The turkish secularists/kemalists have done the turkish people a favour by fencing it off from influence coming from Saudi arabia,
leaving islam in turkey untouched and the way most muslim countries were a 100 years ago.
It sounds incorrect but the reality is that salafism/wahabism is a modernist movement and most muslim were at least before the spectacular rise of salafist , traditionalists.
basically the average turk outside of istanbul is a traditionalist muslim that practices exactly what your grandparents practiced before salafism conquered somalia.
because of the lack f salafism they have been able to think clearly and find a way out of their predicament, through organizing, and hard work.
The predicament of the Turkish muslim was that he was outside the political establishment and outside the small circle of oligarchs that ran the economy .
The government and millitary officers and the economy was monopolized by the 20% of the Turkish population that is essentially non-muslim.
you may call them a fancy name like secular muslims etc, which is an oxymoron but in reality their lifestyle and thinking is no different to the french or swede.
What caused the rise of the AKP and its predecessor and the gulen movement was the rise of the small and medium sized businesses that were owned by conservative muslims from the interior of turkey. They were based on manufacturing and high technology like electronics and IT, while the "secular" oligarchy had the old industries that were failing and were propped up by the government.
Discrimination in the field of education also pushed the muslims of turkey to success, because they were forced to go into more difficult courses like engineering and science instead of law and business, and they were forced to send their children to foreign universities.
This is why you will find it more common for a muslim in turkey to be educated outside the country, work in multinational corporations and speak foriegn langauges,
while most secular turks study inside the country and hardly speak any foreign languages.
most of the time if you come across a turk that speaks excellent english, he is a conservative muslims, while your secularist would struggle with it.
economic power leads to political power if you play the game right and this is what the AKP have done,
they used the application to join the EU, to stop the army from just banning them like last time.
Then when in power they used the EU to destroy the armies political power and thus the secularists by democratization.
genuis.
i would also like to add that Kemal attaturk did not introduce secualrism into turkey.
The Ottoman empire was secular from 1843 till it expired in 1922.
The 1853 laws removed the jizya tax on non-muslims, introduced interest based banking, removed the power of the ulema and moved all power to secular courts, leaving them only in family law. The laws from the same year legalized prostitution and implemented taxation of whorehouses and their regular medical checks.
Hommosexuality was also decriminalized.
This was 18 frikkin 53 !!!!!