ABSTRACT
The role of religion in Turkey’s politics has been one of the most contested and controversial topics in the country’s political history. Different views have generated a large number of accounts that attempt to assess whether the country’s system of secularism and the role of religious movements have been an obstacle or a boon for Turkey’s democracy. The chapter examines this issue through a review of existing accounts that fall into two clashing frameworks in their assessment of the ideational and institutional design of Turkey’s republic vis-à-vis religion and its religious politics. They are the ‘Rupture Paradigm’ and the ‘Continuity Paradigm’.
