THE PROBLEM OF IDENTITY POLITICS IN TURKEY AND MULTICULTURALISM

Abstract

There are many factors that keep societies together and strengthen their culture of living together. Among these factors, the role of identity comes to the front. In the postmodernity period where modernity evolved, identities also turned into a form of politics and took placE in society. There have been many schools of thought about how the Ottoman State could be saved and in what ways the subjects of different cultures could be kept together in the last and difficult times of Ottoman State. These thoughts, on the one hand, formed the political identities of their defenders and critics. The identity politics that underwent various transformations with the proclamation of the new Republic of Turkey can be expressed as existing within two competing streams: namely Kemalism and Islamism. In this study, these two political identities in Turkey are evaluated especially in this era of postmodernism from the perspective of the problem of identity politics. The concept of multiculturalism, which means the defense of the practice of living together with differences in the midst of the problems of modernity, is presented as a solution.