Talk:
“Democratic Parties, Autocratic Possibilities: Politics in Turkey during the 1950s and Its Legacy”
by
Reuben Silverman
History
University of California San Diego, USA
reuben.silverman@gmail.com
Date and Room Info
Friday, February 20, 2026, 12:30 p.m.
A-130
Abstract
The period 1946-1960 was Turkey’s first sustained era of multiparty political competition, but can we draw a straight line from that era to our own? Certainly, many scholars and politicians argue we can, and the echoes are apparent enough: the increased prominence of religion in public life; the nostalgia for Ottoman history; the use of populist rhetoric and mass rallies; the embrace of majoritarian democracy. Yet many of these connections depend on static characterizations of politics in Turkey, where long-standing divides like center/periphery, secular/religious, state/society remain fixed over time. In considering the era, and the Democrat Party in particular, this talk emphasizes the porous nature of these divides as well as the historical legacies and international contexts shaping the party during its decade of rule.
At the national and provincial levels, the Democrat Party was led by politicians who had either directly shaped the institutions of the early republic or been thoroughly shaped by those institutions. These elites came to power at a moment when the international political order offered opportunities (and challenges) unlike those faced by leaders of the early republic. For much of the 1950s, Democrat Party leaders skillfully leveraged Turkey’s strategic value for American and European policymakers, thereby gaining security and financial support from the emerging US-led Cold War order. Turkey, they argued, was a bulwark against the expansion of communism and radicalism. As the decade progressed, the “stability” needed to be a proper bulwark became a justification for increasingly illiberal, even authoritarian policies.
Short Bio
Reuben Silverman is a scholar focused on political history in Turkey. He was a postdoctoral researcher at Stockholm University’s Institute for Turkish Studies (2022-2024). He holds a PhD from University of California San Diego (History, 2022), and an MA from University of Washington (International Relations, 2012). In addition to his recent book The Rise and Fall of Turkey’s Democrat Party: The Cold War and Illiberalism, 1945-60 (Cambridge University Press, 2025) and articles in Turkish Studies, Middle Eastern Studies, and elsewhere, he has published three essay collections with Libra Press: Borderline Personalities: Lives at the Political, Social, and Geographic Edges of Modern Turkey (2021), Politics in Turkey: Parties, Politicians and the Struggle for Power (2018), and Turkey’s Ever Present Past: Stories from Turkish Republican History (2015).