Browsing by Subject "Political culture--Turkey."

Now showing 1 - 2 of 2

Open Access
Civilizing process from above: culture and state in Turkey, 1923-1945
(2000) Çolak, Yılmaz
This dissertation deals with the formation of the official notion of culture during the early Republican era (1923-1945) from a historico-political perspective. This formation reflected the civilizing process from above, directed and determined by the state. The dissertation will analyze the legal and institutional bases of the discursive formation of culture by focusing on the cultural institutions of the Republic, especially the THS and the TLS. Here, the concept of culture will be examined as inherent to the state and its project, promoting the construction of an identity. The dissertation will discuss that culture in the state discourse, overlapping all expressed through civilization, denoted the modern state of mind and way of life as a high, developed category and so came to be the name of re-ordering and re-cultivating the society, taming the people and creating future-generations. Based on a hierarchical and assimilationist understanding, it was the sole means to determine the scope of the public sphere and membership to both political and cultural community. In this sense, it is inclusionary and, at the same time, exclusionary. The Kemalist notion of culture as construction has become more and more a politically contested issue, which has put its stamp on Turkish political life.
Open Access
The democrat as a social type : the case of Turkey in the 1990s
(2011) Akdeniz, Eylem
The main purpose of this dissertation is the explanation of the emergence of a new social type of political opinion producers in Turkey, namely, "the Democrat", throughout the two decades following the 1980 military coup. The common characteristics that constitute the Democrat is investigated utilizing the "social type analysis" approach. Within that methodological framework, the following analytical steps are followed: (1) First, in order to identify the components of the social type, a socio-historical analysis the political history of Turkey between 1980-1999 is completed, with three focal points: The September 12, 1980 coup (with specific emphasis on neo-liberal restructuring of Turkish state and Özalism); re-emergence of the Kurdish Question; and the revival of the Islamic movement. (2) Secondly, collected qualitative data, through in-depth interviews with three representative figures of the Democrat (Ali Bayramoğlu, Etyen Mahçupyan, KürĢat Bumin) is analyzed in order to lay out the profile of the social type. (3) Lastly, the constitutive components of Democrat as a social type are brought together, in relation to the qualitative data and the socio-historical analysis.