“Post‐Turkish” Studies and Political Narrative

Abstract

Narrative is underscored with multilinear, micro‐exemplars of political phenomena. This article examines political narratives on the Republic of Turkey that form mainstream paradigmatic approaches. By attending to narrative inconsistencies and to paradigmatic narrative arrays, forms, and processes, this article explores convergent discourses that imply a structured political narrative on modern Turkey. Particular discourse constructions are analyzed, such as the Kemalist narrative and Turkey and identity. The paper asks if the Republic of Turkey is reducible to the customary coordinates of unifying narratives in light of the existence of irreconcilable spaces—pre‐emergent spaces that can be located within post‐Turkish studies.

Notes

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2. See Edward W. Said, Orientalism, (London: Penguin, 1978).

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5. Paul Dumont, “The Origins of Kemalist Ideology,” in Jakob M. Landau (ed.), Atatürk and the Modernization of Turkey (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1984), pp. 31–33.

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8. Andrew Mango, Atatürk—The Biography of the Founder of Modern Turkey (Woodstock & New York: The Overlook Press, 2002), pp. 49, 276, 374; Dumont, “The Origins of Kemalist Ideology,” p. 27; Kemal Karpat, Turkey’s Politics (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1959), p. 8.

9. See Patrick Kinross, Atatürk—The Rebirth of a Nation (London: Phoenix Giant, 1999) and Mango, Atatürk. In Turkish, see Şevket Süreyya Aydemir, Tek Adam. Mustafa Kemal 1881–1919, [The Only Man: Mustafa Kemal], 3 Vols. 6^th edition (Istanbul: Remzi, 1976). It is also worth noting Jorge Blanco Villalta’s biography, Atatürk (Ankara: Türk. Tarih Kurumu, 1991). Although it cannot be counted as a scholarly work, the author has presented an adequate, general historical context. Ali Kazancıgil and Ergun Özbudun (eds.), Atatürk. Founder of a Modern State (London: C. Hurst & Co., 1981) is not a biography of Atatürk but is viewed as a competent collection of articles on his thought and legacy.

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11. Mateescu, “Kemalism in the Era of Totalitarianism,” p. 232.

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16. Robert Fisk, the journalist for the Independent, accused some Turkish Special Forces soldiers of inappropriate behavior at Yeşilova camp. He was allegedly interrogated at a Turkish police station on suspicion of defaming the Turkish army, a charge if proven carrying a ten‐year sentence. He was released and deported. See Robert Fisk, The Great War for Civilisation, The Conquest of the Middle East (London: Harper Perennial, 2005), pp. 828–35.

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19. Feroz Ahmed, The Making of Modern Turkey (London: Routledge, 1993), p. ix.

20. Zürcher, Turkey: A Modern History, pp. 219–337.

21. See for example, Yucel Bozdağlioğlu, Turkish Foreign Policy and Turkish Identity: A Constructivist Approach (London: Routledge, 2003).

22. See Martin W Lewis and Karen Wigen, The Myth of Continents: A Critique of Metageography (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), p.5.

23. Ayşe Güneş‐Ayata, Hayriye Kahveci and Işık Kuşçu, “Eurasian Studies in Turkey,” Central Eurasian Studies Review, Vol. 3, No. 2 (2004), pp. 6–9.

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28. D. Gow and H. Smith, “EU Puts Turkey on Long Road to Accession,” The Guardian, October 7, 2004.

29. Jesse Lewis, The Strategic Balance in the Mediterranean (Washington, DC: American Enterprise Institute, 1976), p.1.

30. See, for example, Andrew Segars, “Nation‐building in Turkey and Uzbekistan: The Use of Language and History in the Creation of National Identity,” in Tom Everett‐Heath (ed.), Central Asia, Aspects of Transition (London: Routledge Curzon, 2003), pp. 80–105.

31. Abdülbaki Gölpınarlı, Nasreddin Hoca (Istanbul: Remzi Publishing House, 1961), p. 97.

32. See Tzvetan Todorov, Grammaire du Décameron [Grammar of the Décameron] (The Hague: Mouton, 1969).

33. Z. Bauman, Liquid Modernity, (London: Polity Press, 2000), p. 42.