For the last two decades there have been countless books and debates on the subject of the revival of the Islamic movement in Turkey and its meaning: are we witnessing the transformation of the Atatürk's Turkish Republic founded on staunchly secular principles into a type of theocratic Islamic state or was the rise of political Islam simply a return to a cultural and political 'authenticity' long denied by the Kemalist regime? The present volume shows through the reports and observations of the American diplomats stationed in Turkey in the 1950s that the roots of Turkey's Islamic movement lie in currents and trends already present in this period and that much of the current discussion is not so new but has actually been going on in western political and diplomatic circles since this time. As such this work should prove to be an indispensable reference for the scholars working on contemporary Turkey and on the complex relations between cultural and political Islam and the secular order in Turkish society.