Turkish-Muslim Identity from a Japanese Academic Perspective: An Autoethnographic Inquiry

Authors : Hiroki Wakamatsu

Pages : 9-32

Doi:10.37697/eskiyeni.1790758

View : 304 | Download : 358

Publication Date : 2025-12-31

Article Type : Research Paper

Abstract :In this article the author presents an autoethnographic reflection on Turkish-Muslim identity through the lived experience of a Japanese anthropologist himself who embraced Islam and has made Turkey his home for nearly two decades. Rather than treating personal narrative as anecdotal memory, the study takes it as a valuable site of knowledge production, where individual experience intersects with larger cultural and social dynamics. At the same time, drawing on the principles of autoethnography and reflexive anthropology, the paper situates the author’s own trajectory as both a methodological tool and an ethnographic text in its own right. This article looks at how the experience of religious conversion unfolds in social, emotional, and intellectual terms. It pays special attention to the ways in which Islamic values both connect with and differ from Japanese ethical traditions, and to how Turkish Islamic culture shapes everyday practices of faith, bodily discipline, and a sense of belonging. Rather than seeing conversion only as a private change, the study shows it as an ongoing negotiation with cultural codes, community norms, and expectations about identity and authenticity. In the Turkish context, where Muslim identity is often perceived as inseparable from ethnic Turkishness, the study highlights the paradox of inclusion and exclusion. While conversion may invite acceptance into the religious community, it simultaneously exposes the convert to subtle forms of othering that reinforce perceptions of foreignness. To illuminate this tension, the paper draws on Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of habitus, Judith Butler’s notion of performativity, and Victor Turner’s theory of liminality, showing how the self navigates dissonance, manages social roles, and inhabits spaces of ambiguity between belonging and marginality. This reflection is also situated within the broader field of Islamic studies in Japan. It looks back to the semantic philosophy of Toshihiko Izutsu and then moves forward to the more recent sociological and anthropological studies of scholars such as Akiko Komura. Seen against this backdrop, the author’s own position comes into focus: living both as an observer and a participant, as Japanese and Muslim, as someone who belongs and yet remains slightly outside. It is in this in-between space that fresh ways of understanding, critique, and identity-making become possible. In conclusion, the author suggests that Turkish-Muslim identity cannot be reduced to a fixed or uniform essence. Rather, it should be understood as a fluid and evolving process that is constantly reoriented through cultural encounters, historical legacies, and the lived negotiations of everyday life. His identity is not something passively inherited, but something actively practiced and reinterpreted related to shifting social expectations, personal struggles, and moments of reflection. In this respect, religious or cultural belonging emerges less as a permanent state than as an ongoing experience of becoming, in which individuals continually redefine what it means to be both Turkish and Muslim across different contexts and circumstances. The author’s journey to the “True Path” thus illustrates how anthropology, when practiced through autoethnography, ca n bridge personal experience and scholarly analysis to reveal the complexity of religious and cultural belonging.
Keywords : Japon Antropolojisi, Otoetnografi, Müslüman Kimliği, Dönüşüm, Liminalite, Türk İslamı

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