We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Online ordering will be unavailable from 17:00 GMT on Friday, April 25 until 17:00 GMT on Sunday, April 27 due to maintenance. We apologise for the inconvenience.
To save content items to your account,
please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies.
If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account.
Find out more about saving content to .
To save content items to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected]
is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings
on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part
of your Kindle email address below.
Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations.
‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi.
‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
This book offers a radical reinterpretation of the development of the modern world through the concept of Jacobinism. It argues that the French Revolution was not just another step in the construction of capitalist modernity, but produced an alternative (geo)political economy – that is, 'Jacobinism.' Furthermore, Jacobinism provided a blueprint for other modernization projects, thereby profoundly impacting the content and tempo of global modernity in and beyond Europe. The book traces the journey of Jacobinism in the Ottoman Empire and Turkey. It contends that until the 1950s, the Ottoman/Turkish experiment with modernity was not marked by capitalism, but by a historically specific Jacobinism. Asserting this Jacobin legacy then leads to a novel interpretation of the subsequent transition to and authoritarian consolidation of capitalism in contemporary Turkey. As such, by tracing the world historical trajectory of Jacobinism, the book establishes a new way of understanding the origins and development of global modernity.
This chapter summarises and discusses the findings of the book. It elaborates on how the hegemony of the Young Turks (and later Kemalist Republicans) and the Erdoğanist counter-hegemony in Turkey use very similar methods to build their nation, the same tools for social engineering, and the same procedures for the production of citizenship to establish and consolidate their respective hegemonies. The two opposing but influential political ideologies of modern Turkey have sometimes even used the same discourse, albeit for different purposes. There is also a significant degree of overlap between their undesired citizen categories. These are two different regimes relying on two different ideologies, but both of them target, otherise, and even demonise (mostly) the same groups, including Kurdish nationalists, Alevis, non-Muslims, leftists, liberals and practising Muslims who do not completely support the regimes. In addition to desired and undesired citizen typologies, Kemalism and Erdoğanism also have a liminal citizenship category, identity and typology: tolerated citizens (Homo Diyanetus). The chapter also summarises the innovations and contributions of the book, highlights its limitations and discusses potential future studied on the topic. Lastly, the chapter looks at the future of Erdoğan's nation.
This chapter discusses the Erdoğanist nation-building project, which aimed t to create its own desired citizen: Homo-Erdoğanistus. Erdoğanists openly express that they have a desired citizen creation project. However, they have a different name for it: Dindar Nesil, the pious generation. Erdoğan has consistently argued that it is the state’s duty to raise a religious generation. For at least the last decade, the AKP has been using many apparatuses of the state as well as the media, popular culture and Erdoğanist educational foundations to raise this generation, whichis not only religious but is also staunchly Erdoğanist. Homo Erdoğanistus emanates from Erdoğanism. Erdoğanist ideology and national identity, which is based on Islamism, majoritarianism, Muslim nationalism, authoritarianism, patrimonialism, personalism, the cult of Erdoğan, Ottomanist restorative nostalgia, Islamist myth-making, militarism, jihadism, glorification of martyrdom Islamist populism, civilisationism, anti-Westernism, resentfulness, vindictiveness, and anti-Western conspiracy theories. Thus, Homo Erdoğanistus citizens are under the influence of all these. Like the Kemalist relationship with Homo LASTus, Homo Erdoğanistus is the Erdoğanist regime’s favoured citizen who ascends to the critical positions of state and military bureaucracy and economic positions.
This chapter discusses the use of popular culture and the personality cult of Erdoğan in creating the desired citizens of Erdoğanism, the Homo Erdoğanistus. Media, entertainment and pop culture are used to raise the Erdoğanist generation. One of the influential tools of doing this is to manufacture and propagate the personality cult of Erdoğan via different narratives, acts, speeches, performances, emotional instances, movies and TV dramas. All these have been informed and guided by the Erdoğanist ideology. Also, via historical movies and dramas, socio-political reality is shaped to help the Erdoğanist political cause. This chapter discuss, first, Erdoğan’s personality cult and its propagation. Then it elaborates on Erdoğanist myth-making and the rewriting of history. This is followed by an analysis of how reality has been shaped by using movies and historical TV dramas. The chapter then focuses on Erdoğan’s open and direct support for these movies and dramas.
This chapter introduces the book and its general themes. It discusses the traumas, insecurities, anxieties, fears, and victimhood and siege mentality of the Turkish nation, stemming from the agonising collapse of the Ottoman Empire. It then explains how these negative collective emotions paved the way for the Kemalist Turkish state’s desire to create a homogenous secular Turkish Sunni Muslim Turkish nation, composed of desired citizens with this ethno-religious and political identity. This nation-building and social engineering project caused other undesired ethnic, religious and political minority identities to be securitised, stigmatised, demonised and criminalised. After this discussion, the chapter moves on to elaborate on the emergence of the counter-hegemonic Erdoğanism, its own nation-building and desired citizen creation projects in addition to its own undesired citizens project. After very briefly discussing the similarities and differences between these two ideologies and regimes, the book summarises the citizenship typologies used in the book: the desired citizen of Kemalism, Homo LASTus; the desired citizen of Erdoganism, Homo Erdoğanistus and the shared tolerated citizen of both regimes, Homo Diyanetus.
This chapter investigates how the AKP has been very gradually de-Kemalising education and Islamising it at the same time. It explores how the AKP has been instrumentalising the national curriculum and compulsory and optional religious lessons at schools, Erdoğanism’s most-favoured schools, Imam Hatip Schools and Islamist educational foundations to create the Homo Erdoğanistus. The chapter starts with an analysis of the continuities and changes between the Kemalist and Erdoğanist national curriculums, showing how these to overlap to a great extent when it comes to the nation’s insecurities. The AKP has been using these insecurities for its desired citizen project too, and the education system has been undergoing profound changes that are intended to enable Erdoğanists to shape the worldview and national identity of the citizens.
This chapter elaborates on the definition of Erdoğanism from the perspective of this book. To define Erdoğanism for the purposes of this book, the chapter first discusses the insecurities, anxieties, and fears of Erdoğanism. After this it analyses the Islamist populism dimension of Erdoğanism and how its narrative divides the nation into real citizens and their enemy the 'evil' Kemalist elite and the Homo LASTus grassroots and also all secular Turks who are dubbed as the 'White Turks'. In this imagination, the out-group is not only comprised of the citizen-enemies, there are also international groups, entities, institutions, lobbying groups and states that collaborate with both the evil White Turk elite. The chapter calls this populism ‘Islamist Civilizationism’. This discussion is followed by an analysis of Erdoğanist victimhood and resentment vis-à-vis the secular sections of society as well as the West. Finally, the chapter attempts to define Erdoğanism.
For decades after the declaration of the Republic of Turkey in 1923, the Turkish state promoted the idea of a desired citizen. The Kemalist state treated these citizens as superior, with full rights; but the 'others', those outside this desired citizenship, were either tolerated or considered undesirable citizens. And this caused the marginalization of ethnic and religious minorities, religious Muslims and leftists alike. In this book, Ihsan Yilmaz shows how historical traumas, victimhood, insecurities, anxieties, fears and siege mentality have negatively impacted on and radicalised the nation-building projects of the two competing hegemonic ideologies/regimes (those of Ataturk and Erdogan) and their treatment of majority and minority ethnic, religious and political groups. Yilmaz reveals the significant degree of overlap between the desired, undesired citizen and tolerated citizen categories of these two regimes, showing how both regimes aimed to create a perception of a homogenous Turkish nation.
Recommend this
Email your librarian or administrator to recommend adding this to your organisation's collection.