In October 2008, The Turkish republic celebrates its eighty-fifth anniversary. By early November, seventy years have passed since the death of the founder of the secular and unitary republic, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. These anniversaries coincide with a defining moment in the history of the Turkish republic. Severe ideological tensions have erupted as traditional republican notions about the role of religion in society and about the nation-state have come to be increasingly challenged. In 2007 and 2008, Turkey was shaken by a regime crisis in which the ruling Islamic conservatives of the Justice and Development Party (AKP) were pitted against the secular opposition in other parts of the state establishment and in civil society. The decision of the constitutional court in the summer of 2008 not to close down the AKP marked the end of the acute crisis, although not of the age-old struggle over the identity of Turkey. Internal as well as external dynamics underpin the power of the Islamic conservatives. Having been wielding significant power in society for a long time, the Islamic movement has come close also to achieving the goal of controlling the state. By all accounts, with the survival of the AKP, Turkey has passed a critical threshold. From a Western policy perspective, there are two basic questions to be asked about Turkey. The first concerns the perceptions of the nature of Islamic conservatism: to what degree is the assumption that guides U.S. and European policy - that it is a force for reform that will make Turkish society more democratic, securing Turkey as a Western asset - ideologically as well as strategically warranted? The second concerns how the forces of secularism are to be conceptualized.

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