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Copyright of Zeitschrift für Religionswissenschaft is the property of De Gruyter and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

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]

The nationalist movement appeared in Ottoman Empire's Selanik/Thessaloniki by late 1910 and known as New Life (or New Language) group, represents a special phase in the history of Turkish nationalism. The New Life circle flourishing from the 1908 Young Turk Revolution and the explosion in the press it brought with, had played an important role in making and administering the ideology and cultural policy of the İttihat ve Terakki Cemiyeti (Committee of Union and Progress). Among New Life's collaborative and planned activities were publishing brochures, school books and periodicals. These publications are essential in analyzing the movement. These journals are Genç Kalemler (Young Pens) and Yeni Felsefe Mecmuası (New Philosophy Journal). Genç Kalemler is the successor of Hüsün ve Şiir (Beauty and Poetry) journal. Although the contents, policies and ideologies of these journals are examined in a number of studies, very little is known about their technical and managerial side, printing and distribution conditions, and their target and reader profiles. This study tries to elaborate on such issues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article will attempt to develop an in-depth examination of the pivotal role of Islam in the articulation of Turkish nationalism and Turkish official identity by examining the sermons authorized and imposed by the Presidency of Religious Affairs (PRA), the state agency regulating religion, and how the their cosmologies of social, moral and political order are entwined. We will further argue that this role involves a twofold process; firstly, the Muslim identity was imagined as a prerequisite for being considered as a Turk and a Turkish citizen and, secondly, the ‘cultural intimacy’ of Turkish nationalism is grounded on the ‘root paradigms’ inherited and attained from the Islamic tradition and theology. These arguments are particularly pertinent at a time when Islamist JDP (Justice and Development Party) consolidated its power and began to instrumentalize PRA for its priorities and visions of Islam. This, however, does not bring a radical reshuffling of PRA. On the contrary, the continuity from the Kemalist-monitored PRA to the JDP-monitored PRA can be attested not only in its organizational features but also in its ideological make up; especially in terms of its perceptions of society, state and social order. [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]

Drawing on theories of nationalism, two recent books by Dilek Giiven and Ulkii Agir engage with the September Pogrom in Istanbul on the 6th and the 7th of September 1955. To explain the pogrom's emergence from its historical background both studies discuss the role of Young Turkish ideology, ethnic violence in the course of Turkish nation building, and the development of minority politics throughout the Turkish Republic. On the basis of interviews and archival materials, Dilek Giiven meticulously reconstructs the course of events, the actors, their motives and the context. Ulkii Agir analyses the Turkish press discourse in the pogrom's preparatory phase focusing on the Greek Orthodox community. Critically discussing the two studies, this article scrutinises current conceptualisations of collective violence in research devoted to post-Genocidal Turkey. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As the global wave of decolonization that began after 1945 reached the island of Cyprus, the Cyprus question turned into an issue of paramount importance for Turkish nationalists and for the Turkish people in general. Long before, Turkish foreign policy architects – who had previously taken the line that ‘Turkey does not have a Cyprus problem’ – came to portray Cyprus as a ‘national cause’. Three different geopolitical discourses were instrumental in legitimizing Turkey’s claims over Cyprus and in leading Turkish society to believe that it had a crucial stake in the fate of the island. Naturalized geopolitics represented Cyprus as a natural extension of the Turkish heartland, while ideological geopolitics put forth that Greek Cypriots were responsible for the spread of communism. Finally, civilizational geopolitics characterized Turkey and Greece’s rivalry in Cyprus as the latest chapter in the centuries-old conflict between Turkishness and Hellenism. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article offers a critical reading, from the perspective of gender studies, of films produced in the politically charged environment of the 1990s and 2000s by directors Tomris Giritlioğlu and Yeşim Ustaoğlu. Giritlioğlu’s Ms. Salkım’s Diamonds (Salkım Hanımın Taneleri, 1999) and Autumn Pain (Güz Sancısı, 2008) were based on Yılmaz Karakoyunlu’s novels Salkım Hanım’ın Taneleri (1990) and Güz Sancısı (1992), while Ustaoğlu’s Waiting for the Clouds (Bulutları Beklerken, 2004) was inspired by Yorgo Andreadis’ biography, Tamama (1993). The films claim artistic license in presenting individual stories, yet they embellish their representation through documentary footage about silenced historical traumas, depicting female subjects as the store of traumatic national memories, such as the exodus of Pontic Greeks in 1916, the anti-minority Wealth Tax of 1942, and the anti-Greek pogroms of 1955. Underscoring Julia Kristeva’s notion of the “feminine” as a crucial aspect of these films, this article traces two strategies used by the directors: (1) recording personal stories in order to complicate nationalist narratives and their appeal to essentialized identities, and (2) gendering trauma as female suffering inflicted by patriarchal authority. The article concludes that, regardless of their public positions to the contrary, the directors engage in feminist politics by questioning the relationship between women and the nation, by broaching issues of social justice, and by highlighting the hybridity of identities and plurality of cultures. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

El artículo discurre sobre las razones posibles que incitaron el genocidio armenio de 1915-1923 por el Imperio Otomano. El autor comenta sobre la prevalencia de nacionalismo de los otomanas así como el sentido de xenofobia ante los armenios. También se considera la cuestión del genocidio como un acto de limpieza étnica o un evento premeditado.

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]

This article examines the process of development of the political left since its inception in Turkey in a context when the republic was established as a nation state and 1917 October Revolution. It looks at how the movement has been transformed with the collapse of the Soviet Union and with the changes in domestic politics. The historical process of the Turkish left is divided into three eras: The first from the beginning of the republic to the 1960s; the second from 1960 to 1980; and the third from 1980 to the present day. In this era, the left has not had that organized structure and influence as in the second era. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article looks at the Turkey's creation of a militarized borderland around the province of Dersim (Tunceli), Turkey, in the mid-20th century as a way of controlling uprisings and asserting a Turkish national identity and centralized government control in the majority-Kurdish region. Topics include the history of the region in the 19th century, the role of the town of Elazığ, Turkey, as a border town or gateway into the region, disputes over the mapping of the region, and infrastructure development in the region related to the needs of the Turkish armed forces.

This article aims to examine how the Turkish census measures, classifies and interprets the languages spoken in Turkey. By examining the non-standardised relationship between ‘mother tongue’, ‘domestic language’ and ‘ethnicity’, the article analyses the ongoing and dynamic milieu that surrounds the fixed questions and clear-cut classifications of data. This article argues that the ethnic measurement is not a ‘fixed’ measurement, because the wording of the linguistic question and the data categorisation as well as the interpretation of the data has been changing. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Our current knowledge on the history of Turkish nationalism during the Cold War is a blend of facts and myths. One of those myths is the argument that the Turks developed a special relationship with Islam following their massive conversion in the eleventh century to the extent that religion has become the most important ingredient in Turkish national identity over time, even more pronounced than ethnic attributes. Secular visions of Turkish nationalism, on the other hand, which emphasize ethnic characteristics, are generally regarded as curious but unimportant exceptions. This article challenges that narrative and maintains that the alleged unimportance of secular nationalism is an invention of the late 1960s. It provides evidence that there was no consensus among Turkish nationalists on the question of Islam; on the contrary, the role of Islam in the making of Turkish identity was the most hotly debated topic among rival nationalist circles. It was not until the turning point in 1969 that a host of factors such as demographic change, anti-Kemalist and anti-RPP sentiments, and electoral behaviour in Cold War Turkey convinced Turkish nationalists to adopt a more Islamic-leaning discourse to be more successful at the ballot box. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In 1924, John Dewey travelled to Turkey to make recommendations on the Turkish educational system. According to many existing accounts, Dewey brought a sorely needed progressive educational perspective to a nation emerging from centuries of despair. On the whole, these accounts dismiss the Ottoman legacy and overlook how Dewey’s historical thinking coloured his view of Turkish democracy. This article draws on these considerations to offer a critical re-reading of Dewey’s trip, arguing that the visit, rather than supporting the expansion of a bottom-up democratic perspective in the Turkish educational system, actually helped advance top-down Turkish nation-building. In so doing, it explores the connections between history and democracy in Dewey’s thinking, reclaims the significance of the Ottoman legacy, examines the role of education in radically remaking the Turkish public, and points to the need for studying places and times where schooling is used to expunge history in the name of exporting democracy. [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]

At the end of the First World War, the Ottoman Empire collapsed and the Great Powers came to take the control of its territories. Having a strategic position at the southern gate of Europe, all of Turkish lands were very important for the First World War winners, both to secure European borders and to develop the trade between Europe and Middle East. On the other side, under Mustafa Kemal Atatürk command, a new Turkey with a strong nationalist way decided to fight for emancipating. Winning the war with the Great Powers not only in a military way, but also from a diplomatic perspective, the new Turkey became a modern regional power, having institutions and laws that assured its prosperity and security. Taking into consideration the independence war evolution, this paper wants also to show the diplomatic capability of Turkish leaders to balance between powers involved in the region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the cultural construction of the school in Turkey in relation to the construction of Turkish nation-ness. By looking at how the modern school was fit together with a network of interrelated discourses available in early twentieth-century Turkey, the article investigates the ways in which the school became an object of thought in support of narrating and imagining Turkish nation-ness. In the article, I argue that the school was pivotal in the imagination and institution of Turkey not only literally but also symbolically. Juxtaposed with a radically contrasting image of the traditional educational establishment of the Ottoman dynastic past calledmahalle mektebi, the school was appropriated by the Republican elite as a statement of modernity, national character and a total break from the Ottoman past. Giving a visual expression to the new regime’s aspirations for the society, the school, with its very architecture, layout and disciplinary and hierarchical organisation, functioned as a clear symbol of enlightenment, civility, order and progress. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article analyzes the ideological evolution of Turkish nationalism in politics from 1965 to 1980 providing an in-depth analysis of the ideological contours of the Cumhuriyetçi Köylü Millet Partisi (CKMP; Republican Peasant Nation Party) and its successor the Milliyetçi Hareket Partisi (MHP; Nationalist Movement Party). It shows that there were different channels for indoctrination promoting their own view of nationalism within the movement. It also aims to demonstrate that a tangible shift in the nationalist discourse of the party took place during this period, concomitant to the change of the agents of political nationalism. This transfer of ideological power was reflected in the party's gradually transforming political discourse, swinging from secular nationalism to the margins of religious-conservative nationalism. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Copyright of Journal of Modern Turkish History Studies / Cumhuriyet Tarihi Araştırmaları Dergisi (CTAD) is the property of Ataturk Institute for Modern Turkish History and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The article discusses the British Empire's response to the Armenian genocide during the early 20th century. It examines the British government's desire to demonstrate that its imperial responsibilities included the enforcement of human rights, the nationalism among Muslims in Ottoman Turkey that British efforts fostered, and the convergence of human rights and geopolitics. The article also discusses the history of British defense of human rights in the Ottoman Empire.

The article discusses the mass expulsion of the ethnically Greek population from the city of Eski Foça, Turkey, in the early 20th century. Among other topics addressed are the respective roles of both Turkish and Greek nationalism, the former associated with the Young Turks, inter-ethnic conflicts in the Balkans during the same period, and organization of the violence against ethnically Greek population of Foça.

The article addresses social aspects, especially social mobilization, of late Ottoman imperial policy of in the author's term eliminating Greek Orthodox populations. The author identifies this policy as part of a broader Turkish nationalist policy termed National Economy or Milli İktisat. Among other topics addressed are Turkish historiography of such eliminations, the boycott movement against Greece over the status of the island of Crete, and its escalation into violence against Greeks.

Copyright of Türk Dünyası Araştırmaları is the property of Turk Dunyasi Arastirmalari Vakfi and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This article is an examination of the ‘Kurdish Students’ Hope Society’ – a youth-led Kurdish organization founded in the Ottoman imperial capital, Istanbul, in 1912. The article contends that the foundation of this organization should not be seen simply as a reaction to the gradual ethnic polarization and ‘Turkification’ of Ottoman politics that occurred in the aftermath of the 1908 ‘Young Turk Revolution’. It also needs to be understood in the context of dynamics emanating from within Kurdish society. Specifically, to the backdrop of an increasingly fragmented Kurdish elite, the Kurdish youth were setting out their own path towards national salvation which was neither conformist nor separatist. In short, they were outlining a ‘third way’ between these two extremes. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article studies the campaign against the use of non-Turkish languages that was organized by local forces in Izmir in 1934. In contextualizing the campaign within domestic politics and state–society relation, the article attempts to study domestic politics through a local perspective and explore the impact that similar events in the periphery had in the centre's policies, which the literature is usually inclined to comprehendsolelywith reference to state ‘high politics’. The article argues that cases of autonomous mobilization from below, such as the 1934 Izmir campaign, contributed to the evolution of the Turkish political regime in the 1930s by turning the centre towards decisions that would redesign the relationship between the state and the ruling party, and have an impact on state–society relations. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Widely recognized by nationalists, Islamists and conservatives as the heroine of the Turkish Right in the twentieth century, Sâmiha Ayverdi influenced the renaissance of right-wing politics in Turkey as an important leader of the Rifaî order, a prolific author, an unyielding anti-communist, and finally as an institution-builder for right-wing causes. This article focuses on the apparent paradoxes in Ayverdi's long career, such as her modernist interpretation of Islam, her relationship with her sufimaster, preference for memoirs, and her unabashed elitism. Such characteristics defy clichés associated with the stereotypical conservative/nationalist/Islamist intellectual in Cold War Turkey. Our in-depth study of Ayverdi's works thus reveals the complexity of right-wing identities, and the fact that our protagonist is an outspoken woman intellectual also adds an important twist to the story. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Journal of Academic Inquiries / Akademik Incelemeler Dergisi is the property of Akademik Incelemeler Dergisi (Journal of Academic Inquiries) and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This study discusses the position of Alevi identity and Alevi community with regard to the Turkish national identity-building project. There was a partial compatibility between the Kemalist objective of laicization and nation building and the Alevi practice and understanding of a ‘local’ version of ‘Turkish Islam’. Besides these compatibilities, Alevis faced the challenges of nation-building and homogenization policies, which involved homogenization in ethnic, religious and sectarian domains. Kurmanji- and Zazaki-speaking ethnically Kurdish/Zaza Alevis of Eastern Anatolia had a different experience during the project of centralization and ethnic homogenization, in comparison to Turkish-speaking Turcoman Alevis. This different experience still is a source of division among Alevi communities. [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 probes the transformation of Kemalism to a xenophobic nation-statism with a strong anti-western animus diluting its self-styled westernism and elitism in response to the rise of the reformist-Islamist ruling JDP and its patchy liberal rhetoric and pro-EU stance. The article points to the novel qualities of the Kemalism of the 2000s but also attests to its inherent anti-elitist, anti-liberal and anti-intellectual nature that reigned in the 1930s given that the Kemalist project in the inter-war period involved the denunciation of the Ottoman establishment with its elite and intelligentsia and its replacement with an intelligentsia of its own that is acquainted with anti-liberalism, anti-cosmopolitism and also anti-intellectualism. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

A report is offered from an October 11-13, 2012 conference on the history of the Balkan region of eastern Europe on the 100th anniversary on the Balkan Wars. Topics of discussion included the role of the persecution of Muslim Turks in the rise of Turkish nationalism, Russo-Serbian diplomacy in the war, and the history of pan-Slavic social engineering.

This article argues that in the interwar period, the Turkish government subjected Ottoman cities to various forms of spatial planning aimed at modernizing but also ethnically homogenizing them. It draws on untapped sources to portray how the regime saw this “modernization” as a panacea that would bring the country up to par with European “civilization.” In the ideological universe of the regime, a perfect society could be forged by design and coercion. As a result, the multiethnic cities of Turkey became the object of high-modernist utopias of spatial planning and urban redesign. These policies were also aimed at erasing Ottoman cities’ multiethnic pasts and crafting a “healthy” Turkish population. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article discusses the comparative history and historiography of the 20th century, with reference to Marxism and Marxist political and historical thought, with a focus on a comparison between Turkey, Greece, and Italy. Topics discussed include the concept of the influence of localization on the development of variants in Marxist thought and historiography, Marxism as political project, and the influence of nationalism on Marxist historiography in Turkey, Greece, and Italy during the 20th century.

This paper is about Kurdish rebellions and conflict groups in Turkey during the 1920s and 1930s. The study defines these rebellions and conflict groups as local, sporadic and segmented. They were local as they underwent regional forms and variations. Yet, the values and actions of rebellious actors were not reduced to only local realities since it is possible to observe that they exceeded local frames by religious and nationalist motivations. Second, they were sporadic because they did not have temporal continuity. Most importantly, they were segmented in the sense that Kurdish actors in the revolts were not fully integrated. Even though they had almost identical conflictual relationships with state power, they were not present together in the same revolt. These major characteristics determined the nature of mobilization as well as the boundaries of Kurdish conflict groups and rebellions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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]

Copyright of Türk Dünyası Araştırmaları is the property of Turk Dunyasi Arastirmalari Vakfi and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This paper aims to develop a model for the ethno-nationalist incorporation of the space and time — that is of the geography and history — of ethnies considered as 'others' by the ethno-nationalist core of an emerging nation-state. It contends that one of the reasons for the recurring power and emotive force of nationalist discourse and practice stems from the disjunction between the complex history of a locality — exemplified in its material culture — and the homogenised present, which various strategies of ethno-nationalist incorporation have brought about. Based on the analysis of the empirical evidence of the case of the city of (Sanli) Urfa in Southeast Turkey, it argues that a 'spatial perspective' focusing on the locale might facilitate unveiling hitherto understudied aspects of local nationalisms, as well as the rather dark sides of most nation-building projects such as large-scale population exchanges or ethnic cleansing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]