Muslim Nationalism and the New Turks

by Jenny B. White

Turkey has leapt to international prominence as an economic and political powerhouse under its elected Muslim government, and is looked on by many as a model for other Muslim countries in the wake of the Arab Spring. This book reveals how Turkish national identity and the meanings of Islam and secularism have undergone radical changes in today's Turkey, and asks whether the Turkish model should be viewed as a success story or cautionary tale.

Jenny White shows how Turkey's Muslim elites have mounted a powerful political and economic challenge to the country's secularists, developing an alternative definition of the nation based on a nostalgic revival of Turkey's Ottoman past. These Muslim nationalists have pushed aside the Republican ideal of a nation defined by purity of blood, language, and culture. They see no contradiction in pious Muslims running a secular state, and increasingly express their Muslim identity through participation in economic networks and a lifestyle of Islamic fashion and leisure. For many younger Turks, religious and national identities, like commodities, have become objects of choice and forms of personal expression.

This provocative book traces how Muslim nationalists blur the line between the secular and the Islamic, supporting globalization and political liberalism, yet remaining mired in authoritarianism, intolerance, and cultural norms hostile to minorities and women.

Genres: Politics, History, Nonfiction, Turkish

264 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2012

Reviews

[Cyrus Carter · Rating 5 out of 5]

Pivotal book for understanding that Turkey's current internal struggle is not black and white. The various factions are delineated and well explained beyond the facile religious / secular divide that many prefer to believe is the problem. The book will prove difficult reading for anyone who prefers to believe in "us" and "them"; the two sides may share much, including a fierce nationalism and preferred gender inequality. I do hope it gets translated well and quickly. Bravo to Ms. White for a well-researched and novel work.

[heptagrammaton · Rating 5 out of 5]

   Excellent. White can sometimes feel as an all too ambiguous and uncommitted to causal analysis narrator — but that otherwise this would make a poorer work of anthology.
  Muslim Nationalism and the New Turks offers a view of how national subjectivity has been and is being created in the post-imperial Turkish Republic. The emerging picture defies and disturbs Western dichotomous notions of religion and secularism, and their relation to tradition.

[S]ecularism is not necessarily modern, nor is religion marginal or superfluous to a modern life. Instead, religion itself can become secularized (individualized, privatized) while the secular sphere becomes sacralized as profane images and practices are imbued with attributes of the sacred, and religious meanings and legitimacy are extended to new practices. (pp.4-5)

Utilizing sociologist José Casanova's notion of aggiornamentos, re-adjustments and -framings of tradition which blur the lines between sacred and profane, White goes on to suggest that reinterpretations of modernity as much as of tradition have led to public interpellations of piety and democratization previously unimagined.
   Jenny White stresses how practices are continuously emerging in practice, contingent on the experience and practical adjustment experienced by individuals.
 

In practice national subjectivity is highly situational. It is the product of individual motives, the position and perspective of the actor, the intended audience, and the multiple frameworks (civilized, modern, conservative, Kemalist, secular, Muslim, liberal, and so on, as these are defined locally) within which an individual is situated while projecting his or her indentity at any given moment. . . [T]he definition of a culture must proceed from the individual's understanding and expression of cultural categories, which are always strategic. (p. 18)

   which is to say,

National subjectivity are better described by delineating the processes by which people develop them, rather as categories to label them. (p. 183) as [Labels] gain meaning only when they are acted out. And in the process of being performed, root identifying traditions [...] are continually modified by experience, manipulated to meet subjective commitments and concerns, and disordered by contradictory interpretations imposed by one's gender, religious, racial, and social class positions. (p. 194)
   White's perhaps most original contribution centres the ambiguous role of women in Turkish national meaning-meaning: throughout her analysis, she points out women's alienation from the traditional discourses of national subjectivity and its irrelevance to them as individuals. Muslim and secular (Kemalist) nationalists alike share a masculinist militarist notion of the state, for which the patriarchal family is microcosm, model and synecdoche, and a sexed bioessentialist attitude to national identity:

[Men's] offspring would be haunted by a mixed-blood identity in a way that Christian women's offspring are not. Women's ideality has always been more malleable. It was permitted for a Muslim to marry a Christian woman as long as their children were raised as Muslims, while it would have been (and often still is) unacceptable for a Muslim woman to marry a Christian man. The man literally and figuratively plants the seed of identity in the soil of the woman's body. The metaphor of seed and soil is common enough to be encountered in folk sayings, religious sermons, and in daily conversation. A man's blood is the source of his children's identity, while the mother supplies a nurturing medium. This cultural attribute of women makes them "weak"carriers if national identity incapable of instantiating—only of nurturing—Turkish national identity. (p. 160)

   a (i.)note: In Ch. 4, 'The Missionary and the Headscarf', White draws a parallel between the conceptualization of the state between Turkey and France, where Kemalism has historic roots and with which it shares a number of ideological assumptions regarding the role of the state (p. 89) and the state's right and duty to moderate the public. Citing Joan W. Scott's The Politics of the Veil in France, "the veil becomes a screen onto which projected images of strangeness and fantasies of danger—danger to the Fabric of French society and to the future of the republican nation."
    What of find notable about this reference to a common genealogy is that Atatürk is also related and foundational to the forms of European fascism. What suggests itself, in an act of tracing and translation, is that the paternalism of the French Republic (and, perhaps, concretely, its policing of public veiling) is, in a distinct sense, proto-fascistic.
   a (ii.) note and a timely meditation:

Israeli political culture, [Uri Ram (in"Why Secularism Fails? Secular Nationalism and Religious Revivalism in in Israel." Int J Polit Cult Soc (2008) 21:57–73.] argues, moved away from a combination of strong nationalism/weak religionism in its early Zionist days to strong nationalist/strong religionism today. The strong nationalism/weak religionism type is strongly reminiscent of Kemalism, as Ram himself points out. . . Israel, Ram argues, is becoming increasingly nonsecular, because only Jewish nationality is officially recognized, not Israeli nationality, giving religious groups sway over defining the nation. Why is this the case? Jewish nationality means that belonging is determined by family of birth, while Israeli nationality is a potentially universal category open to all—Jews, Arabs, and other citizens. "In order to avert such a potential 'mix' and to secure the boundaries and membership of a 'pure'Jewish nationality, the state leans on Jewish religion(ism.)" Judaism is thus deployed as a shield against civic nationalism. Since they cannot be nationals, non-Jewish perforce are members of the devalued category of citizen. Religion used as a national standard thus disguises what is really political exclusion on the basic of ethnic racism. (p. 191,, emphasis mine)

[Michael DeBusk · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is a treasure trove of deep and valuable insights regarding Turkish culture and politics (my copy is marked on nearly every page). The prose is vague and tedious in places, but well worth the pay-off. I expect Turkish secularists will find White overly generous toward the "Muslim Nationalists," but it's important to recognize she often distinguishes between the movement in the culture and it's politicians who currently control the government--of which she is more critical. All-in-all, indispensable for understanding Turkey in the present moment.

[Emre G · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Gezi catismalarinda, beklentileri 21.yuzyilin kuresel konulariyla, sosyal adaletsizlik sorunlariyla ve neoliberal umutlarla sekillenmis yeni yurttaslar kusagi ile 20.yuzyildan kalma, mesrutiyetini sandik cogunluguna dayandiran, milli "aileyi" yoneten otokratik, guclu adam yonetimi anlayisi karsi karsiya geliyordu"

[Borislav]

The book explores Modern Turkish society and the social tensions that are inherent to it. It describes the struggle between Kemalism and Islamism as well as how the two political currents intermingle. Although it is more than 260 pages it makes its point in the first 50 pages and from then on is an reiteration of the same. I expected more information in particular on Modern Turkish foreign policy.

[Atlas · Rating 5 out of 5]

Depressing but an accurate description of the state of affairs in Turkey. Highly recommended.

[Linda Caldwell · Rating 5 out of 5]

Definitely required reading for anyone who wants to settle in this corner of the world!

[switching to StoryGraph: ka_cam · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found this a fairly challenging read due to my lack of background knowledge on Turkey. However, I was still able to glean some pretty intriguing insights and frameworks of analysis, and would consider it a worthwhile read for those interested in the development of nationalisms and identity formation, roles of religious identity, and/or modern Turkey.

[ehk2 · Rating 2 out of 5]

First, two factual errors:
"At one point, the left-wing mayor of the small Black Sea town of Fatsa officially repudiated the authority of the government and, with his supporters, declared the town an independent Soviet Republic" (p.34)

neremle gülsem bilemedim. Afedersin Jenny, fakat kaç senedir aramızdasın, bu kadar mı uzaksın konuya!!!

"Several years ago, the AKP government introduced a new public holiday, Holy Birth Week, to celebrate the Prophet Muhammad's holiday" (p.9)

Overall, it's a decent study on the cleavages in Turkish society. It's also important that it underlines some fundamental commonalities of identity among the majority of Turkish population:
“Secular and Muslim nationalisms, in other words, despite the animosity they have generated, may share more ideas about being Turkish than issues that divide them” (194)

[Diane · Rating 4 out of 5]

Written by an American anthropologist who studies Turkey, this book looks at beliefs about the nation, minorities, religion, and human rights amongst the traditional Turkish elite (Kemalists) as well as the new, more Islamicly-focused, Turkish elite. The author bases her material on interviews that she conducted in 2008; however, much has changed throughout the region since then, so I am curious as to what she would find if she did the same study today. It is also a work of academic anthropology, so it was a little dense and hard to follow in places. Still, it provided a good introduction to the various factions among the Turkish elite, which is helpful in understanding dynamics in the country.

[Emily]

This book was fine, a nice exploration of the contradictions inherent in being Turkish. Overall, a little repetitive, but I enjoyed the chapter on the place of women in Turkey's nationalistic society.