Religious Confrontations with (Secular) Affects

In line with arguments made by authors who problematise the notions ‘East’ and ‘West’ and also criticise the strict division between secular and religious affects and symbols, the fourth chapter addresses the context in which the so-called headscarf controversy emerged in Turkey. It examines, firstly, the language used in the media; secondly, court cases regarding the headscarf ban in Turkey including cases at the ECHR and the Turkish Constitutional Court; and, lastly, the political fight between the two opposing parties in Turkey over regulations regarding the headscarf ban. Focusing on an analysis of the formative and performative effect of public and official discourses ascribing a presupposed incommensurability between secular and religious worldviews demarcating them as a constant threat to each other, this chapter argues against this divide and explains that without perceiving them as the same, they are similarly accountable for making religious women appear as either vulnerable subjects in need of protection or dangerous subjectivities threatening the polity’s limits. Thus, it reviews questions of agency in relation to the possibilities that female religious activists have to raise differing political demands vis-à-vis their rights, while their political voices are implicated in the language they aim to contest and as their subjectivity appears to be both precarious and elusive, but also formative and constitutive of this field of hegemonic power negotiations.