Building conservative identity in Turkey

Conservatism emerged as a political greed following French Revolution. Conservatism developed as an attitude of opposing to Enlightenment rationalism, political practices of French Revolution and the drawback of industrial society?s. Conservatism is basically divided into two trends as continental Europe conservatism and Anglo-American conservatism. Despite this differentiation, the basic tenets of conservatism are tradition, family, authority, religion, order, history and spontanity.Turkish conservatism unfolded in the Republican period and determined an opposition to the extremism of the radical changes brought about by modern Turkish republic. However, conservatism has never had a substantive opposition to the new regime. Turkish conservatism sustained itself in cultural form. In this sense, The most prominent feature of conservatism, that created its own place in the political arena by the 1950s, is the representation of the periphery in the center-periphery dichotomy.The purpose of this study is to depict the development of conservatism in Turkey and, in this framework, to exhibit the basic elements of Turkish conservative identity. In this way, the is discussed possibility of a conservative socio-political identity in Turkey.