Word: secularization
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Usually made of silk or cotton, the type of head scarf favored by strict Muslim women in Turkey typically measures just 1 m square. Yet that small quadrangle of cloth may bring down the nation's government and push its democratic institutions and secular traditions to crisis. On April 29, nearly a million Turkish citizens flooded Istanbul's trendiest downtown district in one of the largest demonstrations the ancient capital has ever seen. The cause of their ire: Turkey's ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) had named Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul, a politician with an Islamist past...
...much broader revolt by Turkey's self-described "secularists" against a popularly elected Islamic-leaning government that has held power-with considerable success-since November 2002. An ad hoc coalition of opposition parties, the military and parts of the judiciary, often referred to in Turkey as the "secular establishment," has in recent days derailed the presidential selection process in a standoff that underscores a more fundamental clash between the country's urban, secularist élites and its increasingly Islamic political class...
...Turkish democracy has always been a complicated and fragile phenomenon. On the one hand, the country's secular traditions date back to founder Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, who mandated in 1923 a strict divide between mosque and state. (He banned the fez, and modeled his constitution on the Swiss Civil Code.) The secular middle class that grew out of that tradition, filling the ranks of the bureaucracy and profiting from its largesse, has dominated Turkey's political and economic landscape for most of the last century. The Turkish army has served as a guarantor of this successful arrangement. The self-appointed...
...Turkey is a Muslim country where the clout of conservative Muslim voters has been steadily growing, as demonstrated by the AKP's landslide sweep to power in the 2002 elections. Whereas the secular middle class can be found almost exclusively in coastal cities like Istanbul and Izmir, the AKP, led by the former semipro soccer player and Islamist Erdogan, has its roots in the conservative Central Anatolian heartland, as well as among millions of poorer migrants from those areas. Despite secularists' warnings, a poll conducted last year by a leading Istanbul think tank found that only 8.9% of the population...
...year. It strengthened rights for the Kurdish minority and convinced the European Union to launch membership talks last year. Joost Lagendijk, a Dutch member of the European Parliament who chairs an E.U.-Turkey delegation, says the party "has done more for the modernization of Turkey than all the secular parties in previous years. They were willing to open up the system, to challenge the élite...