Laïcité and Laiklik: When Did the Comparability of Assertive Laicism in France and Turkey Dissolve?

Abstract

The political principle of Laicism was institutionalized in the constitutions of both France and Turkey supposedly establishing the separation of religion and state. This project seeks to identify whether French Laïcité and Turkish Laiklik have ever implemented Laicism in ways that fully separate the church and state and if so, to understand at which critical periods their comparability as assertively secular nations derailed. Although French and Turkish Laic-values are built upon a similar platform of nationalism, similar factors influencing the corrosion of Laicism in each case have produced inverse results regarding secularism in the contemporary. Confronting the notion of 'dual laicism's' I claim instead that both France and Turkey have undergone roughly similar processes since the birth of Laicism in each context but have been alternately shaped according to the dynamic interaction between prevailing ideologies of the dominant politic, society's perception of national value and national narrative. The fundamental difference between France and Turkey is more poignantly the direction of Laicism's corruption than the intensity of it. Have French Laïcité and Turkish Laiklik ever implemented Laicism in ways that fully separate the church and state, and if so at which points did they deviate?