What explains the rise and resilience of the Islamist movement in Turkey? Since its founding in 1923, the Turkish republic has periodically reined in Islamist actors. Secular laws denied legitimacy to religious ideas, publications, and civic organizations, while military coups jailed or banned Islamist party leaders from politics. Despite such adversity, Islamists won an unprecedented victory at the 2002 national elections and have continued to rule since. 'Pious Politics' explains how Islamists succeeded by developing a popular, well-organized movement over decades that rallied the masses and built vigorous political parties. But an equally formative-if not more significant-factor was the cultural groundwork Islamists laid through a remarkably robust model of mobilization. Drawing on two years of ethnographic and archival research in Turkey, Zeynep Ozgen explores how social movements leverage cultural production to create sociopolitical change.

‘Pious Politics offers an engaging and ambitious analysis of the rise of Islamist politics in Turkey. The book provides a stark reminder of what we miss when we fail to take culture seriously and when we overlook long-term processes that lay the groundwork for significant political transformations.'

Rory McVeigh - The Nancy Reeves Dreux Professor of Sociology, University of Notre Dame

‘Pious Politics is nothing short of a highly sophisticated ethnographic study of an underground social world embedded within a work of world-class historical sociological scholarship. It will serve as a methodological model for future scholars endeavoring to understand the present in its full historicity. At the same time, the book is meticulous in its evidentiary standards-both ethnographic and historical. Quite simply, a superb work of empirical scholarship.'

Robert Jansen - Associate Professor, Sociology Department, University of Michigan

‘A rich, insightful, and original addition to the literatures on Turkish Islamism, Bourdieusian theory and contentious politics. Drawing on ethnographic research as well as archival sources, Ozgen shows that the electoral successes of Islamist parties is not solely the result of macro-level shifts in the political field but involves micro-level cultural work in the religious field as well.'

Philip S. Gorski - Professor, Departments of Sociology and Religious Studies, Yale University