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Modernist Nationalism: Statism and National Identity in Turkey

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

Ayhan Akman*
Affiliation:
Sabanci University, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, Turkey, ayhan@sabanciuniv.edu

Extract

A few years ago, the New York Times featured an article on the ancient city of Antioch and its modern-day inhabitants. Having lost its ancient grandeur a long time ago, Antioch (Antakya) is described as today a place that “even most Turks consider … [to be] remote and undistinguished.” The article features interviews with two members of the same family: the 110-year-old Ali Baklaci and his 20-year-old grandson Hasan Negruz. An old-timer who lived through the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire, subsequent French mandate and eventual incorporation into Turkey in 1939, Ali Baklaci is unequivocal regarding his identity. In a matter-of-fact manner, he declares, “We cannot forget our origins. We are Arab people.” The grandson, Hasan Negruz, however, has a different view. While Negruz is “one of many local youths who have taken advantage of Syria's offer of free education,” the article informs us, “the experience did not turn him into a pan-Arabist.” Instead, Negruz formulates his identity in a way that is remarkably different from his grandfather's: “I am an Arab who is also a citizen of Turkey, and that's fine. I like being Turkish because this country is more modern than the Arab countries.”

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © 2004 Association for the Study of Nationalities 

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References

Notes

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56. Ortayli, “Batililasma Sorunu,” p. 137.Google Scholar

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62. Cited in D. A. Rustow, Turkey: America's Forgotten Ally (New York: Council on Foreign Relations, 1987), p. 14.Google Scholar

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69. S. Mardin, S., “European Culture and the Development of Modern Turkey,” in A. Evin and G. Denton, eds, Turkey and the European Community (Opladen, Germany: Leske Verlag & Budrich, 1990), p. 20.Google Scholar

70. See N. Gole, The Forbidden Modern: Civilization and Veiling (Ann Harbor: University of Michigan Press, 1996), for an excellent discussion of the issue of women as the touchstone of Westernization in the Ottoman-Turkish context.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

71. Similarly, in France the complex and hierarchical system of appellations of the old regime was replaced by the simple citoyen and citoyenne. See W. H. Sewell, “Le Citoyen/La Citoyenne: Activity, Passivity and the Revolutionary Concept of Citizenship,” in C. Lucas, ed., The Political Culture of the French Revolution, Vol. 2 (Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1988), pp. 105–124.Google Scholar

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75. Ibid., p. 205.Google Scholar

76. The Directorate of Religious Affairs and Directorate-General for Pious Foundations were established in 1924 with the aim of instituting state control over religion.Google Scholar

77. By eradicating the office of the Seyhulislam (1924), by outlawing religious orders and sects (1925) and by restricting the display of religious symbols in public places.Google Scholar

78. In their profound hostility towards religion the Kemalists and Jacobins were quite similar. The Kemalists’ abolition of the religious orders and sects and the seizure of their lands and properties is analogous to the Jacobins’ confiscation of the lands of the Church and their desire to discredit and dishonor the clergy. Not only were the French and Turkish states ideologically committed to crippling religious organizations and sentiments, they also materially took advantage of them.Google Scholar

79. Robins, “Interrupting Identities: Turkey/Europe,” p. 70.Google Scholar

80. Ibid., pp. 68–69. The parallels to the French Revolution are remarkable: “The nation, as it emerged in the French Revolution, was the site and the subject of a radical break in history, one perhaps best symbolized by the new calendar that started time over again with a new Year One that began with the declaration of the French Republic.” Sewell, “The French Revolution and the Emergence of the Nation Form,” pp. 23–24. One also observes a similar tendency in the Soviet and Chinese experiences.Google Scholar

81. While it may be debatable whether French, Soviet or Chinese nationalisms are unequivocally modernist, it is indisputable that modernism constitutes at least a major strand within them. Even when it does not constitute a “pure type,” modernist nationalism can still be helpful for our understanding for the experience of nationalism in the non-European world. The purpose of alluding to these cases is to suggest certain parallels among the Turkish, Soviet and Chinese experiences. Due to space limitations, a detailed comparative analysis cannot be attempted here. The following remarks are meant to be suggestive for further study.Google Scholar

82. Suny argues that “Soviet Russia was conceived not as an ordinary national state but as the first state in a future multinational socialist edifice … For communists of the civil war period, internationalism was less the servant of the Soviet state than the Soviet state was the servant of internationalism” (R. G. Suny, The Revenge of the Past: Nationalism, Revolution and the Collapse of the Soviet Union [Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1993], p. 85). This, in turn, rested on the idea that ethnic “nationalism reflected only the interests of the bourgeoisie, that the proletariat's true interests were supranational” (Suny, The Revenge of the Past, p. 87). The ultimate irony here is that, rather than being a melting pot in which ethnic identities would be bracketed and universal, socialist identities would be valorized; “the Soviet Union became the incubator of new nations” (Suny, The Revenge of the Past, p. 87).Google Scholar

83. C. Taylor, “The Politics of Recognition,” in A. Gutmann, ed., Multiculturalism: Examining the Politics of Recognition (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994), p. 43.Google Scholar

84. In addition to the similarities stemming from their modernism, the Soviet and Turkish experiences are also similar in terms of the historical circumstances of their formation during the 1910s and 1920s: neither Soviet nor Turkish statesmen were burdened by the shadow of prolonged colonial rule, even though both faced imminent external threats to their survival. Modernist elites in Turkey waged the War of Independence (1919–1922) against Greece (backed by Britain, France and Italy), while the Soviet Union had to face the military campaign of the counter-revolutionaries supported by the Allies roughly during the same period (1917 to 1922). In addition, both countries were characterized by the heritage of a strong imperial state ruling over multiethnic and multi-religious populations. Remarkably, both the Ottoman and Russian Empires embarked on self-inflicted processes of defensive modernization (intensifying in the course of nineteenth century) to counteract the rising power of Western European states.Google Scholar

85. Mainly blaming Confucianism, superstition, a highly inegalitarian social stratification and a corrupt imperial bureaucracy for the backwardness of the country.Google Scholar

86. Although played out in different ways, language reform was another common concern of the Turkish and Chinese regimes. Simplification of the characters in China and the changing of the script from Arabic to Latin in Turkey were remarkably similar in intent. Overall, despite some moves in the direction of Sinocization, modernism constituted a major streak within the Maoist reforms and consequently had a significant impact in shaping Chinese national identity.Google Scholar

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91. Keyder, Ulusal Kalkinmaciligin Iflasi, p. 143.Google Scholar