A Key to Turkish Politics? The Center-Periphery Framework Revisited

This article offers a critical rereading of Şerif Mardin’s center–periphery framework. This cleavage has offered a simple and politically appealing theoretical foundation to scholarly and journalistic works for several decades. Empirical evidence, however, suggests institutions and worldviews have not been continuous across time, as the center–periphery framework suggests. Furthermore, disagreements and conflicts among groups perceived as peripheral, the fluidity of relationships between peripheral and central actors, and the lack of cohesion within the institutions of the center leave no reason to maintain the center–periphery cleavage as an organizing framework. The authoritarian turn in Turkey in the 2010s under the Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi invites further scrutiny of the framework. Future research should take into consideration historical patterns and events that do not fit into the binary framework, pay attention to micro-level dynamics within and between social actors and institutions, incorporate strategic decision making into theoretical models, acknowledge the interconnectedness and hybridity of ideologies and worldviews, and conduct comparative research.