One-day discussion on the Turkish politics…

Problems of National Identity and Citizenship in Contemporary Turkey


I attended a workshop in Old Bishop’s House, Lund University in 29 October. In this cold Swedish winds, discussing the Turkish politics has a warming function! Generally speaking, Turkish nationalist discourse and politics were analyzed by discussants. Workshop began with the presentation of Dr. Ozan Serdaroglu. Ozan, firstly, put an emphasis on the deterministic role of the Turkish army and other political actors in Turkey. He questioned whether these actors are service providers for citizens or action-oriented bodies. He argued that 1982 constitution aimed to control cognitive structure of Turkish citizens. It is interesting to me that there are tensions at the conceptual level in 1982 constitution. For instance tension between national unity and human rights. Turko-Islamic synthesis is used to realize the homogeneity of the population. Lastly, Ozan argues that full EU membership would be transformative for the identity politics in Turkey. Then I directed a question him. Moving from the fact that Turkish national discourse is based on essentialist parameters, to what extend the full EU membership will transform Turkish nationalist discourse? How will the essentialist understanding and the EU accord?

Second discussant was Prof. Gunay Goksu Ozdogan. Her presentation was about Armenians in Turkey. She mentioned the debates within Armenians in Turkey and questioned the heterogeneity of the Armenian population in Turkey. Territorial origin, gender, class and religion are the sources of differences, which trigger conflicts within the Armenian community. Armenians’ institutions (hospitals, schools and orphanages) reconstruct and reproduce the Armenian identity in Turkey. After the presentation, my question was about the differences between the Armenians in Agos and Armenians in Patriarchate. Prof. Ozdogan answered Armenians in Agos are relatively young group which symbolizes the new renaissance in Armenian community, most of them migrated to Istanbul from Anatolia and most of them are leftist. Whereas, the Armenians in Patriarchate are mostly Istanbulite, prefer to live under communal shield –shield of Patriarchate-, in their minds old-millet system continues and they do not want to be visible in public sphere.

Prof. Elizabeth Ozdalga was the third discussant of the workshop. Her presentation was on the another debatable issue in Turkish political agenda: Alevites. After presenting the info about the demographic dimension of the Alevite community in Turkey, she questioned the minority, secularism and religious marginalization issues. She argues that although the political parties have ‘Alevi’ representatives, this does not mean that Alevi question is resolved.

The last discussant of the workshop was Dr. Osman Aytar. He argued that the Kurdish identity is ignored by denialist discourses. He provided the short chronology about the Kurds after the establishment of the Turkish Republic. He stated that until the PKK, Kurds had mainly expressed their identity within the leftist organizations. Then he inquired the changes that destined Kurds to found their own parties and organizations. This inquiry brought him to Kurdishness of the Kurdish question.

After the above-mentioned presentations, the workshop ended with a round table discussion, which was functional to the formation of new research questions.

Kivanc

This brief published in CMES-Lund University

image: http://www.horrorlair.com/movies/images/identity.jpg