ABSTRACT
Modern Turkey has not emerged as a result of an autonomous modernization
‘process;’ it rather rests on the modernizing ‘offensives’ of Kemalism, the
official ideology named after the founder of the Republic, Mustafa Kemal
Atatu¨rk. The still-lingering legacy of the top-down nature of Kemalist
modernization can be defined as a continuous attempt on the part of the
state elite to control, limit, and even instruct the political sphere while
‘modernizing’ and ‘democratizing’ the polity. Democratization is often pitted against the survival of the secular regime. Dubbed as ‘politicization,’
political representation of differences and interests has assumed negative
connotations and the political class is expected to serve the needs of the
state to control and contain societal dynamics rather than representing and
channelling them. Consequently, despite successful integration with the
world, especially in the last two decades, politics in Kemalist Turkey has
been marked by a zero-sum understanding of power, a permanent distaste
of political activity, an intrinsic distrust for the political class, and periodic military interventions into the political sphere. In fact, the political history
of Republican Turkey can be read in terms of the ebb and flow of the hold
of Kemalist ideology on politics and society (C¸ınar 2004). The Turkish
political sphere is therefore unable to regenerate itself by re-examining and
redefining fundamental societal issues.
