Official Political Ideology of Turkey: Its Reflection on Socio-Cultural Life

Abstract

Ideologies are keys to understand the modern world. Every ideology promises to take the target to the “ideal” through building a political, moral, philosophical, legal, esthetic and social doctrine. Modern Turkey’s founding Idea was Kemalism. This Idea did not only shape the critical decades of 20th century Turkish modernization but also penetrated into the operational codes of the state. Therefore, we believe that a perspective we propose here, from inside of Turkey, which appeared in international public as a regional actor in Middle East and Balkans in the last few years, would contribute the conference. We propose here to make four representative-critical speeches with different perspectives of Turkey’s Raison d'Etat of the last century. Our prospective panel "Official Political Ideology of Turkey and Its Reflection on Socio-Cultural Life" starts with Tebessüm Yılmaz’s presentation titled “Tracking The Official Political Ideology In Caricatures: Early Republican Era And Humor”. In her speech, she aims to display the “zeitgeist” through caricatures in newspapers and magazines of the Era. With his speech “The Basis of Official Political Ideology in Turkey: Kemalist Westernization”, Hasan Aksakal points out the years between 1925 and 1950 and focuses on the shift from the Imperial Ottoman cultural world to a project of creating a Western society. Oya Aktaş, in her speech “Militarizing the Nation: Compulsory Military Service in Turkey” questions the intersection between militarism and modernization projects and the role of compulsory military service in the construction of “ideal citizens”. Final speech belongs to Özde Köseoğlu. Her speech is “The Enemies of Official Political Ideology And Functionality Of Prisons”. She will focus on the functionality of prisons in fight with the “enemies” of official political ideology. We hope to provide a rich context including military service, prisons, religious-cultural issues and current foreign policy with our prospective panel.

Title	Details
The Basis of Official Political Ideology in Turkey: Kemalist Westernism	View Paper Details
Militarising the Nation: Compulsory Military Service in Turkey	View Paper Details
The Enemies of Official Political Ideology and Functionality of Prisons	View Paper Details