The cultural and historical foundation of Turkish citizenship Modernity as Westernization

• Published in: Citizenship in a Global World pp. 70 - 86
• Main Author: Kahraman, Hasan Bülent
• Format: Book Chapter
• Language: English
• Published: Routledge 2005
• Edition: 1
• Subjects: Turkey's Relations; Kemalism's Modernization Project; Modern Nation State Building; Turkish Citizenship; Jus Soli; Nationalist Character; Kemalist Period; EU Turkish Relation; Turkish Citizenship Law; Young Ottomans; Turkey EU Relation; Kurdish Nationalism; Strong State Tradition; Bozkurt Mahmut Esat; Transcendental Entity; Civil Society; Turkish Bourgeoisie; Postmodern Coup; Young Men; Full EU Membership; Turkish Civil Law; Common Language; Turkish Politics; Turkish Modernity
• ISBN: 9780415354561; 0415646650; 9780415646659; 0415354560
• DOI: 10.4324/9780203001288-6

Turkey's relations with Europe have a long and tiresome history. The constitution of a modern nation-state through the discourse of modernity as Westernization is the main outcome of this history. This chapter is an attempt to analyze historically the cultural foundations of Turkish modernity and its state-centric nature. In doing so I will develop and then substantiate the argument that the republican understanding of citizenship has played a crucial role in the process of the state-centric and the "top down" implementation of modernity in Turkish society since the inception of the Republic in Turkey in 1923. Moreover, in playing this crucial role, citizenship has involved not only a legal status, but more importantly a "sociological and cultural practice" by which the nation-state has attempted to transform its society on the basis of such fundamental principles of Western modernity as positivism, rationalism and secularism. Thus, citizenship has constituted a coup de grâce forcé for the nation-state in its top-down positivist transformation of society as a way to make it modern, rational and secular.