Moderated by Nicholas Danforth, the sixth episode of ELIAMEP-Medyascope Media Series focused on “Post-Kemalism and the Future of Turkish Governance” with Alp Yenen, Berk Esen, Cangül Örnek and İlker Aytürk as guests.
The sixth of seven-episode ELIMED webinar series, which is a media and information project presented by Center for Applied Turkey Studies (CATS) and supported by Mercator Foundation and German Federal Foreign Ministry, was aired on 24 October at Medyascope’s YouTube channel.
During the first decade of the AKP’s rise to power, academic discussions of Turkish politics were dominated by what İlker Aytürk has called “the Post-Kemalist Paradigm.” For many scholars, the pathologies of Turkey’s founding ideology served to explain its subsequent failure to liberalize over the course of the next century. As a result, they hoped that dismantling military tutelage and the intellectual infrastructure of Kemalism would finally enable Turkey’s complete democratization. Yet Erdogan’s consolidation of power has forced a reconsideration of this assumption and prompted an ongoing debate about how those supporting liberal democracy today should approach Turkey’s Kemalist heritage. This discussion examines how disillusionment with the AKP is reshaping academic approaches to Turkey and what that might mean for the future of Turkish politics.
