In the debate surrounding Turkey's integration into the EU, the country is often presented as an imperfect democracy, with a democratization process hindered by the Turkish state itself. Drawing both on Ottoman history & political philosophy, this article argues that the object to be examined with respect to its degree of democracy is less the state per se than its relationship to Turkish political society. This relationship is structured more around an opposition between the rulers & the ruled -- an Ottoman legacy -- than around distinctions derived from the theory of representation, in contradistinction to modern democracies. In fact, the very nature of the Ottoman state -- defined by an original combination of dynastic legitimacy, autocracy & elite reproduction -- isolated the Sultan's Empire in its final years from the trends toward democratization that European political societies were experiencing. Analyzing the elements of continuity between the republican & imperial states & societies -- revealed by the recent Ottomanist historiography -- leads to emphasizing the extent to which the still perceptible Ottoman political figuration has paved the way for the construction of Kemalist state nationalism & has limited the emergence of a democratic culture of representation that conditions its integration into the EU. Adapted from the source document.
Dans la continuité des changements sociopolitiques entrepris par le régime républicain de Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, la réforme des noms propres de 1934 était destinée à instaurer l'obligation du patronyme en Turquie et mettre ainsi fin au système onomastique ottoman. Quatre-vingts ans plus tard, le nom de famille n'est toujours pas devenu l'opérateur d'identification qu'il est ailleurs. D'un côté, les noms propres ont été des objets de réforme sans équivalent, des noms nationalisés et racialisés ; de l'autre, maintenus dans l'anonymat, dominés par l'homonymie, autorisés à changer, associées à des lignées ennoblies , ils ont échappé à l'emprise des procédures d'identification étatique. Tel est le paradoxe que ce dossier sur la réforme des noms propres entend examiner en croisant le regard de l'histoire, de l'anthropologie et de la sociologie.