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Hyphenated Turkishness: The plurality of lived nationhood in Turkey

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

Serhun Al  and
Daniel Karell
Serhun Al*
Affiliation:
Department of Political Science, Izmir University of Economics, Salt Lake City, Utah, USA
Daniel Karell
Affiliation:
Division of Social Science, New York University Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates
*
∗ Corresponding author. Email: [email protected]
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Abstract

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.

Keywords

Turkeynational identitycombinatorial approach to ethnicityKurdishnessethnic versus civic debate
Type
Articles
Information
Nationalities Papers , Volume 44 , Issue 1 , January 2016 , pp. 144 - 164
Copyright
Copyright © 2016 Association for the Study of Nationalities 

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