Creating the Desired Citizen Ideology, State and Islam in Turkey

For decades after the declaration of the Republic of Turkey in 1923, the Turkish state promoted the idea of a desired citizen. The Kemalist state treated these citizens as superior, with full rights; but the 'others', those outside this desired citizenship, were either tolerated or considered undesirable citizens. And this caused the marginalization of ethnic and religious minorities, religious Muslims and leftists alike. In this book, Ihsan Yilmaz shows how historical traumas, victimhood, insecurities, anxieties, fears and siege mentality have negatively impacted on and radicalised the nation-building projects of the two competing hegemonic ideologies/regimes (those of Ataturk and Erdogan) and their treatment of majority and minority ethnic, religious and political groups. Yilmaz reveals the significant degree of overlap between the desired, undesired citizen and tolerated citizen categories of these two regimes, showing how both regimes aimed to create a perception of a homogenous Turkish nation.

1. Anxious Nation and Its Ambivalent Westernism; Part I. Kemalism and its Desired, Undesired, Tolerated Citizens: 2. The Rise and Consolidation of the Kemalist Hegemony; 3. Kemalism's Desired Citizens; 4. Kemalism's Undesired Citizens; 5. Creating Kemalism's Tolerated Citizens via Diyanet; Part II. Emergence of the Counter-Hegemony: Erdoğanism: 6. Turkish Islamism and the Emergence of Erdoğanist Authoritarianism; 7. What is Erdoğanism?; Part III. Creating Erdoğanism's Desired Citizens via Popular Culture and Education: 8. Erdoğanism's Desired Citizen; 9. Creating Erdoğanism's Desired Citizens via Popular Culture; 10. Creating Erdoğanism's Desired Citizens via Education; Part IV. Erdoğanism's Undesired Citizens: 11. Erdoğanism's Undesired Citizens; Part V. Creating Erdoğanism's Tolerated Citizens via Diyanet: 12. Creating Erdoğanism's Tolerated Citizens via Diyanet; 13. The Use of Friday Sermons in Creating Erdoğanism's Tolerated Citizens; 14. The Future of Erdoğan's Nation.

Ihsan Yilmaz is Research Professor and Chair of Islamic Studies at Deakin University, Melbourne where his work focuses on Islam-state-society-law relations and ethnic-religious-political identities in Turkey, Australia, the UK and the USA. He is the author of Muslim Laws, Politics and Society in Modern Nation States: Dynamic Legal Pluralisms in England, Turkey and Pakistan (2005) amongst numerous book chapters and journal articles. He is also a public intellectual, and can be found on Twitter @ihsanylmz.