Buying Buddha, Selling Rumi: orientalism and the mystical marketplace

much interest to scholars working in different traditions. The typology of different conceptualizations of religious identities, newly-developed notion of ‘religio-ethnic identity,’ detailed ethnographic accounts of micro-level processes of identity formation, and historical and institutional analyses of meso-level dynamics will all offer valuable insights to scholars working on the role of ethnicity and religion in conflict settings. Those working in social movements tradition will also find the book much useful since conflict and identity formation are central topics for this literature. Scholars of Kurdish politics in Turkey and the Middle East, on the other hand, will highly benefit from Türkmen’s detailed analyses of Kurdish religious identities and historical trajectory of religious politics in Kurdistan. One of the indicators of high-quality work is that it ultimately leaves us with many intriguing questions to pursue further. Türkmen also delivers here very well. Some of the possible future research questions are already touched upon in the conclusion. For example, Türkmen says that scholars can look at the Basque conflict to explore the role of Catholic religious elites or Catholicism’s understanding of ethnicity. This comparison would help moving towards a more generalizable theory of identity formation. Another potential avenue for research is studying the formation of religious and ethnic identities in different parts of Kurdistan to see if Türkmen’s typology emerging from Kurdistan-Turkey also applies to other parts. Although Türkmen stops with these two avenues, there are other doors opened by the book. For example, one can take her point about Catholicism further to investigate whether conceptualizing ethnicity as God-given is something specific to Islam; whether other religions including non-Abrahamic ones have anything similar; and what type of religious articulations can lend themselves to shaping the relationship between ethnicity and religion. Similarly, one can build upon Türkmen’s work to investigate how the power relations in Turkey beyond the religious field bear upon the different combinations of ethnic and religious identities as well as the role of religion in the conflict. These and similar questions make Türkmen’s book a valuable source to be consulted by a wide range of scholars.