Veiling Issue, Official Secularism and Popular Islam in Modern Turkey

In the Turkish elections of December 1995, the Islamic Welfare Party became the biggest Party in parliament and for the first time in history, an Islamic party had come to power by means of free elections.
The rise to power of the Turkish Islamists is a result of several decades of revivalism. In this process the veil has been a prominent symbol of the new religious puritanism, causing resentment a...