Assesses social, religious and political polarisation under the AKP of Recep Erdogan and the likely consequences for Turkey's evolution

In Media in New Turkey, Bilge Yesil unlocks the complexities surrounding and penetrating today's Turkish media. Yesil focuses on a convergence of global and domestic forces that range from the 1980 military coup to globalization's inroads and the recent resurgence of political Islam. Her analysis foregrounds how these and other forces become intertwined, and she uses Turkey's media to unpack the ever-more-complex relationships. Yesil confronts essential questions regarding: the role of the state and military in building the structures that shaped Turkey's media system; media adaptations to ever-shifting contours of political and economic power; how the far-flung economic interests of media conglomerates leave them vulnerable to state pressure; and the ways Turkey's politicized judiciary criminalizes certain speech. Drawing on local knowledge and a wealth of Turkish sources, Yesil provides an engrossing look at the fault lines carved by authoritarianism, tradition, neoliberal reform, and globalization within Turkey's increasingly far-reaching media.

Updated since the decision to begin Turkey's admission to the European Union. Turkey is a country in a state of flux, swept along by an extraordinary process of change. In the last few years, a series of far-reaching political and economic reforms has swept away much of the old order which ruled the country for so long. Some people call it a second Turkish revolution. But resistance to reform remains strong. Pressure for change has come from ordinary people fed up with the old ways; it's also been motivated by the dominant issue of Turkish political life - the long pursuit of membership of the European Union. And yet Turkey remains a mystery to many outsiders; a complex country hard to understand. It's secular and Muslim, Western and Eastern, democratic and authoritarian, all at the same time. This book examines the potential and the problems of the new Turkey, and the expectations of the people who live there, drawing on first-hand interviews and observations gathered over several years.

With the astonishing transformations in the geopolitics of the world since the collapse of the Soviet Union, Turkey has been profoundly affected by the changes on its periphery. For the first time since the beginning of the century, a Turkic world has blossomed, giving Turkey potential new foreign policy clout from the Balkans across the Caucasus a

Drawing on original research, including personal interviews with President Abdullah Gül as well as his wife and close circle of colleagues and friends, this fascinating account offers readers a portrait of a man who has been at the heart of the political, economic and cultural developments that have brought Turkey to international prominence in recent years. In 2002 Abdullah Gül’s democratically-elected party gained power and challenged Turkey’s republican and secular legacy, and shortly after Gül led Turkey’s attempts to receive an accession date for the European Union. In 2007 he became the first president of Turkey with a background in Islamic politics – causing political commentators to hail his victory as a “new era in Turkish politics” – and he has, ever since, been a major figure in Turkey’s diplomatic relationships in the Middle East and international political arena. Gerald MacLean’s absorbing biography of this significant politician throws light on important episodes of Turkey’s recent history.

"In a world of rising tensions between Russia and the United States, the Middle East and Europe, Sunnis and Shiites, Islamism and liberalism, Turkey is at the epicentre. And at the heart of Turkey is its right-wing populist president, Recep Tayyip Erdo?an. Since 2002, Erdo?an has consolidated his hold on domestic politics while using military and diplomatic means to solidify Turkey as a regional power. His crackdown has been brutal and consistent - scores of journalists arrested, academics officially banned from leaving the country, university deans fired and many of the highest-ranking military officers arrested. In some senses, the nefarious and failed 2016 coup has given Erdo?an the licence to make good on his repeated promise to bring order and stability under a 'strongman'. Here, leading Turkish expert Soner Cagaptay will look at Erdo?an's roots in Turkish history, what he believes in and how he has cemented his rule, as well as what this means for the world. The book will also unpick the 'threats' Erdogan has worked to combat - from the liberal Turks to the Gulen movement, from coup plotters to Kurdish nationalists - all of which have culminated in the crisis of modern Turkey."--Bloomsbury Publishing.

Since the Gezi uprisings in June 2013 and AKP’s temporary loss of parliamentary supremacy after the June 2015 general elections, sharp political clashes, ascending police operations, extra-judicial executions, suppression of the media and political opposition, systematic violation of the constitution and fundamental human rights, and the one-man-rule of President Erdoğan have become the identifying characteristics of Turkish politics. The failed coup attempt on 15th July 2016 further impaired the situation as the government declared emergency rule at the end of which a political regime defined as the “Presidential Government System” was established in July 2018. Turkey’s New State in the Making examines the historical specificities of the ongoing AKP-led radical state transformation in Turkey within a global, legal, financial, ideological, and coercive neoliberal context. Arguing that rather than being an exception, the new Turkish state has the potential to be a model for political transformations elsewhere, problematizing how specific policies the AKP adapted to refract social dispositions have been radically redefining the republican, democratic and secular features of the modern Turkish state.