When the Turkish republic was founded in 1923‎,‎ secularism was adopted as one of the key principles of the new state‎,‎ and religious expression was brought under strict government supervision‎.‎ Republican ideology and its associated institutions came to dominate much of everyday life‎.‎ Only after 1950‎,‎ when the centre‎-right Democrat party was elected‎,‎ did this repressive attitude to religion cease‎.‎ The growth in popular religious sentiment became particularly evident in the 1980s with the proliferation of religious newspapers and literature‎.‎ Relatively little has been written about this steady resurgence of Islam in Turkey‎.‎ The essays in this book‎,‎ written by specialists from a variety of disciplines‎,‎ look at the role of Islam in daily life‎.‎ They also raise the question of the extent to which Turkey may still be said to be unique case in the Islamic world‎.‎