Identity in the Republic

With the foundation of the Turkish Republic, the Kemalist ruling elite embarked in a vast scale programme for redefining Turkish citizens? identity and creating an ?ethnically homogeneous community.?  With the aim of breaking with the past, the new Republic had to distance itself by its Ottoman legacy, creating its own identity as ?Turkish State,? neither as inheritor of the Empire, nor as successor of the Caliphate (Yenişehiroğlu, 1999).  The discourse of the Turkish nationalism revolved around two axes, identified by Karpat (Karpat, 2002: 555) as:

1)      ethnicity and language

2)      religion and culture

Although Karpat considered the first point prevalent in the construction of Kemalist ideology; it is worth nothing that other authors, as the sociologist Bozkurt Güvenç, focused more on the debate on the role that religion and culture played in Kemalist? s  thoughts.

Starting from the religious dimension, we should focus our attention on the concept of secularity and laicism, which became one of the pillars of the Kemalist thinking.  The Kemalist concept of laicism, in Turkish lailik, has often been paralleled with the French term laicité.  Although Atatürk was a profound admirer of the French model, he conceived the Turkish laicism as something peculiar to the Turkish case. Indeed, there was not a definite separation between State and Religion. Islam was conceived as a fundamental, cultural, component of the Turkish identity and so, it had to be controlled by the State; nevertheless, religion became a subjective matter, relegated to the private sphere.[13]  Therefore, many reforms were directed to de-establish the previous religious system. Among the main reform, which affected the religious life, there were the abolition of the Sultanate (1922), and the Caliphate (1924).

At the same time, the Ministry of Islamic Religious Affairs was also abolished and replaced with two Directorates, under the control of the Prime Minister, the General Directorate for Religion (Diyanet İşleri Reisliği)[14] and the General Directorate for Religious Foundations (Vakıflar Genel Müdürlüğü), while religious schools were handled by Education Ministry.  Religious measures also addressed popular Sufi brotherhoods(tarikats); which were considered a medium between popular religion and the official Islam of the Ulema.  In fact, according to the promulgation of Law n.677 (2.09.1925), all tarikatswere officially banned, tekkes closed and their properties confiscated(Zarcone, 2004; Kara, 2002:145-147).[15]  As a consequence, in the early stage of the Republic, the impact of religious reforms was particularly visible in urban areas, where the role of religious buildings ?as organizers of public spaces and society- gradually diminished.

Regarding the cultural sphere, as Guvenç affirmed: ?Atatürk saw the problem of his nation simply as the ?Creation of a new Turk?" (B. Güvenç: 1996).  This statement shows the centrality of topic like ?culture and civilization,? and it is explained by Ataturk?s fascination for the positivist thinking for European sociology.  Therefore, the Kemalist concept of culture included every aspect of human activities, included artistic manifestations and represented an ideological means of control. ?National Culture? was even included in the six fundamental principles that formed the system of Kemalism, together with laicism, republicanism, populism, etatism and revolutionism.[16]

[13]Indeed, the passage to a secularized and laic State was not subitaneus; yet, it was in the second stage of Kemal Atatürk?s government that it sped up. It was only in April 10, 1928, that the constitutional provision stating that Islam was ?the religion of the State of Turkey? was deleted, while the principle of secularism was embodied in the Constitution on February 5, 1937.

[14]The General Directorate for Religion became later a Constitutional organ of the Turkish State.

[15]As Zürcher affirmed ?these measures met with the stubborn resistance from the population. Tekkes and türbes played an important role in everyday Muslim life? (Zürcher, 2004: 173).

[16]The six fundamental principles, forming the system of Kemalism - enounced in the Party programme of the year 1931 - were embedded in the  Art.2 of the 1937?s Constitution. These six principles, or ?six arrows? (altı ok), are: Republicanism, which is based on elective constitutional government; nationalism, founded on culture and national loyalty; populism, based on dignity and necessity of common people; Etatism, which implied State responsibility; Laicism, which reject of every common religious privilege; and revolutionism (reformism). These principles were subsequently complemented by principles of national sovereignty, Independence and national unity (Zurcher, 2004: 181).