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Pols 348 Problems and Issues in Turkish Politics
Fall 2015, M, M W, 2, 3, 2, M 2170, M 2170, IB 102
Instructor: Yeşim Arat
Office Hours: Wednesday 2-3 pm and by appointment at Washburn Hall 511
1980 has been a turning point in Turkey. The country opened its society, politics and economy to
greater integration with the rest of the world and attempted to democratize its politics. This
course aims to offer a theoretically informed study of selected issues in this process. The
theoretical background is one of democratization and its problems in a context of globalization.
We shall first discuss different approaches to the study of Turkish politics that could inform our
understanding of current problems and then focus on some contemporary controversies on the
military, Islamist politics, Kurdish uprising and their implications for democratization.
The course is organized as a seminar. Class attendance is required. Students are expected to come
to class ready to discuss all the readings assigned and with at least one page critical evaluation of
two of them. They are expected to hand in the assignments at the end of the first class period of
the week. The response papers should include the main thesis, the underlying argument and the
conclusion of the article assigned as well as a critical evaluation. The weekly assignments will
not be graded individually; however turning all of them in will constitute 30% of the final grade.
We shall use the response papers to initiate discussion.
Besides the weekly writing assignments, there will be a final exam in the course. The class
participation will constitute 30% and the final exam 40% of the final grade. Only those who
complete their weekly writings will be eligible to take the final exam.
Democracy in a Globalizing Context:
September 28- 30
Amartya Sen, “Democracy as a Universal Value”, Journal of Democracy, July 1999.
October 5-7 Different Approaches to the study of politics in Turkey:
Şerif Mardin, “Center Periphery Relations: A Key to Politics, Daedalus, winter, 1973.
Bernard Lewis, The Emergence of Modern Turkey, Oxford University Press, 1976, 480-487.
Reşat Kasaba, “Kemalist Certainities and Modern Ambiguities”, Bozdoğan and Kasaba eds,
Rethinking Modernity and National Identity, Seattle, University of Washington Press, 1997, 1536.
Çağlar Keyder, “Whether the Project of Modernity?, Bozdoğan and Kasaba eds, 37-51.
October 12-14
Taha Parla and Andrew Davison, Corporatist Ideology in Kemalist Turkey: Progress or Order,
Syracuse, Syracuse University Press, 2004, 1-15, 35-41.
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Çağlar Keyder, State and Class in Turkey, London, Verso, Introduction, 1-5, ch 8, 165-196,
Conclusion, 223-228.
DEMOCRATIZATION AND THE MILITARY
Ayşe Gül Altınay, The Myth of the Military-Nation, NY, Palgrave Macmillan, 2004,
13-32, 87-116.
October 19-21
Ayşe Gül Altınay, “Human Rights or Militarist Ideals? Teaching National Security in High
Schools” in D.T. Ceylan and G. Irzik, eds. Human Rights Issues in Textbooks: The Turkish Case,
Istanbul: The History Foundation of Turkey, 2004, 76-90.
Ali Karaosmanoğlu, “Civil Military Relations,” The Routledge Handbook of Modern Turkey,
Metin Heper and Sabri Sayarı eds., 2012, 149-159.
THE POST 1980 TRANSFORMATIONS
Ergun Özbudun, “Constitutions and Political System” in The Routledge Handbook of Modern
Turkey, Metin Heper and Sabri Sayarı eds., 2012, 194-204.
October 26-28
Ersin Kalaycıoğlu, Turkish Dynamics, NY, Palgrave, 2005, 125-166.
Yeşim Arat “Social Change and the 1983 Governing Elite in Turkey, Mübeccel Kıray ed.
Structural Change in Turkish Society, Indiana, Indiana University Press, 1991, 163-178.
Feride Acar, “Turgut Özal: Pious Agent of Liberal Transformation”, Political Leaders and
Democracy in Turkey, Metin Heper and Sabri Sayarı eds. Lanham, Lexington Books, 2002, 163180.
November 2-4
Ulaş Bayraktar, “Turkish municipalities: Reconsidering local democracy beyond administrative
autonomy”, European Journal of Turkish Studies, 2013.
Banu Eligür, The Mobilization of Political Islam in Turkey, Cambridge, Cambridge University
Press, 2010, 85-135.
Esra Özyürek, “Miniaturizing Atatürk: Privatization of state imagery and ideology in Turkey”,
American Ethnologist, Vol. 31, No. 3, 2004, 374-391.
Yeşim Arat, “Rethinking the political: a feminist journal in Turkey, Pazartesi”, Women’s Studies
International Forum, 2004, 281-292.
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November 9-11, THE KURDISH ISSUE
Theoretical and Historical ContextBhikhu Parekh, Rethinking Multiculturalism, Harvard University Press 2000, 336-344.
Senem Aslan, “Everyday Forms of State Power and the Kurds in the Early Turkish Republic”,
IJMES, 43, 2011, 75-93.
Ceren Belge, “State Building and the Limits of Legibility: Kinship Networks and Kurdish
Resistance in Turkey”, IJMES, 43, 2011, 95-114.
Hamit Bozarslan, “Kurds and the Turkish State”, The Cambridge History of Turkey, vol. 4, Reşat
Kasaba ed., Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2008, 333-356.
November 16-18 Evolution of the Conflict
Henri Barkey, “Turkey’s Kurdish Dilemma”, Survival, 35/4, Winter 1993.
Marie Le Ray, “Experiencing Justice and Imagining State: Engaging the Law to Challenge the
Rule of Exception in Tunceli”, EJTS, 10, 2009.
Nicole Watts, “Activists in office: Pro-Kurdish contentious politics in Turkey” Ethnopolitics,
vol.5 no 2, June 2006, 125-144.
November 23-25
Zeynep Gülru Göker, “The Mourning Mother: Rhetorical Figure or a Political Actor?” In Maral
Erol et al, The Making of Neoliberal Turkey, 2015 forthcoming.
Özgur Sevgi Göral, “Urban Anxieties and Kurdish Migrants: Urbanity, Belonging and Resistance
in Istanbul”, in Maral Erol et al, The Making of Neoliberal Turkey, 2015 forthcoming.
ISLAM, SECULARISM AND DEMOCRACY
Islamist route to power:
Hakan Yavuz, “Political Islam and the Welfare Party in Turkey”, Comparative Politics, October
1997, 63-82.
November 30-December 2
Banu Eligür, The Mobilization of Political Islam in Turkey, Cambridge, Cambridge University
Press, 2010, ch 4, 5, 136-181, 182-213.
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Hakan Yavuz, “The Role of Literacy and the Media in the Islamic Movement”, Islamic Political
Identity in Turkey, Oxford University Press, 2003, ch 5. 103-131.
Iren Özgür, Islamic Schools in Modern Turkey, Cambridge University Press, 2012, ch.2, 64-103.
December 7-9
Seda Demiralp, “The Rise of Islamic Capital and the decline of Islamic Radicalism in Turkey”,
Comparative Politics, 2009.
Ziya Öniş, “The Political Economy of Turkey’s Justice and Development Party”, Hakan Yavuz
ed. The Emergence of a New Turkey, Salt Lake City, University of Utah Press, 2006, 207-234.
Cihan Tuğal, Passive Revolution, Stanford, Stanford University Press, 2009, ch 1. 19-35, ch. 2,
36-56.
From Democratizing Attempts to Competitive Authoritarianism?
İhsan Dağı, “The Justice and Development Party: Identity, Politics and Human Rights Discourse
in the Search for Security and Legitimacy”, in op. cit. The Emergence of a New Turkey, 88-106.
December 14-16
Berna Turam, “ The Primacy of Space in Politics: Bargaining Rights, Freedom and Power in an
Istanbul Neighborhood”, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research March 2013
409-29.
Ergun Özbudun, “AKP at the Crossroads: Erdogan’s Majoritarian Drift”, South European Society
and Politics, vol. 19 No 2, 2014.
Ayşe Buğra-Osman Savaşkan, New Capitalism in Turkey, GL,Edward Elgar, 2014, 109-144.
December 21-23
Kalaycıoğlu, Ersin. "Turkish Popular Presidential Elections: Deepening Legitimacy Issues and
Looming Regime Change." South European Society and Politics, 20/2, 2015, 157-179.
Ergun Özbudun, “Turkey’s Judiciary and the Drift Toward Competitive Authoritarianism”, The
International Spectator, June 2015, 42-55.
Resistance to Authoriatarianism:
Onur Bakıner, “Can the “Spirit of Gezi” Transform Progressive Politics in Turkey?” in Umut
Özkırımlı ed., The Making of a Protest Movement in Turkey: #occupygezi. Palgrave, 2014.
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