ИСТИНА

The special role of traditional Islamic institutions and Muslim organizations in the development and transformation of civil society represent one of the key features in the evolution of civil society in Turkey. Turkish Muslim communities have a reputation of the most developed and highly adjusted to the Modern religious communities in the World. The dynamics of their expansion both inside Turkey and abroad are constantly rising (F.Gulen’s Hizmet movement has more than 1300 schools in 140 countries, cemaat of İsmailağa opened 20 mosques in 20 Muslim countries). Despite the increasing interest in the topics of modern Islam the problem of Turkish cemaats is not a well studied one and has a lot of gaps. The paper aims to analyze special features of civic activities in Turkey focusing on the Turkish cemaats. It seeks to answer to the following research question: what are the defining factors for the rising influence of Turkish cemaats and what is the integral portrait of a Turkish cemaat. The paper also focuses on the problem of alternative perceptions of democracy and civil society in non-western and Islamic context which presumes that certain elements of civil society develop in accordance with the Western liberal paradigm while the others demonstrate unique and interacted development trajectories.