2 - Pluralizers and Anti-Pluralists
An Alternative Key to Politics in Turkey and Beyond
from Part I - Theory
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 19 December 2024
Summary
This chapter introduces an original and timely theoretical toolkit. The purpose: to challenge misleading readings of (Turkey’s) politics as driven by binary contests between “Islamists” vs. “secularists” or “Kurds vs. Turks.” Instead, it introduces an alternative “key”[1] to politics in and beyond Turkey that reads contestation as driven by shifting coalitions of pluralizers and anti-pluralists. This timely contribution to conversations in political science (e.g., comparative politics; political theory) is supplemented by an original analytical-descriptive framework inspired by complex systems thinking in the natural and management sciences. The approach offers a novel methodological framework for capturing causal complexity, in Turkey and other Muslim-majority settings, but also in any political system that is roiled by contending religious and secular nationalisms as well as actors who seek greater pluralism.
Keywords
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- Information
- Contesting Pluralism(s)Islamism, Liberalism, and Nationalism in Turkey and Beyond, pp. 30 - 58Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2025