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Opposition and Control in Turkey*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 March 2014

Şerif Mardin
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Extract

Turkey is not in the usual sense a developing country. It is a state, the fabric of which has endured for a number of centuries. Consequently, its political culture embodies elements which go far back into history. It has both an ethos and eidos of service to the state and a bureaucratic apparatus which for centuries has been entrusted with the application of the values embodied in its political culture. The structure of the state has been somewhat looser in Iran, but there too, the situation is appreciably different from what it is in the Arab states or Pakistan where the structure of the state is recent, its mark on the ethos of the people slight and its political traditions embryonic. In the case of Turkey and to a less extent in Iran, some of the crucial problems of developing nations – problems which are acute in many Arab states – such as those of building up an identity as a nation, overcoming particularistic allegiances, launching oneself into the take-off stages of industrialization are well on the way to solution. We are faced then, under the rubric of ‘Middle East’ with a number of countries which are at different stages on the scale of modernization. By itself, this would suffice to make the subsuming of all Middle Eastern countries under a single heading extremely unwise.

Type
Typology and Opposition
Information
Government and Opposition , Volume 1 , Issue 3 , 01 April 1966 , pp. 375 - 388
Copyright
Copyright © Government and Opposition Ltd 1966

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References

1 In a recent volume marked by the high level of scholarship of the contributors and edited by the originator of the most perceptive and useful concept of political culture, the section on the Middle East takes up Middle Eastern political systems as a homogenized mass and does not make use of the possibilities for analysis opened up by this concept, thus missing the opportunity of making the first adequate comparative study of Middle Eastern systems. See The Politics of Devetoping Areas, edited by Gabriel A. Almond and James S. Coleman, Princeton, 1960.

2 Dahl, Robert A. and Lindblom, Charles E., Politics, Economics and Welfare, New YOrk, 1953, p. 38 Google Scholar.

3 Lewis, Geoffrey, Turkey, 3rd ed., London, 1965, p. 28 Google Scholar.

4 Ibid.

5 Boran, Dr Behice Sadik, Toplumal Yapi Arartirmalari, Ankara, 1945 Google Scholar.

6 Kolars, John F., Tradition, Season and Change in a Turkish Village, Chicago I963, p. 97 Google Scholar.

7 The extent to which individualism is lacking in the values of Turkish students seems to reflect the low tolerance of deviance of Turkish society. In a study carried out a few years ago at Robert College (a college operating in Turkey but where instruction is given in English by an American staff in a great many of the subjects studied) and at the Ankara Faculty of Political Science which is the main supplier of Turkish higher administrative personnel, the following break‐down was found:

Hyman, H., Payaslioğlu, A. and Frey, P. ‘Values of Turkish College Youth’, Public Opinion Quarterly, XXII, 1958 P. 289.Google Scholar