The State and Religion from 1923 to 2023: Major Tendencies in an Incomplete Development

Abstract

Since the beginning of the Turkish Republic, the religious question has been central in Turkey. in their quest to modernize the country on the basis of the Western model, The founders of the Turkish nation state conceived a secularism specific to Turkey, that does not imagine a separation, but rather a control of religion by the state. From the 1980s onwards, the relationship between the state and Islam became even more ambiguous, since Turkish secularism was henceforth similar to the establishment by the state of a form of official religion, embodied by Sunni Islam. When the AKP came to power in 2002, Turkish secularism took on a new form. Ceasing to be less rigid, it increased religious freedoms, but to the benefit of the Sunni fringe, and to the detriment of the large Alevi minority, and other non-religious segments of society. From 2013, the authoritarian turn of power opened the way to a policy of Islamization of the country by a government that wants to make Turkish society more pious. This policy has proved to be counterproductive since, in recent years, in the face of the Islamization of power, deist and atheist currents have emerged within Turkish society and frustrated the project of Islamization of the country.