Nation–states and ethnic boundaries: modern Turkish identity and Turkish–Kurdish conflict

Ethnic and religious conflicts are two of the most pressing issues facing Turkey today. This article offers the argument that the development of the Turkish state and identity, and Turkey’s peripheral position in the interstate system, have collectively determined the parameters and dynamics of the conflicts. It is argued that modern Turkish identity has been forged by the state through the nation–state formation process that began in the 1920s. During the transition from Ottoman Empire to Turkish Republic it was deemed necessary to redefine the state and Turkish identity. At the historical juncture, Islam was replaced with other ideals and universals such as Turkism, modernity and étatism. The sudden and large–scale shift away from religion followed by vigorous ethnic assimilation efforts created a contradictory context between the state and ethnic/religious segments of the population. The change also marked the beginning of a new era in the Turkish–Kurdish discord. Another assertion of the article is that the state’s approach to ethnic/religious issues and demands is consistent with the assumptions and predictions of the ethnic democracy model.     

Turkish nationalism and the evolutionary idea (1923–1938)

This paper sheds light on the role of evolutionary ideas in the making of Turkish nationalism during the Kemalist era (1923–1938). By so doing, it aims to challenge some of the dominant historiographical viewpoints as to the nature of Turkish nationalism. One is related to the Kemalist elites' predisposition towards the so‐called “scientism” seen as one of the bases for nationalism. We intend to turn upside–down the relation between the Kemalists' use of science and Turkish nationalism. Second, we problematize the “culturalist” origins of Turkish nationalism arguing that the seemingly “culturalist” reflections of the time were, indeed, materialist formulations based on the science of the times. We discuss in this respect the Kemalist elites' use of evolutionary ideas. By synthesizing the ways in which these elites employed evolutionary ideas in the fields of history, language, geography, anthropology, biology, eugenics, and pedagogy, we aim to understand the specific nature of Turkish nationalism before 1945. This secular nationalism conceived culture as having materialist bases and differed fundamentally from the culturalist varieties of Turkish nationalism coloured by Islam in the post‐1945 era. Furthermore, the paper empirically enriches the complex and entangled story of evolutionary ideas in the early Turkish Republic.     

从1897年全俄人口普查看俄罗斯帝国穆斯林的社会阶层状况

伊斯兰教是俄罗斯的传统宗教之一。在俄罗斯帝国领土不断扩张的过程中,越来越多的异域穆斯林成为其臣民。1897年,全俄第一次人口普查数据显示,俄帝国穆斯林人口已约达1388．94万人,占当时全俄总人口的11．06％。本文通过1897年的人口普查数据,较为系统地对俄帝国穆斯林的社会阶层状况进行探讨和分析。     

Behçet Kemal Çağlar's Kur’ân‐ı Kerîm'den İlhamlar (Inspirations from the Holy Qur’ān): A Kemalist's Personal,Poetic Response to the Qur’ān

Behçet Kemal Ça?lar, 1908–1969, is the author of a commentary of the Qur’ān, Kur’ân‐? Kerîm'den ?lhamlar (‘Inspirations from the Holy Qur’ān’), published in 1966. This work can be described as a poetic reflection on the Qur’ān. It does not adhere to rendering every line or verse, but instead insists on maintaining a rhythmic cadence and end‐rhyme. Although it resembles a translation in some ways, Ça?lar refuses to call his work a translation. This paper begins by introducing Ça?lar and his text, a brief history of Turkish translations of the Qur’ān, then Ça?lar's approach is contrasted with the aims of translators of the Qur’ān. Ça?lar's text is studied in more detail, providing a sample of the Turkish text and a translation of it into English, focusing on Ça?lar's reflection on Sūrat ?aha. Through this study, it becomes clear that as a result of his prioritizing the literary aspects of the Qur’ān in his reflection, Ça?lar's book has an advantage over literal translations of the Qur'an and it can be useful for Qur’ān translation. At the same time, Ça?lar's book is a reflection of a desire to develop a Turkish Islam—a manifestation of Islam that came from Turkey, that reflected its language and culture and that was intelligible to its people.     

Why Worldwide Bible Translation Grows Exponentially

The number of languages into which the Bible has been translated has grown exponentially during the past 2,300 years. The history of Bible translation can be divided into three periods of growth, each with its distinct limiting and driving forces. In the low‐growth period between 260 BCE and 1814 CE growth was constrained by the rise of Islam and later by the information monopoly of the Catholic Church. The year 1815 was the inflection point, at which annual growth rates rose from below 1 to above 1 per cent. The century 1815–1914 was a period of substantial growth due to the co‐occurrence of three driving forces: Christian revivalism, internationalisation, and industrialisation. This was followed by a third period—the era of explosive growth between 1915 and today—in which information technology and the organisational structure of translation agencies have spurred growth. An array of multinational organisations of Anglo‐Saxon origin have created a quasi‐monopoly for worldwide Bible translation. The exponential growth of worldwide Bible translation can be modelled by a mathematical function. Using this function and assuming the continuation of current trends, it is possible to project the end of the history of pioneer Bible translation sometime between 2026 and 2031.     

Fred Halliday,Marxism and the Cold War

Though possibly best known today as a specialist on the Middle East and Islam, it is often forgotten how central the Cold War was in defining Fred Halliday's understanding of world politics before 1989 and indeed even after. Building on the earlier work of Isaac Deutscher and E. H. Carr, Halliday developed a distinct theory of the Cold War which afforded him great insights but ultimately failed in explaining the complexities of the East–West relationship, and why it came to an abrupt conclusion in the late 1980s.     

Paleopathological and Molecular Study on Two Cases of Ancient Childhood Leprosy from the Roman and Byzantine Empires

This study is based on the paleaopathology of leprosy on human skeletal remains and the detection of ancient Mycobacterium leprae DNA. Two cases of childhood leprosy were recognized. The first case was in a Roman necropolis at Martellona (Rome, Central Italy), dated to the 2nd to 3rd centuries ce . The skeleton of a child aged 4–5 years, from tomb 162, is the youngest individual in Italy from this time period, with the clear rhino‐maxillary syndrome and other bony changes indicative of leprosy. The second case from a burial at Kovuklukaya, in the Sinop region of Northern Turkey, was from the 8th to the 10th centuries, during the Byzantine era. The endocranium of a 4–5‐month‐old infant with new bone formation—an indication of chronic inflammation—was positive for M. leprae DNA. Infant and childhood leprosy is uncommon today, and there is a scarcity of information in the osteoarchaeological literature of leprosy in the past, especially in children. The significance of these cases is that it adds to an understanding of the history of the disease in the former Roman Empire. It is hoped that over time sufficient data can be obtained to understand the epidemiological dynamics and clinical evolution of leprosy from the ancient period until today. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Institutionalization of Islam in Secular Europe: The Influence of State–Religion Relations on Anti‐Muslim Attitudes

This study examines church–state relations in Europe, and analyzes their influence on anti‐immigrant attitudes. The literature explains this relationship primarily with religious demographics, or state privileges for the majority faith. Alternately, this study focuses on the status of the majority religion. It argues that, in countries with a national church, citizens are more likely to consider the institutionalization of a new religion to be occurring at the expense of the national heritage, and react negatively. To test that hypothesis, the study focuses on Muslim immigrants in Europe, and builds an index that gauges the extent to which European states institutionalize Islam. Then, employing multilevel regression analysis, it investigates how the institutionalization of Islam influences anti‐Muslim prejudice in different contexts of church–state regimes. Individual‐level data come from the latest wave of the European Values Study, and cover 31 countries. Findings indicate that, in European countries with a national church, institutionalization of Islam increases anti‐Muslim prejudice. In countries without a national church, however, institutionalization leads to tolerance. These results confirm the continuing relevance of religion on the national level in Europe, despite the decline in individual religiosity.     

BOOK REVIEWS

Book reviewed in this article:
Quranic Studies: Sources and Methods of Scriptural Interpretation. By J. Wansbrough.
The Qur'ān and its Exegesis: Selected Texts with Classical and Modern Muslim Interpretations. By Helmut Gātje, translated from German and edited by Alford T. Welch
Modern Arab Poets 1950–1975. By Issa J. Boullata
The Persian Metres. By L. P. Elwell-Sutton
A Christian's Response to Islam. By William Y. Miller
The Great Moghuls. By Bamber Gascoigne
The Thirteenth Tribe: The Khazar Empire and its Heritage. By Arthur Koestler
The Arabs in Israel. By Sabri Jiryis
Proceedings of the first meeting of the French Colonial Historical Society, Athens, Georgia, April 3–5, 1975. Edited by Alf Andrew Heggoy
Turkish Grammar. By Robert Underhill     

A bargain between the secular state and Turkish Islam: politics of ethnicity in Central Asia

Abstract. This paper reveals and analyses the ethnic politics mobilised by a fast‐growing Islamic movement, the Gülen movement, which emerged in the 1980s in Turkey and expanded to Central Asia in the mid‐1990s. Following the micro‐sites, where nationness is reproduced as an everyday practice, my ethnographic research in Almaty‐Kazakhstan explored the emergent Islamic sensibilities for the nation and ethnic identity. Revivalist Islam has often been essentialised as incompatible with nationalism, since it has been widely associated with the Muslim community rather than nations and nation‐states. I argue that this bias is facilitated and maintained by the deep division in the literature. Scholarly work on both Islam and nationalism are split into two opposing approaches, state‐centered and culture‐centered. The findings of the present study challenge the binary thinking that juxtaposes politics against culture and dichotomises ethnic and state‐framed base of nationalism and nationhood. My major finding is that the Gülen movement has not only inherited the symbols and myths of descent from the founding fathers of the Turkish state, but it is also currently reproducing the related ethnic politics in cooperation with–not in opposition to–the secular states in the post‐Soviet Turkic world. The study reconciles ethno‐symbolic and state‐centered approaches in explaining the convergence between Islamic and secular nationalism in the formation of ethnic politics in Almaty‐Kazakhstan.     

The 1913 Ottoman Military Campaign in Eastern Thrace: A Prelude to Genocide?

This article argues that the leadership of the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP) experimented with methods of mass expulsion for the first time during the Balkan Wars in 1912–1913. The success of these methods of mass violence contributed to their renewed application in World War I. Much has been written about the crimes committed against civilians by Serbian, Bulgarian and Greek armies in this period, but little about the Ottoman operations in Eastern Thrace in 1913. Neither European nor Turkish historiography has examined the issue closely, partly because the Ottoman campaign in Eastern Thrace was very short and of relatively little military significance, and partly because historians interested in the study of violence in the late Ottoman Empire have devoted their attention to the Armenian genocide, which began less than two years after the recapture of Thrace. And yet, it is during this brief period, from July to September 1913, that the Unionist leadership of the Ottoman Empire developed a very specific, new and systematic form of violence that would later be used against other Christian populations, including the Armenians. In this context, the 1913 Ottoman campaign is worth examining closely not just as an important aspect of the Balkan Wars, but also as a prelude to practices that would later be tragically used on a wider scale during World War I and World War II.     

The Ottomans and the West: Some Thoughts on Mutual Perceptions and Good Government

Sir Jack Goody has been exploring the changing dynamics of East/West relations in numerous brilliant works. The key question concerns the dominance of the West since the eighteenth century. Are there features unique to the West which lead to its superiority both in arms and in culture? Or, were the last 200 years a mere passing moment in the “longue durée”? The history of the Ottomans from the thirteenth to the twentieth century provides a good background for Goody’s critical arguments. They turn out to be an unexpectedly tough adversary in the First World War, and yet the Empire fails. Does the Ottoman experience and the Turkish transformation provide new insights for the role of Islam in politics? Are there lessons to be learnt in the conduct of military operations against radical Islamic groups concerning the need for good, responsible and, above all, just governance?     

Negotiating Difference in a Muslim Society: A Longitudinal Study of Islamic and Secular Discourses in Turkey

This article explores the changes in attitudes among Islamic and secular groups in Turkey through an analysis of their discourses regarding Islam, democracy, secularism, and dialogue. We present the findings of a longitudinal study (Q study) conducted in Turkey in 2002 and 2007. The time period under investigation marks the first uninterrupted five‐year‐long term of an Islamic‐leaning government, Adalet ve Kalk?nma Partisi (AKP, Justice and Development Party), in office since the inception of the Turkish Republic in 1923. We suggest that the continuous electoral success of the AKP has played an important role in shaping Islamic and secular discourses in the Turkish public sphere. In contrast with its predecessor, the AKP has employed a rights‐based paradigm when defining the place of Islam in a secular society. This, we suggest, has softened the divide between Islamic and secular discourses in Turkey. In this article, after defining the core characteristics of both discourses that remained the same in both 2002 and 2007, we focus on the major shifts in discourses that have occurred during these five years. Our research reveals that during this time, both Islamic and secular discourses underwent important shifts with respect to Islam's place in a democratic society. We interpret the AKP's discursive shift toward a rights‐based paradigm and the increasing emphasis on dialogue in both Islamist and secular discourses as promising signs for expanding the scope for democratic polity in Turkey.     

“凯末尔主义”与“泛突厥主义”关系探析

泛突厥主义是奥斯曼帝国末期产生的重要社会思潮和意识形态。土耳其共和国建立后,民族主义者以凯末尔主义思想作为立国基础,反对泛突厥主义。但是在人员、组织和思想等方面,凯末尔主义仍与泛突厥主义保持了较多联系,客观上为泛突厥主义在土耳其的长期存在提供了方便,并使土耳其的对外政策表现出一定的泛突厥主义特征。凯末尔主义和泛突厥主义之间的内在联系是由民族主义的性质决定的。认清这种联系,有利于加深对凯末尔主义以及当代土耳其内政、外交的了解与认识。     

Security,secularism and gender: the Turkish military’s security discourse in relation to political Islam

This article examines the sexual and corporeal constructions of risk within the security discourses of the Turkish military in response to the rise of political Islam and Islamist identities in Turkey. I look at the Turkish military as the self-proclaimed guardian of the secular Republic, which, until recently, has actively configured political Islam as a risk to national security and ingrained such risk onto the body of the headscarved woman. My analysis covers a time frame from 1980s to late 2000s when the military issued memorandums and public statements against the rise of political Islam and pursued a belligerent campaign to erase ‘Islamist’ identities both from civilian politics and its own structure. The military implemented security regulations and dress codes to detect the ‘Islamist’ military personnel who are most conspicuously identified with the dress style of the women in their families. I explore these security regulations through women’s everyday and personal experiences in relation to their dress, headscarf style and comportment in military spaces and try to understand how ‘Islamism’ is constructed as a security threat in sexually and corporeally specific ways. I demonstrate how secularism is constructed, and needs to be protected, on the basis of a particular regime of gender and sexuality at the merger of traditional gender norms and secular Western modernity.     

The German Empire and Palestine: German pilgrimages to Jerusalem between the 12th and 16th century

This study is an attempt to discuss various points of interest concerning the pilgrimages to Jerusalem which started from the German Empire during and after the Crusader period. On the basis of a comprehensive critical investigation, it will be demonstrated that by reason of extremely high travel expenses, most pilgrims decided against going on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. It is pointed out to what extent the noble and non-noble pilgrims from the Empire who planned the journey to Jerusalem would have to take into consideration their legal and moral obligations toward their feudal lords or local communities. It will be shown that most German pilgrims' ignorance of foreign languages furthered the cohesion and isolation of their travel parties on the road to Syria. As may be proved, they were not ready to adapt themselves to unusual manners and customs and had a remarkable penchant for violence. Finally, it will be demonstrated that the presence of German pilgrims ready to give donations or to pay for an indulgence must always have been a very important economic factor for some of the religious communities in Jerusalem.     

Transnational Muslim solidarities and everyday life

ABSTRACT. Discussions of globalisation and identity have focused on the renewed relevance of various post‐national frameworks of belonging, including the Muslim umma. This article argues against the idea that the umma has come to constitute a primary referent in contemporary Muslim debates about identity or a form of globalised political consciousness. Furthermore, the advent of ‘post‐Islamism’ means that Islamic political mobilisation rarely seeks to establish alternative political orders within the container of the nation‐state. However, this does not mean that we are seeing a reaffirmation of the nation in Muslim contexts today. Rather, transnational Muslim solidarities represent an intermediate space of affiliation and socio‐political mobilisation that exists alongside and in an ambivalent relationship with the nation‐state. I point to two different socio‐religious movements that, without positing the primacy or exclusivity of the umma/Islamic identity, express discrepant visions of the relationship between Islam and the nation: (1) the Fethullah Gülen movement, which serves simultaneously as the vehicle for a particular vision of neo‐Ottoman Turkish nationalism and a critique of the Kemalist national order; and (2) the neo‐Salafist movement, read here as an effort to embed conceptions of public morality and accountability within the discursive tradition of orthodox Islam rather than the institutional framework of modern polity.     

The Role of Azerbaijani Turkish in Safavid Iran

Turkic languages and dialects played a much more important role in Safavid Iran than is generally thought, while Azerbaijani Turkish in particular was widely spoken and written in Safavid Iran. It was not only the language of the court and the army, but it was also used in poetry, even by renowned poets who usually wrote in Persian. The Safavid shahs, many of whom wrote poetry in Turkish themselves, promoted its literary use. Also, Turkish was used in the court's official correspondence, for both internal and external affairs.     

The origins of Turkish Republican citizenship: the birth of race*

Abstract. This article explores the emergence of the dominance of racialised Turkish citizenship. Contrary to the conventional methods that investigate the early republican era, this paper starts by examining the final years of the Ottoman Empire with a special emphasis on the Balkan Wars as the birth of racialised technologies of citizenship. Then, I analyse the encounters between racialised thought in the Ottoman Empire in the twentieth century and its recurring counterpart in these encounters: ‘European modernity’. Next, I dwell on an illustration of a materialisation of racialised citizenship in the Ottoman Empire: the displacement and elimination of Armenian citizens. Finally, by probing the dominant strand of modern citizenship and nationhood in Europe, I articulate the commonalities of racialised citizenship in Europe and the Ottoman Empire in the early twentieth century. I conclude by arguing that race as a particular identity should not be seen as an institutionalised aspect of citizenship only in ostensibly ‘Oriental and absolutist regimes’. Instead, the focus should be on moments at which ‘European modernity’ and various nationalisms (racial, ethnic, cultural) mutually constitute each other.     

Holy Wisdom and British foreign policy, 1918-1922: the St. Sophia redemption agitation

Abstract

As the Ottoman Empire tottered towards its final collapse at the end of the First World War the fate of its various territorial components aroused the interest not only of other states, but of interest groups within those states. Britain in particular revealed a strong concern with this subject, having long been interested in the Eastern Mediterranean. The end of the Ottoman Empire saw the legendary Lawrence of Arabia grasping the Arab lands, various secret treaties with the other Great Powers disposed of much of Anatolia, and the future of Turkish rule over Constantinople, that much sought after city, now hung in the balance. The final fate of the city would be decided at the postwar Paris Peace Conference. Of all of the spoils of the Ottomans none evoked such passions as that inspired by Constantinople – Byzantium, the Second Rome. If any building could epitomise the Europeans' vision of this city it was the St Sophia, the Church of the Holy Wisdom, which since the fall of Constantinople in 1453 had been a mosque. With the end of Ottoman dominance an opportunity was seen by some of symbolically completing a crusade begun centuries before, with the expulsion of the Turks, and Islam, from Europe. Nothing could so symbolise a change of control at Constantinople than the reconversion of St Sophia into a church. This found support from those who wished to see the Turk expelled bag and baggage from Europe. The philhellenes saw its transfer to the Greek Orthodox church as indicating the resurgence of the Greek nation, and forming the backdrop to eventual Greek control of Constantinople. In Britain the focus of such views was the St Sophia Redemption Committee, which sought to restore the building to its original function. Now virtually forgotten, the agitation for the redemption of St Sophia was an emotive topic during the first months of peace. The supporters of this movement were not a group of fringe political cranks, and its members numbered two future foreign secretaries and many other prominent public figures. The popular agitation coordinated by this committee, and the opposition it encountered, illustrate some of the complexities at work in the formulation of a coherent Eastern Mediterranean policy for Britain.