Globalization, democratization, and the Arab uprising : the international factor in MENA's failed democratization

What explains the almost negative impact of international factors on post-Uprising democratization prospects? This article compares the utility of rival “diffusionist” and neo-Gramscian political economy frames to explain this. Three international factors deter democratization. The failure of Western democracy promotion is rooted in the contradiction between the dominance of global finance capital and the norm of democratic equality; in the periphery, neo-liberalism is most compatible with hybrid regimes and, at best, “low intensity democracy.” In MENA, neo-liberalism generated a crony capitalism incompatible with democratization; while this also sparked the uprisings, these have failed to address class inequalities. Moreover at the normative level, MENA hosts the most credible counter-hegemonic ideologies; the brief peaking of democratic ideology in the region during the early uprisings soon declined amidst regional discourse wars. Non-democrats—coercive regime remnants and radical charismatic movements--were empowered by the competitive interference of rival powers in Uprising states. The collapse of many Uprising states amidst a struggle for power over the region left an environment uncongenial to democratization.PostprintPeer reviewe

Hermeneutics in Contemporary Turkey: An Analysis of Turkish Historicists

The hermeneutical turn in Islamic studies has also affected Islamic scholarship in Turkey, a country where traditional Sunnism historically dominates. Historicism in Islamic studies became an influential intellectual and academic current in Turkey after the 1990s. This was mostly because the first generation of Turkish scholars, who associated themselves with historicism through complex engagement with Quranic hermeneutics in their studies, emerged in the 1990s. In this article, I analyze Mustafa Öztürk, İlhami Güler, and Ömer Özsoy, the architects of the historicist turn of the 1990s in Turkey who are still prominent. The article explains: (i) The Turkish historicists’ views on the nature of the Quran; (ii) Their hermeneutical approach in interpreting the Quran; and (iii) Illustrates how they apply the hermeneutical approach to the interpretation of the Quran by presenting how they interpret the Quran’s relevant verses on corporal punishment/chopping and divorce. The article aims to detail historicism in Turkey by studying its leading scholars

The Rise of Identity Politics in Turkey

Las políticas de identidad en este artículo se enfocan sobre el efecto según el cual las diversas identidades de grupo operan en los procesos políticos de Turquía. El análisis metodológico de las políticas de identidad en este capítulo tiene dos dimensiones: primero, cómo Turquía trata el tema de la identidad, dada la existencia de decenas de diferentes grupos étnicos y religiosos, y segundo cómo los grupos de identidad (étnicos y religiosos) articulan sus ideas políticas. En este capítulo, se argumenta que un análisis pasivo de los grupos de identidad no resulta metodológicamente correcto. Más bien se ha de identificar primero el nexo causal entre estos grupos y la política para así analizarlo. Un análisis dinámico, en el cual varios grupos son tratados como agentes en busca de su propio interés frente al estado, resulta lógico también en vista de la nueva fórmula de estado-sociedad propia de la era de pos-guerra fría