How do the Youth Perceive and Experience Turkish Citizenship?

Abstract

Citizenship is generally perceived as a political practice that falls within the historical domain of the nation-state. At least, this is the claim of many nation-states themselves, which disavow the possibility of citizenship outside of their own structures. Rather than concentrate on the organization of citizenship, this article, instead, concentrates on the experience of individual citizens. It explores a wide-ranging sample of Turkish youth's perceptions and practices of citizenship, focusing on three dimensions: citizenship as legal status; citizenship as identity; and citizenship as civic virtue. It argues that individuals' perceptions and experiences of citizenship can be mapped out according to these three dimensions, and, additionally, political affiliation or commitment is the key to young people's preference for any one of these dimensions. Thus the legal status aspect of citizenship was emphasized by liberal and republican young people; nationalist, Islamist and Kurdish youth were concerned for its identity aspects; and the civic virtue aspect was stressed by republican and leftist respondents. However the article also demonstrates that similarly to the experiences of young people themselves, these three aspects of citizenship are not clearly demarcated theoretical domains but are both deeply interrelated and conflicted with each other. The reasons for this lie in the practice and understanding of citizenship facilitated and propagated by the Turkish state.

Notes

The author thanks Ahmet Icduygu, Christopher Houston, and Amanda Wise for their critiques and suggestions in the writing of this article.

1. See for example R. Lister, N. Smith, S. Middleton and L. Cox, ‘Young People Talk about Citizenship: Empirical Perspectives on Theoretical and Political Debates’, Citizenship Studies, Vol.7 (2003), p.235; C. Nordberg, ‘Claiming Citizenship: Marginalised Voices on Identity and Belonging’, Citizenship Studies, Vol.10 (2006), p.523.

2. W. Kymlicka and W. Norman, ‘Citizenship in Culturally Diverse Societies: Issues, Contexts, Concepts’, in W. Kymlicka and W. Wayne (eds.), Citizenship in Diverse Societies (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), p.30.

3. In the year 2005, the proportions of the 5–14 and 15–24 age groups within the whole Turkish population were 19% and 18% respectively. See http://esa.un.org/unpp. Since the empirical focus of this study is on university youth, it should be noted that the total number of students having an undergraduate education in Turkish universities during the 2003–04 academic period was 1,820,891 (1,752,297 students attending state universities and the remaining 68,684 students attending private universities). This data was calculated by the author using the statistical data provided by the Council of Higher Education of the Republic of Turkey.

4. E.F. Keyman and A. İçduygu, ‘Globalization, Civil Society and Citizenship in Turkey: Actors, Boundaries and Discourses’, Citizenship Studies, Vol.7 (2003), pp.219–34.

5. These principles include Republicanism, Nationalism, Populism, Laicism, Revolutionism and Statism. They were adopted for the first time at the 1931 Congress of the Republican People's Party (RPP). For the full text of the 1931 Programme, see M. Tuncay, T.C'de Tek Parti Yőnetiminin Kurulması (1923–30) (Istanbul: Cem Yayınevi, 1992).

6. On education and citizenship in Turkey, see F. Űstel, Makbul Vatandaş”ın Peşinde: II. Meşrutiyet'ten Bugüne Vatandaşlık Eğitimi (Istanbul: İletişim Yayınları, 2004); S. Kaplan, The Pedagogical State: Education and the Politics of National Culture in Post-1980 Turkey (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2006). Citizenship education began in 1924 with the introduction of the course entitled ‘Information about the Motherland’ (Malumat-i Vataniye), which became a compulsory component of the primary and secondary school curriculum. In 1927, it was replaced with another course titled Yurt Bilgisi and, later on, with Information about Citizenship (Yurttaşlık Bilgisi). Additionally, in the early Republican period, People's Houses (Halkevleri), People's Rooms (Halkodaları), and Village Institutes (Köy Enstitüleri) operated as the constituting agents of the civilizing process from above, which provided room for many activities ranging from education to leisure. See A. Őzturkmen, ‘The Role of People's Houses in the Making of National Culture in Turkey’, New Perspectives on Turkey, Vol.11 (1994); M.A. Karaőmerlioğlu, ‘The People's Houses and the Cult of the Peasant in Turkey’, Middle Eastern Studies, Vol.34 (1998), pp.67–91.

7. T.T. Kurumu, Atatűrk'űn Sőylev ve Demeçleri (Ankara: T.T. Kurumu, 1989), p.188.

8. Actually, both the Ankara Divinity Faculty and new Imam-Hatip schools were opened in 1949 by the Republican People's Party, after they had closed them down in the 1930s.

9. N. Soyarık, ‘The Citizen of the State and the State of the Citizen: An Analysis of the Citizenization Process in Turkey’ (Ph.D. thesis, Bilkent University, 2000), p.150.

10. N. Abadan-Unat, ‘Tűrk Gençliğinin Değer Yargıları ve Siyasi Davranışı’, Ankara Űniversitesi Siyasal Bilgiler Fakűltesi Dergisi, Vol.1 (1965), p.201; T. Çavdar, ‘Cumhuriyet Dőneminde Gençlik’, in Cumhuriyet Dönemi Türkiye Ansiklopedisi, Vol.3 (Istanbul: İletişim Yayınları, 1983), pp.802–12. Some of the important activities undertaken by youth in this period were: the campaign called ‘Citizen, Speak Turkish!’ (Vatandaş Türkçe Konuş!) in 1928; reactions against an article by Nazim Hikmet entitled ‘Break the Idols’ (‘Putları Kıralım’) published in the journal Resimli Ay in 1928; the campaign of ‘Let's Use Turkish Goods!’ (‘Yerli Malı Kullanalım’) in 1929; demonstrations against the railroad company, Yataklı Vagonlar Şirketi, in 1933; reactions to the demolition of a Turkish tomb by Bulgarians in Sofia in 1934; and mass meetings related to the Hatay issue in 1937 and the Cyprus issue in the 1950s.

11. J.M. Landau, Radical Politics in Turkey (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1974), p.30.

12. Ibid., p.30.

13. An important step towards the organization of university students on a legal basis was taken with the establishment of student associations in universities in 1984, on the initiative of the Faculty of Law of Ankara. Following this, more than 80 student associations were set up in various universities in a short period of time. The establishment of the student associations reached its peak in 1988, after which the state adopted a more rigid attitude towards student organizations. See T. Bora, S. Denizmen and S. Dikkatli, ‘Őğrenci Hareketinin SorunlarıŰzerine’, Birikim (1989), pp.47–60.

14. E.F. Keyman and A. İçduygu, ‘Introduction: Citizenship, Identity, and the Question of Democracy in Turkey’, in E.F. Keyman and A. İçduygu (eds.), Citizenship in a Global World: European Questions and Turkish Experiences (London: Routledge, 2005), pp.7–8.

15. The choice of Istanbul as a research site is not an arbitrary one. Firstly, the city, as a metropolitan area, is host to the largest number of universities in Turkey, including six state universities and 15 private universities. Secondly, the youth population in Istanbul provides a representative sample of the whole youth population in the country given the fact that it is a popular destination point for students of diverse backgrounds. The respondents were aged between 18 and 26. In the process of choosing the sample, a balance of male and female students was retained. The geographical origins of the students, the type (quantitative/qualitative sciences) of the academic degrees they were enrolled in and the type (state/private) of universities they attended were also taken into consideration in the sampling process.

16. A four digit identification code was given to each respondent, and these codes have been placed at the end of each quotation. The initial two letters refer to the political orientation of the respondent, and the following two numbers imply the interviewee number. ‘RE’ refers to the Republican group, ‘NA’ refers to the Nationalist group, ‘LE’ refers to the Leftist group, ‘IS’ refers to the Islamist group, ‘LI’ refers to the Liberal group and finally ‘KU’ refers to the Kurdish group.

17. The concept of ‘government’ is used here to imply ‘state’. It was interesting to note that, during the course of the interviews, a significant number of interviewees (irrespective of their political orientations) used the concepts of ‘government’ and ‘state’ interchangeably.

18. The notion of ‘Türkiyeli’, which is a contested and relatively recent concept, is not merely used by the Kurdish people to identify themselves. This expression has also gained increasing resonance with the Minority Rights and Cultural Rights Working Group Report coordinated by Prof. Dr. İbrahim Kaboğlu, the former head of the Human Rights Advisory Board of the Prime Ministry and board member Prof. Dr. Baskın Oran. The report, which was released in October 2004, emphasized the term ‘Türkiyelilik’ (to be from Turkey) as a supra-identity – encompassing all persons living in the territories of the Turkish state regardless of their ethnic identity – in contrast to the notion of ‘Turk’, which is the name of an ethnic identity.

19. It should be added that the course titled Information about National Security (Milli Güvenlik Bilgisi) is one of the core courses among a number of others in the curriculum for citizenship education in Turkey. This course is compulsory in the secondary schools and is taught by active or retired military officers. The curriculum presents a state-centric definition of citizenship. The introduction of this course has constituted one of the most significant attempts at de-politicization of the Turkish youth in the post-1980 era.

20. See R.D. Putnam, Making Democracy Work (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993); A. Etzioni, The Moral Dimension (New York: Free Press, 1988); A.J. Secor and J. O'Loughlin, ‘Social and Political Trust in Istanbul and Moscow: A Comparative Analysis of Individual and Neighbourhood Effects’, Transactions of the Institute of British Geography, Vol.30 (2005), pp.50–66.

21. Kymlicka and Wayne, ‘Citizenship in Culturally Diverse Societies’, p.31.

22. B.S. Turner, ‘Outline of a General Theory of Cultural Citizenship’, in N. Stevenson (ed.), Culture and Citizenship (London: Sage Publications, 2001), p.11.

23. T. Parla and Andrew Davison, Corporatist Ideology in Kemalist Turkey. Progress or Order? (New York: Syracuse University Press, 2004), p.290.