Is Turkey coming to terms with its past? Politics of memory and majoritarian conservatism

There is unprecedented domestic and international interest in Turkey's political past, accompanied by a societal demand for truth and justice in addressing past human rights violations. This article poses the question: Is Turkey coming to terms with its past? Drawing upon the literature on nationalism, identity, and collective memory, I argue that the Turkish state has recently taken steps to acknowledge and redress some of the past human rights violations. However, these limited and strategic acts of acknowledgment fall short of initiating a more comprehensive process of addressing past wrongs. The emergence of the Justice and Development Party as a dominant political force brings along the possibility that the discarded Kemalist memory framework will be replaced by what I call majoritarian conservatism, a new government-sanctioned shared memory that promotes uncritical and conservative-nationalist interpretations of the past that have popular appeal, while enforcing silence on critical historiographies that challenge this hegemonic memory and identity project. Nonetheless, majoritarian conservatism will probably fail to assert state control over memory and history, even under a dominant government, as unofficial memory initiatives unsettle the hegemonic appropriation of the past.     

Deconstructing the Multiple Readings of a Terrorist Event in Turkey: The Case of the Council of State (Danıştay) Assault of 2006

Terrorism is a pivotal matter in Turkish politics. In this article, a specific terrorist activity, which is still having an impact upon Turkish politics, has been analyzed. It scrutinizes two perspectives of the event. Some actors lean towards a secular/positivist reading of events while others favour a conservative/postmodern reading. This serious factional political debate is possibly just the result that the terrorists had in mind. Being imbued by republican principles, the seculars' claims compel the conservatives to raise defensive points since they are blamed for murdering secular figures and targeting the very essence of the republic. Using different symbolic readings, both sides arrive at opposing conclusions: for the seculars the aim/message of the terror is clear—it is the republic; for the conservatives the aim/message is hidden—destabilizing the country.     

“The Floor and the Ceiling” of Politics——Strauss’s Views on the Limit of Political Life and its Revelation

The modern political philosophy hasn’t recognized the limit of politics; it always easily falls into the trap of political romanticism and political nihilism. In contrast, Strauss adhering to the wisdom of classical political philosophy, tells us that the political life has some limits which human reason can’t exceed: the highest upper limit of political life is the rule of philosophy’s king, which is desirable, but not impossible; the lowest limit of political life is natural right principle, which is indispensable root of any political society. On the basis of this vision, the key of actual political practice is the balance of wisdom and agreement, and this is the fundamental spirit of classical political conservatism.     

The Conservative Case for Human Rights

This article explores how conservative values and Conservative Party politicians helped to shape the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) 1948 and the European Convention on Human rights (ECHR) 1950. It provides an overview of the history of conservatism in the UK with a focus on the way that Conservative Party administrations promoted the protection of human rights, including social and economic rights. The author argues that the Conservative Party should continue to play a key role in protecting human rights legislation rather than regarding human rights as a ‘foreign’ imposition from Europe.     

Is South Korea as Leftist as It Gets? Labour Market Policy Reforms under the Moon Presidency

Considering its conservative past, South Korea is undergoing an unprecedented turn to the left. Since priority was given to economic growth from the 1960s until the beginning of the 1990s, a close alliance between big business and government has characterised the country's labour market. Since the 1997 financial crisis, however, two decades of liberal and conservative governments have pushed a neoliberal agenda of labour market flexibilisation, which has resulted in growing inequality in a dualised labour market and left the trade unions in a marginal role. Following a rapid turn of events that led to the impeachment of conservative president Park Geun‐hye, left‐leaning President Moon Jae‐in seems determined to roll back this legacy of labour oppression with the strong support of trade unions and young voters. His administration is pushing for policy change with a series of expansionary active labour market policies aimed at promoting stability and full‐time employment. This article highlights the social‐democratic character of these reforms and the constraints in implementing them.     

法治的人生态度

法治作为现实的人的一种生活方式与生活式样 ,时刻与现实的人的当前生活与未来命运密切相关。作为现实的人的一种生活方式与秩序追求 ,它反映着现实的人的生活立场与人生态度。法治的人生态度的基本特色体现为悲观主义、保守主义、现实主义和个人主义。法治的人生态度与法治始终处于彼此塑造的双向互动之中     

重述德国古典哲学的出路:对保守主义的历史时间经验方式的阐释

存在许多种保守主义概念定义.对我们来说,有价值的是深入一种政治信念因素背后的努力,以及这一见解,即一种最具逻辑一致性的保守主义的出现,是德国19世纪上半叶的最有影响的思想历史事件.当我们在这里强调保守主义与德国精神之间的紧密联系时,便会发现隐含在它之中的历史哲学含义:它在本然而不是应然、在有机集体联合(民族)而不是与之对立的机械社会或自由人联合的基础上寻求理解和解释历史;从某种意义上,它从过去寻求对历史时间的经验表达.在现代文明原则面前,注意德国保守主义的式微与德国古典哲学的出路之间的关系,令我们有充分的理由断言,马克思的共产主义原则需要在更好地揭示并捍卫现代文明原则的基础上来阐明.     

The Russian Orthodox Church as the Church of the Majority

The author examines the evolution of relations among Church, state, and society in Russia over recent years in the light of comparisons with other predominantly Orthodox Christian countries.     

The Use of Force in British Foreign Policy: From New Labour to the Coalition

This article studies the ideational underpinnings of the UK Coalition government's ‘liberal conservative’ foreign policy. It begins by suggesting that an Iraq‐centric account of Blair's foreign policy suggests a grand vision on the prime minister's part that was lacking from his earlier foreign policy adventures, which relied on a more conventional form of British statecraft. The second section contends that the Gordon Brown years 2007–10 and, since the end of New Labour, Coalition foreign policy, can be seen as a response both to the substance and style of Blair's highly personalised stewardship of foreign policy post‐9/11. The war on terror and the invasion of Iraq were accompanied by a seemingly open‐ended democracy promotion around the globe which was quite out of character with past British practice. The article argues, therefore, that under Brown and Cameron cautious pragmatism has tended to win out over the proclamation of grand strategic ambition.     

The American Right and the Framing of 9/11

On September 11th, 2001, 2 hijacked airliners were crashed into the World Trade Center and a third into the Pentagon. The Bush administration's response, both in regard to civil liberties at home and the launching of military action abroad, has been the subject of considerable controversy. As we might expect, the Bush administration's framing of events met with acclaim among many on the American right But here, as elsewhere on the political spectrum, how to understand and react to 9/11 was also the subject of bitter dispute, a dispute that sheds new light on the ongoing arguments among American conservatives in the aftermath of the Cold War.