Using language in boundary-making: nation-state building in the early years of the Turkish Republic (1927–1965)

Abstract

Abstract In 1927, the nascent Turkish Republic engaged in its first endeavor as a nation-state to systematically account for all its citizens. Included on this census were a number of different attributes the Turkish government wanted to know about its citizenry, including language. In the Turkish context, examining the language categories on the census between 1927 and 1965 and how – they changed over time – provides insight into how the new republic was imagining its citizenry (and by extension, itself). The dynamic nature of the language categories not only reflected an ambiguity that the nascent nation-state had regarding what constituted salient ethnolinguistic category for governing purposes, it also reflected the realization and subsequent politicization of minoritized populations over time. After examining the history of the development of the Turkish census, the article outlines the use of running records like censuses to provide insight into how state apparatuses were creating taxonomies to realize (or visualize) its citizenry and the value of utilizing such unobtrusive measures in Durkheimian social facts such as those who are “Us” and those who are “Other”. This article then situates the census data in its geographical context and demonstrates how the delineation of historic parts of the country that were settled by non-Turkish communities were ones that were then later demarcated into smaller administrative borders, allowing for closer government and military oversight. While this article is an exploratory case study of the Turkish census as part of its state building process, I contend that looking at how language categories were used in the 1927–1965 censuses provides insight into the nature of the Turkish government’s imaginings regarding its citizenry. In particular, the use of language data as a proxy for ethnicity was concomitant with processes of internal border demarcation that was taking place to increase government oversight in particular non-Turkish contexts, resulting in a “new” form of minoritization and marginalization in the Turkish Republic.