TODAY’S MESOP QUOTATION / VALENTINES DAY & ISLAMIST TURKEY
In that sense, this new family-minded Lovers Day seems to be a confirmation of what Turkish sociologist Nilüfer Göle has been arguing for a long time: That Turkey is not strictly divided between the cultures of the West and Islam, but is rather breeding mixtures between these two. As Göle argued in her most recent book, Hybrid Patterns: On Islam and Modernity, what we see is not the clear-cut divisions that fundamentalists idealize, but amalgams that synthesize capitalism, globalization, faith and tradition.
By Mustafa Akyol – AL Monitor – http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/home.html