Reconsidering State, Party, and Society in Early Republican Turkey

Politics of Petitioning

Dados Bibliográficos

ID8965787
AutoresYiğit Akın (The Ohio State University, autor correspondente)
Ano2007
Volume39
Fascículo3
Páginas435-457
Data de publicação2007-08-01
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessSim
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoInternational Journal Middle East Studies (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 0020-7438 • E-ISSN: 1471-6380
EditoraCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s0020743807070547
OpenAlexW2102949949
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas17

This article examines the language, content, role, and historical significance of petitions written by ordinary people to the secretary-general of the Republican People's Party in the 1920s and 1930s. Given the highly authoritarian circumstances in which other forms of expressing popular opinion were suppressed, petition writing was one of the few modes of interaction between the bureaucratic/political elites and the people. Although petitioning was an effective mechanism for the Kemalist elite to gain insight into attitudes toward the new regime, people who lacked control over bureaucratic malfeasance and injustice used petitions to involve the political elite in their everyday concerns in order to have their demands fulfilled and justice restored. Through various strategies, petitioners mediated and/or transformed the regime's nationalist and populist discourse to further their own interests. In this sense, the founding principles and the master narrative of the regime turned into a discursive field in which the meanings of “state,” “nation,” and “citizen” were being constantly redefined and contested. Petitions prove that in early republican Turkey there was a much more complicated, multilayered, multifaceted relationship between the people and state and party authorities than has previously been assumed

Authoritarianism · Bureaucracy · Business · Complaint · Democracy · Elite · Government (linguistics · Head (geology · Injustice · Narrative · Nationalism · Petitioner · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Service (business · Sociology · State (computer science · Whip (tree · American Constitutional Law and Politics · Computer Science · European Political History Analysis · European Union Policy and Governance · Historical and Contemporary Political Dynamics · Historical Turkish Studies · History · Islamic Studies and History · Law · Ottoman Empire History and Society · Philosophy · Political Influence and Corporate Strategies · Turkey's Politics and Society