Almost a decade ago, Turkey was a center of attraction for scholars from various fields in the social sciences because the sociopolitical transformation occurring there was indeed unorthodox and well worth exploring. Following a decade of coalition governments, in 2002, the Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi, AKP), with its pro-Islamic leading cadres, obtained a parliamentary majority under the secular constitution. Though a remarkable number of experts were apprehensive about Islamist political figures’ governing strategies and coordination with contemporary democratic values, for some time the AKP government achieved a relative degree of success in the economic realm, in negotiations with the European Union (EU) for full membership, and in the struggle against some of the republic’s historical guardianship mechanisms, such as the military. The AKP and its indisputable leader, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan (currently serving as president), established different levels of sociopolitical coalition with the liberal intelligentsia, with Sunni Islamic communities, and with some of the leading Alevi groups. Ultimately, however, this positive atmosphere failed dramatically, and it is now possible to see Turkey as a country that has, since the beginning of the 2010s, been sliding into an authoritarian regime under a one-man rule.
Tahir Abbas’ interdisciplinary study Contemporary Turkey in Conflict: Ethnicity, Islam and Politics aims to explain this authoritarian drift, and as such it can serve as an ideal reference book for those who wish to understand the transformations and conflicts occurring in contemporary Turkey. Furthermore, the complex relations among ethnicity, nationalism, Islam, neo-liberalism, and conservatism are essential to understanding Turkey’s current situation and commenting on its future, and in this regard—even though he may at times sound too optimistic—Abbas elegantly explores the various nuances of Turkish politics over the last decade.
While it is difficult to conduct research and produce novel contributions based on empirical research under the current authoritarian regime in Turkey, Abbas’ work defies this challenge via a well-structured study that combines both quantitative and qualitative research methodologies. After first exploring some of the critical issues and actors of Turkey—such as the Kurdish issue, the Gezi Park events, and the Gülen movement—Abbas unpacks his general argument. Inspired by Ibn Khaldun’s theory of social development, he suggests that the AKP has become increasingly complacent, self-centered, and dismissive over the long period of its rule. Inebriated by the success of the Turkish model and how the rest of the world perceived it, the AKP maintained a firm hold as it continued to forge ahead and accumulate more power rather than actually revolutionizing the system. Abbas reads this as a sign that the AKP has not only reached its peak, but that decline has already set in (pp. 156–157).
This general argument might be correct as far as the shelf life and mental fatigue of political parties and leaders are concerned. Yet what is missing in this book is an investigation of the social transformation occurring in Turkey’s society and its possible long-term effects on the future of the country. This means that, even though the AKP period marks one of the most massive transformation periods in terms of social values and political norms, Abbas nonetheless reads this process as if it were a permanent and ordinary one. As a result, some of his valuable research and observations remain at a descriptive level. Furthermore, Abbas does not mention one of the most crucial points of all; namely, the sociopolitical and socioeconomic rift between secular Kemalist and conservative Islamist elites and their already existing conflicts, which could prove to be a major determinant for Turkey in the near future.
Aside from such weak points, Abbas’ focus is on how issues of political trust and social capital have impacted identity and Turkey as a whole since the rise of the AKP, especially in regards to the question of how much the ethnic, religious, and cultural dimensions of Turkish identity have changed. In line with this, besides certain interview findings obtained from different parts of Turkey, Abbas presents his readers with many primary observations available to him as a scholar who has lived and worked in Turkey, and this in particular has made the book more readable.
In the first chapter, Abbas provides a brief history of contemporary Turkey, defining this history as one that is full of contrast and contradiction. He focuses primarily on identity issues, claiming that the AKP has constructed a new identity based partly on its subjective reading of the Ottoman legacy and articulated via ethnoreligion. He also touched upon the Gülen movement. While a discussion of this movement—both as an informal coalition established behind close doors and in terms of its long-standing interest-based conflict with the AKP—is inevitable in such a study, Abbas’ reading of the movement seems somewhat one-sided and does not, except for certain points like the movement’s hierarchical structure and pro-nationalist points of view in relation to the Kurdish issue, go much into its political, economic, or bureaucratic aims.
The second chapter provides a detailed and well-written historical-theoretical analysis of how both the Ottomans and contemporary Turkey have perceived religious plurality and monoculturalism. In this chapter, Abbas claims that the transformation of Turkey from the diversity of Ottoman times to a repressive secularist and nationalist republic gave birth to substantial problems, such as the Kurdish issue and social status conflicts between Kemalists and Islamic groups. Here, the author also asserts that, after the 1980s, as the economy opened up to neo-liberalism, the new Islamic bourgeoisie managed to boost the economy and help Turkey become a cosmopolitan society. This claim by Abbas might be read as pointing to a new round in the conflict between secular and religious groups.
The third chapter aims to understand and explain the complex relation between certain minority groups—namely, the Kurds and Alevis—and the Sunni Turkish majority via an analysis of data from the European Social Survey. Here Abbas employs the concept of exceptionalism to explain the paradoxical relations between ethnicity and nationalism in the Turkish context, and he sees Turkish exceptionalism as a unique case. In Abbas’ view, the multilayered relations and conflicts among Turks, Kurds, Sunnis, and Alevis are based in an exceptional situation due to the fact that their relational structures are interwoven with the history of the Ottoman Empire and of modern Turkey. This argument itself could be perceived as “exceptional,” since undoubtedly every possible case has a sui generis nature owing to differences in the social and historical background, though at the same time it is quite possible to observe many common points among different cases. In this chapter, Abbas also strengthens his claim by means of a case study of Tarlabaşı, one of Istanbul’s most diverse neighborhoods.
The fourth chapter proves one of the most interesting parts of the book, as it is based on semi-ethnographic research conducted in Yüksekova, Hakkari, where Kurds constitute the majority of the population. In Hakkari, Abbas conducted six different in-depth interviews with people who had one or more close relatives or acquaintances in the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (Partiya Karkerên Kurdistanê, PKK). Long but highly explanatory interview quotations provide a wealth of detail in this chapter, but it is difficult to discover a general argument owing to the low number of interviews. Basically, this part of Abbas’ study explores how Kurds in Yüksekova approach and perceive the military and armed conflict and how they have been coping as families locked in a deadly conflict zone, but ultimately this offers no unique argument for readers, again partly owing to the small number of interviews.
The fifth chapter examines the Gezi Park events via fourteen different in-depth interviews. Combining both his own personal observations and his findings from these interviews, Abbas portrays the Gezi Park uprising as an output of the ongoing sociopolitical tension between the new Islamic bourgeoisie and Kemalist and leftist social groups. Although one doubts to what extent the AKP’s pro-Islamist supporters can be defined as a “bourgeoisie,” given their patrimonial socioeconomic and sociopolitical interest-based relations with the political power, nevertheless Abbas’ reading of the Gezi Park events through tensions among various sociopolitical groups seems right on target.
The sixth chapter offers one of the major contributions of the book. It examines how diverse configurations of social capital affect political trust and how such patterns diverge according to ethnicity, class, and religiosity. Here, Abbas utilizes data from the European Social Survey and cleverly operationalizes the independent variables of ethnicity, religiosity, education, class, and gender, despite the fact that it is quite difficult to define some of these concepts within the framework of Turkey’s sociological diversity. As a result, in the end Abbas repeats a well-known claim that the dominant tension between the Kemalist-secularist and the Turkish Islamist will continue to be a major issue in Turkey in the near future, with the winner of this conflict to become the next hegemonic power.
In the conclusion to the book, Abbas rakes together all the chapters’ general claims to argue that, while Turkey has undergone a rapid transformation over the last two decades, there is much that is still unfolding at the present. The rise of one-man authoritarianism has been feeding off of ethnoreligious policies and discourses and instrumentalizing both old and new enemies within the state. At the very end of the book, the author briefly mentions the failed coup attempt of July 15, 2016 and how it was subsequently instrumentalized in order to increase sociopolitical pressure on all opposition groups.
Although, given Abbas’ observations of daily life and social relations from the micro to the macro level through the lens of the social sciences, it is rather difficult to be optimistic about the future of democracy in the so-called “New Turkey,” he nonetheless ends his book on a positive note, emphasizing how it is the people and not the politicians who make history. As such, he argues that the Turkish people will carry their own country toward brighter days. In this regard, and leaving aside the author’s sometimes excessive optimism and his repetitions of the previous literature, overall Abbas’ study is a remarkable opus for an understanding of contemporary Turkey in terms of state-society relations. What makes it remarkable in spite of the stated flaws is that, first of all, it offers a general and clear picture of the AKP period, which is a very complicated one difficult to comprehend in one study. Secondly, Abbas proceeds by means of a solid multidisciplinary approach combining sociological, political science, and sociohistorical points of views, making the book quite multidimensional overall. And lastly, the book is exceedingly well written, very readable, and lucid.
