Democracy, Islam, and Secularism in Turkey.

• Author: Jassir, Mauricio Jaramillo
• Position: Book review

Democracy, Islam, and Secularism in Turkey

Edited by Ahmet T. Kuru and Alfred Stepan

New York: Columbia University Press, 2012, 216 pages, ISBN 9780231159333.

DEMOCRACY, Islam and Secularism in Turkey, edited by Ahmet Kuru and Alfred Stepan, decribes the so-called "Turkish model" in detail, while trying to avoid unfounded criticism. The book is divided into eight chapters, written mainly by Turkish authors, with the exception of Karen Barney, Stathis Kalyvas, Alfred Stepan and Joost Lagendijk.

In the first chapter, entitled "Rethinking Ottoman Management of Diversity: What can we learn for Modern Turkey?" (p. 12), Karen Barkey explores three fundamental features of Ottomanism: the acceptance of diversity, a marked religious sense and the idea of millet as a form of government that accepts multiple confessions amongst several communities. Throughout the chapter, the reader gains a general view of how certain Ottoman ideas were maintained in the Turkish model:

[...] With the simultaneous division and integration of communities into the state, it became a normative as well as practical instrument of rule, one based on the notion of social boundaries between religious communities, regulating the transactions between categories. Moreover, the state as communities into organizational units arranged administered by intermediaries with a true stake in the maintenance of the status quo, it ensured that top-down and bottom-up interests in ethnic and religious peace were maintained (p. 22). In the second chapter (p. 32), Sukru Hanioglu clarifies that Kemalism cannot be defined as a single ideology; instead, there are several versions of Kemalism from both the left and the right. The author states that Ataturk was not a scholar like Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin because he did not produce political philosophy or social theory. Rather, Ataturk's thinking can be summarized as pragmatic and even the Republican Party's five arrows --republicanism, nationalism, etatism, laicite and revolutionary character--are subject to interpretation.

In the third chapter, Ergun Ozbudun reflects on the pluralistic nature of the Turkish political system, arguing that the regime's original founding philosophy was monolithic. However, with the passage of time, Turkey has built a pluralistic and consensual democracy. To illustrate this, the author reviews the results of the 2007 parliamentary elections and the 2009 local elections, both of which proved that pluralism had in...