The Allure of the West

Abstract

Kemalism, which has been accepted as official state ideology since the 1930s, represents a watershed moment in Turkish history. Although it fostered a radical displacement of Islamic and Ottoman sources of nationhood from the state structure, Kemalism did not entail a separation between state and religion. Rather, it embodied a specific reconfiguration of the state which allowed it to act with key agency in controlling the production and dissemination of religious knowledge. Religion was to be kept under state control by civil-military bureaucrats who would then inflict the state with a cultural homogeneity achieved through laiklik.