ANALYZING SECULARISM MODELS: THE CASE OF TURKEY

Authors : Kevser Hülya AKDEMİR

Pages : 61-73

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Publication Date : 2019-06-29

Article Type : Research Paper

Abstract :This paper based on the literature review discussion on secularism models, aims to categorize Turkish model during the republican era. Since secularism is an ambiguous term, this study first aims to draw a structure about the meanings loaded on secularism; and then classifies different secularism models that modern secular states practice. After making a core categorization on that arena, this study analyses the historical background of Republican Turkey and categorizes its secularism experience into three terms. Turkey as a country that has gone through many changes very quickly experienced and gave many different connotations to what secularism is. By dividing Turkey’s history into three terms in this quest of giving meaning to what secularity should be, this paper investigates the stages and the theories together. While the first term is from the birth of the Turkish Republic to 1950 that is the date of transition to a democratic multi-party system, the second term involves the term from the 1950s to 2002 which witnessed  the conflict of conservative parties and secular state bureaucracy with regards to the handling of secularism. This paper lastly, looks at AK Party period and how it transformed the notion of secularity into a passive and softer version of what it was before. The sphere of religious freedom and the close relationship it developed with secularity in AK Party period is also investigated and linked to Alfred Stepan’s Twin Toleration model and Jonathan Fox’s Separist Mode of Secularism. 
Keywords : Models of Secularism, AK Party, Kemalism, Turkish Secularism