Turkey's elections, EU membership and the Palestinian crisis

Saturday, October 20, 2007

The Washington-based International Republican Institute (IRI) organized a panel in Istanbul titled 'Religious Expression in a Secular State'

Turkish Daily News
ISTANBUL

The Washington-based International Republican Institute (IRI) organized a panel discussion in Istanbul titled “Religious Expression in a Secular State” where about 30 experts from Turkey discussed the different models of secularism found in Turkey and in the West.

Speakers included Turkish Daily News writers Mustafa Akyol and Cüneyt Ülsever, Islamic commentators Ali Bulaç and Abdurrahman Dilipak, academics, and politicians such as Ayse Böhürler, a member of the central administrative board of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP).

Most speakers emphasized the compatibility of Islam with a secular legal system that respects and protects the rights of religious believers. Yet Turkey's experience with secularism, as most speakers have noted, has been different, because here secularism is more clearly defined in the laic tradition, which means the domination of the state over religion (or the protection of the state from religious influence), rather than the separation of the two (or protection of religious freedoms from the state).

Another issue pointed out by panelists was the role of economics as an underlying factor in Turkey's debates over secularism. Ülsever argued that the war of symbols such as the one on the headscarf is actually a class conflict between the urban seculars and the rural conservatives. Dr. Ersin Kalaycioglu said that the headscarf has become an issue in European countries like Britain, too, and Turkey should keep an eye on the developments there.

The panel, chaired by IRI's Regional Program Director Lindsay Lloyd and Turkey Program Director Ayse Arkis, is one in a series of meetings in Turkey in which different versions of secularism are highlighted and discussed.