Murat Metinsoy | Istanbul University (original) (raw)
Books and Book Chapters by Murat Metinsoy
Mâzîden Âtîye Zarafet: Osmanlı İmparatorluğu'nun Son Döneminden Cumhuriyet'in İlk Yıllarına Kadın Kıyafetleri. İstanbul: Vehbi Koç Vakfı Yayınları , 2023
These are the cover, content and foreword pages from the Exhibition Book of "From Past to Future:... more These are the cover, content and foreword pages from the Exhibition Book of "From Past to Future: Women's Costume from the Late Ottoman Empire to the Early Republican Era Exhibition," organized by Koç Holding and Vehbi Koç Vakfı. The exhibition can be visited at Şehzade Abdülmecid Efendi Köşkü in Nakkaştepe until March 17, 2024.
The Power of the People: Everyday Resistance and Dissent in the Making of Modern Turkey, 1923–38. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press, 2021
Following the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and the founding of the Republic in 1923 under the r... more Following the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and the founding of the Republic in 1923 under the rule of Atatürk and his Republican People's Party, Turkey embarked on extensive social, economic, cultural and administrative modernization programs which would lay the foundations for modern day Turkey. The Power of the People shows that the ordinary people shaped the social and political change of Turkey as much as Atatürk's strong spurt of modernization. Adopting a broader conception of politics, focusing on daily interactions between the state and society and using untapped archival sources, Murat Metinsoy reveals how rural and urban people coped with the state policies, local oppression, exploitation, and adverse conditions wrought by the authoritarian polity and the Great Depression through diverse everyday survival and resistance strategies. Showing how the people's daily practices and beliefs survived and outweighed the modernizing elite's projects, this book also gives new insights into the social and historical origins of Turkey's backslide to conservative and Islamist politics, demonstrating that the making of modern Turkey was an outcome of intersection between the modernization and the people's responses to it.
Türkiye, her iki dünya savaşı ertesi köklü dönüşümler geçirdi. İlki 600 yıllık Osmanlı hanedanına... more Türkiye, her iki dünya savaşı ertesi köklü dönüşümler geçirdi. İlki 600 yıllık Osmanlı hanedanına son verdi. İkincisi ise Tek Parti döneminin sonu oldu; Türkiye’de siyasi demokrasinin yolunu açtı. İkinci Dünya Savaşı’nda Türkiye tarafsız kaldı. Ancak, savaşın tüm olumsuzluklarını bilfiil yaşadı. Tek Parti döneminin toplumsal dengeleri büyük ölçüde hasar gördü. Milli Korunma Kanunu, Varlık Vergisi, Toprak Mahsulleri
Vergisi, İş Mükellefiyeti gibi uygulamalar toplumsal katmanları iktidara karşı tavır almaya sevk etti. Devletin savaş içinde kararlarını hayata geçirme konusundaki zaafları belirginleşirken; kitlelerin gündelik yaşamda tepki ve direnişleri de çığ gibi arttı. Gerek çok partili sisteme geçişte, gerekse 1940’ların ikinci yarısında gündeme gelen sosyal politika alanındaki reformlarda toplum tabanında gözlenen yılgınlık ve
tepkiler önemli bir rol oynadı.
Murat Metinsoy’un kitabı işte bu zor yılların toplumsal öyküsünü gündeme getiriyor. Olaylar dizinini tabandan irdeleyerek; kitlelerin yaşam deneyimlerini, serzenişlerini, gündelik yaşamdaki direnişlerini vurgulayarak… Otoriter dönemlerde bile toplumun
gündelik mücadelelerinin ve taleplerinin siyasete etki edebileceğini
ortaya koyarak…
Zafer Toprak, Boğaziçi Üniversitesi
Crime, Povert and Survival in the Middle East and the North Africa: The Dangerous Classes since 1800, 2020
third-party websites referred to or in this book. All internet addresses given in this book were ... more third-party websites referred to or in this book. All internet addresses given in this book were correct at the time of going to press. The author and publisher regret any inconvenience caused if addresses have changed or sites have ceased to exist, but can accept no responsibility for any such changes.
Tanzimat'tan Günümüze Türkiye İşçi Sınıfı Tarihi, 1839-2014: Yeni Yaklaşımlar, Yeni Alanlar, Yeni Sorunlar, 2014
Türkiye'de cumhuriyet dönemi emek tarihçiliğinde dar anlamdaki, sadece fabrika işçilerini kapsaya... more Türkiye'de cumhuriyet dönemi emek tarihçiliğinde dar anlamdaki, sadece fabrika işçilerini kapsayan "işçi sınıfı" ve "emekçi" kavramlarının giderek aşıldığını görüyoruz. Uzun süre fabrika işçileri asli emekçiler olarak tasavvur edildi ve akademik ilgiye mazhar oldu. Fabrika çatısı altında çalışmanın sağladığı fiziksel yakınlaşmanın, işçi sınıfının kolektif bir sınıf kimliği ve politik eylemlilik geliştirmesinde temel koşul olduğu düşünüldü. Kuşkusuz, bu tek başına yeterli olmasa da, yabana atılır bir koşul da değildi. 1 Bu nedenle fabrika işçilerinin kolektif, partili veya sendikal mücadelesinin işçi sınıfının varlığının ve siyasetinin temel bileşenleri olduğu varsayıldı. "İşçi sınıfı"nı, ancak Batı'dakine benzer tarzda örgütlü sanayi işçisi tipolojisinin oluşturacağına dair Avrupamerkezci genel kanı, farklı emekçi grupların tarihçilerin ilgi odağına girmesini uzun süre engelledi. Bu gruplardan belki de en önemlisi zanaatkârlardı.
Anti-Veiling Campaigns in the Muslim World: Gender, Modernism and the Politics of Dress. Stephanie Cronin (ed.). London, New York: Routledge, 2014: 86-117., 2014
In recent years bitter controversies have erupted across Europe and the Middle East about women's... more In recent years bitter controversies have erupted across Europe and the Middle East about women's veiling, and especially their wearing of the faceveil or niqab. Yet the deeper issues contained within these controversiessecularism versus religious belief, individual freedom versus social or family coercion, identity versus integration-are not new but are strikingly prefigured by earlier conflicts. This book examines the state-sponsored anti-veiling campaigns that swept across wide swathes of the Muslim world in the interwar period, especially in Turkey and the Balkans, Iran, Afghanistan, and the Soviet republics of the Caucasus and Central Asia. It shows how veiling was officially discouraged and ridiculed as backward and, although it was rarely banned, veiling was politicized and turned into a rallying-point for a wider opposition. Asking a number of questions about this earlier anti-veiling discourse and the policies flowing from it, and the reactions that it provoked, the book illuminates and contextualizes contemporary debates about gender, Islam and modernism.
Sayfiye: Hafiflik Hayali, 2014
2005 Zonguldak Kent Tarihi Bienali'nden Seçmeler, 2006
İktisat, Siyaset ve Devlet Üzerine Yazılar: Prof. Dr. Kemalî Saybaşılı’ya Armağan, 2006
Papers by Murat Metinsoy
Middle East Studies, 2023
The collapse of the Ottoman Empire at the end of the First World War culminated in the emergence ... more The collapse of the Ottoman Empire at the end of the First World War culminated in the emergence of the Republic of Turkey led by the president Mustafa Kemal (Atatürk) and his party, the Republican People's Party (RPP). The Republic embarked on many cultural, economic and political modernization reforms and projects. The interwar period in Turkey was marked by these astonishing reform programs under the authoritarian single-party rule. The new state financed the modernization process largely through taxes. Alongside taxes, another important source of revenue to subsidize state projects was monopolies. 1 In fact, monopolies were peculiar neither to the young Republic nor Turkey. Both monopolies and resistance to them through smuggling have been longstanding phenomena in world history. Monopolies had been used to finance ruling classes, states and armies before the formation of modern states. With the advent of modern states and capitalism, monopolies played a great role in capital accumulation and modern-state-making schemes. Together with taxes, monopolies constituted the major source of state revenues, even in western capitalist economies. 2 In Turkey, before the Republic, Ottoman rulers had benefited from monopolies extensively to fund their treasuries, military expeditions, public investments, and later payment of foreign debts. The last generation of Ottomans led by the Young Turks resorted to them to support Muslim-Turkish merchants. After the demise of the Empire, the monopoly system continued to form the backbone of the young Republic's finance. Already during the National Struggle, the Ankara government had started to claim over some monopolies held by the Istanbul government in order to support the Independence War. After the establishment of the Republic, the government monopolized the production and trade of items such as salt, tobacco, cigarettes, cigarette papers, alcoholic beverages, matches, lighters, and wooden products. Within a short time, the importation of textiles, sugar and many other commodities were also monopolized. Sugar and textile factories, most of which were established as public enterprises were subsidized with monopoly-like privileges. The monopoly system as indirect taxation broke up the large number of producers, traders, and consumers of the items subjected to the monopoly. Leasing the production and trade of many goods to a number of cronies as private monopolies also served the commercialization of the economy. Monopolies The government first monopolized the production and trade of matches and lighters in 1924 and transferred their monopoly rights to the American-Turkish Investment Corporation in 1930. In 1925, after abolishing the Ottoman Tobacco Monopoly Company Régie's monopoly over
Journal of Balkan and Near Eastern Studies, 2024
The secular reforms the young Republic of Turkey launched during the interwar period were one of ... more The secular reforms the young Republic of Turkey launched during the interwar period were one of the most comprehensive modernization schemes in the world history. These extraordinary reforms have been considered as the sole maker of today's Turkey. The political histories, focusing on formal politics, mostly reduced the social opposition to secularism to a few well-known hapless protests and rebellions. This article, however, argues that modern Turkey was the culmination of a more complicated process in which popular opposition to these reforms also shaped politics. It reveals that the daily life of ordinary people, particularly in rural areas, was rife with the anti-secular voices and attitudes by exploring non-elite public spheres and popular discursive strategies though which anti-secular opinions and attitudes were produced and expressed. Rather than seeing them as a result of clash between secularism and religion, it emphasizes the socioeconomic reasons that lead to people's negative response, primarily the loss of authority or economic advantages of some groups due to reforms. Finally this article offers that the roots of the Islamist politics of the following decades could be sought in this popular dissent, which subtly contested the secularism's hegemony in daily life during the early republic.
New Perspectives on Turkey, 2020
After the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, the building of the modern Turkish Republic was finance... more After the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, the building of the modern Turkish Republic was financed largely through the taxes extracted from the agricultural economy. Turkey's economy was largely based on agriculture and accordingly the new state relied heavily on rural resources. Despite the abolition of the tithe, many other agricultural taxes increased remarkably. This paper examines the peasants' everyday resistance to heavy taxes under the single-party regime in interwar Turkey. It shows that under an authoritarian single-party system, poor and small-income peasants used daily and mostly informal means to cope with the social injustice that resulted from the increasingly burdensome economic demands of the new state. In contrast to the existing accounts, which mostly regard the peasants as being atomized under the absolute control of the state, this paper portrays them as an active social dynamic that annulled the greater part of the taxes in practice and compelled the government to soften its heavy taxes. Based on new archival sources, such as gendarme records, politicians' reports, citizens' petitions, and newspaper reports, this paper reveals the peasants' different forms of politics and the direct and indirect impact of such politics on the social and political transformation of the new Republic and on the modernization of Turkey overall.
Siyasal: Journal of Political Science, 2020
International Journal of Middle East Studies, No 43, Dec 2011
This article scrutinizes election district and inspection district reports written by the deputie... more This article scrutinizes election district and inspection district reports written by the deputies of the Turkish single-party government and the role of these reports in state decision making. Underscoring social discontent and the fragile hegemony of the new regime—both of which motivated the republican elite to monitor state and party administrations and public opinion—the article argues that the practice of reporting was neither a project of social engineering nor a practice peculiar to the Turkish state but rather a requirement of a polity concerned with the opinion of its citizens. In the absence of direct political participation of the people in government, the reports mediated between the state and society. Contrary to conventional accounts of the single-party period, the article argues that the republican elite did not govern the country through top-down decrees but instead sought to ascertain public opinion and its own administrative defects so as to consolidate its fragile hegemony. Based on these findings, I propose that we redefine the early republican state as a flexible authoritarian regime that was not detached from the society.
The Hat Law is one of the hallmarks of the early republican Turkey’s modernization process. The n... more The Hat Law is one of the hallmarks of the early republican Turkey’s modernization process. The nationalist-modernist elite attempted to modernize the society through changing the cultural codes like clothing styles. The symbols such as headgears became an essential means through which the new regime transformed the society from religious-traditional to modern-secular one. The state intervention in symbolic and cultural realms of the society, specifically the Hat Law of 1925, created widespread social reactions and prompted several uprisings. Many Islamic scholars rejected and fiercely criticized the hat reform. In many provinces, masses staged several anti-hat protests. These widely-known individual opposition and collective protests were not the only form of popular disapproval or resistance. Ordinary people drew on several resistance and disobedience strategies in daily life so as to avoid the wearing new hat or keep away from the social changes the hat reform implied. The political and intellectual history approaches, however, have not examined such forms of people’s everyday politics. Culturalism also captured modernist accounts and conservative literature, both of which explained the anti-hat protests in reference to the people’s religiosity. This article, drawing on new historical sources from several archives, examines the everyday-covert forms and complex causes of people’s negative response to the hat reform, and brings to light how the society negotiated the hat reform in daily life, even without organized-political action.
Birikim Yayınları, 2010
This article focuses on the local political dynamics of early republican Turkey. Taking under clo... more This article focuses on the local political dynamics of early republican Turkey. Taking under close scrutiny the local organizations of the Republican People’s Party, this article aims to shed light on the unexplored aspects of the early republican politics, i.e., the social composition of the local party administrations, the intra-party rivalries, social contestations over the party organizations in localities, relations between the party and state administrations, and the organizational strength of the party in remote parts of the country. The preliminary conclusion this article reaches is that the official image of the RPP and the Kemalist elite as bureaucratic, strong, disciplined, well-organized, homogenous and monolithic entity did not represent the characteristics of the local party and state apparatuses. Drawing on the local intra-party rivalries, manipulation of the party and state administrations by the local social dynamics, tensions between the local party and state authorities, and organizational weakness of the party and the state, this article argues that these local realities of the party and the state might have likely compelled the central elite to merge the party with the state in 1936.
Mâzîden Âtîye Zarafet: Osmanlı İmparatorluğu'nun Son Döneminden Cumhuriyet'in İlk Yıllarına Kadın Kıyafetleri. İstanbul: Vehbi Koç Vakfı Yayınları , 2023
These are the cover, content and foreword pages from the Exhibition Book of "From Past to Future:... more These are the cover, content and foreword pages from the Exhibition Book of "From Past to Future: Women's Costume from the Late Ottoman Empire to the Early Republican Era Exhibition," organized by Koç Holding and Vehbi Koç Vakfı. The exhibition can be visited at Şehzade Abdülmecid Efendi Köşkü in Nakkaştepe until March 17, 2024.
The Power of the People: Everyday Resistance and Dissent in the Making of Modern Turkey, 1923–38. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press, 2021
Following the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and the founding of the Republic in 1923 under the r... more Following the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and the founding of the Republic in 1923 under the rule of Atatürk and his Republican People's Party, Turkey embarked on extensive social, economic, cultural and administrative modernization programs which would lay the foundations for modern day Turkey. The Power of the People shows that the ordinary people shaped the social and political change of Turkey as much as Atatürk's strong spurt of modernization. Adopting a broader conception of politics, focusing on daily interactions between the state and society and using untapped archival sources, Murat Metinsoy reveals how rural and urban people coped with the state policies, local oppression, exploitation, and adverse conditions wrought by the authoritarian polity and the Great Depression through diverse everyday survival and resistance strategies. Showing how the people's daily practices and beliefs survived and outweighed the modernizing elite's projects, this book also gives new insights into the social and historical origins of Turkey's backslide to conservative and Islamist politics, demonstrating that the making of modern Turkey was an outcome of intersection between the modernization and the people's responses to it.
Türkiye, her iki dünya savaşı ertesi köklü dönüşümler geçirdi. İlki 600 yıllık Osmanlı hanedanına... more Türkiye, her iki dünya savaşı ertesi köklü dönüşümler geçirdi. İlki 600 yıllık Osmanlı hanedanına son verdi. İkincisi ise Tek Parti döneminin sonu oldu; Türkiye’de siyasi demokrasinin yolunu açtı. İkinci Dünya Savaşı’nda Türkiye tarafsız kaldı. Ancak, savaşın tüm olumsuzluklarını bilfiil yaşadı. Tek Parti döneminin toplumsal dengeleri büyük ölçüde hasar gördü. Milli Korunma Kanunu, Varlık Vergisi, Toprak Mahsulleri
Vergisi, İş Mükellefiyeti gibi uygulamalar toplumsal katmanları iktidara karşı tavır almaya sevk etti. Devletin savaş içinde kararlarını hayata geçirme konusundaki zaafları belirginleşirken; kitlelerin gündelik yaşamda tepki ve direnişleri de çığ gibi arttı. Gerek çok partili sisteme geçişte, gerekse 1940’ların ikinci yarısında gündeme gelen sosyal politika alanındaki reformlarda toplum tabanında gözlenen yılgınlık ve
tepkiler önemli bir rol oynadı.
Murat Metinsoy’un kitabı işte bu zor yılların toplumsal öyküsünü gündeme getiriyor. Olaylar dizinini tabandan irdeleyerek; kitlelerin yaşam deneyimlerini, serzenişlerini, gündelik yaşamdaki direnişlerini vurgulayarak… Otoriter dönemlerde bile toplumun
gündelik mücadelelerinin ve taleplerinin siyasete etki edebileceğini
ortaya koyarak…
Zafer Toprak, Boğaziçi Üniversitesi
Crime, Povert and Survival in the Middle East and the North Africa: The Dangerous Classes since 1800, 2020
third-party websites referred to or in this book. All internet addresses given in this book were ... more third-party websites referred to or in this book. All internet addresses given in this book were correct at the time of going to press. The author and publisher regret any inconvenience caused if addresses have changed or sites have ceased to exist, but can accept no responsibility for any such changes.
Tanzimat'tan Günümüze Türkiye İşçi Sınıfı Tarihi, 1839-2014: Yeni Yaklaşımlar, Yeni Alanlar, Yeni Sorunlar, 2014
Türkiye'de cumhuriyet dönemi emek tarihçiliğinde dar anlamdaki, sadece fabrika işçilerini kapsaya... more Türkiye'de cumhuriyet dönemi emek tarihçiliğinde dar anlamdaki, sadece fabrika işçilerini kapsayan "işçi sınıfı" ve "emekçi" kavramlarının giderek aşıldığını görüyoruz. Uzun süre fabrika işçileri asli emekçiler olarak tasavvur edildi ve akademik ilgiye mazhar oldu. Fabrika çatısı altında çalışmanın sağladığı fiziksel yakınlaşmanın, işçi sınıfının kolektif bir sınıf kimliği ve politik eylemlilik geliştirmesinde temel koşul olduğu düşünüldü. Kuşkusuz, bu tek başına yeterli olmasa da, yabana atılır bir koşul da değildi. 1 Bu nedenle fabrika işçilerinin kolektif, partili veya sendikal mücadelesinin işçi sınıfının varlığının ve siyasetinin temel bileşenleri olduğu varsayıldı. "İşçi sınıfı"nı, ancak Batı'dakine benzer tarzda örgütlü sanayi işçisi tipolojisinin oluşturacağına dair Avrupamerkezci genel kanı, farklı emekçi grupların tarihçilerin ilgi odağına girmesini uzun süre engelledi. Bu gruplardan belki de en önemlisi zanaatkârlardı.
Anti-Veiling Campaigns in the Muslim World: Gender, Modernism and the Politics of Dress. Stephanie Cronin (ed.). London, New York: Routledge, 2014: 86-117., 2014
In recent years bitter controversies have erupted across Europe and the Middle East about women's... more In recent years bitter controversies have erupted across Europe and the Middle East about women's veiling, and especially their wearing of the faceveil or niqab. Yet the deeper issues contained within these controversiessecularism versus religious belief, individual freedom versus social or family coercion, identity versus integration-are not new but are strikingly prefigured by earlier conflicts. This book examines the state-sponsored anti-veiling campaigns that swept across wide swathes of the Muslim world in the interwar period, especially in Turkey and the Balkans, Iran, Afghanistan, and the Soviet republics of the Caucasus and Central Asia. It shows how veiling was officially discouraged and ridiculed as backward and, although it was rarely banned, veiling was politicized and turned into a rallying-point for a wider opposition. Asking a number of questions about this earlier anti-veiling discourse and the policies flowing from it, and the reactions that it provoked, the book illuminates and contextualizes contemporary debates about gender, Islam and modernism.
Sayfiye: Hafiflik Hayali, 2014
2005 Zonguldak Kent Tarihi Bienali'nden Seçmeler, 2006
İktisat, Siyaset ve Devlet Üzerine Yazılar: Prof. Dr. Kemalî Saybaşılı’ya Armağan, 2006
Middle East Studies, 2023
The collapse of the Ottoman Empire at the end of the First World War culminated in the emergence ... more The collapse of the Ottoman Empire at the end of the First World War culminated in the emergence of the Republic of Turkey led by the president Mustafa Kemal (Atatürk) and his party, the Republican People's Party (RPP). The Republic embarked on many cultural, economic and political modernization reforms and projects. The interwar period in Turkey was marked by these astonishing reform programs under the authoritarian single-party rule. The new state financed the modernization process largely through taxes. Alongside taxes, another important source of revenue to subsidize state projects was monopolies. 1 In fact, monopolies were peculiar neither to the young Republic nor Turkey. Both monopolies and resistance to them through smuggling have been longstanding phenomena in world history. Monopolies had been used to finance ruling classes, states and armies before the formation of modern states. With the advent of modern states and capitalism, monopolies played a great role in capital accumulation and modern-state-making schemes. Together with taxes, monopolies constituted the major source of state revenues, even in western capitalist economies. 2 In Turkey, before the Republic, Ottoman rulers had benefited from monopolies extensively to fund their treasuries, military expeditions, public investments, and later payment of foreign debts. The last generation of Ottomans led by the Young Turks resorted to them to support Muslim-Turkish merchants. After the demise of the Empire, the monopoly system continued to form the backbone of the young Republic's finance. Already during the National Struggle, the Ankara government had started to claim over some monopolies held by the Istanbul government in order to support the Independence War. After the establishment of the Republic, the government monopolized the production and trade of items such as salt, tobacco, cigarettes, cigarette papers, alcoholic beverages, matches, lighters, and wooden products. Within a short time, the importation of textiles, sugar and many other commodities were also monopolized. Sugar and textile factories, most of which were established as public enterprises were subsidized with monopoly-like privileges. The monopoly system as indirect taxation broke up the large number of producers, traders, and consumers of the items subjected to the monopoly. Leasing the production and trade of many goods to a number of cronies as private monopolies also served the commercialization of the economy. Monopolies The government first monopolized the production and trade of matches and lighters in 1924 and transferred their monopoly rights to the American-Turkish Investment Corporation in 1930. In 1925, after abolishing the Ottoman Tobacco Monopoly Company Régie's monopoly over
Journal of Balkan and Near Eastern Studies, 2024
The secular reforms the young Republic of Turkey launched during the interwar period were one of ... more The secular reforms the young Republic of Turkey launched during the interwar period were one of the most comprehensive modernization schemes in the world history. These extraordinary reforms have been considered as the sole maker of today's Turkey. The political histories, focusing on formal politics, mostly reduced the social opposition to secularism to a few well-known hapless protests and rebellions. This article, however, argues that modern Turkey was the culmination of a more complicated process in which popular opposition to these reforms also shaped politics. It reveals that the daily life of ordinary people, particularly in rural areas, was rife with the anti-secular voices and attitudes by exploring non-elite public spheres and popular discursive strategies though which anti-secular opinions and attitudes were produced and expressed. Rather than seeing them as a result of clash between secularism and religion, it emphasizes the socioeconomic reasons that lead to people's negative response, primarily the loss of authority or economic advantages of some groups due to reforms. Finally this article offers that the roots of the Islamist politics of the following decades could be sought in this popular dissent, which subtly contested the secularism's hegemony in daily life during the early republic.
New Perspectives on Turkey, 2020
After the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, the building of the modern Turkish Republic was finance... more After the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, the building of the modern Turkish Republic was financed largely through the taxes extracted from the agricultural economy. Turkey's economy was largely based on agriculture and accordingly the new state relied heavily on rural resources. Despite the abolition of the tithe, many other agricultural taxes increased remarkably. This paper examines the peasants' everyday resistance to heavy taxes under the single-party regime in interwar Turkey. It shows that under an authoritarian single-party system, poor and small-income peasants used daily and mostly informal means to cope with the social injustice that resulted from the increasingly burdensome economic demands of the new state. In contrast to the existing accounts, which mostly regard the peasants as being atomized under the absolute control of the state, this paper portrays them as an active social dynamic that annulled the greater part of the taxes in practice and compelled the government to soften its heavy taxes. Based on new archival sources, such as gendarme records, politicians' reports, citizens' petitions, and newspaper reports, this paper reveals the peasants' different forms of politics and the direct and indirect impact of such politics on the social and political transformation of the new Republic and on the modernization of Turkey overall.
Siyasal: Journal of Political Science, 2020
International Journal of Middle East Studies, No 43, Dec 2011
This article scrutinizes election district and inspection district reports written by the deputie... more This article scrutinizes election district and inspection district reports written by the deputies of the Turkish single-party government and the role of these reports in state decision making. Underscoring social discontent and the fragile hegemony of the new regime—both of which motivated the republican elite to monitor state and party administrations and public opinion—the article argues that the practice of reporting was neither a project of social engineering nor a practice peculiar to the Turkish state but rather a requirement of a polity concerned with the opinion of its citizens. In the absence of direct political participation of the people in government, the reports mediated between the state and society. Contrary to conventional accounts of the single-party period, the article argues that the republican elite did not govern the country through top-down decrees but instead sought to ascertain public opinion and its own administrative defects so as to consolidate its fragile hegemony. Based on these findings, I propose that we redefine the early republican state as a flexible authoritarian regime that was not detached from the society.
The Hat Law is one of the hallmarks of the early republican Turkey’s modernization process. The n... more The Hat Law is one of the hallmarks of the early republican Turkey’s modernization process. The nationalist-modernist elite attempted to modernize the society through changing the cultural codes like clothing styles. The symbols such as headgears became an essential means through which the new regime transformed the society from religious-traditional to modern-secular one. The state intervention in symbolic and cultural realms of the society, specifically the Hat Law of 1925, created widespread social reactions and prompted several uprisings. Many Islamic scholars rejected and fiercely criticized the hat reform. In many provinces, masses staged several anti-hat protests. These widely-known individual opposition and collective protests were not the only form of popular disapproval or resistance. Ordinary people drew on several resistance and disobedience strategies in daily life so as to avoid the wearing new hat or keep away from the social changes the hat reform implied. The political and intellectual history approaches, however, have not examined such forms of people’s everyday politics. Culturalism also captured modernist accounts and conservative literature, both of which explained the anti-hat protests in reference to the people’s religiosity. This article, drawing on new historical sources from several archives, examines the everyday-covert forms and complex causes of people’s negative response to the hat reform, and brings to light how the society negotiated the hat reform in daily life, even without organized-political action.
Birikim Yayınları, 2010
This article focuses on the local political dynamics of early republican Turkey. Taking under clo... more This article focuses on the local political dynamics of early republican Turkey. Taking under close scrutiny the local organizations of the Republican People’s Party, this article aims to shed light on the unexplored aspects of the early republican politics, i.e., the social composition of the local party administrations, the intra-party rivalries, social contestations over the party organizations in localities, relations between the party and state administrations, and the organizational strength of the party in remote parts of the country. The preliminary conclusion this article reaches is that the official image of the RPP and the Kemalist elite as bureaucratic, strong, disciplined, well-organized, homogenous and monolithic entity did not represent the characteristics of the local party and state apparatuses. Drawing on the local intra-party rivalries, manipulation of the party and state administrations by the local social dynamics, tensions between the local party and state authorities, and organizational weakness of the party and the state, this article argues that these local realities of the party and the state might have likely compelled the central elite to merge the party with the state in 1936.
Tarih ve Toplum: Yeni Yaklaşımlar, Nov 2012
Oxford Encyclopedia of Islam and Politics, 2014
Ne "Ulu Hakan" Ne "Kızıl Sultan", 2007
Journal of Holy Land and Palestine Studies , 2021
This is a book review of an edited collection by Stephanie Cronin, which also includes brief comm... more This is a book review of an edited collection by Stephanie Cronin, which also includes brief comment on my piece...
International Review of Social History, 2022
Journal of the Ottoman and Turkish Studies Association, 2022
Ankara Üniversitesi SBF Dergisi, 2015
İLETİM, 2019
This is an interview I gave five years ago...
Linç: İki Tarafı Keskin Bıçak, 2005