A Country Divided: Where Is Turkey Headed?

 A Country Divided: Where Is Turkey Headed?HT: Spiegel.

The self-confidence of AKP supporters is also evident in the bearing of those conservative and economically successful Anatolians and Black Sea Turks who have done well in Istanbul. They have established a zone of mosques and minarets in their neighborhoods, creating a different Istanbul, a city where bikini ads are painted over and store owners are called upon to stop selling alcohol. 

It is a city where members of the new Muslim bourgeoisie are building mansions in the neo-Ottoman style so that their wealth doesn't look European. In districts like Fatih and Sultanbeyli, there is growing pressure on residents to behave in ways that reflect religious norms. "From one day to the next, all female kindergarten teachers were wearing veils," says a mother who was dropping off her children at an Istanbul daycare center. "They call us dirty whores, just because we're wearing short sleeves and short skirts," two female pupils from Pendik, an Istanbul suburb, reported last week.
Modern Turks feel as out of place in these areas as conservatives feel in the liberal quarters in the western part of the city. When a foreign TV crew pointed its camera at a rural family at the Kabata boat landing below Taksim Square a few days ago, a young Turkish woman wearing modern clothing berated the journalists in English, saying: "You shouldn't constantly be filming these people. That's not the real Turkey."
The search for what, exactly, the definition of "real Turkey" is began decades ago. The revolution that Atatürk visited on the rump state of the Ottoman Empire was one of the radical cultural shifts of the 20th century. 
He replaced Arabic script with the Latin alphabet, and Islamic law and the sultanate with Western ideas. He introduced voting rights for men and women, created a secular education system and barred Turks from wearing Turkish trousers, headscarves and the traditional fez in government offices and universities. His methods were often heavy-handed, but his contribution to modernization is undisputed.Hmmm....Unilke Obama's BFF Erdogan, who made it clear from the very beginning what his ultimate goal was: in 1994, when he was the mayor of Istanbul. “I am a servant of Shariah.” Read the full story here.