The Routledge handbook of Turkish politics

This handbook is a comprehensive and much-needed appraisal of Turkish politics that is likely to prove a valuable reference, irrespective of what comes next in the era of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and after. However, reading the various contributions is often a profoundly dispiriting experience. There is hardly a single feature of Turkish politics, public policy, inter-ethnic relations, civil–military ties, religious affairs, environmental policy, human rights or the political role of the diaspora in western Europe which does not reveal a sharp retreat from previous behavioural norms. Modern Turkey has always been a conflicted country, its sharp internal cleavages leading to ruptures, usually involving short-term military interventions to restore a degree of democratic balance. Most textbooks have dealt with the challenges to the secular and nationalist polity created by Kemal Ataturk in 1923. This is the first major work to dwell on the Turkey that has grown up in the nearly two decades since the Justice and Development Party (AKP) first won a national election. Turkey was by then already a complicated country, subject to a series of political ruptures and facing developmental challenges—but the direction of travel seemed hopeful. The AKP possessed some of the hallmarks of a progressive Islamic party; civil society was challenging rigid state control; the military's talons were being cut; the quality of higher education was attracting widespread notice; and Turkey was acquiring the elements of an innovative industrial economy

Civil society · Democracy · Nationalism · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Polity · Secularism · Sociology · State (computer science · Turkish · Law · Turkey's Politics and Society

• Living on the Periphery

  Dimitar Bechev•Southeastern Europe•2020

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