Nation‐building policies in the Balkans: an Ottoman or a manufactured legacy?

Does religion motivate and intensify nationalism, or does religion moderate and even suppress nationalism? Six kinds of relationships between nationalism and religion are critically reviewed: nationalism as a modern religion in competition with traditional religions; religious origins of the “Chosen People” as the mythomoteur of nationalism; religious exclusion as nation-building; religious influences on national policies; influence of religious observance on national identification; and religiously based “civilizations” transcending nationalisms. Western Christian experience with nationalism is not generalizable due to the institutional autonomy and supranational organization of the Catholic Church. Western European nationalisms were premised on religious sectarian homogeneity, and the homogenous “confessional state” served as the template of European nation-states. Furthermore, I argue that the late medieval eradication of Muslims and Jews across Western Europe prefigured sectarian and ethnonational purges of the following centuries. Finally, I argue that different configurations of religion and nationalism depend on two critical conditions: the degree to which the dominant religious tradition is doctrinally supraethnic and institutionally transnational, and the religious identity of the main adversary in the constitutive conflict that culminated in national statehood. The crises of Marxism and liberalism provide the context for the resurgence of religion and nationalism at present.

Section: Previous Studies Of the Religion-nationalism Nexus And Six D...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Nationalism and Religion in Comparative Perspective: A New Typology of National-Religious Configurations

Aktürk

2021

“…When the British obtained the administration of the island from the Ottomans in 1878, a millet -like communal separation of the system was maintained and augmented as part of the “divide and rule” policy. As mentioned by Mylonas (2019), preservation of specific Ottoman-era policies in former Ottoman lands was largely a strategic choice of new rulers to serve new purposes, described as “manufactured legacy.” Despite the maintenance of what Tsitselikis has called the “neo- millet ” system (cited in Mylonas 2019, 870), TCs lost their legal privileges while experiencing hardship and humiliation during the colonial period since they found themselves a vulnerable demographic minority on the island (Yılmaz 2008). As a response to physical and ontological insecurities prompted by British colonial policies and rising Greek nationalism in Cyprus, TC elites promoted Kemalist nationalism among members of their community, in line with the republican reforms of Turkey during the 1920s and 1930s.…”

Section: The Roots Of Turkish Cypriots’ Ontological Insecuritiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Critical Junctures and Ontological Security in Unrecognized States: The Response of Northern Cyprus to the COVID-19 Pandemic

Gülseven

2022

This article will examine the response of the self-declared Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC) to the COVID-19 pandemic from an ontological security approach to illustrate how critical junctures may help de facto states in their quest for status and internal legitimacy. Stressing the pandemic’s role in the reconstruction of political narratives and self-legitimating practices among Turkish Cypriot elites, it sheds light on the effects of this global crisis on domestic power struggles in Northern Cyprus as well as its quasi-foreign relations with its patron state (Turkey), parent state (Republic of Cyprus), and the European Union. The study shows that both nationalist and federalist elites of the de facto entity instrumentalized the pandemic in their legitimation strategies and engaged in opportunistic behavior amid the outbreak. It also reveals how the pandemic enhanced the ontological security of Northern Cyprus while advancing its nationalist leadership’s claims for legitimate authority by enabling state-specific forms of agency and unilateral acts concerning the Cyprus dispute that may jeopardize the resumption of peace talks with Greek Cypriots. Thus, it can be assumed that advanced ontological security of the TRNC is highly volatile given the prospects of further isolation and de-engagement in the post-pandemic era.

“…In the Ottoman Empire between the fifteenth and twentieth centuries, the Armenian Gregorian community, along with the Jewish and Greek Orthodox minorities, lived under the millet system (Barkey 2008), which in the nineteenth century included other communities: Protestants in 1847 and the Orthodox Bulgarian Church in 1870 (Mylonas 2019, 869). The Ottoman rulers followed the Sunni version of Islam and classified non-Muslim groups into two main categories: polytheists and the “People of the Book,” who believed in the Abrahamic religions.…”

Section: Introduction and The Historical Backgroundmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Relationship between Perceived Security Threats and Negative Descriptions of Armenians in Turkish Politics (1946–1960)

Nefes¹

2021

How do perceived threats influence politicians’ attitudes towards religious minorities? Examining the Turkish parliamentary records between 1946 and 1960, this study suggests that perceived security threats significantly contribute to Turkish political parties’ negative descriptions of Armenians. The research analyzes speeches about Armenians via a mixed-method content analysis. The findings demonstrate that (a) debate about security threats is a reliable predictor of the political parties’ negative portrayals, and (b) members of the parliament justify their negative views by labeling Armenians as an enemy. The article concludes that perceived threats evoke negative speeches about Armenians in Turkish politics.