Kemalism and Populism

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 152-188
Author(s):  
Tamer Balci

Abstract This article examines the trajectory of populism/halkçilik, one of the least studied principles of Kemalism, from its origins in the ideas of Enlightenment to its practices in modern Turkey. Unlike its commonly perceived negative connotation that is often associated with irrational political objectives, populism is a manifestation of equality premise of Enlightenment. Populism gained popularity among the nineteenth-century American and Russian farmers as well as fin de siècle French intellectuals and politicians. Neither the Russian Narodnik movement nor the American Populist Party were as influential as the French solidarists who were backed by Vatican to carve a middle path between unrefined Capitalism and revolutionary Marxism. Inspired by its earlier counterparts in France and Russia, Kemalist principle of Populism aimed to end inherited socio-economic inequalities that had existed in the former Ottoman Empire. While modern Turkey curbed some inequalities, it has stumbled upon the same core obstacle, unequal distribution of resources. The never-ending human fight for equality will carry on whether it carries the banner of Kemalism or any other ideology.

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Benoît De Courson ◽  
Daniel Nettle

AbstractHumans sometimes cooperate to mutual advantage, and sometimes exploit one another. In industrialised societies, the prevalence of exploitation, in the form of crime, is related to the distribution of economic resources: more unequal societies tend to have higher crime, as well as lower social trust. We created a model of cooperation and exploitation to explore why this should be. Distinctively, our model features a desperation threshold, a level of resources below which it is extremely damaging to fall. Agents do not belong to fixed types, but condition their behaviour on their current resource level and the behaviour in the population around them. We show that the optimal action for individuals who are close to the desperation threshold is to exploit others. This remains true even in the presence of severe and probable punishment for exploitation, since successful exploitation is the quickest route out of desperation, whereas being punished does not make already desperate states much worse. Simulated populations with a sufficiently unequal distribution of resources rapidly evolve an equilibrium of low trust and zero cooperation: desperate individuals try to exploit, and non-desperate individuals avoid interaction altogether. Making the distribution of resources more equal or increasing social mobility is generally effective in producing a high cooperation, high trust equilibrium; increasing punishment severity is not.


2017 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 75-102
Author(s):  
Melike Tokay-Ünal

This article illustrates American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions’ support of the “missionary matrimony”, mid-nineteenth-century New England women’s perceptions of the missionary career obtained through matrimony, and their impressions of the Oriental mission fields and non-Christian or non-Protestant women, who were depicted as victims to be saved. A brief introduction to New England women’s involvement in foreign missions will continue with the driving force that led these women to leave the United States for far mission fields in the second part of the paper. This context will be exemplified with the story of a New England missionary wife. The analysis consists of the journal entries and letters of Seraphina Haynes Everett of Ottoman mission field. The writings of this woman from New England give detailed information about the spiritual voyage she was taking in the mid-nineteenth century Ottoman lands. In her letters to the United States, Everett described two Ottoman cities, Izmir (Smyrna) and Istanbul (Constantinople), and wrote about her impressions of Islam and Christianity as practiced in the Ottoman empire. Everett’s opinions of the Ottoman empire, which encouraged more American women to devote themselves to the education and to the evangelization of Armenian women of the Ottoman empire in the middle of the nineteenth century, conclude the paper.


1975 ◽  
Vol 6 (4) ◽  
pp. 421-459 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stanford J. Shaw

One of the most significant, but unstudied, aspects of the reforms accomplished in the Ottoman Empire during the nineteenth century under the leadership of the Tanzimat statesmen and of Sultan Abd ul-Hamid II was a radical transformation of the traditional Ottoman tax structure and the introduction of the system that has remained in force, with relatively few changes, to the present day, at least in the Republic of Turkey.


2012 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jacopo Crivellaro

This essay analyses the legal regime of Capitulations in Egypt at the apogee of European abuse of the privilege in the Nineteenth Century. Capitulations were trade oriented prerogatives granted to the European merchants by the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire during the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Century. With the weakening of the Ottoman Empire, the privileges were gradually extended to the point that they awarded foreigners substantial immunity from local jurisdiction and legislation. Once Egypt acquired a greater self-governing status with the successful campaigns of Mohammed Ali, the Capitulatory texts were further enlarged by a substantial body of customary law. Custom operated to exempt Western citizens from compliance with local legislation and immunize them from local jurisdiction. The custom acquired an even more aggressive stance when foreign residents were permitted to sue local defendants and request the application of the foreign resident’s law. Essentially, Consular tribunals, by administering an inequitable consular justice often in favour of the foreign party eviscerated the local judicial system of any authority. The practice only subsided with the institution of Mixed Courts of Jurisdiction in 1876 and the Montreaux Convention of 1936.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Saeed Khudeda Alo

ملخص البحث:يعتبر الأرمن من احد الجماعات العرقية المميزة التي عاشت في الدولة العثمانية، قاموا بتاسيس جمعيات سياسية في القرن التاسع عشر تلك الجمعيات التي سعت الى تأسيس دولة قومية للارمن بمساعدة الغرب كان ذلك من الاساب الرئيسة الى تعرضهم الى الإبادة الجماعية من قبل الدولة العثمانية. وخلال سنوات الحرب العالمية الأولى توجه الاتراك الى اتباع سياسة قومية وذلك نتيجة لتطورات الحرب فكانت النتيجة تهجير الأرمن من مناطقهم وقيام الاتراك بمذابح منظمة ضدهم، لكن هناك مجموعات تمكنت من النجاة من تلك المذابح والتوجه الى العراق وخاصة الى سنجارحيث قام أهلها من الايزيدييين باستقبال الأرمن ومساعدتهم في محنتهم وبناء البيوت ،من الطين، لهم وإيجاد العمل لهم آنذاك لكي يستطيعوا من استمرار حياتهم. لكن موقف الايزيديين هذا مع الأرمن دفع بالاتراك الى القيام بتوجيه حملة عسكرية الى سنجار أدت الى قتل الكثير من الأهالي ونهبت ودمرت قراهم وتركت اثار سلبية على المنطقة. The Yezidis from Sinjar and the Armenians. 1914-1918A study in the Yezidi position with regards to the Armenian Genocide.The Armenians are reputed to be one of the most distinguished ethnic groups which lived during the rule of the Ottoman Empire.During the nineteenth century they established political societies whose raison d' etre was to pursue the founding of a nation-state for Armenia, backed by Western aid and support.Their political endeavours were one of the main reasons for their genocide under the Ottoman Empire. During World War one, the Turks pursued their own national policy, resulting in the displacement of the Armenians from their territories and targeted massacres against them. There were those who succeeded in escaping theTurkish massacres and fled to Iraq, most particularly the area of Sinjar. The Yezidis from Sinjar welcomed the Armenians and aided them in their process of resettlement, building of mud houses and finding employment. The aid extended by the Yezidi community of Sinjar to the Armenian displaced, caused the Turks to launch a military campaign against Sinjar, looting and destroying villages and murdering many that wreaked havoc upon the region.


Author(s):  
Davide Rodogno

This book examines the European roots of humanitarian intervention as a concept and international practice during the nineteenth century, with particular emphasis on the politics and policies of Great Britain and France. It challenges two assumptions: first, that humanitarian intervention is a phenomenon of international relations that appeared after the end of the Cold War and second, that it emerged abruptly during the nineteenth century. Focusing on the Ottoman Empire, the book investigates when, where, who, how, and for what reasons a humanitarian intervention was undertaken from 1815 to 1914. It argues that the primary motivation of humanitarian intervention is to end massacre, atrocity, and extermination or to prevent the repetition of such events, to protect civilian populations mistreated and unprotected by the target-state government, agents, or authorities. This introduction discusses the concept of rights, including natural rights, before the nineteenth century and provides an overview of the questions, assumptions, and issues raised in the book.


Author(s):  
Michael Laffan

This chapter discusses the rise, largely in the nineteenth century, of a new form of populist authority that expanded the scope of Islamic activity beyond the reach of ever more marginalized courts. Indonesian Islam, supported in some instances by a growing native economy, moves away from court-mandated orthodoxy towards a closer connection with Mecca and the Middle East mediated by independent teachers. In some instances, these independent religious masters were able to prosper and to adapt to new modes of Sufi organization that saw the adoption of the tariqas in favor in the Ottoman Empire. By the century's end, the Naqshbandis in particular were exploring new ways of broadening their constituencies. These included somewhat controversial short-courses of instruction and the dissemination of printed materials that were increasingly available to a pesantren-schooled section of the public.


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