Turkish Politics and ‘The People’

Explores the transformations of the notion of ‘the people’ from the late Ottoman to current Turkish political discourses

• Explores Turkish political culture and institutional architecture through archival research and a critical rereading of the historiography of the Turkish state and society
• Proposes key conceptual tools to study popular and populist politics and applies them to the Turkish case
• Uses and integrates modes of analysis from a diverse body of scholarship such as sociology, cultural studies, psychosocial studies, political science and political theory into a genealogical narrative

Turkish Politics and ‘The People’ enhances our understanding of ‘the popular’ in the study of politics through a critical examination of the uses and constructions of ‘the people’ from the establishment of the Turkish Republic in 1923, to the present. It proposes ways of reading the insertion and operationalisation of the notion of ‘the people’ as a concept, a political subject, the object of policy and politics over the past century. It assesses the ways ‘the people’ have been shaped by the history of the republic, and, in turn, have informed ways of visualising society, the country’s political culture, institutional architecture and framed the parameters and repertoires of political action.

Drawing on extensive archival research and contributions from historical sociology and social movement research, Spyros A. Sofos enriches the ways of approaching the ‘popular’ by proposing ways of integrating identity, discourse, strategy, organisation and leadership in the articulation of ‘the people’ in political discourse and action.