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The Politics of Emotions and Spectacles: The Case of the Turkish Language Olympiads

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 October 2019

Senem Aslan
Senem Aslan*
Affiliation:
Department of Politics, Bates College, Lewiston, Maine, USA
*
*Corresponding author. Email: saslan@bates.edu
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Abstract

This article examines the Turkish Language Olympiads as a political-performative strategy that the Muslim nationalists used to communicate their ideology. I argue that to understand the rise of Muslim nationalism, we also need to understand how emotional appeal is created through spectacles like the Turkish Olympiads. The spectacle was effective in boosting people’s sense of national pride and self-confidence by resolving two important tensions of Kemalist nationalism. First, it addressed the tension between Westernization and nationalization. Depicting an image of Turkish national culture that is appreciated and imitated by foreigners, it contested the imitative, Westernist character of Kemalist nationalism. Second, recasting the outside world as friendly to Turks, even Turkophile, it challenged Kemalist nationalism’s emphasis on external threats. Turkish-speaking and -acting foreigners communicated a message of nationalist self-empowerment and confidence, calling into question people’s sense of fear and distrust of the outside world. How Muslim nationalism was promoted, particularly the performative-symbolic strategies that were used, are important to understand because of their emotional resonance and potential for mass mobilization.

Keywords

Muslim nationalismKemalist nationalismspectaclesperformative strategiesthe politics of emotions
Type
Article
Information
Nationalities Papers , Volume 48 , Special Issue 2: Special Issue on National Cultural Autonomy in Diverse Political Communities: Practices, Challenges, and Perspectives , March 2020 , pp. 388 - 403
Copyright
© Association for the Study of Nationalities 2019

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