Nationalism and the State in Turkey: Drawing the Boundaries of ‘Turkish Culture’ in the 1930s
Volume 3, Issue 1, pages 2-20
Abstract
This study seeks to explore the process surrounding the discursive formation of culture in 1930s Turkey, which constituted the core of the Kemalist modernization project. It is based on the selective analysis of statements by Mustafa Kemal (Atatürk), founder of modern Turkey, the Programmes and Law of Settlement of the Republican People’s Party (the RPP, Turkey’s only party from 1923 to 1945), which set a discursive framework for the process of drawing the boundaries of Turkish culture. It seems obvious that, during the formative years of the Republic, the Turkish state promoted a state-led nationalism that signified the will to modernize and civilize society. On this basis, the state effectively produced, re-produced and disseminated a form of culture, which became the vehicle for projecting a vision of ‘the modern way
of life’. In this study I demonstrate that the new Turkish culture was inclusionary and at the same time exclusionary in terms of determining the boundaries of political and cultural membership.
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