Turkey's ruling party favors 'libertarian secularism'

ANKARA

Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development (AK) Party favors “libertarian secularism”, a spokesman said Tuesday.

Omer Celik, who is also the party’s vice chairman, was speaking in the wake of Parliamentary Speaker Ismail Kahraman’s remarks that secularism “must be removed” from a new constitution currently being debated in Turkey.

“The AK Party’s stance and attitude on secularism is clear in the party’s constitution,” Celik told journalists in Ankara. “It is underlined that the secularism principle should be approached as ‘libertarian secularism’.”

Celik said this notion was different to “militant secularism”.

Secularism has been enshrined in Turkey’s constitution since 1924, when Mustafa Kemal Ataturk oversaw the founding of the modern republic.

Turkey is currently seeking to replace its constitution, written after the military coup in the 1980s. However, a parliamentary committee on the matter broke up in February amid a row over replacing the current parliamentary system with a presidential structure.

Celik added: “The secularism principle will be in our new constitutional suggestions, like it has always been, without any doubt.”

In comments made Tuesday during a visit to Croatia, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Kahraman had “put forward his own opinions”.

“The state has an equal distance to any religions, beliefs and the ways to practicing faiths,” Erdogan said. “This is secularism.”