Turcia: (auto)portrete în mişcare

Who is a Turk?” is an extremely difficult question which cannot be answered in just one way. The multiple and sometimes conflicting self-portraits painted over history as well as the cultural richness of the Turkish society provide us with evidence of a complex picture. The auto-images of the Turks in the early republic were defined in opposition with the barbaric, backward, religious and multicultural Ottoman society, regarded as alterity. Domestic otherness, especially of ethnic Kurds and Islamists, was repudiated in order to create an organic and homogeneous society. The failure of the assimilation project caused the reinstating of the Islamic element in the Turkish identity, and later, the scission of the Turkish society, leading to a mixture of competing and complementary identities. In contrast, the image of the Turk in Europe has been static. Turks continue to represent the Other of Europe. The image of Turks in Europe consist in a strong and unchangeable portrait sketched under the influence of Orientalism, full of old stereotypes and constructed on the idea of the clash of civilizations and on the encounter of Europeans with the Turkish-Muslim immigrants.