ABSTRACT
The elites who hailed from that period and shared positivist views of modernity imposed a secular Turkish identity on the state, which survives in a formal sense but suffers steady erosion. Nothing symbolizes the erosion better than dress. The head scarf and the beard, traditional symbols of religiosity, never disappeared from rural Turkey, but the return of the head scarf and the beard to the universities and to fashionable, educated, modernist milieus suggests that the identity issue is anything but resolved. The Kemalists made dress a central element in their effort to define modern Turkey. Said Nursi was attached to his turban, and young Islamists now flaunt various types of Islamic fashion to express their identities, drawing praise in some circles and derision or even prejudicial action in others. Turkish political culture remains exceptional but it is also conflicted. Some secularists fear it is sliding toward an Islamic republic bent on enforcing a narrowminded sharia.
