Page 260 - Religion, Media, and the Public Sphere

of direct experience. On how this is accomplished through visual signs, see Johansen
1999.
10. For a discussion of how Yasar Nuri Öztürk’s scholarly credentials set him apart,
both from the notables of the state divinity establishment in Turkey (a closed commu-
nity of scriptural scholarship) and also the publicly visible “Islamist intellectuals” whose
antiestablishment “radical” rhetoric identi¤es them with political Islam, see Özcan 2000.
11. For three excellent books that offer grounded analyses of how Islam has pene-
trated the public culture and everyday experience of the 1990s decade in Turkey, see
Saktanber 2002; Navaro-Yashin 2002; and White 2002. For a broader comparative per-
spective on politics of Islam in Turkey, see Zubaida (1996, 2000).
12. The “analysis” I offer is essentially based on video recordings of ten programs
broadcast on different Fridays between 1998 and 2000, “randomly” selected by the ar-
chivists of ATV channel. I have transcribed these into writing, as well as watching them
repeatedly—alone, with students, as well as with colleagues willing to spare the time. I
have also interviewed Ayse Özgün at length, and had to “reciprocate” by becoming an
“expert guest” on one of her programs. I have deliberately avoided interviewing Yasar
Nuri Öztürk himself.
13. Ayse Özgün describes her involvement with television in terms of “reaching the
people.” She “wants to do something for this country.” But she also admits that “we have
not been able to reach the mass [kitleye inmeyi basaramdik].” Here is one of her illustra-
tions: “I was in the south, stopped and got out of the car. People were picking cotton in
the heat with Omo [detergent] cartons on their heads. They all came rushing to embrace
me. They watch my program. But when I ask, ‘do you do what we say?’ they mumble
‘things are different here.’” So Ayse Özgün is the prototype—almost a caricature—of
modern/modernizing woman of her generation. Her life story and the ingredients of her
success as a talk show hostess are interesting in their own right but are beyond the im-
mediate concerns of this essay.
14. According to Mardin (1969) the word hürafe has been in circulation since the end
of the nineteenth century, with more or less the same connotations; that is, it is used to
dismiss all popular beliefs and practices associated with oral traditions of “folk” Islam
as “superstition.”

References

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Carpignano, Paolo, and R. Andersen, S. Aranowitz, W. Dizazio. 1990. “Chatter in the
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Cizre-Sakallioglu, Ümit, and Erinç Yeldan. 2000. Politics, Society and Financial Liberal-
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