Opposition and Control in Turkey

In: Government & opposition: an international journal of comparative politics, Band 1, Heft 3, S. 375-388

Abstract

Turkey is not in the usual sense a developing country. It is a state, the fabric of which has endured for a number of centuries. Consequently, its political culture embodies elements which go far back into history. It has both an ethos and eidos of service to the state and a bureaucratic apparatus which for centuries has been entrusted with the application of the values embodied in its political culture. The structure of the state has been somewhat looser in Iran, but there too, the situation is appreciably different from what it is in the Arab states or Pakistan where the structure of the state is recent, its mark on the ethos of the people slight and its political traditions embryonic. In the case of Turkey and to a less extent in Iran, some of the crucial problems of developing nations – problems which are acute in many Arab states – such as those of building up an identity as a nation, overcoming particularistic allegiances, launching oneself into the take-off stages of industrialization are well on the way to solution. We are faced then, under the rubric of 'Middle East' with a number of countries which are at different stages on the scale of modernization. By itself, this would suffice to make the subsuming of all Middle Eastern countries under a single heading extremely unwise.