Populism and Secularism in Turkey:
The Headscarf Ban Policy

Eren Tatari 
Abstract

This article analyzes the impact of two key components of
Kemalist ideology, populism and secularism, on the policymaking
process of modern Turkey by utilizing historical institutionalism
and the political-cultural approach. The Headscarf Ban Policy,
which has been implemented discretionarily since 1981 and
intensively since 1997, provides an illustrative case study of the
broader debates over freedom of religion, secularism, and democ-
racy, and helps to uncover the influence of populism and secular-
ism, as well as the interaction between these two principles. The
analysis reveals the principle of populism, which has been much
overlooked in the literature, as a key determinant of state-centric
reforms as well as a method of legitimizing the undemocratic
version of secularism advocated by the state.

Introduction
Since 1981, women who wear headscarves have been legally banned from
attending private or public schools and working at public enterprises in the
Republic of Turkey. The current debate on the Headscarf Ban Policy
(HBP) is illustrative of broader debates over the freedom of religion, sec-
ularism, and democracy. The main aim of this article is to identify and ana-
lyze the causes of the HBP by utilizing historical institutionalism and the
political-cultural approach. The HBP is important for two main reasons: It
has direct implications for the religious freedom of the 70 percent of Turkish

Eren Tatari is a Ph.D. student in the political science department of Indiana University,
Bloomington. Her areas of specialization include contemporary Middle Eastern politics, in
particular, religion and politics, democratization, and secularization in the Middle East;
Islamic movements; gender issues; and Muslims in the West.



women who wear the headscarf.1 Moreover, all predominantly Muslim
countries are faced with the challenging question of what Islam’s role is,
or should be, in a democratic system. Although I will discuss this issue in
the context of modern Turkey, the arguments and findings have broader
implications, and, hopefully, will contribute to the literature on democra-
tization and secularism. 

In this article, I argue that two components of Kemalist ideology,2
namely, populism and secularism, have been used to legitimize the top-
down reforms concerning public and private life, have shaped modern
Turkey’s institutional framework, and are the key determinants of the state’s
current policymaking process. In other words, at the point of its establish-
ment, the state was defined as, and was given the right to be, the shaper of
its citizens’ public and private lives. The priorities were westernization and
secularization, and individual freedoms could be sacrificed for these state
objectives. The causes of the current state policies concerning religious lib-
erties, and in particular the HBP, can be traced back to this original proto-
type of the state institutions created by Mustafa Kemal.

Research Design
This article is a qualitative single-country case study carried out mainly for
the purpose of theory development. I analyze the reasons behind the HBP in
Turkey from within the framework of state-building ideologies during the
twentieth century. I use the process-tracing method to test my theory by
observing and analyzing the events that took place from 1923 to the present
in Turkey. The unfolding of the state-centered policies that shaped the secu-
larization process and the social responses to the radical reforms require
such an approach. As Stephen Vanevera states: 

In process tracing the investigator explores the chain of events or the
decision-making process by which initial case conditions are translated
into case outcomes. The cause-effect link that connects independent vari-
able and outcome is unwrapped and divided into smaller steps; then the
investigator looks for observable evidence of each step.3

Even though the HBP is a contemporary phenomenon, the actual
dynamics of state-building that yielded the institutional superiority over
society can be understood only by looking at the past and identifying the
causal chains. Analyzing the HBP’s causes requires unearthing the insti-
tutional structures, forces, and ideologies that act as the driving mecha-

Tatari : Populism and Secularism in Turkey 21



nisms of the current policy and decisionmaking process that leads to the
current outcomes. Therefore, I trace backward the causal process by try-
ing to infer “what caused the cause” at each stage and seek to identify the
HPB’s prime cause.4 Thus, I contend that the case of Turkey’s headscarf
ban lends itself perfectly to this methodology and that process tracing is the
most appropriate method of analysis for the question of this particular
study. 

As primary sources, I use the Constitution of the Republic of Turkey,
legal documents of court cases, and declarations of statutes in Resmi Gazete
(Legal Newspaper) and YOKKM (Legal Statement about the Dress Code in
Higher Education Institutions). The journal and newspaper articles, books,
and online accounts provide secondary sources, as listed in the accompany-
ing endnotes. 

Theoretic Approach and Hypothesis 
I employ historical institutionalism and political-cultural theory to analyze
this case. Even though these two approaches are not a priori superior to
other approaches employed in political science, this study’s specific research
question, available facts, and context are best understood by combining
these two approaches.

Historical Institutionalism
Historical institutionalism explains “the way institutions shape the goals
political actors pursue and the way they structure power relations among
them, privileging some and putting others at a disadvantage.”5 Similarly, to
comprehend the dynamics of the policymaking process in Turkey, it is nec-
essary to trace the political processes and unearth the role of institutions in
policymaking.6 Also, historical institutionalism attributes “social causation”
to path dependency, claiming that the effects of operative “forces are medi-
ated through contextual features of a situation inherited from the past.”7 In
other words, ideas and other factors that shape today’s policymaking process
are path-dependent on history. Historical institutionalism is inclusive of
other factors (e.g., ideas, beliefs, and culture) and analyzes macrocontexts,
rather than narrow contexts, to determine the combined effects of institu-
tions and processes.8 I employ the narrow definition of institution to refer to
the impact of those state institutions that have legitimate authority.9 In this
study, institutions specifically refer to the state’s legislature, executive, judi-
ciary, and military components.

22 The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 23:2



Political-Cultural Theory 
Two aspects of political-cultural theory make it particularly appropriate for
this case study: the continuity of the culture principle and Eckstein’s theory
of political transformations. First, as Castles argues, “history leaves a legacy
of ideas, customs and institutions – in sum, a culture – that influences the
present behavior of those who shape the policies of the state and those who
make demands of the state.”10 Political-cultural theory regards political con-
tinuity as the “normal” state11 and, therefore, helps explain the unchanging
nature of the fundamentals of Turkish culture. Moreover, Eckstein’s theory
of political change fits perfectly with the dynamics of the Kemalist revolu-
tion. He defines political transformation as “the use of political power and
artifice to engineer radically changed social and political structures, thus cul-
ture patterns and themes, to set society and polity on new courses toward
unprecedented objectives.”12 Kemal’s revolutionary transformative process,
which was carried out by suppressive power and control, supports this the-
ory of political transformation.13 Eckstein outlines the outcomes of such
social engineering projects: 

If the conventional norms and practices of political life are disrupted by
revolution, what can be put in their place? We may posit the answer that
revolutionary transformation will initially be attempted by despotic or
legalistic means. What, after all, can “order” societies and polities in place
of conventional, internalized culture? Only brute power, or else the use of
external legal prescriptions as a surrogate for internal orientational guides
to behavior.14

Eckstein argues that the long-term outcomes of these types of revolu-
tionary transformations will “diverge considerably from revolutionary
intentions and resemble more the pre-Revolutionary condition of society.”15
Exactly as his theory predicts, the “massive cultural disruptions” that took
place in Turkey in the 1920s and 1930s led to “unintended outcomes” in
that any contemporary religious revival was exactly what Kemal sought to
eliminate.

Hypothesis 
Based on historical institutionalism and political cultural theory, I hypothe-
size that the Turkish state legitimizes the forceful implementation of radical
secularizing reforms on the principle of populism, which places state objec-
tives in front of those of society and individual freedoms by default. The role

Tatari : Populism and Secularism in Turkey 23



of state institutions and the persistence of culture correspond with the theo-
retical framework of these two approaches. For the purposes of this article,
I use a narrow definition of culture and national values to refer only to reli-
gious beliefs and practices.

Numerous closely linked antecedent conditions magnify the causal rela-
tionship of the proposed hypothesis. These antecedent conditions are the
ambiguity or lack of a precise legal definition of secularism, the lack of any
separation of powers, and the military’s influence over the government in
power and the judicial decisionmaking process (judges). One can argue that
the principle of populism (or Kemalist ideology in general) is also the cause
of these situations; therefore, they are not detached from the independent
variable. 

Alternative hypotheses based on rival theoretical approaches may attrib-
ute the current HBP to the patriarchal structure of the Turkish state (gender-
based approaches) or party politics in Turkey (the political mobilization
approach). Although the outcome of the HBP affects women disproportion-
ately, the HBP is part of a wide range of state policies targeting all religious
citizens. Likewise, the rise of religiously affiliated political parties (i.e. the
Welfare party in 1995) can be seen as a factor that triggered state control
over religious activities. However, it is not a cause of the headscarf ban pol-
icy exclusively. In the remainder of this article, I will demonstrate the causal
link between the HBP and the Kemalist principles of populism and secular-
ism as state institutions during the twentieth century. 

Case Description
Since its establishment in 1923, the Republic of Turkey has struggled with
an ongoing mission of democratization. In its fairly short history, Turkey has
undergone major structural changes (i.e., a shift from a one-party to a multi-
party system), witnessed three military coups (1960, 1971, and 1980), and
one “soft” coup (1997). Despite numerous authoritarian policies and the mil-
itary’s ceaseless surveillance of the government, Turkey, at least in theory,
has maintained its commitment to republicanism and constitutionalism.16
The growth of a vibrant civil society composed of groups representing a wide
spectrum of interests has resulted in a push for greater equality, justice, and
political participation. 

One particular segment of civil society is that of practicing Muslims,
who have been marginalized by the state’s secularist mission. The inter-
action between the state and these citizens constitutes a test of democracy.

24 The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 23:2



Recently, one of the most prevalent and challenging policy areas illustrating
this confrontation between the secular state and its citizens has been the
headscarf ban. It is necessary to analyze historical developments within this
society and its state institutions in order to understand the cultural, political,
and societal mechanisms that brought about this confrontation. 

The Role of Religion before the Kemalist Reforms
“Throughout Ottoman history (1299-1922), religion served as a mediating
cultural and political bridge between the state and society.”17 The Ottoman
Empire carried the caliphate, the guardian of the Islamic heritage, and thus
was the apex of the greater Muslim world. The sultan was a political leader
who obtained his legitimacy through Islam, which eliminated any “tension
between the state and an independent ‘church’ similar to that which existed
for centuries in Europe…”18 The nature of Islam under the Ottoman Empire
is commonly described as cosmopolitan and pluralist in nature. For instance,
the empire established various systems to deal with the twenty-three differ-
ent nations under its sovereignty, which “helped to institutionalize a ‘tolera-
ble’ minority status for different religious groups.”19

One Ottoman legacy was its formative development, which helped to
promote a “liberal” frontier Islam.20 Bernard Lewis defines Turkey’s fron-
tier Islamic identity as being “fluid, institutionally fragmented, and multiple
in their loyalties and shared understandings – laws, norms, customs, and
overlapping roles.”21 Ottoman rule shaped the development of Islamic sci-
ences, arts, and legal codes for over six centuries without radical or dog-
matic indoctrination emerging from the empire-sponsored popular religious
mainstream. Religion was evidently a natural part of public and private life,
and all walks of life, including academics and jurisprudence, were guided by
religious teachings.

The Initial Implementation of 
Kemalist Reforms (1923-50)
The Republic of Turkey was established following the Ottoman Empire’s
collapse after the First World War and the successful completion of the
ensuing Independence War (1918-23), led mainly by General Mustafa
Kemal. After this war, Kemal launched a state-building mission and became
the first president of modern Turkey.22 His ideologies, which came to be
known as Kemalism, were the shaping forces behind the subsequent social
engineering projects.23

Tatari : Populism and Secularism in Turkey 25



Two of Kemalism’s fundamental principles, namely, populism and sec-
ularism, can be designated as the original sources and catalysts of the
state’s current attitudes toward wearing the headscarf. Populism refers to the
social content and goal of the Kemalist revolution. The elitist social reforms
were legitimized by the principle of populism, which “recognized the
validity of popular sovereignty to the degree circumscribed by the require-
ments of national unity, sovereignty, and reconstruction. It was made the
new cornerstone of the new political doctrine…”24 Kemalist secularism did
not merely mean the separation of state and religion, but also the separa-
tion of religion from educational, cultural, and legal affairs. It meant the inde-
pendence of thought and of institutions from the dominance of religious
doctrines. 

Kemal was adamantly committed to westernization and secularization,
which, according to him, required Turkey’s breaking its cultural and reli-
gious ties with its Ottoman past. Therefore, the policies he initiated during
the Kemalist revolution ripped Islam away from Turkey’s social fabric.25 He
did not have any difficulty in transforming his vision into public policy
under the “military-bureaucratic”26 regime that he established. Some of the
policies were as follows:

• Establishing the Directorate of Religious Affairs: Under this new institu-
tional framework, all religious staff had to be trained, employed, and con-
trolled by the state. According to Yavuz, its mission was “to control and
domesticate Islam in accordance with the needs of the state.”27

• Adopting the Swiss civil code.
• Reforming the educational system: The Unity of Education law was one

of the most powerful tools to indoctrinate the entire nation with the state
ideologies of secularism and westernization. All religious schools were
outlawed, and even private institutions were subject to state-monitored
curriculum. All Islamic schools and private meetings to study Islam
were outlawed.

These communitarian policies were put in place rapidly under the genre
of inkilap, reforms that were propagated by the state as the means for mod-
ernization as well as economic development. It has to be noted that the First
World War and the subsequent Independence War had left the entire nation
destitute. The conditions, therefore, were ripe for taking advantage of the peo-
ple by promises of economic advancement. Westernization “was presented as

26 The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 23:2



emancipatory and anti-religious, without the critical post-Enlightenment
thought on tolerance, liberalism and democracy.”28

The Two-party System and Changes in Public Policies 
After the death of Kemal (1938), there was a gradual shift to a two-party sys-
tem (1950). The new Democrat party, which was less committed to carrying
out the ideals of Kemalism, won the national elections.29 This party was
more receptive to the religious demands of Turkey’s citizens and pursued
more flexible policies. For instance, the call to prayer was once again recited
in Arabic (it had been changed to Turkish), Qur’anic courses and the train-
ing of public preachers (imams) were allowed, and the state’s control over
religious activities was relaxed. 

Islamist parties began to be formed in the 1970s and gained more
power throughout the 1980s. Meanwhile, “in response to forced exclusion,
many Muslims began to establish their own informal networks and educa-
tion system to preserve and protect their sacred realm from the reaches of
the radical republican state.”30 Thus, in the last two decades, Turkey has seen
a growing number of internal Islamic movements as well as religious
revivalism. As the political-cultural theory predicts, this trend is a return to
the pre-republic status quo, where the unifying factor of the nation’s Islamic
movements is “to resist the totalitarian and homogenizing policies of the
Kemalist state.”31

Policies on Dress during the Republic 
One of the first and most prevalent examples of the new regime’s agenda
was to “westernize” its citizens. This simply meant to dress, act, and talk like
Europeans in the hope that such changes would impact the people’s way of
thinking and religious attitudes. In 1925, a law prohibiting the traditional hat
(fez) was passed. Turkish men were required to wear western-style hats, and
disobedience was punished severely – sometimes with execution. This law
can be pointed to as the starting point of state’s (self-legitimized) interference
with how citizens dress. In the same year, another law (No. 2413) regulated
civil servant dress codes and “required them to dress ‘like their partners in
civilized nations of the world.’”32 This justification demonstrates clearly the
state’s obsession with modernization (westernization) at the expense of per-
sonal autonomy. 

However, it was not until 1981 that the Council of Ministers passed a
statute (No. 8/3349) prohibiting the wearing of headscarves by employees

Tatari : Populism and Secularism in Turkey 27



and students in public institutions and schools.33 In 1982, the Council of
Higher Education (YOK) banned students from wearing headscarves in uni-
versities. The resulting widespread protest against this ban forced the YOK
to allow headscarves that were “more in line with contemporary dress,”
namely, smaller scarves as opposed to larger and darker-colored ones.34
However, in 1987 the Kemalists, led by President Kenan Evran (a former
general, which aligns him automatically with the secularists in the Turkish
context) banned wearing the headscarf, only to have it made legal once again
by the YOK in 1989. 

The Judiciary’s Role in Headscarf Policies 
In 1982, 1984, 1987, and 1989, the Constitutional Court turned down all
appeals from citizens who were denied access to educational institutions,
declaring that wearing a headscarf in public institutions was unconstitu-
tional. However, despite the legislature’s statutes and the Constitutional
Court’s decisions, implementing the HBP was left to the discretion of the
chancellors, deans, and faculties. The National Security Council’s decision
to identify Islamic fundamentalism as the most serious threat to Turkey’s
national security was the turning point in the headscarf ban debate.35 Yavuz
defines February 1997 as “the fourth military coup to protect the state and
democracy from the people”36:

In 1997, the generals decided to cleanse the public sphere of the growing
Muslim presence. The military once again intervened directly in the civil-
ian sphere, declaring peaceful and democratic Turkish Islamic and
Kurdish identity aspirations to be national security threats, and orchestrat-
ing a soft-coup against the pro-Islamic Welfare coalition government by
forcing the government to engage in the cleansing of Islamists from the
public sphere.37

In its 1997 decisions “the Turkish court argued that laicism is not only a
separation between religion and politics but also a necessary division
between religion and society. This justified regulation of social life, educa-
tion, family, economy, law, daily code of conduct and dress-code in accor-
dance with the needs of everyday life and the Kemalist principles.”38

The Current Constitutional Dispute
Women who pursued litigation to seek their rights pointed to three articles
in the current Turkish constitution (1982)39:

28 The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 23:2



• Article 24, which guarantees the freedom of expression,
• Article 10, which prohibits discrimination due to religious belief, eth-

nicity, etc., and 
• Article 42, which guarantees the right to education for all citizens of the

Turkish Republic. 
On the other side, the Constitutional Court outlawed the wearing of

headscarves in universities and in public enterprises, arguing that “in a laicist
order, religion is prevented from politicization, and becoming an administra-
tive device, and kept in its real respectable place in the people’s conscious-
ness.”40 Thus, the Constitutional Court claims to have the right to define the
boundaries of religion and to control where, when, and how people are
allowed to express their religious beliefs. Controversially, it also declared
that the demand to wear the headscarf was against the principle of equal
treatment and religious freedom, since “allowing the headcover would not
only be a privilege given to Islamist students, but it would allow for their
unequal treatment by differentiating them from others.”41 Likewise, the
Council of State declared the headscarf to be against secularism and
women’s rights on the grounds that “rather than an innocent custom, it has
become a symbol of a worldview opposed to the fundamental principles of
the Republic and opposed to women’s liberation.”42

Case Analysis and Discussion
As has been revealed through the dynamics of the headscarf ban in Turkey,
the reawakening of Islamic identity within Turkish society and the increas-
ing demands of its citizens to reassert their Islamic heritage demonstrates the
desire for and an active return to the traditions of the Ottoman legacy. The
Kemalist revolution disrupted the internalized culture by despotic means.
However, as Yavuz states: “… an Islamic-oriented identity, although exist-
ing prior to the foundation of the Republican state’s radical homogenizing
reforms, lay dormant in Turkey for some time” only to be revived in a
stronger form.43 The Kemalist revolution’s radical and artificial social engi-
neering project could not succeed in cutting the nation off from its pre-
republic Islamic identity, and thus Islam is reclaiming its place in Turkey’s
sociopolitical sphere. These social dynamics in Turkey correspond with and
strongly affirm Eckstein’s theory.

The HBP case also reveals the paradoxical and undemocratic nature of
the Kemalist principles of populism and secularism. These ideologies are

Tatari : Populism and Secularism in Turkey 29



formal, deliberate, and codified principles that have been the driving forces
behind numerous communitarian social policies. Although the general pub-
lic has always contested these policies, outspoken protest has gradually
increased in recent years due to “exported” liberalization, increased politi-
cal awareness, and participation brought by what Yavuz calls opportunity
spaces. 

Even though secularism is the alleged reason, I argue that populism is
the necessary means for the state to carry out its mission of secularism
through authoritarian social policies. If the populism principle had not been
inserted into the constitution to legitimize the prioritization of state objec-
tives in spite of popular protest, the state would have lacked the substan-
tial institutionalized support needed to implement its forceful secularizing
reforms. Therefore, unlike what is commonly stated, the statist version of
secularism is not the only authoritarian element that needs to be reformed
to reinstate democracy, for secularism and populism have equal weight in
authoritarian policymaking. 

Davidson argues that secularism connotes “a political sphere that is not
influenced by religion.”44 However, in Turkey “the militant secularism of the
state amounted to rigid state control over religious life and a strict laicism in
public affairs, rather than the institutional separation of Church and State or
the decline of personal belief.”45 The state’s version of secularism forces the
citizens to make an impossible choice: “Am I a Muslim first or a citizen of
my country?” while populism allows the state to define and enforce the com-
mon good for the people.46 Therefore, the Kemalist version of populism and
secularism is the prime cause of the current political debate on the headscarf
dispute in Turkey today. 

The Constitutional Court’s arguments in declaring the headscarf to be
unconstitutional consist of the following assertions: the headscarf is against
women’s rights and liberties, is a political symbol, and is a threat for organ-
izing the state according to the dictates of Islam. Hence, allowing it would
mean the unequal treatment of citizens. Even though most Kemalist aca-
demics acknowledge that it is undemocratic for the state to impose its secu-
larist ideals47 and ban the headscarf, they still justify the ban mainly by the
following two arguments: 

1. “…many women who come from traditional families are expected to
cover their heads, which does not allow them freedom of choice or
autonomy”48 (italics added). This very common assumption or claim has
not been tested empirically. The one and only survey cited above (Cark-

30 The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 23:2



oglu and Toprak) did not feature a question on whether or not women
freely chose to wear the headscarf. I argue that, to the contrary, the
majority of women affected by the HBP are those highly educated
urban women who, in most cases, make a personal decision to wear it
despite the pressure from their families and husbands not to do so.
Hence, an extensive and well-drafted public survey is needed to con-
firm or negate these claims. 

2. The state and the Kemalist elite fears that the people who wear the
headscarf or support this practice also support the implementation of an
Islamic state to replace the republic. This alleged threat has been widely
criticized as being unsubstantiated, especially because the nature of
Turkey’s Islamic social movements is characterized as peaceful, mod-
ernizing, and democracy-seeking.49

Since these arguments lack substantial and scholarly evidence, it is nec-
essary to critically evaluate the reasons for implementing the HBP. If we
hypothesize that many or some women do not wear the headscarf due to per-
sonal choice but are subject to parental or spousal pressure, this leaves some
or many women who exercise their personal autonomy by deciding to
express their religious beliefs in a certain way according to their personal
interpretations of Islamic doctrines. Can the HBP ban be justified in order to
protect women who are subject to some form of pressure? Could other ways
of eliminating this undesirable pressure be found that do not violate the other
women’s rights to express their religious beliefs? 

Likewise, if we hypothesize that some of the people who wear the head-
scarf or who support this practice also support the implementation of an
Islamic state, this leaves many or some that do not support such a political
ideology. On the other hand, they praise democracy, demand equal rights to
practice their religion, and respect the rights of others to live as they
choose.50 Hence, the headscarf dispute illustrates the state’s power, embed-
ded in the principle of populism, over individual freedoms.

This constitutional debate is subsumed within the overarching issue of
the Kemalist elite taking advantage of state-centered institutions to main-
tain its power and privileges. State institutions that carry out these policies
have been formalized by Kemalist values that contradict Turkey’s national
values or culture. The policy outcomes that emerge from these institutions
(or the Kemalist ideologies of these institutions) lack legitimacy and are,
therefore, forcefully imposed on society. How state institutions function in
the headscarf case is rather extraordinary: Adopting a deceptive democratic

Tatari : Populism and Secularism in Turkey 31



façade, they legitimize undemocratic policies by referring to Kemalist
principles. 

Conclusion
The Turkish nation is 99 percent Muslim, and 70 percent of its women wear
the headscarf.51 The problem of compatibility between Islam and the Kemal-
ist version of secular democracy has to be addressed with effective policy
solutions. The state has to resolve how to democratically reconcile the
demands of (the majority of) its citizens with the statist goals of seculariza-
tion and westernization. All of the theoretical issues discussed in this article
demand practical solutions to ease the culminating tensions between the
state and majority of the Turkish population. 

Some of the HPB’s positive outcomes are evident in the increased polit-
ical participation and empowerment of women. Arat elaborates on the posi-
tive implications of civil society: 

Islamist women as well as a number of academicians have documented
how covering their heads and leading Islamic lives allowed women to
exercise autonomy, at times in opposition to their parents who disap-
proved of their headscarves, at times against the state or social pressure
(Arat 1991, Gole 1996, Ozdalga 1998). These women’s discovery of an
alternative religious life allowed them to challenge established customs or
parental expectations. They learned how to fight for their beliefs and how
to express themselves against societal pressure. As individuals, they were
empowered.52

It is not democratic for a state to impinge on its citizens’ basic human
rights based on assumptions or fears of some possible “future” threat. As
Galeotti states, “the possibility of the free rider fundamentalist, who makes
an opportunistic use of liberal institutions to destroy them, seems more a
fantasy of the Western mind than a real threat.”53 Even if this alleged threat
were grounded, it is the state’s responsibility to guard democracy democrat-
ically. The state should clearly delineate where the Islamic groups’ demands
would impinge upon its “democratic principles.” For example, a demand to
replace the entire constitution with the Shari`ah would be incompatible with
democracy. The state should clarify those democratic principles upon which
its policies are based: that of potential harm, westernization, or its own dis-
cretion, for example.

It is evident, even from the secular Kemalist academics’ arguments, that
the HBP is undemocratic and that the Constitutional Court’s interpretation

32 The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 23:2



of the constitution contradicts those provisions related to the freedom of reli-
gion and of religious expression. Even though there are seemingly demo-
cratic institutions, a popularly elected legislature, a constitution, and a
judiciary, the state mechanism’s overall functioning is undemocratic. There
are clear contradictions between what is written in the Constitution, the
ban’s inconsistent implementation, and the Constitutional Court’s discre-
tionary interpretations of the laws. The headscarf dispute illustrates the
state’s power (embedded in the principle of populism) over individual
freedoms. The loopholes in the Constitution, the unclear definition of secu-
larism, and the authoritarian nature of state secularism make such undemo-
cratic rulings possible. In other words, the judiciary is not an independent
institution, for the military oversees judicial decisionmaking, and the sepa-
ration of powers is non-existent.

Turkey must find a peaceful and democratic resolution to the headscarf
debate. There is a pressing need to draft policies compatible with the prin-
ciples of a liberal democratic version of secularism (Anglo-Saxon secular-
ism) and to incorporate the majority’s demands by pursuing more inclusive
strategies. Turkish political history demonstrates how “an Islamic oppo-
sition may integrate itself into a modern democratic system,”54 and it there-
fore constitutes a crucial example for the other Muslim countries. However,
this peaceful and democratic integration is possible only if “Islamic values
are not banned from politics by a fanatical call for secularism, but respected
as a legitimate voice.”55 I strongly agree with Yavuz that Turkey needs
“a new social contract in which ethnic and religious diversity will be
respected.”56 Consequently, Turkey’s institutional set-up under the Kemalist
principles of populism and secularism, which were devised in the 1920s,
affects current public policies. The lack of emphasis on protecting individ-
ual freedoms can be attributed to the state’s priority of protecting the status
quo, which privileges the Kemalist elite, at the expense of its citizens’
rights.

Endnotes

1. Tarhan Erdem, “Turban Dosyasi,” Milliyet Newspaper, 27 May 2003. Online
at: www.milliyet.com.tr/2003/05/27/guncel/agun.html.

2. Kemalism consists of six principles: republicanism, populism, secularism,
reformism, nationalism, and statism. For a more detailed analysis, see Jacob
M. Landau, Ataturk and the Modernization of Turkey (Boulder, CO: Westview
Press: 1984). 

Tatari : Populism and Secularism in Turkey 33



3. Stephen Vanevera, Guide to Methods for Students of Political Science (Ithaca:
Cornell University Press, 1997), 64. 

4. Ibid., 70.
5. Peter A. Hall and Rosemary C. R. Taylor, “Political Science and the Three

New Institutionalisms,” Political Studies Association, no. 64 (1996): 940.
6. Sven Steinmo, Kathleen Thelen, and Frank Longstreth, eds. Structuring Pol-

itics: Historical Institutionalism in Comparative Analysis (New York: Cam-
bridge University Press, 1992), 2. 

7. Hall and Taylor, “Political Science,” 942. 
8. Paul Pierson and Theda Skocpol, “Historical Institutionalism in Contemporary

Political Science,” in Political Science: The State of the Discipline, eds. Ira
Katznelson and Helen Milner (New York: Norton, 2002), 693-721. 

9. S. Laurel Weldon, Protest, Policy, and the Protest of Violence against Women:
A Cross-National Comparison (Pittsburg: University of Pittsburg Press, 2002),
107. 

10. Francis G. Castles, ed., Families of Nations: Patterns of Public Policy in West-
ern Democracies (USA: Dartmouth, 1993), xvi. 

11. Harry Eckstein, “A Culturalist Theory of Political Change,” The American
Political Science Review 82, no. 3 (September 1988): 790. 

12. Ibid., 798. 
13. Ibid., 799.
14. Ibid.
15. Ibid., 800.
16. Freedom House has rated Turkey as 3 (partly free) on its democracy scale of

1 to 7 (1: Free and 7: Not Free ). See www.freedomhouse.org/research/free-
world/2005/combined2005.pdf.

17. Hakan Yavuz and John Esposito, eds., Turkish Islam and the Secular State:
The Gulen Movement (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2003), 38. 

18. Ibid., 41.
19. Ibid., 40. For instance, Muslims were judged in an Islamic court, whereas

Christians were subject to secular legal codes. 
20. Ibid., 39. 
21. As paraphrased in ibid., 39. 
22. The only party was Kemal’s Republican People’s party (Cumhuriyet Halk Par-

tisi [CHP]), and he was the sole candidate for presidency. 
23. For Kemalism, see endnote 1. 
24. Niyazi Berkes, The Development of Secularism in Turkey (New York: Rout-

ledge, 1998), 462. 
25. Hakan Yavuz, “Cleansing Islam from the Public Sphere,” Journal of Inter-

national Affairs 54, no. 1 (Fall 2000): 22. 
26. Ibid., 25. 
27. Ibid., 29. 
28. Ibid., 24.

34 The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 23:2



29. The immediate shift in citizen preference for the Democrat party is similar to
what happened in the 1994 elections. As soon as there was a choice between
leftist and rightist parties, the majority of the citizens (21 percent) voted for the
Islamic Welfare party.

30. Ibid., 25. 
31. Ibid., 28. 
32. Yesim Arat, “Islamist Women, Their Headscarves and Democracy in Turkey,”

2000. Online at: www.bgu.ac.il/humphrey/seminar/yasim.htm.
33. For detailed information on the powers of the legislature, the executive, and

the judiciary, see www.turkishembassy.org/governmentpolitics/politics.htm.
34. Elizabeth Ozdalga, The Veiling Issue, Official Secularism and Popular Islam

in Modern Turkey (Surrey, UK: Curzon Publications, 1998), 41. 
35. The secretary general of the National Security Council is a military official

appointed by the Supreme Military Council of Turkey. Therefore, the decision-
making process is dictated by the Turkish military. 

36. Mehmet Ali Kislali’s article in the Turkish daily newspaper Radikal, “TC’yi
kim koruyacak?” 7 March 2000, as quoted in Yavuz, “Cleansing Islam,” 27. 

37. John Doxey, “A soft-coup in Turkey,” New Leader (10 March 1997), 12-14, as
paraphrased in ibid., 37. 

38. Ibid., 38. 
39. For the full text of the Turkish constitution in English, see www.mfa.gov.tr/

grupc/ca/cag/I142.htm.
40. YOKKM, p. 4, as quoted in Arat, “Islamist Women,” trans. Yesim Arat.
41. Ibid.
42. YOK. “YOKKM: Yuksekogretim Kurumlarinda Kilik Kiyafet ile Ilgili Mev-

zuat ve Hukuki Degerlendirmeler (Legal Statement about the Dress Code in
Higher Education Institutions).” Online at: www.yok.gov.tr. YOK, supervised
by the Ministry of Education, administers Turkey’s universities directly. 

43. Yavuz and Esposito, Turkish Islam, 37. 
44. Andrew Davison, Secularism and Revivalism in Turkey: A Hermeneutic

Reconsideration (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1998), 53.
45. Simon Bromley, as quoted in ibid., 135. 
46. Mehmet Ozay, Islamic Identity and Development: Studies of the Islamic

Periphery (London: Routledge, 1990), 8. 
47. Arat, “Islamist Women.” Arat acknowledges that “by banning headcovering,

the state is authoritatively imposing its own understanding of women’s liber-
ties on a group who does not share the same understanding” and “banning the
headcover is an illiberal act exercised on an illiberal community…” Yet, she
still justifies the HBP as the only remedy to control the religious resurgence. 

48. Ibid. 
49. Hakan Yavuz, Islamic Political Identity in Turkey (Oxford: Oxford University

Press, 2003), 6. 

Tatari : Populism and Secularism in Turkey 35



50. Yavuz and Esposito, Turkish Islam, 6. In his Islamic Political Identity in
Turkey (p. 6), Yavuz states that the Islamic social movements in Turkey are
“modern and progressive ... with yearnings for democracy and economic
development.” For more information about the peaceful and democratic nature
of the Islamic identity in Turkey, see Nilufer Gole, The Forbidden Modern:
Civilization and Veiling (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 1996)
and Serif Mardin, “Religion and Politics in Modern Turkey,” in Islam in the
Political Process, ed. James P. Piscatori (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1983). 

51. Ali Carkoglu and Binnaz Toprak, Turkiye’de Din, Toplum ve Siyaset (Istanbul:
TESEV Publications, 2000). 

52. Arat, “Islamist Women.”
53. Anna Elisabetta Galeotti, “Citizenship and Equality: The Place for Toleration,”

Political Theory 21, no. 4. (Nov. 1993): 602.
54. Ozdalga, The Veiling Issue, 93. 
55. Ibid. 
56. Yavuz, “Cleansing Islam,” 38. 

36 The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 23:2