8 Ş erif Mardin differentiates between orthodox and heterodox Islam going back to the Ottoman Empire and constituting the fabric of social and political life (1971).

On May 29, 1996, travelers visiting Istanbul witnessed a rather peculiar celebration. A group of burly men dressed in Ottoman military clothing, some wearing false moustaches, were dragging a decorated sailboat along the asphalt road toward the central Taksim Square. Although it was no easy task to drag the sailboat uphill under the hot sun and the curious gaze of tourists on this summer day, the laboring men nevertheless displayed a solemn attitude of resolve and austerity, as if to remind the observing public of the grave significance of the historical event they were commemorating. Tourists were not the only people who turned a curious gaze toward this peculiar parade: some inhabitants of Istanbul were also equally puzzled, since May 29 was not an official holiday in Turkey. But others knew: this parade was a celebration of the Conquest of Istanbul Day, commemorating May 29, 1453, when the Ottoman ruler Fatih Sultan Mehmet (Mehmet II, the Conqueror) conquered Constantinople, bringing the Byzantine Empire to an end. Born to a Christian mother, Mehmet II was 21 years old when he led the Ottoman army that seized control of Constantinople after a successful military campaign, which won recognition for the young Sultan as a military genius. Realizing that the city was very well protected on the sides facing Bosphorus Strait and the Marmara Sea, Mehmet II had seventy ships of the Ottoman fleet moved on land, rolling them over oiled logs from a deeper point on the Strait (Beşiktaş), over the hill around Taksim, down to the Haliç Bay (the Golden Horn), and thereby gaining access to the unprotected northern walls of the city. This strategy won Mehmet II not only a definite victory, but also the title Fatih (Conqueror) and recognition as one of the most successful of Ottoman rulers. It was this conquest that the men with false moustaches were celebrating as they dragged the decorated boat through the city some 550 years later.

It would probably be quite curious, if not confusing, for uninformed readers of Turkish politics who are interested in learning more about Turkey's ruling party, the AKP (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi/Justice and Development Party), to pick up these five books, all written by scholars of Turkish politics, all dealing with the ideology of the AKP and the social and political conditions that gave rise to it, all published by prestigious publishers, and realize that they make almost completely opposite claims. For example, while Banu Eligür inThe Mobilization of Political Islam in Turkeyclaims that the AKP is an Islamist party that is “opposed to democracy” (p. 11), William Hale and Ergun Özbudun inIslamism, Democracy and Liberalism in Turkey: The Case of the AKPsee the AKP as a secular, conservative-democratic party that clearly rejects Islamism as a political ideology and is perhaps making the most significant contribution to the expansion of democracy in Turkey.

A man is always a teller of tales, he lives surrounded by his stories and the stories of others, he sees everything that happens to him through them; and he tries to live his own life as if he were telling a story.

Examining Turkey's Gezi Park protests of 2013 as a representative case of the globally surging protest movements since 2011, this study claims that the basic aim of the protests is to contest the foundational rationality of the modern state, which, I argue, is based on a patriarchal social contract that empowers the state with the authority to represent the interests and speak on behalf of citizens using a logic of protection, and to construct, enforce, and monitor a regime of citizenship where citizens can only function as emasculated subjects who are dependent on the protection of the state. Based on an analysis of the use of gender metaphors and familial tropes by the AKP government, and the subversive use of humor and irony by the protestors, this article demonstrates that the protests target the patriarchal premises of modern statehood, both in its democratic (fraternal patriarchy) and authoritarian (paternalistic patriarchy) forms, and the state's disciplinary, regulatory, and remedial interventions toward the interpellation of the citizen as an infantile or feminine subject who is not capable of meeting their needs and interests on their own, and whose life, therefore, needs to be continually monitored, controlled, and regulated by the state. Drawing on criticism brought to the contractual foundations of the modern state by feminist political theorists, this study makes use of the notion of modern patriarchy as a story told by social contract theories, which generates a power relationship between the state and the citizen based on the projection of threat where the state assumes the role of the protector. I conclude that objecting to these modern forms of subjugation, the Gezi Park protests call for a post-patriarchal state where it no longer resorts to a patriarchal protectionist logic that is justified through the claim that it represents the interests of its citizens. By envisioning such a post-patriarchal state, I interpret the protests as a call for the renegotiation of the foundational premises of modern statehood such that the state-citizenship relationship is radically reformulated to enable a more empowered and autonomous citizen.