The contemporary cultural manifestations of the Kemalist paranoid style in Turkish politics

Official URL: http://risc01.sabanciuniv.edu/record=b1819791 (Table of Contents)

Many years ago, R. Hofstadter pointed out that American political rhetoric was suffering from a paranoid style and claimed that such a style was not exclusive to his country; for him, it was an international phenomenon. Following Hofstadter, the study claims that a style that can be named as paranoid can also be observed in Turkish political rhetoric, in the one that has been adopted by Kemalism against political Islam. By utilizing the tools provided mainly by psychoanalysis and critical theory, the study attempts i) to analyze the style that the founding ideology of the republic has adopted, ii)to come up with possible explanations as to why a paranoid discourse has beendeveloped and sustained to this day and iii) to see what such a style means for the nature and tendencies of the ideology itself. To be able to see how deep such a style goes, the study surveys not only the foundational texts of the ideology, but also the recent literary and cultural works pertaining to Kemalism. By doing so, the study attempts to find out what kind of latent and explicit characteristics such a style might have and what kind of reaction Kemalism has given against the resurgence of political Islam in Turkey.