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Abstract
This book is concerned with Turkey's political evolution, the role of Kemalism, and why a social democratic alternative has never fully developed. Concentrating on the electoral weaknesses of the Turkish centre-left, represented by the Republican People's Party (CHP), Sinan Ciddi examines the roles of nationalism and the political establishment and the role of Kemalist ideology. Established by Kemal Ataturk, the CHP is seen to be the founding party of modern Turkey. Kemalism sought to create a secular and democratic society based on the principles of republicanism, populism, secularism, nationalism and revolutionism. Although this leftist ideology became an integral part of Turkish politics by the early 1960s, it has remained a comparatively weak representative movement. Its strong ideological stance advocates an authoritarian and exclusionary position, particularly in relation to matters such as multiculturalism and democratisation, fuelling many debates concerning the role of religion and nationalism within Turkey and perpetuating elements of xenophobia and intolerance. This book will be of interest to students of politics, history and current affairs, and of Turkish politics in particular.
... Founded by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, Turkey's first president, the CHP governed Turkey for nearly three decades as a single party regime after the proclamation of the Republic in 1923. Due to the non-competitive single-party context, the CHP did not build an extensive political organization across the country and remained for decades as a 'cadre party' with limited popular appeal (Özbudun 2000;Ciddi 2009;Esen 2014). After Turkey's transition to multi-party democracy in 1950, the CHP was confined to opposition party status against right-wing populist parties, the Democrat Party (Demokrat Parti, DP) in the 1950s and Justice Party (Adalet Partisi, AP) in the 1960s. ...
... Others mention Ecevit's CHP in passing but without further elaboration (Emre 2015;Onbasi 2016). For many, the transformation of the CHP was impossible to begin with, as the party could never sever its ties with the establishment (Küçükömer 1969;Ciddi 2009), whereas others saw change in the CHP as an extension of its traditionally statist approach to politics and the party's popularity in the 1970s as ephemeral (Erdoğan 1998, 35). This tendency reduces the historical significance of Ecevit's 'left of centre' movement and ignores shifts in the party's ideology and organization over time. ...
... Due to these challenges, the centre-left parties have been out of power for much of the post-1980 period (Ciddi 2009). Their gradual decline, particularly after the disappointing performance of the Social Democratic People's Party (Sosyal Demokrat Halkçı Parti, SHP) in major metropolitan governments in the 1989-1994 period, paved the way for the rise of the Islamist movement. ...
This article explores the prospects of and limits to political party change through a case study of the Republican People’s Party (Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi, CHP) under the leadership of Bülent Ecevit in the 1960s and 1970s. We demonstrate how the CHP, via a new generation of politicians led by Ecevit, gradually transformed its ideological programme and cadres in an effort to turn into a social democratic mass party, thereby maximizing its voter base in the 1973 and 1977 elections against the currents of the extant socio-political faultlines of Turkish politics. We claim that the potential for party change depends on the interplay between three factors: political entrepreneurs, the prevailing preferences and structures of a society, and the extant institutional setup. We conclude by discussing the implications of the findings for the prospects of party change as well as for the present and future trajectory of the CHP.
... Erdoğan's government had, during its early years, overseen much development in the state, particularly economic (Ciddi & Esen 2014) and was the catalyst for EU membership negotiations (Bechev 2022). AKP was deemed as a beacon of hope for the Muslim World, symbolising that democratic governing is possible in a Muslim society (Ciddi 2009), regardless of their faith-based roots (Hale & Ergun 2010). Overtime, however, Erdoğan's rule had the Turkish nation divided by large, despite the fact they have maintained the support to keep them in power. ...
This study is interested in the persuasive and compelling modalities used by advertisers in political campaign advertising images, applied to persuade and impact their audiences. In this respect, this research focuses on two political campaigns posters, chosen by a non-random sampling procedure, commissioned by the Republic of Turkey current ruling party, and their main opposition, during the lead-up of the 2023 General Elections in Turkey. In this endeavour, a multimodal discourse analysis is utilised due to the study involving language and semiotic processes in a visual medium, serving as a foundation for the examination of the information gathered by Kress & van Leeuwen in 1996. In an effort to interpret the representational, interactional, and compositional meanings provided by the various parts of the chosen images, three metafunctions will be used. The results demonstrate that the visual grammar and multimodality-based theoretical framework may be adapted to the discourse of political advertisements. It was additionally found that the framework identified representational, interactional, and compositional processes, which contribute to the social interpretations of the images.
... Thus, it is no wonder that "the secularist Islamists did not have much to offer to the growing urban working class beyond the program of the existing political establishment. In this regard, election results in the 1970s were particularly telling: the Islamist National Salvation Party lost its voting share in each successive election in that decade, while the RPP reached its highest voting share in the multiparty period in 1977 when socialist movements enjoyed popular support in working-class neighborhoods in major cities (Ciddi 2009). In other words, pious Muslims were given a choice in the 1970s, and they did not make that choice on behalf of the Islamists. ...
... Historians have predominantly studied one-party regimes and the parties at the helm within the respective national contexts (Ciddi 2009;Gill 1994;Zheng 2009), paying particular attention to leaders (Apor et al. 2004;Hanioğlu 2017;Khlevniuk 2015;Taylor 2009;Terrill 1999) and violence under one-party regimes (Conquest 2008;Kaplonski 2014;Lankov 2002;Naimark 2016;Yan and Gao 1996). Whereas comparative outlooks, as well as theoretical and institutional studies of one-party regimes have been common in political science (Hess 2013;Magaloni and Kricheli 2010;Meng 2021;Rothman 1967;Swain 2011), historians have rarely paid attention to the mechanics of the one-party regimes and the fusion of parties with governments. ...
Over the course of the twentieth century, a broad array of parties as organizations of a new type took over state functions and replaced state institutions on the territories of the former Ottoman, Qing, Russian, and Habsburg Empires. In the context of roughly simultaneous imperial and postimperial transformations, organizations such as the Committee for Union and Progress (CUP) in the Ottoman Empire (one-party regime since 1913), the Anfu Club in China (parliamentary majority since 1918), and the Bolshevik Party in Russia (in control of parts of the former empire since 1918), not only took over government power but merged with government itself. Disillusioned with the outcomes of previous constitutional and parliamentary reforms, these parties justified their takeovers with slogans and programs of controlled or supervised economic and social development. Inheriting the previous imperial diversities, they furthermore took over the role of mediators between the various social and ethnic groups inhabiting the respective territories. In this respect, the parties appropriated some of the functions which dynastic and then constitutional and parliamentary regimes had ostensibly failed to perform. In a significant counter-example, in spite of prominent aspirations, no one-party regime emerged in Japan, for there the constitutional monarchy had survived the empire's transformation to a major industrialized imperialist power. One-party regimes thrived on both sides of the Cold War and in some of the non-aligned states. Whereas several state socialist one-party regimes collapsed in 1989–1991, some of the communist parties have continued to rule, and new parties managed to monopolize political power in different Eurasian contexts.
... The relatively increased bargaining capacity of the working-class movement in Turkey -between the mid-1970s and the mid-1990s -did not give rise to a social democratic welfare regime. Existing research identifies various dynamics obstructing its development, including the nationalist and authoritarian characteristics of the leading Republican People's Party (Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi) and the lack of an organised labour movement (Emre 2019(Emre , 2015Coşar and Özman 2008;Keyman and Öniş 2007;Ciddi 2009). Without a social democratic regime, state-led decommodification of domestic goods and services remained limited thereby preventing the transition from premodern and modern domestic patriarchies towards social-democratic public patriarchy. ...
... This "neo-Ottoman turn" (Aydıntaşbaş 2019) was even strengthened after Recep Tayyip Erdoğan determined the political fate of Turkey, although Atatürk's personality cult remained strong in the early 2000s (Ökten 2007; Özyürek 2006). Consequently, Kemalism was one side of a dichotomic Turkish identity, and those who represent the secular part of it "suggest that Kemalism is the Turkish equivalent of the enlightenment; a guiding philosophy which brought Turks out of their dark age and onto the road to modernity" (Ciddi 2009). ...
... Ziya gökalp), koji je smatrao da je prevashodni cilj blagostanje i unapređivanje interesa turske nacije. 8 Uticaj gekalpa najbolje odslikava njegov predlog sekularizacije verskih sudova, škola i dobrotvornih fondacija, 9 što je kasnije postao jedan od glavnih aspekata politike modernizacije turske države vođene od strane kemala ataturka i CHP-a. ...
A comprehensive understanding of historical trends and current events in the Republic of Turkey inevitably requires an insight into the development of the oldest and the most stable political party in this country. The aim of this causal study is to provide explanations for the current situation and the problems Republican People’s Party (CHP) is facing. Accordingly, the study will demonstrate how CHP and its ideological principles were established in the context of turbulent historical trends in Turkey during 20th and the beginning of 21st century. The position and the role of this party in the Turkish political system will be analyzed with regard to local and international current events. An overview of CHP’s evolution in chronological order directly
indicates complexity of the Turkish political system and shows how influential CHP was in its formation and development.
... Overall, 'the old CHP cadres worked within the SHP; many of them joined the SHP as the representative of the CHP tradition' (Turan 2006, 561). Therefore, the SHP can be considered in continuity with the CHP during its prohibition (Ayata 2002;Aslan Akman 2012;Ciddi 2009). However, it is important to note that the SHP and the CHP have some important ideological differences. ...
Political parties rely heavily on clientelistic networks in Turkey. However, parties may change and pursue alternative strategies while appealing to voters. The goal of this study is to explain why political parties change their strategies from clientelistic to programmatic or vice versa. Therefore, the key question is: under what conditions do parties adopt a clientelistic strategy or a programmatic strategy? Based on field research in Istanbul, Turkey, concerning party-voter linkages, I argue that parties’ access to state resources affects the changes in party strategy. When a party is involved in a governing coalition, the party is more likely to pursue a clientelistic strategy; conversely, when a party becomes the opposition, it is more likely to pursue a programmatic strategy. In order to support my arguments, this research observes government (1991–1995) and opposition (2002–2015) periods of the Republican People’s Party (CHP, Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi). In this context, the CHP’s electoral strategy and local organizations are observed in the more developed Kadıköy and less developed Esenler districts in Istanbul.
... Ciddi (2009); Güneş- ...
CHP siyasal hayatımızda çok yer kaplayan bir siyasal oluşum. Türkiye Cumhuriyeti Devleti'ni kuran parti olması bir yana CHP, Osmanlı-Türkiye Tarihi'nde halk kitlelerini örgütleyerek popüler siyaset zemininde boy gösteren ilk ve en eski siyasal harekettir. Bu anlamda bir siyasal gelenek olarak İttihat ve Terakki'den beri Türkiye'nin hem resmi, hem gayrı resmi hem de hem popüler siyaset geçmişinin demirbaş bir unsurudur. CHP'nin, Türkiye tarihindeki bu özel yeri, onun geçmişten beri birçok güncel ve siyasal tartışmaya konu olmasına yol açmıştır. Daha açık bir şekilde ifade etmek gerekirse, Siyaseten CHP'ye rakip olan her siyasi parti, kendi varlığını meşrulaştırmak için CHP ile hesaplaşmak ve kendisini siyaseten ona karşı konumlandırmak durumunda kalmıştır. Bunu İkinci Meşrutiyet'ten beri ortaya çıkan legal ve illegal neredeyse tüm siyasi oluşumlar için söylemek mümkündür. Bu durum, bugün dahi Türkiye'de popüler siyasetin temel dinamiklerinden biridir. Bu yüzden de CHP, Tek Parti Dönemi icraatlarından, askeri darbeler konusundaki tavrına, kendisine biçtiği ortanın solu ya da sosyal demokrasi misyonundan, Kürt Sorunu konusunda aldığı farklı tutumlara özellikle de 1990lar sonrasında siyasal İslam'ın yükselişi karşısında büründüğü laiklik odaklı siyasete kadar birçok kritik konuda çok uzun yıllardır tek başına iktidar olmasa da her zaman eleştirilerin odağında yer almıştır. Dolayısıyla, ilgili akademik ve güncel literatürde CHP ile ilgili farklı konulara odaklanan birçok tartışma mevcuttur. Ancak son yıllarda özellikle de Siyasal İslam'ın yükselişi, 28 Şubat Süreci ve sonrasında AKP'nin iktidara gelişinden beri siyasal iktidar bloğu ve sivil destekçileri tarafından CHP ile ilgili eleştirilerde öne çıkarılan baskın tema, CHP'nin din konusundaki siyasetidir. Buna göre CHP veya "CHP zihniyeti", genellikle sağ kanat siyasetçiler, siyasal İslamcı parti, grup, cemaat ve oluşumlar tarafından sürekli din karşıtı siyaset yapmakla; kısmen dinsizlikle ve dindarlara zulüm uygulamakla itham edilmektedir. Öte yandan, dine ilişkin olanları da dâhil olmak üzere CHP'nin resmi parti politikalarına ilişkin birçok araştırma ve inceleme yapılmış olmasına rağmen partinin, resmi politikaları dışında seçmenlerinin din hakkında ne düşündüğüne ve dini nasıl yaşadığına ilişkin henüz kayda değer bir çalışma yapılmamıştır. İşte bu makale, Türkiye'yi temsil eden kapsamlı bir din sosyolojisi araştırmasının nicel verilerini kullanarak sıradan CHP seçmeninin din algısı ve pratiğini analiz etmeyi amaçlamaktadır.
... For the purposes of this paper, we are defining it as the cluster of modernizing/Westernizing Turkish nationalist narratives associated symbolically with the person of Mustafa Kemal Atat€ urk and wielded (especially prior to 2002) for legitimation by institutions such as the military, the judiciary, the state bureaucracy and the Republican People's Party (CHP). For more on Kemalism, see, for example, Kili (1980), Karpat (1970), € Ozy€ urek (2006), Ciddi (2009) and Cizre Sakallıo glu (2012). ...
This article aims to understand the ‘non-Western self’ and the different ways its ontological insecurity can manifest, through the example of Turkey, by contrasting Kemalism’s modernizing vision with Erdoğan’s current populism. We argue that the constructions of political narratives in Turkey (and by implication in other similar settings) derive from two interrelated aspects of the spatio-temporal hierarchies of (colonial) modernity: structural insecurity and temporal insecurity. Modern Turkey’s ontological insecurity was constructed spatially, on the one hand, as liminality and structural in-betweenness, and temporally, on the other, as lagging behind the modernization of the West. After discussing how Kemalism offered to deal with such insecurities in the twentieth century, we analyse the Justice and Development Party (AKP) period of the twenty-first century as an alternative attempted answer to these problems and explain why efforts to dismantle the Kemalist framework collapsed into its populist mirror image. The example of the Turkish case underlines the importance of focusing on the different ways in which the structural and temporal insecurities of ‘the non-Western self’ take shape at a given point and manner of entry into the modern international order.
... The Kemalist inheritance advocated by centre-left CHP, embedded in the Constitution the secular and modern driven nature of Turkey. The neoliberal version of political Islam, advocated since 2002 by AKP, has tried to reconcile modernity and a version of conservative neoliberalism with Islamist principles (Ciddi, 2009;Gülalp, 2001;Kaya, 2015;Özbudun, 2006;Somer, 2007;Uyusal, 2011;Yavuz, 2006Yavuz, , 2009. ...
This study examines the complexity of citizens’ political affectivity in Turkey. Drawing from componential models of affect, we rely on situational (motive consistent versus inconsistent) and motivational state (gain or loss) appraisals to test hypotheses on systematic differences in the clusters of political affect that span beyond the traditionally measured discrete emotional reactions of anger, hope, pride and fear. Using qualitative interview data from 2012, we develop a topography of affect clusters and systems of associations between political concepts. We find citizens express their emotionality in rich terms. They are linked to appraisals of multiple political objects, they reflect aversive, anxious, loss and gain oriented emotional responses, and they are guided by citizens’ ideological orientations. This study is valuable as it addresses a significant gap in the study of political affect going beyond their discrete categorizations. It introduces a mapping methodology as an effective way of capturing the complexity of affect systems, and it reveals powerful insights into the depth and richness of emotions based on appraisal dimensions, enriching our understanding of political tensions and developments in Turkish politics and beyond.
... to the concept (Çarmıklı 2011, 1; for more detail see Berkes 1964, Mardin 1971, Mardin 1989, Göle 1996a, Göle 1996b, Navaro-Yashin 2002, Gülalp 2005, Özyürek 2006, Bilgin 2008, Kuru 2009, Ciddi 2009, and Kadıoğlu 2010. Therefore, the last section of this study looks only at the social engineering attempt aimed at practising Muslims among the subalterns of the Kemalist hegemony. ...
Since the mid-1920s, the Kemalist power elite has been trying to consolidate their nationalist and secularist status quo by employing a sort of Gramscian consent fabrication. They have also attempted to build a monolithic Turkish nation. This study coins and conceptualizes two new analytical terms to better comprehend what, how and why the Kemalist hegemony has tried to achieve on this issue: 'Homo LASTus' and 'Homo Diyanetus.' The acronym LAST denotes Laïcist, Atatürkist, Sunni Muslim, and Turk. The best citizen, LAST, meets all of these four parameters at the same time. The conventional understanding has been that the Kemalist nation-building project has focused on transforming individuals in Turkey to construct identical secularized Turkish citizens, aiming at a monolithic nation. Nevertheless, this study asserts that this top-down social engineering has actually been two tiered. While on the one hand, the Kemalist state tried to create the best citizen (LAST) and even human (Homo LASTus), on the other, the state tried also to construct the Palatable Citizen (Homo Diyanetus). The study also analyzes why the repressive secularist state has endeavored to construct a religious citizen identity (Homo Diyanetus) in addition to the LAST and Homo LASTus.
... Adjusted regression coefficients (β) with standard errors (SE) were computed from the results of the mixed models. These models are particularly useful in longitudinal studies where repeated measurements are made on the same statistical units (Ciddi 2009). The length of the roads network was the dependent variable that was measured annually from 1995 to 2012. ...
In this paper the concept of the “Geo-Economic Gravity System” will be discussed as a methodological tool in regard with the key issue of “regional efficiency”, as well as a modeling tool in the effort to face relevant socio-economic problems. As a case study, the fierce opposition between oriental and westernoriented political powers, other words neo-ottomans versus kemalists in the Turkish society, is being respectively examined. The Geo-economic Gravity Systems explain the socio-economic rifts, heading back to the 90’s and demonstrating the multiple and prevailing societal polarization. On its second part, however, this study exhibits that, in the aftermath of the R.T. Erdogan’s governments, despite that the political dichotomy lines remain, at least the severe economic disparities have been smoothed due to policies, incentives and infrastructure investments accomplished. The analysis of Turkey’s internal geoeconomic trends offers notable insight into the mechanism controlling in general the regional socioeconomic attractiveness and efficiency. Consequently, such an analysis can remarkably contribute in the research of the spatial dimension as a catalyst for emerging development opportunities in any country.
... By the middle of the 1960s, this 'soul-searching' reached at least a partial conclusion when the party was refashioned as being left-of-centre, subsequently being defined as a social-democrat party. Recently an ongoing discussion has taken place, both within the party itself as well as in wider circles, concerning the possibility of making a workable ideological synthesis between Kemalism and social democracy (Alaranta 2014;Ciddi 2009;Ayata and Ayata 2007;Güvenç 2002). The CHP's programme 3 sets out by declaring that the party is the guardian of Atatürk's principles. ...
This study demonstrates how profoundly Turkey's main social clevage –Islam versus Secularism – is produced and reproduced by political parties in their attempts to form coherent sociopolitical bloc as a basis of mass support. The main purpose is to challenge the paradigm which understands social cleavages to be part of a ‘social structure’ that exists prior to political articulations. According to this standard perspective, social cleavages create the demand for political parties.
... The CHP of today has been suffering from a different but not entirely unrelated malaise (Ciddi 2009). For years the party has been split into two wings: anachronists who look back to the single-party era of the 1930s with nostalgia and those who are in tune with the social democratic norms of our time. ...
From the late 18th century onward, the twin revolutions of industrialization and nationalism posed existential threats to multireligious, multiethnic, multicultural territorial empires like those of the Hapsburgs and the Ottomans. During this period, the imperial ruling elite responded to these new challenges using various ideological interventions. In the Ottoman Empire, these were, respectively, Ottomanism, Islamism, and Turkism. Kemalism is the offspring of this turbulent process, borne out of the rise and fall of the three ideologies of Ottomanism, Islamism, and Turkism and the experience of a decade of war and destruction between 1912 and 1922. It emerged as the ideology of revolutionary Westernization from above, conceived and carried out by the modernized intelligentsia of a largely premodern society.
... These models are remarkably useful in exercises where repeated measurements are performed on the same statistical units (longitudinal study). Given their advantage to deal with missing values, mixed effects models are often preferred (Ciddi, 2009). In the current study, student enrolments of tertiary education were the repeated units and dependent variables that were measured annually from 1995 to 2005. ...
This paper discusses a model for identifying and evaluating how the critical changes in the politics of a state impact its socio-economic life. Political transitions of this magnitude may stem out of elections results, but they are not limited to governmental reforms, since they further create a historical rift between the former and the latter status. They definitely initiate regime turnovers, geostrategic reorientation and shifts of geopolitical axes, but they also transform the national growth and socio-cultural development structures and features.The case study chosen refers to Turkey’s political transformation over the last decades; it is considered an ideal paradigm for testing the relevant research questions due to the extent and depth of the revolutionary changes triggered by the Islamic or the so called neoottoman political parties taking over power and overthrowing the long-lasting status quo of kemalism. The consequences of the before mentioned political shift are being examined in correlation with certain statistical indicators like students’ enrolment in the education system. The statistics are projected over a time series covering previous and current status. Then they are mapped via a Geographic Information System on a regional spatial context towards more comprehensive visual representation and further interpretation of the structural changes indicated.
... in the late 1970s, political turmoil led to a military intervention (1980)(1981)(1982)(1983) "The old RPP cadres worked within the SDPP; many of them joined the SDPP as the representative of the RPP tradition" (Turan, 2006, p. 561). Therefore, SDPP can be considered as the RPP before its prohibition (Ayata, 2002;Aslan-Akman, 2012;Ciddi, 2009). In this research, I consider both the RPP and the SDPP as the same party because both parties have similar ideologies and cadres. ...
This study aims to explain why political parties change their strategies from clientelistic to programmatic (or programmatic to clientelistic) in developing democracies. In this regard, key questions include: Under what conditions do parties adopt clientelistic strategy or programmatic strategy? To what extent does the strategy change affect party organisation?Based on field research (Istanbul, Turkey) concerning party-voter linkage, I argue that voter demands and parties' access to state resources affect the changes in party strategy. Parties are more likely to pursue a clientelistic strategy in less-developed areas and a programmatic strategy in more developed areas. At the same time, when a party is involved in the governing coalition, the party is more likely to pursue a clientelistic strategy; conversely, when the party becomes the opposition, it is more likely to pursue a programmatic strategy. To observe the overall strategy shift, I created the Party Clientelism Index (PCI) based on five indicators: vote mobilising strategy, party finance, intraparty democracy, party factionalism, and party loyalty. In order to support the arguments, this research observes three periods (Between 1991-1995 and 2002-2015) of the Republican People’s Party of Turkey, with a particular focus on party strategies in Esenler (less-developed area) and Kadıköy (more developed) Istanbul.
Sınırların tarihsel-sosyolojik açıdan inşası geleneksel toplumdan modern topluma dönüşüm sürecinde gerçekleştiğinden, Türkiye’de bu dönüşüm Osmanlı’nın son döneminden Cumhuriyet’in erken dönemine karşılık gelir. Bu çalışma, Türkiye’de sınırların tarihsel-sosyolojik açıdan inşasını anlamayı amaçlamaktadır. Osmanlı’dan Cumhuriyet’e geçiş, Türkiye’de sınırların imparatorluktan ulus-devlete, ümmetten ulusa ve coğrafyadan vatana dönüşümünü göstermektedir. Osmanlı’nın son döneminde devleti kurtarmakla sembolize edilen sınırlar, Cumhuriyet’e geçişle birlikte milliyetçilik temelinde Türk ulus-devletini inşa etmenin bir aracına dönüşmüştür. Kemalist Türk devrimi, modern, Batılı ve laik bir Cumhuriyet kurarak Osmanlı-İslami gelenekle arasına bir sınır çekmiştir. Kemalist milliyetçilik, Türk ulusal kimliğini Anadolu topraklarını çevreleyen sınırlar içinde inşa etmiş ve sınırlar bu kimliğin uçlarını oluşturmuştur. Osmanlı’dan Cumhuriyet’e geçiş Müslümanların vatan algılarını dönüştürmüş ve Anadolu toprakları yeni vatanın adı olmuştur. Kemalizm’in laiklik ilkesi, Türkiye’nin Müslüman dünyadaki seküler sınırını sembolize etmektedir. “Hudut namustur” ve “anavatan” söylemleri, Türkiye’de sınırların milliyetçi-cinsiyetçi bir şekilde inşa edildiğini göstermektedir. Neticede, Türkiye’de sınırların modernleşme, din, sekülerizm, milliyetçilik, ulusal kimlik ve toplumsal cinsiyet kimlikleri bağlamında inşa edildiği gözlenmiştir.
According to diverse indices of political performance, the Middle East is the world's least free region. Some believe that it is Islam that hinders liberalization. Others retort that Islam cannot be a factor because the region is no longer governed under Islamic law. This book by Timur Kuran, author of the influential Long Divergence, explores the lasting political effects of the Middle East's lengthy exposure to Islamic law. It identifies several channels through which Islamic institutions, both defunct and still active, have limited the expansion of basic freedoms under political regimes of all stripes: secular dictatorships, electoral democracies, monarchies legitimated through Islam, and theocracies. Kuran suggests that Islam's rich history carries within it the seeds of liberalization on many fronts; and that the Middle East has already established certain prerequisites for a liberal order. But there is no quick fix for the region's prevailing record of human freedoms.
Secular nationalism grew over 50 years to become a compelling force for political, social, and cultural change in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), but it was Islamism that rose to be its chief rival and, in many Middle East countries, eventually replaced it. The question is: why? And how did Islam gain political momentum? Since independence, the diktat of most single-party countries in MENA has been to implement modernization and secularization. Unlike the secular elites, which sought to overthrow colonialism and the monarchies, the early Islamic reformers sought to establish an Islamic state. MENA's secular regimes led to the massive institutionalization of national identity by nationalizing economies and education, to create a unified ideology from which people could draw a common identity. While eliminating competing ideologies, governments ignored the conservative right in the form of Islamism, which was not expected to pose a serious challenge to them. However, since MENA regimes were mostly authoritarian and forestalled a viable opposition, a social cleavage from below grew as an Islamic movement and eventually presented a serious challenge to them. This article provides an empirical analysis to support the argument that social cleavages in MENA have cultural implications that relate to identity rather than to territory. Hence, latent political cleavages, such as Islamism and ethnic nationalism, served as opportunities to reinforce or reactivate cleavages.
It would be an understatement to say that Şerif Mardin's center-periphery thesis (CPT) has been influential on contemporary understandings of Turkey. This essay reflects on the impact of the CPT, considers the challenges from both critics and a changing empirical reality, and discusses whether it still has something to offer us today. It argues that some of the criticisms levied at Mardin's thesis are based on a misunderstanding of the role of simplification in social science, while others point to important shortcomings of the theory without presenting an alternative framework. However, the article suggests that the anomalies in the CPT have by now amassed to the point that it no longer serves as a meaningful approximation of key dynamics in Turkish politics, primarily because it fails to capture the importance of the Kurdish issue and the consolidation of the ruling AKP at the center.
The paper intends to demonstrate redefinition of the secular version of Turkish nationalism in the period after the multipartyism introduction in the Republic of Turkey. In the Cold War context, Turkish nationalism has been openly reinterpreted in accordance with the Islamic and Ottoman identity components, thus gradually abandoning the original Kemalist conception. Finally, the evolution climaxed in 1980 when the Turkish-Islamic synthesis became
part of the official agenda sponsored by the military authorities. Followed by the Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi, AKP), the Welfare Party (Refah Partisi) came
to power after electoral success, which one may interpret as the expected course of events.
This dissertation examines Istanbul as a geographical and historical totality and focuses on four different and integral parts of this totality: its Ottoman past, its dalliances with modern planning attempts, the city’s death throes in the face of rabid industrialization efforts, and its first true real estate boom. These divergent parts are scrutinized through the relationship between the state and space. This work investigates the different modes a city takes under different configurations of a state composed of, but not limited to, cultural, ethnic, religious, class-based, formal, and spatial elements. By studying Istanbul alone, it is possible to gauge divergent trajectories of the production of space that the city takes.
The changes in Istanbul’s state-spaces are studied in five stages: the first involves the urban theory that engendered my critical stance on Istanbul and the production of space and how revolutionary urbanism can be harnessed to a re-evaluation of a semi- peripheral metropolis. The second part is related to an attempt in unraveling the early modern historical characteristics of the city and its overdetermining role in the formation of state mechanisms. The third part unearths the rupture that modernity instigated in the urban fabric and conjoining state institutions and mentalities that shaped the city. The fourth part focuses on the industrialization and population boom of the second part of the 20th century and locates the consequence of social developments in the urban space: the squatter settlements, the gecekondus. The fifth part grasps the cycles of boom and bust in the real estate investments in Istanbul and is concerned in the concrete production of space of the five decades since 1965.
To locate the configurations of state-space in Istanbul, four elementary components that create the state-space relationship are employed in this analysis: territory, place, scale, and networks. Amidst the interplay of these elements, the emergent middle class in Istanbul and its social and historical moorings in the urban built environment are revealed to be rooted in the erstwhile squatters, in the gecekondu areas.
This paper investigates the new character of the strategy of the Republican People’s Party (CHP) using populism to combat the success of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP). We consider populism along a left-right axis in terms of the differentiation of exclusionary and inclusionary approaches and conduct a content analysis of campaign speeches by Ekrem İmamoğlu during the 2019 local elections, as well as speeches of the party elites given during the currency crisis of 2018 and the COVID-19 pandemic. We argue that an alternative to the exclusionary right-wing populism may construct images of egalitarianism, participatory budgeting, and agrarian populism instead of mobilizing security or survival issues.
This article aims to demonstrate the tension inherent within the Turkish opposition between those favoring technocratic anti-populism and/or pragmatic politics and those calling for a passionate and resolute anti-AKP platform seeking revenge. These competing inclinations offer alternate anti-populist platforms and ‘styles.’ The article asks whehter opposition to a populist regime inherently generates an anti-populist platform that ideologically confronts it. The article examines three contenders to President Erdoğan as representatives of three alternative anti-populist styles. It also reflects on the debates among various public intellectuals around the ways to electorally defeat populism.
Recent decades have witnessed both a renewed energy in feminist activism and widespread attacks taking back hard-won rights. Despite powerful feminist movements, the Covid-19 pandemic has significantly undermined the progress women have struggled for decades to achieve; how can this be? What explains this paradox of a strong feminist movement coexisting with stubborn patriarchal arrangements? How can we stop the next global catastrophe initiating a similar backlash? This book suggests that the shortcomings of social theory prevent feminist strategies from initiating transformative changes and achieving permanent gains. It investigates the impact of theoretical shortcomings upon feminist strategies by engaging with two clusters of work: ungendered accounts of capitalist development and theories on gendered oppression and inequality. Decentring feminist theorising grounded in histories and developments of the global North, the book provides an original theory of the patriarchal system by analysing changes within its forms and degrees as well as investigating the relationship between the gender, class and race-ethnicity based inequalities. Turkey offers a case that challenges assumptions and calls for rethinking major feminist categories and theories thereby shedding light on the dynamics of social change in the global South. The timely intervention of this book is, therefore, crucial for feminist strategies going forward.
The book emerges at the intersections between Gender, International Development, Political Economy, and Sociology and its main readership will be found in, but not limited to these disciplinary fields. The material covered in this book will be of great interest to students and researchers in these areas as well as policy makers and feminist activists.
Google books: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=cHhvEAAAQBAJ&pg=PT5&source=gbs_selected_pages&cad=2#v=onepage&q&f=false
Publisher: https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/mono/10.4324/9781003054511/political-economy-patriarchy-global-south-ece-kocab%C4%B1%C3%A7ak
This article explores the dynamics of state-formation in Turkey during the AKP regime by questioning its claim of an almost two decades long continuity heading towards the centennial of the Republic of Turkey in 2023. Eclectically drawing on four different, yet related, theories of conflict, power and (visual) narrative; i.e. Gramscian ‘war of position,’ Contentious Politics perspective of (de)democratization, dialogical principle and visuality, the article presents a comparison of the claim-making of the two official publications; now defunct the Silent Revolution, and Towering Power Turkey, published in 2013 and 2018, respectively, to demonstrate the contrast between the pre-hegemonic and hegemonic self-presentation claims of the AKP regime, and indicates that its regime change is the re-entrenchment of many of the postulates of the Kemalist regime it originally aspired to challenge. The tenets of this analysis is located within the intersection of political sociology and cultural studies.
Migration is a relatively new phenomenon in the Czech Republic, which has gradually become a destination country. The securitisation and politicisation of migration in the Czech domestic discourse has created a great deal of public anxiety, especially towards Muslims. This paper focuses on the position of Turkish migrants, the single largest Muslim community in the Czech Republic, in the specific context of the Czech Republic. The objective is to define the nature of Turkish migration to the Czech Republic as part of broader migration patterns. Using data from the Czech Statistical Office and from a questionnaire survey, it investigates the Turkish community's assessment of adaptation to the Czech environment and their position within the wider Turkish dias-pora policy. I argue that that the non-transparent Czech immigration policy and Czech Islamophobia are potential factors influencing the adaptation process of the Turkish community, which might affect their decision to remain in the country. Furthermore, the small size of the Turkish community can hamper the migrants' social life, who might wish to maintain strong ties with the homeland and the diaspora community in Europe.
This study seeks to scrutinize extratextual discourses which frame the Turkish translations and post-translation rewritings of Hamlet as an instrument of national self-imagining and projecting Turkey’s self-image in different socio-political and historical contexts. The study points out that various discourses see image construction as the major motive behind the different versions of Hamlet in Turkey. It also underlines that the extratextual material surrounding the retranslations and rewritings focus on various contextual dynamics that reveal how Turkey is torn between dualities that frame its image in line with the narratives of modernity and tradition, secularism and religion, easternness and westernness. In this context, the study emphasizes that theatre translation, and particularly the translations of Hamlet, formed significant part of the late Ottoman Empire’s and modern Turkey’s westernization efforts. Ultimately, the study concludes that discourses on the Hamlet renderings have foregrounded what is and what is not part of Turkey’s historically constructed self-image by bringing the West alongside the East, centering on how the retranslations and rewritings promote Turkey’s Western (secular and modern) identity against a largely negative representation of its eastern cultural identity.
Key words: Hamlet, Turkey, retranslation, post-translation rewriting, image
This chapter establishes the nature of the news media and its journalism during the decades of Kemalism in Turkey. The illiberality of these governments and the clientelism which developed between the state and the news media owners has meant the journalistic tradition in Turkey is not strong, but it does exist. Moreover, it argues that securitisation of the new media with the aim of discrediting its journalism is not new and is especially relevant with regard to the Kurdish issue since the 1980s. Kurdish journalists have long had to choose between their personal security and doing their jobs as writing about the Kurdish issue was often conflated with support for the PKK. It argues that this approach was written into the constitution following the 1980 coup enabling the state to crackdown on anything deemed to be a threat to the “state”.
The securitisation of news in Turkey, and its steep decline since 2012, is an indicator of the authoritarian drift now apparent in Turkish politics. Therefore, it is important to understand the nuances of the situation because this trend is significant for Turkey’s bilateral and institutional relationships. This chapter will establish definitions of “journalism”, “securitisation” and “authoritarianism” before outlining that the AKP has now securitised all forms of political opposition in Turkey, including journalism, in order to justify imprisoning them in such large numbers. It also details the methodology of the volume in terms of qualitative data collection and thematic data analysis.
This chapter examines the historical evolution of Turkish Islam (i.e. the negotiations of Turks and the Islamic theological schools) by studying how Islam in Turkey has positioned itself in the general debates about Islamic theology between two schools: the Ash‘ari and the Maturidi. One major purpose of the chapter is to investigate the historical patterns of continuity and differentiation that have affected Turks’ theological positions.
This thesis aims to analyze the transformation of the Muslim
Brotherhood in Egypt and the AKP tradition in Turkey with a reference to
the model debate. Actually, toppling of the Mubarak regime following an
uprising that started on 25th of January 2011, has changed the political map
of Egypt. The Muslim Brotherhood-backed Freedom and Justice Party’s
(FJP) victory in post-revolutionary period in legislative elections and
Mohammed Morsi’s taking of office in presidential elections revealed that
Islamists were to be the strongest actor in the new political landscape.
Nonetheless, AKP government’s positive stance towards the Muslim
Brotherhood and Turkish foreign policy activism in the Middle East during
the Arab Spring has opened a debate concerning a Turkish model in Egypt.
What further strengthened this trend were the views of the leaders of theMuslim Brotherhood which refer Turkey as a model. However, the
polarization of the Egyptian society on domestic issues led to the military
intervention of 3 July 2013 and hence, ended the model debate.
Considering the historical account of both the Muslim Brotherhood and the
AKP, this thesis reaches to the conclusion that the Turkish model failed in
Egypt that is attributed to five main reasons; namely (1) different
meanings and functions of the west and westernization in these two
countries, (2) the existence of strong political rivalry for the Muslim
Brotherhood, (3) the lack of political experience of the FJP in power, (4) the
army’s strong role in Egyptian politics and (5) different economic structures
of both countries.
While the literature on Kemal Atatürk is considerable, discussion of his revolutionary reforms and policies has been marked by a lack of consensus on relevant terminology.
This chapter examines the policies that the Kemalist elite and intellectuals undertook to support and with which they disseminated Kemalism in the first three decades of its rule. Kemalists were quick to recognize that the adoption of party principles was not enough to earn popular support.
This chapter examines turning points in the first two decades of the Republic from its foundation until the death of Kemal Atatürk in 1938. It focuses on major phases of ideological consolidation and delineates their distinctive features. Exploring ideological layers of the RPP congresses in the 1920s and 1930s, it offers a comparative analysis of the party programs. RPP rule, pervasiveness of the state, enduring authoritarianism, crackdown on dissent, leader cult, demographic and social engineering, and imposition of a new secular-republican identity constituted the core of the Kemalist politics and political system. Overturning old practices, discrediting values and habits of the old regime, imposition of radical social, cultural, and economic changes puzzled many in Turkey, although many, especially the young, fervently embraced them. Many facets of socio-political organization in the new state were indeed new, while the roots of many ideological features extended at least 50 years back. Formative in many regards, the Kemalist era also constituted a transformative phase and a springboard for ideals and insights that had long existed in the Ottoman Empire.
This research explores the impact of Eurasianism on Turkish foreign policy since the end of the Cold War. It investigates the discourses of Eurasianism and the way they are interpreted by the polity and consequently implemented in the foreign policy making in
Turkey.
In this sense, this research was carried out using literature reviews and interviews in order to respond to the following question:
Considering that Turkey has increasingly been pursuing an active and multidimensional
foreign policy since the end of the Cold War, how have the discourses of Eurasianism been influencing the contemporary Turkish foreign policy making?
The research unpacks the dynamics of contemporary Turkish foreign policy and responds to the debate on whether or not Turkey’s international relations axis is shifting eastwards. Having questioned if such a foreign policy shift exists, the thesis then questions to what extent the process has been informed and channelled by Eurasianism by focussing on three periods since the early 1990s: Özal era (1983-1993), Cem era (1997-2002), Davutoğlu era (2003-2011). Finally, the research presents a set of conclusions on how Eurasianism has been a strong influence on foreign policy making in Turkey and what internal and external socio-economic and political factors have played a critical role in this process.
Key Words: Eurasianism, Turkish Eurasianism, Turkish Foreign Policy.
Even if numerous academic studies about Greece and Turkey have been made so far, just few of them have comparatively analysed these two different countries through social democracy. In this context, this thesis gives an opportunity both to compare the first social democratic experiences of Greece and Turkey with PASOK and CHP and to read the contemporary political history of Turkey and Greece from the view of the social democratic parties. This comparison points the similar ways which have been adopted by PASOK and CHP on the level of the discourses and policies, particularly within the concept of national interest, as well as it propounds the different results of the similar ways due to various unique reasons. At the same time, this thesis analyses the roles of two prominent figures of the Greek and Turkish contemporary politics, Andreas Papandreou and Bulent Ecevit, on the rise of Social Democracy in their countries as the charismatic leaders.
In the last three decades, Turkey has attempted to build close relationships with Russia, Iran and the Turkic World. As a result, there has been ongoing debate about the extent to which Turkey's international relations axis is shifting eastwards. Ozgur Tufekci argues that Eurasianist ideology has been fundamental to Turkish foreign policy and continues to have influence today. The author first explores the historical roots of Eurasianism in the 19th century, comparing this to Neo-Eurasianism and Pan-Slavism. The Ozal era (1983-1993), the Cem era (1997-2002) and Davutoglu era (since 2003) are then examined to reveal how foreign policy making has been informed by discourses of Eurasianism, and how Eurasianist ideas were implemented through internal and external socio-economic and political factors.
"Korkma - Fear not" starts the Turkish national anthem that was officially adopted on 12 March 1921. A framed version of the Turkish national anthem, the symbol of the nation, and in wider sense the historical Turkic symbols of kinship typically occupy the wall above the blackboard in the classrooms of Turkish schools, accompanied by a Turkish flag, a photograph of the country's founding father Atatürk, and a copy of Atatürk's famous inspirational speech to the nation's youth from the concluding remarks to his 20 October 1927 address to the Parliament. The concept of nationalism of Atatürk remained a universal and timeless constitutional reference in Turkey. In the first part of this paper, the nature of Turkish nationalism at the time of its emergence is examined, studying this state shaped nationalism in a comparative context. The second part focuses on the constellation of the Atatürk's nationalism in the symbiotic system of the six arrows: nationalism, laicism, populism, republicanism, etatism and revolutionism.
Keywords: comparative legal history, kemalism, nationalism, identity, citizenship, Republic of Turkey, Europe
Turkey’s secularism is often depicted as a system of control par excellence, pitting the secularist state against religion and ignoring the multiplicity of actors within the state as well as within religious sectors. A review of Turkey’s main state institution, the Directorate of Religious Affairs (DRA) explains why models which reduce state–religious relations to a one-dimensional interaction of control or contestation are insufficient. Such models ignore the perplexing support of the DRA by religious groups due to their inability to identify the institution’s dual role in maintaining the presence of Islam in the state structure and lending legitimacy to various religious groups. A pluralistic account of Turkey’s secularism exposes its contradictions, such as DRA decisions that denounced state key secularist policies and the inadvertent outcomes of some state policies limiting Islamic groups. Exposing the paradoxical role of the state vis-à-vis religion the increasing number of woman employees in the DRA unleashed many unexpected changes in the institution, making it more open to once-marginalized women’s groups and their critical theologies, and highlighting the limits of a dichotomous modeling of state–religion relations in Turkey and beyond.
An overview of general elections and the party system from the beginning of multi-party politics in Turkey would indicate a proclivity towards an increasing number of major parties coupled with fragmentation of the party system. The predominant party system of the 1950s favored stability over representativeness (see Table 1). The 1961 Constitution established new electoral rules and a liberal political regime, which provided for more opportunity for representativeness. The 1965 and 1969 elections produced party governments, with a proportional representation formula that wasted almost no votes; even those parties with the smallest number of followers won some seats in the Turkish Grand National Assembly (TGNA) (see Table 1). For a while in the 1960s Turkey therefore appeared to have discovered the optimal ground of converging stable governments with consummate representativeness. The party governments of the 1960s, however, gave way to the unstable coalition governments of the 1970s, which coincided with a wave of terror and political instability. Coalition governments came to be equated with political instability and terror in the minds of not only the masses, but also the most powerful political forces in the country.
The covering up of women’s heads and shoulders for religious reasons (türban) has become the most important valence issue in Turkish politics since the 1980s. Interestingly, various studies argued that the türban was not necessarily a religious symbol or demand, but a means for women to escape the wrath of their families. This study aims to assess the role that religiosity plays in determining attitudes toward the türban, and search for evidence whether the türban is a symbol of traditionalism, rural values, lower class and others. Two mass surveys of randomly selected and nationally representative samples conducted in 2002 and 2003 have been used to constitute a panel study and control group to assess the relative impact of attitudes toward the türban among the Turkish voting age population. The findings of this study indicate that attitudes toward the türban are closely related to religiosity and political Islam, though political Islam does not function as the sole source of such attitudes. In conclusion, the findings indicate that for a large section of the Turkish voting age population the türban is a religious issue, and relates to the meaning and practice of secularism in Turkey.
Populist cycles and recurrent macroeconomic crises have remained endemic features of the Turkish economy in the postwar period, in spite of the achievement of significant structural change. Populist cycles have become shorter and economic crises have become more frequent following Turkey's unrestricted exposure to the forces of financial globalization in the post-1989 era, with significant negative ramifications for economic performance. The objective of this contribution is to probe into the origins and the consequences of the 2000 and 2001 crises in Turkey from a broad political economy perspective, paying attention to the nature of domestic politics as well as the impact of global or systemic influences.
In a world in which popular democracy sometimes seems on the defensive, the rise of the Justice party has a significance that goes beyond the borders of Turkey. That nation's continuing social and political revolution, obscured as it has been in the eyes of most foreigners by the cruel impasse of Cyprus and the revival of Greek-Turkish antagonisms in the eastern end of the Mediterranean, is worth trying to understand. Not only does multiparty rivalry exist, but political power in this important American ally is held by the Near East's only genuine grass-roots political party. This party has its roots deep in the country's social structure and is currently headed by an energetic and intelligent young leader of relatively humble origins.
Arguments that infer the inevitable decline of European socialist and social democratic parties from the changing class structures of advanced capitalist societies have two major flaws. Firstly, they do not adequately reconstruct the link between citizens' experiences in markets, work organizations and the sphere of social reproduction, on the one hand, and the formation of political consciousness, on the other. Secondly, such propositions do not model the strategic terrain of party competition and intra-party decision making on which socialist politicians devise voter appeals. This article will first present a sketch of an alternative theory of preference formation that does not rely on conventional class categories and then analyse party competition as faced by social democrats under advanced capitalism. It will then test ‘naive’ and ‘sophisticated’ theories of class politics and account for their shortcomings in terms of the alternative theoretical framework.
It has been very widely argued that processes of globalisation render traditional forms of social democratic politics impossible. The paper identifies and reviews three key claims in this debate — concerning trade, capital mobility and a new international division of labour. It is argued that, whilst much has changed, this has not always led in the direction anticipated by those who foresee an end to “traditional social democracy”. In particular, the sorts of changes that have taken place do not add up to an endorsement of recent enthusiasm for a “third way”.