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3 - Kemalism’s Desired Citizens

from Part I - Kemalism and Its Desired, Undesired, Tolerated Citizens

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 May 2021

Ihsan Yilmaz
Affiliation:
Deakin University, Victoria
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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.

Type
Chapter
Information
Creating the Desired Citizen
Ideology, State and Islam in Turkey
, pp. 55 - 71
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2021

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