Beliefs in witchcraft, or the ability of certain people to intentionally cause harm via supernatural means, have been documented across societies all over the world. Extensive ethnographic research on this phenomenon over the past century explored the many roles of witchcraft beliefs in...

The aim of this paper is to discuss how Turkey’s president Erdogan instrumentalized Diyanet in building his own foreign policy vision. Diyanet has always maintained as the tool in the hands of the government for integration of ideology into society. During the 80s Diyanet was very active in...

Islamist nationalist project the AKP has embarked upon has found its resonance in foreign policy which espoused a proactive, interventionist policy in ex-Ottoman territories and Turkish diaspora communities. The most striking and significant change in AKP’s conception of nationalism is the...

Early on, AKP governments tried to liberate the state institutions from Kemalist hegemony. However, this changed after AKP managed to weaken the Kemalist hegemony and assumed the balance of power in Turkey. One of these state institutions was Diyanet. Despite its substantial enlargement, Diyanet...

During the COVID-19 outbreak, most religious places in the world are closed down for months together. Many religious leaders and communities of faith have canceled their services and other gatherings for quite some time. In many nations, such gatherings are already prohibited or discouraged....

The paper explores the evolution of ethnic identities of two important and distinct immigrant religious groups. Using data from Germany, a large European country with many immigrants, we study the adaptation processes of Muslims and Christians. Individual data on language, culture, societal...

In this paper, we examine and compare the impact of cultural differences on intergenerational altruism in Turkish people living in Turkey and in Germany, using the anthropological concept of worldview. Data were gathered from four surveys: nationwide surveys in Turkey and Germany, an online...

For centuries, Jews in Europe have specialized in financial services. At the same time, they have been the victims of historical antisemitism on the part of the Christian majority. We find that present-day financial development is lower in German counties where historical antisemitism was...

This paper connects insights from the literature on cosmopolitan values in political science, anxiety in social psychology, and identity economics in a vignette-style experiment. We asked German respondents about their attitudes towards a Syrian refugee, randomizing components of his description...

This paper examines the relationship between religion and home bias. We propose a simple theoretical framework that suggests that countries interacting via their representative individuals might show a certain degree of religion-driven international altruism that in turn affects trade. We test...