Mapping Anti-Diyanet Oppositional Publics During the 2018 Deism Controversy on Turkish Twitter

Abstract

Amidst rumors that deism - a form of agnosticism that rejects organized religion - was becoming popular amongst students attending religious schools in Turkey, Ali Erbaş, the head of the Religious Affairs Directorate, made a public statement wherein deists were described as adhering to “a perverse and heretic philosophy”. Soon afterwards, social media was abuzz with responses to Erbaş’s controversial statement. Using computational data collection strategies to amass a dataset of 21,674 tweets sent out by 15,226 distinct Twitter users within 48 hours of the event, this study examines the positions and themes through which the controversy was discussed on Twitter. It relies on both qualitative analysis as well as social network analysis to present evidence on how the controversy turned the Turkish Twittersphere into a temporary dialogical space for the a) enunciation of “deconversion narratives” from Islam, b) expression of grassroots civil activism attempting to hold government actors accountable for Erbaş’s comments, c) voicing of rationalized collective critique towards the policies of Ali Erbaş and the Diyanet.