A comprehensive new study that uncovers the real story of working class struggle in Turkey

A comprehensive new study that uncovers the real story of working-class struggle in Turkey.

A comprehensive new study that uncovers the real story of working-class struggle in Turkey.

As was the case in many other countries, it was only in the early years of this century that Greek and Turkish labour historians began to systematically look beyond national borders to investigate their intricately interrelated histories. The studies in Working in Greece and Turkey provide an overdue exploration of labour history on both sides of the Aegean, before as well as after the fall of the Ottoman Empire. Deploying the approaches of global labour history as a framework, this volume presents transnational, transcontinental, and diachronic comparisons that illuminate the shared history of Greece and Turkey.

The political identities of the Turkish working class began a transformative journey that started during a period of industrialization following World War II and continued until the military interventions of 1960. Working Class Formation in Turkey addresses common, structural generalizations to recover the complex history of developing political, recreational, familial, residential, and work-related lives of Turkish workers. Drawing on a wide range of historical sources, this volume brings the concept of “everydayness” to the fore and uncovers the local contexts that fostered class solidarity, examines labor practices that fueled radicalism, and analyzes the shifting dynamics of industrial discipline that impacted working class identity and culture.

The study of politics in Turkey : new horizons and perennial pitfalls / Güneş Murat Tezcür -- Democratization theories and Turkey / Ekrem Karakoç -- Ruling ideologies in modern Turkey / Kerem Öktem -- Constitutionalism in Turkey / Aslı Ü. Bâli -- Civil-military relations and the demise of Turkish democracy / Nil S. Satana and Burak Bilgehan Özpek -- Capturing secularism in Turkey : the ease of comparison / Murat Akan -- The political economy of Turkey since the end of World War II / Şevket Pamuk -- Neoliberal politics in Turkey / Sinan Erensü and Yahya M. Madra -- The politics of welfare in Turkey / Erdem Yörük -- The political economy of environmental policymaking in Turkey : a vicious cycle / Fikret Adaman, Bengi Akbulut, and Murat Arsel -- The politics of energy in Turkey : running engines on geopolitical, discursive, and coercive power / Begüm Özkaynak, Ethemcan Turhan, and Cem İskender Aydın -- The contemporary politics of health in Turkey : diverse actors, competing frames, and uneven policies / Volkan Yılmaz -- Populism in Turkey : historical and contemporary patterns / Yüksel Taşkın -- Old and new polarizations and failed democratizations in Turkey / Murat Somer -- Economic voting during the AKP era in Turkey / S. Erdem Aytaç -- Party organizations in Turkey and their consequences for democracy / Melis G. Laebens -- The evolution of conventional political participation in Turkey / Ersin Kalaycıoğlu -- Symbolic politics and contention in the Turkish Republic / Senem Aslan -- Islamist activism in Turkey / Menderes Çınar -- The Kurdish movement in Turkey : understanding everyday perceptions and experiences / Dilan Okcuoglu -- The Transnational Mobilization of the Alevis of Turkey : from invisibility to the struggle for equality / Ceren Lord -- Politics of asylum seekers and refugees in Turkey : limits and prospects of populism / Fatih Resul Kılınç and Şule Toktaş -- A theoretical account of Turkish foreign policy under the AKP / Tarık Oğuzlu -- US-Turkey relations since WWII : from alliance to transactionalism / Serhat Güvenç and Soli Özel -- Turkey and Europe : historical asynchronicities and perceptual asymmetries / Hakan Yılmaz -- Turkey's foreign policy in the Middle East : an identity perspective / Lisel Hintz -- Turkey and Russia : historical patterns and contemporary trends in bilateral relations / Evren Balta and Mitat Çelikpala -- Citizenship and protest behavior in Turkey / Ayhan Kaya -- Gender politics and the struggle for equality in Turkey / Zehra F. Kabasakal Arat -- Human rights organizations in Turkey / Başak Çalı -- Truth, justice, and commemoration initiatives in Turkey / Onur Bakiner -- The politics of media in Turkey : chronicle of a stillborn media system / Sarphan Uzunoğlu -- The AKP's rhetoric of rule in Turkey : political melodramas of conspiracy from "ergenekon" to "mastermind" / Erdağ Göknar -- The transformation of political cinema in Turkey since the 1960s : a change of discourse / Zeynep Çetin-Erus and M. Elif Demoğlu -- Political music in Turkey : the birth and diversification of dissident and conformist music (1920-2000) / Mustafa Avcı.

In a work of considerable analytic elegance, Caglar Keyder provides the first genuinely radical text on the political economy of modern Turkey. Keyder describes how, with the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire, the traditional Muslim bureaucratic class of the old regime attempted to create a new nation state and effect its transition to modernity. Yet by expelling the Christian bourgeoisie between 1914 and 1924 the bureaucracy initially controlled Turkey's integration into the world capitalist system. Within the framework of the literature of peripheral development, Keyder argues that, in contrast to the Latin American experience, the lack of a dominant landlord class and the continued existence of an independent peasantry had a formative influence on Turkey's political and economic development. Keyder explains how the simmering conflict between the bureaucracy and the bourgeoisie was suppressed during the successful period of import-substituting industrialization in the 1960s and 1970s, to erupt again, soon after the world economic crisis of 1973. He recounts the way in which the rapid industrialization and urbanization transformed Turkey's social structure and shows how the severe economic difficulties of the late 1970s sparked off latent conflicts and led to the spread of fascist violence, culminating in the military coup of 1980. The book concludes with a look at Turkey's prospects for economic development and social change.