The emergence of an Islamist movement and the startling buoyancy of Islamic political parties in Turkey–a model of secular modernization, a cosmopolitan frontier, and NATO ally–has puzzled Western observers. As the appeal of the Islamist Welfare Party spread through Turkish society, including the middle class, in the 1990s, the party won numerous local elections and became one of the largest parties represented in parliament, even holding the prime ministership in 1996 and 1997. Welfare was formally banned and closed in 1998, and its successor, Virtue, was banned in 2001, for allegedly posing a threat to the state, but the Islamist movement continues to grow in popularity.

Jenny White has produced an ethnography of contemporary Istanbul that charts the success of Islamist mobilization through the eyes of ordinary people. Drawing on neighborhood interviews gathered over twenty years of fieldwork, she focuses intently on the genesis and continuing appeal of Islamic politics in the fabric of Turkish society and among mobilizing and mobilized elites, women, and educated populations.