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ANKARA: Turkish identity awareness lies beneath the nation-state

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  • ANKARA: Turkish identity awareness lies beneath the nation-state

    Today's Zaman, Turkey
    March 1 2009


    Turkish identity awareness lies beneath the nation-state


    Nationals of the Turkish Republic, where cultural and ethnic
    differences peacefully coexist, greatly honor their families and show
    the utmost respect to their older relatives, but are not very inclined
    to learn about their lineage, either because it is too difficult to
    gather such information or because they have been taught that such
    efforts may undermine the idea of the nation-state, experts say.


    The Ottoman Empire had a multinational, multiethnic and
    multi-religious community structure. Following its collapse after
    World War I, a nation-state, the Republic of Turkey, was established
    within narrowed borders and a contracted territory but still
    preserving a multitude of differences among its people. Embracing
    those differences, `Turk' is a constitutionally defined and widely
    encompassing term. Article 66 of the 1982 Turkish Constitution, which
    is still in effect, states, `Everyone who is bound to the Turkish
    state through the bond of citizenship is a Turk.' Therefore, all
    Turkish citizens of Kurdish, Armenian, Bosnian, Arab, Circassian,
    Greek and other origins are Turks according to that constitutional
    definition, and they all have the same rights and duties and are all
    equal before the law.

    Different ethnics, one nation

    What is derived from this clarification is that being a Turk does not
    necessarily imply a particular ethnic affiliation whatsoever. However,
    it is very well known by all that there are ethnically Kurdish,
    Armenian, Greek, Albanian and Arab citizens, among others, alongside
    those who have Turkish ethnicity, in Turkey. Analyzing the
    demographics of the Turkish population has become confusing due to
    continuous population migration in the country, which has made
    regional categorization of ethnicities impossible. What makes the
    picture even more complicated is the fact that many families were
    composed of men and women of different ethnicities as a natural result
    of living together, not only after the republic was founded, but also
    for centuries during the Ottoman era. Thus, the ethnicities of later
    generations of such families became blurred in the course of time.

    A survey titled `Who Are We?' conducted in 2006 by KONDA, a research
    and consultancy company, received more than 100 different responses
    from a sample of 47,958 persons in response to a question asking what
    ethnicity they knew, or felt, they belonged to. According to that
    report, which took participants' responses as reliable estimates of
    their ethnicity, 76 percent of the Turkish population was of Turkish
    ethnicity whereas 15.7 percent were Kurds and Zazas, 0.7 percent were
    Arabs and 0.3 percent and 0.2 percent were originally from the
    Caucasus and the Balkans, respectively. The report also indicated that
    0.1 percent of the Turkish population were non-Muslim citizens; this
    group comprises individuals of Armenian, Greek, Syrian Orthodox and
    Jewish descent. Only 2 to 3 percent of the entire group of respondents
    did not give an answer to the question, which leads researchers to
    state in the report that Turkish people essentially do not have a
    problem expressing their identity and ethnicity. Thus, an average
    Turkish citizen does not have a perceived lack of knowledge about who
    he or she really is, according to the report.

    What adds more color to the above-described picture are the cultural
    specifics of Euro-Turks. Although they are present in Turkey only for
    a limited time of the year -- their summer holidays -- and are
    consequently not always visible, it was not the first time the Turkish
    media and academia acknowledged them when Prime Minister Recep Tayyip
    ErdoÄ?an addressed an audience of 18,000, a sports center full
    of Turks living in Cologne last year and 15,000 Belgian-Turks in a
    stadium a month ago in Hasselt, Belgium. The Euro-Turk group contains
    people who have dual citizenship and those who are only nationals of
    the Turkish Republic as well as Turkish-speaking citizens of their
    host countries. It is not possible to give an exact number due to
    illegal migration, but it is estimated that more than 4 million Turks
    reside in Europe, spread all throughout the continent, but mostly in
    Germany followed by Bulgaria, France and the Netherlands. Hence,
    discussions about identity and ethnic awareness now contain new
    elements due to the fact that these Turks' social environments are
    characterized by the countries in which they live. Citizenship,
    integration into the host country and cultural change, as well as
    assimilation and trans-national links, are all incorporated into
    academic discussions to fully understand the complexity of the current
    situation.

    A report titled `Euro-Turks: A Bridge or a Breach between Turkey and
    the EU?' prepared by Ayhan Kaya and Ferhat Kentel, associate
    professors in the departments of international relations and
    sociology, respectively, at Istanbul Bilgi University, states that
    third and fourth-generation Euro-Turks, in particular, have developed
    a cosmopolitan identity that highlights differences, diversity and
    citizenship. `There are no perfectly authentic ethnicities. They are
    rather combinations of the most recent cultural affiliations and are
    continuously in transformation due to social interactions and
    mobility. However, in Turkey, this transformational process had been
    affected by the rise of the nation-state. Today it is not seen
    appropriate by people to search one's lineage because what may come
    out of it may harm the idea of the nation-state,' Kentel told Sunday's
    Zaman via phone from his office in Ä°stanbul.

    There are, however, Turks who are willing to learn about their
    lineage, too. For them, asking relatives, especially parents and
    grandparents and the like, if possible, is naturally the most
    traditional way to start their search. However, it is sometimes either
    too late for many to discuss the matter with someone who might have
    known about their family lines, or the information received in this
    way is mixed with speculation and confusion and is thus not always
    reliable. Learning about lineage extending as far back as the mid-19th
    century is possible through an alternative method. Provincial and
    district population and citizenship directorates, which are part of
    the Turkish Interior Ministry's General Directorate of Population and
    Citizenship Affairs, can provide information regarding lineage upon
    demand and free of charge. The general directorate currently holds the
    records of 54,184 family trees, including those from the archives kept
    by its subsidiary units, covering a time period since the second
    quarter of the 19th century.

    01 March 2009, Sunday
    M. EDÄ°B YILMAZ Ä°STANBUL
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