The Turkish Laboratory: Alternative Modernity and the Post-Secular in Turkey

It is well known that Turkey is a country in a state of flux. The ongoing transition from a Kemalist ideology to a post-Kemalist one has a deep impact on many different levels and domains of the Turkish national life. The Western-like profile of the Kemalist project of modernization is starting to leave room for alternative forms and understandings of modernity. From international relations and foreign policy to TV soap operas and fictions, just to mention two relevant and different examples, Turkey seems in search for herself. Part and parcel of this making of a new way to modernity is a revision of the idea of secularization and a move towards a new understanding of the place and role of religion (s) in national life. In other words, the shaping of an alternative form of modernity is parallel to a deep and highly contested revision of the Kemalist understanding of secularization. The paper will try to draw from the Turkish case some general consideration on the very idea of the postsecular, and its relationship with the notion of multiple modernities.