Modernlik Nostaljisi

Politics, History, and Culture

by Esra Özyürek

As the twentieth century drew to a close, the unity and authority of the secularist Turkish state were challenged by the rise of political Islam and Kurdish separatism on the one hand and by the increasing demands of the European Union, the International Monetary Fund, and the World Bank on the other. While the Turkish government had long limited Islam—the religion of the overwhelming majority of its citizens—to the private sphere, it burst into the public arena in the late 1990s, becoming part of party politics. As religion became political, symbols of Kemalism—the official ideology of the Turkish Republic founded by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk in 1923—spread throughout the private sphere. In Nostalgia for the Modern, Esra Özyürek analyzes the ways that Turkish citizens began to express an attachment to—and nostalgia for—the secularist, modernist, and nationalist foundations of the Turkish Republic.

Drawing on her ethnographic research in Istanbul and Ankara during the late 1990s, Özyürek describes how ordinary Turkish citizens demonstrated their affinity for Kemalism in the ways they organized their domestic space, decorated their walls, told their life stories, and interpreted political developments. She examines the recent interest in the private lives of the founding generation of the Republic, reflects on several privately organized museum exhibits about the early Republic, and considers the proliferation in homes and businesses of pictures of Atatürk, the most potent symbol of the secular Turkish state. She also explores the organization of the 1998 celebrations marking the Republic’s seventy-fifth anniversary. Özyürek’s insights into how state ideologies spread through private and personal realms of life have implications for all societies confronting the simultaneous rise of neoliberalism and politicized religion.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Anthropology, Politics, Islam

258 pages, Paperback

First published August 9, 2006

Reviews

[Steve Chisnell · Rating 3 out of 5]

What happens when the semiotics of Foucault meets a dissertation student's desire to understand the cultural shifts in her home country? The result is Nostalgia for the Modern , a close examination of the mythologizing of Kemal Ataturk. The Children of the Republic, those who were born during the early 20th-century reign of the Founder, allowed a utopian ideal of a secular Islamic state to supplant their own personal identities. Now, as Turkey is pulled to the West by EU dreams and IMF/IBRD reforms and pulled to a conservative center by Muslim fundamentalism, many Turks have inherited this fictional idealism of Ataturk and have transplanted its politics into their private lives. Building on a fairly solid foundation of semiology and ethnography, Ozyurek offers fascinating portrayals of the average citizen and briefly speculates what is at stake for her country.

[Mert Esen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Esra Özyürek explores how Kemalism was revived in Turkish society during the early 2000s, just after the February 28 process and the rise of the AK Party. The book examines how the state's establishment formed an alliance with Kemalist segments of society, using various cultural practices such as exhibitions, national celebrations, and consumer culture to reproduce Kemalist ideology. Through these examples, Özyürek shows how nostalgia for Kemalism was woven into everyday life, offering valuable insights into the socio-political dynamics of the time and its relevance today. For anyone looking to understand the dynamics of early 2000s Turkey, this book serves as an important resource, helping readers grasp how the Kemalist narrative was reshaped to confront the growing influence of political Islam. It also provides valuable insights for understanding today’s political and cultural climate in Turkey.