The rapid industrial growth accompanied by even more rapid export growth of such Far East economies as South Korea, Hong Kong, Singapore and Taiwan has drawn due attention from students of economic development. Economists with a Neo-classical ideological stance, favoring a perfectly free market economy, tend to attribute the industrial growth of these LDCs to the phenomenal increase in their exports. They argue that export expansion will be conducive to growth and the problems that might arise on the way will be taken care of by market forces. They identify the export sector of the economy as the “leading sector” and label the growth strategy patterned after this model as “export-oriented growth.” Over the last decade this growth strategy has been effectively “recommended” to a large number of LDCs facing debt servicing difficulties.

For the economies of the Middle East, the nineteenth century was a period of rapid integration into the world economy. Some of the forces behind this process came from Europe. In the aftermath of the Industrial Revolution, Great Britain and later the Continental economies began to turn towards areas beyond Europe in order to establish markets for their manufactures and also secure inexpensive sources of foodstuffs and raw materials. As a result, European commercial penetration into the Middle East gained new momentum in the 1820s after the end of the Napoleonic Wars. Later, starting around mid-century, commercial penetration began to be accompanied by European investments in the Middle East in the forms of lending to governments and direct investment in railways, ports, banks, trading companies, and even agricultural land. A large part of this investment served to increase the export orientation of the Middle Eastern economies.

Feminism in Turkey has reached a new exciting dimension in the last decade with the emergence of autonomous and multifarious female voices. Duygu Asena, an editor and novelist, has much to do with paving the way for the emergence of these voices. With her controversial writings and independent lifestyle, she is an icon of Turkish feminism, the Gloria Steinem of Turkish culture. As a proponent of staunch individualism, she has not allied herself with any group or movement. But through her editorials in Kadinca (Womanly) and two controversial novels, Kadinin Adi Yok (Woman Has No Name) and its sequel Aslinda Aşk da Yok (In Reality, Love Does Not Exist Either) that insist on female equality and autonomy, she has greatly shaped public opinion that has made possible the mobilization of other feminists.

On April 17, 1993 the Turkish President, Turgut Özal, suddenly died, leaving the Turkish nation in a state of shock and mourning. This situation lasted for almost a week, a time full of nationwide, activities in preparation for the final services which eventually were to culminate in the state funeral. It was only after this that Turkish society returned to normal everyday life, to watch its politicians haggling over Özal's political heritage. As outsiders to Turkish society living in Istanbul at that time we became participant observers of this atmosphere of rising collective solemnity. It was the symbolic dimension of the funeral preparations and the final services which principally aroused our interest, and these are, therefore, the main reason and focus of this article. As festivities always have a reference to the self-understanding of a community or a nation, we analyzed those images and signs which reached us through reading newspapers, watching TV, listening to the radio and the people, and through personal participation in the funeral service in Istanbul. Insofar as we conceptualized Özal's funeral as a collective ceremony that both mirrored and created this society's self representation, our focus gradually broadened. Proceeding on the assumption that the comparison of two similar events at different historical moments of a society will allow us to get an insight into the development of a society’s self understanding over time, we have chosen the funerals services for Mustafa Kemal, the founder of the republic, as just such a point of reference. This will give us an insight into the development of Turkey’s great political tradition, or, more precisely, into the changing construction of national identity on the part of the political elite. In choosing the funeral service of Kemal Atatürk as such a point of comparison we do so first of all because until today Turkish state and society have been deeply characterized by and identified with this leader's legacy, and consequently any change can only be measured by taking Kemalism as a point of reference.

At the end of World War I, senior Ottoman military officers and bureaucrats led the Turkish Muslim inhabitants of Anatolia in a struggle for national independence against invading European armies, under the command of Mustafa Kemal (Atatürk) and his deputy, İsmet İnönü. Emerging victorious in the war, Atatürk and his associates had garnered sufficient national legitimacy and prestige to end the Ottoman sultanate and caliphate, establish a Turkish Republic, and embark on a series of interventions in politics and society known in Turkish parlance as the Kemalist Reforms/Revolutions. Recrafting the ethos, substance, and goals of schooling into a properly national education (millî terbiye) was one of the central components of this reform.

The main goal of this article is to highlight the importance and implications of a debate that is ongoing in Turkey over the meaning, social-political role, and regulation of Turkey's ethnic-cultural diversity, especially that of its Kurdish component. By itself, this debate can neither bring about any significant change in the political realm nor have a major influence on the “mainstream” Turkish social-political discourse. Despite significant changes during the last decade or so, this discourse continues to predominantly reflect the diversity-phobic, dominant beliefs and values of Turkish nationalism.

This paper explores how discourses of nationalism and neo-liberal conceptualizations of economic performance interact in Turkey, by analyzing cultural productions about business elites and workers in the media. I take up both business elites' attempts at self-representation and how mainstream media portrays them to argue that these actors attempt to draw the contours of national belonging with respect to economic success. Even though the representations are diverse in definitions of national identity, they all formulate service to the nation in terms of business success and market performance. In addition, struggles with syndicated labor also produce relevant discourses of economic necessity and rationality only to be challenged by other ideas of political belonging, drawing their force from social rights. These reveal the contingency of formulations that construct desirable citizenship on the basis of one's ability to contribute to economic growth. Through these examples, I suggest that discourses about market economies do not necessarily divest themselves of nation-state frameworks. Instead, they interact with cultural tools in local contexts, producing new social and political constellations that attempt to explain shifting social stratifications. I argue that these struggles over representation are part of a terrain of banal nationalism, transforming connotations of economic rationality, national belonging, and citizenship.

Scholars of Islam in Turkish society have written penetrating analyses on the reciprocal influences and complementary relationships, as well as rivalries between, Alevi Islam, Sunni Islam, Islam of the Sufi orders, Islam of student activists, Islam of “Islamist intellectuals”, Islam as embedded in the oral culture and daily practices of the “mahalle”, Islam of the scriptures, and so on. There are clearly different ways of knowing Islam, distinct yet intertwined. My concern in the present study is with a particular knowledge of Islam—as constructed on the landscape of commercial television in Turkey.

This paper analyzes the processes of integration of the poor into the market, as instigated by their involvement in microfinance projects. This analysis is based on the findings of an ethnographic study of the Turkish Grameen Microcredit Project (TGMP), conducted in Diyarbakır at different time periods between September of 2004 and July of 2005. By analyzing in detail the nature of economic life revolving around the microfinance practices, this paper intends to elucidate the way in which the integration of the microcredit borrowers into the market is guided by societal processes. The findings of the field research show that in everyday practices the borrowers adjust the microfinance system to their own needs and accommodate the economic activities originating in microcredit into their wider social structure. Thus, one can conclude that they are integrated into the market in their own way, guiding the integration process with their own socio-cultural institutions.

This is an age of identity crisis. Who am I? What are my roots? These are the central questions of our age. The search for identity is mixed with a wave of skepticism about development, technology and environment. This is a universal phenomenon. Questions about one's roots, about ecological and technological and demographic limits of growth and development (Olson and Landsberg, 1973; Schumacher, 1973) are being asked in the mass consumption societies of the developed world (Scitovsky, 1976; Hirschman, 1977). And they are being asked in the post-colonial societies of the developing world.

The timing of the global identity crisis is paradoxical. In the developed world economic affluence was expected to liberate man for leisure and creativity. In the search for material satisfaction, western man has lost his soul to “technomania” (Grant, 1969, p. 39). Christian fundamentalism and born-again Christianity are on a rising curve.