Journal Review: Should Center-Periphery Relations as A Key to Contemporary Turkish Politics?
By: Yacub Fahmilda
Tags: Review, Politics, Türkçe, Turkish Politics, Journal

An article titled Center-Periphery Relations: A Key to Turkish Politics? is started by the core-statement of Şerif Mardin’s turkish politics journal, that every civilization has a center and periphery due the either one of them does control or to be under control. Related to the center-periphery, the controlling and to be controlled regards a form of rulers doing security while the controller is the center itself. At the beginning of Şerif Mardin’s writing, he describes the case by looking at Middle East civilization that was ruled by the Ottoman Empire integrated amongst Middle East countries. He asserted that the Ottoman Empire era was ruling with a varied approach to integrating all social levels and backgrounds. Ottoman Empire geographically positioned between Europe and Asia had close ties with Iran Empire as its nearest neighbor that also had power around the Middle East while at the moment Europa had developed early industrialization. The core of this article focusing on the analysis of politics of the late Ottoman to the early Turkey Republic by using a center-periphery point of view and pulled everything into problematic cases.

The author figured out that the empire was a center regarding its influence between Asia and Europe whereas Europe had no power in reconstructing society. Therefore, Europe at the time was a periphery of the Ottoman which was ruled and controlled. However, the Ottoman Empire’s position as a center got moving when Europe stated having a new restructuring society concept. Since then, the Ottoman Empire viewed a concern of the new idea of Europe in constructing society to do the same way. By changing the view, started to get a new position as Ottoman to become a periphery of Europe since had a power influencing in building society. The altering of Ottoman concern into Europe, problematic, and fundamental cases started due to the world view in new society so-called “Leviathan” and “nation-state”.

In the early “Leviathan” and “nation-state” system, the Ottoman Empire stood for its traditional system politics. When those both systems had shown up its success, the Ottoman Empire started to imitate those government systems. This shift in view certainly made a new social class in society by bourgeois and privileges. Şerif Mardin clearly stated his writing also will be discussing the renewal process in the late Ottoman Empire reigned.

In the Ottoman Empire era, one of the problematic cases was a nomad and settled people who lived in Anatolia as a central government that made the environment not stable. This was caused by the central government always pressured and oppressed the actors outside the palace. As a critique for Şerif Mardin’s writing, he said that elite and periphery problems were determined based on the economic side, but he always focused on explaining how the empire regulates the social system by regulations of political power, not from merchant power. As Zurcher (2003) mentioned in his book, people who did not work for the palace classified as a periphery, obviously the merchants who were called Ayan successful without the impact of the palace regard as periphery. The author’s point of view about the periphery feudalism system of the Sultan policy formed the empire as a plunderer for their people indeed. For instance, the officialdom of the palace did not subject to pay tax whereas the peasant obliged to pay tax and their land could be expropriated anytime the palace want.

Based on the explanation above, Şerif Mardin asserts about Ottoman traditional system as an internal government system to establish feudalism. Therefore, the feudalism of the ottoman system created internally a center and periphery. He added, the center position hold by the palace, meanwhile the periphery referred to nomad, settled, urban, and rural people as they live under palace control with all regulations. Also, it was included Ayan people by Zurcher explained. Moreover, the shifting of the decentralization government system created local politicians dominating especially of expropriated land, and as well using the privilege in the middle of an agricultural society. Since that case, the center and periphery had shown up based on political power and domination who oppressed people out of the palace. On the other hand, as there were some local political actors, the revolt happened from urban people who newly live in the city due to the government system was unfair and impartiality for whole social layers. Not only the agricultural people but also all productive guilds non agriculture started to unite and protested about their rights. In addition, Zurcher explained that those prominent actors of guilds had free accessed to communicate with Europe people on the outside because indeed no control of palace towards merchants after iltizam already effect. Therefore, some guilds had imitated European ways to do modernization.

Since 18 century, Ottoman faced problematic situations especially corrupted government systems from military and administration staff. Both positions were done by one actor that is military. Meanwhile, the Ottoman region in 19 century started to decline and focused on modernization process towards a “nation-state” government. The modernization process started by making communication and relation between Turkey guilds with the European guilds. Moreover, since berat affected calling many Orthodox Christians to do the improvement for their internal group. The improvement started from churches and all Christianity believers in rural areas become united. Having contact with outsiders especially European, Ottoman faced a dilemma for ruling its territory. For example, many restrictions for people selling wheat in Palestine and Syria at the time as the nearest modern city. Aside from that, Zurcher said (2003:9) that the Ottoman government system was traditional and conservative because of its limitation in ruling the law, public order, market control, printing money, providing food, and establish working center in Istanbul. Meanwhile, circulating Ottoman income took from people tax because of declining power and lost the war so they did not get the booty of war.

Şerif Mardin’s writing also mentioned the efforts of people in transforming the modernization of the Ottoman towards the Republic in 19 century. They were non-muslim unity like laborers, urban and rural people as minority entities amongst Muslim majority. Other than that, the unification was also pioneered by the Turkish Republic who fought for minority rights in constitute. From the palace actor, Sultan Abdulhamid also tried to do integration by requesting the nomad to be settled down in a certain region. Additionally, He attempted to reunite Muslim in a remote areas. Even though those efforts was failed, Young Turk came up as a new idealist youth association pursuing modernity and secularism to declare a nationalism. Other than Young Turk, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk made an attempt to unify people preparing independence movement. At that moment, many officialdom who worked for Sultan indeed revolted and supported Mustafa Kemal’s ideas. Moreover, the rebellion group toward Sultan declared themselves as continuity of Young Turk forming centralization policy and ended up by one party for Kemalist.

The author clarified the modernization process for bureaucrat as part of westernization. The system pre-independence and the late Ottoman Empire rule used bureaucrat system named “Patrimonial” or “Sultanic” turned into “Rational” bureaucrat. Eventhoug so, the shifting bureaucrat was formed of loomed Ottoman system before, such privilage and oppressed. The author said, within Sultan Abdulhamid II, he attampted to implement a policy for partial modernization. All bureaucrats would be schoolling their children in bureaucrat’s school. Further more, They made everything easier to get the school. This was sure for young military and bureaucrats will be loyal for Sultan than skilled people out of bureaucrats school as bureaucrats school characterized them earlier. Nevertheless, Sultan had established a camp or training school to set up national bureaucrats but it seemed in rush to establish modern country. This modernist movement shifted the old Ottoman motto of “Religion and The State” into “Union and Progress” on behalf of Young Turk for modernization the government.

Explaining the unification process, the author clarified that process of unification form some movements since 18 century until the forming of the republic had not shown its result. In the hand of the Republic Party to do integration missions between local politicians and palace as the center was always rejected. This was related to the independence war that the periphery group indeed wanted to do separatism because they did not feel part of Turkey. Then, the Democrat Party member that part of the Republic Party also could not integrate the periphery who lived in the borders of Turkey. At the beginning of independence, Mustafa Kemal Attaturk also tried to integrate Turkey residents in the rest of Ottoman territory by promoting nationalism, constructing culture, and forming new history in line with the new identity of Turkey.

As the final discussion, the author pulled all center-periphery cases by looking at the preparation towards forming the new Republic Turkey and the first of 25 years after independence. The author described mass unification through two big parties, the are Republic and Democrat Party. The Republic Party did unification by eradicating the gap between master-servant and cut the gap between notables and peasant. On the economic side, Serif Mardin argued that the client faces economic growth. Since at the time, there was new economic power after close ties between notables and peasant than the dominant economy by notables as before. The success of mass unification by the Republic Party made a new center as Democrat Party became a new periphery during the early Republic of Turkey. Both positions realized that there was a war to compete power, especially the Democrat Party by following the Republic Party growth getting a lot of attention due to gather all social classes and construct public infrastructure.

As the author asserted in his writing that this simple thesis could be more complex other than just unification labors and urban people. But, there were other periphery issues like Shi’i Islam, Kurdish separatism, and Turkey politics issues in the future. He was sure that center-periphery considered concepts and important component structure to look at Turkey’s political consternation. Moreover, he said that there were two factors of forming periphery in Turkey modern. First, a center was formed by patrimonial society, and second, the periphery was a center of the counter-work against official-culture. Thus, he was sure that center-periphery will always relevant to examine Turkey politics in the modernization era.

The center-periphery point of view by Serif Mardin, there are three things possibly Turkey politic analysis seems problematic and complicated. The first, Ottoman Empire transition period as a center of civilization shifted toward European of their technology and industrialization progress. The second, critical, and dilemma situation while transforming of Ottoman Empire into Turkey modern by different points of view forming polarization, that was conservative and modernist. Other than that, people should decide to be part of republic or democrat party and ended up with big two big actors. The third, the author positioning clearly who was the center and who was the periphery every period to analyze so that could be concluded that center-periphery will always relevant in examining Turkey politic even in the modern era.

Based on my opinion, the center-periphery theory remained relevant by considering certain terms. First, the examiner should redefine the term “center-periphery” especially in the context of contemporary Turkey politics. That redefinition will assert the position who will be center and periphery. The second, Turkey modern country now is not “Patrimonial” or “Sultanic” government therefore will be multi-parties or a variety of political actors that make it complicated in doing categorization of center and periphery. Thus, this theory will be relevant to examine Turkey politics but the analysis will be not strong enough even limiting the researcher’s point of view.

References

Şerif Mardin. Center-Periphery Relations: A Key to Turkish Politics?. Daedalus Journal.Vol. 102, №1, Post-Traditional Societies (Winter,1973), pp.169–190.

Zurcher, Erik J. 2003. Sejarah Modern Turki. Translated in Indonesian by Karsidi Diningrat. Gramedia Pustaka Utama Publisher: Jakarta.

Acknowledgement

This article was written while I was sitting in Graduate School of Ibn Haldun University, Turkey as my homework for Turkish Politics Course POL505. This article reminds me about having opportunity and experience as international student in Turkey university that carried on online during the first part of fall-semester in October 2020. I am so proud of myself facing through this 2020 whereas this pandemic was not my barrier pursuing my study abroad. However, due to limited budget, I decided to withdraw my scholarship of Ibnu Haldun University. I hope that best and barakah opportunity will raise soon.