Just six years ago, a small group of Turkish citizens performed their civic duty as members of a secular democratic regime by going to the polls, voting by secret ballot, and inaugurating their leader in a lavish ceremony; on October 24, 2002, Jews throughout Turkey participated in a community-wide election of the Turkish chief rabbi. Through anthropological fieldwork in Istanbul, I observed how Turkish Jews, a minority which generally eschews political participation, held this community-wide election at the same time as Turkish national elections were going forward. This parallel exercise in democracy gave the Turkish Jewish community a unique space to debate the meaning of democratic citizenship, to discuss their role as a distinct religious community in the Turkish Republic, and to perform that identity in a semi-public, highly orchestrated event: the ritual investiture of the chief rabbi. This paper describes how the election and investiture of a chief rabbi in 2002 created a unique space for Turkish Jews to debate the meaning of democracy. The election year coincided with a general increase of intensity of the “democratization” discourse, spurred by European Union demands for Turkish political reform. What emerged during the election and investiture of the chief rabbi was a strong debate about Turkey’s weak democracy. This is perhaps not surprising, given that European Union debates about Turkey’s candidacy for admission currently occupy so much media time, judging Turkey against an ever-shifting democratic yardstick. That this debate should be so prominent among Turkish Jews, however, sparks certain critical questions: Who in Turkey still has a stake in the definition of democracy? To answer this question, I document current Turkish-Jewish discourses about democracy by combining ethnographic observations of the election season with an analysis of the production and reception of local narratives (speeches, news articles and interviews) about the process. I then analyze the election and inauguration as a “politics of presence” (Phillips 1994) in which democracy is seen not only as a practice through which to debate ideas but a discursive move to represent collective difference in the public sphere. As such, this article contributes to discussions about the performative nature of minority politics and how these alternative discursive spheres relate to the broader contexts in which they occur.

Since Turkey’s application to the European Economic Community (EEC) for associate membership in July 1959, anything related to Europe, in general, and European Union (EU), in particular, has hit the Turkish daily agenda recurrently. According to many Turks, Turkey’s possible full EU membership sounds the crystallization of Turkish modernization, roots of which could be traced back to the early 19th century of the late Ottoman state, the sick man of Europe. Since the establishment of the Turkish Republic in 1923, modernization meant “secular” in rhetoric but faithfully “secularist” posture against Islamic/Islamist opposition -even anti-theist in some official discourses and policies. The end of the Cold War opened the Pandora’s Box unleashing the earlier heavily silenced religious, sectarian, ethnic and gendered identities as well as emerging supra/trans-national ones into the stage especially in Turkey. However, among these identities, Islam comparatively appeared more in the public sphere and produced itself as a “political language.” The EU has not only played a pivotal role in catalyzing the identity discussions with its regular reports and pressure on Turkey to harmonize its laws but it has also opened the path for Islamists to voice for their religious freedoms, such as appearing in the public and official sphere with religious attire especially for women as a matter of discussion in the last three decades. Moreover, the EU has affected the perception of religion not just for Muslims but also for non-Muslims who are essentially and judicially minorities in Turkey with reference to the Lausanne Treaty in 1924, despite Turkish state’s ironical insistence on secularism. The EU discussions also helped the Alawites to voice their sectarian identity, even their comprehension of Islam more heard by the Islamist political elite. If modernization means an essential change based on lessening bonds with the theological comprehension of the worldly politics, as much as they receive the governmental seats, Islamists have already given up their discourse of Islamic ummah (global and timeless imagined religious community) while transforming their energetic opposition towards the EU to zealous effort to membership. Thus, it is important to comprehend the EU’s role in gradual change in the perception of religion and secularism in Turkey. This paper will evaluate this change on tripod of Islam, non-Muslims and Alawites and question Turkish secularism how authentic or pseudo it is.

One aspect of Turkey’s European Union accession that has generated little attention by scholars is agriculture, which is undergoing a comprehensive series of transformations with profound effects for farmers. Agriculture also lies at the heart of Turkey’s neoliberal policies as required by international lenders such as the International Monetary Fund and World Bank. However, the Turkish government has often legitimized these new agricultural policies solely as a component of Turkey’s EU accession. These new policies have generated sharp debates among policy makers, farmer groups, and activists, and these discussions are likely to intensify as the policies affect farmers. An important example of this agricultural restructuring involves Turkey’s recent formulation of a series of laws to regulate seed production, exchange, distribution, and marketing that reduces farmers’ traditional roles in producing their own seeds. On the one hand, EU regulatory proscriptions might be regarded as central to Turkey’s new seed laws: EU regulations include directives on the regulation of plant varieties and provide a “common catalogue” of recognized categories of seeds that can be marketed freely in member states. On the other hand, it is possible to question the extent to which “Europeanization” alone is responsible for the establishment of seed governance mechanisms in Turkey. To address the contested nature of agricultural changes in line with European Union harmonization, I analyze the perceptions of several actors in the debate (state officials, farmers, farmer group representatives, and non-governmental organization representatives) on the significance and role of EU harmonization in seed regulation and the effects of seed governance mechanisms at the level of farmers. This study draws on official documents and interviews with relevant actors that were carried out in autumn 2007, and contributes to discussions on the effects of European Union accession by examining Turkey’s experience at the level of national policies and perceptions of several actors on European seed laws and agricultural changes.

Over the past two decades, analyses of Turkey and its prospects for European Union accession have been profuse, but they have also tended to be narrow in conceptualization and myopic in their scope of inquiry. Thus far, most studies regarding the membership question have addressed just two broad aspects of the problem; cultural and regional assessments (i.e., matters defined in terms of the ethnic, religious, or “civilizational” fit of Turkey within Europe – often with respect to questions of presumed chauvinism, racism, or xenophobia on the part of Europeans), and the conduct of state-based socio-political and economic reforms (e.g., Turkey’s “progress” in instituting civil or human rights reforms, or “structural adjustments” in the economy). As a result, there has been a serious deficit in the extent to which scholars have scrutinized rigorously anticipated or potential ramifications of union membership for Turkey, its peoples, and its ecologies and environments. To the extent that Turkish sentiments are considered, most sources simply suppose common aspirations for membership within Turkey, and only a few sources observe any measure of apprehension or resistance – generally attributed to assumed frustration with the process or to conjecture about Turkish-held sentiments of nationalism and/or religiosity. In my paper, I contend, however, that there are many unanswered questions and unheard perspectives regarding this process. Based on ongoing fieldwork in rural Turkey with small-scale agriculturalists, I challenge not only commonly held assumptions about Turkish aspirations for EU accession, I also demonstrate the very slight limits of public and scholarly discourse concerning the Turkey-EU question thus far. By presenting findings that emerge from research that engages with rural peoples first-hand to understand and analyze their views about Turkey, Europe, and the potential changes that membership implies, I contend that the voices of farmers reveal profound concerns among Turkey’s rural poor regarding processes of regionalization and impacts that we may presume. In sum, these voices speak to many of the same concerns that we might discern from global-scale critiques associated with shifting governmentalities amid structural reforms and the broader impacts of neoliberalism in the developing world.