The Emergence of Social Democracy in Turkey:
The Left and the Transformation of the Republican Peoples' Party
By Yunus Emre
I.B. Tauris, 2014
The RPP (Republican People's Party) stands as Turkey's main opposition
party - one of two major political blocs, second only to Erdogan's
ruling AK Party. Also known as the CHP (Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi), it was
the founding party of Ataturk's republican regime and had a history of
hostility towards leftist parties. Despite this, by the mid-1960s, the
RPP had re-orientated itself as left of centre, as the growing influence
of the left inside the RPP pushed it in a new direction. This is hailed
as the entry point of social democratic politics into Turkey, and is
the focus of Yunus Emre's impressively researched book. He tracks the
fluctuations in Turkish politics from the single-party period to the
making of a new regime following the 1960 coup, looking at the place of
both the RPP and the left in this trajectory, making this essential
reading for scholars of Turkish politics and modern history.
Yunus Emre is an Assistant Professor in the Department of International
Relations at Istanbul Kültür University. He holds a PhD from the Atatürk
Institute of Modern Turkish History, Bogaziçi University, Turkey.
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