You’re correct. Turks are actually & still Very hardcore muslim in mentality. Ataturk had alot of difficulty trying to secularize. He arrested, subdued & even executed many clerics. Remember Mecca for a long time was controlled by the Ottoman Empire, before the Brits installed the House of Saud just after WW1. Although there are secularists still in Turkey, the mentality of the Turks is still quite Islamic. And, they can be totally brutal. Erdogan is an Islamist too but tries superficially to appear not to be. Mostly because of wanting Turkey to be accepted as part of Europe & Turkey also being in NATO.
Pretending to be our friend is a key part of it.
~Ataturk had alot of difficulty trying to secularize. He arrested, subdued & even executed many clerics.~
Who he thought he was? Assad, Gaddafy or maybe even Saddam?
Too bad Obama, Hillary and McCain weren’t around to save peace preaching mullahs the trouble like they restlessly do in Libya, Syria and so on.
Turkey might have been dar-es-salam many years ago in this case.