Islamic Political Identity in Turkey.

Provides a comprehensive analysis of Islamic political identity in Turkey. This title argues that, since Kemal Ataturk's death in 1938, Turkey has been moving away from his militant secularism and experiencing 'a quiet Muslim reformation'. It offers an account of the 'soft coup' of 1997, and argues that it plunged Turkey into a legitimacy crisis. In November of 2002, the Justice and Development Party swept to victory in the Turkish parliamentary elections. Because of the party's Islamic roots, its electoral triumph has sparked a host of questions both in Turkey and in the West: Does the party harbour a secret Islamist agenda? Will the new government seek to overturn nearly a century of secularisation stemming from Kemal Ataturk's early-twentieth-century reforms ? .