Will 'Islamist' Turkey become the new Pakistan?

Will 'Islamist' Turkey become the new Pakistan? (RussiaToday).

And it is true that ever since the Justice and Development Party (AKP) assumed the reins of power in the country, Turkey has moved into a distinct post-Kemalist era.

Following decades of Kemalist indoctrination and a seeming hostility towards Islam, the nation is now going through a "process of completing its normalization," as voiced by Taha Özhan, the Director General of the Ankara-based non-profit research institute SETA (or Foundation for Political, Economic, and Social Research).

Kemalism" is the “ideas and principles of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the founder and first president of the Turkish Republic.” From The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Islamic World

Özhan sees the overtly Islamic AKP as a political power that is forcibly taking Turkey into new waters, where a pious population is made to feel at ease with the government machinery that had previously appeared to be in direct opposition to the population's deep and heartfelt attachment to Islam and its values. As such, throughout the 1920s and 30s

"the ideological position of Turkish nationalism in the guise of the political doctrine of Kemalism was meant to replace the religion of Islam as the binding force fashioning a unitary and homogeneous state."

The fact that Tayyip Erdogan's AKP-led government is currently developing policies that would strengthen the Turks' rediscovery of their Islamic heritage is illustrated by the budget passed for the fiscal year 2014. 

The money allocated to the Directorate of Religious Affairs has increased by 18.2 percent; the Directorate of Religious Affairs will receive around $2.5 billion, compared to the Ministry of the Interior with $1.6 billion and the Ministry of Health with $1.1 billion.

The budget passed for the year 2014 does seem to stress that Erdogan's government is at pains to provide for the spiritual and physical health of the Turkish citizenry, as befits the Muslim nanny state I talked about earlier.

When the Kemalist regime abolished the Caliphate, it also ended the office of the Chief Mufti and replaced the Shariah* with the new Turkish Civil Code (Türk Medeni Kanunu) in 1926, which was adopted from the Swiss Civil Code of 1907. Many in Turkey now fear a creeping return to a more Islamic approach to law and civil rights.

Could it be that Turkey's Directorate of Religious Affairs and certain trusted faculties of theology are now in the process of formulating a Turkish form of Maududi-ism? 

Thinkers like Hayrettin Karaman are able to provide Turkey's current government with academic and legalistic ammunition to enact a wholesale shift in Turkish policy-making, thus paving the way for the Republic of Turkey to look like another version of Pakistan transported to the western edge of Asia.Hmmmm........Obama's BFF Erdogan.“Thank God Almighty,” said Mr. Erdogan in 1994, when he was the mayor of Istanbul. “I am a servant of Shariah.*” 
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