Everyday Nationalism in Turkey: Construction of Turkishness in Nevşehir

2022-9-28
Ravanoğlu Yılmaz, Sezen
This thesis aims to understand in a period in which Islamist and ethnic nationalism become a dominant paradigm in Turkish politics, in a small- sized nationalist and conservative central Anatolian city, Nevşehir. Right-wing political parties representing political Islam and ethnic nationalism have historically always been strong in Nevşehir. This thesis aims to reveal how Turkishness is discursively constructed and reproduced by everyday actors from different political positions in Nevşehir. For this purpose, a field study, including in-depth interviews, participant observations and focus group discussions was conducted in Nevşehir between March 2017 and October 2018. In this framework, thirty semi-structured, in-depth interviews were held during this period with everyday social actors of diverse age, gender, political affiliation and occupation in Nevşehir. The findings of the research demonstrates that everyday actors, as everyday nationalism approach argues, are not passive receivers of different narratives of Turkishness which are imposed on them by political institutions and actors, rather they are active agents with their potential to negotiate, change, transform and even hybridize these narratives. Although these ordinary people of everyday life construct their nationhood in different forms and contents within the framework of their own subjectivities and experiences, it is the finding of this thesis that there are common “discursive anchors and strategies” that reproduce Turkishness.

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Citation Formats
S. Ravanoğlu Yılmaz, “Everyday Nationalism in Turkey: Construction of Turkishness in Nevşehir,” Ph.D. - Doctoral Program, Middle East Technical University, 2022.