Tabulación, análisis e interpretación de encuestas

As mentioned earlier, one perspective on nation emphasises the ‘ethnic’ element as a tangible ingredient in the formation of nations. In the light of the current literature on nationalism, we see that this perspective is advancing (see, for instance, Wucker, 1997; Guibernau and Rex, 1997). In particular, movements which claim to be based on ethnicity seem to provide the source for the growing adherence to this perspective. The collapse of the Soviet Union and the Yugoslav Federation, in particular, leading to the emergence of new nation-states based on ‘ethnicity’, on the one hand, and some ethno-centric movements within the borders of some nation-states, on the other, seem to prove the essence of ethnicity in providing communal ‘self-assertion’. In Turkey, there apparently seems to be a parallel reading of this ethnicity: the Kurdish question occupies an obviously important part in ‘Turkish society’. I shall briefly discuss whether this perspective of nation is tenable.

Mann (1993: 215) wrote the following: [nation] ‘is a community affirming its distinct ethnic identity and history and claiming its own state’. Smith (1986) emphasised the importance of ‘subjective’ factors in the formation of nation by arguing the following: in the form of ethnocentrism the collective memory plays the basic part in the re-production of a ‘self’ over centuries. Or, more recently, Gutierrez (1995: 164) claimed: ‘I argue that the renewal of ethnicity is less a result of external forces than a self-discovery...’. These observations could be viewed as privileging ‘ethnic oneness’ and homogeneity within the nation. Ethnicity, without critical observation, is taken as a ‘given’ historical reality. In other words, ‘powerful’ memories of the ‘ethnic past’ are seen to determine the formation of the nation: ‘...ethnie have emerged and re-

emerged at different periods in several continents and culture-areas right up to the modern era; and that ethnicity has remained as a socio-cultural ‘model’ for human organization and communication...’ (Smith, 1986: 168). This observation inevitably shows the nation as in existence within history long before modernity emerged. It was this assumption that led to the debate on nationalism between Ernest Gellner and Anthony Smith. The former, as is well-known, saw no possibility for the existence of the nation in premodern times (Gellner, 1964, 1983) while the latter disregarded the idea of nation as being a modern social configuration (Smith, 1983, 1986, 1998). Before considering the Gellnerian - modernist - perspective of nation, let me discuss the ethnocentric view of nation, often associated with the works of Anthony Smith.34

‘Ethnic oneness’ is a chimerical idea to be validated. Even in prehistoric times an ethnically pure community did not exist: there have been processes (marriages, migrations, assimilations, capturing of women, wars) which have always led to intermingling among peoples. More crucially, ethnic purity has never existed, because social traits are not transmitted through biological inheritance but only through education. As Gökalp (1959: 135) considers: ‘Man does not bring with him language, religion, aesthetic feeling, political, legal or economic institutions. All these he acquires later, from society and through education’. Therefore, Smith’s idea of the ethnocentric nation is not tenable in an historical perspective. The argument for connections between ethnicity and nation must show us how it was possible for an ethnicity to see itself as central. The conditions of premodern ages do not correspond to the possibility of forming a nation, i.e. lack of communication between Turks in the South Eastern region of the country and Turks in the Aegean region of the same country.

However, when ethnicity is seen as the feelings of belonging to a cultural group, it becomes a plausible observation. Recently, some have come to admit that biological difference alone does not constitute an ethnic group but that common customs are also an important factor (Guibernau and

Rex 1997). In other words, common traditions, shared ways of life and the memory of the common past are viewed as defining the meaning of ethnicity. Nevertheless, it must be argued that there is no ‘objective’ factor involved in this term: objectively it is impossible to argue for a pure ethnicity, but this does not seem to matter much because the crucial point is the myth through which individuals attribute ethnic unity. Therefore, ethnicity should be defined as classifying people and group relationships. More precisely, ethnicity needs to be seen as follows: a group of people considers itself (and is sometimes regarded by others as well) as being a ‘culturally’ distinctive unity. Nevertheless, for the argument on nationalization, ethnic purity or even the term ethnicity itself should not be overemphasised. In the emergence of the nation, several other elements are as important as ethnocentrism. Firstly, the ‘modernist’ view of nation shall be mentioned.

Gellner (1964: 168) wrote the following: ‘Nationalism is not the awaking of nations to self- consciousness: it invents nations where they do not exist...’ He thus sees nation as a purely modern phenomenon detached from the past (Gellner, 1983). Therefore, in Gellner, the first explicit contrast with the ethnocentric view of the nation is that the nation does not in any way necessarily refer to an ethnic past. On the contrary, the nation is a framework, an instrument of modernization. There is thus a direct relation between industrialisation and nationalization. This perspective primarily refers to the notion that the nation epitomizes the culture of modernity. The nation, in other words, as a modern phenomenon which cannot be traced back to premodern times, is a construct of people as a necessary response to ‘objective’ processes of economic, social and political conditions of an emerging modernity. It seems conceivable to view this perspective briefly as follows: in terms of social configuration, the nation shows a certain discontinuity of modernity; modernity does not rely on any principle which existed in previous ages in terms of community type. Therefore, in this perspective, the important conceptualization is the unrelateness of nation to ethnicity. This is so, because an ethnic group is not seen as tending to produce a state of its own.

On the contrary, the emergence of nation is preconditioned by the presence of the state, which is seen as the main force in the formation of the nation (Gellner, 1983). It is therefore clear that ‘ethnicity’ has almost no part to play in the emergence of nation. Rather, the nationalist ideology of the state elite produces nation to meet the needs of modernization. Emphasis is on common language, mass education, ‘high culture’, and communication within a high level of division of labour, possible only under the conditions of modernity.

This Gellnerian perspective of nation is also problematic, although it is more plausible than the ethnocentric view of nation. Gellner describes nation as a product of modernizing periods, but fails to explore how this process was achieved. It is, no doubt, tenable to observe the nation as follows: by means of mass education, urbanization, a high level of communication and political participation, a ‘high culture’ was imposed on society. However, how these processes alone could ‘eradicate’ former lifeworld practices and identities remains unanswered. It must be seen that without ‘subjective’ interpretation by the ‘people’, the emergence of the nation would not be possible. In this regard, two observers of nation may be considered; Anderson and Hobsbawm.

Anderson (1991 [1983]) wrote the following: [nation] ‘is an imagined political community - and imagined as both inherently limited and sovereign. It is imagined because the members of even the smallest nation will never know most of their fellow-members, meet them, or even hear of them, yet in the minds of each lives the image of their communion’. Hobsbawm (1983, 1990) shows that national traditions are ‘invented traditions’. What is particularly important in these views is that the nation is seen as a ‘creation’ or ‘invention’ and that not only its ‘objective’ conditions but, importantly, people’s image of the nation needs to be focused on. Therefore, following this understanding, the static view of the nation from an ethnocentric perspective and the lack of

‘imagery’ in a Gellnerian perspective may be overcome. The nation is neither an expression of a formerly existing ethnocentrism, nor can it be seen as a product of ‘objective’ processes.

Having discussed some perspectives of nation, we should now briefly answer a remaining question: what then is a nation? As Gellner has shown us, the nation is definitely as a modern phenomenon but, in its emergence, ‘imagery’ played a major part. It is exactly in these terms that it becomes possible to see that nationalist ideology could also use ‘ethnicity’ as the basis for its argument. Nevertheless, ethnicity itself does not define the meaning of the nation; on the contrary, ethnicity is itself ‘invented’ or ‘created’. Thus, nationalism is possible in both ways: one nationalist movement tries to ‘actualize’ the past of an ‘ethnic’ group and privilege it while another demonstrates that not ethnicity, blood, or race but common history and a belief in a common future define what a nation is. It is therefore conceivable to see that there are two kinds of nation-building projects: civic and ethnocentric models. Both use imagery, but the latter also invents an ethnicity. A plausible observation may be that the nation is a product of the nationalist ideology which is necessarily imagery and creative.

What seems most astonishing is that observers do not seem to recognize the unavoidable relationship between the idea of nation and an ‘imaginary signifier of modernity’ - the idea of autonomy: self-determination. The‘love of autonomy’ by a people in a ‘certain’ land constitutes what a nation is. This is only because an imaginary signification is at stake. A people imagines itself as having autonomy in the world, distance from ‘others’. And exactly by holding this understanding as central to the analysis of the nation, two processes could be considered in the emergence of nation: the disintegration of larger social formations, such as empires, and the standardization of practices and identities in a clearly defined land as the ‘country’ of a specific people. In the standardization process, mass education is particularly important in the sense that it

creates a ‘reading public’ (Anderson) which is therefore influenced so that people start ‘imagining’ that they live within a nation, an ‘imagined community’. So, the nation is definitely related with the imaginary signification of autonomy of a people and its country, and this ‘autonomy’ could be ‘developed’, or indeed could only be achieved, by means of modernization: economic and political processes of modernization are important conditions for the autonomy of a country.

This process of nationalization, however, could not take place without a ‘radicalization of dualities’ - the power of ‘the project of modernity’. There are two dualities are at stake: the problematization of locality in the country and the dichotomization of the ‘particular’ at the ‘universal’: the insider-outsider problematic. It is therefore no surprise that nationalization is often criticised, that it destroys the ‘authenticity’ of local cultures and that it divides the earth between nation-states. Thus, it becomes transparent that the nation is a self-expression of a people and, therefore, the idea of nation is obviously related to civilization and culture, which are the bases for the self-definition or the expression of a people. We now need to look at civilization and culture by considering their relations to nation.