UNDERSTANDING THE TURKISH ELECTION RESULTS

Photo: Begum Zorlu

Turkey’s 2023 elections granted President Erdoğan another victory. Not only did he secure another five-year term as president, but the People’s Alliance he led obtained the majority of parliamentary seats. What are the fundamental dynamics and outcomes of the election process? How did Erdoğan and his coalition manage to claim victory? The view from PSA Turkish Politics for the PSA Blog.

Seda Demiralp (Isik University) argues that the election results were quite disappointing for opposition parties. She proposes that “opposition parties hoped to see that even in hybrid regimes where elections are not entirely free and fair, it is possible to change autocratic incumbents via elections.”

“Also, most observers had thought that Erdoğan had never been this close to losing an election over the past 20 years, mainly because of the major economic crisis Turkey has been going through and the February earthquake that destroyed various cities and took nearly 50,000 lives.”

Demiralp also proposes that many observers wrongly assumed that the structural conditions were so ripe for change that any opposition candidate could win.

She adds: “The opposition’s decision to form an alliance and pursue a campaign that focused on economic problems was promising. This new focus on economic issues contrasted with former campaigns prioritising a return to republican principles (such as secularism) and Western values, which hardly brought new voters in the past. However, the campaign had important shortcomings too. 

Too many and diffused promises, lack of coordination among opposition leaders, and perhaps most importantly, opposition leader Kılıçdaroğlu’s lack of charisma to beat Erdoğan were among the main disadvantages of the opposition campaign.

Furthermore, Erdoğan’s campaign appeared relatively weak to many observers, raising hopes for the opposition. The massive economic crisis limited Erdoğan’s ability to focus on daily economic needs, in contrast to his past campaigns. Instead, he pointed at past accomplishments and presented himself not as a mere political figure but as a subject of love. Campaign videos asked voters to choose love (for Erdoğan) over material benefits and emphasised that Erdoğan could still pull the nation out of the economic crisis. Yet, Erdoğan’s killer move came later. In a rally one week before the elections, Erdoğan showed a doctored video demonstrating PKK militants cheering for Kılıçdaroğlu. Erdoğan claimed that Kılıçdaroğlu had allied with the PKK. His new message was that voters faced a choice between national survival and other issues. Kılıçdaroğlu failed to react to these accusations in a timely and effective manner. On May 14, to the surprise of many polling companies, Erdoğan and his People’s Alliance took the first-round lead.”

To end, Demiralp states that “with a desperate effort, Kılıçdaroğlu made a radical turn before the runoff. Not only did he adopt a harsh nationalist discourse, but he also embraced a negative campaign targeting Erdoğan. Yet, with his ill-prepared speeches, awkward masculinity performance and overly eclectic messages that made him look spiritless, he failed to turn the tables and lost in the second round.  

Turkey’s 2023 elections failed to provide a model to change autocratic incumbents via elections. Yet, it provided important lessons about limits of economic voting, the role of agency, and the power of emotions over reason.”

Buğra Güngör (Geneva Graduate Institute) proposes that migration has shaped the debate. He argues that: “Even though millions of registered refugees and thousands of irregular migrants constitute one of the most simmering public and political debates, we observed that both incumbent and opposition leaders did not significantly bring them forth before the first round of the presidential elections.

However, as Dr Sinan Ogan, an opposition candidate who the right-wing and nationalist Ata Alliance nominated, has received more than five per cent of the votes that Erdogan and Kilicdaroglu could not secure the majority in the first round, Kilicdaroglu and other leaders of the Nation Alliance drastically switched to an anti-irregular migrant/refugee rhetoric to garner the support of the nationalist electorate – especially in Central Anatolia and Black Sea.”

“Although this strategy did not help Kilicdaroglu to win, it is highly likely that policies and rhetoric concerning the repatriation of irregular migrants and refugees will come back before the March 2024 municipal elections.”

“The existing level of political polarisation in the country would extensively shape the discourse surrounding the millions of refugees and thousands of irregular migrants. Therefore, certain parties would further use the migration issue in Turkey, making a better electoral performance.””

Begum Zorlu (City, University of London) argues that the international dynamics that shaped the electoral process deserve more attention. She states that: “especially how populism transcends borders and foreign policy becomes an arena where the incumbent claims competence has been vital in this electoral cycle.” 

She underlines that primarily “the AKP’s populism at home is shaped by its global contestatory frames contributing to a boundary between us and them. Since the Gezi Protests of 2013, but especially after the 2016 coup attempt, the construction of the other has been vital in justifying securitisation, as the AKP elites link the political opposition with foreign threats through a populist framing.” 

She adds: “Furthermore, the AKP elites repeatedly underlined how they had transformed Turkey into a global player and praised that they could negotiate with both sides in the Russia-Ukraine war.

While Erdoğan dominates the AKP’s foreign policy outlook, the opposition was more fragmented in raising a strong voice on where they stand on foreign policy.

This contributed to the incumbent framing itself as the solo agent that can maintain Turkey’s national interest. 

APPROACHING THE TURKISH ELECTIONS WITH A GLOBAL LENS

It is official: Turkey’s presidential election will go to a second round. The two candidates, Erdoğan and Kılıçadaroğlu, differ immensely in their domestic politics. What about their foreign policy outlook? Will the opposition candidate promise to break away from Turkey’s assertive foreign policy? How do international dynamics shape this contentious electoral process?

Photo by Burak Bau015fgu00f6ze on Pexels.com

Our co-convenor Begum Zorlu (City, University of London) has written on the role of foreign policy in Turkish elections for the PSA Blog.

When approached with the question: “what’s foreign policy got to do with the Turkish election” one feels the urge to respond: everything. After 20 years in power, and with international spotlight events like the challenging of the Israeli president Shimon Peres at Davos or comparing German officials to Nazis, Erdoğan and his party dominates the conversation on foreign policy. 

Contestatory moves like these are more important than they seem. These statements are the backbone of the incumbent’s populist foreign policy, where the party contests what it labels the “unjust” and “broken” international order, embodied in Erdoğan’s famous slogan “the world is bigger than five”.

The expansion of an injustice frame and how it resonates in the world should not be underestimated.

Followers of Erdoğan around the world voice this vision and have repeatedly underlined that he represents the interests of Muslims around the globe or supports “the voices of the repressed”. This contributes to promoting the incumbent’s framing that without Erdoğan, Turkey’s leadership in contesting injustices domestically and globally will be halted. 

The AKP and the International

Under Erdoğan, Turkey has increasingly followed a confrontational foreign policy. However, this has not always been the case. Throughout its first term, along with its acceptance of EU conditionality as part of its desire for EU accession, the AKP used its foreign policy to advance its domestic power. In particular, the AKP came to present itself as a model democratic and Islamic state in the early 2000s. As Cihan Tuğal’s work uncovered, the US was instrumental in promoting what has been termed the “Turkish model”, which resonated with the democracy promotion agenda of the US.

This context changed in the 2010s with the AKP aiming to have an increased influence in the Middle East in the context of Arab Uprisings and increasing authoritarianism at home. After the Gezi Protests of 2013, the AKP adopted a “fifth column[1] frame” to delegitimise the opposition, accusing them of conspiring with international actors. With the 2016 coup attempt, increasing repression had domestic and international consequences. The AKP’s foreign policy took a more interventionist turn, as it directly interfered in multiple conflicts, and ultra-nationalist voices intensified in foreign policy. Turkey’s military intervention in Syria hampered relations with its Western allies and justified the repression of critical voices at home. This is how we came to 2023, with increased domestic and international polarisation. The blocking of Sweden’s NATO membership for example clearly demonstrates the intersection of the domestic and the global. The AKP accused Sweden of harbouring terrorist organisations, highlighting the distinction between friends and foes on both political dimensions.

However, interventionism is not the sole component of the AKP’s foreign policy, and the party argues it follows a competent foreign policy. In their election campaign, the AKP praised that they could negotiate with both sides in the Russia-Ukraine war, make concrete progress such as the grain corridor and prisoner exchange, and keep the possibility of peace on the table. They frame themselves as peacemakers and have used this mediation role to enhance their legitimacy domestically and internationally.

What about the Opposition and Kılıçdaorğlu ?

On the other hand, the political parties that make up the Nation Alliance and Kılıçdaorğlu have been weaker in voicing foreign policy and focused more on domestic issues like Turkey’s economic collapse, democratic backsliding, and justice. When one looks at the electoral manifestos, while foreign policy makes up a small portion of the opposition coalition, it is one of the highlights of the incumbent’s document.

The opposition coalition and their presidential candidate promise a change in foreign policy. Contrasting themselves to the government’s policies, the opposition block’s manifesto claims that they would change Turkey’s foreign policy in the Middle East, respect the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the countries in the region and would not interfere in their internal affairs by “taking sides.” The presidential candidate Kılıçdaorğlu, on the other hand, bridges his domestic call for restoring democracy with his foreign policy outlook. The opposition coalition’s manifesto underlines the dangers of personalisation in foreign policy, and Kılıçdaorğlu states that he wants to follow the democratisation processes promoted by the EU.

What about the stance on Russia ?A couple of days before the elections, Kılıçdaorğlu stated in an interview that if he won, he would bring Turkey closer to NATO and the EU and would be willing to impose sanctions on Russia. He has also accused Russia of releasing fake content on social media and criticised the government for maintaining energy dependency on Russia. This has become an area of contestation between the candidates; as a response, Erdoğan stated that Russia is one of Turkey’s most important allies.

While the opposition has a a pro-Western stance, there is also the framing of dignity from the block in their relations with the West. Their manifesto underlines that there should be a “relationship based on equality” with the US. Similarly, in relations with the EU, the opposition block calls for joint responsibility and burden sharing between Turkey and the EU on refugees and notes its intention to review the Turkey-EU migration deal. Therefore, it is not a coincidence that the coalition’s election manifesto has combined migration policies with foreign policy.

From what can be interpreted at the moment, one of the reasons why the six-party opposition coalition is not bold on foreign policy is that this serves as a strategy to hold the group together. The block consists of different voices, from more nationalist to centre-right parties. While Erdoğan dominates the AKP’s foreign policy outlook, the opposition is more fragmented. Also, even though the pro-Kurdish HDP party was not part of the coalition, the cities where Kılıçdaorğlu’s votes were the highest were Kurdish-majority provinces. As the first round of voting demonstrated, without the Kurds’ support, Kılıçdaorğlu cannot be elected.

The nationalist voices in foreign policy are likely to increase whoever gets elected, as the far-right candidate, Sinan Ogan, has received around five per cent of the votes and is critical in determining Turkey’s new president. He recently spoke to Reuters in an interview stating that he would only endorse Kılıçdaorğlu in the runoff if “he ruled out any concessions to the pro-Kurdish party”. Ogan defines himself as the representative of Turkish nationalists and is a staunch supporter of cross-border military operations. He also voices an anti-migrant agenda, arguing that “they will send Syrian refugees by force if necessary”. Therefore the upcoming debates will reflect the anti-migrant and nationalist framing advocated by Ogan and the far-right.

Conclusion

International policy circles are debating the possible scenarios with the two prospective candidates, evaluating whether there will be a break with Turkey’s assertive foreign policy if Kılıçdaorğlu gets elected. The answer is not straightforward, and the international dimension of the election deserves more attention. The AKP’s populism at home is shaped by its global contestatory frames contributing to a boundary between us and them. Especially the construction of the other has been vital in justifying securitisation, as the AKP elites link the political opposition, especially the Kurdish opposition, with foreign threats through a populist framing.

The elections were not free and fair, and as revelations of voting irregularities come in, there are contentious days ahead. If Kılıçdaorğlu gets elected, he promises to decrease the impact of foreign policy on domestic politics and strengthen diplomatic institutions. As stated, Kılıçdaorğlu associates democratisation with enhanced partnership with Western actors, yet the opposition block does not promote a solid and uniform voice on their interpretation of the international order. While the coalition aims to restructure foreign policy and promote a more “rational” foreign policy, the AKP uses the sphere of foreign policy to bolden its injustice frame at home and around the globe. If Erdoğan stays in power, Turkey’s populist and assertive foreign policy will likely continue.

[1] A fifth column is defined as a group or faction of subversive agents who attempt to undermine a nation’s solidarity by any means at their disposal.

Book Launch with Dimitar Bechev: Turkey Under Erdogan

PSA Turkish Politics Specialist Group is inviting you to its virtual book launch event in which Dr Dimitar Bechev will present his new book“Turkey Under Erdogan How a Country Turned from Democracy and the West” published by Yale University Press.

The event will take place on Zoom on Thursday, 12 January 2023, 15:00 – 16:00 GMT.

The book will be discussed by Lauren McLaren, Professor of Politics at the University of Leicester and Dr Marc Sinan Winrow (LSE).

The presentations will be followed by feedback from discussants and a Q&A session.


Registration for the event can be made on Eventbrite.

About the speaker

Dr Dimitar Bechev is a lecturer at the Oxford School of Global and Area Studies (OSGA), University of Oxford.

He specialises in the international politics of Eastern Europe and Eurasia.

Bechev is the author of Turkey under Erdogan (Yale University Press, 2022), Historical Dictionary of North Macedonia (Rowman, 2019), and Rival Power: Russia in Southeast Europe (Yale UP, 2017) as well as co-editor of Russia Rising: Putin’s Foreign Policy in the Middle East and North Africa (Bloomsbury, 2021).

To access more information about Turkey Under Erdogan How a Country Turned from Democracy and the West” click here.

Call for Papers for the 2022 PSA Turkish Politics Early Career Workshop

Photo by Oziel Gu00f3mez on Pexels.com

We are happy to announce first Early Career Workshop organized by the Turkish Politics Specialist Group of the Political Studies Association (PSA). This workshop aims to bring together postgraduate students, postdoctoral researchers, and early-career academics who study various aspects of Turkish politics.

The workshop offers PhD students and early career scholars an opportunity to exchange ideas, receive feedback on their methodological approach, and develop their knowledge of different methodological approaches to studying Turkish politics.

The workshop will be held as a virtual event on Wednesday, November 30th, between 13:00-17:00 (Turkish time).

The workshop will have two sections. In the first half, Dr. Osman Zeki Gokce (Medipol University) will discuss some of the fundamentals of research design in politics. In the second half, PhD students and early career scholars will present their own research, with a particular focus on their methodologies. Each presenter will receive feedback from Dr Gokce and two discussants, as well as opening up for a wider Q&A from the virtual audience. We ask that all participants read all papers before the event and are prepared to give constructive feedback in a supportive atmosphere on each other’s work.

There will be up to six presentations, and these can range from full papers and research designs to pre-analysis papers. Each paper presentation and collective discussion will last 45 minutes.

Applicants should submit their full papers, research designs, or pre-analysis plans by filling out this form by November 8, 2022.

We will notify successful applicants by November 14.

Participants will be required to submit their final submission by November 23. The detailed agenda of the workshop will be released after the applicants are informed of the outcome.

We very much look forward to receiving your applications!

Workshop Organizers


Dr. Bugra Güngör (The Geneva Graduate Institute)
Prof. Yaprak Gürsoy (LSE)
Dr. Seçkin Sertdemir-Ozdemir (LSE)
Dr. Matthew Whiting (University of York)
Dr. Begüm Zorlu (City, University of London)

Call for Papers: Greek Politics and Turkish Politics Specialist Groups Joint Panel

We are sharing the call for papers for the joint panel hosted by Greek Politics and Turkish Politics Specialist Groups at the PSA Annual Conference 2023. The conference will take place at the University of Liverpool, between 3-5 April 2023.

The Greek and Turkish Politics Specialist Groups of the PSA welcome papers for a joint panel, marking the centenary of the Lausanne Treaty in 1923. Taking stock of 100 years of bilateral relations, papers can cover any aspect of state formation in Greece and Turkey and relations between the two nations, including how the history of nationalism and state building impacts relations between the two countries today. Papers with a longitudinal focus covering both Greece and Turkey would be preferred within the general theme of “100 Years since the Lausanne Treaty: Reflections on State-Building, Nationalism and Peace.”

About PSA 2023

The PSA’s Annual Conference 2023 will be held at the University of Liverpool. It plans to combine both in-person and digital presentations. Therefore, we welcome papers which will be presented digitally as well as those which will be presented in-person (please state which format you would prefer in your abstract). Full conference details are available at this link.

Deadline

If you would like to be considered for inclusion in this joint panel, email us a 200-word abstract by the 26th of September 2022 to BOTH email addresses below.

If you have any questions or queries, please do not hesitate to contact us.
turkishpoliticspsa@gmail.com
v.tsagkroni@fsw.leidenuniv.nl


Online Book Launch⎢Police, Provocation, Politics Counterinsurgency in İstanbul

PSA Turkish Politics Specialist Group is inviting you to its virtual book launch event in which Dr Deniz Yonucu will present her new book Police, Provocation, Politics: Counterinsurgency in Istanbul published by Cornell University Press.

The event will take place on Zoom on Monday, 19 September 2022, 18:30 – 19:30 BST

The book will be discussed by Elif Babül, Associate Professor of Anthropology, Mount Holyoke College and Joost Jongerden, Associate Professor of Rural Sociology, Wageningen University.

The presentations will be followed by feedback from discussants and a Q&A session.
Registration for the event can be made on Eventbrite.

About the Book

In Police, Provocation, Politics, Deniz Yonucu presents a counterintuitive analysis of contemporary policing practices, focusing particular attention on the incitement of counterviolence, perpetual conflict, and ethnosectarian discord by the state security apparatus. Situating Turkish policing within a global context and combining archival work and oral history narratives with ethnographic research, Yonucu demonstrates how counterinsurgency strategies from the Cold War and decolonial eras continue to inform contemporary urban policing in Istanbul. Shedding light on counterinsurgency’s affect-and-emotion-generating divisive techniques and urban dimensions, Yonucu shows how counterinsurgent policing strategies work to intervene in the organization of political dissent in a way that both counters existing alignments among dissident populations and prevents emergent ones.

Turkish Politics Specialist Group Virtual Book Launch Event with Sevgi Adak

PSA Turkish Politics Specialist Group is inviting you to its virtual book launch event in which Dr Sevgi Adak will present her new book Anti-Veiling Campaigns in Turkey: State, Society and Gender in the Early Republic published by I.B. Tauris and Bloomsbury.

The event will take place on Zoom on Monday, 6 June, between 17:00 – 19:00 BST.

The book will be discussed by Dr Nazanin Shahrokni, Assistant Professor of Gender and Globalisation, at the London School of Economics and Dr Gavin Brockett, Associate Professor and Vice-Dean of Arts, Wilfrid Laurier.

The event will be chaired by Professor Yaprak Gürsoy, European Institute, LSE.

The presentations will be followed by feedback from discussants and a Q&A session.
Registration for the event can be made on Eventbrite.

About the Book

Adak’s new book adopts a historical approach to examining the context and formation of the meanings of veiling and unveiling during interwar Turkey. In this book, Adak reveals how the interwar period marks a moment that the way women’s dress turned into an issue of national mobilisation. She uncovers the complexities of the Kemalist modernisation project by presenting unpublished archival data and investigating how women responded to anti-veiling campaigns. The book shifts the focus from the high politics of the elite to the implementation of state policies and situates the anti-veiling campaigns as a space where the Kemalist reforms were negotiated, compromised and resisted by societal actors.

Our PSA 2022 Programme is Out

As PSA’s specialist group for Turkish Politics, we are hosting four panels on Turkish Politics at the 2022 PSA Annual Conference. Please find below the programme of our panels that focus on multiple and timely issues on Turkish politics. The conference is taking place both at the University of York and digitally. There is still time to register and join the discussion even if you are not presenting a paper.

PANEL 1 – State Formation, Identity and Emotions in Turkish Politics

The map of Sèvres Agreement
Source: Foreign Policy


12 APRIL 2022, TUESDAY, 9:30-11:00
SLB106


Summary of Panel: A specific state identity, drawing on a specific vision of Turkish nationalism, was institutionalised at the foundation of the Turkish state. This process set a path that embedded certain emotions into Turkish politics and ensured that the Turkish state represented itself, and understood itself, in a particular way. This panel examines how the process of state formation led to particular visions of the Turkish state, often relying on a sense of Otherness, and how deeply embedded emotions around Turkish political identity play out in politics today.


Chair: Matthew Whiting

PAPER 1 – State Formation and Civil War on the European Periphery 1917-1923: an essay on Turkish exceptionalism
Bill Kissane
PAPER 2 – Continuity in Change: Anxiety in Turkish Politics Through Sèvres and Lausanne Syndromes
Erman Ermihan and İrem Karamık
PAPER 3 – “Victorious Victims”: The Analysis of the Nationalist Poems Which Are Written by the Ordinary People
Tuğçe Erçetin
PAPER 4 – Ontological Security, Emotions, and the Turkish-Israeli Rapprochement
Özlem Kayhan Pusane and Aslı Ilgıt
PAPER 5 – Political Agency in Agonistic Contexts: Turkey and Politics of Disaster
Senem Yıldırım Özdem

PANEL 2 – The “Local” and the State in Turkey

Photo by hilal on Pexels.com

12 APRIL 2022, TUESDAY, 13:30-15:00
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Summary of Panel: The importance of the “local” is often overlooked given the prominence of the central state to Turkish politics. This panel reasserts the importance of the local level by examining how local dynamics, local identities and local politics have been an important aspect of Turkish politics, both at the foundation of the state and today.


Chair: Matthew Whiting

PAPER 1 – ‘Hybridity by Design’: Between Liberal Norms and Illiberal Peace in Turkey
Esra Dilek
PAPER 2 – Can intervoter contact reduce support for electoral violence? A survey experiment from Turkey
Buğra Güngör
PAPER 3 – State-building and Borderlands: Control of the Turkish State on an Everyday Level
Dilan Okçuoğlu

PANEL 3 – The State and Women’s Rights in Turkey

Photo by Beyza Kaplan

12 APRIL 2022, TUESDAY, 15:30-17:00
SLB106


Summary of Panel: The AKP has an ambivalent relationship with women’s rights and women’s political participation. After initially supporting women’s rights as part of the EU accession process, more recently the position of women has become increasingly precarious under the AKP. This was further compounded when Turkey withdrew from the ‘Istanbul Convention’ on combatting violence against women and domestic violence. Support from women has been an important component of the AKP’s populist strategy, while the AKP has generally promoted a traditional and conservative view of women’s position within society and encouraged a patriarchal vision of the family. This panel explores the AKP’s policies towards women throughout its time in power, its approach t women’s rights, and its framing of a traditional understanding of family through the state’s institutions.


Chair: Yaprak Gürsoy


PAPER 1 – “Strengthening the Family” through Education in Turkey
Ayça Günaydın Kaymakçıoğlu
PAPER 2 – From Liberalism to Conservatism: Turkey’s Women Policies after 2011
Çağlar Ezikoğlu
PAPER 3 – The Puzzle of International Norm Transfer: Exploration of Women’s Rights in Turkey
Sebahat Derin Atışkan
PAPER 4 – “Uncooperation” for Women’s Rights: Turkey’s Withdrawal from Council of Europe’s Istanbul Convention
Tuğba Bayar
PAPER 5 – How AKP Meets with Women: Politics of Party’s Women’s Branch
Nur Sinem Kourou

PANEL 4 – Democracy, Autocratization and Party Politics in Turkey

AFP PHOTO / OZAN KOSE

13 APRIL 2022, WEDNESDAY, 9:30-11:00
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Summary of Panel: Turkey is a vital case for understanding the recent trend of autocratization and populism observable in some hybrid regimes. Over its 20 years in power, the AKP has become increasingly centred around its leader, Recep Tayyip
Erdoğan. Yet the longer the AKP and Erdoğan remain in power, the more it raises under-examined questions around how the party maintains its support and how manages challenges from opposition groups that threaten its dominance. This panel examines the populist strategies of the AKP, ongoing autocratization in Turkey, and government-opposition dynamics in this political landscape.


Chair: Yaprak Gürsoy


PAPER 1 – Politicization of Corruption in Turkey: Populists and their Rivals
Seda Demiralp
PAPER 2 – The news media as a conduit and target of “disinformation” in Turkey
Natalie Martin
PAPER 3 – What is in a Bridge? Developmentalist Economic Imaginaries and Partisanship Under Competitive Authoritarianism
Aykut Öztürk
PAPER 4 – Oppositional Unity in Competitive Authoritarian Regimes: A Comparison of Turkey and Hungary
Pelin Ayan Musil

Member Publications | Sevgi Adak’s New Book Looks at Anti-Veiling Campaigns in Turkey

A new book from our member Sevgi Adak titled “Anti-Veiling Campaigns in Turkey
State, Society and Gender in the Early Republic” has been published by Bloomsbury Publishing.

Sevgi Adak’s new book adopts a historical approach to examine the context and the formation of the meanings of veiling and unveiling during interwar Turkey. In this book, Adak reveals how the interwar period marks a moment that the way women dress turned into an issue of national mobilisation. She uncovers the complexities of the Kemalist modernisation project by presenting unpublished archival data and investigating how women responded to anti-veiling campaigns.

According to Bloomsbury Publishing the book: “shifts the focus from the high politics of the elite to the implementation of state policies” and “situates the anti-veiling campaigns as a space where the Kemalist reforms were negotiated, compromised and resisted by societal actors”.

To read an extract of the book please click on this link.

#PSA22: Call for Papers for Panels on All Aspects of Turkish Politics

Photo by Oziel Gu00f3mez on Pexels.com

The PSA’s Annual Conference 2022 will be held in partnership with University of York and Sage Publishing.

The conference theme this year, under the title “Politics from the Margins” is inviting a reflection on shifting centres of power in the global, regional, national and  subnational political order.

Once again, this year the Turkish Politics Specialist Group will be organising four panels for the conference. Whilst the theme for the conference is ‘Politics from the Margins’, we are happy to receive quality abstracts on any aspect of Turkish politics, broadly defined.

The conference plans to combine both in-person presentations and digital presentations. Therefore, we welcome papers and panels which will be presented digitally as well as those which will be presented in-person (please state which format you would prefer in your abstract).

Full conference details are available at:
https://www.psa.ac.uk/events/psa22-annual-conference

And Conference website is: https://psa22.exordo.com/ 

If you would like to be considered for inclusion in one of these panels, please email us a 200-word abstract by the 4th of October 2021 to the email addresses turkishpoliticspsa@gmail.com

Should you have any questions or queries, please do not hesitate to contact us.

Yaprak Gursoy and Matthew Whiting