Justice and Development Party and Turkish Nationalism

Although there are various ideas about the beginning of the nationalist movement, it has gained worldwide fame with the French Revolution. The Ottoman Empire, where a large number of ethnic groups lived together, is one of the countries that suffered the most from this movement. With the establishment of the Republic under the leadership of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk and the revolutions made by him, the country underwent a radical change both in shape and mentally. The innovations that have been undertaken with the effort to establish a nation-state in the modern sense have been strictly adopted by some circles, but still controversy continues. At the beginning of these debates, the issue of nation and nationalism concepts comes first. However The AK Party government evokes the impression that it is a non-nationalist or an anti-nationalist party because of avoiding ethnic rhetoric and frequently rejecting a racist understanding of nationalism, on the contrary, it is a party that maintains certain points in nationalist discourse. The AK Party does not define itself as a nationalist party. On the other hand, it can be said that it is such a party which has a conservative nationalism concept based on the Ottoman and Islamic themes. The AK Party argues that the policies implemented during the Republican period neutralized the unifying element of Islam and caused separatist movements. In particular, the Kurdish problem that the AK Party took over in addition to an economic crisis in 2002 when it came to power for the first time has always felt its weight in the rhetoric used by the party within the framework of nationalism. The Kurdish problem, which the global powers constantly scratch, is being tried to be solved by the AK Party within the context of Muslim-Ottoman identity. From this point of view, while the AK Party tries to obscure the traces of ethnic identity, Islam is constructed as a unifying superior identity and the Ottoman is presented as a common historical element. Serving the imagination of this nation concept is regarded as the essence and highest of nationalism.