| Week | Topics | Study Materials | Materials |
| 1 |
Introduction
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Instead of providing a historical narrative, this course aims at bringing forth the main political ideas and questions in Turkey’s political history and shedding light on the continuities and ruptures in the history of modern Turkey. In this introductory lecture, the general goal and framework of the course will be presented to the students via a detailed examination of the syllabus and readings of the course.
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Zürcher, Erci Jan, Turkey: A Modern History. I. B. Tauris, 2004.
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| 2 |
Turkey in a nutshell
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After discussing Friedrich Nietzsche’s differentiation between three species of history, this lecture introduces the theoretical and methodological framework of the course by providing a periodization of the history of modern Turkey. It aims to compare the periodization of the history of modern Turkey in official and critical historical narratives. As an introduction to the course, this lecture poses the following question: Was there a continuation or rupture in the transition from the Ottoman Empire to the Turkish nation-state?
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Assigned reading: Eric Jan Zürcher, “Introduction: Periodization, Theory and Methodology,” Turkey: A Modern History (I. B. Tauris, 2004), pp. 1-6.
Additional reading: Friedrich Nietzsche, “On the Uses and Disadvantages of History for Life,” in Untimely Meditations (Cambridge University Press, 2007), pp. 57-123.
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| 3 |
The Ottoman Empire at the end of the 18th Century
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This lecture examines the political, social, and economic structure of the Ottoman Empire at the end of the 18th century, which witnessed the disintegration of the Empire and the launching of the first modernizing reforms to counteract this process of disintegration. It will be discussed whether this traditional structure was the unique personality of the Ottoman Empire or a legacy of the other empires (such as the Byzantines) that previously ruled over the lands that the Ottomans conquered. In order to make sense of the first modernizing reforms of the Ottoman Empire, this classical structure and the causes that led to its disintegration will be revealed.
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Assigned reading: Zürcher, “The Ottoman Empire at the end of the 18th Century,” Turkey: A Modern History, pp. 9-20.
Additional reading: Çağlar Keyder, “Before Capitalist Incorporation,” State and Class in Turkey: A Study in Capitalist Development (Verso, 1987), pp. 7-22.
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| 4 |
Center-Periphery Relations
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Şerif Mardin famously distinguishes Turkey’s modernization from the historical development of the Western Europe and looks at the emergence of modern Turkey through the theoretical perspective of “center-periphery relations.” Analyzing Turkey’s modernization process via the one-dimensional conflict between the center and the periphery, this lecture poses the following question: Is it still possible to understand and explain the politico-cultural structure of Turkey via the center-periphery dilemma?
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Assigned reading: Şerif Mardin, “Center-Periphery Relations: A Key to Turkish Politics?”, Daedalus 102/1 (1973), pp. 169-190.
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| 5 |
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One of the most fundamental social issues that the new Republic inherited from the Ottoman legacy was undoubtedly the issue of şekavet (banditry). What techniques and technologies of power did the Ottoman and Republican state bureaucrats develop in the face of banditry epidemics coupled with nationalist movements? What kind of struggle was waged against banditry and desertion during the liberation struggle through the Independence Courts? How were the Kurdish revolts that took place after the proclamation of the new regime constructed in the state discourse?
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Assigned reading: Mehmet Beşikçi, “Mobilizing military labor in the age of total war: Ottoman conscription before and during the Great War,” in (ed.) Eric Jan Zürcher, Fighting for a Living: A Comparative History of Military Labour, 1500-2000 (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2013), pp. 547-580.
Additional reading (1) (TR): Ahmet Özcan, “Firar, Şekâvet ve Hıyânet: Erken Cumhuriyet Dönemi Türkiye’de Asker Kaçaklığı, Eşkıyalık ve Ölüm Cezası,” in (ed.) Yalçın Çakmak and Ahmet Özcan, Şekâvet, Hıyânet, İsyan: Geç Osmanlı’dan Cumhuriyet’e Eşkıyalık (İletişim Yayınların, 2023), pp. 43-68.
Additional reading (2) (TR): Kemal Tahir, Yorgun Savaşçı (İthaki Yayınları, 2017).
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| 6 |
The Last Emergence of Kurdish Banditry in Modern Turkey (1950-1970)
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With the Democrat Party’s coming to power in 1950, Turkey’s southeastern provinces underwent a dramatic socio-economic transformation. The multi-party system and the ruling DP’s free-market strategy, backed by the Marshall Plan, led to the rise of political patronage and the industrialization of agriculture, which furthered the trend in the eastern regions of large landownership in the hands of a select few and the tandem emergence of landless peasants. These impoverished peasants not only fueled a process of rapid urbanization but also constituted the primary human resource driving the massive emergence of banditry. This lecture analyzes the last Kurdish banditry as a field of political contention among the state elite and native communities.
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Assigned reading: Ahmet Özcan, “From “criminal citizens” to “traitors”: The last of the Kurdish bandits in modern Turkey, 1950–1970,” Histoire Sociale/Social History 58/117, (2024).
Additional reading (TR): Ahmet Özcan, “Ama Eşkıyalık Çağı Kapandı!”: Modern Türkiye’de Son Kürt Eşkıyalık Çağı (İletişim Yayınları, 2018).
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| 7 |
General Overview
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Zürcher, Erci Jan, Turkey: A Modern History. I. B. Tauris, 2004.
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| 8 |
Islam, Politics, and Culture (1)
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Posing the question “What is the role of Islam in Turkey’s political culture?”, this lecture, first of all, analyzes the philosophical and sociological definitions of religion and discusses the characteristics of Islam as a historically-evolving social power.
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Assigned reading: Şerif Mardin, “Ideology and Religion in the Turkish Revolution,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 2/3 (1971), pp. 197-211.
Additional reading (TR): Şerif Mardin, Din ve İdeoloji (İletişim Yayınları, 2017).
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| 9 |
Islam, Politics, and Culture (2)
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After comparing Christianity and Islam in terms of their social functions, the role of Islam in shaping Turkey’s political culture will be analyzed both in history of the Ottoman Empire and the Turkish Republic.
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Assigned reading: Ersin Kalaycıoğlu, “State and Civil Society in Turkey: Democracy, Development and Protest,” in Civil Society in the Muslim World: Contemporary Perspectives, ed. Amyn B. Sajoo (I. B. Tauris, 2002), pp. 247-272.
Additional reading (TR): Şerif Mardin, Din ve İdeoloji (İletişim Yayınları, 2017).
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| 10 |
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Two main pillars of the new Turkish Republic were Westernism and Turkish nationalism. This lecture aims to decipher the historico-political meanings of these terms by concentrating on the politico-cultural vision of Ziya Gökalp, the latent prodigy theorist behind the new Republic. After discussing the roots, contradictions, and consequences of Gökalp’s distinction between hars (culture) and medeniyet (civilization), Gökalp’s grounding of Turkish nationalism on language and culture in the early 1920s will be contrasted with the pan-Turanist movements of Nihal Atsız and his friends in the second half of the 1940s.
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Assigned reading: Niyazi Berkes, “Ziya Gökalp: His Contribution to Turkish Nationalism,” Middle East Journal 8/4 (1954), pp. 375-390.
Additional reading (1) (TR): Ziya Gökalp, Türkçülüğün Esasları (Varlık Yayınları, 1969).
Additional reading (2) (TR): Yakup Kadri Karaosmanoğlu, Yaban (İletişim Yayınları, 2004).
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| 11 |
Turkey’s East vs. West Dilemma via Peyami Safa’s Novels
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While the Kemalist political and intellectual elite was accused of replacing Turkey’s indigenous national and religious values with the West values, the nationalist-conservative political and intellectual elite embraced Gökalp’s synthesis between the East and the West as Turkey’s only suitable path towards civilization. Posing the question whether Turkey is a Western or an Eastern country, this lecture examines Turkey’s East vs. West dilemma via Peyami Safa’s novels.
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Assigned reading: Nazım İrem, “Undercurrents of European Modernity and the Foundations of Modern Turkish Conservatism: Bergsonism in Retrospect,” Middle Eastern Studies 40/4 (2004), pp. 79-112.
Additional reading (1) (TR): Ahmet Özcan, “Nihilizm, güç ve ahlak: Peyami Safa’nın siyasal-ahlaki düşüncesinde Friedrich Nietzsche’nin gölgesi,” Toplum ve Bilim 163 (2023), pp. 185-209.
Additional reading (2) (TR): Peyami Safa, Fatih-Harbiye (Ötüken Neşriyat, 1968).
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| 12 |
Turkey’s Kurdish Question
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If civil society organizations are defined as the gist of the vitality of democracies, can they contribute to the peaceful resolutions of ethnic conflict? In order to address this question, the relationship between civil society and ethnic conflict will be examined in the case of Turkey’s Kurdish question.
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Assigned reading: Alper Kaliber and Nathalie Tocci, “Civil Society and the Transformation of Turkey’s Kurdish Question,” Security Dialogue 41/2, (2010), pp. 191-215.
Additional reading: Mesut Yeğen, “The Kurdish Question in Turkish State Discourse,” Journal of Contemporary History 34 (1999), pp. 555-568.
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| 13 |
Women’s Struggle for Empowerment in Turkey
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Focusing the relationship between civil society and gender, this lecture analyzes whether the vitality of civil society organizations in a country fosters development in issues of gender. The particular focus of the lecture will be the women’s struggle for empowerment in Turkey.
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Assigned reading: Yeşim Arat, “Contestation and Collaboration: Women’s Struggles for Empowerment in Turkey,” in Turkey in the Modern World, ed. Reşat Kasaba (Cambridge University Press, 2008), pp. 388-418.
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| 14 |
General Overview
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Zürcher, Erci Jan, Turkey: A Modern History. I. B. Tauris, 2004.
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