The possibility of individualizing Kurdish religiosity as a socio-cultural construction

Individuals create their identities within their own living spaces. Individuals reconstruct these identities through interactions. The general aim of the research, which is shaped by this basic view, is to understand the relationship between religion and ethnicity and what kind of secularisation typology it reveals through a limited subject. Religion has a continuous characteristic. It is thought that religion is reconstructed as a result of changing conditions and needs arising under other factors. In the case of religious Kurdish individuals, the conditions and factors that lead to such construction have been observed in this research process. It is important in terms of the general aims of the research to reveal the facts and events that enable religious and ethnic feelings to come together and the coexistence of religion and ethnicity, and if there is an observable change in the individual as a result of this, the nature of this change. The study brings to the forefront the processual and reflexive qualities, subjective meanings, and the interactional and communicative nature of social reality. For this reason, the qualitative methods and phenomenological analysis, which allow understanding, were preferred. The study data were obtained by conducting interviews with the help of a semi-structured questionnaire. Interviews were conducted with 28 people, 8 of whom were women. These individuals were selected from Ankara, Aydın, İzmir, Bitlis, Van, and Hakkari. The data collected includes the participants' perceptions of ethnic and religious identity, their religious imagination, and their political imagination. The analysis of this research started with the interview transcripts and was completed with the description and interpretation of the findings. However, the conclusions drawn from the findings obtained from these data are not generalized and are designed to cover the sample of research. Thus, it is thought that this specific example will contribute to the field by expanding the discussions on issues such as ethnic identity, religion, differences, individualization, and secularisation. In this study, in addition to verbal statements obtained through interviews, secondary data sources were also used to support the study. As a result of the data, it was determined that the individuals constituting the study sample have a strong sense of identity. Individual identity perception is related to religious and ethnic identity. This shows that religion and ethnicity in religious Kurdish individuals are reconstructed through lively and dynamic interaction. As a result of this perception of identity, a different conception of religion from tradition has been formed. In this sense, it is understood that a subjective and internal conception of religion is present in the participant's understanding. Ethnic identity is a significant dynamic in this new religious imagination. When we look at the political sphere, it is obvious that the determining factor for participants is the ethnic identity strategy. This is because religious Kurdish participants see what is happening to them as a cultural and identity problem. Religion, on the other hand, continues to be one of the main sources here with its subjective meanings. In this sense, pluralistic, all-encompassing political thinking is trying to be formed in individuals. Therefore, this study analyses the idea that ethnoreligious construction brings along secular construction in the case of the individuals it deals with. Thus, it has been possible to talk about Kurdish Islam based on individual construction. Key Words: Sociology of Religion, Ethnicity, Religion, Identity, Kurds, Kurdish Islam