“So What If I Am Laz?” Irony, Mockery and Humor in Ethnic Integration and Insubordination

This study argues that the ethnic Laz in Turkey resort to irony, humor and mockery to cope with and negotiate the stereotypes, ethnic humor and mockery they encounter in their interactions with outsiders. The trope of irony, humor and mockery have enabled the Laz to navigate the national and regional hierarchies and reproduce their symbolic boundaries regardless of the common and ardent appropriation of Turkishness. In so doing, the Laz can more subtly challenge the official ideology of uniformity. While the public use of Lazuri is still considered a threat to the negotiated boundaries of Lazness, new instruments present creative displays of their ethnic capital which do not contradict present day principles of Turkish nationalism, and offer a legitimate sharing of intimacy without embarrassment. The Laz, like other non-Turkish Muslim peoples of the Black Sea region, abandoned their politically threatening ethnic distinctions, appropriated the capital of Turkishness through their performances, and coped with mockery and stigma by ironizing differences and negotiating, trivializing or selectively appropriating the stereotypes imposed upon them. Ironically, they have “out-performed” ethnic Turks in certain ways, in their search for acceptance as Turks, achieving upward mobility and avoiding forms of stigmatization.

Enjoying an Empty Edifice

This paper reaffirms the methodological potentials of Lacanian psychoanalysis for the theories of nationalism. From the Lacanian perspective, national consciousness and self-determination are only possible in the fantasmatic frame­work through the (mis)recognition and retroactive construction. National imagination is the form of transference, necessary for performing the nation through invented traditions and rituals. However, beyond symbolization and imaginary (mis)recognition, there is always something that resists closure, linked with the subjects' desire and organized around the lack of the subjects' full enjoyment. Taking together all these aspects, we build an analytical framework for the study of nationalism, which comprises a quadruple system of identifications by referring to the concepts of Ideal-Ego, Ego-Ideal, Super-Ego and specular Other, and illustrate it through the example of the AKP's Turkish nationalism.

Flexible Nation: The Turkish Nation under the Justice and Development Party’s Rule

This article explains how the Turkish nation’s composition has changed under Justice and Development Party rule. Turkish nationalism and Turkish national identity have dramatically changed since 2010, when the Kurdish Opening process was started by former prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. The Syrian refugee crisis and the influx of Syrian refugees into Turkey created another change in Turkish national identity. Increasing religiosity in Turkey and the use of Islam by the Justice and Development Party created a flexible nation, where all Sunni Muslims can be considered members even though they are not ethnically Turkish. The author uses primary sources, such as President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s speeches since 2010, to show how his discourse became more embracing of non-Turkish Muslim groups and created a dynastic understanding of nationalism based on religion rather than the idea of an ethnically homogenous, secular Turkish nation.

Turkish foreign policy in the Middle East: power projection and post-ideological politics

Power projection, security, pragmatic considerations and a disparate mix of national interests and narrower party-political objectives have driven the foreign policy of Turkey's Justice and Development Party (AKP) in the Middle East since it came to power in 2002. Ideological concerns, consisting of a fluid blend of Islamist, neo-Ottoman and ‘civilizationalist’ ideas, mingled with a hefty dose of Turkish nationalism, have played a variable, auxiliary but none the less significant role. The Arab uprisings of 2011 opened up opportunities for the AKP to pursue its ideological objectives and they became more central to its policies, if only in some areas or clusters of relationships. However, they receded after 2015, when a confluence of domestic and regional factors caused the onset of a transactional, ‘post-ideological’ phase. The article places the Middle East in the wider context of Turkish foreign policy, both historically and in comparison with other regions, arguing in the process that categories of ‘East’ and ‘West’ are of limited value for its proper understanding and interpretation. It then divides it into four sub-regions, distinct in geographical and issue terms: Syria and Iraq (the ‘near abroad’), the wider Arab world, Israel–Palestine, and Iran. It analyses Turkish foreign policy towards them in sequence, illustrating the ways in which power-political considerations have predominated in all, albeit in different ways and to varying degrees, over the past five years.

Book Review: Ryan Gingeras, Eternal Dawn: Turkey in the Age of Atatürk, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019.

This book analyses the transformation from the late Ottoman period to the modern Republic of Turkey with a focus on Mustafa Kemal Atatürk and the reforms implemented during the early years of the republic. The book familiarizes the readers with the political, social and economic transformation of the country by focusing on specific cases and examples with a comprehensive historical background. Gingeras focuses on the historical background of major topics (e.g. Reforms, Kurdish Revolts, Turkish Nationalism etc.) in the early Republic of Turkey and connects them with the developments in the late Ottoman Empire. This book is different from previous works because it emphasizes the relations between the new state and the people in Anatolia.