Book Review: The Fall of the Turkish Model: How the Arab Uprising Brought Down Islamic Liberalism by Cihan Tuğal

Abstract

Cihan Tugal The Fall of the Turkish Model: How the Arab Uprising Brought Down Islamic Liberalism, London: Verso, 2016; 304 pp.: ISBN 1784783323, 19.99 [pounds sterling] In November 2016, the European Union (EU) Parliament voted to suspend talks with Turkey on its bid for membership of the EU, highlighting the deterioration of human rights and the whittling away of democratic norms under President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's rule. This development almost certainly puts an end to Turkey's accession to the EU as the model country of Islamic liberalism, building a bridge between the East and the West. However, as Ece Temelkuran fittingly argues in her review of Cihan Tugal's book The Fall of the Turkish Model, the EU's agreement with Turkey on the blocking of Syrian refugees had already heralded the collapse of this bridge, and the rise of a wall (Temelkuran 2016). The Fall of the Turkish Model is a well-written and well-researched book offering an alternative reading of Turkey's claim to Islamic liberalism as a model for other Islamic countries to emulate. With its accessible language, the book clearly aims at a broader readership beyond academic circles. The book is focused on the historical development of the Turkish model and how it has been marketed to and perceived in Iran, Egypt and Tunisia. The first three chapters of the book outline the old secular regimes in these countries and demonstrate how various social forces were positioned before their respective Islamic passive revolutions took place, defined by the Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci as processes of 'restoration-revolution'. The relationship between class forces and Islamic movements is well explained in these chapters. The political liberalisation of Islam and its later articulation with neoliberal doctrine is historically and comparatively analysed in Chapters 2 and 3. Following on from this in Chapters 4-6, the author explores precisely what went wrong with the Arab dictatorships that led to the regime crises and the popular uprisings of 2011, but also, ironically, what went wrong with the Turkish model of democratic-authoritarianism leading to the political crisis of 2013. The irony here is, of course, that the Turkish model had long been suggested to Islamic movements in the Middle East as an example of how Islam can be compatible with liberalism and democracy. The marketing of the Turkish model was not only directed towards the West; it was also promoted within the Middle East. This part of the book skilfully questions the dynamics of these uprisings and in particular the role of the new middle classes within late capitalism--as key factors in these revolts based upon an analysis of the strengths and limitations of 'middle-class' revolts. The book finally concludes with its main argument that today's responses to the old regimes connect the dots between disparate events, rising social forces and institutions in history. Tugal disagrees with the orthodox claim that Turkey represents a model for other Islamic countries with its unique form of Islamic liberalism and refutes any suggestion that what went wrong in Turkey is limited to the AKP's (Justice and Development Party) or more directly to Erdogan's arrogance and authoritarian inclinations. He rather puts the very concept of 'Islamic liberalism' under the spotlight and questions the limits of Islamic liberalism through a political society-based explanation. By doing so, he is able to evaluate the claims to both 'justice' and development' in the AKP's rule. However, there are certain problems in the application of this concept of political society, which is taken from Gramsci's Prison Notebooks, to refer to the state in its strict sense. This concept of political society is always used by Gramsci in a dialectical relationship with civil society, in order to conceptualise the integral state. For Gramsci, the integral '[s]tate = political society + civil society, in other words hegemony protected by the armour of coercion' (Gramsci 1971: 263). …