ABSTRACT
In the first two decades following the Second World War, many social scientists in the West and Turkey viewed Turkey as “one of the most successful models of a universally defined modernization process.”1 The establishment of a secular nation-state, under the leadership of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk in 1923, which created a shift “in the bases of political legitimation and the symbols of the political community, together with a redefinition of the collectivity,”2 confirmed all the expectations of modernization theorists. In the eyes of many, the Turkish transformation depicted the transition of a traditional society to a modern one.
