Secularism as a field of class struggle: State, religion, and class relations in Turkey

Abstract

The dialectical relationship between secularism and capitalism, where contradictions in this relationship are resolved on the basis of class relations, results in various state-religion relationships in different social formations. The limitations and particularities of secularism are exaggerated in countries that arrived late at capitalism, such as Turkey. These late-developers are subject to the dynamics of uneven and combined development. This paper borrows from Marxism, particularly the theory of uneven and combined development, in order to explore the relationship between the consolidation of the modern nation-state and its secularisation process during the bourgeois revolution of 1923 in Turkey.