Two Imaginaries of Citizenship in Turkey: the Republican and ??Ethical?? Models

Notions of sovereign state-rule and citizenship which rest on the twentieth century epistemology of state centrism define the ??right to have rights?? in terms of a national, unified category of state membership. In its association of citizenship with state sovereignty, the republican citizenship model in Turkey allows the state bureaucracy to act with key unitary agency in managing the relationship between religion and politics. In contesting the republican model on both religious and civil grounds, a notion of ??ethical?? citizenship has emerged based on the extension of rights and freedoms through citizen activism. This paper illustrates this process through a comparative analysis of the religiously inspired demand by female students to remove the headscarf ban and by Alevi individuals to remove the designation of Islam from national identification cards.