Turkish Nationalism..

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Ehetlaios

Sure anyone is entitled to their own opinion and is free to express it but calling these individuals racist isn't based on some vendeta but common logic.
I mean the opposition to the specific approach Israel has taken in the Palestine conflict is something totally justified (in my view) and something I'd fully support, but I won't say I hate ALL Israelies for their government's choice in the issue, I can't but find that utterly stupid and the exact definition of racism.

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The Economist

Waving Ataturk's flag

Mar 8th 2007

There has been a lethal upsurge in ultra-nationalist feeling in Turkey

SITTING in an office plastered with Ottoman pennants, portraits of Ataturk and the Turkish flag, Kemal Kerincsiz, a lawyer, says his mission in life is to protect the Turkish nation from “Western imperialism and global forces that want to dismember and destroy us”. In the past two years Mr Kerincsiz and his Turkish Jurists' Union have launched a slew of cases against Turkish intellectuals under article 301 of the penal code, which makes “insulting Turkishness” a criminal offence.

Mr Kerincsiz has confined his nationalism to the courts. But elsewhere new ultra-nationalist groups, some of them led by retired army officers, have been vowing over guns and copies of the Koran to make Turks “the masters of the world” and even “to die and kill” in the process. In January one of Mr Kerincsiz's targets, a Turkish-Armenian newspaper editor, Hrant Dink, was shot dead by a 17-year-old, Ogun Samast, because he had “insulted the Turks”. The murder, in broad daylight on one of Istanbul's busiest streets, was a chilling manifestation of a resurgence of xenophobic nationalism aimed at Turkey's non-Muslim minorities and the Kurds—plus their defenders in the liberal elite.

The upsurge threatens to undo the good of four years of reforms by the mildly Islamist government led by Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Indeed, it is partly in response to these reforms—more freedom for the Kurds, a trimming of the army's powers, concessions on Cyprus—that nationalist passions have been roused. The knowledge that many members of the European Union do not want Turkey to join has inflamed them further (the EU partially suspended membership talks with Turkey in December because of its refusal to open its ports and airspace to Greek-Cypriots).

Another factor is America's refusal to move against separatist PKK guerrillas who are based in northern Iraq. If the United States Congress delivers its pledge to adopt a resolution calling the mass slaughter of the Ottoman Armenians in 1915 genocide, Turkey's relationship with its ally would suffer “lasting damage”, says the foreign minister, Abdullah Gul.

Murat Belge, a leftist intellectual who is being hounded by Mr Kerincsiz, sees disturbing similarities between the racist nationalism espoused by the “Young Turks” in the dying days of the Ottoman empire (who ordered the mass slaughter of its Armenian subjects), and the siege mentality gripping Turkey today. The perception, now as then, is that Western powers are pressing for changes to empower their local collaborators (ie, Kurds and non-Muslims), with the aim of breaking up the country. “This social Darwinist mindset that implies it's OK to kill your enemies in order to survive” has been perpetuated through an education system that tells young Turks that “they have no other friend than the Turks,” says Mr Belge. And it has been cynically exploited by politicians and generals alike.

Mr Erdogan and Deniz Baykal, the leader of the opposition Republican People's Party, have proved no exception. When more than 100,000 Turks gathered at Mr Dink's funeral chanting “We are all Armenians”, Mr Erdogan opined that they had gone “too far”. Both he and Mr Baykal have resisted calls to scrap article 301, though there have been hints that it will be amended.

The politicians are keen to court nationalist votes in the run-up to November's parliamentary election. Mr Erdogan also hopes that burnishing his nationalist credentials will help him to coax a blessing from Turkey's hawkish generals for his hopes of succeeding the fiercely secular Ahmet Necdet Sezer as president in May.

Yet a recent outburst by the chief of the general staff, Yasar Buyukanit, suggests otherwise. He declared that Turkey faced more threats to its national security than at any time in its modern history and added that only its “dynamic forces” [ie, the army] could prevent efforts to “partition the country”. These words, uttered during an official trip to America, were widely seen as a direct warning to Mr Erdogan to shelve his presidential ambitions.

Others do not rule out possible collusion between nationalist elements within the army and retired officers who are organising new ultra-nationalist groups (one is said to be training nationalist youths in Trabzon, where Dink's alleged murderers came from). “The real purpose is to sow chaos, to polarise society so they can regain ground [lost with the EU reforms],” argues Belma Akcura, an investigative journalist whose recent book about rogue security forces known as the “deep state” earned her a three-month jail sentence. It would not be surprising if their next target were a nationalist, she adds.

Meanwhile prominent writers and academics, including Mr Belge, continue to be bombarded with death threats. Some are under police protection. Orhan Pamuk, the Nobel prize-winning author whom Mr Kerincsiz took to court over his comments about the persecution of the Armenians and the Kurds, has fled to New York.

Where will matters go from here? This week one court banned access to YouTube after clips calling Ataturk gay appeared on it; and another sentenced a Kurdish politician to six months' jail for giving the PKK leader, Abdullah Ocalan, an honorific Mr. But a private television station also withdrew a popular series, “The Valley of the Wolves”, that glorifies gun-toting nationalists who mow down their mainly Kurdish enemies, after the channel was inundated with calls for the show's axing. The battle for Turkey's soul is not over yet.

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From Muslim to Turkish Nationalism.
Elite Socialization in the Turkish Foyers in Switzerland (1912-1922)

Hans-Lukas Kieser



Workshop "Cultural Conceptions of Middle Eastern Statesmen, Intellectuals and Technocrats (19th - 21st Centuries)", World Congress for Middle Eastern Studies, Mainz, 9.-13. September 2002





Elite diasporas represent an often underestimated factor in the modern remodeling of the East and Near East. During the decades before, in and just after World War One, elite diasporas in Switzerland formed a small but significant arena for what was to happen in the big empires of the Tsar and the Sultan, and the whole Muslim world. La petite Russie, the "little Russia", rue de Carouge in Geneva was well known as a center of the Russian diaspora, famed for its revolutionary stance. The same quarter around the rue de Carouge also housed several Young Turks and the room, rue de Carouge 7, where they weekly met. Interestingly enough, this was also the address of Kurdistan, the first Kurdish periodical. Those responsible of Kurdistan peacefully shared the same work room with later Turkists and members of the Ankara parliament, and an Armenian typesetter made their publications possible.

At the eve of WWI the situation had changed radically. The South Eastern and Ottoman diaspora was now strongly divided along ethno-national lines. Bulgarian, Armenian, Greek, Serbian and Zionist organisations had already existed at the turn of the century, an Egyptian club emerged soon after; new in 1911 was the Türk Yurdu, or Turkish Foyer, followed a few months later by the Kurdish Hêvi. Lausanne had the first Türk Yurdu in Europe that, until 1923, remained the most important one; after WWI it became a strong propaganda center of the Turkish national movement.

We know a lot about the Young Turks in opposition in Geneva, but much less about the Turkish Foyers and the role the Oriental diaspora played during and after WWI for the future of the Caliph's Empire. The Foyers of Lausanne and Geneva were founded in 1911; other European cities and, as Halide Edip put it, the Ottoman "capital soon followed the[ir] example", by establishing the Turkish Hearths (Türk Ocagi) in Istanbul and Asia Minor. Despite their concern for politics and society, medecine, science and law always remained the subjects of study prefered by the Ottoman Muslims including the Foyer members (they numbered about 60 of a total of about 350 Ottoman students then in Switzerland, about seventy percent of these were non-Muslims). Thus a community mainly educated in natural and technical sciences devoted itself mostly to social, political and cultural questions. As an important consequence, we see them often using scientific or medical metaphors for social issues.

Analysing the little Helvetic arena helps explaining the specific role Western-trained new elites played in the changes from the Fin de siècle to the aftermath of WWI. The Foyers in Geneva, Lausanne and Paris presented themselves as an apolitic cultural club; they formed an elite milieu in which young people were converted and mentally trained as nationalists. After the establishment of the Republic of Turkey dozens of members of these Foyers came to important positions in the new state, putting into practice their former ideas. Among them many deputies, ambassadors and ministers, e. g. Þükrü Saraçoglu, president of the Turkish Foyer in Geneva, later minister of finance and prime minister, Yusuf Kemal Tengirsek, minister of foreign affairs, Cemal Hüsnü Taray, minister of education, and Mahmut Esat Bozkurt, president of the Turkish Foyer in Lausanne, later minister of Justice, who introduced the Swiss Civil Code in Turkey.

Mahmut Esat Bey is an impressive member of a generation born in the Fin de siècle whose desire of a new order got caught in the whirl of a violent nationalist and etatist thinking. His ambiguity was that of the whole Foyer movement. Desiring to catch up with the nations renowned as civilized and politically strong, its representatives in the Swiss diaspora selectively adopted elements of Western culture which they considered as "progressive", even though the spirit of these elements, e. g. of the Civil Code, stood in an unresolvable tension to an ethno-nationalist credo. Lacking credibility in their own society, the protagonists thus continuously had to resort to coercion and violence in their political practice.



II

In this workshop we are interested in cultural concepts, the construction of a self-image and national identity. My hypothesis is that the Turkish Foyer milieu in Europe, and especially in Switzerland, was a most formative place of cultural elite socialization; that ex-Foyer members contributed towards forming the civilian wing of the Kemalist Republic's otherwise predominantly military cadre; and that they adapted themselves to the pragmatical power politics of the generals, even though culturally they were highly "idealistic". A dozen years before the abolition of the Caliphate they began to believe, in the way of a secular religion, in a völkisch or ethno-nationalist ideal linked to high modernism and anti-conservative "social technology". We find a similar trend in many right-wing modernist movements of the time. Like the socialists they wanted a social revolution, içtimâî inkilâb, but strictly limited to the nation which they imagined in ethnical terms. Although similar in many respects to the Zionists - which in the same period founded their student clubs in Switzerland -, the Turkists had a much more conflicting relationship with religion. They could not convincingly square their being Muslims and their wish to be Western at the same time. Thus Islam remained a primordial, at the same time highly critical element of ethnicity as part of Turkishness, but was completely devoid of its character of religious revelation. Paradoxically at the same time the Young Turkish regime, to which the Foyer movement was linked, almost completely islamified Asia Minor through coercive demographic politics. The civil architects of the Republic did not face the challenge, which they however realized, of theologically modernizing Islam and adapting its contents to present society. Instead they filled the religious gap with Turkism, myths of national salvation, and a pantheon of heros. I use "Turkism", by the way, as synonym of Turkish ethno-nationalism of which Panturkism or Panturanism is the maximalist and irredentist version.

Let us follow some expressions of Turkey's Muslim diaspora in Switzerland and first return to the turn of the century. I want to show one of numerous caricatures showing the explosion of a bomb.

- We see Abdulhamid torn to pieces by a bomb. "Hükümet-i hamidiyenin sonu. Eden bulur!", in Beberuhi, Nr 3, Geneva, April 1898.

This and other similar caricatures reveal the desire not only to deprive Sultan Abdulhamid of power, but for a complete tabula rasa. Tabula rasa should violently be made of despotism, corruption, religious backwardness, cosmopolitan complexity, "Byzantine" confusion, a Babel of languages, and foreign interference - in short all that the Young Turks saw as weakening the Empire, hampering progress and reducing their chances as the future elite of the state. However they were not able to define common terms for what they wanted to create. They were young people on the search - some twelve years later, those activists now in the diaspora appear to have found what they were looking for in terms of cultural identity. In the protocols of the Foyer turc in Lausanne we read in June 1918: "Brothers, from day to day nationalism exercises a stronger influence upon the Turkish world. While yesterday we answered to the question ‘What is your nationality’ by saying ‘I am Muslim’, today we do not hesitate to respond by proudly saying ‘I am a Turk’." The Foyer explicitly saw its mission in converting desoriented Turkish students to Turkism.

Resorting to Turkishness and Turkdom was an escape to an imagined essence, to given prehistorical, "natural" origins. What was considered as given and solid, was in reality under construction and highly speculative. But for elites socialized in the European Fin de siècle, it appeared much easier to believe in such pseudo-natural essences instead of continuously negociating relations that defined subtly changing identities in a shifting polyethnic context. The new ethno-national self-image miraculously reduced the complexity of being Ottoman. It suppressed the difficulty of being Muslim in a world of declining Islamic power and of global elites believing in scientific progress. In Europe we had the same phenomenon of shattered mirrors - in the sense of broken self-images that had been linked to religious tradition -, but this occured in a much longer period and concerned the whole society, whereas in the late Ottoman world this happened in a concentrated manner in the few decades of the Young Turkish generation and was limited to the Western trained elites.

Thus we see a large majority of the Muslim Turks of the universitary diaspora in Switzerland quickly becoming more or less Turkist, declaring that they now knew who they were, and what they were heading for: a social revolution (içtimâî inkilab) in Turkist terms with Turan as last reference of the quasi religious ideal or mefkûre. The Turkist gospel appears more as an ersatz than a real answer to the probing theological and cultural questions raised by some restless Young Turkish intellectuals of the Fin de siècle, like Abdullah Cevdet.

The Foyers and their sympathizers incited boys and girls of well-to-do parents to study in Europe by dramatically saying, I quote: "Go to the Occident. There learn knowledge and sciences and bring it back with you. If you do not so, our motherland will die, we will die, Islam and Turkdom will die, all will die. It will be trodden under the feet of the Occident. It already is being trodden upon." These rhetorics aptly reveal the mentality, desires and fears of the new academic Turkish elite after the Balkan wars. Contrary to the weltschmerz or at least the grief on account of Islam's general despair in the Fin the siècle, the feeling of doom now had a primarily ethnic connotation.

Salvation was expected through education - this certainly was a constructive aspect of the Foyer movement. The Türk Yurdu in Geneva even published a detailed study guide in the Ottoman language. The enthusiasm for Western style knowledge was however closely linked to the question of maintaining and reenforcing their own nation's power. The desire for female education was revolutionary in the Muslim context, but its scope was not so much individual emancipation than to enable women and mothers to be efficient transmitters of "national" culture, and productive members of a modern nation. This new concept made professional careers of women possible for the first time.

A most significant example of a brilliant female career in close dependence of its masculine architects is Ayse Afetinan (1908-85), the adopted daughter of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, herself a Foyer or Hearth member in Ankara shortly before the Türk Ocagi was taken up by the single party regime. With some interruptions she received her high school and academic education in Lausanne and Geneva between 1925 and 1939. Member of the Turkish Historical Society and secretary of her adoptive father, she was the mouthpiece of the highly ethnocentric Turkish History Thesis, that was imposed on the academic life and text books in the authoritarian Republic in the 1930s.



III

Despite the groundbreaking change to an ethno-nationalist stance, there were many mental images and discursive features common to the Fin de sièce-generation and the 1910s-generation in the Swiss diaspora. Both believed in their vocation as elitist saviours of a not yet awakened nation, be it the millet-i Osmaniye, de facto reduced to the Muslims, or the Türk milleti. Both believed that their nation was the greatest victim of contemporary history that not only suffered tremendous losses of power and territory but was threatened by annihilation in the near future. This view was however strongly elito-centric, "annihilation" firstly meant loss of one's own power, not the misery and death of the masses. Both generations shared a social-darwinist conception of a secular apocalypse presently taking place. For both nature - in the scientific, positivist sense of the 19th century - and its so-called iron laws represented an absolute reference for human society. Organicist metaphores thus had an important place in their political language.

On the whole the new Turkish Muslim elites since the Fin de siècle turned to a right-wing paradigm of modernization, by hypostasizing a community through the term of "nation" and by adopting so called " benefits of science and civilization", but not the spirit of the Enligthenment laying behind them. Politically and culturally (over-)sensitized elite diasporas were powerful catalysts for modernist changes. The dynamics in those closed circles, surrounded by equally over-politicised and over-Europeanized students from imperial Russia, anticipated processes which in the society on the ground would have taken much longer and which, probably, would have taken another direction. The Foyers developed a previously hardly existing ethnic solidarity among elites; verbal and violent attacks against others, e. g. Armenians, strengthened their boundaries. The masculine desire to be empire-saviours and nation-builders existed at a multiple distance: far from their own country, far from the lower classes and far from the reality of the provinces - but greatly desiring to act for them all.

What today we see as dangerous ingredients of a strong and exclusive nationalism was a widespread phenomenon in the first half of the 20th century. Anti-universalist, völkisch nationalism linked with right-wing progressism was a strong paradigm for disoriented societies between the Fin de siècle and World War II. WWI is the time when universal and internationalist references dramatically collapsed. The relevant question is, where and how far this negative development could be rectified in the following decades. In the post-Ottoman world, we must say, this was much less the case than in Europe where the War itself had begun. Just like the European elites of the time, the ruling Committee of Union and Progress, which extended the War into the East, believed in war as means of salvation for what it saw as national progress. Tragically, this destructive link of war and civilization, violence and culture could not decisively be broken; the collapse of universal references not be repared; the peaceful negociation and competition of identities not be renewed in the post-Ottoman area.

To resume the title of my paper: Fleeing from a religious to an ethnic nationalism appears like jumping out of the frying pan into the fire. Nevertheless it was a logic, even if unsatisfiying step for people who were in fear of loosing everything. With WWI, the world openly denied the credible modern universal references that were needed to settle the cohabitation of different religions and cultures that coexisted nowhere so densily than in the Middle East. Culturally the post-Ottoman world could not recover from WWI. Decomposing essentialist ersatz identities - be they Turkist, Islamist or right-wing Zionist - is one of the preconditions for building up pluralist relations based on agreements, confidence and demographic realities - instead of imagined communities. However the deconstruction of essentialist images and beliefs (which so easily can be instrumentalized for power politics) will only succeed if they are replaced in society by a convincing faith in what mankind can and should be.



For more informations see Osmanische Diaspora, thematic issue of Schweizerische Zeitschrift für Geschichte, Nr. 3, 2002.

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Eurasianet.org

TAMING TURKISH NATIONALISM A CHALLENGE IN ACCUSED KILLER’S HOMETOWN
Nicholas Birch 1/26/07



The murder last week of Turkish-Armenian editor Hrant Dink continues to make waves in Turkey, with the country’s powerful Turkish Industrialists’ and Businessmen’s Association joining in national and international calls for the immediate scrapping of a law that makes it a crime "to belittle Turkishness." But the increasingly aggressive nationalism that characterizes Trabzon, the port city that is home to Dink’s suspected killer, suggests that the campaign to overturn the law could face an uphill struggle.

Article 301, as the law is called, "laid the groundwork for the assassination," said Mustafa Koç, a member of the Turkish Industrialists’ and Businessmen’s Association (TUSIAD) and the chairman of the board of Koç Holding, Turkey’s largest and most influential business group. Those who support the law, he added, speaking at the January 25 annual meeting of the TUSIAD high council, "are trying to block transition . . . resist renewal . . . surrender themselves to the current authoritarian atmosphere."

Taken to court by the same ultra-nationalists who targeted Nobel Prize winner Orhan Pamuk, Dink, the editor-in-chief of Agos newspaper, received a six-month suspended prison sentence under the law in October 2005. In the last article he ever published, the editor described the trial as a turning point in his life, writing that the law had prompted "a significant segment of the population . . . [to] view [me] as someone �insulting Turkishness.’"

Police have now detained five people in connection with Dink’s January 19 murder, including 17-year-old suspected gunman Ogun Samast, and an ultra-nationalist university student thought to be the mastermind behind the attack. [For details, see the Eurasia Insight archive].

All five detainees are from Trabzon, a fact that has convinced many inhabitants that this port town, seen as the unofficial capital of Turkey’s eastern Black Sea coastal region, is part of a sinister plot.

For those locals less inclined to conspiracy theories, it is the continuation of a nightmare that began in May 2005, when four young left-wing students narrowly avoided being beaten to death in central Trabzon by a lynch mob.

Like two smaller lynching attempts that followed it, that incident hit Turkish headlines. Then, in February 2006, Trabzon gained international notoriety after a 16-year old local boy shot and killed the Italian priest who ran the local Catholic church.

"What has happened to Trabzon?" asked the headline in the Turkish daily Radikal on January 22, a day after police, tipped off by relatives, arrested gunman Ogun Samast on a bus that would have taken him to Georgia.

Turkey was a nationalist country long before groups opposed to its European Union accession process began pumping up xenophobia. Radical nationalism of the sort that appears to have influenced Dink’s murderers has traditionally been strongest in the towns south of the 3,500-meter peaks dividing Trabzon from the bleak Anatolian interior. But it’s only recently that Trabzon has become a center for such thinking, and locals say the phenomenon is spiraling out of control.

"What you have here is a headless monster, a nursery for potential assassins," said Omer Faruk Altuntas, a lawyer and the local head of the small, left-leaning Freedom and Democracy Party.

"You may not like its policies, but at least the MHP [Milliyetçi Hareket Partisi � Nationalist Movement Party] controls its followers," agreed town councilor Mehmet Akcelep, referring to Turkey’s biggest extremist nationalist party. "But Samast and hundreds of others like him aren’t party people. They’re free operators. In part, Trabzon’s problems are Turkey’s problems. In the space of little more than a decade, the port city’s population has swollen from 150,000 to around 400,000 as farmers flee the economic deprivation of the countryside. In Pelitli, the Trabzon suburb which was home to Ogun Samast, youth unemployment is high, with only two Internet cafes in which idle youngsters can wile the time away."

Local media also play a role. When General Hilmi Ozkok, then commander-in-chief of Turkey’s armed forces, termed two Kurdish teenagers arrested for trying to burn the Turkish flag "so-called citizens," the town’s media outlets readily took up the accusation. When leftist students began distributing leaflets about prison conditions, two television stations told viewers they were separatists. Within minutes, hundreds of shopkeepers were on the street. The result was the May 2005 attempted lynching.

"Three or four times, [the local media has] pretty much invited people to take out their guns and start shooting", said Gultekin Yucesan, head of Trabzon’s Human Rights Association (IHD).

In most Anatolian towns, where people often only read local newspapers for the used car advertisements, that wouldn’t matter. But Trabzon’s ten papers and television stations are influential, for the simple reason that this is a city built around soccer.

Trabzonspor is the only non-Istanbul club ever to have won the Turkish League. Its blue and purple colors drape the city. And while everybody here supports it, some say its influence on the city is increasingly negative.

"Trabzon football has become a semi-official conduit for nationalism," said retired teacher Nuri Topal.

Locals say it’s no surprise that Ogun Samast and Yasin Hayal, the man believed to have given the teenager the gun that killed Dink, played amateur soccer for Pelitlispor.

Rumors have long circulated about the club’s links with a local mafia that got rich controlling this crucial staging post in Black Sea human trafficking networks. Just last year, the club’s best player was banned for conniving with match-fixing mafiosi.

IHD head Gultekin Yucesan describes an incident he saw at a Trabzonspor match two days after Dink’s murder.

After a couple of bad decisions by the referee, he said, one supporter shouted "Do that again and I’ll put a white hat on and blow your head off." Samast was wearing a white hat when he shot Hrant Dink.

"Trabzon must learn its lesson," proclaimed a headline in one local paper on January 22. Though for now, it is far from clear that it has.

Mehmet Samast, a distant relative of the teenager suspected of killing Dink, tells a reporter how much he regrets what has happened, how ashamed he feels. He appears to be sincere. But then, echoing the rhetoric of several nationalist parties, he goes on to say that Ogun Samast was the victim of an international plot.

"Trabzon is vital strategically," he explained. "This murder was the work of the Americans, or the Armenian Diaspora. They didn’t like [Dink] either, you know."

Writing on January 22 in the local newspaper Ilkhaber, columnist Temel Korkmaz was blunter. Since Europeans insist on calling the Kurdish separatists who kill Turkish soldiers "guerrillas," he wrote, "I’ll call the man who killed Dink a guerrilla, too."

In her January 26 column, Ece Temelkuran, a liberal columnist who writes for the national daily Milliyet, was pessimistic about Turkey’s future. Readers were evenly divided in their reactions to her earlier comments on Hrant Dink’s death, she wrote, with 50 percent supportive, 50 percent warning her to watch what she said.

But people who want to see a more open, more democratic Turkey "are not 50 percent of this country," Temelkuran wrote. "We are in a tiny minority. . . More than 200,000 people marched for Hrant Dink’s funeral. That’s good. But don’t forget that number is barely 1 percent of Istanbul’s population."

Editor's Note: Nicholas Birch specializes in Turkey, Iran and the Middle East.

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Ayse Kadioglu, "The Paradox of Turkish Nationalism and the Construction of Official Identity," Middle Eastern Studies, Vol. 32, no. 2 (April 1996)


Civilization is a book to be written internationally: Each chapter containing the culture of a single nation.
Ziya Gokalp

On an ordinary day in 1986, a group of Turkish stage actors dressed in Nazi (SS) uniforms asked randomly the people walking in the streets of Istanbul to show their identity cards. Interestingly, they had employed a mixed language semi German and semi Turkish -- in approaching these people and asked for kimlik bitte!'. What was more interesting was that the majority of the people who were approached by these actors in SS uniforms showed their identity cards without questioning any part of the staged act. The whole event was meant to be humorous, yet it also revealed the unquestioned authority of anybody dressed in a uniform in a country with a strong state tradition.

A study trying to come to grips with the official Turkish identity, first of all, makes references to the strong state tradition in this country which evolved in such a way as to stifle the civil society. It is possible to argue that in such a country, the question of national identity was hardly posed as `Who are the Turks?, but rather as `Who and/or how are the Turks going to be?'. The latter question was clearly more prevalent throughout Turkish history indicating the manufactured character of the Republican Turkish identity. Secondly, the study of official Turkish identity makes references to the paradox of Turkish nationalism. Such a paradox is a characteristic of Eastern nationalisms with a derivative discourse. In fact, it is possible to argue that the paradox of Turkish nationalism enhanced the power of the state elites in Turkey and paved the way to a manufactured, official identity.

In what follows, first of all, the paradox of Turkish nationalism will be unravelled. Secondly, the role of the state elites in Turkey, especially during the single party regime in manufacturing an official Republican ideology will be portrayed.

The theme that a patriotic Turk should try to achieve a balance between the benefits of the West and the East by opting for adopting the science and technology of the former and the spirituality of the latter is repeated quite often in the schooling system designed by the educational establishment in Turkey. This difficult endeavour is almost like a mission for every patriotic Turk. Hence, it is possible to argue that since the days of the early Westernization efforts. the Turkish psyche has been burdened with the difficult task of achieving a balance between the Western civilization and the Turkish culture. Perhaps, one can argue that the women's world is like a microcosm of this paradox ingrained within the Turkish psyche. Since the early days of Westernization at the beginning of the nineteenth century, women have been burdened with the task of being tight-rope walkers between tradition and modernity.(1) They are expected to be modern in appearance while retaining some traditional virtues such as modesty which would keep them away from stepping into men's realm. Those women who are unable to achieve such a delicate balance by either being too modern as to warrant promiscuity or by being too traditional for not keeping up with novel fashions are usually pushed to the margins of society. The former are usually portrayed as too ambitious, and promiscuous `loose women' while the latter as old-fashioned and outmoded types. The tension between modernity and tradition depicted in the behaviour and dress codes of women exists albeit in a less apparent way in other domains of the Turkish social life as well. Patriotic Turks try to resolve this tension by achieving a balance between the materiality of the West and the spirituality of the East. However, the achievement of such a balance is quite enigmatic since a combination of Western civilization and Eastern culture, when transposed to the realm of nationalism renders itself as an insoluble problem.

Partha Chatterjee identifies nationalism as a problem in the history of political ideas.(2) This is especially apparent in the deeply contradictory mission of Eastern nationalism opting for transforming a national culture by adjusting it to the requirements of progress while at the same time maintaining its distinctive identity. In trying to shed some light on to the contradiction embedded within Eastern nationalism, it is necessary to point to a distinction between Western and non-Western nationalisms that is employed quite often in the literature. Such a distinction is made by Hans Kohn, for instance, between Western and non-Western nationalisms that are referred to as good and evil nationalisms, respectively.(3) Accordingly, while the former is taken as the normal type, the latter becomes the deviant type of nationalism. One of the distinguishing characteristics of Western nationalism is its cosmopolitan outlook, universalism, and its acceptance of civilization along with the material and intellectual premises of the European Enlightenment. French nation-state that was established in 1789 emerged concomitantly with such a nationalism which `represented to the rest of continental Europe the modernity of a nation based upon individual liberty, equality, and a cosmopolitan outlook'.(4) German nationalism, on the other hand, which emerged about half a century prior to the formation of the German nation-state in 1870, acquired an ethnic and cultural character with anti-Western, anti-Enlightenment, and Romantic premises. The nationalist youth movement in Germany at the turn of the nineteenth century was fraught with the purpose of `reconstructing the yolk along more genuine and natural principles than modernity had offered'.(5) These Volkish ideas were adopted by the German youth immediately preceding the National Socialists' rise to power as well. In an analysis of the intellectual origins of the Third Reich, George Mosse maintains that the discovery of such ideological presuppositions of the German youth is much more important than the search for some individual precursors of National Socialism such as Herder, Wagner or Nietzsche.(6) German nationalism is loaded with such Volkish ideas. Perhaps, the most distinguishing feature of these ideas is the distinction they put between culture and civilization which, according to Mosse, `was always on the lips of its adherents'.(7) While regarding culture as an entity with a soul, German nationalists regarded civilization as external and artificial, a feature which had forgotten its genuine, Germanic purpose. In the words of Mosse:

The acceptance of Culture and the rejection of Civilization meant for many

people an end to alienation from their society. The word `rootedness' occurs

constantly in their vocabulary. They sought this in spiritual terms,

through an inward correspondence between the individual, the native

soil, the yolk, and the universe. In this manner the isolation they

felt so deeply would be destroyed.(8)

These people opted for `a spiritual revolution which would revitalize the nation without revolutionizing its structure', that is, `a revolution of the soul'.(9)

Both the French and the German models of nationalism and the nation-state deeply influenced the character of rising nation-states everywhere. The paradox of Eastern nationalism stems from its attempt to combine the missions of both the French and the German models. Chatterjee, who focuses on anti-colonial, Eastern nationalism, maintains that such an attempt is deeply contradictory since `It is both imitative and hostile to the model it imitates. It is imitative in that it accepts the value of the standards set by the alien culture. But it also involves a rejection . . . of ancestral ways which are seen as obstacles to progress and yet also cherished as marks of identity.(10) The search of Eastern nationalism, then, is to transform the nation culturally while at the same time retaining its distinctiveness. Such a contradictory attempt is a leitmotiv in Turkish nationalism as it evolved alongside Turkish modernization.

Turkish modernization began in the course of the eighteenth century at the end of the first systematic attempts to understand the difference between the Ottoman and the European military systems. As a result, first traces of modernization involved the establishment of disciplined troops trained upon the recommendations of Western, mostly French, advisers in an effort to replace the janissaries that had become an organic part of the state rather than its instrument. At the turn of the nineteenth century, modernization involved areas other than the military as well. Between 1839 and 1908, the reforms increasingly involved civilian matters that resulted in the `revamping of the civil and political institutions of the Ottomans'.(11) These reforms were introduced by the Tanzimat Charter which was proclaimed by Sultan Abdulmecid in 1839. Tanzimat reforms which involved a major reorganization at the levels of provincial administration, education, and the judiciary brought the Ottomans to a point of no return towards institutional modernization. The ultimate aim of the Tanzimat reformers was the achievement of sivilizasyon as seen through French eyes.(12) This aim later became the slogan of the Republican reforms in the 1920s that strove to elevate Turkey to the level of muasir medeniyet (contemporary civilization).

With the initiation of Tanzimat reforms, the dilemma of the achievement of a balance between the materiality of the West and the spirituality of the East became quite clear. The main problematique of the Tanzimat writers was the achievement of a balance between these reforms and Islamic teachings by delineating the possibility of a compatibility between the two. The writings of the Young Ottomans -- a new literary movement that was inspired by French writing -- became crucial in coming to terms with the ongoing modernization by focusing on such a balance. The extent of modernization and its compatibility with Islam, for instance, constituted the problematique of the writings of Namik Kemal (1840-88), a leading young Ottoman.

In a study that focuses on the implications of the Tanzimat reforms on women, Nilufer Gole depicts a similar theme within the literary movements of the period that opt for achieving a balance between the materiality of the West and the spirituality of the East.(13) She maintains that authors like Namik Kemal, Ahmet Midhat, who thought with the conventions of West-East, and/or a la Franca-a la Turca, distinguished between the good and the bad aspects of the Western civilization corresponding to its material and spiritual aspects, respectively. These authors opted for a balance between Islam and Western civilization by making references to the practices associated with the early, golden age of Islam (Asr-i Saadet). In so doing, they tried to manifest the compatibility between Islamic culture and Western civilization. Tanzimat writers were critical of the adoption of certain Western codes of conduct and life styles on the part of the Ottoman elites. All the debates regarding modernization and Westernization were, in fact, about how to set limitations to this process. As ,Serif Mardin puts it:

One of the questions raised was the extent to which European or western

civilization is an indivisible force . . . Every time the question came up,

whether in the nineteenth century or in the twentieth, the idea of equality

as a fundamental value of the Ottoman system emerged as one which competed

with the idea of an untrammeled bourgeoisie. This is possibly one of the

subtlest strains of `survivals' which cannot be neglected in considering the

position of Turkey vis-a-vis Western Europe. In the nineteenth century, one of

its manifestations was the disapproving attitude of much of the Ottoman

middle- and lower-class population towards the behaviour of westernized

Tanzimat statesmen. Ottoman grandees who had borne the responsibility and

the risk of initiating new policies had also developed Western European

consumption patterns. Crinolines, pianos, dining tables and living-room

furniture were new ideas which the official class soon adopted, and these

were often seen as foolish luxuries by the section of the population that had

lived on the modest standards imposed by traditional values.(14)

It is obvious that a seemingly cosmetic Westernization adopted by the Ottoman elites was only skin-deep. Nevertheless, it generated criticism in the society that was crystallized in the Tanzimat literary tradition. Cosmetic Westernization was criticized as imitation of Western ways. It was also maintained that modernization was possible without resorting to Western codes of conduct that were usually portrayed as ridiculous for being artificial and phony.

Since the literary tradition between Tanzimat and the Republic is like a gold mine in unravelling the problematique of modernization/Westernization, it is worthwhile to refer to a couple of cases in this context. One of the most important novels written at the end of the nineteenth century that focuses on the theme of the extent of Westernization is Felatun Bey ile Rakim Efendi by Ahmet Midhat which was published in 1876.(15) The main theme of the novel is the description of the difference between an imitative, cosmetic Westernization which is ridiculed as phony and a rather preferred one which is characterized by a relentless effort to hold on to indigenous cultural traits. Whereas Felatun Bey is portrayed as an archetype of the former, Rakim Efendi represents the latter trend. Felatun Bey, for instance, prefers the name Plato rather than the Ottoman Felatun. He is the heir to an abundant inheritance and spends his life on the European side of Istanbul gambling and entertaining with women. Rakim Efendi, on the other hand spends his time working diligently in order to achieve his goal of leading a modest life. He is someone who was sent to school as a result of the self-sacrificing efforts of his guardian. He not only graduated from Ottoman educational institutions but also studied French. He is a serious, hard-working person, in contrast to the affluent, flagrant and spend-thrift Felatun Bey. It is obvious that Rakim Efendi represents a preferred model of Westernization without falling into the trap of engaging in conspicuous consumption and by retaining distinctive traits such as modesty.

Another well-known example is Bihruz Bey, an ostentatious Western character in Recaizade Ekrem's novel Araba Serdasi which was published in 1896.(16) Bihruz Bey is a man who became a public official through his father's connections despite the fact that he was a lazy, incompetent, fool for Western materialism. He inherits his father's fortunes which is more than adequate in guaranteeing a comfortable life for him and his mother on the European side of Istanbul. Bihruz Bey refers to Turkish customs as barbaric. He makes fun of the traditional costumes of the Turks. He, on the other hand, dresses himself in the European style with expensive, tailored costumes. He spends his fortune on carriages to roam around in the style of the European aristocrats. He constantly makes remarks in French. In short, he behaves and lives like a French noblesse de robe in Istanbul at the end of the nineteenth century. The Bihruz Bey syndrome which is so eloquently depicted in Recaizade Ekrem's novel generates a criticism against such cosmetic Westernization.

It is obvious that there were many Bihruz Beys in the Ottoman society at that particular historical juncture who were characterized by their imitative Westernization. The criticisms that were directed against them focused on their exaggerated adoption of Western materialism at the expense of indigenous cultural traits. The criticisms that were directed against Felatun Beys and Bihruz Beys point to the evolution of what Mardin calls the `just discourse' in Turkish society.(17) Drawing on the dichotomous classification of the Ottoman Empire with an elite stratum of military and civilian establishment on the one hand, and a folk stratum of the administered, on the other, Mardin maintains that the ensuing duality appears in a number of guises that sets a neat separation between Ottoman political society and civil society. In raising the issue of the `cause of the just' or the `just discourse', Mardin portrays `the lingering modern feeling that the folk are a part of a `team of the just"'.(18) More significantly, Mardin points to the way the `just discourse' is embedded within the Islamic discourse in modern Turkey enabling the folk to seek protection from the changes introduced by Western-oriented Republican reforms. Hence, the rift between the teams of the unjust and the just was produced and reproduced in the course of the modernization of the Ottomans, representing the `high', `palace' culture or the culture of the elites and the `little', `folk' culture, respectively.

It is obvious that with modernization efforts while the `cause of the unjust' was affiliated with the Westernizing elites -- hence critically portraying their affluent and spend-thrift life styles, `the cause of the just' which is characterized by a sense of grievance gradually began to be embraced by the Islamic discourse. The reforms introduced by the young Turks and the Republicans which continued a modernizing trend that was set with Tanzimat, purported to replace from above the Islamic teachings about a `good and just' life.(19) This eventually paved the way to the identification of the Kemalist secularists with the rule of the unjust. The Republican regime simply could not fill the vacuum that was formed with the estrangement and delinking of the discourses of the just and the unjust from each other.

A preoccupation with this balance between modernity and tradition, Western materialism and Eastern spirituality as well as Civilization -- based on the premises of Enlightenment -- and Culture -- based on the premises of Romanticism -- is a recurring theme accompanying Turkish modernization. The desire to achieve such a balance is nowhere better expressed than in Ziya Gokalp's (1876-1924) works. Ziya Gokalp's ideas were wavering between the three trends of Islamism, Turkism, and Westernism, hence, reflecting the political climate of the context in which he was located. As Niyazi Berkes puts it: `He was fighting within himself the battle that intellectuals and politicians were raging on other levels'.(20)

Ziya Gokalp produced his basic writings between the years 1911 and 1918 when he was associated with the Party of Union and Progress against the emotional background of the period laden with nationalist movements among the non-Muslim and non-Turkish peoples of the decadent Ottoman Empire. While on the one hand, there were those intellectuals and politicians who opted for a social reconstruction by way of reversion to Sriat (Islamic law), there were those who staunchly supported the idea of Westernization, on the other. In addition to these two groups, there were others who longed for the romantic ideal of the pre-Islamic Turkic unity. Ziya Gokalp was influenced by all of these trends. Yet, he envisaged a middle road in the tradition of Namik Kemal: `that only the material civilization of Europe should be taken and not its non-material aspects'.(21) Yet, contrary to Namik Kemal's thought, Ziya Gokalp did not think that the individual and his reason could be a criteria for social reconstruction. Ziya Gokalp rather signified a shift from Tanzimat rationalism inspired by the eighteenth century thinkers of the European Enlightenment to the nineteenth century Romantic thought in the tradition of the German philosophers by accepting the transcendental reality of society identified with the nation instead of individual reason. Berkes sums up Ziya Gokalp's convictions in the following manner: `As the ultimate reality of contemporary society is the nation, and as national ideals are ultimate forces orienting the behavior of the individuals, so the most urgent task for the Turks consisted of awakening as a nation in order to adapt themselves to the conditions of contemporary civilization'.(22)

Ziya Gokalp believed that it was the primary task of sociology to determine `what the Turkish people already possessed or lacked to be a modern nation'.(23) He diagnosed the major ailment of the existing cultural climate in Turkey within the dichotomous representations of the East and the West. Accordingly, he believed in the necessity of an adjustment between the two aspects of social life, namely civilization and culture. Ziya Gokalp believed that civilization simply became a matter of mechanical imitation without a cultural basis. The source of cultural values was located in the social unit that he called `nation' Hence, he tried to give momentum to the rise of the concept of a modern Turkish nation as an independent cultural unit within the confines of contemporary civilization. He placed a lot of emphasis on the concept of `nation in coming to terms with the adjustment of culture and civilization. Ziya Gokalp's analyses contained the premises of both Enlightenment and Romanticism symbolized in the concepts of civilization and culture, respectively. By the same token, the nationalism that he described contained elements of individual liberty, rational cosmopolitanism, and universalism while at the same time tended for its own self-preservation. In short, it contained elements of both a cosmopolitan French nationalism and an organic, anti-Western and anti-enlightenment German nationalism. This paradoxical synthesis, first of all, posed the national question in the Turkish context as an insoluble problem; secondly it assigned a particular role to the refined intellect in transforming the popular consciousness by an elitist project from above. The latter had paved the way to the evolution of an official Turkish identity within the confines of a peculiar Turkish nationalism that was adopted in the course of the formative years of the Turkish Republic.

The national question poses itself theoretically as an insoluble problem in the Turkish context. Chatterjee explains the theoretical insolubility of the national question in colonial countries by pointing to a distinction between the thematic and problematic levels of nationalist thought. In so doing, Chatterjee draws a great deal from Anouar Abdel-Malek's distinction between the thematic and problematic levels of Orientalism.(24) Accordingly, Orientalism at the level of the thematic is `codified in linguistic conventions'.(25) It is a style of thought based on an ontological and epistemological distinction between the Orient and the Occident, the East and the West. Orientalism, at the level of the problematic, on the other hand, involves a separation of the Orient as an object of study stamped with an otherness that is passive and non-participant. Edward Said's description of Flaubert's encounter with an Egyptian courtesan, which produced a widely influential model of an Oriental woman portrays Orientalism at the level of the problematic:

. . . she never spoke of herself, she never represented her emotions,

presence, or history. He spoke for and represented her. He was foreign,

comparatively wealthy, male and these were historical facts of domination

that allowed him not only to possess Kuchuk Hanem physically but to speak

for her and tell his readers in what way she was `typically Oriental'.(26)

It is obvious that Said's description points to a power relation between the Orient and the Occident that enables the latter to dominate the former. Therefore, the subjectivity of the object is denied to him/her. Orientalism at the level of the problematic is analogous to `an understanding of meaning in terms of the subjective intentions that lie behind particular speech acts.'(27)

When these two levels of Orientalism are transposed to the nationalist thought, the compatibility between the two levels extinguishes. At the level of the thematic, nationalist thought adopts the same essentialist distinction between the Orient and the Occident or the East and the West. Therefore, the object still retains the essentialist Oriental character. Yet, at the level of the problematic, the nationalist thought, quite contrary to Orientalism, relinquishes the subjectivity of the object who thenceforth is no longer passive, and non-participant. Since the subject is the advocate of an anti-colonial, anti-Western nationalist cause, `he is seen to possess a "subjectivity" which he can himself "make".'(28) The active, autonomous, sovereign subject is burdened with the mission of carrying an anti-colonial nationalist movement at the level of the problematic. It is obvious that in the nationalist discourse while the object retains its essentialist, passive Oriental character at the level of the thematic which condemns its subjectivity, it is also positioned in an active role in the anti-colonial nationalist struggle at the level of the problematic. These two levels of nationalist thought are inherently contradictory. It is this contradictoriness which places the national question as an insoluble problem in a post-colonial country. As Chatterjee puts its: `There is, consequently, an inherent contradictoriness in nationalist thinking, because it reasons within a framework of knowledge whose representational structure corresponds to the very structure of power nationalist thought seeks to repudiate.'(29)

Despite the fact that Turkey was not a colony, a similar contradictoriness and insolubility results from the adoption of a Westernization project while at the same time clinging on to distinctive cultural traits. The paradox of Turkish nationalism which resulted in both a hostility towards and an imitation of Western ways has accompanied the modernization process since the turn of the nineteenth century. Accordingly, it is quite obvious that Turkish nationalism was not the awakening of Turks to national consciousness. It was rather a project undertaken by intellectuals whose discourse was laden with the dilemma of a choice between imitation and identity stemming from the aforementioned paradox. The intellectuals, in Chatterjee's words,

always face the crucial dilemma between `westernizing' and a narodnik

tendency . . . But the dilemma is quite spurious: ultimately the movements

invariably contain both elements, a genuine modernism and a more or less

spurious concern for local culture . . . By the twentieth century, the dilemma

hardly bothers anyone: the philosopher-kings of

the `underdeveloped' world all act as westernizers, and all talk like

narodniks.(30)

The superior material qualities of the West, its science and technology, however, can only be synthesized with the spirituality of the East with a project from without' which necessarily involves the intellectuals who take upon themselves the task of transforming a popular consciousness `steeped in centuries of superstition and irrational folk religion'.(31) By adopting a positivistic stance that was intolerant towards the religio-mystical tradition, the Republican elites in Turkey instigated a distancing of popular, religious elements that thenceforth represented the `cause of the just.'

The proclamation of the Republic in 1923 was followed by the abolition of the office of the caliphate in 1924. Other steps were taken in the course of the 1920s and early 1930s towards secularizing the Republic. These included the abolition of the Ministry of Religious Affairs and Pious Foundations, abolition of religious courts, proscription of male religious headgear, namely the fez, dissolution of the dervish orders, reform of the calendar, and adoption of the Swiss Civil Code. By the end of the 1920s, radical reforms were passed such as disestablishment of the state religion (10 April 1928), adoption of the Latin alphabet (1 November 1928), and the use of the Turkish language in the Islamic call to prayer (3 February 1932).(32) These reforms constituted an onslaught on the existing cultural practices. They opted for a general state of amnesia which would lead to a process of estrangement of the people from some of their own cultural practices. Feroz Ahmad refers to the adoption of the Latin alphabet in place of the Arabic script as the `most iconoclastic reform of the period.'(33) He says: `At a stroke, even the literate people were cut off from their past. Overnight, virtually the entire nation was made illiterate'.(34)

The notion of an Islamic state was anathema to the Republican elites organized around the Republican People's Party. They wanted Turkey to reach to the level of contemporary civilization by emphasizing notions such as science, modern education, rationality and secularism. The 1920s and the 1930s were crucial years in the making of the new Republican Turkey and the emergence of the `new Turks'.(35) In the course of this transformation, there were certain critical turning points that portrayed the gradually increasing conflict between the state and the civil society. In fact, one of the first opposition parties that was founded in November 1924, the Progressive Republican Party -- led by ax-officers like Ali Fuad Cebesoy and Rauf Orbay, opted for `restoring the sovereignty of the people over that of the state'.(36) The Progressive Republicans declared their commitment to liberalism and promised to respect religious opinions and beliefs. Yet, their attempts to pose themselves as a viable opposition failed when an extraordinary law -- Takrir-i Sukun Kanunu (the Law for the Maintenance of Order) -- was passed in March 1925 as a response to a Kurdish rebellion that broke out in eastern Anatolia in February. Thereafter, all the opposition to the Kemalist regime was either crushed or was `created' by the regime itself which was acting as a `referee'. After prompting the establishment of the token Republican Free Party in 1930 as the opposition, Ataturk advised the leaders of the two political parties (Ismet Inonu and Fethi Okyar) in the following manner: `I am now a father. Both of you are my sons. As far as I am concerned there is no difference between the two of you. What I want from you in the Grand National Assembly is an open debate upon national issues.'(37)

The February 1925 rebellion was launched and sustained in religious terms. It confirmed the fears of the Republican leaders of religious reaction and counter-revolution in a society in which a revolution was being realized from above. The Law for the Maintenance of Order gave the government virtually absolute powers for the next two years and on other occasions until March 1929. The 1924 rebellion and the ensuing extraordinary legislation was a dress rehearsal of the dynamics of the Republican regime which was determined by the undisputed principle of the indivisibility of the country. It was through such critical turning points that the Republican regime finally established itself in a centralized fashion.

Another fuming point which furthered the centralization of the Republican regime was the incident in Menemen, near Izmir, in November 1930, where a violent reaction erupted which was directed against the secular military-bureaucratic elites. The disturbance began when a reserve officer in the local gendarmerie was sent to Menemen to quell a disturbance caused by Dervis Mehmed of the Naksibendi mystical order who claimed that he was the Mahdi, who had come to save the world. The reserve officer was seized by the raging crowd, beheaded, and his head was stuck on a flag pole and paraded around the town. The Menemen incident is critical in channelling the subsequent route of the Republican regime since it made it quite clear to the Republican elites that the reforms that were undertaken in the 1920s had not taken root. It manifested in no uncertain terms the erasure of the link between the causes of the unjust and the just, manifested in the centre and the periphery, respectively. As Mardin puts it: `. . . between 1923 and 1946 the periphery -- in the sense of the provinces -- was suspect and because it was considered an area of potential disaffection, the political center kept it under close observation'.(38)

In the period after 1930, the efforts of the Republican elites were more systematically geared towards creating a new ideology. In May 1931, the ideology of Kemalism was launched in accordance with the principles adopted at the Third Party Congress of the Republican People's Party. Accordingly, the six fundamental and unchanging principles of the regime were defined as Republicanism, Nationalism, Populism, Statism, Secularism and Revolutionism/Reformism. The insignia of the six arrows of the Republican Peoples' Party represent the premises of the Turkish Republic that were formulated at that time. Since liberalism and democracy had already been discredited in the eyes of the Republican elites in the 1930s due to the instability of the regimes in Western Europe, they were not included within the founding principles of the Republic. Moreover, the principles of liberalism and democracy did not coincide with the interests of the Republican elites internally since they were constantly trying to tighten their grip on the periphery. The efforts of the Republican elites to create a systematic ideology led to the publication of a monthly called Kadro. Kadro, which began publication in Ankara in January 1932, aimed at `creating an ideology original to the regime'.(39) The Kemalist regime tightened its grip over the periphery in the aftermath of revolts such as the 1925 Kurdish rebellion -- which was actually a religious reaction -- and the 1930 Menemen incident. In fact, the dynamics of events that paved the way to overt attempts at creating a Republican ideology from above manifested a latent fear of the Kemalist elites that Anatolia would be split on primordial group lines.(40) That fear channelled the Kemalist elites towards further social engineering.

By 1930, it was generally agreed by the Republican elites that the reforms that were undertaken in the course of the 1920s had not taken root. This problem was to be remedied with further reforms from above that were geared towards creating a new Turk. The emerging new Turkish identity, then, was distinguished by its manufactured character. Turks were a `made' nation by virtue of emphasizing their difference from the Ottomans along the similar Jacobin lines that the French revolutionaries followed in creating the Frenchman. The fervent desire to break with the past was clearly manifested in the ensuing reforms. From 1923 onwards, the new Turks were to be governed from their new capital at the heart of Anatolia, Ankara, in a mental state that was havoc and can perhaps best be described as `voluntary amnesia'. The Republican state had the mission of elevating people to the level of contemporary civilization. Since any peripheral revolt was interpreted as an effort to revive the old religious order, Republican reforms contained anti-religious themes or in the words of Mardin `showed a clear distaste for religion'.(41) The plain fact remained, however, that the Kemalist ideology could not replace Islam in the lives of the people. The teachings of the Kemalist doctrine were internalized only by the intelligentsia which contributed to the widening of the rift between the center and the periphery.

The Republican elites' attempts to create an ideology was only skin-deep and not espoused by all the classes. The Republic was founded upon principles that were not genuine but were rather manufactured from above. In short, the Republic was not democratic. Democracy was not one of the six arrows of the Republican People's Party.

In the aftermath of the military coup on 12 September 1980, a trend was set in Turkey towards challenging the early Kemalist principles. Such a trend was set in the political atmosphere created in the aftermath of the 1982 Constitution which curbed the number of categories of the state elites, that is, the appointed rather than elected bureaucratic and military elites. The evolution of the Turkish democracy involved a constant conflict between the state elites and political elites, namely, the elected representatives of political parties, who emphasized the vertical and horizontal dimensions of democracy, respectively.(42) It is obvious that an undue stress on the vertical dimension maintaining the long-term interests of the community paves the way to the evolution of strong states that block the development of pluralism and/or civil society. An undue stress on the horizontal dimension, i.e. political participation, leads to debilitating pluralism. Hence the problematique of democracy lies in the achievement of a balance between these two dimensions. In the words of Metin Heper:

The problematique democracy faces is the necessity of striking a balance

between political participation and prudent leadership. By definition,

increased participation democratizes political regimes, but the

consolidation of democracy necessitates the less dramatic but equally

significant process of the emergence of a prudent, not merely a responsive

government.(43)

It is obvious that the state elites reinstituted their powers throughout Turkish political history whenever they felt that the political elites gained too much independence. Hence, the political elites were allowed to play their roles in a system in which the state elites had traditionally been more established. Since the time of the drafting of the early Republican principles the state elites had always felt that they had the last word on vital matters. They took it upon themselves to protect the early Republican ideals that came to be symbolized in the six arrows of the Republican People's Party. Hence, the three military interventions (1960-61, 1971-73, 1980-83) were undertaken in order to reinstitute these early ideals that the political elites had ostensibly ignored. The tradition of resolving the conflict between the state elites and the political elites by reinstituting the powers of the former and by punishing the latter had among other things led to the mystification of an official, absolute, and monolithic Turkish identity.

The 1980s opened up a new chapter in Turkey's political dynamics. Many international and internal factors were influential in prompting this opening. The end of Cold War rhetoric, the opening up of new foreign policy arenas for Turkey, globalization and a score of internal factors pertaining to the Turkish political structure heralded this new era in Turkish politics.(44) Perhaps one of the most critical consequences of the process of globalization is the shattering of homogenous, standardized cultures in an international order whose main political actors were the nation-states. Globalization paradoxically led to the emergence of local identities. The liberal economic policies which were adopted in Turkey in the early 1980s were geared towards global integration. This process was accelerated by the exposure of the Turkish public to global television channels such as CNN and BBC. Moreover, the emergence of various Turkish television channels has lessened the importance of the official Turkish Radio and Television that had been instrumental in maintaining the monolithic Turkish identity.

The internal political dynamics set in the post-1980 period had certain characteristics which connected Turkey with the international global medium. First of all, the post-1983 regime strengthened the political elites in Turkey as a prelude to further democratization. Secondly, the new discourse of the state elites began to make references to the significance of the Islamic identity of the Turks. This discourse led to the abandonment of Kemalism as a political manifesto. It is true that Kemalist principles were still emphasized in this period although not for the sake of creating a monolithic Turkish identity but rather arresting the spread of Marxism, fascism, and religious fundamentalism. The new discourse of the state elites, on the other hand, were laden with references to the significance of religious values for the Turks. Such references represented a stark contrast when compared with the early Kemalist-secular discourse of the state elites. Despite the fact that such a shift was probably prompted by an urge to fight communism rather than by a genuine renewed interest in Turkish identity, it led to a legitimation of the `cause of the just' represented by the Islamic periphery. Islam had finally been brought from the periphery to the centre of Turkish politics as the antidote of communism. Thirdly, many civil societal elements were able to find for themselves a breathing space in this medium in which the grip of the centre over the periphery was gradually being removed. This has led to the emergence of women activists marching to protest against being battered by men, environmentalists, homosexuals and transsexuals seeking the protection of their rights, and Islamic university students protesting against university dress codes. The mushrooming of such civil societal elements coupled with the new mission of the technocratic elites of the 1980s who `defined their goal less in terms of educating the people than of synthesizing Islamic values and pragmatic rationality' gave rise to a political climate that allowed the search for a more historically rooted Turkish identity.(45)

In the course of these developments there also emerged those groups who were critical of these shifts in the discourse of the state elites and expressed a clear wish for the reinstitution of the official Turkish identity which was viewed as secular, nationalist, statist, republican, populist, and reformist in an early Republican sense. The debates and clashes between the Kemalist-secular groups and others who are tolerant towards religious images have begun to represent the newly polarized political cleavages in Turkey in the 1990s.

It is meaningful to refer at this point to the manner in which the Westernist and Islamic discourses are interwoven in the Turkish context in spite of the fact that both trends in their current political manifestations are waging a war to exclude one another. In other words, while the secular Westernists are increasingly becoming more hostile to religious images by relying on and commodifying the image of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the religious groups are increasing their attacks on the decadent Western culture. Ironically, Ataturk who set the trajectory of Turkish modernization towards a zealous Westernization, had never abandoned the rhetoric of a synthesis between the West and Islam. In fact, he adopted for himself and for the Turkish military the title gazi' (connoting a crusading spirit shared by the Muslims who waged wars against the infidel). Ironically, the syntactic and semantic structure of the discourse of the Islamists who have attacked the decadence of the West of the past decade is laden with representations of post-Enlightenment rational thought. Ismet Ozel, for instance, who is a prominent Islamic poet in Turkey has titled his autobiography: Waldo, Sen Neden Burada Degilsin? (Waldo, Why Aren't You Here?), which is a statement made by an American thinker Henry David Thoreau when his friend Ralph Waldo Emerson came to visit him in jail.(46)

The above analysis endeavoured to show the connections between the paradox of Turkish nationalism and the emergence of a Jacobin, `managerial' intelligentsia during the early years of the Republic. Turkish nationalism contained the premises of an Enlightenment mentality as well as a brand of Romanticism. It purported to synthesize the materialism of the West and certain indigenous cultural traits such as Islam, as well as pre-Islamic Turkic traditions. The origins of the attempts to realize such a synthesis date back to the beginnings of Turkish modernization with the Tanzimat reforms. Such a synthesis could only be realized by a social engineering from above that was undertaken by the early Republican elites. The early Republican reforms which were represented in the Republican People's Party's six arrows contained a clear distaste for religion. The reforms instigated during the early Republican years represented a turning point regarding the managerial role of the state geared towards revamping the old social institutions. It is at this historical juncture that the links between the discourse of the periphery and the centre were erased. The early Republican project of social engineering reproduced itself whenever there emerged peripheral revolts challenging the unquestioned authority of the centre. Even the opposition parties were founded in accordance with the limitations posed by the ruling centre. The Republican state which fostered a Jacobin mentality, led to the creation of an official, monolithic, absolute Turkish identity either by suppressing or by ignoring the multiple identities that came to be imprisoned in the periphery.

The political climate that prevailed in the 1980s and the early 1990s has opened the Kemalist Pandora's box out of which have emerged multiple identities making references to the different sects of Islam and the Kurds. It remains to be seen whether the political dynamics. of Turkey have reached a point of no return in this context.

NOTES

(1.) On the issue of women's paradox between tradition and modernity, see Ayse Kadioglu, Women's Subordination in Turkey: Is Islam Really the Villain', Middle East Journal. Vol.48, No.4 (Autumn 1994), pp.645-61: Ayse Kadioglu, `Alaturkalik ile Iffetsizlik Arsinda Birey Olarak Kadin' (Women Between Being Traditional and Unchaste). Gorus, No.9 (May 1993), pp.58-62. (2.) Partha Chatterjee, Nationalist Thought and the Colonial World: A Derivative Discourse (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993). (3.) See, for instance, Ken Wolf, `Hans Kohn's Liberal Nationalism: The Historian as Prophet', Journal of the History of Ideas, Vol.37, No.4 (Oct.-Dee. 1976), pp.651-72. (4.) Hans Kohn, Prelude to Nation-States, The French and German Experience, 1789-1815 (New Jersey: D. Van Nostrand Company, Inc., 1967). p.2. (5.) George L. Mosse, The Crisis of German Ideology: Intellectual Origins of the Third Reich (New York: Schocken Books, 1981), p.6. See also, Ayse Kadioglu, `Devletinin Araryan Millet: Almanya Ornegi' (A Nation in Search of its State: the German Case), Toplum ve Bilim, No.62 (Yaz-Guz 1993), pp.95-112. (6.) George L. Mosse, The Crisis of German Ideology. (7.) Ibid., p.6. (8.) Ibid. (9.) Ibid., p.7. (10.) Partha Chatterjee, Nationalist Thought and the Colonial World, p.2. (11.) Serif Mardin, `European Culture and the Development of Modern Turkey', Ahmet Evin and Geoffrey Denton (eds.), Turkey and the European Community (Leske, Budrich: Opladen, 1990), pp.13-23, esp.15. (12.) Ibid., p.16. (13.) Nilufer Gole, Modern Mahrem: Medeniyet ve Ortunme (Modern Privacy: Civilization and the Veil), (Istanbul: Metis Yayinlari), 1991, pp. 11-47. (14.) Serif Mardin, `European Culture and the Development of Modern Turkey', p.18. (15.) See Serif Mardin, Turk Modernlesmesi (Turkish Modernization), (Istanbul: Iletisim Yayinlari, 1991), pp.36 37, for a review of Felatun Rey and Rakrm Efendi within the context of Turkish modernization. (16.) Ibid., pp.37 40. (17.) Serif Mardin, `The lust and the Unjust', Daedalus, Journal of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Vol.120, No.3 (Summer 1991), pp.113-29. (18.) Ibid., p.114 (19.) Ibid., p.126. (20.) Niyazi Berkes (ed.), Turkish Nationalism and Western Civilization: Selected Essays of Ziya Gokalp (Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, Publishers, 1959), p.20. (21.) Ibid., p.21. (22.) Ibid, p.22. (23.) Ibid. (24.) Partha Chatterjee, Nationalist Thought and the Colonial World, pp.36 53. Chatterjee draws his analysis from the works of Edward W. Said, Orientalism (New York: Vintage Books, A Division of Random House, 1979) and Anouar Abdel-Malek, `Orientalism in Crisis', Diogenes, No.44 (winter 1963), pp.102-40. Chatterjee points to a characterization of Orientalism by Abdel-Malek at the level of the thematic and the problematic that was largely adopted by Said. (25.) Partha Chatterjee, Nationalist Thought and the Colonial World, p.39. (26.) Edward W. Said. Orientalism, p.6 (italics as in the original text). (27.) Partha Chatterjee, Nationalist Thought and the Colonial World, p.39. (28.) Ibid., p.38. (29.) Ibid. (30.) Ibid., p.4 (italics as in the original text). (31.) Ibid., p.51. (32.) Serif Mardin, `European Culture and the Development of Modern Turkey', p.20. (33.) Feroz Ahmad, The Making of Modern Turkey (London and New York: Routledge, 1993), p.80. (34.) Ibid. (35.) Eleanor Bisbee, The New Turks: Pioneers of The Republic, 1920-1950 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1951). (36.) Feroz Ahmad, The Making of Modern Turkey, p.57. (37.) Cited in Metin Heper, The Stare Tradition in Turkey (Walkington, UK: The Eothen Press, 1985), p.52. (38.) Serif Mardin, `Center-Periphery Relations: A Key to Turkish Politics?', Daedalus, Journal of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Vol.102, No.1 (Winter 1973), pp.169-91, esp.182. (39.) Feroz Ahmad, The Making of Modern Turkey, p.65. (40.) Serif Mardin, `Center-Periphery Relations: A Key to Turkish Politics?', p. 177. (41.) Serif Mardin, `European Culture and the Development of Modern Turkey', p.21. (42.) Metin Heper, `Trials and Tribulations of Democracy in the Third Turkish Republic', Metin Heper and Ahmet Evin (eds.), Politics in the Third Turkish Republic, pp.23 1-41, esp.231. (43.) Metin Heper, `Transition to Democracy in Turkey: Toward a New Pattern', Metin Heper and Ahmet Evin (eds.), Politics in the Third Turkish Republic (Boulder, San Francisco, Oxford: Westview Press, 1994), pp.13-20, esp. 13. (44.) See Metin Heper, `Trials and Tribulations of Democracy in the Third Turkish Republic', and also Metin Heper, `"Ikinci Cumhuriyet" Tartismalari Uzerine' (On the Second Republic Debates), Turkiye Gunlugu, No.20 (Guz 1992), pp.31-5. (45.) Nilufer Gole, `Towards an Autonomization of Politics and Civil Society in Turkey', Metin Heper and Ahmet Evin (eds), Politics in the Third Turkish Republic, pp.213-22, esp.213. (italics as in the original text). (46.) Serif Mardin elaborates on this point in `The lust and the Unjust'.


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[Orphic_Hymn]

Not exactly related to nationalism, but it show why there are so many little facists being bread in the country.

Mayor sacked for providing multilingual services
Saturday, June 16, 2007

The Council of State dismisses the mayor of Sur and disbands the municipal assembly for deciding to provide services in Kurdish, Assyrian and English, in addition to Turkish

ANKARA – Turkish Daily News

The country's top administrative court late on Thursday dismissed the mayor of Sur, Abdullah Demirbaş, in Diyarbakır and disbanded the municipal assembly over deciding to provide their services in Kurdish, Assyrian and English languages in addition to Turkish � arguing that the municipality had violated the constitution by doing so.

The Council of State Eighth Bureau assessed the application lodged by the Interior Ministry and was unanimous in deciding the verdict. It argued that the municipality's decision violated the constitution and Turkish law and that it could not be described as a right in the context of the European Local Governments Autonomy rule. The municipality's decision was a overstepping of its rights, the court stated.

The Diyarbakır Prosecutor's Office had filed a complaint against the Sur mayor, some assembly members and Diyarbakır Mayor Osman Baydemir, who approved the municipality's decision. Twenty-one people, including the two mayors, are currently on trial facing charges that carry a prison term of up to three-and-a-half years each.

In recent years, Turkey has passed several reform packages, allowing the teaching of Kurdish. However the constitution states that no language apart from Turkish can be used in public services.


Turkish Daily