Turkey: Goodbye to secularism?

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Turkey | 05 October 2016

On 13 September 2016 Al-Monitor published an article by writer Mustafa Akyol on significant changes within the secular People's Republican Party (CHP). Since its foundation by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk in 1923, CHP has been a staunch defender of Turkey's French-style secularism. It always opposed the use of religious references in politics, arguing that it would amount to the "exploitation" of religion for political ends. It also opposed for decades "religious symbols in the public space," such as the Islamic headscarf. Yet CHP has been changing lately, especially since Kemal Kilicdaroglu became its leader in 2010. First CHP abandoned its intolerance towards the headscarf, accepting hijab-wearing women's right to go to college or get public employment. Then it welcomed some conservative politicians with Islamic credentials to its ranks. Moreover, Kilicdaroglu began to allude to Islamic values to support his arguments, even quoting the Prophet Mohammed recently. Rolf Zeegers, persecution analyst at World Watch Research, agrees that secularism in Turkey"s politics would seem to be a matter of the past: "Islam and nationalism have now taken over in politics. CHP was becoming marginalized as it stuck to the old-fashioned principle of secularism. Instead, its role as dominant party was taken over by President Erdogan"s Justice and Development Party (AKP). The fact that hardly anyone in Turkey supports secularism any longer will make the position of non-Muslims in Turkey increasingly difficult - in this respect Turkey is getting more in line with other Muslim countries in the Middle East. Christians in Turkey are clearly unhappy about this development."