In late 2005, not long before becoming the first Turk ever to win a Nobel Prize, Orhan Pamuk appeared before an Istanbul court on charges of ‘insulting Turkishness’. According to Article 301 of the Turkish Penal Code, it is illegal to ‘insult Turkey, the Turkish nation, or Turkish government institutions’. Some months earlier, in a magazine interview, the world-renowned author had made comments about the Armenian genocide of 1915 and the ongoing conflict against Kurdish militants in Turkey. These were deemed by some to have sullied the good name of Turkey and Turks at large. The charges were eventually dropped, but the episode is notable because it demonstrates the sentimental and definitional importance of ethnicity in Turkey. Indeed, Pamuk was heckled by nationalists at his court appearance. The idea of Turkishness is jealously guarded; it is infused with emotion and pride. At the same time, the charges against Pamuk reflect the delicate nature of discussions of ethnic minorities and their places, and plights, in the territory that is now Turkey.

This chapter examines the complexities and dimensions of ethnic identity in the Republic of Turkey. The Turkish nature of the Republic was not a fait accompli when it was established in 1923; it required an effort of top-down engineering to forge a sense of ethnic coherence and cohesion. This chapter outlines how the idea of Turkishness crystallised, the impacts this and the state’s official discourse and aspiration to ethnic unity had on Kurdish identity, and the ongoing examinations of and controversies surrounding national identity and nationalism in Turkey. The modernising state long denied the very existence of such a thing as Kurdish identity, despite the Kurds constituting the largest non- Turkish community. Amid periodic waves of assimilation and repression, Kurds sought to assert their presence. Within these dynamics the so-called Kurdish Question arose. Over time the contours of the issue have changed, from 1920s denial and attempts at assimilation, to insurgency and discourses of separatism and terrorism in the 1980s and ‘90s. More recently, political spaces and debates have broadened, only to contract again as the political system succumbs to the authoritarian inclinations and re-appropriated nationalist rhetoric of the AKP and Erdoğan.