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401. AK Party's Foreign Policy: Is Turkey Turning Away from the West?

Author:
Kılıç Buğra Kanat
Publication Date:
03-2010
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Insight Turkey
Institution:
SETA Foundation for Political, Economic and Social Research
Abstract:
This article agrees that there is a transformation in Turkish foreign policy. It suggests that the changes in foreign policy are not aimed to de-Westernize Turkey; instead they are attempts to create an autonomous, self-regulating, and self-confident foreign policy agenda while normalizing the previous crisis-driven policymaking in Turkey's foreign relations. These changes include: broadening of Turkey's foreign policy agenda to include regions other than Europe and North America, using the expertise of new actors in shaping foreign policy (such as civil experts and NGOs) and transforming decision making mechanisms to incorporate new initiatives. In fact, this article, while not denying some recurring problems in Turkey's foreign policy, suggests that Turkey is not turning away from the West; but striving to reconfigure and reformulate its foreign policy, reflecting the demands of an increasingly open and democratic society and adapting to the realities of a multi-polar world.
Topic:
Foreign Policy
Political Geography:
Europe, Turkey, and North America

402. Sons of the Conquerors: The Rise of the Turkic World

Author:
Stefan Höjelid
Publication Date:
03-2010
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Insight Turkey
Institution:
SETA Foundation for Political, Economic and Social Research
Abstract:
“One spring day towards the end of the cold war, a time of surprises, my teleprinter shuddered into action. A colleague in Beijing was sending a message: members of an ethnic group called the Uygurs, of whom I had never heard, were demonstrating in the streets of Urumqi, capital of the north-western Chinese province of Xinjiang. The protesters were denouncing the communist leadership in Beijing and chanting the name of an exiled leader said to be living in Turkey, a man named 'Isa'. My colleague had a simple and urgent question: Could I trace Isa down?”
Topic:
Cold War
Political Geography:
China, Turkey, and Beijing

403. Kemalism in Turkish Politics: The Republican People's Party, Secularism and Nationalism

Author:
Metin Heper
Publication Date:
03-2010
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Insight Turkey
Institution:
SETA Foundation for Political, Economic and Social Research
Abstract:
The title of this book is a misnomer: the title should have been “The Republican People Party and Kemalism” for the book aims to unravel why this leftist political party in Turkey has consistently garnered a number of votes less than centre-right political parties have, and this failure is attributed to the party's close relationship with Kemalism rather than with the genuine left.
Political Geography:
Turkey

404. Orhan Pamuk, translated by Maureen Freely, The Museum of Innocence

Author:
Michael McGaha
Publication Date:
03-2010
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Insight Turkey
Institution:
SETA Foundation for Political, Economic and Social Research
Abstract:
One of the most distinctive things about Orhan Pamuk's writing is the playful way he tantalizes his readers by constantly blurring the boundaries between truth and fiction. By having his first-person narrators include many well-known aspects of the novelist's own life in their tales, he keeps us guessing about which parts of the story actually happened and which are imaginary. When he published his first few novels, only people who were personally acquainted with the author or his family could participate in this guessing game. As he has become increasingly famous—and especially since the publication of his memoir Istanbul: Memories and the City—many more of his loyal readers have been drawn in. Not only have his parents, his brother, his grandmother, and even the family servants become familiar figures, but fictional characters from his early novels, such as the wealthy merchant Cevdet Bey and the newspaper columnist Celal Salik turn up with such regularity in later works that they have come to seem equally real. With The Museum of Innocence Pamuk has taken this game to another level. The cover of the novel features a photo of four people parked beside the Bosphorus in a 1956 Chevrolet just like the one described in the novel as belonging to the protagonist's father; two of those people are easily recognizable as Pamuk's parents. A note on the dust jacket attributes the photo to “Ahmet Isikci.” Attentive readers will remember Ahmet as the character personifying the young Orhan Pamuk in his first novel, Cevdet Bey and His Sons.Even weirder is the fact that beginning next summer, if all goes according to plan, you will actually be able to visit the museum supposedly created by Kemal Basmacı, the protagonist of The Museum of Innocence, as a monument to his lost love, Füsun Keskin. That museum will contain many mementoes of Orhan Pamuk's own childhood and youth, such as his tricycle, as well as 4,213 cigarette butts allegedly smoked by Füsun, and many other, equally fascinating objects, such as the ceramic dog that once reposed on a doily on top of her parents' television set. I'm sure you'll agree that this is well worth the price of admission, but if you take your copy of The Museum of Innocence with you, you will get in free.
Political Geography:
Istanbul

405. Islamic Literature in Contemporary Turkey from Epic to Novel

Author:
Roberta Micallef
Publication Date:
03-2010
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Insight Turkey
Institution:
SETA Foundation for Political, Economic and Social Research
Abstract:
This work's title Islamic Literature in Contemporary Turkey From Epic to Novel might give some readers the impression that this book is about different genres of Islamic literature available in Turkey today. It is not. Readers familiar with Bakhtin's essay, “The Epic and the Novel: Towards a Methodology for the Study of the Novel” will be better prepared for what is in this book. Çayır investigates Islamism and the changing compositions of Islamic identities in Turkey through a study of the Islamic literary fictions of the 1980s and 1990s. He explores the political and sociological processes of identity construction in the context of Turkey in that period. Instead of opting for breadth, the author examines Islamic novels in depth by focusing on two 'salvation novels' of the 1980s, Müslüman Kadının Adı Var and Boşluk, and two 'selfreflexive novels' of the 1990s, Halkaların Ezgisi and Yağmurdan Sonra, which have canonical status in Muslim circles and because they are the prototypes for the narrative structure for each time period.
Topic:
Islam
Political Geography:
Turkey

406. Passive Revolution: Absorbing the Islamic Challenge to Capitalism

Author:
Masaki Kakizaki
Publication Date:
03-2010
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Insight Turkey
Institution:
SETA Foundation for Political, Economic and Social Research
Abstract:
While Islamic fundamentalism or “radical Islam” has attracted a great deal of public attention, some societies in the Muslim world have experienced the gradual evolution of radical Islam into “moderate” or “political” Islam. Although moderate Muslims in such societies still maintain a pious commitment to Islam in their daily lives, they are not necessarily against the idea of a market economy, democracy, or the West. Where does moderate Islam come from? Is it the outcome of structural changes such as the modernization and rationalization of Muslim society? Or is the emergence of moderate Islam largely contingent upon a complex interaction between politics, the economy, and everyday social life? Finally, how should we approach this newly emerging alternative to radical Islam?
Topic:
Islam

407. Labour Migration from Turkey to Western Europe, 1960-1974, A Multidisciplinary Analysis

Author:
İhsan Yılmaz
Publication Date:
03-2010
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Insight Turkey
Institution:
SETA Foundation for Political, Economic and Social Research
Abstract:
Labour Migration from Turkey to Western Europe is a detailed multidisciplinary study of the labor migration from Turkey to the West during the official recruitment period between 1960 and 1974. The book endeavors to that make use of all available sources in four languages and draws on both historiography and social science research in the field. The 221-page book consists of six chapters. Following the introduction, it first looks at the causes of migration pressure in chapter two. Chapters three and four subsequently analyze the push and pull processes. Chapter three is titled “The Migration Process: Aspects Related to the Sending Country” and the chapter four is “The Migration Process: Aspects Related to the Receiving Country”. Before the conclusion, the book devotes 35 pages to analyzing the migrants and their characteristics in chapter five. It has also an extensive bibliography listing primary as well as secondary sources in four languages, which will be useful for other researchers in the field.
Topic:
Migration
Political Geography:
Turkey and Western Europe

408. The Politics of Anti-Westernism in Asia

Author:
Mehmet Özkan
Publication Date:
03-2010
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Insight Turkey
Institution:
SETA Foundation for Political, Economic and Social Research
Abstract:
Based on extensive literature and fieldwork research in international relations, intellectual history and political thought, Cemil Aydin has written an exceptionally detailed account of the boundaries and horizons of pan-Islamic and pan-Asian thoughts on world order. Although his research on the intellectual journey of these two main anti-Western movements only covers the period from the early nineteenth century through to World War II, it still has relevance to today as we speak of “the rise of the rest” and/or “the Second World”.
Topic:
International Relations, Islam, and War
Political Geography:
Asia

409. The Ghazi Sultans and the Frontiers of Islam

Author:
Matthew S. Gordon
Publication Date:
03-2010
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Insight Turkey
Institution:
SETA Foundation for Political, Economic and Social Research
Abstract:
The title of this new volume is perhaps misleading suggesting as it does a discussion of imperial expansion and its impact on conqueror and conquered alike. It is, to be sure, a study of ghaza and its organization by pre-modern Muslim dynasts. Anooshahr prefers the term itself, ghaza, to “holy war” with its thorny, tangled associations (p. 14). His particular interest lies with Mahmud of Ghazna (Ghaznavid dynasty, d.1030), Murad II (Ottoman dynasty, d. 1451) and, especially, Babur Muhammad Zahir al-Din (Timurid dynasty, founder of the Mughal state, d. 1531) all of whom engaged in warfare of the sort.
Topic:
Islam and War

410. Exil unter Halbmond und Stern

Author:
Stefan Ihrig
Publication Date:
03-2010
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Insight Turkey
Institution:
SETA Foundation for Political, Economic and Social Research
Abstract:
German-Turkish relations in the twentieth century were at times very good and very close, at times cold, semi-colonial, and often difficult, but always complex and never black and white. Even when relations were friendly, as before and during World War One, the German side often tried to dominate the Ottoman Empire in some way which led to resentment among those who became aware of this—most prominently perhaps Atatürk. And at times when interactions between the two peoples seemed to focus prominently on such aspects as education and academia, as during the National Socialism period when a number of German academics found a temporary home in Turkey, some Germany were not happy about this new kind of closeness between the two peoples. A good history of German-Turkish relations still needs to be written, and there is much to disentangle and uncover until then, but this edited volume by Şen and Halm is another step towards a better understanding of this highly entangled history and inserts itself into the ever growing body of literature on the subject.
Topic:
War
Political Geography:
Turkey and Germany

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