Ali ASLAN

The impossibility of society: Beyond center-periphery relations in Turkey

Şerif Mardin’in çevre-merkez ilişkileri yaklaşımının eleştirisinden hareketle bu çalışma, Türkiye siyasetinin söylemsel bir analizini sunmaktadır. Toplumun tam anlamıyla kendini temsil ettiği fikrine yaslanan Mardin, toplum ile toplumsal olanı eşitlemekte ve toplumun bir merkez ve bir çevreden oluştuğunu iddia etmektedir. Ernesto Laclau’nun söylemsel toplum teorisini kullanan bu çalışma, toplumun kendini tam anlamıyla temsil ettiği fikrini reddetmekte ve mevcut toplumun toplumsal alandaki tüm anlamları kapsayamayacağını iddia etmektedir. Bu sebeple, toplum sadece merkeze sahip olabilir ve toplumun kaderi de toplumsal alandaki bu merkez üzerinde kontrol tekeli kurmasına bağlıdır. Başka bir toplum-iddiasının ortaya çıkışıyla sahne alan siyasal olan, mevcut toplumsal gerçekliğin, toplumun metaforik bütünlüğünü temsil etmede olumsallığını ortaya sererek onu tehdit edebilir. Hâlde söylem teorisi perspektifine gore, siyasi analiz, toplumun ne olduğuna değil, toplumu toplum olmaktan neyin alıkoyduğuna odaklanmalıdır. Bu toplum anlayışından hareketle, bu çalışma, Kemalist “toplum”un ortaya çıkışı ve genişlemesini ve aynı zamanda farklı toplum iddialarıyla birlikte 1980’lerde kadar ki dönemde yaşadığı krizleri analiz etmeyi amaçlamaktadır.

Toplumun imkansızlıği: Türkiye’de merkez-çevre ilişkilerinin ötesi

Built on a critique of Serif Mardin’s center-periphery approach, this study offers a discursive approach to the study of Turkish politics. Resting on the belief that the society is transparent to itself, Mardin asserts that society can exhaust the social and is always composed of a center and a periphery. By deploying Ernesto Laclau’s discursive account of society, this study claims that society is not self-transparent; there is always a surplus of meaning in the social. Therefore, society consists solely of a center and its fate is tied on its success to monopolize the control of the center in the social. The advent of the political as a result of the emergence of alternative society-claim may threaten the existing social reality by revealing its contingency in representing the metaphorical totality of society. So from discourse theory perspective, political analysis should focus not on what society is but what prevents it from being. With this account of society, this study seeks to examine the rise and expansion of the Kemalist “society” as well as its dislocations owing to the emergence of other society-claims till the 1980s.

PDF

___

Aydın, E. (2004). Peculiarities of Turkish Revolutionary Ideology in the 1930s: The Ulku Version of Kemal- ism, 1933-1936. Middle Eastern Studies, 40 (5), 55-82.
Barthes, R. (1990). S/Z, Oxford: Blackwell Pub.
Berkes, N. (1974). Two Facets of the Kemalist Revolution. The Muslim World, 64 (4), 292-306.
Butler, J., Laclau, E. and Zizek, S. (2000). Contingency, Hegemony, Universality. London and New York: Verson.
Çağaptay, S. (2002). Reconfiguring the Turkish Nation in 1930s. Nationalism and Ethnic Politics, 8 (2), 67-82.
Çelik, N. B. (2000). The Constitution and Dissolution of the Kemalist Imaginary. D. Howarth, A. J. Norval and Y. Stavrakakis (eds.). In Discourse Theory and Political Analysis. (pp. 193-204). Manchester: Manches- ter University Press.
Çelik, N. B. (2009). Analysing Kemalism through Discourse Theory. In N. Carpentier et al. (eds.), Communicative Approaches to Politics and Ethics in Europe (pp. 219-232). Tartu: Tartu University Press.
Ciddi, S. (2009). Kemalism in Turkish Politics: The Republican People’s Party, Secularism and Nationalism. New York: Routledge.
Cizre-Sakallıoğlu, Ü. (1997). The Anatomy of the Turkish Military’s Autonomy. Comparative Politics, 29 (2), 151-166.
Çolak, Y. (2003). Nationalism and the State in Turkey: Drawing the Boundaries of the “Turkish Culture” in 1930s. Studies in Ethnicity and Nationalism, 3 (1), 2-20.
Criss, N. B. (1999). Istanbul Under Allied Occupation, 1918-1923. Leiden, Boston, and Koln: E. J. Brill.
Cruickshank, A. A. (1968). The Young Turk Challenge in Postwar Turkey. Middle East Journal, 22 (1), 17-28.
Derrida, J. (1976). Of Grammatology. Baltimore, MD: John Hopkins University Press.
Derrida, J. (1981). Positions. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Doty, R. L. (1997). Aporia: A Critical Explanation of the Agent/Structure Problem. European Journal of International Relations, 3 (3), 365-392.
Foucault, M. (1979). Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. New York: Random House.
Heper, M. (1988). State and Society in Turkish Experience. M. Heper and A. Evin (eds.). In State, Democracy and the Military: Turkey in 1980s. (pp. 231-141). Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter.
Heper, M. and Keyman, E. F. (1998). Double-Faced State: Political Patronage and the Consolidation of Democracy in Turkey. Middle Eastern Studies, 34 (4), 259-277.
Herzog, D. (1985). Without Foundations: Justification in Political Theory. Ithaca/London: Cornell University Press.
Karabelias, G. (1999). The Evolution of Civil-Military Relations in Post-War Turkey, 1980-95. Middle East- ern Studies, 35 (4), 130-151.
Karpat, K. (1988). Military Interventions: Army-Civil Relations in Turkey Before and After 1980. M. Heper and A. Evin (eds.). In State, Democracy and the Military: Turkey in 1980s. (pp. 137-158). Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter.
Kili, S. (1992). Turkish Constitutional Developments: An Appraisal. Capital University Law Review, 21 (4), 1059-1078.
Korkmaz, Z. (ed.) (1984). Nutuk. Ankara: Başbakanlık Yay.
Kuru, A. T. (2009). Secularism and State Policies toward Religion: The United States, France, and Turkey. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Lacan, J. (1977). Écrits: A Selection. (trans. Alan Sheridan). London and New York: Tavistock/Routledge.
Lacan, J. (1993). The Seminar, Book III, The Psychoses, 1955-6. Jacques-Alain Miller (ed.). (trans. Russell Grigg). London: Routledge.
Laclau, E. (1990). New Reflections on the Revolution of Our Time. E. Laclau (ed.) In New Reflections on the Revolution of Our Time (pp. 3-85). London: Verso.
Laclau, E. (1996). Why Do Empty Signifiers Matter to Politics? In E. Laclau (ed.). Emancipation(s) (pp. 36-46). London: Verso.
Laclau, E. and Mouffe, C. (1985). Hegemony and Socialist Strategy. London: Verso.
Landau, J. M. (1974). Radical Politics in Modern Turkey. Leiden: E. J. Brill.
Lewis, B. (1952). Islamic Revival in Turkey. International Affairs, 28 (1), 38-48.
Lewis, B. (1961). The Emergence of Modern Turkey. London: Oxford University Press.
Marchart, O. (2007). Post-Foundational Political Thought. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
Mardin, Ş. (1973). Center-Periphery Relations: A Key to Turkish Politics. Daedalus, 102, 1973, 169–190.
Mateescu, D. C. (2006). Kemalism in the Era of Totalitarianism: A Conceptual Analysis. Turkish Studies, 7 (2), 225-241.
McCally, S. P. (1956). Party Government in Turkey. The Journal of Politics, 18 (2), 297-323.
Mousseau, D. Y. (2006). Democracy, Human Rights and Market Development in Turkey: Are They Related? Government and Opposition, 41 (2), 298-326.
Ocak, A. Y. (1999). Türkler, Türkiye ve İslam. İstanbul: İletişim.
Özbudun, E. and Gençkaya, Ö. F. (2009). Democratization and the Politics of Constitution-Making in Turkey. Budapest: Central European University Press.
Özoğlu, H. (2011). From Caliphate to Secular State: Power Struggle in the Early Turkish Republic. Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger.
Parla, T. (1992). Türkiye’de Siyasal Kültürün Resmi Kaynakları: Kemalist Tek-Parti İdeolojisi ve CHP’nin Altıoku. İstanbul: İletişim.
Saussure, F. (1966). Course in General Linguistics. (trans. W. Baskin). New York: McGrew-Hill.
Saylan, G. (1987). İslamiyet ve Siyaset: Türkiye Örneği. Ankara: Vadi.
Schmitt, C. (2007). The Concept of the Political. (trans. George Schwab). Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press.
Shankland, D. (1996). The Demise of Republican Turkey’s Social Contract. Government and Opposition, 31 (3), 304-321.
Shils, E. (1961). Centre and Periphery. In The Logic of Personal Knowledge: Essays Presented to Michael Polanyi on His Seventieth Birthday, 11 March 1961 (pp. 117-130). Glencoe: Free Press.
Stavrakakis, Y. (1999). Lacan and the Political. London and New York: Routledge.
Sunar, İ. and Toprak, B. (1983). Islam in Politics: The Case of Turkey. Government and Opposition, 18 (4), 421-441.
Tachau, F. (1963). The Search for National Identity among the Turks. Die Welt des Islam, 8 (3), 1963, 165-176.
Tanör, B. (1994). İki Anayasa (1961-1982). İstanbul: Beta Pub.
Toprak, B. (1981). Islam and Political Development in Turkey. Leiden: E. J. Brill.
Vanderlippe, J. M. (2005). The Politics of Turkish Democracy: Ismet Inonu and the Formation of Multi-Party System, 1938-1950. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.
Yalman, N. (1973). Some Observations on Secularism in Turkey: The Cultural Revolution in Turkey. Daedalus, 102 (1), 139-168.
Yavuz, M. H. (2003). Islamic Political Identity in Turkey. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Yıldız, A. (2003). Politico-Religious Discourse of Political Islam in Turkey: The Parties of National Outlook. The Muslim World, 93 (2), 187-209.
Zizek, S. (1993). Tarrying With the Negative. Durham, N. C.: Duke University Press.
Zizek, S. (1997). The Plague of Fantasies. London and New York: Verso.
Zürcher, E. J. (2004). Turkey: A Modern History. London and New York: I. B. Tauris.