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'Is the Turk a White Man?' Towards a Theoretical Framework for Race In This article was downloaded by: [Bilkent University] On: 13 January 2015, At: 00:02 Publisher: Routledge Informa Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK Middle Eastern Studies Publication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/fmes20 ‘Is the Turk a White Man?’ Towards a Theoretical Framework for Race in the Making of Turkishness Murat Ergin Published online: 03 Nov 2008. To cite this article: Murat Ergin (2008) ‘Is the Turk a White Man?’ Towards a Theoretical Framework for Race in the Making of Turkishness, Middle Eastern Studies, 44:6, 827-850, DOI: 10.1080/00263200802425973 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00263200802425973 PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information (the “Content”) contained in the publications on our platform. However, Taylor & Francis, our agents, and our licensors make no representations or warranties whatsoever as to the accuracy, completeness, or suitability for any purpose of the Content. Any opinions and views expressed in this publication are the opinions and views of the authors, and are not the views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of the Content should not be relied upon and should be independently verified with primary sources of information. Taylor and Francis shall not be liable for any losses, actions, claims, proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages, and other liabilities whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with, in relation to or arising out of the use of the Content. This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Any substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing, systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms- and-conditions Middle Eastern Studies, Vol. 44, No. 6, 827–850, November 2008 ‘Is the Turk a White Man?’ Towards a Theoretical Framework for Race in the Making of Turkishness MURAT ERGIN A heated debate broke out in Turkey in 2004 after a Turkish-Armenian newspaper claimed that the adopted daughter of the republic’s founder, Atatu¨rk, had Armenian origins.1 Although some were quick to denounce the hunt for origins as an exercise in ‘outdated racism’,2 others considered the claim a conspiracy by external powers against the unity of the Turkish state.3 Soon, the military leadership issued a statement criticizing the news as an attack on Turkey’s national unity and reminding of the civic definition of Turkish citizenship as outlined in the constitution. The military’s response is a dramatic example of how seemingly incongruous views on Turkish identity can coexist even within the same statement. The military’s almost reflexive use of the image of a nation under threat in response to revelations of ethnic difference shows the uneasy fit between Turkishness and Turkish citizenship. The reference to the constitution in the military’s statement, however, showed the powerful appeal of civic citizenship. Increasing global influences on society, a general trend of economic and political liberalization starting in the 1980s, and the arduous process of application for full membership in the European Union have all contributed to the foregrounding of issues of identity in Turkey. Yet the search for the meaning of Turkishness is not new. Two decades after a 1909 New York Times article discussing the question of Turks’ whiteness in the context of immigration policies cheekily asked ‘Is the Turk a Downloaded by [Bilkent University] at 00:02 13 January 2015 White Man?’,4 a full-fledged scientific mobilization was underway for the purpose of establishing the whiteness and Europeanness of Turks in historical, linguistic, and racial terms. Although the discourse with which identity battles are fought has changed, substantive issues tend to linger. Therefore, in the process of the search for a contemporary identity several issues implicitly or explicitly have revolved around the ethno-racial legacy of the early republican period (1923–50). The most prominent among these are minority rights, the content of Turkishness, negotiating a national culture in a global world, and reformulations of citizenship. Scholarship on Turkey needs to investigate the racial legacy of the early republican period in order to analyze identity issues in contemporary Turkey. The first aim of this article is to build theoretical connections between racial vocabularies in Turkey and the scholarship on race and whiteness. The persistence of race in the Turkish context has tremendous potential for contributing to the ISSN 0026-3206 Print/1743-7881 Online/08/060827-24 ª 2008 Taylor & Francis DOI: 10.1080/00263200802425973 828 M. Ergin literature on race and its global variations. In this sense, an ambitious question drives this essay: do the many variations in the meaning and operation of race render the concept empty and defunct? Although no single study can answer this question, the key lies in building a theoretical framework that puts emphasis on transnational linkages while examining local responses to worldwide currents. This emphasis is needed because the affinity between race and modernity exposes the global character of race. However, racial discourses show a great deal of mutability in their meaning and operation within different settings of modernity. In this sense, the truly remarkable and yet ignored role of racial discourses in the construction of Turkishness during the first half of the twentieth century not only brings to the fore an under-studied case, but also provides an opportunity to tackle the question of whether race maintains conceptual consistency in the midst of contextual variation, or whether the insidious operation of racial differentiation loses its specificity across different settings, so much so that the concept could be surrendered to a broader approach based on dynamics of inclusion and exclusion. Another aim of this article is to link race and modernity within the Turkish experience, thus stressing the circulation of racial discourses in local settings. While it is important to see the contributions of the Turkish case to broader questions, it is equally important to locate racial discourses in Turkey by using a broad theoretical perspective. I will draw upon critical race theory and whiteness studies, arguing that, despite the contextual differences in which these perspectives emerged, we can understand the Turkish experience better by recognizing the conceptual autonomy of race. Despite the close links between race, ethnicity, and nationalism, the literature on nationalism, if used alone, runs the risk of reducing the conceptual wealth and prevalence of race merely into efforts of nation-building. After critically evaluating five prevalent views that assign an aberrational and epiphenomenal role to race in Turkey, I will argue that one needs to take the role of race in Turkish modernity seriously. Finally, this contribution seeks historical links between racial ideas in the early republican history and those in contemporary Turkey, establishing temporal connections between past and present. Temporal connections are important in debunking the widespread myth that racial vocabularies of the republican era have no bearing on contemporary Turkish society. When examining the legacy of early republican racial discourses, I will identify two important consequences. The first Downloaded by [Bilkent University] at 00:02 13 January 2015 one has to do with a broader influence in which racial assumptions, historically embedded in Turkish identity, create a sense of immutability and timelessness. The second consequence is narrower and focuses on a fascination with skin colour and related physiognomic features, which I call chromatism. The manifestations of these racial discourses usually spill over into the cultural terrain and metastasize into taken-for-granted assumptions. The following section will define and situate the terms immutability and chromatism in greater detail. After a discussion on the extent of racial discourses in early republican Turkey, the article will critically evaluate five perspectives that treat race epiphenomenally and examine the legacy of racial discourses in contemporary Turkey. We live in a world in which there is racism without racists. The discursive defeat of racist ideologies throughout the world in the face of the horrendous consequences of ‘Is the Turk a White Man?’ 829 racist regimes did not result in immediate de facto racial equality. Not surprisingly, race and racism are touchy subjects when analyzing the early republican experience. Most recently, a book on the role of race science in republican anthropology5 has stirred controversy among scholars and intellectuals about the validity of race as a lens for understanding Turkish history.6 The book’s claims and methodology encountered a cool reception from scholars. At the heart of the debate were the author’s attempts to gauge the ‘racist’ aspects of Turkish anthropology in the 1930s, which raised the question as to whether using ‘racism’ for the Turkish case overstretches the term, especially considering the data at hand. Attempts to explore the connections between race and Turkishness have to find a fine balance between emphasizing
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