State and Class in Turkey

• Publisher:   Verso Books
• Number Of Pages:   256
• Publication Date:   1987-09-01
• ISBN-10 / ASIN:   0860911659
• ISBN-13 / EAN:   9780860911654

This book should be required reading for every student of Turkish history: it is intelligent, well-researched, and contains many original ideas. However, putting it on your course list may cause a reduction in enrollment owing to a few suicides. I feel I have a fair bit of patience for reading important information presented in not-so elegant styles, but this one drove me to the wall. A leftish history of Turkey written from the point of view of classes: independent farmers, tax farmers, bureaucrats and administrators, and the (often non-Muslim before WW I) bourgeoisie fills a large gap in my picture of economic history. It discusses how the Ottoman Empire rose, survived many centuries, collapsed, and turned into the modern nation of Turkey. Such factors as labor migration, wage levels, bureaucrat-bourgeois rivalry, history of agrarian structure, and ideological tendencies among newly urbanized peasants all feature here. These are fascinating topics which in the hands of other authors, (who unfortunately for me did not write about Turkey) can make excellent reading. The rise of statism in Ataturk's time slowly turned into a period of import substitution capitalism, popular party rivalries, and then incorporation into the wider capitalist world under US hegemony. Whether or not Turkey will follow the formerly undemocratic and formerly poor countries of southern Europe (Portugal, Spain, Italy, Greece) into democratic, prosperous Europe remains to be seen. This and many other views, many other useful observations, are presented in this volume, but you will need the patience of Job to wade through it. Three stars because the information will remain beyond reach for most people.

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