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setting aside of traditional head coverings and dress in favour
of ‘Western-style’dress, the conversion of Sharia-inspired laws
to laws based onWestern European legal thinking, the closure
of religious convents and dervish cloisters, the granting of
equal rights to women and the replacement of the Arabic
alphabet with the Latin one. The new state ideology became
known as Kemalism.
Once the Turkish War of Independence (1919 – 1923) had
been won, the military assumed the role of safeguarding the
new state system. As the protector of the Kemalist principles
it quashed all political dissent. The consequence of Atatürk‘s
reforms was that they split Turkish society into two opposing
camps whose political principles to this day remain irre-
concilable: those who embrace
Kemalismand thosewho adhere
to notions of society that are
essentially based on Islam. This
divide within Turkish society became increasingly evident
with the establishment of themulti-party systemand political
competition. The ruling political party, the CHP, now faced
the challenge of a new movement based on political Islam
that called into question the dominant position of the party
Atatürk himself had founded.This movement represented the
interests of those groups within society that felt that many of
the changesmade in the name of progress andWesternization
should be reversed.
The uncompromising attitudes and lack of trust still prevalent in
Turkey‘s party politics today can be explained by looking back
at what happened in the 1920s. In the decades since the intro-
duction of multi-party politics, political Islam has successfully
transformed itself into a movement that enjoys widespread
support in Turkish society − a fact highlighted by the latest
nationwide elections, which in effect constitute a further step
towards informal one-party rule. After decades of oppressing
the Islamists,andwith an army no longer willing to stage coups
in favour of the Kemalist establishment, it is now the secularists
who fear the dominance of their opponents.They suspect po-
litical Islam, as represented by the current AKP government, of
planning to oust them entirely from the political stage.
Western observers are often puzzled by the fierceness of
Turkey‘s debate over the public display of religious symbols
such as women’s headscarves, but this ferocity reflects a
deep-seated antagonismbetween secularists and Islamists in
Turkish society. And in the minds of many Turks the political
struggle in this young democracy, which witnessed its last
fully-fledged military coup in 1980, is about more than just
day-to-day politics: it‘s about who will determine Turkey‘s
political course for the decades to come.
Prof. Dr. Torsten J. Selck ist Hochschullehrer für„Vergleichende Ana-
lyse politischer Systeme und/oder vergleichende Politikfeldanalyse“
am Institut für Sozialwissenschaften der Universität Oldenburg und
Leiter der Arbeitsgruppe „Comparative Politics“. Er studierte an
den Universitäten Konstanz, Michigan (USA), Liège (Belgien) und
Leiden (Niederlande), wo er 2004 promovierte. Von 2006 bis 2009
war er Außerordentlicher Professor für Vergleichende Politik am
Institut für Politik und Internationale Beziehungen der University
of Nottingham (Großbritannien). Seine Hauptforschungsgebiete
sind Politische Institutionen, Gesetzgebungspolitik, Public Policy,
Organisationstheorie, EU-Politik und Außenpolitik.
Prof. Dr. Torsten J. Selck gives lectures on the "comparative analysis
of political systems and/or comparative political field analysis" at
the University of Oldenburg‘s Department of Social Sciences and
leads the working group "Comparative Politics". He studied at the
Universities of Konstanz,Michigan (USA), Liège (Belgium) and Leiden
(the Netherlands), at the latter of which he obtained his PhD in 2004.
From 2006 to 2009 he was an associate professor in comparative
politics at the University of Nottingham’s School of Politics and In-
ternational Relations. His primary fields of research include political
institutions, legislative politics, public policy, organisation theory,
European politics and foreign affairs.
Berna Öney ist Wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiterin in der Arbeitsgrup-
pe „Comparative Politics“. Öney hat Politikwissenschaft an der
Middle Eastern Technical University und an der Bilkent University
in Ankara ( Türkei) studiert. Ihre Forschungsschwerpunkte sind
Demokratisierungsprozesse, das politische System der Türkei und
Parteiensysteme.
Berna Öney is a research fellow in the working group "Comparative
Politics". She studied political science at the Middle Eastern Tech-
nical University and Bilkent University in Ankara (Turkey). Her main
research interests are democratisation processes, Turkey‘s political
system and party systems.
A further step towards
informal one-party rule.
Die Autoren
The authors