Power of the People: Everyday Resistance and Dissent in the Making of Modern Turkey, 1923-38

After the Ottoman Empire fell, Turkey began a modernization program that included social, economic, cultural, and administrative changes. The Power of the People demonstrates how ordinary people shaped this change, focusing on daily interactions between the state and society and using untapped archival sources. The book shows how rural and urban people coped with state policies, local oppression, exploitation, and adverse conditions during the Great Depression, and how their daily practices and beliefs survived and outweighed the modernizing elite's projects. This book provides new insights into the social and historical origins of Turkey's backslide to conservative and Islamist politics.

Format: Hardback
Length: 416 pages
Publication date: 11 November 2021
Publisher: Cambridge University Press

After the fall of the Ottoman Empire and the establishment of the Republic in 1923 under the leadership of Atatürk and his Republican People's Party, Turkey embarked on a comprehensive program of social, economic, cultural, and administrative modernization aimed at laying the foundations for modern-day Turkey. The Power of the People demonstrates that the ordinary people played a significant role in shaping the social and political change of Turkey, alongside Atatürk's vigorous push for modernization. By adopting a broader perspective on politics, focusing on daily interactions between the state and society, and utilizing untapped archival sources, Murat Metinsoy sheds light on how rural and urban populations coped with the state policies, local oppression, exploitation, and adverse conditions brought about by the Great Depression through diverse everyday survival and resistance strategies. This book offers valuable insights into the social and historical origins of Turkey's backslide to conservative and Islamist politics, showing that the making of modern Turkey was a complex outcome of the intersection between modernization and the people's responses to it.

After the fall of the Ottoman Empire and the establishment of the Republic in 1923 under the leadership of Atatürk and his Republican People's Party, Turkey embarked on a comprehensive program of social, economic, cultural, and administrative modernization aimed at laying the foundations for modern-day Turkey. The Power of the People demonstrates that the ordinary people played a significant role in shaping the social and political change of Turkey, alongside Atatürk's vigorous push for modernization. By adopting a broader perspective on politics, focusing on daily interactions between the state and society, and utilizing untapped archival sources, Murat Metinsoy sheds light on how rural and urban populations coped with the state policies, local oppression, exploitation, and adverse conditions brought about by the Great Depression through diverse everyday survival and resistance strategies. This book offers valuable insights into the social and historical origins of Turkey's backslide to conservative and Islamist politics, showing that the making of modern Turkey was a complex outcome of the intersection between modernization and the people's responses to it.

Weight: 720g
Dimension: 158 x 235 x 30 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781316515464
Edition number: New ed