The Republican discourse of progress has established a strong link between Turkey's modernization and the absolute power of light. As the Turkish word aydin (enlightened) replaced the Ottoman münevver (intellectual), the obligation to be enlightened along the dictates of Kemalist precepts became a national imperative. This over-valuation of light in the cultural and ideological spheres has provoked some Turkish novelists to interrogate the clichés of the symbolism of light versus dark, by obscuring their writing with the twilight colors of shadowy zones. Their texts challenge the reader to dig up what lies beyond the shadows and behind the mists with which these writers have chosen to darken their tales. As the intellectual tradition of modern Turkey has evaded doubt, uncertainty, and indeterminacy, the majority of Turkish novelists have opted for novels of clarity, sited on the axis of conviction and invested with moral certitude. The genealogy of the writers of the dark and dim zone of doubt, disillusionment, and frustration, however, has generated the more intriguing, if not more interesting, novels.

This paper explores two examples of collective action, the Zapatista movement in Chiapas, Mexico, and the Kurdish movement in Turkey, by focusing on how these movements constructed two particular places, Diyarbakir and Chiapas, after the armed conflict subsided. My first aim is to show how this place-making has affected the discourses and practices of these movements. I argue that place-making is not only about locality or physical setting, but also about constructing a movement and a form of struggle in its own right. My second aim is to discuss the broad outlines of what may be called the “appropriation of space.” This refers not only to the spaces of visibility and solidarity opened up by a movement, but also to its chances of acquiring significance within local, national or global spaces of power. I look at how the Kurdish movement has had an impact on democracy in Turkey and compare it with the Zapatista movements local and transnational effects. I do so by relating physical and metaphorical notions of space to several concepts generated by social movement literature. As such, this study intends to contribute to spatial understandings of collective action. It is also likely to indicate various pitfalls and obstacles for emancipatory social movements in the present neoliberal era.

The European public debate on Turkey's EU accession either emphasizes Turkey's political (in)competence for EU membership, or marks its cultural difference. Based on the discourse analysis of this debate in the German mass media, this paper questions the dominant European perspective, by placing emphasis on how and where the symbolic borders of an imagined Europe become visible. I will argue that the debate surrounding Turkey's accession to the EU reveals an ambivalent discursive process as it places the construction of the self-definition of Europe at the frontier of its Turkish-Islamic “Other.”

Anatolia played an important role in German nineteenth-century colonial aspirations that was subsequently blacked out in both the Federal Republic of Germany and the Turkish Republic, due to their political re-orientation. To recreate the important role that Anatolia played in German colonialism, classic approaches to the studies of imperialism, such as tracing government actions through official documentation, are insufficient. This approach must be combined with a close reading of consular archives, travelogues, propaganda leaflets, and personal letters, in order to ascertain correctly the dissemination of motives underlying the Germans' actions in nineteenth-century Anatolia. Based on this approach, one can differentiate between three different roles that Anatolia played in German colonial thoughts and deeds: as an untouched land destined for agricultural settlement; as a source of inspiration for the German Empire to reshape itself in the image of ancient Pergamon; and as a site where German colonialism and Turkish nationalism could cooperate to their mutual benefit.

In the late nineteenth century, the religion, nationality, and citizenship of abandoned children became a contested terrain over which much effort was spent by local authorities, foreign missionaries, religious and civil leaders of the communities, municipalities, the police force, and the central state. Relying on Ottoman and French archival sources, together with periodicals and contemporary literature, this paper discerns the elevated political significance of abandoned children within such realms as demographic politics, politics of conversion, and national identities. The state's new preoccupation of properly registering new-born infants, in line with the new Regulation on Population Registration created controversy over the nationality and citizenship of abandoned children. As new administrative reforms challenged the customary jurisdiction and the autonomy of the communal authorities and as the power of the governmental bureaus, police departments, the municipality, and the foundling unit of the Dârü'l-aceze increased, non-Muslim leadership resisted these practices: they both submitted official appeals to the government and opened or strengthened their own foundling facilities. Furthermore, the child gathering efforts of Catholic missionaries created an atmosphere of self-defense on the part of the communities, as they felt threatened with losing prospective members of their newly conceived and idealized imagined communities. In this context, abandoned children attracted interest hardly due to pity, or disinterested charity. Institutional solutions, policies, and strategies of diverse and competing actors were closely related to the emergence of a modernized governmental structure and attempts to strengthen communities as its mirror image.

The religious and nationalist nature of the Sheikh Said Rebellion in 1925 has been debated by the scholars for decades. For the Kurdish nationalists the rebellion symbolized the Kurdish struggle for an independent state. For the Turkish state, it was another deception by Great Britain to stir up the region for its colonialist interests. Newly available sources in the US diplomatic archives raise the question of the Turkish government's fomentation and/or manipulation of the Sheikh Said Rebellion. In addition, some of the Turkish oppositional leaders (such as Kazim Karabekir) of the time suggested that this rebellion was allowed to happen to suppress the political opposition in Turkey. This study examines the validity of these claims and how this rebellion was manipulated to silence political opposition in Turkey. More specifically, this study will seek answers to the following questions: Was the Sheikh Said Rebellion fomented by the Turkish government to eliminate the political opposition? How was this rebellion manipulated to accomplish this aim?