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TURKEY An Intellectual History of Turkish Nationalism: Between Turkish Ethnicity and Islamic Identity, by Umut Uzer. Salt Lake City: Utah University Press, 2016. 276 pages. $25 paper.
Nationalism in Turkey is a contested topic both within and outside the country. When a Turkish American professor, Aziz Sancar, received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2015, surprisingly, one of the first questions asked by international and Turkish media was that of his ethnic origins. The matter was of interest to so many because Sancar was born in Mardin, in the eastern part of Turkey, which is populated by Arabs, Kurds, and Turks. Although, allegedly, he spoke Arabic with his parents, his reply was clear: "I'm a Turk and that's it." Indeed, he sounded confident. Sancar and his background disrupted hegemonic liberal discourse on Turkish nationalism and Kemalism,1 which generally bemoans Mustafa Kemal Atatürk's ideology as archaic. Umut Uzer's book, in view of the relevance of Turkish nationalism, albeit in evolving forms, as manifest in Sancar's example, takes on the challenge of understanding "the ideational world of [Turkish] nationalist thought" (p. 1). He does so by analyzing the works of major intellectuals while locating them in a social, national, and international context. The book is nicely grounded in a constructivist understanding, albeit a thin one, highlighting the interaction between the material world and ideas and the impossibility of separating them, especially with regard to nationalism.
Turkish nationalism in Western sources is sometimes reduced to certain acts of violence (against the Left) in the 1970s conducted by a group called the Idealist Hearths (Ülkü Ocaklari), widely known as the Grey Wolves (Bozkurtlar). Uzer successfully reveals the broader intellectual and historical framework behind the idea, which spans from the late 19th century to today. The book is organized into five chapters that trace the evolution of Turkish nationalism(s): ethnic, civic (or Kemalist), and conservative. While adopting a chronological approach, Uzer nonetheless reminds readers that the evolution...