IDENTITY POLITICS AND TYPES OF REACTION AGAINTS NATIONALIST IDENTITY POLICIES

Abstract

Modernism, which significantly changed the whole mass of the political and social sphere since the last quarter of the 18th century, used nationalism as a political project, which soon led to the destruction of the traditional organization forms in continental Europe. This process shortly affected the Ottoman state in a destructive way, formed the discursive and political substructure of Turkish nationalism, and speeded up the establishment of a new state. Due to its imagined construction of individuals holding a single / upper / national identity, nationalism by its nature tends to exclude different ethnic, religious, and cultural identities. However, other social groups whose identity and culture differ in their ethnic and religious affiliations must have exhibited different reactions to nationalist politics due to their unique historical experiences and positions.

This study aims to examine the reactions developed against nationalism in Turkey and to develop a typology of such reactions. The intention of of this work, in this context, is not to examine the reactions of all ethnic and religious affiliations, but to select the representative examples among them to characterize the main types of reaction. This study suggests that reactions to nationalism in Turkey are manifested in three main types. a) counter-nationalist response, b) multiculturalist response, c) voluntary-identification response that we think has a centralized prescription for our work and that offers a specific contribution to the literature. The first one is examined through the example of Kurdish nationalism, the second one through the example of the Alevis and the final one through the example of the Chechens, all in the context of their own historical and social dynamics in Turkey.