An intellectual history of Turkish nationalism: between Turkish ethnicity and Islamic identity. By Umut Uzer. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2016. Pp. xi, 276. ISBN: 9781607814658.
This book is a comprehensive study of Turkish nationalism and how its hegemonic status rose over time but declined in the twenty-first century.
The author, an associate professor in the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences at Istanbul Technical University, discusses the ideological evolution and development of Turkish nationalism from the late nineteenth century moving forward. He first starts with the changes during the Ottoman Empire and how groups of minorities (ethnic or religious) such as Greek, Turk, Armenian, Muslim, or Christian started seeking independence and how the Kemalist, ethnic, and conservative nationalism in different periods of time evolved. At the end he emphasizes that the hegemonic position of nationalism, which once acted as the soldier of the state and the protector of the political and social order of the nation, would no longer be guaranteed at the governmental or societal level. Nevertheless, it will survive the global oppression and conflict of identities at the international and domestic level.
Uzer claims that in the early years of the Ottoman Empire a multiplicity of identities existed, but toward the end of that era, dual loyalties such as Kurdish-Ottoman or Arab-Ottoman were experienced. Islam, for example, held a significant place in the identity of Muslim people and was not perceived as a religion but more as an instrument of legitimacy, mediation, balance, and mobilization. This perception was current among both Muslims and Christians under the Ottoman Empire as their ethnic and religious identities were articulated. With politicized Islam returning in the 1980s, Islam in each country started to work within its national boundaries, with the exception of al-Qaeda and ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and Syria).
This book includes five chapters. Chapter one captures the changes from Ottomanism to Turkism. It depicts how almost all of the early nationalists believed in a secular form of Turkish nationalism with some Westernized elements in it. They expressed the need for change in society and the way that religion operates, and their desire for gender equality. Even with these reforms, the identification of Muslims and Turks resulted in the rise of a conservative nationalism in the 1960s, the author claims.
In chapter two, the author uses as examples two figures of the early twentieth century, Yusuf Akçura and Ziya Gökalp, who influenced the idea of nationalism among intellectuals within a cultural, social, and political elite. Their lectures and publications defend the need to establish a Turkish national state along Western lines with secularism and women’s right but without Ottomanism, which had lost its viability. Even though these two figures (with different social backgrounds) contributed in their own ways to early Turkish nationalism during the Unionist and Kemalist era, their intentions were actually different. While Gökalp was leaning toward creating a harmonious relationship between the classes, Akçura was aiming to establish a nation bourgeoisie within a modern state.
Chapter three’s focus is on Kemalist nationalism relying on a central power in developing Turkish politics in the twentieth century. Despite Kemalism’s losing ground, the author says it may come back to life at some point from the military side rather than from civil society. He gives an example from the current government (Recep Tayip Erdoğan), who is using Kemal Atatürk more as an expression than actual appreciation of Atatürk in order to score points against the opposition parties. Currently, Kemalism seems not to be legitimate but at the same time there might be an open door for it to continue to exist, in some reformed version or as it is.
Chapter four is about racism and pan-Turkism, and the author offers some clarification on the concepts of Turkism, Kemalism, ethnic nationalism, and pan-Turkism. Turkist nationalism was inspired by the educational system and the political statements of Kemalist Turkey. While Kemalist nationalism is all about the cultural and historical connection among the Turks around the world, it did not really follow the same path of ethnic nationalism. Kemalists controlled the state functions which ruled supreme over the national interest. The author gives the İnönü government as an example, showing how in an incident in 1944 it oppressed the extreme nationalists with arrests and torture. This was the breaking point between the Kemalists and the ethnic nationalists, Uzer says. The pan-Turk ideology, on the other hand, was strongly advocating the liberation of the captive Turks. In 1991, with the independence of five Turkic republics, “Turkic-Turkic world cooperation and solidarity” became the policy of Turkic states. At that point ethnic nationalism became more of a conservative nationalism.
Chapter five discusses the transformation of Turkish nationalism from a secular to a conservative form. It talks about the past few decades and how the ideology of nationalism changed to conservative nationalism and paved its way to Turkish-Islamic synthesis, or a Turkish-Islamic ideal. The chapter gives examples of the arrival of democracy and conservatism, the different party systems in Turkey, and their political and social clashes.
This book is an appropriate source for any academic and research libraries that have a focus on Middle Eastern Studies. It is useful for learning the political structure of Turkey from the early nineteenth century to the present. The book has an informative concluding chapter which analyzes the relevant domestic and international political and social factors, the intersection of nationalism and Islamism, and how different political/national parties represented these ideologies over the course of changes and movements in Turkey. It has a comprehensive list of bibliographic sources for each chapter, which is very helpful.
Shahrzad Khosrowpour
Chapman University