ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses how secular tropes are intrinsically linked to discourses of modernity, in which family and sexuality have come to occupy a key role. The regulation of the religious justified by the languages of secularism has led to a regulation of family relations. The chapter shows how 'secular values' are articulated repeatedly through the image of 'civilizational others', which is represented, in both cases, by religious family laws carrying defective and patriarchal norms. It explores how the (re)production of space is central to the articulation of the languages of secularism. The importance given to women's bodies and women's performance has prevailed in Turkey, and has become ever more significant from the 1980s onwards, with the growing presence and signs of permanency of Islam in urban centres. The status of women was set as a key indicator of the morality of political projects at the end of the Ottoman Empire.
