Beyond Binaries: Contesting Pluralisms in Turkish Politics

On 17 June 2025, SEESOX closed its term with a seminar chaired by Othon Anastasakis. The event featured Associate Professor Nora Fisher-Onar, Chair of Global Studies at the University of San Francisco, who introduced her new book on Turkey’s “plural realities” and argued that conventional binary frames—East versus West, secular versus religious—obscure more than they explain.

Fisher-Onar began by explaining how conventional “either/or” frames—East versus West, secularist versus religious—distort our understanding of Turkey. She showed how cover images from The Economist, The Guardian and Der Spiegel rely on binary tropes (a bridge between continents, a covered versus an uncovered woman), whereas her book’s quilted-textile cover from Antalya’s open-air markets captures Turkey’s kaleidoscopic diversity. Those hard binaries, she argued, simplify causal complexity in political science, misguide policy towards Muslim-majority states (by backing whichever authoritarian model seems “our ally”) and fuel Islamophobia and right-wing populism at home.

Laying out her three-part structure—Theory, History and Twenty-First Century—Fisher-Onar described Chapter 1’s survey of three waves of Turkish pluralist thought: early Republican social engineering, mid-century democratisation that welcomed diverse societal energies, and a third wave of area-studies scholars crafting truly comparative approaches. In Chapter 2 she offered a new “complex-systems” key to politics, treating Turkey as a system defined by interacting parameters—ideas (normative repertoires), actors (strategic performers) and structures (from electoral laws to global power balances). Rather than isolating single causes, this lens traces how emergent coalitions—shifting alliances of pluralists and anti-pluralists—drive critical junctures.

From Anti-Americanism to Americanofilia: The United States in the kaleidoscope of Greek society

On 3 June 2025, SEESOX hosted an illuminating symposium entitled “From Anti-Americanism to Americanofilia: The United States in the Kaleidoscope of Greek Society.” Over the course of the afternoon, Lamprini Rori, Assistant Professor of Political Analysis at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, and Eirini Karamouzi, Associate Professor of Contemporary History and International Relations at the American College of Greece, presented preliminary findings from their joint research project. Their remarks were followed by commentary from Paul Betts (St Antony’s College, Oxford) and Dimitris Papadimitriou (University of Manchester). Together, they charted fifty years of Greek attitudes towards the United States, weaving together party politics, public opinion, media analysis and the performative rituals of state visits.

Dr Rori commenced with a mass-level perspective, demonstrating that Greek public opinion—drawn from Eurobarometer, MRP and national surveys—remained net negative towards the United States throughout the 1980s and 1990s, only tipping into mildly favourable territory in 2022. She highlighted a striking pattern of elite–mass convergence and divergence: in the 1980s both voters and party elites shared similarly anti-American sentiments; in the 1990s, elites became noticeably more pro-American than the electorate; in the 2000s, the public adopted scepticism aligned with the left-wing parties; and in the 2010s, citizens moderated their stance more rapidly than party leadership. Until the mid-1990s, ideological self-placement and party vote were strong predictors of attitudes to the US; after the financial crash, however, these factors lost explanatory power, leaving only pro-European orientation and attitudes towards Russia as significant correlates.