The socio-psychology of the Republican identity

On Thursday evening in Ankara, the guest at this time's monthly meeting organized by the Journalists and Writers Foundation, moderated by Prof. Naci Bostancı, was Dr. Erol Göka, associate professor of psychiatry. Under the title "The Socio-Psychology of Republican Identity," Göka discussed his theses, which have given rise to quite eye-opening debates, on the fate in the Republican period of the triad "modernity, Turkishness and Islamicity," which Ziya Gökalp formulated for the last period of the Ottoman Empire as the glue (cement) materials ensuring Turkey's fusion as a nation.

Although Gökalp emphasized all three elements as unifying and fusing materials, at the point we have reached it is seen that these materials either can no longer perform their function at all, or that the unifying power of one or two of them is possible only under very special conditions. According to Göka, when Turkishness, which was defined at first not as a "race" but as a "legal status," came over time to be used exclusively to denote the Turkish race, Turkishness naturally lost its unifying quality entirely.

People fused together through the spontaneous effect of modernization (contemporization) on urbanizing masses, but this effect has also run parallel to the development of a particular sensitivity toward developments in the other two elements today. "Contemporization" perhaps binds people to one another as a sociological necessity through the urban division of labor and the comfort it creates, but this does not prevent it from preparing a ground favorable to the easier spread of identities by modern means when needed.

Islamicity, as an identity, has perhaps remained the most unifying element, but although good-faith expectations of Islam are high, Islam's playing a unifying, fusing role is also dependent on the lid of some fundamental problems never being opened. In the Kurdish question, Islam's role in preventing the problems from becoming even more intractable is undoubtedly very great, but failing to resolve the problem on a just basis can also lead to the erosion of Islam's higher values. Because there can arise the danger of its being increasingly perceived as an ideological consolation serving only the interests of the dominant element. There is such a danger awaiting Islam in the course of the process, but the two more striking examples Göka gave in this context are the headscarf and the question of the religious rights of the communities. When the lid of both problems is opened, Islam's role as a unifier can give way to an atmosphere of tension-filled debate.

How strange that today, in the Republican period, the horizon has appeared of the psychological and legal conditions being formed for courageously tackling all the problems stemming from a mistaken conception of society. The great revolutions now taking shape in minds regarding the solution of the Kurdish question are bringing the solution closer and closer. The official recognition of Alevism in the state's discourse and the arrangements Alevis themselves want for practicing their beliefs are just around the corner.

In short, in the democratization process almost no segment is being left with its problem unresolved. By contrast, the headscarf stands before us as an almost deadlocked problem. Because of the way the problem is locked, no light is visible on its solution in the near future. Yet two years ago, when the law aiming to free the headscarf in universities passed the TBMM, even some who were in essence against the headscarf ban opposed the solution, saying "does the country have no other problem than the headscarf?" Today we have seen a horizon in which, at the level of rights, almost no unresolved problem remains other than the headscarf.

The thesis Göka also touched on in his talk, that the Turkish Republic, as a founding ideology, chose Sunnism-Hanafism in the context of Islam in addition to Turkishness and modernity and excluded the elements outside it, is a frequently repeated but correction-needing thesis. Personally, I do not at all agree with the thesis that in the early period of the Republic it preferred Hanafism and in return suppressed Alevism or other religiosities. On the contrary, there was in this period a policy of secularism in which all religious identities were suppressed. If a Diyanet religiosity in which a Hanafi-Sunni tendency predominates emerged as a result of these practices, it must be understood that this was certainly not a preference of the state but a preference of the people.

In what sense can the practices aimed at eliminating every organizational structure and public appearance of religion until the fifties be said to have favored Sunnism? When the transition to democracy came, the people obtained whatever religiosity they demanded, to whatever extent and in whatever form. Alevism's failure to obtain anything has largely to do with its not having demanded religiosity. Alevism became engaged with other ideologies, and it obtained whatever it wanted until then. Today, looking back, it demands the religiosity or religious rights it lost and is moving step by step toward obtaining them. One side of the matter is just this simple.

As always, listening to or reading Erol Göka opens one's mind.