Türkiye’de Laiklik: “Oradaydık ve şimdi buradayız.”

Secularism in Türkiye has been one of the most significant topics of discussion, especially in recent times. In mainstream literature, secularism is generally considered and criticized as a part of the nation-state building process that emerged particularly in the late Ottoman period and underwent its most radical transformation as a result of the Kemalist regime. Setting aside the contentious paradigm created by this dominant reading of secularism in Türkiye and its associated concept frameworks, it is evident that this reading falls short in explaining the transformation of secularism in the context of the state-religion-society relations in the country. The dominant approach in Türkiye, particularly fuelled by criticism of the Early Republican era and diluting secularism by taking advantage of theoretical distortions of liberal concepts such as “pluralism” and “freedom”, did not emerge independently of the ideological interventions of the ruling classes today, the neo-conservative policy-making imposed by neoliberalism, and the possibilities offered by identity politics in the context of postmodernism. Moreover, due to the fact that mainstream literature in Türkiye has almost entirely focused on the founding period of the Republic in the field of secularism, it creates a significant blind spot by excluding the later periods of the Republic’s history where transformations in the ideology of secularism occurred on the long-term path leading to the hegemony of political Islam. The purpose of this article is not to provide a comprehensive historical narrative detailing the evolution of secularism in Türkiye with all its …