A Century of Sufism (1925-2025): Piety, Culture, and Heritage in Turkey since the Legal Prohibition of 1925
Date: December 5-6, 2025
Join Online: https://ceu-edu.zoom.us/j/95717015488?pwd=M4GKcxrTIfgHoJnYXH4Ad1AP5bCyok.1
Location: Central European University, Vienna, Austria – Quellenstrasse 51, 1100
Organizers: M. Brett Wilson (Central European University) and Gökçen B. Dinç (Utrecht University)
Funded by: European Research Executive Agency’s Horizon Europe Programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions 2023, Center for Eastern Mediterranean Studies, CEU-ACRO (CAEF)
Host: Center of Eastern Mediterranean Studies
Schedule:
Friday - December 5, 2025
10:00 – Welcome and Opening Remarks: M. Brett Wilson and Gökçen B. Dinç
10:15-11:15 – Panel I: The Prohibition of Sufi Institutions
Chair: Gökçen B. Dinç, Utrecht University
Brett Wilson, Central European University: “Closing the Sufi Lodges: Shrines, Tekkes, and the State of the Field”
Paolo Sartori, The Austrian Academy of Sciences: “Armageddon Averted: Historicising Soviet Sufism Beyond Institutions"
11:15-11:30 - Coffee Break
11:30-13:00 – Panel II: Sufi Leaders
Chair: Tijana Krstic, Central European University
Gökçen B. Dinç, Utrecht University and the Orient Institute-Istanbul – “The Shaykh of the Halk and the Republic: Şemseddin Yeşil (1904-1968) and Love of Ahl Al-Bayt”
Yusuf Selman İnanç, Central European University, “The Sufi Shaykhs after the Closure of the Lodges”
Göker Giresunlu, Central European University, “Beheading Ataturk: The Ticaniye Order and the Limits of Democracy in Postwar Turkey”
13:00-14:30 – Lunch Break
14:30-15:30 - Panel III: Shrines and Sacred Lineages
Chair: Sara Kuehn, University of Vienna
Barbara Henning, Hamburg University, “Inheriting Sacred Spaces, Protecting Cultural Heritage: The Descendants of Hacı Bayram-ı Veli in Early-Republican Ankara”
Adeliia Davletova, Ludwig Maximilian University, “The Fabric of Belonging: Rethinking Hierarchies of Intimacy in the Bektashi Order (1826–1950)”
15:30-16:00 Coffee Break
16:30-17:30 – Panel IV: Literature, Popular Traditions, and the Provinces
Chair: M. Brett Wilson, Central European University
İlbey Özdemirci, Kilis 7 Aralık University, “Prohibiting Sufism: Perspectives from the Provinces”
Çiğdem Buğdaycı, Boğaziçi University, “Specters of Sufism in Republican Literature”
Saturday - December 6, 2025 (Closed session)
10:00-10:30
Yeliz Teber, Oxford University, “A Story of Loss and Oblivion: The Fate of the Books of the Hacı Bektaş Shrine after 1925”
10:40 – Roundtable I: Sources and Methods
- Institutions: Pious Endowments, Lodges, Archives, Museums
- People: Memoirs, Biographies, Databases
11:30 - Coffee Break
11:45-12:45 – Roundtable II: The State of the Field and Agenda for Future Research
- Past and Current Projects
- Potential Collaborations and Grant Opportunities
Photo credit: M. Brett Wilson, April 2025
