Introduction: reflections on the centenary of the Republic of Turkey

ABSTRACT

This article briefly introduces the rationale and content of a Special Issue of Turkish Studies that reflects on Turkey’s past, present, and future in light of the Republic’s centenary in 2023. It suggests that while Turkey can celebrate many accomplishments over the last century, the country continues to face a number of pressing political, economic, and social challenges.

KEYWORDS:

• Turkey
• Turkish politics
• Turkey’s centenary
• political development

The Republic of Turkey will mark its centenary on October 29, 2023. Like all Republic Days, this occasion will be marked by numerous festivities, including parades, rallies, speeches, food, music, flag-waving, and fireworks. However, as a major milestone, this year’s event is likely to include more serious reflection about Turkey’s accomplishments and shortcomings and how it can move forward to overcome various contemporary challenges.

Amid the celebrations there are also likely to be lively, if not polarizing, debates, which often spring up when political and historical topics are discussed in contemporary Turkey. True, all Turks can rightly take pride in many of the Republic’s numerous accomplishments. On many rubrics Turkey has certainly made substantial economic and social progress since its foundation. It has weathered numerous crises, including military coups, political violence, terrorism, economic downturns, and natural disasters. Whereas a century ago it had to fight to secure its independence, today it stands as an important international actor, both in its immediate neighborhood and beyond. However, Turks are often divided on some fundamental questions.¹ For example, while Mustafa Kemal (Atatürk) will be rightly lauded as the Republic’s founding father, his legacy is contested. While many Turks still deeply venerate his leadership and vision, others believe it is high time that Turkey move beyond some of the core Kemalist principles and practices developed in the 1920s and 1930s. Some would prefer movement to a more liberal, pluralistic, democratic path, one that would also advance Westernization, long a priority for Turkey’s leaders. Others, however, particularly those aligned with the Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi, AKP) might prefer to re-think the Kemalist commitment to Westernization and, in particular, secularism (laicité). In their view, the Republic has been on the ‘wrong’ path for much of its history and today, heeding the call of President Recep T. Erdoğan, they wish to construct a ‘New Turkey’ that would take greater pride in and identity from its Islamic and Ottoman heritage.²

This year’s commemorations are also likely to be colored by other events in 2023. The tragic earthquakes of February 2023 in southeastern Turkey, which killed over 50,000 people, will certainly cast a pall over many of the celebrations. The May 2023 elections, fiercely contested by two rival coalitions which endorse very different visions for the country’s future, will also be fresh in many minds. Some suggest that the very future of Turkey’s democracy, which by many measures has suffered in recent years³, is at stake in these elections. At minimum, however, these elections will be a referendum on the two-decade rule of the AKP, whose accomplishments and shortcomings are also subject to much public debate. The winners of these elections will likely be in a more optimistic and perhaps more festive mood by October. The losers, however, may feel more less sanguine about where Turkey is headed. I should add that while many of the articles in this issue allude to these elections, all of the contributions were finalized well before May 2023. We certainly anticipate publishing numerous articles on these elections and their impact.⁴

This special issue of Turkish Studies aims to contribute, in a scholarly fashion, to the debates about Turkey’s past, present, and future as the Republic observes its centennial. As editor, I would add that this is a truly special issue, comprised exclusively of contributions from members of the journal’s editorial board and international advisory board. As such, the contributors represent some of the world’s leading scholars of Turkey. However, this issue has no overarching theme or framework or specific set of research questions. Instead, authors were given free rein to analyze, reflect on, discuss, and (in some cases) opine on whatever topics they thought deserved greater consideration on the occasion of the Republic’s centenary.⁵ In some cases, their contribution builds upon decades of previous scholarship on the topic. In others, the authors have chosen to branch out and write on something that is new, or least new to them. Some articles in this collection are also purposely more speculative or even provocative. The goal, which we hope we have met, was to produce a diverse collection of reflective, analytical, thought-pieces that would be accessible to a wide variety of readers, have some lasting value, and speak to a number of weighty and topical issues in Turkish studies.

We recognize, of course, that we could not cover everything. There are obvious lacunae. For example, there are no articles on women and gender, which is a very important issue, both on political and personal grounds.⁶ There is nothing that directly addresses issues of education and youth, civil–military relations, religious institutions and actors, the repercussions of the most recent earthquakes, regionalism, social media, inequalities, or Turkish literature. We hope that these topics, as well as others that we neglected, will be taken up in future issues of this journal. The main point is that this special issue’s contents, naturally enough, reflect the interests of those who took up the invitation to contribute to it as well as the journal’s primary focus on contemporary history, political science, and international relations.

Broadly, speaking, we can group the articles in this special issue into three categories: historical, domestic politics, and foreign policy. The first article, by Ersin Kalayçıoğlu, serves as an overview of Turkey’s politics in the past century, focusing on the emergence and collapse of different political regimes and how crises of legitimacy and national identity have frequently produced political instability. Erik-Jan Zürcher’s article looks at several turning points in early Republican history, including movements toward greater authoritarianism in the 1920s and 1930s and later movement in the 1940s toward democracy. Engaging in a bit of counterfactual history, he analyzes how much these decisions can be attributed to agency of Turkey’s political leaders and how much they were shaped by international events. Ilter Turan’s contribution takes a broader view of Turkey’s democratic development, cataloging both its ups and downs as well as suggesting various factors that have prevented Turkey from fully consolidating its democracy. Paul Kubicek focuses more narrowly on the absence of liberalism, both in the discourse and practice of Turkish politics. He suggests that issues of distrust, polarization, feelings of insecurity, as well as aspects of Turkish political culture have worked and continue to work against a more liberal political system. Mustafa Erdoğdu’s article is one of comparative economic history, contrasting the recent experiences of South Korea and Turkey. He examines why South Korea has had a more successful experience with economic development, suggesting how institutional factors such as state capacity, the autonomy of the state, and different modes of decision-making can account for the difference in economic performance. Kelmal Kirişçi and Ayşelin Yıldız offer an original and far-reaching account of how Turkey has responded to refugees and claims for political asylum. Bringing their analysis up to the present-day and the ongoing Syrian refugee crisis, they note how chronic contradictions and shortcomings in Turkish policies have persisted over time.

Several papers, while mindful of history, speak more directly to contemporary domestic political considerations. Lenore Martin’s paper takes up the vexed question of minorities in Turkey, including the Kurds, Alevis, Jews, and Christians. Noting how efforts to assimilate these groups have produced mixed results, she suggests that Turkey might look to other countries for examples of how national minorities can be better integrated into the body politic. Yasushi Hazama’s paper examines Turkey’s Constitutional Court, an important but often overlooked institution. Among the topics he considers is how the Court, in part due to international commitments and emergence of new norms, has evolved over time to be less a defender of the state and more attuned to protecting individual rights, although this feature remains tenuous given that political pressure can still be applied on the Court. Birol Yeşilada examines the role of religion in politics, particularly ties between various religious organizations and Islamic-oriented political parties, including the AKP, and how this relationship has contributed to more authoritarian modes of governance. He also suggests how this development reflects trends in Turkish political culture which are more supportive of a strong, undemocratic leader. Paul Levin critically assesses the continuing relevance of the oft-cited center–periphery thesis, developed a half-century ago by Serif Mardin.⁷ He notes that even though this thesis remains popular with many observers of Turkey, the rise of the AKP (representative of the old periphery) and the persistence of the Kurdish issue (largely ignored by Mardin) limit its insights into contemporary Turkish politics.

Finally, this special issue contains several articles devoted to Turkish foreign policy. Lerna Yanık notes how Turkey does not neatly fit into geopolitical categories such as ‘the West’. One result is that spatio-temporal imaginations have transformed, at least for Turkey’s leaders, the country’s non-Western ‘differences’ into ‘distinctiveness,’ with the latter often coloring Turkish foreign policy. In a somewhat similar vein, Meliha Altunışık argues that Turkey’s in-betweenness or ‘cuspness’, defined by its geography and history, has led to Turkey becoming a ‘modified middle power.’ She suggests that this has often served Turkey well, but notes that recent developments under the AKP to redefine Turkey’s place in the world are creating new tensions and problems. Tarık Oğuzlu, also invoking the notion that Turkey is a middle power, argues that recent developments in Turkish foreign policy, what he dubs as a ‘over-ambitious’ middle power orientation, have largely failed. Instead, he suggests that Turkey would be beter served if it acted as a ‘restrained’ middle power. Ziya Öniş takes up Turkey’s relations with the European Union (EU), which have seen ups and downs over the years. He suggests that both sides suffered from missed opportunities for closer ties in the 1970s and the early 2000s, and he suggests how recent developments in global politics might affect Turkey’s relations with the EU and its member states. Finally, Şuhnaz Yılmaz assesses how threats such as energy security, climate change, and sustainability require Turkish leaders to reconceptualize security, as these issues are growing in significance and will need dedicated policies to confront them.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Paul Kubicek

Paul Kubicek is Professor of Political Science at Oakland University in Rochester Michigan. He has also taught at Koç University, Boğaziçi University, and Antalya Bilim University in Turkey. He is the editor of Turkish Studies.

Notes

1 For an account of how polarization in Turkey has grown in recent years, see Aydın-Düzgit. “The Islamist-Secularist divide.”

2 There is now an extensive literature on “neo-Ottomanism” and how this is transforming Turkey both politically and culturally. See, for example, Yavuz, Nostalgia.

3 For a useful review of developments on this front, see Oder, “Turkey’s Democratic Erosion.”

4 Whether these elections will produce decisive changes remains to be seen. For a speculative argument suggesting that even any opposition victory may not produce a substantial democratic breakthrough, see Kubicek, “The Legacy.”

5 I wish to emphasize that all papers were subject to blinded peer review and all contributors improved their initial papers in light of constructive comments from anonymous readers.

6 The journal is not ignoring these issues. A special issue on sustainable patriarchy in Turkey will appear in early 2024, and in 2019 Turkish Studies published a special issue on women’s empowerment.

7 Mardin, “Center-Periphery Relations.”