The Transformation of Religiosity Among Younger Generations in Türkiye: Urbanization, Individualization, and the Decline of Institutional Practice

Öz

This article examines the transformation of religiosity among younger generations in Türkiye, situating recent evidence of declining institutional religious practice within a broader sociological account of individualization and urbanization. Drawing on an integrative review of scholarship published between 2023 and 2026, the article argues that generational religious change in Türkiye should not be reduced to a single explanatory factor, such as political disillusionment or digital exposure, but is better understood as the product of several converging processes: the individualization of religious meaning-making, in which young people increasingly construct personalized rather than institutionally prescribed religious identities; the erosion of intergenerational plausibility structures within families and communities; and the measurable, survey-documented shift toward secular self-identification across successive household panels. The article reviews evidence for a genuine, non-transitory secularizing trend among Turkish youth, evaluates competing explanations for this trend, and considers the implications of generational religious transformation for Turkish social cohesion, family life, and religious institutions. The article concludes that the transformation underway is substantial but uneven, producing not a uniform decline into non-belief but a diversification of religious and quasi-religious identities among the young that existing survey categories are only beginning to capture adequately.