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“The first lesson was the Independence March”: Return Migration, Uyum Programs & National Identity in 1980s Turkey
Abstract
In my contribution to this panel conversation on displacement in the un/making of Turkey, I investigate the terrain of Turkish return migration in the early 1980s and the Turkish state’s efforts to instrumentalize these returns as a means to refashion a notion of Türklük (Turkishness). In 1983/4, the Helmut Kohl-led coalition government (CDU) of West Germany enticed, through financial incentives, several hundred thousand Turkish guestworkers to “tear up their passports,” that is, agreeing to leave and voluntarily invalidate the possibility of a future return to West Germany. The Milli E?itim Bakanl??? (Turkish Education Ministry) saw this developing stream of return migration into Turkey and, nominally fearing a “loss of Turkishness” amongst the children of adult returnees, developed a series of uyum (re-adaptation) programs to acclimate (or perhaps more pointily, inculcate) the young returnees with renewed notions of an ‘appropriate’ Turkish identity informed by the ideology of the 1980 Turkish coup d'état. In short, Turkish state planners saw this voluntary displacement of Turkish guestworkers from West Germany as an opportunity to enforce and further their refashioned notion of Türklük. My research into this history offers a means to further interrogate the terrain of 1980s Turkish nationalism. During a yearlong research trip in Turkey, I explored the planning and execution for these uyum courses from planning records contained within the Turkish Education Ministry, through an investigation of the textbooks utilized, and also through research into the then-contemporary journalistic coverage of guestworkers returnees and the attendant uyum programs. I also conducted extensive oral history interviews with a number of the (now-adult) children attendees of the 1983/4 programs. The intended and unintended outcomes of these efforts to instrumentalize the return of Turkish guestworkers, explored through both the perspectives of state planners and the lived experiences of attendees, offers another way to consider how displacement, across a spectrum of voluntary and involuntary mobility, played a role in the un/making of 1980s Turkey.
Discipline
History
Geographic Area
Turkey
Sub Area
Turkish Studies