Seite - 116 - in Limina - Grazer theologische Perspektiven, Band 2:1

116 | www.limina-graz.eu hande Birkalan-Gedik | muslim | martyr | masculine regarding nationalism in general. The Turkish national memorats, folk- narratives with unexplainable, supernatural elements, contain references to male martyrs who fought even while holding their chopped off heads under their arms. Riding horses, they would not surrender to the enemy. Militarism and masculinity have been inseparable in the nationalist circles in Turkey in more recent history. Especially since the 1980s, the on-going low-intensity war between the Turkish army and the PKK (Partiya Karkeren Kurdistan/The Kurdish Workers Party) has been a uniting force to bring to- gether all nationalists, creating a common enemy for the state. The Turkish soldiers who died in operations against the PKK guerrillas were painted as martyrs who died for a “holy purpose,” evoking past wars in Turkey, while the PKK guerrillas were considered impure and thus “terrorists.” The dis- course of martyrdom, then, goes beyond the religious implications and il- lustrates the “we” versus “them” or “hero” versus “betrayer” dichotomy/ divide at best, where religion merely serves as the reason to both talk about and justify dying for the homeland. The Turkish General of Army Yaşar Büyükanıt, the head of the greatest “secular” organization, once claimed: “We are a great nation. Truly our martyrs have died for a holy purpose. That holy purpose is to protect the country we live in as one and undivided” (op.  cit. in White 2013, 1). A Brief Look at Turkish Nationalism in the Early Turkish Republic The Turkish Republic, founded in 1923, declared itself a secular state in the constitution only in 1937. However, the roots of secularism can be traced back to the Tanzimat Era (1839–1876), when nationalism emerged as a modernist and modernizing phenomenon. The Tanzimat was a period of re- forms from which several attempts at saving the Ottoman Empire through westernization emerged, steering eventually towards a secular republic (Mardin 2000). During this period, nationalism assumed a secular form, as mainly propagated by the School of Military, School of Medicine, and School of Political Science, the three important secular institutions that propa- gated nationalism. These institutions also both produced and sustained the nationalist male elite, who became the leaders of Turkish nationalism in the new Turkish state. This type of nationalism, which is often identified as “secular,” developed in reaction to the Ottoman cosmopolitanism. The period between 1920 and 1930 was the heyday of racial nationalism, when Kemalism downplayed religion to promote its idea of “secularism.”