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

A fresh interpretation of the foundation of modern Turkey demonstrating the crucial role of ordinary people under Atatürk in the 1920s and 30s.

Murat Metinsoy (Author)

9781009012140, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 7 June 2023

417 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 2.2 cm, 0.602 kg

'… this is a must-read book … Essential.' B. A. Yesilada, Choice

Following the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and the founding of the Republic in 1923 under the rule of Atatürk and his Republican People's Party, Turkey embarked on extensive social, economic, cultural and administrative modernization programs which would lay the foundations for modern day Turkey. The Power of the People shows that the ordinary people shaped the social and political change of Turkey as much as Atatürk's strong spurt of modernization. Adopting a broader conception of politics, focusing on daily interactions between the state and society and using untapped archival sources, Murat Metinsoy reveals how rural and urban people coped with the state policies, local oppression, exploitation, and adverse conditions wrought by the Great Depression through diverse everyday survival and resistance strategies. Showing how the people's daily practices and beliefs survived and outweighed the modernizing elite's projects, this book gives new insights into the social and historical origins of Turkey's backslide to conservative and Islamist politics, demonstrating that the making of modern Turkey was an outcome of intersection between the modernization and the people's responses to it.

Introduction. Toward an infrahistory of Republican Turkey
Part I. Everyday Politics of Peasants: 1. The price of the Republic for the peasants
2. Raising voice and rural discontent
3. Resisting the agricultural taxes
4. Social smuggling: resistance to the monopolies
5. Theft, violence and banditry
Concluding remarks
Part II. Everyday Politics of Urban Labor: 6. The price of the republic for the working class
7. Labor discontent
8. Survival struggles and everyday resistance
9. Violence, protests and walkouts
Concluding remarks
Part III: The Power of Popular Culture: 10. Hotbeds of opposition to secularism: mosques, coffehouses and homes
11. Informal media vs. official discourse: word of mouth, rumors and placards
14. Neither fez, nor hat: contesting the hat reform
13. Negotiating anti-veiling campaigns
15. Old habits die hard: tenacity of old lifestyles in new times
Concluding remarks
Epilogue. Infrastructure of Turkey's modernization
Bibliography.

Subject Areas: Islamic studies [JFSR2], Social & cultural history [HBTB], 20th century history: c 1900 to c 2000 [HBLW], Middle Eastern history [HBJF1]