Over the past decade the once marginal extreme right end of the Turkish ideological spectrum has grown both in size as well as in influence and has effectively reshaped party competition in Turkey. Policy mandates and electoral bases of the rising extreme right rely on potentially explosive social cleavages in the country. One such confrontation is between the secularist and pro-Islamist forces, which has always been one of the centrepieces of Turkish electoral politics. The rise of pro-Islamist electoral forces from a marginal to an undeniably imposing position in Turkish electoral politics has led many to worry that a deep-rooted schism has come to the forefront of Turkish politics. The front line of this secularist vs. pro-Islamist confrontation is quite wide, ranging from a debate around the ban on turbans and headscarves in universities to religious education in the country, from Islamic principles in the economy to Turkish foreign policy towards Middle Eastern countries. I aim to contribute to this debate by drawing an outline of the popular bases of support for the secular principles in Turkey reflected in debates over the civil code as opposed to shariah rule (seriat in Turkish) and a number of recent policies followed in especially the sphere of education. I first focus on the character of the much discussed popular support for an Islamic state or seriat and the public evaluations of one of the pillars of secularism in Turkey, that is, of the Turkish civil code. I demonstrate that while a significant portion of the electorate is not forthcoming in rejecting seriat as a whole, only a very small marginal group supports its implications. Secondly, I focus on several more recent public policies that were shaped during the '28 February process' that started in 1997, when tension between the secularist republican forces spearheaded by the military and the pro-Islamist Welfare Party (Refah Partisi RP) peaked. I demonstrate that compared with overwhelming support for long-standing secularist principles of the civil code, the approval of the recent policies are