Atatürk died in 1938. His successors continued his reforms. Turkey remained a secular republic, joining NATO in 1952 and seeking eventual European Union membership. The military traditionally saw itself as the guardian of Kemalist principles and intervened in politics multiple times to prevent perceived Islamist drift.

Beginning in the 2000s, Turkey under Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and the Justice and Development Party (AKP) began rolling back some Kemalist reforms, expanding religious education and softening strictures against religious expression. The Erdoğan era has been controversial; supporters see it as restoring democracy for religious citizens who had felt excluded by secular elites, while critics see it as eroding Kemalist secularism and democratic norms. The Turkish case shows that the tensions between traditional cultures and modernization do not stay settled.

Comparing Iran and Turkey: The Iran-Turkey comparison is a powerful analytical tool. Both societies faced similar challenges in the early twentieth century: an inherited Islamic political order, pressure from European powers, and weak central states. Atatürk imposed secular modernization with iron discipline and built institutions that sustained it for generations. Reza Shah Pahlavi attempted similar reforms in Iran but his son's continuation faltered. The difference is not simply leadership; it involves the depth of pre-existing institutions, the political alliances of religious authorities, and the speed and scale of attempted change. Maria can use this comparison to argue that modernization can succeed or fail depending on how it is pursued and whose support it secures.

IV. China: Revolutionary Modernization and Its Reversals

China's path through tradition-modernization tensions is one of the most dramatic in the course. Most of this content has been covered in Unit 10.6 on the Cold War, but the thematic frame is important for this unit. China shows how a single society can swing from violent attack on tradition (the Cultural Revolution) to selective re-embrace of tradition combined with market modernization (Deng Xiaoping's reforms).