Islam and Secularism in Turkey

"When Kemal Ataturk's Republic of Turkey was set up in 1923 as a secular state, sweeping political, social, cultural and religious reforms followed. Islam was no longer the official religion of the state, the Sultanate was abolished, all Turkish citizens were declared equal without reference to religion and secular control of education curbed clerical influence. In Azak's phrase, 'secularism was the central tenet of Kemalism' and the ruling philosophy of positivism overshadowed traditional religion. But the fear of resurgent and fanatical Islam continued, fuelled by the Menemen Incident (when a religious extremist murdered a state official), the attempt on the life of the proprietor of the leading liberal newspaper, the Vatan (Fatherland), and the rise of Said Nursi's faith movement preaching a form of Islam suspected to be fanatical. And in the twenty-first century fear still haunts the state with the Council of State's controversial upholding of the headscarf ban and with suspected Islamist influence in modern political parties like the Justice and Development Party (AKP)." "Azak's revisionist and original study follows the struggle between religion and secularism but shows how Ataturk's secular state strove for an idealised 'Turkish Islam' - the 'social cement' of the Turkish nation - stripped of superstition and obscurantism and linked to modern science and rational, positivist, philosophy. The Young Turk ideal of 'Turkish Islam' could make Ataturk's 'catching of the train of civilisation' possible. Thus Islam would be compatible with secularism as long as it could be 'personal, enlightened, rational and national'. The opposition between this 'Turkish Islam' and 'reactionary Islam' has been, in Azak's view, the basis of Kemalist secularism, acclaimed during mass gatherings at Ataturk's Mausoleum, which dominates the capital as a secular shrine with the slogan - 'Turkey is secular, it will remain secular'." --Book Jacket.