What are the underlying political motivations driving the construction of mosques in authoritarian countries? To address this inquiry, I rely on a unique dataset that meticulously tracks the annual issuance of construction permits for mosques in Turkey, along with their corresponding funding sources. Employing a regression discontinuity design, I provide evidence presenting the central government's strategic focus on constructing mosques in electorally competitive opposition districts, when compared with electorally competitive incumbent districts. However, such targeting patterns are not observed for mosques funded by municipalities or private entities. Further analysis reveals that the content of Friday sermons delivered in these mosques bears a resemblance to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's speeches, particularly during electoral periods, when compared to the speeches of the opposition's leader, Kemal Kilicdaroglu. These findings shed light on how sacred places, such as mosques, can be manipulated to serve autocrats' political agendas.

Do the electoral calculations of autocrats in competitive authoritarian regimes shape the distribution of potentially contentious public goods, such as education? If so, how are such public goods targeted and do they lead to attitudinal changes in the autocrat's favor? We offer a set of hypotheses linking autocrats' political strategies to the distribution of educational resources and also theorize their impact. We test our theoretical predictions in the case of Turkey, analyzing how the Justice and Development Party (AKP) regime has distributed a particularly contentious form of religious public schooling--imam hatip middle schools--across competitive municipalities. Using a regression discontinuity design to account for endogeneity issues, we show that, among municipalities with a high degree of electoral competition, the AKP disproportionately distributes religious middle schools to opposition-controlled districts after the 2014 municipal elections. We also find suggestive evidence of changed norms and beliefs in these areas. Specifically, Turkish municipalities targeted with an increase in religious middle schools exhibit increased demand for subsequent religious education, greater youth identification with religious values and dress-codes, and diminished youth support for secular parties. The paper contributes to the literature on distributive and authoritarian politics by demonstrating that the provision of contentious public goods under competitive authoritarian regimes can follow a distinct "indoctrination" logic and that such a strategy can successfully shift societal norms in the autocrat's favor.