Becoming Turkish deepens our understanding of the modernist nation-building processes in post—Ottoman Turkey through a rare perspective that stresses social and cultural dimensions and everyday negotiations of the Kemalist reforms. Yilmaz asks how the reforms were mediated on the ground and how ordinary citizens received, reacted to, and experienced them. She traces the experiences of the subaltern as well as the experiences of the elites and the mediators in the overall narrative—highlighting the relevance of class, gender, location, and urban and rural differences while also revealing the importance of nonideological, social, and psychological factors such as childhood and generations.

Religion and nationalism are two of the most powerful forces in the world. And as powerful as they are separately, humans throughout history have fused religious beliefs and nationalist politics to develop religious nationalism, which uses religious identity to define membership in the national community. But why and how have modern nationalists built religious identity as the foundational signifier of national identity in what sociologists have predicted would be a more secular world? This book takes two cases - nationalism in both Ireland and Turkey in the 20th century - as a foundation to advance a new theory of religious nationalism. By comparing cases, Goalwin emphasizes how modern political actors deploy religious identity as a boundary that differentiates national groups This theory argues that religious nationalism is not a knee-jerk reaction to secular modernization, but a powerful movement developed as a tool that forges new and independent national identities.

What is de facto about the de facto state? In Sovereignty Suspended, this question guides Rebecca Bryant and Mete Hatay through a journey into de facto state-building, or the process of constructing an entity that looks like a state and acts like a state but that much of the world says does not or should not exist. In international law, the de facto state is one that exists in reality but remains unrecognized by other states. Nevertheless, such entities provide health care and social security, issue identity cards and passports, and interact with international aid donors. De facto states hold elections, conduct censuses, control borders, and enact fiscal policies. Indeed, most maintain representative offices in sovereign states and are able to unofficially communicate with officials. Bryant and Hatay develop the concept of the "aporetic state" to describe such entities, which project stateness and so seem real, even as nonrecognition renders them unrealizable. Sovereignty Suspended is based on more than two decades of ethnographic and archival research in one so-called aporetic state, the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC). It traces the process by which the island's "north" began to emerge as a tangible, separate, if unrecognized space following violent partition in 1974. Like other de facto states, the TRNC looks and acts like a state, appearing real to observers despite international condemnations, denials of its existence, and the belief of large numbers of its citizens that it will never be a "real" state. Bryant and Hatay excavate the contradictions and paradoxes of life in an aporetic state, arguing that it is only by rethinking the concept of the de facto state as a realm of practice that we will be able to understand the longevity of such states and what it means to live in them.

The West's actions in the Middle East are based on a fundamental misunderstanding: political Islam is repeatedly assumed to be the main cause of conflict and unrest in the region. The idea that we can decipher Jihadist radicalization or problems in the Middle East simply by reading the Qur'an has now become symptomatic of our age. This dangerous over-simplification and the West's obsession with Islam dominates media and policy analysis, ultimately skewing intervention and preventing long-term solutions and stability in the region. Ömer Taspinar, who has 20 years' research and policymaking experience, explains here what is really going on in the Middle East. The book is based on three of the most pressing cases currently under the spotlight: the role of Erdogan and the unrest in Turkey; the sectarian clashes in Iraq, Syria, Yemen and Lebanon; and the existence of the so-called Islamic State. Islam is often seen as the root cause of the challenge associated with these cases. But by unpacking the real issues, such as entrenched authoritarianism, vast energy resources, excessive defense spending, and the youth bulge, the book demystifies what is happening and cites governance and nationalism as the main drivers of conflict. The book shows the importance of treating the causes – which are economic, social and institutional – rather than the symptom – the continued and growing success of Islamist parties and jihadist movements in assessing the Middle East. In revealing exactly how Islamism is activated and by analyzing the structural challenges of the region, this unique insider's account provides a map to understanding Middle Eastern wars and conflicts and the prospects for the future.

Nationalism was a defining characteristic of Turkey in the twentieth century and was a central driving force in Kemal Ataturk's foundation of the Republic in 1923. How did the prominence of Kemalist ways of political thinking affect its people and policies? Is Turkey making progress towards post-nationalism or post-Kemalism in the twenty-first century? To what extent has Turkey's EU candidature been a vehicle of transformation since 1999 and what would EU membership mean for modern Turkey? This book explores the historical impact of Turkish nationalism, anti- liberalism and Westernization and examines the conditions that have contributed to the country's evolution from a quasi-religious Kemalism. Tracing the development of nationalism from its founding period before the Young Turk Revolution of 1908 to Kemalism and the present AKP government- and analysing key factors such as the position of minorities in the Turkification process and the influence of religious politics-this strong and significant contribution casts a new light on a vivid international debate.

If the surface of Turkish politics has changed dramatically over the decades, the vocabulary for sorting these changes remains constant: Europe, Islam, minorities, the military, the founding father (Atatürk). This familiar vocabulary functions as more than a set of descriptors of institutions, phenomena, or issues to debate in public. These five primary “figures” emerge from national identity, public discourse, and scholarship about Turkey to represent Turkish history and political authority while also shaping history and political authority. These figures unify disparate phenomena into governable categories and index historical relations of power that define Turkish politics. As these concepts circulate, they operate as a shorthand for complex networks and histories of authority, producing and limiting ways of knowing Turkish modernity, democracy, and political culture. These figures not only are spoken and discussed in public, but they also produce the context into which they are projected, in a sense speaking on their own. Figures That Speak explores the diverse mobilization and production of history and power in the primary figures that circulate in discourse about Turkey.

Is Turkish nationalism simply a product of Kemalist propaganda from the early Turkish Republic or an inevitable consequence of a firm and developing 'Turkish' identity? How do the politics of nationalism and identity limit Turkey's progression towards a fuller, more institutionalised democracy? Turkish citizenship is a vital aspect of today's Republic, and yet it has long been defined only through legal framework, neglecting its civil, political, and social implications. Here, Basak Ince seeks to rectify this, examining the identity facets of citizenship, and how this relates to nationalism, democracy and political participation in the modern Turkish republic. By tracing the development of the citizenship from the initial founding of the Republic to the immediate post-World War II period, and from the military interventions of the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s to the present day, she offers in-depth analysis of the interaction of state and society in modern Turkey, which holds wider implications for the study of the Middle East.