Book contents
- Creating the Desired Citizen
- Creating the Desired Citizen
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- Note on the Text
- List of Abbreviations
- 1 Anxious Nation and Its Ambivalent Westernism
- Part I Kemalism and Its Desired, Undesired, Tolerated Citizens
- 2 The Rise and Consolidation of the Kemalist Hegemony
- 3 Kemalism’s Desired Citizens
- 4 Kemalism’s Undesired Citizens
- 5 Creating Kemalism’s Tolerated Citizens via the Diyanet
- Part II Emergence of the Counter-Hegemony: Erdoğanism
- Part III Creating Erdoğanism’s Desired Citizens via Popular Culture and Education
- Part IV Erdoğanism’s Undesired Citizens
- Part V Creating Erdoğanism’s Tolerated Citizens via the Diyanet
- Book part
- Glossary
- References
- Index
3 - Kemalism’s Desired Citizens
from Part I - Kemalism and Its Desired, Undesired, Tolerated Citizens
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 25 May 2021
- Creating the Desired Citizen
- Creating the Desired Citizen
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- Note on the Text
- List of Abbreviations
- 1 Anxious Nation and Its Ambivalent Westernism
- Part I Kemalism and Its Desired, Undesired, Tolerated Citizens
- 2 The Rise and Consolidation of the Kemalist Hegemony
- 3 Kemalism’s Desired Citizens
- 4 Kemalism’s Undesired Citizens
- 5 Creating Kemalism’s Tolerated Citizens via the Diyanet
- Part II Emergence of the Counter-Hegemony: Erdoğanism
- Part III Creating Erdoğanism’s Desired Citizens via Popular Culture and Education
- Part IV Erdoğanism’s Undesired Citizens
- Part V Creating Erdoğanism’s Tolerated Citizens via the Diyanet
- Book part
- Glossary
- References
- Index
Summary
This chapter discusses the principle aim of the Kemalist nation-building project: the construction of Homo LASTus. Understood here as a Weberian ideal type, Homo LASTus refers to a new human being who is at once a laicist, Atatürkist (Kemalist), Sunni Muslim and Turk. Having determined, ethnic religious heterogeneity, Islamism and the Ottoman nostalgia as existential threats to the new secularist and Turkish nationalist state and national identity, the Kemalists were adamant to create a secular nation out of the country’s majority that happened to be Sunni Muslim and Turkish. After summarising Kemalist nation-building and its relations with Islam and minorities, the chapter briefly elaborates on the social engineering policies of the Kemalists and their securitisation of minority identities. It explains how the Kemalist state marginalised, securitised and even in some cases criminalised ethnoreligious and political minorities as well as religious Muslims; and the state’s assimilation and dissimilation policies in relation to these minorities. After discussing each parameter (Laicist, Atatürkist, Sunni Muslim, and Turk) in a separate section, this chapter discusses how the Kemalists created and made use of Atatürk’s personality cult in addition to education in creating their desired citizens.
Keywords
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Creating the Desired CitizenIdeology, State and Islam in Turkey, pp. 55 - 71Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2021