The 1940s and 1950s are commonly viewed as a transformative period in Turkish history. The era witnessed Turkey’s transition from an authoritarian single-party regime to a multi-party democratic political system, a shift to a model of rapid capitalist economic modernization, and integration into the U.S.-led Western bloc in the early Cold War. The period ended abruptly with a military coup. Whether interpreted as a reversal of the early republic’s secularizing reforms and secular institutions or as a return to more representative Turkish cultural institutions and practices, scholars have considered the late 1940s and 1950s as a time of intense cultural and ideological contestation about Turkish identity and modernity between secular republicans and Islamist conservatives.
In this book, Danforth offers an original perspective on 1950s Turkey, arguing that the mid-century was a time when groups articulated differing visions and new syntheses of Turkish modernity, rather than being stuck in a secular...