We found a match
Your institution may have rights to this item. Sign in to continue.
- Title
"TURKEY: EAST, WEST, WHICH IS BEST?" : PROBLEM OF IDENTITY IN A BOR.
- Authors
Tarhan, Belkıs Ayhan
- Abstract
This study explores the problem of identity as it has been manifested throughout the history of modernization in Turkey. It argues that identity has first become a question paralleling the modernization efforts taken place during the late Ottoman period. This has turned out to be an even more apparent problem since then due to demands to identify 'what a Turk is' in relation with the question: "East, West, which is best?". The present study traces the difficulties and ambivalences associated with the attempts in the way of finding an answer to this question as it presents itself also as a query for the character of Turkish modernization. The most difficult aspect, however, is claimed to be about Turkey for its being constructed in a borderland between East and West as the question itself confirms. The very terms of this question and the associated ambivalence(s) outlined in relation with the claims to Turkish identity are questioned. The study concludes with a brief inquiry into the concept, identity, when it is conceived as something to stabilize or fix the terms of belongingness where such terms become even more unclear in a borderland.
- Subjects
TURKEY; MODERNIZATION (Social science); BORDERLANDS; EAST-West divide; OTTOMAN Empire
- Publication
Yearbook of the 'Gheorghe Sincai' Institute for Social Sciences & the Humanities of the Romanian Academy, 2011, Vol 14, p241
- ISSN
1454-5284
- Publication type
Article