Torn Country: Turkey Between Secularism and Islamism [Hardcover]

For centuries, Islam and the West have been competing to define Turkish identity. Decades of close cooperation between Turkey and its NATO allies generated Western confidence that Turkey was a reliable ally and that its democratic system was sufficiently resilient to weather periodic political crises. But in recent years, those who have sought to soften the boundary between Islam and public life have become more organized and influential in Turkish politics.

InTorn Country,Zeyno Baran examines the intense struggle between Turkey’s secularists and Islamists in their most recent battles over their country’s destination. Looking into the fate of both Turkey’s secularism and its democratic experiment, she shows that, for all the flaws of its political journey, the modern Turkish state has managed to maintain an essential separation between religion and the political realm—a separation that is now in jeopardy.

Zeyno Baran examines the intense struggle between Turkey’s secularists and Islamists in their most recent battles over their country’s destination. Looking into the fate of both Turkey’s secularism and its democratic experiment, she shows that, for all the flaws of its political journey, the modern Turkish state has managed to maintain an essential separation between religion and the political realm—a separation that is now in jeopardy.

Zeyno Baran is a Senior Fellow with the Hudson Institute's Center on Islam, Democracy and the Future of the Muslim World. She previously directed the International Security and Energy Programs at the Nixon Center; before that she directed the Georgia Forum and the Caucasus Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Her current work focuses on strategies to thwart the spread of radical Islamist ideology in Europe and in Eurasia and to promote reform across Eurasia. Her most recent boló>