Dublin Core
Title
Symbolic Construction of Turkish National Identity as a Factor of International Management
Abstract
This presentation aims to explore the symbolic construction of Turkish nationalism during the early Republican period in order to trace the origins of the anti-global nationalism in today’s Turkey. It discusses the symbolic bases of Turkish nationalism by going back to early years of modern Republic. We identified three main components of Turkish nationalism in this period: history, geography, and language. They are symbolically constructed within a nationalist perspective. The founders of the Republic and the ideologists of Turkish nationalism hoped this to serve two purposes. One was to establish the bases of realizing the unity of Turkish nations. The other, perhaps the most important, purpose was to prove that the Turks were an advanced and civil nation during the course of history, and to respond the western pressures of disruption, defeat, invasion and exclusion (e.g. the western labels of barbarian Turks, backward Muslims). The main argument in this study is that the Turkish national identity tried to co-exist with, and to join, the modern western civilization by placing geography, history and language in a symbolic context and in accordance with the idea that it determines national interests as a part of a Business of Corporations and key factor of Managers within the international competitive environment. In this context, Turkish history was interpreted as the source of human civilization and the geographies of the Central Asia and Anatolia were the home of human civilization while the Turkish language was viewed as the origin of human languages. By doing so, they aimed to repel the claims of backwardness and barbarity and tried to introduce the national identity as an integral part of national culture having great impact on a process of negotiations
Keywords
Conference or Workshop Item
PeerReviewed
PeerReviewed
Date
2009-06
Extent
145