Contemporary Kemalism

The nature and content of Kemalist ideology in Turkey during the last twenty years is analysed in this book. In order to place the current manifestations of this Turkish official modernising ideology in the two-part context of globalisation and the re-sacralisation of the world, Contemporary Kemalism scrutinises the texts of five prominent Kemalist intellectuals. After defining the unquestioned ideological premises of Kemalism, such as its implied liberal philosophy of history, and its idea about human nature, the book describes Kemalism’s vision of the ideal society. Kemalism’s close relationship to social democracy and neo-nationalism is then discussed in detail. Also included is an analysis of contemporary Kemalism’s relation to earlier Kemalist articulations. The study demonstrates that various previous assumptions, both Western and Turkish, concerning Kemalism’s nature and content are too simplistic, and thus unable to account for the endurance of this ideology and its continuing relevancy in present-day Turkey. Inviting the reader to contemplate contemporary Kemalism’s ambiguous relationship with the Western world, this book will be of value to scholars and researchers with an interest in Middle Eastern Politics, Modernization Theory and Political Ideology.

The nature and content of Kemalist ideology in Turkey during the last twenty years is analysed in this book. In order to place the current manifestations of this Turkish official modernising ideology in the two-part context of globalisation and the re-sacralisation of the world, Contemporary Kemalism scrutinises the texts of five prominent Kemalist intellectuals. After defining the unquestioned ideological premises of Kemalism, such as its implied liberal philosophy of history, and its idea about human nature, the book describes Kemalism’s vision of the ideal society. Kemalism’s close relationship to social democracy and neo-nationalism is then discussed in detail. Also included is an analysis of contemporary Kemalism’s relation to earlier Kemalist articulations. The study demonstrates that various previous assumptions, both Western and Turkish, concerning Kemalism’s nature and content are too simplistic, and thus unable to account for the endurance of this ideology and its continuing relevancy in present-day Turkey. Inviting the reader to contemplate contemporary Kemalism’s ambiguous relationship with the Western world, this book will be of value to scholars and researchers with an interest in Middle Eastern Politics, Modernization Theory and Political Ideology.

This book provides an informed analysis of the ideological content of Kemalismthe name given to Mustafa Kemal Atatürk's party's political thought and practiceand the persistently official and semi-official, hegemonic ideology of the Turkish Republic, formally founded in 1923. Through a textual and contextual analysis of Kemalism in Atatürk's speeches and the official documents of the ruling Republican People's Party, Taha Parla and Andrew Davison offer fresh interpretations of the political, economic, social, and cultural goals of the Kemalist version of Turkish nationalism. They also provide an astute analysis of the power and authority that Atatürk and his colleagues believed were necessary to achieve their implementation, and of the institutions created in that process. Kemalism as a democratizing and secularizing framework for modern governance is debated by illuminating Kemalism's emphatic and self-conscious, corporatist ideological core. The authors show how Kemalism's conceptions of society, national identity, the relationship between the state and Islam, and other fundamental political dynamics require a rethinking of its democratic, secular, and modernist reputation, and its prospects for, and barriers to, a more democratic Turkey within the Kemalist legacy.

Modern Turkey is the site of a powerful Islamic revival, with a strong intellectual elite dedicated to the overthrow of secular modernism. Why have modern Muslim intellectuals turned against the ideals of Kemalism on which the modern Turkish nation-state is founded? What does this reveal about the future of Turkey? And how are Islamic intellectuals in Turkey affected by developments in the Middle East? Muslims in Modern Turkey is the first book to analyse this phenomenon, tracing the evolution of Muslim intellectual thought from the 1980s to the present day. It focuses on six leading Muslim thinkers - Ali Bulaç, Rasim Özdenören, ?smet Özel, ?lhan Kutluer, Ersin Nazif Gürdo?an and Abdurrahman Dilipak - who belong to a single school and share a novel understanding of Islam. They act as public intellectuals, who aim to reform and enlighten society by educating them and raising their awareness of Islamic values, arguing not for the compatibility of Islam and European values but the fundamental superiority of Islam over secular democracy. Sena Karasipahi places the Turkish experience in its broader international context and shows how Turkish Islamic intellectuals are affected by the earlier Muslim intellectuals and revivalists in the Arab world and in Turkey. This important study makes connections with the Islamic revival process throughout the contemporary Middle East as well as with comparable movements in Turkey's own past, making this a crucial contribution to an understanding of contemporary Islamic political thinking.

This book examines the Kemalist ideology of Turkey from two perspectives. It discusses major problems in the existing interpretations of the topic and how the incorporation of Soviet perspectives enriches the historiography and our understanding of that ideology. To address these questions, the book looks into the origins, evolution, and transformational phases of Kemalism between the 1920s and 1970s. The research also focuses on perspectives from abroad by observing how republican Turkey and particularly its founding ideology were viewed and interpreted by Soviet observers. Paying more attention to the diplomatic, geopolitical, and economic complexities of Turkish-Soviet relations, scholars have rarely problematized those perceptions of Turkish ideological transformations. Looking at various phases of Soviet attitudes towards Kemalism and its manifestations through the lenses of Communist leaders, party functionaries, diplomats and scholars, the book illuminates the underlying dynamics of Soviet interpretations.

"The founder of modern Turkey, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, came to power in 1923 with a radical and wide-ranging programme of reforms, known collectively as Kemalism. This philosophy - which included adopting a western alphabet and securing a secular state apparatus - has since the early 1930s, when the Turkish state endeavored to impose a monolithic definition of the term, been connected to the development of the personality cult of Mustafa Kemal himself. This book argues that in fact Kemalism can only be fully understood from a transnational perspective: just as a uniquely national frame is not the only appropriate scale of analysis for shedding light on the process of the nationalization of societies and nationalism itself, the Turkish national lens is not necessarily the most adequate one for understanding the genesis and evolution of what Kemalism stood for from the early 1920s onward. Featuring case studies from across the former Ottoman Empire and using new primary source research, each chapter examines the different ways in which national borders refracted and transformed Kemalist ideology. Across the Balkans and the Middle East Kemalism influenced the development of language and the alphabet, the life of women, the law, and everyday dress. A particular focus on the interwar period in Turkey, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Albania, Yugoslavia, and Egypt reveals how, as a practical tool, Kemalism must be relocated as a global movement, whose influence is still felt today."--Bloomsbury Publishing.

As the twentieth century drew to a close, the unity and authority of the secularist Turkish state were challenged by the rise of political Islam and Kurdish separatism on the one hand and by the increasing demands of the European Union, the International Monetary Fund, and the World Bank on the other. While the Turkish government had long limited Islam—the religion of the overwhelming majority of its citizens—to the private sphere, it burst into the public arena in the late 1990s, becoming part of party politics. As religion became political, symbols of Kemalism—the official ideology of the Turkish Republic founded by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk in 1923—spread throughout the private sphere. In Nostalgia for the Modern, Esra Özyürek analyzes the ways that Turkish citizens began to express an attachment to—and nostalgia for—the secularist, modernist, and nationalist foundations of the Turkish Republic. Drawing on her ethnographic research in Istanbul and Ankara during the late 1990s, Özyürek describes how ordinary Turkish citizens demonstrated their affinity for Kemalism in the ways they organized their domestic space, decorated their walls, told their life stories, and interpreted political developments. She examines the recent interest in the private lives of the founding generation of the Republic, reflects on several privately organized museum exhibits about the early Republic, and considers the proliferation in homes and businesses of pictures of Atatürk, the most potent symbol of the secular Turkish state. She also explores the organization of the 1998 celebrations marking the Republic’s seventy-fifth anniversary. Özyürek’s insights into how state ideologies spread through private and personal realms of life have implications for all societies confronting the simultaneous rise of neoliberalism and politicized religion.

This book examines some of the most pressing issues facing the Turkish political establishment, in particular the issues of political Islam, and Kurdish and Turkish nationalisms. The authors explore the rationales of the main political actors in Turkey in order to increase our understanding of the ongoing debates over the secularist character of the Turkish Republic and over Turkey’s longstanding Kurdish issue. Original contributions from respected scholars in the field of Turkish and Kurdish studies provide us with many insights into the social and political fabric of Turkey, exploring Turkey’s secularist establishment, the ruling AKP government, the Kurdistan Workers' Party and the Institutions of the European Union. While the focus of concern in this book is with the social agents of contemporary politics in Turkey, the convictions they have and the strategies they employ, historical dimensions are also integrated in their analyses. In its approach, the book makes an important contribution to a widening investigation into the making of politics in the contemporary world. Incorporating the importance of the growing transnational connections between Turkey and Europe, this book is particularly relevant in the light of the ongoing negotiations over Turkey’s membership to the European Union, and will be of interest to scholars interested in Turkish studies, Kurdish studies and Middle Eastern Politics.