Meredith Aach, Week 11, Substantive Post, Hurd

"The revival of public religion--seen as a challenge to Kemalism--suggests that Turkey has not come far enough along the continuum of development. In this view Turkey has not yet realised the progression out of a religious (Islamist) past into a laicist (European) present, and is at risk of 'backsliding' toward archaic practices regarding the public presence of religion and its formal control of the state."

The notion that being modern or progressing is equated with secular and essentially moving away from the "traditional society"that regards culture and religion as priority, is a major debate in the development field. Western donors and NGOs regard development as a secular agenda and one that marginalizes and ignores the concept of unity and faith in local communities.

Being in the religious resurgence group, one quote that truly sums this up is: “'religion' gets in the way of helping the poor or promoting development. It’s all right for faith groups to be inspired by the love, compassion, or sense of justice or moral obligation their faith brings them, but they should not use it to proselytize or influence the content of development.”
This is the same idea that religion shouldn’t interfere with a secular development agenda because of the importance of rationality, progress, social justice, and modern economic development. All these concepts are rooted in the assumed universality of secularization, individualism, and modernity. We do not only see this in the field of development but also in other aspects of international relations as Hurd shows with the example of Turkey's potential, or lack of ability, to accede to the European Union. Scott M. Thomas, author of the book we had to read for our presentation, would argue that this is yet another example of how the global resurgence of religion makes the study of culture and religion increasingly important in international relations.