Göle researches why extremism establishes roots in various youth sectors and among women, European behaviour in response to Islamic immigration, and conflicts arising from the problems posed by the veil, the construction of mosques, and the rise of xenophobic extremism. Her books and her work as a journalist have also been invaluable in clarifying the nature of the political evolution currently underway in Turkey, where what she describes as the process of “democratizing secularism” has begun, a process that is dismantling the nationalistic and authoritarian taboos of the Kemalist republican tradition, linked to the success of Erdoğan’s Justice and Development Party and the beginning of negotiations for Turkey’s access to the European Union.

Her books include Interpénétrations: L’Islam et l’Europe (Galaade Editions, 2005), Islamisme et Féminisme en Turquie: Regards Croisés, in Le foulard Islamique en Questions (Éditions Amsterdam, 2004), and The Forbidden Modern: Civilization and Veiling (University of Michigan Press, 1997). In The Forbidden Modern, Göle critiques Turkish modernization, which has tried to homogenize cultural differences and identities in a nationalist ideology, placed under pressure by a fear of a plurality of ethnicities and political movements, including Islamism. Islamism has, instead, increased precisely as a reaction to this homogenizing modernization, which has ignored the religious identity of the Turkish people.

Göle uses a feminist perspective to criticize both Kemalism and Islamism, which focus on the behaviour and clothes of women in an authoritarian manner.

One of Göle’s theses is that women have the right to enter public spaces wearing the veil, which plays a role in their socialization and is also a means for their freedom. In general her work keeps alive criticism of Euro-centrism and defends a pluralist point of view in the name of a multiplicity of possible paths to modernity.

In her more recent work, Nilufer Göle has analyzed the influence of Islam on European politics as a target for policies of fear, as a vital factor in moving votes, and as an influencing factor in political careers and public speeches. Göle has also adopted a concerned stance on anti-Islamic radicalism, which is tending toward moving from the margins to the centre stage. This is not, however, catastrophic, Göle argues, because any occurrence moves through mistakes, and the European public spheres is adopting these issues as permanent and irreversible factors.