This paper analyzes the contemporary welfare provision activities of religiously-motivated associations in Turkey; and their historical roots in the state-religion relations. The findings of the paper are the product of research conducted on the existing literature on religion, politics and social policy; and the empirical research—forty-seven in-depth interviews with RMAs, scholars working in the area, and experts in the state institutions of welfare—carried out in Turkey in the period between January 2008 and June 2009. The empirical research undertaken focused on the aims, motivations and organizational structures of the FBOs and their connections to state, business and civil society networks. Its specific history of secularization renders Turkey a highly interesting object of analysis. Religion has always been a contested phenomenon with the potential to be politically exploited in Turkey. Therefore, the proliferation of these associations can only be understood in relation to this particular historical background of state-religion relations. Following the definition of welfare regimes “as formulas of political compromise between different electoral and societal groups” (Manow, Van Kersbergen 2009), I claim that social provision is becoming an area of struggle between different providers (actors and/or institutions) on the lines of unresolved conflicts, especially in periods of political instability. What is going on in Turkey today is a restructuring of the welfare arena that parallels the ongoing contestation over the issue of religion and its place in Turkish society. The paper claims that the underdevelopment of the social assistance area and the contested nature of state-religion relations are the main reasons for the proliferation of religiously motivated associations in the period after the 1990s. These are also the main reasons explaining why these associations are playing an important role as affectively politicized organizations of change in Turkish society.
