For decades, the legacy of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the Republic of Turkey’s first president, has served as the country’s guiding force. Yet, amidst an unprecedented debate on the role of secularism, has Turkey begun to steer away from Atatürk?
With conservative Muslim believers becoming more visible in Turkey these days, a movement founded by a charismatic Islamic theologian, Fetullah Gülen, is attracting increasing outside interest. The Gülen movement’s public profile is defined mainly by a worldwide network of schools that it operates, yet little is known about the inner workings of the organization’s educational component.
With the escalation of civil warfare in Syria, the flow of refugees heading across the border into Turkey is set to pick up. Some observers in southern Hatay Province, which is the destination for the bulk of the refugees, caution that the influx raises the specter of sectarian tension on the Turkish side of the border.
The December 26 trial of arrested Turkish journalists Ahmet Şık and Nedim Şener has pushed a shadowy organization known as the Gülen movement to the forefront of public attention in Turkey. The group’s influence has long been an open secret. Now, its weight is being felt at a time when the country’s democratic credentials are increasingly being called into question.
To get a sense of the scope of Turkey’s youth unemployment problem, you don’t have to look much further than downtown Istanbul’s inexpensive cafes, which are invariably jammed with 20-somethings during working hours.
Amid Turkey’s turn away from strict secularism, Islamic banking practices in the country are gaining currency. But they still face significant obstacles as they strive to enter the financial mainstream.
Akbıyık, a village with 365 residents in Turkey’s western Bursa province, has a head start on the country’s plans to increase domestic energy production. The reason is simple -- it has a wind turbine and villagers eager to capitalize on a government push toward alternative energies.
Not too long ago, when the military acted as the enforcer of a rigidly secular system, a politician in Turkey could be punished merely for reciting religious poetry.
