Refashioning Secularisms in France and Turkey

This is a refreshing piece of scholarship, a revised version of the author’s Ph.D. thesis, and its importance lies both in its relevance to contemporary debate on the role of state secularism in the public space and the (re)location of faith in the so-called secular space. France and Turkey being case studies, the book is a scientific exploration that makes the best use of quantificative research methods and critical evaluation of the limits of secularity. The ban on the headscarf in France and Turkey provides an excellent starting-point for conduction of this comparative study. The book consists of six chapters. The introduction dilates on the hegemony of secularism, gender and space. It outlines the locating and refashioning of secularism in two republics and provides the overall structure of the book. Chapter 2 addresses the paradoxes of the languages of laicité and laiklik in their French and Turkish contexts. It also provides an historical context of regulations in the modern nation state. Chapter 3 focusses on the slow exclusion of pious women from the public space in the French and Turkish societies. Chapter 4 offers a review of the position of French Muslim activists on the issue. It reviews the March 2004 law and the extension of exclusions. Chapter 5 examines the attempt of Turkish devout activists to reconfigure laiklik with human rights. Chapter 6 provides a right-based discourse: a door to multiple sites of challenges. The last chapter sums up the whole debate and offers the author’s conclusion, which is to go beyond the secular/religious divide.