Description:

Much has been said about the “polarization” of Turkish society and its impact on the recent “authoritarian drift” in Turkish politics. This paper attempts first to clarify that the polarization is between “modernist/Kemalist” and “traditional/Islamist” nationalisms. Secondly, the paper argues that the polarization becomes accentuated over issues like secularism, but gets rather blurred when it comes to the Kurdish question and any other issue seen as a threat to the Turkish nation-state.

Levent Köker is a 2017-18 Visiting Scholar in Turkish Studies at the Buffett Institute for Global Studies, Northwestern University. He was Hans Speier Visiting Professor at the New School for Social Research. His many books (all in Turkish) include Modernization, Kemalism and Democracy (2009), Two Different Conceptions of Politics (2008), and Democracy, Critique, and Turkey (2008). His articles have been published in Political Theory, Constellations: An International Journal of Critical and Democratic Theory, and The Annals (American Academy of Political and Social Science). His research interests include constitution-making and post-national constitutionalism, democratic political theory, secularism, nationalism, multiculturalism, and cosmopolitanism. He is currently working on a critical re-interpretation of constitutional politics in Turkey.

co-sponsored by the Keyman Modern Turkish Studies Program (Buffett Institute for Global Studies)