Search

When and under what conditions do ideologically similar nationalist parties adopt different positions and discourses about refugees and immigrants? We address this question by examining nationalist parties' approaches toward Syrian refugees in Turkey. Documenting these differences based on an original Twitter dataset and party manifestos, we argue that electoral dynamics under the new presidential system have shaped nationalist parties' discourses about refugees in the country. In particular, we explore how pre-electoral alliances and a strategic opening in the political space have motivated nationalist parties to amplify, ambiguate, or silence their otherwise conservative and nativist refugee discourses. Additionally, we maintain that urbanization has influenced the discursive strategies of nationalist party elites toward immigrants and refugees, giving rise to contradictory forms of nationalism in urban areas, including both far-right and liberal nationalisms. Overall, this study offers valuable insights into the complex interactions between refugee politics, electoral dynamics, nationalism, and urbanization in Turkey. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article compares the ideas of Hüseyin Nihal Atsız and Seyyid Ahmet Arvasi, two iconic ideologues of ethnic and religious nationalism in Turkey, respectively, on the issues of history, identity, and national ideal. It first argues that Atsız mainly presents a history of Turkish supremacism whereas Arvasi embraces a method of Islamization to remember history. It also demonstrates that Atsız tends to equate the racial and the national while Arvasi uses Islamic legitimacy for Turkish identity and nationalism. It is also evident that while Atsız offers classical pan-nationalism, Arvasi shows third-worldist and universalistic tendencies in defining Turkish destiny. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To consolidate a predominant party system, an incumbent party will attempt to anchor voting behavior to social cleavages, a strategy called cleavage enclosure. However, does this strategy actually work? In Turkey, the incumbent AKP government has focused its campaigning on conservatives and nationalists. The analysis of the 2018 post-election survey reveals that the cleavage enclosure worked for conservatives but not for nationalists. Of the incumbent supporters in the previous election, conservatives replicated their support, whereas nationalists were less likely to support the incumbent than other identity holders. Nationalists tend to punish but not reward the incumbent party for its economic performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While much has been written to explain the mutation of Islamic-oriented parties in Turkey from pursuing an Islamic ideological cause to embracing vote-seeking behavior and democratic processes, little effort has been made to explain why the far-right establishment – represented by the Nationalist Action Party (Milliyetçi Hareket Partisi, MHP) – still resists ideological change. This article argues that fortification of nationalism with Islam in the party, the party's identification with Turkey's national security issues, and the construction of personality cult around party founder Alparslan Türkeş restrict its ideological moderation. Nevertheless, the party benefits from this ideological immoderation to be a key player in Turkish politics. In other words, while ideological immoderation prevents the MHP from embracing a pluralistic political stance, it has also been functional to exert its nationalist ideology on the state without sharing governmental power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Evdirrehîm Hekarî is mostly known for his Kurdish nationalist writings and activism at the end of the Ottoman Empire. He continued to be a voice for the Kurdish nation during the Republican period in his private writings, while he identified as a Muslim Turk in his publications. Hekarî's complete rejection of secular Turkishness existed alongside his submission to Turkish Islamic discourse. His split identity and paradoxes are analyzed using Frantz Fanon's study of the colonized man and his inconsistencies in his fight with the colonizer. In examining Hekarî's inner inconsistencies, the article also benefits from Partha Chatterjee's study of the contradictions of nationalist thought in its battle with colonialist power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The main argument of this paper is that Turkey had close relations with Middle Eastern states during the Atatürk period, which is contrary to the literature that claims the opposite because of Turkey's Western-oriented ideology. The article asks why Turkey as a Western-oriented state sought to have close relations with Middle Eastern states. To answer this question, the article uses discourse analysis focusing on Middle Eastern leaders' visits as represented in Turkish public discourse. Accordingly, it proposes two main answers. Firstly, the paper argues that the new state's relations with Middle Eastern countries played an important role in legitimation of its Westernization projects in the eyes of its citizens. Secondly, the Turkish state marginalized rival political discourses, mainly Islamism, by proving that even Muslim majority countries wanted to imitate modern Turkey. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The attack carried out by Daesh against Kobane in 2014 prompted the mobilization of worldwide media attention and of large crowds protesting across Turkey's Kurdish-majority southeast and beyond. This paper examines the potentially transformative effects of this event on the popular geopolitical codes of the Kurdish nationalist movement in Turkey. This is done through a qualitative content analysis of 36 op-ed articles published in the newspapers Evrensel and Özgür Gündem. Three core findings stand out: (a) a constant emphasis on Turkey's alleged links with Daesh, even before Kobane; (b) a boundary deactivation with respect to the US and ‘the West’; and (c) a re-articulation of self-representative frames, which initially relied on post-materialistic arguments and later emphasized security and stability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A revisionist tone that has created several crisis has become more pronounced in Turkish foreign policy. This trend has been particularly evident after 2010 when the AKP consolidated its power base, the military's tutelage over politics subsequently disappeared and the Arab Spring opened a new window of opportunity for Turkey in the Middle East. This has been surprising because de-militarization of political space was envisioned to produce more cooperative stances in the globalized post-Cold War world. This trend has occurred alongside what many would argue has been the AKP's authoritarian and Islamist agenda. Such an argument suggests that earlier the AKP had pragmatically used democratic values and integrationist policies to weaken the military, and then adopted Islamism in foreign policy and authoritarianism in domestic politics. This study aims to explore the common characteristics of the AKP in domestic and international realms while the extant paradigm tends to divide the AKP period into two categories, which are democratic/pro-western and authoritarian/Islamist. In order to suggest a common characteristic to identify the AKP's domestic and foreign policy in a holistic manner, this article applies the term ‘populism’ to describe a number of AKP policies and positions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The ‘Alevi openings’ launched in 2007 by the Justice and Development Party have been widely lauded as a historic and unprecedented step in the Turkish Republic. In contrast, this article places the ‘openings’ in a wider historical context, analyzing them in relation to processes of nation-building. Firstly, it is argued that the ‘openings’ marked continuity with previous interventions by state actors, including the military, dating back at least to the 1960s. Secondly, it is contended that these interventions should be regarded as a process of re-framing Alevism within a Turkish–Islamic framework, consigning it to ‘invisibility,’ rather than as democratization. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This study analyzes how the Justice and Development Party's (AKP) understanding of new nationalism, or neo-Ottomanism, incorporates the logic of masculinist protection in its discourse. This necessitates a security-oriented state that firmly connects domestic politics with foreign policy. The concept of the logic of masculinist protection, borrowed from Iris Morrison Young, refers to the reinforcement of a gender hierarchy in politics, and signifies a paternalistic state charged with protecting a society identified with femininity. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Notwithstanding his enormous influence on the grassroots of the Turkish nationalist movement in its Islamic turn in the 1970s, Seyyid Ahmet Arvasi, a staunch nationalist and a pious Muslim at the same time, has remained an understudied intellectual. His oeuvre is left largely unexplored. He is either too simply associated with Türk-İslam Sentezi [Turkish-Islamic Synthesis] or treated as if the sole outcome of his intellectual labor was his three-volume Türk-İslam Ülküsü [Turkish-Islamic Ideal]. This article seeks to remedy this situation by studying critically his views on the particular issue of Turkish nationalism and Islam nexus based on his writings in their entirety. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article purports to study the national identity of two influential ideologues of Turkish nationalism, Ziya Gökalp and Ahmet Arvasi, their approach to Kurds and their rejection of such affiliations regardless of their background in a predominantly Kurdish milieu. Their worldviews were strikingly different regarding social matters but they both shared a common view regarding the hegemonic position of Turkish identity even in a Kurdish-majority region. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This study examines what has been overlooked by most studies of Islamist activism in the early years of the multi-party politics (1945–60) in Turkey. By examining the formal and informal political institutions, power relations and practices, it reveals that the early Islamists did not remain content with only socio-cultural activities. They effectively and creatively engaged with and within the political field, enjoyed an impact disproportionate to their actual numbers and power, and set the parameters for future Islamist activism. In so doing, they reproduced the Republican orthodoxy while advancing their heterodox claims. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article analyzes the Kurdish issue in various aspects before the June 2011 elections. The main research questions include what constitutes the major grievances of the Kurds; how the ongoing conflict is framed as “Kurdish issue” versus a “terrorism problem” and how major political parties in Turkey approach the issue and its solution in their 2011 election manifestos and rallies. This article contributes the literature on the Kurdish issue in particular and Turkey's democratic consolidation in general by identifying the problems and political views of all relevant sides. Finally, based on both a historical and empirical analysis, the article reflects on the reasons why the Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi and Barış ve Demokrasi Partisi have become the major players in addressing the Kurdish issue after the 2011 election. The findings are relevant for Turkish democratic consolidation in particular and the democratization literature in general. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article offers an analysis of basic trends in the post-1980 Turkish party system. How has the Turkish party system evolved during the last eight elections? How do these characteristics change with the rise of the Justice and Development Party (AKP, Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi)? Utilizing statistical methods informed by fieldwork conducted during the parliamentary elections of 2002, 2007, and 2011, the article suggests that Turkish elections exhibit unmistakable patterns of regionalization, which in turn have strongly contributed to the AKP's electoral ascendancy. Barring external shocks such as major economic crisis or leadership replacement, these regional patterns make it difficult for the opposition parties to effectively challenge the AKP. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article revisits modern Turkish political history with a specific focus on trajectories of Turkish nationalism, from the end of the nineteenth century of the Ottoman Empire, to the forms it takes under Justice and Development Party (AKP) rule today. The discussion is theoretically embedded within a relational political–sociological framework that utilizes the “field analysis” approach developed by Pierre Bourdieu. Using this approach, this paper argues that a workable, explanatory political–sociological “surface” of analysis of Turkish politics might be “the political field.” It further argues that inside this field of political forces and competing groups, there is an ordering principle that supplies the political actors with a set of beliefs concerning “what can be politicized for sustainable power.” In this study, nationalism is treated as a kind of historically constituted and re-constituted “set of beliefs,” or doxa in Bourdieu's terminology. The paper further explores two long-lasting “challenges” to Turkish nationalism, those of Islamist and Kurdish claims, and the recent trajectories of these two forms of politics inside the field. History is that of struggles between nations. Each nation strives for its own existence. … Thus, we have shouldered the mission of the Turkish Nation. There are no alien powers among us, and the Turkish people are backing us. We tell ourselves, “Only the Turk is good to the Turk,” “The Turk has no friend other than the Turk” and draw our strength from our people. Alparslan Türkeş1 [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Two novels written by female authors, Sinekli Bakkal and Bahar Ciceği, claim that while the new Turkish nation adopted a Western lifestyle, its original character was built upon its female members' effort to protect its essence. Female authorship seems to be dominated by nationalism. However, a female voice can still be heard in the characterization of female protagonists as strong personalities. Thus, the authors of these works should be judged as writers who try to express themselves as women under a dominant ideology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nationalism has been a powerful force in Turkish politics since the founding of the Republic. Yet nationalist activists have become unusually strident in their rhetoric, coalescing around various radical political platforms to seek the ouster of the Justice and Development Party (AKP) regime, either through the ballot box or by violent means. This study considers the psychological and theoretical bases of Turkish nationalism and analyzes why militant nationalism is becoming a more significant political factor. Particular attention will be devoted to a loose collection of extremist organizations and media known as the "ulusalcılar." Despite philosophical differences within the group, three fundamental elements in Ulusalcı thought can be identified: uncompromising anti-Westernism; externalization of Islam from Turkish nationalism; and ethnic exclusionism. These elements, as well as social and political background and basic beliefs, are examined, the leading components of the neo-nationalist movement are identified, and their objectives and the tactics they use to achieve them are analyzed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article highlights a roundtable discussion focusing on the state of Turkish domestic politics and foreign policy. One person talks about the leadership of the Justice and Development Party (AKP). Another addresses the growing risk of a rift between the ruling echelons and the masses over European Union membership. A participant expresses concern over the increase in nationalism in the country.

Examines the intellectual roots of anti-European sentiments embraced by the radical nationalists in Turkey, and their parliamentary representative, the Nationalist Action Party (MHP). Analysis of the role played by radical nationalists in Turkish politics; Background on the MHP movement; Historical background of radical Turkish nationalism.

Discusses the literary work of nationalist writers, Kemal Tahir, Cemil Meri&ccedll; and Attila Ilhan to demonstrate the nuances of nationalist thinking and the possibilities that literature provides for extending the definitions of national identity in Turkey. Impact of the establishment of the Islamically oriented Welfare Party on Turkish politics; Description of the official nationalism in Turkey; Information on Tahir, Meri&ccedll; and Ilhan; Concept of neo-Kemalism.