Rethinking the Welfare Party : analysis of the 1991 election campaign

Abstract

This thesis is an attempt to reconsider the Welfare Party- WP on the basis of its 1991 election campaign. The thesis introduces the Welfare Party from a historical point of view, considering the party as a continuum of a tradition in the Turkish political thought. Based on the picture drawn from the analysis of the texts of the 1991 campaign, the thesis tries to discover the constituents of the discourse of the party. In doing so it is attempted to interpret the WP by enlarging the limits of the interpretative hermeneutic circle shaped around the blueprints of laicist-Kemalist perspective. The conceptualisation of 'alternative modernities' as well as social and political thought of Ziya Gokalp is employed in rethinking the WP