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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]

The establishment of the Turkish and Irish republics took place nearly simultaneously, under the influence of the nationalist movement. This study discusses the cultural foundations of nationalism that emerged during the independence struggles and the necessity of transferring them to children in comparison. In particular, it is claimed that nations that have fought for independence want to create myths about these difficult times, immortalize them with works such as poetry, stories, and novels, and then pass them to the next generations. This study indicates that although they have different languages, religions, and traditions, these two countries tell fairy tales and epics for children in almost the same period for the same purposes. To illustrate this, two folk narratives of both cultures were compared in this study. In conclusion, these comparisons show that the Irish and Turkish nationalist movements exercise their freedom to 'conceive themselves' and hope to benefit somewhat from reflecting this on children's literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores ordinary individuals' understandings of nationhood. In so doing, it focuses on the case of Armenian migrants from Turkey to Canada and their conceptualizations of the host country. The paper captures multiple strands of nationhood and argues that these are pertinent to different boundary-making processes. The outer boundary of nationhood is defined along inclusive and civic lines where difference is recognized and appreciated. Living with difference, on the other hand, brings to the fore the tension between recognizing it on the one hand and accommodating it on the other. The case study further reveals how the exercise of state power and individuals' encounters with the state shape their understandings of nationhood. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the past two decades, human geneticists have substantially embraced the concept of "biogeographical ancestry" to account for the racial, ethnic, and linguistic categories they use to analyze and interpret genetic difference. Understanding the ongoing role of these categories in human genetic research therefore requires attention to geneticists' representations of geography, particularly the geographic maps they use to illustrate gene distribution and migration. This article examines how the methods and imagery of international genetic geography and its major evolutionary narratives have reinforced or refashioned nationalist practices of geography in the Middle East. Geneticists simultaneously conceptualize the region's physical space as both a historical "crossroads" of human migration and the birthplace of distinct gene sequences and civilizations, alternately blurring and sharpening the boundaries between Europe and Asia. Focusing on genetic research in Turkey and Iran, this paper analyzes how geneticists draw and interpret geographic maps of the region while selectively erasing or highlighting state borders. These genetic maps negotiate between the idealized aims of international projects to reconstruct human evolutionary history, and the reality of practicing science under the constraints of nationstate politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article studies the violent politics of stigmatisation and erasure of nationalist urban infrastructure. In general, urban infrastructure is a mechanism of state power. But, through the case of the imposing presence of Turkish nationalist infrastructure in the Kurdish city Diyarbakir, it demonstrates that when tied to an antagonistic nationalist political project, this infrastructure is often purposefully built to violently cleanse urban spaces of the national "other". Be it a statue, a mural or a picture of a nationalist leader – this infrastructure is incapable of inflicting physical pain. Nonetheless, its violence is symbolic and meant to have a real effect on Diyarbakir's Kurds' ability and willingness to identify as Kurds. That said, violence does not entirely inform the spatial experience of those targeted by this nationalist infrastructure. The article demonstrates that Kurdish residents also found ways of remaining unaffected, even treating the infrastructure laden with Turkish nationalist iconography as a reminder of their own Kurdish identity. This article thus expands our understanding of what nationalist infrastructure does. It may be designed to be violent. However, it also reveals itself to be a site of contestation – equally inspiring the persistence of the counter-narrative of the national "other". [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the absence of anti-fascist public education and debates, the marginalized majority, minority groups, and their political allies will continue to be brutalized in the region. Problematizing exclusionary politics is essential for recognizing the ongoing democratic struggles of the peoples of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. This article aims to stimulate more academic and public debates about fascism in MENA. Critically investigating the history of several waves of nationalism and their affinity with the first historical rise of fascism could enable us to better appreciate the challenges resistance movements in the MENA region have been facing. To that end, the persisting threat of fascism in Turkey, the Arab world, and Iran are examined critically. While the article applies the ideology form theory, a new critical theory of fascism, the soundness of the central argument regarding the significance of and the need for critiquing exclusionary, racist, and genocidal ideologies, movements, regimes, and politics does not rely on the theoretical application of the concept of fascism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the relation between nationalism and heteronormativity through the lens of hegemonic masculinity and shows how Turkish nationalism helps to construct the "normal" and thus strengthen heteronormative thinking in Turkish society. Utilizing in-depth interviews in Çanakkale with 16 men who carry the typical features of a privileged Turkish citizen—namely the ones self-identifying as Turkish, Sunni Muslim, heterosexual, and breadwinner—my aim in the paper is to reveal and comprehend attitudes toward non-heterosexual people in Turkey, to challenge the effect of the possible nationalist ideological tendencies on participants' discourses, and to explicate if such tendencies play a part in justifying their attitudes. I suggest that respondents' privileges are obtained in exchange for strict commitment to Turkish nationalistic values. These values not only define what constitutes "normal" but also determine and disparage anyone who deviates from such definition. Greater commitment to such values signals a more powerful heterosexual matrix and thus greater exclusion of queer people in Turkey. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Taking religious education as an important indicator in evaluating religious freedom in a country, this paper focuses on the religion courses in Turkey in order to evaluate Europeanisation and religious freedom in the country. The EU Commission's recent progress reports indicated that the conduct of religious courses in Turkey is incompatible with EU norms. Although important legal arrangements have been made in accordance with the adoption of minority rights in Turkey, it seems more difficult for change to happen in an ideological issue such as education. As religious freedom is an important value for the European Union, this paper aims to explore the impact of Europeanisation on the state of religious education in Turkey and the extent of Turkey's compliance with the European norms in a highly debated area like religious education. It also aims, in a broader sense, to shed a light on the place of religion in the national identity of Turkey today. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on primary sources such as field notes, reports, and project memorandums, this article addresses architectural restoration work in Turkey from the 1920s to the 1960s. Despite the country's limited budget and workforce, especially in the early years of the republic, the government crafted an intense preservation program of historic monuments, whereby preservation professionals implemented the scientific protection of architectural heritage mainly through maintenance and repairs. This article argues that the historiography of Turkish art became an agent in restoration, while the concept of the essence of national architecture served as the ideological basis for physical interventions. Seeking to restore the pure forms of Turkish architecture, preservationists searched for the pedigree of built works, and Sinan's style was treated as the zenith of Turkish architecture. Works by him, along with other examples associated with the "Classical Period of Architecture" were subjected to heavy-handed interventions aimed at achieving stylistic purity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Boycotts, one of the important forms of political consumerism, are democratic actions in which consumers show their sensitivity to social issues via consumer protests. These actions are seen as more peaceful forms of opposition, separated from other politically motivated forms of opposition, and seen as citizen practices that reinforce democracy. However, in some cases, boycotts can threaten political and social equality, support undemocratic ideologies, and turn into hostile actions when these peaceful collective movements are shaped by consumer ethnocentrism fed by nationalism and religiosity. This study examines the factors affecting the participation of individuals in boycotts within the framework of political consumerism, and in particular, the relationship between important concepts for ethnocentrism such as nationalism and religiosity, and participation in boycotts within the context of Turkey. In this study, which was conducted using survey data collected from a representative sample in Turkey in 2020, a statistically significant relationship is found between "nationalism", "religiosity", "education level", "full-time employment" and the frequency of boycotts. Our quantitative analysis in the context of ethnocentrism, which is the main focus of the research, shows that the level of religiosity in Turkey is more effective in participating in boycotts than the level of nationalism. While this study contributes to the understanding of consumer behavior in the context of political participation, an important field of study in communication studies, it is also important for the development of new policies and communication strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explains how the Turkish nation's composition has changed under Justice and Development Party rule. Turkish nationalism and Turkish national identity have dramatically changed since 2010, when the Kurdish Opening process was started by former prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. The Syrian refugee crisis and the influx of Syrian refugees into Turkey created another change in Turkish national identity. Increasing religiosity in Turkey and the use of Islam by the Justice and Development Party created a flexible nation, where all Sunni Muslims can be considered members even though they are not ethnically Turkish. The author uses primary sources, such as President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's speeches since 2010, to show how his discourse became more embracing of non-Turkish Muslim groups and created a dynastic understanding of nationalism based on religion rather than the idea of an ethnically homogenous, secular Turkish nation. [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]

This article examines the emergence of Nobel Prize-winning Turkish scientist Aziz Sancar as a scientific persona model. After receiving the Nobel Prize in 2015, Sancar's nationalistic tendencies and close relationship with incumbent Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi – AKP) leaders opened up a wide range of discussions on how a scientist's relationship with politics should be intellectually interpreted. Focusing on the case of Aziz Sancar, this article examines the specific contextual conditions in which a scientist expresses his identity and how it is interpreted by the public. To this end, the aim of this work is to present an in-depth analysis of the discussions that took place in Ekşi Sözlük, a popular social media platform acting as an online forum in Turkey, and news from the national media and to scrutinize how a scientific persona is conceived in Turkey and how Aziz Sancar has been 'de-scienticized' in the heavy polarized Turkish political atmosphere. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Turkey has become a powerful example of rising ethno-religious nationalism since the ruling Justice and Development Party allied with the Nationalist Movement Party in 2016. Conceptualising the political ideology in power as Islamic nationalism, I expose ways in which this ideology is articulated in the education reform discourse of 'new Turkey' through a critical analysis of a foundational education reform report (the Report). The analysis shows various aspects of ethno-religious construction of education reform discourse through a focus on citizenship education (CE) partly because the prominent configuration of power relations manifests itself in considerations of CE. The analysis finds that the Report vilifies CE and proposes an alternative for it: social entrepreneurship. Furthermore, it presents Turkey's diverse population as a monolithic homogenous mass and makes no mention of democracy and human rights values. These findings call out the research community to investigate the negative implications of rising ultra-nationalism for CE. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay considers Ziya Gökalp, the received "spiritual father of Turkish nationalism", as an early mastermind of fascism in Greater Europe. During the 1910s, Gökalp acted as a prophet of expansive war and as a mentor of demographic engineering in the Ottoman capital, Istanbul, which was a laboratory for new political styles in a crisis-ridden empire. Gökalp's thinking longed for a supreme leader in an army-like, disciplined and hierarchised society, while it rejected a social contract-based nation and state. An influential inspiration for and beyond the new élites in the capital, Gökalp combined the call for radical modernisation according to "European civilisation" with an assertive essentialism based on völkisch (cultural-racial-ethnic Turkish) and religious (political Islamic) references. He was the chief ideologist of the Young Turk party-state (1913–18) – side by side with Talaat Pasha, its main executive leader – and "the father of my thoughts" for Kemal Atatürk. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The cultural imperialism thesis that emerged in late 20th century focused on inequalities in the West driven global flow of culture and communication, and how that adversely affected the cultural conditions of nations in the so called Third World. However, the core–periphery dynamic at the root of cultural imperialism has not merely been confined to the transnational level, from the West to the Rest. It has existed at the national level as well. Conducting a historical examination of state policy vis-à-vis Kurdish culture in Turkey, and drawing on the theories of cultural imperialism, internal colonialism and nationalism, I develop the concept of internal cultural imperialism to capture the state of severe center peripheral cultural imbalance that has been a product of Turkish nationalist ideology and its policies of cultural homogenization. In hegemonic condition, the state's ultimate goal has been to subjugate and/or possibly eradicate the cultures of non-core groups within its territory. [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]

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]

This paper analyses the 'nationalist movement' of Ahıska, a forcibly displaced people who have been arriving in Turkey from various parts of the former Soviet Union since the early 1990s. I focus on how members of this community attempt to define the Turkish nation, how they invoke migration to Turkey as a patriotic and nationalist act, how they criticize the state's responses to this migration as insufficiently nationalist, and how they respond to the movement of non‐Turkish others into the territorial and documentary space that they seek to inhabit. This nationalist movement, albeit small in number, demands our attention because it is born of a phenomenon that is intimately familiar to displaced people and not commonly associated with nationalism – the longing for rest. This longing animates Ahıska efforts to organize themselves and engage with the Turkish state. What possibilities and limitations does this genre of nationalist movement hold for displaced people across the world? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Turkey's relations with the EU have gradually soured roughly since 2013. Today, Turkey and the EU have an erratic modus vivendi episodically bordering political crises. This study attempts to provide a critical constructivist account of Turkey's foreign policy change towards the EU between 2002 and 2017. This change in state behaviour analysed in relation to the paradigmatic shift in Turkish national identity discourses regarding civilisational self-understanding led by the AKP elites. The article asserts that this transformation in Turkish national self-perception made fluctuations in Turkey's policies towards the EU and gradual deterioration of relations 'thinkable' via the medium of national identity discourses. The impact of Turkey's new hegemonic civilisational self-understanding is pursued within the epistemological framework of conceivability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Religious populism features prominently in the global political landscape. This contribution focuses on this particular type of populism, and the political strategies employed by religious populist actors, with a focus on the Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi (Justice and Development Party, AKP) under the leadership of Tayyip Erdoğan in Turkey. Although there is an established literature on religious populism, there are still dynamics that need to be studied further. How religious populists outflank their rivals, especially those with relatively conservative ideologies and understandings of nationalism, remains unanswered, for example. In this study, I investigate how the AKP, as a religious populist party, has competed with and distinguished itself from other mainstream and conservative Turkish political actors and movements, and their respective nationalist ideologies: (a) the secular political establishment, including the Kemalist Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi (Republican People's Party), (b) the tradition(s) the party was originally part of but is no longer viable, the Milli Görüş (National Outlook) movement, (c) other popular religious movements that have a claim to power (such as the Gülen, or Hizmet, movement), and finally (d) ultranationalist segments and parties such as the Milliyetçi Hareket Partisi (Nationalist Action Party), each of which has their own interpretations of citizenship and nationalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What role do nationally celebrated holidays play for groups that are not considered—or do not consider themselves—to be part of the majority nation of a state? What function do holidays specific to minority group cultures serve under regimes that discriminate against those groups? This article explores holidays as a forum for contestation for the national identity proposals promulgated by the state in repressive regimes. We argue that national holidays are meaningful sites of identity contestation for four reasons: the role of holidays in heightening identity salience, the malleability of identity narratives, the relative lack of institutional barriers to acts of celebration, and the significance of refusing to participate in celebrations. We collected the data through interviews and participant observation of the Hui in China and the Kurds in Turkey. We employ ethnographic observation and intertextual analysis to compare these identity narratives. We find that the Hui legitimize their group's existence by co-opting the traditional Spring Festival, or by outwardly insisting they are not celebrating while still engaging in festivities. In contrast, Turkey's Kurds resist the government's co-optation of the spring celebration of Newroz as a Turkish national holiday. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The process of Europeanisation initiated in Turkey following the 1999 Helsinki summit witnessed a loosening of state control over the Patriarchate of Constantinople under the government of the Justice and Development Party (AKP). In parallel with the AKP's reforms geared towards EU membership, the Patriarchate's activities became more transnational in their character, especially with regards to its organisation and influence over religious affairs within the Christian world. This contribution traces change and continuity in Turkish policy towards the Patriarchate under the AKP government. Key differences between the AKP government's stance on the Patriarchate and those of its predecessors are noted, with specific reference to prospects of EU membership and the strategy that has been devised by the AKP to that end. Specifically, the contribution shows that Turkey's bid to join the EU initially presented important leverage over Turkey, allowing the Patriarchate to reassert its transnational character. However, diminished prospects of EU membership together with a gradual return of nationalist sentiment now present an important challenge for the Patriarchate in its efforts to maintain transnational character and influence. [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 study analyzes social media representations of refugees in Turkey and discusses their role in shaping public opinion. The influx of millions of Syrian refugees in Turkey has created heated debates about their presence and future in the country. One of these debates was triggered by President Erdoğan's statement that Turkey would issue citizenship rights to Syrians in July 2016. Due to a lack of critical voices about refugee issues in Turkey's mass media sphere, social media has become a key platform for citizens to voice their opinions. Through a discourse analysis of tweets about the issue of refugees' citizenship, I will map different perceptions of refugees in Turkey. I argue that despite contesting discourses about Syrians, the debate on social media reinforces nationalism and an ethnocentric understanding of citizenship in Turkey. As the number of refugees and migrants increases rapidly worldwide, they become the new 'others' of national imagined communities. Social media becomes a key communication space where the nation is discursively constructed in a bottom-up manner through manifestations of 'us' and 'them'. The analysis shows that social media contributes to trivialization and normalization of discrimination and hatred against Syrian refugees through disseminating overt discourses of 'Othering'. Social media also enables more covert forms of discrimination through 'rationalized' arguments that are used to justify discrimination through the basis of false/non-verified information. Thus, Twitter becomes a space for critical, bottom-up, yet nationalistic and discriminatory statements about refugees. [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]

The Republic of Turkey of the 1920s and 1930s was a complex place to live. Kemalism came to nurture and embrace a new citizen who had no other choice but that of being a Turk as stipulated by the 1924 constitution. It was particularly challenging for Christian minorities, or what was left of them, because of ultra-nationalism and the highly ideological nature of the one-party regime of the Kemalist era. Many Armenians, who chose to stay or had to stay in Turkey, were not at ease with the existing state of affairs. Most of them were still looking for ways to leave Turkey for safer places. It became a particular matter of contention in the initial years of the Cold War when the Soviet Union launched a policy of encouraging Turkish Armenians to migrate to Soviet Armenia. Based on Russian, Turkish, and Armenian sources, the article presents hitherto unexplored features of that policy. [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]

Folklore served Turkish nationalism in different ways. This essay explores five original texts of folklore written by Young Turk intellectuals, namely Ziya Gokalp, Yusuf Akqura, Fuat Kopriilu, Riza Tevfik and Selim Sirri Tarcan, between 1913-1929. It elaborates on the ways in which these Ottoman intellectuals approached this new discipline and discussed its use in the context of rising Turkish nationalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the coming to power of the Justice and Development Party (AKP), led by its leader Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Turkish Muslim nationalism, a new national ideology promoted by the AKP, laid the foundations for a new Turkey and new Turks. Yeni Türkiye Yolunda (Towards a new Turkey) is the slogan used by the Erdoğan's party to support a more nationalist Turkey intertwined with its Ottoman and Islamic heritage. In this paper, I put forward the claim that a number of State-sponsored institutions, including new national museums, play a relevant role in shaping this new Turkey. The aim is to investigate how museums operate as instruments of national identity building by exhibiting a fictitious national past. The case study of the Kabatepe Simulation Centre and Museum will serve this purpose. By interviewing politicians, bureaucrats, and historians, I have researched the links between a ruling class that supports Turkish Muslim nationalism, and new public museums, which exhibits it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the foundation years of the Republic, nationalism was an ideology that the state used to form a national society, and it showed its influence in many areas, from politics to economically, social, cultural, and shaped state policies. On the other hand, religion remained in the background, due to its connotation of the Ottoman state and for the purpose of creating modern society. After the Second World War, the Cold War process, which was founded on the basis of economic and ideological struggle, began and the world was divided into two poles. In this struggle led by the US and the USSR, almost the whole world has been affected in every field. Turkey is among the countries directly affected by the Cold War period. In particular, the Soviet fear, that is anti-communism, gave direction to Turkey's political, economic and even socio-cultural policy. This effect has shown itself in the field of nationalism and religion in Turkey, the state has taken a completely different situation from before the Cold War. In our study; In the early years of the Cold War, the first five years after the end of Second World War, how the shape of the anti-communist influence the ideology of nationalism and religious in Turkey and these two cases were discussed as how to reproduce the regulation of relations based on this effect. In the early years of the republic, religion and nationalism, which did not stand close to each other, were allied with the influence of anti-communism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the Eurovision stage as a cultural space that cultivated an affective-discursive terrain forging Turkish national identity. It draws upon the media texts as a heuristic to examine how an image of 'Turkishness' was created and negotiated. Focusing in particular on four specific cases (Semiha Yankı in 1975, Çetin Alp in 1983, Şebnem Paker in 1997 and Sertab Erener in 2003), this study suggests that the Eurovision stage was a space where 'Turkishness' encountered an imagined 'Europeanness'. In these cases, affective discourses gave meanings of national allegories of 'Turkishness' to performing bodies on the Eurovision stage. The affective registers generated a discursive formation shaping the contours of 'Turkishness' in relation to Europe. Yet these discourses did not generate fixed and stable meanings. In particular, the construction of national success was negotiated and contested in terms of the appropriateness of the national embodiment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The pro-Kurdish nationalist mobilization in Turkey was mostly built on the right to self-determination aligned with the Marxist-Leninist ideology for the insurgent Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) in the early 1980s and ethnic minority rights for the secular-leftist pro-Kurdish legal parties in the 1990s. The Turkish state mostly framed the legal and illegal pro-Kurdish mobilization as 'the enemy of the state' and 'the enemy of Islam' in its counter-insurgency efforts. However, in the 2000s, the PKK and the pro-Kurdish legal parties became more tolerant and inclusive toward Islamic Kurdish identity by mobilizing their sympathizers in events such as 'Civic Friday Prayers' and a 'Democratic Islamic Congress'. This move aimed to function as an antidote to the rising popularity of the ruling conservative Justice and Development Party (AKP) and the Kurdish Hizbullah in the early 2000s. In other words, Islam and pious Muslim identity has increasingly become contested among Turkish Islamists, Kurdish Islamists, and the secular Kurdish nationalists. This article seeks to unpack why, how, and under what conditions such competing actors and mechanisms shape the discursive and power relationships in the Kurdish-Turkish public sphere. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Turkey is fully engaged in its “hydraulic mission,” very extensively and rapidly “developing” water resources throughout its territory. The extensive hydraulic development attempts conducted by the Turkish government create local, national, inter-state, and transnational contestations among the different interest groups. A great deal of scholarly literature has analyzed the rationale behind Turkey’s massive-scale hydraulic development. While some studies link Turkey’s hydraulic mission to its energy and food security, others highlight the importance of domestic conflicts, as in the case of the Kurdish issue in the southeast. However, few works examine the relationship between hydraulic development and state- and nation-making processes in the early period of the republic. This paper seeks to analyze the role of hydraulic development in state- and nation-making in the context of Turkey by looking at the institutional documents published by official authorities and speeches made by key politicians. Drawing mainly upon the theory of water nationalism and its related conceptual frameworks, this study argues that hydraulic development has formed one of the important components of the modernization process in Turkey, thereby playing a significant role in its state- and nation-making processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article develops the concept of fraternal natalism to examine the long-standing alliances between different state actors in Turkey –governments, physicians, religious authorities, and the military– to build, restore, and consolidate reproductive righteousness. It argues that fraternal natalism relies on a narrative of a national crisis to put forward and justify controversial policies in line with the Turkish state's reproductive imaginaries. This natalism provokes demographic anxieties about religious and ethnoracialized "others," casting them as inherently dangerous for the nation's continuity and security. Looking at these strategies through the lens of fraternal natalism exposes the continuities and disjunctures in reproductive righteousness rather than exceptionalizing particular actors and historical periods. It also reveals how religious rhetoric and constructions of race/ethnicity are mutually foundational in the formation of reproductive politics. Although the article develops the concept through a historical and discursive analysis of reproductive politics in Turkey, it can be applied to other contexts to chart the complex configurations of state actors involved in molding reproductive behaviors and population practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the current ambiguous position of the cult of Atatürk in Turkish society and politics, as both a state cult that is not entirely desired by the ruling party and a fragmented and contested people’s cult. The article argues that the commodification and personal appropriation of the cult of Atatürk in the 1990s and 2000s blurred the lines between state and society and between political ideologies, eventually turning the cult into a much more inclusive realm than before, which enables debating national identity in Turkey despite the contentious political environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article aims to explore the forced dislocation of immigrant Gyspy townspeople from a Turkish town, Bayramiç, Çanakkale in 1970. It focuses on the workings of social categories of Turkishness and Gypsyness through this exclusionary violent case, how they were re-employed and reproduced exclusively in conjunction with Turkish nationalism. It was the time of socio-economic transformation and rise in populist–nationalist discourses in Turkey. In the town, the reflections of this historical context demonstrated the transformation in power allocation and competing personal interests in highway transportation and forestry. Eventually, the attacks started as “Drivers’ Fight” but turned into “Gypsy hunt” with the effects of socio-economic competition and interests, the employment of historical stigma of Gypsyness and terrorization of the perpetrators in the town. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Turkish nationalism has long presented a study in contrasts. The nationalist movement that created the Republic of Turkey sought to define the nation in explicitly civic and inclusive terms, promoting a variety of integrationist reforms. Those same nationalist politicians, however, endorsed other policies that were far more exclusionary, expelling many religious and ethnic minorities from the new nation and imposing harsh restrictions on those who remained. The seemingly contradictory nature of Turkish nationalist policies has been mirrored by much of the scholarship on Turkish nationalism, which has often viewed Turkish nationality through the lens of the “civic/ethnic divide,” with various scholars arguing that the Turkish nation is exclusively civic or ethnic. This article seeks to transcend this dichotomous way of looking at Turkish nationalism. I argue that the policies previously seen as being exclusively civic or ethnic are in fact both examples of boundary-making processes, designed to forge a cohesive nationalist community. Seen through a boundary-making perspective, the seemingly contradictory nature of Turkish nationalist policies in its early years is not paradoxical at all, but represents a multidimensional effort to construct a cohesive national community that could replace the defunct Ottoman state. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The study focusses on converts from Islam to the Christian faith in Turkey. Converts are confronted with special challenges. Based on Islamic theology and Turkish nationalism most Turks cannot think of positive reasons to choose Christianity. So verbal assaults with social consequences like ostracism, prejudice, suspicion, and very low esteem are very common. The First Letter of Peter provides advice for strengthening new Christians by defining their identity as chosen und loved people of God. Personal caring for converts from Islam is crucial to provide a new "home" in assuring them of their new identity. They have to learn to evaluate accusations honestly, and from a faith-based position, and to integrate their new faith with their old environment. In the context of modern Turkey a fresh look at history can be meaningful: There were Turkish Christians before Islam, and there are still Christian Turkish people today. More important however is a genuine spiritual approach that understands verbal assaults within the framework of God's history with his people. Converts should find their identity "in Christ". At the same time, being in Christ must become practical in finding a new family in the local church and seeing themselves as part of the worldwide multinational body of Christ. [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]

Despite being exempt from compulsory military service, women have been indispensable in their roles as mothers of conscripted soldiers in the conflict between the Turkish military and the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK). Based on in-depth interviews conducted with twenty women in Istanbul whose sons were deployed to the conflict zone and returned home without any injuries, this article examines how the conflict has impacted the mothers' perception of national service, of the Kurdish conflict, and of the "East." I argue that the women start to partly question the obligation to serve once their children are asked to become the potential victims, and perpetrators, of the conflict. But this questioning does not develop into a full-fledged critique of the service and ends up reinforcing the tropes associated with Kurds and the "East" as backward, unruly, and resistant to change. Thus they mostly justify the modernizing mission of the military. [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]

Despite Turkey being a culturally heterogeneous country, the primordial narrative of current Turkish nationalism -- regardless whether arguing from secular or from Islamist angles -- does not allow for cultural diversity and plurality. This article challenges the holistic and exclusionary notion of culture that underlies present Turkish nationalism by shedding light on how the appropriation of multiple identities by second and third generation Germany-born women in Turkey is eluding ascriptions of identity divided among we/them lines. Against the backdrop of frameworks that describe identity as fluid, relational, multiple and imagined, the article will analyze the findings of an ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Istanbul in 2013. Rather than a holistic "either/or" dualism of belonging where social practices only take place in the container space, "as well as" transnational social practices in both countries are analyzed, among others, with respect to biographic memories and imaginations, communication and movements across borders and participation in the Gezi protests. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nixon's self-declared war on drugs has been underway for over five decades. Not all aspects are well known, and many voices of those touched by the campaign were and remain unheard. In the early 1970s, the Turkish republic faced a political crisis. The military installed a post-coup leadership that acquiesced to longstanding American demands to halt all cultivation of the opium poppy. This was the first sustained battle in Nixon's war, and it had socio-economically devastating consequences for Anatolian peasants who had for generations farmed the crop for licit and illicit markets. To many Turkish citizens, the ban was the result of a new stage in Western imperialism and a direct consequence of their own leaders' failure to protect the country's rural poor majority, on the one hand, and their surrender of national sovereignty, on the other hand. Farmers' voices were rarely heard on this issue, apart from brief quotes in newspapers and in domestic and foreign governmental studies, but their plight attracted sustained popular attention due in part to the proxy geopolitics articulated on their behalf. Before the recently disenfranchised parliament that did not permit sustained discussion or debate of the poppy question, MPs nonetheless rendered impromptu testimonies protesting the ban, its impacts on farmers, the suppression of democracy, and nation's loss of sovereignty. Through an analysis of Turkey's parliamentary record and other contemporary sources, I approach this crucial episode in the histories of intoxicants and the war on drugs. In so doing, I demonstrate the potential and seeming success of proxy geopolitics echoed on behalf of a marginalized people and why engagement with such sources is essential in the wider practice of critical geopolitics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the ways states manage their national identity through cultural tourism policy. It draws on archival and ethnographic data on the opening of the Armenian Akhtamar Church in Turkey to cultural tourism and religious service for the first time after 95 years. Based on narrative evidence from the disputes among various actors with conflictual constructions of history, I find that states can use cultural tourism to produce multiple articulations of national identity and govern these articulations in accordance with their interests. The presence of multiple stages of tourism policy and the time and space bounded nature of interaction at each stage allow for the production of multiple images in different interaction situations. At the same time, the discourse of economic development associated with cultural tourism allows state actors to insulate themselves from criticism in disputes over national identity. The article shows how states use cultural tourism to create national identity even in the case of complex histories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article I examine the intersections of queer sexualities and the nation online. In particular, I employ Billig’s concept of banal nationalism to investigate when and how the nation is flagged on the most popular LGBTQ websites in Poland and Turkey. The analysis focuses on both the mediation of nationhood through (re)producing the world as a world of nation and the mediation of particular nations through the coupling of queer symbolism with national symbolism. I conclude by proposing the concept of ‘domesticating the nation online’, which is a form of queering the nation via digital technology, though not to challenge hegemonic national discourses in a public debate but to make the nation more homely for queers themselves. Finally, I juxtapose the concept of banal nationalism with the US neo-imperial cultural logic to argue that domesticating the nation online plays an especially important role for queers beyond the USA. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Is Turkish nationality one singular identity that does not permit ethnic modifiers? Or can it be understood as pluralistic, with identities nested – “hyphenated” – with Turkishness? Then, are Turkish and Kurdish identities necessarily mutually exclusive? Such questions over the boundaries of Turkishness have long been framed in the civic versus ethnic dichotomy – an approach that does not ask whether Turkish nationhood is monolithic or pluralistic. In response, this article aims to advance the public and scholarly debates over nationhood in Turkey by turning to the question of ways in which Turkishness can be hyphenated with other identity categories in Turkey, most particularly Kurdishness. First, we reframe the debate over identity by using the combinatorial approach to ethnicity to outline how Turkishness and Kurdishness can be overlapping and nested, or a hyphenated identity. Second, we draw on public opinion data to show that such a hyphenated identity is both theoretically possible and potentially salient in Turkey today. Together, these steps deconstruct the primordialist understandings of Turkishness and Kurdishness, on the one hand, and the taken-for-granted civic claims of Turkishness, on the other. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article examines a peculiar case of commodification of culture under the shadow of a law serving a repressive agenda of modernist, secularist cultural politics. Fortune-telling, criminalized in the name of nationalist modernization in the early 20th century, has become popularized and commercialized in millennial Turkey in emergent businesses called fortune-telling cafés, where complimentary cup readings are provided with a cup of Turkish coffee to avoid persecution. Informed by fieldwork in fortune-telling cafés, I explicate this commodification in terms of the recent recalibration of Turkey’s national identity and culture, specifically in relation to Europe. The article analyzes the relationship between commodification of culture and cultural politics in the particular context of post-colonial nationalisms that host a strong tension between popular and national cultures. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

According to theories of nonviolent resistance, violence is counterproductive and undermines the ability of a movement to achieve mass support. At the same time, studies of ethnic insurgencies suggest that violence is the only available method of mobilization in political systems characterized by entrenched ethnic hierarchies. Engaging with these arguments, this article addresses a historical puzzle: What factors explain the timing and ability of the PKK's (Partiye Karkerên Kurdistan) rise as the hegemonic Kurdish nationalist organization in Turkey between the late 1970s and 1990? The article argues that studies that identify Kurdish nationalism as a reaction to repressive policies of the Turkish state without paying attention to prevailing social conditions and oppositional strategies fail to provide a satisfactory response. It argues that the rise of the PKK was primarily a function of its ability to gain support among the peasantry in deeply unequal rural areas through its strategic employment of violence. It also identifies four causal mechanisms of PKK recruitment based on rich archival and field research: credibility, revenge, social mobility, and gender emancipation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]