ABSTRACT
Turkey belongs to a club of nation-states that inherited the legacy of a former empire. Turkey inherited the Ottoman cultural and political baggage, as well as the bulk of its foreign debt with the Treaty of Lausanne (July 24, 1923), which also erected the new Turkish state, and later a republic (October 29, 1923). It was established by means of a war of national liberation, which the Turkish nationalist forces won against great odds. Turkey emerged from the same cultural milieu and political system of the Ottoman Empire, as did almost all of the states of the Middle East and the Balkans. Turkey is home to more than seventy million Muslims most of who belong to the Sunni sect, although a small but still sizable minority are Alevi.1 Although no reliable data exist, many citizens of Turkey can and do trace their roots to the Balkan, Caucasian, Central Asian, and Middle Eastern provinces of the Ottoman Empire. Thus, Turkey also qualifies as an immigrant nation or a nation of immigrants, most of whom identify with Turks and being Turkish. Many in those regions neighboring Turkey continue, with some enmity or envy and mostly with a complex ambiguity, to perceive of Turkey and the Turks as their former masters. Turkey shares many cultural traits and political characteristics with her Middle Eastern, Balkan, and Caucasian neighbors, and continues to enjoy complicated cultural, political, and economic relations with those regions. Turkey started negotiations for full membership of the European Union
(EU) in 2005, as the only candidate for full membership with a large Muslim population; she has been serving as a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) since 1952, and also functions as a bona fide member of the Organization of Islamic Countries (OIC). Turkey has also been striving to establish a democratic form of government since the end of World War II, and is now considered to have satisfied the Copenhagen Criteria of the EU and thus become eligible for candidacy in that organization. In the meantime, Turkish troops take part in NATO operations in such disparate geographies as the Kosovo, the Baltic Sea, and Afghanistan. The list can be extended to include many more examples of United Nations (UN) peace operations in Palestine, Lebanon, and the like. Such a record distinguishes Turkey from the
rest of the Balkan and Middle Eastern countries, with which she shares a long, rich history and culture. Two major characteristics of Turkish society and polity seem to stick out very clearly in differentiating Turkey from the other post-Ottoman societies and states: they are secularism and democracy. This chapter is devoted to the examination and explanation of the secular and democratic records of Turkey, which seem to differentiate her from other polities with large Muslim populations.
