ABSTRACT
Introduction In the context of modern Turkish political history, the Islarnist movement and the Islamist political parties must be understood not only in terms of their specific Islamist ideology but also as the representative of specific social sectors reacting to the problems created by a number of factors: demographic growth, urbanisation and the changes in the social class structure that are the results of geographic and social mobility. The paper assumes that there is a meaningful relationship between political movements, demographic growth and urbanisation. The focus of the article is the demographic and structural changes in Turkey and the political implications attributable to these changes in the period from the late 1950s till the mid-1990s. The starting point for the analysis of the Turkish society is 1946 when the multi-party system began and when the population growth in the rural areas drove people to migrate to the cities. Prior to that, the article gives due attention to demographic changes, the expansion of the young population, migration from rural to urban areas and their implications for Islamic radicalism in the Middle East.
