The secularization of European societies was a crucial component of the breakthrough into modernity. Although generally universal in tendency, secularization was a culture-specific process, a result of the Western history shaped by Christianity. Throughout this process, religious freedom and other civil liberties, ultimately human rights and general accountability, became established. In the course of their modernization, even non-Christian societies are compelled to follow this movement. This book considers the loss of legitimacy of authoritarian power structures as the core of secularization. It demonstrates how modern Turkish society was committed to a secularist social project, Kemalism, which, however, pursued an authoritarian modernization. Thus begins the birth of the n.