Of Power and Legitimacy: The Idea of State in Iran and Turkey

This chapter delves into Iran and Turkey’s long imperial histories to explore the emergence, institutionalisation and evolution of the idea of state and legitimate authority as the two polities grappled with the challenges of modernity. It surveys the historical arguments for guardianship embodied in the pre-Islamic and Shi’a concept of rule by divine sanction, which has been used to justify both patriarchal authority and rebellions against authority in Iran. It reviews the Ottoman interpretation of legitimate authority, the pragmatic Sunni interpretation of ‘maslahat’ and the role of the state as the central pillar of identity building in modern Turkey to explain state veneration in Turkish nationalism. It then discusses these in the context of successive attempts by the Ottoman and Iranian rulers to centralise and modernise the state apparatus in the 19th and early 20th centuries and the drive for constitutional government in the late Ottoman and Qajar periods.