Exploring the roots and dynamics of Kurdish ethno‐nationalism in Turkey

Using comprehensive and original data derived from a recent major public opinion survey, this study examines an under‐investigated aspect of the Kurdish issue in Turkey: the dynamics and factors behind Kurdish ethno‐nationalism at a mass level. The empirical findings disprove the conventional socio‐economic peace and Islamic‐peace hypotheses around this issue, and our statistical analyses provide strong support for the relative deprivation hypothesis, i.e. that those who think the Turkish state discriminates against Kurds are more likely to have ethno‐nationalist orientations. Multivariate analyses further show that religious sectarian differences among Kurds (i.e. the Hanefi‐Shafi division) matter: the more religious Shafi Kurds have a stronger ethnic consciousness and a higher degree of ethno‐nationalism. The study also provides a discussion of the broader theoretical and practical implications of the empirical findings, which may provide insights into conflict resolution prospects in countries with a Kurdish population.     

Sri Lankan Muslims: between ethno‐nationalism and the global ummah

ABSTRACT. Sri Lanka's Sunni Muslims or “Moors”, who make up eight percent of the population, are the country's third largest ethnic group, after the Buddhist Sinhalese (seventy‐four per cent) and the Hindu Tamils (eighteen per cent). Although the armed LTTE (Tamil Tiger) rebel movement was defeated militarily by government forces in May 2009, the island's Muslims still face the long‐standing external threats of ethno‐linguistic Tamil nationalism and pro‐Sinhala Buddhist government land and resettlement policies. In addition, during the past decade a sharp internal conflict has arisen within the Sri Lankan Muslim community between locally popular Sufi sheiks and the followers of hostile Islamic reformist movements energised by ideas and resources from the global ummah, or world community of Muslims. This simultaneous combination of “external” ethno‐nationalist rivalries and “internal” Islamic doctrinal conflict has placed Sri Lanka's Muslims in a double bind: how to defend against Tamil and Sinhalese ethnic hegemonies while not appearing to embrace an Islamist or jihadist agenda. This article first traces the historical development of Sri Lankan Muslim identity in the context of twentieth‐century Sri Lankan nationalism and the south Indian Dravidian movement, then examines the recent anti‐Sufi violence that threatens to divide the Sri Lankan Muslim community today.     

Threading a needle: Kazakhstan between civic and ethno‐nationalist state‐building

This paper examines the state‐building project in Kazakhstan since independence in 1991. It argues that both civic and ethno‐nationalistic tendencies in state‐building can be identified but that it is not any particular trajectory of nationalism in Kazakhstan that is of significance so much as the tensions between two very different trajectories. We argue that, at least to date, the government has succeeded in managing these tensions quite effectively both at the policy level and in its relations with different ethnic groups and neighbouring states. Whether Kazakhstan can continue to manage these tensions in the post‐Nazarbayev era is one of the most significant questions facing the country.     

Beyond ethno‐nationalism: emerging trends in Cypriot politics after the Annan Plan†

ABSTRACT. Historically, conflict between the two communities in Cyprus has been characterised by the diverging demands of ethno‐nationalists. The introduction of the Annan Plan for the solution of the Cyprus problem has fostered new trends in Cypriot politics and a new alignment of the political forces on the island. This paper argues that the conventional ethno‐nationalist division and the left–right divide are no longer sufficient in understanding the conflict in Cyprus. The new dividing and unifying elements in Cypriot politics can be best understood through analysing the views of political actors on such issues as sovereignty, territoriality, identity and power‐sharing.     

The ethno‐religious ambitions of the Roman Catholic Church and the ascendancy of communism in post‐war Poland (1945–50)

ABSTRACT. This paper differentiates between centrifugal and centripetal aspects of ethno‐nationalism to help account for the ascendancy of communism in the immediate aftermath of World War II in Poland. It argues that the directing of social antipathy to defined out‐groups allowed the Polish Workers' Party (PPR) to manage social anger and that the Roman Catholic Church's ethno‐religious agenda was aligned with the PPR's ethno‐nationalist policy. Furthermore, it is contended that the Church's toleration of hostile actions directed at minority communities supported the PPR's management of social anger. The paper concludes that the Church, despite its manifest intentions and contrary to contemporary perceptions, played a role in the PPR's achievement of hegemony.     

Reconsidering nationalism and feminism: the Kurdish political movement in Turkey

Feminist scholars have documented with reference to multiple empirical contexts that feminist claims within nationalist movements are often side‐lined, constructed as ‘inauthentic’ and frequently discredited for imitating supposedly western notions of gender‐based equality. Despite these historical precedents, some feminist scholars have pointed to the positive aspects of nationalist movements, which frequently open up spaces for gender‐based claims. Our research is based on the recognition that we cannot discuss and evaluate the fraught relationship in the abstract but that we need to look at the specific historical and empirical contexts and articulations of nationalism and feminism. The specific case study we draw from is the relationship between the Kurdish women's movement and the wider Kurdish political movement in Turkey. We are exploring the ways that the Kurdish movement in Turkey has politicised Kurdish women's rights activists and examine how Kurdish women activists have reacted to patriarchal tendencies within the Kurdish movement.     

Seeing for the state: Kemalist long‐distance nationalism in Australia

The recent literature on Muslim organisations in the Turkish diaspora context is voluminous as is analysis of Kurdish and Alevi grassroots politics against the Turkish state. Yet nothing has been written on those whose political orientation is in line with the secularist‐nationalist ideology of the Turkish Republic, that is, of Kemalists. As a contribution to this endeavour, this paper explores Kemalist actors' mobilisation in Australia. The paper argues that their current activism is related to a threatened economic privilege, a loss of cultural capital and a waning political dominance in the ongoing social life of Turkey.     

Excesses of nationalism: Greco‐Turkish population exchange

This article studies 1923 compulsory population exchange between Greece and Turkey through a case study of its experience in Izmir. It traces the ways the early Republican state engaged in the project of reshaping the population by eliminating the non‐Muslims who were rendered as ‘excesses’ in the spatial and discursive matrices of the nation‐state. Through the experience of the exchange in Izmir, it argues that the process of the accommodation and assimilation of the exchangees played a significant role in shaping the modalities of Turkish nationalism by creating new lines and fissures, further dividing the ‘Muslim brethren’ into ever restrictive constructions of Turkishness. It also underlines that this forced displacement is not just a significant episode in Greek and Turkish histories but that it represents a turning point in the project of nation formation in general.     

Religion and nationalism: four approaches*

ABSTRACT. Building on recent literature, this article discusses four ways of studying the relationship between religion and nationalism. The first is to treat religion and nationalism, along with ethnicity and race, as analogous phenomena. The second is to specify ways in which religion helps explain things about nationalism – its origin, its power or its distinctive character in particular cases. The third is to treat religion as part of nationalism, and to specify modes of interpenetration and intertwining. The fourth is to posit a distinctively religious form of nationalism. The article concludes by reconsidering the much‐criticised understanding of nationalism as a distinctively secular phenomenon.     

Constitution‐writing,nationalism and the Turkish experience

Until recently there has been relatively little attention paid to the question of how the relationship between the state, its citizens and the nation is articulated in constitutional texts. This paper seeks to address this gap through an examination of how the rules of belonging to the nation are discussed by the political elite and how these discussions find their final formulation in the constitutional texts. The analysis focuses on the Turkish case at two constitution‐writing moments (1924 and 1961). While such moments have conventionally been assumed to be ‘revolutionary’, the data on Turkey highlights continuities rather than radical changes over time. More particularly, it underscores the resilience and salience of the principle of nationalism over time.     

Turkish nationalism and ethno‐symbolic analysis: the rules of exception

This article examines the applicability of the ethno‐symbolic approach to the study of patriotic Turkish nationalism. In this venue, first it addresses the issue of why many of the existing theoretical models are difficult to use for attending to the case of Turkish nationalism in a comparative framework. Capitalising on the ethno‐symbolic understanding of ideological and ethno‐cultural continuities in the formation of modern nationalisms, this study provides an analysis of points of contestation regarding the history of modern, patriotic Turkish nationalism. It then discusses the demographic and socio‐cultural background of the bonding of exiled masses of Ottoman Muslims with the native Muslims of Anatolia under the banner of a revived, independent Turkish nation. The debate offered here is based on a critical evaluation of the myths and symbols of Turkish national identity within the larger context and time frame of Ottoman/Turkish history.     

Anti‐nationalist nationalism: the paradox of Dutch national identity

Academic research on contemporary Dutch nationalism has mainly focused on its overt, xenophobic and chauvinist manifestations, which have become normalised since the early 2000s. As a result, less radical, more nuanced versions of Dutch nationalism have been overlooked. This article attempts to fill this gap by drawing attention to a peculiar self‐image among Dutch progressive intellectuals we call anti‐nationalist nationalism. Whereas this self‐image has had a long history as banal nationalism, it has come to be employed more explicitly for political positioning in an intensified nationalist climate. By dissecting it into its three constitutive dimensions – constructivism, lightness and essentialism – we show how this image of Dutchness is evoked precisely through the simultaneous rejection of ‘bad’ and enactment of ‘good’ nationalism. More generally, this article provides a nuanced understanding of contemporary Dutch nationalism. It also challenges prevalent assumptions in nationalism studies by showing that post‐modern anti‐nationalism does not exclude but rather constitutes essentialist nationalism.     

Catholic,Irish and Nationalist: evaluating the importance of ethno‐national and ethno‐religious variables in determining nationalist political allegiance in Northern Ireland

Irish national identity, political nationalism and Catholicism are the defining characteristics of the minority community in Northern Ireland. These identifiable ethno‐national and ethno‐religious characteristics have been the basis of communal solidarity that has transcended increasing socio‐economic heterogeneity within that community. Both of the Nationalist political parties in Northern Ireland, Sinn Féin and the Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP), draw their support almost exclusively from their community of origin. What is not known, however, is the relative importance of Irishness, Catholicism and Nationalism in shaping support for either party. Which of these ethnic identifiers is of greatest salience in identifying support for Sinn Féin or the SDLP? Drawing upon recent election survey evidence, this article attempts to rectify this information deficit, highlighting the weighting of components of ethnicity in determining intra‐bloc political allegiances.     

‘Rocking the nation’: the popular culture of neo‐nationalism

The aim of this paper is to understand contemporary forms of nationalism in a socio‐political context in which neo‐nationalism has obtained a dominant role not just in politics but in public discourse and in the cultural field as well. It investigates the emergence of a particular music scene in the beginning of the 21^st century, shaped by rock bands and performers and supported by far‐right political actors, which has made the ‘national’ imagination emotionally and ideologically appealing to a considerable part of Hungarian society and first of all to young people.     

The necessity of Britishness: ethno‐cultural roots of Australian nationalism*

ABSTRACT. Until the last third of the twentieth century, Britishness figured prominently in the national identity of Australians. Many scholars of Australian nationalism have assumed an inherent antipathy between British and Australian solidarities; others have appreciated that there was a degree of mutuality between the two; few have explained why. This article offers such an explanation. It focuses on the crucial nation‐building period twenty years on either side of the federation of the Australian colonies in 1901. Drawing on ethno‐symbolist approaches to nationalism, it argues that Britishness provided the necessary ethno‐cultural foundations for Australian nationhood, the only available repertoire of myth and symbol that could fulfil the nationalist aspiration for unity. Yet Britishness in the antipodes was significantly different to that of the British Isles, as were the civic/territorial components of Australian conceptions of nationhood, giving rise to a distinctive British‐Australian composite nationalism.     

‘Scientific’ nationalism

This paper investigates how the discursive battle for the Flemish nation is waged in the Flemish mass media by politicians of the Flemish nationalist party, the New Flemish Alliance (N‐VA). I focus on the ‘new nationalism’ that N‐VA politicians advocate as a means to ‘banalise’ a hot Flemish nationalism. I establish that N‐VA spokespeople and especially their chairman Bart De Wever invoke discursive alliances with established scholars such as Anderson, Hroch, Calhoun and Billig. On the one hand, these alliances are used to sell their nationalism as a non‐ideological or non‐discursive project. On the other hand, the analyses of these intellectuals are used as manuals to ‘banalise’ a hot nationalism. The concept of ‘scientific’ nationalism refers to the entextualisation of scientific discourses in order to legitimate and banalise the nationalist project of the party as ‘in line with science’.     

Time‐bubbles of nationalism: dynamics of solidarity ritual in lived time

The growth of modern nationalism can be attributed to structural causes, especially the growth of the strong bureaucratic state that penetrates society, creating cultural uniformity and national identity. But structurally based nationalism need not be very intense, or constant; even when institutionalised in periodic formal rituals, it can be routine, low in emotion – even boring. We need to explain sudden upsurges in popular nationalism, but also their persistence and fading in medium‐length periods of time. Nationalist surges are connected with geopolitical rises and falls in the power‐prestige of states: strong and expanding states absorb smaller particularistic identities into a prestigious whole; weaker and defeated states suffer delegitimation of the dominant nationality and fragment in sudden upsurges of localising nationalities. Passing from macro‐patterns to micro‐sociological mechanisms, conflict producing solidarity is a key mechanism: dramatic events focus widespread attention and assemble crowds into spontaneous ‘natural rituals’ – mass‐participation interaction rituals, as distinct from formal rituals. Evidence from public assemblies and the display of national symbols following the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001 (9/11) shows an intense period of three months, then gradual return to normal internal divisions by around six months. Spontaneous rituals of national solidarity are produced not only by external conflict but by internal uprisings, where an emotional upsurge of national identity is used to legitimate insurgent crowds and discredit regimes. Although participants experience momentary feelings of historic shifts, conflict‐mobilised national solidarity lives in a 3–6‐month time‐bubble, and needs to institutionalise its successes rapidly to have long‐term effects.     

The Parthenon Marbles as icons of nationalism in nineteenth‐century Britain

Theories of nationalism place native culture at the core of national self‐fashioning. What explains a state's adoption of foreign objects to sustain national identity? In this paper, I argue that the incorporation of the Parthenon Marbles into British public life is an early example of supranational nationalism. The nineteenth‐century ‘art race’ was a competitive field in which European nation‐states vied for prestige. Of the thousands of art trophies that were brought to Britain from Mediterranean and North African countries, the Parthenon Marbles were uniquely iconicised. Using data from period newspapers and official documents, I assert that this was because they were assiduously presented as prenational by British authorities. In this way, they belonged simultaneously to no nation, to every nation, and to Britain. The case demonstrates the emergence of a particular form of national distinctiveness that transcended the smallness of particularity and rose to the level of universal civilisation.     

Old wine in new bottles: civic nation‐building and ethnic nationalism in schooling in Piedmont,ca. 1700–1861

ABSTRACT. Gellner (1983 : 35) equates nationalism with ‘the organisation of human groups into large, centrally educated, culturally homogeneous units’. As the theorist of nationalism argues, and as recent and not so recent historical research shows, the modernisation of schooling is a defining moment in this process. The objective of this article is twofold: first, to show that during the Risorgimento schooling in Piedmont became nationalist; and second, to explain why that was the case. In doing so, it is argued that: (a) the modernisation of schooling reflected the rise of laissez faire liberalism, industrialisation and the enfranchisement of the middle class; and (b) the leadership of the Risorgimento revived pre‐modern ethnic symbols of patriotism to legitimate inequality and state formation under conditions of individualism.     

Religion,secularisation and nationalism in Quebec and the Basque Country: a comparative approach

This article analyses the relationship between religion, secularisation and nationalism in Quebec and the Basque Country using a comparative approach. I will first outline the ethnic‐religious origin of these nationalist movements. Second, I will examine the extent to which the ‘new’ secular and violent nationalism (Euskadi Ta Askatasuna and Front de Libération du Québec) that emerged in the 1960s was fuelled in its origin by a transfer of sacrality. Third, I will address an aspect that has led some theorists to view religion and nationalism as analogous phenomena, in which nationalism is construed as a religion of blood sacrifice. Fourth, I will examine another aspect that leads to this view of religion and nationalism as analogous phenomena, as the latter also provides a framework of transcendent meaning through an imaginary of continuity between the different generations. The article concludes with a series of general considerations on the relations between nationalism, secularisation and religion.