Faith-based organizations in Turkey as indirect political patronage tools

Abstract

Social assistance is one of the most effective tools for poverty alleviation. However, it can also serve as a means of managing and silencing the poor in regard to the difficulties imposed by the system in which they live. Recognizing the voting potential of the poor in Turkey, political parties have frequently implemented social assistance and political patronage. Faith-based organizations (FBOs) also operate in the field of social assistance and are supported by the government. There have been people and organizations that have had an intermediary role in Turkey since the era of the Ottoman Empire. In this regard, the missing element in the existing literature is an examination of the intermediary role played by social assistance in political patronage. This study coins the term indirect political patronage (IPP) to address the role of FBOs that work to consolidate the government in Turkey. The significance of this paper is that it brings together a discussion on the FBOs (religion) and political patronage implementation in social assistance programmes (poverty) to understand and examine the role played by FBOs by using the concept of IPP. To scrutinize these roles, the examination of the relationship between the state and FBOs in social assistance programmes is of key importance. The relationship can be observed in several spheres, such as governmental incentives as dependency indicators. The relationship also presents a periodization of FBOs regarding their visibility in the public space and the roles that they play in domestic politics, which are both closely related to their performance as actors of IPP. Furthermore, the classification that this study offers through this periodization, noninstitutionalized and institutionalized, provides an organizational analysis of the evolution of FBOs in terms of building necessary skills and achieving a certain level of establishment. In this study, conceptual arguments, field studies, in-depth interviews, and statistical data on social assistance were utilized. FBOs that are affiliated with a religious community, enjoy public benefit status and operate in the districts that are locally run by Justice and Development Party (JDP) municipalities were selected for the purposes of measuring and evaluating their roles in IPP.