Tuesday, March 11, 2014

RELOCATING THE FAULT LINES TURKEY BEYOD THE EAST-WEST DIVIDE

The South Atlantic Quarterly 102: 2/3 , Spring/Summer, 2003
Special Issue Editors: Sibel Irzik and Guven Guzeldere

Andrew Davison:
" The founders of the contemporary institutional relationship between the state and Islam in Turkey named that relationship laiklik, after the French term laicisme, and it was, in terms of the conceptual possibilities for describing the new relation between the state and Islam, a relatively good choice." 337


It should not be overlooked that laiklik was not a constitutional principle until 1937. It makes it first appearance in the RPP principles in 1927. But between 1922 and 1928, the constitution declared Islam to be the official religion and the state to be the executor of the Islamic law. Even after 1937, when those articles are gone, strictly speaking, Islam was not removed from the state. 339

It is true that the various reforms designed to integrate Turkey into the economic and social patterns of Europe constituted assaults, in important respects, on specific Muslim cultural practices in Turkey. 341

No comments:

Post a Comment