Summary:

This project explores the attitudes of religious people in Turkey toward scientific issues that have generated controversy in recent decades, and assesses the political implications of these attitudes. The contentious topics that the project focuses on are vaccination (mRNA vaccines in particular), climate change, and the question of “normalcy” in gender and sexuality. As these topics have revealed the ways scientific expertise can influence policy, the project also looks at religious political elites’ perceptions and their assumptions on the attitudes of religious citizens.

Finally, the project seeks to understand how gender may influence attitudes toward these issues.

The main questions this study asks are:

1. What are religious Muslims’ views on vaccination, climate change, and gender and sexuality? How do they see the role of science in shaping policies on these topics?
2. Do the views of religious political elites and religious voters overlap?
3. In what ways can gender matter in shaping religious people’s views on these issues?

The project contributes to the aims of the INSBS in numerous ways. Research on science and religion has tended to study topics like evolution or Big Bang. This project, instead, studies issues with direct political implications. It also focuses on the potential role of gender in shaping attitudes – a matter that has not received adequate attention. Concentrating on Turkey, the project will also improve our understanding of religious Muslims’ attitudes toward scientific expertise under a purportedly Islamist-leaning government.

The project uses multiple methods. To identify official religious views on these topics, researchers will conduct a textual analysis of the sermons issued by the Directorate of Religious Affairs. Then, researchers will interview government officials and Islamist politicians to uncover the views of these elites, and their assumptions about the attitudes of religious voters. Finally, researchers will conduct gender-segregated focus groups and explore religious people’s views.

A key output of the project will be a policy brief to be presented to the interviewed leaders and officials. The researchers anticipate that the findings will deepen politicians’ understanding of the public, and inform policy-making processes. Also for public outreach, social media accounts will be launched to share information about studies on science and religion, which will contribute to enhancing public debate, and generate interest in the topic. The researchers will also produce two articles, and contribute to the subfield of science and religion, and to the study of religion in the broader fields of sociology and political science.