Post-Secularism in Politics of Turkey: A Comparison with Habermas’ Post-Secularism Theory

In the progress of modernization and Westernization, secularization has been reported in various areas such as politics, among individuals and even religions themselves. Theorizing and explaining such situations, scholars have argued that religious things should be excluded from the public sphere. However, a trend to doubt such secularization theory has recently appeared, which regards society as a "post-secularized" place. This article explores to what extent that the view of "post-secularization" can be adopted to the actual society by focusing on politics in Turkey as one of the examples of "post-secularized" society. While Turkey is known as a country which had experienced a severe secularization in the 1920s by Ataturk, when it comes to the recent political situation, the impacts of Islam cannot be ignored. This article explores the relation between the recent Turkish politics and the "post-secularization" theory, also comparing it with the leading democratic theory argued by Habermas (2008).