The presidency of religious affairs and the principle of secularism in Turkey

Muslim World

Volumn 98, Issue 2-3, 2008, Pages 228-241

  Adanali, Ahmet Hadi ^a  

^a ANKARA UNIVERSITY   (Turkey)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 60949254101     PISSN: 00274909     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/j.1478-1913.2008.00221.x     Document Type: Review

References (18)

1. In its official document, the Party declared that it "accepted The principle that all laws, regulations and methods must follow . . . the rules and procedures that science and technology provide to the contemporary civilization"; quoted by Şerif Mardin, Türkiye'de Din ve Siyaset (İstanbul: İletişim, 1991), 67
2. The terms "laic" (laik) and "laicism" (laiklik) are borrowed from French and as many have argued, the Turkish system of state and religion relations have been influenced by the French model of secularism. The terms laicism and secularism, though conceptually relevant, have semantic differences which should not be disregarded. Secularism is sometimes used to refer to the state and church relations that developed under the Anglo-Saxon tradition while laicism refers to the one that originated from the continental Europe and mainly from the French experience. There are of course different uses of these terms in the contemporary literature. "Laicism," for example, is sometimes used for the withdrawal of religion's influence from the political sphere while "secularism" for the weakening of the visibility of religion and its influence in the public sphere. See Richard Falk, Religion and Human Global Governance (Palgrave, 2001)
3. R. Falk, Küreselleşme ve Din. trans. Hasan T. Başoǧlu. (İstanbul: Küre Yayinlari, 2003). My use of "secularism" instead of "laicism" throughout the article is mainly motivated by the relative familiarity with secularism in the English speaking world rather than the conceptual or semantic differences between the terms
4. İrfan Bozan, Devlet ile Toplum Arasinda Bir Okul: İmam Hatip Liseleri Bir Kurum: Diyanet İşleri Başkaliǧi. (İstanbul: Tesev Yayinlari, 2007), 52
5. İştar B. Tarhanli, Müslüman Toplum. "laik" Devlet: Türkiye'de Diyanet İşleri Başkanliǧi. (İstanbul: Afa Yayinlari, 1993), 45; my article owes as much to Prof. Tarhanli's meticulous study on Diyanet as it disagrees with most of its conclusions
6. Tarhanli, Müslüman Toplum, 47
7. Necdet Subaşi, "Müslüman Modernleşmesi ve Türkiye Örneǧi." Gönül Pinar (ed.) İslam ve Modernite (İstanbul: Remzi Kitapevi, 2007), 75
8. Bahri Savci, "Diyanet İsleri Teşkilatinin Gelişmeleri," Siyasal Bilimler Fakültesi Dergisi, XXXII, 3 (September 1967), 95, 99
9. quoted by Tarhanli Müslüman Toplum, 71, 91
10. For example, George Holyoak, The Principle of Secularism (London 1859)
11. see Reinhard Schulze, "Günümüz Bati ve İslam Toplumlarinda Laiklik ve Din." Yürdagül Fincancioǧlu (ed.) İslam ve Democracy (İstanbul: Tüses Yay., 2002), 89
12. From a conservative point of view, the neutral position of the state with regard to normative ends was argued by Michael Oakeshott in his Rationalism in Politics (London, 1962)
13. Anayasa Mahkemesi, E.1970/53, K.1971/76, 21 Oct. 1971; printed in Resmi Gazete (Official Gazette) 15 June 1972
14. reprinted in Kuruluşundan Günümüze Diyanet İşleri Başkanliǧi (Ankara: Türkiye Diyanet Vakfi, 1999), 38. (References to the reprinted version)
15. This definition was first given in the parliamentary debates that took place in the National Assembly in 1928. See Mardin, Türkiye'de Din ve Siyaset, 122
16. Ahmet Yaşar Ocak, "İslami Bilimler ve Modernleşme Sorunu." Gönül Pinar (ed.) İslam ve Modernite (İstanbul: Remzi Kitapevi 2007), 46
17. Ocak, "İslami Bilimler," 47
18. Özer Ozankaya, Türkiye'de Laiklik Atatürk Devrimlerinin Temeli (İstanbul: Cem Yayinevi, 1990), 215-16