Uneven and Combined Development and the Kemalist Synthesis of Nationalism and Laicism

Mert Söyler

doi:10.47478/lectio.1768097

Uneven and Combined Development and the Kemalist Synthesis of Nationalism and Laicism

Abstract

This article examines the conjunction of nationalism and laicism in the making of the Turkish Republic through Leon Trotsky’s theory of Uneven and Combined Development (UCD), as reformulated by Kamran Matin. The analysis situates Kemalist Turkish nationalism within the broader pressures of global capitalism, arguing that the formation of the modern Turkish nation-state was not a linear process of modernization but a combined outcome of international geopolitical competition and domestic transformation. Drawing on historical sociological analysis, the study demonstrates how the “whip of external necessity” and the “privilege of historic backwardness” compelled Turkish elites to merge nationalism and laicism to construct a secular, capitalist-oriented state. This synthesis was not a derivative of European secularism but a coercive amalgam shaped by late Ottoman backwardness, ethnic purification, and the dissolution of religious authority. The findings reveal that, in Turkey, nationalism and laicism preceded capitalist development and acted as ideological and institutional mechanisms to produce the conditions for it. Thus, the Kemalist experience inverts modernist theories of nationalism by showing how ideological transformation can function as a precondition rather than a byproduct of capitalist modernization within an uneven international order.

Keywords

nationalism , secularism , laicism , nation-building , uneven and combined development

References

Ahmad, F. (1993). The making of modern Turkey. Routledge.
Akan, M. (2017). The politics of secularism: Religion, diversity, and institutional change in France and Turkey. Columbia University Press.
Anderson, B. (2006). Imagined communities: Reflections on the origin and spread of nationalism. Verso.
Ashman S., Fine B. & Newman S. (2011). The crisis in South Africa: Neoliberalism, financialization and Uneven and Combined Development. Socialist Register, 47(1), 174–195.
Atabaki, T. (2004). The caliphate, the clerics and republicanism in Turkey and Iran: Some comparative remarks. In T. Atabaki and E. J. Zürcher (Eds.), Men of order: Authoritarian modernization under Atatürk and Reza Shah (pp. 44–66). I.B. Tauris.
Atabaki, T. and Zürcher, E. J. (2004). Introduction. In T. Atabaki and E. J. Zürcher (Eds.), Men of order: Authoritarian modernization under Atatürk and Reza Shah (pp. 1–12). London: I.B. Tauris.
Başkan, B. (2014). From religious empires to secular states: State secularization in Turkey, Iran, and Russia. Routledge.
Berkes, N. (1999). The Development of secularism in Turkey. Routledge.
Çağaptay, S. (2006). Islam, secularism and nationalism in modern Turkey. Routledge.
Cizre Sakallıoğlu, Ü. (1996). Parameters and strategies of Islam–state interaction in Republican Turkey. International Journal of Middle East Studies, 28(2), 231–251. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0020743800063157

Düzgün, E. (2017). Capitalism, jacobinism and international relations: Re-interpreting the Ottoman path to modernity. Review of International Studies, 44(2), 252–278. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0260210517000468
Düzgün, E. (2022). Capitalism, jacobinism and international relations: Revisiting Turkish modernity. Cambridge University Press.
Gellner, E. (1983). Nations and nationalism. Cornell University Press.
Georgeon, F. (1996). Türk milliyetçiliğinin kökenleri: Yusuf Akçura [The Origins of Turkish Nationalism: Yusuf Akçura]. Tarih Vakfı Yurt Yayınları.
Gerschenkron, A. (1962). Economic backwardness in historical perspective: A book of essays. Harvard University Press.
Gökalp, Z. (2019). Türkçülüğün esasları [The principles of Turkism]. 1923. Reprinted in modern Turkish. Anadolu Üniversitesi Yayınları.
Kieser, H. (2018). Talaat Pasha: Father of modern Turkey, architect of genocide. Princeton University Press.
Marx, K. (1982). Capital: A critique of political economy. Penguin Books.
Matin, K. (2013). Recasting Iranian modernity: International relations and social change. Routledge.
Matin, K. (2020). Deciphering the modern Janus: societal multiplicity and nation-formation. Globalizations, 17(3), 436–451. https://doi.org/10.1080/14747731.2019.1673615
Nairn, T. (1981). The break-up of Britain: Crisis and neo-nationalism. Verso.
Nairn, T. (1997). Faces of nationalism: Janus revisited. Verso.
Özdil, M. A. (2021). Osmanlı millet sisteminden Türk ulusuna giyim ve kimlik. Hiperyayın.
Özdil, M. A. (2024). Dressing the Empire: Clothing, identity, and social control in the Ottoman millet system. Lectio Socialis, 8(2), 99–134. https://doi.org/10.47478/lectio.1489487
Özkırımlı, U. (2017). Theories of nationalism: A critical introduction. Palgrave Macmillan.
Parla, T., & Davison, A. (2008). Secularism and laicism in Turkey. In J. R. Jakobsen and A. Pellegrini (Eds.), Secularisms (pp. 58–75). Duke University Press.
Peker, E. (2016). A Comparative-historical sociology of secularisation: Republican state building in France (1875-1905) and Turkey (1908-1938). (PhD thesis). Université Panthéon-Sorbonne – Paris I; Simon Fraser University.
Peker, E. (2020). Beyond positivism: Building Turkish laiklik in the transition from the Empire to the Republic (1908–38). Social Science History, 44(2), 301–327. https://doi.org/10.1017/ssh.2019.48
Rosenberg, J. (2016). Uneven and Combined Development: ‘The international.’ in Theory and History. In A. Anievas and K. Matin (Eds.), Historical sociology and world history Uneven and Combined Development over the Longue Durée (pp. 17–30). Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.
Rosenberg, J. (2020). Uneven and Combined Development: a defense of the general abstraction. Cambridge Review of International Affairs, 35(3), 267–290. https://doi.org/10.1080/09557571.2020.1835824
Skocpol, T. (1994). Social revolutions in the modern world. Cambridge University Press.
Smith, A. D. (1973). Nationalism and religion: The role of religious reform in the genesis of Arab and Jewish nationalism. Archives de Sciences Sociales des Religions, 18(35), 23–43.
Smith, A. D. (1998). Nationalism and modernism: A critical survey of recent theories of nations and nationalism. Routledge.
Smith, A. D. (2010). Nationalism: Theory, ideology, history. Polity Press.
Trotsky, L. (2017). History of the Russian Revolution. Penguin Books.
Üngör, U. Ü. (2011). The making of modern Turkey: Nation and state in Eastern Anatolia, 1913–1950. Oxford University Press.
Ünlü, B. (2014). Türklük sözleşmesinin imzalanışı (1915-1925). Mülkiye Dergisi, 38(3), 47–81.
White, P. J. (1995). Ethnic differentiation among the Kurds: Kurmancî, Kizilbash and Zaza. Journal of Arabic, Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies, 2(2), 67–90.
Wimmer, A. and Schiller, N. G. (2002). Methodological nationalism and beyond: nation-state building, migration and the social sciences. Global Networks, 2(4), 301–334. https://doi.org/10.1111/1471-0374.00043
Wimmer, A., & Schiller, N. G. (2003). Methodological nationalism, the social sciences, and the study of migration: An essay in historical epistemology. International Migration Review, 37(3), 576–610. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1747-7379.2003.tb00151.x
Worringer, R. (2004). “Sick man of Europe” or “Japan of the near East”?: Constructing Ottoman modernity in the Hamidian and Young Turk Eras. International Journal of Middle East Studies, 36(2), 207–230. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0020743804362033
Yadirgi, V. (2017). The political economy of the Kurds of Turkey: From the Ottoman Empire to the Turkish Republic. Cambridge University Press.
Yalvaç F. & Mengüaslan, H. (2024). The theory of Uneven and Combined Development and the sociopolitical transformations in Syria and Libya. Middle East Critique, 33(1), 105–120. https://doi.org/10.1080/19436149.2023.2271761
Yavuz, M. H. (2019). Understanding Turkish secularism in the 21th century: A contextual roadmap. Southeast European and Black Sea Studies, 19(1), 55–78. https://doi.org/10.1080/14683857.2019.1576367
Yıldızoğlu, E. and Margulies, R. (1988). The political uses of Islam in Turkey. Middle East Report, 18(153), 12–19.
Zürcher, E. J. (2010). The Young Turk legacy and nation building: From the Ottoman Empire to Atatürk's Turkey. I.B. Tauris.
Zürcher, E. J. (2017). Turkey: A modern history. I.B. Tauris.

Details

Primary Language

English

Subjects

Turkish Political Life , Political Sociology

Journal Section

Research Article

Authors

Mert Söyler ^*
0000-0002-4630-2595
Germany

Early Pub Date

December 16, 2025

Publication Date

December 26, 2025

Submission Date

August 18, 2025

Acceptance Date

October 29, 2025

Published in Issue

Year 1970 Volume: 9 Number: 1

DOI

https://doi.org/10.47478/lectio.1768097

IZ

https://izlik.org/JA45ZA26ZS

APA

Söyler, M. (2025). Uneven and Combined Development and the Kemalist Synthesis of Nationalism and Laicism. Lectio Socialis, 9(1), 51-70. https://doi.org/10.47478/lectio.1768097

Lectio Socialis is a prestigious, international, peer-reviewed journal operating on a continuous publication model that provides a platform for scholars to share high-quality, policy-relevant research. The journal’s primary focus is political science, exclusively accepting original research and review articles. While centered on political inquiry, the journal also welcomes contributions from related fields such as public administration, international relations, and economics that offer significant insights into governance and power structures. The primary objective of Lectio Socialis is to maintain an independent and unbiased environment for global researchers to present transformative scholarship that addresses structural inequalities and contributes to the advancement of knowledge and social progress.

Lectio Socialis is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Uneven and Combined Development and the Kemalist Synthesis of Nationalism and Laicism

Abstract

Keywords

References

Details

Primary Language

Subjects

Journal Section

Authors

Early Pub Date

Publication Date

Submission Date

Acceptance Date

Published in Issue

DOI

IZ

Cite