Secularism

Ikhlasul Amal/74190091

In the previous paper, I described shortly the concept of Kemalism that had a
strong impact and how it effect today’s modern Türkiye. In today’s reflection paper, I
will again explain the concept that has similarity with the idea of Kemalism but totally
different both in the structure and the implementation. I will refer to the article from
Mr. Keyman about secularism, modernism and Islam to explain the concept of
Secularism in Türkiye.
Before entering into the concept and basic background of secularism that Mr.
Keyman write in his article, First I’d like to describe shortly how outsider especially
my country Indonesia view Türkiye in a term of Secularism. Türkiye is a really close
country and seen as a muslim country like any other middle eastern countries that
applied an Islamic law and rule for those who never been in Türkiye. They view
Türkiye as a perfect nation that all Muslim country including Indonesia need to set an
example and apply how Türkiye manage and govern their society. Mr. Tayyip
Erdoğan succeed to manage the country’s image to be seen as a Muslim country that
able to counter and handle secularism.
Now, let’s move into the idea of secularism. I underline the sentence from Mr.
Keyman article which say that the more secularism is used by the state elite as a
political project to control religion, the less pluralistic and democratic the state has
become in governing it’s society. We can agree that Mr. Keyman slightly stated that
secularism can’t control and limit the religion completely. It has the effect to the
pluralistic and the democratic system of that country. In the case of Türkiye, we can
also say that religion can’t be totally separated from political and institutional sector.
The Islamic identity that mixed and strongly rooted in every country’s sector is the
reason behind the interconnection among politics and religion. We can named several
institution like MUSIAD (industrialized business organization) that moved in
economic sector, we also witnessed AKP one of the political party in Türkiye that has
a big influence in political side, and many other organization that moved in every
sector in this country.
Secularism is the belief that religion, should not be involved with social and
political activities of a country. Indeed, in today’s world, the world secularism is
always been connected and related to the majority of Muslim country. And we can
agree that Türkiye is on the first list that always been connected with the word
secularism. After reading the article from Mr. Keyman we can conclude that in the
case of Türkiye, at the end political and social activities can’t be totally separated
from religion.