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The Unfinished Tanzimat


From Turkey's 186-Year Journey Toward Liberalization to the Imamoglu's Case 

by Dr Nikolaos Stelgias

In 1839, under the shadow of the "Russian menace," the conflict with Egypt, and rising nationalist movements in the Balkans, the Ottoman Empire—the predecessor to modern Turkey—embarked upon the Tanzimat, an ambitious endeavor to transform the state according to 19th-century liberal principles. This transformation would be a protracted and ultimately incomplete process, hampered by the absence of fundamental liberal values within society, inexperienced political elites, and a deeply flawed electoral system.

Constitutional Struggles and Autocratic Reversals

The year 1876 witnessed Turkey's first coup d'état, resulting in the murder of a Sultan and the establishment of the first Constitution and parliamentary democracy by a progressive junta. Within months, Sultan Abdulhamid II dismantled this constitutional order, imposing autocratic rule until July 1908, when the Young Turks reinstated parliamentary democracy. Abdulhamid's subsequent counter-coup attempt, orchestrated with conservative elements in Istanbul, ultimately failed.

Between 1909 and 1913, the Young Turks gradually abandoned libertarian and democratic principles. They assassinated ministers loyal to the Sultan and governed with unprecedented authoritarianism, eventually turning their weapons against the Empire's Armenian subjects. Their rule culminated in the Empire's catastrophic defeat in the Great War by November 1918.

The Nationalist Resurgence and Republic

From 1919 to 1923, nationalist Sunni Muslim bureaucrats, landowners, and intellectuals spearheaded the Liberation War in Anatolia and Eastern Thrace. With Soviet assistance and exploiting divisions among Allied powers, this coalition defeated Greek forces and secured territories largely "cleansed" of non-Muslim, non-Turkish populations. The Kurds remained the only significant non-Turkish group in these successor lands to the Ottoman Empire.

The proclamation of the republic in October 1923 resembled a coup rather than a programmatic societal evolution. While negotiating the Lausanne Treaty with Allied powers, Mustafa Kemal Pasha and his associates hastily established the republic to neutralize domestic opposition.

Modernization Under Atatürk and Inönü

The republic's foundation initiated a series of socioeconomic transformations primarily modeled on Western principles, with elements borrowed from Soviet industrialization strategies and fascist one-party governance after 1930. A pivotal moment came with Mustafa Kemal Atatürk's death in November 1938, when İsmet İnönü seized power in collaboration with military generals.

İnönü's 1940s governance blended autocracy with pragmatism. Initially aligning with the fascist Axis at the outbreak of World War II, he pivoted toward the Western bloc following Nazi Germany's defeat. This reorientation precipitated a gradual transition toward electoral democracy after 1946.

Democratic Experimentation and Military Interventions

The 1950s saw the ascendance of Adnan Menderes, whose premiership began with promises of economic and political liberalization. Collaborating with emerging Sunni Turkish capital and landowners, Menderes aligned Turkey with the United States and sought regional prominence. This experiment collapsed tragically in late 1950s amid economic crises and intensifying authoritarian tendencies within his government.

The May 1960 coup terminated Menderes' administration and introduced Turkey's first genuinely liberal Constitution. This briefly enabled progressive elements to organize under labor movements and leftist ideologies. However, this liberal interlude proved short-lived, as the new Constitution proved incompatible with Turkey's evolving social fabric and alarmed conservative generals and politicians who feared a socialist drift. Traditional clientelist networks throughout rural Turkey impeded the diffusion of modern liberal values. At the same time, mass migration from Anatolia to urban centers created populations susceptible to opportunistic conservative politics, offering state resources in exchange for votes.

Cycles of Reform and Repression

The 1970s witnessed heightened political tensions and mounting socioeconomic challenges, alongside the resurgence of Kurdish nationalist aspirations and complications following Turkey's 1974 intervention in Cyprus.

The military, having bolstered its reputation through the Cyprus operation and presenting itself as the sole institution capable of resolving sociopolitical turmoil, executed the 1980 coup with relative ease. This intervention and the 1982 Constitution effectively reversed the liberal advances of 1960, imposing a restrictive "tutelage democracy" that persisted into the 2000s, with additional coup attempts in 1997 and 2008.

The Erdoğan Era

Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's Justice and Development Party (AKP) ascended to power with Western and business support, promising to dismantle Turkey's tutelage democracy and resume the unfinished Tanzimat project. During the early 2010s, the party pursued political and economic liberalization, but these efforts proved ephemeral. After 2010, the AKP's increasingly autocratic and conservative tendencies overshadowed reform initiatives.

Subsequent challenges included the Gezi Park protests, unsuccessful peace negotiations with Kurdish factions, confrontation with the Gülen movement, terrorist attacks during 2015-2016, the failed 2016 coup attempt, deteriorating relations with neighboring countries and Western allies, and the problematic transition to a presidential system in 2018.

Recent Developments

A glimmer of hope for electoral democracy emerged in 2019 when opposition forces, having consolidated their efforts, achieved significant victories in local elections—after decades of conservative governance, major Turkish cities, including Ankara and Istanbul, elected opposition candidates. Despite initial attempts to nullify the Istanbul result, the opposition maintained and expanded its municipal control in the 2024 elections.

Only one year after these local election victories, Turkey faced renewed turmoil with the announced nullification of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu's university diploma, followed by his incarceration alongside several other mayors. These developments occurred against a backdrop of routine imprisonment of Kurdish politicians and mayors in Eastern Turkey.

Conclusion

186 years after its inception, Turkey's Tanzimat process remains incomplete**. Periodic steps toward liberalization continue to be overshadowed by the autocratic tendencies of opportunistic political elites and a fractured socioeconomic fabric perpetuating multilayered clientelist relationships. It would be politically naive to expect that electoral democracy alone could remedy modern Turkey's profound challenges. The country must comprehensively reevaluate the unfinished Tanzimat's objectives and agenda. This transformation necessitates engaged intellectuals and a new generation of politicians committed to genuine social and political revolution. Without such fundamental change, Turkey appears destined to remain trapped in the perpetual, unfulfilled promise of the Tanzimat.

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