Abstract
From a postcolonial perspective, the discourse on ‘Black’ and ‘White’ Turks has frequently been scrutinised as an instance of ‘the underdogs versus the establishment’. Yet within this framework, the categories ‘Black’ and ‘White’ Turks remain rather static conceptual demarcations: they obscure the extent to which the discourse’s trajectory actually corresponds with the fundamental transitions that the Republic of Turkey has undergone at a political level over the last two and a half decades. This study combines Brubaker’s (2004) notion of ethnopolitical entrepreneurs with a qualitative media analysis following Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), hence revisiting the discourse with a focus on continually fluctuating power relations between antagonistic actors who are renegotiating and revaluating the categories ‘Black’ and ‘White’ Turks. By dividing the discourse into three periods, I visualise both a reversal of the power to define and the broadening scope of the discourse that evolves beyond the cultural sphere dominated by columnists of major daily newspapers. I show that the discourse is deeply politicised, particularly since prime minister and later president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan started to brand himself as a ‘Black’ Turk around the turn of the century: What used to be a site of negotiation of the ideal citydweller in the 1990s has become a matter of contestation for competing ideals of symbolic citizenship after 2010.
Zusammenfassung
Die grundlegenden Umbrüche in der türkischen Politik und Gesellschaft der letzten zweieinhalb Jahrzehnte spiegeln sich auch in den fortlaufenden Aushandlungs- und Umdeutungsprozessen des Diskurses über ‘Schwarze’ und ‘Weiße’ Türk*innen wider. In der oft zu dessen Untersuchung herangezogenen postkolonialen Perspektive bleiben die Kategorien ‘Schwarze’ und ‘Weiße’ Türk*innen allerdings weitgehend statische Konzepte, verhaftet in einer Vorstellung von ‘underdogs versus the establishment’. Durch eine Kombination von Brubakers (2004) Konzept der ‘ethnopolitischen Entrepreneur*innen’ mit einer qualitativen Medienanalyse in Anlehnung an die Kritische Diskursanalyse (KDA) versuche ich, ein neues Licht auf den Diskus zu werfen. Zentral sind hierbei die fortlaufenden Aushandlungsprozesse von Definitionsmacht unter den zentralen Akteur*innen, welche die Kategorien ‘Schwarze’ und ‘Weiße’ Türk*innen mit sich wandelnden Bedeutungen besetzen. Die Strukturierung des Diskurses in drei Phasen macht eine Neuverteilung der Definitionsmacht unter den Akteur*innen sichtbar und offenbart, dass sich der ursprüngliche Geltungsbereich des Diskurses über die kulturelle Sphäre hinaus entwickelt hat und besonders seit der Selbstbezeichnung von Präsident Erdoğan als ‘Schwarzer’ Türke um die Jahrhundertwende politisiert wurde. Während der Diskurs in den 1990ern ein Schauplatz für die Definition idealer Stadtbewohner*innen durch Kolumnist*innen führender Tageszeitungen war, ist er nach 2010 zu einem Aushandlungsort für konkurrierende Ideale symbolischer Staatsangehörigkeit geworden.
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Steffny, A. (2020). From Ideal City-Dweller to Ideal Citizen. In: Chovanec, J., Cloeters, G., inal, O., Joppien, C., Woźniak, U. (eds) Türkeiforschung im deutschsprachigen Raum . Springer VS, Wiesbaden. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-28782-5_7
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