The Far Right in Turkey
In this talk, I will briefly explain the Turkish far right ideology’s historical and psycho-political collective roots such as ontological insecurity, anti-Western resentment, collective traumas and victimhood identity and will argue that the Turkey’s state and national identities have been significantly informed by this ideology. A significant manifestation of this can be seen in the state’s nation-building project(s) under both the secular nationalist Kemalists and Islamist populist Erdoganists and their treatment of the ethnic, religious and political minorities. This first part will conclude with a brief discussion of state-induced pogroms in the history of the Turkish Republic against minorities. The second part of the talk will firstly discuss how political parties from different parts of the political spectrum easily converge on issues sensitive to the far right such as undesirable minorities. This will be followed by a brief discussion of the Islamist AKP and the far right MHP coalition and their securitization of political minorities. The last part of the talk will focus on the main opposition between the Kemalist secularist and the CHP’s pro-Western far right inclinations, recently manifested in their rhetoric against Syrian and Afghan refugees in Turkey.
Professor Ihsan Yilmaz is Research Chair of Islamic Studies and Intercultural Dialogue at the Alfred Deakin Institute for Citizenship and Globalisation, Deakin University, Melbourne, Australia. He is the author of Creating the Desired Citizen: Ideology, State and Islam in Turkey (Cambridge University Press). He has conducted mixed-method research on several themes: 1. Islam–state–law relations in majority and minority contexts; 2. Islamism, Islamist populism, politics of victimhood and resentment, emotions in politics; 3. Global Islamic movements; 4. Nation-building, citizenship, ethnic, religious and political minorities and their securitisation; 5. Socio-legal affairs, identities, belonging, political participation and intergroup relations of Muslim minorities in the West (the UK, Australia, and the USA); 6. Authoritarianism, democratic decay; 7. Turkish politics; 8. Turkish diasporas (the UK, Australia), transnationalism; 9. Muslim youth in the West. He has been invited by several eminent think-tanks, universities and governmental bodies in many parts of the world as either keynote speaker, guest lecturer or expert witness in areas related to his expertise. He was professor of political science at Istanbul Fatih University (2008-2016), lecturer in law, social sciences and politics at SOAS, University of London (2001-2008), and a fellow at the University of Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies (1999-2001).
The webinar will have one short presentation followed by a Q&A session, moderated by Eviane Leidig.
The Global Perspectives on the Far Right webinar series
The webinar series Global perspectives on the Far Right is co-hosted by C-REX and ICCT (International Centre for Counter-Terrorism - The Hague), and takes place every first Wednesday of the month in the period August 2021-January 2022. The webinars last for one hour from 15:00-16:00 CET, unless indicated otherwise due to speakers’ time zone differences. This webinar series is a continuation of the C-REX hosted webinars that took place from February-July 2021.
The regions covered are largely inspired by the new Manchester University Press book series, ‘Global Studies of the Far Right’, co-founded and co-edited by C-REX affiliate scholar Eviane Leidig.
The webinar will have one short presentation followed by a Q&A session, moderated by Professor Cas Mudde or Eviane Leidig.
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