Journal of East European and Asian Studies, Vol. 2, No.1, 2011: 29–47.
Kemalism, Nationalism, Liberalism – Re-Considering the Problematic Trinity
Abstract
This article explores the liberal presuppositions of Kemalism, the official state-ideology
of the Republic of Turkey. Without abandoning the idea of Kemalism as a corporatist
ideology, the article argues that by reading major Kemalist texts against the ‘liberal
philosophy of history’, we can not only re-consider the Kemalist vision but also critically
evaluate the supposedly liberal character of those political forces described in
contemporary Turkey as Kemalism’s challengers.
Key words
Turkey, Kemalism, Nationalism, Liberalism
It is currently widely accepted wisdom that Kemalism – the official (modernizing)
ideology of the Turkish Republic1 established since the mid-1920s – has been more in
line with the corporatist than the liberal tradition. In previous studies this is put most
forcefully by Taha Parla and Andrew Davison who explicitly argue that ‘…Kemalism’s
ideological character is best understood not in terms of liberalism or socialism, but in
terms of corporatism. Kemalism is best seen as an early variant of rightist, Third
Way…political ideologies that pursue capitalist modernity and societal transformation but
reject both an individualist vision of liberalism and a class-based vision of society and
social transformation of socialism’.2 No doubt, there are good reasons to agree with this
characterization. The most influential political and social thinking of modern Turkey
clearly reveals corporatist tendencies, running from Ziya Gökalp’s (a prominent
ideologue of Turkish nationalism and founder of Turkish sociology) early formulations to
the mainstream Kemalist discourse in general.3 Aykut Kansu notes that the corporatist
thought which since the middle of the nineteenth century emerged as a significant trend
of conservatism, worked as a major inspiration for the Kemalist cadres in Turkey. The
matrix of corporatist thinking in Europe was the ‘double revolution’ (industrial and
socio-political), which challenged all previous ideas concerning the role of an individual,
the nature of community, and the roots of legitimate political authority.4 The driving
political ideology in nineteenth century Europe was obviously liberalism, and it was
against this that other political streams were subsequently formulated. The perceived
anomalies and social dichotomies produced by liberalism (and capitalism) called into
being counter-forces, most important of which was socialism. The corporatist line of
thinking, which was called differently in various contexts (‘Christian-socialism’, ‘state-
socialism’, and finally ‘national-socialism’), on its part aimed to produce certain
ideological ‘third way’ between liberalism and socialism.5
The rise of corporatist thought, Peter J. Williamson notes, was thus a response to the
disappearance of the ancient régime in several continental European countries. The
response was articulated by those who had lost out in the development of industrial
capitalism and incipient liberal political institutions. However, Williamson emphasizes
that ‘the argument for corporatism was not simply a reactionary one. The emergence of
industrial society seemed to jeopardize the maintenance of a peasant society altogether.
Further, there was genuine concern at the industrial and class conflict engendered by the
emergence of liberal capitalism. But underlying corporatist ideology was a continuous
reference to the allegedly harmonious and ordered nature of medieval society where
landlord and peasant were locked together in an organic community. The central idea of
corporatist theorists was, therefore, to recognize the organic nature of society in the
political and economic arrangements of industrial society. By transposing the social
bonds between landlord and peasant to the relationship between capitalist and worker it
was contended that the class conflict, and the social injustice which engendered it, would
be ended.’ In this sense, Williamson notes, ‘the corporatists were arguing that the political
and economic arrangements to sustain a consensual society would have to be based upon
a moral order that the advent of liberalism had largely destroyed. While the majority of
corporatists saw their corporatist society working to serve the greater glory of God, there
were also a number of secular writers who ultimately saw nationalism – serving the
greater glory of the nation – as the basis of appeal that would bind society together.’ 6 In
Kemalism, as we will soon discover, corporatism was clearly blended together with
secular nationalism in order to create new basis for a new community.
Out of this account emerges a picture according to which various forms of
corporatism (Kemalism included) were more or less conservative, authoritarian, and
communitarian visions aiming to rescue a presumably threatened social order, set against
some well-defined idea of liberal political regime. This account has one major flaw. The
presumed kind of inherently coherent and well-defined liberalism has never existed in
reality. In what follows I will read Kemalist texts together with, firstly, John Crowley’s
analysis of the main characteristics of ‘historical liberalism7’, focusing most of all in its
presupposed ‘philosophy of history’, and secondly, Mark Haugaard’s analysis on the
relationship between liberalism and nationalism8. As I will demonstrate, this exploration
reveals a list of somewhat surprising similarities between liberalism and Kemalism. The
purpose of this effort is not to argue that we should altogether stop seeing Kemalism as a
corporatist ideology, but rather to highlight how much Kemalism nevertheless shares
with liberal tradition. Further, the critical analysis of liberalism inherent in this article will
also challenge the one-sided description of the presumably liberal challengers of
Kemalism in Turkey, namely the ideology of the Motherland Party (Anavatan Partisi,
ANAP) of the 1980s, and that of the contemporary Justice and Development Party
(Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi, AKP). It will be demonstrated that defining these two political
movements as straightforwardly ‘liberal’ is far from obvious. In this sense my article will
argue that, if looked from the perspective of underlying ‘philosophy of history’,
Kemalism has been no less but perhaps more in line with liberal tradition than its
contemporary challengers. This finding then, rather than consolidating the perceived
dichotomies, could provide inducement for a ‘liberal synthesis’ of competing political
movements in Turkey.
Etymologically, liberalism is defined by its primary concern with liberty. During the
course of history this liberty has been defended against various kinds of threats, such as
absolute monarchy, established religion, and the tyranny of the majority. As the common
definition puts it, this kind of freedom is perceived as a ‘negative freedom’, that is, an
individual’s freedom to act and think as one pleases.9 Thus, individual freedom must be
seen a primary liberal value. However, liberal tradition has also been strongly influenced
by ‘positive freedom’. During the course of its history, liberalism has encompassed the
highly contrary meanings attached to freedom. During its early stages, liberalism sought
to limit the frontiers of state, claiming that individual liberty was possible only if civic
liberties were immune from government interference (negative freedom). On the other
hand, later liberals have advocated political intervention in the economy in order to
eliminate unemployment and low wages, also demanding public health care services and
other social welfare rights (positive freedom).10
Even more importantly, the exaltation of individual liberty in liberalism has not been
without a clear linkage to a simultaneous idea of shared community as a necessary basis
of any individual development. Surely it must be admitted that within the liberal
perspective the basic unit of analysis is indeed the individual, whereas in nationalism it is
the nation. Mark Haugaard notes that the autonomous individual of liberalism is
preoccupied with community as a constraint upon freedom, while the nationalist
considers community a condition of self-realization. However, even though the
‘unencumbered’ self of liberalism is inherently rational, it has to be created through
socialization. The world of interchangeable individuals presupposes that they are
relatively similar. Hence, Haugaard emphasizes, in the liberal state a common educational
system functions as a form of mass state-controlled socialization.11 Haugaard further
writes that ‘the founders of modern sociology (Marx, Durkheim and Weber) shared the
common Enlightenment misconception that modernity was a move from Gemeinschaft to
Gesellschaft, from traditional communities to societies governed by abstract reason.’
Haugaard, on the contrary, argues that in the transition to modernity Gemeinschaft does
not disappear, or is not overcome, but becomes transformed, ‘even if it appears counter-
intuitive that the disenchanted, individualistic and de-essentialized modern world could
be fertile soil for a nationalist Gemeinschaft.’12 What is even more interesting, Haugaard
also argues that ‘for the liberal self, autonomous self has no meaning outside itself, hence
it makes no sense for the self to be sacrificed for a collective social construction that is
arbitrary convention. In contrast, for the nationalist the nation is what gives meaning to
self as a socialized being. Socialization makes them part of the nation, which is made real
by the belief that it is beyond convention and part of the enchanted world. To such an
actor the ultimate self-sacrifice, dying for the flag, represents a union between the self
and real. As Durkheim argued, such self-sacrifice is not self-annihilation but self-
realization.’13
So it seems that even with respect to such a core liberal value as freedom, the idea of
‘unproblematic’ liberalism implied by the contemporary academic studies on Kemalism
does not correspond to historical reality. The ‘anxiousness about community’ found in
corporatism must also be seen as an integral part of the liberal ideology. As the idea of
‘positive freedom’ presupposes that the fulfillment of individual liberty can only be
secured in relation to some community, the liberal tradition cannot be said to be purely
individualistic and atomized. This, however, at least when applied to economy, was the
main claim leveled against liberalism by the Kemalist ideologues, like Recep Peker 14, who
argued that
Especially from the viewpoint of free trade, liberalism came to be used as a vehicle
of tyranny and domination against the people. Liberalism, which was first
understood as a general concept of freedom, was turned in the economy as a
weapon for crushing the living-conditions of other citizens. The abuse of the
concept of ‘liberal’, which produces agony for others, is what we call economic
liberalism.15
Economic liberalism became widely discredited in Kemalist Turkey during the 1930s.
Faced with the world depression which coincided with what was seen as selfish
behaviour by their own national bourgeoisie, the Kemalists were forced to reconsider
their former laissez-faire policy. Thus between 1929 and 1931, the government passed a
series of measures which brought the economy under state control. Statism (devletçilik)
was incorporated into the ruling party’s programme in 1931. The strategy that was
adopted under this heading called for the state to be the major actor in production and
investment. The government began to take measures that would create a viable industrial
base as the entrepreneurs were unwilling to invest in ventures which did not bring quick
profits.16 Much was also accomplished with these measures. An infrastructure was
established and the process of industrialisation set in motion. The price for these
successes was paid, however, by the workers and the peasants. The shift in the internal
terms of trade in favour of industry was not reflected in benefits for the workers. To
prevent workers from protesting against their declining standard of living and their
extremely harsh working conditions, the government introduced a Labour Law in 1934,
strengthening it in 1936 with Mussolini’s legislation as its model. The workers were
permitted neither to form unions nor to strike, but were instead ‘told to live in harmony
in a society in which their interests would be looked after by the state organised on the
principles of corporatism’.17
Even though the Kemalists came to look economic liberalism with aversion, we should
not so hastily dismiss its revolutionary rhetoric of freedom. Besides the above mentioned
fact that liberalism has not been so thoroughly individualistic as often claimed, the
Kemalist revolution shared some fundamental similarities with liberal tradition. In Recep
Peker’s ‘Lectures on Revolution’ one can find an initial effort to provide the Turkish
revolution a universal context. According to Peker, one major aspect of the civilizational
progress was the popular demand for various freedoms. Peker makes a categorical
distinction between two main historical types of revolution: freedom-revolution (hürriyet
inkılâbı), and class-revolution (sınıf inkılâbı). Freedom-revolution occurs when people rise
against their rulers in order to secure their life, property and personal dignity. According
to Peker, as a widespread behaviour, this kind of action became possible after the early-
modern period had established knowledge as a basis of enlightened philosophy of life. 18 It
seems, then, that the all-encompassing cultural narrative of Enlightenment had crept in
Peker’s lectures also. Here Peker claims that there was an early-modern period which
brought knowledge for the mankind, and that this enabled humanity – a very
universalistic conception – to struggle for its freedom. It becomes obvious from these
Peker’s remarks that the Anatolian Resistance Struggle was no mere independence war
but a struggle of universal meaning, attaching the Turks to the process of modernity
launched by the great European revolutions. The story of Enlightenment included in
Peker’s lectures slowly but surely constructed a Kemalist goal which is to be achieved,
and this goal was established as the legitimating element of a revolutionary movement. In
Peker’s lectures this story created a conception of humanity’s onward march for freedom
One area by time, the cartels of oppression formed by kings, religious institutions,
and aristocracy were being crushed as humanity took its first steps towards
freedom. This movement started in Europe with the English Revolution, followed
by the revolution in France. Other nations soon took example of them.19
The initial adversaries of this emancipating movement are thus kings, religious
institutions, and aristocracy. In Kemalism, especially the struggle against established
religion became the most urgent in order to liberate the individual. This becomes obvious
when we read another influential first-generation Kemalist, namely Mahmut Esat
Bozkurt20. In his book Atatürk İhtilali (The Atatürk Revolution), Bozkurt declares that a
nation has a natural right to change things, and remove obstacles hindering its progress
Especially the thesis that there are no unchanged principles, and that it is
unacceptable to surrender, is manifestly true. Even the religious doctrines, once
considered as eternal, must be abandoned in the face of the changing demands of
time…the Old Testament, the Bible, as well as the Quran. Even the ‘God’ who sent
these books is transformed. He practically disappears. As the Russian communists
have put it, God vanished into history! And philosophers and sociologists, like
Voltaire and Pareto for example, have stated that man was not created by God; it
was man who created the God.21
Thus we can justifiably argue that the Kemalist ideology expressed an uncompromising
critical stand towards any God-given eternal truths. The Kemalists understood Islam
responsible for the socio-economic, political and cultural backwardness of Ottoman
society. The only possible way to become an integral part of the civilized world, that is,
the West, would be a total breaking off from the past (Ottoman-Islamic civilization) and
from those manners in contradiction with progress and science, particularly positivism.
To replace Islam, they attempted to describe new principles for state and society, which
in large part were inspired by the French revolutionary model. As Ertan Aydın rightly
points out, this was the basis of Kemalist laicism which called for a process of
secularization covering all spheres of life. Science and reason instead of religious thought
would provide the legitimate ground for power. Secular conversion was to go hand in
hand with the justification that the republic would bring civilization and prosperity to
those who had hitherto lagged behind by the ‘scholastic mentalities’ of the dark ages. As
Aydın stresses, the authoritarian nature of strict social control and the emancipating
ideals were not perceived contradictory by the Kemalist ideologues. Authoritarian
measures were indeed doomed necessary to make the traditional and ‘backward’
segments of the population capable of becoming involved in the republican way of life.22
This kind of anxiousness towards the mass politics of a democratic regime was not
observable only during the Kemalist one-party era, but continued later in various
Kemalist streams. For example the so-called left-wing Kemalists, whose ideologues
played a major role in composing the new ‘liberal’ constitution after the military
intervention of 1960, expressed highly doubtful thoughts about universal suffrage in the
Turkish context. If we take Doğan Avcıoğlu’s major synthesis on Turkish political and
social history as an example, we notice that even though he presented a very revisionist
interpretation of the nature of Anatolian Resistance Struggle and the Kemalist one party
era – challenging the earlier version by demonstrating the single-party regime as a tool
utilized to repress the peasantry – he nevertheless shared the common Kemalist idea that
as an underdeveloped country lacking educated citizens capable for own critical thinking,
Turkey was not ready for democracy or liberal economy. According to Avcıoğlu
The Kemalist state was to be authoritative. This was unavoidable. As the liberation
war was won with the support of the conservative landowners, and as there was no
other group to whose support the nationalistic cadre willing to execute a social
revolution could turn to, the authoritative state became a necessity. The political
liberalism of Kâzım Karabekir and Fethi Okyar, willing to prevent statism, could
not lead to any other outcome than the road back to the old order. Thus, in this
situation the revolutions accomplished were to be ones of the super-structures only.
They could not break the iron hand surviving from the Middle-Ages, and they did
not reach the world of the peasant masses.23
Doğan Avcıoğlu further claimed that, whatever had been the reason for the
establishment of the multi-party regime, it ultimately only managed to create a situation
where the large landowners, feudal lords, usurers and compradors, that is, the capitalist
class which had already been strengthened during the regime of the revolutionary-
nationalists, came to power in an ever more direct way. In his own words
In a social structure where pre-capitalist relations still survived, universal suffrage
did not eliminate the ruling coalition of landlords, sheiks, usurers and businessmen
but instead strengthened their position even further. These groups were to
dominate party politics. In this way, universal suffrage became the tool of
conservatism, not of advancement.24
Thus, according to Avcıoğlu, parliamentary democracy was not suitable for Turkey. This
shows that the left-wing Kemalism of the 1960s represented by Avcıoğlu was, very
similar to the authoritarian first-generation Kemalism, opposing democratic form of
government. This should not surprise us, though. The only difference between Doğan
Avcıoğlu and, for example, Recep Peker is their understanding of one of the six
principles of Kemalism, namely that of ‘revolutionism/reformism’ (inkılâpçılık). For
Peker, this meant the total reform of politics, culture and economy, that is, their
rationalization, secularization, and nationalisation. With Avcıoğlu we find these same
reforms, but in his opinion they can only be achieved through a genuine social
revolution, that is, by empowering the masses. Avcıoğlu’s view was shared by another
prominent left-wing Kemalist, namely Mümtaz Soysal who declared that
Universal suffrage, freedoms, elections, all these are naturally inseparable
components of classical republicanism, and more a regime is able to secure these
principles, the more republican it is. But, in a country like Turkey, where necessary
structural changes have not been realized, these above listed principles start to work
against republicanism.25
To put these words in a more general context of the relation between democracy and
socialism, one must understand that the problem of the status and orientation of
socialism has always been particularly apparent in its relations with liberalism. Tony
Wright analyses this by noting that, ‘on one view socialism stood apart from the entire
edifice of bourgeois society, in its own separate and self-contained proletarian culture,
equipped with its own proletarian science, a preparation for time when the bourgeois
order would be overthrown and the new society established. On another view, however,
the task of socialism was to extend and fulfill the prospectus of liberalism, by converting
its claims from class into universal terms’. 26 Hence we observe how the corporatist
articulation of the Kemalist one-party era, which altogether rejected class-struggle by
defining Turkish society as homogenous unity, was followed in the 1960s by a socialist
version arguing –at least in rhetoric – for a more structural definition of Kemalist
principles of revolutionism (inkılapçılık), statism (devletçilik), and populism (halkçılık). Even
though there are differences, both of these major articulations of Kemalist ideology
presuppose a certain ‘Enlightenment metanarrative’, that is, an account of universal
history characterised by the emancipation of humanity through science. Both in its
corporatist and socialist versions, Kemalism presupposes the liberation of the individual
from the constraints of established religion.
The common presuppositions of various Kemalist formulations were given already by
Mustafa Kemal Atatürk in his famous six-day speech (Nutuk), delivered in 1927 and
subsequently reproduced in an endless stream of books and other publications. 27 The
‘absolute truth’ internalized by the Kemalist discourse – and by the whole Turkish
collective identity – is the assertion found in the Nutuk that there was no alternative to
the founding of the new Turkish Republic in the years 1919–1923. After describing
various proposals of salvation, Kemal proclaimed the following
Gentlemen, I did not believe in any of these proposals. The reason was that all of
them were based on rotten and unconvincing grounds. In reality, in those days the
foundations of the Ottoman state were already destroyed, and its life was in the
end. There was left only a handful of fatherland protected by the Turks. Finally,
even this land was to be partitioned. The Ottoman State, the sultan, the caliph, the
government, these were all meaningless concepts. Whose independence was to be
saved? In this situation what could be considered as a true decision? Gentlemen, in
this situation there was only one possible way to proceed. That was the creation of
a totally new, in every aspects independent Turkish state, based on the principle of
national sovereignty.28
This is followed by an evaluation of the Republic as the only possible institution capable
to secure the Turkish nation’s absolute desire for Enlightenment
Gentlemen, in this situation there was only one possible decision. That was the
establishment of a totally new, in every respect independent Turkish state. We had
made this decision already while still staying in Istanbul, and then started to
implement it the very moment as I landed on the Anatolian soil in Samsun. The
logic of this decision was based on the fact the Turkish nation ought to live in
honor, and that this was possible only in full independence. Because of this,
whether independence or death! Later, it would have been a tremendous offence
against the Turkish nation not to abolish the institution of the Sultanate in Turkey.
Because, no matter how determinedly the nation had fought for its freedom, its
independence would have been under a constant threat with the sultanate still in
place. It was thus in no way possible to let that madness continue. And what comes
to the Caliph, was not this an entirely ridicule figure in a world enlightened by
science and knowledge.29
Thus, the Kemalist ideology is most of all based on all-encompassing concepts of
‘enlightenment’ and ‘nationalism’, in which the first mentioned can be characterized with
the words borrowed from Robert Nisbet: ‘relatively small things which can be achieved
in one generation toward the fulfillment of the idea or value are greatly heightened in
importance when they are perceived as steps in the inexorable march of mankind’30, that
is, the idea that with the Kemalist Revolution the Turks would join the universal history
heading towards Enlightenment, in other words the emancipation of humanity with
rational science, understood as a millennialist utopia of a new world and a new man
freed from the superstitions and tyranny of religion. However (and this is what the latter
concept stands for), it was simultaneously indeed presupposed in the Kemalist ideology
that this universal emancipation of humanity with science could only be realized in a
territorial and homogenous nation-state, that is, in the Kemalist ideology the nation-state
was represented as the utopia materialized.31
It can be claimed that progress became the catchword of 19th century Western (liberal)
culture, and that a narrative of this progress became the Western self-understanding.
Outside the Western world, on the other hand, ‘progress was not the characterizing
element of societies. As a matter of fact, the whole concept was usually perceived as an
external threat. For majority of the non-European peoples progress meant most of all a
cavalcade of foreign values and habits that seemed to destroy the existing order formed
by traditional values.’32 It can even be asserted that the Western hegemony was
accomplished, besides militarily, also in more subtle ways by creating in the periphery
local elites that had internalized the concepts of ‘modernity’ and ‘progress’. This is the
critical stand taken toward modernity as a Western hegemonic project. If we analyze
Atatürk’s Nutuk in light of this critical idea, we may say that it is a text that in the same
time carries with it the concept of Western modernity and calls for a fight against the
Western hegemony. It is because of this dualistic message that the Kemalist discourse
simultaneously strives for full Western modernity conceived as Enlightenment, and is
anxious not to lose political and economic independence of Turkey in the face of
Western demands. Of these two elements the concept of Enlightenment is, in the final
analysis, the strongest. In the Nutuk the Enlightenment is established as a telos, that is, the
fundamental purpose of history. If this concept of Enlightenment conceived as
secularization and progress achieved through science in an independent nation-state is
abandoned, the Republic of Turkey loses its legitimacy and reason for existence.
The Kemalist discourse is thus most of all constructed on the charismatic vision of
Atatürk. This can be interpreted as a vision which points to a future goal and a future
identity in a critical standing with the present. It can also be interpreted as yet
unaccomplished and in a way ‘never-ending’.33 It is indeed very significant that the Nutuk
which laid down all the core aspects and unquestioned presuppositions of Kemalism
already manifests the double nature as a narration of ‘achieved already’ and ‘not yet
accomplished’. The first one refers to Nutuk’s assertion that the Enlightenment project
was realized in Turkey with the foundation of the Republic, and that the ‘sacred duty’ of
the coming generations was to secure it. The second conception, the ‘not yet
accomplished’, on the other hand, refers to the Nutukian call of ‘reaching the level of
contemporary civilization’ which is implicitly described in the Speech as an eternal mission.
Thus, we can argue that the Nutuk offers legitimacy both for a conservative status quo –
politics and the liberal call for never-ending emancipation.
It is after this exploration that we can start to uncover more thoroughly the proposed
similarities between Kemalism and liberalism. As we have read major Kemalist texts, we
have noticed that both with its corporatist and socialist version, the idea of uncontrolled
masses too early provided with universal suffrage has been a characteristic element of
Kemalism. However, one can claim that with this kind of argumentation Kemalist
ideologues have only reproduced a line of thinking that has also been major element of
historical liberalism. As John Crowley puts it, ‘…the people can govern itself badly. From
Tocqueville to Mill and Schumpeter, the distrust of popular sovereignty runs through
liberal thought.’34 He continues by noting, firstly, that ‘liberal diffidence reflects…worries
or fears about the relation between the characteristic metanarrative of progress and the
core liberal value of freedom.’35, and then describes how the fear of uncontrolled and
uneducated masses was present in John Stuart Mill: ‘As the squalid realities of industrial
society and mass politics became unavoidable, the classic problem of the “mob” became
central to liberal thinking. In Mill, fear and confidence are still compatible. The problem
is defined as keeping liberal institutions safe until education has transformed the mob
into virtuous democratic political community. The snobbery and humanism are held
together, somewhat uneasily, by the belief in progress.’ 36 Crowley continues by noting
that ‘from the mid-eighteenth century the questioning of religious doctrine itself, by
applying to it forms of reasoning and standards of proof derived from natural science,
changed the character and consequences of toleration. Instead of being merely politic, it
was increasingly seen as intellectually necessary. No truth was ever definitive, and no
view, even the most eccentric, unworthy of opportunity to challenge received wisdom.
This did not lead to relativism, however, because of the unquestioned assumption of
progress and of the universal application of experimental method’, and then he explains
that after liberalism had come into conflict with religion, God could no longer set the
purpose and limits of government.37 Thus there developed the liberal ‘philosophy of
history’ in which history is the development of human potential, and since, in the eyes of
classical liberals, the highest standard of human excellence is essentially unchanged since
antiquity, development can only mean the broadening and deepening of human
development. Thus, Crowley concludes, liberals necessarily became pragmatic elitists, not
because anyone is by nature better than anyone else, but because some have not yet fully
developed.38
This being the case, the historical liberalism instantly includes the potentials for
contradictory aspirations, as the emancipation implied by it easily transforms to some
form of elitism. Now, it is exactly this kind of ‘elitism’ that has been a major component
among the so-called liberal critics of Kemalism. As Çağlar Keyder has emphasized, in the
Turkish case modernization was not initially generated from the society, but executed as a
project from above by the sate elite who were obviously self interested actors. This meant
that even though the state elite wished to westernize Turkey, it did so in a selective
fashion, choosing only certain aspects of modernity. The transition from empire to
republic occurred in such a way that the fundamental division between the state class and
the masses was perpetuated. Thus, modernization from above did not result in
democratic regime – even though the individuation, rationalization, and secularization
produced the necessary grounds for classical individual freedoms. Keyder suggests that as
modernity was executed as a project from above in the hands of the state elite, it led to a
crisis-ridden trajectory toward fascism.39 According to Keyder, the authoritarian
modernization from above has produced the situation where it is the modernizing state
elite itself which forms the main obstacle for a full-blown modernity to emerge in Turkey,
including the legal rights of the individual in a regime based on political liberalism.40
As the Kemalist regime has been unable – and, it seems, unwilling – to fulfill the
Enlightenment ideals, Turkish liberal intelligentsia has during the last decade formed an
alliance with Islamic conservatives41, a group that has opposed Kemalist Enlightenment
project from the beginning of the Republican period. According to Halil M. Karaveli, the
liberal critic of Kemalism is essentially ‘an internal opposition’ that is, a rift within the
modernist and secularist camp. This estrangement from the political universe which
should be its asylum, in other words, western-minded liberal intellectuals fighting against
a discourse which is supposed to be a westernizing-modernizing ideology, results,
according Karaveli, from the historical context inside of which Kemalism was initially
formed. In Karaveli’s words ‘the secularizing enterprise in the Ottoman/Turkish realm
was never sustained by the kind of social dynamics that had given impetus to Western
Enlightenment; it has made Turkish secularists intrinsically non-disposed toward
identifying their creed with liberal, Western ideas and symbols.’42
In early liberalism, such as Locke’s, the ultimately non-political basis for politics was
provided by God through the idea of natural law. However, as liberalism discredited
religion as a justified basis for permanent knowledge, the idea of religion was no longer
tenable. In this new phase, history became to be seen as the progress of human potential,
and since, as we noted above, the highest standard of humanity was the same as in
antiquity, development could only mean one thing, that is, the forever deepening and
broadening of human development. Seeing the issue from this perspective, the path for
progress was universal education, compounded by permanent criticism of received
traditions. In this context ‘the system of institutions that prevents any dogma (including
public opinion) from imposing itself on society is valuable not so much per se as because
it is the condition for human flourishing – which is the gradual diffusion of human
enlightenment’.43 Thus, there is absolutely no doubt that classical liberalism includes, and
is predicated on, certain synthesizing interpretation of history, one that also, if at all
inherently coherent, should prohibit all kinds of temporary marriages with the status-quo
ideologies, such as conservatism.44 As Crowley emphasizes, ‘the power of these ideas is
that they go far deeper than any particular set of institutions or historical circumstances:
something of this kind is a necessary component of any philosophically consistent
liberalism’.45 Crowley proceeds to note how this discussion underlines the fundamental
philosophical and political incoherence of the Reagan/Thatcher attempt to marry
liberalism with conservatism.46
This means, of course, that the Kemalist ideology put in practice has never been
liberal. Its authoritarian nature and intolerance for opposition and dissident opinions has
made it, especially when attached to nationalist and corporatist emphasis on homogenous
collective, a tool for power and oppression. However, the mission to emancipate the
individual implied by liberalism also casts severe doubts whether those Turkish political
movements that have been defined as liberal in previous studies really deserve this name.
Even though the Democrat Party (Demokrat Partisi) which ruled Turkey 1950-60 can
already be seen as a liberal challenge to Kemalism47, it was most of all the Motherland
Party (Anavatan Partisi ANAP), ruling Turkey during the 1980s, that for the first time
seriously challenged Kemalism. Turgut Özal, the leader of the ANAP and subsequent
president of the Republic, once declared that
The Turks now know how to ensure the future growth of their country. They are
also capable of acquiring and utilizing advanced technology, having already learned
the necessary skills. Development is no longer the prerogative only of state. We
have set in motion a process of organic evolution which will sustain itself. Turkey
has no further need of reforms or continual revolution. The economic reforms
achieved by the Motherland Party were the last westernization reforms to be
needed. The rest is only a matter of time.48
It is tempting to read this as a self-assured proclamation of Turks’ ability to stand on their
own without the emulation of the West. However, in the context of 1980s, the
abandonment of reforms in Turkey also meant that the utopian and emancipating nature
of Kemalist discourse was closed in order to reach social and political stability (istikrar).
This period saw the re-definition of official ideology in Turkey as traditional Kemalism
was replaced by the so-called ‘Turkish-Islamic Synthesis’49. Ersin Kalaycioğlu has
described Özal era by noting that in Özal’s ideal Turkey ‘the majority of the population
would still be Allah-fearing, mosque-attending souls, taking pride in the competitive
strength of their companies in the global market, simultaneously taking care of the
downtrodden brothers through charitable contributions established by the state. In short,
Özal wanted a modern society held together by conservative values’.50 After this
definition, we should crucially question the ANAP as a genuine representative of
liberalism; it would be totally suitable to put the above list in the form
Reagan/Thatcher/Özal, and again emphasize how this kind of marriage of liberalism
with conservatism is totally incoherent.
On the other hand, currently the liberal name has been vested to the Justice and
Development Party ((Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi, AKP), which has its roots in political
Islam. William Hale and Ergun Özbudun argue that the AKP continues the tradition of
liberal centre-right in Turkey, that is, ‘attachment to private enterprise (aided, on
occasion, by the state), majoritarian democracy (with a tinge of cultural conservatism),
clientelist populism and a western-oriented foreign policy.’51 However, after we have
seen how crucially liberalism is characterized by the mission of the ‘forever deepening
and broadening of human development’, we can really wonder in what sense, exactly, is
the AKP a representative of liberal tradition. If we the take a look on Fuat Keyman’s
evaluation of the AKP experience, we come to notice that rather than driving for the
essential liberal mission, the AKP rule since 2002 has witnessed ‘the rising tide of
conservatism’ which has involved not only conservatism with Sunni Islamic core but also
conservatism of the secular middle classes’. He notes that rather than democratic
consolidation, ‘the AKP experience has paved the way to the increasing power of
conservatism as a scepticism and closure of difference, pluralism and multi-culturalism,
resulting in the widening and deepening of political, societal, and cultural polarization’.
Keyman also argues that the AKP has equalled democracy with parliamentary
majoritarianism, and privileged religious right-claims and freedoms over the others.
Keyman concludes by noting that there is an increased perception in Turkey that by
equating democracy with parliamentary majoritarianism the AKP ‘views and approaches
democracy in a heavily instrumentalized fashion’.52 The intolerance towards opposition
and the exaltation of conservative Islamic values, then, are hardly expressions of
liberalism’s vision to emancipate the individual (by education) from the constraints of
tradition.
Even though the potential of freedom has never materialized in Kemalism, its
‘philosophy of history’ is very similar to that of liberalism. Besides, as we saw above,
liberalism has never been free form elitist perspective, and one can even argue that the
idea of widening education as a core of liberal vision presupposes a cadre of teachers who
shall deliver ‘freedom’ for others. As Crowley says, ‘liberal values are in essence a form of
vanguardism: they are the values of a current elite regarded as indicative of future human
development’.53 As long as there was trust in the belief of history as a path to progress,
this was justifiable, but once the liberal tradition has lost this belief, the liberal values
suddenly seem to be nothing else than the values of the dominant groups.54 In this sense,
the coherence of liberalism, after rejecting God as a basis of politics, necessarily needs the
above mentioned liberal ‘philosophy of history’. This, then, becomes very close to the
Kemalist idea of teachers (Mustafa Kemal Atatürk being some sort of super-teacher in
his role of a ‘Father55’) as an enlightened cadre spreading Enlightenment to the masses.
This has been expressed very neatly for example by İlhan Selçuk, a prominent left-wing
Kemalist ideologue who has argued that as the Anatolian society lacked the structural
preconditions for Enlightenment, it was carried through with different methods than in
Europe. It was obligatory to replace the umma56 mentality with nationality, and to move
from slave-identity to the citizen-identity as rapidly as possible. In a country where only
10 per cent of the population knew how to read or write, the teachers were given the
duty to execute the transformation, that is, ‘to create a new human’ (yeni insanı yaratmak).57
At first sight one could be inclined to treat these similarities between liberalism and
Kemalism as totally superficial, under which rest some fundamental differences.
However, since the unquestionable secularization of liberal perspective, the struggle
against God-given truths became a necessary starting point in liberalism’s struggle against
religiously-oriented conservatism and the social status quo attached to it. As this kind of
fight against established religion has been the most explicitly stated effort of Kemalism,
one can hardly ignore the truly fundamental similarity of liberalism’s and Kemalism’s
understanding of individual liberty based on the Weberian ‘disenchantment of the world’.
Equally important, however, is the argument proposed by Haugaard (mentioned above),
according to which the rejection of God left the individual self of liberalism in a certain
existential void, which was then filled with communal solidarity based on shared
nationality. As we noticed, the liberal state has promoted education not only as a
precondition for individual development but also as a necessary tool to create attitudinal
similarity between individual citizens so that they can engage in a meaningful public
discussion about the public good. On these grounds, the strong nationalism inherent in
Kemalism does not in any clear sense distinct it from liberalism; it is on the contrary
more the case that both liberalism and Kemalism have presupposed the nation as a
ground on which individual emancipation can be grounded.
When it comes to the underlying ‘philosophy of history’, one is not totally exaggerated
to conclude that the Kemalist mission to create a new human, freed from the constraints
of established religion, is closer to the tradition of classical liberalism than the one
implied by the conservative-oriented AKP. This conclusion would naturally turn the
currently held conceptions about Turkish transformation upside down. Obviously this is
held by many as an unjustified conclusion since the Kemalist tradition has indeed been a
major obstacle for the consolidation of liberal freedoms in Turkey. These paradoxes have
two main roots. Firstly, liberalism has historically been much more demanding – and its
success seen much more precarious – than the contemporary ‘minimal’ definition implies.
The traditionally and conservatively oriented ‘mob’ in the age of mass-politics was
perceived as a threat to liberalism’s progressive mission. Secondly, in historical liberalism,
very similar to Kemalism, there has been an effort to emancipate the individual, while on
the other hand liberalism has included an intuitive rejection to support any all-
encompassing ideologies – even those which seem to aspire for liberal enlightenment.
Seeing the issue from this perspective, Kemalism can be defined as exactly this kind of
totalizing ideology which has tried to repress dissident opinions, condemning these as a
threat to the ‘historical mission’.
Thus, with its nationalist and corporatist doctrines, Kemalism compromised – severely
– liberalism’s respect for individual liberty. Also, the (national) community which in
liberalism was considered as the necessary political arrangement to socialize the
individuals to embrace the common liberal values of tolerance as a precondition for the
enlightened ‘self’, was in Kemalist nationalism glorified at the expense of the individual.
But, as we observed by referring to Mark Haugaard’s argument, the nationalist Gesellschaft
has not been overcome in the modern individualized society, but has rather worked
inside of it as a tool fulfilling the felt existential void. One should further note that the
political movement currently described as representing liberalism in Turkey, the Justice
and Development Party, is also very nationalistic; the difference is that whereas Kemalist
nationalism advocated secular national identity, the AKP has intentionally propagated
Islam as the core ingredient in the Turkish national identity. 58 In this sense the
nationalism advocated in Kemalism does not in any fundamental way demonstrate its
distance from liberalism. On the other hand, the so-called liberal challengers of
Kemalism in Turkey (whether the Motherland Party of the 1980s or the current Justice
and Development Party) with their coupling of liberalism and conservatism have on their
part crucially compromised the emancipating mission of historical liberalism. In an effort
to build political legitimacy on the traditional conservative values of the past, these
movements end up in preserving the status quo, this way betraying the most
characteristic aspect of historical liberalism, that is, the forever deepening and broadening
of human development.
All in all, this analysis demonstrates that we should once more critically explore the
problematic trinity of Kemalism, nationalism, and liberalism in Turkish twentieth century
political experience. Rather than questioning the corporatist tendencies of Kemalism per
se, this reconsideration has unearthed the shared ‘philosophy of history’ of historical
liberalism and Kemalism. This critical act thus reveals the highly problematic habit to
classify the contemporary governing Justice and Development Party as a ‘liberal’ force.
Instead of this kind of simplistic definition, the findings of the present article should
provide inducement to look for a more profoundly liberal force in Turkey, one that could
go beyond corporatist Kemalism and the conservatism of the AKP. In other words, the
‘not yet accomplished’ interpretation of Kemalism, inherent already in Atatürk’s great
speech, could replace the conservatism inherent in the AKP ideology. It is obvious, of
course, that this kind of vision in itself presupposes certain liberal philosophy of history,
that is, seeing liberal political order as a ‘good’ thing.
1 The Republic of Turkey was founded in 1923 on the ashes of the Ottoman Empire. The years preceding this, 1919
to 1922, are viewed by the Turks as the years of their struggle for national liberation (milli mücadele). As a result of
this struggle, the Turkish state (devlet) was rebuilt in a totally new form, as a republic. The Ottoman Empire had
fought the First World War in alliance with Germany, and the Allies were prepared to split the Ottoman territories
among them. Ultimately, this scheme came to nothing since the Anatolian Resistance Movement was capable of halting
the Allies’ designs. After embryonic phase, the Anatolian Resistance Movement was led by Mustafa Kemal (1881–
1938), later known as Atatürk. His years in power, 1922–1938, witnessed a tremendous reform and modernizing
efforts in Turkey. During the years of the single-party regime of the Republican People’s Party (1922–1945), an
official state-ideology, Kemalism, developed into a self-standing modernizing ideology of the Turkish Republic. The
Kemalist ideology was crystallized in the Republican People’s Party programme of 1931. It included the six main
principles, or ‘arrows’, which are republicanism, populism, nationalism, laicism, statism and reformism. Thus, the
original formation period of Kemalism is from 1927 to 1937. This ten-year period begins with the so-called six-day
speech of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk and ends with the total incorporation of party and state, including the
constitutionalization of the six arrows of Kemalism. Today, Kemalism is still the official state ideology of the
Turkish Republic. However, it can be claimed that the position of Kemalism has been brought under serious
challenge in the last two decades as moderate political Islam has slowly established itself as the representative of the
conservative right in Turkey. For a good overall presentation of Turkish modern history, see Erik J. Zürcher, Turkey.
A Modern History. New Revised Edition (London & New York: I. B. Tauris, 1998); for an excellent critical survey on
Kemalism, see Ahmet İnsel (ed.), Modern Türkiye’de Siyasî Düşünce Cilt 2: Kemalizm (Istanbul: İletişim, 2002); for a
good analysis of Atatürk and his legacy, see Ali Kazancigil and Ergun Özbudun (eds.), Atatürk. Founder of a Modern
State (London: C. Hurst & Company, 1981).
2 Taha Parla and Andrew Davison, Corporatist Ideology in Kemalist Turkey. Progress or Order? (Syracuse, New York:
Syracuse University Press, 2004), p. viii.
3 Murat Belge has argued that Ziya Gökalp (1876–1924) was strongly against not only economic liberalism but
liberalism altogether. This way, Belge argues, Gökalp inspired the early republican Kemalists even more than
Mustafa Kemal himself. According to Belge, in Gökalp’s footsteps whole array of influential Kemalists, such as
Yunus Nadi, Şevket Süreyya Aydemir, Recep Peker, Mahmut Esat Bozkurt, and Ali Çetinkaya perceived liberalism
as one of the ‘major threats’ of republican Turkey, others being communism, reactionary movements, and Kurdish
separatism. Murat Belge, ‘Mustafa Kemal ve Kemalizm’, in Ahmet İnsel (ed.), Modern Türkiye’de Siyasî Düşünce Cilt 2:
Kemalizm (Istanbul: İletişim, 2002), p. 34.
4 Aykut Kansu, ’Türkiye’de Korporatist Düşünce ve Korporatizm Uygulamaları’, in Ahmet İnsel (ed.), Modern
Türkiye’de Siyasî Düşünce Cilt 2: Kemalizm (Istanbul: İletişim, 2002), p. 253.
5 Ibid, pp. 253-254.
6 Peter J. Williamson, Corporatism in Perspective. An Introductory Guide to Corporatist Theory (London 1989), pp. 25-26.
7 John Crowley, ‘Liberal Values, Liberal Guilt, and the Distaste for Politics’, in Zdeněk Suda & Jiří Musil (eds.) The
Meaning of Liberalism – East and West (Budapest: Ceupress, 2000).
8 Mark Haugaard, ’Nationalism and Liberalism’ in Gerard Delanty & Krishan Kumar (eds.), The Sage Handbook of
Nations and Nationalism (London: Sage Publications, 2006).
9 Crowley, Liberal Values, pp. 47-48.
10 Robert Eccleshall, ’Liberalism’, in Robert Eccleshall et al. (eds.) Political Ideologies. An Introduction (London & New
York: Routledge, 2003), p. 23.
11 Haugaard, Nationalism and Liberalism, pp. 346-349.
12 Ibid, p. 350.
13 Ibid, p. 352.
14 Recep Peker (1888–1950) was, like so many other leading first-generation Kemalists, trained as a military officer.
In 1920 he joined the nationalist resistance forces, and after the foundation of the Republic he became the first
Secretary General of the Republican People’s Party. During the 1920s Peker held various ministerial posts, and also
worked as the president of the Turkish Grand National Assembly.
15 Recep Peker, İnkılâp Dersleri (Istanbul: İletişim, 1984), pp. 26-27 [1935]. This and all subsequent direct quotations
from Turkish are translated by the author.
16 Enver Ziya Karal, ‘The principles of Kemalism’ in Ali Kazancıgil and Ergun Özbudun (eds.), Atatürk: Founder of a
Modern State (London: C. Hurst & Company, 1981), p. 21.
17 Feroz Ahmad, The Making of Modern Turkey (London & New York: Routledge, 1993), pp. 96-99.
18 Peker, İnkılâp Dersleri, pp. 25-26.
19 Ibid, p. 26.
20 Mahmut Esat Bozkurt (1892–1943) graduated from law school in Istanbul and went on to complete his studies in
Freiburg and Lausanne. Bozkurt returned to Turkey in 1919 and joined the resistance forces. From 1920 until his
death Bozkurt served as a representative of his native town Izmir in the Grand National Assembly. Besides working
as an unofficial ideologue of Kemalism together with Recep Peker, Bozkurt’s major contribution to the Kemalist
regime included the introduction of the Swiss Family Code to Turkey in 1926.
21 Mahmut Esat Bozkurt, Atatürk İhtilali (Istanbul: Kaynak Yayınları, 1995), pp. 140-141 [1940].
22 Ertan Aydın, ‘Peculiarities of Turkish Revolutionary Ideology in the 1930s: The Ülkü version of Kemalism, 1933–
1936’, Middle Eastern Studies 40:5 (2004), p. 59.
23 Doğan Avcığlu, Türkiye’nin Düzeni: Dün, Bugün, Yarın (Istanbul: Tekin Yayınevi, 2003), p. 507 [1968].
24 Ibid, pp. 531-532.
25 Mümtaz Soysal, Güzel Huzursuzluk (Ankara: Bilgi Yayınevi, 1975), p. 29.
26 Tony Wright, Socialisms: old and new (London & New York: Routledge, 1996), p. 24.
27 For a detailed analysis of the famous speech and its tremendous influence on Turkish political culture, see: Taha
Parla, Türkiye’de Siyasal Kültürün Resmî Kaynakları Cilt 1: Atatürk’ün Nutuk’u (Istanbul: İletişim, 1991); Hakan Uzun,
Atatürk ve Nutuk (Ankara: Siyasal Kitabevi, 2006); Toni Alaranta, ‘Mustafa Kemal Atatürk’s Six-Day Speech of 1927:
Defining the Official Historical View of the Foundation of the Turkish Republic’, Turkish Studies Vol. 9, Issue 1
(March 2008), 115-129.
28 Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, Nutuk (Istanbul: Kitap Zamanı 2006), p. 15 [1927].
29 Ibid, pp. 15-16.
30 Robert Nisbet, History of the Idea of Progress (London: Heinemann, 1980), p. 171.
31 This kind of synthesis between universalism and particularism has not in any sense been unique to Kemalism. As
Gerard Delanty and Patrick O’Mahony note, ‘The European Enlightenment was divided between the universalistic
tenets of rationalism and positivism on the one side and, on the other, the quest for feeling and the emotions that
was typical of historicism and romanticism and which tended to emphasize social context. This ambivalence at the
heart of modernity would be of great significance for nationalism, which was the paradigmatic example of the use of
universalistic ideas to justify particularism.’ Gerard Delanty and Patrick O’Mahony, Nationalism and Social Theory
(London: Sage Publications, 2002), p. 7.
32 Eric Hobsbawm, The Age of Empire (London: Sphere Books, 1989), pp. 30-31.
33 Özlem Demirtaş Bagdonas, ‘The Clash of Kemalisms? Reflections on the Past and Present Politics of Kemalism
in Turkish Political Discourse’, Turkish Studies Vol. 9, No. 1 (March 2008), pp. 101-102.
34 Crowley, Liberal Values, p. 52.
35 Ibid, p. 56.
36 Ibid, p. 56.
37 Ibid, p. 49.
38 Ibid, p. 53.
39 Çaglar Keyder, ‘Whither the Project of Modernity? Turkey in the 1990s’, in Sibel Bozdoğan and Reşat Kasaba
(eds.), Rethinking Modernity and National Identity in Turkey (Seattle & London: University of Washington Press, 1997),
pp. 35-36.
40 Ibid, pp. 41-42.
41 Halil M. Karaveli, ‘An Unfulfilled Promise of Enlightenment: Kemalism and its Liberal Critics’, Turkish Studies,
Vol. 11, No. 1 (March 2010), 85–102, 85.
42 Ibid, p. 88.
43 Crowley, Liberal Values, pp. 52-53.
44 The synthesizing world-history of emancipation achieved through science implied by liberalism is depicted by
Bernard Susser with the following words: ‘So tight was the knit between liberalism and science at their origin that we
might be excused for despairing of clear boundaries. Together they assaulted the authority of non-rational beliefs
and institutions that had rendered human reason fearful of its own powers and relegated it to a state of permanent
minority…No belief was too well established to be immune from rational scrutiny and no individual held any
authority beyond the reach of criticism…Among human endowments, rationality is sovereign. All our beliefs and
decisions ought to look to it for guidance.’ Bernard Susser, The Grammar of Modern Ideology (London & New York:
Routledge, 1988), pp. 214-215.
45 Crowley, Liberal Values, p. 54.
46 Ibid, p. 54.
47 Feroz Ahmad, Turkey. The Quest for Identity (Oxford: Oneworld, 2003), p. 101.
48 Turgut Özal, Turkey in Europe and Europe in Turkey (Nicosia: K. Rustem & Brother, 1991), p. 311.
49 After 1980 military intervention the concern of Turkish powerful army was with all such ideologies that did not
conform to the status of servants for the right-wing nationalist message guided by the state. This was amply
demonstrated when the ruling junta decided to incorporate a strong Islamic element into its nationalist message
through the ‘Turkish-Islamic Synthesis’ (Türk Islam Sentezi), an ideology developed already in the 1970s by İbrahim
Kafesoğlu. The military thus started to consciously use a special brand of Islam as an ideological antidote against
those currents which they saw as threatening Turkey’s internal cohesion. This new ideology proclaimed that religion,
not secular humanism, was the means for national salvation. Sam Kaplan, The Pedagogical State. Education and Politics of
National Culture in Post-1980 Turkey (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2006), pp. 77-78.
50 Ersin Kalaycioğlu, The Motherland Party: The Challenge of Institutionalization in a Charismatic Leader Party’,
Turkish Studies, Vol. 3, Issue 1, (Spring 2002), p. 46.
51 William Hale and Ergun Özbudun, Islamism, Democracy and Liberalism in Turkey. The case of the AKP (London & New
York: Routledge, 2010), p. xviii.
52 Fuat Keyman, ‘Modernization, Globalization and Democratization in Turkey: the AKP Experience and its
Limits’, Constellations, Volume 17, No. 2 (2010), pp. 324-325.
53 Crowley, Liberal Values, p. 62.
54 Ibid, p. 62.
55 Atatürk means literally ‘Father of the Turks’.
56 Universal Islamic community of believers.
57 İlhan Selçuk, Türkiye Aydınlanması:”Yeni İnsan”ı Yaratmak’ in Türkiye’de Aydınlanma Hareketi. Dünü, Bugünü,
Sorunları. 25–26 Nisan 1991 Strasbourg Sempozyumu Server Tanilli’ye Saygı (Istanbul: Alkım Yayınevi, 2006), p. 37.
58 Soner Cağptay, ‘Türkiye’de Laikliğin ve Dış Politikanın Geleceği. Seçimler ve Endişe Verici Gelişmeler’, Policy
Focus nr. 67, (Nisan 2007), The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, pp. 5-6.
