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.