Search

Studies on nationalism have recently transitioned from macro‐level analyses of large structural factors to micro‐level examinations, emphasizing nationalism as a set of cultural and political beliefs held by individuals. Such works that use opinion measures to explore heterogeneity in national self‐understandings show that nationalist beliefs distribute among the public in particular and non‐random ways, though the extent to which these heterogeneities induce variation in behavioural outcomes remains relatively unexplored. In this article, we argue that varying conceptions of nationhood inform ethnonational boundary‐making strategies and social action. Using latent class analyses and a resource allocation task in original representative survey data (N = 1,460), we ask whether varying cultural positions on nationhood covaries with preferential behaviour. We found that nationalist cultural models provide heterogeneous cultural templates and lead to preferential treatment of ethnonational ingroups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The conventional historiographical paradigm depicts the consolidation of nation‐state and nationalism in Turkey as a top‐down political project characterised by the domination of the 'center' over the 'periphery'. In this narrative, the masses are portrayed as either passive recipients or silenced opponents of the nation‐state project. Based on a historical and contemporary analysis of the state‐sponsored tea production in Rize, this article contends that this perspective neglects the agency of the provincial population in the reproduction of the nation‐state and nationalism in Turkey and in influencing the decisions made by the state elite. The economic interventionist measures of the ruling authority to extend its nationalist hegemony across Anatolia also opened a field of action for rural/provincial populations to negotiate their interests with the state and thereby influence its policies. The main contours of this relationship have remained salient during the Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi (AKP) period, and it needs to be taken into account to explain this party's large ideological appeal in the Black Sea region. This argument builds on a fieldwork conducted in Rize that included in‐depth interviews with local tea workers and farmers as well as extensive archival research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The early monumental statues of Atatürk in Turkey have so far been studied from the perspective of the state and its ambition to disseminate a national consciousness. While this state‐centric approach has been helpful to understand the role of symbolism in nation‐building, it ends up reducing people to a passive recipient of symbolic indoctrination. We, in contrast, approach public perception as an active component in the discursive construction of these monuments over time. We first analyse the period until the death of Atatürk in 1938 during which the democratic possibility of conflicting with the official narrative remained quite minimal. We then look at the aftermath of Atatürk's death, which coincides with the introduction of the multiparty democracy in Turkey where there were more critical engagements with these monuments, particularly by the right‐wing constituents and politicians. We conclude that such resistance was still discursively bound by the nationalist context within which it operated. Our analysis of the politics of symbolism in Turkey taps into the theoretical works of Hanna Pitkin and Warren Breckman. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlighting the modernity of state institutions, Hobsbawm defines the nation as a modern territorial state (the nation‐state) and argues that nation and nationality cannot be discussed unless they refer to the nation‐state. Hobsbawm's conception of nations and nationality in the context of the nation‐state warrants readdress by comparing Westphalian models of states with subjects that do not attempt a territorial model but arguably still invest in the nation and a sense of nationality. This article compares the discourses of building nations and national identities fostered in the content of school textbooks in the Republic of Turkey—a modern, territorial nation‐state—and the Autonomous Administration of North and East of Syria (hereafter Rojava)—an alternative state system model established in the power vacuum proceeding Bashar al‐Assad regime withdrawal from expansive territory in northern Syria. In doing so, the article revisits the existing literature on the correlation between the content and political associations of school textbooks through a comparative analysis of primary school course materials in Turkey and Rojava, neighbouring and conflicting political entities that occupy contrasting domains of statehood and military capacity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper sheds light on the role of evolutionary ideas in the making of Turkish nationalism during the Kemalist era (1923–1938). By so doing, it aims to challenge some of the dominant historiographical viewpoints as to the nature of Turkish nationalism. One is related to the Kemalist elites' predisposition towards the so‐called "scientism" seen as one of the bases for nationalism. We intend to turn upside–down the relation between the Kemalists' use of science and Turkish nationalism. Second, we problematize the "culturalist" origins of Turkish nationalism arguing that the seemingly "culturalist" reflections of the time were, indeed, materialist formulations based on the science of the times. We discuss in this respect the Kemalist elites' use of evolutionary ideas. By synthesizing the ways in which these elites employed evolutionary ideas in the fields of history, language, geography, anthropology, biology, eugenics, and pedagogy, we aim to understand the specific nature of Turkish nationalism before 1945. This secular nationalism conceived culture as having materialist bases and differed fundamentally from the culturalist varieties of Turkish nationalism coloured by Islam in the post‐1945 era. Furthermore, the paper empirically enriches the complex and entangled story of evolutionary ideas in the early Turkish Republic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Feminist scholars have documented with reference to multiple empirical contexts that feminist claims within nationalist movements are often side‐lined, constructed as ‘inauthentic’ and frequently discredited for imitating supposedly western notions of gender‐based equality. Despite these historical precedents, some feminist scholars have pointed to the positive aspects of nationalist movements, which frequently open up spaces for gender‐based claims. Our research is based on the recognition that we cannot discuss and evaluate the fraught relationship in the abstract but that we need to look at the specific historical and empirical contexts and articulations of nationalism and feminism. The specific case study we draw from is the relationship between the Kurdish women's movement and the wider Kurdish political movement in Turkey. We are exploring the ways that the Kurdish movement in Turkey has politicised Kurdish women's rights activists and examine how Kurdish women activists have reacted to patriarchal tendencies within the Kurdish movement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyses the relationship between Islam and nationalism by considering the role of the ulama in Turkey, housed within the Presidency of Religious Affairs (PRA). The ulama - religious scholars and experts of Islamic law - in Muslim majority contexts are typically closely linked with the state and play a key role in shaping the boundaries of Islam and of what is Islamically acceptable. However, this is also of consequence for the boundaries of the nation, since in Turkey Islam and nationalism has been intertwined, with Islam playing a central role in nation-building, as a basis of ethnic identity formation and a source of symbols and myths. This articles shows, firstly, that the PRA has acted as a carrier and preserver of Sunni (Hanefi) Muslim identity in continuity with the Ottoman ulama and, secondly, that it has delimited nation-building, by considering its approach to and interventions against Alevi identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Until recently there has been relatively little attention paid to the question of how the relationship between the state, its citizens and the nation is articulated in constitutional texts. This paper seeks to address this gap through an examination of how the rules of belonging to the nation are discussed by the political elite and how these discussions find their final formulation in the constitutional texts. The analysis focuses on the Turkish case at two constitution-writing moments (1924 and 1961). While such moments have conventionally been assumed to be 'revolutionary', the data on Turkey highlights continuities rather than radical changes over time. More particularly, it underscores the resilience and salience of the principle of nationalism over time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Why do some newly formed regimes incorporate religion in various dimensions of public affairs, while others relegate religious actors and content to the private sphere? This article offers an explanatory model with four key components that together determine the status of religion in newborn political regimes: (1) the pervasiveness of religion in the old order; (2) the overlap among different ingredients of national-identity; (3) the constraints of demographic realities; and (4) the period before and during the formation of the new regime as critical juncture. The model is applied and tested in the cases of Israel and Turkey, which in many respects represent opposite trends - accommodation and marginalization, respectively - that produced broad and long-term consequences for their respective political regimes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the link between language policies and nation-building by focusing on the Turkish case during the early Republican period (1920-38). As opposed to conceptualising nation builders as seamlessly and strategically forming a nation out of the remnants of an empire, this article emphasises the complex and, at times, ambiguous nature of the nation-building process using Turkey as a case study. The article is also critical of ethno-symbolic accounts of nations and nation formation that tend to emphasise the cultural at the expense of the political sphere. Instead, by looking at the process and content of the formulation of language policies, this study demonstrates how culture was highly politicised during the formative period of the Turkish nation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author reflects on a theoretical exchange about the theories of nationalism, modernism and perennialism, which this debate is based on the book "Nationalism: A Very Short Introduction," by Steven Grosby. He states that Grosby has been one of the most consistent supporters of the perennialist thesis in the field of nationalism studies and that he argues that the term nation could in fact be applied to several communities in antiquity.