The state of the regime in Turkey has become a significant question of late. After a half-decade of liberalizing measures, economic development, and advancement toward the prospect of European Union membership under the Justice and Development Party leadership (2002–2007), democratization has taken a drastic turn, especially since 2013. On July 15, 2016, while being broadcast live, massive numbers of civilian protesters bravely halted an attempted coup by a faction of the military. Their courageous resistance in the face of tanks and guns—which proved to be the undoing of a number of citizens on the street that night—ultimately confounded the aspirant-junta-led forces and preserved the existing regime, led by President Erdoğan. This event proved to be a paradoxical moment in Turkish political history. On the one hand, it heralded a society-wide consolidation of the supremacy of civilian rule (and, ostensibly, democracy) over military guardianship, an important milestone in Turkey’s long and junta-interrupted experience with democracy. Citizens very antagonistic to the leadership of President Erdoğan,nonetheless,insisted that his removal from power would be by the ballot box and not by bullets. At the same time, unfortunately, this display of support has been subsequently followed by Erdoğan using the attempt as a blank check to operate indefinitely through a “state of emergency,” stifling opposition and reconfiguring the regime toward personalistic rule.

In regard to our burning questions regarding the state of Turkish democracy and its future prospect, a well-known scholar of Turkish politics, Professor Emeritus İlter Turan, offers a timely interpretation of Turkey’s past, present, and future political path. The argument of this most recent work, conveyed by the book’s subtitle, Two Steps Forward, One Step Back, is that, regardless of the vantage point of a “step back” in 2014, “Turkey’s democracy is likely to pass its new test and emerge from it stronger” (p. 231). In other words, Turkey’s journey in democratization, though encountering its fair share of “steps back,” is on a steady path forward in “deepening and maturing”—the expression he uses in place of what he views as a more static term, “consolidation” (pp. 24–29). The optimism for this meta-argument is grounded squarely on a fairly classical version of modernization theory, which he carefully lays out for us in the beginning without a discussion of other theories pertinent to democratization (pp. 6–24).

The analysis of the Turkish case is largely historical and descriptive in nature but divided into two segments. His approach to the first chapters are chronological, a narrative of selected political developments and interpretation, spanning the Ottoman’s second siege of Vienna through the military coup of 1980 (Chapters 2–4). More recent history, post-1980, is then divided by the categories of military-state relations, socioeconomic change, and democratic development. The “deepening and maturing” of the author’s argument really takes place in the final chapter also entitled, “Two Steps Forward and One Step Back” (pp. 206–221). The potential contribution of the book is hindered—though Turan provides some points of insight into political dynamics in the country—by the decision to ground the interpretation on a theoretical perspective that is well-worn in application to the Turkish case and by resorting to a dense narrative that vacillates between extensive reference to secondary literature and unsubstantiated interpretations.

Although readers have the benefit of drawing from the expertise of a veteran scholar in the field, the source material for the history and interpretations given could lead to a measure of frustration. Despite the historical density of the central chapters, no new or primary sources were brought in to discuss events that had been widely covered elsewhere. Unfortunately, most of the history provided is reprocessed from the works of other social scientists. Various segments of the history are recounted while drawing heavily from one or no source. For example, almost all source material on the political period from 1950–1960 is taken from Cem Eroğlu’s work (pp. 88–94). Because the interpretations and details from these periods of political history in Turkey are both contested and numerous, the decision not to at least draw material from a broader consensus or from primary texts is a curious one, causing us to question the reliability of the selected historical narrative given. In any case, although no one would fault Turan from drawing from comprehensive works by Erik Zürcher, Ergun Özbudun, William Hale, and Ersin Kalaycıoğlu, or from his own works, the extensive use of selected material from these sources prompts the question of what is really new in this work.

An interesting example of the fuzzy foundations of the historical narrative is the discussion of the Sheikh Said rebellion (p. 49). While it is fair to claim that the conditions and impetus behind the revolt were far more complicated (involving religious, tribal, nationalist, and anti-centralization elements) than a simple attribution of “Kurdish nationalist rebellion,” Turan frames the whole rebellion as “triggered” by a snafu while some gendarmes were trying to arrest ten “men as bandits.” Throughout the narrative of the event, no reference is given for any of the details—which have actually been covered by numerous historians and social scientists—and the specific date given for the gun battle between Sheikh Said’s forces and the gendarmes is incorrect (February 8, not February 13). There is wide consensus that the rebellion had been coordinated long before the first confrontation, whether or not all the members of the fighting force were in agreement on why they were fighting. The author takes great pains to avoid using the word “Kurd” in the discussion and makes the rebellion appear as a spontaneous happenstance, rather than the result of a complex mix of factors as detailed in most other accounts, including Zürcher’s history, which he uses frequently in other sections of the work.

Beyond the selected historical narrative, the reliance on the modernization theory paradigm puts pressure on Turan to make assertions about the past and future of Turkish politics that he would have trouble substantiating with evidence. One of the causal mechanisms related to his analysis is that economic development and differentiation engender democratization, and that Turkey’s slow development in democracy is due to a lack of the (“modal man”) mentality derived from a more advanced economy (p. 184). The pressure toward teleological assumptions regarding the advancement in modernization in Turkey is too heavy for the author to ignore. Thus, he is pressured into arguing that Turkish citizens are becoming more economically minded in their voting behavior (pp. 207-208) when good empirical evidence exists that voters were economically-driven to support political parties from the very beginning, but Turan also acknowledges this at points (p. 193). This teleological argument based on Turkey’s economic advancement leads him to assert that “there are no actors in society that feel powerful enough to subvert the democratic system and any attempt to that effect would bring high costs to the perpetrator” (p. 191), and “it seems safe to argue that Turkey has reached and passed the levels beyond which a democratic form of rule becomes irreversible [sic]” (p. 206).

In the end, there are a few moments when Turan breaks from the modernization framework, and we receive a number of analytical gems. Examples are his interesting parallels between the Democrat Party of the 1950s and the Justice and Development Party (pp. 196–197) and his discussion of the structural impulses encouraging passive obedience to party leaders by parliamentary deputies (p. 202). These discussions show Turan at his best. Finally, even if one does not entirely buy the modernization theory paradigm, it is hard not to want to purchase his optimism regarding Turkey’s future trajectory. He writes, “If past experience is a guide, even if the country goes through a retrogression of democracy, it is likely to be temporary, and to be followed by more democratization” (p. 217). From the current dark shadows of a worrying retrogression of democracy in Turkey, let’s hope that the scholar’s optimistic projections for the country’s future prevail.