Beyond Turkey’s Borders: Long-Distance Kemalism, State Politics and the Turkish Diaspora 9780755607532, 9781780760872

Citation preview

To Christopher

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LIST OF ILLUSTR ATIONS

Figures Figure 1 Figure 2 Figure 3 Figure 4 Figure 5 Figure 6 Figure 7 Figure 8 Figure 9

Figure 10 Figure 11 Figure 12 Figure 13 Figure 14

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Atatürk images on the Bondi Pavilion Wall Atatürk images on the Bondi Pavilion Wall First Turkish assisted passage migrants arrive at Sydney First Turkish assisted passage migrants arrive at Sydney Solcu (Leftist)–Sağcı (Rightist) ‘From where to where’ Sydney Turkish Welfare and Cultural Centre Leftist–Rightist–Islamist Children sitting around the bust of Atatürk during the award ceremony at Turkish House Atatürk Monument on Anzac Parade, Canberra Conference on the occasion of the 125th anniversary of the birth of Atatürk Commemoration of the Martyrs and Mehmet Akif Ersoy Auburn Gallipoli Mosque A cartoon playing with Kemalist class distinctions

2 2 43 43 58 67 73 90

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LIST

Figure 15 Figure 16 Figure 17

Figure 18 Figure 19 Figure 20 Figure 21 Figure 22 Figure 23

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ILLUSTR ATIONS

A cartoon speculating over the change of dress code A cartoon juxtaposing Erdoğan and Atatürk A cartoon displaying Atatürk complaining to his doctor about the current situation of the country ‘You are with us. Forever . . .’ ‘We are missing you with gratitude, pride and yearning’ ‘Gallipoli impassable’ Scenes from Gallipoli Scenes from the fashion show Scenes from the fashion show

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190 191 191 195 196 218 218

Tables Table 1

Number of Turkish-born persons in Australia, Censuses 1901–2006

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Maps Map 1

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Turkish-born population by state and territory, 2006

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PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This book is a study of Turkish nationalism and secularism abroad. Drawing on two years of fieldwork in Sydney it explores the phenomenon that I call trans-Kemalism, the cross-border work of the Turkish State in its ceaseless project of retooling or even reconfiguring its citizens outside of Turkey according to its ideology of Kemalism. Its subject is the Turkish state’s injection of its presence into the everyday life of the Turkish diaspora through the work of its consular institutions, its management of Turkish Muslims and Turkish Islam, and through its sponsoring of an assortment of rituals celebrating the official history of the Republic. Yet this mission is impossible without a willing body of citizens intent on living out (and propagating) the major tenets of Kemalism themselves. This book then also examines Turkish immigrants’ agency in reproducing this Kemalist ideology. It uses the suggestive frame of ‘long-distance nationalism’ for describing and analysing their everyday forms of political participation in Turkish and Australian domestic politics. The long-distance nationalism investigated in this study is an unusual one, compared to its more standard forms where nationalists constitute a minority ethnic group in exile suppressed by the state. Kemalist long-distance nationalism is different, given its origin in the ruling segment of the Turkish population. Despite its enduring transnational presence, the diasporic politics of the Turkish state has constituted a neglected research subject,

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PREFACE

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

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especially compared to the huge amount of research produced on Turkish emigration and Turkish migrants. Most studies of political transnationalism in the Turkish diaspora context have examined Kurdish, Alevi and Islamist grassroots politics in their political struggle against the Turkish state. This absence constitutes a puzzle: one would have thought that as research on Islamic actors sensitively explores the social practices of Muslims and the ramifications of their visibility in and beyond Turkey, secular actors too would have become exposed, visibly different alongside Muslim figures, suddenly an identifiable ‘counter’ counter-public in turn. Why then this scant interest in secularist Kemalist actors abroad, in stark contrast to the burgeoning scholarship on the lives, organisations and activities of Turkish Muslims in the diaspora that has accrued over the last two decades? The difference now is the profound social, political and economic transformations in Turkey over the last decade, triggered by the electoral victories of the Justice and Development Party (AKP) and the growing assertiveness of Muslims in Turkish politics. These changes have been the immediate context of my fieldwork in Sydney, marked by many Kemalists’ perceived thwarting of political agency and loss of status and significance. Feelings of disillusionment, anxiety, and outrage with the current political scene in Turkey constitute the emotional tenor of secularists who now feel themselves to be in the unwanted position of ‘political exiles.’ The sense of ‘persecution’ motivates social action. During the period of my research, events in Turkey were not only closely followed through the Internet and the media, but were also responded to through the actions of both individual Kemalists and Kemalist organisations in Australia. *** No study of this kind would be possible without the help and forbearance of Turkish people in Sydney who generously opened their lives to me while making time to talk, think and explore Turkish politics and history. In particular Gün Gencer, Doğan Bey, Rıza Bey, Leyla Hanım, Adnan Bey, Ahmet Bey, Arzu Hanım, and Ali Bey were both kind and critical in their comments and accounts of Kemalism,

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although I should note here too that they will not always agree with my conclusions. I must express special thanks to Aşkın Baran and Beşir Karasu for allowing me to use their newspaper files and for their unceasing assistance and interest in my research. I also have a long list of acknowledgments and grateful thanks to express to a host of people who have facilitated the writing of this book. Among these are the Faculty of Arts at Macquarie University in Sydney for research funding and other support, the Migration Research Programme at Koc University (MiReKoc) for a generous research grant, and the School of Social and Political Sciences at the University of Melbourne for a grant towards the editorial costs of this manuscript. I am most grateful to Jim Houston for his incisive editing of this book. Jim’s influence over the manuscript was more than an editorial one. He helped me crystallise my arguments and his first-hand experience of and comments on the Australian policy of multiculturalism were extremely useful. I have also been fortunate to receive the very helpful editorial assistance of Maria Marsh and Nadine El-Hadi at I.B.Tauris, as well as their patient responses to my continual enquiries and their great care over the production of the book. During my doctoral study at Macquarie University, I was fortunate to receive the academic guidance and friendly care of my supervisors Amanda Wise and Selvaraj Velayutham. Their sagely advice, constructive criticisms and support made the worries of composition easier to bear. Thanks too to little Leela for her sweet interruptions. My wonderful colleagues at Macquarie University provided me with invaluable intellectual and friendly company during the different stages of writing. Generous friends not only have put up with my occasionally bad-tempered moods, but have also kept me up -to- date on social eruptions in Turkey. Here I would like to thank Can Yalçınkaya, Onur Ateş, Armen Gakavian, Sean Durbin, Kylie Sait and Nilgün Dursun for their friendships. I wish to express my deep indebtedness to Ahmet İçduygu whose influence is far from being confined to this book. Throughout my journey as an academic-in-becoming Ahmet has been both a continuing inspiration and a source of encouragement.

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

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I also wish to name my parents Gönül and Erdal, to thank them for their boundless support and love through the long years of my learning to crawl before I could walk. And finally, I thank my partner Christopher Houston, whose mark is evident on all of these pages for many reasons. Without his loving support, critical comments, and much needed sense of humour this book would never have happened.

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INTRODUCTION

In the era of globalisation, it is the nationalists, not the workers who ‘have no country’. Ghassan Hage, 20031

Atatürk at Bondi Beach Posted up on the Pavilion Wall six faces of Mustafa Kemal (Atatürk) overlook Sydney’s famous Bondi Beach. They are a copy of a photograph replicated on the Turkish Five-Lira note. Unlike the graffiti characters surrounding him, Atatürk appears classy in his black tuxedo, a symbol that has long reminded Turks of his leadership in ‘Western’ fashion. Who was the ‘artist’ who placed a poster of Atatürk – literally Father Turk – on a wall covered with graffiti? Was the poster an artistic project? Why did s/he choose Bondi to display the national icon of Turkey and of Turkish nationalism? Was it because Bondi Beach itself constitutes an Australian national icon? Or was it a political statement, to which the crowd on the beach were blithely oblivious? This book presents an ethnographic study of Turkish secular nationalism in Australia. It explores the transnational political processes that might motivate a Turkish migrant in Sydney to stencil the faces of Atatürk on the city’s public space. Accordingly it is also a study of long-distance ‘Atatürk-ism.’ Unlike most studies of the nationalism of the ‘diasporas’ originating from Turkey, the focus of this book is not the activities of Kurds or Alevis. Rather it is an investigation of Turkish laic Kemalists, who take their name from Mustafa

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Figures 1&2 Atatürk images on the Bondi Pavilion Wall (Source: author’s own)

Kemal (dubbed Atatürk) (1881–1938), founder (with others) of the Turkish Republic. Kemalism has constituted the official ideology of the authoritarian and secularist Turkish Republic since its establishment in 1923. Unlike the abundance of scholarly work focusing on the transnational activities of Kurdish, Alevi and various Islamist emigrant

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INTRODUCTION

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groups in their political struggles against the Turkish state, there has been a striking lack of scholarship on the political mobilisation of Kemalist Turks. This study then is not about those who feel they have been misrepresented and marginalised by the Turkish Republic, but rather concentrates on the political practices and self-understanding of Kemalists, often accused of orchestrating that very misrepresentation and marginalisation of ‘others.’ Why is there a Kemalist long-distance nationalism, if Kemalists have been thought to be the ‘masters’ of the Turkish nation, and if Kemalism continues to be the official state ideology in Turkey today? The answer lies in the profound transformation of Turkey since the mid-1980s that has facilitated the rise of certain counter-hegemonic political movements, Islamist, Kurdish, and Alevite in particular. The ruthless suppression of the Left in Turkey since the 1980 military coup and an increasing mobility of people within and beyond national borders have provided a limited opening for the emergence of these social movements. In the process they have challenged the authoritarian and monolithic ideology of the Republican state while raising the issue of human rights and democratic reform in Turkey. Although the political agendas and strategies of these political movements have differed, intrinsic to each of them is an attempt to challenge the legitimacy and power of the dominant Kemalist subject. By this I mean their opposition to the politics of distinction pursued by Kemalists in their self-aggrandisement as ‘modern.’ The crisis of legitimation that these movements have engendered has not necessarily resulted in the institutions of the Kemalist state losing their ability to mould social reality. Despite the growing paranoia of contemporary Kemalists over the election and re-election of the proIslamist Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi (AKP) (Justice and Development Party) in 2002, 2007 and 2011 respectively, the key state institutions established by the Kemalists in the early years of the Republic and renovated by the military after the 1980 coup are all still in place. The Kemalist state continues to use the education system, the media, the religious institutions and the cultural sphere to reinforce the social framework established in the early Republican period. Most importantly for this study, the Turkish state has long extended its project of

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Kemalist social engineering (or trans-Kemalism) beyond its national territory. It uses various means both to politicise and mobilise Turkish migrants in the diaspora.2 In brief, the long-distance nationalisms which this book deals with involve not only Kemalists themselves, but also the Turkish state. I argue that analysis of the state’s attempts to reconfigure the identities of Turkish people in the diaspora is necessary for a critical examination of the nationalist discourses and practices of individual Kemalists. Both forces sustain a trans-Kemalist political field in Australia.

The ideology and practice of Kemalism To study the intricate nature of the connections between migrant and state-initiated political activities that generate Turkish secular nationalism in Australia, at least three fundamental aspects of the history of modernity in Turkey are crucial; one, the conception of ‘Turkish’ identity in Turkish nationalism; two, Kemalism’s stance towards Islam; and three, civil-military relations. Having both contributed to and emerged from the demise of the Ottoman Empire, the Turkish Republic was established by a coalition of forces led by Mustafa Kemal after the First World War. The new state was declared in 1923 with Mustafa Kemal as its first president. Gathered around him, a bureaucratic elite declared their ambition to create a new nation with a new national identity. The constitutive element of this identity was ‘Turkishness’, claimed to indicate both a shared common culture and an ethnic core. Searching for a unifying myth, Kemalist nation-builders argued that Turks represent one of the oldest civilisations in the world, whose ethnic origins were rooted in Central Asia yet whose presence in Anadolu (Anatolia) dated to pre-historic times. Paradoxically, in the discourse of the Republican cadres Anadolu came to be rhetorically constructed as both the native land of the Turks and hence the source of ‘authentic’ Turkish culture, and as conquered by the Turkish tribes in their migration from east to west. The official history as declared in the 1930s constituted an endeavour by the nationalist elite to find ‘glory in a history that never was.’3

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INTRODUCTION

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One key aspect of this national imaginary was a desire to quarantine its version of history from the Ottoman past. The Kemalists claimed the Republic to be radically different from the Ottoman Empire in at least two fundamental ways. First, unlike the multiethnic, multi-religious and multi-lingual state of social relations that were accepted during the Ottoman era, the Republican nationstate would exist ‘for the Turks’ only. It was assumed that the new national identity would be ethnically and linguistically homogeneous, and that Turkishness would form the core of this identity. One strategy pursued to manage the ethnic fault lines that the new policies were generating was to identify all Muslims as ‘Turks.’ For example, Kurdish speakers who constituted the largest Muslim ethnic minority in Turkey were declared to be ‘mountain Turks.’4 A second strategy adopted to fabricate an ethnic homogeneity in Anatolia was the forced emigration of non-Muslim minorities, in particular of Greeks, Armenians and Jews.5 This was most explicit in the deportation of the majority of Turkey’s Armenians to various countries in Mesopotamia in the years 1915–18 (under the Ottomans), during which some 1.5 million Armenians died or were killed en route,6 and the expulsion of more than a million Greeks in 1923. The Christian population (excluding Armenians) declined from about 450,000 in 1914 to 240,000 in 1927.7 The policies and practices undertaken in the process of Turkification were not limited to forced emigration. They also included the campaign called ‘Citizen, Speak Turkish!’ in 1928; the recruitment of non-Muslim men to the military as reserve forces in 1941; the discriminatory Capital Levy Tax of 1942; and the 6–7 September (1955) events – a state-initiated riot against nonMuslims in Pera, a district in Istanbul. Critical reference to these events in Turkey, particularly the Armenian massacre, brings the possibility of state prosecution or worse (assassination) to those who do so. In Australia too, as explored in this book, reference to this war named Kurtuluş Savaşı (War of Liberation) is heavily policed by Turkish nationalists. A second aspect of Turkish modernity that constituted a radical departure from the legacy of the Ottoman Empire related to the role of Islam in the organisation of public life. With the declaration of

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the Republic, the new regime embarked on a comprehensive program of reorganising Islam in the Republic’s social fabric. In this highly interventionist endeavour, a wide range of reforms were introduced in every sphere of social life: the abolition of the office of the Caliphate (1924); the banning of the wearing of the fez (male religious headgear) and religion-based clothing such as the veil and turban (1925); the closing down of the dervish orders and medreses (religious educational institutions) (1925); the adoption of the Western calendar and system of weights (1925); the replacement of Islamic law with the Swiss civil code and the Italian penal code (1926); the replacing of the Arabic alphabet by the Latin alphabet (1928); the use of the Turkish language in the Islamic call to prayer (1932); and the elimination of Islamic symbols from emerging modernist public places in the country’s town and cities. Plans to sterilise the urban landscape against Islam reached such extremes that a new capital city – the modernist Ankara – was built to replace Istanbul, the city that had long served as capital of the Ottoman Empire. The modernising reforms executed by a now Jacobinist state in a topdown manner ‘showed a clear distaste for religion.’8 These reforms not only destroyed the Islam of the Ottomans, but also alienated the bulk of society. As Kadıoğlu argues, the reforms constituted an onslaught against existing cultural practices. ‘[The Kemalists] opted for a general state of amnesia which would lead to a process of estrangement of the people from some of their own cultural practices.’9 Feroz Ahmad contends that with the sudden changing of the alphabet, ‘Overnight, virtually the entire nation was made illiterate.’10 Nevertheless, many accounts of the reforms directed at Islam miss their most important aspect. With the establishment of the Directorate of Religious Affairs in 1924 Islam was reorganised for service to the new nation-state.11 The incorporation of Islam into a state bureaucracy facilitated a new governance of Muslims and mosques. Describing an existing reality, laicité (secularism) was officially declared in 1931 as one of the six fundamental principles of the Kemalist ideology (along with republicanism, nationalism, populism, statism, secularism and reformism). As the vast literature on secularism in Turkey has indicated, this term has distinctive meanings in

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INTRODUCTION

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the Turkish context. First, it does not facilitate a separation between state affairs and religious affairs in which the state is neutral towards denominational groups. On the contrary, it places religion under state control.12 Second, it is a didactic form of secularism,13 serving to impose a Western way of living (‘a form of authoritarian Westernism’ as Yavuz calls it14). Third, the bodies of Muslim women have been pivotal in the shaping and representing of Turkish secularism. The authoritarian project aimed to constitute new gender-specific ways of being and living, ‘transmitted primarily by women via their changing intimacies with men in the newly constituted public sphere.’15 The contemporary rejection of the demands of Muslims to wear the headscarf in public institutions should therefore be understood in this context.16 A final key aspect of Turkish modernity intimately linked to this study’s analysis is the deeply rooted tradition of civil-military relations in Turkey. Since the founding of the Republic one unchanging tradition in Turkish political life has been the Turkish Armed Forces’ (TAF) instituting themselves as a legitimate actor in political decisionmaking.17 In this process, the military positions itself as the guardian of ‘national’ interests, and asserts extensive autonomy vis-à-vis both civilians and the elected governments. The present constitution allows it to initiate and veto policy without being subject to any democratic checks and balances. And, as the long record of military interventions in Turkey (1960, 1971, 1980, 1997) demonstrates, it can even take over political governance if it perceives that the civilian politicians need to be brought into line. In this undemocratic political culture, elected political actors are allowed to play their roles in a system in which more powerful state actors have the last word.18 The presence of the military in public affairs and its influence over political decision-making has been further consolidated in the post1980 period. One institutional mechanism enabling this has been the National Security Council (NSC),19 established by the military regime after the 1980 coup. In the 1990s, ‘national security’ became the most popular discourse of army officials. This discourse took its boldest form when the TAF intervened in the civilian sphere once again in 1997, forcing the pro-Islamic Welfare Party-led coalition

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government to resign and the Welfare Party to close down.20 As Cizre notes: [In the course of the 1990s] the main instrument affecting the military’s expanded influence over Turkey’s political development and its autonomy from civilian actors has been the redefinition of the ‘national security concept.’ Internal political discord has been re-interpreted in the language of internal security threats. Hence, Islamic activism [irtica] and Kurdish nationalism were singled out as internal security threats and given primacy over the external ones. The TAF has expanded the scope of its guardianship mission by securitizing the country’s serious, but essentially political problems . . . It is the translation of national security into laws, decrees and regulations that in fact gives the Turkish military a wide latitude in policy-making and law enforcement.21 As Cizre’s work makes clear, the military uses diverse means to shape the socialising process of the populace. These include a military schooling system, compulsory military service, the military’s mobilisation of ‘friendly’ media and its direct involvement in the civilian education system since 1926: military officers teach compulsory national security courses in Turkish high schools.22 The military expanded its tactics in the new political context of the 2000s, an era marked by the electoral victory of the AKP – an offshoot of the Welfare Party – in the 2002, 2007 and 2011 general elections respectively. In its intensifying political war against the AKP government, the military pursued the strategy of ‘streamlining’ the thoughts of the society by gaining the popular support of various actors in the academy, civil society, students, think-tanks, media and artistic communities.23 Such efforts yielded some of the results desired by the military. In April 2007, massive protests were held against the AKP government in Ankara, Istanbul and Izmir under the name of ‘republican rallies.’ Hundreds of NGOs took part in the organisation of these demonstrations, with two prominent Kemalist groups at the forefront: the

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INTRODUCTION

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Atatürkist Thought Association (ADD) and the Support for Modern Life Association (ÇYDD). A year after the rallies it came to light that a clandestine Kemalist ultra-laicist and ultra-nationalist network named Ergenekon was influential in mobilising these ‘civil’ society organisations. This para-military network is made up of retired army officers, media patrons, journalists and others alleged to have been committed to the overthrow of the AKP government by provoking a military coup through a series of political assassinations (including the assassination of Turkish Armenian intellectual Hrant Dink in 2007). Since July 2008, over a hundred people have been arrested in Turkey – including several army generals and a former secretary-general of the National Security Council – and charged with organizing this violent opposition.24 These ongoing events in Turkey, including the planning of at least three military coups since 2002, have been the highly relevant context of my fieldwork in Australia. In a nutshell, the category of ‘civil society’ in Turkey is as highly problematical as the concept of secularism. This is not to say that there are no autonomous non-governmental organisations (NGOs) NGOs in Turkey, independent from the state; but it is to argue that there are entrenched covert links between the military and the laic civil society groups, at least when their political struggle against what they claim to be ‘political Islam’ is concerned. As Cizre rightly argues, ‘The real secret behind the TAF’s continuing domination in Turkey lies not in its role of guarding the republic coercively, but in the more subtle form of power relations that it has successfully developed with the Turkish public to evince consent and approval through seemingly non-repressive methods.’25 The implications of all of these factors for political configurations among Turkish diasporic communities in Australia have been profound. During the period of my research, events in Turkey were not only closely followed on the Internet and in the media, but were also responded to through the activities of Atatürkist organisations in Australia. For example, following the first wave of republican rallies in 2007, the Australian Atatürk Cultural Centre held meetings to discuss how Kemalists in Sydney could provide support to the secularist NGOs in Turkey. First-hand information about the mass protests was delivered by those who had attended the rallies. The members

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of the organisation also brainstormed about how to ‘win’ the support of Turkish young people in Sydney in the political struggle against Muslims. Moreover, Mustafa Balbay, the Ankara correspondent of the Kemalist daily Cumhuriyet, was invited to Sydney to deliver a series of talks on the ‘anti-laicist’ policies of the AKP government. His talks managed to attract the attention of hundreds of Turks in Sydney. Not long after returning to Turkey, the journalist was arrested for being a member of Ergenekon. What all this highlights is that there is an intense and immediate flow of information between Turkey and Australia, generated through the activities of Turkish organisations, through the visits of political actors from Turkey and through the use of media. These processes, along with many others, contribute to the constitution of a Turkish political transnational field in Australia in which Turkish politics is debated, given meaning and responded to by Kemalists in Sydney.

Plan of the book This book is located within the theoretical terrains of transnationalism and diaspora studies. It explores the production of Turkish secularnationalism in Australia by elucidating two different but related processes: first, the political transnationalism engineered by the Turkish state to nationalise Turkish migrants living in the diaspora; and second, the bottom-up transnationalism engaged in by Turkish immigrants themselves in their production of long-distance ‘Kemalism.’ Accordingly a key argument of the study is that the transnational field emergent in this diasporic context is best understood by investigating the conflicts and confluences that emerge between state-initiated and migrant-initiated discourses and practices. Let me give one brief example. On 16 November 2008 the Australian government-funded television network SBS broadcast a programme in which certain remarks about the ‘Armenian genocide’ were aired. The next day the Turkish Embassy in Canberra and the Consulate in Sydney e-mailed their long lists of Turkish contacts in Australia asking them to complain to the television network. The result was the inundation of the television network by a torrent of standardised letters. In brief, the

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INTRODUCTION

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emerging transnational political space in this diasporic context cannot be mapped and analysed unless we address in tandem both the Turkish state’s diaspora politics and the political activities of Turkish migrants. Turkish-Australians offer an interesting case for exploring a political transnational field for a number of reasons. Firstly, current domestic developments in Turkey have engendered a power struggle among various political actors (military, AKP, judiciary institutions, etc.), which is redefining the parameters of Turkish politics not only in Turkey,26 but also in the diaspora. This power struggle has provided a new political context for Turkish migrants, especially for politically active Kemalists, to follow and respond to what is happening in Turkey. Second, Turkish migrants in Australia constitute a heterogeneous group in terms of their ethnic and religious identities and political orientation. They also include labour migrants, political refugees and those who migrated either through family reunion or skilled migration schemes. Third, although Turkish migration was initiated by Australia to expand the workforce, the flow presents an exception within the general framework of Turkish labour movements, given that it was towards a traditionally migrant-receiving country with a policy promoting settler migration. More importantly, there is a range of mechanisms and institutions established by Australian governments that the Turkish state and Turkish nationalists have taken advantage of to pursue their own agenda. The most important of these are ‘Saturday Schools’ for learning Turkish, the government funding of such ‘ethnic’ schools and the national policy of multiculturalism that facilitates migrant groups’ production of cultural activities. I argue that with its distinctive immigration and citizenship policies Australian multiculturalism has facilitated various dimensions of the Turkish political transnational field. In it the Australian state’s own ongoing project of managing ethnic diversity articulates with the Turkish state’s longdistance mobilisation. Finally, this migration context is also relatively under-studied. It is not possible to mention a single study examining the expressions of Turkish transnationalism – let alone political transnationalism – in Australia. In the main, Turkish migration to Australia has been studied by Turkish and Australian academics with

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a concentration on the settlement experiences of the first-generation of Turkish migrants residing in the city of Melbourne.27 A stream of policy-oriented research followed this earlier work, directed at issues around social adaptation into the host society.28 Investigating the transnational connections emerging in this context is also vital for another reason. The rather unusual choice of Australia as a case to explore the Turkish political transnationalism will allow us to consider the value of a range of hypotheses resorted to in transnationalism studies with an aim to explain the determinants of this phenomenon. These so-called determinants vary, on one hand, between emigrant group-specific factors such as age, gender, educational status, the length of time spent in the receiving country, the size and strategic importance of the emigrant population, the geographical proximity of the diaspora to the country of origin and other factors that take into account the structural imperatives facing developing nations and international norms. For example, Portes and his colleagues make the statement that ‘the more distant the nation of origin is the less dense the set of transnational enterprises, other things being equal.’29 In his work on the transnational activities of the Haitian state, Laguerre counts, among others, the size and the strategic importance of the diaspora as factors that determine sending state-diaspora relations.30 Some argue that ‘exclusivist’ host country regimes generate stronger transnational orientation among migrants than in those pursuing inclusivist policies. For example, Portes holds the view that ‘transnational activities flourish in highly concentrated communities, especially those that have been subjected to a hostile reception by the host society’s authorities and citizenry.’31 He asserts that immigrants in such exclusive contexts are more prone to cross-border activities and civic associations as these ‘offer a source of solace against external hostility and protect personal dignities threatened by it.’32 In the light of these predictive propositions, one would not expect to find much of that transnational engagement between the Turkish state and Turkish people living in Australia. First, unlike other Turkish diasporic contexts, Turkish immigrants in Australia are geographically out of Turkey’s sight. They are relatively smaller in size and are not accorded a particular strategic importance, in contrast to

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INTRODUCTION

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the Turkish people living in Europe, given that Turkey’s prospective membership of the European Union is a major concern of the Turkish state. Nor have Turkish immigrants in Australia been establishing their lives in a country where they are subject to exclusive and antagonistic forms of migrant incorporation policies. By contrast, having long self-constituted itself as a country of immigration, Australia has pursued much more inclusive and receptive citizenship regimes than most other host countries. Yet despite all of these elements that contradict the dichotomous assumptions put forward above, the political activities of Turkish migrants in Australia have been catalysts for a vibrant political transnational field. Equally importantly, they too have been the targets of the Turkish state. Neither of these are recent phenomena. As the political history account in this book will demonstrate, the Turkish consular institutions have been systematically involved in politicising and mobilising Turkish emigrants since the late 1970s. Back then, the state’s long-distance politics took the form of wiping out the political activities of left-wing Turkish emigrants, as was the case with their counterparts in Turkey. Similar processes of state mobilisation have also taken place in other host countries where Turkish migrants have been residing as Østergaard-Nielsen’s work on the German situation illustrates.33 The contours of the state-diaspora relationships in the Turkish case have been largely determined by the domestic political developments in Turkey (i.e. the military coups). This study of Turkish trans-Kemalism attempts to contribute to the field of political transnationalism studies in three different arenas. These are (i) conceptions of the units of analysis, (ii) delineation of the ‘political’ in political transnationalism, and iii. the scope of the ‘transnational’ in political transnationalism. i. Dimensions of analysis Since the 1990s, the burgeoning research on political transnationalism and diaspora studies has encompassed a wide range of phenomena through which the multi-stranded social relations and political processes articulating immigrants with both the countries of origin and settlement, and with their co-nationals living elsewhere, have

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been continued.34 Although these processes are by no means new phenomena, their appearance in migration studies is a recent trend. One explanation put forward for the delayed interest in such processes is a normative premise of the earlier migration paradigm, the ‘quiescence thesis’, which often portrayed migrants as powerless apolitical actors. This was especially the case with the way that labour migration has been theorised, often reducing migrants to ‘unfeeling statistics, factors of production, or generators of remittances’ as Miller argued.35 A second explanation of this delayed attention to political transnationalism relates to the relative absence of analysis of the politics of the sending country in migration paradigms. Having long been preoccupied with theoretical explanations relating to receiving countries (i.e. the assimilationist and the ethnic pluralistic models), migration studies have shown little interest in the sending countries. As Brand argues, ‘even with the attention that a handful of scholars has devoted to various aspects of the sending country’s economy, social structure or culture, one cannot really talk about a developed literature on sending-state emigration policy or practices in the way one can cite myriad works on receiving-state immigration policy.’36 Bauböck shares a similar view, pointing out that there are more studies on the policies of receiving states than on sending ones and more focus on immigration than on emigration.37 According to Østergaard-Nielsen, this is partly because of the dominance of research on US and Europe-oriented migration in the field, two geographical regions that have historically received substantial flows of immigration.38 Although the political transnationalism literature has generally focused on immigrants’ political activities directed at their countries of origin,39 state-sponsored transnationalism has also become a significant area of investigation in the field. A standard definition of the term refers to ‘institutionalised national policies and programs that attempt to expand the scope of a national state’s political, economic, social and moral regulation to include emigrants and their descendants outside the national territory.’40 Relatively under-researched, this literature has predominantly dealt with the policies of Caribbean and Latin American states toward their nationals living in the United states.41 Some of the key areas of inquiry have included the mobilisation of

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emigrants by the sending state to lobby for their ‘home’ countries; the membership policies of sending states; transnational electoral politics; political campaigns sponsored by the institutions of countries of origin; state-implemented mechanisms to attract emigrants’ economic capital; and the transnational political activities of party officials and government functionaries. The findings of this body of literature have not only broadened the theoretical and empirical boundaries of migration and diaspora studies, but have also helped to re-problematise debate over the question of nation-state sovereignty by demonstrating that the state is not yet withering away. Some have argued that the political efficacy of the state is replaced by globalisation and global capitalism as the main structure organising political, social and economic life. In this view, new technologies, increasing mobility across borders, and the growing importance of transnational and international institutions, norms and discourses are understood as undermining the sovereignty of states.42 What the findings of the research on state-initiated transnationalism tell us is that rather than undermining its sovereignty, transnational processes can provide the state with new opportunities to exercise its sovereignty outside its territory. As such, states are actively involved in the making of the transnational fields. Indeed, as Nyíri puts it, ‘the celebration of migrants by sending states is now in its honeymoon stage.’43 The literature on political transnationalism displays a vast number of examples illustrating various creative strategies adopted by sending states to reach out to their emigrants. For instance, the Haitian state recognises overseas Haitians as its Tenth Department, complete with its own ministry in addition to the other nine departments within its national territory. Basch et al. write: ‘through the use of symbols, language and political rituals, migrants and political leaders in the country of origin are engaged in constructing an ideology that envisions migrants [even those who had left as refugees or exiles] as loyal citizens of their ancestral nation-states.’44 Mahler’s work illustrates this by highlighting the El Salvadoran state’s provision of free legal assistance to its political refugees who fled the country to live in the United states, so that they may obtain asylum there and send remittances.45

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In another example, we see the Philippine National Assembly’s introduction of a draft law granting the right to vote to its undocumented citizens abroad. The rhetoric of most states of origin has shifted from referring to their emigrant communities as ‘our workers’ to ‘our citizens’ abroad.46 Why is this the case? According to Bauböck, although there are diverse instrumental reasons for states to court their emigrant constituents, in the main these include: ‘upgrading human capital’, ‘attracting remittances’, and ‘using immigrant communities to promote economic and foreign policy goals.’47 Brand, on the other hand, suggests a more complex set of explanations to explain state behaviour including macro-historical, international politics, economic, domestic political and security/stability factors. Building on the contributions of these studies, this book proposes a full multi-actor-based analysis in investigating the transnationalisation of migrants’ political lives. The diasporic politics of the Turkish state is one important element that needs to be unpacked in analysing the evolution of a Turkish political transnational field in Australia, given the state’s ceaseless laic-nationalist project to reconfigure and mobilise ‘civil society’ in Turkey and abroad. I agree with Bourdieu and Wacquant who emphasise, citing Adelmalek Sayad’s work, that ‘before becoming an immigrant, the migrant is first an e-migrant and that the sociology of migration must therefore start, not from the receiving society, but from the structure and contradictions of the sending communities.’48 This is one of the key premises of this study. However, the efficacy of this state-led transnationalism cannot be fully understood without first examining Turkish migrants’ own responses to this process (or their own agency), and then secondly, the immigrant incorporation regime of the receiving country and its broader political context. Although the impact of the host country’s regime on immigrants’ organisational behaviour and their political activities has been acknowledged and studied, the question of how this also shapes the transnational attitude of states of origin (their political discourses and practices) has been overlooked in the literature. Only a handful of scholars have considered this, and then merely in passing.49 This study then, brings these three actors together in investigating the constitution of transnational political space. In highlighting this

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point, however, I am careful not to overlook the role of other actors and contexts in their contribution to Turkish political transnationalism in Australia. As the historical analysis in this study will demonstrate, the political agendas of Turkish immigrants in Sydney have been shaped, to some extent, by the political situation of their counterparts living in various European countries, particularly in Germany. What this reveals is that transnationalism encompasses not only the ties, interactions and exchanges between immigrants and the societies of origin and settlement, but also those between immigrants and their co-nationals living elsewhere. The dynamic relationship between different political transnational fields shapes the political attitudes of immigrants living in those contexts. Not only a multi-actor, but also a multi-level analysis is required to scrutinise the complexities of the transnational phenomenon. ii. The ‘political’ in political transnationalism In Faces of the state, anthropologist Navaro-Yashin draws attention to a general problem prevailing in the field of political anthropology.50 According to her, the strategy followed by most studies of the ‘political’ has been to pick a social institution and study its production of public discourse. ‘We therefore have ethnographies of education, law, bureaucracy, and medicine, imagined out of fieldwork in characteristic institutional sites: schools, courts, public offices, clinics,’ writes Navaro-Yashin.51 By contrast, her ethnography on the production of politics in the Turkish public sphere illustrates how the ‘political’ exists over and beyond its manifestation in rationalised institutions. A similar tendency replicates itself in the field of political transnationalism. Many studies in this field also privilege certain formal institutions and mechanisms in their framing and researching of the ‘political.’ The field of political action connecting immigrants with their countries of origin is understood to comprise a limited range of ‘political’ practices, often being reduced to immigrants’ participation in electoral processes, membership in a political association or party in the country of origin, running for office, and monetary contributions to a political organisation.52 This tendency is perhaps most

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reminiscent in the latest collection of papers on the political mobilisation and organisational life of Turkish migrants in western Europe and North America.53 The papers in this special issue (with the exception of Özyürek’s) limit their analysis of Turkish migrants’ political activities to their organisational behaviours, their voting patterns and their recruitment opportunities as local politicians or parliamentarians. These formal practices are read as signs of the ‘political.’54 This conceptualisation is insufficient to provide us with a lens on more complex political transnational processes. First, it takes our attention away from mundane practices of political participation and ordinary ways of engaging with politics that are equally significant in shaping migrants’ lives. I agree with Faist, who also finds it problematic to limit the ‘political’ to ‘formal channels of political participation in incorporated associations, political parties, and parliaments.’55 He argues that ‘Focusing on the traditional forms and arenas of politics only would lead us to look for politics in the wrong places . . . there are sub-politics to be found in the everyday activities and choices of people and in the often informal and spontaneous political actions of social movements.’56 We can extend this argument to also include the mundane practices of homeland governments directed at their emigrants. Secondly, the search for the political in seemingly political domains obscures the entrenched relationships between different circuits of transnationalism (cultural, religious, political) and how they often overlap. The common tendency in the literature has been to treat these fields of transnationalism as distinct and isolated from one another. For example, in the typology developed by Portes et al., the category of political transnationalism from below involves home-town civic committees created by immigrants, alliances of immigrant committees with home country associations and fund-raising activities for home country electoral candidates, whereas the category of political transnationalism from above refers to consular offices and representatives of national political parties abroad, dual nationality granted by home country governments and immigrants elected to home country legislatures.57 The analysis in this study, however, shows that there are key intersecting elements between different forms of transnational fields.

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Indeed, in the case of Turkish political transnationalism, the ‘political’ is often produced within the confines of what seems to be the ‘cultural’ or the ‘religious.’ For example, we will see in Part Two of this book how the Republican state’s attempts to nationalise and politically mobilise Turkish people in Australia against the Kurdish terrorist organisation, PKK (Parti Karkerani Kurdistan), are channelled through the state-authorised religious organisations as much as through its consular institutions. In another example, the Turkish Ministry of Culture and Tourism’s sponsorship of music and dance events commemorating the 800th anniversary of the Sufi poet Rumi taps into the broader Kemalist project of reconstructing and promoting a sterilised vision of Turkish Islam. Finally, the analyses of humour-making and musicmaking presented in Part Three also illustrate how the ‘political’ is manifest in multiple forms and in multiple sites that muddy and flow beyond the circumscribed formal or institutional arena. By exploring the synchronicities between what seems to be autonomous political, cultural and religious transnational processes, the analysis in this study demonstrates the state’s negotiation of the line (or lack thereof) between what may appear to be discrete political and religious realms. iii. The ‘transnational’ in political transnationalism There has been a major effort in certain studies of transnationalism to devise typologies in order to provide evidence for the scale and intensity of the transnational phenomenon. For example, the typology by Guarnizo et al. seeks to measure the scope of the transnational activities of Salvadoran, Dominican and Colombian immigrants living in the United states. Here a range of activities are understood to indicate to what extent these migrant groups are transnationally oriented, such as their membership in home country political parties, their involvement in home country electoral campaigns and rallies, their membership in civic hometown associations, and so on.58 On the basis of the quantitative responses collected for each indicator, they conclude that the transnational political field constituted by these immigrant groups is not as extensive as proposed by previous accounts, mainly coming out of ethnographic research.

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In another study, this time focusing on state-led political transnationalism, Gamlen offers a different typology that maps out the diaspora policies of a large number of sending states.59 Distinguishing between ‘diaspora building’ mechanisms and ‘diaspora integration’ mechanisms, he notes that diaspora building involves steps taken by sending states either to recognise or cultivate pre-existing diasporas (i.e. convening diaspora congresses, commissioning migrant studies, extending media coverage, expanded consular units), while diaspora integration involves mechanisms endowing emigrants with various national membership privileges and responsibilities (i.e. permitting dual nationality or external voting rights, special legislative representation, providing welfare and education support, taxing expatriates). While these typologies are useful for demarcating an untidy set of measures adopted by sending states, their straightforward classification obscures some less obvious forms of transnationalism, especially when nationalistic state projects are concerned. Let me discuss this by giving some examples from the Turkish case. Looking at the diaspora building and integration measures ticked off in Gamlen’s typology, the Turkish state appears to display some degree of transnationalism, even if this seems to be less extensive than in some other sending states such as India, Ireland, Israel and Mexico. Some of the standard measures adopted by the Turkish state, as captured by the typology (without necessarily providing examples) include: the introduction of dual citizenship and other membership arrangements (e.g. Pink Card); the setting up of special funds for emigrants offering favourable interest rates for channelling remittances (e.g. the Fund for Credit to Housing, Small Arts and Lending to Workers Working Abroad introduced in 1964); the broadcasting of the state-owned TV channel abroad (TRTINT); the forming of the Consultation Commission for Citizens Living Abroad in 1998, led by a state minister, with members of the political parties represented in the parliament and 76 Turkish citizens living outside the country; and the promotion of ‘Turkish culture’ abroad. Yet the extra-territorial activities of the Turkish state targeting Turkish emigrants in Australia that I encountered during the time of my fieldwork encompassed much more than these and included: the preparation and circulation of protest letters by Turkish consular

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bodies against anti-Kemalist initiatives in Australia; the organisation of commemorative events (all selected according to Kemalist historiographical categories); the military’s initiation of fund-raising campaigns; the circulation of press releases by the Turkish Armed Forces about the ongoing low intensity war between the Turkish army and PKK militants; funeral prayers for martyrs; the Turkish Armed Forces’ conscription of Turkish men living abroad; the convening of diaspora congresses; the initiation of specific youth programs (e.g. ‘The Turkish Youth in Australia is Meeting with Its Own Culture and History’ program recently invented by the Turkish General Directorate of Youth and Sports), and the Ministry of Education’s provision of racist school textbooks for Turkish language classes funded by the Australian state. As in Turkey, all of these political practices seek to produce a nationalist subjectivity in Turkish migrants living abroad, replete with its own forms of ethnic chauvinism. Further, as the historical account in the following part will demonstrate, this long-distance state nationalism is not a new phenomenon. After the 1980 coup, the state’s transnational policies were directed at destroying the Kurdish movement (especially in the case of western Europe), as well as the political activities of left-wing Turkish people living abroad. Here the ‘diaspora integration’ enterprises pursued by the Turkish state went hand in hand with its equally important endeavour of ‘diaspora disintegration’ (or even ‘eradication’), which is not captured by the categories constituting Gamlen’s typology. Sending states transnationalise their policies not only in an attempt to secure various types of financial, social, and political gains from their emigrants; they also do so to pacify various groups they feel threatened by. This study argues that, unless accompanied by qualitative approaches that help document the nuances of transnational lives, typology-driven analyses of political transnationalism have only limited utility for capturing the complexity of transnational processes. An approach that specifies certain formal mechanisms as the markers of transnational action offers little room to investigate, in particular, the nationalistic projects of states (and immigrants) not always generated in explicit ways. Some sending states may seem to have only a very limited range of formal mechanisms or institutions directed at

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their citizens abroad but they may still inject their presence into the everyday lives of those citizens in more subtle ways. This was certainly the case with the Turkish state in the 1970s and early 1980s. What sustained the transnational work of the state in those years were the informal alliances that Turkish consular institutions built with their ‘loyal’ citizens against other threatening ones. I agree with Guarnizo and Smith who rightly argue that: It must be kept in mind that positivist taxonomies can lead to the erroneous conceptualization of transnationalisms as ‘things’ that can be readily ‘measured’ such that a person or group may be conceived as being ‘more or less transnational.’ Transnationalism is neither a thing nor a continuum of events that can be easily quantified. It is a complex process involving macro- and microdynamics.60 In brief, one of the key challenges of studying transnationalism (including both its ‘above’ and ‘below’ forms) is to consider the macro and micro dimensions of the phenomenon in tandem and to employ the appropriate research methods to enable the exploration of how those macro and micro dimensions are entangled. This will help us unpack the factors that sustain transnational relations and ties. It will also help us explore the hegemonic discourses and power relationships that individual migrants are surrounded by.

Method The anthropological fieldwork for this study was undertaken in Sydney during 2007 and 2008. The research focus of the study – Kemalist long-distance nationalism sponsored by the Turkish state and engineered via the grassroots activities and discourses of Turkish Kemalists in the diaspora – was methodologically very challenging. The approach adopted made use of a combination of different qualitative research tools. In the main, participant observation formed the heart of the inquiry. Fieldwork in an urban context requires its own specific methods and tasks. An integral aspect of it involved my

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accompanying and sometimes even my pursuing of contacts to a huge range of different sites, places and activities, from political rallies, Saturday language schools, official Consular events, performances and shows by community organisations, commemorations, newspaper offices to religious gatherings. Attendance and first-hand observation at a wide variety of events and sites facilitated a sustained engagement with diverse Turkish immigrant communities and individuals in Sydney, as well as a first-hand experience of their reproduction of Kemalism through micro practices within the diaspora community. One of the most important components of my research was my membership of a large Turkish music ensemble based in Sydney (I played the ney (reed flute)). This provided me with a great opportunity, not only for making music with friends, but also for sharing and listening to everyday conversations of Turkish people about Turkish politics and events in Australia. My fellow musicians in the group helped me build contacts and informed me about events that they themselves were attending. Occasionally, my dual loyalties to the group – as both researcher and member – was challenging, given my critical stance toward the political practice and ideology (Kemalism) of many group members. Yet even if we did not share the same opinions, the intimate (and sometimes heated) conversations that we had were of great value to my research. Conducting formal and informal interviews was another key research technique supplementing participant observation. One group of interviewees consisted of politically active Turkish people who defined themselves as Kemalist. These interviewees involved both first-generation and second-generation Turkish migrants as the transnational project of the Turkish state has targeted both groups. First-generation respondents included both Turks who migrated to Australia in the 1970s and 1980s as labour migrants, and those who arrived after the 1980s, mainly as skilled migrants. The interviews were semi-structured, designed to prompt individual responses about their migration memories and experiences, personal feelings about the political developments in Turkey and impressions of the activities of the Turkish state (in Australia) and of the policy of multiculturalism implemented by Australian governments.

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A second key group of interviewees involved Turkish community leaders. The interviews were of a biographical kind during which leaders talked about their life-stories and their earlier selves. Many of these community leaders were not only actively involved in the associational life of Turkish migrants during the 1970s and 1980s, but were active supporters of the leftist or rightist political movements in Turkey at the time. Their narratives helped me enormously in writing a political history of Turkish migrants in Sydney. They also provided me with first-hand information about the Turkish state’s cross-border engagement in this migratory context in the post-1970 period. Finally interviews were also conducted with various Turkish state officials, both those visiting Australia and those based in the Consulate in Sydney, as well as two members of the Australian Federal Parliament who were working closely with Turkish-speaking migrants at the time of my fieldwork. Complementing these formal and informal interviews, political archival research was also undertaken with a focus on the back issues (1977–80) of two selected community papers: Yorum and Dayanışma, sympathetic to the leftist and rightist movements of their time respectively. The archival material enhanced my knowledge about the past political formations, fragmentations and debates among Turkish people in Australia. It also allowed me to explore and critically analyse the current transnational motivations and strategies of the Turkish state by situating them in their broader historical entirety. This provided the book with a much needed account of the continuities/discontinuities in the transnational life of the Turkish state in Australia. Finally, a content analysis of both visual and textual sources was coextensive with the qualitative methodology. This phase of the research involved an analysis of political speeches, cartoons, internet blogs, email networks, websites, pamphlets, bulletins, local Turkish newspapers and radio and television broadcasts.

Organisation of the book This book can be seen as explicitly divided into four parts. Part One provides us with two historical accounts. Chapter One traces the

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history of Turkish emigration to Australia. This is followed by a more in-depth look at the political history of Turkish people in Australia with a heavy concentration on the 1970s and 1980s in Chapter Two. The political landscape of the Turkish migrants in those years was heavily influenced by the ideological polarisation in Turkey between leftist and rightist groups. After the 1990s this polarisation evolved into a new one between Kemalists and Islamists. The chapter gives us a context for understanding the current political fractions and polemics that divide Turkish migrants today. It also provides important historical information serving as the backdrop for understanding the larger question of how the Turkish state injects its presence into everyday life of Turkish migrants in Australia today. Such an overview is necessary for tracing continuities (or otherwise) between the political practices of the Turkish state then and now. Part Two of the book explores the current political mobilisation of the Turkish state in Australia. Chapter Three examines the ‘seeing like a state’61 of officials in the diaspora, particularly through the activities of the consular body in Sydney. Chapter Four continues to sketch out this state-engineered transnationalism by focusing on the politics of two other key institutions of the Republic: the Directorate of Religious Affairs, and the Ministry of Culture and Tourism. My concern here is to examine the state’s control over, and its manipulation of Islam in an attempt to secularise and nationalise Turkish people in line with the ideology of Kemalism. Part Three of the book shifts our attention from the political transnational activities of the Turkish state to that of the Kemalists. In Chapter Five we see how Kemalists, dissatisfied with the transnational activities of the Turkish state, assign themselves the task of ‘seeing for the state’, given their perception of its relative absence. The analysis here juxtaposes different ways in which Turkish migrants themselves live out Turkish nationalism and commit themselves to the propagation of the ideology of Kemalism in their everyday lives. Chapter Six considers the realm of music-making. By taking a musical performance as a case study, it examines how Kemalism constitutes itself as a politics of aesthetics. The musical performance analysed in this chapter informs us about how the Kemalist performers

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position themselves vis-à-vis both the broader Australian society and the Islamists. The final part of the book, Chapter Seven, elucidates the important ways in which the politics of the Australian state articulates with Kemalism. The analysis here accentuates the complexities and multiple dimensions of transnationalisation by highlighting the role of the receiving country and its partial constitution of the transnational political field. The chapter is also a critical re-reading of some local scholarly accounts of Australian multiculturalism.

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1 TUR KISH MIGR ATION TO AUSTR ALIA: THE STORY SO FAR

To the Turkish Embassy, Canberra ‘The first group of [Turkish] workers including 169 people will arrive in Sydney at 5pm on Monday, 14 October (1968) on flight number QF 174027.’ Foreign Affairs Ministry1 To the Foreign Affairs Ministry, Ankara ‘Our group of workers arrived on time. They were welcomed by the Minister of Housing, Secretary of Immigration, various associations and by the Embassy at the airport and then taken to their hostels. For your information.’ Ambassador Karatay2

Thus was heralded the large-scale migration flow from Turkey to Australia. Over the next six years numerous Qantas charter planes would fly back and forth between Ankara and Australia carrying Turkish ‘workers’ (as the Turkish government called them) or Turkish ‘assisted migrants’ (as the Australian government deemed them) to Sydney or Melbourne. On the termination of the assisted migration

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scheme in 1974, thousands of non-assisted migrants from Turkey would make their way to Australia under various schemes such as family reunion, humanitarian programme and skilled migration, all contributing to the formation of Turkish communities in the fifth continent. The history of this particular flow of people has strong similarities with the histories of the non-Turkish migration movements to Australia in the post-war period, as well as with the histories of Turkish migration to other parts of the world since the 1960s. Yet the timing of the migratory flow was significant for a number of reasons. From Turkey’s perspective, the migration agreement with Australia came at a time when, unable to send more workers to European countries, the government was in search of alternative destinations to export its excess labour force. Therefore the agreement with Australia helped maintain the continuity of Turkish emigration abroad in the late 1960s. On the other hand, viewed from Australia’s perspective, the beginning of the influx of Turks coincided with a period of intense political debate over immigration and settlement policies. This was a period when ‘integration’ became the key settlement policy and when the ‘White Australia Policy’ was under close scrutiny, given the changing political, economic and social circumstances in Australia. More importantly however, the late 1960s were crucial in setting the scene for a looming shift in policy-making towards multiculturalism, a policy officially espoused in the mid-1970s. Thus the chapter focuses on an examination of these two transitional factors: the changing political economy and social developments in Turkey; and the transition from the policy of integration to the programme of multiculturalism in Australia. I will somewhat arbitrarily select 1968– the year Turkish immigration to Australia officially began – as the pivotal moment in the political histories of the two nations, a moment marking a clear ‘before and after’ in Australian and Turkish societies.

Turkey before 1968 The Turkish Republic’s initial encounter with international migration occurred in the 1920s through the large-scale expulsion of non-Muslim

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Turkish citizens from the country and the equally enforced expulsion of non-Turkish Muslims from the Balkans. Yet Turkey is often depicted as a latecomer in the international migration system. Instead Turkey’s entry into the international migration system is invariably associated with the emigration of hundreds of thousands of Turkish workers to Europe in the 1960s and to various non-European destinations in the following years. These labour movements were not directly related to the nation-building agenda, but they still served to rescue the national economy that was under severe pressure in the late 1950s. The basic reason for the increasing volume of out-migration of Turks in the 1960s must be primarily found in the demographic pressures resulting from Turkey’s explosive population growth.3 With a population of 27.7 million in 1960 Turkey had one of the world’s highest birth rates – 44 per thousand – while still being a predominantly agricultural country. However since the late 1940s the agricultural production system in the countryside had already been undergoing a significant transformation, a process that would continue during the 1950s and radically change the social, demographic and economic landscape of the country. This transformation of the agrarian system occurred as a result of the introduction of machinery and other agricultural technology, and new crop varieties which caused many tenants to lose their chance of share-cropping in areas of large landholders and brought about a process of ‘de-peasantisation.’4 Small landholders, unable to afford investment in cash crops, ended up in such debt that they could not continue earning their living from agriculture. Under these conditions many people migrated to the cities. Improved transport and communication were also influential factors in facilitating the mass internal migration from rural to urban areas, bringing a previously isolated peasantry into contact with big cities, as well as with many new emerging cities. The cities partly met these new inhabitants’ aspirations to building new lives for themselves and their families, yet failed to offer sufficient and equal life chances for everyone. Unemployment became a significant problem when the urban economy proved unable to provide enough job opportunities for the new urban dwellers. The absence of sufficient infrastructure facilities and services in the cities resulted in

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increasing shortages of housing, further complicating settlement and adjustment to urban life. Under these conditions many had to find alternative strategies to survive. One strategy chosen was to acquire marginal jobs in the informal economies in the expectation of finding more secure jobs whenever and wherever they emerged. In the late 1950s, the Turkish state failed to introduce long-term solutions to these structural problems. Nevertheless, as in the case of migrants, the state developed its own strategies for dealing with the situation. One strategy, also incorporated into the government’s first Five-Year Development Plan (1962–67), was to export the surplus labour to countries with labour shortages. In 1961, the Turkish government negotiated a large-scale labour migration agreement with the Federal Republic of Germany. This was a prelude to a series of similar agreements signed with the governments of other labour-importing industrial countries in Europe.5 In the first half of the 1960s and 1970s, workers from Turkey and other southern-European countries provided the industrial labour force demanded by western Europe. Two points are worth mentioning about these labour movements. First, although the immigrants’ decision to migrate reflected their own free will, the regulation of these flows occurred in a highly impersonal mode. They were state-initiated and from the outset mediated by administrative means.6 Second, the bulk of the migration to western European countries in this period had a temporary character, at least in theory. The expectation was that ‘foreign workers’ – or ‘guest-workers’ in the case of the well-known German scheme – would only come for a couple of years and once the work they were contracted to do was finished they would return home. The desired and expected duration of migrant workers’ presence had an important impact on the scope of the policies developed by both sending and receiving countries for managing the flows and the settlement of immigrants. Given that the migrants’ presence was seen as a temporary phenomenon, the administrative policies for coordination took no account of the social implications of migration. Unsurprisingly, the psychological effects of the mobility on migrants were also neglected. Most importantly here however, the Turkish migrants’ assumed temporary stay in the European countries impacted upon their motivations and future decisions in

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multiple ways, including decisions to settle permanently, to take up citizenship of the receiving society, to be re-united with family members, and to make investments, just to name a few. Although many have eventually become permanent settlers in the destination countries, the experiences of these pioneer migrants still affected the intentions of later migrants, as the case of Turkish Australians demonstrates.7 In the late 1960s Turkish emigration to Europe experienced a slowdown due to a growing economic stagnation in many European host countries. In the next couple of years the number of recruited workers declined drastically, until this remarkable epoch of organised labour transfer came to an end in the early 1970s. However this should not be understood as the end of Turkish migration to Europe. In the following decade flows from Turkey to Europe continued and even intensified through the family reunion programs. Given that its migration policy at the time aimed to export as many nationals as possible, the Turkish state had already begun to search for new markets in the context of decreasing European demand.8 Interestingly, it was not only Turkey whose migration regime was substantially influenced by the changing dynamics in Europe. On the other side of the world, Australia too was reformulating its immigration policy, albeit for different reasons.

Australia before 1968 Post-war immigration is a remarkable phenomenon in Australian history that completely transformed the social, political, economic and demographic make-up of the country. Given the potential for sustained economic growth in the aftermath of the war and yet lacking sufficient manpower to turn this potentiality into reality, Australia committed itself to mass immigration beginning from 1945. The main public justification for this decision was immigration’s role as a catalyst of economic development. Birthrates had already started to decline in the 1930s and there was a growing need for young persons to be employed in the primary industries of the Australian economy such as mining and agriculture.9 This demand was unable to be met through natural population growth. While such economic structural circumstances created favourable preconditions for massive immigration flows to

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emerge from a political economy perspective, it was also the government’s desire to build a larger population for defence reasons that helped make immigration a practical solution, and gain public acceptance. Australia’s experience in the Second World War (especially the threat of Japanese invasion) was influential in shaping the new policy. In short, in the post-war years immigration became a tool for building a larger and stronger nation for economic, as well as national security reasons. Marked by the first federal Immigration Minister Arthur Calwell’s slogan of ‘Populate or perish’, the second half of the 1940s saw the implementation of an immigration policy. In 1945 the Labor government initiated a program aimed at increasing the population by an average of two per cent a year, of which one per cent would result from net immigration. Yet to help meet this contribution immigrants were not only selected on the basis of the statistical quota, but also on the basis of their ethnic and racial origin. During this period, the door was open only to ‘white’ immigrants – a category which specifically included British and northern Europeans – whereas non-Europeans would only be admitted for business visits and education purposes.10 In the post-war period Australia turned out to be the most favoured destination for Britons. These came mostly as assisted migrants who paid ten pounds for the journey. The 1950s saw ups-and-downs in the patterns of arrivals from the United Kingdom. The economic recession that Australia experienced in the early 1950s, economic pressures caused by the Korean War and improving economic conditions in the UK were factors impacting on the inflow of Britons in those years. When Britain was unable to meet Australia’s target, new assisted passage schemes were signed with other European countries including West Germany, the Netherlands, Austria, Belgium, Malta, Italy, Greece, Spain and Portugal. In the post-war years assimilation was the state ideology underlying the settlement of millions of immigrants in Australia. The assimilationist policy had three key propositions relating to the issue of national identity: that Australia was a culturally homogeneous society based on British values and institutions; that this homogeneity should not be disrupted by mass European immigration; and that Australia

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could not survive any Asian immigration.11 The policy repercussions of this paternalistic policy were limited to the preservation of the racial, ethnic, cultural, social and linguistic homogeneity of the nation and did not take into consideration the diversity of migrant welfare needs. The services provided for migrants were extremely limited and did not go beyond the areas of employment and language, in the shape of rudimentary English classes.12 Although assimilationism is most often addressed in the context of immigration and migrant settlement, it should be conceptualised in the broader context of nationbuilding that aimed to create a homogeneous Australian nation with a strict definition of its superior civilisation. Those who did not fit this category would be seen as ‘unassimilable’ and a source of threat to English-speaking ‘white’ Australia. The policies adopted for the forced assimilation of indigenous people at the time also highlight the nationalist scope of this assimilationist policy requiring not only immigrants to become indistinguishable in appearance, speech, and cultural tastes from the Anglo-Saxon Australians, but also saw its own indigenous people as a threat to its ethno-racial uniformity.13 Assimilationism was the predominant ideology in the making of the post-war Australia; however anti-assimilationist reactions had begun to emerge as early as the 1950s. It was mainly church groups, interest groups, and a few key actors working in the social welfare arena and in academia who voiced the need for reform of these immigration policies.14 Meanwhile, domestic and international trends created a more favourable climate for the introduction of such reforms. Historian Mark Lopez lists the key relevant international trends as these: Australia’s increasing involvement in trade relationships with countries in the Asia-Pacific region (especially Japan and the United states); the rising popularity of the theory of political pluralism that became resonant in the USA and other Western democracies in the 1960s; and the growing salience of interest group politics in policymaking.15 Another key trend emerging in the 1960s was the changing European migration regime. Having reached a level of economic growth, many western European countries were also in need of additional labour to accelerate their industrialisation. Thus Europe itself became a recipient of large-scale migration flows, both internal and

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international. In these circumstances Australia, no longer a favoured destination for white Europeans, appeared to have no alternative strategy than to expand its network of potential source countries. In the domestic sphere, the problems encountered by the immigrants in numerous areas ranging from language, work, education, communication, health, cultural production to the care of their children and old people showed that the assimilationist logic was not working.16 Many immigrants (especially Italian and Greeks) showed an inclination to go back to their countries of origin and there was a high incidence of psychiatric disorders recorded among immigrants.17 All of these factors precipitated a retreat from the assimilation policy. However the adjustments introduced to the assimilation policy were far from being revolutionary. In the words of Laksiri Jayasuriya: So we began to witness in the mid 1960s the emergence of a milder form of assimilationism, now called ‘integration.’ This more liberal and less rigid attitude towards migrant settlement signalled greater tolerance of cultural difference and a diversity of lifestyles. As in the ‘melting pot ideology of the United states’, here the expectation was of an eventual blending of cultures.18 The new approach eased restrictions on the entry of people of nonEuropean origin, but this time there was a growing emphasis on the immigration of qualified immigrants and the numbers of those accepted were smaller compared to the numbers accepted in previous years. There is no doubt that the mid-1960s did not witness any significant shift towards a more liberal migrant settlement policy as there was a continuing emphasis on the notion of ‘fitting into the mainstream.’ However the debates around policy-making that intensified in the second half of the 1960s were significant for providing an ideological basis for the emergence of a further shift in immigration and settlement policy. At that time these debates were taking place between a small group of academics and migrant activists (a group that Lopez characterises as the ‘proto-multiculturalists’) and opposing bureaucrats in the Department of Immigration.19

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The decision to negotiate a migration agreement with the Turkish government came at this pivotal moment, when Australia not only began to open its doors a little to non-Europeans, but also when these ideological discussions taking place among the ‘proto-multiculturalists’ began to stimulate a second transition in immigration and settlement policy. The government’s decision to recruit migrants from Turkey was controversial because of the continuing reluctance within the Department of Immigration to accept migrants from ethnic groups viewed as ‘too different’ from mainstream Australians, and also because of the absence of a consensus over the civilisational status of Turks. The public view about Turks associated Turkey with Asia rather than Europe and expressed fears that the entry of Turks could open the floodgates to Asian immigration.20 The absence of a Turkish community in Australia, as well as an established Muslim community, further complicated the question of Turks’ assimilability into the Australian society.21 In fact, prior to the large-scale migration from Anatolia, there were Turkey-born persons in Australia, but mostly of diverse ethnic backgrounds including Bulgarian refugees, Greeks born in Turkey, and Turkish Cypriots who arrived on British passports in the late 1950s and early 1960s. In the 1961 Census, these early migrants numbered 1544 persons. Despite Turkey being a predominantly Muslim country, only a minority of them identified themselves as Muslim.22 Despite the prolonged debates over the cultural compatibility of Turks, the government justified its intention of signing a migration agreement by making reference to Turkey’s reputation as one of the main labour force suppliers to the western European countries. In the words of B. M. Snedden, then Liberal Minister for Immigration: Turkey offers excellent prospects for attracting workers of the type needed in Australia. It represents a valuable addition to the various countries in Europe to which we look for desirable settlers . . . Many thousands (of Turks) have been eagerly sought by employers in Europe who have nothing but praise for them as workers.23

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This pragmatic discourse underlining the valuable contribution that the Turkish workers had been making to the European market successfully identified Turks as ‘acceptable’ migrants to the business community. Despite the non-consensus over whether Turks were really European enough or not, Turkey was promoted in these circles as a European country and Turkish people were represented as being ‘close to Europeans’: ‘Turkey was now for all intents and purposes an entirely European country.’24 What made them ‘European’ had to do with their reputation as ‘disciplined and good workers.’ As İçduygu notes, ‘Turkish migration to Australia was born under these critical conditions, not as a premature but as an unwanted or to some extent as an illegitimate child.’25 Importantly this rhetoric mirrored an earlier debate in Turkey over the civilisational position of the country.26 The early twentieth-century ideology promoted by Mustafa Kemal and his associates after the creation of the Republic was based on an affirmation of a European universality and superiority. The Kemalist project, which made a cultural revolution in addition to a political one, sponsored Westernisation programmes in order to eliminate the influence of Islam from the sociopolitical structure of the state and to replace an Islamic culture with a constructed Turkish national culture. This ‘civilisational shift’, both in theory and in practice, was imbued with the goal of ‘reaching contemporary civilisation’ – as voiced by the Kemalist elites themselves – and saw the re-articulation of Turkishness and Turkish culture as being ‘modern’ and ‘European.’27

The 1967 Agreement In October 1967, the Agreement on the Residence and Employment of Turkish Citizens in Australia was signed between the governments of Turkey and Australia. This marked the official beginning of the inter-governmental migration of people from Turkey to Australia. The migration movement took the form of an impersonally organised flow of persons until the termination of the bilateral agreement in 1974. This meant that the arrangements concerning the selection, transportation and reception of migrants were negotiated between the

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governments of the two countries.28 According to the agreement, the Australian Immigration Office in Ankara would work in collaboration with the Turkish Employment Service to select appropriate migrants who would meet general requirements regarding age, marital status and skills. The Australian government would sponsor the transportation of the migrants and provide hostel accommodation upon arrival. To be eligible for this financial assistance, migrants would pay the equivalent of 25 Australian dollars before departure – for themselves and for any household members of 19 years of age or over who might travel with them – and would stay in Australia for two years.29 The migrant was legally bound to repay the cost of the journey in case he or she left Australia before the two years expired. The agreement guaranteed that the Turkish migrants would enjoy the same rights as other migrants in Australia with respect to learning English, employment and social services. There were also provisions for the maintenance of the Turkish culture and language, the first agreement with a migrantsending country to do so. Two controversial issues emerged during the negotiation of the agreement. The first concern was that the wording of the agreement reflected the opposing perceptions of the two governments regarding the nature of the migration flow. The Australian government intended recruiting Turkish migrants as permanent settlers, whereas the Turkish government had the expectation that Turks would migrate to Australia on a temporary basis as in the case of the Turkish ‘guest-workers’ in Europe. Turkey accordingly did not want the word ‘migrant’ to be included in the agreement, insisting on the term ‘worker.’ Likewise, the title of the agreement did not make any reference to words such as ‘migration’ or ‘settlement’, and used the terms ‘residence and employment’ instead.30 The agreement therefore gave the impression to many potential migrants that this was another ‘guest-worker’ scheme whereby they would sell their labour in Australia for a couple of years and, once enough savings had been made, would return home. The second controversial issue was about the ratio of skilled and unskilled migrants to be recruited. Australia’s immigration policy at the time was aiming for an intake of relatively larger numbers of skilled migrants; however Turkey wanted its unskilled workers to emigrate. In the end, the

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compromise reached was a ratio of 30 per cent skilled and 70 per cent unskilled workers.31 While the scale of Turkish labour migration to Australia was less significant compared to Europe, this migratory flow was important further for maintaining the continuity of Turkish migration abroad.32 Yet what was most distinct about this movement of people was the fact that it was made to a traditionally migrant receiving country with a policy that promoted settler migration. This presented an exception within the general framework of Turkish emigration at that time.33 Ironically, however, many of the Turkish migrants who had migrated in the earlier period had conceived Australia only as a temporary destination in their minds.

‘We came as workers, stayed as citizens’ For the majority of the Turkish migrants who came to Australia under the assisted migration scheme, the main reason for moving was economic. It was difficult to make a living in Turkey in those years even for those who had a decent job. Besides, a considerable proportion of the population was living in a state of poverty with little prospect of upward mobility. In this context, going overseas to work for a couple of years was seen as the only way to earn enough money to buy land or a small business once they returned to Turkey. In the 1960s, stories about Turks who had gone to work in Germany or to other countries in Europe and had made good were a major source of inspiration for non-migrant friends and relatives in Turkey. Turks in Germany, also referred as Almancılar (a designation indicating that they had become like Germans but not Germans), would come back home for holidays driving their own cars. Within a year they would be able to buy a flat in Turkey while bringing gifts to their children and other family members. Many non-migrant Turks were lured by the accounts of these Turks although they knew little – and perhaps were told little – about the harsh working conditions abroad. At the time that Turkish migrants heard about the Australian government seeking workers from Turkey, many of them already had their names on the waiting lists for Germany. Some transferred their

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applications to the Australian scheme since it was becoming harder to get into Germany. On the other hand, many others preferred Australia because its migration policy permitted the migration of family members as well. This was seen as a great opportunity especially for married couples, as they would not have to leave their spouses and children behind. Ali34, a migrant from the first group, recounts his memories of this time: My auntie had a son. He went to Germany in 1960. On his return to Turkey, he first came to our place and then to the village. He was wearing a fedora hat when he came, you know, it is popular in Germany. And he had a cassette player in his hand. Of course I disapproved of him a little bit, but nevertheless I was impressed looking at the way he spoke and dressed, and desired to be like him. I hadn’t even done my military service back then. I was about 17–18 years old. I said to my father: ‘Dad, I want to go too.’ ‘Go and get registered,’ he said. Back then I used to be a plumber. I used to do welding as well. I had my own business in Ankara. I registered my name for Germany. They called me. There was an office of the Employment Service in Maltepe. I went there. There were 350 people in the lounge. There was a man making a speech in the corner. He said: ‘Registrations for Europe are now closed. You can register for a new place called Australia. Our colleague is going to give you some information.’ Someone gave a speech: ‘Australia is an English-speaking country. Don’t be afraid, cannibals won’t eat you’ and so on. I was standing at the front. When they asked who would like to go, 11 persons raised their hands out of 350. I was the first to raise a hand. Those who went to Germany would go alone. If a woman went she wouldn’t be allowed to take her husband and children with her. I was newly married then and had two children. I felt like I won the lottery when they said ‘You can take your family with you.’ (Ali, mid-60s) The first Qantas charter plane departing from Ankara with 169 people on board arrived in Sydney on 14 October 1968 after a stopover in Karachi first and then in Singapore. The trip was long and exhausting.

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Many had no idea about their destination. Years after, stories would be told about those who only realised after getting on the plane that the country they were flying to was Australia, not Austria! Perhaps this was a rare experience that happened among the first comers; yet what was common in the stories of many was that they were completely unsure about what to expect upon their arrival. There were many stories about life in Germany, but Australia was too ‘unknown’ for the Turks at the time. The only rumours that circulated about Australia were that it was a dangerous place to go, from which one could never come back alive, and that there were cannibals living there. Despite the false (and racist) impressions these stories created about the destination, the people on the first flight embarked on this journey with the hope of providing a better future for themselves and their children. My husband had applied to go to Germany. He used to be a foundryman in Turkey. He got accepted but he did not want to go there since he didn’t want to leave us behind. Then we heard that one could come here [Australia] as a family. We quickly got registered. Can you believe it, in a couple of months work was all arranged. We didn’t go to Germany. Australia was our fate. I had a grandad. He used to say that there are cannibals in Australia and ants as big as horses. He said ‘If your husband wants to go, let him go. You stay here with your children.’ I said to him: ‘I better go so that I can make a home.’ (Ayşe, mid-60s) Arriving at Sydney’s Kingsford Smith Airport in the early evening, the first flight was warmly welcomed by a large group of Cypriot Turks. The Minister for Housing, the Secretary of Immigration, the Turkish diplomatic representatives, members of the Australian Returned Services League, the Australian Federation of Islamic Societies and the Cypriot Turkish Club were there to greet them as well. Children were dressed in national costume with red Turkish flags in their hands. Some were carrying placards saying: ‘Welcome our brothers and sisters,’ ‘Welcome Muslim friends.’35 This unexpected welcoming ceremony made the passengers forget about the long trip and how exhausted they were. Everyone was emotional and crying.

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Figures 3&4 First Turkish assisted passage migrants arrive at Sydney. (Source: National Archives of Australia)

This emotional upheaval however was replaced by feelings of shock and disappointment shortly after they got on the double-decker buses waiting ready at the airport to take them to their first place of residence in Sydney. Finding the army barracks made out of tin instead of the beautiful houses promised to them, they were speechless and regretted the move on the very day of arrival. Ayşe tells: The [Turkish] Minister for Employment came to the airport to farewell us before we left Turkey. What he told us was that we would be given these nice houses and that our children would go to good schools. They gave us each a complimentary Turkish flag to fly over our houses in Australia. And then we arrived here. Forget about the houses and schools! All we were given were army barracks. Ayşe was not the only one who felt frustrated and betrayed. I was told by some other early immigrants that they were given booklets about Australia at the Employment Service in Ankara when they went to lodge their application. The booklets included brief information about Australia accompanied by various pictures including those of the furnished houses (or flats, according to some), promised to be offered to them upon arrival. Given that the migration agreement did not

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incorporate a condition as such, this was probably a rumour invented by Ankara to convince the potential migrants to apply for Australia rather than for Germany. A bigger shock was awaiting those migrants who, disappointed by the low standard of the accommodation, immediately wanted to go back to Turkey. I said to my husband, ‘They are paying our return fare anyway; let’s go back before the two years are up.’ But a friend told us we had been brought here as migrants, and that if we decided to go back, we had to pay our own way. Believe me, I didn’t even know we were migrants till then.36 Almost none of the early migrants were aware of their status in Australian eyes as migrants, considering themselves as guest-workers. This was apparently due to the unclear information provided to them by Ankara, as well as the absence of any explicit or implicit statement about permanent settlement in the 1967 agreement. This, however, should neither be seen as an accidental mistake on the part of the Turkish state nor as a natural outcome of the poor planning of the scheme in the early years of its operation. The Turkish state deliberately gave the impression to migrants coming to Australia that they were ‘guest-workers.’ This idea was imposed even on those who migrated in the fifth year of the assisted scheme. I came to Australia in 1972. Before we came here a man gave us a lecture. He said: ‘They will call you migrants there. Don’t believe them. You are not migrants, you are workers. Go there and save money without eating or drinking anything. As soon as possible come back and be a blessing to your country and people.’ I don’t think that many of those migrants returned back. (Ömer, 50s) In this context, many felt as if they were living in a state of exile in their initial years of residence, even if the decision to move was a voluntary one. While the early immigrants were disappointed about not having been informed accurately about the passage, the policy-makers in Australia were also in a state of disappointment, although for

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different reasons. Brian Murray, then a senior Departmental policy adviser, noted: Our understanding with the Turkish Government was that we would get urbanised Turks, but the Turkish officials organised things so that we got a large number of those with rural backgrounds. The Turkish labour office handled the initial selection for us. The Turkish migrants that came out were not quite the outcome Peter Heydon [Secretary of the Department of Immigration] wanted. From the Turkish point of view it made sense to unload people who would have flooded into their cities.37 Life at the hostel was unbearable for these pioneer migrants as for many other assisted non-Turkish migrants who came to Australia during the heyday of immigration. Memories of hostel life were mostly about the food served, as well as the hardships of getting used to a new built environment where there were different ways of organising things. It was evening, we arrived at the hostel. We lined up for dinner in the cafeteria. We were crying. There were strange types of pasta. We were only familiar with Turkish food. At the cafeteria a tall lady grabbed our suitcases and took us to the barracks. It was literally a barracks. A string was hanging next to the door. She pulled it. The light turned on. She pointed out the beds, the convertible beds. There was one double bed and two single beds for children. And a stuffy smell in the room. I took lemon cologne from one of the suitcases and splashed it around. When we wanted to go to sleep, we couldn’t turn the light off. We heard some sounds coming from the next room. They were speaking Turkish. We had been on the same plane with that family. That man said: ‘Sister, pull that hanging string down.’ I pulled it, the light went off. We went to bed. We had a long sleep. When we got up in the morning we had already missed the breakfast. We were hungry till lunchtime. My child was nearly fainting in my arms. Can you believe that, when I remember those first

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days my brain begins to hurt. It was lunchtime but we couldn’t eat the food. They served coleslaw. We didn’t have any money to buy bread from the shops. The government in Australia then gave six dollars to each one of us. We bought bread from a Greek grocery. (Emine, early 70s) I heard similar stories from many first comers who would tell me – laughing – how failing to do small things like turning the light on/off or opening the convertible beds in their hostel room made them feel even more like strangers in this new country. Food was one of the key symbols of unfamiliarity with life in an alien country. Missing the taste of familiar food, for months many people lived on bread, onion and tomato. Hard living conditions in the hostel accompanied the harsh working conditions. Until the mid-1980s, most Turkish migrants were destined for the factories as process workers although many of them had very little experience of working in big industrial plants before. Migration had a significant impact, in particular, on the workforce participation of women. For those women who had not had a paid job previously, the move meant an even bigger change than for the men, in the sense that it opened up the possibility, or necessity, of participating in the paid workforce. The situation for women who did have work experience in Turkey was different. They experienced downward mobility from the semi-professional jobs previously held.38 Employment problems often centred around heavy industrial work and lack of opportunity to use previously gained skills because of language difficulties. Many migrants worked frantically at factories, often seven days a week, hardly having any time to spend with their families. It was very common among married couples, especially with children, to communicate through written notes since they had to work in different shifts so that they could look after the children. In cases where their working hours overlapped, the child would either be left with a neighbour living in the same street or someone would be hired to look after the children during the day. Another strategy resorted to by some families as an immediate solution was to send their children back to Turkey, thinking that they would be looked after better by the relatives there.39

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We started working a month after our arrival. We were 26 women. They took us to a bag factory in Redfern. We didn’t know a single word of English and it was hard getting on and off the train. We would rely on each other. Many times we got on the train secretly without buying tickets. We didn’t know how to buy tickets. We didn’t know how to ask to buy tickets. Because we couldn’t understand English those who came earlier like Italians and Greeks assigned the hardest jobs to us. We wouldn’t give up anyway. Our children used to go to school on their own. Would they go? We would get up when it was still dark to go to work. The children would get up by themselves. Can you believe how much we suffered in this country? But thank God, we are now comfortable here. This is how our lives were like, like a novel. I mean, if someone wrote it, it would be like a novel. (Hatice, late 60s) As Hatice’s account reveals, language difficulties caused further problems in the everyday lives of migrants. Not knowing the language, they had limited communication with foremen and others at the workplace and could hardly defend their rights and actions if they needed to. Another serious problem related to the language was getting to work and back. The memories of early years would often include narratives about trains. As Hatice recalls, even buying train tickets used to be a stressful job for many who could not speak a word of English. Catching the right train used to be an even tougher business for those who not only did not know how to speak English, but who could not write and read at all. In Senelerin Arzusu (Years of Longing), a collection of personal stories of Turkish women who attended the literacy courses at Petersham College of TAFE, migrant women talk about how disadvantaged they were due to their illiteracy both in Turkish and English. My illiteracy became an even greater problem when we came to Australia. Problems mounted one after another especially after I started to work. Getting on a train to and from work was a major task. I did not know at which station I should get off the train.

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My husband gave me a match box with some matches in it. One match represented one station. I took one match out of the box at each station. When I ran out of matches, I knew it was time to get off the train.40 Unable to communicate with non-Turks, many Turkish migrants would rely on the help of other Turkish migrants and Cypriot Turks who were relatively experienced. Once the children started going to school and acquiring English skills, it was their turn to provide interpretation for their parents. Indeed, English language courses were provided by the Australian state at the hostels; however attending these courses was another problem for those who spent the day working. However the main reason for not attending the English classes was their intention to return to Turkey. For the first five years almost everyone seriously hoped to go back.41 Over time, however, many re-assessed their plans for return – in some cases after making a couple of return visits to Turkey. Reasons for staying permanently in Australia were mostly related to children who had adapted to the country in a much quicker way than their parents. Besides, economic conditions in Turkey were still unfavourable in the 1970s with unemployment being one of the key problems. The gap in hayat şartları (life conditions) between Turkey and Australia was another concern for the majority of migrants in deciding to settle permanently in Australia. As Mehmet comments: During my visits to Turkey everyone was suggesting to me that I return to Turkey. Why would I? I no longer have any rubbish on my doorway. My electricity never cuts off. Neither does my water. What could I ask more in life? I have all these things in this country [Australia]. (Mehmet) The future plans of many early migrants ‘evolved through a transition from temporary migration to unintended settlement’42, yet the ‘guestworker’ perception had a huge impact on their adjustment to life in Australia. One example is an initial reluctance to apply for Australian

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citizenship. Ahmet, another migrant from the first group to arrive in Sydney in 1968, had this to say: We used to receive registration letters for Australian citizenship from the Office of Housing Commission. I used to rip them up thinking ‘am I going to become an Australian citizen?’ We became Australian citizens in 1985. I regretted that I didn’t do it earlier. But at that time I wasn’t that progressive in my thinking. In Turkey we used to think those who weren’t Muslim were unbelievers. But as time went on we began to realise that Australians were more humanistic than we were. (Ahmet) The analysis so far has given the impression that the decision to settle permanently in Australia developed gradually for most Turkish migrants who arrived under the assisted migration scheme. Although this was the case with most Turkish people who made the move for economic reasons, the situation of those who migrated for political reasons was different. A small number of Turkish people came in the early 1970s because of dissent from the policies of the non-democratic regime in Turkey at the time. Some old leftist activists I spoke to revealed that it was because of the military intervention in 1971 and the resulting suppression of the leftist movement that they decided to leave Turkey permanently. I graduated from the university and started working as an architect in Ankara. I was heavily involved in theatre in those years. At the same time, I was working for the Turkish Workers’ Party and I was an active member of the Socialist Idea Club, which was a prominent leftist organisation run by university students. The military coup happened in 1971. Everything got worse after that. They introduced legal measures to pacify leftists. They accused us for making propaganda of communism. I underwent a trial because of that. I escaped by the skin of my teeth. Then I thought, maybe I would not be lucky a second time around. So I decided to go either to Canada or Australia.

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The Australian Government was paying for the airfare if you migrated through the Employment Office. I heard that they were not recruiting those who held university degrees. So I took my high school diploma and went to the Employment Office. (Kenan, 50s) Kenan’s narrative draws attention not only to the political dimension of this migration movement, which is often ignored in mainstream accounts of labour emigration, but also to the point that those who fell into the category of ‘skilled’ migrants had to find alternative strategies to be eligible for recruitment as assisted labour migrants. Erol’s experience also supports this point. We were living in Ankara before we came here. I used to work at the airport there. The job was good indeed. I was paid well. But there was constant tension in Turkey in those years. You could be easily killed in the streets, doesn’t matter if you were a leftist or rightist. The military intervened in the end. There was no democracy, but fear. A friend of mine and I heard that it was easy to migrate to Australia at that time. But we heard that they were recruiting unskilled people only. So I found my technical school diploma and attached it to my application although I did have a university diploma. We came to Sydney in August 1972. Almost every Turkish man used to work at the Ford factory in those years. And women mostly worked at the biscuit factory in Homebush. When we arrived in the hostel, I took my papers and went to the social worker there who was helping us find a job. They took me to the Ford factory. The manager of the factory quickly looked at my file and turned to one of the guys standing there: ‘Why did you bring him here? He is over-qualified.’ I told him that I didn’t mind and that all I wanted was a job. I was wearing a shirt, a tie and a jacket. The guy said: ‘You better take off your jacket then.’ I remember my wife crying when she saw my jacket covered with dirt and oil when I got back home that night. I worked in similar jobs for a couple of years. Then I found a good job at Phillips as a technician where I worked for years. (Erol, early 60s)

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Both Kenan’s and Erol’s narratives recounted above highlight the mixed motivations of the migrant actors. The narratives also give us some idea of the hardships of the migrant experience, although this is not the only memory of those early years. Yet often, these early immigrants have been typified as naive peasants from rural parts of Turkey whose ‘traditional’ values were irreconcilable with the values of the receiving country. They have been perceived not only as economically and politically poor, but also as poor in terms of their culture, which brought about problems of alienation and non-adaptation to life in Australian cities. The narratives I collected from much later Turkish migrants, who are middle-class and came after the assisted scheme, often reflect this prevailing interpretation, since they too view the early migrants as cahil (ignorant), uncivilised, backward, peasants, and as ‘victims’ of migration.

Arrivals after 1974 With the lapsing of the bilateral migration agreement in 1974 the chartered Qantas planes flying between Australia and Ankara ceased operating. Between 1968 and 1974, some 19,000 people from Turkey made their way to Sydney, Melbourne and a smattering of other places, lifting the number of Turkish-born people from 2,476 to nearly 20,000 (see Table 1) and listing Turkey among the top ten source countries of migrants to Australia.43 After 1974, migration from Turkey to Australia continued at a lower level. The family reunion scheme became one of the main pathways through which migrants from Turkey arrived. The socio-economic characteristics of the migrants who came in this period were similar to those of the earlier migrants; however this time more migrants came with the intention of settling permanently in Australia. As İçduygu notes, ‘This period represented a new era in the history of Turkish migration: realisation of permanent settlement, not only on an individual level but also at a community level.’44 By the early 1980s, the number of Turkish-born had risen to over 24,000. Immigration from Turkey to Australia continued at a slower pace in the first half of the 1980s, the family reunion scheme continuing

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Table 1 Number of Turkish-born persons in Australia, Censuses 1901–2006 Calculated on the basis of census data. Year

Population

1901

200

1911

322

1921

185

1933

281

1947

252

1954

1 036

1961

1 544

1966

2 476

1971

11 589

1976

19 355

1981

24 314

1986

24 468

1991

27 770

1996

28 869

2001

29 821

2006

30 490

to be the main mode of immigration. In this period the Australian immigration policy had also begun to change by putting more emphasis on the migration of skilled immigrants. The arrivals from Turkey under the skilled migration visa scheme included relatively younger and mostly single immigrants, who had post-secondary qualifications and were often able to speak English. There were also a considerable number of university graduates and white-collar workers who arrived in the 1980s. In addition, political oppression in Turkey during the 1980s, partly due to the military coup in 1980 and the accompanying state violence in the Kurdish regions of Turkey, was also decisive in changing the composition of Turkish migrants, who now also included political refugees. In the 1990s, immigration from Turkey slowed

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down substantively and the percentage of the arrival of Turkish-born people dropped below ten per cent. During the 1990s and 2000s migrants from Turkey have been admitted mainly through the family migration programme, with a smaller number through the skilled migration scheme. The data available on the immigration of Turkish-born people through the humanitarian programme (refugees) also reveals that there have been some arrivals in the first half of the 2000s, albeit on a very limited scale. All these changing trends in Turkish migration to Australia have meant that the profile of those born in Turkey and living permanently in Australia is now quite heterogeneous in terms of socio-economic indicators. The Australian Census in 2006 recorded 30,490 Turkish-born people residing in Australia. This number doubles to 59,402 when the size of the community is reckoned according to ancestry. Half of the Turkish-born population (15,290) has settled in Victoria with a slightly smaller percentage (12,470) in New South Wales followed by Queensland (1,120) and Western Australia (760) (see Map 1).45 In Sydney most Turkish speakers live in the western and southwestern suburbs, although they are also dispersed in other parts of the city. When the first Turkish-assisted migrants moved out from the hostel to rent their own houses – or to share with other families – they mostly preferred residing in inner suburban areas of Sydney including Redfern, Marrickville and Dulwich Hill because of the close proximity of such suburbs to the industries in which they were working. In the next few years, however, the primary residential areas where the Turkish-speaking people settled shifted from inner-west to western Sydney due to the availability of cheaper accommodation in this area, which also had the reputation of being close to factories. For these reasons Auburn has become a centre of community activities with a significant concentration of Turkish-speaking residents. Many Turkish community organisations, as well the largest Turkish mosque in New South Wales (NSW) are also located in Auburn. Today the Turkish community residing in Auburn (2,553 Turkish-born people) is the third largest group, following the Chinese and the Vietnamese. In addition, significant numbers of Turkish-speaking people live

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Northern Territory 30 0.1%

1120 3.7%

Western Australia 760 2.5%

Queensland

South Australia 600 2.0%

New South Wales 12 470 40.9%

AustralianCapital Territory 180 0.6%

Victoria 15 290 50.1%

Tasmania 40 0.1%

Map 1 Turkish-born population by state and territory, 2006. (Percentages relate to the proportion of Turks in Australia as a whole) (Source: DIAC 2007)

in Granville, Blacktown, Mt Druitt, Fairfield, Marrickville and Bankstown. Migrants from Turkey in Australia are now well established, divided almost equally between the first and second generation.47 They form a heterogeneous group in terms of their ethnic identities and religious affiliations. The 2006 Census indicated that 75 per cent of the Turkish-born immigrants in Australia were followers of Islam; 3.1 per cent were Eastern Orthodox Christians; and 8.6 per cent were not affiliated with any religion.48 There is also diversity among those who are believers of Islam. While the majority of the Muslim Turkishborn population are followers of the Sunni branch of Islam, there is also a substantial group of Alevis who follow the heterodox Anatolian Islamic tradition of Alevism. The history of Turkish emigration to Australia crafted in this chapter dealt with certain aspects of this migratory context while leaving

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some other equally important aspects of it untouched, such as the production of political and cultural identities and activities among the Turkish migrants in a setting that is moulded by the political projects of the sending and the receiving country. We shall now look at the political history of those migrant workers, who typically in modernist perspective and in the earlier migration scholarship have often been slandered as apolitical.

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2 A POLITICAL HISTORY OF THE ‘APOLITICAL’ MIGR ANT: FROM THE 1970S ONWAR DS

Before coming to Australia I had heard that the quickest way of meeting people from Turkey would be to visit Auburn, a Sydney suburb which, I was told, while not as ‘Turkish’ as the Kreuzberg of Berlin, is the main settlement area of Turkish migrants. On my second Saturday in Sydney I caught the western-line train to Auburn. Getting off the train at the station and taking the South Parade exit, I found it surprising not to see any signs in Turkish or any visible presence of the Turkish community. At the point where South Parade twisted to the right and joined the main arterial road, I caught sight of a signboard hanging on the second storey of a yellow building with the words Yeni Vatan (New Homeland) on it. At last! Here was the office of a local Turkish newspaper. I walked up the stairs and rang the bell. Inside was a group of people working at their computers while making small talk with visitors, who had either popped in to place advertisements or simply to pass the time of day. Having found out that I was ‘new’, everybody started to bombard me with questions: ‘Whereabouts in Turkey are you from?’, ‘Do you know anyone here?’ Answering the questions one by one I told them

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enthusiastically that I would be doing research in Sydney on Turkish immigrants. As soon as I finished my words, a wry laugh came from the other corner of the room. Moving his eyes away from the computer screen, the assistant editor of the newspaper said to me: ‘We are so bölünmüşüz (divided) that you won’t find any research on that.’ The others in the room gave a quick nod of acknowledgement. My topic was deemed unworthy. Over the next few weeks as I encountered the same comment from many other members of the ‘non-existent-community’, my disappointment grew. Finally the penny dropped: this is what I was researching. Why and how were people from Turkey in Sydney so divided? Having started my fieldwork in early 2007, it did not take me long to realise that the prime division among the Turks in Sydney was between laic Kemalists, and another group of people whom the Kemalists call ‘islamcılar’ (Islamists).1 Certainly there were others who did not fit into either category, including non-Kemalist leftists and liberals who were not defenders of a strict form of secularism under state control. Yet this current division has not always fractured and politicised Turkish people in Australia. In fact as we will see in Chapter Five, the antagonism of Kemalists towards Islamists has a clear enough starting date. In this chapter then I trace the political history of an earlier ideological polarisation among Turkish people in Sydney.2 To do so, I will look at the political landscape of the Turkish migrants in the late 1970s with a focus on their political activities, polemics and forms of dividedness in the associational spectrum. My main aim is to explore whether there is any enduring continuity between these earlier political practices among Turkish migrants and those of today. In addition to my focus on the political practices of the immigrants themselves, I will also examine the pre-history of the Turkish state’s current mobilisation of Turks in Australia. In what ways has the Turkish state addressed and organised Turkish immigrants in Australia during their forty years’ presence in this country? Is there any continuity in the way that the state seeks to mobilise certain ideological groups of Turkish migrants? In order to provide this political-historical background I will rely heavily on the archival data I collected from two local Turkish newspapers (Yorum and Dayanışma), as well as on the interviews I conducted with Turkish community leaders.

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The politics of Turkish migrants in the 1970s and 1980s The image below was taken from a cartoon that appeared in a 1993 issue of Yorum (Interpretation), a leftist Turkish paper in Sydney, which is no longer extant. Drawing on the different styles of moustaches as they came to symbolise the left-wing and right-wing affiliations of their owners, the cartoon signifies the ideological make-up of the Turkish migrants in Australia in the 1970s and 1980s. This left-right polarisation was already outdated by 1993 and as the other half of the cartoon illustrates (later in this chapter), it was replaced by a new form of political division. Yet scrutinising this former division is vital for understanding the constitution of the current politico-ideological fragmentation among Turkish people in Sydney. A brief summary of the domestic politics in Turkey in the late 1960s is necessary to better understand the chain of events that led to the politicisation of many Turkish migrants along the ideological lines of left and right. In the more democratic atmosphere engendered by the relatively liberal character of the 1961 Constitution, Turkish politics, which had been heavily dominated by right-wing political parties, saw the formation of alternative political movements and interest groups in the 1960s. The institutionalisation of the political left surfaced in this context, first

Figure 5 Solcu (Leftist)–Sağcı (Rightist) The political division among Turkish migrants in Sydney in the 1970s and 1980s (Source: Yorum, 4 June 1993)

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with the opening up of the Türkiye İşçi Partisi (TIP) (Turkish Workers’ Party) in 1961, and then with the establishment of a number of workers’ unions (i.e. the Union of Chambers of Industry and the Confederation of Employers (TİSK) in 1962 and the Confederation of Revolutionary Trade Unions (DİSK)). The political left gained strength within broader society as well, especially among university students, workers and the urban intelligentsia. Looking at the other end of the political spectrum, right-wing groups had also enhanced their organisational strength by the 1970s, organizing around the idea of combating communism. The political ideology and practice of the Turkish right had been mainly supported by the ultra-nationalist, far right Milliyetçi Hareket Partisi (MHP) (Nationalist Movement Party) and the para-military fascist Bozkurtlar (Grey Wolves) and Ülkü Ocakları (Idealist Hearths), with their clear, if unofficial, links with the MHP. In the second half of the 1960s, the domestic environment in Turkey was marked by disorder and unrest. The student riots and clashes between the two ideological camps intensified after 1968 and slowly turned into an armed conflict in the streets. Student radicalism was also accompanied by an increased radicalisation of the working class, advocating higher wages and social improvements.4 The government led by the centre-right Justice Party seemed unable to restore order in the society. This loss of governmental authority brought about a power vacuum into which the military stepped in 1971 with its second military coup in a decade. The intervention occurred in support of the rightists and aimed to suppress the political left. The TIP and other leftist organisations were closed down, leftist publications were banned, and many leftist advocates were arrested. Yet these countermeasures could not stop the widening political schisms. Ideological polarisation, fragmentation and volatility were the defining features of the Turkish party system in the 1970s.5 The socio-political lives of Turkish migrants in Sydney, similar to their counterparts in various European host countries6, were not insulated from the fierce political climate in Turkey in the 1970s. As noted in the previous chapter, some leftist activists left Turkey to settle permanently in Australia after the military coup in 1971. It was not only the flow of these politically oriented people, as well as their expertise

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in political activism, that gave stimulus to a growing politicisation within the community. More importantly, a number of Turkish migrant organisations were instituted in the 1970s whose main area of functioning was welfare provision. Funded by various federal and state government institutions to hire social workers and initiate community programmes, these organisations provided a range of welfare services to the Turkish-speaking community, and at the same time became vigorous instigators of Turkish politics in Sydney. Aligning themselves either with the leftist or rightist ideological movements in Turkey, they closely followed domestic political developments in the homeland and transmitted the political tensions, as well as conflicts, to Australia. My aim in tracing the unwritten political history of Australian Turkish migrants in this chapter is to draw attention to two significant points. The first is how resourceful, politically speaking, migrants are. Mark J. Miller’s book on foreign workers was pioneering in drawing attention to this point in the migration literature in the 1980s.7 He argued in relation to the European context that migrant workers were seen as overwhelmingly apolitical and passive. He notes: The largely implicit, but sometimes explicit, thesis that foreign workers are politically passive or not a significant factor in political analysis of contemporary Western Europe also arises from the tendency to view them as strictly economic agents. This viewpoint follows from the prevailing assumption of European officialdom that post-war migrations would be temporary labour migrant adjustments and that the sojourns of individual migrants in Western Europe would be short-term, as migrants, once they had amassed sufficient savings or else lost their jobs during recessions, would return home. Within this conception of post-war labour migration, there was little room for an active migrant worker political role in Western Europe and, more importantly, no need for it.8 Miller further argued that this view of the migrant workers as ‘apolitical’ and ‘passive’ was prevalent not only among the policy-makers,

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but also among scholars – whether Marxist or non-Marxist – writing on the labour migration flows. Making a strong critique of this scholarship, he examined far too often ignored forms of foreign workers’ political participation and representation during their sojourn in western Europe. This point will be further discussed in this study, given its concern to explore the production of political identities and practices among the Turkish migrants in Australia in conjunction with more recent attempts by the Turkish state to mobilise and regulate its diasporic population. The second key point which the historical analysis in this chapter will highlight is the crucial role played by migrant associations – even by those only seeking to provide welfare assistance – in the formation of a political transnational space. An overwhelming concern of the discussion on this topic has been the question of whether immigrant organisations have a positive or negative impact on the assimilation or social integration of immigrants into the host society. Those who have argued that organisations facilitate the integration of the migrant group they represent have called attention to the potential quality of these institutions as civil platforms of interest aggregation, as producers of consensus formation and/or of social trust, and as linkages through which the specific needs of a particular ethnic group can be identified and met. On the other hand an opposing view has assumed that organisations established along ethnic lines hinder cultural exchange and accordingly impede segregation. Additionally, there has been a related interest in the literature in exploring the correlation between participation in ethnic organisations and political participation. Some of this research has focused on participation in the politics of the host country, while some others paid attention to the changing multi-strand relationships that these organisations build with political institutions in the homeland. The so-called ethnic associations are truly transnational in this sense. They re-orient their goals and activities and develop strategies according to the changing political circumstances in both countries; they use various mechanisms of politics-making in the host country through networking and participating in that country’s political parties; and at times they lobby the political authorities, the media and the general public

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in the host country to advocate their interests against the government or the regime in the homeland, or vice versa. It is to the flourishing of these ‘ethnic’ (Turkish) welfare and cultural organisations in Sydney that I will now turn.

The politics of the Turkish left in Sydney I met Fikret for the first time in May 2007 when I went to the commemoration night organised for the 44th anniversary of the death of Nazım Hikmet, a renowned Turkish poet and a committed communist who spent most of his life in exile in the USSR for his political views. The event was initiated by a group of older leftists at the Lidcombe Community Centre. I did not know then that similar commemoration events, in fact much bigger ones, had been organised annually by the leftist Sydney Turkish People’s House during the 1970s and 1980s. The same commemorations were also held in Ankara and Istanbul. Our second encounter was seven months later. We were at a meeting held by a group of Kemalists on the terrace of a privately owned Turkish music school in the western Sydney suburb of Merrylands. The purpose of the meeting was to brainstorm about a forthcoming march being organised to condemn the attacks of the PKK9 (Kurdish Workers’ Party) against the Turkish military in south-east Anatolia. After the meeting Fikret offered to give me a lift to the train station. He was interested in my work because he seemed to know a lot about the political lives of Turkish people here, both as an old leftist and as a former editor of Yorum newspaper. I visited him a couple of times in his travel agency office in Summer Hill. His office seemed more like a living area with numerous private photos and posters decorating its walls. The posters displayed past events organised by the Sydney Turkish People’s House. There were also pages of Yorum newspaper, which was initiated by Fikret’s father, framed and hung on the sidewalls. What caught my attention more than anything else was a series of photos welcoming visitors as they walked in. Noticing me eyeing the photos Fikret told me that these people were the role models in his life: Mustafa Kemal; Turkish poet and writer Nazım Hikmet; Turkish folk singer Ruhi Su; Turkish

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writer and humorist Aziz Nesin; the assassinated Kemalist intellectual Ahmet Taner Kışlalı; and Fikret’s father Hüsnü. Fikret was born in the Black Sea city of Trabzon in 1955. He was 19 years old and had just finished high school when his parents decided to migrate to Australia in 1974 for political and economic reasons. He recounted: My father used to be a journalist in Turkey. Before we came here we went to the Australian Embassy in Ankara to be interviewed. The man who interviewed us said to my father: ‘We would be delighted to have an intellectual like you in Australia.’ Even though this was what he had told us, my father found himself working as an unskilled worker in this country. Upon arriving in Sydney we were settled in Villawood Hostel. We had brought three-four suitcases with us. Two of them were full of books. We dedicated ourselves to reading those books. The first year passed with a lot of hardship. After staying for five months at the hostel we moved to Summer Hill. We have been living here since then. At the beginning I worked at several factories. Then I went to a three-month English course provided by the government for migrants. Finishing the course, I became an employee at Australia Post. Meanwhile my father had health issues and had to ask for his retirement. He started publishing Yorum newspaper in 1977. When my father died in 1998 I resigned from my job at the post office and continued to publish the paper. I also began working as a court translator. The paper was published till 2002. The first interview I had with Fikret, which lasted for more than two hours, revolved mostly around his memories of life in Sydney, as well as his and his father’s experiences as leftist activists. From time to time, he would grab one of the old bound volumes of Yorum and point out the relevant pages to me on the issue he was talking about. I became passionate about these yellow-tinged and dog-eared pages. At first I took the volumes in sets of three from Fikret’s office. Kindly thinking that this would be too time consuming for me, he put

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together the copies of each and every issue and gave them to me in an old green suitcase. Yorum was a left-oriented newspaper that used to come out fortnightly. Financially, the paper was heavily dependent on the income generated from publishing advertisements placed by local Turkish shops as well as by various (Australian) government institutions. Fikret told me that when the polarisation between the leftist and rightist groups began to accelerate, many Turkish shops stopped placing advertisements in Yorum so as to not to be labelled ‘leftists.’ This placed financial pressure on the publishing of the newspaper. Yorum’s coverage included both Turkish and Australian news, but the paper also had an internationalist vision with a focus on developments in non-aligned socialist countries. Its content also included a section on arts and culture, biographies of well-known leftist figures, readers’ commentaries and sports news. The early issues of Yorum often talked about the inability of the existing Turkish migrant associations10 to answer the social and cultural needs of the Turkish-speaking people in Sydney. In 1978, Sidney Türk Halk Evi (Sydney Turkish People’s House, hereafter STPH) was established as a welfare association with the intention of filling this gap in the associational spectrum. The initiative came from Hüsnü, Fikret’s father. An office was rented in Burwood to accommodate the association. According to Fikret’s account of that period: The Sydney Turkish People’s House was founded as an Atatürkist organisation and, because it was Atatürkist it was inevitably a leftist formation. The left-right division within the community here began to evolve prior to the military intervention of 12 October 1980 and progressed in parallel with developments in Turkey. In the late 1970s, the left-wing group included social democrats, socialists, Alevis. The right, on the other hand, mainly included the supporters of the MHP and, to a smaller extent, some religious people. However, back then the split in the community was not too sharp. I will tell you something very interesting. When the Turkish People’s House was opened up in 1978 its first meeting was held at the mosque hall in Auburn. I mean the relationships between two sides

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were like this back then. The split became clearer as the coup approached. Fikret’s narrative points out that the ideological division among the politically oriented Turkish migrants in Sydney was directly influenced by the political climate in Turkey. This became even more explicit following the military coup in 1980. In addition to highlighting the role of the transnational effect in the production of political identities and practices in the diasporic context, the narrative pinpoints two other interesting points. First of all, it helps us to understand how the political structure of the diaspora has changed since the 1970s. This is most explicit in what Fikret tells us about the holding of the first official meeting of the STPH – an organisation that identifies itself as leftistKemalist – at the mosque. Fikret himself defines this as ‘interesting’ because he acknowledges that this would not happen today, given the current political tension between Turkish organisations. In other words, the narrative confirms that Kemalism was not operating as a political identity in the late 1970s nor was it experiencing a legitimation crisis. Secondly, the narrative draws attention to the symbiotic relationship between Kemalist ideology and the Turkish left by stating that there is a mutual link between the two. Indeed this paradoxical relationship between the two ideologies goes back to the origins and practice of the leftist movement in Turkey. The most distinctive feature of the Turkish version of leftist politics is the close association it has built with the ideology of Kemalism. As Belge notes, ‘The Turkish left, in both its “socialdemocrat” and “communist” manifestations, grew up in the garden of Turkish nationalism . . . And although in Turkey these two branches have quite different origins (unlike in many countries in Europe), the common point between them is their closeness to nationalism.’11 One of the grounds on which the leftists identified their political position within Kemalism was over anti-imperialism. Here Kemalism was interpreted and praised as a movement of national liberation with strong reference being made to the War of Independence (1919–23) in which Turkish nationalists fought against Greece and the Allied powers following the Ottoman Empire’s defeat in the First World War, and secondly to the Turkish national movement under the leadership of

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Atatürk. The quote taken from an editorial commentary that appeared in a 1978 issue of Yorum illustrates this point: In our century, the first nation to initiate a fight against the imperialist powers and the first one to prove that this is the most honourable path for the emancipation of the oppressed nations in the twentieth-century is the Turkish nation under the command of Atatürk. This nation lost its leader forty years ago and since then it has not managed to reach the contemporary civilisation that he [Atatürk] set out as a target . . . We, the Turkish labourers who are selling their labour in foreign lands in order to survive, are bowing down in front of the memory of our Father [Atatürk] in the 40th anniversary of his death. Forty years after his death, we declare once again that the only way to liberation is to fight against every form of exploitation coming from inside and outside.12 The very same discourse referring to Kemalism and the political left as twin ideologies of anti-imperialism is reflected in another commentary titled ‘Listening to Mustafa Kemal’: 41 years passed after the death of Atatürk, who pioneered the first war of independence against capitalism and its last stage, imperialism, in the twentieth-century, and who established the Turkish Republic as a respectable independent state. 10 November 1938 is a mournful day not for the Turkish nation only, but for every nation which embraced the idea of national struggle against imperialism.13 Both quotes illustrate leftist thought in the way it was expressed in Yorum and in the numerous activities of the STPH, associating antiimperialism with the Turkish national struggle, and from that with the nationalist Kemalist ideology. Anti-imperialism was addressed from an economic point of view as well. The main reference point here was Kemalism once again, this time referring to it as an anti-imperialist

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Figure 6 ‘From where to where’ (Source: Yorum, 2 October 1979)

economic policy. The cartoon below, which came out in Yorum in 1979, displays the same paradox of the Turkish left. Figure 6 pictures Atatürk (on the left) as a teacher introducing the letters of the newly adopted Latin alphabet to the Turkish nation during the language revolution in 1928. The right side of the cartoon, on the other hand, shows a bald fat man also standing in front of a blackboard and writing the letters of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) with which Turkey signed a stability package agreement in 1978. The cartoon contrasts the Kemalist revolution of nationbuilding with the economic policies of the post-Atatürk era and expresses the concerns of Kemalists as they imagine the decline of the nation in the face of outside intervention. Drawing attention to the close association between a nationalist Turkish left and Kemalist ideology is significant not only from a social theory point of view. In the context of this study, it is also important for locating the current forms of political transnationalism among Turkish migrants in a broader historical setting. In other words, it helps to contextualise a transition within the political landscape from the left vs. right divide into a Kemalist vs. Islamist one. In the example of the STPH, the close association between the left and Kemalism is even made explicit in the name that this organisation chose for

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itself. Indeed the term Halkevi (People’s House) has a deep Kemalist connotation in the political history of Turkey. In 1932, as part of the citizen-making project of the Kemalist state, People’s Houses were established by the Republican People’s Party in the urban centres. Providing space for many activities ranging from adult education to leisure, these institutions were utilised as ‘adult education centres through which the Kemalist revolution might be disseminated to the people.’15 They stayed active until their closure by the Democrat Party Government in 1951. Interestingly, the ideal of reopening these institutions has animated not only leftist-Kemalists in Turkey, but also leftists in the diaspora. The similarities that the STPH had with the People’s Houses of the early Republican period were not limited to name only, but can also be observed in the way the STPH structured its social and cultural activities: 1. Social assistance; 2. Workers’ issues; 3. Theatre; 4. Folklore; 5. Photograph and film; 6. Exhibitions and leisure; 7. Library. Nearly all of these divisions, such as social assistance, theatre, library, exhibitions and leisure were core activities of the early People’s Houses in Turkey.16 Apart from its more routinised activities taking place in each of these divisions, the STPH was also active in periodically organising seminars and educational meetings. From the seminar advertisements printed in Yorum it is clear that the main themes under discussion in the 1970s included capitalism, imperialism, fascism, socialism, education, the problems of migrant workers in Australia, the legal rights of migrant workers, Australian class history, the Cyprus issue, Middle East politics and women’s issues. Another area in which the STPH was highly active was the production of cultural activities. During the 1970s and 1980s, a good number of cultural events organised by the association had a focus on the Turkish poet, novelist and playwright Nazım Hikmet, who was persecuted for decades by the Turkish state during the Cold War for his communist views and spent much of his adult life in prison or in exile. Starting with 1978 the STPH held annual commemorations in the name of Hikmet. In 1979 the library division of the association started to collect the work of the poet that came out in Turkish and

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in other languages, as well as other work that was written about him. Additionally, the theatre division presented a number of plays written by Hikmet. The poet’s meaning for Turkish leftists in Sydney was expressed in this quote taken from a commentary in Yorum: As an organisation of a group of migrants, who were forced to live in a country other than their homeland, we are commemorating the greatest Turkish poet on the anniversary of his death, who was also forced to live and die in a country other than his homeland. His painful life gives us cause for pride in Australia, in Germany, in Norway, in France and in many other countries. We are proud of him as the inheritors of a culture that raised him, as people speaking the language that he wrote his poems in and as his compatriots. As members of the working class living in a country that has turned towards multiculturalism, we are experiencing the happiness of reading Nazım’s poems in his own language.17 The cultural activities produced by the STPH not only helped to generate a political consciousness among its members, but also brought this group of people in contact with other Turkish leftists living in other diasporic contexts. For example, advertisements placed in Yorum in the 1970s and 1980s reveal that various cultural products such as books and music cassettes forbidden in Turkey for propagating a left-wing ideology were imported into Australia from Europe in that period. These were reproduced by various Turkish leftist groups in European countries and then distributed to their Turkish counterparts elsewhere including Australia. The socio-political transnational space constituted by Turkish leftists living in different countries did not merely involve the circulation of various cultural products with symbolic importance for this political movement. The cultural activities revolving around the theme of Nazım Hikmet were a significant element of this politico-cultural transnationalism, constituting a micro-transnational field in itself. In those years the cultural activities produced by Turkish leftist activists in Europe with a focus on Nazım Hikmet were closely watched by the STPH

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and similar activities were held in Sydney. Some of these events also involved the participation of some other leftist non-Turkish migrant groups in Sydney. For example, at the Nazım Hikmet Poem Night held at the Sydney University in 1979, Nazım’s poems were read in ten different languages. These cultural activities, therefore, also helped to build interaction between Turkish leftists organised around the STPH and other non-Turkish leftists in Sydney. Another example of this was the anti-imperialism music events held annually in the late 1970s. It is understood from the related Yorum news that a wide range of leftist groups participated in the organising of these events, which included Australians, Italians, Argentinians, Turks, Zimbabweans, Greeks and Chileans.18 A bigger step towards the institutionalisation of the political left among Turkish migrants in Sydney was taken with the founding of the NSW Federation of Democratic Turkish Associations (FDTA) in September 1979. Initially five Turkish associations joined this umbrella body: the STPH, the Australian Contemporary Turkish Workers’ Association, the Turkish Education and Cultural Association, the Association of Progressive Women and the Turkish Kindergarten Co-op. Fikret’s father, Hüsnü, was elected president of the Federation with the consensus of the majority. In the opening speech, Hüsnü explained where this institution stood in the associational spectrum of the community: The associations that are part of this Federation are well aware of two things. The first one is that we are members of the working class. And secondly, we constitute a small migrant group in a foreign country with our identities as labourers. Now, having this realisation shows that we have made serious progress eleven years after coming to Australia. This progress has brought this umbrella organisation to the Turkish migrants living in NSW.19 Although Hüsnü’s speech declares that the main focus of the associations affiliated to the Federation is on issues related to migrant workers in Australia (who include far more than Turkish migrants),

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the Federation shifted its focus to Turkey-based political issues not long after. In other words, the provision of welfare services and the production of social, cultural and political activities with a focus on Turkish politics went hand in hand. This latter aspect became an area of debate among the leftists themselves. Some leftists argued that the leftist movement of Turkish migrants should deal with the issues that concerned workers in Australia. The main argument of this group was that the divisions proliferating among leftist groups in Turkey would obstruct the unity of a movement of migrant workers in Australia. A Yorum article written by a leftist reader illustrates this viewpoint: The issues we discuss and worry about are not the issues of Australia; they are the issues of Turkey. Things happening in Turkey are important within the circumstances of that country. They must be secondary for shaping our lives here . . . If we, as the people of this country, want to participate in Australian politics, there is not any barrier obstructing us. This country has its own political parties and there is no obstacle to becoming a member of them. We can be supporters of any political thought we like. The political divisions emerging from Turkish politics appear to be very superficial. Here ninety-five per cent of Turks living in Sydney are labourers working at the heaviest jobs. The interests of workers can be pursued not in a state of division, but in a state of coalition at least on a number of issues. Besides, bringing some unpleasant conflicts originating from another country to Australia can make us get negative reactions from the public. The problems of workers arising from their status as workers can be solved only through working together, not through getting fragmented.20 Despite these internal debates about the supposed objectives of the left-wing movement in Sydney, the group mainly concentrated on Turkish-based political developments. They organised numerous events and meetings to generate a leftist consciousness among Turkish immigrants as well as within the general public in Australia. They built contacts with the left-wing Australian political

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parties, particularly with the leftist faction of the Australian Labour Party, the Socialist Party of Australia and the Communist Party of Australia.

The politics of the Turkish right in Sydney In the 1970s and 1980s rightist-oriented Turkish migrants in Sydney were organised around the Turkish Welfare Association (TWA), one of the oldest Turkish organisations in Sydney. The association was opened in 1971 initially under the name of Türk Cemiyeti (Turkish Association). In 1973 its name was changed to Turkish Welfare and Cultural Centre. It has, however, been most commonly referred as the ‘Turkish House’ (or as ‘Türkeş’s House’, coined from the name of Alparslan Türkeş, the former leader and founder of the MHP) in the everyday parlance of Turkish migrants. Similar to its leftist counterpart, the TWA was established with the primary aim of providing welfare-based services to Turkish immigrants in Sydney. Its head office was located in Auburn, but its services were also extended to other areas of Sydney with substantial Turkish settlement such as Marrickville, Eastlakes, Hillsdale, Mascot, Redfern, Botany, Engadine, Fairfield and Mt Druitt. In addition to its provision of welfare services, the organisation has also been one of the main social and cultural hubs for Turkish migrants. Similar to the STPH, the TWA published its own newspaper Dayanışma (Solidarity) through which it disseminated information about its services and activities, as well as about political developments in the home and host countries. The TWA’s office on Gallipoli Parade in Auburn was a place I visited regularly during my fieldwork (Figure 7). I went there not only to follow various social and cultural activities held by this association, but to witness its hosting from time to time of various national day celebrations, meetings, and seminars organised either by certain other associations (i.e. Atatürk Cultural Centre, the Azerbaijani Association, the Eastern Turkestan Association and the Australian Turkmen Association) or by the Turkish Consulate in Sydney. The first floor of this two-storey building contains offices, a kitchen and a lounge area that often accommodated a group of Turkish men dropping in to have a cup of tea on

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the way to or back from the nearby mosque. Some would stop by to grab a local Turkish newspaper from the big pile of papers placed in the entrance. Entering the interior area, a golden bust of Atatürk welcomes visitors. The bust was placed on a display plinth bridging two wall columns standing in the middle of the room, where the portraits of Atatürk, his famous speech addressing ‘Turkish youth’ and the lyrics of the Turkish national anthem were hung. The sidewalls of the lounge area were covered with more photos of Atatürk, presenting many shots of him during the cultural revolution of the 1920s and 1930s. The idea of exhibiting these photos came from Hasan, president of the TWA since 1984. Hasan’s father passed these photos on to him years ago. He brought them to Sydney when he left Turkey with his wife in 1970. At first they were not sure about how long to stay abroad. However Hasan’s wife had a car accident not long after they came to Sydney and she had to stay at the hospital for a couple of years. After this they decided not to go back to Turkey.

Figure 7 Sydney Turkish Welfare and Cultural Centre (Source: author’s own)

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Serving as the president of the TWA for the last 28 years, Hasan was one of the most experienced community leaders in Sydney, honoured by the NSW Community Relations Council with a ‘Lifetime Achievement Award in Community Service.’ I had many chats with him as well as with his friends who often visited him in his office, a room full of Atatürk portraits of various sizes, wolf’s-head signs, maps and flags of Turkey, Australia and the Turkic Republics of western Asia. Among all these images, one would attract my attention each time I entered Hasan’s office: a document hanging on the wall, which symbolised the deed of ownership of the Turkish Republic. Like a real deed of ownership would do, this imaginary deed specified the essential characteristics of Turkey including its name, capital city, official language, religion, national anthem and national days. The national borders of the homeland in this imaginary deed not only comprised the borders of Turkey, but also included that of North Cyprus, the so-called ‘infant homeland’, whose status as a ‘state’ in the international system is only recognised by Turkey. The owners of this property were stated as ‘the 73 million Kemalist and nationalist Turkish citizens who call themselves Turks.’ Right above this line, there was a quote from a popular poem written by the nationalist poet C. Kuntay: ‘What makes a flag a real flag is blood on it. The land is made into a homeland when it has been died for.’ This imaginary deed of ownership of the Turkish Republic was given to Hasan by a friend because of his reputation of being a true Turkish nationalist. Interestingly, however, Hasan said to me that he had no idea about being a rightist before he migrated to Australia. As he tells us below, his interest in right-wing politics and his involvement began much later: Before I came here I used to say to myself ‘When we go to Australia we will prove to them what a Turk is. We are the superior nation. When they see us, they will bow down in front of us.’ I was proud of my Turkishness. But when we came here I was very disappointed. No one cared about my Turkishness. Actually I was not a rightist before coming here. In Istanbul there was a coffee house right next to the restaurant I was working in as a waiter. Some young men used to come to that coffee house. They were leftist. The owner of the coffee house would

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not let them in. He would kick them out swearing. I used to feel sorry for those young men. I even shouted at the owner one day and said to him ‘Why are you treating them like that! They don’t give harm to anyone.’ But when I came here I realised that these leftists were the traitors to the homeland; they were the ones who were burning the Turkish flag.21 That’s how I became a rightist. Although this narrative reflects the subjective experiences and opinions of a particular person only, it nevertheless gives us an idea about the type of Turkish nationalism that the TWA is associated with. This is a chauvinistic nationalism grounded on the idea of the superiority of ethnic Turkishness over other ethnic identities (particularly in Turkey and amongst its neighbours) and on the notion of pride in the Turkish nation’s essential characteristics. In it Islam is also perceived as an important component of Turkish national culture, a fundamental point that differentiated the rightists’ interpretation of nationalism from the one adhered to by the leftist group who produced their own form of nationalism in relation to the discourse on Kemalism as anti-imperialism. Beyond the mid-1970s, the TWA became the main supporter of far-right Turkish nationalism in line with the MHP in Turkey. The ideologies of socialism and communism were seen as threats to the national sovereignty of Turkey, given that they had originated in non-Turkish contexts and were therefore seen as non-applicable to the Turkish case. Combating the proponents of these ideologies thus became the main objective of the TWA. In 1980, with the aim of generating a nationalist consciousness among young Turkish men in Sydney and mobilising them against the leftist-socialists, the TWA established Kültür Ocağı (Cultural Hearths), which was reminiscent of Idealist Hearths – the youth organisation of the MHP. Although Cultural Hearths did not have any official links with this political party, it was still an extension of this ultranationalist formation originally based in Turkey. The group was based in the Turkish House. And it also started to publish its own newspaper, Çağrı (The Call). A bigger step towards the institutionalisation of the Turkish right came in February 1981 with the establishment of NSW Türk

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Kuruluşları Konseyi (the NSW Council of Turkish Associations). This was a counter attempt to build an alternative federative institution to represent Turkish organisations that were not part of the leftist federation. These included: the TWA, the Turkish Islamic Culture and Mosque Construction Association, Cultural Hearths, the Turkish Music Association and the Turkish Soccer Club. The federation made it explicit from the very beginning that its primary goal was to watch political developments in Turkey. The TWA continued to maintain its position as the premier defender of the right-wing ideology among the other associations that joined this federation. It was the key producer of the cultural events on the right, which often took the form of national day celebrations and talks on the history of the Ottoman Empire and the early Republican era. Whereas the meaning of celebrating national days for the rightist group was associated with celebrating Turkish nationalism and ethnic Turkishness, when it came to the leftist group this was replaced by the idea of celebrating a struggle against anti-imperialism. In 1979, the Turkish Education Association had initiated an attempt to bring the leftist and rightist organisations together in celebration of national and religious days, and a joint event was organised by the two umbrella organisations. However, in the following years, both groups preferred holding separate celebrations again. Meanwhile, both Yorum and Dayanışma newspapers reveal that following the military intervention in Turkey in 1980, the Turkish Consulate in Sydney co-organised national day celebrations with the rightist NSW Council of Turkish Associations and that the representatives of the leftist federation were not invited to these celebrations. This can be seen as indicative of the Consulate’s de facto alignment with the rightist group.

‘Long-distance policing’ by the Turkish state Østergaard-Nielsen notes in her book on the political transnationalism of Kurdish emigrants in Germany that beginning in the early 1980s, Turkish consulates began mobilising emigrants from Turkey

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in a more systematic way as Turkish policy-makers realised that the majority of these migrants would not return.22 In the 1980s, the state’s mobilisation of its emigrants mainly took two forms: first, the monitoring of diasporic politics-making, and secondly the formation and support of lobby groups. Writing about the German context, Østergaard-Nielsen points out that in order to monitor the political activities and practices of Turkish immigrants, the state established ‘Coordination Councils.’ Initiated by the Turkish state and financed through the consulates, these umbrella organisations involved Turkish associations whose ideals and activities were not in opposition to the state or in other words, who promoted Kemalist ideas.23 Differently from the German case, the Turkish diplomatic corps in Australia did not establish Coordination Councils, although the urgent need to bring Turkish organisations together within a single federative structure was expressed by the Turkish diplomats in Sydney and Canberra from the late 1970s onwards. Staff at the Turkish Consulate in Sydney, however, made it clear that they would only collaborate with the rightist federation of Turkish associations, given that the political left was seen as a dissident movement at the time. In the Australian case then, the Turkish authorities’ involvement in the transnational political field constituted by the leftist and rightist Turkish groups happened through what Østergaard-Nielsen calls the ‘long-distance policing’ of the Turkish state as well as through the formation of lobby groups.24 Murat, one of the old rightist activists I met, was very insightful about how these processes were initiated in Sydney. In 1967, after coming back to Turkey from the USA where he received his undergraduate degree in sociology, Murat heard about the assisted migration scheme provided by the Australian government. Although he had good prospects for finding a job in Turkey, he wanted to come to Australia to see another country. ‘It was more like an adventure for me’, he said. He thought that he would easily find a job in Sydney as a social worker but instead found himself working in a bank. Identifying himself as a rightist, he joined the TWA and became an active participant in the association’s activities. The reason for him aligning himself with

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right-wing politics, he said, was that this ideological movement had legitimacy in the eyes of the Turkish state and its diplomatic institutions in Sydney, which were sympathetic towards cooperating with them in their struggle against ‘reactionary’ movements. There was this guy called Kamuran Gürün. He once also served as the Minister of Foreign Affairs. He was from the Republican People’s Party. He came here. Now, the issue of citizenship is a very interesting one. Australia is one of the rare countries that accepts dual citizenship. Before dual citizenship was legally introduced in Turkey, everyone here would secretly apply to get Australian citizenship. They were scared of losing their Turkish citizenship. Kamuran Gürün came here. He gathered everybody. And he said: ‘We want you to acquire Australian citizenship and get involved in the lobby activities.’ I am one of the pioneers of the lobby activities here. The consulate chose four of us. This was in the 1970s, before the 1980s. We bought some office stationery with the money sent to us from Turkey. We prepared bulletins and sent these to every state and federal parliamentarian in Australia and to every library in Australia. We were involved in activities to promote Turkey. We particularly worked on the Armenian issue. After a while Turkey stopped sending us money. The consuls said to us ‘Leave these activities.’ So we did. Murat’s narrative informs us how the Turkish state’s mobilisation through its consular networks of its citizens abroad – especially its right-wing activists – was not limited to the European case, but was extended to Australia as well. Although the lobbying activities that Murat talked about were undertaken by a small number of Turkish migrants and the financial support provided to them by Ankara was cut off after a while, this information is highly important for highlighting the willingness of the Turkish state to police not only its own boundaries but those of other countries where their nationals live. The narrative draws attention to another important point in relation to the issue of dual citizenship: the Turkish state’s redefining

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of its boundaries to include Turkish emigrants who are no longer resident in Turkey. The legal measures for the adoption of dual citizenship in the Turkish Citizenship Law (dated 1961 and numbered 403) were taken in 1981. This major change obviously came about as an outcome of the migration of millions of Turks to other countries since the early 1960s. Turkish immigrants have continued their lives abroad for several decades, have paid taxes to the Turkish state and the governments of the receiving countries and have been affected by political decisions in Turkey, but have never gained full political rights since they were not allowed to hold multiple citizenship.25 The adoption of dual citizenship was, therefore, a major step forward in solving problems encountered by Turkish emigrants in relation to their legal status. Murat’s narrative brings to light another aspect of the issue of dual citizenship: the granting to Turkish migrants of the right to hold dual citizenship was seen as a strategy by the Turkish state, through which the lobbying of its nationals abroad could be utilised in more effective ways. From the late 1970s onwards, having realised that the so-called ‘guest-workers’ were now permanent settlers in the countries of destination, the Turkish policy-makers came up with a new rhetoric for addressing Turkish emigrants. This rhetoric, which is still predominant in the current Turkish state’s discourse, encourages Turks abroad both to stay in the countries they migrated to, yet warns them about the dangers of assimilating to those societies. They should be ‘integrated’ so that they can keep their ties to Turkey alive. Facilitating dual citizenship then does not contradict this expectation of the state. Besides it even opens up the possibility for Turkish emigrants of actively participating in the politics of their host societies and defending the interests of Turkey which, according to the state, are not (and should not be) different from their own individual interests. The Turkish state’s long-distance policing gained momentum following the military takeover on 12 September 1980. The intervention was made in the name of demolishing political polarisation and fragmentation in Turkish society, as well as in the name of preserving the integrity of the secular Kemalist nation-state. However, in practice, the coup and the oppressive measures taken by the military

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government during the three years it stayed in power were mostly aimed at dissolving the political left. Hundreds of thousands of political activists, mainly leftists, were arrested and put in prison. Those who could flee the country sought refuge outside Turkey.26 This was the case for a small minority of right-wing activists as well. Europe, and particularly Germany, became a ‘withdrawal zone’ for MHP activists and for the party’s paramilitary commandos, the Grey Wolves.27 In the transitory period of 1980–83, all political parties were outlawed by the military regime and were forbidden to set up an organisational structure abroad. Trade unions, foundations and associations were all closed down. The major impact of these domestic developments on the political groups in the diaspora, and of the military intervention in general, was increasing political polarisation. In contrast to what was happening in Turkey, the associations through which Turkish migrants were politically active (as well as their transnational networks) were still operating and, unsurprisingly, they became further politicised after the coup. The Australian case was no exception to this. In February 1981 another legal change was made to the Turkish Citizenship Law, which directly concerned the legal status of Turkish emigrants abroad. According to the new law, Turkish citizens abroad who were involved in ‘hostile activities’ against the Turkish state, or those who had been involved in similar domestic activities and then fled the country, would lose their Turkish citizenship if they failed to return to Turkey within three months of notification.28 Immediately after this law was enacted the Turkish state, once again through its consular networks, sent notifications to thousands of Turkish citizens living in various European countries that their citizenship had been annulled.29 This means of policing Turkish migrants was accompanied by what Østergaard-Nielsen calls ‘passport harassment.’30 From the late 1970s Turkish consulates in Europe refused to renew the passports of numerous Turkish citizens involved in dissident political activities, compelling them to return to Turkey if they wished to resolve the problem. As a result, many lost their passports and became ‘illegal aliens’ in Germany. This mostly included trade union activists.31

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The practices of the Turkish state vis-à-vis Turkish leftists in Europe were monitored closely in Australia. An article written by a Yorum reader reflects the broader perceptions and feelings of the leftist Turks in Sydney: The Turkish state has intensified its racist and fascist propaganda on the Turkish-born people living abroad. These people [the military junta] for years have been oppressing Kurds and other minorities in Turkey; they have not even let them speak their own languages. Now, although these prohibitions are still continuing, they can still talk about fraternity. We are fighting in Australia to change the prevailing order in Turkey, which swept our nation into hunger, poverty, torture and oppression. Our struggle aims to change the order which forced us to live in exile.32 The authoritarian demand in Turkey that leftist Turks escaped and dedicated themselves to changing, however, caught up with them in Australia as quickly as it did with the leftist activists in Europe. First, in February 1983 the Turkish Consulate in Melbourne made known that four Turkish citizens (all leftists) were on trial under the Turkish Citizenship Law numbered 10.403 and that they would lose their Turkish citizenship if they did not return to Turkey within a month’s time (This enforcement was called ‘The Call to Return Home’ – Yurda Dön Çağrısı.) Following this, a similar notification was issued by the Turkish Consulate in Sydney forcing nine leftist Turkish citizens to return to Turkey for trial.

Counter-mobilisation of the political left after the coup The leftist activists’ counter-mobilisation against the Turkish state had already begun following the military intervention of 1980. Domestic politics in Turkey were being closely monitored with intense discussions on how to fight against the military government. In December 1981, the FDTA (the left-wing federative body) decided to form a dayanışma komitesi (solidarity committee). The main objective of the

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committee, which would operate at the national level, was to inform the Australian government and the Australian media about political developments in Turkey.33 The first step taken towards this end was to collect news on the ultra-nationalist Grey Wolves that had come out in both the Australian and the European press. These articles were then re-published in several issues of Yorum and sent to various Australian newspapers and policy-makers to draw their attention to the issue. For example, a media coverage of the Grey Wolves that came out in a 1982 issue of Yorum included the following passages from The Sun and The Daily Mirror: Sydney members of an international Turkish terrorist group are being brought to Melbourne as part of a violent campaign against local organisations. Welfare workers in Melbourne claim the group, the Grey Wolves, was responsible for a spate of fire bombings, shotgun blasts, smashed windows and death threats last year . . . It is believed the Wolves have concentrated on small organisations to recruit their members and finance their outlawed party in Turkey.34 The group, known as the Grey Wolves, has members in the Sydney suburb of Auburn . . . Their finance-gathering operations have recently been extended to Melbourne.35 In addition to its media-related activities seeking to influence public opinion in Australia, the solidarity committee also organised protests and marches. The biggest protest came after the new Turkish Constitution (the 1982 Constitution) was approved by the military government in November 1982. The protestors gathered in front of the Turkish Consulate on Ocean Street in Woollahra to voice their reactions to the approval of the constitution. They put a black wreath in front of the consulate building shouting, ‘Long live Turkey, God Damn the Junta.’36 The news that appeared in Yorum about the protest also noted that a group of rightists (referred to as ‘fascists’) gathered on the other side of the street during the protest and junked the wreath and placards after the leftist group

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left the site. According to Yorum’s interpretation of the event, it was the Turkish Consulate that had informed the rightist group about the protest and mobilised the ‘fascists’ to come and stand in for the Turkish government.37 In 1983, the counter-mobilisation of the leftists gained further momentum in reaction to the Turkish Consulates’ announcing of the ‘Call to return home’ to a number of leftist activists in Melbourne and Sydney. Smaller committees called ‘Amnesty for Political Prisoners’ were formed in both cities by the leftist federation to condemn this interference by the government in Turkey, as well as to defend the rights of people accused of being involved in political activities hostile to the Turkish state. These committees sought to inform the Australian authorities about this particular action of the Turkish state and solicit their support. Fikret was one of those leftists compelled to go back to Turkey to appear in court. It was not only him, indeed, but his father and younger brother who were also harassed with the same calls from the Consulate. This is how Fikret remembers those days: We were forced to return home by the then Özal Government. This attempt however backfired because the Australian media and the Federal Government supported us. Their reaction was: ‘These people are our citizens as well. How come that you are trying to oppress our citizens here?’ A big meeting was held in Melbourne. Various human rights organisations attended this meeting. Almost half a dozen federal ministers were also present at the meeting and made speeches. Of course we used these initiatives to tell the true story about the junta’s administration in Turkey. For example, we showed films at that meeting in Melbourne showing how the leftists were tortured after 12 September [coup]. We passed these films on to Australian journalists and TV channels. I never forget what one of those journalists said to us: ‘The junta government in Turkey lifted a stone to throw at you, but instead dropped it on its own foot.’ That’s what he said and it was exactly what happened.

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A good number of Australian representatives attended the meeting held in Melbourne on 28 May 1983 including Labour Party officials, the Federal Minister for Immigration and Ethnic Affairs, the Victorian state Minister for Ethnic Affairs, the President of the Victorian Ethnic Affairs Commission and legal consultants. The Australian officials not only provided symbolic support but immediately contacted Turkish officials in Australia. Both the Department of Immigration and Ethnic Affairs and the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs approached the Turkish Embassy in Canberra and condemned the Turkish state’s court case against thirteen TurkishAustralian citizens as interference and as an ‘inappropriate transgression of the Turkish government.’ The official letter that the Department of Foreign Affairs wrote to the FDTA also guaranteed that the Australian government would not take any action to force these thirteen people to go back to Turkey for trial. Below is a quote from that letter: On 12 April 1983, the Turkish Ambassador was approached to be informed about the concerns of our Government about the related action. The Secretary for Foreign Affairs expressed that we perceive the attempts of the representatives of another government to put enforcements on our citizens as ‘an inappropriate transgression.’ It is clear that the right to become a permanent resident in Australia is provided to Turkish as well as to other migrant groups in Australia as long as they are willing to be a member of the Australian society, and that they are under the guarantee of Australian law and regulations as long as they live in this country. This point was also made clear in the press release made by the Minister for Immigration and Ethnic Affairs . . . With regards, R. S. Laurie Deputy Secretary – Europe, America, North Asia Office38 Another strategy undertaken by the FDTA and its related committees in Sydney and Melbourne was to inform the union movement about

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developments in Turkey and ask for their support also. They were successful in doing so as this letter, which was written by the Building Workers’ Industrial Union of Australia (BWIU) to the FDTA on 20 May 1983 illustrates: Our union has received the letter and documents sent by your organisation explaining the current circumstances in Turkey which are irreconcilable with human rights. To support your activities, we have sent a protest letter to the Turkish General Consulate in Sydney . . . International solidarity will help to strengthen the determination and confidence of the Turkish nation in the struggle they are giving to regain their democratic rights. We are resolutely united.39 In addition to the letters written to the FDTA by representatives of various Australian organisations, I also came across a number of personal letters in Yorum written to the Turkish Consulate by the leftist activists themselves who had received the call to return home. These letters are a valuable source for giving a first-hand account of how they felt about the initiative of the state: Although I have not been informed about the ground on which I have been asked to go to Turkey, I am aware of the fact that this enforcement is against Turks abroad who are assumed to have committed a crime in Turkey based on political and societal reasons. However, I came to Australia in 1974. Since then I have gone to Turkey only once for a short holiday in 1977. In 1978 I became an Australian citizen. As a free citizen of Australia, I have been dealing with the economic and political issues of the world as much as I have been dealing with those in Australia. Being threatened for losing my Turkish citizenship in case of not going back to Turkey does not mean much to me at this stage. I believe that it is more honourable to be deprived of the citizenship by a dictator than to share the same citizenship with those people whose hands are covered with blood.40

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First I would like to ask you this: what is it that you call home? Would someone who does not have a house, a job, property have a home? I do not own a single piece of earth in Turkey. More importantly, I am not even a Turk. I am a Kurd. And being a Turkish citizen was not my choice. It was a regulation that was imposed on me. Despite this, if there were a government in Turkey that was ruled by the workers, I would not say that I am a Kurd. Because I am a soldier of working class who would like to fight for the emancipation of working class people in the world. I have been living in Australia for fourteen years. I became an Australian citizen eight years ago. Moreover, when I went to Turkey on the date 15.12.1976 I filled in a form at the Istanbul airport to quit my Turkish citizenship. Now how do you find the right to ask me to go back to Turkey? These are my final words to you: I will certainly come back ‘home’ to contribute to the Turkish and Kurdish nations’ living together in solidarity in a free society once the fascist Kenan Evren and his puppet government collapses. This is my will and testimony. This I swear to you.41 The leftists’ opposition against the Turkish state also took the form of hunger strikes in the second half of 1983. The strikes had been first initiated by thousands of leftist Turks at prisons in Turkey. The idea was then replicated among leftist activists in various European countries. In September 1983 a small group of Turkish leftists held a hunger strike in Melbourne that lasted for nine days. Following this, a similar strike was held in Martin Place, a pedestrian mall in the central business district of Sydney, located one hundred metres from the NSW Parliament. These activities seeking to influence the Australian authorities and the general public continued during 1984. On 1 December 1984 the FDTA set up an advocacy campaign in Melbourne and Sydney for an amnesty for political prisoners in Turkey. The day selected for the campaign was also the day for general elections in Australia. ‘Vote for Amnesty in Turkey’ placards were placed in front of various school buildings in Sydney where the voting was taking place. The voting

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cards read: ‘I condemn the executions and torture taking place in Turkey and the state’s oppression against the Kurdish minority. I want Turkey to declare an amnesty.’42 The votes collected in the two cities were then sent to various international human rights organisations. Figure 10 shows the then Prime Minister, Bob Hawke, voting for the campaign. The support that the Turkish leftist activists received from the Australian government officials, unions and media institutions was highly significant for raising the profile of these Turkish migrants’ claims. Needless to say, this support also helped Australia become a ‘home’ for them. Interestingly, Østergaard-Nielsen’s work on Kurdish political transnationalism in Germany demonstrates that, in the early 1980s, the German authorities were also critical about the systematic abuse of human rights by the Turkish state, not so much in dealing with the political leftists, but with the Kurdish opposition in south-eastern Anatolia. She notes that ‘All German political parties employed a critical view of domestic political development in Turkey, although the sharpness of such criticism declined steadily from left to right on the party political spectrum.’43 Such positions taken by the Australian and German governments vis-à-vis the Turkish government in the 1980s highlights the importance of the host country politics in shaping the transnational political activities of the immigrants and sending states. The composition of the Turkish migrants living in the two host societies is also an important factor in shaping the agendas of these host countries’ officials. The situation of the Kurdish migrants attracted the attention of the German government more than the Australian government, given that more Kurdish people found refuge in Europe than they did in Australia after the 1980 military intervention. The counter-mobilisation initiated by the Turkish leftist activists living in Australia and in other parts of the world, however, did not make much impact on stopping state violence such as executions, torture in prisons and the stripping of citizenship status of dissident citizens wherever they may be. Fikret’s words make for an appropriate full stop:

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We did not go back to Turkey. And they expelled us from citizenship. We were all leftists. With the coming of the DemirelInönü coalition Government, this enforcement was declared invalid and we were given our Turkish citizenship back. But I want to say this: no one asked us anything when we were expelled from citizenship nor when they gave it back.

The post-coup period: Turkish politics in transition Political polarisation between Turkish leftists and rightists in Australia began to diminish and mutate in the late 1980s. The outcomes of the 1980 military intervention created major structural changes in Turkish domestic politics, which instituted new forms of fragmentation within Turkish society that began to ripple across the Turkish diaspora. One major change was the successful eradication of leftist movements from the political arena. Secondly, it was not only the political left but also the Kurdish insurgency that was punished by the military and the state. Thirdly, although the coup also attempted to bring the rightist movement into line, it paved the way for the strengthening of the political right in the longer run, which this time not only included the nationalists but also a type of Turkish-Islam. Following the military coup, a statefacilitated Islamic identity and ideology became influential and Islam was incorporated into a new official state ideology titled the Turkish-Islamic synthesis. This ideology was a fusion of Turkish nationalism and Islam. This shifting position of Islam in the political domain was endorsed by the military. In this, religion was thought to be (and used as) a panacea to suppress the leftist and Kurdish movements. For example, religion courses were made compulsory in secondary education and the number of religious schools (İmam Hatip Liseleri) were increased.44 As Belge argues, ‘these were, no doubt, attempts to conform to the anti-communist ‘Green Belt’ policy planned in the USA, and aimed to both benefit from Islam while taking the religious ideology under control.’45 Social engineering of religious activists however proved difficult for the interventionist state and the Turkish military when the Islamist

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movement began to manifest itself as a challenge to the Kemalist ideology in the 1990s, as well as in a struggle for the recognition of differences based on a Muslim identity. The burgeoning Islamist social movement sought to ‘carve out an alternative moral order based on its conception of Islam.’46 The fundamental claims of this movement were based on two points; first, a critique of the exclusion of Islam from the foundations of Turkish identity and the denying of religious identity in the public realm; and secondly, the military fashioning of and strict control over Islam in the name of laicism. Although the origins of the Islamist movement in Turkey are often (problematically) traced back to the Democratic Party period 1950–61, it was in the 1990s under the leadership of the Refah Partisi (RP) (Welfare Party) that the movement surfaced as a rights-based identity movement challenging the prevailing conception of Turkish citizenship that envisaged all ‘alternative’ identities (religious, ethnic, sectarian, etc.) as at best confined to the private realm. The resurgence of political Islam beginning in the early 1990s was accompanied by a growing paranoia among a similarly newly constituted political identity, that of the Kemalists. Included among the newly formed Kemalist activists were state and military forces, as well as a leftist variety of Kemalists, now known as the ulusalcılar. The chief principle of this neo-Kemalism of the 1990s, differing from its earlier version in the 1960s and 1970s, was not anti-imperialism but secularism and nationalism.47 The discourse adopted by the Kemalists in relation to secularism defined irtica (political Islam) as the biggest internal threat to the Republic by arguing that the hidden intent of the Islamists was to turn Turkey into a country ruled according to the sharia. The revitalisation of Kemalism in the 1990s, however, did not happen only in relation to political Islam. The identity politics generated by Kurds also challenged the homogenising Kemalist modernity by giving a new breath to individual and group-based claims over rights and freedoms. Central to the Kurdish movement was the way ethnic relations were arranged within the fabric of the nation-state, which did not allow Kurds to be recognized as a distinct ethnic group. With the

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PKK’s launching of an armed insurrection against the Turkish state in 1984, the Kurdish movement gained broader resonance among the Kurdish population and turned into a mass movement of Kurdish nationalism. As Yavuz puts it, ‘The PKK activities encouraged Kurds to criticize not the ‘political authority’ in Ankara, but rather Turkish nationalism as a construct, in order to legitimize their own separatist nationalism.’48 In 1987 the Turkish Government initiated emergency rule in south-eastern Anatolia that lasted until 2002, resulting in the internal displacement of hundreds of thousands of Kurds living in the region. In a nutshell, both political Islam and the Kurdish movement symbolised the legitimacy crisis of Kemalist modernity in Turkey and raised questions about who should control the ship of state. Let me now return to the repercussions of these developments in Sydney. Here, the other half of the Yorum cartoon presented earlier in this chapter might give us a quick representation of the transnational impact of these new political processes in the diaspora (Figure 8). A new political category, ‘Islamist’, accompanies the former political identities. This, however, should not be understood as a shift to a three-fold fragmentation among Turkish people in Sydney. The former leftist and rightist Turkish associations continued to operate in the 1990s; however both sides have now begun to self-identify themselves as ‘Kemalists’, given that the

Figure 8 Leftist–Rightist–Islamist (Source: Yorum, 4 June 1993)

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prevailing new ideological division within the community is between Kemalists and their ‘other’: Islamists. The rhetoric of both groups has shifted to the preservation of secularism and Kemalism at home and abroad. This Kemalist rhetoric, unsurprisingly, has produced a toxic discourse on Islamists and Islamism, depicting them as ‘Atatürk dü ş manları’ (enemies of Atatürk), as supporters of sharia, and as the biggest threat to the fundamental values of the Kemalist Turkish Republic. This discourse is also highly racist towards Arabs (and Orientalist) in its situating of Islamic countries (mostly including Iran, Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan) as backward and as the ‘other’ of the modern self.

Associational spectrum in the 1990s The key Turkish groups in Sydney maintained their position on the associational spectrum during the late 1980s and early 1990s. The STPH and the TWA continued to be the most active associations in this period as well. Yet the agenda of both organisations became less concerned with right-wing and left-wing ideologies, particularly in the case of the STPH. Apart from Nazım Hikmet commemoration events, the association ceased to organise any social and cultural activities that could be associated with the left. The themes of the periodic seminars held by the organisation also remarkably changed in the 1990s with more emphasis on issues to do with laicism. These changes were reflected in the content of Yorum as well. In the 1990s, the newspaper’s content was primarily concerned with the increasing visibility of Islam in the public sphere in Turkey and Australia. Here is an example from an article that came out in a 1987 issue of Yorum with the title ‘Making us forget Atatürk’: Since the 12 September intervention, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the democrat, revolutionary, statist, nationalist, republican and secularist founder of the Turkish Republic, is as everyday passes becoming less known and less understood. They are making us

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forget Atatürk by identifying him more and more as a cult figure. The scene below, which would be impossible to come across anywhere in Turkey during Atatürk’s time, reflects the grievous situation with our children who will be the adults of the twentyfirst century.50 The image associated with the commentary displayed two veiled women walking past Mustafa Kemal’s mausoleum, depicting them as ‘Dark shadows of grief and pain.’ Similar images and articles were also often published in Dayanış ma in the same period, including jokes, cartoons and satires producing a Kemalist political humour as a subversive response to political Islam (see Chapter Five). The TWA, similar to the STPH, also reworked its Kemalist identity from the late 1980s onwards. The association maintained its rightwing nationalist vision, but its ideological position shifted more to the centre-right. The decision of the TWA committee to close down Cultural Hearths in 1987 is an important sign of this change. The TWA continued to maintain its close relationship with the Turkish consulates in the 1990s, providing moral and financial support for the campaigns initiated by the state. The new ‘internal enemy’ no longer included the Turkish leftists but Kurds and Islamists.51 Similar to its leftist counterpart, the rightist Federation went through a split in 2001 when a number of associations decided to establish a new federation. The 1990s saw new formations in the associational spectrum. In 1991, the Alevi Cultural Centre (AAC) was established. This association, which defined itself primarily as a religious organisation, has provided welfare services to Turkish-speaking Alevis. Like many other Turkish associations, the AAC has also been closely following Turkish domestic politics, particularly in relation to the state’s policies concerning the Alevi minority in Turkey. Two primary issues have been central to the politicisation of the Alevis. The first one is the Turkish state’s lack of recognition of Alevis as a distinct religious group, which causes serious problems for Alevis in establishing their own institutions and prayer rooms. Alevis are

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highly critical of the bias of the Directorate of Religious Affairs and its Sunni-oriented policies. Secondly, also strictly defining themselves as ‘Kemalists’, Alevis have become extremely concerned about secularism which, according to them, has been threatened by the re-Islamisation of Turkish politics since the 1990s. Compared to its counterparts in Europe, which have been actively lobbying for constitutional changes in Turkey, the ACC activities have focused more on the welfare of the Alevi community in Sydney, as well as on the teaching of Alevi tradition and culture. From time to time however the organisation has issued public declarations condemning the assimilationist policies of the Turkish state (e.g. the building of Sunni mosques in Alevi villages), which has long involved the persecution of Alevis. Another key organisation joined the associational spectrum in 1993 with the founding of the Australia Atatürk Cultural Centre (AACC). Unlike the others, the AACC was established not as a welfare organisation, but as a political organisation aiming to produce cultural and social activities in line with Kemalist ideology. Although it does not appear to have official links with similar laic-nationalist civil society institutions in Turkey such as the Atatürkist Thought Association or the Support for Modern Life Association, the AACC has been an ideological extension of them in the diaspora. Its key activities mainly involved the organisation of seminars and publicity meetings; celebration of national days; the holding of commemorative events on Atatürk on the anniversary of his death; organising activities in Saturday Schools to promote Atatürk; the publicising and support of initiatives in Turkey in the area of contemporary education; and the promotion in the print media of Atatürk and the early Republican history. Turning our attention to the Islamist end of the spectrum, it is ironic that there are very few organisations apart from the mosque associations located in Auburn, Bonnyrigg, Erskineville, Mt Druitt and Redfern, which are all under the official authority of the Directorate of Religious Affairs. Yet, given their connection with the Directorate, these associations are not perceived by the Kemalists as a threat to laicism or as rivals to the Turkish

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state’s version of Islam. Instead, it is a number of tarikats (religious groups or Sufi orders where individuals come together to read the Qur’an or other religious books and to engage in worship), which are labelled as ‘Islamist’ and ‘anti-laicist’ by Kemalist individuals and organisations in Sydney. The association between tarikats and reactionary politics that Kemalists imagine is also linked to the very nature of secularism in Turkey. In 1925, as part of its attempt to de-Islamise the newly established Republic, the Kemalist revolution closed down and banned tarikats, whose existence was conceived of not only as undermining laicism, but also the central authority of the state. In the Australian context, the goals and activities of tarikats have been mainly directed towards, firstly, Islamic worship and secondly, the maintenance of in-group solidarity and support among their members. Despite the differences they have in terms of their objectives and organisational patterns, they have been advocates of a more orthodox vision of Islam. Opened up in 1989, Milli Görüş (National Vision) is the oldest of these groups. Its primary activities have included Qur’an courses, Friday prayer, organising pilgrimages to Mecca, and social events such as picnics and celebrations of religious days. Another major group is Cemaat-i Nur (disciples of Light Movement), which is organised mostly around young men and women and whose activities are also directed to worshipping and socialising. Originating from the Naqshbandiyya order, Süleymancılar is another Islamic group that, similar to the others, has been concerned with providing worship services to its members. The only Islamic movement whose vision and activities can be differentiated from those of the former ones is the Gülen movement named after its leader Fetullah Gülen. An offshoot or split from the Cemaat-i Nur, this movement frames Islam as an attribute of Turkish national identity and rhetorically emphasises inter-faith dialogue. The Gülen movement has also established a huge number of Turkish-Islamic schools outside Turkey, including Şule College in Sydney and Işık College in Melbourne, and has

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built its own media organs, which include TV and radio stations, Zaman newspaper, and a publishing house.

Turkish state mobilisation in the 1990s The Turkish state’s interpolation of its citizens in the diaspora continued in the 1990s, taking different forms in parallel with the structural changes in Turkish politics. In the late 1970s and early 1980s the key strategy adopted by the state (mainly through its consular networks) was to mobilise one political group (rightist Turks) for the suppression of the other (leftists). In the new circumstances of the 1990s and 2000s there is no longer a socialistcommunist movement to be eradicated at home and in the diaspora, and Kemalism has been acknowledged by both former leftist and rightist groups as the main ideological and political category of self-identification. There has however been even more stress on the preservation of so-called national values and national culture in the discourse of the state. On the one hand, this discourse has sought to generate everyday ‘banal nationalism’52 among Turkish migrants; on the other hand, it has called them to be involved in lobbying against the latest ‘internal’ and external enemies of the state. The quote below, which is taken from a letter written by the Turkish Ambassador in Canberra to the TWA in 1995, is a good example of this discourse. Entitled ‘All together hand in hand’, the letter expresses the unrest felt by the state officials over the enduring lack of coordination and fragmentation among the Turkish organisations in Australia. It is not possible for all human beings, wherever they may be, to think and act alike. However, if the preservation of our national culture and patriotic feelings are concerned, we should join our hands and get involved in activities towards this aim. In Australia, what a sadness to say this, there are far more Turkish associations than are necessary and no coordination

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exists among them. There is no doubt that the TWA is working with firm intention to fill this gap as much as possible. It is only through the work of expert and non-partisan people in the community that we will learn more about our history, our national culture, our language and about our homeland. Language is the basis for the maintenance of national culture and national self. The efforts to teach language should be a priority. We also acknowledge the importance of enlightening young generations through meetings, talks and national celebrations, which will help to build moral links with the motherland.53 The narrative reveals how a ‘banal nationalism’ generated through the celebration of national days, through the maintenance of national language and an authorised curriculum, and through aesthetic events organised in the name of the national culture is perceived by the state as a significant means to reach out to its diasporic communities. This discourse speaks of Turkey as the migrants’ anavatan, explicitly to point out that there is an ‘original’ motherland out there regardless of their affiliation with the host country. Given that every person can have one biological mother only, Turkey is the only ‘ana’ (mother) – in other words, the eternal/maternal home for Turks abroad – as well as for their children born in other countries.54 This primordialist discourse standardises the idea of homeland as a given and immutable mode of belonging. In this frame of thinking there is no possibility of multiple ‘homes’ or ‘homelands’ mutually existing. More importantly, although the discourse of anavatan implies a caring representation of statehood, the mother – child connection embedded in this term is not a unilateral relationship in which the mother nurtures and cares for the child. The child is also expected to obey the mother, as the following quote by a former Turkish Ambassador in Canberra addressing Turkish people in Australia illustrates:

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Every Turkish community outside Turkey is an extension of Turkey in so much as they are representatives of Turkey. What gives strength and respect to both of them apart from emotional factors are the relationships between the two based on their reciprocal interests.55 The key idea here, rather subtly enunciated by the narrative, is that the so-called moral links between the ‘motherland’ of Turkey and Turks abroad are valued as long as their reciprocal interests overlap and as long as each party meets the self-interest of the other party. Since the second half of the 1990s, these reciprocal interests of the Turkish state and of the Turkish nationalists outside Turkey have been mainly directed to two issues. The first one has been to the denigration of political Islam in the diaspora similarly to the case in Turkey. The transnational politics of the Turkish state in this area has mostly been channelled through the machinery of the Diyanet. The second major issue paving the way for the politicisation of Kemalist Turks in Sydney in line with the mobilisation of the Turkish state has been a response to the transnational politics of Greek and Armenian lobby groups. Realising that the millions of Turks living abroad could be utilised to discredit the nationalistic and/or anti-Turkish claims of rival national or ethnic groups, the state has called upon its children in the diaspora to lobby against its external enemies. The transnational politics pursued by the Turkish state in these two realms will be examined in detail in the next two chapters. Here let me conclude with two examples of the Consulateled mobilisation. In 1998 the then NSW Premier, Bob Carr, announced that the NSW Parliament was declaring 24 April as ‘Armenian Genocide Commemoration Day.’ Following this, Turkish diplomats not only approached the Australian officials to express their reactions, but also called on individual Turks to lobby against the declaration through their announcements in the Turkish newspapers.

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There is now a duty falling on you. Exert pressure on the state ministers working in your area and tell them that the decision taken by Carr does not reflect the reality. Make copies of the documents that we will provide, which will have correct information about the reality and post them to the parliamentarians. The protest letters can be accessed from the Council of Turkish Associations.56 A similar mobilising discourse was replicated in another speech by a former Consul General: . . . Armenians and Greeks are now trying to antagonise Australia, a country that we chose as our second homeland, against us by claiming that we committed genocide . . . There is a chair of Greek studies at the three most respected education institutions in Sydney including the University of Sydney, the University of New South Wales and Macquarie University. Despite this none of them provides courses in Turkish. Yet a chair in Turkish language to be established at one of these universities would be the most effective way to stop this anti-Turkey propaganda. There is a need to generate financial funding for this aim. I have no doubt that our community will give the necessary support to the campaign that will be undertaken under the leadership of the presidents of our associations.57 To take stock, my historical reconstruction of the political field constituted by Turkish migrants and the Turkish state in the 1970s and 1980s leads to two general points. The first is the continuation of the enduring political-ideological fragmentation among Turkish migrants, although this has taken a completely new form in the 1990s. A second point to note is the Turkish state’s continuing intention, as well as its adopted strategies, to interpolate its migrant population abroad. It is the varied mechanisms and

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institutions by which the Turkish state is currently able to mobilise and politicise Turkish migrants, in conjunction with the multiculturalism of Australian governments, that I will turn to in the next two chapters.

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3 WITH KIND R EGAR DS, FROM THE CONSUL ATEGENER AL OF TUR KEY

In Seeing Like a state James Scott argues that a ‘project of legibility’ has been central to the social engineering intent of modern states.1 According to Scott, the project comprises a number of disparate yet connected processes and techniques advanced to transform social practices in ways that enhance the ‘legibility’ of society to the state: the creation of permanent surnames, the standardisation of weights and measures, the establishment of cadastral surveys and population registers, the standardisation of language and legal discourse, and the planning and redesign of cities, to name just a few.2 Scott maintains that these mechanisms help the modern state to create a ‘legible’ social order with standardised characteristics whereby it can ‘monitor, count, assess, and manage’ its population more easily, so that it can ‘get a handle on its subjects and their living environment.’3 Although the Middle East is not the focus of his book, each of the techniques he identifies as crucial in state officials’ drive to construct a standardised social order can be identified in the social and linguistic engineering projects of ‘Kemalist states’, the new centres of power that replaced the Ottoman and Qatar Empires in Turkey, Iraq and Iran in the first decades of the twentieth century. Here I am using Houston’s argument that Kemalism might usefully be seen as an ideology and social programme characterising nearly all post-Ottoman states4, in

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particular Turkey, Iran (under the Shah) and Iraq (under the Ba’ath regime). ‘Reform’ of Islam, and the ‘nationalising’ of the population are key Kemalist policies, as is the making of a language revolution that rationalises Turkish, Persian and Arabic in each country respectively. In the case of Turkey, for example, the changes initiated either by Young Turk or Republican officials saw a wide range of reforms (referred to as devrimler or inkılaplar) not only in the legal and bureaucratic realms, but also in the realm of aesthetics, through the making of a cultural revolution. All of these reforms were intended to create a new social order, as well as a new monocultural citizen who, as Kadıoğlu puts it, would be both object of the Kemalist modernisation project and its carrier.5 I use the phrase ‘seeing like a state’ in a more figurative manner but it has an analytic dimension too. The term highlights two points that are equally important for this chapter. First, and in clear contradiction of Scott’s argument about the ultimate failure of authoritarian regimes in their radical attempts to engineer social reality, the Kemalist state in Turkey continues to exist.6 Further, its project of legibility is not restricted to reforms propagated during the early Republican era (1923–50), but is still being pursued today. Despite the paranoia voiced by contemporary Kemalists over the threat to the established order heralded by the election of the ‘Islamist’ AKP, the key institutions established by the Kemalists in the early years of the Republic are all still in place. The Directorate of Religious Affairs manages a bureaucratised state Islam. The Department of Culture sponsors ‘high’ and ‘low’ artistic performance of national culture. Compulsory military service still sends young men off to all corners of the country, and the ‘National Security’ and ‘History of the Turkish Revolution’ lessons, first taught in 1936, are compulsory subjects in every school and in every university in Turkey. All of these institutions are designed to enable citizens not only to ‘see like the state’, but in times of crisis, real or manufactured, to ‘act for the state.’ The second significant point about the activism of the Turkish state is that its desire to ‘get a handle on its subjects’ pertains not only to those living in Turkey, but is extended far beyond its national territory. As one Turkish Minister remarked: ‘Everywhere that . . . Turkish

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communities exist, the Turkish state exists too.’7 Analysis of the Turkish state’s attempts to make the lives of its citizens socially legible has to be extended to exploring its influence on the political and religious practices of Turks abroad. The immediate subject of the next two chapters is the transnationalism engaged in by the Turkish state to nationalise and secularise Turkish people living in Sydney. In this emergent transnational field we see not only the virtual construction of the Turkish state in Australia, but more importantly the (re)construction of the Turkish state’s unique ideology of Kemalism there. Thus I find ‘trans-Kemalism’ a more accurate phrase in relation to the Turkish state’s transnational political strategy vis-à-vis the diaspora. ‘Trans-Kemalism’ refers to the cross-border work of the Turkish state in its ceaseless secular-nationalist (Turkist) project of reconfiguring its ‘civil society’ abroad. How does the Turkish state reach out to its nationals and expatriates abroad? What are the institutional and non-institutional sites of trans-Kemalism? In what ways is Islam made into a political tool? These are some of the vital questions that the next two chapters seek to answer. The analysis that follows focuses mainly on the transnational work of two state institutions: Turkish consular bodies and the Directorate of Religious Affairs (hereafter Diyanet). There are other producers of trans-Kemalism too that I have left out here, for reasons of space rather than importance. In investigating the quotidian practices and discourses of these two institutions, the next two chapters examine a vast terrain of sites in which trans-Kemalism is embedded and evoked: the creation of a Turkish political lobby; the dissemination of information via electronic sources and the print media; the circulation of complaint letters and petitions against ‘anti-Turkish’ (i.e. anti-Kemalist) initiatives; the holding of national day celebrations, commemorations, talks, award ceremonies and other events; the promotion of ‘Turkish culture’; the provision of school textbooks published by the Turkish Ministry of Education; and the initiation of fund-raising campaigns by various state institutions. In focusing on this repository of self-affirming strategies I explore the ‘political’ over and beyond its manifestation in more traditional state practices. Indeed, some of trans-Kemalism’s most potent domains appear to reside in the cultural and religious

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transnational fields manufactured by the state. But before discussing any of this, it would be useful to look at the theoretical discussion about state-led political transnationalism.

Seeing like a consulate In her article Life is Dead Here, Navaro-Yashin writes about the everyday experiences of people living in Northern Cyprus, a territory administered by a self-declared ‘state’ unrecognised by the international system (with the exception of the Republic of Turkey).8 She depicts how, since the 1974 division of the island through the erecting of barricades and barbed wire, people in the North have lived in a zone of ‘immobility, entrapment, confinement, [and] incarceration’ due to the legitimacy crisis engendered by the illegal entity, the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus. The focus of her article is not merely the ‘abnormal’ qualities of the authoritarian state in Northern Cyprus, or even the ‘normalising’ of its abnormality by the inhabitants of this ‘dead’ space, whose passports do not allow them access to the gates of international airports.9 It is also concerned to identify what she calls the abnormal in contexts that are usually considered politically normal. Thus her article seeks to make visible certain processes through which the nation-state’s sovereignty in general is exercised and legitimised. Consulates and embassies offer good examples of such processes. By granting certain papers, they regulate the movement and identity of their citizens. If someone is not registered as existing in the records of state officials, their existence or non-existence does not count. By granting certain papers (i.e. transactions of birth, death, marriage, divorce, citizenship, military service, etc.), consular institutions carry out the ceaseless task of making society legible in order to enhance the state’s power to monitor and manage its population. The Turkish Consulate in Sydney is no exception to this. More strikingly, however, the Turkish Consulate also involves itself in and promotes a series of other practices that are often not so clearly part of the everyday functioning of consular institutions. For the majority of Turkish migrants in Sydney, the first and most immediate

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place where they encounter the Turkish state is the Consulate. This encounter is not necessarily a face-to-face one. Through its employment of electronic networks and use of Turkish daily papers, the Consulate conveys information directly to the homes and offices of Turkish people, even in the absence of their curiosity. This regular dissemination of information might be classified into three categories, although they bleed into each other: announcements and information about upcoming events organised by the Consulate/Embassy, by various Turkish organisations, or by various state institutions in Ankara. By selectively advertising various events, the Consulate produces information about what constitutes an ‘attend-able’ occasion for Turkish migrants. For example, a good number of the events advertised through the Consulate’s e-mail network were organised either by the Australia Atatürk Cultural Centre or by the other pro-Turkish organisations whose activities are not seen as ‘dissident’ by the Consulate. The second category of information disseminated by the Consulate includes press releases, policy documents, declarations and speeches made by Turkish state officials. Here, the Consulate acts as a mouthpiece for the state institutions in Turkey (and sometimes of those of the Australian state) to Turkish-speaking people in Australia. The e-mail circulated by the Consulate on 27 December 2007 disseminating a press release by the Genelkurmay Başkanlığı (military) about the ongoing low-intensity war between the Turkish army and PKK militants is a good example: Attached is the press release by Genelkurmay Başkanlığı regarding the military operations launched against the PKK terrorist organisation on 26 December 2007 in the city of Şırnak. With kind regards, The Consulate-General of Turkey in Sydney As part of the military operations continuing in the Küpeli Mountain in Şırnak, a group of PKK terrorists were encountered on the morning of 26 December 2007. Fighting emerged upon the terrorists responding back to the ‘Surrender’ call with firing. Eight terrorists, two of them alive, were captured with their weapons. Including the five terrorists killed yesterday, the number of the

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terrorists who were terminated in the Küpeli Mountain region in the last two days has risen to thirteen. The terrorists were killed in the same zone where one lieutenant and three private soldiers of ours were martyred on 13 November 2007. This press release indicates that the scope of the information disseminated by the Consulate is not limited to informing Turkish migrants about various procedural issues to do with state bureaucracy in Turkey. Here the state, represented by the military in this case, reaches out to people of Turkish origin living in different parts of the world in order to politicise them against the PKK. By discursively interpolating its migrant communities as part of the ‘nation’, the state extends its nationalism beyond its territory, or in other words, reproduces its nation-building extra-territorially. The mobilisation is sometimes immediately effective. Not long after the release of the press statement, a group of Turkish nationalists marched in the Sydney city centre to condemn the PKK’s attacks against the Turkish military. (The announcement of this march was also circulated by the Consulate.) Placards read ‘PKK=Terrorists’, ‘Every Turk is born a soldier’ and ‘We are all Mehmetçik [Turkish soldiers; in Australian terms, diggers]’. If it is too simplistic to claim that the march was solely an outcome of the information disseminated by the Consulate – an earlier series of marches and demonstrations had been initiated by Turkish nationalists (including Kemalists and MHP supporters) in Sydney and Melbourne in November 2007– the synchronisation is important for illuminating how the political mobilisation of the Turkish state and the grassroots political activities of some groups of Turkish migrants cohere in their production of long-distance nationalism. The ‘political’ aspect embedded in the e-mails circulated by the Consulate is not always so visible. A good example of this more camouflaged political stratagem is what I call the ‘Turkish-pride’ e-mails that the Consulate occasionally sends out to inform Turkish people about the achievements of Turks living elsewhere (for example the e-mail about Erden Eruç’s, a Turkish-American rower, solo crossing of the Atlantic Ocean in 2006). This kind of information aims to create

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pride in Turkish individuals by passing on to them the success stories of Turks living in other parts of the world.10 A common ethnic identity is sufficient to raise the self-esteem of the ‘informed citizen’ through their communal participation in the great act of another Turk. Yet this pride is a very discriminating process. When Orhan Pamuk was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 2006, there was no e-mail sent out by the Consulate to Australian Turks informing them of Pamuk’s achievement. The reason is clear enough: Pamuk in an interview with a Swiss newspaper in February 2005 had criticised the founding decades of the Republic, resulting in his being charged with insulting Turkey’s national character according to Article 301 of the Turkish Penal Code. The dosage of Consulate-led nationalism gets higher as we move on to the third category of material disseminated by the Consulate. This involves the petitions and protest letters that the Consulate wants faxed or mailed out en masse to local or national politicians, or to media organisations. At the time of my fieldwork, a stream of e-mails was being circulated by the Consulate (including fax-campaigns and electronic petitions) urging Turkish people to lobby against Armenian or Greek campaigns in Australia. The Consulate (and the Embassy) not only circulate petitions initiated by various Turkish organisations or individuals, but also compose model complaint letters to ease the burden of lobbying for Turkish people. Let me give one brief example. On 21 June 2008 the Australian government-funded radio network, ABC Radio National, broadcast a programme (Saturday Breakfast) in which a recently produced book by Giles Milton on the history of Smyrna (now the Turkish city of Izmir) was publicised. The programme also interviewed Milton, who made certain remarks about the destruction of this cosmopolitan city and the massacring of its non-Muslim inhabitants when the Turkish army under the leadership of Mustafa Kemal seized the city from Greece in 1922. The next day the Turkish Embassy and the Consulate e-mailed their long list of Turkish contacts, telling them that a series of actions had been taken by the Embassy to protest against the programme as well as asking them to complain to the programme producer. When I rang the Embassy the following day to enquire about the type of action taken by the Turkish authorities,

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I was told about the model complaint letter drafted by the Embassy, which was then e-mailed to me. The letter read: Dear Sir/Madam, I am writing to you in relation to the Saturday Breakfast program that was aired on 21 June and 28 June 2008 on ABC Radio National. Author Giles Milton was the guest on these programmes and he spoke about his recent book ‘Paradise Lost: Smyrna 1922: The Destruction of Islam’s City of Tolerance.’ During the program, he uttered groundless and biased allegations about the Turkish army’s march on Izmir in 1922 to rightfully save the city from enemy occupation. I would like to point out that fabricating such blackening and one-sided stories about a nation’s history does not conform to scientific objectivity which seems to be totally lacking in the author’s book. Furthermore, airing such biased views on a national broadcasting service does not comply with the spirit of harmonious relations among different societies successfully established by the multicultural character of Australia. I therefore underline my deep disappointment and strongly protest against ABC Radio National for airing one week after another, such biased interviews full of fabricated and slanderous propaganda. By the way, it was the Greek occupying army that destroyed and burnt the beautiful Turkish city of Izmir and committed heinous crimes as they fled. With the sincere hope of listening to programmes reflecting not only fabrications but also the objective truths of a story. The result of the Consulate’s mail-out was a large number of standard letters sent to the radio station. Similar comments were also posted to the blog on the programme website. The Consulate’s mobilisation of Turkish people overseas as a foreign policy lobby for the Turkish state is evident in another stream of e-mails, targeting a series of initiatives taken by Australian

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Armenians. This time the Consulate organised petition-sending for a full six-month period, from November 2008 to April 2009. On 14 November the Consulate disseminated a press release by the Turkish Embassy about a visit to the Federal Parliament made by the Armenian National Committee of Australia. The press release claimed that the Armenian activists indulged in propaganda during their visit by issuing their version of the 1915 history to Australian Parliamentarians, as well as by holding an exhibition on Armenia at the Parliament building. The Consulate invited its contacts to pass their concern about this on to relevant local and national politicians. Nearly a month later, another e-mail by the Consulate informed Turkish people in Sydney about a more serious crisis: the inauguration of a memorial plaque commemorating ‘the victims of the Pontian genocide’ at a Greek community function held at Adelaide’s Migration Museum on 20 December 2008. The e-mail noted that during the unveiling of the plaque, South Australia’s Attorney-General Michael Atkinson made a speech in which he mentioned the Pontian, Armenian and Assyrian genocide committed by Turkish nationalists led by Mustafa Kemal during the late Ottoman era of 1919–23. Not surprisingly, this so angered the Turkish Ambassador to Australia that ‘he protested to Foreign Minister Stephen Smith about the “defamation of his country”, as reported by The Australian. A press release was disseminated by the Embassy on 18 February 2009 through its consular networks asking Turkish people to mount pressure for the removal of the plaque and to lobby the Australian authorities against Atkinson’s speech. The ‘history wars’ between the Greek and Turkish communities became more confused following another speech in Federal Parliament on 18 March 2009 by South Australian senator, Alan Ferguson, in response to Atkinson. Emphasising the contribution of Turkish migrants to multicultural Australia and praising the bond forged between Turkey and Australia in Gallipoli, Ferguson challenged Atkinson’s account supporting the Greek version of history. Then it was the Greek community’s turn to petition, which further triggered a series of electronic petitions initiated by Turkish organisations and individuals giving support to Ferguson. All of these petitions were

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circulated and promoted by the Consulate. The crisis gained even more momentum on 25 March 2009 with the introduction of a motion for the recognition of the Armenian genocide in the South Australian Parliament. Turkish citizens in Sydney were once again mobilised to lobby against the politicians responsible for the motion. Yet the motion was passed by the South Australian Parliament despite the diplomatic action taken by the Turkish Embassy and the petitions sent to Parliament by various Turkish organisations. The Embassy’s press release on the Parliament’s decision was similar to those released earlier. This long quote from the press release is an example of the rhetoric adopted by the Turkish authorities: Turkey and Australia are close international allies and partners, even though they are geographically very far apart. Much of the friendship between them is based on a determination to overcome former hostility and conflicts which cost the lives of many sons of both our nations and to build a better world of cooperation and peace. Now some ministers and politicians appear to back a policy of creating division and resentment between our two peoples where none previously existed. The consequences of this could be far-reaching . . . The South Australian Parliament’s resolution is clearly the work of an ethnic lobby determined to stir up and distort ancient antagonisms. As such it could very easily bring the friendship between Turkey and Australia to a halt. Ethnic lobbies should not be allowed to damage the excellent relations between our countries originating from the Gallipoli spirit and Mustafa Kemal Atatürk’s words of reconciliation to Anzac mothers . . . (19 June 2009). Two points are remarkable in the discourse here. First, although these kinds of political conflicts are (or should be) a concern only for diplomacy, the discourse depicts the action of the South Australian Parliament as antithetical to the policy of multiculturalism. Secondly, ‘Gallipoli’ is consistently used by the Turkish officials as a reference point in which ‘a unique friendship blossomed between the two countries after they first met as enemies.’ Here an implicit message is sent

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to other Australians: ‘Can you believe that a country like Turkey, which became a friendly and close nation through the tragedy and gallantry shown on the Gallipoli battle field, could do these terrible things to others?’ Australians are regularly reminded of the reconciliatory remarks of Atatürk, addressed to the mothers of the fallen Anzac soldiers: ‘You, the mothers who sent their sons from far away countries, wipe away your tears. Your sons are now lying in our bosom and are in peace. After having lost their lives on this land, they have become our sons as well.’ Atatürk’s words are utilised as proof of the humanitarian characteristics of the Turkish nation. All of these examples demonstrate how the Turkish state through its representative institutions in the diaspora has been working to create a Turkish lobby. Yet this is not a recent phenomenon. As the previous chapter argued, Turkish political authorities had attempted to mobilise Turkish emigrants as a lobby group against ‘dissident’ political movements back in the 1970s and 1980s too. However, what is new about the long-distance mobilisation engineered by the Turkish state now is the changing means through which such mobilisation (‘e-mobilisation’) occurs. The increasingly available electronic communication technologies enable the Consulate to keep Turkish migrants abreast of affairs at home, as well as generate mass participation in various events, petitions and protests. As Anderson has demonstrated, ‘print capitalism’ was instrumental in the inception of modern nationalism as it allowed persons to identify themselves with other members of the nation whom they had never been in face-toface contact with.11 The analysis here shows that ‘electronic capitalism’ also allows such identification to emerge, even at a transnational level. By informing Turkish migrants about the affairs of the Turkish military and other state institutions in Ankara and by reminding them of their ‘national’ duties, the information disseminated by the Consulate facilitates the emergence of not only what Appadurai calls a ‘community of sentiment’12, but also a ‘community of action.’ Despite claims that the nation-state is losing its sovereignty in the face of the processes of transnationalism, the state continues to claim and manage its populations abroad by utilising what transnational processes offer them.13

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The Consulate’s everyday functioning involves not only the dissemination of information, but also the organising of a range of events in Sydney through which Turkish trans-Kemalism is reinforced. These may include commemorative ceremonies, conferences, festivals and award ceremonies. In the following sections, I will use a series of ethnographic vignettes to sketch out some other dimensions of the Consulate-engineered political transnationalism.

Commemorating the nation National day celebrations and commemorative events constitute another political site wherein the ‘abnormal’ qualities of ‘normal’ states are obscured. In the process they are often manifested and normalised as legitimate aspects of state sovereignty. According to Turner, ‘the term “commemoration” refers to all those devices through which a nation recalls, marks, embodies, discusses or argues about its past, and to all those devices which are intended to create or sustain a sense of belonging.’14 Celebration of national days, the building of monuments, war memorials, cemeteries, museums and other sites of mourning, the naming and re-naming of streets, the composing of literary texts and images are all part of the repertoire that states utilise to construct a past, as well as a collective identity to remember that past. Consular institutions perform this task outside the state’s political territory through their concern to transnationalise these devices. As Turner notes, ‘The device chosen may reflect the internal life of the nation, its current international status, and its prevailing political aesthetic as much as the nature of the event itself . . .’15 There is, then, an intricate connection between the type of event and the type of commemorative device selected. Moreover, messages disseminated through the celebration or commemoration of any single event may vary depending on the type of strategy employed. To illustrate this point, I will provide some examples of how the Consulate uses multiple techniques to celebrate a single national day in Sydney. 23 April is one of the important dates in the national calendar of the Turkish Republic. Designated National Sovereignty and Children’s Day, it marks the anniversary of the inauguration of the Turkish Grand

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National Assembly in 1920. Mustafa Kemal dedicated this epochal day to the children of the Republic whom he identified as the future of the Turkish nation. The children of Turkish migrants, regardless of which generation, are also seen as symbols of this future. The day, like other Turkish national days, is remembered (or is made to be remembered) through a combination of annually held ceremonies and various one-off events. Every year, on the morning of 23 April, a number of Turkish students who attend various Turkish Saturday Schools16 in Sydney are invited by the Consulate to its office building in Woollahra to celebrate the day dedicated to them. Singing the national anthem, reading poems, performing small theatre sketches and listening to the speeches made by various consulate staff on the significance of the day, the children learn how and why to remember the nation’s past, a past that confers on them a distinct national identity, not shared with their non-Turkish friends in their weekly classes. In these commemorative ceremonies, children learn not only about ‘nationhood’, but also about ‘statehood.’ In the celebration they are surrounded by emblems of Turkish statehood; the national anthem, the flag, the founder of the Turkish Republic, the War of Independence and the Parliament, to name just a few. Their physical presence in the Consulate building brings children into embodied contact with Turkish statehood, as they experience face-to-face contact with the physical space of the state apparatus via the commemorative event. One striking element of the ritual is the privilege given to one of the students to sit in the consul-general’s chair. Nestling in the consulgeneral’s black leather seat, the child interrogates the staff about their work, role playing that s/he is the real authority in the room. This ritual was of course invented in Turkey, and is familiar to me from my own primary school years. In its original version, each year on Children’s Day a number of primary school students are honoured with the opportunity of replacing a state official in their town – not the consul-general, but a mayor, governor, or even the President of the Republic. The child is expected to imitate, bodily and discursively, the state official s/he replaces. For one student at least the bodily encounter with state power is more potent than other ritualistic acts such as singing the national anthem, standing at order during the singing of

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the anthem, performing sketches, singing while marching and so on. In all of these practices the body itself, just like the ceremony, becomes a means for preserving the past in the present social order. According to Connerton, this is how societies remember, as the title of his book probes. It is through commemorative ceremonies and bodily practices that ‘recollected knowledge of the past is conveyed and sustained by (more or less ritual).’17 Another commemorative device chosen by the Consulate to remember this day was a painting contest. In March 2009 children were invited to use their creative skills to craft a picture on the theme. But the invitation to compete was not extended to all children! It was open only to those who attended Turkish Saturday Schools. Clearly these were the ones who deserved it in the eyes of the Consulate. But was this a message sent to the children only? In penalising the non-Saturday School kids by excluding them from the competition the Consulate was also addressing their parents. ‘Responsible’ parents sent their children to Saturday Schools. The competition, as well as the prize ceremony held two months later, was an opportunity to inculcate a particular sense of history and remembering in the minds of children. The Consul-General himself expressed this point in the speech he gave at the ceremony: It is one of the duties of our teachers to teach our students about Atatürk and how the Turkish Republic was founded. I congratulate our teachers who make this possible thousands of kilometres away [from Turkey] . . . These types of activities guarantee our existence in this country. Only communities who care for [sahip çıkmak] their history, their language and their culture can continue to exist.18 The award ceremony at the Turkish House resembled a typical national day celebration, with a similar genre of poems, speeches and marches performed. There was a large turnout including parents, language teachers, the Consulate and Turkish House staff, representatives of Auburn Council and children from Turkish schools all over Sydney (i.e. Auburn, Dulwich Hill, Eastlakes, Hurstville, Lidcombe, Bonnyrigg, Matraville, and Seven Hills). Everyone was seated on chairs except

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for the children who were seated on the floor facing a golden bust of Atatürk, who had a Turkish flag hanging beneath him (Figure 9). The placing of the bust at such close range was not arbitrary. Any other image of the ‘Father of the Turks’ placed at a more remote distance (such as a portrait of him gazing at his ‘children’) would not provoke the same effect as the dominating shiny head. The children’s positioning around the Atatürk bust tells us more about the connection between body and memory. In contrast to what Connerton argues however, remembering is not conveyed through any bodily actions or performances in this example. As the image below displays, the bodies of the children are not involved in any performative action. They are motionless. What stimulates the memory here is not the incorporated actions and practices played out by the body, but the body’s physical closeness to the image to be remembered. Extending Connerton’s point then, ‘bodily social memory’ can also be generated, as in this case, through the immobile posture of the body. A third example of the celebration of National Sovereignty and Children’s Day shifts our attention to another form of commemorative device: the building of a monument. On 23 April 2007 the renovated Atatürk Monument, which was first constructed in 1985, was re-launched.

Figure 9 Children sitting around the bust of Atatürk during the award ceremony at Turkish House (Source: Turkish News Weekly, 2009)

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Situated on Anzac Parade in Australia’s capital city Canberra, the monument has the honour of being the only memorial devoted to an enemy commander on the memorial Parade. The crescent shape of the monument symbolises the moon and five-pointed star in the Turkish flag. A column rises from the centre holding a bronze likeness of Atatürk and a time capsule containing soil from Gallipoli. Beneath the bust is an inscription of Atatürk’s famous words about the ANZACs. The monument is the primary site for commemorating Atatürk for Turkish people in Australia. Every year, on the anniversary of his death, a large crowd visits the monument. This always includes representatives of Turkish organisations, Turkish Saturday School students, and families not only from Canberra but from other cities. The site, in this sense, functions like Anıtkabir, the mausoleum of Atatürk located in Ankara. The monument is not just a reminder to Turkish people of their own national history. As voiced by the Turkish Ambassador in his opening speech regarding the unveiling of the renovated Monument: The Monument will stand for many things: as a symbol of reconciliation and friendship between two nations, as witness to

Figure 10 Atatürk Monument on Anzac Parade, Canberra (Source: Canberra Times, 1993)

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Atatürk’s qualities as a statesman and a general; and I think also as visible proof to later generations that the young soldiers of our two countries did not die entirely in vain and something good for all of us came out of their sacrifice. The three examples illustrate how a variety of devices are mobilised to commemorate the same event on the national calendar. The type of device chosen varies according to the make-up of the targeted audience, even if the messages conveyed via different commemorative strategies overlap with each other. The first and second examples highlight how, through organising commemorative ceremonies and initiating a competition, the Consulate seeks to nationalise the second, and even the third generation of Australian Turks living in Sydney. The generational aspect of these commemorations is particularly important, given that they perform a socialising task for the younger generations of Turks. There is an inter-generational transmission of Turkish nationalism that these practices produce in the diaspora context. The third commemorative example, on the other hand, demonstrates the intervention of the state into the nationalistic landscape of Australia, as well as the friendship between the two countries. In short, commemorations are good excuses for state officials from sending countries to forge a sense of nationhood in their celebrants and observers. This is often done through verbal messages and written texts. Yet the Consulate uses some other devices too to remind Turks of their national history. Conferences and talks are often organised. For example, the Consulate invited a Turkish historian from Ankara to deliver a talk in Sydney in December 2006 to commemorate Atatürk on the 125th anniversary of his birth (Figure 11). In another example, a joint initiative of the Education Attaché and the Religious Affairs Attaché in Sydney called Turkish people to commemorate the life of Mehmet Akif Ersoy (poet of the Turkish national anthem) and the lives of Turkish soldiers who lost their lives in the Turkish War of Independence (Figure 12). This example highlights how even a religious congregation can be mobilised to mourn the passing of a national hero.

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Figure 11 (left) Conference on the occasion of the 125th anniversary of the birth of Atatürk (Source: Turkish Consulate General, Sydney, 2006) Figure 12 (right) Commemoration of the Martyrs and Mehmet Akif Ersoy (Source: Turkish Consulate General, Sydney, 2008)

‘Showcasing the best of the unique Turkish culture’ ‘No performance today is complete without a festival, and every vision of the future includes some kind of celebration’ wrote Mona Ozouf.19 In an ethnically diverse country like Australia, there is perhaps nothing more ordinary than cultural festivals through which each migrant community celebrates and displays its unique ‘authentic’ cultural traits. In 2008, it was the turn of the Turkish community to hold a long-awaited festival, Turkfest, to celebrate the 40th anniversary of Turkish migration to Australia. In May 2006, the Turkish Ambassador requested the ConsulsGeneral of both Victoria and NSW to set up committees to organise a series of celebratory events marking forty years of Turkish presence in Australia. The project was partly funded by the Turkish state. Appointed by the Consul-General, the committee in Sydney (called Australian Turkish Mutual Alliance) involved ten Australian Turks

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from different professions; a solicitor, a corporate accountant, music and arts teachers, university students, a locally elected Council member, a computer engineer, a professional events manager and a professional marketing manager. Fourteen months after it was formed, the committee members held a meeting in Auburn to inform the community of their ongoing activities. The venue chosen was a Turkish restaurant. The second floor of the restaurant was full of businessmen, local shop owners, leaders of community organisations and Turkish journalists, all of whom were invited to give their support to Turkfest. The first person to take the floor was the head of the committee who gave a quick summary of how the project came into being and what the committee had done so far. Listening to him, the faces surrounding the long u-shaped table silently agreed on the view that not much progress had been made yet. It looked like things were happening in a ‘Turkish’ way here. What made the situation Turkish-like was not only its slowness. More seriously, the whole organising process, from the very beginning, was pursued in a top-down manner. The committee members were not chosen by the Turkish people in Sydney, but were instead appointed by the Consul-General, reflecting a fundamental quality long held by the Turkish state: a top-down (tepeden inmeci) attitude to governance. More importantly, at least for those who filled the restaurant, the committee did not involve any community leader in the real sense. It was filled by a bunch of young professionals. The complaints made that evening would continue to be hotly debated in the Turkish newspapers, at coffee houses and during house visits over the following months. Although it was not much aired at a public level, another criticism regarding the representativeness of the committee came from the so-called Islamists. At a lunch I was invited to by a devout Turkish couple, the husband said to the assembled guests: ‘Look at all those people that the Consulate picked. None of them is from a religious organisation. They [the laics] are celebrating themselves.’ At the meeting in the Auburn Turkish restaurant, the committee explained the range of activities they were planning to hold across the metropolitan area of Sydney over the next two years: arts and crafts exhibitions, workshops, seminars, book launches, concerts, plays, sport

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activities, street parades and so on. The cornerstone event for the anniversary would be Turkfest, a one-day festival to be held in First Fleet Park at The Rocks (the historic hub of Sydney close to where the ships of the first settlement landed in 1788), located next to the international passenger terminal and the Museum of Contemporary Arts. One of the committee members explained why they insisted on this venue: ‘It would not matter if I tried to explain to you how beautiful the Turkish flag is. You know this already. What is more important is to express this to Australians. That’s why we chose Circular Quay.20 Otherwise, we could hold the festival here in Auburn.’ At the festival, as he went on to explain, there would be numerous performances of local and international artists including contemporary and traditional bands and artists; Anatolian rock and pop bands; dance shows; kids’ attractions; a variety of stalls selling food, arts and crafts and giftware. A special area would be devoted to marquees decorated to resemble the world famous Grand Bazaar in Istanbul. To make all of these attractions possible, the committee was now asking for the support of the community. Another young committee member explained: ‘Everyone can do something. A small child can wear a Turkfest T-shirt to advertise the event. An old lady can tell them [the potential audience that would attend the festival] about our history. We have our flag, our Atatürk, our culture. I try to tell my Australian friends about these every day.’ In contrast to the expectations of the committee members, not a word of support came from the guests. Those who did speak heavily criticised the Consulate’s top-down approach to the celebrations. A local shop owner said sarcastically: ‘Events concerning the whole community cannot be successful if people who know the community very well are not involved in organising them. Each one of you might be successful in your own jobs. But cultural activities are affairs of the soul [gönül işi].’ Despite the fierce debates, the committee managed to organise Turkfest in First Fleet Park on 12 January 2008. This was the first time that the Sydney Harbour Foreshore Authority had given permission for the holding of an ethnic group festival in this heritage precinct. According to the information that the organising committee obtained

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from the Foreshore Authority after the festival, approximately 120,000 people used the festival zone on that day. However, although the targeted audience was non-Turkish Australians, the majority of those filling the park were Turks, plus a good number of tourists who just happened to be there. There were also changes in the initial plans for financial reasons. The area imagined as the Grand Bazaar was instead devoted to the food stalls selling gözleme (savoury pancakes) and kebabs. Moreover, there were hardly any performers from Turkey apart from one band that performed their songs in English. Chatting with people on the festival day and afterwards, it was clear that most Turkish people were underwhelmed by the long-awaited event, perhaps apart from the tourists, who enjoyed their kebab. The comments were diverse. Some complained about the low quality of the performances: ‘I couldn’t work out whether it was Turks’ festival or the Aborigines’, one man said, pointing to the buskers. ‘Even the didgeridoo sound was more powerful than the sound coming from the stage.’ Many found it quite absurd that the music band invited from Turkey performed Western rock classics (on Turkish instruments) in English rather than in Turkish. For them, this was unacceptable at a Turkish festival. The festival was perhaps most severely criticised by middle class Kemalists. One of my fieldwork contacts said to me later: ‘I looked at the festival place from afar. The scene was not nice at all. People [Turks] should at least wear appropriate things when coming to events like this. Women with headscarfs were everywhere. There was no aesthetic.’ Turkfest highlights two important points regarding the formation of a Turkish politico-cultural transnational space in Sydney. Firstly, it exemplifies how the state sponsors cultural activities in order to promote national identity among emigrants living abroad. Governments of sending states may mobilise a range of programs for this purpose through their consular networks, various ministerial offices or cultural centres that they set up (such as Amicale des Algériens en Europe sponsored by the Algerian state, and the Amicale des Travailleurs et Commerçants Marocains en France sponsored by the Moroccan state21). In the case of the Turkish state, it is not possible to talk about any cultural organisations officially sponsored and subsidised by the state. Writing about the German context, Argun also confirms this point,

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in that the transnational activities in the Turkish diaspora are ‘not always systematic and patterned’ and are ‘of a rather low level of institutionalisation.’22 The key state institutions involved in the process of cultural production include the consular institutions and occasionally various ministries such as the Ministry of Culture and Tourism and the Directorate of Religious Affairs. Secondly, and more importantly, Turkfest also illustrates how the authorities of the host country facilitate the cultural transnationalism engineered by the sending state. Through its policy of multiculturalism, the Australian government actively promotes the expression of ethnic groups’ cultural and group identity. The Australian multicultural affairs institutions encourage this by providing funding for celebratory events held by ethnic groups, and by organising multicultural festivals in different metropolitan areas. A good example of this is the Auburn Street Festival held in September each year. Organised by the Auburn Council the event invites the inhabitants of Auburn to display and co-celebrate their cultures. The festival is also promoted by the Turkish Consulate every year. Through its e-mail network and the print media, the Consulate invited representatives of the Turkish community to showcase the best of Turkish culture at the Auburn Festival in September 2008: Auburn’s annual Festival will be held this year on 20 September 2008 on Auburn Street. The Turkish community has made a significant contribution to the multicultural character of Auburn and has provided Auburn with its reputation as a Turkish suburb. It is highly important for the Turkish community, through its associations and various organisations, to attend this festival and represent its culture and values in the best way. These occasions provide an opportunity structure that feeds back into the identity formation of migrants, as the Turkish Ambassador clearly expressed in the speech he gave at the Immigration Museum in Melbourne on 11 November 2007 for the 40th anniversary of Turkish migration to Australia: ‘We extend our profound gratitude to Australia, a nation that embraces opportunity and inclusion that

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had made it easy for Turks to feel at home and make their dream come true.’ The narratives of Turkish state officials in Australia often involve an expression of appreciation for what has been provided by Australia for the maintenance of post-Ottoman Turkish culture.

Twin celebrations for students in Auburn It was a Sunday afternoon. Cars parked in Gallipoli Parade in Auburn were spread beside the train line. In the foyer of Turkish House proud parents, happy at their children’s success in the university entrance exams, were chatting with each other. Upstairs others were looking for seats from where they could get a good view of the ceremony. Everything looked familiar in the second floor of Turkish House. Chairs lined the room facing the flags of the two nations with an Atatürk portrait hanging in between. Protocol members were ushered to their seats at the front. These included the Minister for Local Government, Barbara Perry, Auburn Councillor Le Lam, Saturday School of Community Languages Principal Marjory Ellsmor, the Consulate staff and community leaders. This was a day of celebration for ‘Turkish’ students. Two things had brought all these people here on 24 May 2009. One was an award ceremony honouring Turkish students who were successful in the university entry exams (HSC exams) the year before. First held in 1996, the event had become a ritual of the Consulate since then (both in Sydney and Melbourne). The other ceremony was a commemorative one. The students would celebrate a national holiday, 19 May, Youth and Sports Day, the day dedicated by Atatürk to Turkish youth. The ceremony began with the welcoming speech of two young female presenters. The first speaker to take the floor following the singing of the two national anthems was the Turkish Consul-General. In the first half of his speech, he expressed his happiness at the increase in the number of Turkish students studying at Australian universities, a trend which he identified as a good indicator of the Turkish migrants’ integration into Australian society. ‘We are proud of the position the Turkish community has made for itself in Australia today’, he said.

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The second half of the Consul-General’s speech was about the importance of 19 May for Turkish youth. This year we celebrated the 90th anniversary of the great leader Atatürk’s landing on Samsun on 19 May to start the national independence struggle. This date marks a turning point in the independence movement initiated to establish a modern, independent Republic based on the principle of rule by people from the ashes of an empire . . . By calling on youth to watch over what he identified as his ‘greatest work’, the Republic, our great leader both revealed his trust and love in youth and expressed his faith in their capacity to raise our Republic. We have complete trust not only in youth in Turkey but also in Australia who will do their best to defend the Republic and make it reach contemporary civilisation. I believe that by committing yourselves to the principles of Kemalism as well as to our culture, you will contribute both to the contemporary Australian society and to our efforts to build strong bridges of friendship between Turkey and Australia. The ceremony continued with the Consulate staff showering the three most successful students with gifts and letters of testimony. Gifts were also offered by the Australian Turkish Businessmen’s and Industry Association. This was followed by the awarding of certificates to other students in the room. Everyone was proud: parents, students, Turkish teachers, Consulate staff. It would be surprising, of course, if there was no speech on the importance of language at an event like this. This time the student who got the highest grade in the Turkish component of the exam was invited to the microphone: They [Turks] came out of the north woods; brave, strong and talented. First spread into the steppes of Altai-Kirghiz and then into China beginning with 3000 B.C. They called themselves ‘soldiers of God.’ Their names manifested strength, power, maturity and order. With the hundred and twenty states they established,

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these audacious people stamped their names onto history. They terrified Europe with Atila and China with Murat Khan. They opened the doors of the cradle of civilisations [Anatolia] with Alparslan. With Fatih they conquered what was impregrable [Istanbul]. And with Mustafa Kemal they enflamed a fire which was about to die down. They were brave, strong and talented. Their stories will last forever. A long wave of applause filled the room. Listening to this highly imaginary speech it struck me how I had been subjected to the very same narrative about Turkish history in my school years in Turkey. Closing my eyes I could easily imagine sitting in my Year Eight or Year 11 class on ‘History of the Turkish Revolution and Atatürkism.’ Further, the narratives embedded in the speech were exactly the same as the state discourse used in school textbooks and lessons in Northern Cyprus. There too, according to Navaro-Yashin, children are taught to identify as descendants of generations of statemakers over the centuries. ‘History’ is constructed as a succession of state-entities. It is often called the ‘History of Turkish states’ and includes chapters on what is called ‘the first Turkish states in Central Asia’, with references to the Hun and Göktürk empires, leading onto the Selçuks, the lordships of Anatolia, the making of the Ottoman state, [and] the foundation of the Republic of Turkey.23 Daydreaming . . . perhaps I was a Turkish-Cypriot sitting in a classroom in Northern Cyprus. Back in Auburn, surrounded by this omnipresent state discourse, the emotional aura in the room intensified even further when a young student from Dulwich Hill Saturday School began to read Atatürk’s ‘Orientation to the Turkish Youth’ (Atatürk’ün Gençliğe Hitabesi) – in the 2008 version of this award ceremony, a written form of this orientation was given to each and every student with a badge of Atatürk. A bird’s eye view of the celebration gives us a good sense of the link between youth, education and state nationalism. Young people can be

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defined as ‘citizens-in-making’, as they pass through a long process of civic education. Through the official curriculum or other special programs, they are socialised into a national community. The Consulate’s holding of these yearly award ceremonies conforms to this nationalistic project. The vignette illustrates for us how the Turkish state sees not only Turkish youth in Turkey, but also second and third generation Turks in Australia as an important category to be nationalised and made citizens. As the Consul-General’s speech confirms, young people here are invariably portrayed as an extension of youth in Turkey and reminded that the same civic duties apply to them: ‘to watch over the Kemalist Republic.’ The ceremony also serves to instil a shared historical memory in these young people, given that the celebration of their personal achievements goes hand in hand with the celebration of the achievements of the Turkish nation. It is this historical memory that binds the citizens of a nation together: ‘To have common glories in the past, a common will in the present; to have accomplished great things together, to wish to do so again, that is the essential condition for being a nation.’24 The Turkish state’s invention of strategies to instil national pride into young people is not limited to using national day celebrations and commemorative events as an excuse for this. A recent, and perhaps more striking example of transnational state projects targeting youth is a cultural program entitled ‘Turkish Youth in Australia Encountering Its Own Culture and History’, introduced by the Turkish General Directorate of Youth and Sports in 2011. As part of this initiative, a group of fifty ‘Turkish’ young people (aged 16–24) living in different Australian cities was taken on a trip to Turkey, during which they visited a number of Anatolian cities and Istanbul over a two-week period. The participants’ costs, including their airfares, accommodation and meals, were fully funded by the office of the Prime Minister. The program, whose aim was to ensure that ‘Turkish youth abroad consolidate [pekiştirmek] their identities and culture’, had been first held in Europe in 2010, targeting young people residing there.25 Yet as some other initiatives coming from the Consulate officials demonstrate, the state’s interpolation of youth is not always simply an attempt to promote national pride in them. For example, a press

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release issued by the Turkish Consul-General in Melbourne in July 2009 urged the need for a project on Turkish youth in Australia on two grounds. The first one was his (and the Turkish state’s) anxiety about the prospect of the Turkish language’s gradual disappearance in Australia. If later generations of Turkish people were to become more Australianised, in the near future Turkish would hardly be spoken among the local Turks. The second reason was directly linked to domestic politics in Turkey. The Consul-General pointed out that the Islamist groups in Australia were very well organised and worked hard in contrast to laic Turkish groups. The implication here was that youth needed to be prevented from falling into the hands of Islamists. They had to be mobilised as part of the struggle against Islamists. Indeed, the ‘winning’ of youth is not only the concern of the Turkish state officials in Australia. The same applies to the Kemalist Turkish organisations as well. An anecdotal example of this was the annual board meeting of Atatürk Cultural Centre in June 2007. One of the issues over which the organisation members brainstormed was how to gain the support and allegiance of young Australian Turks. In the discussion, speakers often made references to how Islamists brainwashed many young people (although they provided no evidence for this). Numerous ideas were suggested about initiating counterstrategies such as getting in touch with the Turkish student clubs in Australian universities, holding social events for young people, organising youth trips to the Atatürk Monument in Canberra on national days and so on.

‘Every Turkish citizen is an ambassador’ On 20–23 May 2009, a symposium held in Ankara – fully funded by the Turkish Ministry of state – brought academics, Turkish and foreign policy-makers together to discuss various issues in Turkish emigration. The title of the conference gave clear signals about the tone of the speeches to be delivered: ‘Turks Abroad: The Symposium on Migration and Integration in its 50th Year.’ In it all migrants from Turkey were referred to as ‘Turks’, despite the emigration of hundreds of thousands of non-ethnic Turks from the country, particularly Kurds.

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It was unclear whether this was because of the state’s insistence on calling them ‘Turks’ or because they were deliberately excluded from the symposium (which would explain why there was not a single speaker representing any Kurdish or Alevi associations). The title also designated lands of Turkish migrant settlement as ‘abroad’ (yurt dışı) – the literal translation is ‘outside the homeland’–despite 50 years of official emigration from Turkey. In the eyes of the Turkish state, there is no possibility for the ‘host’ countries to become ‘home’ for first generation migrants from Turkey. But what about the second and even third generation of people born in those countries and who have lived there their entire lives? Are they still yurt dışı? From the symposium’s commencement, it was clear that the main objective of the event was even more circumscribed than the title. The agenda of the next three days was set out in the opening speech: it was clear that the symposium was about nothing more than how ‘Turks abroad’ could be more fully utilised. ‘How can we enhance the gains obtained from Turkish emigrants?’, ‘How can the financial and social capital provided by migrants be put to use?’, ‘How could Turkish migrants enrich their host societies while preserving their Turkishness and cultural values?’ The unremitting use of words like ‘contribution’, ‘gains’, ‘enrich’ found their boldest form in the speech of state Minister Egemen Bağış: We see each and every Turkish citizen abroad as our ambassador. I would like to particularly emphasise one thing that they [Turkish migrants] should be aware of: every contribution they will make to their [host] societies will be considered as a contribution by Turkey to those countries. On the other hand, if they mistakenly do something wrong, that mistake will also be attributed to Turkey. What does being an ‘ambassador’ of the state entail? How are the children of the Turkish Republic living outside their ‘motherland’ expected to respond to and obey their ‘mother’? As this chapter has illustrated, they are expected to petition against all kinds of anti-Turkish (and anti-Kemalist) movements; they are expected to commemorate the

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lives of national heroes selected for them; they are expected to send their children to Turkish schools; and they are expected to enrich the societies in which they live without forgetting their Turkishness. The chapter ahead continues to investigate the Turkish state’s expectations from Turkish migrants in Sydney and its project of transKemalism in Australia by shifting our gaze from the activities of the Consulate to the actions of two other state institutions from Turkey, the Department of Religious Affairs and the Ministry of Culture. Each has created its own ways of reaching out to and nationalising the diaspora.

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4 NATIONALISING ISL A M, SACR ALISING THE R EPUBLIC

The empty coffin Inside the mosque courtyard under the blue sky sits a coffin, draped in green cloth. Standing in rows and facing the coffin, fidgeting men prepare themselves for prayer. The white-robed imam1 says: -

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They were martyred in the name of vatan [homeland]. We endure this pain even thousands of kilometres away [from Turkey]. May God not leave us without faith and our vatan. Amin, answers the congregation. May God have mercy on our martyrs, says the imam. Amin, say the men. Allahuekber2, pronounces the imam. Allahuekber, the men repeat back, four times. In the name of the souls of our martyrs. In the name of the souls of our veterans who have passed away. In the name of our homeland, our flag, our nation. In the name of all the souls who have sacrificed their lives for holy values. In the name of the unity of our Turkey, our homeland. And in the name of the unity of the

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Turkish community here so that it may be strong. Let us recite Al-Fatiha3, says the imam. After the prayers the coffin holding its imagined corpse is lifted lightly upon the shoulders of men, to be carried not to a cemetery but back to the mosque storeroom. On Friday, 17 October 2008 similar funeral prayers in absentia (gıyabında) for martyred Turkish soldiers were held in every Turkish mosque across Australia. The soldiers were said to have been killed in Diyarbakır by PKK terrorists. The prayers were organised by the Religious Affairs Attachés of the Turkish Consulate, and conducted by the mosque imams, all employees of the Directorate of Religious Affairs and sent to Australia on four-year contracts. The Turkish Consulate in Sydney is not the only Turkish state institution addressing Turkish migrants in Australia. This chapter will continue to sketch out trans-Kemalism by focusing on the politics of two other key institutions of the Republic: the Directorate of Religious Affairs (hereafter Diyanet) and the Ministry of Culture and Tourism. The examination of the ‘religio-cultural’ enterprises undertaken by these institutions provides us with a lens onto the intertwined relationships between political, cultural and religious4 forms of transnationalism, and how they intermingle. The chapter offers two major arguments: the first, that by extending the institutional structure of the Diyanet abroad, the Turkish state promotes ‘Turkish Islam’ as a ‘moderate’, ‘civilised’ and ‘enlightened’ type of Islam, one that is not antithetical to the ideals of ‘Western’ modernity. In this endeavour, Islam becomes an image that the Turkish state projects vis-à-vis the host societies where Turkish migrants live. Secondly, the state uses religion as an avenue to maintain its political control over the Turkish diaspora. The transnationalisation of the institutional apparatus of the Diyanet enables the Turkish state to reach out to its emigrant communities in an attempt to politicise, as well as to mobilise them. The vignette above illustrates this point by showing us the manipulation of the praying men, to confront them once again with the enemies of the Turkish army. It is this dual mission of the Diyanet that makes it one of the key institutions through which trans-Kemalism is engineered in a top-down manner.

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State Islam Positioned at the interface between state attempts to promote a unified national culture and a new type of citizenry, religion was incorporated into the governance of the Turkish state in the founding years of the Republic. This was part of the wider political agenda introduced by the Kemalists to appropriate the influence of religion so as to make it serve the socio-political structure of the Republic, and to supplement an Islamic culture with a constructed Turkish national culture.5 The key institutional innovation made by Mustafa Kemal and his associates was the founding of the Directorate of Religious Affairs in 1924. The basic duties of the Diyanet were specified in Article 136 of the Constitution: ‘to execute the affairs concerning the beliefs, worship, and ethics of Islam, to enlighten the public about their religion, and to administer the sacred worshipping places.’ The same Article also indicated that the institution is to ‘remain separate from all political views and thoughts in accordance with the principle of secularism.’ But notice that the logic that gave the Diyanet its very existence is embedded in a highly politicised and politicising ideology, the laicnationalist ideology of Kemalism. In official Kemalist discourse, the need for the institutional apparatus of the Diyanet has been justified on the ground of separating din işleri (religious affairs) from devlet işleri (state affairs). In practice, however, this was an attempt not to separate the institutions of mosque and state, but to ‘reinscribe Islam within Kemalism.’6 By incorporating religion into its institutional machinery, the state officially formalised what Islam should be about, how it should be taught and how it should be practised by its laic citizens. According to Houston: . . . we might describe this as its [Kemalism’s] intention to produce regime-friendly Muslims. Rather than benign indifference, strict separation or implacable hostility [towards religion], Kemalism politicizes and instrumentalizes Islam in a Hobbesian fashion: that is, the state arrogates to itself the right or duty to tell the religious institution what doctrine to preach.7

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Islam then, having been subordinated to the Leviathan, was made into a political tool to institute society. And Islam itself was instituted in the same process. The ‘orthodox’ Islam formalised and controlled by the Diyanet has been promoted as ‘civilised’, ‘moderate’ and ‘enlightened’, one that is compatible with the ideals of European modernity. Yet this state-inscribed Islam should also been seen as essentially discriminatory, because it is grounded exclusively upon the teachings of Sunni tradition, disregarding and marginalising the heterodox religious tradition of Alevism that is adhered to by a substantial proportion of the Turkish and Kurdish population (around 20 to 30 per cent). Likewise the mosque and other religious services provided by the Diyanet have solely benefited Turkish Sunni believers. As Özyürek notes, having a larger budget than many other ministries (approximately one billion dollars), the Diyanet employed 60,000 imams in Turkey and abroad and funded 4,221 Qur’an schools in 2005.8 Alevis receive none of these services.9 This highlights how the institutionalisation of religion under the governance of the state has aimed to form and nationalise a Sunni population as much as it has aimed to secularise them. The nationalising mission carried out by the Diyanet is expressed in one of the key objectives of the institution as mentioned in its website: ‘to provide service by protecting and strengthening social stability and peace, and national unity and solidarity, and to warn Turkish citizens against negative activities of various destructive, harmful and sectarian movements.’10 Here the state is intimately involved in deciding what is ‘good’ and ‘evil’ for its citizens as well as in guiding them how to live out their spiritual lives. In short, the homogenising role played out by the Diyanet, as Seufert puts it, oscillates between ‘secularisation on the one hand and Sunnification and Turkification on the other.’11 Examining the Diyanet activities outside of Turkey might give us a better understanding of its dual mission. The expansion of the Diyanet apparatus outside of Turkey began in the 1970s, with the sending of religious personnel to countries with substantial Turkish presence. In 1982 the Diyanet opened up its first overseas post in Berlin, followed by the establishment of a national office in Cologne in 1984 under the name of the Turkish-Islamic Union for Religious

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Affairs (Diyanet İşleri Türk-İslam Birliği) (DITIB). This was a key development in terms of the Diyanet’s growing extra-territorial institutional structure, which meant that the state was now aiming to monitor and control the religious activities of its nationals abroad. From the 1980s onwards the Diyanet-franchised offices began to proliferate in other host countries, often in the context of a fierce competition with other Islamic organisations and actors.12 Writing in the French context, Çitak notes: . . . there was the worrisome realisation by Turkish state elites that years of inactivity had led to the rise and subsequent flourishing of many actors in the host countries who were deemed dangerous by the Turkish state. Thus, when the Diyanet began to be actively involved in Europe in the early 1980s, it found itself as a latecomer in the religious market, hitherto dominated by a wide range of dissident networks such as Milli Görüş, Süleymancıs, Kaplancıs and extremist nationalist groups. As a principle, the Turkish state aimed to combat the influence of these groups, be they on the right of the political spectrum or on the left.13 The changing political climate in Turkey in the post-1980 period was highly influential in determining the transnational strategies of the Diyanet. This era was marked by the rise of the Islamic movement alongside Kurdish identity politics. Thus it became the key objective of the Diyanet to suffocate the religious organisations at home and abroad who did not subscribe to the regime’s ideology. Yet, compared to the European context, the Diyanet’s stance against ‘dissident’ Turkish-Islamic organisations in Australia has been relatively less antagonistic. The alternative Islamic groups (i.e. Süleymancılar, Milli Görüş, Nurcular, Gülen movement) that have evolved in Europe have also been present in Australia (with the exception of Kaplancılar). But given the much larger numbers of Turkish people living in European countries, Islamic groups in Europe have been both larger in size and more vocal in criticising laicised state Islam. Indeed, at the time of my fieldwork the Diyanet-controlled mosque organisations collaborated

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with some of these groups in organising various social events. The most important of these is a week-long festival celebrating the anniversary of the Prophet Muhammed’s birth known as Kutlu Doğum Haftası that involved, among other things, Qur’an-reciting competitions, conferences, book fairs, sports activities, Sufi music concerts, poetry writing competitions and craft exhibitions. Despite this, the Diyanet officials still fear losing their congregations in this competitive religious market. Structurally, the key institutions that facilitate the Diyanet’s extraterritorial activities are the Turkish consular networks and mosques. The Religious Affairs Counsellors (müsteşar) appointed by Ankara are hosted at the Turkish embassies whereas the Religious Affairs Attachés are appointed to the consulates. The incorporation of these posts into the consular institutions also signifies the bureaucratisation and formalisation of religion by the Turkish state. Another group of staff sent abroad to provide religious services to Turkish people includes imams. These are civil servants who lead the prayers and sermons (the Diyanet in Ankara sends them an approved sermon to read out each Friday) at the Diyanet-authorised mosques. They are appointed by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs for a period of four years only (with the exception of the Netherlands where they serve for five years) through a special funding agency – Yurtdışında Türk Kültür Varlığını Tanıtma Fonu (Fund for Promoting Turkish Cultural Heritage Abroad). It is possible to divide the extra-territorial activities of the Diyanet into four categories: (i) mosque services (i.e. the sending of imams, counsellors and attachés, construction of mosques); (ii) educational and social services (e.g. Qur’anic text reading courses and competitions, educational courses, sporting activities, seminars, conferences, religious day celebrations and festivals14), (iii) publication services (i.e. the publishing of religious periodicals, magazines and visual materials, the broadcasting of ‘Diyanet Time Programme’ on TRT-INT (the official state TV channel for Turkish people abroad); and (iv) pilgrimage services for the haj to Mecca. The institutionalisation of the Diyanet outside Turkey then can be understood as a micro transnational field in itself within the broader top-down transnationalism engineered

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by the Turkish state. The nature of this transnational phenomenon is multi-dimensional, embracing numerous religious, social, political, cultural and economic transactions and activities.

The mosque as a gateway for trans-Kemalism The reaching out of the Diyanet to Turkish people (and to Islam) in Sydney goes back to the mid-1970s. At the beginning its function was temporary in nature, limited to the export of imams each year to lead prayers during the period of Ramadan. In 1977 the Diyanet obtained an institutional status with the opening up of a Religious Services Unit at the Turkish Consulate. This was followed by its gradual monopolisation of the Turkish mosques in Sydney (Auburn Gallipoli Mosque, Redfern Mosque, Erskineville Mosque, Mt. Druitt Mosque and Bonnyrigg Mosque). This transnational management of the Turkish mosques and religious clerics in the diaspora by the Turkish state constitutes a remarkable exception among other Muslim immigrant communities in Australia. Being the largest mosque in NSW if not in Australia, Auburn Gallipoli Mosque is the key Diyanet base in Sydney. The mosque was first opened for worship in 1979. Back then, it was a house standing on the present mosque site with its internal walls removed to generate space for praying. I listened to the story of the mosque from a reliable eye-witness, İsmail Amca, who was the first person to come up with the idea of building a Turkish mosque in Auburn. He is now serving as the president of the Gallipoli Mosque Association. Long time ago, in the 1970s, we used to go to the Erskineville Mosque for the teravih prayers during the month of Ramadan. However that mosque was quite far away from us. It was hard getting there and back to Auburn, especially during Ramadan. In 1977, we had someone called Mustafa Hodja here. He was a Diyanet authorised attaché working at the Consulate. I used to insistently tell him that we needed a mosque in Auburn too. Back then we used to gather at friends’ houses to pray. ‘Let’s form an association. We need a mosque here. Think about your

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children. We can’t let them get lost’, I used to say to my friends. Finally, Mustafa Hodja liked the idea and he chose a couple of people from the community making them responsible for setting up an association. We formed the association immediately. It was called Auburn Qur’an Course and Turkish Islamic Cultural Centre. We then started holding Qur’an courses at a friend’s house. 250 students enrolled within a week’s time. We managed to save some money through those courses. We then bought the house which used to stand here in the place of the current mosque. We turned that house into a mosque. The President of the Diyanet was also with us on the opening day. Over time we bought another house which was located right next to the first one. We then bought another one. So we had enough space to build a bigger mosque. In 1982 our first imam was appointed by the Diyanet. He said to us: ‘Let’s get a work of art built here symbolising Turkish architecture.’ Some of us were sent off to Turkey to see the mosques there to get some ideas. The construction plans were made in Turkey. Finally, the Diyanet said to us: ‘Hand this mosque over to us and we will provide you one million dollars.’ The construction began when the first funding arrived not long after the deal was made. Not only the funding, but the bulk of the material used in the construction and in the decoration of the mosque also came from Turkey. The courtyard marble was from Tokat. The travertine stone used on the external walls was from Denizli. The crystal chandeliers were manufactured in Istanbul. So were the timber doors and the carpet used in the interior area. Calligraphers and other artists were brought from Turkey too. The construction of the mosque took thirteen painstaking years. During this time the mosque association had to ask many times for donations from the local community and Turkish organisations given that the funding provided by the Diyanet was not enough for the completion of the building. It was finally opened in 1999 by the Diyanet. Gallipoli Mosque has been a key site of fieldwork in my study (Figure 13). Although it constitutes a religious institution in the first

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Figure 13 Auburn Gallipoli Mosque (Source: author’s own)

instance, its functions encompass a diverse range of activities that go far beyond the realm of religion. For example, educational programs make up a significant component of the mosque’s functions. Computer courses, English courses, sewing courses, visual arts courses, after-school tutorials, soccer courses, childcare courses and parenting courses have been some of the programs offered by the mosque during the time of my fieldwork. Another key area of activity involved day trips, exhibitions, social nights, sports competitions, religious festivals, commemorative events, seminars, talks and workshops. All of these socio-cultural and educational activities that revolve around the mosque make it much more than a place of worship. Is this a unique feature of the Gallipoli Mosque only? The literature on the Diyanet-authorised mosques in Europe suggests that it is no exception. Writing in the context of the Turkish mosques in the Netherlands and Germany, both Doomernik and Avcı respectively observe similar facilities being provided by the Diyanet organisations

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there.15 What does this synchronisation of the vast scope of mosque functions tell us about the transnational mission of the Diyanet? For Doomernik, who appears anxious about the issue of integration, the social activities offered by the Diyanet mosque organisations ‘fulfil a bridge-like function’ and ‘facilitate Turkish migrants’ entry into society.’16 The act of participation in mosque activities is reduced here to cater for the condition of the ‘unsuccessful’ migrant, who is not productive enough in the labour market and who therefore desires extra capacities to integrate into the life of the host society. Doomernik describes the multi-faceted scope of mosque functions as a trend resulting from the rise of second-generation leadership in these organisations. However, this claim is also problematic in the Australian case given that those involved in the Turkish mosque associations (at least in Sydney) are still predominantly first-generation migrants. Rather than social integration, my estimation of the Diyanet’s transnational role is that it first aims to promote an orthodox type of Sunni Islam by sponsoring a vivid socio-cultural life around the mosques under its official authority. In this endeavour the mosque is imagined and designed not only as a religious space enriching Muslims spiritually, but also as a civil society institution equipping Turkish people with various life skills. Yet the Diyanet mosque is not a civil-society institution in the normative sense given its ownership and control by the Turkish state. My intention in re-emphasising the umbilical link between the Turkish state and the Diyanet-authorised mosques is not to undervalue the usefulness of various services they provide. In the case of the Gallipoli Mosque, Turkish people’s high level of attendance in its functions confirms that they are found useful by the service-users themselves. I argue, however, that the Diyanet’s promoting of its mosques as community centres is not immune from its wider project of producing orthodox Islam, an Islam designed to conform to so-called Western values. We might also interpret this as a preventive strategy of the Diyanet to make sure that Turkish citizens do not get involved in other Islamic groups. Clearly, it expects Turkish people to make use of the mosques under its monopoly rather

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than those that belong to some rival Islamic groups. This expectation was expressed by the Religious Affairs Attaché in Sydney when I interviewed him: Those tarikats [religious groups] steal the worshippers who would otherwise come to the Diyanet mosque to pray. The state makes all these investments to facilitate services. It builds mosques. It sends out imams. It is a shame if one goes and prays at a house of a tarikat while all these facilities exist. The official state discourse in this narrative projects the Diyanet as the best-equipped authority to decide on how Islam is to be practised by subjects of the state. What is it about this state Islam that merits such claims? What further aims does the Turkish state seek in monopolising Islam abroad? The answer doubtless resides not only in the state’s production of a ‘civilised’ Islam, but also in its generation of a Turkish national identity via its manipulation of religion. This equally significant attempt of the state to nationalise, and even militarise Turkish migrants through those organisations has not been discussed. The funeral for an empty coffin is a powerful illustration of this less spoken task carried out by the Diyanet. The holding of funeral prayers in absentia for martyred Turkish soldiers has long been a common ritualistic activity in the Diyanet mosques in Turkey, particularly as part of the ongoing violence between the Turkish military and the PKK. Yet it is striking to see that the state also authorises its attachés to organise similar funeral prayers at the Turkish mosques abroad. This highlights another aspect of the mosque, its use as an architectural site intimately connected with Turkish militarism. By keeping the militaristic discourse of martyrdom alive, the state seeks to mobilise religion as a political tool to nationalise its citizens. Just as the bodies praying in the presence of the ‘unknown soldier’ become a device to remember the nation and its statehood, so the mosque becomes a site imbued with the militaristic project of the state. It is through the presence of the dead body that nationalism communicates with the living. In the migratory context, this bloody nationalism also produces an understanding of home and homeland. As one of my interviewees who

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attended the funeral pointed out: ‘Australia can never be a homeland like Turkey. Turkey is sacred; our martyrs lie there.’ Another aspect of such collective activities aimed at commemorating the martyrs is that they burden worshippers with various communal obligations. For example, on 1 November 2007 the Diyanet launched a campaign via its offices abroad to raise money for the families of martyred Turkish soldiers who died fighting against the PKK. The recently increasing frequency of the traitors’ attacks against the unity of our nation and the indivisibility of our homeland has deeply saddened all our nationals and co-religionists both inside and outside Turkey . . . Although we are not able to pay back our gratefulness to our martyrs and veterans who willingly sacrificed their lives in the name of our homeland, it should be a binding duty on our nation to see their families and children as entrusted to us and look after them. With this feeling of responsibility the Directorate of Religious Affairs has found it appropriate to initiate a fundraising campaign via its organisations abroad aiming to support the education of the families and children of our martyrs. In relation to this campaign I propose that a bank account be opened by our units and foundations abroad, and the information regarding the campaign and the account numbers be delivered by our imams through their sermons.17 These are the words of the President of the Diyanet, Ali Bardakoğlu, reminding Turkish emigrants that they are also bound by the obligation to support the families of the martyrs left behind. In addition to exemplifying how Turkish people abroad are hailed as ‘nationals and co-religionists’ by the Turkish state, the message also clarifies why the Diyanet not only appoints its own imams, but also tells them what they are to preach in sermons. What happens to Islam then in the process of its nationalising? How convincing is it to argue

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that the main task of the Diyanet is to formalise a ‘civil’ and ‘liberal’ Islam? Clearly the Directorate is not just civilising Islam, but militarising it. Ironically, however, it is not only the Diyanet that seeks to institute Islam as a political tool to legitimise the acts of the Turkish military. The military also utilises religion to mobilise worshippers for its own ends. This cannot be better expressed than in the e-mail below, which was disseminated by the Turkish Consulate on 21 November 2007: Attached is the information regarding the campaign initiated by the Mehmetçik Foundation of the Turkish Armed Forces to collect the 2007 kurban [sacrifice] donations by proxy in the name of the families of our martyrs and veterans. The e-mail strikingly demonstrates how the military gets a handle on the religious sensitivities of Turkish people. In doing so, the Kemalist state itself might be accused of violating the principles of secularism. In reality the affairs of religion are not separated from the affairs of the state or from the affairs of the military. Instead religion is inscribed within the nation, which is presented as non-political. In this way we see how secularism is given its particular meaning in Turkey, facilitating the subordination of the religious institution to the state. In brief, all these pseudo-religious practices initiated by the Diyanet (and by the military as the final example shows) make it into a device through which the state can continue to interpolate its citizens.18 To take stock, this chapter has argued that first, the Turkish state aims to both secularise Islam and to nationalise Turkish worshippers through the Diyanet-authorised mosques and, secondly, that the state-centric Islam formalised by the Diyanet has highly militaristic overtones. Yet an equally important question concerns the wider implications of the Diyanet’s monopolisation of Islam for crosscultural interaction and communication. What type of knowledge does the Diyanet produce about other forms of Islam and about other Muslims in Australia? How does it situate itself vis-à-vis the

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non-Turkish institutions and groups also representing Islam? Let me give just one example to illustrate an answer to these questions. The President of the Diyanet, Ali Bardakoğlu, paid a visit to Sydney in early November 2006 to mark the official opening of Sydney’s newest Turkish mosque in Bonnyrigg. His trip happened to coincide with the airing of a provocative remark by the Australian Arabic Mufti, Sheik Taj Aldin al-Hilali in which he put responsibility on scantily clad women themselves for being raped, comparing them to ‘uncovered meat left out in the backyard and eaten by a cat.’ Unsurprisingly, Bardakoğlu was asked to comment on Sheik Hilali’s statement many times during his time in Sydney. Pointing out that the statement was not in line with Islamic scholarship and did not reflect the Turkish understanding of Islam, he said: The Islamic world should take enormous steps in order to promote equal rights for women . . . Many people in Islamic countries have been surprised that women have been appointed to high positions in Turkey. It is not possible in other countries for women to be muftis, but in Turkey we are continuing our good work and opening new avenues in that regard . . . Turkey is a laic and democratic society. It is also an open society.19 In another assessment he revealed: In Turkey our Faculties of Divinity are providing education by using universal methods. The main reason that democracy and laicism were easily adopted in Turkey is that Turkey’s knowledge about religion is more profound than those of other Muslim communities. Religious staff in Turkey are more modern compared to those in other Muslim countries. According to Turks, the religion of Islam is open to democratic debate and interpretation.20 Bardakoğlu’s statements found wide coverage in the Turkish dailies in a highly celebratory tone as the crisis triggered by Sheik Hilali’s

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remarks accelerated. For example, depicted as the ‘Pope of the Islamic world’, Bardakoğlu was pictured as scolding Sheik Hilali. What is striking in these narratives is a discourse of the superiority of Turkish Islam, presenting the genius of Turkish Islam as originating in the trans-historical essence of the Turkish nation, a nation whose definitive features are claimed to be compatible with the principles of universalism, democracy and modernity. Embedded in this complex here is also an essentialist and chauvinist perception towards non-Turkish forms of Islam that are juxtaposed as irreconcilable with modern values. As the second narrative makes explicit, the superiority of Turkish Islam is also demonstrated through another typical claim that imagines Turks to be more knowledgeable than other Muslims. Interestingly yet unsurprisingly, the same opinion was voiced by the former Religious Affairs Attaché of the Turkish Consulate when I asked him about the potential differences he perceived between Turkish Muslims and other Muslims living in Sydney. Referring to Arab Australians, he responded: ‘Their mufti would never know the things that I know. He wouldn’t even know the titles of the books that I have read.’ He then moved on to the issue of hygiene as another marker of self-differentiation for Turkish Islam: They [Arabs] are different from us even when it comes to hygiene. Go to their mosque. You see men taking ablution and then walking into the toilet with bare feet. And then they walk into the mosque like that. This never happens in our mosques. These types of racist narratives belittling non-Turkish Muslims, particularly Arabs, as voiced by the Diyanet officials and many of my interviewees, including both laic and devout Turks feed back into the official state discourse promoting Turkish Islam as ‘liberal’, ‘civilised’ and ‘moderate.’ (I will come back to this point in Chapter Seven when I talk about the Kemalist toxic discourse on Islam.) In this state-centric approach to religion there is no room for

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appreciating different ways of understanding and practising Islam. Instead differences are readily seen as the basis of the claimed superiority of Turkish Islam. Significantly, this is reflected in the institutionalisation of Turkish Islam in Australia as well. Turkish Islamic organisations have long distanced themselves from the umbrella institutions representing Muslims in Australia and formed their own representative bodies. Today, the Federation of Turkish Islamic and Cultural Centres of Australia represents Turkish Muslims at the federal level. The formation came as an initiative of the Religious Affairs Attachés in Sydney and Melbourne in 2008. In brief, the Diyanet is the key state institution monopolising Turkish Islam abroad. Yet it is not the only one. Other state ministries play a role in the same project albeit in a more temporary manner. The example below illustrates how the Ministry of Culture and Tourism21 is also involved in the state’s making and marketing of ‘Turkish Islam.’ The vignette also shows how even collaboration with international organisations can be utilised in this endeavour.

Clash or competition of civilisations? Come, come again, whoever you are, come! Heathen, fire worshipper or idolater, come! Come even if you broke your penitence a hundred times, Ours is the portal of hope, come as you are. The velvet tones of the presenter rang out as he welcomed the audience packed into Sydney Town Hall nestled in the heart of the city for over a century. No words could be more powerful than Rumi’s own lyrics in calling the world to celebrate the 800th anniversary of the birth of Mevlana Jalal al-din Rumi (1207–73), recognised as one of the great poets and scholars of Islamic civilisation. Rumi was born in the city of Balkh in present-day Afghanistan and lived almost all of his life in the city of Konya (in Turkey) where he died. He wrote his poems in

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Persian. Regarded as one of the prominent Sufi masters, his work is interpreted in the West as addressing humanity as a whole. ‘I do not distinguish between the relative and the stranger’, Rumi says. Despite this the nation-states of Afghanistan, Iran and Turkey continue to claim him as their own. The programme included a lecture on Rumi’s life and significance, and a performance of the famous Sema Ceremony of the Whirling Dervishes. The evening was fully sponsored by the Turkish Ministry of Culture and Tourism in collaboration with UNESCO. This Sydney performance was the eighth for the Dervishes travelling to 18 different countries and 22 cities as part of their year-long programme celebrating the life and teachings of Rumi. Although the event was dedicated to the Sufi master, it was an irresistible opportunity for the Ministry to ‘sell’ Turkey to the crowd of nearly 2,000 people who filled the hall. A promotional film was shown for this purpose, intended both for foreigners and Turks, given that they also constitute a major group of holiday package buyers during the Turkish summer. The film thus killed two birds with one stone by taking the mixed audience to the tourist sites of Turkey, presented as a heavenly place for holidays. Snapshots of the bodily pleasures able to be enjoyed in Turkey were displayed one after another; swimming, rafting, jet skiing, wind surfing, canoeing, water parachuting, golf and so on. These were highly sanitised images of Turkey, as well as de-Islamised. No headscarfed women appeared on the white sandy beaches or in the cafe-party streets of Turkey in the 12-minute film. Following the film a speech was made by Mr Güngör, the General Director for Research and Education of the Ministry of Culture. He described how the idea of celebrating Rumi began as an initiative of the representatives of Afghanistan, Egypt and Turkey who sold the idea to UNESCO in 2005. A year later the organisation declared that Rumi was among 63 world figures to be celebrated during 2007, describing him as ‘one of the great humanists, philosophers and poets who belong to humanity in its entirety.’ Güngör spoke about the Mevlevi Sufi order (known as the Whirling Dervishes) that was founded in 1273 in Konya by Rumi’s followers after his death. He praised the

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humanism of the Mevlevis by stressing the notions of peace, love and tolerance. Yet he associated this humanistic quality with the genesis of the Mevlevi in Anatolia, rather than with its genesis within Sufism or Islam. Here it was not the Mevlevi brotherhood that was primarily valued but Anatolia (‘the cradle of civilisations’ as he referred to it) represented as the only land of tolerance that could give birth to such a humanistic theology. Somewhat ironically, the fact that the Mevlevi order was outlawed in the early years of the Republic by the Kemalists as part of their attempts to secularise Turkey was omitted in Güngör’s and others’ speeches.22 Instead Güngör proudly pointed out how Turkey was fulfilling an important responsibility by taking Mevlana’s philosophy to 22 different countries. ‘Rumi’s Islamic philosophy was unifying every Muslim from Chile to Indonesia.’ The same rhetoric simultaneously appropriating and domesticating Rumi continued when it was the Turkish Consul-General’s turn to express his views. In his speech Rumi was described as a great ‘Turkish humanist.’ The lecture delivered by a university professor from Turkey was no exception, given its identification of Rumi on the basis of his supposed Turkish nationality. After the speeches the ney (the reed flute) prelude introduced the Sydneysiders to the music and to the Sema23 ceremony of the renowned Whirling Dervishes from Konya. The white-gowned semazens (dervishes) performed their zikr (remembrance of God), representing the spiritual journey of the believer in Mevlevi thought. In the end, the event was generally very well received, at least among Turkish people.24 Talking to some of my fieldwork contacts afterwards it became obvious that they were more impressed by the event’s promotion of Turkey than by the performance itself. Some of them only talked about how they felt when they were watching the clip on Turkey. ‘Everyone saw what our country looks like’, one said proudly. Another young man commented: ‘These types of events are very important for advertising Turkey to foreigners. You need to spend a lot of money on things like this so that people can learn about Turkey.’ He was right indeed in emphasising the abundant resources put into the event to advertise Turkey. Not only the promotional film, but the complimentary bags handed out to the

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audience, each including tourist maps of Turkey, booklets, brochures, magnets and other small items carrying the emblems of the Ministry of Culture and Tourism were also part of the marketing campaign accompanying the commemoration of Rumi. Their appreciation of the event had less to do with the aesthetics of the Sufi music and the ‘dance’ or with the theological meanings of the sema. On the other hand the Islamic groups were concerned not so much about the promotion of Turkey as the promotion of Islam and its humanistic messages conveyed through the language of the performance. Nevertheless the meanings of the performance as they negotiated them were not homogeneous either. I will proceed by quoting two comments: At a time when Muslim-West relations need to be strengthened, UNESCO’s declaration of 2007 to be the ‘Year of Rumi’ is certainly welcomed, as Rumi is loved by people of all backgrounds, particularly in the West. (Mehmet Saral, President of Affinity Intercultural Foundation) A second quote is taken from the local Muslim newspaper Zaman: Once it was the fashion to westernise the Anatolian people in Turkey! This zealousness for westernisation happened not only in areas like education, health or Council services, but most in areas related to style such as bodily gestures, dress and music . . . One of the things they [Kemalists] did in the name of westernisation was to get Anatolian people to listen to classical music in villages. In fact rumour has it that during the singleparty era people in Erzurum were gathered together to listen to the performance of a symphony orchestra. One of those with a passion for westernising the people asked someone from the crowd: ‘Amca [uncle], how did you find it?’ The Anatolian man replied with ready wit: ‘Erzurum has seen no oppression like this since it became Erzurum.’ The situation in Sydney on Saturday

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evening was different. The Mevlevi dervishes were spectacular enough to make everyone, Turks and foreigners who filled the Sydney Town Hall say: ‘Sydney has seen no beauty like this since it became Sydney.’25 The two narratives reveal how for many people cultural practices are perceived as signifiers of political identities. The first narrative assesses the importance of the performance within the context of inter-faith dialogue. Here UNESCO’s (the West’s) involvement in the commemorative project is interpreted as its gesture to Muslims at a time of fierce polemic about the compatibility of the values of Islam with those claimed for the West. In the second narrative, on the other hand, the performance is discussed in terms of the question of authenticity, more particularly, in terms of a long ongoing struggle between the Kemalists and Islamists over ‘real’ Turkish culture. Sarcastically criticising the Kemalists’ remaking of Turkish music during the 1930s Cultural Revolution, the narrative treats the performance of Whirling Dervishes as the Kemalist state’s reconciliation with its own authentic cultural values. While the former prioritises the West’s recognition of Islam as a component of the universal culture, then, the latter prioritises the Kemalists’ recognition of Islam as a component of the national culture. What could be a third supplementary way of understanding the performance? How is it articulated with the religious transnationalism constituted by the Turkish state? The event illustrates how the ceaseless production and promotion of Turkish Islam outside Turkey occurs not only through the Diyanet structure, but also through the occasional ‘cultural’ activities organised by other state ministries. Both the ‘religious’ and ‘cultural’ here are deeply intertwined with the ‘political’, in that they are inseparable from the state’s making of Islam. The Ministry’s choosing of Rumi itself is a political decision. By appropriating Rumi and blending his Sufi theology with its orthodoxy, the state is able to trademark ‘Turkish Islam’ as ‘humanistic’,

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‘inclusionary’ and ‘tolerant.’ All these messages serve to air a bigger message, the view that ‘Turkish Islam’ does not foster a clash of civilisations but their harmonious (if competitive) co-existence. On its website26, the Turkish Ministry of Culture and Tourism clearly expressed why it wished to commemorate Rumi: The policy of our Ministry on the celebrations for the 800th anniversary of the birth of Mevlana was conceived as a plan to promote Turkey in the international arena as well as introducing Mevlana to the world. In varied events organised in 2007, Turkey carried out an important mission to develop the ‘Alliance of Civilisations’ through a shared appreciation of Mevlana. Guests were provided with complimentary bags at the celebrations including textual and visual materials promoting Mevlana and Turkey. This sounds rather cynical. And according to more classical understandings of Sufism it also appears contrary to the spirit of the tradition. It is not the object of this book to delve into the theological ideas of Sufism. But I want to conclude by asserting that the Turkish state’s use of the poetry of Rumi and his life as a tourist promotion for Turkey, as well as to generate patriotism offshore and to construct and promote an ‘enlightened’ image of ‘Turkish Islam’, violates the very essence of Sufism. Here I will refer to Almond’s work comparing the process of deconstruction in the writings of Derrida and Ibn ‘Arabi to build up my argument, although I will be selective in focusing mainly on the work of Ibn ‘Arabi.27 Ibn ‘Arabi (1165–1240) (born in present-day Spain) is considered to be one of the most important Sufi masters. His entire approach to divine epistemology can be summed up as a Sufi critique of rational thought which, as Almond puts it, is critiqued as ‘the acquisition of divine knowledge in order to justify social and legal practices, . . . systemize theology and ascertain exactly what is orthodox and what is heresy.’28 The key aspect of scholastic theology about which Ibn ‘Arabi takes most umbrage is its claims for the predictability and knowability of God. For him, all

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theologies that sketch out God by defining what s/he is and what God’s attributes are, are idolatrous, given that they ‘fix their own rational/theological constructs onto God’ and ‘do not take into account the infinite range of divine possibilities in addition to their own.’29 The idea of the unknowability, uncontrollability and unpredictability of God constitutes the core idea in the writings of Ibn ‘Arabi. Were the Essence to make the loci of manifestation manifest, It would be known. Were It known, it would be encompassed. Were it encompassed, It would be limited. Were It limited, It would be confined. Were It confined, It would be owned.30 We can rethink the logic for the existence of the Diyanet from Ibn ‘Arabi’s ‘orthodox’ Sufi perspective. The fundamental problem with this institution is that it has built and elaborated its entire theology upon a singular (and state-driven) construct. By appropriating the text and determining what kind of use it will be put to, by training and exporting its own imams and by controlling the Turkish mosques at home and abroad, the Diyanet not only generates and monopolises Islam, but also severely circumscribes the name of Allah (God). Seen from the viewpoint of Sufism, what also makes the Diyanet an antiSufi formation is its claiming of ownership over the production of meanings of God. This is explicit in the Republican state’s closing down of all religious lodges in 1925 given the ‘unpredictability’ and ‘uncontrollability’ of these Islamic formations in the eyes of the state. According to the knowledge produced by the Diyanet there is no place for a multiplicity of meanings of the divine. In brief, looking at the state-sponsored celebrations of Rumi from the perspective of Ibn ‘Arabi’s negative theology, we witness the state’s appropriation and domestication of Sufi ideas and practices. But in its delimiting of the meanings of Mevlana’s writings as well as of his life we also see the Ministry of Tourism and Culture’s attempted stabilisation of the meaning of the text – Mevlana’s poetry, and the narratives of his biography. It is here then that we might see a similarity between

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the Sufism of Ibn ‘Arabi and the deconstructive approach of Derrida, at least according to Almond. He writes: If Ibn ‘Arabi loses his patience with those who chain the Real to their own meanings and dismiss any other manifestations as heresy, Derrida spends a similar amount of energy exploring the infinite semantic possibilities of a text – and how various thinkers have sought to restrict these possibilities to their own interpretations.31 Whereas Ibn ‘Arabi critiques the various institutions and movements of his time that sought to simplify and order the nature of God, the work of Derrida might be appropriated to critique state-Islam’s overdetermining of the writings of Rumi with its own standardising meaning. For Derrida, the meanings of a text are open to an unlimited range of possibilities, given the uncontrollable ‘play’ between the images and signs that constitute it, as well as the multiplicity of contexts in which the text is read and understood. For example, in her recent novel Aşk (Love) Elif Şafak gives the reader a completely different context in which to comprehend the life and philosophy of Rumi.32 In Aşk the genius of Rumi is not derived from (or backgrounded in) the spiritual richness of Turkish Anatolia, but is presented as an outcome of his intimate friendship with Shams-e Tabrizi, an Iranian Sufi dervish who lived with Rumi in Konya for several critical years and whose companionship had a tremendous impact on Rumi’s life and teachings. In brief, both Ibn ‘Arabi’s and Derrida’s deconstructive approach resist the ‘tyranny’ of the theologian/reader for whom the Real/text is fully knowable, and therefore, controllable. The focus of Chapters Three and Four has been on the political transnationalism fabricated by the Turkish state in its production and dissemination of the Kemalist state pedagogy in Australia. The efficacy of this transnational mobilisation, however, should not be overestimated. Indeed the Turkish state is often criticised by Turks in

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Australia for not doing enough. An equally vital task then is to assess how Turkish migrants themselves respond to the political transnationalism engaged in by the Turkish state. Perhaps they develop their own vision, and invent their own practices to ‘see and act for the state’? The chapters ahead investigate this.

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5 CULTUR AL ATTACHÉS

Part Two of this study has revealed to us a number of significant transnational processes. First, the various institutions of the Turkish state generate a continuous flow of mobilising ideology directed at its migrant community in Sydney and elsewhere, particularly Melbourne, a city with a comparable population. Second, the state’s transnational politics has a dual purpose: to nationalise (Turkify) Turks in the diaspora so that they can be appointed as volunteer ‘ambassadors’ and activists for Ankara, and to promulgate an enlightened type of Islam that advertises the Turkish version of laicism abroad. Third, the state institutions posit themselves as the vanguard of the trans-Kemalist project. In the state’s ‘mind’, Turkish migrants are expected to carry out their duties as envisioned for them by the state. Fourth, the state desires that the Turkish diaspora has no divisions and acts in a homogeneous and unified manner. Turks in the diaspora are entreated to work hand in hand with each other so that ‘national values’ and ‘national culture’ are preserved. Fifth and perhaps most importantly, the Republican state conceives Kemalism as a never-ending revolution, or as a ‘never-ending dance’ as Houston1 notes, one that is never accomplished and hence ceaselessly to be performed. Despite a fiction that everyone from Turkey is a supporter of Kemalism, in reality it is an extremely activist and activating project, simultaneously producing both its revolutionaries and its counter-revolutionaries.

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It might appear surprising that in the era of the so-called withering away of the nation-state the Turkish Republic seeks to make its presence apparent in the lives of Turks dwelling in the political territory of another nation. Yet the efficacy of this trans-Kemalist politics can only be assessed by evaluating the extent to which its premises and practices actually take root in the perceptions and practices of its targets, the Turkish diaspora in Australia. This is the task of the next two chapters. To anticipate my conclusions, I will argue that the transnationalism of the Republican state is highly successful, most particularly in terms of its politicisation and mobilisation of the diaspora. In terms of its fantasy of fabricating a homogeneous and unified political community however, the efficacy of state-led transnationalism seems to be limited. Why might this be the case? One key reason is that, as we have seen, Kemalism is both an extremely polemical ideology and a very partisan political practice. Partly because of this it is also a very unstable discourse. Hamit Bozarslan contends that this instability is grounded in an antagonistic relationship between the three foundational elements that compose it: Turkification, Islamisation and Westernisation.2 Each one of these elements is upheld by particular segments of the Turkish population. According to Bozarslan, whenever supporters of one of these political projects gain the upper hand, those who identify with another element of Kemalism are made to feel marginalised and excluded. A controlled politics of Islamisation, for example, is perceived as a threat by the secularist Western-oriented segment of the population. In similar vein, Westernisation from above is disliked by the ‘Turkish-Sunni population of the Anatolian provinces and the inhabitants of the shanty towns in big cities’ for demeaning Turkey’s Muslim culture.3 Turkification is embraced by both Muslims and secularists but is understood and resisted as a hostile assimilationist political project by Kurds and other ethnic minorities. Further, as we have seen, Kemalism is also a partisan ideology given its self-constitution vis-à-vis its imagined enemies (both ‘internal’ and ‘external’). Chapter Two has shown that in the 1970s and 1980s Kemalism’s internal threat was perceived to be the revolutionary leftist parties. By the 1990s they had been crushed, to be replaced as threats by political Islam, the

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pro-Kurdish movement and their supposed Western backers. In brief, Kemalism is an intrinsically fragmenting politics (at its worst, even a doctrine of civil war), whose intended consequence is social distinction as much as mobilisation. All of these factors have far-reaching implications for the project to produce a Turkified diaspora in Australia. The next two chapters will juxtapose different ways in which transKemalism is lived out by Turkish migrants themselves. How does the state-led trans-Kemalism impact the agency of individual Kemalists? How and why do Turkish migrants identify with the propagation of Kemalism? How do they see (and sing) for the Kemalist state? My analytical approach in this third part of the book takes Michael Herzfeld’s critique of the studies of state and nationalism as a point of departure. In Cultural Intimacy Herzfeld argues that most anthropological studies have followed the strategy of treating the state and people as separate conceptual constructs, and taking official ideology as an accurate account of what the nation-state is about.4 Critiquing such accounts, he recommends the strategy of investigating the engagement between the state and the practices of citizens so as to unpack how these two categories relate to each other. The same holds for the state-individual relationship in a diasporic context. The analyses in the next two chapters illustrate the intermingling of the discourses and everyday practices of individual actors with the state ideology, to show how the former reinforces the latter even when they appear to be critical of the state. I find useful the suggestive frame of ‘seeing for the state’ for describing and analysing my respondents’ everyday forms of political participation in Turkish politics, as acted out in opposition to the present government and in support of the Turkish state. Before I present and analyse the discourses of my research participants in relation to the diasporic politics of the Turkish state, let me explain what I mean by ‘seeing for the state.’

Seeing for the state ‘Seeing for the state’ is a metaphor that draws attention to individuals’ or groups’ production of nationalist discourses and practices that contribute to the reification of the state. This process is a vital aspect

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of nationalistic projects, even if it is not James Scott’s concern. Given that it is Turkish immigrants’ country of origin-oriented discourses and practices that are the focus of this study, Kemalist Turks’ seeing for the state can also be conceived as long-distance nationalism. Analysis of long-distance nationalism as developed by Benedict Anderson has become prominent within the diaspora and transnationalism studies since the 1990s.5 Establishing an intimate link between electronic communications, the globalised world-economic system and migration, Anderson describes long-distance nationalism as a new form of nationalism that ‘no longer depends as it once did on territorial location in a home country.’6 He cites Sikh nationalists in Australia, Croatian nationalists in Canada and Algerian nationalists in France as the ‘most vehement’ long-distance nationalists. Similarly writing on long-distance nationalism, Glick Schiller defines it as a set of identity claims and practices that connect people living in various geographical locations to a specific territory that they see as their ancestral home. Actions taken by long-distance nationalists on behalf of this reputed ancestral home may include voting, demonstrating, lobbying, contributing money, creating works of art, fighting, killing, and dying . . . Long-distance nationalists believe there is a nation that consists of a people who share a common history, identity, and territory.7 Long-distance nationalism provides a theoretical context for locating the idea of ‘seeing for the state.’ Both phrases encompass actors’ political actions and discourses that are oriented to (and generated on behalf of) the country of origin, which they see as their ancestral homeland. However, the term ‘seeing for the state’, as developed in this book, differs from long-distance nationalism in three vital ways. These differences concern the type of nationalism and the nationalist group studied. Central to most studies of long-distance nationalism is immigrants’ identification with a homeland where there is a situation of severe conflict. For example, Wise examines the collective struggle of the East Timorese refugees in Sydney in the 1990s to free

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East Timor from Indonesian occupation.8 Skrbiš’s study explores the long-distance nationalism of Slovene and Croatian second-generation youth in Australia in the 1990s when the former Yugoslavia was dissolving in the face of a violent ethnic conflict.9 Fuglerud uses the term long-distance nationalism to describe the political transnational activities of Tamils in Norway intended to further the cause of independence in Sri Lanka.10 According to Skrbiš, long-distance nationalism develops only if an emigrant population contains a critical mass of political exiles that had experienced a loss of status in their homeland. Agreeing with Skrbiš, Glick Schiller argues that political exiles forced to flee by repressive governments are the most familiar characters in the drama of long-distance nationalism.11 The case of Kurdish emigrants who have left Turkey as a result of ongoing state oppression is a good, and often cited, example of this. By contrast the long-distance nationalism of Kemalists emerges for different reasons. First of all, this group does not constitute an exiled community. Although some Turkish people migrated to Australia for political reasons in the 1970s and 1980s, the majority of them arrived as migrant workers or through family reunion schemes. The reasons for their politicisation, then, are to be found in the present rather than in the past. Secondly, many long-distance nationalisms have an ethnic dimension where the group of nationalists constitute a minority ethnic group who in their homeland are suppressed by the state, as seen in the case of Tamils, Kurds, Papuans and so on. What causes the long-distance nationalism in the context of this study, on the other hand, is not the minority ethnic status of the nationalist group vis-à-vis the population in the country of origin, but their political identities. And thirdly, most widely cited long-distance nationalists see against the state. This is why Eriksen argues that long-distance nationalisms or politics via remote control illustrate ‘how transnational connections weaken the authority of the nation-state.’12 By contrast, this study deals with actors who see for the state, and argues that their transnational connections do not undermine the authority of the nation-state, but strengthen it. These characteristics make their case an unusual form of long-distance nationalism. This is not to argue that counter-Kemalist voices do not exist (i.e. Kurds and

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Islamists), but rather that the hegemony of trans-Kemalism remains a powerful and persuasive force. Why do Kemalists perceive the need to see for the state then? Over the last 15 years, the electoral victories of the so-called ‘Islamist’ parties and the growing power and assertiveness of Muslims in Turkish politics have forced a legitimation crisis upon the country’s founding ideology. Kemalists no longer have full monopoly over political, economic and socio-cultural affairs in Turkey. As Kasaba and Bozdoğan note, by the 1990s the majority of those at the forefront of Islamist politics in Turkey were engineers, doctors, lawyers and other professionals.13 ‘Today, the segment of Turkish society that identifies itself with an [Islamist] outlook is becoming increasingly well represented in the most prestigious schools as well as in the newly expanding fields of communications, finance, international commerce and investment.’14 Kemalists no longer enjoy a hegemonic position in these diverse societal domains. Extending Skrbiš’s point, we can argue that this constitutes a perceived loss of status and significance for many Kemalists in Sydney that has made it possible for them to envision themselves as ‘political exiles.’ Closely following events in Turkey through a multitude of agencies – the media and the Internet, communication with their contacts in Turkey, talks, meetings, and through return visits – the Kemalists I met during my fieldwork regularly expressed strong feelings of disillusionment, anger and frustration with the current AKP-led government in Turkey, and a longing for the old Republican days. This was most evident in the texts and images circulated among Kemalists through their Australia-wide e-mail network. As this chapter will show, the bulk of those images were photos of Atatürk collected in power point slides, and a huge number of jokes, cartoons and satires producing a toxic discourse on the AKP officials as well as on religious Muslims. Moreover, stories about Atatürk’s life were produced in almost every weekly issue of the Turkish newspapers in Sydney. For instance Vatan newspaper published a graphic version of Atatürk’s life in sequence over a three-year period (2007–9). The houses and offices of Kemalist Turks whom I visited during my fieldwork illustrated the affective dimension of this nationalism

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(or the production of a cult of Atatürk). Photos of Atatürk were often displayed in prominent places in private spaces, even among family photos. Özyurek discusses, in great detail, this increasing consumption of the images of Atatürk among Kemalists in Turkey in Nostalgia for the Modern.15 Based on research in Istanbul and Ankara between 1998 and 1999, she argues that secular state ideology, politics and symbolism found a new life and legitimacy in the private sphere at the very moment political Islam appeared in the public sphere.16 This manifested itself through a privatisation of state ideology and imagery, and the commodification and consumption of symbols of the Turkish state – the priority given to the images of Atatürk of course – as well as in the invocation of nostalgic sentiments for the period of the early Republicans.17 Özyurek calls this longing ‘nostalgic Kemalism.’18 In short, a strong self-identification with Atatürk, and a commitment to the secular establishment of the Turkish state (led by the Turkish army) is crucial in understanding the uniqueness of this long-distance nationalism. Nevertheless the local dimension of this ‘seeing for the state’ is just as important. The so-called ‘Islamists’ whom laic Kemalists position themselves against not only include those in Turkey, but also those in Australia (both Turkish and non-Turkish. Their discourse about the latter will be discussed in Chapter Seven). Let me refer here to the narrative of one of my respondents:

We ran away from Turkey because of them [Islamists], but they found us here too. I don’t hold back. I say whatever I want to say to them. We were in Turkey last summer. Every time we go back, we see more of them wearing the headscarf, veil. When I saw them in the street, I would say: ‘Why don’t you go and live in Iran or Saudi Arabia? You don’t fit the Republic [Cumhuriyet’e yakışmıyorsunuz].’ Now when I go to Auburn here it is the same scene. You see men with beards and long dresses walking in the streets. This country [Australia] should ban Islamic clothes. (Nermin, arrived in 1982)

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In brief, ‘seeing for the state’ encompasses a discourse on the enemies of that state, ‘backward’ Muslims. Just as they strive for the good old days of Kemalism, Kemalists fantasise about living in an Australia sterilised against ‘out of place’ Muslims. Yet the category of ‘enemies of the state’ is not limited to Muslims only. Although this will not be discussed in this chapter, ‘seeing for the state’ also involves lobbying against Armenians, Greeks, Assyrians and Kurds living in Australia.

Cultural attachés How do Kemalists see for the state? During my fieldwork it became apparent that the commonest way of talking about the Turkish state was to criticise it for not engaging with the Turkish migrants in Australia in the ‘proper’ way. To put it differently, there was an acknowledgment that at least some state institutions were actively involved in the diaspora, but most people disagreed with what they were doing. In their eyes, the state somehow failed to act like a state, primarily because of its subversion by reactionaries (‘Islamists’). The critique of those who see/act for the state, then, is not directed to the institution of the state per se, but rather serves to affirm the validity of state authority and its self-ascribed status as the guide and guardian of people’s lives. This critique had several facets. It blames the state for not teaching the younger generation about Turkish history, Turkish language and Turkish nationalism; for failing to develop effective lobbying mechanisms; for not sponsoring proper cultural events; for not creating a better image of Turks in Australia; and for not suppressing the so-called Islamist tarikats (Islamic religious groups). Halit migrated to Sydney in 1988 with his wife and three children. The decision to move was made with the hope of accessing better educational opportunities for their children. Halit studied architecture in Turkey, but he has never worked in Sydney. He was involved however in a number of Turkish community associations. Aged 54, he defines himself as ‘a laic Turkish citizen.’

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The only thing that the Turkish state does is to send imams. Why don’t they send Turkish teachers instead? Each year 8–10 professors come from faculties of divinity in Turkey. They give conferences to hundreds of people. Conferences about what? Of teaching how to become more Muslim. They are not scientific. They just teach what Islam says. The Diyanet is very active here. It has at least three staff working at each Turkish mosque. The Government doesn’t say, ‘We should provide our citizens someone with academic knowledge. We should send them a musician, an artist.’ They should send Fazıl Say [a Turkish pianist] for example. Or a folk music group. This year they brought the Whirling Dervishes to Sydney. Each one of those dervishes cost ten thousand dollars to the Government. Who went to that event? Maybe Islamists did. Maybe foreigners did. Fazıl Say has an audience too. The musician you bring here must be universal so that you can promote the event to Australians, to Lebanese, to Iraqis, to all ethnic groups living here so that they can say ‘Wow, Turks have all these valuable people.’ (Halit, mid-50s) Halit’s narrative provides a glimpse of the complexities with which the state’s actions and practices vis-à-vis Turkish migrants in Sydney are greeted at the grassroots. He makes a critique of the state by discussing what he observes taking place in the transnational realms of religion and culture. For him, what the state (and the government) promotes in these areas does not address and embrace the entire community of Turks in Sydney, but speaks to ‘Islamists’ only. He criticises the state’s sending of imams and not Turkish language teachers, as well as its sponsoring of conferences which he depicts as ‘unscientific’ and ‘un-academic’ despite the fact that the speakers are academics from various Turkish universities. The discourse here presents a negative view of Islam, said to be at odds with principles of science and universalism. Indeed Halit’s critique of the types of cultural events sponsored by the state is not immune from a deeper feeling of anxiety about Islam’s ‘imagined’ rise within the Turkish diaspora as a determining element of Turkishness. Ironically, it is the transnational activities of the Diyanet that Halit is unhappy

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about, an institution that promotes a certain type of Turkish Islam in line with the Kemalist ideology, as we have seen in Chapter Four. The state’s efforts to intensify the transnational activities of the Diyanet in its struggle against unauthorised Islamic movements is understood here as an aim of the state to Islamise the diaspora. According to Halit, the recent cultural events sponsored by the state reflect this ‘aim’ of the state. He thinks that such cultural practices should take the form of a folk music concert or a piano performance by the famous Turkish classical pianist Fazıl Say19, but clearly not the dance performance by the Sufi dervishes. But why is that so? What is it about the latter that makes it less ‘universal’ than the former two in Halit’s eyes? Is this purely his aesthetic judgment? Indeed we are being introduced here to a much broader discussion that informs much of the debate over the essence of the contested Turkish identity. Here the genres of folk music and classical music conform more to Halit’s understanding of ‘Turkishness’ because they signify what he considers to be the fundamental elements of Turkish identity. Halk müziği (folk music) represents the pure, traditional öz kültür (native culture) of Anatolia. And it goes without saying that classical music makes a clear reference to the Western face of Turkey. Embedded in his argument is a claim that the genres of folk and classical music offer a better image of Turks to multicultural Australia, an image smeared by association with the genre of Sufi music. In his narrative then the artistic categories of folk music and classical music operate as signs of self-distinction through which Turkish migrants can distinguish themselves from other migrant communities in Sydney, particularly from Muslims, while at the same time showing them distinct forms of cultural capital possessed by Turks. In terms of its broader meanings then Halit’s critique of the Turkish state does not bemoan an absence of the state’s engagement with the diaspora, but is rather directed at the forms of its engagement. A similar point of view is shared by Cengiz, who migrated to Australia with his wife in 1974, planning to stay for a couple of years only. He worked in different low-skilled jobs for over 15 years in Sydney and then retired. He follows what is happening within the

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Turkish community by attending associational events and following the media. Below is how he perceives the diasporic politics of the Turkish state: Everything has become worse since 2002. I hear that the ConsulGeneral attended the launch of Fethullah Gülen20 Chair at the Australian Catholic University in Melbourne. And that the Ambassador spoke about the new Turkish Embassy building in Canberra as a sample of Ottoman architecture. That’s what he said. Now, what is the need for these? Why are you visiting Fethullah’s university? What is going to happen to your relationship with the community if you do so? You might have a good relationship with the followers of Fethullah in the end, but not with the whole community. On the other hand, we have seen some other ambassadors. B.S. worked hard. He published two volumes on Turkish poetry in Australia. He held exhibitions in Canberra. He followed what was being discussed within the community. Also some funding came from Turkey during his time. He allocated the money among the associations. This is what real support is supposed to be like. This is what we expect from them; either financial support or moral support. (Cengiz, late 50s) Although Cengiz criticises the state’s diasporic politics on the basis of the Consulate activities, his overall argument shares key similarities with Halit’s. Embedded in both narratives is a feeling of anxiety about the state’s perceived Islamisation of the diaspora. This is more explicit in Cengiz’s narrative where he provides us a clear starting date for the changes that he has observed in Turkish politics. 2002 is not arbitrarily chosen. It marks the electoral victory of the AKP (Justice and Development Party) on 3 November of that year. His narrative then tells us that this shift in the state’s diasporic politics is a direct result of the election of the AKP government. Embedded in his argument here is an assumption that the state in now infiltrated by Muslims. For Cengiz, the Turkish Consul-General’s presence at the launch of Fethullah Gülen Chair at the Australian Catholic

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University in November 2007 and the opening of a new Turkish Embassy building in Canberra in July 2006 designed in Ottoman architectural style are signs of Islamist subversion of the state from within.21 If Halit criticises the Ministry of Culture’s sponsoring of Whirling Dervishes, Cengiz expresses discomfort with the Embassy’s appropriating of Ottoman architectural style. In the eyes of both informants, these aesthetic genres do not represent the authentic nature of Turkishness. Moreover, comparing the recent consular representatives of the Turkish state in Sydney with the earlier ones, Cengiz’s narrative initiates a discussion about how an ideal ambassador/consul-general is supposed to act. There is an expectation here that they should establish relationships with the Kemalists only, and second, that they should actively promote Turkish culture and identity in the diaspora by sponsoring ‘appropriate’ cultural and artistic events. ‘They should also get Turkish migrants to lobby for the state,’ added Cengiz, seeing this as another key function to be pursued by these institutions: The reason for sending ambassadors and consul-generals abroad should not be to have them deal with passport or military service transactions. The primary function of these institutions must be lobby activities. They must organise Turkish nationals abroad. And lobbying can only be pursued by those who have national consciousness, I mean, by Kemalist-nationalists. Note here where Cengiz draws the boundaries of the consulate’s seeing/acting for Turks. According to him, ‘seeing for the state’ requires a certain level of national capital which does not exist in those who have failed to embrace the Kemalist revolution. Moreover, there is an expectation in this discourse that the state should do more than serve the Turkish people – there is a willing acknowledgment that it is the state that needs to be served. It is the appropriation and normalisation of this discourse of serving the state that reifies the state in the lives of its subjects. Similar discourse was reiterated by my other informants, even to the extent that some self-defined themselves as ‘cultural attachés’ of the state.

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I was a member of this club in Sydney. There was this man there, an Australian man, who used to come and talk to me sometimes. He would say: ‘You Ottomans did this, you Ottomans did that in Gallipoli.’ One day I lost my temper and said to him: ‘Who are you talking about? You are still living in the 1500s. We are in the 2000s now. Are you aware of that? I am a child of the Republic. Ottomans don’t interest me. Don’t ever imply to me that I am a child of Ottomans. I am a child of the Republic. Do I look like an Ottoman?’ We were tired of giving history lessons to everybody. We have been like cultural attachés. This is what being a cultural attaché is. (Ayfer, late 40s) Ayfer’s self-ascribed status is associated with her giving history lessons to those who have ‘distorted knowledge’ about the national history of the Republic. Yet what is interesting here is that she performs this task in the name of the state rather than in her own name, imagining and situating herself as a volunteer representative of the state. Here Ayfer’s drawing of a discontinuity between the Republican and Ottoman pasts not only serves to distinguish the laic-Kemalist self from an Islamic-Ottoman identity, but also to distinguish the Turkish self from the ‘Ottoman enemy.’ In the particular context of Australia, ‘being Ottoman’ also brings to mind the Gallipoli battle in which the ANZACs came into deadly contact with the Ottoman soldiers in 1915. A second issue that invites comment is Ayfer’s referring to herself as ‘a child of the Republic’, which is instrumental in the construction of a child/parent relationship between Turkish migrants and the Turkish state. Many scholars emphasise the reliance of nationalist discourse on various familial metaphors.22 Herzfeld argues that ‘the formal ideology of the state lays claim to intimacy and familiarity in a series of rather obvious metaphors: . . . our boys and girls, mother country and Vaterland, the wartime enemy as the rapist of mothers and daughters, and the tourist as a family guest.’23 Similarly, Pettman draws attention to the rhetorical construction of nationalist imaginations through the metaphors of kinship ties, which often assign different roles for men and women: ‘In a complex play, the state is often

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gendered male, and the nation gendered female – the mother country – and the citizens/children become kin.’24 This point applies to the Turkish example, given that the state is always referred to as ‘devlet baba’ (father state) while the nation is imagined as a matriarchal figure (anavatan-motherland). There is an intimate, yet hierarchical, relationship envisioned between the state and the individual here. Feelings of intimacy and resentment against favouritism are deepseated within this discourse. The quote below shows us that the term ‘ambassador’ is also employed in describing one’s relationship to the state. The President of the Turkish Parliament visited Sydney. I said to him: ‘Sir, you expressed all these nice ideas but I don’t trust politicians. Look, Armenians are doing all these things against us. As the Turkish state, you are not doing anything in return. You are leaving it to me.’ I had talked to the Minister of Culture too when I was in Turkey one time. ‘We have our opera, we have our ballet. Why don’t you send them to perform in Australia?’ I asked him. I heard six months later that the Turkish ballet went to perform in Germany. The Germans were shocked. For days the papers wrote: ‘We didn’t know that Turks knew about such things.’ These cultural promotions have to be done. Whatever happens here happens because of our [my italics] ambassadorship. Every Turkish citizen abroad must see himself or herself as an ambassador for Turkey. (Tuna, early 60s) Similar to the other informants Tuna also makes a critique of the Turkish state for not fighting hard enough against anti-Turkish movements and for not promoting ‘real’ Turkish culture in Australia. He makes the point that the state leaves all these matters to him and to its other diffused ambassadors, and that it is only through the volunteer acts of these unofficial ambassadors that proper things happen in the Australian Turkish diaspora. Yet he is also glad to be an ambassador. As his last sentence puts it, this is the responsibility of every virtuous citizen of the Republic regardless of where they live. As Chapter Three has shown, this is also how the state wants its emigrants to think. The

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state addresses its nationals abroad by using the very same discourse. Yet ironically, all of these narratives express a mismatch between what the respondents think the state should be doing and what they believe it is doing. Despite the strong and continuous flow of trans-Kemalism coming from above, Turkish Kemalists are of the opinion that the policies and practices of the state are insufficient to institute a Kemalist Turkish diaspora in Australia. They want more from the state. What further suggestions do these volunteer ambassadors/cultural attachés prescribe for the state’s transnational engagement so as to make it more effective? Below I present two examples of how youth is prescribed as an important category to be made use of by the state. A good deal of the responses by my informants (particularly of the first generation) mentioned Turkish youth in Australia when asked about what form the state’s diasporic politics should take. According to Faik: I suggest that the Turkish state establish youth centres. I told this to Government officials here many times. These centres can provide vocational training for our unemployed young people. They can host conferences, meetings, and talks, say about the Turkish War of Independence, Gallipoli Battle, or about the principles of Kemalism. Australia’s biggest problem is its youth. Young people here get addicted to smoking and alcohol at the age of 12. They start using drugs. Many young people fall into prison. This is the case because there is no compulsory military service in Australia. The Turkish state has to deal with this. Young people will be the next representatives of Turkey after us. If we don’t tell these children about our traditions, customs, language, history and culture they will end up assimilating. No Turk will be left here. The Turkish state should invite Turkish students living in Australia to Turkey. They should accommodate them. They should give them seminars to teach them about Turkish foreign policy. How come that they don’t make use of this potential? (Faik, late 40s) This narrative emphasises three important points. First, it introduces us to the perceived benefits of military service, that is, its functioning

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as a panacea for various societal problems. According to Faik, youth-related social problems in Australia result particularly from the absence of conscription (and youth discipline) as a fundamental part of the Australian society. Yet the solution that he proposes demands not the Australian state, but the Turkish state should open local youth centres in order to overcome this problem. The category of youth here envisioned is a group of people who are purely Turkish in ethnic terms and need to be rescued by the authorities of the country of their ancestors. Second, it is clear that in the narrative these centres are imagined as having more tasks than simply providing social support to young people as the targeted group. Faik desires that these places inculcate in the ‘Turkish’ youth the virtues of patriotism and nationalism and a deep sense of responsibility so that this great potential is made real. Third, the special meaning attributed to youth here envisions them not only as ‘representatives’ of the Turkish state, but also as the facilitators of the future presence of the Turkish nation in Australia. According to this insecure discourse, the Turkish presence in Australia would come to an end if young people were not Turkified and nationalised enough to realise that it is through their conduct and role in society that such a presence can be maintained. As Skrbiš argues, ‘nationalism does not only operate through manipulation of the past but also through projecting the real and imagined characteristics of an ethno-national group into the future.’25 The following narrative shares a similar opinion regarding the utilisation of youth as a political lobby force: The state should see Turks abroad as its ambassadors, I mean, as its representatives. Turkey should build dialogue with its youth abroad regarding problematic issues like this Armenian issue, PKK, Cyprus issue, the Aegean islands, Kirkuk and Mosul, and Eastern Turkestan. It should educate them. This education does not necessarily mean opening up schools here. Every year they can send a couple of scientists, professors and politicians to enlighten people. They can’t achieve anything by just repeating those classic sayings: ‘Be unified. Integrate but do not assimilate. Do not forget your motherland.’ And then

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they go to Europe or America and spend millions of dollars on lobbying. They wouldn’t have spent that much money on lobbying if they sent here a couple of people to give conferences to young people so that they don’t forget their language and their national history. Our youth learn English but they don’t know Turkish. They learn English history, Australian history but know nothing about their own history. The state doesn’t send us teachers. We have Saturday Schools here. It is ironic that the Government of this country [Australia] provides material and moral support to our children so that they can learn their own language [Turkish]. (Tekin, 50s) This narrative also conceives youth as the ‘political army’ of the Turkish state in the diaspora. It argues that young people be trained by the state like ‘real’ ambassadors so that they can serve as its everyday ambassadors. Here transnationalism is suggested as a means for nationalising and politicising the youth, through sending academics and politicians from Turkey to educate young people in Sydney. A similar point was also raised by Faik who advised the Turkish state to invite and host Turkish students so that they can be educated about Turkey and its ‘national’ affairs. Ironically, all these suggested mechanisms to nationalise young people are all in place. Equally importantly, Tekin draws attention to how the Australian state provides Turkish people with the much needed support that the Turkish state fails to provide (in the area of education at least). This has been a recurrent theme of conversation during my research. My informants often expressed a feeling of gratitude to the Australian state for being more willing to help them preserve their identity than the Turkish state itself (I will pick up this point in the final chapter). The narratives presented in this section provide us a glimpse into understanding how the Turkish state’s engagement with this diasporic context is conceived and contested by the Kemalists. Deeply dissatisfied with the forms of transnational politics pursued by the state, my respondents presented rich accounts of an ideal

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transnational Turkish state they had in mind. The narratives also highlight how the official ideology of the state and its nationalism is contained within the very discourse and practices of these respondents. Although the discourse of these informants is highly critical about what the state is doing, it is not critical about the presence of the state in their lives. Indeed, they want more of its presence. The efficacy of seeing for the state, here, lies not in the state’s imagining of its citizens as its voluntary ‘ambassadors’ or ‘attachés’, but in the willingness of the individuals to self-ascribe this mission to themselves. This is what makes the state such a formidable power in this transnational field. The section below focuses more on the actions through which the state is made alive. Here I delve into my interview with a highly experienced Turkish teacher working at a Turkish Saturday School in an inner-city Sydney suburb.

‘The homeland is waiting for you to serve it.’ Born in the Turkish city of Izmir in 1951, Nermin migrated to Sydney with her husband and one-year-old son in 1982. Both she and her husband studied chemical engineering in Istanbul and had decent jobs after graduating from university. Yet they wanted to experience living in an English-speaking country. Not long after their arrival in Sydney the couple both found jobs as social workers. However, Nermin had some serious health issues and had to quit her job. After she regained her health she decided to work as a Turkish teacher. For 17 years she has worked at a number of Turkish Saturday Schools in Sydney. I visited Nermin in their house at Granville (a western Sydney suburb) where they had been living for 24 years. We sat on the veranda and drank tea. Nermin then went inside and brought out a thick folder of material that she used for teaching, as well as some photo albums of her students. Pointing to a photo of a Republican Day celebration she said: ‘How many national days did we organise, so many! But recently the interest in national days has been lost. They are celebrated separately in each [Turkish] school. The AKP

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has been very influential in this of course.’ I gently reminded her that the Consulate in Sydney continued to hold annual celebrations for at least some national days. Objecting to my comment she continued: ‘We love our country. We had no problems with Turkey until this AKP came to power. I don’t even watch the news now. I grew up with Atatürk. I want to believe that the darkness that my country has fallen into will pass. We, Atatürkists, won’t leave the country to the reactionaries.’ Although Nermin tells us that she grew up with Atatürk, ‘the father Turk’ had already died by the time she was born. Her feeling of nostalgia for Atatürk, then, does not arise from her own lived memory of him. It should rather be understood as what Özyürek calls ‘nostalgic longing for the foundational years of the Republic.’26 Nermin was convinced that the Kemalist-Islamist division within the Turkish community in Sydney came as a result of the coming into power of the AKP in 2002. ‘We have never been so divided. They [AKP Government] send their own men here’ she said implying that they were creating their own cadre in the diaspora. According to her, this ‘new’ cadre did not care about Kemalism and Turkish nationalism. All they wanted, she said, was to mobilise Turkish emigrants ‘to gain support for their party’ as well as for ‘their attempts to turn Turkey into Iran.’ She gave some examples to illustrate the changes that she observed in the state’s politics visà-vis its diaspora. We are teaching Turkish to our children only with our own efforts and with the support of the Australian Government. Let me tell you one incident. I have worked in many different schools and organised many national day celebrations. I wrote plays. I arranged what children wore, what they read. A couple of years ago I went to the Consul-General to ask for assistance for organising a Republican Day celebration. I said to him: ‘Let’s hold the celebration in the city this year. This is our national day, a day of announcing our existence to the world. We know this among each other. We know ourselves. Let’s let others get to know us this time. But to do this I need your support.’ And

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I did know that money comes to consulates for these things. What the Consul-General said to me was: ‘We have heard your reputation. You have been doing this job for years and you are doing it so well. You keep going. If you invite us too we will come.’ We do everything with our own resources. We had to make placards. We bought cloth. We wanted to write ‘We are in Atatürk’s footsteps’ on them but we had no paint. We bought it from our own pocket. We found some sponsors to hire the venue. Parents didn’t want to pay for the children’s costumes. We said ‘They must all get dressed in red and white [the colours of the Turkish flag] then.’ We do everything with our own resources. The Turkish state and the consulate it represents are no use to us. But other states are. Australia is. If one aspect of this narrative is concerned with the absence of desire in the Turkish state officials to provide moral support and financial assistance to the production of Turkish nationalism coming from below, another aspect of it is concerned with how this expected support is provided by the Australian government. Nermin continued telling me about how the children feel in celebrating national days: We celebrate all national days in our school. Our children are always excited at the celebrations. They all get dressed in red and white. On 19 May, they impersonate soldiers, war prisoners, and wounded soldiers. On 23 April, they all dress up with colourful costumes and dance. And when we celebrate the Republican Day, they wear more formal costumes and carry placards with the principles of Atatürk written on them. They like things to do with Atatürk. We make them read Atatürk’s Address to the Youth in every celebration. And what they most enjoy doing is going to Canberra. She then shows me some photos displaying her students and herself standing in front of the Atatürk Monument in Canberra and commemorating the leader on the anniversary of his death.

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Every year on 10 October we go to Canberra. Teachers, parents, children. This year we had the biggest commemoration for Atatürk. This was a reaction against the AKP. We departed from Sydney at midnight to arrive in Canberra at 9am. We went there as the invited guests of the [Turkish] Embassy. They invite us every year. Normally the ambassador makes a speech at the ceremony. But this time, for some reason, the newly appointed ambassador was very busy and wanted to cut the programme short. We said: ‘No! We have our poems. We have our marches.’ I read a beautiful poem written by a soldier who was martyred at the War of Independence. Other teachers also read poems. After the ceremony they took us to the embassy building for the reception. They gave us lettuce sandwiches in white bread. I said to the Ambassador: ‘Is this how you treat us? Even children are making fun of the food.’ We also noticed that there was not any Atatürk portrait on the walls. We asked them why that was the case. We were told that they had just moved into that building and that was why they hadn’t hung any. How much time would it take to hang a picture on the wall? So this is the situation now. We are trying to raise our children to be Atatürkists and to bind them to Turkey. We say to them: ‘The homeland is waiting for you to serve it. You will study and make it great.’ I see myself responsible for the continuity of Atatürk’s Turkey. Atatürk gave me the right to work, to study, to talk beside a man. It is my duty to save the regime. I am doing this by educating our children here. Going to Canberra to visit the Atatürk Monument every 10 October (the day Atatürk passed away) is a journey of pilgrimage for Sydney Kemalists. Interestingly, the narrative shows us how Nermin tries to make her Saturday School students into pilgrims. Nermin also informs us about the Embassy’s involvement in this project through its facilitating of these pilgrimages. The broader implications of this narrative are striking. It shows us how the

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Australian government-funded Turkish language classes do more than teach children their community language (I will come back to this point in the final chapter). These lessons provide a whole range of extra-curricular activities through which children are inculcated with the official ideology and history of the Republic. The celebration of national days and the pilgrimage to Canberra are the best examples of this. These extra-curricular activities socialise young generations in feeling a sense of national belonging and identity and of responsibility towards a ‘homeland’ that is already chosen for them. The children are expected to be the begetters and gatekeepers of this homeland. Nermin’s account enhances what we understand about ‘seeing for the state.’ In the context of this study ‘seeing for the state’ is not limited to promoting Turkish nationalism in Sydney. As some of Nermin’s narratives clearly express, it also involves self-mobilisation and the intention to mobilise others against the AKP government, as well as against the so-called ‘Islamists’ who are imagined as the internal enemies of the Kemalist regime. In Nermin’s eyes and in the eyes of most laic Turkish people I got to know in Sydney, this category of ‘Islamists’ now even includes the Turkish state itself as they claim that the whole state machinery has been infiltrated and taken over by the ‘enemy’ despite the continuing prevalence of the key Kemalist state institutions of the early Republic today and their enmeshing with the lives of Turkish migrants in Australia. Unlike the state’s unitary fantasy about how Turkish people should behave, ‘seeing for the state’ then results in fractured visions.

Laughing for the state: Kemalists anonymous When God created the world, he called to his side representatives of every nation. He gave two virtues to each of them. He gave order and respect for the law to the Swiss. To the English he gave cold-bloodedness and nobility. To the Japanese he gave patience and the ability to work. To the Italians he gave cheerfulness and romance. To the French he gave wine and delicious food.

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And to the Turks he gave intelligence, honesty and a love for Tayyip [Prime Minister of Turkey]. One of the angels asked God: ‘Why did you give three virtues to the Turks and only two virtues to the rest of the nations?’ ‘Yes’ replied God, ‘but they are only able to use two of them. So when a Turk is intelligent and a lover of Tayyip, they won’t be honest. When a Turk is honest and a lover of Tayyip, they won’t be intelligent. When a Turk is intelligent and honest, they won’t be a lover of Tayyip.’ The fractured and antagonistic nature of seeing for the state is perhaps most visible in the sphere of political humour and is constantly generated through the circulation of jokes, satires and cartoons. Humour is a key transnational medium through which politics in Turkey is given meaning, evaluated and responded to by the Kemalists in Sydney. What is striking about its practice is its immediacy: as soon as a new event crops up in Turkish politics, it is translated into a joke or a caricature. There is hardly a day that a joke does not appear online, circulated via e-mail networks shared by the Kemalists or posted on the virtual discussion forums. This online humour constitutes an important aspect of the everyday public debate and like all humour ‘contribute(s) directly to the world of real politics.’27 Although most of the jokes and cartoons cited in this section were not created by the Kemalists in Sydney, they were circulated by them through their Australia-wide e-mail network (titled ‘AU-Ataturk’). Here, I take actors’ circulation of these online texts and images as an example of their participation in Turkish politics. An old man was talking with his grandson: ‘Oh my son, who would think that this country would become like this? Look around you. Women are all veiled. Men dress like monsters. Laicism has disappeared.’ ‘But grandpa, why didn’t you do anything? Why didn’t you stand up against them?’ queried the grandson.

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‘We did my son, we did,’ replied the old man, ‘we kept forwarding e-mails.’ Humour is an ‘oblique phenomenology of everyday life’ says Critchley.28 It makes ‘situations perspicuous’ and ‘provides us with a sort of synopsis or overview of a particular state of affairs.’29 The world imagined and crafted by humour is by no means similar to the empirical world. According to many analyses of humour, humour turns everything upside-down, reframing it not according to what is deemed acceptable and normal in the actual socio-cultural setting, but according to the fictitious (alternative) setting imagined and presented to us by the joke-maker. Billig analyses jokes as ‘a way of saying the unsayable.’30 Irony, absurdity and abnormality are seen as basic ingredients of the humorous mode. Nevertheless, understanding humour only or mainly as a medium of evaluation (about events and their meanings) would be to underestimate its social power. Its functions go beyond acting as a distorting mirror that partially reflects the realities of everyday life and what we take for granted. Humour is also a form of action – particularly in the case of political humour. This action is generated by joke-tellers or joke-circulators as much as it is made by the person who invents the joke. They share an equally active role in producing a particular knowledge about the person, group, event or situation that is the subject of ridicule. According to Bergson, jokes might promote social change, whereas McKay argues that they might promote social control.31 And Scott observes humour’s potential to be powerful ‘weapons for resistance’ (for peasants) against state control.32 Yet humour can also be intended to preserve those established interests rather than disrupt them. In brief, here lies the key argument of this section. – Hello, hello? My father is having a heart attack. We urgently need an ambulance. – We can’t come now. We are fasting. Wait until sunset.

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– What? You can’t come now? He will be dead by then! – If that’s what God wants we can’t do anything. Those who pass away on a holy day go to heaven by the way. This doesn’t come everyone’s way. So rest easy. I argue that the circulation of jokes, satires and cartoons by those who laugh at them in Sydney has at least three key social functions. First, it provides them a transnational contact via the Internet with other humourists who might be living anywhere in the world. Extending Schein’s point on the role of media in generating transnational spaces, it is possible to argue that this activity is important not only because it connects people at the level of the content of what they see, read or laugh at, but also because ‘people understand themselves as consuming the same media [humour] in different places, and that practice of collective consumption also constitutes this community.’33 The subjectivity of the actors (who they are, what they worry about) participating in the laughter is shaped by the images and texts consumed in a collective way. Secondly, by instantly reporting on the political developments in Turkey, these political jokes create and disseminate certain knowledge, distorted or otherwise, among Kemalists in Australia. They become producers and carriers of knowledge. In the context of this study, an analysis of humour thus provides us with a lens to observe the daily discourse generated by Kemalists about the current Turkish government, the state of being modern, Islam and the Turkish Republic. And, finally, I argue that these humorous texts and images help to reinforce the political structure of Kemalism by generating and disseminating a political narrative (i.e. stereotypes, speculations and conspiracies) as the examples here will illustrate for us. Kemalist jokes about ‘Islamists’ are not new. In Faces of the state, Navaro-Yashin provides the reader with an account of the laic public humour that erupted in Istanbul following the Welfare Party’s winning of the municipal elections in 1994. This public talk consisted largely of black humour produced by middle-class Kemalist Istanbulites. Jokes, gossip and stories were invented and exchanged about ‘the Islamic future of Istanbul.’34 Navaro-Yashin elucidates

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this burgeoning repertoire of jokes and satire in relation to the atmosphere of uncertainty in the city, sometimes ridden by ‘panic, depression, and serious anxiety’, at least for the urban Kemalists. Similarly, in an earlier collection titled Political Cartoons in the Middle East Göçek too is concerned with the Kemalist politics of humour in Turkey.35 Unlike Navaro-Yashin, however, Göçek’s focus is on government responses to political humour, particularly in the form of censorship. Understanding political humour as a social force, she argues that political cartoons have the potential to generate change ‘by freeing the imagination, challenging the intellect, and resisting state control’, especially in societies dominated by the state.36 Is this always the case? Political humour has continued to be an effective (and aggressive) weapon of the Kemalists to mock and de-legitimise the AKP government, despite its managing to stay in power since the 2002 national elections. A common feature of this political wit has been that it is frequently directed against individual prominent persons. Being one of the most visible symbols of state power in Turkey since 2002, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has been the butt of more jokes than anyone else. These jokes range over a wide spectrum, from the personal to political. From time to time the object of ridicule in these jokes has included the supporters of the AKP and the President Abdullah Gül (one of the founders of the AKP) as well. Temel37 got his medicine degree and became an expert on brain surgery. At the first medical congress he attended away from Turkey, he joined a group of doctors chatting, all from different countries. An English doctor said: ‘Our brain surgery has advanced so far that we are now doing brain transplants. We take one man’s brain, transfer it to another and in six weeks he is able to look for a job.’ A German doctor went one better: ‘That’s nothing. We can take one man’s brain, transfer it to another and in four weeks he is able to join the army and go to war.’ In response Temel said in a loud voice: ‘Brain transplants? How unnecessary is that! We picked someone without a brain from Kasımpaşa and turned him into the prime minister. Now

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Figure 14 A cartoon playing with Kemalist class distinctions (Source: ‘AU-Ataturk’ e-mail network) The mother: ‘She won’t be a doorman’s wife like I am. She will be the wife of the prime minister or of the president.’

half of the country is looking for work and the other half is preparing for war.’ The vast majority of jokes about Erdoğan (and ‘Islamists’) were of this kind: aggressive, dehumanising and carrying demeaning connotations against his persona rather than posing a critique of his Government’s policies. Intellectual deficiencies were a recurring theme, Erdoğan often being represented as ‘dim-witted.’ Stupidity was not the only strategy chosen by the jokers to scorn Erdoğan. The theme of class was keenly utilised to represent him as inferior, with constant reference being made to his coming from Kasımpaşa, a working-class Istanbul suburb where Erdoğan grew up. Class distinction is a recurring theme in the following caricature as well that mocks Muslims: Figure 14 pictures two women having a conversation. The mother of the little girl says to the other woman: ‘She won’t be a doorman’s wife

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like I am. She will be the wife of the prime minister or of the president.’ The bodies of the women in the cartoon are striking. Each has exaggerated facial features, thick eyebrows, black hair and fleshy bodies. Their dresses signify their rural origin or their ‘clashing identities with modernity.’ Their bodies illustrate the traditional, rural, lowerclass identity of ‘Islamist’ subjects, who despite being neither modern, urban, educated or middle-class have gained illegitimate power over state institutions. Unlike the two women, the little girl is not wearing a village-style scarf with the ends tied below the head, but the more fashionable Islamic head covering. The mother’s lack of ambition for her daughter in her own right crystallises laic suspicions about Muslim masculine domination over befuddled women (while flying in the face

Figure 15 A cartoon speculating over the change of dress code (Source: ‘AU-Ataturk’ e-mail network) 1. ‘I can go in because there is democracy.’ 2. ‘I can go in because there is democracy.’ 3. ‘I can go in because there is democracy.’ 4. ‘You can’t go in because there is sharia.’

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of the empirical evidence of city streets all over the country, humming with head-scarved university students). Representations of the body are instrumental in organising laic actors’ mobilisation against Muslims, as so much of the humour ‘sees through’ the piousness of those of religious appearance. Navaro-Yashin’s argument about the laic political humour that prevailed in the 1990s is still valid today, since of the ‘humorous’ comments have to do with dress and appearance.38 Given that there has been no attempt to legislate dress codes by the government, this demonstrates that humour works with exaggerated fears. The cartoon in Figure 15 is a good example of this. Each section of this cartoon shows a person standing in front of a door symbolising devlet (the state). The figures in the first three sections are represented with the same dress codes, employed to signify their Muslim identity. The woman in the first section wears an Islamic headscarf, the woman in section two wears a veil, and the man in the third section is represented with beard, long sleeves, pants and a covered head. The captions in these three sections are all the same and read: ‘I can go in because there is democracy.’ The woman in the fourth section, on the other hand, is pictured with long uncovered hair. She wears a cape with ‘democracy’ written on it. Her appearance conveys the message that she is a ‘modern’ Turkish woman unlike the two Islamist women. The script in this section reads: ‘You can’t go in because there is sharia.’ The cartoon speaks to the widespread Kemalist paranoia, which speculates that dress code restrictions are to be imposed and European-style clothes are to be replaced with Islamic attire and the enforcement of Islamic order. The figure shows us that the duality between what is modern and çağdaş (contemporary), and what is Islamic and therefore ‘backward’, is enacted and represented through the body. Another key strategy that Kemalist political humour employs to play with the dualities of modern/traditional, urban/rural, Western/ non-Western, Islamic/contemporary is to juxtapose the images of Atatürk and Erdoğan, either real or caricatured. In these types of jokes and cartoons, an idealised Atatürk is brought into contra-distinction

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with Erdoğan, always to the detriment of the latter. For example, one of the most widely circulated cartoons of this kind juxtaposed two images of Atatürk and Erdoğan eating, asking readers to ‘spot the seven differences’ between them. But the two images of course placed Erdoğan at a disadvantage. Atatürk is pictured sitting upright at a dining table with white linen, cutlery, silver service and butlers. Consuming modernity and civilisation, he embodies the exemplary conduct and lifestyle moralised and aspired to by the Kemalist elites. By contrast, Erdoğan is photographed gnawing on a chicken wing held in his fingers. This is not an image of a cultured epicure. It invokes tradition, incivility, backwardness and a Muslim habitus. The contrasts between the two bodies are manifest: civilised vs. primitive, self-control vs. compulsion, well-trained vs. ill-mannered, refinement vs. vulgarity, cutlery vs. fingers, and so on. None of these are explicit political categories or ideologies. Yet the juxtaposition produces the conflicted relationship of laic actors with Muslims, felt particularly to reside in the realm of lifestyle. The body here becomes the site for social distinction39, political contestation, a ‘domain of power struggle’ as Göle suggests:

Western taste as a social indicator of [Kemalist] distinction established new social divisions, creating new social status groups (in the Weberian sense referring to lifestyles) and thus changed the terms of social stratification. Thus there emerges a domain of power struggle, a habitus in Bourdieu’s terms, a realm beyond our language and will, encompassing habits of eating, body language, and taste.40

What the puzzle reveals to us then is that Kemalism is not only an ideology of political distinction, but an ideology of social distinction. As such, the Kemalist struggle against Islamists also operates through social categories as clearly manifested in the realm of political

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humour. Here we see a close similarity between the anti-Islamist jokes in Turkey and in Iran. In her study on political humour in Iran, Kaur contends that jokes targeting the persona of President Ahmadinejad are widespread especially among the urban middle-classes for whom ‘the ascendance of Ahmadinejad to state power was a shocking event, representing fear and uncertainty.’41 This atmosphere, according to Kaur, was not unrelated to the lower-middle class background of Ahmadinejad. The ridicule that he is subjected to is also of a more intimate nature, for example, his lacking sense of hygiene, simple-mindedness, and feeble logic. The popularity of these jokes, particularly among the urban middle classes, testifies to the social class distinctions at subtle play in the way Ahmadinejad is identified as the object of mockery and consequently unfit to represent the Iranian state.42 This is very similar to how humour works in the Islamist jokes invented by Kemalists. They also express a profound resentment over a perceived loss of power or status. These shared characteristics lead to a vital question: what precisely is it that Ahmadinejad and Erdoğan jokes have in common that make them significant modes of ongoing political struggle as well as indicators of political contestation? My answer is that both are humour of the elite and both attempt to preserve and reinforce the status quo favoured by the elite group. To put it differently, the humour we are dealing with here is not a weapon of the weak43, but a weapon of the strong. It is not a form of everyday resistance to state power, but a daily mechanism that helps to reinforce the political structure, and the legitimacy of Kemalism. The jokes and cartoons become the carriers of serious stereotypes, speculations and conspiracies invented by Kemalists to de-humanise Muslims and to de-legitimise ‘Islamist’ politics as an alternative modernity.

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Figure 16 A cartoon juxtaposing Erdoğan and Atatürk (Source: ‘AU-Ataturk’ e-mail network) The man on the left: ‘Don’t be so upset Sir. It will set in the evening.’ Erdoğan: ‘Yes, but it will arise again in the morning. We’ve witnessed that a thousand times

Figure 17 A cartoon displaying Atatürk complaining to his doctor about the current situation of the country (Source: ‘AU-Ataturk’ e-mail network) The doctor: ‘What is your complaint my General?’ Atatürk: ‘I am turning in my grave [My bones are aching].’

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Given its intent in Turkey then, what is it about humour that sees it portrayed as intrinsically revolutionary? Or as Billig asks, why is there a widespread ‘temptation to take a celebratory stance’ towards humour, ‘praising the human capacity for laughter and joking?’44 My analysis of the Kemalist politics of humour leads me to a conclusion very different to that of Göçek. For me Kemalist humour acts not as a facilitator of social change (or as resistance to state control as Göçek identifies it), but rather as a perpetuator of the established social order. Jokes have the potential to confirm the world as much as to ‘free the imagination’, to deaden the intellect rather than ‘challenging’ it, and to uphold Kemalist state control rather than ‘resisting’ it. Let me conclude with the following two cartoons. The cartoons present us with different representations of Atatürk. In Figure 16, he is a sun45 rising over his country every day, whereas in Figure 17, which was created by a Sydney Kemalist, he appears as a patient complaining to his doctor about the current situation of the country he founded. Although their messages differ, the representations of Atatürk in both images carry with them an overlapping implication, which is his immortality. They both give life to Atatürk, contending that he has never died. Despite his non-existence in the current material world, in the immaterial world he is made to exist forever in the everyday lives of Kemalists. There is an

Figure 18 (on the left) ‘You are with us. Forever . . .’ (Source: ‘AU-Ataturk’ e-mail network) Figure 19 (on the right) ‘We are missing you with gratitude, pride and yearning’ (Source: ‘AU-Ataturk’ e-mail network)

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ambiguous line here between what is humorous and what is serious. This is more explicit in the second cartoon in which it is sarcasm rather than a joke that is employed to produce amusement in the audience while allowing Kemalists to spell out their anxieties and resurrect Atatürk. The ‘ever-living Atatürk’ was a theme not only for humorous, but also for serious images and texts migrating in the Kemalist online networks. Figures 18 and 19 deny that Atatürk is dead by insisting on deleting the year he died (1938). These images were circulated in the form of power point slides that constituted another significant genre of online material floating in Kemalist cyberspace. At the time of my fieldwork, a good number of slide shows were circulating, distributing a diverse range of Atatürk images and information about his life. The representations of intimate aspects of Atatürk’s life were widespread in these slides, such as his favourite things (i.e. food, colour, songs, books, dance, sports, etc.). Özyürek notes that such images of Atatürk displaying a more human side of him (‘desacralising him’) have been in high demand among Kemalists in Turkey too since the 1990s.46 In these images Atatürk is utilised as a mouthpiece to respond to everyday politics in Turkey. In conclusion, the analysis of images and texts, humorous or otherwise, circulating in online Kemalist networks gives us a privileged insight into the everyday politics engaged in by laic Turks in Sydney. My aim is not to argue that such politics has the efficacy to transform political reality. I agree with Shifman et al. that the role of online humour is relatively limited when it comes to making more people politically engaged.47 Yet although the circulation of online images, texts and objects by Kemalists might fail to convert non-Kemalists, they are effective in mobilising already politicised actors. They reinforce a certain type of structure in which each new incident in Turkey is given meaning and responded to by the Kemalists. As such, they are not only expressions of the Kemalist paranoia vis-à-vis Islamists, but also help to generate that paranoia. Through them people are able to laugh for the state. Yet are Kemalists the only ones who see for the state? Is Turkish nationalism contested and generated by others? What will become clear in the rest of this chapter is that the so-called ‘Islamists’ do not

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leave the field completely open to the claims of the Kemalists. They also take on the task of seeing for the state. Ironically, although Kemalists have a polemical hatred of ‘Islamists’, when we examine their practices we see little difference between them, particularly regarding Turkish nationalism. To illustrate this point I will present two ethnographic examples revealing how a single national day is construed by two different groups of commemorators: the first one by the laic Kemalists and the second one by the so-called ‘Islamists.’

A sacred site for the secular nation The Gallipoli Campaign, a milestone in the national histories of Turkey and Australia, is regarded by nationalists of both nation states as a unique phenomenon symbolising how a friendship between the two countries was born out of a devastating battle in 1915. Ironically, although the Australians (fighting alongside the British Army and Navy) under the title ‘Australian and New Zealand Army Corps’ (ANZAC) lost the battle, this military loss is narrativised in official Australian history as bringing about an unintended and much more important victory: the emergence of the Australian nation from a British colony and the painful birth of a distinct Australian national identity. Although academic Australian history cites the creation of the Federation of Australia in 1901 as the official inauguration day of the Australian nation, the country’s psychological independence is presented in Anzac Day ceremonies as having been inaugurated at Gallipoli. On 25 April each year Australians commemorate Anzac Day, a national day of remembrance for those who lost their lives in the battle, and all subsequent battles. On 18 March 2007 Boğaziçi Reception, a Turkish-owned function centre in Auburn, was crowded with the members and friends of the Atatürk Cultural Centre, gathered to listen to a talk on the significance of the Gallipoli Battle for the Turkish nation. The interior area of the venue, which hosts wedding ceremonies on most weekends, was rearranged for the occasion. Chairs were lined up in rows, replacing the big round tables. The décor of the stage was replaced with the

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flags of the two nations, a portrait of Atatürk hanging between them. Upon entering the hall, one noticed on the right side a bookstand displaying the latest books and DVDs on Atatürk’s life and Kemalism, all brought from Turkey for sale. Next to the bookstand a petition was tabled calling for the Turkey-based TV channel, Kanal Türk, to extend its broadcast to Australia. The channel was known for being anti-Islamic and ultra-nationalist. The programme started with a minute’s silence to remember the martyrs for the nation, followed by the singing of the Turkish national anthem. Mehmet, the main speaker, then took the floor. Mehmet had moved to Sydney in 1982, after being arrested for his leftist party affiliation during the 1980 military intervention. Yet it was not his socialism, but his reputation as an articulate Kemalist activist in the present that made him the main speaker of the day. He started by reminding the audience of the official narrative of nation-building in the Republic’s history. These narratives constructed a heroic past of antiimperialism, construing the military success obtained in Gallipoli as a victory against the British colonialists. ‘From this war a new nation was born with its [new] citizens, which includes us. The idea of vatan, the idea of nation, and the Republic of Turkey were born’ he said. A heavy discourse of martyrdom (death in battle for one’s country) was a faithful companion to Mehmet’s nationalism. In his speech, martyrs were praised as role-models worthy of emulation given the virtues embodied in them. Dying for the vatan was clearly the most virtuous of all virtues in Mehmet’s eyes, yet his words also confirmed other values exemplified in the actions of Turkish soldiers: honour, gallantry, humanism and humility. These battles reveal the image of a Turkish soldier, in particular, how the Turkish soldier even helps the enemy soldier. If a book on humanism was to be written, it would begin with the words of Atatürk . . . We won’t let our feelings towards our martyrs weaken. He then read out Atatürk’s tribute to the ANZACs fallen at Gallipoli as evidence of his humanism: ‘Those heroes that shed their blood and lost their lives . . .’

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Why were the martyrs so important for Mehmet that those living in the present should not let their feelings towards martyrs weaken? The answer was this: the war against the imperialists may be over, but the war against the ‘enemies within Turkey’ was continuing. Mehmet continued: A fierce and intense campaign against Atatürk is ongoing both in Turkey and abroad. They [Islamists] take bus-loads of people to Gallipoli. But those veiled women do not even get off the buses to go and see the war cemetery. They just look out from the bus windows. Their guides tell them that the war was won with the help of Allah. They fool people by telling them that angels poured rocks on the heads of enemy soldiers. Atatürk’s name is not mentioned at all there.48 Friends, can you believe this? Look to whom they attribute the victory of this war which was obtained with Turkish blood, with Turkish souls. They are the enemies amongst us.

Figure 20 ‘Gallipoli impassable’ (Source: ‘AU-Ataturk’ e-mail network)

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Mehmet’s narrative highlights two important points for us. First, his militaristic discourse on the martyrs not only keeps the memory of the dead alive, but more importantly, establishes a continuity between the nation’s past struggles and its contemporary ones. It builds an ontological link between the sacrifice of those soldiers who died in the physical war and the current war to be fought by the Kemalists against the ‘Islamists’ (in Turkey and Australia) so that their indebtedness to the martyrs can be repaid. This rationale manifests itself most clearly in an image circulated by the Atatürk Cultural Centre via its e-mail network a year later to celebrate the 93rd anniversary of the Gallipoli victory. Written ‘Gallipoli impassable’ at the top, the image shows a soldier with his weapon saying: ‘I did what was entrusted to me. Now it is your turn!’ (Figure 20). Second, Mehmet’s narrative reveals his uneasiness with Muslims’ appearance in Gallipoli, a site where the idea of a new nation and a new citizenry was born, as Mehmet put it earlier. Yet clearly, this new citizenry does not include pious Muslims, who are not secularised enough for the Kemalists.

Figure 21 Scenes from Gallipoli (Source: Vatan, 30 March 2008)

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Interestingly enough, a similar discourse targeting ‘Islamists’ was replicated in another e-mail circulated by the Atatürk Cultural Centre in April 2008. This e-mail contained several images of Turkish Muslims visiting Gallipoli that was first published in a Turkish daily, Vatan (Figure 21).49 Appropriating the newspaper’s heading ‘Çanakkale de bölündü’ (‘Gallipoli is divided too’), the e-mail made the point that it was unacceptable to encounter such scenes in a place like Gallipoli. Implicit in this discourse is the conviction that Gallipoli is a sacred site for the secular nation and therefore Muslims shouldn’t make an appearance there. To return to the commemorative event, a film show followed Mehmet’s talk. The documentary was of an epic theatrical dance performed by the students of Ege University Conservatorium in 2006. Using dance and calligraphy as a metaphor for nation-building, the performance narrated the story of the Turkish national struggle in Anatolia. In the film, the dancing body, robed in a military uniform, animates the body of a soldier fighting, killing and dying for his vatan. In it we see how the cult of martyrdom is infused, enacted and reproduced in the shifting movements of the body. Yet the performance was not all dramatic. As the story evolves from battle scenes to the establishment of the Turkish Republic, the killing/dying body transforms itself into a dancing body. This final setting of the performance illustrates the new, westernised citizens of the Turkish nation dressed in ball gowns, waltzing for the emerging revolution of the Republic. The comments aired in the room following the film made it even clearer that the national struggle was continuing. ‘We may be small in numbers here. But we shouldn’t be pessimistic. We will fight against every threat to come,’ a watcher shouted out. Another person blasted: ‘The Sharia threat is making incredible propaganda. It is poisoning young minds. I hope that Australia, with our support, takes action against them [Islamists] and preserves the peace.’ ‘We won’t give up. We will rescue our country from the AKP and its henchmen’, said a third person.

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The discourses of the speaker and of the audience make it clear to us that seeing for the state in this particular context not only implies the manufacturing of Turkish nationalism, but also a mobilisation against Muslims. Islamists, in this moral and political war, are represented by Kemalists as the ‘other’, even to the extent that they are referred to as ‘enemies.’ Explicit in this antagonistic discourse is the activist’s self-positing of him or herself to be in a state of war fought against those who, in their eyes, haven’t embraced the Kemalist revolution, and therefore threaten its continuity. Moreover, the comments released also highlight how that national struggle is as much directed against the Islamist Turks in Sydney as against those in Turkey. There is even an expectation that the Australian officials will provide them with assistance in this ongoing struggle. It is not clear here exactly what type of support is expected from the Australian Government. Yet it is easily forgotten that these so-called ‘enemies’ are also citizens of Australia. Let’s now visit another commemorative event organised by these ‘internal enemies’ who also remember the martyrs of Gallipoli.

‘Go my son, go. Either be a gazi or a martyr’ On 30 April 2007, a large crowd of women and children filled Auburn Town Hall to commemorate the ‘Turkish’50 soldiers who sacrificed their lives for their homeland at Gallipoli. The event was organised by the women’s branch of the Auburn Gallipoli Mosque. The passionate and mournful audience was exceptional in terms of its size and composition in comparison to other social events I had attended during my fieldwork. The event was open only to women, and one could see participants of all generations. A song repeating the lines ‘ş ehitler ölmez’ (‘martyrs never die’) echoed in the background while the audience was taking their seats, as well as during the break. The young women who had volunteered to organise the commemoration night – most of them born in Australia – were dressed in white and red, the symbolic colours of the Turkish flag. On both sides of the stage were placed huge maps of the

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territory of Turkey and of the Ottoman Empire, which were accompanied by a massive Turkish flag in the middle. The ceremony started with the singing of the Turkish national anthem and continued with the reading of various sections from the Quran in the name of the souls of the martyred ‘Turkish’ soldiers. The night saw a large number of verbal and visual presentations narrating the history of the Gallipoli Battle. During the flow of these performances one could read epigrams projected on the back wall of the stage: It is not possible to imagine the existence of a nation who would defend their country like the Turks. The ANZACs saw how bravely the Turkish soldiers fought and how gentlemanly they were. If the two flags [of Turkey and Australia] wave next to each other today, this is because of the good manners of the Turks. Intrinsic in all these messages was a desire to glorify Turkishness and celebrate Turkish nationalism. Knowledge about Turkishness was not only produced through reiteration of the historical fact that the battle was won by the Turks, but even more importantly, through an emphasis on the manners and attitudes displayed by the Turkish soldiers. (This discourse is not specific to these Turkish migrants. It also exists in Turkey.) In other words, this victory was imbued with an ethical quality. These qualities were taught to the ANZACs as well, such as the idea of nation, and fighting to preserve the honour of the nation and the flag. Above all, the knowledge performed about Turkishness was imbued with the virtue of the action of dying as a martyr in the name of the homeland. Messages informed by this mode of thinking were continuously addressed to the audience throughout the night: Raise sons who will be worthy of having ‘Mehmet’ as their first name and ‘Martyr’ as their last name.

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Those who cannot face up to becoming a martyr cannot become a nation. The nation, flag, ezan [call for prayer] and honour were entrusted to them [soldiers]. Go my son, go. Either be a gazi [war hero] or a martyr. According to Islam there are three categories eligible for becoming henna-d [henna is reddish-brown dye that is made from the leaves of a shrub]: first, brides who sacrifice themselves for their families; second, rams that can be sacrificed for God; and third, men who go soldiering willing to sacrifice themselves for their nation. At the event there were tasks for all different generations of volunteers. Some older women recited prayers for the martyrs; young women read poems about the homeland and sang ilahi (hymns); girls performed sketches. The night was emotionally highly charged: voices shouting ‘Allahu ekber’ mingled with epic poems, and prayers for the martyrs were mixed with prayers for the nation. Thus the evening presented a specific version of historical knowledge – tinged with a religious perspective – about the homeland. The performance and generation of Turkishness and Turkish nationalism was ensured through subjective constructions about the ethical values held by the Turkish soldiers, representations of how to be a ‘proper’ Turkish citizen, and propaganda about military service and the virtue of dying as a martyr for the Turkish nation. Ironically, in terms of its ethnic-nationalist and militaristic discourse, the event shared more similarities than differences with the discourse aired by the laic Kemalists in the commemoration event described earlier. They both envision and construct Turkishness through ‘bloody’ nationalism. What we see in both events is the proclamation of martyrdom as a sine qua non of becoming a nation, as well as of being a member of the nation. The idea of self-sacrifice is construed as a virtue in most nationalisms. For example, Hage discusses how a culture of martyrdom becomes an entrenched part of Palestinian society:

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A culture of glorification of self-sacrifice became an entrenched part of Palestinian colonised society. The culture of martyrdom, with the high social esteem (symbolic capital) it bestows on the ‘martyrs’ themselves (the funeral processions, the speeches, the photos of filling the streets and so forth, plus the relative wealth and social support their families receive), stands against the background of social death. It reveals itself for many Palestinian young people as a path of social meaningfulness and self-fulfilment in an otherwise meaningless life. The culture of martyrdom is an astonishing manifestation of the capacity of the human imagination – individuals commit themselves to a path that leads to an imagined enjoyable symbolic life following the cessation of their physical life. It is a swapping of physical existence for symbolic existence.51 Hage describes this peculiar symbolic capital as suicidal capital: ‘the accumulation of death as a mode of seeking a meaningful life.’52 Following this through, we can argue that both commemorative events serve for the accumulation of suicidal capital. Both groups of nationalists reify the Turkish nation, the state and its ideology in their accumulation and normalisation of the discourse of self-sacrifice. Despite the Kemalists’ positioning of themselves in opposition to the ‘enemy’ Islamists, there are shared nationalistic dispositions that had been inculcated into these Turkish migrants (Kemalists and Islamists). Islamists can also be, and often are, supporters of ethnic Turkish nationalism. Their position vis-à-vis the Kurdish movement has not been much different to the position taken by the Kemalists.53 What distinguishes them from each other is primarily their views about what should constitute a moral order, not their nationalisms. To summarise, what might we mean now by ‘seeing (acting) for the state’? Seeing for the state is a nationalist practice and discourse emanating from actors who feel some form of belonging to the Kemalist nation-state of Mustafa Kemal and commit themselves to the propagation of Kemalism in Australia. Those who act for the state in the context of this study engage in political action not only on behalf of

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their homeland, but on behalf of a particular kind of political ideology (Kemalism) with which they strongly identify. As such, seeing for the state does not imply the absence of individual agency: by contrast, it acknowledges the autonomy of the ‘activist’, committed as they are to social intervention and political struggle. This chapter has explored different ways in which Turkish migrants themselves live out and give life to Kemalism in their everyday lives. Although not discussed in this chapter, my research participants engaged in other forms of transnational political participation too, including: contributing money to the Turkish Army, to the Kemalist political parties and various NGOs in Turkey; holding political meetings; inviting Kemalist intellectuals, journalists and writers from Turkey to deliver speeches in Sydney; initiating petitions; organising marches, protests and commemorative events; and raising young ‘Turkish’ generations in Australia in line with the philosophy of Kemal Atatürk. The actors whose voices we have heard in this chapter have more or less strong views about how the Turkish state ought to address Turkish people living in Australia. Most of them consider the transnational politics of the state as insufficient or even undesirable. The state is felt to be leaving the defence of Atatürk and his revolution in their hands. Yet clearly, not all of them engage in certain practices or discourses in the name of acting in the absence of the state. The motivation of women mourning for the martyrs who died in Gallipoli is not the same as the Turkish teacher who sets herself the mission of saving the Kemalist regime by educating Turkish children in Sydney. These practices and discourse, however, exemplify different ways in which transKemalism and Turkish nationalism are lived out by Turkish migrants. In the next chapter I turn my attention to how Kemalism is embodied, contested and reified in the realm of music-making, another pleasurable practice through which social distinction is made.

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6 SINGING FOR THE STATE

In 1928 Mustafa Kemal attended a concert where he heard the performances of two groups: the first group performed Ottoman classical music while the second ensemble played Western music. Commenting on the first performance Atatürk pronounced: This unsophisticated music cannot feed the needs of the innovative Turkish soul, the Turkish sensibility with its urge to explore new paths. We have just heard the music of the civilized world, and the people, who gave a rather anaemic reaction to the murmurings known as Eastern music, immediately came to life . . . Turks are, indeed, naturally vivacious and high-spirited, and if these admirable characteristics were for a period not perceived, it was not their fault.1 He then prescribed Western music as a natural fit for Turkish society, at the same time proscribing the music of the East. Unlike the humorous jokes that amused us in the previous chapter, this is a serious anecdote that conveys Mustafa Kemal’s first public assessment of ‘Eastern’ music. The speech is cited in Orhan Tekelioğlu’s article Modernizing Reforms and Turkish Music in the 1930s. The quote reflects Atatürk’s appropriation of the putative opposition between Western and Eastern civilizations and his devaluing and silencing of the latter, whereas the title of Tekelioğlu’s article gestures to the fate of

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this ‘unsophisticated’ music, first its silencing and then its consequent re-tuning so as to force it to sound out the true national character of Turks. What has the muting of Ottoman classical music in Turkey in the 1930s to do with processes of trans-Kemalism in Australia today? In this chapter a case study of the performance of a Turkish music group in Sydney will illustrate how, more than 70 years later, the state’s transformation of the aural content and meanings of Turkish music is appropriated by the members of the music group, who in the process not only see like the state but also hear and sing for it. This exploration contributes to an equally fundamental concern in this chapter – the politics of Kemalism as a transnational aesthetic. Studying transnationalism requires more than delineating the complex relationships between the main migratory actors; it also requires the investigating of social processes that enable experiences of agency and embodiment. We have already seen how Kemalism constitutes a form of transnational politics as manufactured by the institutions and officials of the Turkish state in the diaspora (Chapters Three and Four), as well as by individual Kemalists in their own discourse and practices (Chapter Five). But it also manifests itself in the realm of aesthetics, both as a producer of music and of social taste. In exploring transnationalist processes in Turkish migrants’ cultural performance, this chapter follows two strategies. The first is to show how the music and narrative of the concert is intimately related to the Cultural Revolution initiated by the Republic, seeking to shape the aesthetic tastes of individuals through official processes of music and place making. Although the creation of new forms of sculpture, theatre and dance were important, the revolution gave pride of place to what was called a ‘musiki inkilabı’ (music revolution), the manufacturing and disseminating of new arrangements of sounds and new aesthetic meanings about ‘proper’ Turkish music. Equally importantly it also sought to shape the sensibilities of people engaged in musical activity, either as performers or listeners. Following Werbner’s2 suggestion that the study of diaspora should aim to reveal the dialectics between diaspora aesthetics and political mobilisation, this chapter also demonstrates how artistic performance

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is intimately connected with actors’ political loyalties and commitments. Aesthetic endeavour or cultural performance is treated here as a privileged activity to investigate everyday forms of trans-Kemalism in Sydney. To do so I analyse a performance of a Turkish music ensemble in Sydney, which took the city of Istanbul as its theme. My analysis of this concert explores how its sounds, images and narratives are intimately tied to the performers’ positioning and negotiating of their identities as Kemalist Turks living in Sydney.3 The second strategy is to discuss the means whereby the receiving society adds value to the performance. Given that the concert is performed by Australian Turks living in Sydney, I consider how both Kemalist-Turkish identities and the performance are given meaning in relation to Australian multiculturalism. But first a brief discussion of the Kemalist music revolution will help frame the discussion.

The politics of the senses: Kemalism’s formation of a national musical identity In Ethnicity, Identity and Music, Martin Stokes argues for a new definition of the term ‘ethnomusicology’, one that reverses the classic description of the term as formulated by Merriam: ‘the study of music in culture.’4 Stokes’s uneasiness with this description is not limited to its conception of the discipline of ethnomusicology. More seriously, he is concerned with the way the term music is understood. He argues by contrast that ‘music is not just a thing which happens “in” society.’ More particularly, ‘a society might also be usefully conceived as something which happens “in music”.’5 It appears that the power of music to create social relations and not simply express or reflect them has long been appreciated by cultural brokers who have used music as a technique to construct national histories. Kemalist nation-builders were no exception. The Kemalist intelligentsia utilised music as a vehicle of social order and change in the founding years of the Republic. This was part of the broader Kemalist Cultural Revolution, which sought to define the civilisational status of the new nation-state, created from the rump of the Ottoman Empire. As noted in the Introduction, the

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revolution instituted a wide range of reforms that pervaded every sphere of public and personal life. The scope of the reforms, however, reveals that their efficacy was not to be limited to the creation of a unified national state, but that the Republic also desired to sponsor new senses and sensibilities, or ‘new forms of embodied skills and knowledge’ in citizens.6 This was pursued most explicitly in the reforms in language, dress code, education (including the introduction of compulsory gymnastics and physical education) and performing arts (music, dance, theatre, folklore, etc.), each of which impacted upon the everyday lives of individual citizens. Here the state legislated about what citizens should and should not be wearing, and disciplined the ‘folklore’ of the population through teaching them proper ways of dancing or ‘musicking.’7 One of the influential proponents of the musical revolution was Ziya Gökalp (1876–1924), considered by many to be the principal ideologue of the evolving Turkish nationalism. Gökalp’s intellectual strategy was to return to the roots of Turkish culture while embracing the universal modern European civilisation. Here the idea of ‘Turkishness’ and ‘Turkish culture’ ‘involved pride in the history and traditions of Anatolia, both of which had to be rediscovered and even manufactured.’8 According to Gökalp and Mustafa Kemal, the true Turkish national culture would be a synthesis of original national elements and borrowed Western ingredients, particularly its science and technology. A similar pragmatic and highly positivistic logic also prevailed in their philosophy of true Turkish music. If the national Turkish culture would be a synthesis of local culture and the universal civilisation, the national Turkish music would be a synthesis of ‘Turkish folk music and the musical techniques of Western civilization.’9 This is clearly expressed by Gökalp: Today we are faced with three kinds of music . . . Which one of them is ours? Eastern music is morbid music and non-rational. Folk music represents our culture. Western music is the music of our civilization. Thus neither should be foreign to us. Our natural music, therefore, is to be born from a synthesis of our folk music and Western music.

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Our folk music provides us with a rich treasury of melodies. By collecting them and arranging them on the basis of Western musical techniques, we shall have both a national and modern music.10 As Gökalp suggested, the Kemalist intelligentsia took an active role in fabricating the folk music of Anatolia, using fieldwork as the primary method to collect and document authentic Turkish music.11 Western musicians were invited to help with this project including the famous Hungarian composer Béla Bartók. This genre was redefined and named as Turkish Folk Music according to the nationalistic tenets.12 The valorisation of folk music went hand in hand with the devaluation and even censoring of other musical genres. To begin with, Ottoman palace music (known today as Classical Turkish Art Music) was silenced primarily through the closing down of the musical institutions established during the late Ottoman period to teach it. These institutions were replaced by Republican counterparts. While Ottoman music went through a process of ‘petrification’, a more popular version of it found popularity based on the tradition of şarkı (song).13 This genre came to be known as Turkish Art Music (alaturca). The state formed and sponsored choirs that regularly disseminated their performances of these two genres via state radio (TRT). As Tekelioğlu notes, the state’s monopoly of radio broadcasting continued until the beginnings of the 1990s.14 The attempts directed towards reconstructing the aural shape of Eastern music – heard as ‘morbid and ‘non-rational’ by Gökalp and Atatürk – involved transplanting the Western musical technique of polyphony. Western harmonics began to be used in the arrangements of Anatolian melodies to make them sound like a blend of east and west. Tekelioğlu’s work gives us an insight into some other strategies employed by the state to manufacture its national music: In an effort to teach the people to enjoy polyphony, elegant light examples of Western music were played not only on the radio, but also in other public areas of life, for example on the vessels of the Turkish Maritime Lines and at government-sponsored

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ballroom dances. Meanwhile, as gifted musicians began to be sent abroad for training and education, a state conservatoire was founded, offering Western-style education and repertories. Orchestras performing polyphonic pieces offered free of charge public programmes which incorporated easily digested Western classical music. Music classes, also free of charge, were to be had at the Halkevleri (People’s Houses).15 This ‘music revolution’, or ‘musical colonialism’ as Stokes calls it, reveals how Kemalist social engineering went hand in hand with the formalisation of new aesthetic meanings about artistic performance.16 Implicit in all these reforms was an attempt to change ‘the emotional, historical and expressive disposition or ethos of the population.’17 In brief, the music revolution intended to formalise and mobilise certain musical styles and repertoires while silencing others – all music sung in Kurdish for example – so that people’s dispositions and judgements could be guided and disciplined in harmony with the nationalistic project of the state. Although the Kemalist Cultural Revolution is over today, the Turkish state’s – like most other states’–intervention in artistic production to create an authentic culture is ongoing.18 Anthony Shay’s study on Türk Devlet Halk Dansları Topluluğu (the Turkish state Folk Dance Ensemble) provides an interesting illustration of this point.19 In Choreographic Politics, Shay shows us how ‘folk’ is constructed by state dance ensembles through their selective representation of ethnicity, gender, religion and class. He argues that the Turkish state Folk Dance Ensemble embeds Turkish nationalism and participates in its production by deliberately excluding Kurdish, Islamic and Ottoman ‘identities’ from its choreography, repertoire and costuming. By deciding on whom to include in the imagined folk, and how to represent those included, the ensemble regenerates the official Kemalist discourse on ‘Turkishness.’ Although the performances that Shay examines in Choreographic Politics are made by state-assisted and nationally based dance ensembles, his analysis of dance and choreography provides a useful insight into my own analysis of music and narrative in this chapter. Similarly to Shay, I am also interested in exploring what Desmond calls ‘the

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ideological underpinnings of aesthetic practices.’20 And as with dance, music study can also allow us to encounter some of the most entrenched narratives of nationalism.

Remembering the ‘timeless city’ The Ottoman Orchestra21 is an amateur, non-profit organisation founded by music lovers committed to performing and promoting Turkish music in Australia. The organisation was officially established in 2003 although the friendships and musical gatherings of the group members predate this. Currently, the ensemble numbers 34 individuals – 21 choir members and 13 instrument players. The majority of them are first generation migrants born in Turkey with the exception of five members who migrated from Northern Cyprus in the 1960s because of inter-ethnic conflict between Greek and Turkish Cypriots. Of the Turkish-born members of the ensemble only a small proportion came in the early 1970s as assisted migrants: the majority arrived in the 1980s and are graduates of various Istanbul and Ankara universities. Members’ occupations range fairly evenly from professional to skilled tradesmen, including social workers, teachers, local business owners, students and so on. There are a couple of other ‘ring-ins’ as well, including myself – I have been a member of the group since 2007, playing the ney (reed-flute). My participation in the ensemble as a performer provided a great opportunity not only for making music with these friends, but also for meeting a large number of Turkish people living in Sydney, as well as participating in everyday conversations. The rehearsals were held on Monday evenings at the Northern Cypriot Turkish Friendship Association in the western Sydney suburb of Granville, a spacious venue in a central location. The building, whose interior is decorated with numerous national icons (pictures of Atatürk, Turkish and Northern Cypriot flags), is also used for folklore, karate, backgammon competitions, social gatherings, music practice and Turkish language courses for children. Since 2003 the ensemble has performed numerous concerts. Despite their changing themes, these different projects share certain artistic

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similarities. Firstly, they all have a special focus on a geographical area or city in Turkey selected as their theme. A second common feature among them is their structure. Each includes an oral narration and a visual presentation that accompanies the performance, informing the audience of the background of each song. These narrations invariably involve stories connected to the history of nation-building in Turkey. In this sense, the performances have both an entertaining and pedagogical aspect to them. Thirdly, there are key similarities between them in terms of the musical techniques and arrangements created by the music director. The melodies involve dense polyphonic and harmonic textures. Given this common narrative technique and musical style, an analysis of one particular concert with Istanbul as its theme reveals the capacity of a performance to make the past – a particular past – heard at first hand in the present. The concert flyers were designed to reflect the city’s imperial legacy, displaying various shots of the historic peninsula where Topkapı Palace, Ayasofya (Hagia Sophia) and the Blue Mosque stand. Held in the Tom Mann Theatre, the concert’s audience was primarily Turkish. But there was a sizeable non-Turkish audience too. Listeners were escorted to their seats by ushers while Segah Saz Semaîsi (Instrumental Semaî in Segah makam22) played in the background. Slides capturing panoramic views of the city were projected on the back wall of the stage with epigrams written on each slide informing the audience about the scene. Concert programmes providing information about the ensemble, the content of the performance and the musical genre of the concert (Turkish Art Music) were placed on each seat. The section introducing Turkish Art Music made a link between Istanbul as the theme of the concert and Istanbul as a city that historically developed its own musical forms: Historically, there have been two distinct Turkish artistic traditions. One is that of Istanbul, a rich, refined, indulgent and often decadent approach to art carried through the centuries from the Byzantines, to the Ottomans to present day Turkey. Especially in the six centuries of Ottoman rule, there was Istanbul and there was the rest of the Empire. In literature, in music, while Istanbul relied on the written word or note, in Anatolia the oral

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tradition was the norm. There are even two words for ‘song’ in Turkish: şarkı (derived from şark, the East) was heavily influenced by Arabic, Persian and Indian music, while the indigenous music of Anatolia is called türkü [folk song], which derives from Türk, or Turk. Tonight’s theme being Istanbul, all the songs in the programme are şarkı. In keeping with the 1930s music revolution, ‘real’ Turkish music is understood in this narrative as a combination of folk music – the music of the villages of Anatolia – and Turkish Art Music as they were successfully manufactured by the state during the musical revolution. The performance started with a historical introduction about Istanbul by the narrator, creating a timeline of the city’s past. This past began with the Battle of Malazgirt in 1071 that resulted in the victory of Turkish armies over Byzantine forces and opened up Anatolia for conquest and settlement by Turkish tribes – as explained in the Kemalist history thesis. It continued with young Sultan Mehmet’s conquest of Constantinople in 1453 and the converting of the great Byzantine church of Hagia Sophia into a mosque: Konstantiniyye, variously known as Tsarigrad, Rumiyyat el Kübra, Taht-ı Rum, Miklagarör, becomes Istanbul. Built in the fifthcentury AD, Hagia Sophia boasted the world’s biggest dome for centuries. Hagia Sophia is preserved, converted into a mosque, human images and icons covered and Islamic motifs added. As symbolised by Hagia Sophia, Istanbul becomes a true melting pot of cultures. Turkish court music, influenced by Arabic and Persian music, meets and blends with synagogue and church music. 2674-year-old Istanbul, today with a population of around 15 million, is named the Cultural Capital of Europe for 2010. Following this very particular historical introduction, the chorus took their place on the stage. They lined up behind the orchestra, the women standing in the first two rows, and the men at the back. The formality and uniformity of their costumes was striking. They were dressed in white blouses (men wore shirts) and black pants, which

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looked like uniforms. The costumes and the organisation of the stage were in keeping with the style of the TRT-sponsored state Turkish Art Music Chorus in Turkey. However, the ensemble differed from the latter in terms of the sazlar (instruments) used. In addition to the key instruments always used in traditional Turkish Art Music (piano, violin, cello, ney, oud (a string instrument prominent in the Middle East), kanun (a stringed instrument found in Near Eastern traditional music) and bendir (a type of drum)), there were a few Western instruments including keyboard, guitars and percussion. The repertoire chosen for the night contained fine examples of both classical and contemporary songs celebrating Istanbul. The songs were chosen not only for thematic reasons, but also according to their makam (mode or scale). As the narrator pointed out: Our conductor has chosen the ‘nihavent’ and ‘hicaz’ modes for today’s concert. Nihavent is a mode that is easy on the ear and that is said to have a soothing effect on the listener. The equivalent of A minor, this mode is in many ways closest to Western music. Hicaz is a ‘master mode’ with four sub-modes, namely Hicaz Proper, Hicaz Hümayûn, Hicaz Uzzal and Zirgüleli Hicaz. Traditionally, all Turkish music is monophonic, even when there are scores of instruments playing. Our director has managed to breathe new life into these pieces with his deep understanding of the roots of Turkish music and his training as a modern composer. The conductor and musical director of the ensemble is a graduate of Ankara state Conservatorium – a musical institution well-known for the training it provides in the fields of Western music and theatrical arts. His rescoring of monophonic Turkish Art Music into polyphonic form was easily discernible throughout the whole performance, given that he had rearranged the melody of each song to make them harmonic. As the previous section has already noted, this scoring has its origin in the music revolution. Tekelioğlu notes: What the new musical elite eventually hoped for was a birth, in the Turkish listener, of an enjoyment of polyphonic music which,

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it was assumed, the ‘modern’ western listener already had. The new cultural policies were built around the expectation that, with the gradual appreciation of polyphonic music, and the contributions of Turkish performers and gifted composers trained abroad, Anatolian melodies which came from and were beloved by the people would be recomposed along polyphonic lines. In this way a West-East synthesis would be forged throughout the country, and a modern polyphonic Turkish art music come into being.23 In this sense the music of the ensemble is a West-East synthesis as it tuned the songs of the East with the techniques of the West. This was not peculiar to this performance only. The director followed the same strategy in the previous performances too although their genres were slightly different. The opening song of the concert was a reworking of Münir Nurettin Selçuk’s (known as ‘the man who put Turkish music in western dress’24) well-known song Aziz Istanbul (Beloved Istanbul), composed in the late 1940s. The lyrics of the song belong to Yahya Kemal Beyatlı, a prominent poet of the early Republican period. Opening up with a long ‘ah’ sound, the lyrics read: I looked down on you yesterday from a hilltop, beloved Istanbul I could not see one place that I had not strolled through, did not love Create happiness in my heart as long as I live Even the love of one of your neighbourhoods is worth an entire life.25 The song presents a scenic Istanbul overlooked from an elevated position (Çamlıca Hill), high above the Bosphorus. In another article Stokes analyses the way the song recreates how Istanbul is ‘seen’ by the modern Republican self in Turkish popular culture. One cannot only look across the city and see its edges, but one can also look down on it. This, as Donatella Mazzoleni suggests,

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is a rare privilege in the modern city. In particular, the viewer experiences the sound of the call to prayer coming from below, rather than from minarets towering above. The opening ‘ah’ traces the sound of the call to prayer in the faintest outline; the singer is echoed by a ghostly female chorus. The view of Istanbul, and the distant sound of the mosques, establishes the viewer as a sovereign modern. He (the viewer is unambiguously gendered) looks down on a glorious Islamic/Ottoman past that has been built on and transcended the mosques that represent it, quietly evoking the old rhythms precisely to signify their transcendence by the new.26 Looking out over the city and remembering its bygone days is then a very modern experience here. The following series of popular songs took the audience on a journey to other ‘delectable’ spots of Istanbul (Kalamış, Çamlıca, Göztepe, Boğaziçi, Göksu, Heybeli, Üsküdar). These songs joined the Turkish Art Music repertoire in the 1940s and 1950s, as the expanding road transport system facilitated access to these places. As Nobel Prize-winning author Orhan Pamuk writes in his book Istanbul, daily excursions and road trips made (along the Bosphorus) to these highly popular spots of the city became a pleasurable weekend activity for the middle-class inhabitants of the city in those years. The songs, then, conveyed memories of an Istanbul consumed and enjoyed by its elite population. The visual slides chosen to display these beauty spots depicted them as places of earthly joys; for instance, as a love-nest for lovers; as places covered with exquisite gardens where nightingales sing, and so on. The fact that these slides were reproductions of paintings (and not of photographs) made it clear that the memories of these spots were the product of a highly aestheticised imagination rather than of any personal experience of their actual form.27 The last song of the night, different to the other pieces in the repertoire, did not memorialise Istanbul, but the homeland Turkey. Following the compere’s reading of the famous poem Memleketim (My Homeland) by Turkish communist poet Nazım Hikmet, the choir then sang this well-known song, also named Memleketim. The tune of

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the song was originally composed by French singer Mireille Mathieu, but its lyrics were set to music by Fikret Şeneş in 1972 and made famous by Ayten Alpman, a well-known singer of the time. Despite Nazım Hikmet’s exile and death in the Soviet Union and a lack of public interest in the song for the first two years of its life, it was turned into a national march following its extensive broadcasting on TRT in 1974 with the Turkish military’s intervention in Northern Cyprus. At the end of the concert the whole audience accompanied the choir in singing this song, proudly raising their voices while repeating the final verse: ‘Bir başkadır benim memleketim’ (‘Somewhat different is my country’). After the concert a throng of exhilarated listeners crowded the foyer to congratulate the performers. Clearly most people had a very positive response to the performance. It was not only the musical quality of the performance that they were pleased about, but also the particular way that Istanbul was represented. To understand why this particular past was remembered and recreated in the present, we need to look back to the post-1980 history of the city.

Istanbul at the crossroads of collective remembering and forgetting One complex issue about the performance under analysis is the ensemble’s choice of Istanbul as the theme of the concert. For the first 30 years of the Turkish Republic Istanbul was an un-national city, dominated by minority non-Muslims citizens. It has also held a key position in the historical narrative of political Islam in Turkey, given its dethroning as capital by the Kemalist elites in their building of modernist Ankara after 1923. Although the ensemble’s choice of Istanbul, and not ‘beloved’ Ankara, might seem to contradict the Kemalist nature of the performance, we need to consider the status of Istanbul in the recent cultural politics of Turkey. Just as various musical styles were mobilised and some others silenced by the Kemalists in the early Republican era to construct a ‘Western’/’modern’ soundscape, place-making too was utilised to construct an urban landscape that would conduct inhabitants to a modern

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experience of social relationships. This place-making occurred in two ways, through the ‘de-Ottomanisation’ of the built environment28, and through the building of new architectural forms and spaces. In an attempt to break any perceived continuity with an Islamic/Ottoman past, the Republican elites moved the institutions of the government and state to a newly built capital, Ankara. As Stokes notes, in the new national imagery: Istanbul was often portrayed as a relic of an Ottoman past, an image evoked only to remind modern Turks of what they had to forget: a world that was closed, concealing, irrational, absolute, and ‘Islamic’. Ankara was its antithesis; embodying a reinvented Anatolian tradition (referring to the pre-Islamic past, open, revealing, rational, and secular.29 But it was not only public space and institutions in Istanbul that were transformed to conform to the new national imaginary. Most importantly, the composition of Istanbul’s population changed drastically as a consequence of the project to Turkify the city. Through a series of discriminatory policies, the ‘secular’ state gradually drove the nonMuslim population out of Istanbul.30 ‘By the 1980s the Greek population had dwindled to less than 2,000, Armenians to 50,000, and Jews to 25,000.’31 The city lost most of its cosmopolitan character, as well as what Yumul calls its ‘cosmopolitan civility’ that ‘made difference agreeable and allowed a ‘civilised coexistence’ between people of different backgrounds.’32 Although all of these Kemalist initiatives severely damaged the historical multicultural character of Istanbul, from 1980s onwards the city has been imagined and increasingly promoted as a multicultural global city. A growing interest in its defunct cosmopolitan past and in the historical richness of Istanbul has been related to the city’s latest mode of globalisation and the government’s neo-liberal economic policies, particularly to their desire to ‘sell Istanbul.’33 In this endeavour, the discourse on Istanbul as the ‘bridge’ between Europe and Asia has multiplied, so as to depict it also as ‘a bridge between Europe and the emerging Central Asian markets.’34

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Similarly, the city has increasingly been portrayed as ‘a cradle of civilizations,’ ‘a melting pot of cultures,’ ‘a cosmopolitan megacity,’ ‘a meeting point of East and West,’ ‘an exotic and beautiful harmony,’ etc. not only by Turks themselves, but also in international newspapers and magazines. Istanbul’s depiction as ‘a city of many pasts’ in a 2005 issue of the New York Times is an example of this clichéd rhetoric.35 Even if there is some truth embedded in this rhetoric, the complexity of these historical processes has been standardised in one imagined past that idealises the city as a place of tolerance, diversity and civility. Indeed, it is not only Istanbul, but also Turkey’s Ottoman heritage that has recently been reappropriated in the Kemalist discourse too. Kasaba and Bozdoğan describe this trend as ‘Ottomania’: Over the last twenty years, there has been a dramatic shift from the old view of the Ottoman past as the backward and anachronistic ‘other’ to the current more tolerant, curious and even proud assessment of this past. The reclaiming of this heritage is by no means confined to Islamists . . . In popular culture, media and public discourse, one encounters numerous manifestations of ‘Ottomania’. Ottoman art, calligraphy, miniatures and museum objects have become highly popular. Public and private funds have been used to put together special exhibitions of Ottoman art for European and US museums, in order to showcase the richness of the Ottoman heritage.36 To give an example from Australia, in 2008 the Turkish state sponsored three fashion exhibitions called Yansımalar (Reflections) in the cities of Canberra, Melbourne and Perth. In these exhibitions, six fashion models, four from Turkey, displayed 72 pieces of modernised Ottoman palace costumes to Turkish and Australian audiences (Figure 22). The timing of the exhibitions also overlapped with events held in these cities to celebrate Turkfest, the 40th anniversary of Turkish immigration to Australia. Indeed, the exhibition illustrates not only the Turkish state’s increasing ‘Ottomania’, but also how it plays with ‘Ottomania’ to propagate Turkish nationalism. This was most clear in the final part

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of the fashion show when two models appeared on the platform, one wearing the Turkish flag and the other wearing a black long dress with Atatürk’s silhouette crafted on it (Figure 23). The script on the pelerine of the dress read: ‘Biz herşeyimizi sana borçluyuz’ (We owe everything to you). Note here again the gendered body of nationalism. The bodies of the women in the images become the objects of the state’s authoritarian secular project, as well as sites in which trans-Kemalism finds life in Australia. Returning to the musical performance, a discourse of continuity with the Ottoman past was also replicated in a very selective manner by the creators of the programme. The performance played with certain Ottoman symbols, as seen in the title given to the concert (City of the Sultans, Sultan of the Cities), and Ottoman images were used in the concert programme, flyers, and the photo slides presented during the whole performance. All of these portrayed the city’s past as a time of diversity and tolerance when people from different millet (religious minorities) lived together in peace, where churches and synagogues existed side by side with mosques, and in whose streets more than a dozen languages were spoken, from Italian to Persian, Greek to Arabic. Even the reference to the conversion of Hagia Sophia, centre of Orthodox Christianity, into a mosque via the covering of its Christian features (the bells, altar, icons) with Islamic motifs (the mihrab, the minbar, the minarets, etc.) signified this development as exemplary of a ‘melting pot of cultures.’

Figure 22&23 Scenes from the fashion show (Source: www.40yil.com, accessed in 2008)

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Further, while the narrative tracing the history of the ‘timeless city’ stretched back 2,000 years and more, the timeline stopped with the establishment of the Republic. Exalting in its hosting of the ancient Anatolian, Roman, Greek, Byzantine and Ottoman civilisations, the narrative on Istanbul did not make reference to the ethnic cleansing of the city after the demise of the Ottoman Empire. If selective remembering is an integral part of imagining the nation (or a city that is made to stand for the nation), the deliberate ‘forgetting’ of other remnants of its past is a key part of it as well. For example, the discrimination against non-Muslims in the high Republican period (1923–50) that devastated the city’s so-called cosmopolitan character was simply not mentioned. Similarly, there was no reference to the city’s de-Ottomanisation in those same years. This was remarkable in a historical narrative that mentioned the conversion of Hagia Sophia into a mosque in 1453 but not its transformation into a museum in 1935 by the Republic. In short, the narrative was a selective sketching in and blotting out of Istanbul’s pasts, through which an ideological contemporary ‘meaning’ of the city is created.

Imagined Audiences Finally, what further meanings might we add to the musical performance presented in Sydney by a group of Australian Turks to a mixed Turkish and non-Turkish audience? Non-Turks included both local politicians familiar with the Turkish community in Sydney, and friends or neighbours etc. of the ensemble members. Interestingly, in the period before the concert, the identity of these unknown ‘Australian’ listeners was debated. In a meeting in which we brainstormed about how to attract a broader non-Turkish audience, some group members suggested we hand out free tickets to ‘Australians.’ There was a clear consensus when the conversation turned to who this might include. One person suggested: ‘We should give them to the Australians. I mean, not for example, to the Chinese, Indians or Arabs.’ Another person was of the view that the free tickets should be given to kaliteli (quality, cultured) Australians who work in places like universities and conservatoriums. Another group member added:

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‘Yes, we shouldn’t give them to kebab-makers.’ My own suggestion to hand out the unsold tickets in front of the Auburn Gallipoli Mosque was dismissed out of hand. This debate over the question of who to invite did not simply tell us about the ethnic preferences of the individual performers. Rather, it was informed by a hierarchy of identities, based on ethnicity, nationality, and class. The musical performance then was not only a marker of the Kemalist identities of the actors involved in it, but to cite Stokes, it was also ‘used by social actors in specific local situations to erect boundaries, to maintain distinctions between us and them . . .’37 So why did the group desire Anglo-Australians to attend? The answer lies in another conversation that performers had at the after-concert party when still high on performance adrenalin. Members agreed that they had shown such Australians what true multiculturalism was: They think that they [Australia] are the only country on earth that knows what multiculturalism is. That’s not true. We have had this culture for hundreds of years. They should see that our ancestors [Ottomans] got to know multiculturalism ages ago. Not only does Ottomania serve in this discourse as a means for asserting a distinct Turkish identity vis-à-vis Australians, it also becomes a way of showing them just how multiculturalist Turks are. Another person, this time a Turk from the audience, added affirmingly: Istanbul could not have been narrated better than this. We should feel proud of our country [Turkey]. We need people like you to organise cultural events like this. And it is easier to attract our young people if it’s a concert. We have to teach them our history and culture. Implicit in these remarks is a sense of pride and superiority that found its logic in an imagined past. The performers were proud, the listeners were proud. They were proud to be Istanbulites, although few of them had ever lived there. Their comments also allow us an insight into how the performers negotiated their migrant identities within the context

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of the broader Australian society. Hage argues that ‘nationality is best conceived as a form of national ‘cultural capital’, which refers to the sum of accumulated nationally sanctified and valued physical cultural styles and dispositions (national culture) adopted by individuals and groups, as well as valued characteristics (national types and national character) within a national field: looks, accent, demeanour, taste, nationally valued social and cultural preferences and behaviour, etc.38 Istanbul obviously is neither a physical style nor a disposition. Nevertheless, the city becomes a means through which the performers and listeners accumulate their own national cultural capital as skilled practitioners and connoisseurs of multiculturalism. Defining themselves through this self-image, they give the message that they are not culturally poor. For Hage, national capital displayed through music is convertible into what Bourdieu calls ‘symbolic capital.’39 It is in this context that the performers project a membership claim to Australian society that equals that of Anglo-Australians. Further, this is a call to be recognised as equals by Anglo-Australians. It is obvious in the narratives above that this call is directed to ‘Anglos’ and not to other immigrant communities, given that the performers do not perceive them as true ‘Australians.’ Lastly, given the presence of multiple audiences, the musical performance should also be understood as an expression and an instituting of performers’ own particular ‘Turkishness’ in relation to other Turks in the community. Istanbul has long been a site of symbolic contestation between Kemalists and Islamists and more recently, has been caught up in a battle between rival forms of nostalgia. While the city was ‘de-Ottomanised’ in the high Republican period, with the rise of political Islam as an electoral force a new discourse valuing its Islamic and Ottoman legacy has been disseminated by the Istanbul City Council. After the victory of the Welfare Party in municipal elections of March 1994, the Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality attempted to transform the city ‘into the object of Islamic nostalgia.’40 Recalling Orwell’s famous saying,

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‘Whoever controls the past controls the future. Whoever controls the present controls the past’, Istanbul has become a city whereby the dominant interpretation of its past has partially recreated the present in its image. Hence the interpretation of Istanbul’s past sung into play through the performance is socially meaningful only if we take into account rival historiographies of modern Turkish history. The remembering of a particular past for Istanbul in music and narrative not only displays a nostalgia for an idealised city, but also sheds light on the longing for an ideal Kemalist Turkey, a civilised Turkey of cosmopolitan middle classes. The performance then is simultaneously a political act directed to the creation of this desired homeland. The material presented in this chapter provides a glimpse into the complexities and diversity of trans-Kemalism. My intention here is not to draw overly abstract theoretical conclusions from one ethnographic case study. What is crucial for the analysis here is to note how the performers participate in and embody the official national discourse, and how the nation is imagined in kinaesthetic and musical form through their performances. In conclusion, there are three points I would like to emphasise. First, trans-Kemalism is constituted and preserved here as a politics of aesthetics. An analysis of the music revolution in Turkey reveals to us how the musical arrangements, images and narratives synthesised in the musical performance echo official Kemalist music in their representations of Turkish music, as well as of the city of Istanbul. The legacy of this revolution has been the politicisation of music (and culture in the broader sense) as an ongoing site of power struggle, both in Turkey and therefore in the Turkish diaspora. TransKemalism then is lived out in this politico-cultural transnational context not only through Turks’ close following of Turkish politics, their self-mobilisation against various ‘anti-Turkish’ movements through petitions, marches, fund-raising campaigns and other practices where politics seems to be clearly foregrounded (e.g. the circulation of antiMuslim political cartoons, the everyday discourse on soldiering, the celebration of national days, the commemoration of martyrs etc.), but also through their appropriation and re-production of certain aesthetic genres. To put it differently, enough people have appropriated the

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narratives of Kemalism that they can perform it in their everyday lives without being instructed by the state. Secondly, the musical performance informs us about how the performers position themselves vis-à-vis the broader Australian society. The choice of Istanbul as a city to be musically imagined and remembered is not arbitrary. The long-prevailing clichéd discourse that promotes the city (and the Ottoman past) as a cosmopolitan multicultural place in the present is reiterated by the performers in their self-presenting of Turks both as multiculturalists and as inheritors of multiculturalism. The analysis is also revealing of crucial elements of ethnicity, nationality and class that resonate in the performers’ discussion of what constitutes Australianness. Finally, analysis of migrant cultural production should also consider the internal relations and fractions within the group itself. The analysis here has shown that the performance is not only a marker of the ethnic distinctiveness of Turkish performers in relation to other emergent ethnic identities in Australia, but it is a marker of the performers’ distinctiveness within their own fractured ‘community.’ This distinctiveness is evident in the performers’ particular way of remembering and narrating Istanbul’s past. This is not to argue that there are fixed, static categories that give any cultural production its status as a Kemalist practice. It is, however, to argue for an analytic de-ethnicising of the performance to illuminate the multiple political meanings and messages invested in it. This musical production does not demonstrate performers’, as well as listeners’, connections to Istanbul (or homeland) per se, but it demonstrates how remembering Istanbul is connected to the performers’ subjectivities that are in complicated ways crafted by national states.

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7 MULTICULTUR AL POLICY AND TR ANS-KEM ALISM IN AUSTR ALIA

The reader will have noted that the analysis of Turkish migration to Australia in the preceding six chapters has privileged the actions of the sending state and of immigrants themselves, and has deliberately refrained from examination of the role of the receiving country and its partial constitution of the transnational political field. By contrast, this chapter explores the politics of the Australian state to further illuminate the complex interrelationships and processes that are involved in the manufacturing of trans-Kemalism in Australia. Where does the Australian state’s own project to oversee society find place for the transnational phenomena that have been investigated in Parts Two and Three? My answer to this question will enhance knowledge about the processes of political transnationalism more generally by taking into account the impact of dual state projects and how Turkish migrants respond to them. This final part of this book has three main concerns. First, it seeks to investigate in what ways the policy of multiculturalism in Australia engages with, and even facilitates, the nationalising attempts of the Turkish state and of the long-distance Kemalists. This exploration helps us to sketch out the complexities and multiple dimensions of the transnational political field. In comparison with European countries

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to which the bulk of Turkish immigration was directed, Australia has a very different citizenship regime and method of managing cultural difference. Through its policy of multiculturalism the state facilitates the flourishing of migrants’ associations, the maintenance of community languages other than English, and migrant groups’ production of cultural activities. Thus with its distinctive immigrant incorporation regime the Australian state provides a space for the emergence of forms of transnationalism that might be very different to those in Europe. The second concern of the chapter is to analyse and discuss Kemalist migrants’ perceptions of how ‘multiculturalism’ (in Turkish çokkültürlülük) impacts on to them. In Chapter Five, we have already seen their discourse on the Turkish state. Equally important is the question of how they understand different versions of multiculturalism as implemented by the Australian state. An analysis of the narratives presented in this chapter demonstrates that Kemalists’ perceptions of multiculturalism oscillate between feelings of gratitude and mistrust. Thirdly and finally, the chapter re-considers some of the material presented in the earlier chapters through the lens of the literature on multiculturalism in the Australian context. Which analyses of Australian multiculturalism help cast light on migrant and sendingstate-initiated nationalism? I intend to answer this question by focusing on certain influential critical accounts of multiculturalism.

Theoretical issues: host states in debates about political transnationalism Transnational theory has contributed to our understanding of migration by pointing to the burgeoning of social relations, networks, interactions and transactions across borders. It has successfully highlighted the significance of migrants’ ‘attachments to people and places that transcend the confines of particular nations’1, and the ‘extra-territorial conduct’ of sending states in seeking to maintain or reincorporate their expatriates within their political communities. Analyses of transnationalism have thus drawn attention to the connections and relations

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spanning geographical boundaries of the nation-state and, at the same time, to ‘the continued significance of the national.’2 Yet I argue that the political transnationalism literature has not problematised sufficiently the role of the country of settlement and its immigration regime in the generating of the transnational field, or how that field is conditioned by the policies and ideologies that constitute the host society as they enable (or disable) various forms of political actions by immigrants and sending states. My argument here is not that receiving countries are ignored in analyses of transnationalisation. Indeed I accept Østergaard-Nielsen’s point that ‘European-based research is (pre)occupied with the implications of immigrants’ transnational political practices on receiving countries.’3 Yet this receiving-country-dominated literature is often uninterested in analysing the ways that the immigrant incorporation regimes of those receiving countries engage with the diasporic politics of sending states. In other words, this literature is not equally (pre)occupied with the implications of host country political context on the transnational political enterprises of sending countries. By contrast, the impact of host state politics on the political activities of immigrants has not gone unexplored. In the main, this point has been addressed from two different analytical perspectives. One has been the implications of the political structure of the receiving state for migrants’ host-country related political activities such as their voting patterns, their membership in political organisations, their recruitment opportunities as local politicians or parliamentarians, etc. A great deal of such work has made use of the notion of political opportunity structures. This approach, often used in cross-national comparative studies, is interested in how institutional arrangements (the social and political rights extended to immigrants; the citizenship procedures of the host country; etc.) provide avenues for the political claims and rights of immigrants.4 A second point of debate that has been sympathetic to incorporating the political arrangements of the receiving state in the analysis has been concerned with the potential impact of this on the form and scope of migrants’ transnational political activities directed at countries of origin. Both Østergaard-Nielsen and Faist give weight to and discuss this question in their work. Pointing to the importance

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of the receiving country’s political institutions and actors as mediators of immigrants’ transnational political activity, Østergaard-Nielsen explores in a comparative manner the Turkish and Kurdish homeland political organisations in Germany and the Netherlands. The findings of her study conclude that ‘more exclusionary contexts [Germany in this case] encourage transnational mobilization.’ She also goes on to note that ‘those contexts that are receptive to migrants and actively encourage their political participation as migrants [hereby represented by the Netherlands] are not very receptive to the promotion of homeland political agendas.’5 Faist also discusses whether inclusive/exclusive host country regimes account for divergence among the transnational activities of migrants although, unlike Østergaard-Nielsen, he refrains from researching this question empirically. By occupying a middle ground, he argues that both exclusive host country policies – through their denial of acculturation or cultural recognition – and inclusive political structures – through their encouragement of cultural distinctiveness – can be conducive to the transnationalisation of migrants’ political and cultural activities.6 We can extend the analytical boundaries of this debate to include the equally important, yet neglected, dyadic relationship between the political structure of the receiving context and the transnational activities of sending states. Diasporic politics of sending states can also advance differently as a response to the nature of the immigrant incorporation policies pursued by receiving states (be they repressive or liberal). Indeed sending states often modify their transnational strategies according to the political opportunity structure available in those receiving societies. This is manifested in differentiated membership arrangements that states of origin come up with vis-à-vis their diverse emigrant groups. For instance, the legal measures allowing Turkish migrants to acquire dual citizenship were adopted in Turkish Citizenship Law in 1981. Accordingly, Turkish nationals became eligible to take up the citizenship of another country as long as their host state also allowed dual citizenship (as in the case of Australia). Yet Germany, for example, has never allowed dual citizenship, except now for children born in Germany after the year 2000 (according to the new German Citizenship Law issued on 1 January 2000).7 This has led

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the Turkish state to look for other arrangements through which Turks living in Germany could take up German citizenship without losing their Turkish citizenship as well as their economic, social and political rights in Turkey. The solution was found with the introduction of the ‘pink card.’ Although those who hold pink cards are no longer Turkish citizens, they can enjoy certain rights (i.e. residence, work, mobility, property rights, including selling and renting land) that are entitled to Turkish citizens, while holding the possibility of taking up the citizenship of their host country. This differentiated arrangement raises two significant points for the discussion here. Firstly, it reminds us how international migration ‘binds together the politics of two societies’8, as both sending and receiving states extend and limit migrants’ membership in their political communities. Thinking about transnationalism in this way also helps us to go beyond the standard conceptualisations of the term. Although definitions of what falls into the domain of political transnationalism vary, they typically include various forms of ‘activities’ (cross-border voting, formation of hometown associations, giving political support to the political institutions in the country of origin, taking part in political rallies, etc.). Yet what constitutes a political transnational field is more than a set of activities. As Bauböck rightly argues, a transnational agenda should be broadened to consider and examine how migration changes the institutions of the polity and its conception of membership, rather than limiting itself to exploring politics across borders.9 Secondly, if we recognise the power of the host state in facilitating (or constraining) not only various opportunities for immigrants, but also for sending states, we could argue that sending states do not pursue uniform forms of diaspora politics. Their motives and behaviour can, and often do, vary according to the formal arrangements of the receiving state. That is to say, the Turkish state does not need to send ‘minor armies of teachers’ to Australia, as it does in Germany10, in order to teach the Turkish language to second/third generation ‘Turkish’ children there, given that the Australian policy of multiculturalism already enables the existence and provides funding of those language schools. To unpack this point further, the following section

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proceeds with a case study presenting a snapshot of a Republican Day celebration held at a Turkish Saturday School. The event highlights for us how the Turkish language classes funded by the Australian government function as a site in which the actions of the three actors – the host country, sending country and immigrants – coalesce in the production of trans-Kemalism.

The children of Atatürk Every Saturday, more than 300 children join in Turkish lessons at the Greenwood Public School11, conducted by ten Turkish-speaking teachers. Located in western Sydney, this is one of the largest Community Language Schools in NSW, offering a range of language classes for children from many non-English-speaking backgrounds. I visited the school for the first time in September 2008 to meet with Mr. Aykut who had served as the President of Turkish classes there for nearly ten years. He kindly gave me permission to sit in on classes as long as I wished. I attended classes in this school every Saturday for a two-month period. Although unintended, my visits coincided with a special period during which the children were being prepared for a bayram (festival) to celebrate the coming Cumhuriyet Bayramı (Republican Day). Just as in other Turkish community schools in Australia, this was one of the national days that the children were made to celebrate every year on 29 October to remember the founding of the Turkish Republic. The preparations for the bayram took a good five weeks. The children were divided into groups according to their interests and skills. Some were given places in the choir, others in the acting or dancing groups. Other students were responsible for reading out poems or short texts about the importance of the day. During this five-week period, the lessons were rearranged to enable the children to attend both to their Turkish lessons and to their special classes rehearsing for their bayram performances. But even the ‘Turkish’ lessons were devoted to propagating the official history of the founding of the Republic, Turkish nationalism, and the legacy of Atatürk. In every class I attended children were taught about the heroic episodes of the history of the Turkish nation,

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particularly about the War of Independence fought under the command of Atatürk. Central to the variety of textual accounts used in different grades was a complete reliance on the symbols of the Turkish state and the Turkish nation. For example, in the third grade children read out: Every state has some values that represent its territorial integrity and independence. Flag and national anthem are the most important of these values. Our flag and Independence March [İstiklal Marşı] are the symbols of our nation’s independence. For this reason we have respect for our flag. Our flag takes its colour from the colour of our martyrs’ blood. It is sacred for us. It moves in the sky with honour and glory. We will be independent as long as our flag waves in the sky.12 After the children finished reading out the text (in Turkish) the teacher continued: ‘The future of our flag is in your hands. You will make it wave in the sky.’ She then asked the students to write down the paragraph in their notebooks as their homework. In another class, a fifth-grade student recited a poem written by Arif Nihat Asya, known as the ‘flag poet.’ The girl was told by her teacher that she would be given the opportunity to read out this poem on the bayram day if she had memorised it. Standing in front of a portrait of Atatürk leaned against the blackboard, the girl proclaimed (in Turkish): The Flag The white and scarlet ornament for blue skies . . . The bridal gown for a sister, the last cover for a martyr, Glimmering and glittering, undulating with wind, my flag, I’ve read your legend, I’ll write your legend. I’ll dig the grave for him Who doesn’t look at you with my eyes. I’ll ruin the nest of the bird That flies away without greeting you. Wherever you undulate, there is no fear, no sorrow . . .

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Give me, give me a place under your shadow. Who cares if it is not morning, if days don’t break? The light of your star and crescent is enough for the country. Both texts presented in these examples seek to instil in the children feelings of devotion and reverence for the national flag. The flag is rendered as the symbol of Turkish existence and the future of the state. In the absence of the flag the existence of the children has no meaning. The duty that addresses them is to defend the flag even at the cost of their lives. This is envisioned as a national duty. The rhetoric presenting the flag as the symbol of the nation justifies this point by associating it with another potent national symbol. Martyrs! Here it is to be understood that there is a kinship between children in the present and those martyrs who have sacrificed their blood for the nation. Together all are members of the one national family. Wandering inside the school during a break time, I was shocked to see how this rationale was inscribed on the blackboard of one of the classrooms. It said: Turks are a family Turkey is the home of this family. Our ancestors poured out their blood for this vatan We are all bonded to Turkey. The children are taught that what holds the family of Turks together is the blood of the martyrs, both in the past and of themselves in the future. Writing on the official curriculum in post-1980 Turkey, Sam Kaplan notes in The Pedagogical state that schoolchildren ‘are expected to believe in the same reasons for which the soldiers died an exemplary death. That is to say, they must feel indebted to the blood their ancestors sacrificed on the battlefield.’13 The message given to the children is that it is the turn of their generation to repay their gratitude for their very existence. In this highly militaristic and nationalist endeavour, children are entreated to put the common good of the nation – a very paranoid and chauvinistic nation – above their individual interests.

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This militaristic pedagogy was not only embedded within the textbooks and other textual material used in the classroom, but was also manifested in at least some teachers’ styles of instruction. One time I joined the music class where children from diverse grades were rehearsing for the mini-concert to be performed at the bayram. The repertoire brought together a number of patriotic songs and marches including the Song of Yemen, In Gallipoli, Youth March, Mediterranean March and Turkish Children, which are often recited by students at commemorative events in Turkey. The programme began with sounds of guns firing and bombs exploding. The sounds continued as one of the students began to read out a text: ‘In 1914 the Ottoman Empire was tired and hopeless. It was the “sick man of Europe” as the Europeans called it. It had no energy to enter the First World War. It was weighed down with despair.’ The chorus then joined in singing the first two verses of the Song of Yemen. There is no cloud in the sky Why is this smoke? There is no death today Why is there screaming and crying? The bad-tempered teacher, irritated, stopped playing his keyboard. ‘Sing more dramatically!’ he yelled, and made the choir do it again. However he was still dissatisfied with his students’ performance even after they tried it for the third time. Raising his voice again he shouted at the children: ‘Sing it louder and more boldly! Say it with feeling. Say it like a soldier. Imagine yourself as a soldier as you say it.’ The teacher’s voice addressed the students as soldier-children. It sought to make them stand up like soldiers through the manipulation of their bodies. It is important to remember here that the type of militaristic nationalism promulgated in the classrooms through the curriculum and the teachers’ pedagogy is Atatürkist nationalism. Every week students are made to read a text with Atatürk as its theme. These texts are often about his childhood, his education years, his traits as a military commander, his accomplishments as a statesperson, the reforms

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he introduced to modernise Turkey and his thoughts. The children are constantly being told to hold Atatürk in full regard and to live in accord with the principles of his ideology. In other words, they learn how to be ‘Atatürk çocukları’ (children of Atatürk). This is exemplified in another text that a group of third-grade students were made to read out on the bayram day: As children of Atatürk we will forever walk on the path he opened up As children of Atatürk we will always make the Republic live As children of Atatürk we will make our country and our culture live in a foreign land as best we can We will protect the inheritance left to us by Atatürk How happy is the one who says ‘I am a Turk.’ Another group of children then came onto the stage to practise their performance. Here students lined up one behind the other. The pupil in the front called out: ‘First the Turks established the Hun Empire’, before moving to the end of the line. ‘We established the Göktürk state’, recited the next person leaving his place to the student behind him. ‘The migration of Turkish tribes started in Central Asia. Turkestan was the first place of settlement’, proclaimed the third pupil. ‘The Oghuz Turks arrived in Anatolia.’ ‘We established the Great Seljuk Empire in Anatolia.’ ‘We founded the Ottoman Empire.’ ‘We conquered Istanbul with Sultan Mehmet.’ ‘We gained a unique victory at the Gallipoli Battle.’ ‘Atatürk went to Samsun on 19 May 1919 to commence the War of Independence.’ ‘The Republic was announced and the Turkish state was established on 29 October 1923,’ said the last student as the reciting of the long history of state-making by the ‘Turks’ was concluded. The discourse used in this performance is dominated by the nationalistic meta-narrative of the 1930s, known as Türk Tarih Tezi (Turkish History Thesis). Arguing for a long history of Turkish presence in Central Asia and Anatolia, this narrative was invented by the Kemalists to claim Anatolia as the authentic homeland of Turkish people.14 ‘Turks’ are great state-builders in this discourse. This thesis

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is not only imbued with a highly essentialist view of the Turkish state, but also of Turkishness. It exclusively argues that the people of these ‘Turkish’ states all belong to one race, that is, the Turkish race. It treats the nation and race as one and the same. How significant is the teaching by volunteers of this highly selective version of history? My observations lead to three main conclusions. First, the education provided in Turkish language classes – in this particular Australian-funded school – seek to inculcate children with a hyperbolic discourse of patriotism and a sense of Turkish identity as much as they seek to teach them the Turkish language. The children are hectored about how to be ‘Turks’ and good citizens of the Turkish state through a vast range of curricular and extra-curricular activities. They are constantly reminded of their duties and responsibilities towards their homeland. These include above all loyalty to Atatürk and his nationalism, as well as a willingness to sacrifice personal interests for the common good of the nation. This might take the form of dying for the nation as the exemplary martyrs did in the past, or serving the vatan after completing their education. Secondly, the case study highlights to us how the Australian government indirectly becomes part of the production of a chauvinist Turkish nationalism through facilitating this education. Although this may not be its aim, the Australian government facilitates transKemalism in this context, enabling the Turkish state to extend its civilising project to the new generations living in the country. The Turkish state and the Turkish nationalists take advantage of this valuable opportunity offered by the Australian government whose aim is the encouraging of mother tongue education. Some context about these language schools needs to be provided here. Community Language Schools are after-hours language schools funded by the Australian government to provide mother tongue language teaching and cultural maintenance programs. According to the recent study carried out by Cardona, Noble and Di Biase, there are currently 47 languages being offered at Community Language Schools to more than 32,000 students, aged 5 to 16, enrolled in 493 schools in NSW alone (the most populous of the six states).15 Turkish is taught by 38 teachers at 12 different schools. The Community Languages

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Schools Board (CLSB) and the Community Languages Section of the NSW Department of Education and Training (DET) are responsible for this language program. The CLSB monitors the allocation of grants administered by DET to incorporated associations conducting schools outside mainstream school hours for Kindergarten to Year 12 students. In 2007 the Australian (federal) government distributed $2.4 million of funds to teach over 32,000 students in 493 schools involving 2343 teachers in NSW alone.16 Thirdly, we see here how seeing like a state and seeing for the state go hand in hand. Volunteer schoolteachers17 (individual Turks) are the key actors promoting transKemalism in this case. This nationalising role was clearly voiced by the teachers working at the school I visited. None of the teachers I got to know mentioned the potential benefits of Turkish lessons for promoting multilingualism. They worried more about the maintenance of Turkish identity and culture. One teacher said to me: ‘We want them to learn about Atatürk and how this country [Turkey] was born. They get to know our flag here, our national days, and our anthem. If the young generations don’t learn about these things we run the risk of losing them.’ I was told by another teacher: ‘I am raising Turkish children in this country [Australia] with the hope that in the future they will watch over their own country [Turkey].’ (Remember also Nermin’s discourse in Chapter Five). The curriculum followed in classes is as important in the generation of trans-Kemalism as the instruction and skills of the teachers. Here the Turkish state comes into the picture. The school, like every school operating in Turkey, uses textbooks written or approved by the Turkish Ministry of National Education. These are distributed in Australia through the office of the education attaché in the Consulate. In this way the official curriculum set out by Ankara reproduces itself in Sydney in the name of catering for the language needs of young Australian Turks. There are also extra-curricular materials used as part of teaching Turkish at the Saturday Schools in Sydney. For example, on 23 March 2009, the Turkish Consulate disseminated an e-mail about the screening of a movie entitled 120 at the Matraville Saturday School. Based on a real story from the First World War, this highly nationalistic movie is about 120 young boys from the Turkish city of

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Van aged 12 to 17 who carry ammunition for the Turkish Army during the Battle of Sarıkamış. Here we need to remember what research on the Turkish education system has shown. It has been long acknowledged that the school textbooks used in the official curriculum have been highly problematic for their nationalist, militaristic and essentialist content.18 More recent research also highlighted that these problems continue even after the redesigning of textbooks in the curriculum reform of 2005 that Turkey undertook as an aspect of the process of integration into the EU. Çayır’s analysis of the pedagogical content of the textbooks after the reforms shows that ‘they are still imbued with an exclusive and narrow definition of nationalism and citizenship, backed by the myth of origin, ethnocentrism and essentialism.’19 Similarly, in his review of contemporary textbooks Irzık shows that they are pervaded by: (i) ‘an attitude of ‘othering’ sometimes through degrading and expressing xenophobia toward people who are non-Turkish or nonMuslim or who form a social minority;’ (ii) ‘a mentality that attributes a fixed, sacred, superior and historical essence to Turkishness,’ and (iii) ‘an essentialist conception of Turkish state and state-worship.’20 It is striking then to see that this pedagogy informs Turkish language schools in Sydney. Finally, and perhaps most critically, we need to ask whether this style of pedagogy disables students from engaging in intercultural dialogue within multicultural Australia. To what extent is a Turkishdesigned curriculum relevant for ‘Turkish’ children living in Sydney? Does it take into account the hybridity of their cultural identities? Children are treated as if they are exclusively ‘Turkish’ in terms of their ethnic and national belonging, and as if they were solely citizens of the Turkish Republic. Most importantly, they are constantly reminded of their enemies (i.e. Greeks, Armenians, Kurds, etc.) given that the textbooks published by the Ministry of Education are full of such references.21 Children from these ethnic backgrounds may very well be members of the same day-school classes in the multicultural Australian cointext, an ironical moment, given that the Saturday schools are funded by the Australian authorities as part of the macroproject of building cross-cultural understanding and equality.

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Kemalist reflections on multiculturalism One view that was almost universally shared by my research participants was their recognition of the generosity of the Australian state in providing facilities and services that made their adaptation to Australian society considerably easier while, at the same time, helping them to preserve their Turkishness and to practise their own culture. The state officials of Turkey also expressed this view at every opportunity, in particular praising the policy of multiculturalism for enabling Turkish children to learn the Turkish language in Australia and for supporting the cultural production of Turkish migrants. My findings from archival research and interviews confirm that similar discourses about Australian multiculturalism were prevalent among Turkish migrants in the 1970s and 1980s as they are today, in particular when ‘welfare multiculturalism’ was concerned. Sami, who arrived in Sydney in 1968 and worked in different low-skilled jobs for 19 years, said to me: This country has always endeavoured to make us live in good conditions. I remember when Whitlam was the prime minister, he gave us social rights, he enhanced our social security. They provided Turks their own radio channel. They provided us with translators if we went to a government institution and couldn’t explain what we wanted. They even changed telephone directories not long after I came. We could read the government’s announcements in our own language. They would be translated into Turkish too. If we have ever felt homesickness here, it was not because we were made to feel alien. It was because of the distance. (Sami, late 50s) Like Sami, my informants often referred to the welfare multiculturalism of the 1970s and 1980s when they discussed policies of the Australian state vis-à-vis immigrant groups. This is partly because the bulk of the migratory flow from Turkey to Australia coincided with the policy shift from integration to multiculturalism. In 1974, multiculturalism became accepted as an official policy by

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the Labor government of Gough Whitlam (1972–75). Labor’s (and the then Immigration Minister Al Grassby’s) vision of Australia as a multicultural society was based on the idea that the value of each migrant culture and their contribution to enriching Australian society should be recognised, and that integration could be achieved if both migrants and the host community were involved.22 It was not only with the culture of migrants, but also with their rights and participation on an equal basis in the Australian society that Labor’s multiculturalism was concerned. The Whitlam government improved educational facilities and social services and ensured that migrants could gain access to these. Welfare services were developed further under the conservative Fraser government (1975–83), institutionalised in the so-called Galbally Report on Migrant Services and Programs (1978). The Report led to the creation of Migrant Resource Centres in major urban areas throughout Australia, the Australian Institute of Multicultural Affairs, a national research institute in Melbourne and the use of ethnic-specific welfare workers, and it recommended the introduction of broadcasting in various languages, as already trialled under the previous government.23 This led to the creation of the Special Broadcasting Service24 in 1978, fully funded by the Federal government. My informants’ narratives expressing feelings of contentment, and even gratitude, about the policy of multiculturalism were sometimes accompanied by a critical discourse directed either at the Turkish state or at the Turkish people living in Australia for their disinterest in making enough use of the services provided by the host state. The Australian state has always provided us more support than our own state [Turkish]. They have supported not only us, but all ethnic groups in this country. But we have not made enough use of these opportunities. Take education as an example. Australia even pays for the salaries of teachers so that they can teach our children their own language. Unfortunately our people do not understand the value of this. Not only our people, but even the Turkish state doesn’t. The state [Turkish] should send

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professional teachers here, one to Sydney and one to Melbourne. Our children should learn about their national history, about their homeland from real teachers. They used to send teachers during the Ecevit Government. They don’t send any more. (Ömer, late 50s, arrived in 1972) We Turks have always been ignorant about our rights, about what this country has provided to us. Not that we wanted, but these men themselves thought about what we needed to become part of this society. Ethnic newspapers, community organisations, associations . . . they supported all of these. And the same with ethnic radio and television. What I am saying is that we haven’t made enough use of our rights. We are so lucky to be living in Australia. Look at those Turks in Germany who don’t have even half of the rights we have here. (Mehmet) In addition to his criticism of some Turkish migrants, Mehmet draws our attention to another important point: that is, how the situation of Turkish ‘guest-workers’ in Germany has been a source of comparative knowledge for Turkish people regarding their own life conditions in Australia. Differently from Australia, Germany has refused to see migrant workers as ‘immigrants’ and has to date pursued an exclusive immigrant incorporation regime. Not only the issue of citizenship rights, but also the discrimination and xenophobia directed at Turkish migrants in Germany made their adaptation to living there particularly difficult. These issues, along with some others (like mother tongue teaching and religious education) have become ‘the subjects of transnational dialogue between Turkish citizens and German and Turkish authorities.’25 The Turkish media in Australia has also closely followed the debates around Turkish migrants in Germany. For example, in 1984 Yorum newspaper published a long series of supplementary volumes under the title ‘Workers from Turkey in Germany’. These volumes covered a range of issues including the xenophobia, work conditions, housing

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and education problems that Turkish migrants in Germany were struggling with. The close interest of the Turkish media in Australia in the lives of Turkish migrants in Germany continued in the 1990s. The media coverage reached its peak when the tragic incidents of violence against Turks erupted in Mölln and Solingen in 1992 and 1993 respectively. In both incidents a Turkish family was burned to death after firebombs were thrown into their homes. The importance of these German-based developments for the analysis here is that they have constituted a constant point of reference among Turkish people in Sydney in their negotiations of their relationship with the host society and state. This transnational dimension of reflection on multiculturalism recurred often in my interviews and conversations with Turks in Sydney as they discussed the range of rights and opportunities available to them in comparison to German Turks. Their feelings of contentment with Australian multiculturalism were, in a sense, an outcome of this comparison. This comparison was also made in relation to the diasporic politics of the Turkish state. There is a consensus among Turkish people in Sydney that the Turkish state directed more ‘care’ and resources to the service of Turkish migrants in Europe. The resentment felt towards the state was often expressed through the employment of one particular metaphor: ‘We are the stepchildren (üvey evlat) of the Turkish state.’ Implicit in this discourse was a conviction that Turks in Europe were its privileged or real children (öz evlat). The narratives below give us an idea about the contexts in which this metaphor is used: We are like the stepchildren [of the Turkish state] here. I think this is because Australia is so far from Turkey. It is out of the state’s sight anyway. They always send useless personnel to work here. Take the education attaché for example. The only thing he does is to distribute the books sent from Turkey to be used at the Turkish Saturday Schools. The Consulate helps those who move back to Turkey with their transfer. They do roll calls for

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military service. There is nothing they do other than these. (Gül) [Emphasis mine] The only visible thing that the [Turkish] state has done so far was to extend the TRT-INT broadcasts to Australia. Apart from that they have done nothing for us. They just signed a migration agreement with this country [Australia] and said to us: ‘You go now.’ But nobody comes here and asks ‘How are you? Are you all right, are you happy?’ We are like their stepchildren. Now, what makes our case different from those in Germany is that we are Australian citizens also. Turks in Germany, in Europe are not citizens of those countries. Do all of those two million Turks living in Germany carry German citizenship? But in Australia eighty-ninety per cent of Turks carry Australian citizenship. That’s maybe why the [Turkish] state provides us with less assistance. And the other thing is, we are far away and smaller in number compared to those in Europe. (Fikret) [Emphasis mine] Both informants make a comparative checking of the diasporic policies of the Turkish state here. While agreeing with Gül’s point about Australian Turks ‘being out of the Turkish state’s sight,’ Fikret underlines an important difference between the legal status of Turkish migrants in Europe and those in Australia and reminds us how it is relatively harder, and in some countries almost impossible, for migrants to acquire the citizenship of the host society. On a different note, although both informants articulate the relative absence of the Turkish state in Australia, ingrained in their critical tone is an awareness that at least some state institutions do make themselves visible in the lives of Turkish migrants in Sydney: the Turkish Ministry of Education’s provision of its own textbooks to be used at Turkish language classes in Australia, the military’s recruitment of Turkish men for military service and Turkish state Television’s setting up of a special TV-channel targeting Turkish nationals living abroad (TRT-INT26). All these examples demonstrate that the state is not actually ‘neglecting’ its diaspora. What is at stake then is not whether the Turkish

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state does less in Australia compared to its activities in Europe, but how various practices of the state are taken for granted and normalised by the informants, to the extent that they are not even read as signs of the state’s seeing for Turks in the diaspora. What are some of the theoretical implications of these narratives? What do they tell us about the processes of transnationalisation? My answer is that the transnational space emerging in other Turkish migratory contexts, particularly in Germany, has a considerable influence on the political agenda and perceptions of Turkish migrants in Sydney. This is not to argue that Turkish political transnationalism in Germany is a constituent of a Turkish political transnational space in Australia; but it is to note how knowledge about Germany facilitates Turkish migrants in positioning themselves vis-à-vis their sending and receiving societies and their institutions. The socio-political context with German Turks has a transnational effect on Australian Turks’ self-perceptions about being immigrants in Australia. The former relativises the latter. This further highlights two important points. First, there is a dynamic relationship between different transnational contexts that shapes the complex social processes involved in migrants’ lives.27 And secondly, transnationalism encompasses not only the ties, interactions, and exchanges between immigrants and the societies of origin and settlement, but also those between immigrants and their co-nationals living elsewhere. As Levitt et al. note, ‘Migrants are embedded in multi-layered social fields and to truly understand migrants’ activities and experiences, their lives must be studied within the context of these multiple strata.’28 The analysis so far has presented a positive impression of Turkish migrants’ perception of state-sponsored multiculturalism. Although this is the case with their experiences of welfare services and the citienship policies of the Australian state, they are occasionally critical about multiculturalism too. These criticisms are aired especially on two regularly occurring events: one, when a supposedly ‘anti-Turkish’ programme is broadcast in the media and secondly, when other ethnic groups (like Armenians, Greeks, or Assyrians) lobby Australian Government officials for their own political agendas. Kemalists’ responses to such incidents, which often take the form of petitions,

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protest letters and online blogs, are invariably framed around multiculturalism, accusing it of reinforcing divisiveness between, and within, ethnic groups and for encouraging ‘anti-Turkish’ propaganda in Australia. (The same discourse is also employed by the Turkish state officials in their own responses to the Australian authorities. See Chapter Three.) Australia is a multicultural country. I like this aspect of it. No culture has any harm to another culture. And you can always find out new things about other cultures. You taste other cultures’ food, you see their dances, their traditional outfits. This is very nice. On a different note, sometimes this country utilises multiculturalism to instigate divisiveness between different groups. They pursue the politics of ‘divide and rule.’ They divide us as Turks, Kurds, Alevis. They do this deliberately. (Ayfer) The Australian media does not foster multiculturalism. For example, every year, on 24 April, they broadcast a programme on Armenians. They never ask Turks what they think about what had happened in the history. In particular, SBS and ABC always do this. They say that there is multiculturalism in this country. No, there is not. They set people against each other. (Fikret) Both informants raise interesting points about the supposedly ‘divisive’ function of the multiculturalist policy, which according to them, fosters antagonistic encounters within and/or between ethnic groups. Ayfer appreciates multiculturalism in its ‘soft’ sense (food, dance, clothes), but yet describes it as a fracturing ideology, as exemplified in its dividing of Turks, Kurds and Alevis. Fikret, on the other hand, criticises various media organs for supporting ‘antiTurkish’ propaganda. Multiculturalism, in his discourse, engenders not harmonious, but antagonistic relationships between different ethnic groups. Although these narratives articulate the ‘divisive’ role of multiculturalism in different ways, implicit in their discourse is a conviction that the way multiculturalism is implemented in Australia is inimical to the national unity of Turks: ‘it aims to

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divide Turks,’ or ‘it is against Turks.’ This is not, however, how all migrants from Turkey perceive multiculturalism. Metin, the president of the Alevi Cultural Centre in Sydney, has a very different opinion about multiculturalism: Multiculturalism means equality to me. It means freedom of religion. The state here does not care about which religion you practise. It gives you the right to establish your own association. When you go to a public institution, nobody treats you or judges you according to what you wear. For example, Alevis in Turkey cannot establish their own cultural organisations. They have opened up some associations in the last couple of years, but the names of those associations can’t even mention the word ‘Alevi.’ On the other hand, when we came to this country, we said to the Australian officials: ‘We want to set up an Alevi Cultural Centre.’ They let us do so. They even came and joined our dabki (a folkloric dance) at our opening day. They gave us funding for a social worker. Now everybody makes use of our services. Alevis have their own associations in Europe too. But differently from Australia, Europe does not allow multiculturalism. We are much more comfortable here. (Metin) What these narratives highlight to us is that the perceptions about multiculturalism are shaped by the societal position occupied by the individual actors and groups in the country of origin and the country of settlement. As a middle-class Sunni Turk, Ayfer is uncomfortable about the recognition of the Alevis (and Kurds) by the Australian state, because this has never been the case in Turkey. For Metin, by contrast, multiculturalism means the recognition of his identity as an Alevi by the Australian state, in the first place, and the state’s facilitation of various means through which he and other Alevis can practise their religion freely. The same applies to Kurdish immigrants in Australia too. Despite the official refusal of the Turkish state to recognise their claim that they are not Turks, Kurds have been able to set up their own institutions in Australia. The funding opportunities provided by the multiculturalist programmes in Australia have

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helped in alleviating settlement and other problems of Kurds to an important extent. This situation has been appreciated by Kurds in Sydney, but not by Kemalists, who have often interpreted this as an attempt of the Australian government to divide the Turkish ‘community.’ As one of my respondents (female, aged 47) said to me: ‘It was only after I came to Australia that I heard of Kurds. No one used to say “I am Kurdish” when we used to live in Turkey. Such a thing did not exist in Turkey. The Government of this country is provoking these separatists.’ This type of reaction often came from the leaders of Turkish organisations too. For example, Peter Doyle, the current Australian Ambassador in Ankara, visited a number of Sydney-based Turkish organisations in August 2008 prior to taking up his position. These visits were more of a courtesy call during which Mr. Doyle asked the organisation leaders about their expectations from the Australian Embassy in Ankara. Yet his visit to the Kurdish organisation attracted the reaction of the Kemalist organisations that were uneasy with his recognition of it. To take stock, two important points need to be stressed here. First, while the policy of multiculturalism facilitates the nationalising attempts of the Turkish state and of the long-distance Kemalists through its way of managing ethnic diversity, it also provides a political opportunity structure for Kurds and Alevis to express and live out their identities in Australian society. The multiculturalist policy’s encouraging of migrants’ associations and the production of their cultural activities not only works to the advantage of Kemalists, but also those groups who are suppressed by the Kemalist state in the country of origin. Secondly, an analysis of the narratives reveals to us that the Kemalist discourse on multiculturalism stands on a knife-edge between feelings of gratitude and mistrust. On the one hand, there is a widely shared consensus that being an immigrant in Australia is not the same as being an immigrant in Germany; it comes with certain rights and privileges (and obligations), many of which are not available to immigrants in other host countries. Yet on the other hand, there is a deep-seated feeling of mistrust and scepticism

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towards the government policy and politicians in Australia, accentuated when they perceive an attack on Turkish ‘national’ interests. It is this notion of ‘national’ – strictly defined on the basis of the premises of Kemalism – that determines the parameters of their perceptions of multiculturalism. This chapter has dealt so far with the question of how the policy of multiculturalism in Australia engages with trans-Kemalism. It has argued that with its distinctive immigrant incorporation regime the Australian state provides a space for the emergence of various forms of migrant nationalisms – in this case trans-Kemalism. This final part of the chapter shifts our attention from the practices and discourses of Kemalists to some of the key theorisings on multiculturalism. My aim in doing so is to reconsider some of the key material presented in the former chapters in the light of the extensive and heterogeneous literature on multiculturalism. A discussion of the key theorisings on multiculturalism will help us question how multiculturalism engages with the nationalism of certain immigrants and of their states of origin, as well as to identify persistent gaps and missing links in certain theories of multiculturalism. In the following section, I selectively discuss the central claims of three clusters of arguments that have critically addressed multiculturalism in its Australian version: ‘multiculturalism as an essentialist discourse about culture,’ ‘multiculturalism as an obfuscation of structural problems,’ and ‘multiculturalism as an exclusionary discourse and practice vis-à-vis ‘nonWhite ethnics.’ Which analyses of Australian multiculturalism help cast light on migrant and sending-state-initiated nationalism? Multiculturalism as an essentialist discourse There is a widespread consensus among scholars that one of the main problems accompanying official multiculturalism is its holistic assumptions about culture and migrant identity.29 According to this standard critique, in the multiculturalist perspective, migrants’ cultural traits and practices are conceived as internally homogeneous and self-contained while their identity, which is often reduced to ethnic identity, is naturalised as an unchanging product of their ‘authentic’

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culture. In this common sense discourse, identity is indivisible from culture and ethnicity. It is also unthinkable in the absence of a reference to the other two. This essentialisation of ‘culture’ and its merging, unproblematicly, with ethnicity has been identified as one of the contradictions of the multiculturalist policy in Australia, as elsewhere. According to Gunew, ‘Multiculturalism becomes too often an effective process of recuperation whereby diverse cultures [often conceived as and reduced to ‘nutritious ethnic bread and finger-snapping ethnic circuses’30] are returned homogenized as folkloric spectacle.’31 Jayasuriya calls this type of multiculturalism the ‘multiculturalism of the right’ in his left versus right classification. In ‘right-wing’ versions, the focus of multiculturalism is on cultural diversity and lifestyle, rather than on structural issues such as access and equity. He argues that culturalist multiculturalism ‘privileges cultural maintenance and a celebration of culture based on an essentialist understanding, i.e., a static view of culture.’32 Similarly, according to Stratton and Ang, underlying the Australian way of dealing with cultural pluralism – the practice of providing support and facilities to ethnic groups so that they can preserve their cultural heritage – is a logic that ‘tends to hypostatise and even fetishise “culture”, which suppresses the heterogeneities existing within each “culture”, constructed as coterminous with “ethnicity.”’ 33 They contend that such a representation not only pigeonholes the migrant as permanently marginalised and ethnicised, but also juxtaposes cultural differences as incommensurable, as if they are mutually exclusive. The metaphor of unity-in-diversity, then, implies the sideby-side living of different ethnic cultures, yet in a state of hierarchy rather than harmony. This type of multiculturalism, according to Stratton and Ang, enables different cultural (‘ethnic’) groups to speak to, and even fight with each other, as exemplified in the row over Macedonia between Greeks and (Slav) Macedonians.34 Jayasuriya too agrees that this is one of the consequences, and hence the limits of official multiculturalism. Arguing that the multiculturalist programme endorses cultural diversity by demarcating groups along fixed ethnic lines, it paves the way for cultural ghettoisation, and

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a ‘them vs. us’ attitude out of which some migrant groups produce their own identity politics and diaspora nationalisms.35 Collins, Noble, Poynting and Tabar, on the other hand, draw attention to another consequence of multiculturalism’s institutionalisation of migrant organisations as definable ethnic constituencies.36 They note that the reinforcement of ethnic community hierarchies leads to internal problems within such groups taking the form of paternalism, internal patronage and competition for community leadership. Humphrey’s work on the formation of Lebanese diaspora in different receiving societies illustrates this point.37 Using anthropological fieldwork as his research method, Humphrey provides a rich historical and contemporary account of the external and internal politicisation confronted by the Lebanese migrants. His analysis of the associational trajectory of the Lebanese organisations reveals that sectarianism operated as a major source of friction and internal competition among these organisations. He notes: ‘The provision of welfare services and government grants became the focus of intra-Lebanese ethnic competition (in Australia). Multiculturalism opened up a new arena for party politics and petty patronage which the Lebanese were quick to learn and exploit.’38 This critique of the shortcomings of multiculturalism as cultural pluralism is not confined to Australian academia of course.39 For example, Faist draws attention to the fundamental similarity between the assimilationist and ethnic pluralist perspectives over the conception of culture. According to him, if the former predicates immigrant culture as ‘a sort of baggage brought from the “old world’” and ‘everything beyond folkloric expressions is considered a transitory phenomenon’40, the latter ‘over-emphasizes cultural retention among minorities, and under-emphasizes the impact of transnationalisation on immigrant cultural adjustment.’41 In similar fashion, Caglar makes a strong critique of multiculturalism on the basis of how it predicates ‘culture.’ Concerned with the common sense privileging of ethnicity and culture (as a homogenised, bounded, unified construct) in the institutionalisation of multiculturalism, she argues that the real danger of multiculturalism is not

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its taking of culture as a basis for defining a certain collectivity, but as a basis for collective rights and identity claims. She contends that ‘multiculturalism takes the form of a political movement for cultural empowerment. Culture becomes the idiom for resistance. Yet what culture is, or who “owns” it, is left unanswered.’42 Extending this criticism to problematise the restrictive tendency of some social scientists who also privilege ethnicity in their research designs, Caglar argues for a writing (and researching) against culture. This entails a disassociation of culture from territory and a deconstruction of the taken for granted ideas about culture as ontologically a priori, as internally homogeneous and as anchored in ethnic collectivities. Writing against culture can enable a discovery of more hidden forms of identification, other than ethnic and religious identities. I agree with Caglar and others on the limits of a multiculturalist model, which reinforces the concept of ethnic community (and ethnic hierarchies) in an attempt to maintain and keep up to the ideal of cultural pluralism. However, the force of this critique is blunted by a number of other considerations. First, although this anti-essentialist critique has mentioned, in passing, how the official multiculturalism has led to the identity politics and diaspora nationalisms of various migrant groups, it has refrained from considering the equally important implications of a culturalist multicultural model for sending states. The empirical material in this study encourages me to argue that the institutionalisation of multiculturalism in this particular way makes a paramount service to sending states as they compete with one another to get a hold on their emigrant communities. This service is often acknowledged with expressions of gratitude in the discourses of Turkish policy-makers towards their Australian counterparts. In other words, they seem to be content about the tendency in cultural multiculturalism to fix ‘culture’ in ethnic boxes and to organise emigrant groups along ethnic lines. To put it simply, the multicultural model serves the transnational objectives of the Turkish state (and of other nationalist sending states who too may see their emigrants in Australia as economic and political agents to be utilised), at least in regard to this point. It facilitates a political opportunity structure not for immigrants only, but also for sending states who make use of

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those opportunities in line with their own political agendas. Yet there is no attempt in the discussions of multiculturalism to consider how this policy engages with the transnational politics of sending states. Indeed, it is surprising that, despite the growing research on state-led political transnationalism in the North American and European contexts, this stream of research has found almost no appeal in Australia. The receiving country and its political institutions continue to be of overriding interest here. A consideration of the sending state’s position is vital for another reason. Needless to say, the operation of multiculturalism in Australia constitutes the major structure in which immigrant groups form their own organisations and pursue their agendas. As Sayad notes, the host country occupies ‘a structural position to impose unilaterally the terms and goals for immigrants.’43 Nevertheless, the transnational mechanisms engineered by sending states also generate a structure that has implications for immigrants’ agency. The literature on political transnationalism provides us many rich examples of how most sending states also reify the ethnic identities of their emigrants by constantly emphasising their distinctness (from other ‘ethnic’ communities as well as from the native population of the receiving society) and by reminding their emigrants that they are also bounded by the national ‘culture’ of their homelands. As Guarnizo and Smith assert, ‘states of origin are re-essentialising their national identity and extending it to their nationals abroad as a way to maintain their loyalty and flow of resources back home.’44 This is not achieved through discursive means only. As the expanding of the Diyanet apparatus abroad in the Turkish case illustrates, states of origin also have a direct impact on the institutionalisation of their emigrants in ways that privilege ethnicity. The Diyanet not only makes a statement about the distinct ‘ethnic’ identity of Turkish people in Australia, but also about their distinct ‘religious’ identities by promoting the official, state-inscribed Islam in the diaspora. Thus if the policy of multiculturalism ethnicises migrants’ identity through its demarcation of emigrant groups along self-contained ethnic lines, the transKemalist politics of the Turkish state insists on the ‘Turkishness’ of its emigrants in Australia, even of those who were born there. It

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expects everyone to have a single identity and a single national allegiance, while claiming that they have a single national history and a single national culture (remember the Turkish state-funded project entitled ‘Turkish Youth in Australia Encountering its Own Culture and History’). The point here is not to argue that the Turkish state’s practices and discourses override the power of the multiculturalist policy in essentialising a holistic Turkish culture and in ethnicising Turkish migrants; it is to emphasise that the state’s self-injection of itself in the everyday lives of Turkish migrants also has consequences for the conception of a Turkish ethnic identity as much as the multiculturalist policy does. ‘Writing against culture’ should aim to ‘uncover the “hidden side” of culture’45, as Caglar argues, but this is possible if the work of both sending and receiving states are considered in tandem. Finally, it should be noted that multiculturalism’s positing of membership in certain definable collectivities might in some cases work to the advantage of those migrants whose identity claims are unrecognised in the country of origin. Kurdish and Alevi immigrants from Turkey are good example of this. As the example of the Australian Ambassador’s visits to the Sydney-based Turkish organisations illustrates, the Australian practitioners of multiculturalism do not always see and treat the so-called ‘ethnic’ groups as internally homogeneous or unified. Indeed, local politicians in particular are fully cognisant of the internal splits among them. Multiculturalism as an obfuscation of structural problems A second cluster of arguments that question the emancipatory potential of multiculturalism has come from Marxist theorists, particularly in the late 1970s and 1980s.46 Similar to the critique above, the proponents of this perspective have also been suspicious of cultural pluralism. However, their claims differ from the former in at least two important ways. First, they have argued that the focus on culture and ethnicity shifts attention from other more important structural disadvantages faced by immigrants. Accordingly any analysis of ‘ethnicity’ should incorporate a discussion of other social relations such as class

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and gender. Secondly and ironically, like many Kemalists they have also argued that the multiculturalist programme is divisive, in this case leading to the fragmentation of the imagined community of the working class. One of the earliest analyses concerned with migrants’ structural disadvantage is that of Collins.47 Drawing on a political economy perspective, Collins analysed labour market segmentation and class relationships. Another influential study on class and multiculturalism is Ethnicity, Class and Social Policy in Australia, edited by Jakubowicz, Morissey and Palser.48 Providing a Marxist-influenced historical analysis of multiculturalism, the book makes a strong critique of the sponsoring of an ethnic group model and cultural pluralism, in particular by the conservative Fraser government. It argues that the policy of multiculturalism provided the state with a context in which it could perpetuate the class relations from which it benefited. Here multiculturalism is understood as a form of state ideology geared towards managing and controlling social relations via the fostering of ethnic boundaries between migrant groups. This thesis has been most clearly articulated by Jakubowicz: Ethnicity as ideology mediates Australian class relations, by reifying the history of peoples into a static category of theoretical labelling . . . While the argument hereunder affirms the importance of cultural histories to an understanding of individual group experience, these histories are invalidated and rendered undialectical by the imposition on them of the category of ethnicity. It is the invalidation of the class history of ethnic Australians and the reconstruction of their experience and histories in their countries of origin and in Australia as totally cultural (that is, specifically non-political, non-class based and in that sense ahistorical) that is the effective outcome of multiculturalism as ideology.49 The Marxist perspective provides a suitable framework for the systematic analysis of structural disadvantages that migrants face in the host society such as socio-economic and linguistic barriers. Nevertheless it is less perspicacious in its ability to explore political cleavages or

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factions that emerge even among those who share the same ethnic identity or immigration history. The privileging of ethnicity as an explanatory category might obscure some more important, yet less visible, processes shaping migrants’ lives, as Marxists have rightfully stated. However there is a theoretical naivety in Marxist expectations that a unified ‘left’ will emerge in the absence of ethnic divisions between migrant groups. Migrant workers may share the same class position, but not necessarily the same political loyalties and identities. The Marxist critique, as the quote above demonstrates, does suggest that the political history of immigrants in their country of origin should be taken into account, but nevertheless here the political identity of migrants is most valued when it involves their struggle against their exploitation as workers. It is the class-based political activism of migrants in the post-settlement period that is of concern to Marxists, not their political orientations developed in relation to the country of origin. As an extension of this presumption, Marxist theory expects all immigrants (in particular migrant workers) to be on the ‘left’ given the similar class position they share. Yet some working class migrants can also be on the ‘right’, as exemplified by the fascist Turkish Grey Wolves. The newspaper archives analysed in Chapter Two revealed that political issues and developments related to their country of origin have been very influential in the experience of the Turkish diaspora in Australia. Over and above any ‘encouragement’ by multiculturalist policies, Turkish associational life in Sydney throughout the 1970s and 1980s took the form of two opposing camps reflecting the political polarisation in Turkey at the time. The Turkish ‘ethnic’ associations established in those years were (and still are) overtly political. The two most active organisations, the left-wing Sydney People’s House and the right-wing Turkish Welfare Association, were in constant competition against each other despite both being run and supported by working class Turks, who had few other options than to work at similar factory jobs. Class interest was not strong enough to bring those migrants together to pursue a single political practice. This also applies to Kemalists and ‘Islamists’ in the present, many of whom share the same class position. As Yalçın-Heckmann puts it, migrant groups are

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divided ‘not only by subnational and transnational affiliations but by age, gender and political or religious tendencies cutting across them, all of which generate a tendency towards splits and cleavages.’50 A second problematic aspect of the Marxist perspective is its predication of migrants’ ethnic identities as ‘false consciousness’ waiting to be unveiled by the forces of history and class warfare.51 In this view, shared ethnicity and race is primarily a ‘class’ identity and all forms of political participation by migrant and minority populations are seen as evidence for an emergent class consciousness of migrant workers. When migrant activism includes political co-operation with indigenous workers – for example, through trade union activities, and Labour and communist political parties – then it becomes seen as evidence for a common class consciousness transcending the false consciousness of ethnic and racial identity.52 This assumption is often empirically untrue. What prompts cooperation between migrant workers and ‘indigenous’ organisations of the political left such as unions is not necessarily issues that concern workers’ exploitation and the structural disadvantages they face. A good example of this is the collaborative relationships that the Sydney People’s House established with labour unions and various non-Turkish leftist associations in Sydney and Melbourne in the early 1980s. Yet as detailed in Chapter Two, the immediate motivation of these Turkish leftists to do so had little to do with class-related issues per se. Their intention was to win the support of those organisations against the abuses of the Turkish state directed at its leftist citizens. This example illustrates the complexities of these alliances and the mixed motivations of actors. It demonstrates, on the one hand, that there was a shared class identification between the People’s Houses and the unions and various non-Turkish leftist associations at that time out of which some collaborative action emerged. But the issues that exercised Turkish migrants concerned politics in Turkey (i.e. the intervention of the Turkish military in 1980) rather than with class-related issues that migrant workers struggle with.

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Finally, while the Marxist perspective directs its critical energy to the policy and political institutions of the receiving state, it rarely includes within its analysis the politics of the sending state. It makes an a priori assumption that the state of origin is both ‘weak’ and ‘absent.’ In other words, it is not in the main a transnational perspective that analyses migrant politics by taking into account the political agendas and strategies of sending states, or the political subjectivities that such strategies may engender. To conclude, class analysis has an important explanatory value in shedding light on some of the most entrenched issues encountered by migrants and on how these may be linked to the formulation and sometimes cynical implementation of multiculturalism. However, the privileging of class over other explanatory categories obscures some of the complexities involved in immigrant politics. Multiculturalism as exclusionary discourse and practice In the 1990s there emerged a growing body of literature that dealt with issues like racism, everyday multiculturalism, Islamophobia, nationalism, migrant bodies and ethnic youth.53 Leading this wave of research, Ghassan Hage’s White Nation presents one of the most influential left-wing critiques of multiculturalism in Australia.54 The book’s analytical focus is the ideology and politics of ‘whiteness’, which according to Hage has pervaded Australian policy since the period of assimilationism. Thus he charges that there is a continuity between the older policies and multiculturalism, as each has been devised to manage ethnic and racial relations in Australian society, while maintaining the racial ideology of white (Anglo-Celtic) supremacy. Yet Hage’s strategy in exploring the politics of whiteness is not to analyse how the state perpetuates certain power relations between ‘whites’ and non-white ‘ethnics.’ By contrast, he investigates how those power relations are generated from below, through the discourses and practices of white nationalists. He is concerned with how multiculturalism is given meaning and experienced within the dominant white culture. Hage begins with the claim that there are certain fundamental similarities shared between white racists and white multiculturalists. According to him, the key similarity lies in the way they imagine

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national space, in which they position themselves as ‘masters of the nation.’ He calls the desire to be in such position as white nation fantasy: ‘a fantasy of a nation governed by white people, a fantasy of white supremacy.’55 This, he says, is most explicit in the immigration debates of these white fantasisers over who should stay inside/outside of the national space and who should be allowed to come in and in what numbers. He argues that in this dispute both white racists and multiculturalists see ‘ethnics as people one can make decisions about: objects to be governed.’56 Thus he suggests that the exclusionary practices and discourses of both groups should be understood as nationalist, not as racist (even if racist modes of thinking are deployed within them). The book provides the reader with a rich analysis of how these ‘white’ nationalists position themselves vis-à-vis non-White ethnics. To summarise, Hage argues that ‘white’ nationalists are constant ‘worriers’ about the nation, and that the type of belonging they feel themselves to possess is not national belonging, but what he calls ‘governmental belonging.’57 Those who fall into this category do not just belong to a nation, but assume that ‘they have managerial rights over racialised/ethnicised groups or persons, which are consequently constructed as manageable objects.’58 Hage also problematises the ideas of ‘tolerance’ and ‘cultural enrichment.’ He discusses how these nationalist discourses, which have long been embedded in the state-sponsored multiculturalism, also provide white nationalists with a position of spatial power over non-white ethnics. He argues that white multiculturalism sees in the migrant not only a tolerable, but also an enriching presence59: I want to show how the discourse of enrichment encapsulates a White nation fantasy for those White Australians interpolated by it. For the White Australian articulating it, the discourse of enrichment still positions him or her in the centre of the Australian cultural map. Far from putting ‘migrant cultures’, even in their ‘soft’ sense (i.e. through food, dance, etc.), on an equal footing with the dominant culture, the theme conjures up images of a multicultural fair where the various stalls of neatly positioned migrant cultures are exhibited and where the

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real Australians, bearers of the White nation and positioned in the central role of the touring subjects, walk around and enrich themselves.60 The key point Hage raises here is that the discourse of enrichment ‘assigns to migrant cultures a different mode of existence to Anglo-Celtic culture. While the dominant White culture merely and unquestionably exists, migrant cultures exist for the latter.’61 Interestingly, as this study has already demonstrated, Australian multiculturalism is not alone in reminding migrant groups of the enriching value of their cultures. The same discourse of cultural enrichment is expressed by the officials of the Turkish state too visà-vis Turkish emigrants (see Chapter Three). The Turkish state is also ‘worried’ about how Turkish migrants can enrich Australian society, while it is anxious too that such enriching should not endanger their Turkishness and Turkish culture. In this sense, the Turkish state not only assigns Turkish migrants a ‘different mode of existence’ to white Australians and to other ethnic and racial groups that constitute Australian society, but also expects them to preserve their already distinct mode of existence and to defend it by acting as its voluntary cultural attachés. Migrant cultures exist not for the dominant white culture (only) as Hage argues, but also for the state of origin. My comment on Hage’s analysis should not be read as a direct criticism. His discussion is located at a different level and focuses on different aspects of multiculturalism. Positioned from an Anglo-Celtic perspective, it captures an important, persisting reality of white multiculturalism (or white nationalism) and how this has a structural effect on social relationships between Anglos and ethnics in Australian society. Hage’s focus is on the ideology and politics of whiteness, whereas this study focuses on the ideology and politics of Kemalism. He sees multiculturalism as a reinforcer of ‘white’ power. I see it as potentially reinforcing Kemalist power. His analysis has a heavy reference to the context of the host country. This study, on the other hand, focuses more on the sending state and immigrants themselves by integrating a transnational perspective. However, despite these differences there is a fundamental similarity shared between White Nation and

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the analysis of this book. Both contextualise their discussion within the framework of nationalism and explore the discourses and practices of certain groups of nationalists. It is useful therefore to think about Hage’s key arguments about what this study discusses in relation to trans-Kemalism. To begin with the idea of whiteness, Hage provides us with a rich analysis of whiteness as a field of social distinction in Australian society. Heavily influenced by Bourdieu, he emphasises the cumulative aspect of whiteness as ‘cultural capital’ and argues that those who accumulate certain symbols of whiteness (i.e. looks, accent, demeanour, taste) acquire the chance to claim more governmental belonging than others less well endowed with cultural capital.62 He considers whiteness as an aspiration to be constantly achieved by white nationalists. This point is useful for understanding how whiteness also operates as a field of social distinction in Turkish society. In this context, whiteness implies not a racial but a cultural category occupied by laic Kemalists, who are symbolised by their ‘display [of] Western roles, attire and habits’ and their ‘ability to imitate external European appearances.’63 By contrast, who are the black Turks then? Yavuz writes: Modern Turkey, like a transgendered body with the soul of one gender in the body of another, is in constant tension. White Turks regard themselves as Western souls in the body of a foreign socio-political landscape. Its body is native to the land, but its soul is alien. The soul of white Turkey and its Kemalist identity is in constant pain and conflict with the national body politic of Turkey. Each side has its own discursive field. For the white Turks, identity is based on the ideology of militant anti-religious secularism, known in this case as Kemalism, or laïcism. Islam, on the other hand, has provided the vernacular for the marginalized majority, who were excluded from the top-down transformation. White secular discourse seeks to empower the state; Islamism empowers the excluded black Turks and Kurds. The black Turks and Kurds use a shared religious tradition to mobilize against exclusion and marginalization by the white Turks.64

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The discourse on whiteness as a form of cultural capital is a global one, which is negotiated and expressed in particular national contexts. Clearly, ‘whiteness’ has different connotations in the Australian and Turkish contexts. Yet being white brings with it similar symbolic and political privileges for those who dominate the field of whiteness, just as it discriminates against those who are unable to accumulate it. As Hage argues, being white increases one’s ability to exercise governmental power over those who are seen as ‘governable.’65 Yet Hage overlooks how there is no one single form of power relationship that determines the advantage of white Australians. The internal orientalisms entrenched in these social relationships are more complex than Hage describes in White Nation. One complexity is the overlapping of exclusionary discourses coming from different groups of orientalists (Kemalists) that work in the end to the detriment of one particular group. This is clearly the situation with Muslims in Australia. The growing literature on Muslim immigrants in Australia points to the construction of Islam as abject and the symbolic positioning of Muslims as being outside secular modernity.66 Yet what is less known in Australia is that this essentialist view on Islam constitutes the backbone of Kemalist ideology. More importantly, the toxic discourse on Muslims that sees them as a problem does not come from ‘white Australian’ nationalists only. This is also how my research participants talk about Muslims – not just about Turkish Muslims (‘Islamists’) but equally about non-Turkish Muslims as well. The narratives below illustrate the point: Although I have been living in Australia for 35 years, I cannot accept these newcomers. They are covered with veils. Why Australia is letting them in? People from the Middle East would be no good to Australia. The earlier migrants looked much better. Many Muslims have moved into Auburn. They see the Mosque and the two minarets and come to Auburn. It has become a bad place to live (Cengiz, late 50s). Auburn has changed a lot. It became a non-liveable place for us. The Afghanis, Pakistanis, Iranians and Iraqis have come to

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Auburn. Look at the way they dress, they behave. They put on clothes like dresses and have huge beards. Their young people do not work. They prefer Auburn because of the Mosque. You can’t find a place to park your car in Auburn on Fridays. Can you believe this? (Gül, late 40s). These types of stereotypes are not limited to perceptions about Auburn, where Turkish-speaking people until recently had long constituted the largest migrant group. Yet despite the impression given by the narratives above, it is not ‘Middle Eastern’ migrants, but migrants of Chinese and Vietnamese origins who are now the majority nonAnglo inhabitants of Auburn. In the conversation below we find two Turkish women talking about the Cronulla Riots67. Commenting on the ‘Arabs’ who were involved in the riots, the first woman says: A: For example, the Cronulla Riots happened. I don’t want the Arabs either. They went there, they went swimming with their turbans. Who would go swimming wearing the veil? It’s disgusting and disgraceful. This is the sea. They should wear beachwear. There are those swimming costumes people wear in pools; there are wetsuits and T-shirts. They should at least wear something like that. B: I don’t agree. Swimming costumes are what is worn in the sea. They should wear swimming costumes too. Years ago I went to a store in Istanbul. I saw a woman there. I still can’t forget her. You couldn’t see her skin and hair anywhere. But she was very well-dressed. She was wearing a black silk skirt, high heels and a sweater with a high neck. On her head was a hat. You couldn’t see any of her skin but she was dressed just like a European. If they want to cover themselves then that’s how they should dress. What is important here is that ‘ethnics’ too can position themselves as ‘national-spatial-managers’ and construct their own ‘national objects.’ The narratives above reveal that governmental belonging is also

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accumulated and claimed by some Turkish migrants who do not simply endure their status as being tolerated by ‘white’ Australians, but tolerate others (more or less). They also claim the right to make decisions about other Australians, at least when Muslims are concerned. There are shared elements between their ‘worries’ and ‘fantasies’ and those of the ‘white’ Australian nationalists. The distinction of being anti-Muslim is here accumulated by both groups of nationalists in their aspiration for whiteness. So what motivates some Turkish migrants to align with white nationalists in their inferiorisation of Muslims, particularly of Arabs? Is it because they are subject to racism themselves and their essentialisation of certain other Muslims helps them cope with this problem? Hage points out in Against Paranoid Nationalism that ‘There is no reason why those subjected to racism of the worst kind cannot be racist themselves.’68 He argues that ‘it would be easy for “ethnic communities” who perceive themselves as “under attack” to duplicate the paranoid communalism prevalent within the nation . . .’69 Or is this a strategy that Turkish migrants might follow to distinguish themselves from the ‘despised’ Arab so that they themselves can avoid being labelled as ‘bad Muslims’? This is the position taken by Dunn in his research on the politics surrounding mosque development in Sydney in the 1980s and 1990s. He contends that Muslim groups with Asian and European heritages often stressed that they were not Arabs in their applications before local Councils for building mosques.70 For him, these were rhetorical strategies whereby they sought to disassociate themselves from the negative constructions of Islam. There is truth in these explanations. The Islamophobic policies of the Howard government (1996–2007) and a media coverage that overwhelmingly associated Islam with terrorism and Muslims with crime, ‘ethnic gangs’ and asylum-seekers, have shaped public attitudes towards Arab Muslims in Australia over the last decade. Likewise, these processes have also shaped Muslims’ own perceptions and attitudes towards each other. Nevertheless there is a significant factor overlooked in Hage’s and Dunn’s analyses: this is the long history of these social distinctions and power relationships. These explanations are overtly ahistorical when it comes to problematising the attitudes of

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immigrants. In both accounts it is only the present context in the host society (invariably symbolised as connected to September 11) that gives meaning to the practices and discourses of immigrants. There is no recognition of how certain tensions, conflicts or alliances between and among groups are historically constructed. By contrast the antiArabic and anti-Islamic discourses of Kemalists need to be situated in the first instance within the orientalist and state-dictated nature of Kemalism, a political ideology that has marginalised Islam as a source of identity and has seen all Islamic formations other than those controlled by the state as a threat to the well-being of the nation. In fact, in 1930s Turkish nationalism, the whole Islamic period of the Turks was seen as an alien imposition of a backward culture, perverting the proto-modernity of Turkish society. (The identical discourse was produced by Iranian intellectuals in the same years.) In arguing this, I am not denying the impact of host society-related factors in bringing various internal tensions to the fore. The discussions taking place in the host society produce a new context in which certain historically and socially constructed stereotypes or orientalisms are negotiated and given further meaning by different groups of actors. In this sense, the negative constructions of Islam and, in particular of Arab Muslims in Australia, do not explain why Turkish Kemalists dislike Arabs in the first place; but they clearly exacerbate Turkish migrants’ inferiorisation of Arabs. In the end this contributes to the racialisation of Islam via the problem of its Arabness, as the narratives below illustrate: When you compare the Turkish community with other Muslim communities in Australia, say with Arabs, you see a big difference. Turkish people have a unique understanding of Islam, which they have developed in respect to Atatürk’s principle of laicism. Because of this, how we understand Islam is very different to how Arabs understand it. If we don’t complain about Islamophobia today, this is because of Atatürk, because of Kemalism. Unfortunately we also have some headscarved women, but at least they are not wearing sacks like some others. (Timur, in his mid-50s).

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I have never experienced any uncomfortable situation in Australia because of my religion [Islam]. Maybe those Turks who came here from a village did or those who couldn’t conform to Kemalism did. I don’t know. But I haven’t. We are farsighted, modern people as Atatürk wanted us to be. And Australia is a modern country, you know. So we don’t have any problems. When we are in a social group we always try to promote Turkey as a modern country in line with Atatürk’s philosophy. Turkey is a Muslim country, but it is laic. No one cares about another person’s religion there. (Arzu, aged 39) In the eyes of these Turks, it is not their ethnic identity, but their Kemalist identity that distinguishes them from other Muslims in Australia (as well as from ‘non-white Turks’ i.e. villagers, Islamists). Kemalism enables their accumulation of more whiteness, to become like white Australians (and less like other Muslims). Interestingly, this is also how some Australian government officials conceive Kemalism. One of my interviewees, (an MP – a member of the Federal Parliament) whose electorate area has a considerable number of Turkish-speaking people, said to me: ‘What makes Turkish people here distinct from other Muslims is the Kemalist revolution that they went through. They have had that experience of secularism.’ According to him, Turkish migrants had a better image as Muslims compared to other Muslim groups, to the extent that they were often praised as exemplary Muslims. The former Australian Treasurer Peter Costello publicly expressed similar views of Turkish Islam in 2006. As reported by The Age on 24 September 2006, he described Turkey as ‘the most outstanding example of a secular state separate from the religious domain in the Muslim world’, while referring to Mustafa Kemal as ‘a model of leadership for the modern Islamic world.’ Some non-Turkish Muslim leaders immediately condemned these remarks. By presenting Turkish Islam as an ideal model, Costello’s discourse reinforces a power relationship between Turkish Muslims and ‘the rest.’ Implicit in his view is a conviction that there are some ‘undesirable’

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qualities in other Muslim immigrants, which prevent them from being ‘exemplary Muslims.’ Implicit here, then, is also a desire that those Muslims suppress these ‘undesirable’ qualities so that they can become more like Turks (i.e. orthodox, laic, unproblematic Muslims). Furthermore the views of both Costello and the MP I interviewed reveal that the visions of the Australian and Turkish states overlap on the issue of how they want their Muslims to be. This is not to say that they have similar forms of ‘seeing like a state’ in the realm of managing religion. Unlike in Australia, religion is under strict state control in Turkey and it is the militant connotation that gives a unique meaning to the Turkish variant of laicism. I claim, however, that the desire of the Turkish state to maintain its transnational control over the making and practising of Turkish Islam through the Diyanet structure is welcomed by the Australian Government. As Humphrey notes, even though the Turkish Muslim community has always set itself apart from organisations representing all Muslims in Australia at the state or federal level (i.e. the Australian Federation of Islamic Councils established in 1964), they have been held up as a ‘model of moderate Islam’, and an ‘antidote to extremists.’71 The situation of Turkish migrants, then, adds a complexity to the scholarly arguments that see Australian multiculturalism as an exclusionary practice and discourse vis-à-vis non-whites. The paradox that this material unfolds is that such exclusionary practices and discourses also involve an inclusive dimension. The exclusion of various groups goes hand in hand with the inclusion of some others, who might even share the same ethnic or religious background with those excluded. In brief, the arguments claiming that Australian multiculturalism excludes Muslim immigrants ignore the enormous diversity among those Muslims and the histories of modernity in the Middle East. In closing, this chapter emphasises two points. First, a theory of migrant political transnationalism needs to consider the role of the host country policies in determining the political agendas of both immigrants and their states of origin. The transnationalism of the activities of both groups of actors differs across different receiving countries depending on the type of immigration policy they pursue.

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I agree with Faist here that multiculturalist host states in particular can offer various opportunities conducive to furthering immigrants’ transnational activities.72 We can extend this point to argue that those opportunities can also be conducive to furthering immigrants’ longdistance nationalisms. Secondly, the literature on multiculturalism can benefit from analyses of transnationalism as much as the reverse. The theoretical discussions of multiculturalism that have been sketched out above have identified its various problematic aspects from different angles. I acknowledge the value of each of these critical approaches and agree with them on many grounds. However, for the purposes of this study, these critical reviews of multiculturalism are of limited utility because they only tangentially touch upon immigrant nationalisms and completely underestimate the transnational politics of sending states. I agree with Collins et al. that ‘Multiculturalism is part of the solution, not part of the problem’ and that ‘multiculturalism should challenge the cultural or ethnic stereotypes about ethnic communities and ethnic cultures.’73 Yet I also see that in itself, multiculturalism is not the only problem, or solution. The discourses and practices of immigrants and sending states are also part of the solution, as much as they are part of the problem. For what prevents a state of harmonious living in a culturally pluralist society like Australia is not only the nationalism of ‘white Australians’, but also the nationalisms of ‘ethnics’, since they are in many cases perpetuated by the transnational politics of sending states.

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On 15 December 2009 more than 200 Turks and Assyrians gathered outside the Fairfield Council building as the councillors debated whether to allow the construction of a monument commemorating the Assyrian genocide during the First World War. The proposal for the 4.5m memorial, to be placed in a reserve opposite Bonnyrigg Park, was lodged by a local group called the Assyrian Universal Alliance. The two groups of protestors, draped in Turkish and Assyrian flags respectively, massed in the Council carpark, divided by a police picket-line. At 7.30pm the result was announced. The monument was approved. Seconds later each side began to hurl abuse at the other. The Assyrians cheered: ‘Winner, winner, winner! Thank you Australia.’ Crestfallen Turks left the carpark to pursue their campaign through other means. Within two days of the decision, A.C., a local Turkish resident in Fairfield, was able to obtain more than 800 signatures on a petition opposing the monument. The Turkish organisations in NSW also took immediate action, issuing press releases and urging the local MPs to consider the ‘divisive’ consequences of the decision taken by the Fairfield Council. ‘We migrants should not bring our own issues to Australia. Those who have always had hatred for Turks are uniting against us now. Why don’t they go and build a monument in Iraq, given that most Assyrians are of Iraqi origin and many of them were killed in Iraq,’ declared the President of the Australian Association for Turkish Industrialists and Businessmen. ‘Assyrians live their lives comfortably in Turkey. Nobody interferes in their affairs. They have never come up with such demands in Turkey. It

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is ridiculous that it is those Assyrians here making these claims. No one should be allowed to put up a statue wherever and whenever they want to,’ contended the President of the Turkish Welfare Association. Ironically, almost a year before (in September 2008) it was Turkish organisations together with the Turkish Consulate in Sydney who approached the Auburn Council with a proposal to put up a statue of Atatürk in the Auburn Botanical Gardens. The proposal was approved. This tale encapsulates some of the most significant aspects of this book. In Australia the Turkish state is unable to prevent a form of Assyrian long-distance nationalism, unimaginable for their counterparts living in Turkey, given the constitutional crime of insulting ‘Turkishness.’ There, Assyrians would find themselves in court for suggesting the commemoration of such an ‘event.’ Yet imagine: if the Turkish state lacks the capacity to get its own way on certain issues in Australia that it considers to be against its ‘national interests’, it is not inclined to regard the doctrine of nation-state sovereignty and/or autonomy as an obstacle when it comes to facilitating Turkish migrants’ ‘seeing for the state.’ The day after Fairfield Council’s announcement, the Turkish diplomatic institutions, once again, involved themselves in the mobilisation of their ‘voluntary ambassadors’ in Sydney. Petition documents, complaint letters, and contact details of the local MPs to be contacted were circulated by the Consulate in no time, reminding everyone of their duty to stand up for the vatan. The result was one more expression of what I have called trans-Kemalism, as Turkish migrants ‘see’ both like and for the state. An important aim of this book has been to demonstrate that it is inadequate to explore trans-Kemalism in Australia without situating it within the context of the authoritarian state project in Turkey. As Navaro-Yashin notes, ‘the state has particular significance in the ethnographic and historical context of Turkey, arguably more so than in other contexts.’1 This is clearly the case with the diaspora too. Unlike stateless Assyrians, Turkish emigrants originate from a country where there is an authoritarian and very interventionist state. What makes

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the Turkish situation different from others is the Kemalist state’s ongoing missionary zeal to create laic-nationalist citizens as well as to nationalise Islam. The outcome of this has been the emergence of a class of people who have appointed themselves as the vanguards and carriers of this very mobilising ideology of the state. Houston takes this point one step further in arguing for a phenomenology of laic actors’ lives in Turkey, ‘a legitimate project given that more clearly than in other places, institutional laicism there has facilitated the formation of a self-identifying, self-instituting political class.’2 The agency of this political class has developed within a social context marked by the Kemalist regime’s hostile relationship with the Ottoman past, its refusal to allow religion any autonomy from the state (hence its uneasiness with ‘secularism’ in its liberal form), its appointing of the military and the judiciary as the only really legitimate actors in political decision-making and its using of an ‘inner state’ (derin devlet) through means of surveillance and periodic violence to intimidate and silence its opponents. In this light, what makes the state an unavoidable object of analysis in the case of Turkish political transnationalism is not confined to its masterful orchestration of a wide range of techniques adopted to interpolate its emigrant communities, although these are important (e.g. the techniques of surveillance of and threats against leftists in the 1970s and 1980s, and techniques for fostering patriotism, such as the state’s authority and control over Turkish mosques abroad; the initiation of fund-raising campaigns; the organisation of commemorative events; the conscription of Turkish men living abroad; the convening of diaspora congresses; the funding of children and youth-specific programs; the provision of school textbooks to be used in Turkish Saturday Schools; the extended state-owned media coverage, the promotion of ‘Turkish culture’, and so on). Equally important is the state’s ability to propagate Kemalist actors’ seeing for it, their investing of themselves in the state project. The genocide monument demonstrates that the Turkish state is unable to prevent certain developments within the territory of another nation-state. Yet the Turkish nationalists standing in front of the Council building are paramount

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symbols of its political efficacy. Though in absentia the state is created in the practices and discourses of these real people who are working for it even as they criticise its subversion by ‘reactionaries.’ Despite their conviction, there is uniformity between the intention and work of the state institutions and the long-distance Kemalism of laic actors. As their cartoons, jokes and power-points reveal, their critical discourse seeks to perpetuate the established social order rather than dismantle it. Trans-Kemalism is fed by other sources as well. In this book I have tried to analyse the key role played by the institutions of the receiving society in engendering certain transnational processes. I have argued that the Australian government facilitates political opportunities that both the Turkish state and Turkish Kemalists take advantage of to pursue their political agendas. At the same time, these opportunities constitute a challenge to the efficacy of trans-Kemalism by making possible the identity politics of Kurds, Alevis, Assyrians and Armenians too. Further, the visions of the Turkish and Australian states overlap when Islam is concerned. Just as the Turkish state desires Turkish migrants to exemplify ‘moderate’ and ‘civil’ Muslims in Australia, Australian governments have desired the Muslim population to be like Turkish Muslims. Thus the Turkish state’s maintenance of its control and monopoly over Turkish Islam through the transnationalisation of the Diyanet apparatus is approved of the Australian state. To put it differently, the Turkish state’s management of the religious lives of Turkish Muslims in Australia, most of whom are also Australian citizens, is not perceived by the Australian state as an infringement of its own national sovereignty. The Australian officials’ embrace of trans-Kemalism is not merely a tacit one. At every official event I attended over the two years of my fieldwork, local officials too praised Atatürk’s attempts to establish a ‘secular’ and ‘modern’ Turkish Republic. In positing Atatürk’s leadership qualities and in pointing to Turkey as an exemplary democratic and secular country, they appropriated and reaffirmed the official discourse of Kemalism. It is the confluence of dual national projects (at least when the management of Islam and

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Muslims is concerned) that helps sustain the Turkish state’s nationalising control over Islam in Australia, as well as over Turkish people living there through its manipulation of Islam. If we understand transnational projects not so much as unproblematic reproductions of homeland politics, but as intersecting points of both sending and receiving state projects, then we can argue that each state displays multiple transnational faces. The question of whether this trans-Kemalism is sustainable in the future is yet another complicated matter. Although the Turkish state insists on the Turkishness of those second/third-generation Turkish citizens born in Australia and directs a substantial amount of its energy (and financial capital) to their incorporation into its nation body, the consequences of this ongoing project on the generational transmissibility of this transnational phenomenon is still to be seen. So far, however, there is little to argue that trans-Kemalism is exclusively a first-generation practice and discourse that will die out with the passing of the first-generation migrants. More importantly, it is the potential transformations that the Turkish domestic political scene will go though in these critical years that will determine its future life beyond Turkey’s borders. Turkish politics is once again on a political knife-edge. The unfolding legal investigation in Turkey into Ergenekon is a critical point of change in Turkish political life, the outcome of which is still unknown. On the other hand, there are clear signs that not everyone in Turkey is content with the ruling power of the civilian and military bureaucracy, cemented in the military-introduced 1980 Constitution and still valid today, despite the recent constitutional referendum (held on 12 September 2010). In that referendum, the passing of a constitutional amendment package was an explicit manifestation of the discontent felt by a large portion of society given that Turkish voters supported the package by a 58 per cent majority. If bolder democratic reforms can be made, i.e. a new constitution, then the possibility of a post-Kemalist Turkey arises. Although the approach adopted in this book has been to look at the expressions of trans-Kemalism (and long-distance Atatürkism) in

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one location, Australia, the processes I have illustrated have much broader application. Two key points are worth stressing here. First, the empirical analysis of the Turkish state-led politico-religious transnationalism contributes to debates on the future of the state during the odyssey of globalisation. Although this study has deliberately refrained from delving into this debate – only because enough empirical studies have shown the danger of taking a strong globalist or post-nationalist approach towards the nation-state – a few words must be said here. The Turkish case demonstrates the strength of arguments put forward by other scholars that, far from disappearing, states continue to exert a strong influence on migration flows and their expatriates.3 The rise of globalisation, the increasing codification of individual rights based on personhood, and the rapidly changing communication and transportation technologies may well have led to the reconfiguration of notions of sovereignty, territoriality and belonging, but not necessarily in the form of erasing the state. As the analysis in this book has shown, the state is still a relevant category – in some contexts more so than in others – given its continuing active involvement and exercise of power on its citizens (at home and abroad). The findings of research on state-engineered transnationalism have demonstrated this point quite explicitly. An analytical distinction made by Koopmans and Statham is useful to bear in mind in the debates over the destiny of the state. Distinguishing between the nation-state’s sovereignty and its capacity to act autonomously, they assert that it is the latter that is in decline, not the former: ‘the nation-state still is by far the most important locus of sovereignty.’4 The state has not withered away; by contrast, some are reconfiguring new ways of injecting their authority into their citizens’ lives, even those living outside of their territory. ‘Our age of globalization is also a time of nationalism, or ethnic mobilization, of the rise of xenophobic movements.’5 Transnational processes can work to facilitate this rather than undermining the state. Accordingly we do not see a ‘de-territorialising’ of the state as Glick Schiller and her colleagues described it.6 I agree with Michael Smith that the term ‘deterritorialised nation-state’ ‘fails to appreciate

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that territoriality is a defining dimension of the nation-state because it holds a monopoly on the use of violence’ amongst other things.7 To put it differently, states lack a monopoly on the use of violence in those places that are out of their territory (at least in theory). As the vignette about the Assyrian statue above illustrates, if the Turkish state has the ability to mobilise Turkish people in Sydney to speak out against Assyrian activists in Fairfield, it lacks the capacity to silence the claim-making of those Assyrians through use of violence (or other means). Nation-states are still territorially bounded entities. It would be an exaggeration of the scope of states’ extraterritorial actions if we read this phenomenon as a process of deterritorialisation. The findings of this study have led me to argue that rather than de-territorialising, nation-states are in a process of re-territorialising their institutions and mechanisms to get a ‘grip’ on their diasporic communities. The Chinese authorities organise summer camps to teach overseas Chinese children Mandarin8; the Mexican state establishes cultural institutes across the United states while initiating youth exchanges and scholarship programs in order to broaden and institutionalise its relationship with Mexicans living there9; the Brazilian state officials in Boston are sponsoring creativewriting contests among second-generation immigrants10; the Indian state uses the Overseas Citizenship of India as a tactic of transnational governance to secure the financial and material capital of the Indian diaspora11. All of these illustrate the institutionalisation of a wide range of practices and discourses by sending states, designed to maintain and promote the national belonging of their emigrants, out of which many political, social and economic gains are anticipated. Far from disappearing, more and more sending states are displaying their willingness to reproduce ‘transnational subjects’12, and more importantly, their ways of doing so. The second point of broader relevance concerns research methodology. Several important critiques of anthropological approaches to transnationalism have been made from a methodological point of view. These critiques seek to highlight potential shortcomings of anthropological studies of transnationalism, arguing that they are

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too case-specific, suffering from the ‘disadvantage of obscuring’ the scope of the transnational phenomenon.13 The assumption is that the anthropological method has less ‘scientific’ power to demonstrate the true scope and representativeness of various transnational practices, as opposed to quantitative methods that rely on surveys, questionnaires and large cross-country datasets. Proponents of these critiques have made an important effort to devise typologies for examining and confirming the empirical existence of transnational activities in more precise (measurable) terms.14 To properly understand the value of an anthropological approach to transnationalism, however, it is important to recall that anthropological analyses do more than just provide a thick description of the phenomenon in question. In the first place, its method of fieldwork offers a lens through which hardto-see dimensions of transnational phenomena can be glimpsed. Unlike typology-based approaches, this method does not seek to fix certain practices as signs of transnationality and then measure how many times those practices are enacted by sending states or migrants themselves. Such approaches bring the risk of looking for the transnational in the wrong domain, while making too quick generalisations about the existence/absence of a transnational phenomenon. Let me discuss this with an example. The typology developed by Gamlen, which canvasses the diaspora engagement policies of a large number of states across different regions, ticks the following efforts made by the Turkish state to engage with its diaspora: inclusive rhetoric and symbols; dedicated bureaucracy; special membership concessions; remittance capture; and promoting expat lobby.15 According to the typology, the Turkish state appears disinterested in a range of other mechanisms including promoting its culture offshore, shaping media, organising diaspora conferences, devising ministerial-level agencies, monitoring its emigrants, building transnational networks, providing dual citizenship and welfare protection and knowledge transfer programs. These are left un-ticked.16 To put it differently, the Turkish state seems to have little passion for its diaspora unlike some other states, even through Gamlen acknowledges (by citing Østergaard-Nielsen’s work) the Turkish state’s previous attempts ‘to

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engage with “its” diaspora in order to upscale its political agenda and gain entry to the EU.’17 In reality, all of these unticked ‘mechanisms’, along with a number of other practices analysed in this book, have actually been taken up by the Turkish state in the last three decades, clearly in pursuit of much more complex aims than mere entry into the EU. This aim does not even figure for the Turkish state’s transnational work in the Australian context. Additionally, states do not wish to get a grip on their emigrant communities only for the purpose of milking potential political and economic gains from them. They also do so when they perceive a threat from their expatriates. The Turkish state-led political transnationalism illustrates this point both in its anti-leftist policy in the late 1970s and early 1980s, as well as in its continuing anti-Kurdish and anti-Islamist prejudices in the present. To investigate why sending states become ‘diaspora-makers’ requires an empirical analysis of what state actors really do. This is the task of fieldwork. Moreover an anthropological optic facilitates even more than this. Its intention is also to examine with whom such actions are generated, for whom and with what motives. Who are included in and excluded from certain cross-border events and initiatives? What are they intended for and for whom? What makes states of origin send particular cultural brokers to perform before their emigrant communities and not some others? How do they select which days to celebrate or whom to commemorate? Who gets invited to such events? Who gets left out? Typologies do not inform on any of these questions. What is the use of having a statistical measure of certain transactions and events engendered by certain institutions or groups of people, if we have no idea about their significance for those actors involved. Ethnography does not merely describe the case at hand; it provides us with the true causes and consequences of the phenomenon. And, accompanied by a history-based approach, ethnography can also help us pinpoint whether or not transnational discourses and practices observed in the present possess historical significance. Again, typological check-lists may discover that state institutions are limited (or not) in their techniques. But this is not evidence for a

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lack of engagement with their diasporas. They may do so by aligning themselves with certain political, social, religious groups, by providing covert support to their allies, or by mobilising those allies against the dissident ones. To understand long-distance mobilisation and nationalism, it is crucial to tease out state action to facilitate others in seeing and acting for it in its absence. This requires a systematic investigation of the friction between transnationalism from above and from below, which cannot be disclosed through the use of quantitative approaches. As Guarnizo and Smith have suggested, ‘Quantitative measurement cannot replace qualitative investigation of social, economic, and political processes . . . quantitative evidence of transnational processes should be qualified by interpreting it in the context of ethnographic insights which quantitative methods cannot capture.’18 Methodologically, the study of a transnational field requires a full multi-actor-based analysis to examine the intricate interactions that take place between all migratory actors. *** As the Kemalists’ anxiety over the perceived ‘de-Kemalisation’ of Turkey and thus of the diaspora continues to deepen, the ‘father of the Turks’ finds new life in the rhetoric of state officials, as well as in the personal lives of Kemalists. Seventy years after his death, his portrait decorates homes, his image stands next to family photos, and his bust maintains a watchful eye over Turkish children in Sydney. As NavaroYashin notes, it is in the figure of the person of Atatürk that the Turkish state materialises in peoples’ (semi)consciousness, rather than being imagined in the abstract terms.19 The state is seen and acted for through the symbolism of Atatürk. This symbolism, however, does not mean much to the nonchalant gaze of non-partisans. The discourses and associated images of transAtatürkism circulate strongly but in very particular zones. Discovering Atatürk at Bondi Beach shows this. I rang Waverley Council the day after I noticed Atatürk posted up on the wall. Did they have any information about the stencil, I asked.

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The man on the phone replied: ‘Oh, you mean that poster. It was taken off the wall this morning. We don’t know who put it up. It was done without permission.’ Almost as an afterthought he then asked: ‘Who was that man in the picture anyway?’

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NOTES

Introduction Ghassan Hage, Against Paranoid Nationalism: Searching for Hope in a Shrinking Society (Annandale, 2003), p.108. 2. Following Brubaker, this book understands the term ‘diaspora’ not as a ‘bounded entity’, but as a ‘category of practice.’ Brubaker claims that ‘as a category of practice, “diaspora” is used to make claims, to articulate projects, to formulate expectations, to mobilize energies, to appeal to loyalties.’ This conceptual approach emphasises the fluidity and contingency of the term. Rogers Brubaker, ‘The ‘Diaspora’ Diaspora’, Ethnic and Racial Studies 28/1 (2005), p.12. 3. Doğu Ergil, ‘Identity Crises and Political Instability in Turkey’, Journal of International Affairs 54/1 (2000), p.50. 4. Ibid., p.51. Kurds are estimated to make up 15 to 20 per cent of the population in Turkey. The majority of them are Sunni Muslims. They speak a number of dialects of Kurdish such as Kurmanc and Zaza. At the declaration of the Republic, Kurds were heavily concentrated in the eastern and south-eastern provinces of Turkey, provinces that at one stage were named ‘Kurdistan’ by Ottoman administrators. 5. For the expulsion of non-Muslims from Anatolia see Rıfat N. Bali, Cumhuriyet Yıllarında Türkiye Yahudileri: Bir Türkleştirme Serüveni (1923– 1945) (Istanbul, 2000); Ahmet İçduygu et al., ‘The Politics of Population in a Nation-building Process: Emigration of Non-Muslims from Turkey’, Ethnic and Racial Studies 31/2 (2007), pp.358–89. 6. Ergil: ‘Identity Crises’, p.52. 1.

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281

7. Çağlar Keyder, ‘The Setting’ in Ç. Keyder (ed), Istanbul: Between the Global and the Local (Boulder, 1999), p.10. 8. Şerif Mardin, ‘European Culture and the Development of Modern Turkey’, in A. Evin and G. Denton (eds), Turkey and the European Community (Opladen, 1990), p.21. 9. Ayşe Kadıoğlu, ‘The Paradox of Turkish Nationalism and the Construction of Official Identity’, Middle Eastern Studies 32/2 (1996), p.186. 10. Feroz Ahmad, Making of Modern Turkey (New York, 1993), p.80. 11. See Christopher Houston, Kurdistan: Crafting of National Selves (Oxford, 2008). 12. For other references on this topic see Nilüfer Göle, ‘The Gendered Nature of the Public Sphere’, Public Culture 10/1 (1997), pp.61–81; Bobby Sayyid, A Fundamental Fear: Eurocentrism and the Emergence of Islamism (London, 1997). 13. Ernest Gellner, Muslim Society (Cambridge, 1981), p.68. 14. Hakan Yavuz, ‘Cleansing Islam from the Public Sphere’, Journal of International Affairs 54/1 (2000), p.24. 15. Göle: ‘The Gendered Nature’, p.68. 16. Given these distinctive meanings of the term laicism, this study has chosen to use the words laic and laicism (rather than secular and secularism) to refer to the group of actors that it wishes to describe. This is in keeping with anthropological convention that privileges subjects’ own terms for themselves over vocabulary or categories from other contexts that may carry a different range of meanings and associations. 17. Ümit Cizre, ‘Problems of Democratic Governance of Civil-Military Relations in Turkey and the European Union Enlargement Zone’, European Journal of Political Research 43 (2004), p.113. See also Ümit Cizre Sakallıoğlu, ‘The Anatomy of the Turkish Military’s Autonomy’, Comparative Politics 29/2 (1997), pp.151–66. 18. Kadıoğlu: ‘The Paradox’, p.189. 19. The NSC is a supra-parliamentary body made up of the president, the prime minister, the foreign minister, the defence minister, the minister of internal affairs and five top army generals. 20. The military had also been influential in the banning of two ‘pro-Islamic’ parties that predated the Welfare Party, namely the National Order Party and the National Salvation Party. The Virtue Party, which was an offspring of the banned Welfare Party, was also closed down in 2001 at the urging of the military. 21. Cizre: ‘Problems of Democratic’, p.108. 22. For detailed reading on militarism and schooling: Sam Kaplan, The Pedagogical state: Education and the Politics of National Culture in post-1980

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23. 24.

25. 26. 27.

28.

29. 30.

31.

32. 33. 34.

BEYOND TURKEY ’S BORDERS

Turkey (Stanford, 2006); Ayşe Gül Altınay, The Myth of the Military-Nation: Militarism, Gender, and Education in Turkey (New York, 2004). Ümit Cizre and Joshua Walker, ‘Conceiving the New Turkey after Ergenekon’, The International Spectator 45/1 (2010), pp.89–98. Ergenekon is allegedly an extension of the derin devlet (inner state). Controlled by the army, the inner state has worked together with Turkish intelligence services, judiciary and the political wing to preserve state interests through violence, assassinations and other means of pressure. Cizre: ‘Problems of democratic’, p.113. Cizre and Walker: ‘Conceiving the New’, p.89. See Joy Elley, ‘Guestworkers or Settler? Turkish Migrants in Melbourne’, unpublished PhD thesis, Monash University, 1985; Ahmet İçduygu, Migrant as a Transitional Category: Turkish Migrants in Melbourne, Australia, unpublished PhD thesis, Australian National University, 1991. See Lenore Manderson and Christine Inglis, ‘Turkish Migration and Workforce Participation in Sydney, Australia’, International Migration Review 18/2 (1984), pp.258–75; Christine Inglis et al., Making Something of Myself: Educational Attainment and Social Mobility of Turkish-Australian Young People (Canberra, 1992); Rahmi Akçelik (ed) Turkish Youth in Australia (Melbourne, 1993); Benal Keceli and Desmond Cahill, ‘Education and Inequality: a case study of second-generation Turkish Australians’, Journal of Intercultural Studies 19/2 (1998), pp.207–13; Joel Windle, ‘The Ethnic (Dis)advantage Debate Revisited: Turkish background students in Australia’, Journal of Intercultural Studies 25/3 (2004), pp.271–86. Alejandro Portes et al., ‘The study of transnationalism: pitfalls and promise of an emergent research field’, Ethnic and Racial Studies 22/2 (1999), p.224. Michel S. Laguerre, ‘state, Diaspora, and Transnational Politics: Haiti Reconceptualized’, Millennium: Journal of International Studies 28/3 (1999), pp.633–51. Alejandro Portes, ‘Conclusion: Theoretical Convergences and Empirical Evidence in the Study of Immigrant Transnationalism’, IMR 37/3 (2003), p.880. Ibid. Eva Østergaard-Nielsen, Transnational Politics: Turks and Kurds in Germany (New York, 2003b). See the following special issues on this topic: Ethnic and Racial Studies 22/2 (1999); Global Networks 1/3 (2001); International Migration Review 37/3 (2003); Ethnic and Racial Studies 31/4 (2008); Turkish Studies 10/2 (2009); Nationalism and Ethnic Politics 17/1 (2011). The term ‘transnationalism’ was initially defined by a pioneering group of anthropologists led by Nina

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35. 36. 37.

38.

39.

40.

283

Glick Schiller, Cristina Blanc-Szanton and Linda Basch as ‘the process by which transmigrants, through their daily activities, forge and sustain multistranded social, economic and political relations that link together their societies of origin and settlement, and through which they create transnational social fields that cross national borders.’ Linda Basch et al., Nations Unbound: Transnational Projects, Postcolonial Predicaments and Deterritorialized Nation-states (Langhorne, 1994), p.6. This formulation was widened in later studies to consider the efficacy of various other actors in the production of the ‘transnational’. Levitt and Jaworsky, for example, understand transnationalism as taking place within multi-layered and multi-sited social fields – not just the home and host countries – that connect migrants not only to their countries of origin and settlement, but also to their ‘co-nationals and co-religionists’ living elsewhere. Peggy Levitt and B. Nadya Jaworsky, ‘Transnational Migration Studies: Past Developments and Future Trends’, Annual Review of Sociology 33 (2007), p.131. Mark J. Miller, Foreign Workers in Western Europe: An Emerging Political Force (New York, 1981), p.6. Laurie A. Brand, Citizens abroad: Emigration and the state in the Middle East and North Africa (Cambridge; New York, 2006), p.2. Rainer Bauböck, ‘Towards a Political Theory of Migrant Transnationalism’, International Migration Review 37/3 (2003), pp.719–20. For similar arguments see also Nancy L. Green and François Weil, ‘Introduction’ in N. L. Green and F. Weil (eds), Citizenship and Those Who Leave: The Politics of Emigration and Expatriation (Urbana, 2007); Douglas S. Massey, ‘International Migration at the Dawn of the Twenty-First Century: The Role of the state’, Population and Development Review 25/2 (1999), pp.303–22. Eva Østergaard-Nielsen, ‘The Politics of Migrants’ Transnational Political Practices’, International Migration Review 37/3 (2003a), p.764. ØstergaardNielsen highlights the striking differences between the European-based and US-based studies of migrant transnationalism. She notes that ‘(pre)occupied with the implications of transnational political practices on receiving countries’, European-based research has tended to focus on migrants’ political participation. US-based studies, on the other hand, have been mostly interested in investigating the role of the sending country as a mobilising factor. This strand of research has taken the form of study of migrants’ long-distance nationalism; of home-town civic committees; and of migrants’ participation in the politics of their birthplace. Luin Goldring, ‘The Mexican state and transmigrant organizations: negotiating the boundaries of membership and participation’, Latin American Research Review 37/3 (2002), p.64.

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41. These include Dominicans (Luis E. Guarnizo et al., ‘Assimilation and Transnationalism: Determinants of Transnational Political Action among Contemporary Migrants’, The American Journal of Sociology 108/6 (2003), pp.1211–48; Luis E. Guarnizo, ‘The Rise of Transnational Formations: Mexican and Dominican State Responses to Transnational Migration’, Political Power and Social Theory 12 (1998), pp.45–94); Mexicans (Michael P. Smith, ‘Transnationalism, the state, and the Extraterritorial Citizen’, Politics & Society 31/4 (2003), pp.467–502); Haitians (Basch et al.: Nations Unbound). 42. See Saskia Sassen, ‘The de facto Transnationalizing of Immigration Policy’ in C. Joppke (ed), Challenge to the Nation-state. Immigration in Western Europe and the United states (Oxford, 1998); Kenichi Ohmae, The Borderless World: Power and Strategy in the Interlinked Economy (London, 1991). 43. Pál Nyíri, ‘The “New Migrant”: state and Market Constructions of Modernity and Patriotism’ in P. Nyíri and J. Breidenbach (eds), China Inside Out (Budapest, 2005), p.158. 44. Basch et al.: Nations Unbound, p.3. 45. Sarah J. Mahler, ‘Theoretical and Empirical Contributions toward a Research Agenda for Transnationalism’ in M. P. Smith and L. E. Guarnizo (eds), Transnationalism from Below (New Brunswick, 1998). 46. Robert C. Smith, ‘Reflections on Migration, the State and the Construction, Durability and Newness of Transnational Life’ in L. Pries (ed), Migration and Transnational Social Spaces (Aldershot, 1999). 47. Bauböck: ‘Towards a Political’, p.720. See Brand for a more complex set of explanations (macro-historical, international politics, economic, domestic political, and security/stability explanations). Brand: Citizens abroad, pp.14–19. 48. Cited in Pierre Bourdieu and Loïc Wacquant, ‘The Organic Ethnologist of Algerian Migration’, Ethnography 1/2 (2000), p.173. 49. See Brand: Citizens Abroad, p.35 50. Yael Navaro-Yashin, Faces of the state: Secularism and Public Life in Turkey (Princeton, 2002). 51. Ibid., p.2. 52. See Guarnizo et al.: ‘Assimilation’; Levitt and Jaworsky: ‘Transnational Migration’, p.136. 53. Turkish Studies 10/2 (2009). 54. On a different note, this special collection is informative about the preoccupations of most scholars writing on Turkish migration. There is barely a mention of the transnational politics of the Turkish state in the journal. No attention is given to the political activities of Kemalists, although the activities of Alevis and Islamists (i.e. the Gülen movement) are of concern to the editors.

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285

55. Thomas Faist, ‘Beyond a Methodologically Nationalist Perspective on Civil Society’, Turkish Studies 10/2 (2009), p.319. 56. Ibid. 57. Portes et al.: ‘The Study of Transnationalism’, p.222. 58. Guarnizo et al.: ‘Assimilation.’ 59. Alan Gamlen, ‘The Emigration State and the Modern Geopolitical Imagination’, Political Geography 27 (2008), pp.840–56. 60. Luis E. Guarnizo and Michael P. Smith, ‘The Locations of Transnationalism’ in Michael P. Smith and Luis E. Guarnizo (eds), Transnationalism from Below (New Brunswick, 1998), p.28. 61. James Scott, Seeing Like a state: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed (New Haven, 1998).

Chapter 1 1. Bilal N. Şimşir, Avustralya Türk Edebiyatı Antolojisi (Ankara, 1997), p.xviii. 2. Ibid., p.xix. 3. Nermin Abadan-Unat, ‘Turkish Migration to Europe, 1960–1975: a balance sheet of achievements and failures’ in N. Abadan-Unat (ed), Turkish Workers in Europe 1960–1975: a socio-economic reappraisal (Leiden, 1976), p.5. 4. Mübeccel B. Kıray, ‘The Family of the Immigrant Worker’ in N. AbadanUnat (ed), Turkish Workers in Europe 1960–1975: A Socio-economic Reappraisal (Leiden, 1976), p.211. 5. Turkey signed agreements with Austria, the Netherlands and Belgium in 1964; with France in 1965; and with Sweden in 1967. In addition to these, agreements of narrower scope were signed with the United Kingdom in 1961; with Switzerland in 1971; and with Denmark and Norway in 1973 and 1981 respectively. Between 1961 and 1974 approximately 800,000 Turkish workers migrated to Europe through the Employment Agency of which the majority went to Germany, France, Austria, and the Netherlands. For a detailed account of Turkish emigration history see Ahmet İçduygu, International Migration Debates within the Context of Turkey-European Union Relations (Istanbul, 2006). 6. Abadan-Unat: ‘Turkish Migration’, p.6. 7. Ahmet İçduygu, ‘Facing Changes and Making Choices: Unintended Turkish Immigrant Settlement in Australia’, International Migration 32/1 (1994), p.71. 8. See Suzanne Paine, Exporting Workers: the Turkish Case (Cambridge, 1974). In the 1970s, large numbers of Turkish workers also migrated to the oilexporting Arab countries, a trend that continued increasingly in the 1980s.

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9. Charles Price, ‘Australia’ in D. Kubat (ed), The Politics of Migration Policies: The First World in the 1970s (New York, 1979), p.6. 10. Ibid., p.4. Laid down in the Immigration Restriction Act of 1901, the ‘White Australia Policy’ aimed at excluding all non-European migrants. The Act introduced the Dictation Test that required every person seeking entry to Australia to write a passage of 50 words in length in a European language. 11. Stephen Castles et al., Mistaken Identity: Multiculturalism and the Demise of Nationalism in Australia (Sydney, 1988), p.46. 12. Mark Lopez, The Origins of Multiculturalism in Australian Politics 1945–1975 (Melbourne, 2000), p.49. 13. See James Jupp, From White Australia to Woomera: The Story of Australian Immigration (Melbourne, 2007). 14. Lopez: The Origins of Multiculturalism, pp.52–3. 15. Ibid., pp.69–71. 16. Ibid., p.79. 17. Laksiri Jayasuriya, ‘Multiculturalism: Fact, Policy and Rhetoric’ in M. E. Poole, P. R. Lacey and B. S. Srandhawa (eds), Australia in Transition: culture and life possibilities (Sydney, 1985). 18. Ibid., p.27. 19. Although the turning point in the emergence of multiculturalism in Australia is often traced to the years of the Whitlam and Fraser governments in the 1970s when multiculturalism became the official policy, Lopez convincingly shows that the ideas encouraging the ideological development towards multiculturalism were being discussed by the close of the 1960s. 20. Hürriyet Babacan, ‘Turks’ in J. Jupp (ed), The Australian People: an Encyclopaedia of the Nation, its People and their Origins (Melbourne, 2001). 21. James Jupp, Arrivals and Departures (Melbourne, 1966), p.21. 22. Babacan: ‘Turks’, p.709. 23. İçduygu: Migrant as a Transitional, p.63. 24. Jean Martin, The Migrant Presence: Australian Responses 1947–1977 (Sydney, 1978), p.30. 25. İçduygu: Migrant as a Transitional, p.47. 26. Banu Şenay, ‘Ulusaşırı Toplumsal Alanlar, Ulusaşırı Kimlikler: Avustralyalı Türkler Örneği’ in R. Ö. Dönmez, P. Enneli and N. Altuntaş (eds), Türkiye’de Kesişen ve Çatışan Dinsel ve Etnik Kimlikler (Istanbul, 2010), p.265. 27. This tendency to define the Turkish self as ‘European’ was appropriated for pragmatic purposes by the Syrian/Lebanese migrants in Australia in the early 1900s whilst they were applying for naturalisation. As Hage’s research on the Arabic migrants in Australia shows, when it became more difficult for Asiatic Aliens to become naturalised, Turkey was more often stated as the place of birth. See Ghassan Hage, Arab-Australians Today: Citizenship and Belonging (Melbourne, 2002), p.22.

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287

28. John S. Macdonald and Leatrice D. Macdonald, ‘Chain migration, ethnic neighbourhood formation and social networks’, The Milbank Memorial Fund Quarterly 42/1 (1964), p.83. 29. İçduygu: Migrant as a Transitional, p.50. 30. Ibid. 31. Babacan: ‘Turks’, p.710. 32. İçduygu: ‘Facing Changes’, p.75. 33. Paine: Exporting Workers, p.56. 34. All names are pseudonyms. 35. Hatice H. Başarın and Vecihi Başarın, The Turks in Australia: Celebrating twenty-five years down under (Victoria, 1993), p.47. 36. Ibid., p.13. 37. Cited in Lopez: The Origins of Multiculturalism, p.104. 38. Manderson and Inglis: ‘Turkish Migration’, p.266. 39. In some cases the decision to send the children back to Turkey was made with the consideration that it would be better for them to socialise in the home country and learn the Turkish way of life. This concern also reflects the perception of many migrants who saw themselves as temporary. 40. Turkish Women’s Literacy Group, Senelerin Arzusu (Sydney, 1987), pp.26–7. 41. The Turkish migrants in Melbourne were also in a very similar situation. Only less than one fifth of the Turkish people who migrated between 1968– 74 had the intention of settling permanently in Australia. See İçduygu: Migrant as a Transitional, p.77. 42. İçduygu: ‘Facing Changes’, p.79. 43. Lenore Manderson, ‘Turks’ in J. Jupp (ed), The Australian People. An Encyclopaedia of the Nation, its People and their Origin (Sydney, 1988), p.35. 44. İçduygu: ‘Facing Changes’, p.78. 45. Department of Immigration & Citizenship, ‘Community Information Summary, Turkey-Born’ (Canberra, 2007), p.1. 46. Ibid. 47. Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS), Australians’ Ancestries, Catalogue No: 2901 (Canberra, 2001). 48. DIAC: ‘Community Information’, p.3.

Chapter 2 1.

2.

Apart from the term ‘Islamists’, Kemalists also use other generic words to refer to this group such as ‘dinciler’ (religious fanatics) or ‘yobazlar’ (reactionaries). The political history presented in this chapter will cover the political activities of those who constitute themselves as the ‘majority’ in the Turkish

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288

3. 4. 5. 6.

7. 8. 9.

10.

11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16.

17.

BEYOND TURKEY ’S BORDERS

community. The self-mobilisation of Kurdish and Alevi people from Turkey will not be addressed in much detail. This image was printed in Yorum newspaper on 4 June 1993 (p.8). Ergun Özbudun, Contemporary Turkish Politics: Challenges to Democratic Consolidation (Boulder, 2000), p.33. Ibid., p.74. The intense politicisation of the Turkish migrants is not limited to those in Australia. The literature on Turkish migrant organisations in European host countries has also confirmed this point. See Lale Yalçın-Heckmann, ‘The Perils of Ethnic Associational Life in Europe: Turkish Migrants in Germany and France’ in T. Modood and P. Werbner (eds), The Politics of Multiculturalism in the New Europe: Racism, Identity and Community (London, 1997); Betigül E. Argun, Turkey in Germany: The Transnational Sphere of Deutschkei (New York, 2003); Østergaard-Nielsen: Transnational Politics. Miller: Foreign Workers. Ibid., p.2. The PKK is a Kurdish militant organisation led by Abdullah Öcalan since 27 November 1978. Its main objective has been to resist Turkish nationalism and the assimilation of Kurds. A very violent but so-called low-intensity war between the Turkish government forces and PKK militants continued until 1998. In 1999, Öcalan was arrested in Kenya and imprisoned in Istanbul. The most prominent Turkish associations active in the second half of the 1970s were the Turkish Welfare Association, Turkish Islamic Culture and Mosque Construction Association, Turkish Education and Culture Association, Turkish Cypriots’ Association, and Australian Contemporary Turkish Workers’ Association. Murat Belge, ‘Nationalism, Democracy and the Left in Turkey’, Journal of Intercultural Studies 30/1 (2009), p.7. Yorum, 13 November 1978, p.2. Ibid., 12 November 1979, p.1. Ibid., 2 October 1979, p.5. Houston: Kurdistan, p.128. Ibid. Each and every People’s House in Turkey would provide social and cultural activities in at least three of these possible divisions: 1. Language, History and Literature, 2. Fine Arts, 3. Theatre, 4. Sports, 5. Social Assistance, 6. Public Classes and Courses, 7. Library and Publishing, 8. Village Development, 9. Museums and Exhibitions. Yorum, 9 June 1980, p.11.

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NOTES

289

18. I came across much news and many commentaries published in Yorum that reflected the presence of an internationalist vision among the leftist Turkish migrants. The STPH not only took action in relation to the issues that were of concern to the Turkish workers, but through Yorum it continuously voiced its support for non-Turkish leftist migrants in Australia. For example, the quote below was taken from a letter written in the name of the STPH regarding the South African Night organised by South African migrants in Sydney on 16 June 1979: To the South African Community Organisation: The STPH identifies with any struggle made to fight against racism, chauvinism and imperialism as its own wherever they may be. For this reason, we are proud to acknowledge that we support the struggle of the South African community. Long live the legitimate struggle of the South African community and the struggles of every oppressed society. Yorum, 25.6.1979, p. 4. 19. Ibid., 1 October 1979, p.1. 20. Ibid., 9 June 1980, p.2. 21. Although the narrative refers to an incident here in which the Turkish leftists in Sydney burned the Turkish flag, I could not come across any evidence confirming this argument whether in my archival research or in the interviews I had with leftists about that time. 22. Østergaard-Nielsen: Transnational Politics, p.118. 23. Ibid. 24. Ibid. 25. Ahmet İçduygu et al., ‘What is the Matter with Citizenship? A Turkish Debate’, Middle Eastern Studies 35/4 (1999), p.187. 26. Thousands of Kurds also left Turkey as political refugees after the coup following the declaration of martial law and accompanying state violence in the Kurdish regions of Turkey. In the 1960s, Kurdish activists found a political space to voice their demands within the broader left movement. From the side of the Kurdish activists, their alignment with the left could result in a social revolution and free them from repression; and from the side of the leftists, the base of the leftist movement could expand by voicing the demands of the Kurds and Alevis. See Yavuz: ‘Cleansing Islam’, p.10. 27. Argun: Turkey in Germany, p.141. 28. The full version of the law is: ‘A person who has been engaged in activities violating the internal and external security of the Turkish Republic or the economic and financial security of the country in the form of an

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290

29.

30. 31.

32.

33.

BEYOND TURKEY ’S BORDERS

offence described by the law or a person who, after being engaged in such activities at home, has in any manner gone abroad such that it is not possible to file public action against him or to initiate penal proceedings or to enforce a ruling and who has failed to come back despite notification within three months, or in the case of Martial Law or Emergency Situation within one month will lose his citizenship.’ Nalan Soyarık, The Citizen of the state and the state of the Citizen: An Analysis of the Citizenization Process in Turkey, unpublished PhD thesis, Bilkent University, 2000, p.189. Ibid., p.191. Thousands of non-Muslim Turkish citizens with ethnic origins other than Turkish were also expelled from Turkish citizenship on the grounds expressed in this law. Through archival research on Official Gazette, Soyarık tracked down 3092 individual cases of loss of Turkish citizenship by non-Muslim Turkish citizens. Østergaard-Nielsen: Transnational Politics, p.118. Jonathan Power’s work reveals that a similar anti-leftist attitude also determined the transnational politics of the Moroccan, Greek, Spanish and Portuguese states in those years. To avoid their immigrants from getting involved in political activities, ‘the Greek government of the Junta organized social clubs in the main German cities, and supported football teams and religious activities for the Greek immigrants in Germany’ while ‘the Turkish government provided Turkish teachers for Turkish children in German schools, and imams to be spiritual leaders to the Turkish Muslim community.’ Jonathan Power, Migrant Workers in Western Europe and the United states (Oxford, 1979), p.57. Yorum, 12 October 1981, p.11. It is interesting that the leftist subject of this narrative also points attention to the oppression of Kurds. As in Turkey, Kurdish activists in Sydney first associated themselves with the leftist group. The first Kurdish formation in Sydney was the Australian Kurdish Union established in 1981. The declarations made by this institution referred to Kurdish people in Sydney (from Turkey) as labourers in the first hand rather than as a distinct ethnic group and mainly used an anti-imperialist rather than an anti-nationalist discourse. The issue of right-left polarisation, and particularly the political activities of the ultra-nationalist Turks first appeared in the Australian press in 1980. A Melbourne-based monthly journal, Nation Review, published an article titled ‘Turkish Fascism in Australia’ in a May 1980 issue. The article argued that the fascist movement in Europe initiated by the Turkish Nationalist Movement found supporters among the rightist Turks in Sydney and

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NOTES

34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48.

49. 50. 51.

52. 53. 54.

55.

291

Melbourne. Referring to the Cultural Hearths in Sydney and their newspaper as the supporters of the fascist movement, as well as to their newspaper, Çağrı, the article also makes a critique of Australian multiculturalism: ‘Because of its naivety and inexperience, Australia is giving too much freedom to some groups to put their political views into action.’ Ibid., 26 May 1980, p.3. Yorum, 18 January 1982, p.8. Ibid. Ibid., 6 December 1982, p.3. Ibid., p.1. Ibid., 23 May 1983, p.5. Ibid., p.3. Ibid., 14 March 1983, p.6, 8. Ibid., p.8. Ibid., 5 September 1983, p.12. Ibid., 3 December 1984, p.4. Østergaard-Nielsen: Transnational Politics, p.42. Belge: ‘Nationalism’, p.14. Ibid. Yavuz: ‘Cleansing Islam’, p.28. Tanıl Bora, ‘Istanbul of the Conqueror: The ‘Alternative Global City’ Dreams of Political Islam’ in Ç. Keyder (ed), Istanbul: Between the Global and the Local (Boulder, 1999), p.439. Hakan Yavuz, ‘Five Stages of the Construction of Kurdish Nationalism in Turkey’, Nationalism & Ethnic Politics 7/3 (2001), p.11. Ibid., 5 June 1989, p.3. For example, the TWA was the key supporter of the campaign initiated by the Turkish state in 1989 through its consular networks, which asked for financial support from Turks abroad to be provided for the hundreds of thousands of Bulgarian Turks forced to emigrate from Bulgaria in the same year. A bigger campaign, ‘Mehmetçik El Ele’ (‘Hand in Hand with the Turkish Soldier) was initiated in 1995 again to generate financial support for the Turkish Armed Forces in the war against the PKK. Michael Billig, Banal Nationalism (London, 1995). Dayanışma, 26 May 1995, p.2. Note here the state discourse’s gendering of the nation. For more on the topic of nationalism and gender see Nira Yuval-Davis, Gender and Nation (London, 1997). Dayanışma, 14 April 1993, p.1.

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56. Ibid., 5 June 1998, p.2. 57. Ibid., 18 March 1999, p.24.

Chapter 3 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

6.

7. 8. 9. 10.

11. 12. 13.

14.

Scott: Seeing Like. Ibid., p.2. Ibid. Houston: Kurdistan, p.4. Ayşe Kadıoğlu, ‘Can We Envision Turkish Citizenship as Non-Membership?’ in E. F. Keyman and A. İçduygu (eds), Citizenship in a Global World: European Questions and Turkish Experiences (London, 2005), p.114. There is a strange omission of Kemalism from Scott’s list of authoritarian regimes that emerged in the early twentieth century. According to Seeing Like a state, state-originated social engineering originates in ‘a pernicious combination of four elements. These are: the administrative ordering of nature and society; a high modernist ideology; an authoritarian state; and an incapacitated civil society.’ (Scott: Seeing Like, pp.4–5). Clearly, all of these elements were present in the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and the emergence of the Turkish nation-state. ‘Türkoloji Projesi 5. Yaz Staj Programı Sona Erdi’, Avrasya Bülteni (2007), p.3. Yael Navaro-Yashin, ‘‘Life is Dead Here’: Sensing the Political in ‘No Man’s Land’’, Anthropological Theory 3/1 (2003), pp.107–25. Ibid., pp.107–8. We can also describe the circulation of this type of information as part of the Consulate’s ‘roots-making’ activities, using Smith’s term. Smith notes the Mexican state’s distribution of a wide range of information (as part of the Program for Mexican Communities Abroad) regarding the work of Mexican painters, poets, writers, and musicians. Smith: ‘Transnationalism, the state’, p.472. Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London, 1991). Arjun Appadurai, Modernity at Large (Minneapolis, 1996), p.8. See also Laguerre: ‘state, Diaspora, and Transnational Politics’ for an analysis of how the Haitian state has reconfigured its engagement with Haitian emigrants by using new technologies. Charles Turner, ‘Nation and Commemoration’ in G. Delanty and K. Kumar (eds), The SAGE Handbook of Nations and Nationalism (London, 2006), p.206.

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15. Ibid., p.209. 16. These are after-hours language schools funded by the Australian authorities that provide mother tongue language teaching. The education that young Australian Turks receive at Saturday School classes is regarded by the Consulate as an important component of their Turkish ‘citizenisation’ process in Australia. The Consulate’s providing of school textbooks published by the Ministry of Education in Turkey as the basic and required texts for use at these language schools is a clear example of this. In the process the official curriculum in Turkey itself becomes ‘transnationalised’ through the axis of the Consulate’s education office and the institutions facilitating Australian multiculturalism. 17. Paul Connerton, How Societies Remember (Cambridge, 1989), p.4. 18. Yeni Vatan, 7 May 2009, p.3. 19. Mona Ozouf, ‘The Festival in the French Revolution’ in J. Le Goff and P. Nora (eds), Constructing the Past: Essays in Historical Methodology (Cambridge, 1974), p.181. 20. Circular Quay is a vibrant part of the Sydney city district located between the Opera House and the Harbour Bridge. The place is also a key transportation hub, hosting ferry quays and a train station. 21. See Miller: Foreign Workers. 22. Argun: Turkey in Germany, p.27. 23. Navaro-Yashin: ‘Life is dead’, p.12. 24. Ernest Renan, Qu’est-ce qu’une nation? (Paris, 1882), p.26. 25. More information is available at http://www.ghdb.gov.tr/agenc/

Chapter 4 1. 2. 3. 4.

5.

Muslim leader in public worship. ‘God is most great. God is almighty.’ Literally means ‘the opening.’ It is the first chapter of the Qur’an and is recited at the start of each cycle of prayer. For religious transnationalism see Peggy Levitt, ‘You Know, Abraham was really the First Immigrant: Religion and Transnational Migration’, International Migration Review 37/3 (2003), pp.847–73; Peggy Levitt, God Needs No Passport: Immigrants and the Changing American Religious Landscape (New York, 2007). See Sayyid’s work on the elimination of Islamic symbols from emerging modernist public places (the concert hall, the university, the clinic, the stadium, etc.) in the early Republican years. In addition to the re-arrangement of the public space to exclude Islam, a number of structural changes were introduced

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6. 7. 8.

9. 10. 11. 12.

13. 14.

15.

16. 17. 18.

BEYOND TURKEY ’S BORDERS

including the abolition of the Caliphate, the closing down of the Sufi lodges and medreses (religious educational institutions), the replacing of the Arabic alphabet by the Latin alphabet, to name a few. Sayyid: A Fundamental Fear. Ibid., p.63. Houston: Kurdistan, p.102. Esra Özyürek, ‘“The Light of the Alevi Fire Was Lit in Germany and then Spread to Turkey”: A Transnational Debate on the Boundaries of Islam’, Turkish Studies 10/2 (2009), p.237. Ibid. Available at: http://www.diyanet.gov.tr/english/tanitim.asp?id=13# Accessed on 2 February 2010. Günter Seufert, ‘The Faculties of Divinity in the Current Tug-of-War’ in Les Annales de l’ Autre Islam (Paris, 1999), p.361. Zana Çitak, ‘Between ‘Turkish Islam’ and ‘French Islam’: The Role of the Diyanet in the Conseil Français du Culte Musulman’, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 36/4 (2010), p.622. Ibid., pp.621–22. The most important of these festivals is the week celebrating the Prophet Muhammed’s birth anniversary known as Kutlu Doğum Haftası. The type and number of activities held during the festival week differ across host countries according to the size of the Turkish population. The 2009 programme of the festival involved 338 different events and activities worldwide (nearly half of these activities were held in Germany) including Qur’an reciting competitions, conferences, book fairs, sports activities, Sufi music concerts, poetry writing competitions, performances of whirling dervishes, craft exhibitions, house visits to the families of martyrs, etc. See Jeroen Doomernik, ‘The Institutionalization of Turkish Islam in Germany and the Netherlands: A Comparison’, Ethnic and Racial Studies 18/1 (1995), pp.46–63; Gamze Avcı, ‘Religion, Transnationalism and Turks in Europe’, Turkish Studies 6/2 (2005), pp.201–13. Doomernik: ‘The Institutionalization’, p.53. Turkish News Weekly, 7 September 2007, p.2. Such interpolation also feeds into the conscription of Turkish citizens abroad in exchange for a monetary fee. Turkish male citizens who are under the age of 38 are obliged to pay 5,112 Euros if they wish to be exempted from military service. The fee to be paid by those who are at the age of 38 or more is 7,688 Euros. However men are not completely ‘exempted’ from doing the military service even when they pay the required fee. It is still compulsory

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NOTES

19. 20. 21.

22.

23.

24.

25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30.

295

for them to serve the military for twenty one days in the Turkish city of Burdur. The Canberra Times, 10 September 2006. Turkish News Weekly, 22 September 2006 Similar to the Diyanet, the Turkish Ministry of Culture and Tourism has also extended its institutional structure outside Turkey. There are 40 Kültür ve Tanıtma Müşavirliği (Consulates for Cultural and Information Services) abroad operating in coordination with Ankara. Institutionalised within Turkish consular bodies, they facilitate and coordinate advertising campaigns promoting Turkish culture. See http://www.kultur.gov.tr All mevlevihane (lodges used by Mevlevi dervishes) were closed down by the Turkish state in 1925. In the 1950s, they were re-allowed to perform the sema ceremony in public, but only on the anniversary of Rumi’s death. The restrictions were further eased with the touristification of the ceremony by many private groups. Sema has evolved into a spiritual practice performed and taught in Mevlevi circles. The whirling of the dervishes during the Sema represents their spiritual journey. Turkish Alevites in Sydney, who are generally critical about the Diyanet and the Turkish Sunni Islam it promotes, were an exception to this. Attending a social night held at the association building of the Turkish Alevites not long after the performance of the Whirling Dervishes, I discovered that no one had gone to see the event. The president of the association touched on this point too in the speech he made that night: ‘When we ask the [Turkish] Government to sponsor the artists that we want to bring here for our events, we are always told the same thing: ‘We do not have enough funding for that.’ Yet they wander from one country to another with their huge groups [implying the Whirling Dervishes]. Why shall I go to their event? I don’t even understand the language they sing in. It is not Turkish. Who knows why they spin around anyway? We commemorate Hacı Bektaş-ı Veli instead, because he put his feelings into words in Turkish. We promise neither hell nor heaven in our folksongs.’ Zaman, 5 August 2007, p.5. Available at: http://www.mevlanayili.gov.tr Ian Almond, Sufism and Deconstruction: A Comparative Study of Derrida and Ibn ‘Arabi (New York, 2004). Ibid., p.12. Ibid., p.19. Ibid.

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31. Ibid., p.16. 32. Elif Şafak, Aşk (Istanbul, 2009).

Chapter 5 1. Christopher Houston, ‘The Never Ending Dance: Islamism, Kemalism and the Power of Self-institution in Turkey’, The Australian Journal of Anthropology 17/2 (2006), pp.161–78. 2. Hamit Bozarslan, ‘Political Crisis and the Kurdish Issue in Turkey’ in R. Olson (ed), The Kurdish Nationalist Movement in the 1990s: Its Impact on Turkey and the Middle East (Kentucky, 1996), pp.137–38. 3. Ibid., p.138. 4. Michael Herzfeld, Cultural Intimacy: Social Poetics in the Nation-state (New York, 1997). 5. See Benedict Anderson, Long-Distance Nationalism: World Capitalism and the Rise of Identity Politics, The Wertheim Lecture Centre for Asian Studies, Amsterdam, University of Amsterdam; Benedict Anderson, ‘Western Nationalism and Eastern Nationalism: Is there a difference that matters?’, New Left Review 9 (2001), pp.31–42; Zlatko Skrbiš, LongDistance Nationalism: Diasporas, Homelands and Identities (Aldershot, 1999); Amanda Wise, ‘Nation, Transnation, Diaspora: Locating East Timorese Long-Distance Nationalism’, SOJOURN 19/2 (2004), pp.151–80; Nina Glick Schiller, ‘Long-Distance Nationalism’ in M. Ember, C. R. Ember and I. Skoggard (eds), Encyclopedia of Diasporas. Immigrant and Refugee Cultures around the World (New York, 2005). 6. Anderson: ‘Western Nationalism’, p.42. 7. Glick Schiller: ‘Long-Distance’, pp.570–71. 8. Wise: ‘Nation.’ 9. Skrbiš: Long-Distance Nationalism. 10. Øivind Fuglerud, Life on the Outside: The Tamil diaspora and long-distance nationalism (London, 1999). 11. Glick Schiller: ‘Long-Distance.’ 12. Thomas Hylland Eriksen, Ethnicity and Nationalism: Anthropological Perspectives (London, 2002), pp.154–5. 13. Reşat Kasaba and Sibel Bozdoğan, ‘Turkey at a Crossroad’, Journal of International Affairs 54/1 (2000), p.7. 14. Ibid. 15. Esra Özyürek, Nostalgia for the Modern: state Secularism and Everyday Politics in Turkey (Durham, 2006). 16. Ibid., p.3.

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297

17. Ibid., pp.3–6. 18. Ibid., p.16. 19. Interestingly, a couple of weeks before the conducting of this interview (in December 2007), Fazıl Say announced he was thinking of abandoning Turkey, as secular people like him were now a ‘minority’ in it. 20. Fethullah Gülen is the leader of the Gülen movement which grew out of the Nur Jamaat in Turkey during the 1960s. Gülen’s theology can be described as a moderate expression of Sunni/Hanafi Islam, putting emphasis on interfaith dialogue. 21. The Consul-General’s attendance at the inauguration of the Gülen Chair should not be understood as contradictory to my earlier point about the state’s dislike of the rival Islamic movements. Although Gülen is intensely disliked by Turkish secularists for his perceived ‘secret’ anti-secularist ideals, the movement has received covert support from the Turkish state, given Gülen’s successful incorporation of Turkish nationalism within his Islamic ideals. 22. See Herzfeld: Cultural Intimacy; Yuval-Davis: Gender and Nation. 23. Herzfeld: Cultural Intimacy, p.5. 24. Jan Jindy Pettman, Worlding Women: A Feminist International Politics (New York, 1996), p.49. 25. Skrbiš: Long-Distance Nationalism, p.97. 26. Özyürek: Nostalgia, p.16. 27. Michael Mulkay, On Humour: Its Nature and Its Place in Modern Society (Cambridge, 1988), p.197. 28. Simon Critchley, On Humour (New York, 2002), pp.65–6. 29. Ibid., p.86. 30. Michael Billig, ‘Humour and Hatred: The Racist Jokes of the Ku Klux Klan’, Discourse & Society 12/3 (2001), p.285. 31. Henri Bergson, Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic (New York, 1911); Douglas McKay, ‘The Puissant Procreator: Comic Ridicule of Brigham Young’, WHIMSY 1 (1983), pp.128–9. 32. James C. Scott, Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance (New Haven, 1986). 33. Louisa Schein, ‘Minorities, Homelands and Methods’ in P. Nyíri and J. Breidenbach (eds), China Inside Out: Contemporary Chinese Nationalism and Transnationalism (Budapest, 2005), p.123. 34. Navaro-Yashin: Faces of the state, p.24. 35. Fatma M. Göçek, (ed), Political Cartoons in the Middle East (Princeton, 1998). 36. Ibid., p.1.

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BEYOND TURKEY ’S BORDERS

37. Temel is a prominent character in ‘Laz’ jokes. Laz people are an ethnic group in Turkey who live in the Black Sea region. They are the main target group for ethnic humour in Turkey. Laz jokes can be compared to the Irish jokes told in England or the Polish jokes told in the USA. 38. Navaro-Yashin: Faces of the state, p.24. 39. Pierre Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory of Practice (Cambridge, 1977). 40. Göle: ‘The Gendered Nature’, p.70. 41. Ravinder Kaur, ‘The Politics of Humour in Iran’, ISIM Review 22 (2008), p.47. 42. Ibid. This is an example of a typical Ahmadinejad joke: ‘One day, Ahmadinejad found lice crawling on his head. He took a comb and made a neat parting in his hair. Someone asked him why he had done that. He replied, “One side is for male lice, the other for females.’” Ibid. 43. Scott: Weapons of the Weak. 44. Billig: ‘Humour and Hatred’, p.269. 45. According to Özyürek, the association of Atatürk with the sun, which has been prevalent since the 1930s, signifies two things. One is that he brought the country from darkness into light. And secondly, she notes that ‘The imagery of the sun naturalizes the abstract authority of Atatürk’s Westernizing state and its enlightenment discourse, which defines the religious Ottoman past as darkness and the secularist Republican future as illumination.’ Özyürek: Nostalgia, p.104. 46. Ibid., p.114. 47. Limor Shifman et al., ‘Only joking? Online humour in the 2005 UK general election’, Information, Communication & Society 10/4 (2007), p.483. 48. Mustafa Kemal was the Ottoman commander in the Gallipoli campaign, and this brought him to prominence. 49. http://www18.gazetevatan.com/fotogaleri/resim.asp?kat=2781&page_ number=34 Accessed on 5 September 2011. 50. The expression ‘Turkish soldiers’ used here does not reflect the interpretation of the author, but that of the audience involved in the ceremony in question. At the time when the Gallipoli War was fought there was no Turkish Republic: the soldiers at Gallipoli were Ottoman soldiers and included men of diverse ethnic backgrounds. 51. Hage: Against Paranoid, p.134. 52. Ibid. 53. For the best account of the Islamists’ position on the Kurdish issue see Christopher Houston, ‘Civilizing Islam, Islamist Civilizing? Turkey’s Islamist Movement and the Problem of Ethnic Difference’, Thesis Eleven 58 (1999), pp.83–98.

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Chapter 6 1. Orhan Tekelioğlu, ‘Modernizing Reforms and Turkish Music in the 1930s’, Turkish Studies 2/1 (2001), p.96. 2. Werbner argues that the diasporic subjectivities invoked by creative artists ‘are never simply a response to exile and alienation per se or to the sense of marginality and cosmopolitanism these engender’; they are ‘shaped in tension with prior or more widespread hegemonic diaspora discourses and modes of institutional organization.’ Pnina Werbner, ‘Introduction: The Materiality of Diaspora-Between Aesthetics and ‘Real’ Politics’, Diaspora 9/1 (2000), p.7. 3. Of course, musical performance has other ‘meanings’ over and beyond its ‘ideological’ intent, not the least being both the embodied pleasure of making music itself, and the processes of crafting oneself as a musician. But I cannot investigate these here. 4. Martin Stokes, ‘Introduction: Ethnicity, Identity and Music’ in M. Stokes (ed), Ethnicity, Identity and Music: The Musical Construction of Place (Oxford, 1994). 5. Ibid., p.2. 6. Houston: Kurdistan, p.98. 7. Christopher Small, Musicking: The Meanings of Performing and Listening (Hanover, 1998). 8. Ahmad: Making of Modern Turkey, p.78. 9. Martin Stokes, The Arabesk Debate: Music and Musicians in Modern Turkey (Oxford, 1992), p.33. 10. Ibid. 11. For an account of how anthropology and nationalism shared a common theoretical heritage in Turkey during the 1920s and 1930s see Christopher Houston, ‘An Anti-history of a Non-people: Kurds, Colonialism, and Nationalism in the History of Anthropology’, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 15 (2009), pp.19–35. 12. Orhan Tekelioğlu, ‘The Rise of a Spontaneous Synthesis: The Historical Background of Turkish Popular Music’, Middle Eastern Studies 32/2 (1996), p.198. 13. Ibid., p.197. 14. Ibid., p.205. 15. Ibid., p.195. 16. Stokes: The Arabesk Debate, p.38. 17. Houston: Kurdistan, p.134. 18. Needless to say, I am not claiming that the state’s attempts to nationalise music were entirely successful. The state did mute certain musical genres,

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19. 20. 21. 22.

23. 24.

25.

26. 27.

28.

29. 30.

BEYOND TURKEY ’S BORDERS

but its official musicology and imposition of polyphonic music was not readily appreciated by individual people. Indeed in the 1950s and 1960s many Turkish listeners began to tune into Egyptian radio or watch Egyptian films to satisfy their taste. The state intervention in music continued even into the 1980s with the banning of another genre, Arabesk music (meaning Arablike), which has been devalued as inferior by Kemalists. See Stokes: The Arabesk Debate. Anthony Shay, Choreographic Politics: state Folk Dance Companies, Representation, and Power (Middletown, 2002). Jane C. Desmond, ‘Introduction’ in J. Desmond (ed), Meaning in Motion (Durham, 1997), p.1. This is a fictitious name. Instrumental Semaî is an instrumental piece composed in measures of six or ten cycles. Segah is the name of particular makam (mode), a scale that determines tonal relations, starting and reciting notes, as well as the melodic contours in a musical piece. Tekelioğlu: ‘The Rise of’, p.196. Martin Stokes, ‘Sounding Out: The Culture Industries and the Globalization of Istanbul’ in Ç. Keyder (ed), Istanbul: Between the Global and the Local (Boulder, 1999), p.131. Stokes’s translation. Martin Stokes, ‘“Beloved Istanbul”: Realism and the Transnational Imaginary in Turkish Popular Culture’ in A. Walter (ed), Mass Mediations: New Approaches to Popular Culture in the Middle East and Beyond (Berkeley, 2000), p.233. Ibid., pp.233–34. The musical repertory on Istanbul is full of songs that express contrary feelings about living in the city. For example, most arabesk songs refer to the hardships of living in the city and to feelings of disappointment as experienced by its working class inhabitants, especially following their migration from villages. See for example Taner Şener’s Istanbul’u Hiç Sevmiyorum (I hate Istanbul), Burhan Çaçan’s Istanbul’a Niçin Geldim? (Why did I come to Istanbul?), Yılmaz Morgül’s Elveda Istanbul (Farewell Istanbul), etc. Ibid. For detailed analysis see Michael E. Meeker, A Nation of Empire (Berkeley, 2002); Sibel Bozdoğan, Modernism and Nation-Building: Turkish Architectural Culture in the Early Republic (Seattle, 2001). Stokes: ‘Sounding Out’, p.125. These included ‘the closing of many occupations to non-Turks in 1932, the discouragement of foreign schools, the ‘Citizen Speak Turkish’ campaign of the 1930s, the discriminatory Capital Levy Tax of 1942, and the 6–7

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31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40.

301

September events of 1955.’ See Arus Yumul, ‘“A Prostitute Lodging in the Bosom of Turkishness”: Istanbul’s Pera and its Representation’, Journal of Intercultural Studies 30/1 (2009), p.69. Keyder: ‘The Setting’, p.11. Yumul: ‘A Prostitute Lodging’, p.59. Keyder: ‘The Setting.’ Stokes: ‘Sounding Out’, p.126. Rick Lyman, ‘A City of Many Pasts Embraces the Future’, New York Times (25 September 2005). Kasaba and Bozdoğan: ‘Turkey at a Crossroad’, pp.12–3. Stokes: ‘Introduction’, p.6. Ghassan Hage, White Nation: Fantasies of White Supremacy in a Multicultural Society (Annandale, 1998), p.53). Bourdieu: Outline of a Theory. Bora: ‘Istanbul of the Conqueror’, p.49.

Chapter 7 1.

Karen F. Olwig, ‘Transnational Socio-Cultural Systems and Ethnographic Research: Views from an Extended Field Site’, International Migration Review 37/3 (2003), p.788. 2. Ulf Hannerz, Transnational Connections: Culture, People, Places (New York, 1996), p.6. 3. Østergaard-Nielsen: ‘The Politics of Migrants’’, p.764. 4. See Ruud Koopmans and Paul Statham, ‘Migration and Ethnic Relations as a Field of Political Contention: An Opportunity Structure Approach’ in R. Koopmans and P. Statham (eds), Challenging Immigration and Ethnic Relations Politics: Comparative European Perspectives (Oxford, 2000); Marco Giugni and Florence Passy, ‘Migrant Mobilization between Political Institutions and Citizenship Regimes: A Comparison of France and Switzerland’, European Journal of Political Research 43 (2004), pp.51–82. 5. Eva Østergaard-Nielsen, ‘Transnational Political Practices and the Receiving State: Turks and Kurds in Germany and the Netherlands’, Global Networks 1/3 (2001), p.276. 6. Thomas Faist, ‘Transnationalization in International Migration: Implications for the Study of Citizenship and Culture’, Ethnic and Racial Studies 23/2 (2000), pp.199–200. 7. Even in this arrangement the child has to give up the citizenship of his/ her parents’ native country between the ages of 18 and 23 in order to take up German citizenship. Gökçe Yurdakul, ‘state, Political Parties and

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8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14.

15.

16. 17.

18. 19.

20.

21. 22. 23. 24.

BEYOND TURKEY ’S BORDERS

Immigrant Elites: Turkish Immigrant Associations in Berlin’, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 32/3 (2006), p.438. This means that it still remains impossible for many Turkish immigrants living in Germany to hold dual citizenship. Stephen Castles and Mark J. Miller The Age of Migration: International Population Movements in the Modern World (London, 2003), p.257. Bauböck: ‘Towards a Political’, p.701. Østergaard-Nielsen: ‘Transnational Political Practices’, p.268. This is a fictitious name. C. Eren and G. Gören, İlköğretim Hayat Bilgisi Kitabı 3 (Istanbul, 2000), p.38. Kaplan: The Pedagogical state, p.182. Aslı Gür, ‘Stories in Three Dimensions: Narratives of Nation and the Anatolian Civilizations Museum’ in E. Özyürek (ed), The Politics of Public Memory in Turkey (Syracuse, 2007), p.47. Beatriz Cardona et al., Community Languages Matter: Challenges and opportunities facing the Community Languages Program in New South Wales Sydney, University of Western Sydney, 2008. Ibid., p.19. Half of the teachers working at this school held undergraduate degrees from various Turkish universities. Yet none of them had the experience of working as a professional school teacher. See Deniz Tarba Ceylan and Gürol Irzik (eds), Human Rights Issues in Textbooks: The Turkish Case (Istanbul, 2004). Kenan Çayır, ‘Preparing Turkey for the European Union: Nationalism, National Identity and “Otherness” in Turkey’s New Textbooks’, Journal of Intercultural Studies 30/1 (2009), p.39. Gürol Irzik, ‘Human Rights Issues in Textbooks in Turkey: Developments, Problems and Solutions’ in D. T. Ceylan and G. Irzık (eds), How Are We Educated? (Istanbul, 2005), pp.29–30. Tanıl Bora, ‘Nationalism in Textbooks’ in D. T. Ceylan and G. Irzık (eds) How Are We Educated? (Istanbul, 2005). Ann-Mari Jordens, Redefining Australians: Immigration, Citizenship and National Identity (Sydney, 1995), p.163. James Jupp, Understanding Australian Multiculturalism (Canberra, 1996), p.8. Special Broadcasting Service (SBS) is an Australian government-funded nationwide public broadcaster, established to provide multilingual and multicultural radio and television services. SBS Radio commenced broadcasting in 1978, initially in eight languages respectively. Currently, the Radio produces more than 13,500 hours of language-specific programs each year,

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NOTES

25. 26.

27.

28. 29.

30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39.

303

in 68 languages. SBS Television, on the other hand, began transmission in 1980. The programs broadcast include news and current affairs, sport, documentaries, films and music. Østergaard-Nielsen: Transnational Politics, p.3. TRT-INT is the state-owned TV channel established in 1990 to reach Turkish people abroad. Its broadcast was expanded to Australia in 1999. Writing on the TRT-INT broadcasts in Germany during the 1990s, Østergaard-Nielsen notes: ‘In the mornings there are stories of Atatürk, and in children’s programmes the viewers are encouraged to sing along when the national hymn is played. Most famous is the campaign Hand in Hand with Turkish Soldiers, a 56-hour live programme that encouraged the Turkish nation to donate moral and economic support for the Turkish army in 1995.’ Østergaard-Nielsen: Transnational Politics, p.115. Here we should not forget that there is a much larger number of Turkishspeaking people living in Germany than in Australia. The size of the migrant group is a key factor here in determining the direction of the interaction between the two transnational contexts. Peggy Levitt et al., ‘International Perspectives on Transnational Migration: An Introduction’, International Migration Review 37/3 (2003), pp.567–8. Jon Stratton and Ien Ang, ‘Multicultural Imagined Communities: Cultural Difference and National Identity in Australia and the USA’, Continuum: The Australian Journal of Media & Culture 8/2 (1994), pp.125–58; Laksiri Jayasuriya, ‘Australian Multiculturalism Reframed’, Australian Quarterly 80/3 (2008), pp.27–30. Sneja Gunew, ‘Denaturalizing Cultural Nationalisms: Multicultural Readings of “Australia”, in H. K. Bhabba (ed) Nation and Narration (London, 1990), p.104. Ibid., p.112. Jayasuriya: ‘Australian Multiculturalism Reframed’, p.27. Stratton and Ang: ‘Multicultural Imagined.’ Ibid. Jayasuriya: ‘Australian Multiculturalism Reframed’, p.27. Jock Collins et al., Kebabs, Kids, Cops and Crime: Youth, Ethnicity and Crime (Sydney, 2000), p.232. Michael Humphrey, ‘Lebanese Identities: Between Cities, Nations and Trans-nations’, Arab Studies Quarterly 26/1 (2004), pp.31–50. Ibid., p.40. Since the 1980s there has been a growing tendency within the discipline of anthropology to scrutinise the taken-for-granted assumptions about culture. This trend has also contributed to the critical discussions over multiculturalism as cultural pluralism. See Akhil Gupta and James Ferguson,

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40. 41. 42.

43. 44. 45. 46.

47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53.

54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 62. 63. 64.

BEYOND TURKEY ’S BORDERS

‘Beyond “Culture”: Space, Identity and the Politics of Difference’, Cultural Anthropology 7/1 (1992), pp.6–23. Faist: ‘Transnationalization’, p.211. Ibid., p.215. Ayşe Caglar, ‘Hyphenated Identities and the Limits of ‘Culture’ in T. Modood and P. Werbner (eds), The Politics of Multiculturalism in the New Europe: Racism, Identity and Community (London, 1997), p.178. Bourdieu and Wacquant: ‘The Organic Ethnologist’, p.174. Guarnizo and Smith: ‘The Locations of Transnationalism’, p.10. Ibid., p.183. See Jock Collins, ‘The Political Economy of Post-War Immigration’ in E. L. Wheelright and K. Buckley (eds), Essays in the Political Economy of Australian Capitalism (Sydney, 1975); Marie de Lepervanche, ‘Australian Immigrants 1788–1940: Desired and Unwanted’ in E. L. Wheelright and K. Buckley (eds), Essays in the Political Economy of Australian Capitalism (Sydney, 1975); Andrew Jakubowicz, ‘state and Ethnicity: Multi-culturalism as Ideology’ in J. Jupp (ed), Ethnic Politics in Australia (London, 1984). Collins: ‘The Political Economy.’ Andrew Jakubowicz et al., Ethnicity, Class and Social Policy in Australia (Kensington, 1984). Jakubowicz: ‘state and Ethnicity’, p.18. Yalçın-Heckmann: ‘The Perils of’, p.95. Koopmans and Statham: ‘Migration and Ethnic’, p.15. Ibid. Ellie Vasta and Stephen Castles, The Teeth are Smiling: The Persistence of Racism in Multicultural Australia (Sydney, 1996); Hage: White Nation; Scott Poynting et al., Bin Laden in the Suburbs: Criminalising the Arab Other (Sydney, 2004); Collins et al.: Kebabs, Kids. Hage: White Nation. Ibid., p.18. Ibid., p.16. Ibid., p.55. Ibid., p.48. Ibid., p.133. Ibid., p.118. Ibid., p.121. Ibid., p.53, 60. Yavuz: ‘Cleansing Islam’, p.24. Ibid., pp.25–6. For a critique of the binary opposition between white state and black society see Houston: Kurdistan, p.121.

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NOTES

305

65. Hage: White Nation, p.60. 66. See Michael Humphrey, ‘Culturalising the Abject: Islam, Law and Moral Panic in the West’, Australian Journal of Social Issues 42/1 (2007), pp.9–25. 67. The Cronulla ‘riots’ were a series of racially motivated clashes that took place in December 2005 in the Sydney beachside suburb of Cronulla between mostly male, young Anglo-Australians and second-generation Lebanese youth. 68. Hage: Against Paranoid, p.177. 69. Ibid., p.119. 70. Kevin Dunn, ‘Representations of Islam in the Politics of Mosque Development in Sydney’, Tijdschrift voor economische en sociale geografie 92/3 (2001), p.303. 71. Michael Humphrey, ‘Securitisation and Domestication of Diaspora Muslims and Islam: Turkish Immigrants in Germany and Australia’, International Journal on Multicultural Societies, 11/2 (2009), p.147. In the same article, Humphrey also explains: ‘In Australia the institutions of the Turkish Muslim diaspora were not able to play the role as representative of Islam and the Australian Muslim community because the Lebanese Muslims demographically dominated the ethnic, cultural and political face of Islam in Australia.’ Ibid., p.150. 72. Faist: ‘Transnationalization’, p.200. 73. Collins et al.: Kebabs, Kids, pp.233–4.

Conclusion 1. Navaro-Yashin: Faces of the state, p.201. 2. Christopher Houston, ‘In Search of a Revolution: Thwarted Agency and the Strange Afterlife of Islamism in Militant Laicism in Turkey’, JRAI (forthcoming), p.3. 3. See, among others, Koopmans and Statham: ‘Migration and Ethnic’; Smith: ‘Transnationalism, the state’; Schein: ‘Minorities, Homelands’; ØstergaardNielsen: ‘The Politics of Migrants’’; Levitt et al.: ‘International Perspectives on’; Ana Margheritis, ‘state-led Transnationalism and Migration: Reaching out to the Argentine Community in Spain’, Global Networks 7/1 (2007), pp.87–106. 4. Koopmans and Statham: ‘Migration and Ethnic’, p.44. 5. Ibid., p.45. 6. Basch et al.: Nations Unbound. 7. Smith: ‘Transnationalism, the state’, p.301. 8. Nyíri: ‘The “New Migrant”’, p.153.

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9. Robert C. Smith, ‘Migrant Membership as an Instituted Process: Transnationalization, the state and the Extra-Territorial Conduct of Mexican Politics’, International Migration Review 37/2 (2003), p.306. 10. Peggy Levitt and Rafael de La Dehesa, ‘Transnational Migration and the Redefinition of the State: Variations and Explanations’, Ethnic and Racial Studies 26/4 (2003), p.598. 11. Constantino Xavier, ‘Experimenting with Diasporic Incorporation: The Overseas Citizenship of India’, Nationalism and Ethnic Politics 17/1 (2011), p.48. 12. Guarnizo and Smith: ‘The Locations of Transnationalism’, p.8. 13. Alejandro Portes, ‘Introduction: the Debates and Significance of Immigrant Transnationalism’, Global Networks 1/3 (2001), p.183. 14. Guarnizo: ‘The rise of transnational’; Portes et al.: ‘The study of transnationalism’; Alejandro Portes, ‘Conclusion: Towards a New World – The Origins and Effects of Transnational Activities’, Ethnic and Racial Studies 22/2 (1999), pp.463–77; Gamlen: ‘The Emigration State.’ 15. Alen Gamlen, ‘Diaspora Engagement Policies: What are They, and What Kinds of States Use Them?’, working paper, No. 63, ESCR Centre on Migration, Policy and Society, University of Oxford, 2006, p.9. 16. Ibid. 17. Ibid., p.5. 18. Guarnizo and Smith: ‘The Locations of Transnationalism’, p.28. 19. Navaro-Yashin: Faces of the state, p.198.

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Shay, Anthony, Choreographic Politics: state Folk Dance Companies, Representation, and Power (Middletown: Wesleyan University Press, 2002). Shifman, Limor, Coleman, Stephen and Ward, Stephen, ‘Only Joking? Online Humour in the 2005 UK General Election’, Information, Communication & Society 10/4 (2007), pp.465–87. Skrbiš, Zlatko, Long-Distance Nationalism: Diasporas, Homelands and Identities (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1999). Small, Christopher, Musicking: The Meanings of Performing and Listening (Hanover: University Press of New England, 1998). Smith, Michael P., ‘Transnationalism, the state, and the Extraterritorial Citizen’, Politics & Society 31/4 (2003), pp.467–502. Smith, Robert C., ‘Reflections on Migration, the State and the Construction, Durability and Newness of Transnational Life’ in L. Pries (ed), Migration and Transnational Social Spaces (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1999). —— ‘Migrant Membership as an Instituted Process: Transnationalization, the state and the Extra-Territorial Conduct of Mexican Politics’, International Migration Review 37/2 (2003), pp.297–343. Soyarık, Nalan, The Citizen of the state and the state of the Citizen: An Analysis of the Citizenization Process in Turkey, unpublished PhD thesis, Bilkent University, 2000. Stokes, Martin, The Arabesk Debate: Music and Musicians in Modern Turkey (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992). —— ‘Introduction: Ethnicity, Identity and Music’ in M. Stokes (ed), Ethnicity, Identity and Music: The Musical Construction of Place (Oxford: Berg, 1994). —— ‘Sounding Out: The Culture Industries and the Globalization of Istanbul’ in Ç. Keyder (ed), Istanbul: Between the Global and the Local (Boulder, Rowman & Littlefield, 1999). —— ‘“Beloved Istanbul”: Realism and the Transnational Imaginary in Turkish Popular Culture’ in A. Walter (ed), Mass Mediations: New Approaches to Popular Culture in the Middle East and Beyond (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000). Stratton, Jon and Ang, Ien, ‘Multicultural Imagined Communities: Cultural Difference and National Identity in Australia and the USA’, Continuum: The Australian Journal of Media & Culture 8/2 (1994), pp.125–58. Şafak, Elif, Aşk (Istanbul: Doğan Kitap, 2009). Şenay, Banu, ‘Ulusaşırı Toplumsal Alanlar, Ulusaşırı Kimlikler: Avustralyalı Türkler Örneği’ in R. Ö. Dönmez, P. Enneli and N. Altuntaş (eds), Türkiye’de Kesişen ve Çatışan Dinsel ve Etnik Kimlikler (Istanbul: Say Yayınları, 2010). —— The Turkish State and Its Cultural Attachés: Long-distance Kemalism in Australia, unpublished PhD thesis, Macquarie University, 2010. Şimşir, Bilal N., Avustralya Türk Edebiyatı Antolojisi (Ankara: Atatürk Kültür Merkezi, 1997). Tekelioğlu, Orhan, ‘The Rise of a Spontaneous Synthesis: The Historical Background of Turkish Popular Music’, Middle Eastern Studies 32/2 (1996), pp.194–215.

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INDEX

A accommodation 39, 44, 53, 128 AKP (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi) 3, 8–11, 104, 164, 169, 176, 177, 179, 180, 184, 197 Alevi Cultural Centre 92, 247 Alevis 1–3, 54, 64, 92, 93, 130, 135, 246–248, 254, 272 Anatolia 4, 5, 37, 62, 87, 90, 127, 149, 154, 168, 197, 206, 207, 210, 211, 236 Anzac Day 193 Anzacs 112, 113, 118, 171, 193, 194, 199 Arab Australians 146, 219, 264, 265 Armenians 5, 9, 10, 78, 97, 98, 109, 111, 112, 166, 172, 174, 216, 239, 245, 246, 272 assimilationist policy 34–36, 93, 251 assisted migration 29, 40, 49, 77 Assyrians 166, 245, 269, 270, 272, 275 Atatürk 1, 2, 4, 9, 38, 62, 64, 66, 67, 72–74, 91–93, 107, 109, 111–113, 115–120, 122, 125–127, 129, 134, 164, 165, 177–179, 181,

Senay_Index.indd 318

185–188, 190–197, 201–203, 206, 207, 209, 218, 232, 233, 235–238, 265, 266, 272, 273, 270, 278, 298, 303, 316 Atatürkist Thought Association (ADD) 9, 93 Auburn 53, 56, 64, 72, 82, 93, 116, 121, 122, 124, 125, 127, 138, 140, 165, 193, 198, 220, 262, 263 Australian Atatürk Cultural Centre 9, 72, 107, 129, 193

B Bauböck, Rainer 14, 16, 231 Bondi Beach 1, 278 Bourdieu, Pierre 16, 188, 221, 261

C ‘call to return home’ 81, 83, 85 Canberra 10, 29, 77, 84, 95, 96, 118, 129, 169, 170, 178–180, 217 Cemaat-i Nur 94, 136 citizenship,

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INDEX Turkish 78–81, 85, 86, 88, 89, 230, 231 see also Turkish Citizenship Law Australian 49, 78, 244 civil-military relations 4, 7 civil society 8, 9, 16, 93, 105, 141 Cizre, Ümit 8, 9 commemoration 23, 62, 68, 91, 105, 114, 115, 119, 120, 150, 179, 198, 200, 222, 270 Community Languages Schools 232, 237 Cronulla Riots 263 cultural attachés 159, 166, 170, 171, 173, 260 cultural pluralism 250–252, 255

D Department of Immigration and Ethnic Affairs 84 diasporic politics 11, 16, 77, 161, 169, 173, 229, 230, 243 Directorate of Religious Affairs see Diyanet Diyanet 6, 25, 93, 97, 104, 105, 124, 133–147, 151, 153, 167, 168, 253, 267, 272 Diyanet Işleri Türk-Islam Birliği 136 dual citizenship 20, 78, 79, 230, 276

E emigration policy 14 employment 35, 38, 39, 41, 46, 50, 243 Employment Service 39, 41, 43 Ergenekon 9, 10, 273 European Union (EU) 13, 239, 277

F family reunion 11, 30, 33, 51, 163 First Five-Year Development Plan 32 Fraser Government 241, 255

Senay_Index.indd 319

319

G Galbally Report 241 Gallipoli Battle 113, 173, 193, 199, 236 Gallipoli mosque 138–141, 198, 220 Germany 17, 32, 34, 40–42, 44, 69, 76, 80, 87, 140, 172, 230, 231, 242–245, 248 Glick Schiller, Nina 162, 163, 274 globalisation 1, 15, 216, 274 Gökalp, Ziya 206, 207 Greeks 5, 36, 37, 46, 47, 70, 97, 98, 109–111, 166, 209, 216, 218, 239, 245, 250 Grey Wolves 59, 80, 82, 256 ‘guest-worker’ 32, 39, 44, 48, 79, 242 Gülen, Fethullah 169 Gülen movement 94, 136

H Hage, Ghassan 1, 200, 201, 221, 258–262, 264 Hikmet, Nazım 62, 68–70, 91, 214, 215 Halkevleri (People’s Houses) 68, 208 Herzfeld, Michael 161, 171 Houston, Christopher 103, 134, 159, 271 Howard Government 264

I Içduygu, Ahmet 38, 51 Idealist Hearths 59, 75 ideological polarisation 25, 58, 59 imams 132, 133, 135, 137–139, 142, 143, 153, 167, immigrant incorporation regime 13, 16, 228–230, 242, 249 immigration policy 14, 30, 34, 36, 39, 52, 267

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320

BEYOND TURKEY ’S BORDERS

integration 30, 36, 61, 125, 141, 239–241 Islam 4–6, 9, 19, 25, 38, 54, 75, 88–92, 94, 97, 104, 132–136, 138, 141–147, 149–154, 159, 160, 165, 167, 183, 215, 221, 253, 261, 262, 264–267, 271–273 Turkish 19, 88, 133, 141, 146, 147, 151, 152, 168, 266, 267, 272 Islamisation 93, 160, 169 Islamist movement 89, 90 Islamophobia 258, 265

K Kemalism 2–4, 10, 23, 25, 26, 65–67, 75, 89, 91, 95, 103, 105, 126, 131, 134, 159–161, 165, 166, 173, 177, 183, 188, 189, 194, 201, 202, 204, 205, 222, 223, 238, 249, 260, 261, 265, 266, 272 see also trans-Kemalism Kurds 1, 81, 89, 90, 92, 129, 160 163, 166, 239, 246 –248, 261, 272 Kurdish 2, 3, 5, 8, 19, 21, 52, 76, 86–90, 130, 135, 136, 161, 163, 201, 208, 230, 247, 248, 254,

M Melbourne 12, 29, 51, 81–84, 86, 94, 108, 124, 125, 129, 147, 159, 169, 217, 241, 242, 257 migration agreement 30, 32, 37, 38, 43, 51 military coup 3, 7, 9, 13, 21, 49, 52, 59, 65, 76, 79–81, 83, 87, 88, 194, 215, 257 military intervention see military coup military service 8, 41, 106, 170, 173, 200, 244 Milli Görüş 94, 136 Milliyetçi Hareket Partisi (MHP) 59, 64, 72, 75, 80, 108 mosque 6, 53, 64, 73, 76, 93, 132–142, 144–146, 153, 198, 211, 214, 218–220, 262–264, 271 multiculturalism 11, 23, 26, 30, 69, 112, 205, 220, 221, 223, 227, 228, 240, 241, 243, 245–255, 258–260, 267, 268 welfare 240 music revolution 204–206, 208, 211, 212, 222 Muslims in Australia 144, 146, 147, 262, 264–267, 272 Mustafa Kemal see Atatürk

L labour movements 11, 14, 31, 32, 40, 60, 61 labour migration see labour movements Lebanese 167, 251 Levitt, Peggy 245 lobbying 61, 78–79, 93, 95, 97, 105, 109, 111–113, 162, 166, 170, 175, 245 long-distance Atatürkism 273 long-distance nationalism 3, 4, 21, 22, 108, 162, 163, 165, 270, 278

Senay_Index.indd Sec2:320

N national security 7–9, 34, 104 Netherlands, the 34, 137, 140, 230 New South Wales (NSW): Council of Turkish Associations 76 Federation of Democratic Turkish Associations (FDTA) 70, 81, 84–86

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INDEX

O Ottoman: architecture 169, 170 Empire 4–6, 76, 103, 111, 199, 219, 205, 235, 236 identity 171, 208 music 203–204, 207, 209 past 214, 216–218, 223, 271 state 127 Ottomania, 217, 220 Østergaard-Nielsen, Eva 13, 14, 76, 77, 80, 87, 229, 230, 276 Özyürek, Esra 18, 135, 165, 177, 192

P Pamuk, Orhan 109, 214 Parti Karkerani Kurdistan (PKK) 19, 21, 62, 90, 107, 108, 133, 142, 143, 174 political: mobilisation 3, 25, 204 participation 18, 61, 202, 230, 257

Q Queensland 53, 54

R remittance 14–16, 20, 276 Republican People’s Party 68, 78 Rumi, Mevlana Jalal al-din 147

S Saturday Schools 11, 23, 93, 115, 116, 118, 125, 127, 175, 176, 179, 232, 239, 243, 271 Scott, James 103, 104,162, 182

Senay_Index.indd Sec2:321

321

second-generation 23, 54, 119, 128, 130, 141, 163, 231, 273, 275 secularism 6, 7, 9, 57, 89, 91, 93, 94, 134, 144, 261, 271 skilled migrants 23, 39, 40, 50, 52 skilled migration 11, 30, 53 Special Broadcasting Service (SBS) 10, 241, 246 state-diaspora relations 12, 13 Stokes, Martin 205, 208, 213, 216, 220 Support for Modern Life Association 9, 93 Süleymancılar 94, 136 Sydney Turkish People’s Life (STPH) 62, 64–70, 72, 91, 92, 256, 257

T Tekelioğlu, Orhan 203, 207, 212 trans-Kemalism 4, 13, 105, 114, 133, 138, 161, 164, 173, 204, 205, 218, 222, 227, 232, 238, 249, 261, 270, 272, 273 transnationalism 10–16, 17–20, 21, 22, 25, 67, 69, 87, 106, 113, 114, 133, 137, 154, 160, 175, 227–229, 231, 245, 253, 267, 268, 271, 274–277, 278 political 10–15, 17–19, 21, 67, 87, 106, 114, 154, 227–229, 231, 245, 253, 267, 271, 277 TRT-INT 137, 244 Turkish: associations 64, 70, 72, 77, 90, 92, 95, 98, 124, 166, 256, 257 Consulate 10, 24, 72, 76, 77, 80, 81–83, 85, 92, 106–112, 113– 116, 119, 121, 122, 124–126, 128, 131, 133, 137, 138, 144, 146, 177, 178, 238, 243, 270

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322

BEYOND TURKEY ’S BORDERS

culture 4, 20, 38, 39, 75, 105, 120, 124, 125, 134, 151, 170, 172, 206, 254, 260, 271 Cypriots 37, 42, 48, 127, 209 Embassy 10, 29, 84, 107, 109–112, 169, 170, 179 nationalism 1, 4, 10, 25, 65, 75, 76, 88, 90, 119, 166, 177, 178, 180, 192, 193, 198, 199, 200–202, 206, 208, 217, 232, 237, 265 organisations 10, 53, 60, 65, 72, 76, 77, 107, 109, 111, 112, 118, 121, 129, 248, 254, 269, 270 youth 21, 73, 125–129, 173–175, 254 Turkish Armed Forces (TAF) 7–9, 21, 144 Turkish Citizenship Law 79–81, 230 Turkish House 72, 75, 116, 117, 125

Senay_Index.indd Sec2:322

Turkish Ministry of Culture and Tourism 19, 25, 124, 133, 147, 148, 150, 152, 153 Turkish Ministry of Education 21, 105, 238, 239, 244 Turkish Welfare Association (TWA) 72–77, 91, 92, 95, 96, 256, 270 Turkish Workers’ Party 49, 59

W Welfare Party 7, 8, 89, 183, 221 Western Australia 53, 54 White Australia Policy 30 Whitlam, Gough 240, 241

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