Ankara : The Department of Political Science and Public Administration, Bilkent University, 2009.Thesis (Ph.D.) -- Bilkent University, 2009.Includes bibliographical references leaves 216-229.This thesis examines the analysis of Turkish politics in the works of three key
social scientists in Turkey: Niyazi Berkes, #erif Mardin and Metin Heper.
Berkes’s account on the development of secularism in Turkey, Mardin’s
center-periphery model and Heper’s strong state tradition argument and his
idea of rational democracy are the subjects of the critical evaluation in this
study. The main question of this thesis is whether the perspective they
develop in their analysis can provide a critical democratic vision, which
locates the political at its center. My project is to evaluate these three
accounts from a radical democratic theory based on the ideas of Bonnie Honig
and Jacques Rancière. By drawing on the writings of Honig and Rancière, I
aim to elucidate the meaning of democracy and the political in order to frame
my theoretical and conceptual position. Additionally, from this theoretical
perspective I define the meaning of the closure of the political and argue that
it is the fundamental problem of democracy. My analysis focuses on the
conceptions of politics and the binary oppositions in Berkes, Mardin and
Heper. My argument is that their accounts consist of limitations in registering
different instances of the closure of the political as a problem of democracy.
Furthermore, they displace politics with their conceptions of politics and
dichotomous thinking.Tombuş, H ErtuğPh.D