Nostalgia for the Modern

As the twentieth century drew to a close, the unity and authority of the secularist Turkish state were challenged by the rise of political Islam and Kurdish separatism on the one hand and by the increasing demands of the European Union, the International Monetary Fund, and the World Bank on the other. While the Turkish government had long limited Islamthe religion of the overwhelming majority of its citizensto the private sphere, it burst into the public arena in the late 1990s, becoming part of party politics. As religion became political, symbols of Kemalismthe official ideology of the Turkish Republic founded by Mustafa Kemal Atatrk in 1923spread throughout the private sphere. In Nostalgia for the Modern, Esra zyrek analyzes the ways that Turkish citizens began to express an attachment toand nostalgia forthe secularist, modernist, and nationalist foundations of the Turkish Republic. Drawing on her ethnographic research in Istanbul and Ankara during the late 1990s, zyrek describes how ordinary Turkish citizens demonstrated their affinity for Kemalism in the ways they organized their domestic space, decorated their walls, told their life stories, and interpreted political developments. She examines the recent interest in the private lives of the founding generation of the Republic, reflects on several privately organized museum exhibits about the early Republic, and considers the proliferation in homes and businesses of pictures of Atatrk, the most potent symbol of the secular Turkish state. She also explores the organization of the 1998 celebrations marking the Republics seventy-fifth anniversary. zyreks insights into how state ideologies spread through private and personal realms of life have implications for all societies confronting the simultaneous rise of neoliberalism and politicized religion.