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Public-private distinctions, the alevi question, and the headscarf
Turkish secularism revisited
pp. 121-141
Abstract
From the beginning of the Turkish Republic, its political elites promoted a secular nationalism as the social bond intended to overwrite religious and ethnic divisions and create a sense of coherence and unity. Ever since it became a guiding principle for politics in the late Ottoman period, Turkish nationalism aimed at creating national homogeneity and identity qua a rhetorical inclusivism (around categories of Turkishness and Islam) and practical exclusivism (as for everything that did not fit said categories), which was sometimes more and sometimes less forceful and violent. In the Turkish republic, united under the banner of Kemalism, Turkish nationalism and Turkish secularism—or better laicism (laiklik)—determine the parameters for the negotiation of the legitimacy of particularist group identities and practices in public. Indeed, it is in cases of dissent to the significations and internal logic of the homogenizing nationalistlaicist discourse that its grammar becomes most palpable.
Publication details
Published in:
Cady Linell E., Shakman Hurd Elizabeth (2010) Comparative secularisms in a global age. Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan.
Pages: 121-141
Full citation:
Dressler Markus (2010) „Public-private distinctions, the alevi question, and the headscarf: Turkish secularism revisited“, In: L. E. Cady & E. Shakman Hurd (eds.), Comparative secularisms in a global age, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 121–141.