If nationalism is on the rise in Turkey, what kind of nationalism is it. Is there a possibility for the emergence of a civic nationalism which could also be the base for popular democracy? Civic nationalism, while recognizing the nation as the basic political unit, links nationality with citizenship and not ethnicity, thereby giving significant space for cultural, historical and ideological plurality. By definition, it requires the primacy of the will of the people, to whom sovereignty belongs to, to shape the quality of the state. This also indicates the source of legitimate power exercised by state authorities. Here nationalism is not an apparatus to mobilize the nation in the name of an omnipotent and transcendental state but an essential preference for the supremacy of the will of the people. In short, civic nationalism’s society and citizenship-centric approach to legitimacy, sovereignty and representation makes it an asset for the development of democracy. Yet dominant understandings of nationalism in Turkey are far from the civic kind. Let’s look at the varieties:
“Kemalist nationalism” has historically imagined a nation culturally homogenized, politically obedient and economically dependent on the state. The building of a new nation, the new Kemalist state, was a rationalist and authoritarian project. Yes, for Kemalist nationalism sovereignty belonged to the nation but the nation was not mature enough, and never will be, to decide on its own. The trustworthy state elite would decide on its behalf. Yes, it talked of citizenship, but citizenship did not really carry rights but responsibilities, first of which was to obey the Kemalist project subordinating the nation to the state. Therefore Kemalist nationalism did not establish democracy but one-party rule during its reign from 1923 to 1945.
“Radical nationalism” represented by the National Action Party (MHP) is a movement with a strong tendency to conceive the nation as ethnic, cultural and historical uniformity justifying intolerance to ethnic and religious pluralities among the citizenry. It was formed in the 1960s by a colonel, Alparslan Turkes, who had played a leading role in the military coup of 1960 against the elected government of Adnan Menderes who was hanged as a result of that coup. Thus, in the roots of that party exists a crime committed against parliamentary democracy. How could it nourish a civic notion prioritizing national will and representative democracy? In order to remember the MHP’s proximity to militarism we should better remember a famous statement of Alparslan Turkes in the early 1980s under the military regime that put him in prison: “We are in prison but our ideas are in power.” Just last week the current leader of the party, Devlet Bahceli, over TUSIAD’s democratization report, referred to those who hid behind democracy and human rights where they betray the nation, implying that democracy and human rights are a façade of betrayal.
“Popular nationalism,” the third form, is the most widespread and moderate, viewing the nation as a construction of historical evolution, thus opposing the Kemalist narrative. Popular nationalism is not ideologically based and has more of a sense of belonging to the Turkish nation and Turkish history. Politically this nationalism stands with the centre-right that emphasizes the will of the people and popular representation. Therefore popular nationalism is more likely to evolve into a kind of civic nationalism upholding democracy.
Yet all these forms of nationalism share a culture that treats the state, not the nation, as the supreme entity and view its survival as constantly at stake. Because of this, Turkish nationalisms are prone to militarism if not fascism.
Development, therefore, of a civic nationalism in Turkey is possible only if nationalists avoid being contaminated by the notion of the supremacy of the state over the nation. Yet this is extremely difficult because the idea of the supremacy of the state has it roots in Turkish history, the Turkish psyche and the daily narratives of Turkish politics. It was just few days ago that an opposition leader, Erkan Mumcu, accused the government of “treason” and that the Turkish Chief of General Staff Büyükanıt pointed out again that Turkish state has never been surrounded by deadly problems like today.
