The Creation of ‘Secular’ Muslims Through Turkish Secularism

Abstract

This study traces how nationalism and secularism—core components of Kemalism, established as Turkey's state ideology after the founding of the Republic in 1923—intertwined, and critically examines the process by which this social engineering project infiltrated the internal psyche of the citizenry to form a unique, hybrid national identity known as the ‘secular’ Muslim. Unlike Western models, Turkish secularism took the form of 'assertive’ secularism, in which the state excluded and controlled religion within the public sphere. By establishing the Directorate of Religious Affairs (Diyanet), the state enacted a nationalization of religion, incorporating Islam into the state apparatus itself. As a product of this power engineering, the secular Muslim emerged as a refined subject who obeyed the state's legal order while privately sharing Sunni Islamic sentiments. However, the exclusive boundary set around Sunni Turks limited the model by alienating ethnic minorities, non-Muslims, and conservative masses. Furthermore, top-down reforms driven by elites deepened the cultural divide and polarization between the Westernized 'center' and the traditional 'periphery.' Consequently, the religious and ethnic resistance built up during this rushed, top-down nation-building process provided the structural nutrients that later enabled conservative political Islam to emerge and claim hegemony. The early Republic's grand experiment to forge a national character through a distinctly Turkish synthesis of secularism and nationalism remains a critical reference point defining Turkish politics today. Therefore, the future development of Turkish democracy depends on its capacity for systemic transition—overcoming the long-standing legacy of authoritarian nation-building and seeking a new, pluralistic equilibrium between secularism and Islamism.