The Scope of crisis in the Turkish political culture within the framework of interaction between crisis and political culture

ABSTRACT Establishing relationships between political culture and crisis presents some theoretical difficulties. The most important reason of these difficulties is the widespread studies of the concept of crisis in social sciences like culture, and consequent expansion of the conceptual framework of crisis. Therefore, it is necessary to define the scope of interaction between these two phenomena, in other words, to draw the boundaries of interaction for these two concepts as a first step of the study. The framework of interaction which is defined as mainly in terms of economic, political and social phenomena contributes to the explanation attempts of the relationship between political culture and crisis. Finally, this three-part interaction field leads to the explanation of the whole. The contemporary Turkish political culture, like any social phenomena, has emerged within a particular historical process. Today's Turkish political culture inherited many characteristics both structurally and institutionally from Central Asian origins, Islam and the Ottoman Empire. In this process, the Ottoman Empire transmitted the previous inheritance to the present. The Ottoman political culture is the dominant factor through an important Ottoman reform known as Tanzimat in shaping the republican era. As a result, a study on the Turkish political culture will reach consistent findings only when taking this process into consideration. Thus, the aim of this study is to explain the interaction between the Turkish political culture and crisis by defining the characteristics of economic, political and social crises in the evolution process. VI