THE TRAJECTORY OF LEFT-LIBERALISM IN TURKEY AND ITS NEMESIS 147 WINTER 2012 DOĞAN GÜRPINAR * * Dr., Researcher, dogangr@gmail.com This article investigates the unique trajectory of Turkish (left-) liberalism which emerged irst as an intra- left polemic and left-revisionism in the 1980s and gradually became disassociated from the Left through the 1990s before crystallizing in the 2000s. As the grand narrative of socialism collapsed, while some socialists leaned towards liberalism, others were transformed into left-Kemalists with nationalist commitments and accused left-revisionists and left- liberals of moral corruption, treason and ideological nihilism by using such pejorative labels as liboş and dönek. The debate was not simply ideological and political; both sides developed heavily moralist discourses and questioned the moral integrity of the opposing party. This article attempts to discuss and analyze the principal contours and premises of the emerging Turkish liberalism, left-Kemalism and the post-war Turkish political culture, which only faintly resembles the Western political landscape and cannot be understood through the prism of Western political vocabulary. ABSTRACT The Trajectory of Left-Liberalism in Turkey and Its Nemesis: The Great Rupture in the Turkish Left A ll political cultures construct concepts, labels and idioms that are untranslatable. These concepts, labels and idioms are charged with unique and powerful emotional at- tributes and acquire their own autono- mies and become self-sustaining once they are generated. This is what Ko- selleck and his colleagues demonstrated persuasively in their impressive litera- ture on “conceptual history.” 1 Concepts are not neutral labels. They are not mere nomen. On the contrary, they are emo- tionally charged and, thus, they may produce and reproduce their meanings and become active agents developing a history of their own. Intellectual histo- rians such as Pocock and Skinner have studied the development of certain con- cepts, situated them within particular historical, social and cultural junctures, and demonstrated their prominence in the constitution of social and political junctures. 2 Insight Turkey Vol. 14 / No. 1 / 2012 pp. 147-168