Abstract
Michael Ferguson turns the spotlight on the class dimension of Erdogan’s politics of polarization, in particular his popular distinction between “White Turks” and “Black Turks”. Through a brief yet compelling analysis of the ambiguous history of the term “zenci” ( black, negro) and the enslaved and emancipated Africans in the Ottoman Empire, Ferguson exposes the pitfalls of Erdoğan’s strategy which ended up antagonizing not only the so-called White Turks, but the actual Black Turks by aligning them with an innate lack of education and culture.
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Notes
Murat Ergin, “Is the Turk a ‘White Man’? Towards a Theoretical Framework for Race in the Making of Turkishness” Middle Eastern Studies 44 (6), 2008, 832.
For example, see Ehud Toledano, Slavery and Abolition in the Ottoman Middle East (Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press, 1998), ix–x
Y. Hakan Erdem, Slavery in the Ottoman Empire and Its Demise, 1800–1909 (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1996), xvii–xix
John Hunwick and Eve Troutt Powell, The African Diaspora in the Mediterranean Lands of Islam (Princeton: Markus Wiener, 2002), ix–xxiv.
Esma Durugönül, “The Invisibility of the Turks of African Origin and the Construction of Turkish Cultural Identity: The Need for a New Historiography” Journal of Black Studies 33(3), 2003, 289.
Ehud Toiedano, The Ottoman Slave Trade and Its Suppression, 1840–1890 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982), 81–90.
Ronald C. Jennings, “Black Slaves and Free Blacks in Ottoman Cyprus, 1590–1640” Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 30(3), 1987, 289.
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© 2014 Michael Ferguson
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Ferguson, M. (2014). White Turks, Black Turks and Negroes: The Politics of Polarization. In: Özkırımlı, U. (eds) The Making of a Protest Movement in Turkey: #occupygezi. Palgrave Pivot, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137413789_6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137413789_6
Publisher Name: Palgrave Pivot, London
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