How did actors who embraced a social-communitarian and authoritarian version of Islam in the 1990s adapt to a free-market and democratic interpretation of Islam in the 2000s? I argue that we need to look at patterns of political activism, rather than upward mobility and development of civil society alone, to understand this transformation. I use the state-society and polity models developed in political sociology to respond to the inadequacies of political economy and civil society models. Scholars such as Evans, Skocpol, Mann, and Migdal have accounted for major social transformations by focusing on the interactions between official institutions on the one hand and civil society and changing political economic patterns on the other. I contribute to this literature first by extending its focus to the transformation of culture and local contexts as well. Second, I point out the significance of the political party in such transformations. I argue that, at least in some cases, the political party can be reduced neither to an official institution nor an organization within civil society. Its logic of leadership rather connects civil society and the state to each other. The political party is the missing conceptual link in most current political sociological accounts of state-society interaction. Studying Sultanbeyli, a previously Islamist district in Istanbul, uncovers the basic dynamics of the massive transition from Islamic radicalism to free-market conservatism. I first analyzed Islamic politics in this district between 2000 and 2002. The backbone of the study is based on participant observation in teahouses, mosques, schools, party headquarters, and the municipal building. I supplemented this ethnographic experience with fifty semi-structured, in-depth interviews. By 2006, Sultanbeyli had become the ideal place for studying different patterns of Islamization over the decades. In the 2002 general elections and 2004 municipal elections, which both occurred after my first visit to the district, the area’s population shifted from support for Islamist parties to the free-market conservative Justice and Development Party. In this part of the study, while focusing again on participant observation, I collected an additional forty semi-structured, in-depth interviews. My analyses do not deny the importance of an emergent business-class and associational activity, and their liberalizing impact. Still, what I demonstrate is that without decisive political leadership, the transition from communitarian to neoliberal Islam would be much less complete. In other words, the political party did not create neoliberal trends from scratch, but it gave them a more definitive direction.

Commercialization emerges as a forceful driver of change in health care systems all around the world. Reforms, which have often been described in terms of an ‘epidemic’, involved a profound transformation of the role of the state in the financing, provision and regulation of healthcare services. This paper focuses on the most recent reform attempt in Turkey, ‘Transformation in Health’ program, which aims to carry out a fundamental transformation of the health sector. It examines to what extent the reform program adopts the market logic and applies it to more and more areas of health services. Starting with the debates regarding the nature of health care as a commodity, the paper demonstrates how different aspects of health care, from primary care services to acute hospital care, will increasingly be provided by a complex web of contracts, creating new modes of regulation. Furthermore, different policies listed in the reform program, such as the introduction of the purchaser-provider split, hospital autonomization and reorganization of the primary care, contain a whole new set of expectations with respect to provider behavior. The paper discusses the implications of all these policies in terms of the changes in the value systems, public perceptions and incentive structures of the patients as well as the providers. Also taking into consideration the similar reform attempts in other countries, it argues that these policies represent important changes in the boundaries between the public and the private and entail transfer of responsibilities from the state to the markets and family, and to higher and/or lower levels of policymaking. Yet, in the Turkish case it is too early to reach a conclusion about the direction of change. While in the provision of care the state seems to be withdrawing, in the financing of the services the picture is not clear: the reforms may lead to a greater role for public sector financing, which is essential to keep the governing Justice and Development Party’s promise of universalizing access to health care, or to governmental downsizing and privatization or a combination of both, that is universalizing access with a strong trend towards commercialization.

Who governs Turkey? Since Turkey’s initial democratization in 1950, considerable periods of democratic governance have alternated with direct and indirect military intervention. From the last direct military intervention in 1980, the military has intervened in “soft coups,” using indirect influence to shape patterns of government formation and policy outcomes. The 2002 election and subsequent reelection of the Justice and Development Party (AKP), a party with Islamist roots, have led both the military and court system to play a significant role in defining the boundaries of government power. The reality of Islamist sympathizers controlling the Turkish government has led the military to issue unambiguous statements about appropriate governmental boundaries, and has significantly limited the policy options of the democratically-elected government. Likewise, public prosecutors and the constitutional court have legally challenged the ruling party as unconstitutional, setting the stage in 2008 for the potential disbanding of the AKP, a move that would have an enormous effect on the Turkish democratic system. While the formal disbanding of the ruling party was narrowly averted by a close vote in the constitutional court, legal restrictions placed on the party have sent a clear message: the state, not the government, will determine the acceptable boundaries of policy-making. Although Islamically-oriented politicians have “popularized” Turkish democracy by dramatically expanding the representation of traditionally marginalized voters in government, the potential religious implications of the AKP’s victories has also led state officials to constrict Turkish democracy in favor of robust state power. The ruling party's convincing victories have, in an ironic twist, hollowed out the power of elected officials, while strengthening other institutions of state to serve as a counterweight to the government's power.