La Turquie et l’Europe : incarnation de l’État et représentation de la société au XXe siècle
Olivier Bouquet
In the debate surrounding Turkey’s integration into the
EU, the country is often presented as an imperfect democracy, with a democratization process hindered by the Turkish state itself. Drawing both on
Ottoman history and political philosophy, this article argues that the object
to be examined with respect to its degree of democracy is less the state per se
than its relationship to Turkish political society. This relationship is structured more around an opposition between the rulers and the ruled – an
Ottoman legacy – than around distinctions derived from the theory of representation, in contradistinction to modern democracies. In fact, the very
nature of the Ottoman state – defined by an original combination of dynastic
legitimacy, autocracy and elite reproduction – isolated the Sultan’s Empire in
its final years from the trends toward democratization that European political
societies were experiencing. Analyzing the elements of continuity between
the republican and imperial states and societies – revealed by the recent Ottomanist historiography – leads to emphasizing the extent to which the still
perceptible Ottoman political figuration has paved the way for the construction of Kemalist state nationalism and has limited the emergence of a democratic culture of representation that conditions its integration into the EU.
• Les Ottomans
• La Turquie républicaine