The authors trace the emergence of Ataturk and Reza Shah through the constitutional revolutions in Iran and the Ottoman Empire, which led to the introduction of European social models, the establishment of dictatorship and of secularist reforms. This produced in both Turkey and Iran highly authoritarian, nationalist, and quasi-westernised states, where the personality cult of the leader defined the politics of each country."
Über den Autor Atabaki Touraj
![]()
Touraj Atabaki is Senior Research Fellow at the International Institute of Social History and Professor Emeritus of Social History of the Middle East and Central Asia at Leiden University. Atabaki studied theoretical physics and later history at the University of London and Utrecht University. Following positions at Utrecht University and the University of Amsterdam, he joined Leiden University where he held the Chair of Social History of the Middle East and Central Asia. Atabaki's research encompasses historiography, social history of labour and subaltern studies in Twentieth century Iran, the Ottoman Empire and Turkey as well as the Caucasus and Central Asia. His forthcoming publications are: Social History of the Iranian Oil Industry (Cambridge University Press) and Fallen in the Whirlwind: Life and Time of Iranian Migrant Labour and Political Activists during the Soviet Great Purge (Cambridge University Press). Atabaki's major publications and research projects can be found on:https://socialhistory.org/en/staff/touraj-atabaki
