Religion and politics in Turkey: The promise of political liberalism

Abstract

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.