Under the Same Sky

Everyday Politics of Religious Difference in Southern Turkey

Seçil Daǧtaș

• Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
• Year: 2025
• eBook ISBN: 9781512827729
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Religion, Politics & State
• Index: Social Sciences

An ethnographic study of the everyday lives of religious minorities near Turkey's border with Syria How do people coexist in a world shaped by longstanding differences, political instability, and recurrent displacement? In Under the Same Sky, Seçil Da?ta? addresses this question by exploring the everyday politics of religious difference among minority communities in Turkey's southern borderlands.In a region often portrayed through the lens of conflict and division, this ethnography brings to life the subtle, often overlooked negotiations occurring in social spaces such as bustling city bazaars, shared worship sites, interfaith unions, home gatherings, and a multireligious choir. Set against the backdrop of major political upheavals in Turkey and Syria before the 2023 earthquakes devastated the region, the book demonstrates how Arab 'Alawis, Christians, and Jews, alongside their Sunni Muslim neighbors, use familiar social idioms—kinship, hospitality, love, and companionship—to reproduce religious differences.Da?ta? argues that religious difference is more than an identity marker for these communities, as it is often treated in studies focused on statecraft or political movements. It is a dynamic aspect of social relations which is constantly redefined by race, class, citizenship, and gender, and unsettled by overlapping practices and multireligious belonging. Under the Same Sky focuses on religious difference as lived and reworked in daily encounters—within the larger context of a majoritarian Turkish Sunni state—inviting readers to reconsider secularism, religious plurality, and the nature of political life.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Note on Transliteration, Translation, and Anonymity
• Preface
• Introduction
• Chapter 1. The Matters of History
• Chapter 2. The Troubles of Representation
• Chapter 3. Business Knows No Religion
• Chapter 4. Servants of the Same God
• Chapter 5. The Heart That Doesn’t Concede
• Chapter 6. Whose Misafirs?
• Epilogue
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index
• Acknowledgments