To understand society and see change

Those who hold grand political visions of society, who have a program of change, who have a utopia about the future, are usually first disappointed by society itself. For leftist revolutionism, this has been a subject repeated many times in history, each time causing serious traumas. When revolutionaries see that the society for which they think they are fighting pays no attention at the most critical moments, their immediate accusation that society is "not mature enough," "uneducated" or "ignorant" is a very familiar way of consoling themselves.

Before this, the flattery lavished on society, or the people, or even the nation, creates serious ideological illusions. They fit the whole of society, with all its diversity, dynamism and plurality, into their own narrow vision.

Does only the left do this? Beyond a certain point, this can be a mistake that anyone who identifies their own political visions and feelings with society falls into, the conservative or the Islamist as well.

Beyond a certain point, political competition turns into a race to presume that a people who have never been asked anything are on one's own side. It is a kind of race to "seize society." Everyone thinks that it is they themselves who truly represent society. When speaking, they exercise a self-granted authority, as if speaking on behalf of the whole of society. Frankly, this is quite normal as a language of political competition. After all, everyone in political discourse is in a race to seize low-cost advantages. The problem arises when it goes beyond a political maneuver and one believes it too much. You do not see the society that you assumed to be at your side, at your service, the subject of your cause, beside you at the most critical time, in the elections for instance, or in a fight of yours; it has taken its leave and gone somewhere entirely different from your visions.

Because society is like that, and for society to be well understood, it must first of all be known and accepted that it is in no one's possession. Authentic politics requires, above all, a serious hermeneutic effort and a serious sociological outlook.

These days, interesting barometer-style studies on the current state of Turkish society are being published. Important clues about the course Turkish society is on can be gleaned from these studies. The research data that Prof. Ali Çarkoğlu announced on our friend Ayşe Böhürler's program, for example, gives a very vivid cross-section. Although Böhürler presents the data under the heading "calm down, we are not changing!", the figures still show sufficiently that we are changing. But this change, as Böhürler also noted, probably does not fully satisfy the desires of those who have expectations of society.

Society is secularizing, of course, but not to the extent that some want or that some fear. Atheism is increasing a little, but not as much as has been claimed lately.

For example, in 2008 the share of those who said "I know that God truly exists and I have no doubt about it" was 93.1 percent, while in 2019 it fell to 85.2 percent. A decrease of eight percent is of course not small, and it shows a change sufficiently. By contrast, the real interesting point, in complete opposition to this data, and even as a kind of reaction, is that young people's worship practices are higher than those of their parents.

The share of young people who practice worship 2-3 times a month, or several times every week, is 79 percent; for their mothers it is 64 percent, for their fathers 71 percent.

KONDA's study titled "TR100-2022 If Türkiye Were 100 People," also published these days, compares the results of two separate studies conducted in 2011 and 2021 to reveal the change over the ten-year period; whereas it had found the number of non-believers and atheists to be only 2 percent ten years ago, it now finds it to be 7 percent. When these data are combined, it becomes even more possible to conclude that there has really been no change. Indeed, in the same study the number of atheists and the number of those who call themselves believers appear to have increased by the same amount. Those who pray regularly rose from 42 percent in 2008 to 44 percent in 2021, but at the same time the number of those who have never prayed rose from 17 percent to 24 percent.

From all these studies it of course emerges that there is a trend toward secularization. However, we also need to think separately about what this secularization is the result of.

In the period when these research data emerged, that is, from 2008 to today, Türkiye went through a very serious process of urbanization. Urbanization here refers not only to moving from village to city but to a change in lifestyle in which even the countryside has gained urban amenities.

The share of people living in 1-2 person households was 15 percent in 2011 and has risen to 22 percent within ten years. The share of 3-5 person households has remained the same, but 6-8 person households fell from 16 percent to 11 percent. Households of 9 or more people fell from 3 percent to 1 percent. This shows that we are moving toward a household culture with an increasingly nuclear family, and beyond that, a growing share of people living alone, and there is a serious ideological climate corresponding to these settings as well.

The rate of university education has risen from 10 percent to 20 percent, and now nearly 10 percent of society are university students, and this rate will increase further with each passing day. We also know that university students and campus culture come with their own distinctive lifestyles and ideologies.

The data on the type of housing people live in show that in terms of housing quality, apartment and housing-estate (site) life, which brings more individualization, severing from others, becoming atomized, and detachment from the neighborhood, has increased by nearly 50 percent in total.

How these sociological changes will affect people's religious practices or perceptions has a place both in the book of religion and in the book of sociology, and everything is happening in accordance with this book.

Reading sociological change together with the Book of God also lets us see what is going on from a larger picture. Let us never neglect it.