The Jarring Road to Democratic Inclusion

A Comparative Assessment of State–Society Engagements in Israel and Turkey

Aviad Rubin, Yusuf Sarfati

• Publisher: Lexington Books
• Year: 2016
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9781498525084
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Comparative Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This edited volume brings together chapters that offer theoretically pertinent comparisons between various dimensions of Israeli and Turkish politics. Each chapter covers a different aspect of state–society interactions in both countries from a comparative perspective, including the public role of religion, political culture, women rights movements, religious education, religious movements, marriage regulation, labor market inclusion, and ethnic minorities. Israel and Turkey share significant similarities, such as state formation under nationalist ideologies, familiarity with democratic governance since the 1940s, strong affiliation with the West, recent resurgence of religious parties, ongoing conflict with ethno-national minority groups that challenge the dominant national project, contemporary popular protests against the incumbent regime, and recent serious erosion of democratic rights. At the same time they differ on major variables, such as size, majority religion, geopolitical location, level of economic development, policy towards ethnic minorities, and institutional arrangements to managing the state–religion relations. The presence of these differences in face of common backgrounds facilitates analytically grounded comparisons in a host of dimensions. Therefore, employing a case-oriented comparative method, this book provides historically interpretative and causally analytic accounts on the politics of both societies. The contributions reveal the dynamic and complex—rather than one-dimensional and linear—nature of political processes in both settings. This empirically rich and theoretically sophisticated volume should contribute to a better understanding of these two important states, and, no less important, stimulate new directions for comparative research, especially on Middle East regimes, social movements, and democratization.

Table of contents

• Title Page
• List of Figures
• List of Tables
• List of Abbreviations
• Introduction
• Contesting the Religious in a (Secular) Democracy
• Political Mobilization through Religious Schooling
• Challenges to the Religious-Political Establishment
• Comparative Trajectories of the Women’s Movements in Israel and Turkey
• Dominant vs. Hegemonic Tendencies as Critical Features in Israel’s and Turkey’s Political Culture
• Elections 2015
• Marriage Regulation in Israel and Turkey
• On the Margins of Social Citizenship
• Index
• About the Contributors