Nation Building And Turkish Modernization

This book analyzes the nation building process in Turkey from a socio-historical perspective. Authors compare the nation-building process in the Republic period with the pro-Islamists of the JDP period.

Architectural historian and philosopher Bozdogan began planning this study while she was researching her book on Turkish architect Sedad Hakki Eldem. Now based in Boston, she situates Turkish architecture during the early decades of the 20th century within the contexts of nationalist impulses and modern architecture in western culture generally. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

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.

During the early republican period, architectural interventions in rural Turkey took the form of social engineering as part of the state's modernization and nationalization policies. Özge Sezer demonstrates how the state's particular programs had a powerful effect on rural life in the countryside. She examines the regime's goals and strategies for controlling the rural people through development projects and demographic shaping to create a strong Turkish identity and a loyal citizenry. The book outlines the implementation of new rural settlements, particularly following the 1934 Settlement Law, with a geographic focus on two cities - Izmir and Elazig - with varied socio-economic and ethnic standing in the state program.

The grand narrative of "The Young Turk Legacy and Nation Building" is that of the essential continuity of the late Ottoman Empire with the Republic of Turkey that was founded in 1923. Erik J. Zurcher shows that Kemal's 'ideological toolkit', which included positivism, militarism, nationalism and a state-centred world view, was shared by many other Young Turks. Authoritarian rule, a one-party state, a legal framework based on European principles, advanced European-style bureaucracy, financial administration, military and educational reforms and state-control of Islam, can all be found in the late Ottoman Empire, as can policies of demographic engineering. The book focuses on the attempts of the Young Turks to save their empire through forced modernization as well as on the attempts of their Kemalist successors to build a strong national state. The decade of almost continuous warfare, ethnic conflict and forced migration between 1911 and 1922 forms the background to these attempts and accordingly occupies a central position in this volume. This is a powerful history reflecting and contributing to the latest research from a leading historian of modern Turkey. It is essential for all readers interested in the history of the Ottoman Empire and Turkey, and for an understanding of a key player in the politics of the Middle East and Europe.

From 1924 to 1946 the Republic of Turkey was in effect ruled as an authoritarian single-party regime. During these years the state embarked upon an extensive reform programme of modernization and nation-building. The Kemalist reform movement has been extensively studied in its institutional dimensions as a state project of top-down reform; however, Nation-Building in Modern Turkey offers a fresh look at these formative years of the Turkish state. It studies modernist nation-building and state-society relations from a novel perspective through the study of the People's House, an institution aiming at the propagation of the modernist reforms to Turkey's urban population in the 1930s and 1940s. Using previously unpublished archival material and provincial publications, this work offers an alternative understanding of social change and state-society relations. In shifting the focus from the state as the fulcrum of change to the population's participation in the process, this book offers a 'peripheral' perspective of social change as it fashions a view from provincial towns. Focusing on everyday people, it explores their participation in and experience of the new habits and mixed-gender socialization practices the modernist state was introducing in the People's Houses, such as theatre, concerts, sports, dancing balls and village excursions. By analysing hundreds of petitions and complaint letters from the provinces, Alexandros Lamprou is able to examine the multiple ways ordinary people experienced, negotiated and resisted the reforms and to consider the ramifi cations of this process for the shaping of social and collective identities. Nation-Building in Modern Turkey will be essential reading for not only students and scholars of nation-building, socio-cultural change and state society-relations in Turkey, but also of the history, sociology, political science and anthropology of Turkey and the modern Middle East.

In recent years there has been an upsurge of interest in Turkey's ability to create a secular, constitutional democracy within a predominantly Muslim population. Remaking Turkey provides a comprehensive and detailed account of how Turkey has achieved the possibility of modernity and democracy in a Muslim social setting as well as the important problems and challenges confronting this achievement. Turkey has demonstrated that as an alternative modernity and as a significant historical experience of the co-existence between Islam and democratic modernity in a secular political structure it could make an important contribution to the most needed democratic global governance for the creation of a secure, just and peaceful world. Remaking Turkey starts its investigation with an analysis of the Ottoman legacy, then focuses on identity-based conflicts and civil, economic, and global processes, all of which have brought about significant challenges to modernity and democracy in Turkey. The book concludes with an account of the recent changes and transformations that have given rise to the process of 'remaking Turkey.' In this way, editor E. Fuat Keyman presents a political theory-based approach to Turkish modernity and its recent changing formation, creating an original study of contemporary Turkey.

demographic engineering. --