Ahmet Yukleyen

Ahmet Yukleyen is an assistant professor in the department of sociology and anthropology and the Croft Institute for International Studies at the University of Mississippi.  His project focuses on the role of the Salafi movement in the prevention and promotion of radicalization and terrorist recruitment among Muslim youth in Western Europe.  He argues that existing explanations of rising Salafism and radicalization, such as globalization and socio-economic marginalization, fail to account for participation by a Europeanized middle class, and the role of sub-trends – political, apolitical, and Jihadi, among which these participants switch alliances – show Salafism to be both a potential stepping stone toward Jihadi terrorism and a bulwark against it.   His project will examine the relationship among these sub-trends and participants’ rationale behind switching from one to the other.  The project is based on field research in the Netherlands that Yukleyen has been gathering since 2006.

Yukleyen was a 2003-2004 USIP Peace Scholar studying Turkish Islamic organizations in the Netherlands.  He received his B.A. in international relations at Bilkent University in Ankara, and completed his M.A. at the Graduate School of International Studies, University of Denver.  He received his Ph.D. in Cultural Anthropology from Boston University in 2006. He is second generation Turkish-Dutch.

• Localizing Islam in Europe: Turkish Islamic Communities in Germany and the Netherlands, (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, forthcoming Fall 2011)
• “Production of Mystical Islam in Europe: Religious Authorization in the Süleymanlı Sufi Community,” Contemporary Islam (Vol 4, Issue 3, 2010) pp 269-288
• “State Politics and Islam in Europe: Milli Görüş in Germany and the Netherlands” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies (Vol 36, Issue 3, 2010) pp 445-463
• “Localizing Islam in Europe: Religious Activism among Turkish Islamic Organizations in the Netherlands” Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs (Vol. 29, Issue 3, 2009) pp 291-309