Rethinking Revolutions through the Turkish Case: A Critical Overview of the Establishment of the Turkish Republic

• In Event: 2111 - War, States, Money and Culture: New Approaches to Classic Concerns in Comparative and Historical Sociology

Abstract

Setting out from the question; “How can we understand the establishment of the Turkish Republic as a revolution?” and delving into the literature on revolutions, both in general, and specifically on the Turkish case, this paper analyzes the major conceptualizations of revolution itself since the 1930s, and the analyses of state formation in Turkey using these conceptualizations of revolution. Bringing these two bodies of research together, this analysis addresses why the two spheres have not been brought together in a full-fledged account and, in fact, why they have mostly been comprehended as incompatible through a discussion of what the revolution scholarship has missed, and why this inattention has been essential in the lack of existing revolutionary analyses on the Turkish case. Through an analysis of what the establishment of the Turkish Republic is not (e.g. a disruptive event, a reform, a rebellion or a coup), and an analysis of the previous studies on the establishment, this paper finds that the Turkish case has not often been approached as a revolution, of any form – at most considered a reform – mainly due to the fact that it has not been seen as a good fit in the way revolutions have so far been defined. Taking mostly the big Western revolutions as default, the revolution scholarship has considered the revolutionary situation of Turkey, specifically its particular cultural context irrelevant. However, studies of the Turkish case with an emphasis on the cultural transformation that was led, have been able to point to the essential revolutionary rupture the movement brought. The paper concludes that understanding the Turkish revolutionary situation through an eventful analysis that emphasizes the symbolic events and the cultural transformation within its specific context, rather than fitting the case into existing models, is vital in rethinking revolutions and incorporating non-Western revolutionary contexts.

Author

• Vasfiye Betul Toprak, University of Virginia