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2. H. Kohn, The Idea of Nationalism (New York: Macmillan, 1944); Nationalism: Its Meaning and History (Malabar, FL: Krieger, 1965); J. Plamenatz, “Two Types of Nationalism,” in E. Kamenka, ed., Nationalism: The Nature and Evolution of an Idea (London: Edward Arnold, 1976), pp. 23–37; H. B. Davis, Towards a Marxist Theory of Nationalism (New York: Review Press, 1978); M. Ignatieff, Blood and Belonging: Journeys into the New Nationalism (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1993).Google Scholar

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10. See also T. Narin, “Breakwaters of 2000: From Ethnic to Civic Nationalism,” New Left Review, No. 214, 1995 p. 103, on this point.Google Scholar

11. Yack, “The Myth of the Civic Nation.”Google Scholar

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14. Yack, “The Myth of the Civic Nation,” p. 198Google Scholar

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20. The suggested differentiation of modernism from mere modernization can be met with skepticism. The question could be raised as to whether nationalism is not already a modern phenomenon as such? In other words, one could ask, “What is the use of distinguishing between ‘nationalism as a modern phenomenon’ and ‘modernist nationalism’ proper?” The difference between “nationalism as a modern phenomenon” and a specifically modernist form of nationalism is similar to the difference between modern painting and modernist painting. While “modern painting” refers to a whole collection of different styles and understandings united by their epochal boundedness, “modernism” refers to a particular style within modern painting which has its own distinctive stylistic conventions. Nationalism (and specifically “nation-form”) mimics the character of “modern painting” in so far as it depicts a certain epoch within which different forms of nationalism flourish. Modernist nationalism, by contrast, is a specific kind of nationalism which, while using the nation-form as the container of its expression, offers a substantially different vision of the “nation” than ethnic or civic nationalisms. In other words, just as modern painting includes different currents like cubism, tribalism, modernism and the like, so does nationalism—as a modern phenomenon—encompass different kinds of nationalisms; ethnic, civic and modernist. Modernism is no more reducible to modernization than modern painting is reducible to modernist painting.Google Scholar

21. In the Turkish experience, being a modern subject entailed not only literacy and urbanization but also a militant secularist attitude, a certain dress code, preference for polyphonic Western music, use of the Latin script, incorporation of women into the public sphere by professionalization and a series of interrelated reforms aimed at transforming the cultural fabric of the nation. We will take this up in a later section where the radical reforms that Kemalist nationalists adopted will be discussed.Google Scholar

22. P. Chatterjee, Nationalist Thought and the Colonial World: A Derivative Discourse? (Minneapolis: University of Minneapolis Press, 1986).Google Scholar

23. E. Gellner, “The Turkish Option in Comparative Perspective,” in S. Bozdogan and R. Kasaba, eds, Rethinking Modernity and National Identity in Turkey (Seattle: Washington University Press, 1997), p. 235.Google Scholar

24. Plamenatz, “Two Types of Nationalism”.Google Scholar

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26. Chatterjee, Nationalist Thought and the Colonial World, p. 11Google Scholar

27. What is meant by “resistance” here is not the resistance of various groups and individuals to a colonizing state but the resistance of an “indigenous,” non-colonized state to colonial powers. In other words, “resistance” here refers to the experience of those countries that avoided direct colonization by a European power.Google Scholar

28. The argument presented so far should be qualified with a caveat. Any scholar who is sensitive to the extreme complexity of such a major historical phenomenon as nationalism would be compelled to recognize that the absence of sustained colonial domination is unlikely to be the sole factor determining the modernist character of the nationalist identity project. I would like to argue that, while the absence of colonial rule may fall short of providing an exhaustive explanation, it is nonetheless the major dynamic that steers these nationalisms in a modernist direction. To gain a more complete understanding of the situation, the relationship between colonial presence and modernist national identity needs to be supplemented with a consideration of a set of contextually specific factors such as tribal networks, religious solidarity, geostrategic peculiarities, difference in policies adopted by colonial powers, etc. Google Scholar

29. For example in Chatterjee, Nationalist Thought and the Colonial World, p. 18Google Scholar

30. S. Mardin, “Center-Periphery Relations: A Key to Turkish Politics?” Daedalus, No. 102, 1972, pp. 169–191; H. Inalcik, “Turkey between Europe and the Middle East,” Foreign Policy, Vol. 7, 1980, pp. 12–21; A. J. Toynbee, “The Ottoman Empire's Place in World History,” in K. Karpat, ed., The Ottoman State and Its Place in World History (Leiden: Brill, 1974), pp. 15–34; M. Heper, The State Tradition in Turkey (Walkington: Eothen Press, 1985); B. Toprak, “The State, Politics, and Religion in Turkey,” in M. Heper and A. Evin, eds, State, Democracy and the Military: Turkey in the 1980's (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1988), pp. 119–137.Google Scholar

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32. The formula of the Circle of Justice is as follows: the maintenance of the state requires an army, the maintenance of the army requires wealth, wealth is produced by the Reaya (subjects), the Reaya needs justice in order to produce, and justice is sustained by the state (S. Mardin, The Genesis of Young Ottoman Thought; A Study in the Modernization of Turkish Political Ideas (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1962). It is important to note here that justice (adalet) includes Kanuns (i.e. secular laws of the ruler) as well as the Shari'ah (i.e. religious law). It is a generic concept that embodies a whole range of principles organizing the social as well as political realm.Google Scholar

33. H. Inalcik, “The Nature of the Traditional Society: Turkey,” in R. Ward and D. Rustow, eds, Political Modernization in Japan and Turkey (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1962), p. 3.Google Scholar

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35. N. Berkes, The Development of Secularism in Turkey (Montreal: McGill University Press, 1964), p. 133.Google Scholar

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41. The Edicts of Tanzimat (1839) and Islahat (1856) were the two major constitutional reforms that attempted to restructure the political, economic and social life of the Empire in the nineteenth century.Google Scholar

42. Mardin, “Center-Periphery Relations,” p. 302.Google Scholar

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48. T. Z. Tunaya, “Osmali-Bati Diyalogu,” Tanzimat'tan Cumhuriyet'e Turkiye Ansiklopedisi, Vol. 1 (Istanbul: Iletisim, 1985), p. 143. Even the army was not a complete exception to this rule: from the founding of the Nizam-i Cedid corps by Selim III (1792) until the abolition of the Janissaries by Mahmud II (1826), the army displayed a dual structure of the modern versus the traditional; each with its own command and control structure, recruitment policy and field practices.Google Scholar

49. L. Ortayli, “Batililasma Sorunu,” Tanzimat'tan Cumhuriyet'e Turkiye Ansiklopedisi, Vol. 1 (Istanbul: Iletisim, 1985), p. 138.Google Scholar

50. See S. H. Rudolph and L. Rudolph, Modernity of Tradition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1967), for an alternative in the context of the Indian experience.Google Scholar

51. C. Keyder, State and Class in Turkey: A Study in Capitalist Development (London: Verso, 1987), p. 141.Google Scholar

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54. The Republican regime not only changed the alphabet from Arabic to Latin in 1928 because the latter was more “modern,” but also instituted a systematic effort to “reform” the language through the introduction of a newly invented vocabulary. Basically, this entailed an effort to discard “Eastern” (i.e. Arabic and Persian) words and phrases.Google Scholar

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56. Ortayli, “Batililasma Sorunu,” p. 137.Google Scholar

57. One should note that modernist nationalism, while providing the locomotive of Turkish social change, did not preclude experimentation with, and occasional valorization of, a fabricated ethno-racial past. Though invented in a particularly banal and internally inconsistent fashion, elements of ethnic nationalism still found their way into the official discourse and gained a limited, but nonetheless significant, visibility. The fact that they have been less influential than modernism in shaping the direction and substance of reform policies of the Republic is the reason why Turkish nationalism should nonetheless be characterized as a modernist project. Regarding the superficiality and offhandedness in the fabrication of Turkish nationalistic myths, see C. Keyder, “Whither the Project of Modernity? Turkey in 1990s,” in S. Bozdogan and R. Kasaba, eds, Rethinking Modernity and National Identity in Turkey (Seattle: Washington University Press, 1997), p. 45, and A. Kadioglu, “The Paradox of Turkish Nationalism and the Construction of Official Identity,” Middle Eastern Studies, Vol. 32, No. 2, 1996, p. 166. The various inconsistencies in the attempt to fabricate ethno-nationalistic myths stem from an attempt to combine ethnic substantiation of identity with the imperatives of territorial nationalism. The narrative of migration of Turkic peoples from Central Asia to Asia Minor, for example, is clearly inconsistent with another narrative that asserts that all previous civilizations in Anatolia (Hittites, Assyrians, Urarts, etc.) were essentially Turkic.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

58. K. Robins, “Interrupting Identities: Turkey/Europe,” in S. Hall and P. du Gay, eds, Questions of Cultural Identity (London: Sage, 1996), pp. 67–68.Google Scholar

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70. See N. Gole, The Forbidden Modern: Civilization and Veiling (Ann Harbor: University of Michigan Press, 1996), for an excellent discussion of the issue of women as the touchstone of Westernization in the Ottoman-Turkish context.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

71. Similarly, in France the complex and hierarchical system of appellations of the old regime was replaced by the simple citoyen and citoyenne. See W. H. Sewell, “Le Citoyen/La Citoyenne: Activity, Passivity and the Revolutionary Concept of Citizenship,” in C. Lucas, ed., The Political Culture of the French Revolution, Vol. 2 (Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1988), pp. 105–124.Google Scholar

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76. The Directorate of Religious Affairs and Directorate-General for Pious Foundations were established in 1924 with the aim of instituting state control over religion.Google Scholar

77. By eradicating the office of the Seyhulislam (1924), by outlawing religious orders and sects (1925) and by restricting the display of religious symbols in public places.Google Scholar

78. In their profound hostility towards religion the Kemalists and Jacobins were quite similar. The Kemalists’ abolition of the religious orders and sects and the seizure of their lands and properties is analogous to the Jacobins’ confiscation of the lands of the Church and their desire to discredit and dishonor the clergy. Not only were the French and Turkish states ideologically committed to crippling religious organizations and sentiments, they also materially took advantage of them.Google Scholar

79. Robins, “Interrupting Identities: Turkey/Europe,” p. 70.Google Scholar

80. Ibid., pp. 68–69. The parallels to the French Revolution are remarkable: “The nation, as it emerged in the French Revolution, was the site and the subject of a radical break in history, one perhaps best symbolized by the new calendar that started time over again with a new Year One that began with the declaration of the French Republic.” Sewell, “The French Revolution and the Emergence of the Nation Form,” pp. 23–24. One also observes a similar tendency in the Soviet and Chinese experiences.Google Scholar

81. While it may be debatable whether French, Soviet or Chinese nationalisms are unequivocally modernist, it is indisputable that modernism constitutes at least a major strand within them. Even when it does not constitute a “pure type,” modernist nationalism can still be helpful for our understanding for the experience of nationalism in the non-European world. The purpose of alluding to these cases is to suggest certain parallels among the Turkish, Soviet and Chinese experiences. Due to space limitations, a detailed comparative analysis cannot be attempted here. The following remarks are meant to be suggestive for further study.Google Scholar

82. Suny argues that “Soviet Russia was conceived not as an ordinary national state but as the first state in a future multinational socialist edifice … For communists of the civil war period, internationalism was less the servant of the Soviet state than the Soviet state was the servant of internationalism” (R. G. Suny, The Revenge of the Past: Nationalism, Revolution and the Collapse of the Soviet Union [Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1993], p. 85). This, in turn, rested on the idea that ethnic “nationalism reflected only the interests of the bourgeoisie, that the proletariat's true interests were supranational” (Suny, The Revenge of the Past, p. 87). The ultimate irony here is that, rather than being a melting pot in which ethnic identities would be bracketed and universal, socialist identities would be valorized; “the Soviet Union became the incubator of new nations” (Suny, The Revenge of the Past, p. 87).Google Scholar

83. C. Taylor, “The Politics of Recognition,” in A. Gutmann, ed., Multiculturalism: Examining the Politics of Recognition (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994), p. 43.Google Scholar

84. In addition to the similarities stemming from their modernism, the Soviet and Turkish experiences are also similar in terms of the historical circumstances of their formation during the 1910s and 1920s: neither Soviet nor Turkish statesmen were burdened by the shadow of prolonged colonial rule, even though both faced imminent external threats to their survival. Modernist elites in Turkey waged the War of Independence (1919–1922) against Greece (backed by Britain, France and Italy), while the Soviet Union had to face the military campaign of the counter-revolutionaries supported by the Allies roughly during the same period (1917 to 1922). In addition, both countries were characterized by the heritage of a strong imperial state ruling over multiethnic and multi-religious populations. Remarkably, both the Ottoman and Russian Empires embarked on self-inflicted processes of defensive modernization (intensifying in the course of nineteenth century) to counteract the rising power of Western European states.Google Scholar

85. Mainly blaming Confucianism, superstition, a highly inegalitarian social stratification and a corrupt imperial bureaucracy for the backwardness of the country.Google Scholar

86. Although played out in different ways, language reform was another common concern of the Turkish and Chinese regimes. Simplification of the characters in China and the changing of the script from Arabic to Latin in Turkey were remarkably similar in intent. Overall, despite some moves in the direction of Sinocization, modernism constituted a major streak within the Maoist reforms and consequently had a significant impact in shaping Chinese national identity.Google Scholar

87. Belge, “Cumhuriyet Doneminde Batililasma,” p. 263.Google Scholar

88. Karpat, Turkey's Politics, p. 331.Google Scholar

89. Heper, The State Tradition in Turkey, p. 72.Google Scholar

90. C. H. Dodd, The Crisis of Turkish Democracy (Beverley, England: Eothen Press, 1983), p. 63.Google Scholar

91. Keyder, Ulusal Kalkinmaciligin Iflasi, p. 143.Google Scholar