1st Edition
Reflections on the Centenary of the Republic of Turkey
This book provides both a retrospective and prospective look at Turkey on the occasion of the country’s centenary. It covers numerous important issues, including political, economic, and cultural development, the role and performance of political institutions, and foreign policy and Turkey’s place in its region and the wider world.
The Republic of Turkey’s centenary in 2023 is an opportune time to assess the country’s achievements and shortcomings as well as look ahead as to how Turkey may cope with current challenges. This volume, comprised of empirically rich and theory-informed analytical essays written by a global collection of leading scholars on contemporary Turkey, addresses many central issues that bear both on the Republic’s history as well as on major political, social, economic, cultural, and foreign policy issues that confront Turkey today. Much focus is given to particular “turning points” in the past as well as how 2023, during which Turkey had a highly-contested and polarized election, may also serve as a critical juncture for the country.
Reflections on the Centenary of the Republic of Turkey will be a key resource for scholars and researchers of Middle Eastern studies and Turkish history, politics, and foreign policy. This book was originally published as a special issue of Turkish Studies.
Introduction: reflections on the centenary of the Republic of Turkey
Paul Kubicek
1. A hundred years of flux: Turkish political regimes from 1921 to 2023
Ersin Kalaycıoğlu
2. Three turning points in the political development of modern Turkey
Erik-Jan Zürcher
3. Never quite making it: Turkey’s repeated attempts at political democracy
Ilter Turan
4. Liberalism: the missing piece in Turkey’s political development
Paul Kubicek
5. Divergent developmental performance of Turkey and South Korea: an appraisal from political economy perspective
M. Mustafa Erdoğdu
6. Turkey’s asylum policies over the last century: continuity, change and contradictions
Kemal Kirişci and Ayselin Yıldız
7. The plight of Turkey’s minorities: what obstacles and opportunities exist for equal citizenship beyond the Republic’s centennial?
Lenore G. Martin
8. From activism to resilience: the Turkish constitutional court in comparative perspective
Yasushi Hazama
9. The AKP, religion, and political values in contemporary Turkey: implications for the future of democracy
Birol A. Yeşilada
10. Reflections on Şerif Mardin’s center-periphery thesis
Paul T. Levin
11. The making of Turkish exceptionalism: the west, the rest and unreconciled issues from the past
Lerna K. Yanık
12. The trajectory of a modified middle power: an attempt to make sense of Turkey’s foreign policy in its centennial
Meliha Benli Altunışık
13. Turkey as a restrained middle power
H. Tarık Oğuzlu
14. Historic missed opportunities and prospects for renewal: Turkey-EU relations in a post-Western order
Ziya Öniş
15. Facing new security threats in an era of global transformations: Turkey’s challenges of energy security, climate change and sustainability
Şuhnaz Yılmaz
Biography
Paul Kubicek is Professor of Political Science at Oakland University, Rochester, USA. He has also taught at several Turkish universities and has published extensively on contemporary Turkish politics. He is the editor of Turkish Studies.
