Turkey's most controversial religious figure is the Muslim cleric and author Fethullah Gülen, whose followers have established around one thousand schools in 135 countries. Since 2003, the Gülen-affiliated educational non-profit TÜRKÇEDER has organized the International Turkish Olympiad, a competition for children enrolled in the Gülen schools. The showpiece of this event is its song contest, in which students perform well-known Turkish songs before live audiences of thousands in cities all over Turkey and reach millions more via television broadcasts and the Internet. While the contest resembles American Idol in its focus on individual singers and Eurovision in its nationalistic overtones, the fact that the singers are performing songs associated with a nationality not their own raises intriguing questions about the intended message of the competition as well as about its publics. To answer these questions, I analyzed YouTube videos of the competition and examined YouTube comments, popular websites, and newspaper opinion columns. I conclude that the performers themselves are meant to feel an affinity with Turkish culture and values, while Turkish audiences receive a demonstration that Gülen's brand of Islam is compatible with Turkish nationalism. Moreover, the competition reaches a multiplicity of publics both within and beyond Turkey. While some of these can be characterized as essentially oppositional counterpublics, I find that, in the case of the Turkish Olympiad, the dichotomy between rational public and emotional or irrational counterpublic established collectively by such theorists of publics as Jürgen Habermas and Michael Warner begins to break down.

In the age of mass information, globalization, and peer-to-peer social networks, the traditional markers of identity and elective affinities, particularly those of religion and nationalism, are shifting in relation to contemporary trends. The field of Religious Studies has been influenced by a series of ‘post’s: postsecular, postmodern, postcolonial, and post 9/11. The rise of revolutionary religious movements internationally is a hallmark characteristic of the postsecular age. Participants in these movements are variously characterized as religious dissidents, militant secularists, neo-fascist nationalists, and terrorists. However, according to the dialogues within these communities, participants do not think of themselves in these terms. The dualizing labels of ‘religious’ and ‘secular’ do not lend meaning to these contemporary identities. This thesis addresses the question: How do traditional and contemporary theories in the field of Religious Studies evaluate contemporary religious nationalist movements, and how do their analyses compare to how members of the groups in question perceive themselves? To answer this question, this dissertation examines and contrasts four key case studies: the Native Faith Movement and Femen in Ukraine, and the Gezi Park protesters and the Gülen Movement in Turkey. By analyzing group activities through the fora of the curated digital presences of group leaders and members, this research investigates emerging elective affinities and markers of identity which transcend the religious/secular binary. Contemporary theory from the field of Critical Religion and feminist theology transcending the religious/secular binary will be applied to these case studies in order to gain a deeper understanding of the shifting relationships between religion, protest and the nation.

L’objectif de cette thèse est de montrer comment une communauté musulmane d'origine turque caractérisée par la culture du secret, l’informalité et l'action sociale s’institutionnalise dans la transnationalisation. Par une étude connectant la Turquie, l'Afrique du Sud, le Sénégal et le Kenya, il s'agit de comprendre ce que l’expansion transnationale vers l’Afrique subsaharienne et les interactions qui en émergent révèlent de l’institution tout en la recomposant, dans ses mécanismes organisationnels mais aussi dans sa capacité (ou non) à produire de la croyance et à susciter de l’engagement et des loyautés chez les Turcs comme chez les Africains. / The goal of this work is to analyze the ways a Muslim group coming from Turkey, relying upon a culture of secret, informal bonds and social action, institutionnalizes itself through transnational expansion. Through a study connecting Turkey, South Africa, Senegal and Kenya, our aim is to understand how the transnational expansion towards Subsaharan Africa and the encounters it creates between Tuks and Africans both reveals and recomposes the logics of the institution.