Enes Ataç

Our recent article tackles this question directly. TL;DR: Turkey is not secularizing like Europe, where each younger generation is less religious. Instead, religiosity is being reshaped by political polarization, with decline concentrated among non-AKP supporters. A 🧵

Religious rebound, political backlash, and the youngest cohort: understanding religious change in Turkey Abstract. We distinguish two streams of theory that dominate explanations of religious change: cohort-based cumulative decline theory, which emphasizes sma

However, we need more data on subsequent birth cohorts to confirm this possibility.

Please check out my article for a more detailed discussion of this. If you do not have institutional access, you can find it on my website as well.

academic.oup.com/sf/article-a...

I should note that the data are available only for those born before 2000 (the last WVS wave for Turkey was conducted in 2018). Looking at the trends for the youngest birth cohort (1990–1999), Turkey may be beginning to enter a secularization phase, potentially offset by increasing polarization.

Yet, the increase in attendance across all groups suggests that the party’s transformation into a more authoritarian actor encouraged performance signaling. Here, public religious behaviors may function as signals of regime support that potentially generates political and economic opportunities.

Although the AKP’s relatively liberal stance during its early years led to a short-term increase in the number of individuals who identified as religious, the figure below shows a general decline even among AKP supporters after 2011.

Performance signaling, in contrast, is more characteristic of authoritarian regimes, where existing research shows how public religious behaviors can operate as signals of political loyalty.

Identity updating also mirrors the rise in evangelical identification in the US following Trump’s 2016 election. Although more individuals began identifying as evangelical during this period, church attendance did not increase and in some cases even declined.

In other words, such behaviors may signal support for the regime and potentially provide access to political and economic opportunities associated with that support.

In the second phase, as the AKP evolved into a more conservative and authoritarian political actor, public religious behaviors such as attending Friday prayers may have functioned as performance signaling.

In the first phase, the emergence of a relatively liberal and moderate religious party may have led individuals to feel closer to religion during the 2000s. We conceptualize this as identity updating, a shift that is arguably easier than changing religious practices.

We explain this pattern through identity updating and performance signaling. To do so, we first distinguish between two phases of AKP rule.

What is particularly striking, however, is that after 2011, while all generations began to view themselves as less religious, religious attendance rates increased across cohorts during the same period in Turkey.

First, we show that there are no significant generational differences in religious identification (left) or monthly attendance rates (right) between 1990 and 2018. If a clear secularization process were underway, we would expect to observe widening gaps between generations.

Our recent article tackles this question directly. TL;DR: Turkey is not secularizing like Europe, where each younger generation is less religious. Instead, religiosity is being reshaped by political polarization, with decline concentrated among non-AKP supporters. A 🧵

Thanks for engagement with our work, Paul! If you have any trouble accessing it, you can find a PDF version on my website here: www.enesatac.org/publications...

“AUSTRALIANS ditch religion at rapid rate” declared the 2017 CNN headline of an article reporting that Australia’s 2016 census was the first in which the share of people identifying with “no religion” exceeded the Catholic share of the population (Berlinger 2017). However, the CNN story didn’t report on another first—in 2016, Australia made “no religion” the first response category presented to people answering the census religious identity question. Previously, “no religion” was the last option offered in the list of choices. How many people chose “no religion” because it was the first option rather than the last? Would the number of Australians identifying as Catholic in the 2016 census have remained higher than the “no religion” count if this measurement change hadn’t made it easier for those with weak Catholic identity to choose “no religion”? Unfortunately, no one knows for sure. The Australian Bureau of Statistics didn’t publish a study on the effect of this change in wording.

NEW: How Measurement Changes Can Exaggerate the Growth of Religious “Nones”
from Matthew Conrad & me https://sociologicalscience.com/articles-v13-5-89/

The wages of ethnic power: Socioeconomic status, group threat, and anti-immigrant attitudes in Western Europe - Ibrahim Enes Atac, Charles Seguin, Brandon Gorman, 2025 Group threat theories explain anti-immigrant attitudes as emerging from threats to the perceived or actual power of one’s ethnic group. Studies also show that i...

🚨 New publication: “The Wages of Ethnic Power: Socioeconomic Status, Group Threat, and Anti-Immigrant Attitudes in Western Europe” 🚨

Just published in the International Journal of Comparative Sociology with Charles Seguin and Brandon Gorman.

journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10....

Thrilled to share my new article in Political Psychology: “The psychology of political attitudinal volatility.” In it, I attempt to answer why do some people change their political views more than others? Open access at: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10....
@ispp-pops.bsky.social

BJPolS abstract of a scientific study related to social science research on migration, cultural bias, and economic impacts from the 2010s, using survey data from 428,881 respondents globally. The text elaborates on the findings and mentions the influence of migrants on professional education, cultural concerns, and public perception.

NEW -

A Meta-Analysis of Attitudes Towards Migrants and Displaced Persons - https://cup.org/3K67rG6

- @swebera.bsky.social, Nik Stoop, Peter van der Windt & Haoyu Zhai

#OpenAccess

SSSR’s 2025 Distinguished Article Award for ‘Religious rebound, political backlash, and the youngest cohort: understanding religious change in Turkey

Congratulations to @ienesatac.bsky.social & Gary J. Adler Jr, winners of the SSSR’s 2025 Distinguished Article Award for ‘Religious rebound, political backlash, and the youngest cohort: understanding religious change in Turkey,’ published in @sfjournal.bsky.social sssreligion.org/awards-grant...

Thank you so much for engaging with our work! I completely agree that extending the analysis to post-communist countries is definitely something worth pursuing in future work.

The wages of ethnic power: Socioeconomic status, group threat, and anti-immigrant attitudes in Western Europe - Ibrahim Enes Atac, Charles Seguin, Brandon Gorman, 2025 Group threat theories explain anti-immigrant attitudes as emerging from threats to the perceived or actual power of one’s ethnic group. Studies also show that i...

The paper is open-access and you can read it here:
journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10....

Our main contribution is that we show the effect of SES on anti-immigrant attitudes is stronger among majority group members, where lower-SES individuals hold the most exclusionary views. And yet, at the highest SES levels, differences between majority and minority group members almost disappear.

We examine how the interaction between ethnic group power and SES shapes anti-immigrant attitudes. First, using ESS and EPR data, we show that majority groups are more likely than minority groups to hold anti-immigrant attitudes, and that SES is negatively associated with such attitudes overall.

The wages of ethnic power: Socioeconomic status, group threat, and anti-immigrant attitudes in Western Europe - Ibrahim Enes Atac, Charles Seguin, Brandon Gorman, 2025 Group threat theories explain anti-immigrant attitudes as emerging from threats to the perceived or actual power of one’s ethnic group. Studies also show that i...

🚨 New publication: “The Wages of Ethnic Power: Socioeconomic Status, Group Threat, and Anti-Immigrant Attitudes in Western Europe” 🚨

Just published in the International Journal of Comparative Sociology with Charles Seguin and Brandon Gorman.

journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10....

Thrilled to share that our paper (w/ @garyadler.bsky.social) in Social Forces, “Religious Rebound, Political Backlash, and the Youngest Cohort: Understanding Religious Change in Turkey,” received the Distinguished Article Award from @sssreligion.bsky.social!

Research + teaching + student = great partnership. Also why I love my job @pennstateuniv.bsky.social

Keep an eye on @ienesatac.bsky.social!

It was a fun weekend at @sssreligion.bsky.social

Thrilled and honored that my book Religion for Realists was given the 2025 Distinguished Book Award by @sssreligion.bsky.social last night.

It’s vital that we understand religion and religious people. The social sciences are remiss to ignore either.

Hire more religion specialists.

Religious rebound, political backlash, and the youngest cohort: understanding religious change in Turkey Abstract. We distinguish two streams of theory that dominate explanations of religious change: cohort-based cumulative decline theory, which emphasizes sma

It’s such an honor to receive this award in the presence of scholars who have inspired my work from day one. You can read our paper here (let me know if you can’t access it): academic.oup.com/sf/article-a...

Thrilled to share that our paper (w/ @garyadler.bsky.social) in Social Forces, “Religious Rebound, Political Backlash, and the Youngest Cohort: Understanding Religious Change in Turkey,” received the Distinguished Article Award from @sssreligion.bsky.social!