Book Reviews
681
The ‘New Turkey’ and Its Discontents by
Simon A Waldman and Emre Caliskan.
London: C. Hurst & Co., 2016. 176pp., £14.99
(p/b), ISBN 9781849045667
The ‘New Turkey’ and Its Discontents by
Simon Waldman and Emre Caliskan offers an
examination of recent developments in Turkey,
including the recent failed attempted coup in
July 2016, making the study the first of its kind
in English. Furthermore, the book presents an
account of how Turkey has shifted from being
a rising economy with strong potential for a
stable democracy to an illiberal authoritarian
state marked by purges of what the ruling party
considers to be ‘enemies of the state’.
Waldman and Caliskan emphasise the role
that the army has played since the founding of
the Turkish Republic in 1923 and rightly note
that despite the crippling of the army’s political
power, democracy has not flourished in the
country. In addition, while it was believed that
the army’s fall from power would be pivotal in
solving the long-lasting bloody ethnic conflict
between Turks and Kurds that has proven not
to be the case. Another crucial topic that the
authors take up is the EU reform process and
its halt, as well as how that has affected domes-
tic politics. Indeed, this stands as one of the
most important issues in present-day Turkey’s
turn to authoritarianism and failure to solve the
Kurdish issue.
Finally, the book deals with the relationship
between the Justice and Development Party
(AKP) and the Gülen movement. The authors
rightly trace the origins of this relationship
from the history of the various forms of con-
servative nationalism that emerged in the
1950s to the ‘Turkish-Islamic Synthesis’ that
occurred in the 1980s in an attempt to unite the
country against the ‘enemy of the state’ (e.g.
communism) by placing Islam at the centre of
Turkish identity and history. The Gülen move-
ment was one of the movements that emerged
in the 1980s, and it later established close rela-
tions with the AKP. It is unfortunate, however,
that the authors seem to argue that it was solely
the Gülenists who were behind the attempted
July coup and that they did not receive any
help from the Kemalists and nationalists, as in
doing so they internalise the Turkish govern-
ment’s line of argumentation.
In sum, The ‘New Turkey’and Its Discontents
is the most up-to-date study of recent develop-
ments in Turkey and as such it is definitely
worth reading. It is well-written, and its jour-
nalistic style makes it easy to read and accessi-
ble. Considering the fact that the authors have
brought their study up-to-date with analyses of
the developments surrounding the coup and
cover a wide array of topics, this is by far the
most complete account of recent events in
Turkey and the best book available on the mar-
ket covering the past few years.
Nikos Christofis
(University of Macedonia, Thessaloniki)
© The Author(s) 2017
Reprints and permissions: sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav
DOI: 10.1177/1478929917719409
journals.sagepub.com/home/psrev
The Last Post-Cold War Socialist
Federation: Ethnicity, Ideology and
Democracy in Ethiopia by Semahagn Gashu
Abebe. Farnham: Ashgate, 2014. 285pp., £65.00
(h/b), ISBN 9781472412089
This single case study examines the role of the
ruling political coalition of the Ethiopian
People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front
(EPRDF) – the Front is led by the Tigrayan
People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) – in shaping
the organisation and function of Ethiopia’s
federal system. In the introductory-theoretical
section of this study, the author tries to under-
line some ‘fundamental features of socialist
federations with a view to comprehend the
ideological background of the Ethiopian fed-
eral system’ (p. 5). The rest of the study pro-
vides an extensive analysis of Ethiopia’s
federal system ‘from the perspective of the
ideological principles pursued by the TPLF/
EPRDF’ (p. 253).
The author – himself a native of Ethiopia –
advances the argument that even though ‘the
federal system is formally presumed to be reg-
ulated by the Constitution of the Federal
Democratic Republic of Ethiopia (FDRE), the
system is informally structured and regulated
by the ideological fundamentals of TPLF/
EPRDF’ (p. 253). For example, although the
federal system has constitutionally granted
various powers to regional governments, the