Modernity and Younger Workers

As we stated at the beginning of this book, few countries have been founded so deliberately in the image of modernity as the Turkish Republic that Atatürk brought into existence in 1923. In recent times there has been considerable debate about whether Atatürk and his successors conflated modernisation and westernisation and about the consequences of imposing the new society top-down. It is sometimes said, for example, that Turkey today is not one society but two – in effect a Muslim people dominated by a secular state (which in turn is steered and at times directed by a self-perpetuating officer caste that claims legitimacy as the guardian of Atatürk’s vision). Certainly, the officer caste fails to operate within the limits acceptable in a democratic state and in several important and inexcusable respects the Turkish state has been repressive, generally with respect to human rights, as widely noted in its treatment of Kurds, and, as we have seen, in relation to trade unions and workers’ rights. As even mention of Kurds and trade unions suggests, however, it is too simple to seek to understand Turkey as two societies.