Saraçoğlu C.
Justice, Power and Resistance, sa.Early View, ss.1-20, 2026 (Scopus)
Özet
This article analyses the recent emergence of secular nationalism in Turkey as a reactionary ideological domain rather than a coherent political doctrine. Prompted by observations from the March 2025 protests following Istanbul Mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu’s arrest, the study examines how this phenomenon manifests through three primary venues: popular social media platforms, emergent nationalist parties, particularly the Victory Party (
Zafer Partisi
-ZP), and a small intellectual circle attempting to doctrinalise the movement. The analysis situates secular nationalism within the broader transformation of Turkey’s ideological landscape under the Justice and Development Party (AKP). As the AKP sought to redefine Turkish national identity through an Islamist lens, displacing the Kemalist synthesis of secularism and nationalism, an ideological vacuum emerged, particularly after the Nationalist Action Party (MHP)’s incorporation into the ruling bloc in 2018. Secular nationalism arose as a reactive formation within this void, crystallising around three primary objects of resentment: Syrian refugees and migrants, the Kurdish movement, and religious communities (
cemaatler
). Conceptually, the article theorises secular nationalism, not as a coherent doctrine or political project, but as a
reactionary ideological domain
. It argues that secular nationalism is
non-doctrinal in composition yet ideological in function
: while lacking a shared programme, stable symbolic canon, or unified vision of the nation, it operates by translating structural contradictions of neoliberal authoritarian rule into moralised narratives of cultural loss, demographic threat, and national decline. Secular nationalism operates as a potent ideological formation that mystifies the material foundations of Turkey’s contemporary crisis while reproducing oppressive structures it ostensibly opposes.