Turkey is passing through a critical period in its democratic history. The political and judicial debate in Turkey is often misread abroad as a struggle between the “good old secularists” and the “bad new Islamists” and is misperceived as a fight for power between these distinctively opposing ideological camps. This dichotomous reading of Turkish politics does an injustice not only to Turkey but also to the pluralistic nature of the sides of the debate. The multi‐colored mosaic of Turkish politics cannot and should not be reduced to a black‐and‐white Kafkaesque tableau. True, the political scene in Ankara can often make one feel dizzy and perplexed, but the debate itself is breathtaking.
One reason for the failure to feel the vividness of the debate and the “multivoicedness” of the debating sides is the portrayal of the debate in the “embedded media” as taking place in the political, judicial and military “battlefield” of power politics, where the actors are rude politicians, brutish soldiers and distant high court judges. True, the debate has a frontline where words are used as weapons, but the hinterland of that debate is much wider and inclusive. There is a quite healthy intellectual, artistic and public debate going on behind the frontline. In the hinterland the camps are vaguer, positions are more flexible, discussions are wiser. The “good old secularists” are not always good, not all of them are old and secularism has all kinds of meanings producing proponents ranging from Anglo‐American secularists to secular fundamentalists. The “bad new Islamists” are no longer Islamists; they are not so new, in fact, and as Turkey's renowned sociologist Professor Faruk Birtek observes: “We have a situation in which the so‐called Islamists are more democratic than the secularists. It's what Hegel would call a contradiction without dialectic.” The Turkish Review (TR) regards this contradiction as a dialogic one. Unfortunately the dialogic dimension of the debate is underrepresented in the influential media, and more often than not the commentaries in circulation are produced for mass consumption within a pop‐culture perspective of supply and demand. An oxymoronic intellectual populism presides over political analyses of what is going on in Turkey. The TR has been born out of a need for an all‐embracive, long‐sighted, deep analysis of the social, cultural and political debate shaping the future of Turkish democracy. The TR is a bimonthly semi‐academic journal published in the English language to inform those seeking an answer to the question, "What is happening in Turkey?" It aims to reach those unaware of Turkey’s importance in the international arena and to convince those who nurture prejudices about Turkey. Published by Feza Gazetecilik A.S., the TR has an editorial policy that is summed up in its slogan "From Turkey to the whole world." The TR intends to accommodate all of Turkey’s intellectual hues. But it wants to be a kaleidoscope, not a rainbow. It intends to host all scores, not in cacophony, but in a well‐orchestrated symphony. The TR adopts a popular‐academic language and a presentation delicately poised between journalism and academic scholarship, and its first issue will appear on October 10, 2010. In our first issue, we will be discussing the results of the recent constitutional amendment, its implications for the appellate judiciary, the new cadres of the Turkish military and the sources of anti‐Americanism in the ranks and files of the Turkish army. The Turkish foreign minister will show up in the pages of Turkish Review
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the TR in an extensive interview; and the Turkish finance minister Ali Babacan will write about the fiscal rule Turkey is trying to adapt. The journal will also ponder on the freedom of media, influence of the military coups on the minorities in Turkey and Arab views on the constitutional referendum.
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