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The ontic and epistemic, even ethical and aesthetic existence of human beings acquires meaning with identity. Identity is a paradoxical structure that expresses involvement and integrity as well as marginalizing and revealing differences. Common language, values, attitudes, opinions and beliefs are the causes and effects of identification. The individual or micro is surrounded by the society or macro, and macro has introduced to the micro. The macro world constructs the psychological and cognitive structure of the micro world. But at the same time, the background of this macro world is determined by the identities that it shares with the micro world. The identities that make up the collective identities may differ according to the conjuncture. Thus, identity has been built with understanding that changes according to time and society. Religious hegemony was dominant in most parts of the world during the Middle Age. Thus, religion which essentially means transforming chaos into cosmos, was used as the most important tool to maintain order by the states. It retained its dominant position over political and other decisions by the authority for many years. This situation brought a society based on religious identity. This structure had created an organic bond between the state and society. This link was the only representative of identity. The organic bond between the state and society was likewise built on religion in the Ottoman Empire. It was placed as the unique element that shaped the perception of individual or collective identity. Religious differences in Ottoman Empire constitutes the epistemological essence of identity. Placing religion merely in the semantic domain of the concept of identity was making it decisive of identity. The fact that social identity corresponds only to religious partnership, independent of cultural and linguistic partnership, has caused individual reality to deviate from social reality, in the population known as Karamanlides in the current literature that will be used in this paper as the Turkophone Anatolian Orthodoxes. This deviation would be particularly felt in the following centuries, when religious affiliation would be replaced by tribal belonging. This paper takes issue with cultural identities of two communities that were separated by religion. It seeks to reveal cultural identicalness of two communities when religious identity has not been replaced by tribal one. It is based on the work Ανατολ Τουρκιουλερι that was published in 1896 and was the first folk magazine in the Ottoman Empire, points out the commonality, in other words, integration in the individual existence of social identities separated by the religion. A particular focus is on one of the folk songs in the booklet Ανατολ Τουρκιουλερι, which contains folk songs collected through field research among Orthodox people: “A Girl Being Bride”. The Turkish poet in question has a pseudonym with the other image of his poet: The poet has a marginalised alias named: “Kul Shadi”. In the axis of Kul Shadi and his Turkish folk song with Greek Letters known as Karamanli Turkish in the current literature and named in this article as Turkish with Greek Letters, this article aims to determine language and cultural identities between two communities in the Ottoman Empire that had been separated by religious identities, however, essentially they could not be separated. Consequently, it is proper to say that a single subject as the bearer of social idendity is inadequate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Organizational structure, operational mechanism, and employment conditions of Theology faculties have always been hotly debated topics in Turkish academic circles. Many employment-related issues, such as procedures for student acceptance, program outcomes, and broadening students' future job opportunities for graduates, are still significant today. These endless discussions have most negative effects on the motivation of every person in Theology faculties involved in the teaching and learning processes. Theology Faculties, which were established as the only higher religious education institutions in the Turkish Republic, have throughout their history been continually scrutinized by different views and ideologies exclusively for the purposes of their establishment. As a result of these considerations, the teaching content, and particularly the curriculum, has transformed and evolved concomitantly. Although Theology faculties, at the beginning of the Republican Era, were established with the specific aim of meeting the needs of the country for well-educated and equipped religious functionaries, they could survive only for nine years, between 1924 and 1933, and were closed without achieving this goal. Ideological debates on employment-related issues, such as for what purpose and in the frame of which responsibility would these university graduates to perform their future career duties, also played an important part in this turbulent process. Thus, it was not possible to actualize the first ascribed goal for their establishment. The second goal envisaged for the Theology faculties was to perform the activities related to religious education and other religious affairs based on an embracing and moderate religious discourse, with a certain reference to the Quran and Sunnah, to contribute to the unity and solidarity of the country. In this respect, one of the reasons why radical movements could not find any solid ground in Turkey and its surroundings, even during the times when religion-centred political and ideological developments intensified, is that Theology faculties introduced a reliable religious perception and adopted an embracing approach toward the different fragments of society. With their intense influence on society Theology faculties created a vacuum effect for the radicalized movements by preventing them from establishing permanent habitat in Turkish society. However, today it is clear that Theology faculties are far from attaining these goals. It is possible to claim that these faculties are much more inclined to concentrate on creating religious men rather than fulfilling their previously assigned responsibilities, training intellectuals professionalized in religious matters, which is articulated in the Unity of Education Law as "senior experts of religion". Examining the faculty curriculum over a certain period proves this alteration. Today, Theology faculties follow one single teaching program. In the academic year 1998-1999, the Department of Teacher Training for Primary Schools Religious Culture and Ethics Class, with the main purpose of graduating prospective school teachers, was established within Theology faculties' organizational structures. However, in the academic year 2014-2015 the programs ceased to accept students based on the decision of the Higher Council of Education, and in the academic year 2016-2017 it was de facto closed. Thus, the Theology program is the only program that accepts students at present. A faculty that runs one teaching program attracts an important question: how can Theology faculties train experts for the different fields required by the modern society and its changing perceptions on employment through one single program? This question constitutes the main research problem of this paper. Examining the curriculum of Theology faculties results in two main problem areas. First, there is the lack of a stable relationship between the purposes and the employment areas of the faculties. As the formal and non-formal religious institutions offer the main graduate job opportunities, the curriculum should be designed to include the courses that future employees would benefit from. However, the curriculum does not have a proportional distribution of classes in regards to their associated employment areas. The second problem is excessive numbers of classes. Although the numbers vary according to the faculty, the average number of classes is more than 70 during the four-year study period. It may be claimed that having a large number of classes is a parameter for the richness of the curriculum, yet, in practice this is under scrutiny. Benefiting from the curriculum at best cost is not possible without relating the teaching content to employment requirements and compartmentalization of the program if necessary. Also, compartmentalization will require readjustment of the curriculum for employment areas. Thus, in the process of reorganizing the teaching program and, correspondingly, its content, the most crucial matter that should be taken into consideration is to analyse the requests and expectations from the field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we dealt separately with the days that Ziya Gökalp spent in Diyarbakır and Thessaloniki considering that a thought is made up in a social environment. That is because his social environment in Diyarbakır which is called Thessaloniki of Anatolia and that of Thessaloniki titled as Kaaba of freedom are quite different. Thus, his views on religion and tasawwuf changed to a large degree. In his Diyarbakır days, he was affected by Doctor Yorgi Efendi, his teacher in Junior School, his uncle Hasip Efendi, Dr. Abdullah Cevdet as well as Muhyiddin Ibn Arabi that he defined him as the biggest philosopher. Even he was stuck in their approaches. He found out in Thessaloniki the sociology of Durkheim. Then, he followed Durkheim's point of view very passionately and accepted it as his guide in many subjects and reshaped his opinions to accord with Durkheims' views. In this context, it would be suitable to make comparison between his two articles titled İcmâ-ı Siyâsi İ'tizâl-i Siyâsi that he wrote and Yeni Hayat ve Yeni Kıymetler that he wrote them in Diyarbakır and Thessaloniki respectively in order to detect the difference between both periods of him. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Folk medicine, embodies a number of components containing the society’s values like tradition, ritual and language and is one of the significant factors ensuring the protection and continuity of these values. Today, although, as a result of the political and social obligations imposed to them, Ulupamir Kirgizs living in Ulupamir village in Erciş-Van, where the last stop of their migration waves is, appeal to the modern health institutions in Erciş and Van to solve their health problems, they prefer to solve the problems primarily in the Village, through their traditional methods. Due to the geographic and social conditions of the places where they live, Ulupamir Kirgizs, like the other aspects of their daily lives, have carried diagnose and treatment methods into modern times through their cultural memory and they ensured the continuity of the traditional treatment methods by adapting them to their new residential areas and the problems there. A lot of treatment methods for a lot of illnesses are practiced in the Village. Generally, these treatment methods are practised by women called “bübü”, described as “open-eyed” and known as “healers” by everyone. These treatments based on the insight power of the healer, are mainly based on the practice that a negative effect is removed by the combination of supernatural world full of symbols with words/prayers. In this paper, the structures of the folk medicine practices which have some shamanic features as we observed through the data of our fieldwork among Ulupamir Kirgizs, magical practices and symbols accompanying them are evaluated in terms of phrases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ethics is not a separate topic like other theological topics such as divinity, prophethood and eschatalogy dealt with in Kalam books. Ethical issues are generally discussed in terms of acts of Allah and human in different parts of Kalam books. At this point, there are two prominent theological approaches dominated by Ash'arite and Mu'tazilî scholars. In ethics, Ash'arite scholars defend their position by relying on revelation while Mu'tazila used reasoning to defend theirs. Unfortunately, historically the lively discussions between these two denominations overshadowed Maturidi sect. In this paper, we will try to analyze and uncover Maturidi's thoughts especially regarding basic matters in ethics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]