The Torn Republic: Turkey's Search for Civilizational Identity

The Torn Republic provides a comprehensive reinterpretation of modern Turkey's political trajectory, connecting history, memory, and identity to explain the country's ongoing turmoil and shifting foreign policy. Yavuz argues that Turkey remains a “torn republic,” caught between competing civilizational projects-Kemalism, Islamism, neo-Ottomanism, pan-Turkism, and Eurasianism-that continue to shape both domestic politics and international orientation.The book begins with the traumas of Ottoman collapse, the Treaty of Sèvres, and the War of Independence, showing how humiliation and rebirth produced a securitized national culture obsessed with survival. It traces how Atatürk's reforms sought to “civilize” society through Westernization and secularism, even as Kurdish and Islamist resistances preserved suppressed memories and grievances. During the Cold War, Turkey's Western integration deepened security dependence but also blended Islam and nationalism into a new mix. The Cyprus crisis, Kurdish uprisings, and Armenian terrorism revived old fears of division, reinforcing the “Sèvres Syndrome.” Turgut Özal's neoliberal reforms in the 1980s opened new opportunities for conservative groups, while his active foreign policy sparked a neo-Ottoman vision. Yavuz demonstrates how Recep Tayyip Erdoğan transformed these legacies into a neo-patrimonial order. Initially deploying Europeanization to weaken military tutelage, Erdoğan later embraced Islamization and neo-Ottomanism, interpreting the Arab Spring as a civilizational opening. The Gezi protests, corruption scandals, the failed Kurdish peace process, and the 2016 coup attempt turned foreign policy into a survival strategy. Military interventions in Syria, Libya, and Karabakh, transactional deals with Russia, and volatile ties with the West all became instruments of regime consolidation. The Torn Republic portrays Turkey not as a settled regional power but as a liminal state, oscillating between East and West, secularism and Islam, nation and empire-where foreign policy mirrors unresolved traumas and identity struggles. Read more