Ayşe Akyürek

Ayşe Akyürek is a French-Turkish researcher in religious studies at the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences (EHESS) in Paris, specialising in Turkish Sufi orders, particularly the Mevleviye, the renowned order of the Whirling Dervishes.

Ayşe previously gave a talk at our Seb-i-Arus event to mark the anniversary of Mevlana Rumi’s passing, on the significance of death in Rumi’s Poetry, and we are delighted that she will be joining us for Sufi Festival 2025 to present the Istanbul Sema Group’s spiritually soothing and elevating Sema ritual at our Sufi Conference.