Introduction
Nation-states are the creation of the age of nationalism, which started in the 19th century and continues today. In the process of becoming nation-states, many empires were demolished through wars and nationalist movements. The dissolution of the Ottoman Empire at the end of World War I and the subsequent Turkish War of Independence created the Turkish nation-state from the ashes of the Ottoman Empire under the leadership of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. Even though most of the people living in the current area of Turkey were Turkish in the 1920s, there were other ethnic groups in the area too.
In this article, I argue that President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has changed the Turkish nation. Even though several non-Muslims were declined citizenship and many Kurds were assimilated into what might be called Turkishness, there are still Kurdish populations concentrated in southeastern Turkey, which is predominantly Muslim. The Kurdish population includes citizens who belong to other religious groups such as Alevis. Moreover, the influx of many Syrian refugees in Turkey created another sizeable Muslim group. According to Rodgers et al. (Reference Rodgers, Gritten, Offer and Asare2016), in 2016, there were more than 2.7 million legal Syrian refugees in Turkey. In some southeastern cities, such as Kilis, there were more Syrians than Turkish citizens (Sözcü, January 8, 2018). The data from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees as of June 2, 2021, show 3,675,845 registered Syrian refugees currently residing in Turkey. Even though most of the accepted Syrian refugees are Sunni, other refugee communities from Syria include Yazidis, Christians, and Kurds from Kobane (for a detailed explanation, see Korkut Reference Korkut2016). My thesis is that in the era of nationalism, language, ethnicity, and race are all used to create a more homogenous society. Still, under Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi, AKP) rule, Turkey chooses to enforce religious homogeneity combined with a dynastic discourse reminiscent of the Ottoman Empire.
Most scholars in the literature, such as Ernest Gellner (Reference Gellner2009), argue that when nations and nationalisms are fabricated, they cannot change. On the contrary, new scholars of nationalism, such as Nadav Shelef (Reference Shelef2010) and Zeki Sarigil (Reference Sarigil2018), assert that nationalism is malleable and the nation can be flexible, meaning it can adjust to new challenges it faces. In what follows, I use Shelef’s (Reference Shelef2010) framework, along with Sarigil (Reference Sarigil2018), to analyze the present-day changes in Turkish nationalist identity. Other Turkish scholars, such as Şener Aktürk (Reference Aktürk2018), argue on Turkish citizenship’s flexibility in a different context, primarily by analyzing different ethnic groups from 2009 to 2013. Focusing on the period 2010–2018, I present evidence for the changing Turkish nationalist identity by using President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s speeches from 2010 to 2018. Unlike Aktürk (Reference Aktürk2018), I integrate the Syrian Refugees into the Turkish nation and follow a more theoretical approach.
In the sections that follow, I review the literature and show how scholars disagree on nationalism’s adaptability. I then present evidence for the change of Turkish nationalism and explain the history of Turkish nationalism. After presenting my theoretical framework and methodology and explaining how the sources in this research were selected, I present evidence supporting my argument that Turkey has become a more flexible nation and the implications of my findings.
Nationalism in A Broader Perspective
There is no one definition of national identity. For example, I define national identity as a person’s connection and loyalty to a nation. But it might be agreed that national identity is a construct. For example, Benedict Anderson (Reference Anderson2006, 6) argues that all nations and national identities are created, and he defines this conception as an “imagined political community.” He further states that people believe that they belong to an imagined nation because even in tiny groups, every group member cannot know each other (Anderson Reference Anderson2006, 6). Especially in geographically large or highly populated nation-states, it is difficult to know one’s fellow citizens beyond one’s immediate community. Loring Danforth concurs with Anderson, and maintains that in the case of the Macedonian Conflict, the identities of both parties (Greeks and Macedonians) are created, “not biologically given” (Danforth Reference Danforth1995, 231). Gellner (Reference Gellner2009) argues that culture is an essential component of this constructed national identity. According to Gellner, two people can only belong to the same nation “if they share the same culture” (Reference Gellner2009, 6). Gellner also states that the two should believe that they belong to the same nation and recognize each other as equals (Reference Gellner2009, 7). If they do not believe that they are a piece of the same nation, they cannot construct a nation. Eric Hobsbawm also supports Gellner’s argument about the shared culture, explaining that the “invented tradition” creates an integral part of the national identity (Hobsbawm Reference Hobsbawm1992a, 1). For example, Hugh Trevor-Roper (Reference Trevor-Roper, Hobsbawm and Ranger1992, 22) states that the modern kilt became a national symbol and an item of the national identity in Scotland after created by an Englishman for capitalist aims and convenience. David Cannadine (Reference Cannadine1992) explains the ritual tradition in England and discusses that some of the invented rituals became an essential part of the national identity and helped its creation. In the Turkish case, these traditions show themselves as newly added national holidays, like the July 15th commemorating the attempted coup, and erasure of the Kemalist-era national holidays related to secularism and Mustafa Kemal Atatürk.
Danforth agrees with the previous scholars on the social construction of the national identity, but he brings the ethnicity into the picture different from the other scholars, describing ethnic groups as “social groups” that share a “common origin, history, language and culture” (Reference Danforth1995, 13). In Gellner (Reference Gellner2009) and in the contributions to Hobsbawm and Ranger (Reference Hobsbawm and Ranger1992), the commonness of the culture among the citizens of the same nation is a prevalent theme. Another general idea in the literature is the importance of language and its relationship with national identity. For example, Danforth explains that speaking a Slavic language divided the Macedonians from Greece and that the Macedonian language was an essential component of the Macedonian identity (Reference Danforth1995, 57).
Anderson (Reference Anderson2006, 37–46) analyzes the vernaculars and how vernacularization created different nations and national characters in Europe. For instance, according to Anderson, in the age of empires, the language that a person spoke did not affect a person’s national identity because all the people in the realm were the subjects of the same ruling elite (Reference Anderson2006, 19). Moreover, all the empires were composed of many nations, and because of that, the ruling elite did not favor any language (Anderson Reference Anderson2006). Gellner (Reference Gellner2009, 8–18) explains that there was no nation or national identity in agrarian societies. There were small, mostly peasant communities that only communicate within their little groups. However, in the age of nationalism, language became the most important identifier of a person’s nation. In the Republic of Turkey, with the first and second constitutions,Footnote 1 Turkey’s language was established as Turkish, and all instruction in public schools is conducted in Turkish. Henri Barkey (Reference Barkey2000, 93) explains that to create a more homogeneous nation, at least in terms of language, the Kurdish language was prohibited, a prohibition that included giving Kurdish names to children (a step also taken in the Macedonian case, as explained by Danforth [Reference Danforth1995, 69]).
Nationalism can be constructed in different ways. To understand how the notion of a nation is created, it is helpful to understand how a state is defined in the literature. Gellner (Reference Gellner2009, 3) uses Max Weber’s famous definition of state to explain it, saying that the state is the “agency within society which possesses the monopoly of legitimate violence.” According to Gellner, there are different kinds of states, such as the agrarian state, feudal state, and the modern state (Reference Gellner2009). He explains that there were many different states in an agricultural society, such as small, local communities and large, centrally controlled communities. In such a society, there was no overarching culture that connected the people in the local communities to the other people who were the subjects of the realm (Gellner Reference Gellner2009, 11–13). However, during the industrial era, nationalism became more popular, and the states tried to create nation-states, where a defined territory is occupied by only one nation. Mesut Yeğen (Reference Yeğen2007, 123) explains this transition from Ottoman Empire to the Republic of Turkey, saying that in the Ottoman Empire, Turks were the “unsur-i asli (main ethnic group),” but in the Republic of Turkey, they are “millet-i hakime (dominant/ruling nation).”
Language is not the only way to construct a national identity and create a homogenous nation. The state elites can use other measures, such as religion, to ensure a nation’s homogeneity and define the Other with respect to religion. Both Genevieve Zubrzycki and Danforth give examples of the creation of national identities in industrial societies, Québec and Macedonia, respectively, and both show how religious elites tried to create a homogenous society based on Catholicism and Orthodoxy (Zubrzycki Reference Zubrzycki2016; Danforth Reference Danforth1995). In Amílcar Barreto’s (Reference Barreto2001, 25) case of Puerto Rico, religion is also important, and it is a characteristic of Catholic Puerto Ricans that differentiated them from the Protestant Americans. Zubrzycki (Reference Zubrzycki2016, 2) describes religion as a dividing factor between Canadians (primarily Protestants of English descent) and Québécois (primarily Catholics of French descent). After the secularization of the Québec region, nationalism emerged as a “quasi-religion” (Zubrzycki Reference Zubrzycki2016, 16). Mariam Raqib and Barreto (Reference Raqib and Barreto2014) explain the importance of religion in Afghanistan and how the Taliban wanted to connect different ethnicities under the flag of Islam. The discourse of Islamic brotherhood has also been present in Turkish politics to strengthen the relationship between Kurdish and Turkish populations, decrease the bias toward Sunni-Arab Syrian refugees, and enforce and maintain peace between the Kurdish Worker’s Party (Partiya Karkeren Kurdistan, PKK) and the Turkish military in southeastern Turkey (Gürses Reference Gürses2015; Korkut Reference Korkut2016; Polat Reference Polat2018; Türkmen Reference Türkmen2018; Al Reference Al2019a, Reference Al2019b). Although in the Ottoman Empire religion was not a dividing line between the Sunni Kurds and Sunni Turks, it was an obstacle between non-Muslims and Muslims. For example, the non-Muslims in the empire were taxed more because they were not allowed to join the army, but this tax (jizya) was abolished in 1856 as a part of the Islahat, the Imperial Reform Edict (Selçuk Reference Selçuk2010).
In modern Turkey, there are many groups riven by religion. Martin van Bruinessen explains the Alevi minority in Turkey and defines them as “a heterodox religious minority” who are both “the Turkish and Kurdish speakers” and who have “retained many more elements of pre-Islamic Turkish and Iranian religions than [have the] Sunni Muslims” (Reference Van Bruinessen1996, 7). Even though some Turkish scholars such as Aktürk (Reference Aktürk2018) argue that the Justice and Development Party started Alevi-friendly policies in the current Republic of Turkey, these arguments are not valid. As Durukan Kuzu (Reference Kuzu2018, 109) explains, Alevi Kurds have split loyalties “between the Kurdish political movement and other secular parties such as the CHP [Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi, Republican People’s Party],” which indicates that the Justice and Development Party does not have any incentive to implement Alevi-friendly policies. In addition to the division between Alevis and Sunnis, there is a division between the religious and the secular people in both Kurdish and Turkish communities. This division became more pronounced with the election of the Justice and Development Party in 2002. Hasan Turunç (Reference Turunç2007, 80) defines the Justice and Development Party as “a new type of Islamic-oriented party” that is “committed to the secularism of the Turkish state.” Even though there were other religiously oriented parties in Turkish history before the Justice and Development Party, such as the Welfare Party (RP) and the National Salvation Party (MSP), none of these were as successful.
The membership to the nation and the nationalism can also change according to state-elites’ preferences and political parties. Barreto and Nicholas Napolio (Reference Barreto and Napolio2018) explain the different ways that state elites and different political parties perceive citizenship. According to Barreto and Napolio (Reference Barreto and Napolio2018, 9), in the United States, the Republican Party’s perception of national identity is “white, straight, and Christian,” but the Democratic Party has a more inclusive definition of national identity. They argue that this construction of the national identity is not rigid, and it has evolved over time. Shelef (Reference Shelef2010) also has a similar logic, and he explained the construction of the Jewish identity and Israel since the 1940s. The changes in the map of Israel and the perception of ideal Israel were different in political parties; for example, the Religious Zionist Movement’s perception of “Where is the homeland?” changed from “The River of Egypt to … the River Euphrates” to “Whole land of Israel,” including only “West Bank, Gaza Strip and Golan Heights” (Shelef Reference Shelef2010, 5). Shelef’s analysis of the Israeli maps concurs with the evidence presented by Anderson (Reference Anderson2006, 179–178), who argues that maps are an essential part of the nationalist discourse.
National identities may also evolve and change according to the perception of the golden eras and the modular elements in the nationalist discourse. Anderson (Reference Anderson2006, 4) posits that when the historical facts are created, they become modular, so state officials can choose how to influence citizens about nationalism and national identities. The modularity of the national elements is also explained by Ernest Renan (Reference Renan, Bhabha and Thom2013), who states that forgetting is an integral part of a nation. Renan (Reference Renan, Bhabha and Thom2013, 11) says that “unity is always effected by means of brutality,” and the citizens forgot the violent acts of the past due to the state indoctrination policies. Selecting a golden age to fabricate a national identity and a matching nationalism is connected with the national artifacts. In Turkey, the golden ages chosen by the state officials were very different. For instance, for the current president, Erdoğan, Turkey’s Ottoman heritage should be glorified.
Turkish Nationalism
To understand the current cleavages in Turkey, one must first understand the history of Turkish nationalism. After the establishment of the Republic of Turkey, there were many challenges to secular Turkish nationalism. The most critical challenge against a homogenous, secular, and modern Turkish state came from Kurdish and Islamic groups (Barkey Reference Barkey2000, 87). With the establishment of a predominantly Turkish state, Kurdish groups felt threatened: under the Ottoman Empire, being Muslim was enough to be a privileged member of the society as there was no ethnic discrimination (Barkey Reference Barkey2000, 91). Even though the Republic of Turkey’s second constitution defined Turkish citizenship in a civic manner,Footnote 2 the de facto implementation of this article was not in line with the law. As Jenny White argues, the “early attempts at creating a national identity did not focus on blood or a single Turkish lineage, or on Islam” (Reference White2014, 27).
The religious, mostly Islamic fundamentalist, challenges to the new Republic of Turkey have come from both Kurdish and Turkish groups. Even though the Republic of Turkey’s first constitution stated that the Turkish state’s religion is Islam, the continuing changes in the structure of the state made the conservative Islamic groups uneasy. For example, in 1924, the Islamic caliphate was abolished; religious organizations, courts, and schools were banned; the Ottoman Era civil code was dropped and the Swiss Civil Code was adopted; and the reactionary fez, the Muslim “male religious headgear,” was banned, with the modern hat becoming mainstream (Kadıoğlu Reference Kadıoğlu1996, 186). Consequent changes in the constitution, which in 1928 abolished Islam as the religion of the state and in 1937 added the six principles of Kemalism (republicanism, populism, nationalism, laicism, statism, and reformism), which were also those of the Republican People’s Party founded by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, sparked widespread uprisings in several Anatolian provinces. The most famous Islamic revolts happened in Kurdish provinces such as Tunceli and were incited by Kurdish reactionaries such as Sheikh Said.Footnote 3
Kurds and Turks were not the only groups of people living within Turkey’s borders. There were other small ethnic groups, such as Lazs and Circassians in the Black Sea region of Turkey, Jewish people in most large cities, Arabs in the southern part of Turkey, Greeks in the western region of Turkey (mostly Izmir), and Armenians in the eastern part of Turkey and large cities. However, to “Turkify” and “Muslimify” Turkey, population exchanges took place between Greece and Turkey: Muslim Turks in Greece were brought to Anatolia and the western provinces and settled in the place of non-Muslims Greeks, who were taken back by Greece (Yeğen Reference Yeğen2007, 125). These population exchanges and incidents such as that of September 6–7, 1955, in Istanbul, when Greeks were attacked by mobs incited by the authorities, have dramatically decreased the non-Muslim population in Turkey. For example, in the 19th century, some 55 percent of the population of Istanbul was non-Muslims, but in 1927, the number dropped to 35.2 percent (Yeğen Reference Yeğen2007, 145). The current ratio of Muslims to non-Muslims is not known, but in a 2015 speech, President Erdoğan claimed that 99 percent of Turkey is Muslim (Türkiye Cumhuriyeti Cumhurbaşkanlığı Reference Cumhurbaşkanlığı2015). However, there are also non-Muslim groups in Turkey, such as Jews and Christians, but their numbers are meager. For example, in 2009, according to the newspaper Milliyet (October 28, 2009), there were some 23,000 Jews; 65,000 Armenian-Orthodox; 15,000 Syrian-Orthodox; 3,000 Greek-Orthodox; 3,000 Iraqi-Chaldean; 3,000 Protestants; and 5,000 Yezidis; 10 to 20 million Alevis; and 500,000 Shia Muslims.
One other important step in nationalism includes the openings during the Justice and Development Party era. Aktürk (Reference Aktürk2018) delineates three openings undertaken by the Justice and Development Party in the 2000s: the Kurdish Opening, Alevi Opening, and non-Muslim Opening. The Kurdish Opening included the foundation of the Kurdish Television channel funded by the tax revenue and “incorporation of minority languages into public school curriculum” (Aktürk Reference Aktürk2018, 526). The Alevi Opening included having only one MP of Alevi descent and attending Alevi ceremonies by high-level Justice and Development Party officials (Aktürk Reference Aktürk2018, 537–538). Even though these steps are important for the relationship between the Justice and Development Party and the Alevi community, the Alevis’ most important rights are still not recognized in Turkey, such as their right to pray in government-funded praying houses. Alevi praying houses, called cemevi, are not considered praying houses, which means the government does not cover cemevi expenses. As Özlem Güvemli (Reference Güvemli2020) explains, the Republican People’s Party and the Iyi Party (Good Party) proposed a bill to recognize cemevi in Istanbul as praying houses, but this proposal was rejected by the Justice and Development Party and Nationalist Action Party (Milliyetçi Hareket Partisi, MHP). For this reason, I cannot fully agree with Aktürk’s (Reference Aktürk2018) approach to the Alevi Opening, as the actions of the Justice and Development Party reveal that they are not sincere in their behavior toward Alevis.
Methodology and Theoretical Framework
To analyze the recent changes in Turkish nationalism, I applied critical discourse analysis to President Erdoğan’s speeches in various settings from 2010 to 2018. About this approach, Umut Korkut et al. (Reference Korkut, Mahendran, Bucken-Knapp, Cox, Sphere, Korkut, Mahendran, Bucken-Knapp and Cox2015, 1) explain that political discourses can “create normative mechanisms” by “first making socially constructed realities in politics, second playing a role in delineating subsequent policy frames, and third influencing the public sphere.” Lene Hansen (Reference Hansen2006, 49) states that “the meaning of a text is thus never fully given by the text itself but is always a product of other readings and interpretations.” Elfriede Fürsich (Reference Fürsich2009, 240) asserts that not only the text but the cultural context is vital as texts are “a complex set of discursive strategies that is situated in a special cultural context.” Ruth Wodak et al. (Reference Wodak, de Cillia, Reisigl, Liebhart, Hirsch, Mitten and Unger2009, 9) emphasize that “extra-linguistic social variables and institutional settings of the specific situation of an utterance” is essential in critical discourse analysis.
President Erdoğan’s speeches have covered topics from election propaganda to social policies. Noting that text becomes intertwined with context when applying the critical discourse analysis, I have found that the speeches delivered in the southeastern part of Turkey gain particular importance because the southeastern part of Turkey houses the majority of Kurdish citizens and Syrian refugees. Moreover, the literature analyzing the development of Turkish nationalism and its relationship with Kurds and Kurdish nationalism generally gives more weight to the speeches in Kurdish-majority cities. For example, while analyzing the Kurdish Opening process from 2009 to 2013, Aktürk (Reference Aktürk2018) states that the speeches given in the southeastern and eastern regions of Turkey carry more weight. These parts of Turkey are also affected by the terrorist actions of Kurdish aggression groups such as the Kurdish Worker’s Party (PKK) and the People’s Protection Units (Yekîneyên Parastina Gel, YPG), and, during the Syrian Civil War, the Islamic State. I expected that President Erdoğan’s speeches in these cities would emphasize Turkish, Kurdish, and Syrian unity based on the connective tissue of the Ottoman Empire and Sunni Islam. Although Aktürk (Reference Aktürk2018, 528) argues that President Erdoğan has used the Islamic past more than Ottoman heritage to try to bind Alevis, Kurds, and Turks together, my evidence suggests that he has used both of them equally.
On the Syrian case and general Islamic brotherhood discourse of President Erdoğan, the context is still important. Korkut (Reference Korkut2016, 2) argues that the Justice and Development Party government constructed the Syrian refugee crisis “as a war between the Sunnite victim and Alawite oppressor.” According to Korkut (Reference Korkut2016), speeches given in different international settings by then prime minister Ahmet Davutoglu help to create a narrative in which Turkey is constructed as moral due to open-door policy with Syria while the West is constructed as immoral due to the closed-door policy. Rabia Polat (Reference Polat2018, 506) also states that President Erdoğan’s speeches at UN National Assembly helped to construct Turkey as “a safe haven for people who were forced to leave their homelands.”
Although some scholars engage with several Justice and Development Party actors in their works, I chose to focus exclusively on President Erdoğan’s speeches. Polat (Reference Polat2018, 504) argues that “in a time of rising executive power, there is a need to analyse presidential speeches in order to assess their role in the discursive construction of refugees.” In addition, with the rising authoritarianism in Turkey, especially after the change in the electoral system from parliamentary to presidential, it is clear that President Erdoğan’s speeches are considered as primary policy-making tools. Previous president Abdullah Gül and the two previous prime ministers, Binali Yildirim and Ahmet Davutoglu, are currently in the periphery of Turkish politics. Gül unofficially helped to establish the Democracy and Progress Party (Demokrasi ve Atilim Partisi, DEVA) in 2020 to compete against the Justice and Development Party, and Davutoglu established his party, the Future Party (Gelecek Partisi) in 2019.
I worked directly from the speeches posted on the Republic of Turkey’s Presidency website, Türkiye Cumhuriyeti Cumhurbaşkanlığı, and selections of the speeches in reliable newspapers such as Sözcü and Milliyet. One caveat of taking the speeches directly from the presidency website is the language barrier, as the presidency website only includes the full versions of the Turkish speeches. Even though there is an English version of the Presidency of Turkey website, the full text of all speeches is not available on the English website. In addition to this, a few of the old speeches of Erdogan given when he was the prime minister is not available on the Presidency of Turkey website. I was able to find some of these speeches online. I translated some of the speeches from Turkish to English myself and, on other occasions, found translated versions in other articles and books in the literature or took it from the English version of the Presidency of Turkey website when available.
My theoretical framework includes Shelef’s (Reference Shelef2010) evolution of nationalism, arguing that national identities and nationalism are an evolving element dependent on the changing conditions. Turkey’s evolution from a secular nation-state to an autocratic, Islamic, multi-ethnic empire-like structure under the Justice and Development Party rule aligns with Shelef’s (Reference Shelef2010) description of evolving national identities. Moreover, the evolution of the discourse used by the Justice and Development Party officials supports Barreto and Napolio’s (Reference Barreto and Napolio2018) finding that the discourse used by the state officials such as Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump changed over time and according to incidents that happened in the USA. Further, as the inclusion of ethnic minorities and refugees into the nation based on their religion requires a boundary approach, Sarigil’s (Reference Sarigil2018) explanation of boundary-making by the Kurdish movement is informative.
Sarigil argues that when Turkey started to become more religious after the coup in 1980, there was a change in the same direction by the Kurdish social movement: The nonreligious approach by the Kurdish movement in the 1970s and 1980s evolved into “a sometimes ambivalent but increasingly friendly approach in the 1990s” and “an accommodative attitude and the rise of a Kurdish-Islamic synthesis since the early 2000s” (Sarigil Reference Sarigil2018, 15). Both Kuzu (Reference Kuzu2018) and Sarigil (Reference Sarigil2018) recognize Islam as the primary bonding agent between Kurdish and Turkish populations, but Sarigil (Reference Sarigil2018, 18) also states that the boundary-expansion efforts by the mainstream Kurdish movement also created new boundaries between the Alevi Kurds and Sunni Kurds.
Analysis of Erdoğan’s Speeches
President Erdoğan started his political life in the 1990s, when political Islam had been rising in Turkey. The speeches he gave in his first years in politics are not within the scope of this article because before his election as a prime minister, he did not touch on essential topics such as Kurds, terrorism, and nationalism. Even though inventing new traditions and demolishing the old ones started with his election as president in 2014, his speeches became more inclusive of Kurds and other Muslim groups during his prime ministry, and developed to express dynastic and religious nationalism.
In a 2011 speech in Diyarbakır, the third-largest city in southeastern Turkey, then prime minister Erdoğan stated:
We [Turks and Kurds] are eternal brothers … We have the same qibla. When we perform namaz at Suleymaniye mosque in Istanbul, at Selimiye mosque in Edirne, at Haci Bayram mosque in Ankara, we turn our face to the same qibla that you turn here at Ulucami mosque in Diyarbakir … However, in recent times we see a new practice … The BDP [Peace and Democracy, Barış ve Demokrasi Partisi] officials and their supporters try to discourage my Kurdish Muslim brothers from attending Friday prayers at mosques and from praying behind the imams appointed by the state. (Sarigil Reference Sarigil2018, 122–123)
Sarigil (Reference Sarigil2018, 122) argues that in this speech, then prime minister Erdoğan wants “to contract Islamic religious boundaries, excluding Kurdish ethnopolitical elites.” However, as both Polat (Reference Polat2018) and Hansen (Reference Hansen2006) state, a passage can have multiple meanings, and these meanings can change from reader to reader. Here, I see that Prime Minister Erdoğan uses a family discourse by defining Kurds and Turks as eternal brothers and connects this imagined family to the broader Islamic community and brotherhood by saying all Muslims turn to the same qibla when they pray. Secondly, Erdoğan implies that the Peace and Democracy Party and its supporters are not real Muslims because they prevent pious Kurdish people from praying. I argue that this speech has two aims: first, to exclude the Peace and Democracy Party, and its supporters from the Muslim family, as Sarigil (Reference Sarigil2018) argues; and second, to expand the boundary of the Islamic brotherhood to Kurdish people. By stating Turks and Kurds are brothers, “the AKP wants the Kurds to become more Islamic as a way for the Kurds to realign their identity and become less Kurdish” (Gürses Reference Gürses2015, 147).
In another speech same year, given in Ağrı, a small province bordering Iran that has a significant Kurdish population, Prime Minister Erdoğan stated:
Dear brothers, you wanted courses in your mother tongue. Who started courses in the mother tongue in this country? Dear brothers, you stated that you wanted to broadcast in Kurdish. Who opened TRT Şeş? Dear brothers and sisters, you wanted Kurdish propaganda. Who started this? … They know that Imrali is saying the religion of the Kurds is Zoroastrianism. This is an insult to my Kurdish brothers because my Kurdish brothers’ religion is Islam. (Erdoğan Reference Erdoğan2011, my translation)
In this speech, Erdoğan first emphasizes the reforms made under the Justice and Development Party government, such as the Kurdish Opening explained in Aktürk (Reference Aktürk2018). Secondly, by using “brothers and sisters” to address the Kurdish-majority crowd, he seeks to create a brotherhood discourse. Finally, to appeal to Kurdish people’s religious sentiments in the region, he refers to the Kurdish Worker’s Party and its nonreligious stance in the 1970s and 1980s. Erdoğan defines Abdullah Ocalan and his organization as Zoroastrians and stresses that Kurdish people believe in Islam, not Zoroastrianism.
The critical discourse analysis literature also suggests that timing and other cultural markers are important to consider. Sarigil (Reference Sarigil2018, 44) suggests that “electoral periods increase the likelihood of boundary work in general and external boundary contestation in particular.” These two speeches were given in Kurdish-majority cities just before the general election in 2011. Both speeches try to create a religious discourse around Islamic brotherhood. As both Kuzu (Reference Kuzu2018, 109–110) and Sarigil (Reference Sarigil2018, 104–106) show, in southeastern Turkey, the main electoral competition is between the Justice and Development Party and the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), so by using an instrumental Islamic brotherhood discourse and creating a boundary by characterizing the Peoples’ Democratic Party as non-Islamic, Erdoğan aims to maximize his vote share in the Kurdish regions.
Polat (Reference Polat2018) argues that showing continuity with the Ottoman Empire and emphasizing Ottoman heritage in general, is also prevalent in Erdoğan’s speeches, especially when he speaks about Syria. As explained in Danforth (Reference Danforth1995) and Hobsbawm (Reference Hobsbawm1992b), nationalist movements try to create continuity and unity with the past. For example, Danforth (Reference Danforth1995, 43–55) explains that the Macedonians tried to fabricate continuity with Alexander the Great and Philip the Macedon. In President Erdoğan’s Turkey, this sense of continuity with the Ottoman Empire has been perpetuated. For instance, at a 2016 Yenikapı rally in Istanbul after the July 15, 2016, coup attempt, President Erdoğan stated:
Just like the Turkish nation opened the doors to Anatolia with faith and conviction a thousand years ago, they stood against coup plotters on July 15 with the same feelings (…) With the same vision Süleyman Şah founded our first state on these lands in 1075, we defended our country on July 15. Around the same principles upon which Osman Gazi built the mightiest state in history in 1299, we defended Turkey on that night. (Presidency of the Republic of Turkey 2016)
President Erdoğan’s rhetoric became more focused on the Ottoman Empire after the influx of Syrian refugees to Turkey. As Polat (Reference Polat2018, 506–507) observes, “AKP actors often make a distinction between Turkey’s ‘official’ and ‘imagined’ borders” as until recently, Syria and Iraq were parts of the Ottoman Empire, For example, in a speech given at the Istanbul Youth Festival in 2018, Erdoğan stated, “I was in the Spice Bazaar, and when I was wandering inside Bazaar, I saw Syrians in every shop. They are not tourists; they are working there. However, some of them are working illegally. There are Syrians, Moroccans, and Algerians. However, some of them could not be Turkish citizens, but almost all could speak Turkish. We have set goals for ourselves, we said; let us naturalize these people if necessary” (Türkiye Cumhuriyeti Cumhurbaşkanlığı Reference Cumhurbaşkanlığı2018, my translation).
As Korkut et al. (Reference Korkut, Mahendran, Bucken-Knapp, Cox, Sphere, Korkut, Mahendran, Bucken-Knapp and Cox2015, 1) explain, the discursive frames can create the policy agenda and affect the public sphere and discourse, which underpins the idea for discursive governance. Even though President Erdoğan eventually reverted from the welcoming attitude toward refugees in response to backlash from different political groups (Sazak Reference Sazak2019), when refugees first started settling in Turkey, he wanted to offer a path to Turkish citizenship to select groups from Syria. The naturalization policies specifically targeted the Sunni-Arab refugees, but because of the dramatic economic downturn in 2018, nearly 80 percent of the Turkish public “wish for their [Syrian refugees] return to their home country” (Karasapan Reference Karasapan2019). Korkut (Reference Korkut2016) shows that non-Sunnite refugees, such as Yazidis, Christians, and Kurds from Kobane are not afforded the same rights and protections as are Sunnites from Syria. Further, ethnically Turkish Turkmens from Syria who were displaced due to ISIS incursions were not accepted in Turkey in 2015, and “the AKP government stated that Turkmens should remain in Syria in a safety zone” (Korkut Reference Korkut2016, 17).
In a 2014 speech to Syrian refugees in a refugee camp in Islahiye, a large city in Gaziantep, in southeastern Turkey, President Erdoğan stated:
May the peace be given to all the land of Islam … We are delighted that you [Syrians] have been our guests for the last four years. We have joy and pride in having you as guests. You became an emigrant [Muhajirun]; you left your country. We became Ansar for you and mobilized opportunities for you. No matter what anyone says, you are not a burden for us. In our civilization, in our traditions, the guest is a blessing; the guest is an honor.” (Türkiye Cumhuriyeti Cumhurbaşkanlığı Reference Cumhurbaşkanlığı2014, my translation)
Polat (Reference Polat2018, 506) argues that by using the terms Muhajirun (a reference both to those who came with the Prophet Muhammed to Medina and to the millions of people of various ethnicities, who from the late 18th to the early 20th, emigrated to Anatolia from the regions of the former Ottoman Empire) and Ansar (helpers, a reference to the citizens of Medina who aided the Prophet and his followers from Mecca), President Erdoğan “not only touch[ed] upon the emotions and religious beliefs of their conservative constituency but also attempt[ed] discursively to construct a society according to their own imagination.” Korkut (Reference Korkut2016, 13) states that the metaphor emphasizes the “historical and moral responsibility” shown by Ansar to Muhajirun, suggesting that now the Turkish people are showing the same responsibility to Syrians. Moreover, this characterization is an example of Sarigil’s (Reference Sarigil2018) thesis: by using the Islamic narratives while referring to the Syrians in this speech, President Erdoğan blurs the boundary between Turkish citizens and Syrian refugees.
Discussion
The commonness of culture, the importance of religion as a common denominator, and the importance of language in the cultural homogenization process are the main themes in nation building. Erdoğan’s speeches place a strong emphasis on the common historical, cultural, and religious ties among different groups living in modern Turkey. While there is less emphasis on a common language because the groups living in Turkey originally speak different languages, it is crucial to acknowledge Erdoğan’s constant usage of Arabic words instead of their Turkish variants while communicating with the electorate. Anderson (Reference Anderson2006, 13) suggests that premodern religious communities believed that the language they speak is sacred. There are two prominent examples of these sacred languages: Latin and Arabic. Erdoğan uses words such as Muhajirun and Ansar to maintain a cultural, linguistic, and historical connection with the Ottoman Empire.
Common religion has been an essential tool in Erdoğan’s speeches to foster brotherhood between different ethnic groups and unify them under the banner of Islam (see Raqib and Barreto [Reference Raqib and Barreto2014] on the Taliban’s use of such discourse in Afghanistan). Gellner (Reference Gellner2009, 13–14) argues that in the prenationalist polities, community leaders dominate the subject by controlling “the official wisdom of the society, which is eventually enshrined in script.” President Erdoğan uses many citations from the Koran, the holy book of Islam, to link people together. In many of his speeches, he uses the terms “our religious brothers” and “our brethren” to define Syrian refugees. Mustafa Saatçi (Reference Saatçi2002) states that Islam was the preferred connective in the Ottoman Empire. Yeğen (Reference Yeğen2007, 127) argues that when Turkey was established in 1923, the founders preferred to homogenize the Turkish nation-state ethnically because an ethnically heterogeneous country implies an empire-like ruling, whereas an ethnically homogenous country implies a nation-state-like ruling. However, in President Erdoğan’s era, nationalist policies based on ethnicity have taken a back seat to an approach that stresses a unified religion.
Cultural commonness and cultural continuity have been touchstones of Erdoğan’s discourse. Both Gellner (Reference Gellner2009) and the contributions of Hobsbawm and Ranger (Reference Hobsbawm and Ranger1992) emphasize how cultural commonness, such as sharing some traditions, is essential during the process of nation-building. Erdoğan has used the tradition of Muslim prayer to foster a mutual culture. For instance, his references to qibla, mosques, and the Ottoman Empire are designed to suggest that a shared understanding unifies the ethnically diverse electorate.
In addition to his discourse, Erdoğan has also used several policy instruments to homogenize Turkey culturally and create a pan-Ottoman-like national identity. Erdogan changed the identity of three important national holidays, marking the establishment of the First Grand National Assembly of Turkey, the declaration of the republic, and the beginning of the Turkish Independence War, respectively. April 23, once National Sovereignty and Children’s Day, is now not celebrated enthusiastically by the high-ranking government officials, indicating a massive break with the pre-Justice and Development Party governments; October 29, once Republic Day, is now ignored by the government, and it does not organize national celebrations; and May 19, once Youth and Sports Day, celebrated in the largest stadiums in Turkey by state-commissioned high-school parades, was cancelled by the Justice and Development Party government in 2012, only to be reinstated by the Council of State in 2019. In addition to this, he implemented a more religiously oriented education system, changing several regular middle and high schools into Imam Hatip Lisesi, a school for training the imams who preach. Erdoğan also held several international summits in historically important places, such as Dolmabahce Palace, intending to change the significance associated with these sites.
The evolution in Turkish political elites’ discourse also follows patterns that Shelef (Reference Shelef2010) observed in the Israeli setting. Before Erdoğan came to power, Yeğen (Reference Yeğen2007, 134) explains, “all (Muslim) inhabitants of Anatolia, including Kurds, were of Turkish descent.” Even though this notion seems close to President Erdoğan’s discourse, it has very different origins. Thinking of all Muslims of Anatolia as Turkish means that Turkey is a nation-state of Turks only, no other nationalities. The way that Erdoğan describes the nation is closer to Gellner’s (Reference Gellner2009) preindustrial society, in which differentiation is the key, not homogeneity. During Erdoğan’s presidency, different national groups were recognized, such as the Kurds, and after the refugee crisis, the Syrians.
Conclusion
This article presented evidence on the changing perception of the Turkish nation during the Justice and Development Party era. Before the Justice and Development Party government, Turkish nationalism and national identity evolved around a nation-state narrative in which the importance of Turkishness was emphasized. From the 1920s to the 1990s, Turkey was considered a nation-state where minorities were deprived of their rights, such as speaking in their primary languages or getting an education in their mother tongue. The data analyzed in this article showed that President Erdogan employed an encompassing language based on religion towards Sunni Muslim minorities in Turkey, including Kurds, emphasizing the commonness of Islam among all these minority groups and the Turkish nation.
Moreover, the speeches indicated that during the Justice and Development Party era, there has been an expansion of some citizenship rights to Kurds, such as elective Kurdish language courses and a dedicated government-funded television channel in Kurdish. However, these reforms have not been enough to solve the Kurdish question. In this process, President Erdoğan has focused on the differentiation of nationalities, which according to Gellner’s (Reference Gellner2009, 12) definition, is a key feature of prenationalist societies. As seen in President Erdoğan’s speeches, he first differentiated the Kurds and Syrians in his speeches by emphasizing the importance of the Kurdish and Arabic languages, then spoke of unity with the Turks by stressing the commonality of religion—Islam—and appealing to a sense of Muslim brotherhood. The evolving discourse of President Erdoğan and Syrians’ addition to the equation also showed that the Turkish nation became more flexible, adapting to the changes in the population of Turkey, under the rule of the Justice and Development Party.
Acknowledgments
I thank two anonymous reviewers at Nationalities Papers for their valuable comments.
Disclosures
None.
