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Mustafa Kemal Ataturk started Turkey on a wrenching course of reform in the 1920s; over the subsequent years the changes he instituted have made Turkey into a democracy that is far closer to Europe than the Middle East.
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| Turkey is a secular democracy whose citizens are overwhelmingly Muslim. The next chapter of Turkish history is unfolding: a power struggle between an old secular elite and a new, religious class. Above, a man in an Istanbul cafe relaxed under the ubiquitous gaze of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the founder of modern Turkey. |
In April, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his ruling Justice and Development party nominated a presidential candidate whose wife wears a head scarf, sparking protests by secular Turks of creeping Islamism. Many demonstrators carried large banners with Ataturk's likeness.
The protests in different cities brought together more than a million Turks. Hundreds of thousands gathered at Ataturk's mausoleum in the captiol city of Ankara to show their support for the secular establishment.
Turkish education system teaches secularism and nationalism. Pictures of Ataturk hang in nearly every classroom in the country, including this high school in Istanbul.
e A.K. party has been successful at the grassroots level, providing services to Turkey's poorer classes through local government. An older woman read aloud in a women's literacy class at a community center set up by the party in Istanbul.
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Traditional Turkish society is religious but, under the influence of Sufism, tends to have fewer forces for radicalism. Residents of Konya, a conservative city in eastern Turkey, waited for the midday call to prayer at one of the city's central mosques.
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Sufism was a primary way that Islam caught hold in what is now modern Turkey. One of its central characters was Rumi, a 13th century mystic poet whose grave is in Konya. Dervishes are Sufis who attempt to find divine focus in dance.
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Konya has the largest number of mosques per capita in Turkey, with nearly the same amount as Istanbul, a city five times as large. For generations, devoutly religious Turks have been the underclass of Turkish society.
Students in the art department at Selcuk University in Konya. Over the last several years the school has been a moderating influence on the city's conservative sensibilities.
opening up of Turkey's economy in the 1980s set off an economic boom that drew large portions of the rural, devout population to the cities from the countryside.
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Mustafa Kemal Ataturk started Turkey on a wrenching course of reform in the 1920s; over the subsequent years the changes he instituted have made Turkey into a democracy that is far closer to Europe than the Middle East.
