Islam has been the religion of the majority of the Turkish people for more than 1000 years. The emergence of Islamist political movements is very recent compared to the long history of the Islam religion. Therefore, the emergence of Islamist movements (especially after 1980s) should be considered as a political issue rather than a religious issue. Islamist movements mainly react to the Kemalist secular ruling idea, Turkey should be ruled by a western modern regime. Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the founder of the Turkish Republic, wanted to create a new government and a country that could cope with the close by western world. Therefore his invented state ideology was a western/secular ideology. In order to reduce the resistance against the newly founded republic, especially against the resistance that might have come from ex-Ottoman elite, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk and his colleagues tried to keep Islam under government control. In 1924, Kalifate and the governmental ministries of religious affairs were abolished. In 1928, religious clauses were removed from the Constitution. Islam, being repressed by the new Kemalist elite, emerged as a political resistance in 1980s. The roots of the Islamic resistance is based on first, the loss of government control over daily activities of the masses, second the global anti-national state philosophies and third the globalization of national economies as well as globalization in general. As a result headscarf became a symbol for the Islamist movements, as well as a political issue conflicting with the secular identity of the Turkish Republic.
Turkish Isalmist Movements
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