Civic Nationalism and Ethnocultural Justice in Turkey Author(s): Thomas W.

Smith
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HUMAN RIGHTS QUARTERLY

Civic Nationalism and Ethnocultural Justice in Turkey
Thomas W. Smith*
ABSTRACT
Are civic states culturally neutral? The Turkish model of civic nationalism
often national praised as a success, In fact, albeit Turkey's an authoritarian n
ational one, identity culture. in creating has come a unitary at a steep
is
cultural cost. Civic institutions have homogenized and folklorized minority cult
ures. Ethnoreligious conceptions of Turkish identity have underpinned
immigration and naturalization, internal movement and resettlement,
education,
heaviest "Turkish nationalize Sunni divisions, on
language, and cultural policies. Turkish nationalism has weighed
Kurds, Islam Islamists, of have Islam turned religious failed the case and left.
A state-run the minorities, in the 1930s; more to recent attempts state into a
mouthpiece for mainstream that may in states be with a coerced deep one. societa
l
Reformation"
doctrine.
The
Turkish of civic
suggests
the dream
nationalism
I.
INTRODUCTION
from the European Union (EU), Turkey has launched a
human reforms intended to expand basic freedoms and
ual and group rights in the country. With EU uphold
ope hinges entry talks slated to begin inOctober on
Tayyip Erdo?an, a reformed Islamist who was in 1999
s jailed religious hatred/7 now

Bowing to demands series of

rights a platform of individ
2005, Turkey's future in Eur
the outcome. Prime Minister
for "inciting for four month

*
is an Assistant Thomas W. Smith Professor of Government and International Affair
s at the He is the author of History of South Florida St. Petersburg. and Intern
ational University in the fields of international Relations law and human (1999)
as well as journal articles rights. in Istanbul. He can be reached From 1997-20
00 at he taught at Ko? University by e-mail twsm ith@stpt. usf.edu.
Human

Rights Quarterly
27
(2005)
436-470
?
2005
by The
Johns Hopkins
University
Press

2005
Civic Nationalism
& Ethnocultural
Justice in Turkey
437
governs
the eagle eye of the country's military.1 For Erdo?an, human He argues that righ
ts represent "the common voice of human conscience."2 "the universality of human
rights, democracy, countries that fail to embrace and the rule of law will be d
riven into lonliness."3 Turkey's reformers inevitably will confront the Kemalist
model of civic under
the hard-communitarian and laic ideology of the country's nationalism, that visi
on of a Mustafa Kemal Atat?rk. By virtually every measure, founder, success. A s
tate bonded civic has been a remarkable loyalty unitary by a Western national ed
uca modern bureaucracy, legal system, progressive state are the progeny of a rev
olution tion, and all the trappings of a modern East. redrew the boundary betwee
n that arguably Europe and the Middle for women, who have enjoyed Kemalism has b
een especially emancipating full civil rights since 1934. states hewn from tradi
tional societies, Turkey's Like that of all modern civic success has come at ste
ep cultural cost. From its inception, the a diverse to homogenizing of the state
has been dedicated machinery has been stunted. Religion has been national Civil
association populace. ized. All but the most folkloric of minority cultural exp
ressions have been In times of crisis, civic has masked nationalism ethnic disco
uraged. The only explicit minority chauvinism. rights that exist in Turkey have
their social contract; these are the protections the Kemalist origins outside ac
corded and Jews?in the Greeks, Armenians, non-Muslims?traditionally 1923 Lausann
e Treaty, which in codified the status of modern Turkey international law.4 Larg
e Muslim communities of Kurds, Arabs, and Alevis, a of liberal Shiite sects, as
well as smaller non-Muslim collection groups such as Syrian Orthodox and Chaldea
n Catholics, enjoy few rights to shield them from the majority. in the is afoot.
The opening of the economy liberalization However, in the 1990s. The sixteen ye
ar 1980s liberalization spurred political Party (Partia Karkaren Kurdistan, or i
nsurgency by the Kurdistan Workers' in 2000,5 and civil rights laws are being re
moved from a war PKK) ended
1. 2. 3.
Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, Turkey: International Religious Fr
eedom (2002), available afwww.state.gov/g/drl/rls/irf/2002/13986.htm. at the New
in Human Tactics Erdo?an, Address Recep Tayyip Rights Symposium at www.newtacti
cs.org/file.php?ID=484. Ankara, Turkey (29 Sep.-4 Oct. 2004), available at the S
ymposium on Conservative Address Erdo?an, Recep Tayyip Democracy, is available i
n Turkish, Istanbul (10 Jan. 2004). The address under the title, 10.01.2004 ve D
emocrasi in the electronic Muhafazakarlik archive of the Justice and Sempozyumu,
U.S. Report Party (AK Parti), available Development aiwww.akparti.org.tr/. Powe
rs and Turkey, the Allied 11, Treaty of Peace Between July 24, 1923, 28 L.N.T.S.
18 Am. J. Int'l L. 1 (Supp. 1924) (hereinafter Treaty of Lausanne). For overvie
ws of the Kurdish question and the war, see Omer Taspinar, Kurdish Nationalism a
nd Political Islam in Turkey: Kemalist Identity in Transition (2005); Doyu Ergil
, The Kurdish in Turkey, 11 J. Dem. 122 (2000); Henri J. Barkey et al., Turkey's
Kurdish Question Question
4. 5.

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HUMAN RIGHTS QUARTERLY
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27
over the has exploded footing. The number of civil society organizations and liv
ely past fifteen years. New media, a new Islamic political economy, the official
popular culture have outstripped ideology. Erdo?an's "Islamic" Criteria and the
liberalism is also generally well regarded.6 The Copenhagen to the EU have deta
iled Turkish National Program for accession explicit for reform.7 guidelines a l
ooser conception has also encouraged The prospect of membership over of citizens
hip. Turks are reaching a d?tente with their own government it means to be Turki
sh, as the divided of EU membership what loyalties state. In the process, the un
itary state replace the absolutes of the modern and an invented national culture
are giving way to greater cultural freedom. It is no coincidence national Turki
sh strongest that minorities who have been shoehorned into this Alevis, Syriacs,
identity?Kurds, Most supporters of EU membership. as well, as a way of lifting
Kemalist membership
muslims.
and others?are among the Islamists in Turkey support repression of observant
IL DOES CIVIC NATIONALISMACCOMMODATE MINORITY CULTURE?
Political theorists ism and exclusive have inclusive between long distinguished
ethnic, religious, or cultural nationalism.8 civic national In this age of
6. 7.
and Turkey: An Example of The Kurdish Question (1998); Kemal Kirisci & Gareth M.
Winrow, a Trans-State Ethnic Conflict (1997); Michael M. Gunter, The Kurds and
the Future of Turkey (1997). of Heart: AKP Leader Turns Away from See Hugh Chang
e Pope, Turkish Politician's A9. St. J., 1 Aug. 2002, at vol. 240:23, Islam and
Finds his Party May Win Power, Wall E.U. Bull., no. 6, of the Presidency, Conclu
sions See Copenhagen European Council, or as the "Copenhagen are known Guideline
s" what ? 7(A)(iii) (1993) (establishing acces The Copenhagen Guidelines Criteri
a"). require a country seeking Copenhagen sion to the EU to achieve the followin
g goals: [Stability of institutions guaranteeing democracy, the rule of law, hum
an rights and respect for and protection of minorities, the existence of a funct
ioning market economy as well as the capacity to presupposes the cope with compe
titive pressure and market forces within the Union. Membership candidate's abili
ty to take on the obligations of membership including adherence to the aims of p
olitical, economic and monetary union. also Thomas
8.
and W. Smith, The Politics of ConditionalityrThe European Union 111 (Paul J. in
The European Union and Democratization in Turkey, Rights Reform Kubicek ed., 200
3). 16 (1940), See Hans Kohn, The Idea of Nationalism: A Study in ItsOrigins and
Background Eastern" ethnic between and "illiberal, which "liberal, civic Wester
n" distinguished 11 (1992); Yael Tamir, Five Roads to Modernity Nationalism: Lia
h Greenfeld, nationalism; 5 and Bad Nationalisms!, Liberal Nationalism (1993); D
avid Brown, Are There Good in Diverse Societies 366-67 Nations & Nationalism (Wi
ll (1999); Citizenship 281, 281-82 Id. See Human 15 The Ethics of Nationalism &
Wayne Norman eds., 2001); Margaret Moore, Kymlicka in the Global Era 152 Equalit
y and Diversity (2001); Seyla Benhabib, The Claims of Culture: (2002).

2005
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of states, the logic of civic nationalism ethnic strife and the Balkanization se
ems unimpeachable. As Michael Ignatieff noted in Blood and Belonging, a civic na
tion is "a community of equal, rights-bearing united in citizens, to a shared se
t of political and values."9 practices patriotic attachment started to scrutiniz
e how civic states Political theorists have nonetheless Iscivic nationalism neut
ral with regard to religion, accommodate diversity.10 it guarantee with basic ri
ghts? Is it compatible race, and ethnicity? Does it homogenize Does and deracina
te? Are the alternatives minority rights? worse? civic national For multicultura
lists (and some cultural conservatives), ism presents one of the great conceits
of modernity. Will Kymlicka argues have been "obscured by the myth of the that t
he defects of civic nationalism of the state."11 Kymlicka claims that "virtually
all ethnocultural neutrality to diffuse a liberal democracies have, at one poin
t or another, attempted culture all of its territory."12 Anthony Smith single so
cietal throughout to the heart of the "modernist fallacy," that civic nationalis
m contends goes of all stripes have deep primordial that nationalisms roots.13 D
avid Brown notes that, often, "ethnic domination is disguised as national integr
ation."14 are "imperialistic": constitutions liberal James Tully adds that civic
-liberal to the ism not only fails to recognize diversity, but speeds assimilati
on culture through civic institutions and a common language.15 in most modern st
ates. Formal cultures exist precariously Minority often neglect the idea of cult
ural belonging, whether citizenship rights or instrumental in primordial defined
(natural, organic) (constructed, mod terms. Civic for democracy institutions ma
y be necessary and markets ern) are clear. National to function But the costs of
assimilation smoothly. identity, shared values, and other symbols of solidarity
typically are cast in dominant
9. 10.
Michael
6 (1994). Journeys into the New Nationalism Ignatieff, Blood and Belonging: Libe
ralism and Nationalism, 23 Pol. Theory include Bernard Yack, Reconciling Surveys
166 (1995); Michael in Human Rights: Liberal Democracy and Minority Freeman, Ri
ghts, New Perspectives, New Realities 31 (Adamantia Pol Iis & Peter Schwab eds.,
2000); David and Multicultural Nationalism: Politics Civic, Ethnocultural Brown
, Contemporary (2000); Two Conceptions A Review Gerard of Cultural of Recent Cit
izenship: Delanty, 3 Global Rev. Ethnopolitics 60 (2002), available at Literatur
e on Culture and Citizenship, Multiculturalism and Citizenship 4
11. 12. 13. 14. 15.
www.ethnopolitics.org/archive/volume_l/issue_3/delanty.pdf. in the Vernacular: W
ill Kymlicka, Politics Nationalism, (2001). Id. at 26. in a Global Anthony D. Sm
ith, Nations and Nationalism
Era eh. 5 (1995). Brown, Contemporary Nationalism, supra note 10, at 10-11. in a
n Age of Diversity eh. 3 (1995). Constitutionalism James Tully, Strange Multipli
city: . . . that is, a state Charles Taylor adds, "If a modern society has an 'o
fficial' language inwhich and -defined and both economy -inculcated, sponsored,
language and culture, an immense advantage state function, to people that it is

obviously if this language and culture are theirs." Kymlicka, supra note 11, at
27.

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HUMAN RIGHTS QUARTERLY
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is usually controlled the image of the majority. Cultural patrimony by the in th
e name of diversity or inclusion. state, which may folklorize minorities Majorit
y politics often are in league with mass media, popular culture, and in thousand
s economies "that benefit majorities of subtle ways."16 So to use Kymlicka's phr
ase, that minorities efficient are "civic state-builders,"17 may be hard pressed
to find refuge.
III.CIVIC NATIONALISMAND THE EMERGENCE OF MODERN TURKEY
than in any case since the French Revolution, has underpinned civic identity. Th
e literature of of the Rights of Man18 were de rigueur at the cadets went on to
lead the nationalist movement. military academies whose claims that the French R
evolution was "the Atat?rk's leading biographer for the Turkish of reference" le
ader throughout his life.19 supreme point reforms (Tanzimat), built atop nearly
100 years of Europeanizing Though as the flexible the civic model from late Otto
man practice, departed in the of autonomous accommodation of the millet nations,
system sense of the word, gave way to the fixed identity and space of nonterrit
orial In Turkey, state. the modern The Republican Party (Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi
, or CHP), People's Atat?rk in 1924 and ruled Turkey as a one-party which was es
tablished by state until 1946, proclaimed that the Turkish nation was a "social
and formed by citizens that are united by a common whole language, political cul
ture and objective."20 The fez, the symbol of the Orient, was banned. The Latin
alphabet and Gregorian calendar were adopted. Vernacular Turkish the more courtl
y Ottoman The civil code was borrowed replaced language. from Mussolini's the pe
nal code Italy. "Enlightened" servants fanned out across and other civil teacher
s, (aydyn) judges, Anatolia, intending to reshape traditional society. In hundre
ds of provincial towns "People's Houses" to spread the established (Halk Evleri)
were from Switzerland, perhaps more liberalism enlightenment 1789 and the Decla
ration
16.
17. 18. 19. 20.
Liberal Theory and Minority 108, Joel E. Oestreich, Group Rights, 21 Hum. Rts. Q
. Human 43 Pol. Freeman, Are There Collective (1999); see also Michael Rights!,
Human F. Felice, The Case for Collective Stud. 25 (1995); William Rights: The Re
ality 10 Ethics & Int'l. Aff. 47 (1996). of Group Suffering, Kymlicka, supra not
e 11, at 230-32. in The French and Citizen of the Rights of Man Declaration (Fr.
1789), reprinted and Human Rights: A Brief Documentary History 77-79 Revolution
(Lynn Hunt ed., 1996). Atat?rk: The Biography of the Founder of Modern Turkey 4
9 (1999). Andrew Mango, in Kemal Kirisci & Gareth M. Winrow, The Turkish Daily N
ews (11 Mar. 1995), quoted and Turkey: An Example of a Trans-State Ethnic Confli
ct 97 (1997). Kurdish Question See 118

2005
Civic Nationalism
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This cultural revolution Kemalist message. left itsmark, though in the most rura
l social terrain it could produce "more control than transformation/'21 to the g
lasnost Thanks in Turkish historical research over the past to excavate some of
the mythology researchers have begun decade, Turkish Republicanism.22 The rhetor
ic of civic surrounding impartiality there is ample evidence that ethnicity and
religion deter notwithstanding, mined and practice and naturalization, policies
regarding immigration internal movement and resettlement, lan economics, educati
on, religion, in times of revealed guage and culture. The country's cultural cor
e was some critics of the civic model of crisis. In the early years of the Repub
lic Ankara also reined in citizenship were branded as racists and prosecuted.
a noxious ethnic "idealists"?who right wing ?lk?c?lar?literally, espoused Turkis
h nationalism. of civic nationalism has weighed Still, enforcement heaviest on K
urds, Islamists, religious minorities, and the left. The genius of Turkish natio
nalism (T?rkc?l?k) was its ability to conflate the organic/ethnic An organic Tur
kish identity was and the civic/territorial. in the 1920s and 1930s, constructed
rich in ancestral myths, national and ethnic symbolism. To be a Turk denoted a
civic identity, but memories, was also a carefully fashioned ethnie, traced lite
rally in children's textbooks to the Altaic-Ural peoples of Central Asia. Afet Y
nan, one of the architects of the new history, wrote that "Turkish children will
learn that they are part of an Aryan, civilised and creative people descended f
rom a high race who have existed for tens of thousands of years."23 The prehisto
ry of Central Asia was rewritten to show that distinct Muslim minorities had des
cended from the same ancient Turkish tribes? hence the designation of Kurds as "
Mountain Turks."24 The founding myths often mimicked social science. "Turkism" w
as propelled by the ideologue
21.
and Democracy Ylkay Sunar, State, Society, New Challenges for a Rising Regional
Power 1996). See, e.g., 36 Middle
143
in Turkey, in Turkey Between East and West: & R. Craig Nation (Vojtech Mastny ed
s.,
22.
Kemal Kirisci, Disaggregating Turkish Citizenship and Immigration Practices, E.
Stud. 1 (July 2000); Berna Yazici, Discovering Our Past: Are "We" Breaking Taboo
s? Reconstructing and the Past in Contemporary Atat?rkism Turkey, 25 New Persp.
Turk. 1 (2001); Kerem Oktem, the Turk's Homeland: National Creating Modernizatio
n, ism and Geography in Southeast in the late 19th and 20th Centuries (2003) Tur
key Kokkalis Graduate Workshop, School of Government, (paper for the Socrates Ke
nnedy Harvard University), available Soner aiwww.ksg.harvard.edu/kokkalis/GSW5/o
ktem.pdf; in Interwar Turkey, 9 Nations & Nationalism Policies 601 (2003); ?a?ap
tay, Citizenship Ayhan Aktar, Varlyk Vergesi ve "T?rklestirme" Politikalary [The
Capital Tax and "Turkification" and Kemalism: Policies] (2003); Soner ?a?aptay,
Turkish Nationalism Race, Assimilation and the Minorities in the 1930s, 40 Midd

le E. Stud. 86 (2004). Hugh Top Hat, Grey Wolf and Crescent: Turkish Nationalism
and the Turkish Poulton, Republic 108 (1997). Christopher Houston, Islam, Kurds
and the Turkish Nation State 99-101 (2001).
23. 24.

442
HUMAN RIGHTS QUARTERLY whose
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(1876-1924), Ziya G?kalp theories of the nineteenth
ideas were from the racial derived Faux-academic century European Orientalists.2
5 the fantastical Sun Language Theory (G?nep-Dil Teorisi) journals publicized th
at Central Asian Turkish was the root of all the world's languages, and the Turk
ish History Thesis (Turk Tarih Tezleri) that Turks were the fount of all civiliz
ations.26
The upshot was that, from Eastern Thrace to Kurdistan, "Turks were a like the pe
oples of Europe . . . [and] had more historic right to Turkey people than did an
yone else."27 Turkey would nation state. People be a modern who Kazahks, Kirgiz,
Turkmen, Uzbeks spoke Turkic languages?Az?ris, vast reaches of Central Asia, to
the Uighur and many others?inhabited known as "East Turkistan." But Pan-Turkist
s, or region of China, sometimes for the union of all Turkic speakers, were clam
ored "Turanists,"28 who blocked those by Atat?rk's pragmatism. in the struggle l
aid down Turkey's "natural" frontiers would for national liberation and codified
be at
Lausanne.29
civic identity was carefully tended. The term Within those boundaries, a pejorat
ive under the Ottomans, was rehabilitated. Turkish facets of "Turk," were Ottoma
n and Greek, Armenian, and Syriac history highlighted, were con excavations Stat
e-run archaeological contributions obscured. to show that the early civilization
s of Anatolia were Turkish. At ducted the Turkish Language Association Atat?rk's
behest (Turk Dil Kurumu), in 1932, set out to retrieve an authentic Turkish cle
ansed of Arabic founded and Persian words.30 The Turkish Historical (Turk Tarih
Kurumu), Society an arm of the ethnic-nationalist Turkish "hearth" (ocak) move o
riginally voice of Turkish history. The Historical the quasi-official became men
t, state archivists and republican is still active, along with Society leaning h
istorians, in promoting nationalist historiography.31
25.
26. 27. 28. 29. 30.
and Western Civilization: Selected Essays of Ziya G?kalp See Ziya G?kalp, Turkis
h Nationalism in id. at 284-313. The Programme See also David of Turkism, (1959)
; See especially at 8-10 (1977). 1876-1908, Kushner, The Rise of Turkish Nationa
lism, in Interwar Turkey, supra note 22, at 601-02. Policies Citizenship ?a?apta
y, The Ottoman Peoples and the End of Empire 213 (2001). Justin McCarthy, The na
me "Turanists" refers to the mythical land of Turan where Turks were said to hav
e originated. supra note 4. See also Jacob M. Landau, Panturkism: From Irredenti
sm Treaty of Lausanne, to Cooperation 74-75 (1995). is still See Kushner, supra
note 25, at 101-02 (1977). The Turkish Language Association at Its website is av
ailable of the Turkish under government. auspices operating www.tdk.gov.tr/. 199
(1997); Poulton, See Erik J. Z?rcher, Turkey: A Modern History supra note 23, a
t 101 09. For an overview of recent Turkish nationalist?and antinationalist?hist
oriography, in the Turkish see Howard and Memory and Historiography: Politics Ei
ssenstat, History website 12 Contemp. Eur. Hist. 94 (2003). The English-language
of the Turkish Republic, at www.ttk.gov.tr/ingilizce/index.html. Historical is
available Society
31.

2005
Civic Nationalism
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the Armenian effort to diminish has also been a concerted of purportedly still p
ublishes The State Archive compilations genocide. in documents along with interp
retations attributing the violence exculpatory I to Armenians in league with Eas
tern Anatolia World War the during imperial powers keen to resolve "the Eastern
question" regarding the future There its diplomatic of the Levant.32 The Ministr
y of Foreign Affairs also wields it successfully influence on the issue. For exa
mple, the Clinton pressed in 2000 to have a resolution memorializing administrat
ion the tragedy In 1999, a Genocide withdrawn from consideration by the US Congr
ess.33 in the Eastern province of l?dir to Monument and Museum were established
memorialize the 80,000 Turks officials said were massacred by Armenians in the r
egion between 1915 and 1920.34 The fact remains, however, that incipient Turkish
nationalism under the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP), also known as the
Young Turks, and the national liberation movement of itself, led to the ethnic c
leansing Eastern Anatolia.35 The scheme, devised by the CUP leadership, was 1915
and 1917 hundreds of referred to as a relocation (tehcir). Between some of whom
collaborated with Russia and even thousands of Armenians, an Armenian state in
Eastern Anatolia, took up arms in hopes of establishing as well as tens of thous
ands of Syrian Orthodox Christians, were massacred or marched to their deaths.36
In many cases, the physical space they had redistributed vacated properties occ
upied was "Turkified," as state agencies to Muslim refugees from the Balkans. So
me evacuated villages were given
32.
33.
to the Belgelerinde Relating See Osmanly [Ottoman Documents Ermeniler, 1915-1920
Ermeni Olaylary Tarihi [Armenian Historical Ermeni Armenians] Incidents] (1998)
; (1994); Meselesinin Siyasi Tarih?esi, 1877-1914 [Political History of the Arme
nian Question] (2001). in Ankara by the State Archives. All are published See Er
ic Schmitt, House Turks' Killing of Armenians, N.Y. Backs Off on Condemning of F
oreign Affairs, see T?rkkaya Times, 20 Oct. 2000, at A11. For a view from the Mi
nistry InApril 2003, Trauma and Objectivity the Ata?v, The "Armenian Question":
Conflict, (1997). to have fifth- and seventh of Education issued a circular urgi
ng schools Turkish Ministry were that allegations of the Armenian essays grade s
tudents write arguing genocide on the topic. unfounded. The Ministry to stage co
nferences schools also encouraged Police arrested seven teachers for comments ma
de at one of these conferences. See also U.S. Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights,
and Labor, Turkey: Country Reports on Human Rights Practices, 2003, at 23-24 at
www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2003/ (2004), available 27869.htm. of Press and S
ee Directorate General Office of the Prime Minister, Information, Statue and Mus
eum in Igdir, Turk. Press Rev., 6 Oct. Genocide at 1999, available Opens 0/99X10
X06.HTM. www.byegm.gov.tr/YAYINLARIMIZ/CHR/ING99Zl The Ottoman See Donald Quatae
rt, at 184-86 Empire, 1700-1922, (2000); Taner Ak?am, and the Armenian Genocide
From Empire to Republic: Turkish Nationalism (2004); Richard G. in Remembrance a
nd Denial: The Case of the Armenian Genocide Hovannisian, Introduction, 13 (Rich
ard G. Hovannisian ed., 1998). in the Twentieth Century Final Solutions: Mass Ki
lling and Genocide See Benjamin A. Valentino, 157-66 (2004).
34.

35.
36.

444
HUMAN RIGHTS QUARTERLY names,
Vol.
27
new Turkish War of
and churches into mosques.37 transformed During the in 1922 and in population in
1923 some Independence exchanges 1.2 million Greeks were in turn also ousted fr
om Asia Minor.38 Greece
Turks.39 800,000 expelled A recent history of ethnic strife in the twentieth cen
tury adopts the state that sought ties with standard interpretation: "A new Turk
ified Ottoman Turkish and Islamic states to the east had no room for a large, al
ien, or Greek."40 traitorous Christian population, whether Armenian potentially
at times invoked jihadist language to rally the national movement Although drive
n less by religious support, ethnic cleansing was probably popular than by an ov
erwrought differences dream of a homogeneous nation state. As one secularism"?i.
e, Nergis Canefe commentator noted of the massacres, "that was not Islam; that w
as a kind of v?lkisch nationalism imported from Europe.41 has argued that this "
demographic flowed from purfication" of Turkish nationalists "to fit into the de
finition of a the "political obsession" V?/Zcand to prove the presence of an eth
noreligiously distinct Turkish nation More than any economic resort to a final s
olution at
in order to claim legitimate political existence."42 or security rationale, this
explains "the nationalist the very inception of the Turkish nation-state."43
37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43.
supra note 22, at 8. ?ktem, Eric D. Weitz, A Century of Genocide: supra note 35,
at 14.
Utopias
of Race and Nation
51
(2003);
Hovannisian,
Weitz, supra note 38. inTwentieth-Century Norman M. Naimark, Fires of Hatred: Et
hnic Cleansing Europe 43 (2001 ). in John Kelsay, Bosnia in Religion and and the
Muslim of Modernity, Quoted Critique Justice in the War over Bosnia 139 (G. Sco
tt David ed., 1996). Nationalism and Ethno-Symbolic The Rules of Turkish Canefe,
Nergis Analysis: 8 Nations & Nationalism (2002). 133, 149-50 Exception, brought
discuss fruitful. have Id. at 149. A kind of glasnost is underway several works
hops have here, too. Since 2000, and others?to and other historians Armenians, s
cholars?Turks, together far from conclusive, the meetings the fate of the Armeni
ans. have been Though Some of the Turkish been denounced by
the Ottoman historian Halil Berktay, participants, including at Sabancy Turks fo
r their research. Officials nationalist to fire the historian; where pressed Uni
versity, they did not. See Berktay teaches, were of History: Turkish Studies The
Burden Turkish Economic and Social Foundation, Armenian TESEV Electronic Newsle

tter (Apr. 2001 ), available aiwww.tesev.org.tr/ Dialogue, Ron Suny & Fatma M?ge
G?cek, Genocide: Contextual Discussing '?zing nisan/apr3.html; at in the Ottoma
n the Armenian Empire, 9 J. Int'l Institute (2002), available Experience Turks B
reach Wall Belinda Cooper, www.umich.edu/~iinet/journal/vol9no3/suny.htm; at B9.
Turkey's N.Y. Times, 6 Mar. 2004, novelist of Silence, best known contemporary
in much in an of the Turkish press after mentioning Pamuk has been pilloried Orh
an in February 2005 in Turkey. See Armenians interview that a million had been k
illed To me, The Guardian, 27 Feb. It's Genocide, Nouritza Matossiann, They Say
Incident. 2005, ava/7ab/eaiobserver.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,14
26319,00.html.

2005
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IV.MUSLIM AND NON-MUSLIMMINORITIES
As noted, minority the Kemalist social rights in Turkey are rooted outside contr
act. Religious, educational, cultural, linguistic, and emigration rights were in
corporated at European insistence in the Lausanne Treaty.44 Although inmodern th
ese rights were codified a treaty law, precisely who constituted drew on Ottoman
dhimmi law governing non-Muslim communi minority in the nineteenth in ties, as
well as a series of treaties concluded century which the Sublime Porte recognize
d the rights of Christians living under Ottoman to the Lausanne provisions on ru
le.45 Some civic purists objected grounds that the state should be blind to ethn
ic and religious differences. Tekin Alp, a former publicist for the Young Turks,
wrote in 1937 that Kemalism "has ended the Muslim/non-Muslim divide by laicism
. . . The as Turks all the citizens of the country Law has recognized fundamenta
l without distinction of race or religion, and has prepared the way for a into T
urkism."46 complete integration of minority elements In practice, the Lausanne r
ights extend only to Turkey's communities of Armenian Orthodox (60,000-70,000 st
rong today), Jews (25,000), Greek rare occasions, Orthodox (3,000), and, on extr
emely Syrian Orthodox the Lausanne rights of other non (10,000).47 The state doe
s not recognize Muslim minorities: Armenian Catholics, Chaldeans, Nestorians, Bu
lgarians, and Turkey's estimated 10,000 Baha'is.48 Jews have always been Georgia
ns, viewed as the most "Kemalist" of non-Muslim In 1925, the Rabbi of groups. Is
tanbul waived the safeguards set out at Lausanne, the demonstrating in the civic
state.49 confidence Jewish community's That confidence has largely been vindica
ted. Aside from a few right Islamist screeds, antisemitism is virtually unheard
of. The recent wing Israel and Turkey in the security sphere iswidely between ra
pprochement in Istanbul in November 2003 accepted.50 The two synagogue bombings
44. 45.
46. 47.
supra note 4, arts. 37-45. Treaty of Lausanne, Most the nineteenth important was
the Treaty of Berlin (1878). During century, Christian minorities used the dipl
omatic intervention of their Great Power patrons to help them secure certain und
er Ottoman from military for privileges service, rule?exemption See Donald Quata
ert, The Ottoman at 66 (2000). Empire, 1700-1922, example. Poulton, supra note 2
3, at 123-24. from Nigar & Edward Deverell, Karimova Institute of Swedish Figure
s adapted International in Turkey, Occasional Affairs, Minorities Papers no. 19,
at 14 (2001), at www.ui.se/texter/op19.pdf. available U.S. Bureau of Democracy,
Human Rights, and Labor, Turkey: International Religious Freedom at www.state.g
Ov/g/drl/rls/irf/2004/35489.htm. (2004), available Stanford Empire and the Turki
sh Republic 244 (1991). J. Shaw, The Jews of the Ottoman a bilateral and Israel
signed in 1996, prompted defense alliance Turkey by shared in the Arab world, co
mmon adversaries concerns about terrorism, and fears of growing See Report
48. 49. 50.

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HUMAN RIGHTS QUARTERLY
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were who
condemned.51 descendants of Jews However, D?nmes, universally are fully tolerate
d by to Islam in the seventeenth converted century, neither Jews nor Muslims. Th
e word d?nme means "turned," but connotes and many converts hide their lineage.
"turncoat," are considered All Muslims of the majority, members the "Turkish the
re are no officially Muslim minorities.52 According Nation"; recognized and a ha
lf peoples in Turkey" saying, "There are seventy-two half refers to the Roma).53
In fact, demographers estimate that there are (the perhaps fifty different ethn
ic groups in the country.54 To the extent that these have seen this as a represe
nt competing identities, Kemalists political to overcome. Atat?rk warned that so
me citizens "have been challenge to propaganda about Kurdish, Caucasian Laz and
and even subjected . . . because Bosnian nations. But they are misnomers the ind
ividuals of this of the integrated unified Turkish Community, have a nation, as
members common and law."55 past, history, morality Most Turks are Sunnis of the
Hanefi rite. The following minorities also to a Turkish
of 10-15 million Alevis, a blanket term for the large Muslim minorities sects th
at account for 70 percent of Turkey's Shiites; 12-14 easy-going million Alevis (
who Sunnis, Zaza-speaking Kurds, including Shaffii-rite as Zazas, not Kurds, and
refer to their increasingly identify themselves historical lands as "Zazastan")
, and perhaps tens of thousands of crypto exist: elements of Manicheism, Yezidi,
followers of a syncretic faith that combines and who have Islam, Christianity,
Judaism, and Gnosticism, historically at the hand of Sunnis as well as Shiites;
and some 300,000 been persecuted in Hatay province Arabs, among them Alevi Nusay
ris who are concentrated in Urfa, Mardin, and Siirt.56 Turkey is also a and Shaj
ii-rite Sunnis centered nation of immigrants. There are sizeable numbers of assi
milated Muslim
have close ties, played Islamic militancy. The United both countries States, wit
h which in joint naval exercises, and the Turkish and Israeli forces have engage
d matchmaker. on Palestinians soil. The crackdown Israeli Air Force has trained
over Turkish by the tested Turkey's tolerance. Suha Ariel Sharon See, e.g., has,
however, government A Turkish View, 29 J. Palestine Stud. 21 Alliance: Behind t
he Turkish-Israeli Bolukbasy, in the Middle Balance of Power East, (1999); Dov W
axman, Turkey and Israel: A New on recent Turkish-Israeli at 22 Wash. Q. 25 (199
9). A bibliography is available relations 51. 52. 53. tsi.idc.ac.il/Bibliography
.html. See BBC News, Turkish Press Aghast at Bombings (16 Nov. 2003), available
at
news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/3275387.stm. Poulton, supra note 23, at 95. in
Servet Mutlu, Ethnic Kurds in Turkey: A Demographic Quoted E. Stud. 517, 517 (19
96). Thanks to Do?an G?rpinar of Sabancy this point. Id.
Study, 28 University
Int'l J.Middle for clarifying
54. 55. 56.
Poulton, supra note 23, at 95. See Fuat D?ndar, Azynlyklar: T?rkiye N?fus Sayyml
arynda [Minorities: The Turkish Population Census] (1999); Karimova & Deverell,
supra note 47, at 14.

2005
Civic Nationalism
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Tatars, Az?ris, Laz, Slavs, Georgians, Pomaks, Circassians, Albanians, from the
Balkans, the Crimea, and the North and others Ossetians, forebears sought refuge
inAnatolia as the empire Caucuses, most of whose in the nineteenth receded cent
ury. Most of the country's 50,000 nominally Muslim Roma live on the margins of s
ociety.57 Even for protected minorities the reality of civic nationalism has lag
ged in moments of national crisis. During the 1930s and the law, particularly in
ternal move laws governing 1940s, asylum, assimilation, deportation, ment and re
settlement, and culture favored Hanefi Turks. The education, in 1934, marked "a
massive social engineer Law on Settlement,58 adopted to sustain of a Turkish nat
ional the construction ing project aiming identity."59 Race (irk) and culture (b
ars) were critical; only those of "Turkish in 1934, 8,000 and culture" could gai
n refugee status.60 Also descent from the strategic zones of Edirne and the Jews
were 10,000 uprooted to Istanbul.61 New Sunni and relocated Dardanelles immigra
nts were in the belief that they would in their place be firmer stalwarts resett
led in the 1930s denatural against foreign incursions. A series of laws enacted
numbers of non-ethnic Turks.62 Minorities have always been ized expanding to spe
ak Turkish?with Jacobin fervor during the "Vatanda?, encouraged Speak Turkish!"
campaigns starting in the late Turk?e /Cona^!"/"Citizen,
1930s.63
nationalism Since the time of the Young Turks, economic had been as well. Christ
ians and Jews had historically dominated Turkish stirring and trades. Hoping to
create a "national bourgeoisie," commerce, banking, the CUP organized firms whil
e boycotts of Greek and Armenian fostering at the thus raising national consciou
sness Turkish/Muslim entrepreneurs, were In the early Republican o? minorities.
expense period, companies to employ of Turkish capital and personnel. percentage
s required high to favor Tariffs, subsidies and other state preferences were als
o designed Muslim-owned firms. The Press Law of 1931 barred minorities from owni
ng magazines
were closed
and
to
journals.
non-Turks.64
Some
professions, and with only
including
medicine
and
law,
More

than most
countries,
one major
exception?the
57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 62. 63. 64.
& Deverell, supra note 47, at 14. See also the country entries for Turkey availa
ble European Roma Rights Centre archives, aiwww.errc.org/Archivum_index.php. Law
on Settlement, No. 2510 (1934). at 5-6. Kirisci, supra note 22, /c/. at 18. Kar
imova note 23, at 116. in Interwar Turkey, supra note 22, at 605-13. Policies Ci
tizenship supra note 23, at 122. in Turkey: The Formative Nationalism Years, 191
2-1925, Ayhan Aktar, Economic Bodazi?i J.: Rev. Soc. Econ. & Admin. Sei. 263 (19
96). Poulton, supra ?a?aptay, Poulton,
in the
10

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HUMAN RIGHTS QUARTERLY
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to Jews fleeing Hitler, its borders opened tragic Struma affair65?Turkey evicted
from Spain during the had welcomed much as the Ottomans Jews in the 1930s, the
government welcomed close to Inquisition. Beginning German who were academics Je
wish refugees, 45,000 given including educa boosting Atat?rk's Westernizing prom
inent posts at state universities, railroad to tion reforms. Istanbul became a n
exus in the Zionist underground Palestine. By 1945 as many as 100,000 Jews had p
assed through Turkey on to the promised land.66 the way At the same time, discri
mination Jews, against minorities, including non in 1942-1944; imposed spiked. T
he capital tax (varlyk vergesi) was rate. Armenians Muslims were charged as much
as ten times the Muslim were saddled with the harshest of Greek, Jewish, levies
, though hundreds Business owners who and other firms were bankrupted. D?nme, Ge
orgian, could not pay were packed off to a labor camp in A?kale, near Erzurum. i
n order to raise war funds or tame Often justified as fiscally necessary to is n
ow thought to have been mounted inflation, the scheme specifically and further T
urkify the economy.67 up minority businesses of the the first generation of homo
genization The degree during census of 1906, nearly a to the Ottoman Republic wa
s striking. According of present day Turkey were fifth of the subjects living wi
thin the boundaries and 1 percent Jewish. 10 percent Greek, 7 percent Armenian,
minorities: 1914 and 1924 this demography Between radically. When Turkey changed
in 1927, non-Muslims its first census conducted only 3 percent comprised to ero
de through the continued communities of the population.68 Minority to the new po
stwar years. After 1948, some 30,000 Turkish Jews emigrated in Turkey. state of
Israel.69 In 1950 there were still 100,000 ethnic Greeks the anti-Greek riot in
Istanbul in September 1955, the expulsion However, carve
65.
and Russian left Constanta InDecember Jews 1941, the Struma carrying 800 Romania
n to Palestine. The ship's engines to make failed while their way through passin
g hoping and the vessel sat in the port of Istanbul for ten weeks, the Bosphorou
s, refugees aboard, over their fate. Under British while British, and local Jewi
sh officials wrangled Turkish, towed the ship the refugees visas. Turkish police
and German pressure, Ankara denied it was scuttled out into the Black Sea, wher
e the next morning several miles by a Frantz There was one survivor. See Douglas
from a Soviet submarine. launched torpedo H's Story of the "Struma" and War & C
atherine Collins, Death on the Black Sea: The Untold at Sea xiv-xv (2003). Turke
y's Role inRescuing Turkish and European See Stanford Shaw, Turkey and the Holoc
aust: at 266 (1993). Jewry from Nazi Persecution, 1933-1945, . . . And Its Past
of the Country's to Learn the Realities 5ee Turkish Society Begins 1999. Present
, Turkish Probe, 12 Dec. inTurkey: A Study inClass and Development 79 (1987). ?a
dlar Keyder, State and Class i at country stud es. us/turkey/ Study: Turkey, ava
ilable Library of Congress, Country U.S. 34.htm. Holocaust
66. 67. 68. 69.

2005
Civic Nationalism
& Ethnocultural
Justice in Turkey
449
in 1964, and tensions over Cyprus in the 1970s, reduced the of dual citizens to
3,000 people.70 Also during the 1970s, antagonism Greek community rose in respon
se to terror attacks by the Armenian Secret toward Armenians the Liberation of A
rmenia and (ASALA) against Turkish diplomats Army for other targets abroad. acco
unt for less than one-quarter of 1 percent of Today non-Muslims on minority over
t discrimination is rare, the state encroaches Turks.71While in myriad ways. As
of 1965, minorities were not institutions and culture ones. The Greek existing O
rthodox Island in the Sea of Marmara School Holy Theological was in 1971 when al
l institutions of higher shuttered learning were A breach of Article 40 of the L
ausanne Treaty, this was a blow nationalized. to the Greek Church because Ankara
decrees that only Turkish citizens may become Greek Orthodox Bishops or Patriar
chs in Turkey.72 Treasury officials have seized minority schools and churches as
constituents have dwindled. allowed to open new schools to expand on Heybeli an
d 'Improperly Dilapidated registered" properties have also been confis It remain
s difficult to for minority cated. vakifs, or pious foundations, inAugust 2002 s
hould help.73 reforms adopted acquire property, although The ethnocultural demis
e of the Syrian Orthodox (Suryoye) community in the Mardin/Midyat region of Sout
heastern Turkey is at hand. The ancient as a millet by the Ottomans, sect was Ch
ristian the recognized placing on legal par with Greeks and Armenians. The massa
cres of community in 1915 are largely forgotten, though in 2001 Syriacs alongsid
e Armenians a Syriac priest was acquitted of "provoking religious enmity" for pu
blicizing is thought to have numbered a quarter million the killings.74 The comm
unity in 1923, but was targeted for "Turkification" for much of the Republican i
n the cross fire between the PKK and the Turkish Army, the period. Caught or
70.
U.S. Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, Turkey: International Religio
us Freedom Report (2004), supra note 48. See also Human Rights Watch, The Greeks
of Turkey (1992); in Elias Dimitras, The Greek Minority Panayote y/Dwindling, E
lderly and Frightened?" AIM (31 Jan. 2000), at www.aimpress.ch/dyn/trae/archive/
available Turkey Revisited, -001 -trae-ath. htm. data/2 00002/00201 Based on au
thor's estimation. U.S. Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, Report (2004), supra
note 48.
71. 72. 73.
and Labor, Turkey:
International
Religious
Freedom
74.
inTurkey: Submission to the European Union and the Nurcan Kaya & Clive Baldwin,
Minorities Turkish Government 28-32 at www.minorityrights.org/admin/download/ (2
004), available The issue was forced by a case pdf/MRG-TurkeySub.pdf. lodged wit

h the ECHR dealing the expropriation with of a Christian See Institute of French
Priests place of veneration. v. Turkey, Application no. 00026308/95, as to Admi
ssibility and Others Decision (14 Dec. 2000). See U.S. Bureau of Democracy, Huma
n Rights, and Labor, Turkey: International Religious Freedom Report (2001), avai
lable at www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/irf/2001/5694.htm.

450
HUMAN RIGHTS QUARTERLY
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has withered in 1985 to a few from an estimated 60,000 community thousand today,
with heavy emigration abroad.75 The Syrian Orthodox have almost never been able
to exercise their can identify only one under the Lausanne Treaty. Church offic
ials rights court ruling that granted them protections under the Treaty.76 In 19
97 Ankara authorized same time blocked the Church to conduct in Aramaic, classes
but at the to open a Syriac seminary and to bring in clergy plans from abroad.7
7 Suryoye have been barred from publishing and importing in Aramaic. Church offi
cials struggle to hang on literature written religious to ecclestical have also
decimated the properties. War and republicanism several thousand Chaldean Cathol
ics of Hakk?ri Province.78
AND HUMAN RIGHTSTODAY V. KEMALISM
Although bid for EU membership, many of by the country's prompted Turkey's recen
t reforms had been brewing for years. Kemalism could hardly contain the financia
l boom brought about by the opening of the economy in the 1980s, and political c
hange could not be far behind. The EU has given to Turkey's new freedoms. direct
ion Since the precise February 2002,
seven reform packages Parliament has adopted aimed at fulfilling the Copenhagen
Criteria for EU membership, which include minority rights and the rule of law, a
nd satisfying specific from the European judgments Court of Human Rights (ECHR).
79 InMarch 2004, the Council of Europe in the past two years than in determined
that Turkey had liberalized more ten. At the same time, the COE Committee the pr
evious that had been Turkish formally monitoring Turkey's human rights practices
since 1996 announced as a member of that Ankara had honored its obligations and
commitments no longer face special scrutiny.80 the COE and that Turkey would
75.
76.
U.S. Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, Turkey: International Religio
us Freedom Report (2004), to the Turkish supra note 48. See also Jan Pacal, What
Happened 1996. Turkish Daily News, 29 Aug. Assyrians?, Letter of the Archbishop
s and Istanbul to the President of Tur'Abdin of the Republic of in Turkey (27 Ma
r. 1995) (on file with Turkey about the Status of the Aramean Minority author).
in Turkey, 2002 B.Y.U. L. Rev. 371, at 377. See Niyazi Oktem, Religion See Otmar
Oehring, Human Rights inTurkey: Secularism = Religious Freedom? 36-37 available
aiwww.missio-aachen.de/lmages/MR%20T%C3%BCrkei%20englisch_tcm14
77. 78.
(2002),
79. 80.
11238.pdf. in See Thomas W.
eform in Turkey (Zehra Arat
pects Turkey, of Eur. Parl.
ments by Turkey, art. 3 (17

Norms: The ECHR and Human Smith, Leveraging Rights R

ed., forthcoming). in Human Rights Policies and Pros
Ass., Honoring 5ee Council of Obligations and Commit
Mar. 2004). COE Doc. 10111,

2005
Civic Nationalism
& Ethnocultural
Justice in Turkey
451
in the Kemalist establish Even as Turkey edges closer to Europe, many intent on
liberalizing ment?the military, the courts, the bureaucracy?seem the confines of
the official within noted, "the ideology. As The Economist a brake on has itsel
f become of Atat?rk, the great modernizer, legacy is jealously guarded by the mo
dernization."81 Republicanism continuing in "pashas," as Turkey's military chief
s are known, but is also embedded institutions and ingrained in public life. It
is second nature to deny divisions in civic in society and to repress grassroots
politics. Turks are well versed see multiculturalism nationalism. Many state an
d believe that inserting religion in a backslide from modernity. been as tantamo
unt into the public to dismantling the would result sphere
It should also be noted that far from receding first by bolstered over the past
generation, and institutions erected following the 1980 coup, in 1991 in respons
e to Anti-Terror Law,82 enacted According the 1970s 2004
to Freedom House, Turkey slipped to being only "partly free" ever since, althoug
h the 2003 in political did applaud improvements ratings rights and
into history, Kemalism has laws the "neo-republican" and then by the draconian t
he insurgency by the PKK. from being "free" for most of and civil
liberties.83 is still in force, sharply curbed individual The 1982 constitution,
which while expanding the power of the National Security Council, which rights
its stamp on virtually every facet of public policy. The State Security puts Cou
rts which combined and (Devlet G?venlik Mahkemeleri), military civilian judges,
have tried thousands of defendants, most of them Kurds. The Courts had come to s
ymbolize Turkey's lack of judicial independence and, in June 2004.84 also under
EU pressure, were formally dismantled to shape continues Kemalist discourse stea
dily eroding, Although to human of human rights. Ankara refers conspicuously con
ceptions violations carried out by Kurds, Islamists, and the radical left, but r
ights state abuses and only recently has started to accept the often downplays i
dea of cultural and minority rights. Ethnic and religious strife have fostered a
climate of societal violence. At the same time, civic nationalism has also as J
acobin authorities state violence, errant citizens. punish encouraged over the p
ast few of torture have declined markedly allegations Although are still common,
in political cases. The US State years, abuses especially official
81. 82. 83. 84.
at 46. of Sorts, Economist, 2 Aug. 2003, Turkey: A Revolution Law to Fight Terro
rism, No. 3713 (1991 ). at www.freedomhouse.org/research/freeworld/2003/ House F
reedom available Data, countryratings/turkey.htm. See Commission of the Towards
Progress Report 2004). Communities, European COM(2004)656 Accession, 2004 Report
Regular at 23 (hereinafter on Turkey's EU Progress
final,

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27
Department Country Report for 2003 claims that there are still hundreds of insta
nces of torture each year, with radical leftists and Kurdish activists the main
targets. Village guards in the Kurdish Southeast, the Jandarma, and the worst vi
olators.85 Detainees' police special teams are considered charges of abuse are r
arely taken seriously and impunity is common. The pace of has picked up and ther
e are growing numbers of convictions, prosecutions rather than the graver crime
of torture. though often for mistreatment to chip away at scores of laws coverin
g political reforms continue Legal parties, assembly and association, media, bro
adcasting, religion, education, and "crimes against Atat?rk."86 instruction, art
istic expression, language in September 2004 and due to take effect Turkey's new
Penal Code, adopted torture and ill-treatment in April 2005, defines in line wi
th international now be prosecuted conventions.87 Doctors for falsifying medical
may to cover up torture. Reforms in police and prosecutorial have been ordered.
have been barred from suspending Judges in torture convictions.88 in the Southe
ast As the war has prison sentences Ankara has taken broad strides to dismantle
the most waned, repressive or "political" crimes that for statutes. Suspects det
ained for "collective" merly fell under the jurisdiction of the now defunct Stat
e Security Courts reports conduct used for forty-eight hours. Though still tailo
red may still be held incommunicado to extract confessions, this is an improveme
nt over the two-week detentions allowed under emergency the state of emergency r
ule. Although previously was lifted in November remains the site of illegal the
Southeast 2002, torture, and disappearances. detentions, Turkey has also agreed
to retry cases remanded to it by the ECHR.89 have filtered slowly the Legal and
administrative changes through of state. Rules on political have been relaxed, b
ut machinery assembly are still routinely detained. demonstrators The Political
Parties Act was liberalized.90 based March Undeterred, the Constitutional Court
People's 2003.91 close HADEP's Partisi, or DEHAP), Democracy Party (Halk Demokra
si Chief prosecutor Sabih Kanado?lu the Democratic successor, People's and the d
issolution the Kurdish or HADEP) in Partis!, to has filed a petition Halk Party
banned
Party (Demokratik of the Rights and Freedoms
85. 86. 87. 88. 89. 90. 91.
See U.S. Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, Turkey: Country Rights Pr
actices, 2003, supra note 33, at 5. See EU Progress Report 2004, supra note 82.
Id. at 54. See U.S. Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, Turkey: Countr
y Rights Practices, 2003, supra note 33. Id. Parties Act, No. 2820 Political (19
83), Frank Bruni, Threats and Responses: on Second, Moves N.Y. Times, 14 Mar. am
ended by Act Istanbul; Turkey at A13. 2003, No. 4748 Bans One
Reports on Human
Reports on Human
(2002). Kurdish
Party
and

2005
Civic Nationalism
& Ethnocultural
Justice in Turkey
453
(Hak ve ?zg?rl?kler Partisi, or HAK-PAR) as well as the Turkish Communist Party
(T?rkiye Kom?nist Partisi, or TKP), are also pending.92 The prolifera tion of ci
vil society organizations in recent years has been staggering, the state, which
still rests partly with though the fate of civic groups has been approves or rej
ects NGO charters. The National Security Council revamped to dilute the power of
the generals, though the military's political is still pronounced. influence Ne
w Article 302 of the Penal Code regarding criticism of the state or institutions
is now limited to speech intended to "insult" or "deride" those institutions.93
New Article 216 replaces Article 312 of the Turkish Penal Code, which criminali
zed "inciting people to enmity and hatred by or regional differences."94 to clas
s, racial, religious, confessional, pointing to read "in a way that may be dange
rous is amended The new Article for state Crimes Committed public order."95 The
"Law Concerning Against Atat?rk" remains in force.96 A 150-article to hamstring
Press Law continues the media, though under speech laws are increasingly rare.97
In a bell-weather prosecutions in 2001, Nadire Mater was acquitted of charges t
hat she had an unflattering oral history insulted the military by writing Mehmet
s Book, of the war in the Southeast based on interviews with Turkish soldiers.98
A in other free speech and free press cases has followed. cascade of acquittals
remain in prison for speech violations, several journalists and local Still, on
their own officials often censor divisive expression initiative. Turkish decisi
on the closure of two internet based newspapers in 2003?the leftwing Ekmek ve Ad
alet ("Bread and Justice") and the pro-Kurdish ?zg?r Politika ("Freedom Politics
")?though to operate.99 both websites continue
Human rights groups remain skeptical of Ankara's half-measures. In a
courts ordered
rejoinder
to the EU's sanguine
2001
progress
report, Human
Rights Watch
92. 93. 94. 95. 96. 97.
See Commission Draft Turkish Turkish Penal Draft Turkish
of the European Communities, Penal Code, art. 302 (2004). art. 312 (1926), amend
ed Code, Penal
supra 1981.
note

84,
at 42.
art. 216 (2004). Code, The Law Concerning Crimes Committed (1951). Against Atat?
rk, No. 5816 For details of the 2004 Press Law, see International Publisher's As
sociation, New Turkish to Freedom of Expression (2004), available Penal Code: A
Long Way at www.ipa-uie.org/ at the Crossroads Sarah Repucci, Countries at www.f
reedomhouse.org/research/crossroads/ [Mehmet's Book: of the trial, see Times, 30
Sept. 2000, Turkey, available at
PressRelease/171204/COMMENTS.htm; 2005: available (2005), Turkey 4-5 98. 2005Aur
key2005.pdf. Nadire Mater, Mehmedin Soldiers Who Douglas at A7. 99. See Fought F
rantz,
Kitaby G?neydogu'da Savasmis Askerler Anlatiyor in the Southeast Speak Out] (199
8). For an account Journalist Borders, Cleared of Insulting Army, Surveillance N
.Y. 2004:
Turkish
Reporters
Without
Internet Under
www.rsf.fr/article.php3?id_article=10683.

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that Turkey had done contended little more than "tinsel and varnish" its on the
eve of EU summits, arguing that a bevy of review human rights record to a Potemk
in human rights boards instituted by the government amounted on the "grudging an
d uneven A March 2004 update focuses regime.100 of reforms.101 The government im
plementation" recently permitted Amnesty International (AI) to reopen its office
in Istanbul that had been closed by the in 1980. AI has praised the pre-accessi
on reforms adopted military by Erdo?an's
systematic.102
government,
but
holds
that
torture
remains
widespread
and
are among Turkish human the government's rights NGOs sharpest critics. The Human
which (Ynsan Haklary Derne?i), Rights Association focuses on Kurdish rights, fa
ces a labyrinth of intimidation, detentions, and by the state. Scores of court c
ases are pending prosecutions against the Ynsan Haklary Foundation group.103 The
Turkish Human Rights (T?rkiye centers for victims of torture. The Foundation re
habilitation Vakfy) operates also prepares detailed, monthly reports on abuses,
and drafts a variety of policy Human for recently joined Physicians papers.104 S
everal Turkish NGOs to write the "Istanbul Protocol," a medical to help handbook
Rights cases of torture.105 The Istanbul Bar Association doctors document has g
one so far as to draft a new, liberal constitution. The Organization of Human fo
r Oppressed known as Mazlumder ("the People, Rights and Solidarity on religious
a Turkish Islamist human NGO rights focusing oppressed"), in twenty cities, has
also faced harassment freedom with offices and
prosecutions.106
100. 101. 102. 103.
Human of the 2001 Regular Report on See Human Analysis Rights Watch Rights Watch
, available (Dec. 2001), aihrw.org/backgrounder/eca/turkey-analysis.htm. Turkey
in Key Year for EU Bid See id.; Human Rights Watch, Turkey: Rights Progress Marr
ed at hrw.org/english/docs/2004/03/03/turkey7784_txt.htm. available (3 Mar. 2004
), in Early 2002, AI Torture Continues See Amnesty International, Systematic Tur
key: Index Eur 44/040/2002, available afweb.amnesty.org/library/lndex/ENGEUR4404
02002. According to the European 2003 October and August between 2004, Commissio
n, launched the IHD/ and court cases were different against investigations ninet
y-eight of the European Communities, HRA. 5ee Commission of the supra note 84. T
he website is available Human afwww.ihd.org.tr/eindex.html. Rights Association a
vailable of the Turkish Human 5ee the website Rights Foundation, afwww.tihv.org.
tr/ eindex.html. for Human Rights, on the Effective Manual High Commissioner Ist

anbul Protocol: U.N. of Torture and Other and Documentation Inhuman or Degrading
Investigation Cruel, U.N. Sales No. E.04.XIV.3 Treatment or Punishment, U.N. Do
c. HR/P/PT/8/Rev.1, (2004). See the Mazlumder website, available at www.mazlumde
r.org/english/mainpage.htm.
104. 105.
106.

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Civic Nationalism
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VI. NATIONALIZING ISLAM
Kemalism ushered in a cultural revolution. Moderniza For devout Muslims, was wag
ed in the language of contemporary tion (?aOdap) society, as the to the obscuran
tism of Islam. In the 1920s, the state dismantled opposed institutions of high I
slam. In the 1930s and 1940s, it targeted the vernacular of saints, festivals, p
ilgrimages, veneration faith?the religious dress and driven and local sheiks. Ma
ny amulets, religionists were soothsaying, were in the 1950s, although relaxed b
eginning Prohibitions underground. an overabundance of Islam," defined with shar
p curbs on "political to say, many observant Turks loathe remain in place.107 Ne
edless prudence, led the opposition leviathan. The religious orders have always
the Kemalist sector of civil society. Historically, the and remain the best orga
nized though religious periphery was pitted against the secular center as well,
the politically thanks to mass urbanization savvy core of Turkey's Islamists cit
ies. Tanzimat had occurred secularization during the Ottoman as and under the Yo
ung Turks. For Atat?rk, secularism meant modernization In the seat of power, sta
te secularism crippled the religious well as control. Ottoman institutions and l
earned community (ulema) that had mediated it "smash[ed] localised folk cultures
and replaced rule. In the countryside, the nexus of global them by a unified na
tional culture."108 The Caliphate, Extensive in 1924.109 Islamic schools (medres
es) were padlocked Islam, was abolished The Sufi orders (tarikats) were banned,
nationalized. and pious foundations in 1925. The and dervish (tekkes) and sacred
tombs (turbes) closed lodges in 1926. Some religious shari'a was repealed and f
amily law secularized were Tribunals executed reactionaries (Istiklal by the Ind
ependence In 1930, Hagia Sophia, the great Byzantine church-turned Mahkemeleri).
was converted In 1933, Ankara decreed that into a museum. mosque, muezzins woul
d recite the call to prayer (ezan) in Turkish rather than Arabic, replacing the
word "Allah" with the pagan Turkish term "7anr)/."110 What is followed in Turkey
is not Jefferson's model of the separation of of laicism, or Hobbes'?model chur
ch and state, but rather Rousseau's?or over state control in 1924, the Presidenc
y of Established religion.111 now Western live in
107. 108. 109. 110.
111.
Erik J. Z?rcher, Turkey: A Modern History 192 (1998). Poulton, supra note 23, at
99. the Abolishment Law Concerning and the Expulsion of the Ottoman of the Cali
phate of Turkey, No. 432 from Lands Under the Jurisdiction of the Republic (1924
). Dynasty of Islam is Binnaz The best discussion of this top-down secularizatio
n and Turkification in Civil Society in the Middle East 107 (Augustus Richard in
Turkey, Toprak, Civil Society Norton ed., 1996). a "purely civil profession In
The Social Contract, Rousseau of faith of which advocates as religious not exact
ly fix the articles, but as social should the Sovereign dogmas, a man cannot or
a faithful subject." The which be a good citizen sentiments without

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Islam in (Diyanet Religious Affairs l?leri Bakanly?y) literally administers owns
Turkey's nearly 80,000 mosques. The agency's Turkey. The Diyanet run the mosque
s, craft religious doctrine, organize the 90,000 employees oversee to Mecca, ann
ual pilgrimage in religious and moral education the country's holy relics, publi
sh journals and in the Islamic and represent the faithful symposia, Conference.
every imam in Turkey is a civil servant, appointed Officially, and paid by the D
iyanet and supplied by the agency with civic-minded the General Director sermons
.112 The Treaty of Lausanne notwithstanding, ate of Foundations (Vakiflar Genel
M?d?rl???) similarly oversees minority schools, convene keep scholarly and schoo
ls. institutions, churches, monasteries, religious The early Republic was keen t
o sever religion from civil society and it. It was nationalize that Kemalism, sa
nctified suggested through an "cult of Atatiirk," might eclipse Islam as "Turkey
's religion."113 elaborate a kind of religious What instead was that both corpor
atism emerged Islamists. Church and state have conspired and accommodates antago
nizes on many levels. The secularizing Young Turks were praised across the The n
ational liberation movement Islamic world for their anti-imperialism. was someti
mes cast in terms of cihat, or religious struggle, to rid Anatolia of Mufti of A
nkara issued revolutionary the pro-nationalist nonbelievers; or Islamic legal ed
icts.114 Koranic terms such as ?ehit (religious fetvas, martyr) or gazi (holy wa
rrior) were appropriated by the Republic.115 In recent years the military has br
anded the PKK and leftist opponents of Even hardened the regime as unbelievers.
secularists that Turkey's agree life owe much to Islamic traditions. political c
ulture and ethos of communal To a great degree, Turkish identity is tied to Sunn
i identity. This was as true in the early Republic, which retained Islam as the
state religion until 1928, as it is today for traditional Turks worried about th
e excesses effects of joining the EU. and the possible homogenizing of neolibera
lism track of
of civil religion, he added, Jean "ought to be few, simple, and exactly worded."
dogmas and Discourses 276 theorist (1973). No political Jacques Rousseau, The S
ocial Contract In Leviathan, of secular than Hobbes. sovereignty posits a more r
igorous conception a secular absolutism divine law: that trumps especially theor
izes Hobbes to their Sovereign, a new Covenant, made, not Some men have pretende
d for their disobedience with men, but with God .... But this pretence of Covena
nt with God is so evident a lie, even in that it is not only an act of an unjust
, but also of a vile, and the pretenders own consciences, unmanly disposition. T
homas Hobbes, Leviathan 230 (1983). in Islam in in Turkey, Modern Turkey: Religi
on, and Political Culture Ylter Turan, Religion Politics and Literature in a Sec
ular State 42 (Richard Tapper ed., 1991). Faces of the State: Secularism and Pub
lic Life On the "cult of Atat?rk" see Yael Navaro-Yashin, in Turkey 188 (2002).
at 318 Preparation for a Revolution: The Young Turks, 1902-1908, See M. ??kr? Ha
niodlu, at 363 (1977). 1950-1975, (2001); Feroz Ahmad, The Turkish Experiment in
Democracy, See Turan, supra note 112, at 42.
112. 113. 114. 115.

2005
Civic Nationalism
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Religion also colored the peopling of the Republic. Kemal Kirisci argues that ev
en at the height of state secularism, Turkish immigration officials a striking p
reference exhibited for admitting Hanefi-rite Sunnis. The Otto man Empire had pr
ovided haven for Muslims from the Crimea, the Volga the Caucasus, Central Asian
"Turkistan" and the Balkans. This Urals, in the Republican to citizen practice w
as formalized period. The gateway was marked by "Turkish descent and culture" as
viewed ship through the lens of religion.116 Gagauz Turks from Romania?Christia
ns who spoke Turkish?were barred entry, while Bosnian Turks?Sunnis who did not T
urkish?were welcomed. Alevis and Azeri Turks, who are Ithnaashria speak rite Shi
ites, faced similar obstacles. In general, writes Kirisci, "Turkey has a much mo
re followed restrictive policy compared to the Ottoman Em
factor" in immigration and refugee policies was pire."117 "A determining "who th
e state felt most at ease with, or. . . who the state has felt constitutes the v
ery core of the Turkish national it can unyieldingly identity on which those who
spoke Turkish.118 rely," namely Hanefi Sunnis, especially In Turkey, democratiz
ation has always fueled greater Islamization. In some ways this should come as n
o surprise. As Hakan Yavuz has argued, Islam comprises a large segment of "the g
rammar according to which Turkish society communicates."119 Since the 1950s, cla
ndestine Sufi net works have surfaced and cultural conservatives have gained a v
oice.120 now lead consciously Conscious Islamic lifestyles, boost (?uurlu) Musli
ms in religious popular and commercial ing new markets culture, from high fashio
n veiling to Muslim beach resorts. One also finds syncretisms of Islam/science,
and Islam/modernity, Islamists range from the violent Islam/capitalism. Ideologi
cally, Turkey's and the Raiders of the Islamic Great East (Islam? B?y?k fringe o
f Hizbullah Do?u Akincilari), which in league with al-Queda bombed the apparentl
y and the British Consulate in Istanbul in November synagogues 2003,121 to
secularized, near-Marxist Alevis.
116. 117. 118. 119. 120.
Kirisci, supra Id. at 3. Id. at 18. See M. Hakan Muslim World
note
22,
at 18.
121.
The Assassination of Collective The Case of Turkey, 89 Memory: 193, 193 (1999).
See Ay?e Ayata, The Emergence of Identity Politics in Turkey, 1 7 New Persp. Tur
key 67 69 (1997); Ziya ?ni?, The Political of Islamic Resurgence in Turkey: The
Rise Economy of the Welfare 18 Third World Party in Perspective, Q. 743 (1997);
Hakan Yavuz, Political Islam and the Welfare (Refah) Party in Turkey, 30 Comp. P
ol. 63 (1997); Ahmet Discourse of Political Islam in Turkey: The Parties of Nati
onal Yyldyz, Politico-Religious 93 Muslim World 187 (2003). Outlook, See BBC New
s, Istanbul Rocked at available (20 Nov. by Double 2003), Bombing Yavuz, news.bb
c.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/3222608.stm.

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HUMAN RIGHTS QUARTERLY
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A handful of neo-Ottomanists revived hope to see the House of Osman the Caliphat
e and reconstituted.122 Technically illegal but nonetheless the Nak?ibendi broth
erhoods extend from the influential, enormously conservative flour Khalidis, and
Kadiris, to Fetullah G?len's S?leymancys, a New Age mix of Islam and ishing Nur
cu ("seekers of the light") movement, in the Sufi tradition, the orders stress t
he esoteric and the science. Rooted a more authentic and claim to embody faith t
han either the mystical, ulema or the paper pushers of the Diyanet. legalistic O
ttoman The travails of Turkey's Islamists are well known. Since the late 1960s,
a succession movement of political parties rooted in the Nak?ibendi have Court o
n grounds been shuttered by the Constitutional that they were Erbakan of the hot
beds of confessional politics.123 In July 1996, Necmettin in Turkish the first I
slamist Prime Minister Refah (Welfare) Party became to be squeezed out of office
a year later under pressure from history, only Court closed Refah soon thereaft
er and the military. The Constitutional convicted Erbakan of inciting religious
hatred.124 The successor Fazilet in 2001,125 The Council of State has (Virtue) P
arty was also shut down strengthened universities called at the fifty year prohi
bition headscarves against wearing Council and in public offices.126 The Nationa
l has Security of the ban on the tarikatlar. Turkish military for stricter enfor
cement
122.
5ee Houston, supra note in Vernacular A Study Administration 23 (1997). of
inTurkey: Islamist Mobilization 24, at 12-14, 183; Jenny B. White, Politics Alev
Refah the City 23 (2000); Party and ?inar, and Hybridity, 16 New Persp. Turkey
Istanbul: Liberal Islam, Localism
123.
124.
& Birol Akg?n, of Political Parties Limitation on the Freedom See Yusuf Sevki Ha
kyemez in Turkey and the Jurisdiction of the European Court of Human Rights, 7 M
editerranean Pol. 54, 65-66 (2002). ruled that Refah did of Refah was Court The
closure by the ECHR. A divided upheld an "Islamic theocratic the party thus met
a indeed envision regime," and that banning states under the margin of appreciat
ion accorded social need" that was within "pressing to the legitimate aims pursu
ed." See and that "was not disproportionate the Convention Refah Partisi (Prospe
rity Party) v. Turkey, Applications 41342/98, 41343/98, 41340/98, the dismissal
41344/98, Judgment ?? 76, 82 (31 Jul. 2001). The ECHR has also upheld in fundame
ntalist activities of the military for participating of members (Kala? v. Turkey
, at least inadmissible (1 Jul. 1997)); and has ruled 20704/92, Judgment Applica
tion
125. 126.
and dress. life and religious observance twenty applications involving military
U.S. Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, Turkey: International Religio
us Freedom Report (2001), supra note 74. In June 2004, who was barred from atten
ding medical the ECHR ruled against a woman an Islamic headscarf. at Istanbul Un
iversity The Court held she wore because school of Human 9 of the European Conve
ntion for the Protection that Article Rights and 4 Nov. for signature Fundamenta
l 1950, 213 U.N.T.S. 221, Europ. Freedoms, opened into force 3 Sept. 1953), whic

h "does T.S. No. 5 {entered deals with freedom, religious or inspired by a relig
ion or belief," and found that the not protect every act motivated the legitimat
e aims of protecting the rights and ban on headscarves "pursued university freed
oms of others and of protecting 44774/ public order." Sahin v. Turkey, Applicati
on 98, Judgment ?? 66, 84 (29 June 2004).

2005
Civic Nationalism
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to purge alleged Islamists from the ranks.127 Although continue officials sliver
of the country's Muslims, Islamists representa militant they loom large who hav
e pursued in the minds of the military and intelligence services, of Islam," the
view that Islam in what Hakan Yavuz terms "the securitization lifestyle.128 gen
eral threatens the Kemalist to Islam. Rather, But Turkey laicism has both is not
simply hostile a uniquely the faith. Ankara has encouraged coerced and accommod
ated a "Turkish Reforma Turkish Islam. In the 1930s the government promoted the
tion" to modernize Islam. A state panel recommended and nationalize that prayer
times be adjusted to fit the Turkification of texts and services, in mosques, an
d modern work day, that church style pews be introduced replace Koranic recitati
on.129 some reforms remained in resisted by traditional Muslims, Although in the
1950s by the Islam-friendly Demokrat until overturned place Partisi.130 A simil
ar "national and progressive image" of Islam was promoted which for eighteen mon
ths Unity Committee, by the National governed the 1960 coup. "Backward" elements
of Islam, such as women following that hymns the ?ar?af, or veil, were said to
have been imported from foreign wearing lands.131 In the late 1960s, the Turkish
-Islamic Synthesis (Turk-Islam Sentezi), was the brainchild of the Hearth of the
Enlightened (Aydyn Oca?y), as the antidote to political and social radicalizaro
n. advanced Yet, as Etienne Copeaux writes, at the same time as the Turkish-Isla
mic Synthesis itwas making official the place of "was reinforcing the Cult of Ke
malism, a requirement at all levels religion in society, making religious educat
ion to the development and allowing freedom of [religious high complete was rein
forced schools]."132 This cultural engineering by a post-1950s intellectuals who
affirmed Islam as the of respected Muslim generation cultural core of T?rkc?l?k
.U3
127.
see Eric Rouleau, with Political For background, Pashas: Military Turkey's Moder
n Le Monde Diplomatique, 5ee also Soner ?agatay, Union Power, Sept. 2000. Europe
an on Brussels' Door, the Role of the Turkish Military: Ankara Knocking Reforms
Diminish no. 781 at Institute for Near East Policy: Policywatch available Washin
gton (2003), www. washingtoninstitute.org/templateC05. php?CID=1659. at Ebru Dog
an, BBC News, available (21 Nov. 2003), Turkey's Militant Minority M. Hakan Yavu
z, Islamic Political Identity in news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/3227320.stm.; Turkey
244-45 (2003). Identity inTurkey, supra note 128, at 50; Z?rcher, Yavuz, Islami
c Political supra note 107, at 201. Ahmad, supra note 114, at 378-81. Id. at 374
-75. Etienne Copeaux, Espace et Temps de la Nation D'une Historiographie Turque:
Analyse in Eissenstat, 1934-1993 Nationaliste, (1997), quoted supra note 31, at
104. as State Ideology in a Secular Setting: The Turkish-Islamic See Binnaz Top
rak, Religion in Secular Turkey 10 (Malcolm Wagstaff in Aspects of Religion ed.,
1990); Synthesis, in the Republic E. Meeker, in Islam in Michael The New Muslim
of Turkey, Intellectuals See
128.
129. 130. 131. 132. 133.

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These ideas began to bear fruit in the 1970s under the National Front coalition
governments of Turkish nationalists and Sunni Islamists. composed After the 1980
coup, the Turkish-Islamic the centerpiece synthesis became to promote a Turkish
national of the military's "retraditionalization" policies in culture. Better t
o be a Muslim than a Marxist (or a Kurd for that matter; 1981 a special Diyanet
to propagate branch was established Islam as an alternative what to Kurdish nati
onalism), if the state could influence especially kind of Islam people practiced
.134 General Kenan Evren, who led the set out to revive Turkish Islam as "a rati
onal and logical religion," coup, and science."135 In the end, Evren's noted for
its "high regard for knowledge Islam largely mirrored majority Hanefi Sunnism.
new powers to cultivate It The Diyanet was accorded orthodoxy. the construction
of mosques its own and began rapidly expanded issuing fetvas against the temptat
ions of the left. The 1982 Constitution decreed that and instruction" for primar
y and middle and moral education "religious school students "will be conducted u
nder the supervision and control of the of Education for the public state."136 T
he Ministry up funding stepped the Iman-Hatip schools, secondary lyc?es, which o
stensibly religious trained for the national Sunni feeders leaders, but became r
eligious movement. At their height, in 1996-1997, the Iman-Hatip schools enrolle
d more than 500,000 middle and high school students.137 In 2003, the state added
night and summer Koran courses to counteract or educational the mushrooming num
ber of private religious dershanes, that "religion educa institutes. Education M
inister H?seyin ?elik explained tion should be carried out with the State's reso
urces and under State as a in a healthy manner, instead of being pushed undergro
und supervision,
nefarious activity."138
on the same centrist Sunnism. State and society have largely converged in incorp
orating Islamists into the political system," "Turkey has succeeded concludes Ha
kan Yavuz, "and this in turn has softened and restructured Islamic demands and v
oices."139 This domestication of Islam might seem to as Islamists internalize re
publican vindicate years of repressive secularism,
norms.
However,
as noted,
the state
itself is deeply
implicated
in religious
life.
Modern 1991). 134. 135. 136. 137. 138. 139.
Turkey: Religion,
Politics

and Literature
in a Secular
State
189
(Richard
Tapper
ed.,
in Turkey, supra note 110, at 107-08. Toprak, Civil Society Identity in Turkey,
supra note 128, at 70-71. Islamic Political Yavuz, Turk. Const, art. 24 (1982).
Islamic Political Identity in Turkey, supra note 128, at 124, Table Yavuz, in Tu
rkey: A Dilemma State and Religion Education U?ur Akinci, at www.turkishpress.co
m. available Islamic Political Identity in Turkey, supra note 128, at 237. Yavuz
,
5.1. (4 Jan. 2004),

2005
Civic Nationalism
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461
it inevitably favors one As it polices and association religious expression is d
ominated version of Islam over others. The Diyanet by Hanefi Sunnism, the agency
seems to view as synonymous with "Turkish" Islam, and which receives the lion's
share of state support. which of faith and power prompted a UN special rapporte
ur This confluence for religious freedom who visited Turkey in 1999 to warn agai
nst even "a it status for the Hanefi conception of Islam."140 Such ties make qua
si-official seem natural or inevitable that Turkish identity should be defined b
y resources indeed have monopolized and Sunnis, who public majority the country'
s "civic" culture.141 largely molded have profited most from this arrangement.14
2 The Islamic nationalists Islamist Justice and Development Party (AKP), known a
s a "reformed" to victory in the November 2002 national elections, faction, swep
t forming in twenty years. Party leader Tayyip government Turkey's first majorit
y the AKP's divorce from the more strident wing of Erdo?an, who engineered the N
ak?ibendis, democrat" and compares the calls himself a "conservative to the cent
er-right Christian Democrats inWestern The party Europe.143 party's logo, an ill
uminated light bulb, often set against a portrait of Atat?rk, to the secular its
commitment rather than the signals Enlightenment "heavenly light" (nur) o? Isla
m.144 as an Some of Turkey's Islamists see the sprint for EU membership most vie
w it as a path toward "de affront to Muslim values, though Kemalization" and hen
ce greater freedom.145 The AKP favors religious to the "mosaic" of European but
envisions Turkey adding membership, cultures, not simply assuming identity. Erdo
?an frequently em European to foreign and from political economy Islamic languag
e and devices, ploys he exhibits an Islamic sensibility. But this is balanced by
almost daily policy
140.
Interim Report of the Special Rapporteur of all Forms of Intolerance Elimination
1: Situation in Turkey, Belief, Addendum
on Human the Commission Rights and and of Discrimination Based on Religion U.N.
GAOR, 55th Sess., at 5-6, U.N. Doc. of
the or A/
55/280/Add.1 (2000).
141. Encounter with Modernity: Ambivalent Kieser, The Alevis' Islam, Reform in T
urkey (19th-20th cc.) 1 (2002) (unpublished Ethnopolitics manuscript prepared in
the Balkans for the Conference, and Heritage and Anthropology, Archaeology or T
he Life and Times of F.W. Hasluck of Wales, Anatolia (1878-1920), University at
www.hist.net/kieser/puAVales.pdf. available (3-6 Nov. 2001)), Gregynog, Hans-Luk
as and See Metin in Contemporary and Democracy Islam, Modernity, Heper & ?ule To
ktas,, 157 (2003); Thomas W. Turkey: The Case of Recep Tayyip Erdcftan, 93 Musli
m World Allah and Atat?rk: The Turkish Model from Laicism to Liberal Islam, 9 Sm
ith, Between Int'l J. Hum. Rts. (forthcoming 2005). at 74. 18 Dec. 2004, The Eni
gmatic Mr. Erdogan, Economist, at www.akparti.org.tr/. See the AKP website, avai
lable Cousin: Turkey, the European Union and
142.

143. 144. 145.

Bertil Dun?r & Edward Deverell, Country Human Rights, 2 Turkish Stud. 6, 7 (2001
).

462
HUMAN RIGHTS QUARTERLY
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of political Islam, even repudiations community. As Erdogan puts it, "Islam the
two, We ruling, You can't compare of the people."146
the idea of an Islamic political is a religion, democracy is a way of just want
to increase the happiness
Islam has weighed heaviest on Turkey's millions of Alevis, Nationalizing the cou
ntry's the heterodox Muslim, arguably largest minority. Nominally Shiites have t
heir own religious ceremonies (cem) and hereditary priest class of the faith rat
her (dede). They profess to follow the inner (batin) meaning most do not pray, f
ast, tithe or than its external (zahir) rules. Accordingly, the Hajj. Nor do the
y accept the Sunni shari'a}*1 Their nonsegregated are held in cem-houses, are in
fused with not mosques, services, which music, poetry, and dancing. to mystics,
Politically, Alevis range from Marxists though most are left to Catholic Turkish
Alevism has been compared liberation theol leaning: the Sunni Ottomans, Alevis
cheered been ostracized ogy. Having by to press for the separation of church Ata
t?rk's secular reforms, and continue make and state in order to insulate them fr
om the Sunni majority. Although many Alevis are not religious, the public face o
f Alevism alarms conservatives. is venerated Twin portraits of Atat?rk and the I
mam AM, who by Shiites as are often mounted behind the dais at the Prophet Moham
med's rightful heir, events. to the For Turks accustomed Alevi and cultural conf
erences of Kemalism, and for Sunnis, who do not idolize saints, the monotheism s
cene elicits a kind of cognitive dissonance.148 in the 1970s an Alevi cultural r
evival clashed with the Beginning of state and society. Right wing Sunni nationa
lists, Sunnization growing led pogroms against rural Alevis as including the fas
cist "Gray Wolves," in Western well as the "urban diaspora" Hundreds were killed
. In Turkey.149 the 1990s, Alevis were still stigmatized as disloyal and heretic
al kyzylba?lar, literally, "redheads," a folkloric reference to Alevi tribal hea
dgear.150 In July a Sunni mob firebombed an killed when 1993, thirty-seven peopl
e were in the city of Sivas. The attackers were incensed by Alevi cultural congr
ess a secularist who at the conference had the presence of Aziz Nesin, translate
d portions of Salman Rushdie's Satanic Verses into Turkish.151 The some of it, v
iolence was discourse, legitimized by a toxic Sunni-nationalist
146. 147. 148. 149. 150. 151.
in Pope, supra note 6. Quoted 5ee Martin van Bruinessen, Kurds, Rep. 7 (Jul.-Sep
t. 1996). See Tahire Stud. 99, 105
Turks and
the Alevi
Revival
in Turkey,
200 Middle
E.
in Contemporary Erman & Emrah G?ker, Alevi Politics Turkey, 36 Middle E. (Oct. 2

000). 262. Poulton, supra note 23, at 162-63, David Shankland, The Alevis inTurk
ey: The Emergence of a Secular Islamic Tradition 26 (2003). van Bruinessen, supr
a note 147, at 9.

2005
Civic Nationalism
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463
notably
the
the lumping of Alevi were also shaken
activism
and Kurdish separatism,
by
state.152
by the rapid ascent during the 1990s of the Partisi (MHP), or National Action Ha
reket Party. right wing Milliyet?i a sordid history of religion baiting Alevis a
nd race baiting Kurds, the Despite MHP became the lynchpin partner in the coalit
ion government from 1999 Alevis to 2002.153 In February 2002, a state court clos
ed Peace the Alevi Democratic as well as the main Alevi cultural association. Mo
vement With Alevis to take the case to the ECHR, an appeals court overturned the
threatening Erdo?an has ruling.154 Prime Minister to religious minorities, cabi
net positions the AKP ticket in local elections. Erdo?an as well and has distanc
ed himself from but he has also reportedly
cem-houses are "culture houses" rather
non-Muslims, offering on running ethnic Armenians has made overtures toward Alev
is the anti-Alevi fanatics of the MHP, said that "Alevism is not a religion" and
that Alevi and
than "temples."155
embraced
as errant Muslims, seems to view Alevis The Diyanet and budgets almost nothing f
or their activities. Recently the agency attempted, corporatist invented inAnkar
a. style, to co-opt Alevi youth with a cultural association Alevis have thus far
failed in their efforts to have their children exempted from the religion cours
es taught in schools, which they say parrot the Hanefi mainstream. Most Alevis w
ould dis probably prefer to see the Diyanet remote possibility to mantled altoge
ther?a given that the state continues on the agency to set the tone for moderate
Sunnis, and remains dead rely set against ceding control of mosques to the reli
gious orders.
VII. THE KURDISH REALITY
The well on Turkey's Kurds has been of citizenship impact of the ethnicization i
n documented. Atat?rk offered Kurdish tribal leaders future autonomy for their h
elp during the independence but that movement, exchange commitment faded as libe
ration gave way to nation building, and rebellion in the Kurdish region?roughly
the Eastern quarter of the country?was used
152. 153.

Kieser, supra note 141, at 17. See Alev ?inar & Burak Arikan, The Nationalist Ac
tion Party: Representing the State, the or the Nationalists, Nation 3 Turkish St
ud. 25 (2002); M. Hakan Yavuz, The Politics of Fear: The Rise of the Nationalist
Action E. J. 200 Party (MHP) in Turkey 56 Middle (2002). U.S. Bureau of Democra
cy, Human Rights, and Labor, Turkey: International Report (2003), available at w
ww.state.gov/g/drl/rls/irf/2003/24438.htm. U.S. Bureau of Democracy, Human Right
s, and Labor, Turkey: International Report (2004), supra note 48. Religious Reli
gious Freedom Freedom
154. 155.

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to justify repression nationwide.156 By the late 1920s, state historians and soc
ial scientists toured the Southeast describing how Kurds had descended from Turk
men tribes and thus really were Turks, albeit "Mountain Turks."157 Ethnic chauvi
nism In 1927, Foreign festered beneath this civic veneer. Minister Tevfik Ru?di
predicted that the Kurds, "inevitably doomed," would suffer the fate of the "Red
Hindus [Indians]."158 For the first seventy years of In 1991, then prime the Re
public, Kurdish identity was officially denied. S?leyman Demirel broke
minister
the silence when he lifted the ban on the for "non-political" and communications
) (though only language as he put it, "the Kurdish reality."159 acknowledged, Fo
r some, the rise of Kurdish nationalism was sparked by the "structural violence"
caused by systematic deprivation and injustice by the state. For itwas a reacti
on to "internal colonialism": the case fits Michael others, Kurdish core and tha
t unequal economic relations between theory a country within incite peripheral n
ationalism.160 To the extent periphery a problem at all, it has favored economic
that Ankara has recognized rather for most observers, Kurdish nationalism than
ethnic explanations. However, as a is the result of modern identity politics. Ma
ny Turks view Kurdishness construct rather than an authentic ethnie. During the
war, latter-day political the notion
Hechter's
as "absurd, of a separate Kurdish identity was widely dismissed and subversive,"
and activists for Kurdish rights were cast as unnecessary, "terrorists and enem
ies of the nation."161 The the main identity of Turkey's Kurds is not fixed. Non
etheless, emic (the view of the group from markers by which ethnicity is gauged?
the as well as the etic (the view from without)?both within) point to the of a d
istinct Kurdish ethnicity and culture.162 Many existence" "undeniable in being a
Turk of Kurdish extraction. Inter Kurds see no contradiction is common. Promine
nt and politi businessmen, entertainers, marriage cians?a of Kurdish descent. qu
arter of Parliament by some estimates?are Kurdish and Turkish Others lapse betwe
en state. Abdullah ?calan, be an essentialist speaks only broken Kurdish. Tribal
lineage to is supposed realities inwhat the jailed leader of the PKK, (Dersim,
Kuchgiri, Barzani, and
156. 157. 158. 159. 160.
161. 162.
David McDowall, A Modern History of the Kurds 186-89 (1997). supra note 24, at 9
9-101. Houston, at 421 in Philip Mansel, Constantinople: City of the World's Des
ire, 1453-1924, Quoted (1996). in Ergil, supra note 5, at 130. Quoted Internal C
olonialism: The Celtic Fringe in British National Development, See Michael Hecht
er, are roughly one-tenth at 7-9 in the Kurdish Southeast Incomes of (1975). 153
6-1966, in the industrial swathe of Western those Turkey. Henri J. Barkey & Grah
am E. Fuller, Turkey's Kurdish Question 117-18 (1998). to Europe and the U.S. 39
(2000). On Kurdish Heinz Kramer, A Changing Turkey: Challenges see Mutlu, emic
and etic markers supra note 53, at 518-19.

2005
Civic Nationalism
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many
others), religious sect and rite (Shafii Sunni, Alevi Shiite, Yezidi), and ident
ity. Depend language (Kurmanji, Surani, Zaza, Gurani) further delimit identities
may overshadow these Kurdish ethnic ing on circumstance
identity.163
Strife between Kurds and the state is a recurrent feature of the in the Southeas
t were caused by Early insurrections equally and Islamic rejectionism of the sec
ular state. Kurdish nationalism at the time (and many Turkish historians the sin
ce) described or "irredentists," but almost "religious fanatics," "reactionaries
" nationalists.164
Republic. forces of Journalists rebels as never as
Kurdish activists, By the mid-1920s, including the Azadi were openly espousing (
Freedom) movement, separatism. In 1925 the Sheikh Said The state always met resi
stance with violence. Rebellion was crushed, and the Independence Tribunals brou
ght back to its leaders. Other revolts broke out near A?ri Da?y (Mount Ararat) p
rosecute source says in 1937. One and in Dersim (now Tunceli) in the Kurdish hav
e been as many as thirty-eight armed mutinies 1925 and 1938, tens of thousands r
egion since the early 1920s.165 Between to Western of Kurds and Alevis were depo
rted Turkey.166 Parts of the area were under continuous martial in the law from
1925 until 1946. Quiescent from 1926-1930 there 1950s and 1960s, the Southeast g
rew increasingly restless in the 1970s. From 1984 until 2000 the region was the
site of a brutal secessionist war in which more than 30,000 people died.167 Ther
e are still occasional flare-ups of violence between Kurdish fighters and Turkis
h security forces. The PKK or Kongra-Gel, has reconstituted itself as the Kurdis
tan People's Congress, in Northern and is thought to have some 5,000 fighters ha
rboring Iraq.168 to eradicate Turning Kurds into Turks was always a civilizing m
ission and feudalism. Ankara repeatedly sought to overturn land tenure, the abas
, the great Kurdish landlords. The campaign banishing targeted nation "ethnic" o
r "folk" Islam as well. Atatiirk wrote that no "civilized let themselves tolerat
e a mass of people who be led by the nose by [could] a herd of shaykhs, dedes, i
n other babas and amirs," sayyids, chelebis, tribalism
163. 164.
See See
Kirisci & Winrow, supra note 20, at 23-25. L?le Yal?yn-Heckmann, Ethnic Islam an
d Nationalism in Islam in Modern Turkey: Politics and Literature in a Secular
the Kurds in Turkey, among State 103-06 (Richard Tapper
165. 166. 167. 168.
supra note 24, at 125. McDowall, supra note 156, at 199-200. See Stephen Kinzer,
Turks and Kurds: A Corner Times, 4 July 1999. See

ed., 1991). See Houston,

of
the World
that Peace
Forgot,
N.Y.
International Crisis Group, Iraq: Allaying Turkey's Fears over Kurdish Ambitions
14, 18 at www.icg.org/home/index.cfm?l=1 See also Yigal Schleifer, &id=3241. (2
005), available How Will to Growing 22 Rebel Violence?, Christian Science Monito
r, Turkey Respond Sept. 2004.

466
HUMAN RIGHTS QUARTERLY
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words, backward clerics and holy rollers.169 Southeastern Turkey is legend and s
ometimes ary for its dissenting, clandestine, religious brotherhoods and lodges.
Religious heterodoxy has compounded the separate identity of Islam in the South
east. Kurds while The foiling attempts to "Diyanetize" to sheikhs was such that
they managed reputation of some Nak?ibendi sectarian and tribal rivalries and ex
ploit transcend solidarity born regional of resentment toward Ankara.170 Kurdish
cohesiveness grew in response to of the state. As the influence of the tarikats
increasing Turkification into a secular ethnic nationalism. this solidarity was
parlayed waned, Former President Turgut ?zal?a Kurd himself?predicted that mass
to the industrial centers of Western would complete the immigration Turkey assi
milation of Kurds.171 Surveys and voting patterns do show that Kurdish remain on
the land. Displaced by identity is strongest among those who the part poverty a
nd war, roughly half of Turkey's Kurds now live in theWestern of the country. Vi
llagers who migrate to the cities, typically through "chain" in the city. These
migration, maintain close ties to their regional compatriots rural culture but l
ess so ethnic or social networks reproduce (hem?ehri) 1999 elections, the main p
arty, legal Kurdish-oriented in the Southeast, but received scant support among
HADEP, polled in the inWestern Kurdish migrants Turkey.173 Still, the party's st
rength was remarkable given the slim chance of reaching the 10 percent provinces
to gain seats in the parliament, the high and given threshold needed in likelih
ood the party would be closed by the Constitutional Court, which, in the 2002 el
ections. in 2003.174 This trend continued fact, happened DEHAP won 60 percent of
the vote in the Southeast, though country-wide, parties.175 three-quarters of K
urds voted for non-Kurdish well political identity.172 In the 1995 and
169. 1 70. 171.
McDowall, supra note See Yal?yn-Heckmann, 210-11.
156,
at 196. note 164, at 104; McDowall, supra note 156, at 196-98,
supra
observation Ernest Gellner's that the Barkey & Fuller, supra note 161, at xii. T
his echoes in the Kurdish from agrarian?or rise of nationalism the transformatio
n often attends and to industrial Ernest Gellner, Nations See generally case, gr
azier?society society. and See also Murat Ethnic Kurds, Endogenous Nationalism (
1993). Identities, Somer, 1 Global Rev. Ethnopolitics and Integration with Europ
e, 74, Turkey's Democratization at www.ethnopolitics.org/archive/volume_l/issue_
4/ available 87-88 (June 2002), somer.pdf. See Tahire Rural-to-Urban (1998). Erm
an, Becoming on "Urban" or Remaining Question," "Rural": 30 The Views of Turkish
Int'l J.Middle E. Stud. 541
172.
Migrants
the "Integration
173. 174. 175.
Ayse G?nes-Ayata Parties & Elections

in Politics, Bases of Voting, Ethnic and Religious & Sencer Ayata, inTurkey 137,
139 (Sabri Sayary & Yylmaz Esmer eds., 2003). See Bruni, supra note 91. 6 Middl
e East Rev. 2002 Elections: A New Beginning?, Ali ?arkoglu, Turkey's November In
t'l Aff. 30, 33-34 (2002), available afmeria.idc.ac.il/journal/2002/issue4/carko
glu.pdf.

2005
Civic Nationalism
& Ethnocultural
Justice in Turkey
467
the leviathan pressures Kurds have faced. in earnest in the 1950s. The the South
east was begun Kurdish language was banned. Registrars refused to record Kurdish
names on birth certificates removed (in July 2003, Parliament language from the
Census Law that had prohibited the use of names contrary to the "national in 19
56, the "Special Commission for Name culture").176 Established new Turkish of Ku
rdish villages with re-christened thousands Change" Turkification of were not fa
r behind. The process was acceler names.177 State mapmakers rule in 1983. With t
he outbreak of the war, ated after the return to civilian a deep freeze. Kurdish
cultural entered Kurdish and historical rights were banned. Kurdish-leaning new
spapers, publishing houses, representations and NGOs were shuttered. Books about
Kurds, organizations Kurdistan and Kurdish nationalism, distant historical acco
unts, including were seized. Turkey's great novelist, Ya?ar Kemal, was prosecute
d in 1995 for arguing that the Kurdish would fade without language literary free
charitable
dom.178
It is hard
to overstate
Kurdish civilians bore the brunt of the war. According to the Human Foundation o
f Turkey, thousands of Kurdish villages were evacuated, Rights or razed.179 The
army and hundreds burned instituted Vietnam style as the war progressed. than a
million More Kurds were "hamletting" Most of the PKK's victims were also Kurds (
schoolteachers and displaced. considered favorite targets), and postal workers,
agents of Ankara, were many Kurds supported the movement only under duress. In a
well-regarded 1995 survey, only 11 percent of Kurdish respondents favored seces
sion, said they wanted though two-thirds of those polled respect for greater Kur
dish identity and culture, and some measure of self-administration.180 It was cl
ear, however, that civic allegiance had shallow roots in the Southeast. The gove
rnment ruled by military might teamed with the arming of the to purchase the rea
lity, a massive "village guards"?in bribery scheme loyalty of tribal leaders to
carry out indirect rule. Aside from an occasional skirmish the war is now over,
and bitterness between Turks and Kurds is receding. Having invested so much bloo
d and treasure (as much as $100 billion) in the war, many Turks are reluctant to
176. 177. 178.
U.S. Rights
Bureau of Democracy, Practices,
supra ?ktem, See Yasar Kemal,
Human Rights, 2003, supra note 33. note 22, at 9. The Dark Cloud Urge Rights ove
r Turkey
and Labor, Turkey: Country
Reports on Human

179. 180.
Intellectuals Kinzer, Stephen 22 Oct. 1999, at A12. See Press Release, Human www
.tihv.org.tr/eindex.html. The survey was conducted inMcDowall, summarized
Index on Censorship 141 (1995); Turkey, 24 to End the War Against Its Kurds, N.Y
. Times, of Turkey (31 May University. 2001), ErgiTs available findings at are
Foundation
by Do?u supra note
Ergil of Ankara 156, at 446.

468
HUMAN RIGHTS QUARTERLY
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to Kurdish culture. Since 1999, the Village Return and make concessions Rehabili
tation the return of about 10 percent of the Project has overseen Kurds as well
as some Syriacs. Refugees must receive official displaced, to return. There have
been some 300,000 half of permission applications, which have been denied, for
security reasons.181 Some Kurds ostensibly to return only after signing an affid
avit stating that they report being allowed a tactic not the government's, had f
led because of the PKK's actions, the government's in future cases aimed at bols
tering defense possibly have been resettled in new brought at the ECHR.182 Some
of the displaced "consolidated villages"
instead of original sites, often distant from the lands. Resettlement has not be
en helped by the fact villagers' agricultural that 60,000 Indeed, some village g
uards remain on the public payroll. have had to flee a second time.183 The entir
e process has reinforced villagers were designed to be permanent. that the displ
acements suspicions The Kurdish issue has always been an international one as we
ll.184 The in Iraq may have warned that regime change generals spin off an Kurdi
sh state there, and have vowed to block it from happen independent Turkish speci
al forces soldiers are active in 1,500-3,000 ing; an estimated to undermine Nort
hern Kurdish efforts.185 Ankara is particularly Iraq, trying worried that Iraqi
Kurds might try to seize the oil-rich city of Kirkuk, which to have a significan
t Turkmen, or Turkoman, minority also happens that under Kurdish rule.186 Today
much hope is Turkey fears may be persecuted in the Eastern Anatolian invested (G
AP), a massive Project regional and rural development irrigation plan, although
critics say that the project,
181.
182.
Resettlement and Reconstruction Joost Jongerden, 1 Global Rev. Ethnopolitics 80
(2001), Turkey, archive/volume_l/issue_1/jongerden.pdf. Displaced and Disregarde
d: See Human Rights Watch, 4 (Oct. 2002),
of Identity: The Case of the Kurds at www.ethnopolitics.org/ available
in
Turkey's Failing Village Return Program at www.hrw.org/reports/2002/turkey/. The
available largest share of to the ECHR from Turkey have been lodged by Kurds se
eking damages applications on Human 1 of the European Convention under Protocol
I,Article Rights for properties there has been a sharp up-tick by Turkish securi
ty forces. Since 2000, allegedly wrecked in the number of "friendly settlements,
" to the inwhich damages Turkey pays monetary
183. 184.
185. 186.
the Court that legal and administrative reforms have been but also satisfies app
licant, to prevent future abuses. Thomas W. Smith, Leveraging Norms: The ECHR an
d enacted in Turkey, supra note 79. Human Rights Reform See Human Rights Watch,
Displaced and Disregarded, supra note 182. See generally Kirisci &Winrow, supra
note 20, ch. 6; Michael M. Gunter, The Kurds and the Future of Turkey ch. 4 (199
7); Dietrich Jung & Wolfango Piccoli, Turkey at the Crossroads: Legacies and a G

reater Middle East ch. 7 (2001). Ottoman International Crisis Group, Turkey's Fe
ars over Kurdish Ambitions, See Iraq: Allaying supra note See 168, at 11-12. id.
at 6-8; Scott as Turkey Watches, Kurdish Groups Unite Peterson, Warily, 4 Oct.
2002; Sandra Mackey, The Coming Clash Over Kirkuk, at A23.
Christian Science Monitor, N.Y. Times, 9 Feb. 2005,

2005
Civic Nationalism
& Ethnocultural
Justice in Turkey
469
which
has already inundated a number of villages and historical sites, is of the state
's top-down engineering of life in the Southeast.187 emblematic in the country,
the taboo surrounding all things Kurdish has Elsewhere is lively debate about Ku
rdish cultural and linguistic rights, lifted. There advocates of Kurdish freedom
s still risk public censure although outspoken In August and state prosecution.
Parliament ended the ban on 2002, Kurdish-language broadcasts might broadcasting
prove useful private Kurdish that state-run television (officials suggested in
order to counter satellite TV propaganda), lessons.188 In June 2004, the state l
anguage
in Kurmanci, and radio began broadcasts the most in Turkey. While Kurdish dialec
t Turkification had the full widespread are largely on their own. backing of the
state, Kurdish cultural entrepreneurs dershanes face frequent bureaucratic shut
obstacles, Language notably downs for fire code violations.189 Reforms or not,
many police-state absurdities subver linger: discerning sive lyrics, censors sti
ll seize Kurdish pop music; officials recently detained rock star Haluk L?vent a
fter he performed at a Kurdish cultural festival in in the past, the government
had in essence criminalized the Germany; are common in Kurdish but do not exist
in "w" and "q," which letters "x," the Turkish version of the Latin alphabet, an
d a number of prosecutions were mounted over spelling;190 in the "poster crisis"
of 2003 a lower court ruled that a campaign of posters reading "Peace will prev
ail" in Turkish and Kurdish threatened national unity, and police nationwide wer
e ordered to hunt down and remove the subversive placards.191
and legalized run TRT television
VIII. LEAVENING CITIZENSHIP? TURKEYIN EUROPE
to ethnicity harnessed Turkey presents a vigorous case of civic nationalism and
culture. However, the coercive and the processes of style of citizenship describ
ed here no doubt happen more homogenization subtly in other
187.
188. 189.
in the See, e.g., The Kurdish Human Rights Project, The Ilisu Dam: A Human Right
s Disaster in Turkey May Soon Flood?A Making N.Y. '2nd Pompeii,' (1999); Stephen
Kinzer, Dam at 1. Times, 7 May 2000, Human Rights, and Labor, Turkey: Country U
.S. Bureau of Democracy, Reports on Human Rights Practices, 2003, supra note 33.
A good overview of difficulties Kurds still Research: Board, Country of Origin
Turkey, face is Canadian TUR42658.E and Refugee Immigration at www.irb (2004), a
vailable See also At Last, Turkish 11 June 2003. Telegraph, 189. (19 Dec. 2003),
available at
190. 191.
cisr.gc.ca/en/research/ndp/ref/?action=view&doc=tur42658e. to Voice Their Hope K
urds Are Able of Freedom, See Canadian and Refugee Board, supra note Immigration

Ebru Dogan, BBC News, Kurds Wait for Turkish Sea Change news.bbc.co.ul</1/hi/wo
rld/europe/3328875.stm.

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a civic state and a national culture almost settings. Constructing inevitably In
the garb entails the leveling of diversity and the folklorizing of minorities.
of civic inclusion the institutions of state become for the majority. vehicles I
n politics as well as economics the path to success may be open only to the In t
he Turkish case, ethnoreligious state policies were at the assimilated. and the
division of public identity, state building, the day to day tasks of state also
served to diminish although civic state turned coercive. diversity. The dream of
a modern its own diversity? How will Turkey accommodate Islam is sometimes that
will hold the country together. A more held out as the cement likely to the EU
will help to crack this dilemma. is that Turkish accession scenario has been a b
oon to reform. There are Already, the prospect of membership heart of national r
esources, out of signs that joining the EU may actually heighten cultural conser
vatism within Turks might become fears of homogenization Europe. Ironically, mor
e Turkish in Europe; this accounts in part for the popularity of Erdogan's But a
efforts to balance Euro-friendly policies and religious traditionalism. inwhich
the unitary federalist Europe also offers a more supple civic model, state and
Turkish and culture" exist alongside other nationalisms for example, those alrea
dy transnational movements, identities, including in Turkey. linking Kurds in Ge
rmany or Syriacs in Sweden to their brethren In Turkey and elsewhere, the divide
d of the EU are replacing the loyalties "national of the modern state.
absolutism