"Din-u Devlet" All Over Again?

The Politics of Military Secularism and Religious Militarism in Turkey after the 1980 Coup

Abstract

The article focuses on how the Turkish military systematically structured its political ideals through the national educational system. By examining in detail the current curriculum, it shows how the military reworked the emotional bonds between the army and the civilian population following the 1980 coup. Together with the religious-minded sponsors of the "Turkish-Islamic Synthesis" ideology, it formulated a curriculum that not only extols Ataturkism (the life and thoughts of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk) but also religious-inspired militancy. This recycling of the twinship of "state and religion", in which each citizen-child learns to identify him/herself as the defender of the Islamic faith, has unwittingly unleashed divisive debates over the constitutive role of secularism in Turkish society and polity.