Illiberal polity as the retribution of post-imperial nation-building: The case of Turkey

Abstract

Turkey, in direct lineage of the Ottoman Empire, experimented a particularly violent nation-building out of the imperial ashes. Non-Muslims corresponding to one fifth of its population have been annihilated for the creation of a homogeneous nation State. These crimes have never been accounted for, giving way to a culture of impunity, self-righteousness, contempt for the rule of law and justice which, over years, pushed the polity towards an illiberal if not totalitarian essence and praxis , domestically against its own constituency and externally against neighbours through an extensive neo-imperial drive. Paradoxically, such an outcome seems to constitute a belated retribution for the unaccounted crimes.