The inclusion of Diyanet İşleri Başkanlığı (Presidency of Religious Affairs, hereafter the Diyanet), among leading Islamic scholarly platforms within Sunni Islam would surprise some: Diyanet's claim to global leadership of Sunni Islam is, after all, quite recent. But, if comparative analyses are valued for their potential to identify subtle shifts that in the medium or long term can potentially change the status quo, then it is the study of Diyanet and of the changing milieu of the Turkish Islamic scholarly sphere that has most to offer to this comparative project. The socio-economic and political changes in Turkey since 2002, when AKP (the Justice and Development Party of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan) came to power, have facilitated a revival of the traditional Islamic scholarly and spiritual platforms. More importantly, scholars leading these platforms are now engaging with Diyanet in ways that are boosting the latter's authority among devout Turks and making its newly stated ambition to be the leader of the moderate voice of Sunni Islam on the global stage plausible. It is the contention of this volume that Turkey today is the most promising context for the flourishing of what in this volume has been defined as the civilizational approach to Islam, capable of appealing to the sensibilities of the modern-educated, progressive Muslims: its appeal rests in its ability to combine moderate but loyal readings of Ḥanafī fiqh with a strong emphasis on taṣawwuf.

This moderate approach, which respects the importance of sharī’ah while equally emphasizing esoteric matters and the inner workings of the heart through a strong emphasis on taṣawwuf, is in fact quite close in spirit to what is normally interpreted as al-Azhar's wasaṭīyah Islam; it also strongly overlaps with the understanding of neo-traditionalists in the West such as Hamza Yusuf and Tim Winter, who—as we will see in Volume 2, Part I—are currently very influential among young, educated, and upwardly mobile Muslims in the West. The burst in Islamic scholarly activity that Turkey has seen under the AKP, especially since 2010, merits serious scholarly attention: it tells us about the deep-rootedness of Islam in Turkish society and the potential that Turkey offers for reinvigorating intellectually engaging and spiritually enriching Islamic discourse and practices that can court modern-educated and socially progressive Muslim youth.