Snapshots of popular Turkish nationalism: Neo-Kemalism, bestsellers and facebook

Abstract

This thesis takes snapshots from contemporary popular culture to understand manifestations of Turkish nationalism. It focuses on neo-Kemalist version of Turkish nationalism which is defined as a new type of Turkish nationalism emerging in the 1990s emphasizing political action and civil society. This focus is based on analyses of best sellers such as Those Crazy Turks and Metal Storm. These analyses are products of discourse analysis of the books and interviews with the readers of Those Crazy Turks. The thesis also examines a new medium for the Turkish nationalism to be articulated: Facebook. Being a popular internet-based networking sites, protests are organized and realized here. When the analysis of the books/readers and Facebook/users are put together, neo-Kemalist discourse surfaces as specifically targeting the youth to take action. Yet the ambiguities and paradoxes neo-Kemalism implies lead to a dichotomous picture. This thesis argues that the dichotomy lies in many points of the discourse swinging between Orientalism and Occidentalism, the “virtual” and the “real,” past and future, conservation and transformation, militarism and civil politics, action and passivism, pessimism and optimism. All these sensitive points are blended with the language and symbolism of consumer culture. In the struggle of neo-Kemalist discourse to have hegemony over other versions of nationalism, producers and user of this discourse embrace this language and symbolism.