Turkey could abandon secularism and become the leading Islamic state

Evidence

What, however, if Turkey redefined itself? At some point, Turkey could be ready to give up its frustrating and humiliating role as a beggar pleading for membership in the West and to resume its much more impressive and elevated historical role as the principal Islamic interlocutor and antagonist of the West. Fundamentalism has been on the rise in Turkey; under Özal Turkey made extensive efforts to identify itself with the Arab world; it has capitalized on ethnic and linguistic ties to play a modest role in Central Asia; it has provided encouragement and support to the Bosnian Muslims. Among Muslim countries Turkey is unique in having extensive historical connections with Muslims in the Balkans, the Middle East, North Africa, and Central Asia. Conceivably, Turkey, in effect, could “do a South Africa”: abandoning secularism as alien to its being as South Africa abandoned apartheid and thereby changing itself from a pariah state in its civilization to the leading state of that civilization. Having experienced the good and the bad of the West in Christianity and apartheid, South Africa is peculiarly qualified to lead Africa. Having experienced the bad and the good of the West in secularism and democracy, Turkey may be equally qualified to lead Islam. But to do so it would have to reject Ataturk’s legacy more thoroughly than Russia has rejected Lenin’s. — Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the…, 486

Categorization

• SEED: The ‘do a South Africa’ template — a state abandoning a defining ideology to shift civilizational identity — is a reusable analytic frame for other torn countries.
• XREF: Connects to the current Erdogan-era Turkey that arguably fulfilled something close to this prediction; worth checking against modern developments.