In Turkey's religious heartland, secularism thrives - International Herald Tribune

"In the not too distant past here in Turkey's religious heartland, women would not appear in public unless they were modestly dressed; a single woman was not able to rent an apartment on her own, and the mayor proposed restoring a segregation of the city's buses by sex.

Fears of those kinds of restrictions have led thousands of Turks to march in many cities over the past month, inflamed by secularist politicians. A political party with a past in Islamic politics, led by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has tried to capture the country's highest secular post. Once it succeeds, their argument goes, Turkey will be dragged back to an earlier era when Islam ran the state.

"But secular Turks, like those who took part in the recent protests, do not believe the religious Turks have changed. The mayor who proposed segregation, for example, is now part of Erdogan's party. They argue that the party might say it wants more religious freedom for its constituents, like allowing devout women to wear their head scarves in universities, but it has never laid out its vision for how to protect secular lifestyles going forward."
In Turkey's religious heartland, secularism thrives - International Herald Tribune