Abstract:

This article aims to bring clarity regarding discussing of political identities and lifestyles in Turkish society on the base of empirical data. This debate is sometimes over the concept of piety and conservatism, and the other times secularism and secularization in which the politics may be rely on lifestyles or may manipulate lifestyles. The Republic, since its establishment, aims to replace traditional lifestyles with western and modern lifestyles. In this regard, Turkish modernization can be interpreted as an upper structural change process through socio-cultural changes by the state. Different political parties in the democratizationprocess proposed different approaches and policies about direction and shape of modernization. In this regard, the political changes in Turkey, especially in last ten years, starts a discussion about the lifestyle of people, which is not at all surprising. Because political projects aimed at social secularization in the past was out of purpose when conservative Democrats came to power in the 2000s and this time it has been started to speak of “the conservatization of the society”. Since this article refers and pays attention such researches and studies, the article also questioned the relationship between political identity and lifestyle through three different political identities on the base of empirical data.

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