Konferenz
Entrenchment and Experiment: Situating Authoritarian Turkey in the 1930s and 1940s
International conference at the University of Hamburg, 1–2 October 2026
Organization: Alexander Balistreri
The period between 1931 and 1946/50 in Turkey represents a distinct phase in Turkish political history, because it was when the country’s founding regime became most entrenched and its ideologies explicitly (re)formulated. These two decades were characterized by nationalism and violence, but also by intra-regime contestation and by institutional arbitrariness and experimentation. They present a particularly fruitful case for global historical analysis of authoritarianism — and not only because of Ankara’s interaction with contemporary authoritarian regimes in Western Europe and the USSR. Turkey’s political system also exerted transnational influence and served a putative model for developmentalist-authoritarian states around the postcolonial world later in the century.
This conference and the subsequent book project invite scholars to contribute cutting-edge research on authoritarianism as lived and practiced in Turkey between 1931 and 1950. We are especially interested in contributions that consider issues of institutional experimentation, state-society relations, and rule of law (including states of exception and legal arbitrariness).
Submission deadline: 16 January 2026
For more information on the conference concept and on how to apply, please read the following call for papers:
Call for Papers (PDF, 119 KB)