A Paradigmatic View of the Turkish Context

This chapter introduces Kemalist and post-Kemalist paradigms, along with a phase named post-post-Kemalism, in order to contextualize the narratives and the research field. Kemalism was an international construct that engaged with different discourses in Western and non-Western countries. However, it has long been associated with authoritarian secularism and considered the reason for the suffering of the religious masses within the borders of Turkey. Post-Kemalism was the dominant academic and political paradigm of the post-1980 era until the Gezi Park Protests that erupted in 2013. It regarded social groups like Islamists, which had long been excluded by Kemalist state institutions, as the democratizing forces of the country. Nonetheless, the authoritarian implementations of the moderate Islam-oriented Justice and Development Party have negated post-Kemalist assumptions, paving the way for a post-post-Kemalist era. Since these paradigms were dominant academic paradigms as well as political ones, they have affectively shaped scholarly production.