Leiden University Student Repository

ZHU, JIAYI (2019)

Maoism in Turkey: the Journal of Proleter Devrimci Aydınlık,1969-1971

Master thesis | Middle Eastern Studies (MA)

This thesis titled studies the localization of Maoism as a global ideology among the milieu of Turkish leftists in the years 1969–1971.The thesis titled “Maoism in Turkey” studies the localization of Maoism as a global ideology among the milieu of Turkish leftists in the years 1969–1971. In doing so, it analyzes the debates on and about Maoism within the intellectual field around the journal Proleter Devrimci Aydnlk (Proletarian Revolutionary Enlightenment, PDA). This thesis divided into three parts, The first part assesses how Maoism sprawled from China and reached the rest of the world, included Turkey. The second part assesses why Turkish leftist group adopt Maoism and the establishment of the Maoist Journal of Proleter Devrimci Aydınlık. The third part, “Debating Maoism in PDA Journal”, will deal with how Maoism was interpreted by Turkish leftists from 1969 to 1971, through an analysis of the Proleter Devrimci Aydınlık journal and other related leftist journals.

Turkey

Leftist

Maoism

PDA

Maoculuk

Türk Solu

Cold War

global intellectual history

Sino-Turkey

Author

ZHU, JIAYI

Note

I consider my work to be a contribution to global intellectual history, which emphasizes the explanation of tendencies on a global scale, or comparative analyses of how tendencies developed in different parts of the world. Maoism thought China’s anti-imperialist route to be suitable for almost all the countries in the Third-World, fittingly with the cosmopolitanism approaches of global intellectual history. By exploring the political and social background, and actual situation of adoption of Maoism from its headstream China to the world in the 1960s, this thesis will introduce Maoism with an international and global perspective. In Part Two, based on more than a hundred articles published on the 12 issues of PDA, this thesis will take Turkey as a case study to explore how the global trend of Maoism was localized in the World.

Faculty

Faculty of Humanities

Specialisation

Turkish Studies

Supervisors

Yenen, Alp. A.

ECTS Credits

20

Language

en