Comparing Turkey and Iran in Political Science and Historical Sociology: A Critical Review
Abstract
This article reviews existing comparative literature on Iran and Turkey in terms of their approaches, themes and findings. It extracts and critically analyses two dominant trends in this literature; Comparative Analyses of Cultures and Comparative Analyses of Modernizations. This paper argues that, these two common lines of approaching have serious limitations since they carry the traces of orientalist and ethnocentric assumptions. New literature on this topic however, offers new avenues of research, enabling the debate to avoid the above mentioned pitfalls. As a conclusion, this critical review points to certain dynamics to consider (over-politicization of the Iran-Turkey comparisons and the impact of international developments) in order to facilitate stronger comparative frameworks
Keywords
Turkey, Iran, Comparative Politics, Orientalism, Ethnocentrism
References
- Afacan, Serhan, “Devletle Yazışmak: Türkiye ve İran Sosyal Tarihçiliğinde Dilekçeler,” Türkiyat Mecmuası, 2011, (21).
- Afacan, Serhan, “Kitap Değerlendirmesi: Emperyalist Çağda Modernleşme: Türk Modernleşmesi ve İran (1800- 1941),” İnsan ve Toplum, 2012, (2) 3.
- Akyol, Taha, Türkiye ve İran’da Mezhep ve Devlet, İstanbul: Milliyet Yayınları, 1998.
- Atabaki Touraj. & Zürcher E.J. (ed.) (2004), Men of Order: Authoritarian Modernization in Turkey and Iran, 1918-1942, New York: I. B. Tauris.
- Atabaki, Touraj, “The Caliphate, the Clerics and Republicanism in Turkey and Iran,” in Touraj Atabaki (ed.), The State and the Subaltern: Modernization, Society and State in Turkey and Iran, London: I.B. Tauris, 2007.
- Atabaki, Touraj, “Time, Labour Discipline and Modernization in Turkey and Iran,” in Touraj Atabaki (ed), The State and the Subaltern: Modernization, Society and State in Turkey and Iran, London I.B. Tauris, 2007.
- Başkan, Birol, Religious Institutions and State Building: Incorporation vs. Exclusion, Unpublished PhD Dissertation, Submitted to the Graduate School, The Department of Political Science, Northwestern University, 2006.
- Başkan, Birol, “State Secularity and Its Impact on Societal relations in Turkey and Egypt,” Arab Studies Quarterly, 2013, (35)2.
- Başkan, Birol, From Religious Empires to Secular States: State Secularization in Turkey, Iran and Russia, New York: Routledge, 2014.
- Başkan, Birol, “State Secularization and Religious Resurgence: Diverging Fates of Secularism in Turkey and Iran,” Politics and Religion, 2014, available on CJ02013. Doi: 10.1017/S1755048313000059.
