“Citizen, Speak Turkish!”: A Nation in the Making

Aslan, Senem

doi:10.1080/13537110701293500

Cited by 64 publications

(33 citation statements)

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“…Turkish state discourse denied the existence of the Kurds (Yeğen, ). “Citizen, speak Turkish” campaigns put pressure on everybody to speak Turkish in public spaces (Aslan, ).…”

Section: Turkeymentioning

confidence: 99%

Religion and Nationalism: Contradictions of Islamic Origins and Secular Nation‐Building in Turkey, Algeria, and Pakistan*

Aktürk

2015

Social Science Quarterly

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Objectives. Turkey, Algeria, and Pakistan have been persistently challenged, since their founding, by both Islamist and ethnic separatist movements. These challenges claimed the lives of tens of thousands of people in each country. I investigate the causes behind the concurrence of Islamist and ethnic separatist challenges to the state in Turkey, Algeria, and Pakistan. Method. This research employs comparative historical analysis, and more specifically, a most different systems design. In addition to small-N cross-national comparison, I also designed an intertemporal comparison, whereby Turkish, Algerian, and Pakistani history is divided into four periods, corresponding to preindependence, mobilization for independence, postindependence secular nation-building, and Islamist and ethnic separatist challenge periods. Results. Contrary to the prevailing view in the scholarship, this article formulates an alternative reinterpretation of Turkish, Algerian, and Pakistani nation-state formation. These three states were founded on the basis of an Islamic mobilization against non-Muslim opponents, but having successfully defeated these non-Muslim opponents, their political elites chose a secular and monolingual nation-state model, which they thought would maximize their national security and improve the socioeconomic status of their Muslim constituencies. The choice of a secular and monolingual nation-state model led to recurrent challenges of increasing magnitude to the state in the form of Islamist and ethnic separatist movements. The causal mechanism outlined in this article resembles what has been metaphorically described as a "meteorite" (Pierson, 2004), where the cause is short term (secular nationalist turn after independence) but the outcome unfolds over the long term (Islamist and ethnic separatist challenges). Conclusion. A distinct and counterintuitive path of nation-state formation has been identified based on the cases of Turkey, Algeria, and Pakistan. This research demonstrates that a contradiction between the goals of the original mobilization that establishes the state and policies of its postindependence governments can be a major structural source of instability and violence in the long run. These findings suggest that theories of nationalism that were developed based on the European experience of ethnic or linguistic nationalism need to be modified in explaining the religious nationalism that is found in the origins of some of the major nation-states in the Muslim world.Why are the Turkish, Algerian, and Pakistani states persistently challenged, since their founding, by both Islamist and ethnic separatist movements, with some of these challenges resulting in extremely violent confrontations? While there are many states where religious movements challenge secularism, such as India and the United States (Kuru, 2007; Needham and Rajan, 2007), and there are many other states that face challenges from * for their constructive comments and criticisms on previous versions of this article. As usual, all respons...

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“…Turkish state discourse denied the existence of the Kurds (Yeğen, ). “Citizen, speak Turkish” campaigns put pressure on everybody to speak Turkish in public spaces (Aslan, ).…”

Section: Turkeymentioning

confidence: 99%

Religion and Nationalism: Contradictions of Islamic Origins and Secular Nation‐Building in Turkey, Algeria, and Pakistan*

Aktürk

2015

Social Science Quarterly

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“…Scholars refer to various social engineering policies by the state that were not independent of an ethnic core of Turkishness. These policies include ‘Citizen, Speak Turkish!’ in the late 1920s, which sought the elimination of non‐Turkish languages from the public sphere (Aslan ; Çağaptay ); the founding of official institutions such as the Turkish Historical Society (1931) and the Turkish Linguistic Society (1932), which promoted official discourses of an ancient (pre‐Islamic) and primordial Turkish identity (Hanioğlu ; Morin and Lee ); official interests in the anthropological origins of the Turkish race in the 1930s (Ergin ); and the Settlement Law of 1934, which closed strategic locations to a non‐Muslim minority settlement (Çağaptay ) and also exchanged various Kurdish‐speaking communities with Turkish‐speaking communities between eastern and western parts of Turkey (Mango ; Yeğen ). Through the implementation of these policies, for instance, Mesut Yeğen () argues that the constitutional definitions of Turkishness, regardless of race and religion (the 1924 Constitution) or every citizen being considered as Turkish (the 1961 Constitution), showed a gap between promises and practices.…”

Section: Modernity and National Identitymentioning

confidence: 99%

An Anatomy of Nationhood and the Question of Assimilation: Debates on Turkishness Revisited

2015

Studies Ethnicity & National

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Scholars have primarily debated the anatomy of Turkishness within the framework of an ethnic versus civic dichotomy. Arguing that such an approach would be inconclusive and less explanatory, this article approaches Turkishness from a singularity/plurality framework. First, the article emphasizes the singular nature of Turkishness – defined as monolithic nationhood – in the early Republican years that rejected any alternative identity approaches other than the definition of the state elites. Second, the article argues that the homogenization of the nation by the new state targeted those who considered themselves Turks as well, especially those who did not fit the ‘ideal’ or ‘imagined’ Turk (i.e. Muslim but secular, urban, and Western). The final section analyses the persistence and change in the monolithic nationhood in Turkey throughout the twentieth century and considers the implications of the state's recent identity policies on the meaning of Turkishness.

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“…campaigns were entirely in line with what the Republican leaders encouraged under the slogan 'one language, one culture, one ideal', the forceful methods utilized by the youth was disapproved by Ankara as voiced in the media. As the campaigns turned violent, the government intervened and called for a halt (Aslan 2007). Still, various non-governmental actors throughout the country revived these campaigns well until the 1940s.…”

Section: Ontological (In)security Of 'The Included'mentioning

confidence: 99%

Conflict Resolution and Ontological Security

Rumelili

2014

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“Citizen, Speak Turkish!”: A Nation in the Making

Cited by 64 publications

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Religion and Nationalism: Contradictions of Islamic Origins and Secular Nation‐Building in Turkey, Algeria, and Pakistan*

Religion and Nationalism: Contradictions of Islamic Origins and Secular Nation‐Building in Turkey, Algeria, and Pakistan*

An Anatomy of Nationhood and the Question of Assimilation: Debates on Turkishness Revisited

Conflict Resolution and Ontological Security

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