There are breathtaking developments in Turkey these days: The government is negotiating with the PKK, a “terrorist organization” that it fought for three decades, while the prime minister is arguing for a decentralized political system. On another front, veiled women are gaining the right to work as lawyers, defying an authoritarian secularism that disallowed any “religious symbol” in public life. Turkey is changing, and it is changing fast.
It is not hard to see that all such developments are either threatening, or altering, the two main pillars of the Republic of Turkey enacted by its founding leader, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk: Nationalism and secularism. The first pillar asserted that every citizen of the republic is a Turk, and, if he is not, he has to be converted into one. That is why the language and culture of the main non-Turkish group, the Kurds, have been suppressed by Atatürk and his followers. But now, the Turkish government is openly acknowledging the existence of Kurds and their rights. It is even “negotiating with the terrorists” who have fought for these rights.
