heptagrammaton’s Reviews > Muslim Nationalism and the New Turks > Status Update

{In journalist Ayşe Önal's words:} "On a food program {...} you can't say 'Rum food' because it will corrupt honour [namus bozar]." She once heard someone say in this context, "Don't dishonor the kitchen." [Mutfağin ırzina geçme; literally, don't rape the kitchen.]

(Curly brackets mine. Square brackets in the original, White's own. If any misspellings: mine.)

[In] Ayşenir [Bilgi Solak]'s descruption of nationalism, regardless of variety, is male and hard-edged without room for compromise. It is obsessed with an emphasis on boundaries of the nation, women's honor, and blood, and not concerned with the substance of religion. Islam appears rather as a motif.

The maintenance of a national identity requires continuous vigilance against the threat of forgetting, losing the coherence of the national narrative, and disappearing. It requires continual monitoring of boundaries against the incursion of impure elements (in language, ideas, cultural practices and blood).

The sociologist Ferhat Kentel told mr that modernisation was a form of physical shame. "In school, you learn shame at wearing pyjamas to the store, to wear a scarf. You learn how to hold a knife and a fork, how to correctly scratch your nose. Modrrnjtyabd civilization teaches me to be ashamed. Then you learn yo despise others who haven't passed the same test .... I was tamed, domesticated.

In Turkey, the individual has become the nation, and the prospect of loss is immeasurably more inspiring of fear because it implies the loss of the "authentic" self. Charles Lindholm has suggested that the search for authenticity is a consequence of a modern loss of faith and meaning. Some seek [it] ... anchor[ing] themselves in more collective forms [...] but also in [...] group identity...