Debating Turkish Modernity

Debating Turkish Modernity describes the opening act of Turkey's half century bid to join the European Community. Between 1959 and 1980, Turks from all walks of life weighed in on their prospective integration into Europe. This book details how these Turks made sense of the project of European Unification and how they spoke about it. It argues that Turkey's EEC debates, by resurrecting past questions over Turkey's relationship to Europe, became the principle forum where Turks of the Second Republic defined who they were, where they came from, and where they were going.

This thesis investigates the socio-historical developments of Turkey in the light of current developments in the tradition of comparative-historical sociology by according a central place to the 'concept of varieties of modernity' in the analysis. The debate on varieties of modernity is a response and a contribution to new theoretical developments regarding modernity. And this thesis is set in the conceptual context of the current debate on varieties of modernity by aiming at understanding the Turkish experience as a particular model of modernity. The starting-point of the thesis is the possibility of the emergence of 'multiple modernities' with their specific interpretations of the 'imaginary significations of modernity'. As a consequence, a critique of perspectives that reduce modernization of non-western societies to Westernization emerges immediately. Thus, the assumed equivalence between the West and modernity is problematized through the themes of the 'plurality' of civilizations, histories, modernizing agents and projects of modernity. The concept of 'later modernities' is suggested as a category for certain varieties of modernity, entirely different from the Western model. The term 'later modernities' refers in particular to non-western experiences that came about as distinct models of modernity, different from the West European experience, in the absence of colonization. In this context, the Turkish experience is a particular modernization an analysis of which is able to clarify the argument for varieties of modernity: the Turkish experience has been so far analysed only as a mere case of Westernization. By analysing both civilizational patterns and modernizing agents of Turkey, this thesis suggests that Turkish modernity cannot be read as a version of the Western model. This conclusion is reached through examining Turkish history in terms of a 'singularization of culture' against the view that sees Turkey as a border country between the West and Islam. It is argued that the division between West and East is, in fact, irrelevant in the case of Turkey. Therefore, the Turkish experience, as later modernity, does not express a Western model of modernity nor does it correspond to a 'pure' Islamic East. The distinctive traits of Turkish modernity are analysed on the basis of the following themes: the nationalizing process, the configuration of state, society and economy; Islam; the woman question. Finally, the lessons from the Turkish experience for a social theory of modernity are discussed in terms of conclusions.

In contemporary history, a much-debated issue has been whether European nations have a common identity and what relevance the European Union has for a shared definition of Europeanness. The present book examines the link between historical conceptions of Europe and the contestations over Turkey's compatibility with the European Union during the 2000s.

Drawing on a diverse array of published and archival sources, Nicholas L. Danforth synthesizes the political, cultural, diplomatic and intellectual history of mid-century Turkey to explore how Turkey first became a democracy and Western ally in the 1950s and why this is changing today.

In the first two decades after W.W.II, social scientist heralded Turkey as an exemplar of a 'modernizing' nation in the Western mold. Images of unveiled women working next to clean-shaven men, healthy children in school uniforms, and downtown Ankara's modern architecture all proclaimed the country's success. Although Turkey's modernization began in the late Ottoman era, the establishment of the secular nation-state by Kemal Ataturk in 1923 marked the crystallization of an explicit, elite-driven 'project of modernity' that took its inspiration exclusively from the West. The essays in this book are the first attempt to examine the Turkish experiment with modernity from a broad, interdisciplinary perspective, encompassing the fields of history, the social sciences, the humanities, architecture, and urban planning. As they examine both the Turkish project of modernity and its critics, the contributors offer a fresh, balanced understanding of dilemmas now facing not only Turkey but also many other parts of the Middle East and the world at large.

In "Is the Turk a White Man?" Murat Ergin examines how the links between race and modernity has shaped the formation of Turkish identity.

Turkey's Enagement with Modernity explores how the country has been shaped in the image of the Kemalist project of nationalist modernity and how it has transformed, if erratically, into a democratic society where tensions between religion, state and society continue unabated.