The comparative study of the Turkish and French laicism models

Laicism and secularism are often interchangeably used concepts; in addition to this, secularism, is a theory that suggests a decrease in the religious influence, will decrease over education, law and politics and also the daily life of individuals. In this context, secularization is divided into two main branches; social secularization and institutional secularization. While social secularization primarily means that the social life of individuals is not shaped by religious values; institutional secularization means that evolving as the legitimacy and functioning of the state is not based on religious values and norms. Thus, institutional secularization has been accepted as the key element of modernization and democratization. Laicism is one of the institutional models of secularism. Laicism as a French model, rather than separating religion and state, progresses by deprivation of religious symbols and practices from the public sphere and a state control over religion. This study examines the developments, similarities and differences of laicism as one of the models of institutional secularism, in two different nation-states that were built on similar republican values; Turkey and France. In the study, it has been determined that controlling tendency, authoritarian methods, constitutional limitations and the obsession of creating homogeneous society constitute the main features of the model. In this context, it was observed that the revolutionary political transformation of both countries and the republican values constitute common values on the understanding of laicism. In addition, it was observed that sociological structures, Islam and Christianity and democratization developed differences on the applied laicism model. As a result, the concept of laicism has been re-questioned in terms of the freedom of belief and worship and democratization. Controlling tendency has continued in Turkey. However, rejection of the visibility of religion in the public sphere was improved in the 2000s through democratization efforts. And, laicism has evolved to accept the existence of religion in the public sphere. Since 1905, France, which carried out institutional separation in the laicism model, saw the growing Muslim population as a threat and model has been developed by ignoring public demands against Islam in a controlling way.