This chapter will depart from these interpretations of the Turkish Revolution through the theoretical and historical pointers discussed in previous chapters. It will argue that the original Kemalist experiment with modernity (1923–45) cannot be understood as a form of (state) capitalism, but rather as a historically specific Jacobinism.

This chapter makes an introduction to the key themes of the book and provides a book plan.

The Ottoman Empire’s transition into more narrowly defined nation-states after World War I introduced new facets to the already established culture of productivity. Focusing mainly on the Republic of Turkey, the Epilogue raises several issues about the relationship between the culture of productivity, the exclusionary discourses and practices that developed with it in the long nineteenth century, and the reforms implemented by nation-states in the post-Ottoman Middle East. The Turkish Republic imposed drastic sociopolitical reforms, including the displacement and termination of several post-Ottoman institutions and social groups, including seminary schools, Sufi lodges, and the Muslim scholarly class (ulema). Even elements of Ottoman high culture did not escape culpability. In the 1930s, with the belief that it induced lethargy, Ottoman-style music was banned from the public radio. Behind the justification and implementation of such radical reforms in the Turkish Republic stood a century-old unexplored history of the modern anxiety about the productivity of every citizen in the age of nation-states.

Chapter 1 examines the immediate aftermath of Turkey’s 1950 elections, tracing the way both of the country’s major political parties incorporated democracy into their historical narratives and modernizing ambitions. The Democratic Party (DP), for its part, sought to convince voters that democracy would enable them to more effectively realize the populist and materialist promise of Kemalist modernization. Finding itself in opposition for the first time since the country’s founding, the Republican People’s Party (CHP) sought to take credit for the advent of democracy, while also embracing democratic ideals in their criticism of the DP. In doing so, they opened an ongoing debate about which Kemalist-era reforms the Turkish people had truly accepted.

This chapter summarises and discusses the findings of the book. It elaborates on how the hegemony of the Young Turks (and later Kemalist Republicans) and the Erdoğanist counter-hegemony in Turkey use very similar methods to build their nation, the same tools for social engineering, and the same procedures for the production of citizenship to establish and consolidate their respective hegemonies. The two opposing but influential political ideologies of modern Turkey have sometimes even used the same discourse, albeit for different purposes. There is also a significant degree of overlap between their undesired citizen categories. These are two different regimes relying on two different ideologies, but both of them target, otherise, and even demonise (mostly) the same groups, including Kurdish nationalists, Alevis, non-Muslims, leftists, liberals and practising Muslims who do not completely support the regimes. In addition to desired and undesired citizen typologies, Kemalism and Erdoğanism also have a liminal citizenship category, identity and typology: tolerated citizens (Homo Diyanetus). The chapter also summarises the innovations and contributions of the book, highlights its limitations and discusses potential future studied on the topic. Lastly, the chapter looks at the future of Erdoğan's nation.

This chapter analyses the Kemalism’s tolerated citizen creation project via the state’s powerful Presidency of Religious Affairs (Diyanet) that controls all mosques and employs all imams and preachers in Turkey. Kemalism wanted to keep Islam under its strict control to prevent its potential use for opposition. Thus, it made it illegal to have private mosques or to function as a non-state employer of imams. However, the Kemalist state also wanted to use Islam as a helping hand to build the nation based on the majority’s sectarian as well as ethnic identity. Thus, it worked to create a secularist and Turkish nationalism-friendly Islam – what I call ‘Diyanet Islam’. Before AKP came to power there were about 75,000 mosques in Turkey. The Diyanet used these mosques as adult education and indoctrination centres by politically instrumentalising weekly Friday sermons that are attended by about 60 per cent of the nation’s adult males. After elaborating on and defining Diyanet Islam, the chapter proceeds to discuss the Kemalist construction of a tolerated citizen category that I call ‘Homo Diyanetus’. Homo Diyanetus refers to a practising Sunni Muslim citizen of Turkey who follows the state manufactured Diyanet Islam, reveres the state and Atatürk, is Turkish nationalist, militarist and is definitely not a member or participant of any other religious group, brotherhood or movement.

This chapter introduces the book and its general themes. It discusses the traumas, insecurities, anxieties, fears, and victimhood and siege mentality of the Turkish nation, stemming from the agonising collapse of the Ottoman Empire. It then explains how these negative collective emotions paved the way for the Kemalist Turkish state’s desire to create a homogenous secular Turkish Sunni Muslim Turkish nation, composed of desired citizens with this ethno-religious and political identity. This nation-building and social engineering project caused other undesired ethnic, religious and political minority identities to be securitised, stigmatised, demonised and criminalised. After this discussion, the chapter moves on to elaborate on the emergence of the counter-hegemonic Erdoğanism, its own nation-building and desired citizen creation projects in addition to its own undesired citizens project. After very briefly discussing the similarities and differences between these two ideologies and regimes, the book summarises the citizenship typologies used in the book: the desired citizen of Kemalism, Homo LASTus; the desired citizen of Erdoganism, Homo Erdoğanistus and the shared tolerated citizen of both regimes, Homo Diyanetus.

This chapter discusses the revival of Islamism as a counter-hegemonic paradigm in Turkey. After giving a brief definition of Islamism, it looks at the genealogy of Turkish Islamism, it looks at how the Kemalists put an end to Turkish Islamism, securitised and criminalised it. Then, the chapter summarises the several Turkish Islamist parties that were by the National Outlook Movement, after the closure of each party by the Kemalist constitutional court. After briefly evaluating National Outlook Islamism’s divisive, Islamist populist, anti-Western and conspiratorial rhetoric, the chapter proceeds to the emergence of AKP and consolidation of its own authoritarian regime. This chapter argues that there are three different versions of AKP. The first one’s (AKP 1.0) emergence can be traced back to 1997 when the Kemalists profoundly victimised and traumatised the Turkish Islamists once again after staging a coup. The AKP was established in 2001 as a Muslim Democrat party and until 2008 continued to democratise Turkey in line with the EU’s requirements. AKP 2.0 emerged in authoritarian drift times between 2008 and the Gezi events of mid-2013 when Erdoğan decided to crush the peaceful demonstrators with violence. AKP 3.0 is the full authoritarianist and Erdoğanist version of the AKP that started with the Gezi protests of mid-2013 and has continued until present.

This chapter starts with a historical background of the Kemalist hegemonic paradigm, starting with the late Ottoman period. It argues that Turkish secularist nationalists and Islamists emerged due to their different explanations for the internal and external causes of the Ottoman decline. The secularist nationalist narrative of the Young Turks who ruled the Empire between 1908 and 1918, was later incorporated into Kemalist ideology following the fall of the Ottoman Empire. This ideology shaped state thinking until the early 2000s despite transitioning to a multiparty political system in 1950. After discussing different variants of Kemalism, the chapter discusses how the Kemalist elite guaranteed the continuation of their hegemony by locking in their privileges into the 1960 Constitution and creating a dual tutelage system with anti-majoritarian institutions such as the Senate, the Constitutional Court and the National Security Council, whose decisions had to be implemented by the governments. These institutions were in control of high politics issues that were all securitised to the level of existential importance for the nation. Thus, the politicians were not allowed to modify the secularist Muslim nationalist identity of the state, the creation of the desired citizens project, state–Islam relations, Diyanet’s status, homogenisation policies and the discrimination of minorities.

This chapter discusses the principle aim of the Kemalist nation-building project: the construction of Homo LASTus. Understood here as a Weberian ideal type, Homo LASTus refers to a new human being who is at once a laicist, Atatürkist (Kemalist), Sunni Muslim and Turk. Having determined, ethnic religious heterogeneity, Islamism and the Ottoman nostalgia as existential threats to the new secularist and Turkish nationalist state and national identity, the Kemalists were adamant to create a secular nation out of the country’s majority that happened to be Sunni Muslim and Turkish. After summarising Kemalist nation-building and its relations with Islam and minorities, the chapter briefly elaborates on the social engineering policies of the Kemalists and their securitisation of minority identities. It explains how the Kemalist state marginalised, securitised and even in some cases criminalised ethnoreligious and political minorities as well as religious Muslims; and the state’s assimilation and dissimilation policies in relation to these minorities. After discussing each parameter (Laicist, Atatürkist, Sunni Muslim, and Turk) in a separate section, this chapter discusses how the Kemalists created and made use of Atatürk’s personality cult in addition to education in creating their desired citizens.

This chapter analyses what happened to the undesired citizens of the Kemalism during the Kemalist nation-building project. The ‘other’ to the state’s desired citizen of Homo LASTus were practising Muslims, Islamists, non-Atatürkists such as leftists and socialists, non-Muslims, Alevis and Kurds who were discriminated against by the Kemalist state in a variety of ways. Not only were attempts made to assimilate or dissimilate them, but they were also denied important bureaucratic positions, despite officially being ‘equal citizens'. The chapter looks at the ‘others’ to the Homo LASTus in order: practising Muslims and Islamists (opposite to the laicist), leftists–socialists–communists (opposite to the Atatürkist), non-Muslims and Alevis (opposite to the Sunni Muslim) and Kurds (opposite to the Turk). Before concluding, the chapter discusses how, for a variety of reasons, these minorities felt a need to hide their identities in public, resorted to dissimulation and were constructed by the majority as villains in different conspiracy theories linked to the insecurities, anxieties, fears and paranoias of the state and the nation.