Berkley Center

Ahmet Erdi Öztürk explains why the increasingly authoritarian and overtly Islam-based policy of Turkey cannot be regarded as benign religious soft power or public diplomacy. Rather, its religious soft power is best characterized in terms of ambivalence.

Peter Henne describes how the United States and Russia have drawn on faith as part of their geopolitical struggles and asserts that while it is difficult to untangle the influence of military, economic, and cultural factors, the religious soft power of the United States and Russia does matter.

Rim-Sarah Alouane argues that the French state, as protector of both religious freedom and secularism, is attempting to navigate the country’s balkanized Muslim community but has developed a bad habit of relying on external parties to regulate Islam within France’s borders.