interpretation of religion and history. I accept that political actions may have certain unintended
and unexpected results. For even such results, there should be a political action.
The particular reason is that state policies towards religion follow a very dynamic pattern,
which cannot be simply explained by deterministic theories. In the empirical chapters, I use the
metaphor of a “swinging pendulum” to stress the recurring shifts of state relations to religion,
which go back and forth along the spectrum of diverse policies based on the balance of power
between struggling actors. To schematically emphasize these changes, I analyzed state-religion
separation in the US, France, and Turkey from 1770 to 2005 using 17 variables from the Kuru-
Sezgin index.
Table 5 and Figure 1 below indicate the highest possible level of state-religion
separation as 0/17 and the lowest level as 17/17.
The data emphasize the dynamism of state-
religion relations.
56
See appendix 3.
57
The results also indicate a rupture in state-religion separation in all cases in the aftermath of the foundation of
secularism (1770-1820 for the US, 1870-1920 for France, and 1920-1970 for Turkey). Figure 1 below stresses these
three periods with black. In the following section, I analyze these periods while exploring the historical formation of
two meanings of secularism.
19
Convention