İlter Turan’s book Turkey’s Difficult Journey to Democracy: Two Steps Forward, One Step Back is a comprehensive account of the democratization efforts made in Turkey since the late Ottoman period. Though one might assume its subtitle comes from the Ottoman military band’s marching pattern of two steps forward and one step back, it was, as the author states, in fact a “mild inspiration” from Vladimir Lenin’s famed 1904 analysis of the party politics at the Second Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party, held in 1903 (p. 210). The title is self-evident, and a more optimistic phrasing than Lenin’s own: it implies that while Turkey took many major steps toward democracy, it also faced challenges that sometimes resulted in backward steps toward authoritarianism. The title’s relative optimism comes from its implication that the progressive steps toward democracy have been more prevalent than the regressive steps, with the ultimate end of the journey still being democracy.

The book’s manuscript was completed prior to the first popular presidential elections held in Turkey, on August 10, 2014, and therefore a nine-page postscript was necessarily added so as to analyze President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s “growing authoritarianism” (p. 193) as a prime minister in early 2014, and his potential confrontations with the country’s judiciary as well as with his own Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi, AKP) in 2015. This short postscript is the only part of the book where Fethullah Gülen and his movement are mentioned throughout the book. In the time between the date of completion of the manuscript and the writing of this book review, the disagreements between Gülen and Erdoğan would turn out to be the major challenge to Turkey’s difficult journey. This gives one the impression that the steps being taken toward and away from democracy are much more rapid nowadays. As such, the book is especially timely and thought-provoking. In particular, it is especially worthwhile to read an account of the history of democratization in Turkey from the perspective of a distinguished scholar and the first Turkish president of the International Political Science Association (IPSA).

Turan’s book is divided into three major parts. In the first part, Chapter 1, the author reveals his understanding of the necessary conditions for the emergence and sustenance of a democracy. These conditions are, primarily, a level of cooperation among different groups based on a common understanding of national unity and the improved socioeconomic conditions of an industrialized economy; a developed civil society; and a market economy guaranteed by the rule of law. He considers Turkey as a case of “late” democratization, as it did not possess the required socioeconomic conditions when its first transition toward democracy took place. In this chapter, Turan also discusses a major scholarly debate over the impact of policy orientation in terms of economic and security issues, respectively. According to one school of thought, economic development and modernization would pave the way for a consolidated democracy. The rival school of thought, on the other hand, argues in favor of order and security being the first and foremost condition for democracy. This major debate is recalled throughout the book in order to explain political elites’ behavior, and thus their contribution to democratic process. According to Turan, those elites who prioritize prosperity over security in policy making are more likely to contribute to democratic politics (p. 31). The author examines how this choice between prosperity and security affected the steps being taken toward democracy even in the late Ottoman Empire and the early years of the Republic of Turkey.

In the book’s second part, from Chapter 2 to Chapter 5, Turan provides readers with insights into Turkey’s political history by means of specific references to events he considers important for the process of democratization. As an advocate of historical institutionalism emphasizing the importance of “path dependency” (p. 23) and “the context” (p. 24), Turan attempts to define those factors that have constituted the historical context. He discusses relevant themes in Turkish politics—including the political legacy, the transition to competitive politics, and the cycles of democracy interrupted by military interventions—which eventually resulted in a market-oriented economy with civilian supremacy over the military. These chapters provide valuable insights into and a comprehensive chronicle of the ongoing political struggle at the elite level. For instance, Chapter 3, which concerns the transition to competitive politics in the post-World War II era, looks to be an excellent piece for undergraduate- and graduate-level courses, as well as for scholars wishing to get a grasp of the transition from single-party rule to multi-party democracy in Turkey. In this part, Turan puts forward an especially interesting point when he discusses Turkey’s transition to competitive democracy, arguing that, without İsmet İnönü’s contribution and commitment to democracy, the existing political structure could well have resulted in a non-democratic outcome (p. 85). This statement highlights the importance of agency vis-à-vis structure in transitions to democracy. Although, in early years of the republic, İnönü had been in the more cautious camp of the Republican People’s Party (Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi, CHP) in terms of his approach and attitude toward democracy, his eventual emergence as a proponent of democracy in the post-World War II transition process raises questions to be answered by future studies. What factors, for instance, cause an individual agent or politician to act differently at critical historical junctures of political development? Another important research question for further studies can be generated by Turan’s discussion of the military’s role in politics. Throughout Chapter 5, Turan implies that the military’s overemphasis on security concerns has become a significant obstacle to democratic development, one that has only recently been avoided by civilian leaders’ supremacy in politics and their efforts motivated by prosperity and with a boost from Turkey’s European Union membership process (p. 123, p. 139). However, even though Turan considers further military intervention to be only a “remote possibility” (p. 136, p. 174), the failed coup attempt of July 2016 indicates that this was something of an overstatement on the author’s part. Whether or not this recent desire on the part of the military to return to politics was specifically caused or triggered by the civilian government’s shift to a more security-oriented approach in responding to Turkey’s enduring problems, such as the Kurdish insurgency and growing economic inequality, is yet another question that will need to be elaborated in the future.

In the book’s third part, from Chapter 6 to Chapter 8, Turan examines the mechanisms that he suggests to be important for democratization. The primary mechanism is the changing interactions among society, the economy, and politics. In his view, the relevance of economic policies has increased over time and come to have a huge impact on the reformation of society. Citizens have increasingly become rational individuals in the market economy, where politics become a tool for negotiation. While Turan appreciates this transformation (p. 173), he also points to the increased importance of identity and group exclusion as a new source of conflict in contemporary societies (p. 142). I agree with this point, as ethnic and religious cleavages in Turkish society have become more and more prevalent over time, and negotiations with the government, if any, have been shaped by such identities, a factor that undermines national unity and thus modernization theories’ ability to explain the outcome. Therefore, both representative politics and liberal negotiation mechanisms have been conducive to the emergence and solidification of ethnic and religious identities as significant elements. While Turan argues that negotiations based on economic issues could potentially pave the way for cooperation between the government and citizens, negotiations where identity-based groups have acted as adversaries of the government have not necessarily resulted in democracy. Such groups have faced an authoritarian response from the government whenever the relevant negotiations ended in failure. In Chapter 7, Turan discusses the expansion of civil society and developments in the international context as other mechanisms that contribute to democratic sustenance, while also arguing that securitization, majoritarianism, and electoral winners’ replication of the authoritarian behavior of their predecessors will continue to be potential obstacles for years to come. Finally, in the concluding chapter, the author provides his final thoughts and projections. Turan is optimistic about the upcoming period, especially when he claims that “Turkey’s democracy faces no immediate likelihood of being terminated by non-elected actors” (p. 206); or, in relation to the Kurdish question, that “the government would rely on the democratic political process rather than on instruments of security to address major societal problem [sic]” (p. 215); or that “after the loss of many lives […] both the political elites and the general public [are] coming to the conclusion that expansion of the content of individual liberties and accepting ethnic plurality […] may lead to an eventual removal of the issue as one that threatens the domestic peace of Turkey” (p. 218), as the recent past has revealed on many occasions.

Overall, Turan’s important study might be criticized on two grounds. First, although he draws extensively on the existing literature in his account of democratization in Turkey, he does not undertake a comprehensive critical literature review to introduce the existing debates, nor does he generate a conversation with those debates. This leaves the reader with some curiosity as to how the author sees his own arguments within the literature. Second, while the book is rich in empirical evidence for elite-level politics and macro-level indicators of political change in Turkey, factors at the social level (such as social inequality or social movements) and micro-level indicators (such as individuals’ attitudes toward democracy and their level of political participation) are not discussed in detail. If these factors and indicators were given more emphasis, this narrative about Turkey’s difficult journey toward democracy would be still more comprehensive.

Leaving aside those minor points, Turan’s very well-crafted book is an excellent contribution to the long-standing debates on Turkish democracy. The book’s major contribution to the literature lies in its attempt to investigate the factors that impede democracy, despite Turkey’s favorable economic transformation, by focusing on the country as a case study where multiple other factors are also highly relevant, among them cultural bifurcation, military interventions, and ethnic conflict. Therefore, this is a book that is well worth investigation by scholars of democratization as well as by students of Turkey’s political history.