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This title reveals the historical dynamics propelling two centuries of Ottoman and Turkish history. Findley's reassessment of political, economic and cultural history highlights the dialectical interaction between radical and conservative currents of change.

This book is concerned with Turkey’s political evolution, the role of Kemalism, and why a social democratic alternative has never fully developed. Concentrating on the electoral weaknesses of the Turkish centre-left, represented by the Republican People’s Party (CHP), Sinan Ciddi examines the roles of nationalism and the political establishment and the role of Kemalist ideology. Established by Kemal Ataturk, the CHP is seen to be the founding party of modern Turkey. Kemalism sought to create a secular and democratic society based on the principles of republicanism, populism, secularism, nationalism and revolutionism. Although this leftist ideology became an integral part of Turkish politics by the early 1960s, it has remained a comparatively weak representative movement. Its strong ideological stance advocates an authoritarian and exclusionary position, particularly in relation to matters such as multiculturalism and democratisation, fuelling many debates concerning the role of religion and nationalism within Turkey and perpetuating elements of xenophobia and intolerance. This book will be of interest to students of politics, history and current affairs, and of Turkish politics in particular. 'A very useful addition to the literature on Turkish politics. It is recommended to both the uninitiated and the long-time student of Turkish politics.' - Metin Heper, Bilkent University, Insight Turkey, Vol. 12, No.1, 2010 'Ciddi’s book provides an informative and moving account of social democratic politics and the RPP in recent history. It also tries to explain the failure of the social democratic political parties both in electoral politics and when they have led coalition governments. At a time when there is a growing interest in Turkish politics and the JDP government, such a contribution helps researchers to extend the scope of their studies to include oppositional politics in general and social democratic parties in particular.' - Middle East Policy, Vol. XVI, No.2, Summer 2009 Introduction Social Democracy, Kemalism and the Republican People’s Party Part 1 1. Kemalism and the Left 2. Mainstream Left Politics: \"Democratic Left\" Ideology and the CHP 3. Appraising Centre-Left Politics 1961-1980 4. The 12 September Coup d’état and its Aftermath: The Displacement of Centre Left Politics? Part 2 5. Accounting for the Weakness of the Centre-left in the 1990s: Ideological Considerations 6. A Crisis of Kemalist Modernity? 7. Three Cases: The Alevis, Trade Unions and the Urban Vote 8. Revisionism: An Anathema for the Turkish Centre-Left and The Principle of ‘Ideological Adaptability’ Conclusion : The CHP: The Continued Projection of Centrist Politics? Sinan Ciddi is currently an instructor at Sabanci University. He will be working at the University of Florida, Gainesville from Fall 2008 onwards where Turkish Studies is being established within the Center for European Studies.

In contemporary Turkey-a democratic, secular, and predominantly Muslim nation-the religious healer is a controversial figure. Attracting widespread condemnation, religious healers are derided as exploiters of the sick and vulnerable, discredited forms of Islamic and medical authority, and superstitious relics of a pre-modern era. Yet all sorts of people, and not just the desperately ill, continue to seek them out. After years of research with healers and their patients in working-class neighborhoods of urban Turkey, anthropologist Christopher Dole concludes that the religious healer should be regarded not as an exception to Turkey's secular modern development but as one of its defining figures.Healing Secular Lifedemonstrates that religious healing and secularism in fact have a set of common stakes in the ordering of lives and the remaking of worlds. Linking the history of medical reforms and scientific literacy campaigns to contemporary efforts of Qur'anic healers to treat people afflicted by spirits and living saints through whom deceased political leaders speak,Healing Secular Lifeapproaches stories of healing and being healed as settings for examining the everyday social intimacies of secular political rule. This ethnography of loss, care, and politics reveals not only that the authority of the religious healer is deeply embedded within the history of secular modern reform in Turkey but also that personal narratives of suffering and affliction are inseparable from the story of a nation seeking to recover from the violence of its own secular past.

The Diyanet is the 'Presidency of Religious Affairs', the official face of Islam and highest religious authority in Turkey, and is a governmental department established in 1924 after the break-up of the Ottoman Empire. In this book, Emir Kaya offers an in-depth multidisciplinary analysis of this vital institution. Focusing on the role of the Diyanet in society, Kaya explores the balance the institution has to strike between the Islamic traditions of the Turkish population and the officially secular creed of the Turkish state. By examining the various laws that either bolstered or hindered the Diyanet's budgets and activities, Kaya highlights the institutional mindsets of the Diyanet membership as well as evaluating its successes and failures as a governmental department that has to consistently operate within the context of the religiosity of Turkish society. By situating all of this within the context of the two competing but often complimentary concepts of religion and secularism, Kaya offers a book that is important for those researching the role of religion and the state in society in the Middle East and beyond.

This is the only volume dedicated to the Alevis available in English and based on sustained fieldwork in Turkey. The Alevis now have an increasingly high profile for those interested in the diverse cultures of contemporary Turkey, and in the role of Islam in the modern world. As a heterodox Islamic group, the Alevis have no established doctrine. This book reveals that as the Alevi move from rural to urban sites, they grow increasingly secular, and their religious life becomes more a guiding moral culture than a religious message to be followed literally. But the study shows that there is nothing inherently secular-proof within Islam, and that belief depends upon a range of contexts. Introduction 1. Setting the Scene: Religion and Social Change in Modern Turkey 2. The Alevis and their Place in the Republic: An Overview 3. An Alevi Community 4. Religion, Ritual and Belief among Alevis 5. Social Change and the Alevi Communities 6. The Alevi, the State, and the Future 7. Theoretical and Comparative Reflections Appendices: Primary Material on the Alevis David Shankland lectures in the Dept of Social Anthropology at the Univeristy of Wales, Lampeter, and was formerly Assistant and Acting Director of the British Institute of Archaeology at Ankara, Turkey. For many years a specialist on Turkey, he has published widely on the subject.

The Turkish Republic was founded simultaneously on the ideal of universal citizenship and on acts of extraordinary exclusionary violence. Today, nearly a century later, the claims of minority communities and the politics of pluralism continue to ignite explosive debate. The Reckoning of Pluralism centers on the case of Turkey's Alevi community, a sizeable Muslim minority in a Sunni majority state. Alevis have seen their loyalty to the state questioned and experienced sectarian hostility, and yet their community is also championed by state ideologues as bearers of the nation's folkloric heritage. Kabir Tambar offers a critical appraisal of the tensions of democratic pluralism. Rather than portraying pluralism as a governing ideal that loosens restrictions on minorities, he focuses on the forms of social inequality that it perpetuates and on the political vulnerabilities to which minority communities are thereby exposed. Alevis today are often summoned by political officials to publicly display their religious traditions, but pluralist tolerance extends only so far as these performances will validate rather than disturb historical ideologies of national governance and identity. Focused on the inherent ambivalence of this form of political incorporation, Tambar ultimately explores the intimate coupling of modern political belonging and violence, of political inclusion and domination, contained within the practices of pluralism.