Class, State and Property: Modernity and Capitalism in Turkey

Abstract

This paper argues that the class-based analyses that seek to make sense of the recent transformation of Turkish modernity rest on a pre-given duality between the state and the bourgeoisie. This not only jettisons the relational and temporal context in which classes define and articulate their interests, thereby leading to determinist explanations of various sorts, but also obscures the historical distinctiveness and mutual re-transformation of two different modes of socio-spatial organization, modernity and capitalism, in Turkey. Based on a novel historical materialist method known as Political Marxism, I suggest that re-conceptualizing class as property-relations sheds new light on the historical-comparative specificity of Turkish modernity, which, in turn, leads to a radical re-interpretation of Turkey’s recent transformation.