Profile

Introduction

Turkey was the center of the multi-ethnic Ottoman Empire that ruled the Muslim world for six centuries. After World War I, it became a republic in which state-sponsored secularism denied religion a role in public life. When an Islamist government was elected in 2002, the Turkish administration was forced to grapple with balancing the rights of religious conservatives against secularists. A member of NATO since 1952, Turkey is slated to be the first Muslim country to enter the European union (Eu).