Bodily Transformation of Islamic Identity in Turkey

This study aims to present a new evaluation of the journey of “Islamic Identity” in Turkey from 1970s to 2000s. It particularly focuses on body within the context of emergent theories of sociology of body to present the status and fluctuations of Islamic identity through this period. In this study, 12 novels written in the period from 1970s to 2000s were examined by qualitative content analysis method. As a result, Islamic identity have maintained a homogenized idea of body and self integrity on the fluid and heteregenous ground of modern secular culture as the most important foothold to preserve its homogeneity. However, after 1990s, this body and self integrity have become heterogenized through the growing process of individuation, deprivatization, and politicization in this era. It can be evaluated that this desacralization of the body and self integrity have become a "modern life strategy" to the extent that for Islamic identity desacralization paved the way for the means of coexisting with others