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Introduction: İsmet İnönü and Multi-Party Politics in Turkish History
- State University of New York Press
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Introduction I . smet I . nönü and Multi-Party Politics in Turkish History The presidency of I . smet I . nönü, 1938–50, developed amid the crises of World War II and the Cold War, global economic and political transformation , and economic and social change within Turkey. Since the foundation of the Turkish Republic in 1923, the scope of political debate had been narrowly defined and participation in the political arena restricted to a limited group of participants, who shared similar backgrounds, experiences, and views of the Turkish nation, its needs and its future. As the Republic’s first Prime Minister, during the presidency of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, I . nönü had played a central role in shaping both the major political issues, and the nature of political participation in Turkey. For both Atatürk and I . nönü, politicians and political debate were more obstacles than instruments to progress and advancement. Outcome was more important than process for both men, but during World War II and the Cold War I . nönü found his government increasingly confronting demands to open up the political process, to accept new and different voices into the political arena, and to allow new discussion of old issues as well as the introduction of new issues. A strong believer that caution and preparation were essential to avoid the irreparable mistakes of the Young Turk regime, I . nönü had to balance demands from many in the ruling People’s Party for restriction and tighter control, with demands from others within and outside the party to open debate on domestic and foreign affairs. Believing that the crisis of the war demanded greater central direction of all aspects of the economy and curtailment of political debate for the sake of national unity, I . nönü asserted his own authority as National Chief, President of the Republic, and Permanent Leader of the People’s Party. But new forms of domination produced new 1 2 THE POLITICS OF TURKISH DEMOCRACY forms of resistance, and increasing numbers of politicians, journalists, landowners and private entrepreneurs, and academics and technocrats, representing the voices of different constituencies, pushed political discourse beyond its previously allowed limits. Within the context of the presidency of I . smet I . nönü, it is then crucial to ask, how did global and local changes lead to new types of struggles, and what kind of antagonisms did the struggles express as a response to new types of limitations imposed by the Turkish state? Also, what kind of implications did these antagonisms have for the emergence and molding of democracy in Turkey during the period since 1945? In the longer time frame of Ottoman and Turkish Republican history, the articulation of antagonism that reached a new level of struggle in the period of I . smet I . nönü’s presidency carried questions first raised during the late Ottoman period, continued by the Young Turks, and brought into the Republican period by the Kemalists and their opponents, on four major concerns: (1) how to achieve economic development, and what constitutes progress; (2) what roles can, and should, the bureaucracy and the military play in economic and cultural affairs and in the electoral system; (3) what are vital national interests, and how should they be protected; and (4) how can relations with the Western powers, particularly Britain, Germany, and Russia, and later the United States be established in such a way as to benefit Turkey, without compromising its sovereignty and independence in international affairs? In the early Republican period, during the presidency of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, politics were defined within the constraints of Kemalism, a set of ideological prescriptions regarding nationalism, republicanism, secularism , populism, reformism, and statism that were embedded in the ruling People’s Party program. Even though it had its roots in the ideas of the Young Turks, Kemalism was proclaimed as a break from the Ottoman past, and as an ideology of progress for the new Turkish Republic. Thus the acceptability of any debate, and any political actor, was measured in reference to Kemalism. While struggles expressed antagonism, emerging as a response to the dominant formulation of Kemalism, they also tended to develop in continuity with the ongoing implications of the Young Turks’ ideas and policies. The single-party regime enforced a singular interpretation of past as well as future, and antagonism developed between supporters of Kemalist singularity and those who proposed alternative interpretations of the past, or alternative visions for the future. In contrast to the...