The Intellectual Roots of Anti-European Sentiments in Turkish Politics: The Case of Radical Turkish Nationalism

2003 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 127-148 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nergis Canefe ◽  
Tanıl Bora
Keyword(s):  
Turkish Nationalism ◽  
Turkish Politics

The Formation of Turkish Republicanism

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Banu Turnaoğlu
Keyword(s):  
Intellectual History ◽  
Formative Period ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Political Experience ◽  
Turkish Nationalism ◽  
Turkish Politics ◽  
History Of ◽  
Kurdish Question ◽  
Modern Turkey ◽  
Kemal Ataturk

Turkish republicanism is commonly thought to have originated with Mustafa Kemal Atatürk and the founding of modern Turkey in 1923, and is understood exclusively in terms of Kemalist ideals, characterized by the principles of secularism, nationalism, statism, and populism. This book challenges this view, showing how Turkish republicanism represents the outcome of centuries of intellectual dispute in Turkey over Islamic and liberal conceptions of republicanism, culminating in the victory of Kemalism in the republic's formative period. The book is the first complete history of republican thinking in Turkey from the birth of the Ottoman state to the founding of the modern republic. It shows how the Kemalists wrote Turkish history from their own perspective, presenting their own version of republicanism as inevitable while disregarding the contributions of competing visions. The book demonstrates how republicanism has roots outside the Western political experience, broadening our understanding of intellectual history. It reveals how the current crises in Turkish politics—including the Kurdish Question, democratic instability, the rise of radical Islam, and right-wing Turkish nationalism—arise from intellectual tensions left unresolved by Kemalist ideology. The book offers a new narrative of the evolution and shaping of modern Turkey.

Regime Change in Contemporary Turkey

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Necati Polat
Keyword(s):  
Recent Change ◽  
Political Regime ◽  
New Order ◽  
Making Sense ◽  
Turkish Politics ◽  
Subsequent Phase ◽  
The Government ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
The Arab Spring ◽  
The Military

This book explores the transformation of Turkey’s political regime from 2002 under the AKP rule. Turkey has been through a series of major political shifts historically, roughly from the mid-19th century. The book details the most recent change, locating it in its broader historical setting. Beginning with the AKP rule from late 2002, supported by a wide informal coalition that included liberals, it describes how the ‘former’ Islamists gradually acquired full power between 2007 and 2011. It then chronicles the subsequent phase, looking at politics and rights under the amorphous new order. This highly accessible assessment of the change in question places it in the larger context of political modernisation in the country over the past 150 or so years, covering all of the main issues in contemporary Turkish politics: the religious and secular divide, the Kurds, the military, foreign policy orientation, the state of human rights, the effective concentration of powers in the government and a rule by policy, rather than law, initiated by Erdogan’s increasingly authoritarian populism. The discussion at once situates Turkey in the broader milieu of the Arab Spring, especially in terms of Islamist politics and Muslim piety in the public sphere, with some emphasis on ‘Islamo-nationalism’ (Millî Görüş) as a local Islamist variety. Effortlessly blending history, politics, law, social theory and philosophy in making sense of the change, the book uses the concept of mimesis to show that continuity is a key element in Turkish politics, despite the series of radical breaks that have occurred.

Politics of Asylum Seekers and Refugees in Turkey: Limits and Prospects of Populism

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fatih Resul Kılınç ◽  
Şule Toktaş
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Soft Power ◽  
Asylum Seekers ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Syrian Civil War ◽  
Turkish Politics ◽  
Right Wing Populism ◽  
Mass Influx ◽  
Asylum Seekers And Refugees ◽  
The Eu

This article addresses the international movement of asylum seekers and refugees, particularly Syrian immigrants, and their impact on populism in Turkish politics between 2011 and 2018. The article argues that populist politics/rhetoric directed against Syrians in Turkey remained limited during this period, especially from a comparative perspective. At a time when rising Islamophobia, extreme nationalism, and anti-immigrant sentiments led to rise of right-wing populism in Europe, populist platforms exploiting specifically migrants, asylum seekers, and the Syrians in Turkey failed to achieve a similar effect. The chapter identifies two reasons for this puzzling development even as the outbreak of the Syrian civil war triggered a mass influx of asylum seekers and irregular immigrants into Turkey. First, the article focuses on Turkey’s refugee deal with the EU in response to “Europe’s refugee crisis,” through which Turkey has extracted political and economic leverage. Next, the article sheds light on Turkey’s foreign policy making instruments that evolved around using the refugee situation as an instrument of soft power pursuant to its foreign policy identity. The article concludes with a discussion of the rise of anti-Syrian sentiments by 2019.

scholarly journals Did Secularism Fail? The Rise of Religion in Turkish Politics

2012 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
pp. 528-554 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zeynep Taydas ◽  
Yasemin Akbaba ◽  
Minion K. C. Morrison
Keyword(s):  
Explanatory Power ◽  
Political Islam ◽  
Religious Movements ◽  
Religious Nationalism ◽  
Palestinian Territories ◽  
Complex Process ◽  
Turkish Politics ◽  
Religious Parties ◽  
Democratic System ◽  
The Republic

AbstractReligious movements have long been challenging the modernist and secularist ideas around the world. Within the last decade or so, pro-religious parties made significant electoral advances in various countries, including India, Sudan, Algeria, and the Palestinian territories. In this article, we focus on the rise of the pro-religious Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi- AKP) to power in the 2002 elections in Turkey. Using the Turkish experience with political Islam, we evaluate the explanatory value of Mark Juergensmeyer's rise of religious nationalism theory, with a special emphasis on the “failed secularism” argument. Our analysis indicates that the theoretical approach formulated by Juergensmeyer has a great deal of explanatory power; however, it does not provide a complete explanation for the success of the AKP. The rise of religion in Turkish politics is the result of a complex process over long years of encounter and confrontation between two frameworks of order, starting with the sudden imposition of secularism from above, when the republic was established. Hence, to understand the rise of religion in contemporary Turkish politics, an in-depth understanding of history, politics, and the sources of tension between secularists and Islamists is essential. The findings of this article have important implications for other countries, especially those that are experiencing a resurgence of religion in politics, and are struggling to integrate religious parties into a democratic system.

ERGUN ÖZBUDUN, Contemporary Turkish Politics: Challenges to Democratic Consolidation (Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner, 2000). Pp. 181. $49.95 cloth.

2001 ◽  
Vol 33 (4) ◽  
pp. 657-660
Author(s):  
Frank Tachau
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
Current Literature ◽  
Real World ◽  
Democratic Consolidation ◽  
World Politics ◽  
The Other ◽  
Southern Europe ◽  
Turkish Politics ◽  
Political Studies

Based on Professor Özbudun's lectures at Bilkent University, this book is at once compact, highly readable, and very insightful. Unlike much current literature on Turkey, the analysis is set in a broad and informed comparative context. Turkey, the author points out, has been left out of comparative political studies, particularly those encompassing the Middle East and southern Europe, in which arguably it could (or should) have been included. Scholarly neglect thus reflects real-world politics: Turkey falls between two worlds, one of which it once largely controlled, the other to which it currently aspires to belong. This lacuna is one of the factors that persuaded Özbudun to publish this volume.

Religion and Politics in Contemporary Turkey

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ateş Altınordu
Keyword(s):  
Religion And Politics ◽  
Political Incorporation ◽  
Turkish Politics ◽  
Primary Means ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Republic ◽  
Turkish State ◽  
Islamic Parties ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The Relationship

Religion and secularism have been central threads in Turkish politics throughout the history of the republic. This chapter focuses on three important aspects of the relationship between religion and politics in contemporary Turkey. First, it explores the political functions of the Directorate of Religious Affairs (Diyanet), a government agency that has served as the primary means for the implementation of the religious policies of the Turkish state. Second, it investigates the relations between Islamic communities, political parties, and the state and argues that the distinction between official and unofficial Islam that has informed much of the work on the Turkish religious field must be strongly qualified. Finally, the author focuses on the trajectory of political Islam in Turkey, critically reviewing the literature on the rise, political incorporation, and authoritarian turn of Islamic parties. The conclusion emphasizes the need for studies investigating the impact of politics on religiosity in Turkish society.

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