Myth and Rhetoric of the Turkish Model

This volume discusses what the Turkish Model, or Turkish Development Alternative, was and why it was promoted in the Central Asian republics immediately following the dissolution of the Soviet Union. The Turkish Model proposed a secular, democratic, liberal society for the post-Soviet Turkic world and in the process encouraged a Turkic rhetoric that emphasized the connection between two regions based on common ancestry. The volume begins with an understanding of the reality of the model from a Turkish perspective and then goes on to examine whether the Turkish world as a cultural-civilizational alternative makes sense both from a historical as well as contemporary perspective. It concludes by looking at the reemergence of the model in the wake of the events in West Asia in early 2011. While Turkey defines its Turkic world as the Balkans, parts of the Caucasus, the Central Asian states, the region of the Volga in Russia and northern Afghanistan, this volume examines only that part of the Turkic world where the Turkic Model was presented as the model of development in the post-disintegration period, i.e., Central Asia. This is also done with the recognition that in the regions where the Ottomans had once wielded control, the volatile nature of both subnational and ultranational agendas complicates the formulation of any single model. For example, Turkey is faced with issues of Armenian genocide, Abkhazian and Gagauz agendas for independence, the demand for a greater Azerbaijan and many others where it has had to take sides when its own interests have been at stake.