Suchergebnisse

Current discussions on the political developments in Turkey frequently frame the struggles
between the military and religious parties as a war between secularism and Islam and draw out
incommensurable differences between the two sides. Indeed, the military establishment, which
casts itself as the guardian of the secular republic, succeeded in 1997 in having the Supreme Court
ban the Welfare Party, the first openly religious party ever to form a government in the Turkish
Republic. The generals justified this seemingly undemocratic move by claiming that that this party
was trying to reinstate the sacred shari[ayin]a law.