Post-Kemalist policy towards the outside Turks

Abstract

Post-Kemalist Turkey’ has long been used to distinguish the periods before and after the death of Kemal Atatürk in various fields of research such as history, politics and even architecture (for instance see Feroze 1976, Kreiser 2002) . The phrase, nonetheless, started denoting Turkey’s shift (or signs of shift) from the Kemalist path and creed by the 1990s when Necmettin Erbakan’s pro-Islamic government intended to open more space for Islamic political voices in the country. In this sense, Erbakan’s pro-Islamic government was the first rigid political manifestation of a post-Kemalist rule. Yet even before Erbakan, Turgut Özal had planted the seeds necessary to transform Kemalist Turkey into a post-Kemalist state. He did this via political means and through his attempt to institutionalise neo-liberal and pro-Ottoman policies. Without a doubt, the meanings that post-Kemalism connotes depend on the actors introducing such practices. Therefore, Özal’s and Erbakan’s post-Kemalisms were quite different; while...