- The Oxford Handbook of Secularism
- List of Contributors
- Introduction: The Study of Secularism
- Identifying (with) the Secular: Description and Genealogy
- Religious/Nonreligious Demography and Religion versus Science: A Global Perspective
- Secularization and Its Consequences
- The Imagined War between Secularism and Religion
- Political Secularism
- Political Secularism and Democracy in Theory and Practice
- Anglo-American Secular Government
- Secularism in France
- Secularism in Turkey
- Secularization in Israel
- Secularism, State Neutrality, and Islam
- Secular Government in Sub-Saharan Africa
- Secularism in India
- Soviet Atheism and Its Aftermath
- Sacred, Secular, and Neosacred Governments in China and Taiwan
- Religion in the Public Sphere
- The Liberal Betrayal of Secularism
- Religious Freedom in a Secular Society
- Communicative Reason and Religious Faith in Secular and Postsecular Contexts
- Secularisms or Liberal-Democratic Constitutionalism?
- Multiculturalizing Secularism
- Beyond Comparing Secularisms: A Critique of Religio-Secularism
- A Secular Critique of Religious Ethics and Politics
- Secular Education and Religion
- Secularism, Feminism, and the Public Sphere
- Secularism, Race, and Political Affiliation in America
- Black Infidels: Secular Humanism, Atheism, and African American Social Thought
- Secularism and US Religion Jurisprudence
- Separating Church and State in America
- Varieties of Secular Experience
- Secular Living: Many Paths, Many Meanings
- Secular Prosociality and Well-Being
- Secularism and the Science of Well-Being
- Secular Spirituality
- Nonreligious People in Religious Societies
- The Challenge of Leaving Religion and Becoming Secular
- Agency and Responsibility in a Natural World
- The Evolution of Sociality, Helping, and Morality
- Ethics, Secular and Religious: An Evolved-Cognitive Analysis
- Secular Ethics, East and West
- Secularism, Humanism, and Secular Humanism: Terms and Institutions
- Humanism as a Positive Outcome of Secularism
- Secularization, Biomedical Technology, and Life Extension
- Index
Abstract and Keywords
This chapter provides a brief history of secularism in Turkey and discusses current political issues surrounding secularism. Is Turkey a secular country? This question is entangled in the emergent process of secularism in Turkey and its unique cultural and political history. In Turkey, secularism has little social or historical basis: it has been conducted by the hand of the state, was installed from the top, and emerged through external dynamics. Ataturk’s reforms toward secularism and secularization placed strict legal controls on Islam’s institutions and practices. The RPP Party and its Kemalism rely on republicanism, nationalism, populism, étatism, secularism, and revolutionism. The JDP party is more anti-Kemalist than antisecularist. A large moderate center is present among today’s voters, who mostly affirm democratic values and much freedom of religion. It appears a democratic and secular culture has settled into Turkey, as the only politically secular country with a Muslim majority population.
Keywords: Turkey, Islam, secularization, secularism, modernism, Westernism, Kemalism, religious freedom
Kenan Sevinc is Assistant Professor of Psychology of Religion at Canakkale Onsekiz Mart University in Turkey. He is an assistant editor for the Journal of Intercultural and Religious Studies, the Turkish Journal of Religious Education Studies, and Journal of Divinity Faculty of Canakkale Onsekiz Mart University.
Ralph W. Hood Jr. is Professor of psychology at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. He is a former editor of the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion and a recipient of the William James award of the Division of the Psychology of Religion of the American Psychological Association.
Thomas J. Coleman III is a research psychology doctoral student in the Brain, Belief and Behaviour research group at Coventry University in the United Kingdom. He is an assistant editor for the journal Secularism & Nonreligion and a managing editor for The Religious Studies Project.
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- The Oxford Handbook of Secularism
- List of Contributors
- Introduction: The Study of Secularism
- Identifying (with) the Secular: Description and Genealogy
- Religious/Nonreligious Demography and Religion versus Science: A Global Perspective
- Secularization and Its Consequences
- The Imagined War between Secularism and Religion
- Political Secularism
- Political Secularism and Democracy in Theory and Practice
- Anglo-American Secular Government
- Secularism in France
- Secularism in Turkey
- Secularization in Israel
- Secularism, State Neutrality, and Islam
- Secular Government in Sub-Saharan Africa
- Secularism in India
- Soviet Atheism and Its Aftermath
- Sacred, Secular, and Neosacred Governments in China and Taiwan
- Religion in the Public Sphere
- The Liberal Betrayal of Secularism
- Religious Freedom in a Secular Society
- Communicative Reason and Religious Faith in Secular and Postsecular Contexts
- Secularisms or Liberal-Democratic Constitutionalism?
- Multiculturalizing Secularism
- Beyond Comparing Secularisms: A Critique of Religio-Secularism
- A Secular Critique of Religious Ethics and Politics
- Secular Education and Religion
- Secularism, Feminism, and the Public Sphere
- Secularism, Race, and Political Affiliation in America
- Black Infidels: Secular Humanism, Atheism, and African American Social Thought
- Secularism and US Religion Jurisprudence
- Separating Church and State in America
- Varieties of Secular Experience
- Secular Living: Many Paths, Many Meanings
- Secular Prosociality and Well-Being
- Secularism and the Science of Well-Being
- Secular Spirituality
- Nonreligious People in Religious Societies
- The Challenge of Leaving Religion and Becoming Secular
- Agency and Responsibility in a Natural World
- The Evolution of Sociality, Helping, and Morality
- Ethics, Secular and Religious: An Evolved-Cognitive Analysis
- Secular Ethics, East and West
- Secularism, Humanism, and Secular Humanism: Terms and Institutions
- Humanism as a Positive Outcome of Secularism
- Secularization, Biomedical Technology, and Life Extension
- Index