Understanding the exclusionary politics of early Turkish nationalism: an ethnic boundary-making approach

Abstract

Abstract: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. At the same time, however, those same nationalist politicians 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 are not paradoxical at all, but represent a multidimensional effort to construct a cohesive national community that could replace the defunct Ottoman state.

Geographies of nationalism

“…Indeed, the rapid growth of xenophobic and animosityfueled nationalist storylines, espoused by far-right politicians and populist leaders across the world since the mid-2010s has sparked new interest among scholars, who suddenly became anxious about the perceived threat of these forms of nationalism to the cosmopolitan worldview that they once took for granted. This newer scholarship on the geography of "exclusionary nationalisms" or "ethno-nationalism," aims to show how hate-based and exclusionary scripts of nationalism work to territorialize a community within an imagined "pure" (or "purified") homeland (e.g., Avni, 2021;Anderson and Secor, 2022;Bescherer and Reichle, 2022;Bosworth, 2022;Chatterjee, 2021;Conversi, 2020a;Cunningham, 2020;Dahlman, 2022;Decker et al 2022;Dempsey, 2022aDempsey, , 2022bDevadoss and Culcasi, 2020;Dossa, 2021;Flint, 2004;Getzoff, 2020;Goalwin, 2017;Goonewardena, 2020;Hart, 2020a;Khan, 2022;Koch and Vora, 2020;Kolstø and Blakkisrud, 2016;Luger, 2022;Mulej, 2022;Mullis and Miggelbrink, 2022;Nagel and Grove, 2021;Shoshan, 2016;Singh, 2022;Stock, 2020;Wondreys and Mudde, 2022;Yiftachel and Rokem, 2021).…”

Avrupa’da Aşırı Sağ Partiler ve Göçmenlere Yaklaşımları; Seçilmiş Örnekler

“…Millete üyelik kalıtımsaldır, adeta miras yoluyla aktarılır ve genelde bu milletin paylaştığı ortak bir din ve/ veya dil vardır (Mudde, 2000, s. 170). Etnik milliyetçilik, bireyin tercihi dışında gruba üyeliğine vurgu yaptığı için temel olarak dışlayıcıdır (Goalwin, 2017(Goalwin, , s. 1152Filc, 2015, s. 267;Shulman, 2002, s. 576). İki milliyetçilik türü bazı düşünürler tarafından Batılı-Doğulu (Kohn, 1955(Kohn, ve 1967 ya da kültürel olarak ayrıma (Plamenatz, 1973) tâbi tutulmuş olsa da her ikisi de Doğu'da, Batı'da, Asya'da Latin Amerika'da ve Afrika'da görülebilir (Smith, 1994, s.133).…”

Inside Outsiders: Comparing State Policies Towards Citizens of Palestinian and Kurdish Descent in Israel and Turkey

“…despite the stated goal of crafting an inclusive civic national identity, the result was the prevalence of exclusionary ethnic definitions of Turkish identity (Goalwin, 2017) and a strong emphasis on Turkish ethnicity and language in the constitutional preambles, legislation, and the courts' jurisprudence (Bayır, 2013). Plenty of primary sources provided first-hand accounts of how exclusionary state policies and practices have created a sense of alienation and discrimination for at least some segments of the Kurdish minority and generated a decades-long armed conflict (Anter, 1999;Cemal, 2003;Diken, 2007;Miroğlu, 2005).…”

“…As this study has shown, the discourse on inclusive civic Turkish national identity, which transcended race or ethnic origin and manifested itself in the concept of Turkish citizenship, has been predominant among the Turkish political elite regardless of their ideological affiliation. However, recent scholarship criticized the representation of Turkish national identity in civic terms (Goalwin, 2017;T.W. Smith, 2005;Tezcür, 2009;Uzer, 2016;Yeğen, 2017).…”