In the first two decades after World War II, social scientists heralded Turkey as an exemplar of a "modernizing" nation in the Western mold. Images of unveiled women working next to clean-shaven men, healthy children in school uniforms, and downtown Ankara's modern architecture all proclaimed the country's success. Although Turkey's modernization began in the late Ottoman era, the establishment of the secular nation-state by Kemal Atat)rk in 1923 marked the crystallization of an explicit, elite-driven "project of modernity" that took its inspiration exclusively from the West.

The essays in this book are the first attempt to examine the Turkish experiment with modernity from a broad, interdisciplinary perspective, encompassing the fields of history, the social sciences, the humanities, architecture, and urban planning. As they examine both the Turkish project of modernity and its critics, the contributors offer a fresh, balanced understanding of dilemmas now facing not only Turkey but also many other parts of the Middle East and the world at large.

Edited by Sibel Bozdogan and Resat Kasaba

List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Introduction, Sibel Bozdogan and Resat Kasaba
Kemalist Certainties and Modern Ambiguities, Resat Kasaba
Whither the Project of Modernity? Turkey in the 1990s, Caglar Keyder
Modernization Policies and Islamist Politics in Turkey, Haldun Gulalp
Projects as Methodology: Some Thoughts on Modern Turkish Social Science, Serif Mardin
The Quest for the Islamic Self within the Context of Modernity, Nilufer Gole
The Project of Modernity and Women in Turkey, Yesim Arat
Gendering the Modern: On Missing Dimensions in the Study of Turkish Modernity, Deniz Kandiyoti
The Predicament of Modernism in Turkish Architectural Culture: An Overview, Sibel Bozdoga
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Once There Was, Once There wasn't: National Monuments and Interpersonal Exchange, Michael E. Meeker
Silent Interruptions: Urban Encounters with Rural Turkey, Gulsum Baydar Nalbantoglu
Arabesk Culture: A Case of Modernization and Popular Identity, Ernest Gellner
The Turkish Option in Comparative Perspective, Roger Owen
Modernizing Projects in Middle Eastern Perspective, Joel S. Migdal
Finding the Meeting Ground of Fact and Fiction: Some Reflections on Turkish Modernization, Joel S. Migdal
List of Contributors
Index