The great powers and the water dispute in the Middle East: A prelude to the six day war

The definition of Turkish nationhood after the founding of the Republic has been evaluated and labelled very differently by various scholars. The classical view paralleled the official representation of Republican policies in describing Turkish nationhood as being based on a civic and territorial understanding of nationality. More recent and much more critical scholarship, which enjoys a near-hegemonic position in the study of Turkish nationalism today, claims that the official definition of Turkish nationhood has a clearly identifiable mono-ethnic orientation, manifest in a series of policies and institutions. This article argues that the definition of Turkish nationhood as manifest in state policies is neither territorial nor mono-ethnic, but rather ironically for the adamantly secular Turkish republic, the definition of Turkish nationhood is mono-religious and anti-ethnic, in striking continuity with the Islamic millet under the Ottoman Empire. The reason critical scholars perceive Turkish nationhood as mono-ethnic might stem from the dichotomous view of nationalisms as civic versus ethnic, a dichotomy that has recently been repudiated by some of its erstwhile proponents. Supremacy of the religious over ethnic categories in Turkey, as a historical legacy of the Ottoman millet system, might be applicable to most post-Ottoman states in the Islamic Middle East and North Africa, in contrast to the interplay of ethnicity and religion in Western Europe. This view of Turkish nationhood is confirmed by a dozen interviews that the author conducted with members of the political and intellectual elite of different ideological orientations in Turkey. It is then demonstrated how the new efforts at reformulating modern Turkish identity with reference to Ottoman and Islamic conceptions lead to new inclusion–exclusion dynamics with the Kurds and the Alevis, suggesting that a truly inclusive reformulation has to follow secular and territorial principles.     

Surname narratives and the state–society boundary: Memories of Turkey's family name law of 1934

The definition of Turkish nationhood after the founding of the Republic has been evaluated and labelled very differently by various scholars. The classical view paralleled the official representation of Republican policies in describing Turkish nationhood as being based on a civic and territorial understanding of nationality. More recent and much more critical scholarship, which enjoys a near-hegemonic position in the study of Turkish nationalism today, claims that the official definition of Turkish nationhood has a clearly identifiable mono-ethnic orientation, manifest in a series of policies and institutions. This article argues that the definition of Turkish nationhood as manifest in state policies is neither territorial nor mono-ethnic, but rather ironically for the adamantly secular Turkish republic, the definition of Turkish nationhood is mono-religious and anti-ethnic, in striking continuity with the Islamic millet under the Ottoman Empire. The reason critical scholars perceive Turkish nationhood as mono-ethnic might stem from the dichotomous view of nationalisms as civic versus ethnic, a dichotomy that has recently been repudiated by some of its erstwhile proponents. Supremacy of the religious over ethnic categories in Turkey, as a historical legacy of the Ottoman millet system, might be applicable to most post-Ottoman states in the Islamic Middle East and North Africa, in contrast to the interplay of ethnicity and religion in Western Europe. This view of Turkish nationhood is confirmed by a dozen interviews that the author conducted with members of the political and intellectual elite of different ideological orientations in Turkey. It is then demonstrated how the new efforts at reformulating modern Turkish identity with reference to Ottoman and Islamic conceptions lead to new inclusion–exclusion dynamics with the Kurds and the Alevis, suggesting that a truly inclusive reformulation has to follow secular and territorial principles.     

Le probléme des origines des Assemblées d'États: Réflexions méthodologiques à la lumière de l'histoire sud‐est européenne de l'institution

Summary

This paper examines the relations between republican and democratic forces in Restoration Spain. From the middle of the last century, republicanism was the political movement most clearly involved with the democratization of Spanish politics. After the collapse of the 1873 Republic, the republican movement went through a severe crisis which led to its fragmentation over issues both of principle (federalists against unitarists) and of practice (revolutionaries against reformists). Between 1873 and 1931 Spanish republicanism underwent a marked transformation. The old republicanism was characterized by the modes of political activity of the nineteenth century — the club, the committee, the masonic lodge. The new republicanism, on the other hand, emerged from the first decade of the present century clearly moving in the direction of the modern political parties which finally crystallized out in 1931. Together the Radical and the Reformist parties are a case‐study in the transition between the classical and the modern which perfectly exemplifies the hybrid nature of republican democracy.

Though Spanish republicanism was socially heterogeneous, embracing within its various parts elements of the upper and middle bourgeoisie, substantial sections of the petty, urban bourgeoisie, and a declining, but still numerous, section of the working class, it still needed an alliance with the socialists (the Conjunción of 1910). However, what was most notable about Spanish republicanism was its link with the intelligentsia; it was they who gave it its character and who made the greatest effort to integrate Spain into the most modern currents of European thought.     

Nationalism and modernism in the East Turkestan Republic, 1933–34

This study explains the intellectual history and ideology of the Turkic insurgency and the East Turkestan Republic in Kashgar in 1933–34. Texts in periodicals from the period suggest that the insurgency was defined by its intellectual elites more as a nationalist enterprise than as a religious one. The insurgency's ideologists established important national attributes of the East Turkestani nation, particularly its national name, homeland, symbology, and history, and they also articulated East Turkestani national interests, particularly political independence, representative government, and modernization. Regardless of the arguably low degree of social penetration of the ideas of the elites among common society and the small extent to which policy was actually implemented, the intertwining of East Turkestani national identity and interests with political self-government and modernization was an ideological concept that had a profound impact on all subsequent administrations in Xinjiang.     

Turkish Radicalism and its Images of the Ottoman Ancien Régime (1923–38)

This article develops a comparative study of Turkish radicalism (i.e. Kemalism and Unionism) demonstrating its resemblances and differences vis-à-vis its European counterparts, especially French republicanism and Bolshevism. The historiographical vistas of Turkish radicalism are thoroughly examined to elaborate on the ancien régime imageries of Turkish radicalism and the contradictions inherent in these coexisting historiographical vistas. The article aims to develop a critical perspective of Turkish radicalism, arguing that many clichés reproduced in the academic literature had been in fact produced by the Kemalists as self-fashioning.     

The legal notion of nationality in the Turkish Republic: from Ottoman legacy to modern aberrations

Shortly after its emergence, the Turkish Republic adopted legislation inspired by European legal systems and traditions, including a law on nationality. The implementation of this law was affected by the staunchly nationalistic early republican policies which were not immune from the influence of the concept of ‘race’, as well as by the Ottoman legal conceptions on nationality based on religion, both of which guided the application of the new laws by the judiciary and the administration. This article proposes a critical legal approach to the issue of Turkish nationality, based on historical reflections. After a survey on the laws on nationality since the foundation of the Republic, it addresses the major confusions in connection with the concept of nationality in the light of textbooks from the relevant period, in order to observe, in conclusion, inherent and insolvable inconsistencies within the law, and a tenacious survival of Ottoman conceptions within the current law on nationality, especially with regard to religious minorities, which are assimilated to dhimmis in the legal subconscious and often equated to foreigners in practice.     

Translating the State: Ethnic Language Radio in the Lao PDR

ABSTRACT

The nation-building project of the Lao People’s Democratic Republic has been challenged by the task of uniting the multi-ethnic country under its political ideology. The Lao National Radio broadcasts in the Khmu and Hmong languages are the only official voice of minority languages and provide insights on how political messages are sent to the population. In their creation of programming material, the broadcasters must translate the socialist ideology of the Communist Party into language that is politically correct and culturally acceptable. In the process, they are creating a political register in the two languages that is heavily influenced by the linguistic structures of Lao. This article examines these two broadcasts to see how language use at the radio effects the message that is delivered to the listeners, enhancing the calls for mobilisation by teaching the people a new political language reflected not only in terms of lexicon, but also in the syntax and phonology of their translations. The result is a way of speaking that crosses ethno-linguistic boundaries to reinforce the control of the state.     

Understanding Turkish secularism in the 21th century: a contextual roadmap

ABSTRACT

This paper asserts that Turkish secularism and Islamism represent two faces of one coin – contemporary Turkish politics – when one considers their goals and strategies. The two ideological movements have shaped one another and each now seeks to impose itself as superior. This article unpacks these differences and similarities in the following steps: (a) it defines the socio-historic modes of Turkish secularism and (b) examines its social and political origins; (c) it then explores Islam’s return to the public domain as an oppositional Turkish identity; (d) and thereafter considers the diverse understandings of secularism resulting from neoliberal policies that relaxed state control over Islam, which then prompted socially-acceptable reinterpretations of Islam; and finally (e) describes how the AKP’s has re-imagined secularism while (mis)using Islam as a political instrument. The comparison highlights such commonalties as a collectivist character, a desire for state control as a vehicle to realize an ideology, intolerance of diversity and criminalization of other perspectives, and the differentiation of religion as morality in the private sphere versus its cultural role in the public sphere. It concludes that, under the AKP government, Islam is used as a tool to consolidate the power of Erdo?an’s kleptocratic regime.     

法国民族国家和民族观念论析

法兰西民族国家是长期历史演变的产物。大革命传统和共和主义理念奠定了当代法兰西民族国家的基石。在民族观念方面,法国与德国的分歧与历史文化差异有关,但也是欧洲大陆两大国政治博弈的产物。在法国,共和同化政策被视为进步和文明的表现。法国在社会文化模式和移民政策方面历来强调"大一统"和"共和原则",这主要是由于法国在世界上长期拥有的政治、经济和文化强国地位所决定的。然而,随着全球化的发展、欧洲一体化的深入、法国国际地位的下降,以及移民问题引发的社会危机,法国的民族国家观念、社会文化模式和民族认同受到了严重挑战。法国人不得不对法国的社会文化模式、法兰西民族认同,以及法兰西的前途进行重新思考。     

Süleyman Nazif's ‘Open Letter to Jesus’: An Anti-Christian Polemic in the Early Turkish Republic

The recent ‘cartoon crisis’ caused by European newspapers that published disrespectful caricatures of the prophet Muhammad and offended Muslims all over the world, intensified the discussions on ‘the clash of civilizations’. The present religious quarrels, as distressing as they are, remind us of the uproar Süleyman Nazif (1870–1927), a Muslim Turkish nationalist caused in Turkey in 1924. At that time the bone of contention was not a cartoon but the ‘Open Letter to Jesus’ Nazif published followed by his ‘The Reply of Jesus’ and in both of which he condemned the ‘crusader mentality’ of the Christian world. Being political satires, these letters reflect the views of Süleyman Nazif on the imperialist European powers, show his attempt to defend the newly founded Turkish Republic and illustrate how relations between Turkey and Europe had been deepening the prejudices of Muslims and Christians toward each other. This contribution presents translations of Nazif's two letters, preceded by an overview of Muslim–Christian polemics in the late Ottoman Empire and the early Turkish Republic.     

The Cuban Experience in East Germany: Academic Migration from 1960 to 2000

The partnership between revolutionary Cuba and the German Democratic Republic (GDR) offered a route for migration that had not been possible before. While academic exchange aimed to construct a socialist society in Cuba and strengthen the Socialist Bloc, as well as serving the economic and political interests of both states, the creation of a transnational academic elite and of intellectual collectives across borders also occurred as a by‐product of the exchange. This article shows how these ‘by‐products’ came into existence, and how academic exchange can be influenced by political, financial and organisational limitations.     

Intellectuals and Political Power in Social Movements: The Parallel Paths of Fadlallah and Hizbullah

This article examines the intellectual impact of Ayatollah Muhammad Hussein Fadlallah (1935–2010) on Hizbullah's political behaviour. Many depicted Fadlallah as the ‘spiritual guide’ and ‘oracle’ of Hizbullah, while others accentuated his socio-political independence and the potential he represented as an ‘alternative’ to Hizbullah and Iran. This study argues that Fadlallah directly influenced Hizbullah's political worldviews, but the Islamic movement's socialisation in Lebanon, its dependence on Iran and its war with Israel have led it to pursue a separate path from Fadlallah. But despite the separation, the Ayatollah shared a common world vision with Hizbullah and the Islamic Republic, and would not have formed an alternative. The article is divided into two sections. The first examines the socio-political origins of Fadlallah and Hizbullah as an intellectual and a political movement, respectively, and conceptualises the discursive and political fields that motivate the behaviour of the two actors. The second section assesses the impact of Fadlallah's ideas on Hizbullah by focusing on three main themes: (1) Islamic liberation and resistance against injustice; (2) the Islamic state and Lebanon; and (3) Wilayat al-Faqih and Islamic Iran.     

The genesis of the ‘Exceptional’ Republic: the permanency of the political crisis and the constitution of legal emergency power in Turkey

ABSTRACT

Almost half of the political life has been experienced under the state of emergency and state of siege policies in the Turkish Republic. In spite of such a striking number and continuity in the deployment of legal emergency powers, there are just a few legal and political studies examining the reasons for such permanency in governing practices. To fill this gap, this paper aims to discuss one of the most important sources of the ‘permanent’ political crisis in the country: the historical evolution of legal emergency power. In order to highlight how these policies have intensified the highly fragile citizenship regime by weakening the separation of power, repressing the use of political rights and increasing the discretionary power of both the executive and judiciary authorities, the paper sheds light on the emergence and production of a specific form of legality based on the idea of emergency and the principle of executive prerogative. In that context, it aims to provide a genealogical explanation of the evolution of the exceptional form of the nation-state, which is based on the way political society, representation, and legitimacy have been instituted and accompanying failure of the ruling classes in building hegemony in the country.     

‘Modelling’ for Democracy? Turkey's Historical Issues with Freedom of Speech

Although Turkey has come a long way in terms of human rights since the 1980 military coup, a closer historical look inside the Turkish political scene shows us how freedom of speech was always to be sacrificed if its exercise threatened the perceived unity of the country. The article shows how decision makers’ perceptions of the state as a superior institution in need of protection have shaped the practice of governing free speech in Turkey since the early years of the Republic, and introduces a unique chronology, accounting for the interaction of internal and external influences.     

Pseudo‐democratic politics and populist possibilities: the rise and demise of Turkey's Refah party

Within the span of only a few years, Turkish politics witnessed the dramatic rise and fall of the Refah Party. This transformation from relative obscurity to the head of a ruling coalition and eventual banning was caused by a combination of features inherent in the Turkish political system and the party itself. Turkish democracy features the continued interference of the military in domestic political affairs on the one hand and a preponderance of largely centrist and bland ‘mainstream’ parties on the other. Nevertheless, the existence of ostensibly democratic institutions such as elections or a parliament enable potential political aspirants who are outside the mainstream to make bids for power through officially sanctioned channels. The Refah's rise was a product of the perceived uniqueness of its ideological platform and its unparalleled focus on grass roots voter mobilization. Its fall, however, came when the military considered it to have overstepped the bounds of acceptable political behaviour within the country's narrowly defined democracy.     

Ziya Gökalp’s idea of cultural hybridity

This paper is a reflection on the distinctiveness and scope of the ideas of Ziya Gökalp (1876–1924), who played a key role in the formation of the ideology of the Turkish Republic created in 1923. Gökalp is generally cast by interpreters as a ‘Westernist’ or ‘modernist’ nationalist thinker, like many other thinkers in late developing societies, whose chief concern was the establishment of a modern Turkish nation-state and who, therefore, tried to combine Western knowledge with the culture of his own society. Contrary to received wisdom, I argue that Gökalp developed not just a model of modernity befitting Muslim Turks but also a distinctive general theory of social life, according to which the cultures of all societies are hybrid, i.e. blends of other (past and present) cultures. If this is correct, then Gökalp’s social thought is more than a mere specimen of late nationalist ideologies; it is applicable to all forms of social life just as much as the ideas of the European social theorists he cited.     

Renegotiations of femininity throughout the constitutional debates in Turkey: representative claims in 2014 presidential elections

In August 2014, for the first time in the history of the Turkish Republic, the president was elected through a popular vote. The quest for a new constitution and revisions to the political system were the main topics that the three presidential candidates, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu and Selahattin Demirtas, raised during their presidential campaigns. Women’s problems and issues were among the central topics through which the matters of the new constitution and the revisions to be made in the system were addressed. Through a qualitative content analysis of the campaign material, this article maps the candidates’ approaches to women’s interests and the roles the candidates promised to play to promote these interests and roles. The findings indicate that motherhood, daughterhood and sisterhood are the key terms through which the candidates formulated the ultimate purpose of their gender-related agenda. They simply blamed the existing constitution as the main cause of alienated motherhood, polarized daughterhood and complicit femininity respectively. Based on the analysis of these simultaneous calls for heightening-disavowal of certain femininities, the article argues that competing projects for the (re)establishment of the constitutional regime in Turkey can be construed as renegotiations of feminine attachments to political authority.     

From ‘clients’ to ‘magnates’: the (not so) curious case of Islamic authoritarianism in Turkey

ABSTRACT

This paper sketches out the historical emergence and progress of political Islam in modern Turkey by emphasizing its statist and clientelistic aspects emanating from the authoritarian basis of Turkish political modernization. The paper contends that there has always been an authoritarian and autocratic tendency in modern Turkish politics that depends on a peculiar and modernist articulation of both Islamism and secularism, which eventually stand on the same ground. This very ground is formed upon a sacred understanding of the state that can be defined as an all-encompassing and absolute perfection of political power, which manifests itself differently in content for secular nationalists and Islamists, and yet produces the same authoritarian tendency. Both the secular nationalism and Islamism appear to be state oriented movements in the sense that they both have emanated from the state, and envisage to control the state in an absolute sense.     

Women prisoners in Turkey

Historically, the closure of a party is a common phenomenon in Turkish politics. While the recent case against the governing Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkinma Partisi, AKP) was reminiscent of this trend, the decision of the Constitutional Court demonstrated that there are changes in the dynamics of the Turkish political structure. Although the literature cites the so-called ‘28 February Process’, the impact of EU accession, and the learning effects of democratization as explanations for the distinction of the AKP from its predecessors, this article argues that the AKP is different due to its extended business network and newly defined conservative base. The decision of the court in the recent closure case against the AKP reflects this structural political change within the foundation of Islamic parties in Turkey. While the court acknowledged the political legitimacy of the party by taking a decision against its closure, it has revealed the general discontent regarding AKP's non-adjusted conservative/pro-Islamic policies by cutting down its financial means.     

War and identity: the case of the Donbas in Ukraine

Abstract

The study of identities struggles to capture the moments and dynamics of identity change. A crisis moment provides a rare insight into such processes. This paper traces the political identities of the inhabitants of a region at war – the Donbas – on the basis of original survey data that cover the four parts of the population that once made up this region: the population of the Kyiv-controlled Donbas, the population of the self-declared “Donetsk People’s Republic” and “Luhansk People’s Republic,” the internally displaced, and those who fled to the Russian Federation. The survey data map the parallel processes of a self-reported polarization of identities and the preservation or strengthening of civic identities. Language categories matter for current self-identification, but they are not cast in narrow ethnolinguistic terms, and feeling “more Ukrainian” and Ukrainian citizenship include mono- and bilingual conceptions of native language (i.e. Ukrainian and Russian).