Veiled Threats and the Sacralized Defense of Secularism in Turkey

Abstract

In a country like Turkey, which is a predominantly Muslim, developing, modernizing, secular country, we might assume or expect that the public response as well as the legal and institutional regulation, and the responses developed in reaction to the increasing public visibility of practices, sensibilities, ways of life, and, in particular, the increasing use of the headscarf would reveal significant differences from Europe. However, this is not the case. Despite the differences in the social and cultural contexts of many European countries and Turkey, there are striking similarities in the terms of the debate in both contexts. In this chapter, I want to examine the dynamics behind this public response and the ways in which the public concern with Islam’s increasing presence in Turkey’s social and political life has been turned into a matter of protection of the principles of secularism, which are deemed to be under threat. Consequently, the issue was turned into a sacralized defense of the Western (read modern) principles upon which the Kemalist Turkish republic has been built. In an indirect way, the defense of secularism came to imply the defense of Western civilization whose principles have guided the modern Turkish Republic.