Erguvaniler

This book tells the story of modernisation and the modernisers — of the oligarchy in Turkey — not through conspiracy theories but with concepts drawn from the social and natural sciences. Oligarchy, a key concept in the Turkish socialist movement, ceases to be a mere abstraction and takes on flesh and blood. In this book, which has become something of a cult work, the relationships and ties are made sense of for the first time…

From a sociological standpoint one might, quite rightly, think of those who have studied the power of elites — C. Wright Mills (The Power Elite), Thomas R. Dye (Who’s Running America?) and John Scott (Who Rules Britain?). In another, more theoretical book — which will show both the similarities and the differences with those authors’ ideas — I will try to explain “why” we have an oligarchy, tracing it from the fifteenth century onwards through the Ottoman mode of production and the structure of the state.

This book, by contrast, describes the continuity of power. Description lists facts and makes approximate generalisations; it answers the question “how”. Beyond it lies explanation — the answer to “why”. Here I write about the “how” of the oligarchy, while knowing that within the current scientific paradigm I must also answer the “why”. The thesis must not be tautological: power cannot endure for so long independently of its material base. What I say here mainly concerns the superstructure; in the other work I will show it with examples from the base as well.

Marx wrote Capital on the principle that the anatomy of the ape is understood through the anatomy of man, and pre-capitalist modes of production through capitalism. In the same way, the much-debated Ottoman modes of production can be understood today through Turkey’s present relations of production and its oligarchy.