02/2019 – La “nuova Turchia”di Erdoğan. Tra risveglio islamico, sviluppo e autoritarismo politico

Abstracts

Emanuela Locci,  Genesis and Change of Turkish National Identity. From Atatürk to Erdoğan

The present paper intends to investigate the birth and development of the Turkish national identity. The analysis starts with the first republican span and focuses on two core issues: nationalism, with its many sides and outcomes, and secularism, dwelling here on the role Islam has played, as nationalism did as well, on the of national identity. The arguments also focus on the present scenario, not proposed under a historical analysis, though as a widen sight on authority guidelines on nationalism and Islam.

 

Valeria Giannotta, The Justice and Development Party: between Conservatism and Reformism

Since its foundation in 2002, the Justice and Development Party (AKP), with its Islamic origins, has attracted a great social consensus, marking the success of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. In its historical path the AKP presents itself as an evolving organization, which reacts to the external changes and it has contributed to a new course in the political management of the country. The period of government can be divided into several phases: the first starts with the rise on the public stage of November 3, 2002 with the Conservative Democracy program, where all efforts have been focused on the legitimacy and recognition of power. Instead, 2007 electoral success marks the beginning of the effective exercise of power, particularly sensitive regarding the issue of religious freedom. It shows a greater autonomy and led directly to the next electoral victory in 2011. However, with the call to the polls in 2015 begins the descending parable of AKP confirmed by the political result of 24 June 2018. In other words, in pursuing its political objectives, the AKP initially supported a strategy of careful patience not to stand in open opposition to the secular establishment and not to move away from the expectations of its constituents. Today, however, it has assumed a predominant position within the Turkish political system until it has assumed the connotation of “state party”.

 

Fabio Vicini, Turkish Islamism before and after Gezi: Conservatism, Fears, and Social Contention

The paper sheds light on the complex process of re-articulation of the Islamic field in Turkey after the upheavals of June 2013 and the following sociopolitical developments in the country. In particular, it sheds light on the renewed exacerbation of the tension between the two macro-groups in which Turkish society has been divided since the foundation of the republic in 1923: the religious-conservatives and the secular camp. In this regard, it argues that the Gezi protests were a turning point, as they opened the way for a stiffening of the peace process opened by the AKP administration in 2012 by determining a radical turn in the party’s policies. By focusing on the implications that these changes had on the Islamic camp, the paper points to how, especially following the coup attempt of July 2016, religious groups in the country have been in large part co-opted by the state and do not seem to enjoy much space for action at the moment.

 

Chiara Maritato, The Diyanet Presence in Turkey and Europe: the Religious Bureaucracy in the Erdoğan Era

The paper addresses the extent to which and how the Turkish Presidency of Religious Affairs (Diyanet) has been affected by sixteen years of a religious conservative party (AKP)’s government. It stems from the following questions: How have religious hierarchies contributed to the redefinition of the role of Islam in Turkey? And how have those changes affected the Turkish communities living abroad? Drawing on ethnographic observation of the activities organized by the Diyanet personnel in Turkey (2012-2015) and in the Diyanet’s organizations in Sweden and Austria (in 2017), the work analyses how the religious officers’ increasing competences and agency form part of a larger redefinition of boundaries between religion and the state. In this respect, three aspects concerning the Diyanet are particularly emphasized: i) the hybridity of the secular and the religious at the institutional level, ii) the risk of a lack of autonomy vis-à-vis of the political power, iii) an individualization of the religious services as a way to promote Islam as a way of life.

 

Emel Parlar Dal, Hakan Mehmetcik, A Neo-Classical Reading of Turkish Foreign Policy under JDP

Neo-Classical Realist account argues that a country’s foreign policy as an outcome is a function of both systemic and domestic factors filtered through elites and leaders’ worldviews/ideologies. With a deep bound to structural analysis, neorealism provides a theoretical framework and conceptual toolkits building upon spatial (domestic-international) and cognitive (ideas-matter) as well as temporal (past-present-future) divisions for foreign policy analysis. From a neoclassical reading, Turkish Foreign Policy can be divided into two sub-periods in which different sets of systemic, domestic factors are at play under different elite and leader’s apprehension of the international and regional politics. The first period between 2002-2011 has been characterized as a period in which Turkey was a rising power due to the new opportunities stemming from the international system and its domestic politics which were supportive to its rise whereas the second period between 2011-2018 is malign and has conflictual sets of systemic and domestic factors. This article anchors neoclassical realism as a solid framework to analyse Turkish Foreign Policy since 2000 within these two-time periods.

 

Federico Donelli, Turkey’s Regional Policy: from Pro-active Autonomy to the Rise of the Turkey-Qatar Axis

The wave of protests that crossed the Middle East causing regime change within some important regional actors, and has destabilized the regional order by encouraging a new distribution of power. The military coup in Egypt (2013) and the embargo imposed on Doha by the Saudi bloc have highlighted the political convergence between Qatar and Turkey, which today constitute an alternative pole to both the Arab and the Shiite axes. The article analyses Turkey’s regional policy, highlighting the growing convergence with Qatar. The main argument is that in addition to the famous sectarian cleavage (Sunni vs Shia) the Gulf crisis (2017) has also revealed the rift within the Sunni bloc.

 

Giovanni Scarpato, Another Idea of Nation. A Political Path in the Leopardi’s Zibaldone

The essay deals with the idea of nation in Leopardi, focusing on his reflections presented between 1820 and 1824 in The Zibaldone. According to the author nations existed in truth only in the ancient world, whereas in the modern world selfishness has destroyed the national feelings. The comparison with Antiquity becomes a polemical tool vis-à-vis the despotism, inherent in modern politics especially after the Congress of Vienna. Leopardi’s thoughts on nation as expressed in The Zibaldone are a compelling prelude to the Discourse on the Present State of the Customs of the Italians (1824), where he poses the issue of Italian nation-building process-starting with the need for its modernization.

 

Alessandro Orsini, Sociology of Radicalization 

This article has three aims. The first is to present and discuss the most influential theories of radicalization leading to terrorism in order to evaluate the contribution that the discipline of sociology provided to this field of study. To that end, the process of radicalization has been conceptualized as a process of socialization. The second aim is to sum up the academic articles and monographs that the so called “scientific community” considers as “milestones”, none of which has so far been translated in Italian. The third aim is to introduce in the Italian public debate a great amount of concepts in order to challenge many commonplaces about how one becomes a terrorist and why.

 

Andrea Spallino, ‘Towards a new Constitution’. Gianfranco Miglio and the Constitutional Reform Project of the “Milan Group”

Between the spring of 1980 and July 1983 Gianfranco Miglio (1918-2001) and the “Milan Group” – a team composed by «skilled specialists» in the fields of law, politics and economics – developed an organic reform project of the Italian Constitution. This plan resulted in the publication of 1983 Verso una nuova Costituzione. Ricerca promossa dal CESES su Costituzione vigente e crisi del sistema politico: cause ed effetti (Giuffrè: Milano). On the one side, the reform project aimed at a «correct diagnosis of the dysfunctions within the Italian political system»; on the other side, its purpose was to «identify the reforms needed to achieve the fundamental goals of the 1948 Constitutional Charter». The theoretical recovery of Miglio’s project could contribute to the ongoing debate on the institutional reforms in Italy.

 

Alessandro Campi, Democracy in the Mirror of Populism

The rise of political populism was largely caused by the crisis of legitimacy and functionality that has affected contemporary democracies over the past two decades. The reaction to this crisis has resulted in the growing consensus achieved by those parties and movements (left and right) that are usually called “populists”. More generally, at the base of this rise there has been a sum of historical-political and social factors: the denationalization of the elites, the radical changes that have affected the world of work, the digital revolution that has changed the way of thinking of millions of individuals, the progressive disappearance of the public sphere as a space for discussion, the ambition to impose democracy as an institutional standard valid all around the world.