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As a result of its failure to embrace the increasingly visible social and political diversity in the country, Kemalism, the founding ideology of modern Turkey, is currently facing its severest legitimacy crisis. Through interviews with representatives of leading voluntary Kemalist associations, this article inquires whether there are attempts to reinterpret the doctrine in order to offer an alternative, credible vision in harmony with the existing social, political and economic realities of Turkey.

A healthy and robust public political culture is generally regarded as being of utmost necessity for the maintenance of a stable democratic environment. Especially when a country is facing significant challenges and is in the process of devising and implementing radical reforms, the presence of satisfactory collective deliberation can ensure durability and stability. This article will focus on one type of argumentation that stands in the way of such healthy deliberation. It will explore the various forms that ad hominem arguments take and consider the harmful consequences of their wide prominence in the political culture of the country.

This paper proposes an alternative way of conceptualizing the relation between religion and politics, a topic of significant debate in Turkey. It puts forward an alternative justification for the requirement to leave religious convictions out of political discussions. In order to do so, it has recourse to the approach recently developed by John Rawls. The merits of this approach as well as the possibility of implementing it in practice are discussed, while also analyzing the question of sincerity in political deliberations.

In this article, recent attempts by the Justice and Development Party (AKP) to address the problems of Alevi citizens in Turkey are analysed. After briefly outlining the sources of Alevi revitalization in the 1990s, the article critically discusses different aspects of the Alevi Opening process. It concludes by arguing that the Alevi question reveals many aspects of the problematic nature of secularism in Turkey.