Black Turks, White Turks: On the Three ... - Insight Turkey

Black Turks, White Turks:
On the Three Requirements of
Turkish Citizenship
MÜCAHİT BİLİCİ*
ABSTRACT
Turkish media frequently employ
the term “White Turks” to
describe the Turkish cultural elite.
Although Turks are unfamiliar
with American-style racial
divides, the terms “black” and
“white” are widely used to colorcode
inequalities in Turkey. The
common tendency to distinguish
White Turks from Black Turks
on the basis of wealth, however,
fails to uncover the historical and
cultural dynamics that gave rise to
these two groups. This essay not
only offers a necessary clarification
of this popular heuristic device
but also proposes a perspective
for understanding the current
standoff in Turkish politics
between the governing Justice
and Development Party (AKP,
Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi) and
the secular establishment, with
their distinct value systems and
competing claims to modernity.
Long before the White Turks/Black
Turks distinction gained currency,
the dominant academic metaphor for the
analysis of Turkish society was based around
the Center and Periphery model, introduced
to the Turkish context by Serif Mardin in his
“Center-Periphery Relations: A Key to Turkish
Politics,” an article published in Daedalus
(1973). Mardin’s discussion revolved around
the challenge of integrating the periphery
(Anatolia) to the center, a persistent problem
facing power holders from the late Ottoman
period through to the Republic. We know that
Mardin borrowed the term from Edward Shils’s
The Constitution of Society. The conceptual
origins of the distinction, while not acknowledged
by Shils, can be traced back to the Hegelian
master-slave dialectic. In the years since
Mardin first applied this paradigm to Turkey,
however, it has become clear that approaching
center-periphery relations from the point of
* Professor, John Jay College, mucahitbilici@gmail.com
Insight Turkey Vol. 11 / No. 3 / 2009
pp. 23-35
23

MÜCAHİT BİLİCİ
view of “integration” is rather too simplistic. Such an analysis fails to question the
centrality of the center: it gives the impression that the incumbents of the center
have arrived there through some achievement and effort, and that the periphery is
under some teleological obligation to try to join with them under normative conditions
that Shils calls the “central value system.” Even in Western democracies,
where such “central value systems” are relatively broad, there has been a tendency
towards multiculturalism as a way of acknowledging the multiplicity of values. In
countries like Turkey, what has become the “central value system” of the society is
still far from representative or inclusive. Authoritarian efforts to engineer a new
society from above led to a center that has remained in constant opposition to the
periphery, creating two Turkeys at odds with one another.
Once we begin to see the relationship between the center and the periphery in
these terms, we can no longer think of its vernacular reflection, the White Turks/
Black Turks distinction, in terms of income level, economic power or, most misleadingly,
the “degree of modernization.” The relationship between the two Turkeys
has been one of power relations. It can best be grasped as a long-running
competition, often obscured by the domestic discourse of national homogeneity
and by such imported templates as “political Islam versus the secular state.” This
competition occasionally flares up into political crises, the most recent example of
which is the ongoing standoff between the Justice and Development Party (AKP,
Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi) and the Kemalist bureaucratic elite. What follows is a
discussion of the historical and cultural conditions that contributed to the bifurcated
Turkey we see today.
Being a Minority in Turkey
As part of the European Union candidacy requirements, in the last couple of
years the Turkish government has engaged in a series of constitutional and legislative
reforms, and has lessened the restrictions on minority languages and on
the property rights of non-Muslim foundations. This trend towards change and
democratization was so promising that in October 2004, the prime minister’s Advisory
Committee on Human Rights sponsored a “Report on Minority Rights and
Cultural Rights.” It was prepared by a committee and co-authored by Baskin Oran
and Haluk Kaboglu. The report criticized traditional state policies towards minority
identities, demonstrated how the term “Turk” was simultaneously a racial/
ethnic and a constitutional category, and recommended greater accommodation
of Kurdish and Alevi identities as well as protection of the rights of non-Muslim
minorities.
24

Black Turks, White Turks: On the Three Requirements of Turkish Citizenship
The requirements of citizenship
reflect the experience, cultural
taste and conception of
modernity particular to a small
segment of Turkish society
It soon became clear that the term
minority was one of the most explosive
in Turkish state culture. The report was
attacked from all sides. It was disowned
by the government and the prime minister
who sponsored it. The Turkish military
condemned it and Turkish courts
decided to prosecute the authors. What was even more interesting was that the
unofficial minorities themselves—Bosnians, for instance—rejected the label of
minority. One might ask: What is wrong with being a minority?
To answer this question in the Turkish context we need to explore the minorities
external and internal to the Turkish nation. They can be categorized in terms
of their visibility and recognition. It is important to note that their locations within
(or outside) the nation interact with larger processes such as globalization and EU
accession. My larger task is to make a statement about Turkish national identity
as understood by the official discourse, which I argue has three conditions. Only
a small percentage of Turkish society meets the requirements of ideal citizenship.
Turkish national identity and the sense of what constitutes rightful citizenship, as
I hope to show, are not products of a Habermasian deliberative process nor are
they “objective” goals set by society at large. Rather, the requirements of citizenship
reflect the experience, cultural taste and conception of modernity particular
to a small segment of Turkish society.
Turkish National Identity: Muslim, Turkish, Secular
Turkish national identity came into being in dialogue with Europe and today
it is being re-negotiated in dialogue with Europe. The story of Turkish national
identity can be re-told as a tale that stretches between two European cities: Lausanne
and Copenhagen, the cities that played host, respectively, to the making
and potential remaking of Turkish national identity. The boundaries of Turkish
national identity were drawn by the Lausanne Treaty in 1923, the same year Turkey
declared itself a republic. Some eighty years later, those boundaries are being
called into question as a result of the Copenhagen accord with the EU—but not all
minorities are benefiting equally from these externally instigated openings.
Identifying some of the minorities whose exclusion remains invisible will allow
us to understand who, exactly, is a Turk. Before the Republic, a Turk was
merely an ethnicity among many, and not necessarily a prestigious one. Only later
was it elevated to the level of national standard. Most people in Turkey would say
25

MÜCAHİT BİLİCİ
that a Turk is a citizen of the Turkish Republic (as they have been taught). But
what if you ask who is the ideal citizen of Turkey? Whom does the state cherish
as its preferred subject? What if you ask the average shopkeeper, schoolteacher, or
police officer, what image first pops into their heads? I argue that there are three
components of Turkish national identity: Muslimness, Turkishness and secularism.
This three-layered definition of Turkish national identity excludes a number
of groups. Some of these exclusions are visible and recognized while others are
invisible and in need of recognition. Any group that fails to meet all three requirements
fails to achieve full citizenship. They remain either externally attached to
the nation (as the Greeks, Armenians and Jews are) or relegated to other times
and places (on the mountains in the case of the Kurds, or in the past in the case
of religious people).
The Turkish Republic was built on the political, cultural and psychological debris
of the Ottoman Empire. Culturally it was extremely heterogeneous—an undesirable
condition for the taste of modern nation builders. Psychologically it was
just coming out of trauma caused by prolonged wars and a sense of having been
besieged by non-Muslim great powers. The Ottoman Empire lost the majority of
its territory (85 percent) and population (75 percent) in the last 50 years of its history.
It would also be further homogenized through the massacre of Armenians
in 1915 and the population exchange with Greece in 1923. In the late period of its
history, the Ottoman state was also engaged in building a nation based on Muslim
identity. A path-dependency initiated by the Ottoman millet system and deepened
by Sultan Abdulhamid II’s policy of constructing a “Muslim nation” became
the main legacy upon which the young Turkish Republic would construct its own
national identity.
The political and cultural elite that exercised power in defining the new nation
and its identity were mostly elite immigrants or of immigrant backgrounds,
originally from the Balkans and the Caucasus. Ironically, for the most part they
were not ethnic Turks. They were Macedonians, Circassians, Georgians, Bosnians
and Tatars. They were people whose history was shaped by persecution by non-
Muslims on the ever-shrinking frontiers of the Ottoman Empire. Their strong
attachment to Muslim identity was not necessarily religious but identity-related,
for their Islamic identity was the single most important cause of their displacement
and became the future avenue of their relocation within the remainder of
the empire. They were, more often than not, non-Turkish Muslims for whom
Muslimness and Turkishness were one and same thing. They were also more urbanized,
Westernized and secular than the local population of Anatolia, who were
26

Black Turks, White Turks: On the Three Requirements of Turkish Citizenship
An ideal Turkish citizen of the
new country would have to
simultaneously have Muslim,
Turkish and secular identities.
Yet, each of these identities was
defined in specific ways
“still” traditional, underdeveloped and
ignorant of the challenges of modernity.
Their frontier consciousness was a product
of their displacement and of exposure
to the forces (ethnic nationalism,
the nation state, European hegemony)
which had put them to flight. A mostly
unconscious, loosely attached identity
(i.e., being Muslim) turned into a visceral identification as a result of the trauma
they suffered for its sake. In that regard, they represented just another example of
diasporic sentiment, characterized by “bitterness” and nationalism, except that
this nationalism was projected onto the “new land” of Anatolia and expressed
through the only bond that linked them to it, their Muslimness. Their nationalism
was “Muslim nationalism”—a secular, modern ideology—and it evolved into
“Turkish nationalism” in the hands of the early Republican elite.
The nation-building elite chose the identity of ethnic Turks and constructed a
new nation based on very specific conditions. At the core of this new identity was
a peculiar conception of Muslimness without which Turkishness could not be secured.
The classic illustration of this practice is the population exchange between
Turkey and Greece, which was based on religion. At the same time, the belief in
progress and Westernization also required this identity to be secular. This component
was gradually introduced and finally consolidated firmly as the third pillar.
An ideal Turkish citizen of the new country, therefore, would have to simultaneously
have Muslim, Turkish and secular identities. Yet, each of these identities was
defined in specific ways. You have to be Muslim but not religious. You have to get
Turkified (i.e., adopt Turkishness as language and identification) but you don’t
have to be an ethnic Turk—even ethnic Turks had to go through this Turkification
process. You have to be secular, but you have to support state-sponsored Islam.
Today, these three elements have coalesced and together draw the boundaries of
Turkish national identity. The story of the crystallization of this identity started
with the Lausanne Treaty in 1923.
The transition from Empire to Turkish Republic was marked by wars, terror
and massive displacements of people. The Armenian massacre was motivated by
anxiety on the part of the Turkish ruling elite over losing a homeland. At the end
of the Turkish war of independence, the Lausanne Treaty was signed between
Turkey and the Western powers. Those who founded the Republic were forced
by the Western powers to grant minority status to the remaining, Istanbul-based,
27

MÜCAHİT BİLİCİ
non-Muslim population. Taken together with the negative experiences from the
late-Ottoman period, the concept of minority has been stigmatized and associated
with loss of sovereignty and foreign interference by the Republican elite.
The Lausanne Treaty defined minorities on the basis of religion. No ethnic,
linguistic or sectarian differences among the majority Muslim population were
recognized. Those who were not Muslims were no longer Turks. Even when they
wanted to be Turkish they were rejected because they were not Muslim (e.g., the
Armenians, Greeks, Jews). All others who were Muslim were forced to become
Turks (e.g., the Kurds, Arabs, Laz). A third group that was both Turkish and Muslim
was still rejected because they were not secular.
Before going into details of who, in practice, fits the definition of the ideal
Turkish citizen, let us first go over the list of those who do not pass muster. As we
shall see, each component of Turkish national identity has generated victims.
Visible Minorities: Non-Muslim Turks
While European pressure secured minority status for the non-Muslim citizens
of Turkey, it also created grounds for their exclusion. Minority still means noncitizen
in the eyes of the Turkish state. Therefore, non-Muslim minorities in Turkey
are neither proper minorities nor full citizens. Baskin Oran, one of the authors
of the famous minority report, has observed that it comes as no surprise that court
documents refer to non-Muslim minorities in Turkey as “foreigners” or “domestic
foreigners.” There is almost a built-in expectation that one day they will leave, as
indeed some of them do (e.g., the Greeks to Greece, the Jews to Israel, and the
Armenians to Europe and America). Otherwise, within their ghettoized spaces
they enjoy certain rights. Their position may even at times seem above or beyond
the majority, but it is certainly “outside” of the nation as well.
Sometimes their national identity is used against them by the Turkish state. In
1942, the Turkish state levied a wealth tax (Varlik Vergisi) targeting non-Muslims.
A state-sponsored provocation and mob riot in 1955 (the September 6-7 Events)
resulted in attacks on non-Muslims and their properties in Istanbul. Their recognition
as a minority cost them their full citizenship. They were and still are seen
as foreign elements. Their loyalty is suspect while their treatment as minorities
produces a perceived privilege in the eyes of the Muslim majority. Turkish military
training still involves lectures where institutions of non-Muslim communities
(e.g., the Greek Patriarchate in Istanbul) are listed among threats to national
security.
28

Black Turks, White Turks: On the Three Requirements of Turkish Citizenship
Up until quite recently the Turkish
state had restrictions on clerical schools,
did not allow the opening of new churches,
and campaigned against missionary
activities. One might—as most outside
observers do—ascribe this intolerant
and oppressive attitude to the majority
Muslim culture. But the reality is quite different; their exclusion is rooted in the
very construction of the secular Turkish national identity.
While non-Muslim minorities regardless of their color do not qualify as Turks,
they are not considered Black Turks either. They are simply external to the nation.
The Black Turks are hidden in the majority and their visibility depends on the
democratization process and their relationship to Europe.
Partly Visible Minorities: Non-Turkish Muslims
The Black Turks are hidden
in the majority and their
visibility depends on the
democratization process and
their relationship to Europe
The Republic not only declared all Turks (i.e., all its citizens) to be Muslims
(hence the exclusion of non-Muslims from proper citizenship) but also declared
that all Muslims were Turks. The latter move led to the exclusion of non-Turkish
Muslims who refused to identify as Turks. Still, the definition of “Muslim” remained
deeply exclusionary for those who were within the fold of Islam.
A Muslim in Turkish official discourse means Sunni Muslim. Even within Sunni
Islam one has to be of the Hanafi school of law. This is another exclusion that is
hardly visible as the majority of Kurds in Turkey are Shafii. What is relatively visible
within the Muslim category is the exclusion of Alevis in Turkey. The Turkish
state-run Directorate of Religious Affairs owns and operates all the mosques and
pays the salary of imams throughout the country. Their sermons are also centrally
produced according to the Hanafi school of Islam. Alevis and Shafiis all pay taxes
for public services that are not directed towards them.
The official construction of Muslim identity not only represses non-Sunni
and non-Hanafi identities, it is also a means of forcing non-Turks into becoming
Turks. The exclusion of the Kurdish identity takes the form of a demand for
assimilation with a promise of equal treatment. Indeed, as long as the Kurds or
other Muslim minorities declare themselves Turks and renounce their ethnicities,
they become full members of the Turkish nation on condition that they fulfill the
third requirement (of secularism). In this sense, Turkish nationalism follows the
cultural (French) and not the racial (German) model of nationhood.
29

MÜCAHİT BİLİCİ
As long as the Kurds or other
Muslim minorities declare
themselves Turks and renounce
their ethnicities, they become
full members of the Turkish
nation on condition that they
fulfill the third requirement (of
secularism)
In the following pages I want to focus
on two groups of minorities who are internal
to the Turkish nation: the Kurds
and religious people. Unlike non-Muslim
minorities, they qualify as Turks but
their full membership is contingent on
certain transitions. If they fail to make
those transitions they qualify as Black
Turks. The first group of Black Turks is
those who refuse to assimilate into the
official definition of Turkishness. In anticipation of their transition and assimilation,
they have also been called in official discourse up until quite recently “mountain
Turks.” These are the Kurds.
Black Turks I: Mountain Turks
Article 3 (1) of the Turkish Constitution stipulates that, “The Turkish state,
with its territory and nation is an indivisible entity. Its language is Turkish.” Turkey’s
largest ethnic minority, the Kurds, were claimed to be among “the nation’s
founding elements” in the context of the Lausanne Treaty. But they have come to
feel betrayed by the Republican elite as Turkey has increasingly become secular
and Turkified. Sporadic Kurdish rebellions in the early years of the Republic were
suppressed and the Kurds were expected to become Turks through modernization.
Even today, the Kurds are neither a minority nor part of majority.
Denial of the Kurdish identity, however, could not solve the problem of the
existence of a Kurdish language. During the 1980s when the word “Kurd” was forbidden,
Kurds were told they were Turks speaking a dialect of Turkish. They were
called Kurds, the folk etymology went, because as they stepped on snow on their
mountaintops, the snow would make sounds like “kart, kurt.” They were nothing
but “mountain Turks” who would be naturalized through urbanization and assimilation
to the official Turkish culture.
It was during the 1980s that the Kurdish ethnic nationalist organization, the
PKK, resorted to violence and engaged in decades-long warfare with the Turkish
state. The results were horrific: 35,000 people died and hundreds of thousands
of Kurds were displaced. During the dirty phases of this conflict, peasants of Yesildere
village were forced to eat human excrement (a case taken to European
courts). Thousands of villages in southeast Turkey were subjected to forced evacuation
during the low-intensity conflict with the PKK.
30

Black Turks, White Turks: On the Three Requirements of Turkish Citizenship
When hundreds of college students across Turkey submitted petitions to their
college administrations asking for elective courses in the Kurdish language in
2000, many of them were suspended, dismissed and finally arrested. Nevertheless,
as the protests unfolded it became clear that Kurdish grievances now had new
channels of expression, from satellite television to the European Court of Human
Rights (ECHR). As the scholar Kathryn Sikkink and others have observed,
the process of globalization and technological change now facilitates the transnational
empowerment of sub-national NGOs, which can put pressure on their own
governments through international actors.
After the arrest of Abdullah Ocalan and signs of growing calm in the region,
prospects of joining the EU forced the Turkish state to introduce some changes.
Constitutional amendments in October 2001 removed restrictions on minority
languages. In August 2002 further space and recognition were granted to Kurdish
alongside other minority languages. Despite freedoms on paper, many Kurdish
intellectuals or politicians are prosecuted for their use of Kurdish. (A recent example
is the case of Abdulmelik Firat, who was prosecuted for using Amed, the
historical Kurdish name for the city Diyarbakir, in an invitation letter). Nonetheless,
progress continues to be made, most recently in January 2009 when Turkish
state television launched its first Kurdish language channel, TRT-Shesh.
As a result of prolonged PKK violence and EU pressure, the Kurds managed to
make themselves visible as minorities. Europeans can consistently be counted on
to extend their support when it comes to the Kurds. Despite the PKK’s reluctance,
there is a genuine effort on the part of the current government to take serious steps
towards granting the Kurds their long overdue rights and cultural freedoms.
Invisible Minorities: Non-Secular Turks
The definition of Turkish national identity as “Muslim, Turkish and secular”
resulted in the exclusion of non-Muslims, the Kurds and adherents of non-state
Islam respectively. Turkish secularism in practice means state Islam. What kind
of Islam does the Turkish state promote? Turkish secularism requires that citizens
not be atheists but that they be Muslims who are non-practicing. If they do attempt
to practice Islam, it must take place within the officially designated framework.
While Islam-in-abstract is officially dignified and upheld as rational and beautiful
(“dinimiz akil dinidir,” “ours is the faith of reason”) —a move that comports oddly
with the state’s official secular stance—all non-state forms of Islam are considered
irrational, dogmatic, and politically threatening. The Turkish state’s control over
Islam has been repressive for practicing Muslim men and women.
31

MÜCAHİT BİLİCİ
Turkish secularism in practice amounts to control and suppression of nonstate
Islam. The binary opposition that dominates most of the literature on Turkish
secularism therefore pits “political Islam” against “the secular state.” Yet this is
surely a misnomer. In contemporary Turkey, the two competing currents should
rightly be identified as state Islam versus civil Islam—or simply as state elites representing
a nineteenth century authoritarian ideology versus the masses who demand
the new standards of liberal democracy. It is not an opposition between
tradition and modernity, or between Islam and secularism. Rather it is between an
old conception of modernity (as a top-down authoritarian process) and a newer
one (bottom-up grassroots democracy). The inherent contradiction in Turkish
modernization is that it has included both currents of top-down modernization
and bottom-up democratic participation. Arguably, today the top-down modernization
has reached a limit where its claims to progress are in conflict with its
promises of democracy. How else can we explain the paradoxical situation where
the most enthusiastic supporters of the EU are not conventional modernizers (the
Kemalists) but the very victims of the Kemalist project, among them the Kurds
and religious people?
Black Turks II: Religious Women (and Men)
Today the most contentious violation of the human and citizenship rights
of religious people is the ban on the headscarf. A survey conducted by Bogazici
University and the Open Society Foundation revealed that 93 percent of Turkish
people have no problem with the headscarf (Zaman, March 11, 2006). A majority
of people in fact consider themselves “religiously conservative” but ask for
change and more political liberties. Many Turkish women, rural and urban, wear
headscarves. Yet the notorious ban on the headscarf has persisted since the last
military coup in 1997, when the military ordered public institutions to deny access
to students and public servants who wear them. (Strange as it may seem, the
Turkish prime minister’s daughter does not have right to go to university in Turkey.)
The ban on the headscarf has been so strict that efforts to get around it have
been countered by increasingly drastic measures. Not only students who wear the
headscarf but also those who wear wigs in an effort to accommodate official demands
while still covering their hair are in some cases prevented from attending
university.
One of the victims of discrimination against headscarf-wearing students, Leyla
Sahin, took her case to the ECHR and argued that her right to education had
been violated. The ECHR decided that the Turkish state’s ban on the headscarf was
not a violation of her right to education. Accepting all assertions of the Turkish
32

Black Turks, White Turks: On the Three Requirements of Turkish Citizenship
state at face value, the court granted the Turkish state the right to restrict rights
to religious expression and education. Independent organizations such as Human
Rights Watch (HRW) expressed their disappointment over the ECHR decision.
Jonathan Sugden of HRW wrote that the decision “was disappointing for HRW,
but much more disappointing for the thousands of women who face the choice
of being denied higher education under Turkey’s headscarf ban, or having to go
through higher education dressed in a manner that offends their conscience…
Reading yesterday’s decision one is struck by the judges’ reluctance to really tease
out the issues, their too ready willingness to accept the government’s assertions,
and the presence of some rather glaring internal contradictions.”
People usually criticize the European discourse of human rights for claiming
universalism and seek to opt out of its jurisdiction. In this case, however, it was the
ECHR that betrayed its own claims to universalism by exempting discrimination
against headscarf-wearing students from its jurisdiction. The European court’s attitude
toward religious Turks stands in stark contrast to its attitude toward the
Kurds. Violations of the rights of religious people—and the headscarf issue in particular—have
been largely ignored in EU progress reports on Turkey’s accession.
Turkey may be an equal opportunity oppressor, but the European institutions certainly
have not proved an equal opportunity liberator for excluded groups.
To say that official ideology is against the headscarf is not entirely true. There is
one form of headscarf that is acceptable for the Turkish state: Grandma’s headscarf.
Religious women wearing the headscarf often hear the argument “my grandma
also wears a headscarf but yours is different.” The young women’s choice to wear
the headscarf is seen as offensive and antithetical to enlightenment and modernity.
To be more precise, there are only two modes of wearing a headscarf that are
considered legitimate: grandma’s and the servant’s. In the teleological progression
of Turkish modernity, both of them are not only accepted as legitimate figures but
deemed necessary to mark what has been left behind temporally (grandma) and
spatially (the peasant domestic servant). The grandmother symbolizes a tradition
we respectfully part ways with. She naturally and compassionately fades into the
sunset. The servant represents a miserable tradition that has been abandoned;
her continuing presence on the margins serves to remind us of how far we have
come on the road to modernity. Not surprisingly, a university student’s conscious
and individualistic decision to articulate a different way of being or an alternate
trajectory of progress is perceived as a threat. It is as though those who believed
that they have been marching along toward an imaginary destination have no assurance
of their progress but a backwards glimpse of their distant starting point.
33

MÜCAHİT BİLİCİ
Most Black Turks feel much
more comfortable in Western
democracies than they do at
home
They get disappointed and angry when
they see that the symbol of their assurance
has been moving alongside them,
thus nullifying their perceived progress
and self-legitimation.
That some White Turks feel offended when they see a religious woman or man
is peculiar. This would be a non-issue if it were only a matter of taste, but it is not.
We all ride trains where we travel with all kinds of people and feel not in the least
offended so long as everybody rides as an equal, “in his own seat.” In the Turkish
case, however, discomfort in the presence of certain others is very strong. It is a
feeling of being violated; it generates existential anxiety. Much could be said in
psychoanalytical terms about this particular feeling or pathos. Being offended by
someone else’s entry into Kantian moral autonomy, thus inflicting their presence
on us (and making us self-conscious) seems to generate “ressentiment” among the
Turkish ruling elite. Unfortunately this pathos is not confined to individual tastes.
It has, indeed, become the ground on which state policies and the infamous Turkish
notion of the public sphere is constructed. Not surprisingly most Black Turks
feel much more comfortable in Western democracies than they do at home.
Who are the White Turks?
A Kurd is not an ideal citizen. A religious Turk is not an ideal citizen. An Alevi
is not an ideal citizen. An Armenian, a Greek or a Jew is not an ideal citizen. An
atheist is not an ideal citizen but a devout believer is not an ideal citizen, either. A
woman who wears a miniskirt is not an ideal citizen and a woman wearing a long
skirt is not an ideal citizen, either.
White Turks are ideal Turkish citizens not by any virtue of their own, but because
they belong to the cultural milieu and the constitutive elite that initially defined
the notion of Turkishness. An ideal citizen identifies as Muslim, yet harbors
reservations about the forms of Islam practiced by the majority of the people. An
ideal citizen tends to subsume all ethnic identities—including his own, which is
most likely non-Turkish—under the banner of Turkishness. White Turks are typically
of immigrant background. They see the new land (Anatolia) and the new
country (Turkey) as their final “homeland.” Their experiences and values became
the values of the center of the Turkish Republic. In this way, a minority experience
and lifestyle acquired the trappings of the majority, while the actual majority
of Turks, the Black Turks, found themselves experiencing a discomfort usually
reserved for minorities.
34

Black Turks, White Turks: On the Three Requirements of Turkish Citizenship
Conclusion
Today, with the arrival of the
Black Turks and their powersharing
claims, what we see is a
conflict between two culturally
defined “classes” that represent
values and conceptions of
modernity with origins in
different times and places
In Turkey, the state is Janus faced.
It is Muslim against non-Muslims. It is
Sunni against Alevis. It is secular against
Sunnis. It is Hanafi against Shafiis. This
list can be expanded and other excluded
groups identified. The only group about
which the Turkish state has no reservations
about is the White Turks. One is
tempted to think that White Turks are
politically represented by the Republican People’s Party (CHP, Cumhuriyet Halk
Partisi), a party which includes the old-style bureaucratic as well as the military
elite and public servants. They benefit from official ideology in terms of income—
and more importantly in terms of status. They are the true citizens. Despite its
relatively small core constituency the Turkish state has been successful in mobilizing
various sectors of society against each other while keeping all at bay.
It is fair to say that if there were more non-Muslims in Turkey and if their rights
were better respected, Muslims who are religious would be freer. One reason the
Turkish state does not grant rights to the Greek Patriarchate is for fear that Muslims
following a civil Islam will ask for the same rights. In a sense, non-Muslims
are also paying the price for the repression of religious Muslims. Unfortunately,
the majority of mainstream Muslims are complicit in the Turkish state’s discrimination
against non-Muslims, Armenians or missionaries.
In the way of a conclusion, one may speculate that the current standoff in
Turkey seemingly between the Islamist-rooted AKP and secular forces of the establishment
(the judiciary, CHP and most importantly the military) is in fact a
conflict between the Balkans and Anatolia. The majority of White Turks belong
to an elite class of immigrants from the Balkans and the Caucasus. They built the
Turkish Republic on a peculiar diasporic ethos that led to the unhappy marriage
of Muslim nationalism and naive nineteenth century secularism. Their headlong
rush for modernity created the symbolic capital that allowed them to act as benefactors
of the nation and the rightful inheritors of its resources. Today, with the
arrival of the Black Turks and their power-sharing claims, what we see is a conflict
between two culturally defined “classes” that represent values and conceptions of
modernity with origins in different times and places.
35