Studying Secularism: Modern Turkey and the Alevis

Any researcher interested in modern Turkey can hardly escape the controversy that has surrounded religion in the last decade. The rise and fall of Erbakan and the Welfare Party, the National Security Council's secular 'recommendations' in February 1997, the partial closure of the Imam-Hatip (religiously-oriented) schools, and the formation of 'Western Working Groups' to investigate alleged infiltration into the civil service by religious activists, are just a few instances of how prominent these issues have been. How, as observers, are we to attempt to understand the significance of these and similar events in today's Republic