The Rise of Identity Politics in Turkey

Abstract

In this article I use identity politics as the survey of how the various group identities affect political processes in Turkey. The methodological survey of identity politics in this chapter has two facets: First, how Turkey deals with the identity issue, given its tens of different ethnic and religious groups; and second how identity groups (ethnic and religious) articulate their political ideas. In this article, it is argued that a passive analysis of identity groups is not methodologically correct. Rather, the causal link between those groups and politics has to be identified and carefully analysed. A dynamic analysis, on which the various groups are treated as interestseeking agents set against the state, is logical also in view of the new state-society formula of the post-Cold War era.