Public Policy of Religion in Turkey

One of the most important principles of the Turkish Republic since its foundation in 1923 is the concept of laicity or “laiklik” as it is called in Turkish. As we can understand from its etymological proximity, this primarily juridical principle of peaceful coexistence was inspired from France and it took its own particularities in the Turkish context. Since then, this laicity, as a major symbol of the Turkish Republic, has always been a passionate subject in between those who defend the laicity as the major pillar of the Turkish modernization, those who argued its misinterpretation and its particular rigid application, and eventually those who perceived it as a vehicle of cultural alienation, or westernization, in terms of its cultural and religious discordance with the Islamic tradition. Since the accession of the Justice and Development Party (AKP) to power in 2002, a party having its ideological roots in the movement of political Islam, the future of the laicity under the AKP government became a central question and the subject of polarization in the political sphere. Having a critical approach to the Turkish laicity and the defense of the fundamental freedoms within a religious discourse, the AKP has undertaken significant democratic reforms which had a limited impact on the reconfiguration of the public policy of religion.