Although both are overwhelmingly Muslim countries, Turkey and Saudi Arabia have developed in very different directions. While Turkey's leading party, the Justice and Development Party, has Islamic roots, the country has a strong tradition of secularism and there is a broad spectrum of Islamic practice. In Saudi Arabia, on the other hand, the dominant form of religious expression is Wahhabism, an ultraconservative branch of Islam, and there is little tolerance for other religions or less conservative schools of Islamic thought.
