Feriha Perekli

The “Turkish model,” in the form of a marriage between moderate Islam and democracy, the AKP’s electoral success and the economic growth witnessed in the last decade, has become the ultimate allure to which Arab Islamists aspire. This study focuses on the main premises of the Islamist PJD (Parti de la Justice et du Développement) of Morocco in order to understand what the “Turkish model” signified for them. By not confining the “Turkish model” solely to the AKP policies, but stretching it instead to the pre-AKP Islamist parties, the idea is to uncover which features of the “Turkish model” are espoused by the Moroccan Islamists and which features are not appreciated. After a brief introduction regarding the AKP’s understanding of secularism and how it differs from radical secularism, the emphasis is given to the PJD’s position on secularism. The following section explores lessons gathered by the PJD from Turkish parliamentarian Islamism in regards to engagement in political participation in the face of state repression. The last section examines the transition of the PJD’s discourse from being moralistic-based to policy-oriented, in which the Turkish experience once again formed a reference point.