Kemalism and Democratic Party

This thesis aims to offer a new conceptualization of the relationship between Kemalism and Democratic Party (DP) by contextualizing the relationship into the framework of Turkish political modernization. The political developments from 1839, treated as a turning point, to 1950 has been discussed in a way enabling to reveal a structural transformation, without forgetting continuities and ruptures. The study formed through in-depth reading of the literature on the Turkish modernization, Kemalism and DP. Rather than being an era-study, the research follows a thematic and chronological order. It is contented that a proper reading on the DP, requires distancing itself from certain forms of argumentation such as ?the spirit? or ?deviation? of 1946. The relationship between Kemalism and the DP is discussed through three levels, which are the thesis posits to be the levels through which the Party enabled Kemalism to be consolidated. DP, founded in 1946 and coming into power in 1950, expanded the political space and channels for political participation, and hence brought a political consolidation. Through the political consolidation, the Party has managed to create a social consolidation by easing the tension between social periphery and political centre. As an effect of both mentioned consolidations, there has also been an ideological consolidation since, the new form of the relationship between the state and the society enabled the party to leave the implementation of radical methods in modernization politics and to redefine the modernization as merely a matter of economic development. The thesis, in a nutshell, contents that Democratic Party, rather than being merely a counter-Kemalist or counter-modernist project, should be treated as a political intervention, redefining the organization of the political space in contrast to bureaucratic-centralist tendencies in Turkish modernization.