Turkey is significant, though: in 1923, it became the first republic in the modern Middle East. Mustafa Kemal Ataturk instituted a series of reforms, including the formal separation of religion from politics, and carried out what Marxists refer to as "bourgeois democratic tasks"—in other words, the reforms needed to mark the transition from a feudal monarchy to a capitalist democratic order. His key battle was against the old order based on Islamic law and practices. To consolidate his own authoritarian rule, he had to destroy the power and authority of the old ruling classes, which were tied to Islam. In 1924, he abolished the caliphate, closed down the madrassas (religious schools), replaced Sharia law with the Swiss civil code, and expunged the Turkish constitution of any reference to Islam as the state religion.

XREF: Connects to contemporary debates over secularism vs. Islam in Turkish politics, and the tension between modernization and authoritarianism visible in later Turkish leaders.

Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politi…, loc. 302