This is a book about what it meant to be German, Soviet, Russian, and Turkish in the twentieth ce... more This is a book about what it meant to be German, Soviet, Russian, and Turkish in the twentieth century, and how that definition radically changed at the turn of the twenty-first century. Germany's ethnic citizenship law, the Soviet Union's inscription of ethnic origins in personal identification documents, and Turkey's prohibition on the public use of minority languages, all put in place in the early twentieth century, underpinned the definition of nationhood in these countries. Despite many challenges from political and societal actors, these policies did not change for many ...
Assyrians are the indigenous people of Mesopotamia. They pride themselves on being the heirs of t... more Assyrians are the indigenous people of Mesopotamia. They pride themselves on being the heirs of the ancient Assyrian Empire. They still speak the language of Christ (Syriac) and were among the first Christians in the world. Their ‘national’ church sent missionaries to India, China and Japan as early as the seventh century. Their national identity, as they claim it to be, is as old as history; their forefathers founded one of the first civilizations on Earth, and their religion encompassed the entire Asian continent. Such claims of nationality and national history are thought-provoking for scholars who have studied the history of nationalisms. Thus, I seek to find the particular events and broader processes through which Assyrian nationalism is synthesized, raised and then failed.
ABSTRACT This article argues that Russia and Turkey radically reframed their projects of nation-b... more ABSTRACT This article argues that Russia and Turkey radically reframed their projects of nation-building around the turn of the twenty-first century, and the migration patterns between the Caucasus, Central Asia, Middle East, Russia, and Turkey reinforce these new projects of nationhood, aimed at reshaping society and building a new collective identity. By focusing on the nineteenth and the early twentieth century, most studies of nationalism and nation-building overlook the decisive transformations nation-building projects have been going through, particularly in Eurasia since the collapse of the Soviet Union. There is an observable and major change in the definition of the nation not just in post-Soviet Central Asia and the Caucasus where it is somewhat less surprising but also in Russia and even in Turkey which was not part of the Soviet Union. At the turn of the twenty-first century, Russia and Turkey embarked on different nation-building projects. This article argues that despite, or perhaps because of, the stark differences in the policies adopted by various states in post-Soviet Eurasia, the patterns of emigration and immigration reinforced the new nation-building projects underway in Russia and Turkey.
This essay critically approaches the impact of September 11, 2001 attacks in galvanizing the myth... more This essay critically approaches the impact of September 11, 2001 attacks in galvanizing the myth of a Christian Europe, a myth that provided the ideological justification for the recent massacre in Norway. The myth making around the failed Ottoman siege of Vienna in 1683, an event that provided the inspiration for Anders Breivik's fifteen hundred pages long anti-Muslim manifesto, 2083: A European Declaration of Independence, comes under scrutiny. The author argues that Europe has been, not only a Christian, but also a Jewish and Muslim continent for many centuries, using examples from the centuriesold history of Islamic civilization in France, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Poland, and Spain, among other European countries. The author draws attention not only to the total annihilation of historical Muslim communities in places such as Sicily and Spain, but also to the nearly total eradication of Islamic religious heritage and architecture in these countries.
In this article, I critically evaluate the causal and temporal dimension of social scientific stu... more In this article, I critically evaluate the causal and temporal dimension of social scientific studies focusing on Turkish politics. A very important and yet often neglected aspect of social scientific analysis involves the temporal dimension of causal processes. The temporal dimension of causal processes has direct consequences for operationalization and measurement, and hence it is an essential component of research design. Does the dependent variable (outcome) of interest unfold over the short term or the long term? Do the hypothesized independent variables (causes) unfold over the short term or the long term? Paul Pierson (2004) provided a classification of four types of causality based on the temporal dimension of causes and outcomes using metaphors of natural disasters: tornado, earthquake, meteorite, and global warming. Operationalization and measurement of long term causes and outcomes pose a major challenge, compounded by the challenges of periodization of causes and effects. Unfortunately, a large proportion of the studies of Turkish politics do not have a clearly discernible independent variable (cause) to begin with, and they are thus better characterized as works of “non-causal description.” Moreover, many of the studies of Turkish politics tend to imply, but rarely state explicitly, a global warming type of causality (long term cause and long term outcome), which necessitates focusing even more intensively on such challenges of measurement and periodization. Yet the operationalization of the key (dependent and independent) variables is often missing even in articles published in reputable academic journals of Turkish politics and society. In the spirit of constructive criticism, I suggest a number of guidelines for research design in order to address the problems of causality and temporality discussed in this article, including awareness of multi-temporal equifinality.
Objectives
Turkey, Algeria, and Pakistan have been persistently challenged, since their founding,... more Objectives Turkey, Algeria, and Pakistan have been persistently challenged, since their founding, by both Islamist and ethnic separatist movements. These challenges claimed the lives of tens of thousands of people in each country. I investigate the causes behind the concurrence of Islamist and ethnic separatist challenges to the state in Turkey, Algeria, and Pakistan.
Method This research employs comparative historical analysis, and more specifically, a most different systems design. In addition to small-N cross-national comparison, I also designed an intertemporal comparison, whereby Turkish, Algerian, and Pakistani history is divided into four periods, corresponding to preindependence, mobilization for independence, postindependence secular nation-building, and Islamist and ethnic separatist challenge periods.
Results Contrary to the prevailing view in the scholarship, this article formulates an alternative reinterpretation of Turkish, Algerian, and Pakistani nation-state formation. These three states were founded on the basis of an Islamic mobilization against non-Muslim opponents, but having successfully defeated these non-Muslim opponents, their political elites chose a secular and monolingual nation-state model, which they thought would maximize their national security and improve the socioeconomic status of their Muslim constituencies. The choice of a secular and monolingual nation-state model led to recurrent challenges of increasing magnitude to the state in the form of Islamist and ethnic separatist movements. The causal mechanism outlined in this article resembles what has been metaphorically described as a “meteorite” (Pierson, 2004), where the cause is short term (secular nationalist turn after independence) but the outcome unfolds over the long term (Islamist and ethnic separatist challenges).
Conclusion A distinct and counterintuitive path of nation-state formation has been identified based on the cases of Turkey, Algeria, and Pakistan. This research demonstrates that a contradiction between the goals of the original mobilization that establishes the state and policies of its postindependence governments can be a major structural source of instability and violence in the long run. These findings suggest that theories of nationalism that were developed based on the European experience of ethnic or linguistic nationalism need to be modified in explaining the religious nationalism that is found in the origins of some of the major nation-states in the Muslim world.
This article discusses the political origins, present-day significance, and implications of the i... more This article discusses the political origins, present-day significance, and implications of the intellectual movement known as “Eurasianism” in Turkey, a movement with Euroskeptic, anti-American, Russophile, neo-nationalist, secularist, and authoritarian tendencies, and including among its ranks socialists, nationalists, Kemalists, and Maoists. Since the turn of the twenty-first century, Eurasianism emerged as a major intellectual movement in Turkey, competing against Pan-Islamism, Pan-Turkism, and Westernism. Aspiration for a pro-Russian orientation in foreign policy, and a socialist–nationalist, Left-Kemalist government at home are the international and domestic faces of Turkish Eurasianism, which distinguish this movement from others. These orientations and their origins are situated within the history of intellectual movements in Turkey, going back to the Kadro and Yön movements in the 1930s and the 1960s, respectively. Similarities and actual links between Russian and Turkish Eurasianism are also discussed.
... me on the shoulder and joked, “ter-rible Turk,” adding that I should not mind what this ignor... more ... me on the shoulder and joked, “ter-rible Turk,” adding that I should not mind what this ignorant monk was say-ing. ... On the Swiss referendum, Sener Akturk and Mujeeb Khan, “How Western anti-Muslim bigotry became respectable: The historic roots of a newly resilient ideology ...
This review essay looks at the causes of the covert U.S. intervention in Iran in 1953, which over... more This review essay looks at the causes of the covert U.S. intervention in Iran in 1953, which overthrew the government of Prime Minister Mohammed Musaddiq, and turned Iran into a de facto autocracy. The argument of the essay is that, as opposed to economic interests or strategic considerations, it was American perceptions of Musaddiq and of the Iranian people in general that determined the course of U.S. foreign policy towards Iran.
In this paper, it is argued that the abandoning of the command administrative economy in the Sovi... more In this paper, it is argued that the abandoning of the command administrative economy in the Soviet Union and its transformation into an ostensibly market capitalist system in post-Communist Russia was a reaction by the Soviet elite to emerging threats to their accumulated privileges and power presented from the campaign for ³socialist legality² launched by Andropov and later Gorbachev in the 1980s. Threatened by the prospect of being purged for corruption and of losing their entitlements, the Soviet elite responded to the campaign for socialist legality by transforming itself into an official bourgeoisie that could legally claim the power and property it already controlled. ³Capitalist legality² was embraced to protect this power and property from possible reappropriation from below. The challenge of Andropov and Gorbachev to the Soviet ³New Class² was ultimately defeated when the elite pushed ahead with laws that destroyed the socialist economy. The alternative explanation for the transition put forward by the modernization theory is criticized in detail.
This is a book about what it meant to be German, Soviet, Russian, and Turkish in the twentieth ce... more This is a book about what it meant to be German, Soviet, Russian, and Turkish in the twentieth century, and how that definition radically changed at the turn of the twenty-first century. Germany's ethnic citizenship law, the Soviet Union's inscription of ethnic origins in personal identification documents, and Turkey's prohibition on the public use of minority languages, all put in place in the early twentieth century, underpinned the definition of nationhood in these countries. Despite many challenges from political and societal actors, these policies did not change for many ...
Assyrians are the indigenous people of Mesopotamia. They pride themselves on being the heirs of t... more Assyrians are the indigenous people of Mesopotamia. They pride themselves on being the heirs of the ancient Assyrian Empire. They still speak the language of Christ (Syriac) and were among the first Christians in the world. Their ‘national’ church sent missionaries to India, China and Japan as early as the seventh century. Their national identity, as they claim it to be, is as old as history; their forefathers founded one of the first civilizations on Earth, and their religion encompassed the entire Asian continent. Such claims of nationality and national history are thought-provoking for scholars who have studied the history of nationalisms. Thus, I seek to find the particular events and broader processes through which Assyrian nationalism is synthesized, raised and then failed.
ABSTRACT This article argues that Russia and Turkey radically reframed their projects of nation-b... more ABSTRACT This article argues that Russia and Turkey radically reframed their projects of nation-building around the turn of the twenty-first century, and the migration patterns between the Caucasus, Central Asia, Middle East, Russia, and Turkey reinforce these new projects of nationhood, aimed at reshaping society and building a new collective identity. By focusing on the nineteenth and the early twentieth century, most studies of nationalism and nation-building overlook the decisive transformations nation-building projects have been going through, particularly in Eurasia since the collapse of the Soviet Union. There is an observable and major change in the definition of the nation not just in post-Soviet Central Asia and the Caucasus where it is somewhat less surprising but also in Russia and even in Turkey which was not part of the Soviet Union. At the turn of the twenty-first century, Russia and Turkey embarked on different nation-building projects. This article argues that despite, or perhaps because of, the stark differences in the policies adopted by various states in post-Soviet Eurasia, the patterns of emigration and immigration reinforced the new nation-building projects underway in Russia and Turkey.
This essay critically approaches the impact of September 11, 2001 attacks in galvanizing the myth... more This essay critically approaches the impact of September 11, 2001 attacks in galvanizing the myth of a Christian Europe, a myth that provided the ideological justification for the recent massacre in Norway. The myth making around the failed Ottoman siege of Vienna in 1683, an event that provided the inspiration for Anders Breivik's fifteen hundred pages long anti-Muslim manifesto, 2083: A European Declaration of Independence, comes under scrutiny. The author argues that Europe has been, not only a Christian, but also a Jewish and Muslim continent for many centuries, using examples from the centuriesold history of Islamic civilization in France, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Poland, and Spain, among other European countries. The author draws attention not only to the total annihilation of historical Muslim communities in places such as Sicily and Spain, but also to the nearly total eradication of Islamic religious heritage and architecture in these countries.
In this article, I critically evaluate the causal and temporal dimension of social scientific stu... more In this article, I critically evaluate the causal and temporal dimension of social scientific studies focusing on Turkish politics. A very important and yet often neglected aspect of social scientific analysis involves the temporal dimension of causal processes. The temporal dimension of causal processes has direct consequences for operationalization and measurement, and hence it is an essential component of research design. Does the dependent variable (outcome) of interest unfold over the short term or the long term? Do the hypothesized independent variables (causes) unfold over the short term or the long term? Paul Pierson (2004) provided a classification of four types of causality based on the temporal dimension of causes and outcomes using metaphors of natural disasters: tornado, earthquake, meteorite, and global warming. Operationalization and measurement of long term causes and outcomes pose a major challenge, compounded by the challenges of periodization of causes and effects. Unfortunately, a large proportion of the studies of Turkish politics do not have a clearly discernible independent variable (cause) to begin with, and they are thus better characterized as works of “non-causal description.” Moreover, many of the studies of Turkish politics tend to imply, but rarely state explicitly, a global warming type of causality (long term cause and long term outcome), which necessitates focusing even more intensively on such challenges of measurement and periodization. Yet the operationalization of the key (dependent and independent) variables is often missing even in articles published in reputable academic journals of Turkish politics and society. In the spirit of constructive criticism, I suggest a number of guidelines for research design in order to address the problems of causality and temporality discussed in this article, including awareness of multi-temporal equifinality.
Objectives
Turkey, Algeria, and Pakistan have been persistently challenged, since their founding,... more Objectives Turkey, Algeria, and Pakistan have been persistently challenged, since their founding, by both Islamist and ethnic separatist movements. These challenges claimed the lives of tens of thousands of people in each country. I investigate the causes behind the concurrence of Islamist and ethnic separatist challenges to the state in Turkey, Algeria, and Pakistan.
Method This research employs comparative historical analysis, and more specifically, a most different systems design. In addition to small-N cross-national comparison, I also designed an intertemporal comparison, whereby Turkish, Algerian, and Pakistani history is divided into four periods, corresponding to preindependence, mobilization for independence, postindependence secular nation-building, and Islamist and ethnic separatist challenge periods.
Results Contrary to the prevailing view in the scholarship, this article formulates an alternative reinterpretation of Turkish, Algerian, and Pakistani nation-state formation. These three states were founded on the basis of an Islamic mobilization against non-Muslim opponents, but having successfully defeated these non-Muslim opponents, their political elites chose a secular and monolingual nation-state model, which they thought would maximize their national security and improve the socioeconomic status of their Muslim constituencies. The choice of a secular and monolingual nation-state model led to recurrent challenges of increasing magnitude to the state in the form of Islamist and ethnic separatist movements. The causal mechanism outlined in this article resembles what has been metaphorically described as a “meteorite” (Pierson, 2004), where the cause is short term (secular nationalist turn after independence) but the outcome unfolds over the long term (Islamist and ethnic separatist challenges).
Conclusion A distinct and counterintuitive path of nation-state formation has been identified based on the cases of Turkey, Algeria, and Pakistan. This research demonstrates that a contradiction between the goals of the original mobilization that establishes the state and policies of its postindependence governments can be a major structural source of instability and violence in the long run. These findings suggest that theories of nationalism that were developed based on the European experience of ethnic or linguistic nationalism need to be modified in explaining the religious nationalism that is found in the origins of some of the major nation-states in the Muslim world.
This article discusses the political origins, present-day significance, and implications of the i... more This article discusses the political origins, present-day significance, and implications of the intellectual movement known as “Eurasianism” in Turkey, a movement with Euroskeptic, anti-American, Russophile, neo-nationalist, secularist, and authoritarian tendencies, and including among its ranks socialists, nationalists, Kemalists, and Maoists. Since the turn of the twenty-first century, Eurasianism emerged as a major intellectual movement in Turkey, competing against Pan-Islamism, Pan-Turkism, and Westernism. Aspiration for a pro-Russian orientation in foreign policy, and a socialist–nationalist, Left-Kemalist government at home are the international and domestic faces of Turkish Eurasianism, which distinguish this movement from others. These orientations and their origins are situated within the history of intellectual movements in Turkey, going back to the Kadro and Yön movements in the 1930s and the 1960s, respectively. Similarities and actual links between Russian and Turkish Eurasianism are also discussed.
... me on the shoulder and joked, “ter-rible Turk,” adding that I should not mind what this ignor... more ... me on the shoulder and joked, “ter-rible Turk,” adding that I should not mind what this ignorant monk was say-ing. ... On the Swiss referendum, Sener Akturk and Mujeeb Khan, “How Western anti-Muslim bigotry became respectable: The historic roots of a newly resilient ideology ...
This review essay looks at the causes of the covert U.S. intervention in Iran in 1953, which over... more This review essay looks at the causes of the covert U.S. intervention in Iran in 1953, which overthrew the government of Prime Minister Mohammed Musaddiq, and turned Iran into a de facto autocracy. The argument of the essay is that, as opposed to economic interests or strategic considerations, it was American perceptions of Musaddiq and of the Iranian people in general that determined the course of U.S. foreign policy towards Iran.
In this paper, it is argued that the abandoning of the command administrative economy in the Sovi... more In this paper, it is argued that the abandoning of the command administrative economy in the Soviet Union and its transformation into an ostensibly market capitalist system in post-Communist Russia was a reaction by the Soviet elite to emerging threats to their accumulated privileges and power presented from the campaign for ³socialist legality² launched by Andropov and later Gorbachev in the 1980s. Threatened by the prospect of being purged for corruption and of losing their entitlements, the Soviet elite responded to the campaign for socialist legality by transforming itself into an official bourgeoisie that could legally claim the power and property it already controlled. ³Capitalist legality² was embraced to protect this power and property from possible reappropriation from below. The challenge of Andropov and Gorbachev to the Soviet ³New Class² was ultimately defeated when the elite pushed ahead with laws that destroyed the socialist economy. The alternative explanation for the transition put forward by the modernization theory is criticized in detail.
Abstract: This paper presents the comparative data on state policies on ethnic and ethno-religiou... more Abstract: This paper presents the comparative data on state policies on ethnic and ethno-religious diversity in fifteen specific policy areas in thirty-five countries, including some Western, Post-Communist, and Muslim-majority states, collected through a survey of country experts. These states, compared along fifteen specific policies on ethnic and ethno-religious diversity, provide a large enough dataset to give a tentative answer to questions of Western, post-Communist, and Islamic ���legacies��� in the treatment of ethnic and religious diversity. ...
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Papers by Sener Akturk
Turkey, Algeria, and Pakistan have been persistently challenged, since their founding, by both Islamist and ethnic separatist movements. These challenges claimed the lives of tens of thousands of people in each country. I investigate the causes behind the concurrence of Islamist and ethnic separatist challenges to the state in Turkey, Algeria, and Pakistan.
Method
This research employs comparative historical analysis, and more specifically, a most different systems design. In addition to small-N cross-national comparison, I also designed an intertemporal comparison, whereby Turkish, Algerian, and Pakistani history is divided into four periods, corresponding to preindependence, mobilization for independence, postindependence secular nation-building, and Islamist and ethnic separatist challenge periods.
Results
Contrary to the prevailing view in the scholarship, this article formulates an alternative reinterpretation of Turkish, Algerian, and Pakistani nation-state formation. These three states were founded on the basis of an Islamic mobilization against non-Muslim opponents, but having successfully defeated these non-Muslim opponents, their political elites chose a secular and monolingual nation-state model, which they thought would maximize their national security and improve the socioeconomic status of their Muslim constituencies. The choice of a secular and monolingual nation-state model led to recurrent challenges of increasing magnitude to the state in the form of Islamist and ethnic separatist movements. The causal mechanism outlined in this article resembles what has been metaphorically described as a “meteorite” (Pierson, 2004), where the cause is short term (secular nationalist turn after independence) but the outcome unfolds over the long term (Islamist and ethnic separatist challenges).
Conclusion
A distinct and counterintuitive path of nation-state formation has been identified based on the cases of Turkey, Algeria, and Pakistan. This research demonstrates that a contradiction between the goals of the original mobilization that establishes the state and policies of its postindependence governments can be a major structural source of instability and violence in the long run. These findings suggest that theories of nationalism that were developed based on the European experience of ethnic or linguistic nationalism need to be modified in explaining the religious nationalism that is found in the origins of some of the major nation-states in the Muslim world.
Turkey, Algeria, and Pakistan have been persistently challenged, since their founding, by both Islamist and ethnic separatist movements. These challenges claimed the lives of tens of thousands of people in each country. I investigate the causes behind the concurrence of Islamist and ethnic separatist challenges to the state in Turkey, Algeria, and Pakistan.
Method
This research employs comparative historical analysis, and more specifically, a most different systems design. In addition to small-N cross-national comparison, I also designed an intertemporal comparison, whereby Turkish, Algerian, and Pakistani history is divided into four periods, corresponding to preindependence, mobilization for independence, postindependence secular nation-building, and Islamist and ethnic separatist challenge periods.
Results
Contrary to the prevailing view in the scholarship, this article formulates an alternative reinterpretation of Turkish, Algerian, and Pakistani nation-state formation. These three states were founded on the basis of an Islamic mobilization against non-Muslim opponents, but having successfully defeated these non-Muslim opponents, their political elites chose a secular and monolingual nation-state model, which they thought would maximize their national security and improve the socioeconomic status of their Muslim constituencies. The choice of a secular and monolingual nation-state model led to recurrent challenges of increasing magnitude to the state in the form of Islamist and ethnic separatist movements. The causal mechanism outlined in this article resembles what has been metaphorically described as a “meteorite” (Pierson, 2004), where the cause is short term (secular nationalist turn after independence) but the outcome unfolds over the long term (Islamist and ethnic separatist challenges).
Conclusion
A distinct and counterintuitive path of nation-state formation has been identified based on the cases of Turkey, Algeria, and Pakistan. This research demonstrates that a contradiction between the goals of the original mobilization that establishes the state and policies of its postindependence governments can be a major structural source of instability and violence in the long run. These findings suggest that theories of nationalism that were developed based on the European experience of ethnic or linguistic nationalism need to be modified in explaining the religious nationalism that is found in the origins of some of the major nation-states in the Muslim world.