• About
  • Policies
  • What is openaccess
  • Library
  • Contact
Advanced search
      View Item 
      •   BUIR Home
      • University Library
      • Bilkent Theses
      • Theses - Department of Political Science and Public Administration
      • Dept. of Political Science and Public Administration - Ph.D. / Sc.D.
      • View Item
      •   BUIR Home
      • University Library
      • Bilkent Theses
      • Theses - Department of Political Science and Public Administration
      • Dept. of Political Science and Public Administration - Ph.D. / Sc.D.
      • View Item
      JavaScript is disabled for your browser. Some features of this site may not work without it.

      Portrait of a Turkish social democrat : İsmail Cem

      Thumbnail
      View / Download
      6.5 Mb
      Author
      Örmeci, Ozan
      Advisor
      Burçak, Berrak
      Date
      2011
      Publisher
      Bilkent University
      Language
      English
      Type
      Thesis
      Item Usage Stats
      147
      views
      57
      downloads
      Abstract
      İsmail Cem (1940-2007) was a Turkish intellectual and social democratic politician who spent his life investigating the characteristics and problems of Turkish modernization and social democratic solutions to these problems. Cem started his career as a peculiar socialist journalist who had a special curiosity towards the Ottoman past in the late 1960s and early 1970s. With his books and articles he became an influential and prestigious figure in the leftist intellectual and political circles and served as the manager of Turkish Radio and Television Corporation (TRT). Unlike usual leftist-modernist intellectuals, he was very critical of “top to bottom” Turkish modernization and had propositions to solve Turkey’s political problems within the limits of democracy. During these years, Cem’s democratic socialism slowly evolved into social democracy. Starting from the 1980s, Cem appeared this time as a social democratic politician and tried to realize his projects and reduce his theories into practice. He was one of the leading figures of Turkish social democracy and was the creator of the “Anatolian Left” together with Deniz Baykal. In the mid-1990s he served for a short time as the Minister of Culture and starting from 1997 -with short interruptions- for five years he worked as the Foreign Minister of Turkey. He continued to write about Turkish politics and foreign policy and left behind an important collection of books and articles. İsmail Cem saw his life’s work as involving basically three tasks: to reconcile Turkey with its Ottoman past by softening the radical modernist mentality of the earlier Republican period both on the intellectual and social levels, to find solutions to Turkey’s various political problems by making a social democratic interpretation of Kemalism and thus, achieving democratic consolidation in Turkey and to transform his country into a respected regional power in international relations by pursuing an active foreign policy through full membership to the European Union as well as by developing relations with Middle Eastern and Eurasian countries. Both as a public intellectual and politician, he was able to take considerable steps in order to realize these three tasks, though he did not have chance to complete his mission. Although he was an important part of the intellectual force behind Turkey’s pro-Western secular segments, we do not know too much about Cem’s personal life and intellectual development throughout the years. This thesis is an attempt to analyze İsmail Cem by focusing on his life, his ideas, his political career, his propositions to Turkey’s major democratic problems and his foreign policy understanding and practices analytically.
      Keywords
      Ismail Cem
      Republican People’s Party
      Social Democracy
      Turkish Left
      Kemalism
      New Left
      Turkish Foreign Policy
      Permalink
      http://hdl.handle.net/11693/15586
      Collections
      • Dept. of Political Science and Public Administration - Ph.D. / Sc.D. 100
      Show full item record

      Browse

      All of BUIRCommunities & CollectionsTitlesAuthorsAdvisorsBy Issue DateKeywordsTypeDepartmentsThis CollectionTitlesAuthorsAdvisorsBy Issue DateKeywordsTypeDepartments

      My Account

      Login

      Statistics

      View Usage StatisticsView Google Analytics Statistics

      Bilkent University

      If you have trouble accessing this page and need to request an alternate format, contact the site administrator. Phone: (312) 290 1771
      Copyright © Bilkent University - Library IT

      Contact Us | Send Feedback | Off-Campus Access | Admin | Privacy