Behlül Özkan

The project examines how the fight against communism in Cold War-era Turkey was conducted by the Turkish establishment and what role the West played in this campaign. A significant number of scholarly studies characterize the Turkish establishment as secular in nature, claiming that it suppressed Islamist movements arising on the periphery. This research, by contrast, will demonstrate how the Turkish state apparatus, operating under the rubric of anti-communism, used Political Islam as an antidote to the social and political power of the Left.