Backlash: A neo -Gramscian approach to the rise of political Islam in Turkey.
Item
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Title
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Backlash: A neo -Gramscian approach to the rise of political Islam in Turkey.
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Identifier
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AAI3245056
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identifier
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3245056
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Creator
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Usenmez, Ozgur.
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Contributor
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Adviser: Frances Fox Piven
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Date
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2007
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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Political Science, General | Sociology, Social Structure and Development | Religion, History of | History, Middle Eastern
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Abstract
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There has been an upsurge in the success and effectiveness of Political Islam in Turkish civil society since the 1970s. However, contrary to the arguments of modernization theorists and orientalists, this increasing effectiveness is not the result of "essential" features of Islamic culture nor does it stem from an irreconcilable dichotomy between the progressive West and backward East. Nor is it, as postmodernists have argued, an outcome of a discursive shift in the 1980s as a result of the weakening of nation state and national identity. Instead, it is the result of capitalism's historically specific evolution from the Fordist mode of production to what we call globalized production, which in turn activated an overhaul of the historical blocs within the Middle East and Turkey. This overhaul culminated in the creation of a new hegemonic bloc (i.e. transnational liberalism). This new hegemonic bloc's favorite ideology has been Islam, which has been promoted by the Turkish dominant classes since the September 1980 coup as a cement to unify the country's social forces around a conservative nationalist project.;But since the collapse of the Soviet Union and the first Gulf War, parallel with the erosion of the ideological power of neo-liberalism as a hegemonic project in the 1980s, the once promoted conservative Islamists began to challenge the basis of secularism in Turkey as the Welfare party came to power after 1995 elections. Since then in the volatile waters of the Turkish political scene, Islamists, supported by the Anatolian bourgeoisie, and the big business and the military-civilian bureaucracy have entered an increasingly bitter political struggle over the common sense of the Turkish people, whose outcome would determine the nature of Turkish democracy in the near future.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
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degree
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Ph.D.
