Visuality as reality definer and the spectacularization of politics in Turkey
ALI ERGUR
As is well known, the postindustrial era affected the value of the production as an essential criterion according to which an entire social organization was adjusted. What emerges with new forms of global integration is the determinant force of consumption, which entails a much more flexible, unrooted, ahistorical social context. Although the social life becomes gradually diversified with a vast variety of alternating socialities, it also acquires a function of absolute signifying. Due to the over-circulation of decontextualized signifiers, an emphasis on discourse dominates and inhibits possible ideological implications of things. In such a non-congruent social milieu, politics, as it is the case for several other domains, is constructed on this unrooted and flexible social expressions, which no more correspond to class positions, because of the loss of meaning once generated by conflicts based on productive forces. Rather, politics became a purely pragmatic process, where the designing of discursive strategies constitute the primary preoccupation of a group of professionals, not only politicians. The constant necessity for maintaining politics valid involves the mobilization of a techno-ideological apparatus assuring the perpetuation of spectacularity. What has been omitted by gaps of reflex ion emerges as an over-accentuation of discursive reconstruction of political praxis. Not far from these global changes, Turkey has experienced, during the 1980’s, the direct effects of neoliberalist policies, which ended up by reforging the existing modes of social integration and their representations at political level. The rise of private media channels contributed to the development and proliferation of the use of discursive strategies in politics, via the over-exposure of the rhetorical aspect. For this, different forms of propaganda operated, while certain political images served as socially agreed ideological implications, such as the TV programs promoting the policies of Turgut Özal, the ex-prime minister, or the construction and reuse of the image of Tansu Çiller, another ex-prime minister, in Bosnia during the war.
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On societal legitimacy of the Turkish Armed Forces
TANEL DEMİREL
This study examines how the Turkish society at large perceives the Turkish military’s political autonomy and the remarkable power it wields in political life. It argues that the Turkish military has traversed a long way in legitimising its privileged situation. The role it played in the establishment of the Turkish Republic, its tendency to take its guardianship role seriously, the social structure which dispose people to accept the military’s tutelary role as normal, and the weaknesses of civilian institutions, can be counted amongst the factors that made such an outcome possible. This having been said, one should never ignore the fact that the very existence and/or posture of the military prepare a fertile ground that greatly facilitates re-production of status quo since the military’s presence make it costly to challenge prevailing power configuration.
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On the Rousseauian constraints of the modern Turkish politics: A Kantian interpretation
HASAN BÜLENT KAHRAMAN
This article primarily deals with the concepts of ‘general will’ and ‘public sovereignity’ arguing that these Rousseauian notions have played a constitutive role in the making of the hegemonic ideological structure of the Turkish Republic. The preference of this model is a consequence of the state-centered and community-based structure inherited from the previous social norms. This structure which dwells on a notion of social contract, argues the article, is set against the Kantian understanding of the terms and there has been a radical difference between the two different models of contractualism. The article develops the view that the Rousseauian tradition of communitarianism hinders the transition to the liberal legal structure. However, in the conclusionary section, the analysis aims to show that as a matter of a number of inputs such as the new models of democracy, citizenship and especially through the effects of globalisation and other similar external issues there has been a relatively transition towards a liberal state in the Kantian sense which comes out with the demise of the nation-state.
Globalization, alternative modernities and the
cultural economy of Turkish capitalism
E. FUAT KEYMAN
Turkey has been undergoing both a series of socio-economic trnsformation and the deepest economic crisis of its modern history. While socio-economic transformations have created the legitimacy crisis of Turkish modernity, the economic crisis has brought about the governing crisis of the Turkish state. This paper argues that these crisis should be seen as interrelated and intertwined, and that a long-tem solution to the economic crisis should be sought by analysing the economic crisis not as a purely economic phenomenon, but as a “governing crisis” whose roots are directly related to the changing formation of Turkish modernity since the 1908s, but especially in the 1990s. The paper argues secondly that globalization constitutes a discursive and historical context for the changing formation of Turkish modernity, insofar as it has made possible for the emergence of new terms of politics, new economic and cultural actors and new claims to identity and modernity in Turkey. These arguments that the paper puts forward is not only theoretical but sociological and discursive in the sense that they are founded upon both a theoretical analysis of the recent academic and public discourses and debates on Turkish politics, and more importantly the views, the visions and the strategies of new important economic actors, mainly the industrialists and business associations, concerning the question of how to create a different and democratic Turkey.
The paper develops its arguments in three interrelated sections. First, it provides a critique af the neoliberal and the statist approaches to the economic crisis. This critique constitutes a possibity of creating a “transformationalist ground” for analysing the crisis of modernity and the economic crisis as intertwined processes. Secondly, the paper provides a brief analysis of the changing formation of Turkish modernity, in order to create an historical framework for a better understanding of the existing alternative claims to identity and modernity, the alternative production-based solutions to the economic crisis, and the alternative visions of a different and democratic Turkey, all of which have been voiced by the existing important economic actors. The third part of the paper documents these claims, solutions and visions which I have extrapolated from the indept interviews I have done with them in my research on the impacts of globalization on Turkey.
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The modernization-nationalism tension and Ecevit’s leftist populist movement
EMİN ALPER
CHP’s performance in the 1970s under the leadership of Ecevit has usually been assesed in terms of its political project. The aim of this article is to examine the way Ecevit’s leftist populist movement had related itself with nationalism, to capture how it had defined nationalism as it articulated it in its own political discourse, to understand the significance of this attempt within the political course of Turkish nationalism and where it stands. Therefore this movement is regarded here to be aiming at not only political but also cultural unification. The article draws on Chatterjees’s theoretical model of colonial nationalisms.
The main assumption of the article is that, since Turkish state was established without an anti-colonial mobilization, official Turkish nationalism during one-party period was neither politically nor culturally capable of encompassing the nation and establishing its hegemony. Adopting a populistic policy, DP tried to close the cultural and political gap between the state and the nation, but this evoke high resistance among the establishment. As against AP, which appropriated DP line without change, CHP line was incapable of establishing its hegemony - a crisis which Ecevit would come up with a solution. This was to render hegemonic a project containing social democratic inspirations by reinterpreting Kemalism with a leftist perspective. In the article, Ecevit’s movement is regarded as a movement bringing forth a unification proposal antithetical to that of DP/AP line.
Ecevit had tried to close the gap between the state/CHP line and the majority who did not support it not only politically but also culturally. For that purpose, a new historical thesis was set forth. Declaring the first three centuries of the Ottoman Empire to be its golden age, this thesis made the living/recent past part of “nation”s historical narrative. In this golden age, a certain model of social democratic state in which the peasants had enjoyed liberty was discovered, thus the historical sources for justifying modernization were found and Westernization became synoymous with return to national sources. At the same time, the “specifications” of the Turkish people brought forth in this structure were determined, and a national identity definition, which would be compatible with the political project proposed, around traits like egalitarianism, contentment etc. was tried to be established.
Within Ecevit’s model of etatist development, state is justified as the warrant of social justice. Even though a participant economic life is proposed, the state has maintained its autonomous position in coordination and planning. The nation was expected to melt political life within the body of the state and the state was expected to be close to political interventions. This approach has been considered as a model of passive revolution.
The fantasy space of revolutionary students: “Salute Seattle!”
HALİL NALÇAO⁄LU
It is commonplace among Turkish intellectuals who discuss the fate of revolutionary movement and (radical) left in Turkey to conclude that the working class movement during 1960s and 1970s was detached from working class. Despite the gap between proletariat and revolutionaries, these years, especially the period which had produced “the sixty-eighters generation” has been constituted and re-constituted as a liminal reality against which “today’s activists” are placed and judged. This mode of thinking has yielded the judgement that today’s revolutionary activists are repeating the mistakes committed by their precurser in history. The present article quesitons this judgement on the basis of post-Lacanian psychoanalysis, anecdotal evidence and some material printed by “leftist” student organizations and publishing houses. It claims that historical analysis falls short in explaining certain aspects of revolutionary students’ struggle and their relation to the past. Informed by psychoanalysis, and especially by its _i_ekean version, the article attempts to develop two concepts toward a more complete understanding of the specific “fantasy space” of the revolutionary students. Although these concepts are derived from completely irrevevant contexts (a kitchen utensil called “kitchen robot” and “courtesy flush”), they can still be considered as “illuminative” as far as certain dynamics of “fantasy space” is concerned. In conclusion, the paper asserts that the typology of student activism that divides the world into “West” and “the rest” is operative in the field of student activism as this analytical division is sustained through two distinct (even opposite) injunctions produced by two different modes of social organization: “post-liberal” and “pre-bourgeois liberal.”
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The single party period and corporatism
controversy in Turkey
AHMET MAKAL
One of the basic subject of controversy as to the single-party period, which reaches over from the inception of the Republic to 1946, is “corporatism”. During this period, some corporate discourse is enunciated and especially in the 1930’s we witness some formations and practices as well as legal arrangements that give corporatistic impressions. Those were the years during which the state’s willingness of supervision and control on various social groups and organizations had intensified as a result of the single-party rule’s becoming rigid in the political sphere and etatist practices in the economic sphere. However, even as of this period, practices of corporate character did not assume generality and were not transformed into a system but were rather limited to specific social groups. The tone of these limited practices is fairly open. One of the basic reasons for this is the fact that, in spite of some limited formations, Turkey has not been able to become an organized society due to actual and / or legal restrictions on social organization during the single-party period. Conceptually, however, both liberal corporate practices and practices of state corporatism imply relations realized at the organizational level between the state and various groups. Also, the limited organizations realized in Turkey during the period and their relations with the state are fairly different from corporate relations, for instance, in Italy. In the 1930’s, although there are some similarities and imitations in such areas as party model, party-state relations and party-state-community relations, the Turkish state has some characteristics different from the state in Italy. Besides this, for different considerations, there seems to be no need for a corporate structuring in Turkey similar to that in Italy. In any case, the single-party rule carries out its functions as an authoritarian state as such, and does not need, at one level or the other, to share, within a corporate structure, its authorities with different organizations of various social groups. As a matter of fact, no economic and social prerequisites of an Italian-type corporate structure have developed in Turkey. Such a corporate structure, although not sufficiently matured, necessitates a certain level of industrialization, social differentiation, and class diversification. Being at the inception of industrialization, such diversification is not strong enough to bring about a corporate structure. In addition, strict control of the state over the economic activities, is a factor that weakens, to a large extent, the need for corporate solutions. In view of this factual picture, to assert the existence of a corporate structure in Turkey during the single-party rule stems from, in our opinion, identifying corporatism with authoritarianism. Although it seems natural for a single-party rule of an authoritarian character to subordinate some of the existing organizations, this is not sufficient by itself unless a corporate structure of the type in Italy and other prerequisites we have discussed are present. In conclusion, we can say that although there seems to be some discourse of a corporate nature and some limited practices in Turkey during the period, these practices have a tone of openness and that they did not gain prevalence and did not assume a systematic form and its prerequisites have not developed. And it can be said that the organizations allegedly considered to be the subject-matter of corporate relations are “intermediaries” that provide relations between the state and certain social groups and carry out a kind of filtering function. For this reason, the concept of “corporatism” should be handled with extreme care and its boundaries should be well-drawn out.
Citizenship and Turkishness
MESUT YE⁄EN
This essay aims to deconstruct the idea of Turkishness designed by the Turkish citizenship. Arguing that the present debate on Turkish citizenship fails to provide a ‘true’ picture of the Turkishness defined by Turkish constitutions, I display that the idea of Turkishness designed by Turkish citizenship is remarkably more complex and imprecise than it is mostly understood in the current debate on the issue.
The essay starts with a brief examination of the recent discussion on citizenship in order to highlight the significance of the issue of membership. This is followed by an examination of the present debate on Turkish citizenship. Then, I provide a ‘close’ reading of the constitutional texts, which contributed to the construction of Turkish citizenship. This reading displays that the ‘oscillation’ of Turkish citizenship between a political and an ethnic understanding of citizenship is not as ‘accidental’ as it is sometimes assumed in the present debate on the issue. It rather reveals that the roots of this oscillation may be found in the constitutional texts, which constructed the Turkish citizenship.
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Population resettlement and immigration policies of interwar Turkey: A study of Turkish nationalism
SONER ÇA⁄APTAY
This article studies Turkish nationalism during Atatürk’s rule. In the interwar years, the Kemalist state promoted a territorial-voluntaristic definition of the nation. Then, however, the gradual rise of ethnicist nationalism in the country was accompanied by the ascent of the “Turkish History Thesis.” This was coupled with an emphasis on the Turkish language. The manuscript presents an analysis of these developments. In analyzing Turkish nationalism in this era, it focuses on the practices of the state, and studies the Kemalist immigration and population resettlement policies
The interaction between territory, religion, language, and ethnicity produced a rather complex definition of Turkishness in the interwar years. Then, Kemalism had three definitions of the nation: territorial, religious, and ethno-religious. With these, Ankara produced three concentric zones of Turkishness: an outer territorial one, a middle religious one, and an inner ethnic one. In this scheme, only when a group was located in the innermost, ethnic zone, it enjoyed close proximity to the Turkish state. Alternatively, the further away a group was from the center, the more unaccommodating was Ankara towards it.
The different missions of the same identity:
Turkish-Islamic Synthesis and Turkish Islam
ÜNAL BİLİR
In the following article a comparison will be made between “Turkish Islam” and the “Turkish-Islamic Synthesis” in respect to their worldviews. The “Turkish-Islamic Synthesis” which gained popularity as an ideological formulation in 1980s served as a model for the nationalistic group “Gray Wolves” [Bozkurtlar; Ülkücüler] and assumed influence on Turkish politics up to and including the 1990s. The “Turkish- Islamic Movement” of nurcu groups [Fethullahçılar] inherited the ideological fundamentals of the “Turkish-Islamic Synthesis” without exerting an influence on policy.
First the historical phases and ideological predecessors of the “Turkish-Islamic Understanding” will be succinctly described. Next the common and dissimilar positions of “Turkish Islam” and the “Turkish-Islamic Synthesis” with regard to their conceptions of nationalism, worldviews and denominational preferences in terms of Western civilization will be described. The main point dealt with is whether “Turkish Islam” and the “Turkish-Islamic Synthesis” are a repetition of the same ideology or whether “Turkish Islam” is a successor of the “Turkish-Islamic Synthesis”s worldview. Also, the question of what goals these currents follow will be dealt with, based on their philosophical conceptions of the world.
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The neo-nurcu schools of
Fethullah Gülen in Central Asia
BAYRAM BALCI
Since the break up of USSR, Turkic Central Asia -Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan- emerged on the geopolitical scene and fed the identity debate in Turkey. Although the Turkish state grants these republics a new and high geopolitical importance, Turkish presence in the region results more from the commitment of private actors, among which one should distinguish the community of Fethullah Gülen, leader of a branch of the nurcu movement founded by Said Nursi (1873-1960). On the eve of independence in Central Asia, the community of Fethullah Gülen stands at the peak of its power and influence in Turkey. It benefits from a large and powerful educational network that serves its implementation strategy for Central Asia.
With the support of businessmen and missionary education professionals, this community inaugurates as soon as September 1991 dozens of private schools run by nurcu professors together with their Central Asian partners. Businessmen from Turkey and Central Asia provide the financial support necessary for the development of such schools, out of which will emerge the next elites of the nation with a close relationship to the movement. Like any missionary movement, the group of Fethullah Gülen carries an ideology and spreads a message for the dissemination of an Islam based on modernity and slightly tinged with mysticism. Spreading Islamic ethics is definitely the priority motivation for nurcu missionaries in The different missions of the same identity:
Turkish-Islamic Synthesis and Turkish Islam
ÜNAL BİLİR
In the following article a comparison will be made between “Turkish Islam” and the “Turkish-Islamic Synthesis” in respect to their worldviews. The “Turkish-Islamic Synthesis” which gained popularity as an ideological formulation in 1980s served as a model for the nationalistic group “Gray Wolves” [Bozkurtlar; Ülkücüler] and assumed influence on Turkish politics up to and including the 1990s. The “Turkish- Islamic Movement” of nurcu groups [Fethullahçılar] inherited the ideological fundamentals of the “Turkish-Islamic Synthesis” without exerting an influence on policy.
First the historical phases and ideological predecessors of the “Turkish-Islamic Understanding” will be succinctly described. Next the common and dissimilar positions of “Turkish Islam” and the “Turkish-Islamic Synthesis” with regard to their conceptions of nationalism, worldviews and denominational preferences in terms of Western civilization will be described. The main point dealt with is whether “Turkish Islam” and the “Turkish-Islamic Synthesis” are a repetition of the same ideology or whether “Turkish Islam” is a successor of the “Turkish-Islamic Synthesis”s worldview. Also, the question of what goals these currents follow will be dealt with, based on their philosophical conceptions of the world.
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The neo-nurcu schools of
Fethullah Gülen in Central Asia
BAYRAM BALCI
Since the break up of USSR, Turkic Central Asia -Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan- emerged on the geopolitical scene and fed the identity debate in Turkey. Although the Turkish state grants these republics a new and high geopolitical importance, Turkish presence in the region results more from the commitment of private actors, among which one should distinguish the community of Fethullah Gülen, leader of a branch of the nurcu movement founded by Said Nursi (1873-1960). On the eve of independence in Central Asia, the community of Fethullah Gülen stands at the peak of its power and influence in Turkey. It benefits from a large and powerful educational network that serves its implementation strategy for Central Asia.
With the support of businessmen and missionary education professionals, this community inaugurates as soon as September 1991 dozens of private schools run by nurcu professors together with their Central Asian partners. Businessmen from Turkey and Central Asia provide the financial support necessary for the development of such schools, out of which will emerge the next elites of the nation with a close relationship to the movement. Like any missionary movement, the group of Fethullah Gülen carries an ideology and spreads a message for the dissemination of an Islam based on modernity and slightly tinged with mysticism. Spreading Islamic ethics is definitely the priority motivation for nurcu missionaries in Central Asia. However, because of the strong suspicion and paranoia among those post-Soviet states against any kind of religious movement, nurcu schools in order to strengthen their presence focus more on Turkism than on Islamic ethics.
Their contribution to the dissemination of Turkism explains the good relations this religious community has been maintaining with the Turkish state in Central Asia while their relations are very much problematic in Turkey. Whereas very much appreciated in Central Asia for their education activities, Gülen’s movement has no guarantee for sustainability in the region. Indeed, today the majority of its missionaries are Turkish expatriates from Anatolia. The education of local elites will take more time, as it will depend on the rapidity with which the new regimes will move towards more political tolerance and freedom for all political and religious trends and movements.
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The religious policies of military regime
NECDET SUBAŞI
The religious policies of Turkish Armed Forces which took over rule in Turkey on September 12, 1980 proves to be still effective today. The political, institutional and legal constitutions that have been enforced rapidly on a wide scale since September 12 bear the mark of this intervention. In this context, there is a set of arguments concerning the relation of the military forces with religion - suggesting that contemporary Islamic fundemantalism has been mainly supported by military forces, or the military has attempted at patronizing Sunnism in a sectarian discrimination. There are also other arguments maintaining that the military regime has used, even manipulated religion when necessary as a shield against its opponent discourses.
The aim of this article is to discuss religious policies of Turkish Armed Forces in the three year period starting with its intervention on “civilian rule”, along with various arguments set forth in this context. In this way, the arguments maintaining that the rulers have used religion as a means of social unification will be discussed.
