I don't really get this whole secularism thing.

Like the title says: I really don't get Turkey's secularism policy. I understand the concept just fine. But I can't figure out where they're drawing the line on public religion. Maybe they can't either, though.

This evening I attended the most ludicrously overt covert prayer meeting in the history of mankind. They called it a cultural music performance, not a Sufi prayer meeting that's theoretically illegal, but it was pretty obvious what it was, particularly when they started praying loudly with the windows open and lots of random tourists sitting in.

We talked with a women's rights NGO earlier today (though actually they deal with a lot of stuff besides women... let's just call them a rights NGO) who said that while many people may be arrested for observing zikir they're always found innocent and immediately released.

When Ataturk was still Mustafa Kemal, a military officer trying to push the Allies out of the Anatolian core of the Ottoman Empire, he took the title Ghazi, or 'holy warrior'. He officially dropped the title when he started trying to secularize Turkey, but apparently no one's told the military that - they're still calling Ataturk Ghazi today.

It seems like Turkey's still kind of torn on the religion deal. They can't possibly make the country as secular as Ataturk wanted - the people wouldn't stand for it. So they make a series of secularizing laws but don't actually enforce any of them. No government has ever had particular success with creating laws on principle but not enforcing them - it makes the government look weak and fails to discourage whatever the law is supposed to forbid. So maybe Kemalism ought to think about making a realistic accord with Islam rather than a feel-good arrangement that means nothing.