Protest over end of the Peace Process, Istanbul, 2015. Demotix/erhan demirtaş. All rights reserved.Though often depicted as a relatively stable exception in a turbulent region, the Republic of Turkey has also wrestled with burdens of the Ottoman Empire. Arguably, the most troublesome legacy has been the multi-ethnic and multi-religious character of post-Ottoman society, because even after the transition from Kemalist authoritarianism to multi-party democracy in 1950, the Republican regime has not adapted itself to the nature of society but continuously sought to mould it instead.
The willingness of decision-makers in Ankara to create a homogenous society out of highly heterogeneous communities is one of the few characteristics shared by all successive governments—regardless of their radical differences in ideological outlook.
While the Kemalists aimed to form a westernised, secular, exclusively Turkish nation; social conservative or centre-right administrations such as the incumbent AKP (Justice and Development Party) have been less dedicated to the idea of state-imposed secularism. Yet the maxim of ‘one nation, one state and one flag’—recently ‘one religion’ can be argued to have been added by the AKP to this list—has remained intact. The harrowing yet unsurprising side-effects of this vision of homogeneity has been seen in the form of assimilation campaigns, mass deportations and massacres against those who have refused to conform. Just as Islamists challenged Kemalist rule, minority groups such as Kurds and Alevis have also resisted top-down impositions of identity. As a result, contemporary Turkey is inhabited by a deeply polarised society and the state has been engaged in a violent conflict with an armed Kurdish organisation, the PKK (Kurdistan Workers’ Party), since the 1980s. Let us look at Turkey’s recent travails in dealing with its society before discussing its current predicament in an ever more unstable Middle East.
