In his book, Capitalism, Jacobinism, and International Relations: Revisiting Turkish Modernity, Eren Duzgun examines capitalist and non-capitalist versions of modernity in Western Europe and their impact on Ottoman/Turkish modernization. Duzgun attempts to develop a transdisciplinary approach to the study of modernity by criticizing i) the ahistorical perspectives on modernity—the critique of presentism—and ii) the perspectives that isolate domestic politics from international influences—the critique of internalism. Duzgun suggests a perspective of International Historical Sociology, underpinned by Political Marxism, to “deliver the promise of a truly nonpresentist and noninternalist conception of world-historical development” (p. 53).
Duzgun argues that a particular set of historical (geo)political conditions led to the emergence of capitalist modernity in Britain. In contrast, another set of conditions led to the emergence of Jacobinist modernity in Napoleonic France. While British capitalism conditioned individuals’ public participation to private property and market conditions, French Jacobinism conditioned the citizens’ involvement in the public sphere on military conscription and public education. The Jacobinist model institutionalized extra-market mechanisms to gain income and status. As a result, Jacobinism “recognized the abstract individual by conditioning his rights to his duties toward an idealized abstract collectivity—that is, the nation” (p. 95).
After developing these two variants of modernity in the book’s first part, Duzgun looks at how Jacobinism shaped Ottoman modernization efforts between 1838 and 1914 and Republican modernization since 1923. While capitalism and Jacobinism both influenced early attempts at Ottoman modernization until 1876, the Jacobinist model gained dominance among the younger reformists after 1876, thus influencing those who would capture Ottoman rule in 1908 until the decline of the Empire. The early Republican elite were remnants of the Jacobinist late Ottoman reformers, and they established the new Republic around the Jacobinist ideals. Only following the changing (geo)political realities after the Second World War did the capitalist route of development gain strides in Turkey. Between 1945 and 1960, and especially after 1950, under the rule of the Democrat Party, Turkey implemented genuine market reforms and allowed capitalist modernity to take root. Although the Kemalists attempted to revive the Jacobinist roots of Turkish development through military interventions in 1971, 1980, and 1997, capitalist modernization, combined with the earlier Jacobinist ideals, shaped Turkey’s development trajectory.
Duzgun puts particular emphasis on the impact of Islamists in changing the trajectory of Jacobinism in Turkey. He argues that Islamist actors in the National View Movement, which originated in the 1970s, challenged the Jacobinist roots of the Kemalist development model and argued for a more market-based approach as a development model. In their defense of capitalism, Duzgun argues, the favored position of the state-supported secularist industrialists played a more significant role. He argues that Islamists favored market reforms to create competitive economic conditions for their social base of small conservative merchants and industrialists. Duzgun also analyzes the deepening of capitalism in the first decade of the 2000s under the rule of the Justice and Development Party and its authoritarian turn, especially after 2013.
Duzgun deserves praise for several reasons. First, Capitalism, Jacobinism, and International Relations does an excellent job of demonstrating that capitalism was not the only path toward modernity, not only globally but also in Western Europe. Similarly, the book also puts the two variants of capitalism into a geopolitical historical context and fulfills its promise to develop a non-presentist approach to development. The book demonstrates different ways of legitimizing citizenship in capitalist and Jacobinist developmental models and their impact globally.
Second, Capitalism, Jacobinism, and International Relations offers an analytically rigorous perspective of Turkish modernity that connects economic and ideological explanations sophisticatedly. The book bridges the perspectives that use economic and ideational factors in explaining Turkish political development. For example, when explaining the military’s intervention in politics in 1997, Duzgun writes that “the legacies of a Jacobin past were invoked once again to reinforce an oligarchic capitalism against the vision of a more market-dependent society. The soft coup of 1997 turned secularism into a bulwark against the deepening of capitalist social relations” (p. 243). Such an approach that provides a political-economic background for ideological contestations is rare in Turkish studies. Duzgun’s study utilizes political economy to make sense of Turkish society’s ideological divisions.
Finally, the theoretical promise of the book, offering a nonpresentist and noninternalist analysis of modernity, is largely fulfilled. Both in the Western European context and the Ottoman/Turkish version, Duzgun avoids ahistoricism and provides a rich historical context for the emergence of capitalism and Jacobinism and their impact in the Ottoman/Turkish lands, which makes his study truly nonpresentist.
While Duzgun also provides an international geopolitical perspective in explaining the Ottoman modernization efforts, his success in offering a noninternalist perspective is relatively limited. In his analysis of Ottoman modernization and the trajectory of modernity in the Republican period, international factors are mostly left out. While he mentions the impact of French Jacobinism on late Ottoman intelligentsia, for example, he does not offer international mechanisms that helped Jacobinism take root in the Ottoman Empire. Similarly, while Duzgun mentions the geopolitical considerations for Turkey’s transition to a multi-party democracy after 1945, he does not demonstrate empirically the impact of international context on Turkey’s transition to capitalist modernity. Instead, he focuses on the state-society relationship that resulted in a Jacobinist model, a capitalist model, or a synthesis of the two. From this perspective, Duzgun’s study looks like a work of political economy rather than a work of international relations.
Duzgun discusses the importance of the rise of conservative politics in Turkey for capitalism’s growth there, especially after the 1980s; however, his description of the rise of authoritarianism in the 2010s seems to represent a Jacobinist mentality. To Duzgun, the conservative actors saw capitalism as a chance to compete with state-supported bourgeois and therefore supported the market reforms. The state-supported economic actors were “noncompetitive, protectionist, and inward-looking industrialists, opposing (yet no longer able to completely derail) the economic restructuring begun in 1980” (p. 225). The conservative actors, by implementing market reforms, challenged the Jacobinist establishment. While this narrative is in line with the general arguments of Capitalism, Jacobinism, and International Relations, Duzgun does not provide an explanation for the transformation of Islamists in the 2010s toward more authoritarian rule. Duzgun concedes in his book that under Islamist rule in recent years, “there has been a clear shift from a ‘rule-based’ neoliberalism toward an arbitrary, militarized, and fascist-like neoliberal regime of governance” (p. 255). An analysis of this change reveals that the shift toward authoritarianism departs from market-based logic and leans toward a Jacobinist mentality by linking the citizens’ status to more state-based factors such as patriotism, loyalty, and nationalism. While Duzgun labels the new shift in Turkey as authoritarian capitalism, the new trend seems to represent more of a new Islamist synthesis between Jacobinism and capitalism.
All in all, Duzgun’s study offers an excellent interdisciplinary analysis of different modes of modernity and their application to Turkish modernization. Those scholars interested in modernity, the political economy of development, and Turkish studies will benefit from the book immensely.
