The term “civilisation” conveys both a descriptive/pluralistic concept, where a variety of supracultural units co-exist across the globe, and a normative/unitary concept in the sense of ‘being civilised’, as opposed to being uncivilised or barbaric. There is also the idea of a civilising mission, a belief in the need to propagate one’s own civilisational values and systems to other peoples as if it were a virtuous deed.

The descriptive, pluralistic conception of civilisation is the attempt of many late modern scholars to imagine the citied Afro-Eurasian landmass as composed of distinct historical worlds that can be separately understood (Hodgson, 1993, p.9). Each civilisation was understood by some of these scholars to have an essence or special character that could be unlocked through philology, the pursuit of analysing and comparing the civilisation’s languages and its religious and literary tradition (Lockman, 2009, p.68). The literary tradition could include “Great Books” such as the Bible or Roman and Greek classics for Western or European Civilisation, or the Qur’an for Islamic Civilisation, or the Confucian canon for Chinese Civilisation. The essentialist perspective meant that scholars, such as the orientalist Ernest Renan, could make sweeping statements that reduced populations spread over vast geographic regions and time periods into monolithic units with rigid essences (ibid., p.78). Marshall Hodgson, an American Historian writing on global history suggests that, while supranational societies are important as a framework to understand history, these categories overlap and are situated in continuums of technology or urban/rural relation patterns that do not recognise reified monoliths or insuperable boundaries demarcating various “Civilisations” (1993, p.12).

In Empires in World History, historians Jane Burbank and Frederick Cooper begin to describe the empire through its contrast with the modern concept of the nation-state (2010, p.8). While the latter aims to represent a single, homogenous group of people proclaiming their commonality, the empire is a political unit that incorporates many peoples while maintaining the distinction and hierarchy between them (ibid.). These distinctions and hierarchies were often not natural, but intentionally worked in order to separate the colonised and coloniser populations (ibid., p.12). This creation of the “we/they” and “self/other” distinctions would resultantly justify empire-building, as the created state would utilise the resources of its possessions among other areas or people to serve a core area or people. Political scientist David B. Abernethy uses this relationship, one between a metropole that has the position of dominance, and a colony that is subordinate, as the defining feature of an empire (2000, p.19).

With reference to the French Revolution

French disciples of the Dublin-born British political thinker, Edmund Burke, were the first to coin the word “conservative” in the aftermath of the French Revolution (Hamilton, 2020). It originally referred to those ideas which Burke had espoused in his Reflections on the Revolution in France and was also associated with general anti-revolutionary sentiment throughout Europe in the 19th century. However, today, the word has taken a much broader meaning that has come to refer to a myriad of political ideologies, many of them which lack the essence of conservatism, such as Thatcherism or neoliberalism, monarchism and even radically theocratic ideas of the Iranian Revolution. While elements of conservatism can be identified within these doctrines and creeds, they are not representative of what the term conservative ought to describe, which cannot be an ideology itself but is rather a disposition which tends to oppose it yet can also lend itself to an ideology if there are common, traditional values.

The 1945-1960 Multi-Party Period and Counter-Revolutionism

[NOTE] This essay was written in sixth form for a nationwide competition. I have preserved the text as it was, and have not fixed improper and inconsistent citation practices. The content is also poorly organised, so I have added some headings. Any opinion or framing does not reflect my current attitudes.

Introduction

Speaking in the Turkish Grand National Assembly on the 18th of January 2023, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan of the incumbent Justice and Development Party announced that the first round of elections would commence on the 14th of May. In his speech, he reminds the present MPs of the 1950 election held on the same date, and that ‘Our people, 73 years later on that same day, are going to say ‘enough!’’¹. In recent years, many actions have been taken by the Justice and Development Party to mythicise the personalities of the Democratic Party government (1950-1960) who were overthrown during the 1960 coup d’etat. The principal personality admired by Erdoğan and his support base is that of Adnan Menderes, 9th Prime Minister of the Republic of Turkey and leader of the Democratic Party. Menderes has achieved a status of martyrdom among those ideologically conservative due to his execution following the Yassıada trials set up by the military. The online newspaper of the state-owned broadcaster TRT describes the 3 ministers executed as a result of the Yassıada trials as ‘democracy’s first martyrs’² and in 2013 the island where the trials and subsequent executions occurred, Yassıada, was renamed to the Island of Democracy and Freedoms (Demokrasi ve Özgürlükler Adası)³. While it is true that the Democratic Party was beneficial for a while in the advancement of democratic freedoms within the Republic of Turkey, the years that it took power in government became increasingly authoritarian and aimed to curb democracy at every turn. It is not surprising that President Erdoğan, who is arguably an ideological successor to Adnan Menderes, would place so much emphasis on his character and politics, especially after the coup attempt in 2016 which saw his democratically elected government challenged as well. However, the amplified legacy of Menderes and his Democratic Party serves another purpose which presents a dichotomy between the grass-roots, democratically elected conservative, yet populist governments of Turkey and an entrenched secular, progressive elite. The latter clique has consistently been represented by the Republican People’s Party (Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi) which in 2023 composed the bulk of the opposition bloc against Erdoğan, and 70 years earlier against the Democratic Party.⁴