Assertive Secularism in Crisis: Modernity, Democracy, and Islam in Turkey

Abstract

Since its state-centric inception in 1923, Turkish secularism has operated in a multiplex fashion, and in doing so has always faced serious legitimacy, representation, and governing problems. Moreover, since the 1980s, and especially the 1990s, it has been subject to challenges and criticisms demanding democratic restructuring through institutional and discursive reform. As Turkish secularism has operated both as constitutive of modernity and as a political project to control the identity claims and demands of religious communities for the recognition of their cultural rights, it has been criticized and challenged as functioning as a restrictive and biased foundation lacking the capacity to develop a common public and religious morality. More precisely, the more the state has become involved in the institutional regulation, funding and administration of existing religious identities and their political, economic, and cultural presence in Turkish modernity, the more it has been confronted by serious challenges and criticisms demanding institutional and discursive reform. As a matter of fact, as José Casanova has correctly pointed out, the project of constructing a strong and state-centric mode of secularism is likely to be vulnerable to criticism and challenge, “because it is too secular for the Islamists, too Sunni for the Alevis, (too Muslim for the non-Muslim minorities) and too Turkish for the Kurds,”¹ and moreover “a Turkish state in which the collective identities and interests of these groups cannot find public representation cannot be a truly representative democratic state, even if it is founded on modern secular constitutional principles.”²