ABSTRACT
Political culture is often defined as “the product of both the collective history of a political system and the life histories of the individuals who currently make up the system” (Pye, 1965: 8). As such, political culture consists of particular patterns of orientation to political actions (Almond and Powell, 1978: 26). Departing from such an understanding of political culture, the current Republican Turkish political culture is best defined by reference to what it had inherited from the past at its inception and the trajectory of evolution of the Republican system since it was established in 1923. The Turkish political system is essentially a product of the legacy of the Ottoman Empire, and of the War of Independence that the nationalists successfully fought to resist and end the occupation of eastern Thrace and Anatolia between 1919 and 1922.
