As Islam grew out of its designated private realm in modern Turkey in the 1990s, it challenged secularism as an imported, disingenuous, and even forced, lifestyle. Secularists in return tried to legitimate their views and values as authentic and sincere by circulating modernist state symbolism in the private sphere through the market, the home, civil society, life history, and emotional attachment. In the last 25 years a lot has changed in Turkey. In the last 20 years Islamist Justice and Development Party ruled the country and went through different stages where they supported neo-liberalism and later nationalism and authoritarian tendencies. In the time that passed, however, the secularist Kemalist ideas and the sense of nostalgia for them have not changed. This presentation will trace the continuities and changes in the nostalgic emotional and political approaches to Kemalism over the last 25 years and will make speculations about its future.
