First, in the Turkish context, the Islamists are in large part drawn from the business class. The AKP itself is quite neoliberal and pro- American. (It's interesting to see such sympathetic coverage of AKP in the New York Times, which is not otherwise known for its sympathy to Islamist forces. And it's also interesting that their new correspondent in Istanbul, Sabrina Tavernise, collaborated with Michael Gordon on some "Iran is smuggling bombs into Iraq" stories. For that, YF christened her the "new Judith Miller" <http:// mailman.lbo-talk.org/2006/2006-December/025854.html>.) So if we're talking about economic elites, then the politics of secularism are hardly clear - especially since there were many anti-imperialist, anti-coup secular forces also involved in the demos. Are we now to celebrate religion in itself, and not merely as the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of the heartless world?
But more broadly, I thought "progressives" liked education, and believed in spreading more of it around. Education tends - not always, but generally - to make people more secular. If the poorer masses of Istanbul are anti-secular, does that make being anti- secular a good thing? There's a school of thought on the left that seems to think that deprivation is ennobling and privilege of any kind is corrupting. If that's the case then we should oppose mass education. That would fit in nicely with the American right-populist tradition, which is contemptuous of book learning as feminizing and decadent.
Doug