The Torn Republic

Turkey’s Search for Civilizational Identity
The Torn Republic provides a comprehensive reinterpretation of modern Turkey’s political trajectory, connecting history, memory, and identity to explain the country’s ongoing turmoil and shifting foreign policy. Yavuz argues that Turkey remains a torn republic, caught between competing civilizational projects-Kemalism, Islamism, neo-Ottomanism, pan-Turkism, and Eurasianism-that continue to shape both domestic politics and international orientation. The book begins with the traumas of Ottoman collapse, the Treaty of Svres, and the War of Independence, showing how humiliation and rebirth produced a securitized national culture obsessed with survival. It traces how Atatrk’s reforms sought to civilize society through Westernization and secularism, even as Kurdish and Islamist resistances preserved suppressed memories and grievances. During the Cold War, Turkey’s Western integration deepened security de