Turkish society is frequently accused of having amnesia. It has been said that there is no social memory in Turkey before Mustafa Kemal Atatürk founded modern Turkey after World War I. Indeed, in 1923, the newly founded Turkish Republic committed to a modernist future by erasing the memory of its Ottoman past. Now, almost eighty years after the establishment of the republic, the grandchildren of the founders have a different relationship with history. New generations make every effort to remember, record, and reconcile earlier periods. The multiple, personalized representations of the past that they have recovered allow contemporary Turkish citizens to create alternative identities for themselves and their communities. Unlike its futuristic and homogenizing character at the turn of the twentieth century, Turkish nationalism today uses memory to generate varied narratives for the nation and its minority groups. Contributors to this volume come from such diverse disciplines as anthropology, comparative literature, and sociology, but they share a common understanding of contemporary Turkey and how its different representations of the past have become metaphors through which individuals and groups define their cultural identity and political position. They explore the ways people challenge, reaffirm, or transform the concepts of history, nation, homeland, and “Republic” through acts of memory, effectively demonstrating that memory can be both the basis of cultural reproduction and a form of resistance.

Niyazi Berkes (1908–1988) was among the most prominent figures in Turkish political thought in the Republican period. He was the author of several masterpieces that broke fresh ground in the fields of Turkish politics and history. Berkes not only witnessed political history, on several occasions he was influential in shaping Turkish identity during his long life, which began in Cyprus, where he was born in 1908, and concluded with his death in Britain in 1988. In fact, the Young Turk Revolution (1908), the War of Independence (1919–1922), the reforms of Kemal Atatürk (1923–1938), the construction of a Kemalist ideology and its transformation during the Second World War (1939–1944), and the Cold War (1945–1989) are some of the weighty matters of Turkish history that were a part of his life story. Berkes’s political and intellectual biography thus affords a unique vantage point from which this book studies both Turkish political thought and examines the interplay between political history and an intellectual biography. This book also sheds light on recent political developments in contemporary Turkey, suggesting that the challenges to inculcate the democratic vision that originated in Berkes’s lifetime still continue today.

The Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is known for his populist Islamist ideology, charismatic personality, and for ushering in new forms of communication strategies in Turkey. The key tools in Erdogan's political communication repertoire include religious, cultural and historic symbols and imagery. From engaging Israel to the Gezi Park protests, from the Arab uprisings to the July 2016 coup attempt, every key moment in Turkey's recent history has heralded a change in Erdogan's rhetoric. Communication Strategies in Turkey examines the transformation of political messaging that has taken place within the Justice and Development Party (AKP) under Erdogan. Using quantitative and qualitative analysis of in-depth interviews with high profile AKP officials, observations at AKP rallies and headquarters, and analysis of Erdogan's speeches from 2002 to 2019, the book shows how his method of communication changed over time to prioritise a “New Turkey” to replace Atatürk and his legacy.

This book explores and comparatively assesses how Armenians as minorities have been represented in modern Turkey from the twentieth century through to the present day, with a particular focus on the period since the first electoral victory of the AKP (Justice and Development Party) in 2002. It examines how social movements led by intellectuals and activists have challenged the Turkish state and called for democratization, and explores key issues related to Armenian identity. Drawing on new social movements theory, this book sheds light on the dynamics of minority identity politics in contemporary Turkey and highlights the importance of political protest.

The ideological odyssey of Turkish nationalism and its ties to the political history of modern Turkey

One of the most significant yet least known periods of modern Turkish history is that of Turkey's second president, İsmet İnönü. Following the death of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk in 1938, Turkish politicians and intellectuals struggled to redefine Kemalist notions of modernity and democracy, Islam and secularization, the role of the state, and Turkey's place in the world. The Politics of Turkish Democracy examines İnönü's presidency (1938–1950), which developed amid the crises of World War II and the Cold War, global economic and political transformation, and economic and social change within Turkey. John M. VanderLippe analyzes the political discourse of the era and argues that İnönü was a pivotal figure who played the decisive role in Turkey's transition to a multi-party political system.

Few studies tracing the history of liberalism have taken into account that its reception in non-Western or westernising countries, in the form of the denial or acceptance of its core values and institutions, is an important aspect of the liberal tradition. In Intellectual Origins of the Republic: Ahmet Ağaoğlu and the Genealogy of Liberalism in Turkey, Ӧzavcı investigates the histories of liberalism and nationalism in the late Russian and Ottoman Empires and early Republican Turkey through the prism of the life, ideas and times of the revolutionary writer Ahmet Ağaoğlu. This is the first in-depth study in the English language that places under scrutiny the Turkish idea of liberty and its endless yet destructive flirt with nationalism.