Turcia post-kemalistă: între secularism și islamism

The study argues that starting with 2002, when the Islamic-rooted Justice and Development Party (AKP) came to power, the ideological orientation of Turkish politics has changed. Kemalism had lost its leadership position in the Turkish society, which prefered to move forward to a post-Kemalist order, by embracing the Islamic and Ottoman traditions. Most of foreign and Turkish political analysts claimed that the new political orientation would transform Turkey into a theocracy and distroy the country’s secular base, while the outcomes of the ruling party’s politics have denied this evolution. This paper shows the disfunctions of the Kemalist form of secularism, understood not as freedom of religions and non-interference of religion in state affairs, but as strict state control over religions and sanctioned Sunni Islam. The AKP emphasized the need of reinterpretation of secularism in the light of human rights, by allowing people to live according to their beliefs.