The conscience becomes its own ulama? The Diyanet and its attempted crafting of conscience in Turkey

According to one founding narrative of the Turkish Republic, its forcible secularising of worldly affairs – education, family life, law, economy, etc. – simultaneously paved the way for the emergence of the free conscience of individuals from the servitude of state religion. Rescuing Islam from corrosive public life, the Republic claimed to allow its flourishing in the private conscience. But did this happen? This contribution investigates the complex social life of the conscience in Turkey. It argues that in instituting the Presidency of Religious Affairs (Diyanet İşleri Başkanlığı) in 1924, the Kemalists did not leave the conscience in peace. Rather, one central moral sense that it sought to foster in citizens was – and still is – religious militarism. And yet despite this, in Turkey’s conscientious objectors’ movement, citizens generate an alternative conscience, contesting this militarist ethos still desired of them by the authoritarian state. This contribution explores the history of ongoing relations between a bureaucratised Islam and the conscience in Turkey, concluding that for both the public and the individual, the conscience has been as much a force of conflict and division as it has of moral conformity.