Amberin Zaman: Erdogan’s dreams of eclipsing Ataturk unfulfilled as Turkish republic turns 100

Source:al Monitor Date:28Oct2023

I lvoed it.  Erdogan has Ataturk envy!   A must read for those  who beleive Turkey is becoming more Islamic!

Yet the results of Erdogan’s attempted counter revolution — the conversion of a Byzantine icon, the Hagia Sophia, from a museum to a full-service mosque was a defining moment in his “New Turkey” — are in fact mixed. Numerous studies reveal that a growing number of young Turks are ditching faith as the government doggedly keeps pushing ever more of it down their throats. Islam has thinned spiritually, said Selim Koru, a Turkish scholar and editor of the KulturKampf blog, becoming more of a transactional tool for achieving profit and power.

In an October survey, Metropoll, an Ankara-based polling outfit, found that 41% of respondents favored Republican rule while 19% plumped for Islamic governance. (A measly 3% yearned for a return to the sultanate.) The same survey indicated that 64.4% endorsed secularism versus 28.6% who did not. Some 44.9% said they wanted Turkey to resemble Germany. The first runner-up was Qatar with 9.4%, and the second China with 5.2%.

“Young women who are inclined to shift away from the piety of their family are deeply intrigued by Ataturk,” remarked Ayse Cavdar, a Berlin-based ethnographer who has written extensively about Islamist mobilization in Turkey. “Women who discard their Islamic head coverings and who are distancing themselves from religiosity are everywhere and the AKP know this perfectly well, as it is happening in their own homes, neighborhoods and social circles,” Cavdar told Al-Monitor.