Turkey is a nation that social scientists in various fields have sought to interpret and that, consequently, has received abundant and diverse academic attention. Different issues have dominated these studies from era to era. For example, whereas studies of the early Republican period compare modern Turkey to the Ottoman Empire, studies of periods in the second half of the twentieth century examine multiparty political life, the tutelage system, and the governmental influence of political Islam and the army, which gradually strengthened during this period. These issues to an extent still guide the literature. However, especially after the early 2000s, social scientists have sought to make sense of the Justice and Development Party (AKP), which rose to power in 2002 claiming the ability to enable the coexistence of Islam and democracy. Although these efforts at interpretation were prominent until the early 2010s, Turkey’s swift descent into authoritarianism at the hands of the AKP and its leader, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, altered the research agenda for political scientists. Recent studies across a range of fields focus on questions of how and in what manner Turkey is being dragged into authoritarianism. Yeşim Arat and Şevket Pamuk’s Turkey: Between Democracy and Authoritarianism, to which they bring years of accumulated knowledge and experience, is one example of this new current of research.

Arat and Pamuk’s study does not rely on any specific fieldwork, and it is difficult to ascertain a fundamental research question or hypothesis driving the book’s narrative. However, it is clear that the authors are interested in the retraction of democracy in Turkey. Specifically, this study both scrutinizes meticulously and offers an expansive picture to the reader of the changes that Turkey underwent in various domains after the 1980 military coup d’état. Arat and Pamuk do not present us with a generalizable theoretical framework to help us converge on a broader explanation of the authoritarian, nationalist, and Islamic regimes through which Turkey passed; instead they take a deep dive into the Turkish manifestation of these phenomena. Nonetheless, academics who would compare Turkey to examples such as Hungary and Brazil, which quickly fell under the influence of conservative populist regimes, could use Arat and Pamuk’s study as a resource.

The book, which comprises nine separate chapters including the introduction and conclusion, illustrates the salient issues facing Turkey in a logical manner. First, the authors summarize issues such as coups d’état and nationalism, which are the fundamental issues facing Turkey and are in some way correlated to nearly every topic they consider. The sections in which they mention secularism and Islam are problematic, however. In chapter 4, “Islamists in Power,” they offer a superficial and one-dimensional analysis of the relationship between religion, state, and society in Turkey. They suggest that the conflict between the secular state and Islamist social structures generally determines the fate of Turkey. However, although this conflict is certainly significant, it is not determinative. To the contrary, the relationship of ends and means that religious groups, political configurations, and the state mechanism established with the religion of Islam is multifaceted and convoluted. This multidimensionality and intricacy have transformed the AKP over a prolonged length of time and prompted the government to move swiftly to the center. The greatest deficiency of this study may be its neglect of this fluid situation.

Chapters 2, 5, and 8, which discuss issues of urbanization, the economy, and women, respectively, are cogent despite this deficit. While questions of how and in what manner the change in urban Turkish society materialized do not receive general discussion throughout most of the study, the authors do discuss the change in urban populations in Turkey after 1980 and argue that secular segments were unable to properly interpret the urban centers where neoliberal economics and Islamic values coincided. This is a sound and accurate claim. Similarly, chapter 5, “Uneven Economic Development and Domestic Politics,” explains that Turkey’s economy, which quickly opened to foreign countries, gradually became fragile and dependent after 1980 because of erroneous and ineffective policy preferences. Moreover, this chapter clearly indicates that groups close to the regime grew wealthy with the descent into authoritarianism, as economic differences increased between classes in Turkish society. This reading is both salient and accurate. Chapter 8, “Women’s Call for Democracy,” moves beyond the views that currently dominate the literature on Turkey by separating the women’s movement into the Kurdish and Turkish women’s movements. In doing so, it fundamentally demonstrates the manner in which these two structures, which take different positions against different patriarchal configurations, joined in opposition to the male-dominated and female-exclusive policies of the AKP. The description of how the AKP’s use of religion as a means of oppression could give rise to a secular women’s movement is the most enticing section of the book.

The chapters that depict military and civilian relations demonstrate how Turkey entered a crisis of identity during the AKP regime while being wedged between Europe and the Middle East; their discussion of the rise to power of segments of the population that prioritize Islamic values in Turkey is instructive. The chapter titled “The Kurdish Revolt: Nationalism and Ethnicity” is perhaps best characterized as a decent summary that addresses the AKP and other elements in Turkey’s “Kurdish question” while ignoring the notion of Turkishness and the Kurdish “allergy” found at the core of the state structure in Turkey. Here I would have liked to see this study, which intellectually opens various doors on topics such as the women’s issues, take an equally deep look at the Kurdish issue, which is of course enormously consequential for Turkey and global politics more broadly.

In conclusion, Yeşim Arat and Şevket Pamuk’s Turkey: Between Democracy and Authoritarianism is an essential work for every academic, researcher, journalist, and expert who speculates and will continue to speculate about Turkey. In this book two experienced and prominent political scientists discuss issues of paramount importance that faced Turkey from 1980 until 2018, thereby offering the reader a useful resource for future scholarship. This discussion by two academics with relatively discrete areas of expertise, but also from a shared perspective, usefully demonstrates the breadth of political science scholarship and how it can be used to help enlighten readers.