Religious Socialization and the Crisis of Faith Among Turkish Youth: A Conceptual Review

Öz

This conceptual article examines how religious socialization shapes, and at times undermines, the faith commitments of young people in contemporary Türkiye. Drawing on an integrative review of empirical and theoretical scholarship published between 2023 and 2026, the article argues that religious socialization should be understood as a dynamic, bidirectional process rather than a one-way transmission of belief from adults to children. Three interrelated mechanisms are identified as central to the emergence of a crisis of faith among Turkish youth: authoritarian and inconsistent parental religious modeling, the disjuncture between the moral rhetoric of religious authority and its lived political practice, and the expansion of digital environments that expose young people to competing worldviews outside institutional control. The review situates these mechanisms within the broader Turkish debate between secularization and desecularization theory, arguing that state-led efforts to cultivate religiosity through education and public visibility do not straightforwardly reverse individual-level secularizing trends and may, under certain conditions, accelerate disengagement. The article concludes that religious socialization in Türkiye is best modeled as a contested, negotiated process in which young people act as interpreters rather than passive recipients of inherited faith, and it outlines implications for religious educators, families, and future research.