Role of Religious Institutions and Voluntary Associations for Countering Terrorism

• In Event: Sub-Cultures and Self-Care

Abstract

The main purpose of this study is to examine the effects of prevalence of religious institutions and prevalence of voluntary associations on frequency of terror related crimes in Turkey. Beyond investigating the impacts of traditional structural factors such as poverty, inequality, and education on terrorism. This study goes a step further by adding the mediating factors between those primary social disorganization variables and terror related crimes. Direct, indirect and, total effects of structural variables on terrorism through the mediating variables, that is prevalence of voluntary associations and religious institutions, are examined.
This study is a secondary analysis of reported terror related crime incidents in Turkey. All other variables included in the study have been created by using different aggregated statistics prepared by various government agencies in Turkey. In order to explore the distribution of terror related crime among Turkey’s 81 cities, national level data will be used.
These results suggest that terror related crimes are lower in the cities where there are more religious institutions per capita They also suggest that the frequency of terror related incidents are higher where there are fewer voluntary associations

Author

• Oguzhan Basibuyuk, Usak University