emerged to protest what they considered the Almoravids’ “tolerance.”

18 emerged to protest what they considered the Almoravids’ “tolerance.” Their takeover of Andalusia radicalized the society, leading to the persecution of non-Muslims and to religious warfare. Turkey’s Islamization under the AKP threatens to follow a similar, if more gradual, trajectory. The AKP’s embrace of religious values is not the biggest problem of Turkish secularists. Rather, the larger threat is that, now that the AKP has pushed religion more to the center of Turkish social preoccupations, fundamentalists will gain carte blanche to challenge the AKP as “not Muslim enough.” Indeed, last November the AKP was moved to fire Ali Bardakoglu, the liberal head of Diyanet, Turkey’s official religious authority that has historically checked fanaticism by building mosques and training imams while promoting a liberal understanding of Islam. The AKP replaced Bardakoglu with another well-known scholar, Mehmet Gormez, who has an avowedly more conservative take on Islam. The new Diyanet chief’s first act was to fire Ayse Sucu, who headed the organization’s women’s branch. Sucu’s initiatives had included suggesting that women should be able to decide for themselves whether to cover their hair. Fundamentalist media and pundits were ecstatic at her ousting, claiming that it signaled that there was no room for a personal interpretation of Islam. The AKP has promoted socially conservative values, such as the need for women to wear the Islamic headscarf and a disdain for alcohol. Turkish bureaucrats and businesspeople complain that embracing these practices to prove that one is a “good Muslim” has become a precondition for getting government promotions and contracts. Meanwhile, the AKP-run media watchdog recently scolded a television station for broadcasting a program about Suleiman the Magnificent that truthfully depicted the famously cosmopolitan Ottoman sultan drinking alcohol. The official warning followed an outcry led by AKP leaders and fundamentalists alike, who demanded HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_023504