cover image: Approfondimento n. 19/ luglio 2022   The old and the new:

20.500.12592/9qjb4g

Approfondimento n. 19/ luglio 2022 The old and the new:

1 Feb 2023

Post-imperial identity embraced Western modernity across the whole spectrum of daily life, from the mundane (the adoption of a new dress code, the introduction of the international Gregorian calendar, the metric measuring system and the Latin alphabet, the abolition of titles, and the passing of a bill introducing family names) to the official (the replacement of the God-given sharia law by a civi. [...] Nationalism and Islam The transition of Turkey into multiparty politics in the 1950s marked the beginning of a new era which saw the transformation of Islam into a language of protest and discontent, in particular by the rural population of Anatolia who had to bear the brunt of the top-down, authoritarian nature of republican reforms. [...] This explains why the republican vision was premised on a deliberate and strategic conflation of the terms “nation” and the “people”, which allowed the elites to mitigate the expression of the people’s will by recourse to the other dimension of popular sovereignty, that of the nation. [...] The reintegration of Islam into definitions of Turkishness during the 1950s and 60s informed the so- called Turkish model until the end of the twentieth century, albeit kept in check by a formally secular state and the military that assumed the role of guardian of the Kemalist heritage. [...] The fear that has been the hallmark of the second, ideological, phase of AKP rule has been exacerbated by the bitter 6 feud between the government and the Gülen Movement, the deteriorating situation in Syria and the declaration of autonomy in Rojava (Northern Syria) by the PKK’s sister organization The Democratic Union Party (PYD) and a series of terrorist attacks in various Turkish cities alleged.

Authors

HILAL DIKMEN

Pages
9
Published in
Italy

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