Turkey: A Historical Overview

Abstract That history reflects the moment in which it is written is no more apparent than in the case of Turkey. To write the history of Turkey at a time when the Middle East is roiling in the complex set of expectations and events associated with the Arab uprisings is to attempt to explain a country profoundly impacted by regional turmoil yet also engulfed in its own strife, the outcomes of which are far from clear. At first, Turkey appeared to escape the tumult that began in 2011, and its prime minister—now president—Recep Tayyip Erdoğan—even trumpeted Turkey as the paragon of political stability among countries seeking to integrate a Muslim population and democratic political order. However, in 2013 the alliance of forces that had brought about Erdoğan’s decade-long dominance and apparent Turkish economic prosperity began to unravel. The government became enmeshed not only in its own internal struggle, but also in an intensifying civil war with Kurdish groups in the southeast and in the catastrophic war in Syria. Then, on July 15, 2016, the country—and the world—was startled by a failed, but nonetheless violent, military coup. Shocked by such drastic action, Turks across the country flocked to Erdoğan’s defense. Then, once he had secured his position as president, he declared a state of emergency and embarked on a countrywide purge, arresting and/or firing from public employment tens of thousands of suspected opponents, not the least of whom were academics, some of whom had publicly challenged his growing authoritarianism and erratic rule. Erdoğan is accused by his critics variously of either attempting to establish his own revived Ottoman “sultanate” or seeking to replicate the power and prestige once claimed by Turkey’s founding president, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. He is president of a Turkey undergoing only the latest in successive waves of dramatic change and transformation that have been ongoing for more than a century. Formally established in 1923, Turkey’s history is that of a country whose ties with its immediate past are debated and defined according to competing ideologies and agendas of the moment. Turkey came into a paradoxical world, one defined according to the ideal of independent nation-states, while in fact the pressure to integrate and conform to transnational systems leading to increasing interdependence, lately as a result of globalization, has been enormous. While capitalist economics and democratic, representative politics indeed emerged dominant in the world in the late 20th century, their force no longer seems unassailable or certain. For almost a century, Turkey has had a conflicted relationship with the countries of “the West” that tirelessly promoted this system. Now that the authenticity of this system itself faces increasingly intense scrutiny in Europe and North America, Turkey seeks to redefine itself politically and to assert its role both regionally and globally, even as it deals with deepening crises at home.