Living the clash within: secular/conservative divide of immigrant Turkish parents on the identity formations of British Turks

ABSTRACT

This article addresses the identity constructions of British Turks in the context of the inherent fragmentation of Turkish immigrant parents situated within the historically complex secular or conservative divisions of Turkish politics. British Turks raised in the UK maintain identities defined within the parameters of the either/or epistemology forced by their Turkish immigrant parents, who are either in harmony with Turkish moral values and Islamic lifestyles or adopting a modern secular approach to life embedded in secular principles of Kemalism. Accordingly, we see the manifestations of polarity between religious/conservative versus secular principles of Turkish immigrant parents who, in a strictly practical sense, interfere in British Turks’ identity constructions. Illustrated through the empirical findings, a fault line appears in the impact of conservative/secular ideologies of Turkish immigrant parents on their British-born children due to the latter’s encounter with versions of Britishness and British ways of life. On both fronts, we see that British Turks understand the limits of the certainty of parental ideologies and values and therefore embrace more fragmented and pluralized selves as if the former were the necessary source of the latter .

KEYWORDS:

• British Turks
• Turkish upbringing
• Islamophobia
• secular camp
• conservative camp

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Turkish republicanism as the nation-state ideology was founded upon two pillars: secularism and nationalism, referred to as Kemalism [Göle, N. 2015]. Islam and secularity: The future of Europe’s public sphere. Duke University Press.

2 Alevism is often defined as a mystical, syncretic, or heterodox form of Islam and Alevis as the second largest belief community in Turkey are strongly affiliated with the political left.

3 The argument about Kemalist secularism is the view that Turkey must adopt Western civilisation, in its totality, including music, dress, alphabet etc., and its enactment is a reform and even a revolution for the supporters of this new system. Yet its implementation was inadvertently, or at times, openly rested on the complete erasure of the past of the country symbolised by Islam (Çarmikli 2011).

4 The Tanzimat reforms hold a unique place in the Ottoman history of modernization. During the Tanzimat period (1839–1878), the state underwent a restructuring process in almost all of its institutions to establish a centralised modern state, and many new institutions were established. The Ottomans paid special attention to education to train the new generation required for the continuity of modernisation and the centralised bureaucratic structure. While they opened modern high schools and higher education institutions, they attempted to reform the existing sıbyan schools, which were the primary education institutions (Braun and Clarke 2013; Richards 2019; Samani 2018; Simsek 2012).

5 While Turkishness was defined through ethnicity under secular Kemalism, population engineering in the service of Turkish nationalism emerged as a valuable concept. The government was acutely aware of the presence of non-Turks and non-Muslims in different parts of the country. Despite this puzzling synthesis, staunch nationalism and secularism led ethnically non-Turks and non-Muslims to embrace the Turkish republic (Cagaptay 2006).

6 Muslims have been attributed stereotypical traits as a monolithic and static entity, and Islamophobia has been increasingly mainstream in the British context. There is no single way to conceptualise Islamophobia, which is constantly produced and reproduced, and therefore is not monolithic or immutable (Allen 2013; Saeed 2007).

7 Forbidden to the male gaze.