The present article is a study of the fiscal history of the Ottoman salt monopoly before 1881, when it was taken over by local and European creditors. It brings a novel perspective to the literature on Ottoman finances by highlighting a case of centralized collection of an indirect tax. It argues that the interplay between the government’s urge to raise indirect contributions and the consumers’ proclivity to illicit salt determined the enterprise’s sustainability. Not merely a security for European credit, the salt monopoly was a genuine Ottoman institution in the transformation to a modern fiscal state.

Considerable research has examined Turkey’s discursive governance of the Syrian refugee crisis, identifying the central themes and metaphors in top officials’ refugee-related messages. However, since they tend to rely on qualitative analyses based on convenience or purposive samples, prior studies have failed to assess the relative frequency of these themes and fall short of reliably gauging the shifts and continuities in the official discourse on refugees. Moreover, while several studies have noted the growing emphasis on the repatriation of Syrian refugees in recent years, no research has yet explored how the Turkish government has sought to reconcile this with its pro-refugee posturing. This paper addresses these limitations via a mixed methods analysis of 382 speeches President Erdoğan gave from September 2014 through December 2022. Quantitative findings show that Islamist and neo-Ottomanist themes have played a major role in Erdoğan’s refugee discourse throughout his presidency. However, since 2018, there has been a sharp increase in Erdoğan’s remarks about repatriating Syrian refugees. A critical discourse analysis of these remarks indicates that Erdoğan has appropriated the language of international law and standards on refugee returns so that he can continue to claim the moral high ground while simultaneously advocating mass repatriation of the Syrians.

After the coup attempt on July 15, 2016, the Turkish state started to produce a new official history of the event as a narrative of popular resistance against a military coup for the sake of democracy. This narrative with a religious aura was supported by “democracy watch” meetings and new commemoration days, museums, and monuments across Turkey. It was based on four concepts, symbolized by the Rabia sign: one nation, one homeland, one flag, and one state. However, the use of the Rabia sign has fallen from grace recently, creating a critical gap or “glitch” in the mnemonic infrastructure. This paper offers a visual categorization of July 15 monuments across Turkey and positions them in the historiography of Turkish national monuments. Finally, Rabia monuments are analyzed as a case study to show part of the complex (trans)national narratives of the “New Turkey.”

This article offers a critical reading of Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s Ahlat Ağacı (The Wild Pear Tree) through an exploration and critique of the mythmaking and monumentalization surrounding the Gallipoli Battle and the multiple ways in which Ceylan’s film unsettles the foundational myths of the last century in Turkey. Ceylan’s scenes and characters are constructed in such a way that the male characters and particularly Sinan (the main character) refuse to succumb to hegemonic codes of masculinity. Through this cinematic refusal by an anti-hero (Sinan), the film addresses the crisis of hegemonic masculinities in their interconnectedness to militarism, nationalism, capitalism, and heteronormativity. Through Sinan’s quest for self-realization, the film signals not only the impotence and vanity of nationalist masculinities but also the caesuras and instabilities in national myths. As the last film of Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s new Land of Ghosts trilogy, which started with Once Upon a Time in Anatolia and Winter Sleep, Ahlat Ağacı seems to close the cycle with a final scene that bespeaks the possibility of unearthing lost others of national mythmaking, bringing fertility and hope to the lands in which collective amnesia reigns supreme.

A Bourdieusian analysis of gender relations within political organizations is highly instructive. This kind of analysis might provide insight into the intertwinement of gender and politics by illuminating the construction process of gendered political identities. Drawing upon memoirs written by the members of the left-wing organizations in Turkey and interviews conducted with them, this article argues that the narratives of members of the Turkish left reflect the multidimensional nature of what Pierre Bourdieu called masculine domination.

This article explores the relationship between women’s labor market participation and early childhood education and care (ECEC) in Turkey within a broader Mediterranean context. Since the 1990s, there have been significant changes in the familialist models in the Mediterranean region driven by women’s increased labor market participation and the expansion of ECEC services. The transformations in the region have unveiled a significant link between the expansion of preschool education and an increase in women’s labor market participation. Turkey missed this critical juncture in the 1990s, as indicated by the low employment rates of women and below-the-Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD)-average preschool enrolment. Through a comparative perspective that examines the slow progress in both areas in Turkey as well as the gendered feature of its familialist model, the article emphasizes the need for closer analysis of the link between ECEC and the low labor force participation of women. Given that the expansion of ECEC in the 2000s has taken place through market-driven services, the article concludes that the link between ECEC and women’s labor market participation exhibits a class dimension. Thereby, women from lower socio-economic groups are increasingly experiencing the impact of the gendered characteristics inherent in the familialist regime in Turkey.