M. Hakan yavuz
  • Professor, Political Science Department

Research Summary

Professor Yavuz's current research interests are: the socio-political evolution of Islamic Calvinism in Turkey (the Gulen movement; and role of religious ethics in the market); the Balkan Wars (1912-1923) and the construction of memory; and the origins of Kurdish nationalism and ethno-religious conflict in Anatolia (1878-2007)

Education

  • Ph.D., Political Science, The University of Wisconsin-Madison. Project: The Construction of Islamic Identity in Turkey
  • Ph.D., Political Science, University of Wisconsin-Madison. Project: The construction of Islamic Identity

Biography

M.Hakan Yavuz is a professor of political science at the University of Utah.  His current projects focus on transnational Islamic networks in Central Asia and Turkey; the role of Islam in state-building and nationalism; ethnic cleansing and genocide; and ethno-religious conflict management. 

Yavuz received his earlier education in Ankara, Turkey, graduated with B.A. from Siyasal Bilgiler Fakultesi, Ankara.  He received his M.A. from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and spent a semester at the Hebrew University, Israel (1990) and received his Ph.D. from University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1998 in political science. M. Hakan Yavuz so far published four books: Toward and Islamic Enlightenment: The Gülen Movement (Oxford University Press, 2013).  Islamic Political Identity in Turkey (Oxford University Press, 2003); Muslim Democracy and Secularism in Turkey (Cambridge University Press, 2009); ed. The Emergence of a New Turkey (University of Utah Press, 2007).

Yavuz has received a number of fellowships, some of them are the MacArthur fellowship,University of California Fellowship, Rockefeller Fellowship, and most recently was a Tanner Humanities Center Fellow in 2014. 

Yavuz also carried out an extensive fieldwork in Fergana Valley, Uzbekistan to examine the relationship between Islam and nationalism and the preservation and dissemination of Islamic knowledge under socialism.  He is an author of more than 30 articles on Islam, nationalism, Kurdish question, and modern Turkish politics.  He published in Comparative Politics, Middle East Critique, Middle East Journal, Oxford Journal of Islamic Studies, SAIS Review, Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs, Current History, Central Asian Survey, Journal of Islamic Studies, and Journal of Palestine Studies.

Some of his articles are translated into Arabic and Bosnian from English.  He is an editorial member of Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs and Critique.