In the Ottoman context, such political supremacy over the religious realm was made possible thanks to the incorporation of Islam into the administrative apparatus of the Empire. In a remarkable continuity with Ottoman patterns, secularism in modern Turkey did not attempt to separate state and religion. Instead the republican regime maintained a firm control over the religious establishment by monopolizing Islamic functions and incorporating religious personnel into the state bureaucracy. The result is the current anomaly of a “secular” system where the state is still in charge of religious affairs.Why did Atatürk decide not to institutionally separate religion and state? The short answer is “threat perception.” The Kemalist perception of Islam as the mobilizing factor and common denominator of all counter-revolutionary threats made such a separation unrealistic. The polarization between secularism and Islam created a zero-sum game, where either the state would dominate religion, or religious conservatives would overtake the state. Separation became simply impossible.
What distinguished Kemalist secularism from the Ottoman patterns of governing was not the incorporation of religious establishment within the state apparatus, but the regime’s determination to base its legitimacy on secular Turkish nationalism. The Sultanate and Caliphate had to be abolished because they were pre-national Islamic and imperial institutions inhibiting the development of a Turkish national identity, which still needed to be invented. Moreover, in their attempt to generate a collective sense of Turkish national identity, the founding fathers did not wish to be deprived of the potentially constructive role a “civic” and reformed kind of Islam could play. An instrumentalist, co-optation-oriented approach towards Islam, reminiscent of Ottoman patterns, had considerable appeal to the pragmatic Kemalists. In practice, this meant placing a reformed, civic type of official Islam at the service of citizenship building. Not surprisingly, such a plan rendered an effective separation of state and religion all the more difficult.
As a result, after the abolition of all Islamic institutions such as the Caliphate, the office of the Şeyhülislam, a new governmental agency under the name of the Directorate of Religious Affairs (Diyanet) was established. Today, the Directorate of Religious Affairs effectively continues to supervise and regulate the religious realm in contemporary Turkey. Its president is appointed by the Council of Ministers upon nomination by the prime minister. Thus, in remarkable continuity with Ottoman patterns, the religious establishment was placed under the direct supervision of central authority.
The Turkish understanding of secularism has also important ideological parallels with French laicism. France has always served as a source of inspiration to Turkish reformers, since the beginning of the Tanzimat era. Laicism, in both the French and Turkish context, became an integral part of first “establishing” and then “protecting” the Republic. In both the Jacobin and Kemalist contexts, laicism became a dividing line separating progressive from conservative, modern from traditional, enlightened from obscurantist, and revolutionary from reactionary. Both the Turkish and French republics were keen on taking religion and religious symbols out of the public sphere. The Turkish and French reaction to headscarves is a case in point. In this respect, Turkish and French laicism acquired characteristics that went well beyond the less confrontational parameters of Anglo-Saxon secularism.
Despite such philosophical affinity, Turkish and French laicism have also important differences. For instance French laicism culminated with the complete separation of church and state in 1905, whereas in contemporary Turkey religious affairs are still regulated by the state. Although the majority of French citizens are Catholic, the French state has no organic or institutional connection to any confession. However, in Turkey the state is not impartial towards all confessional groups because Sunni Islam is practically considered as the state religion - a situation that is increasingly resented by the Alevi minority. In that sense, Turkish secularism has still a long way to go.
