One of the Nowruz traditions involves leaping over bonfires to rid oneself of pain and sorrow (Image credit: Borna News)

As people in Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, India, Iran, Iraq, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Pakistan, Tajikistan, Turkey, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan prepare to celebrate Nowruz, there is a palpable sense of excitement and anticipation in the air. Nowruz, which literally means “new day” in Persian, marks the beginning of spring and the start of the new year for many peoples across the Middle East and Central Asia.

Nowruz is celebrated on the vernal equinox, typically falling on March 20 or 21, and lasts for thirteen days.

Rooted in the Zoroastrian tradition, Nowruz is a time of renewal, hope, and cultural celebration that transcends borders and unites people across the Persianate world.

Nowruz Down Under

Although in the Southern hemisphere Nowruz falls in the beginning of autumn rather than spring, still it takes on a special significance for Iranian Australians as we bring the traditions and customs of our homeland to this distant land.

The Haft-Sin table, with its seven symbolic items representing rebirth and renewal, takes centre stage in our celebrations. From sprouts symbolising growth to apples representing beauty and health, each item holds deep cultural significance and is a reminder of the values we cherish.

Spirit of Nowruz

Haftsin Table in the Victorian Parliament (Image Credit: Australian Iranian Society of Victoria)

Poetry and music fill our homes with joy and inspiration during Nowruz. Poets and writers have long captured the essence of this festival in their verses, expressing themes of renewal and spiritual growth. Music, too, plays a vital role, with traditional songs and melodies evoking a sense of nostalgia and connection to our roots.

At the heart of Nowruz is the spirit of unity and solidarity. As Iranians around the world come together to celebrate, we are reminded of the bonds that unite us as a community.

Solidarity with the people in Iran

Since the establishment of the Islamic Republic in Iran in 1979, the regime has suppressed the nation’s multifaceted and ancient culture under a theocratic dictatorship. However, for Iranians, both inside Iran and in the diaspora, Nowruz is not just a celebration of a new year. It is a celebration of our rich cultural heritage, resilience in the face of adversity, and hope for a brighter future.

So, this Nowruz, as an Australian-Iranian, deeply concerned about the future of Iran, I unite with my compatriots across the globe who embrace and celebrate Nowruz. For us, at this moment in history, Nowruz is more than just a cultural tradition. It is a unifying force and a symbol of Iranian-ness and unity, with a rich history that predates the current regime.

At the outset of Nowruz, we remember Mahsa Amini, and many other young people whose tragic deaths during the recent protests against the injustices in Iran have ignited a renewed sense of solidarity among Iranians both inside Iran and in the diaspora. Their memories remind us of the importance of standing together in the face of adversity and working towards a brighter future.

My music

This Nowruz, it’s fitting to dedicate to everyone two of my songs, that encapsulate the longing for freedom, love, and peace, “Hamseda” (Sympathizer) and “Eshghe-Bimarz” (Endless Love), which were created by a group of artists inside Iran and performed by myself.

Happy Nowruz! نوروزتان پیروز

After we completed our fieldwork, we were fortunate to obtain additional funding; first, to travel to New York to share our findings at the United Nations; and second, to bring together our findings in the first book to be published on this topic: The Legal Protection of Refugees with Disabilities has just been published.

For me personally, this project was a unique opportunity as a young researcher – I was able to gain invaluable experience designing, coordinating and carrying out fieldwork across six different countries, with a variety of people, in a variety of languages. I learned many valuable lessons which have hopefully helped me grow as a researcher and contributed to my capabilities as a PhD candidate.

But what does this project, which centres around international human rights law, have to do with language or sociolinguistics? While this research is officially within a very different field, I have still identified so many points of crossover, or ways of thinking, that have really helped each of my research fields.

Article 1 of the CRPD states:

Persons with disabilities include those who have long-term physical, mental, intellectual or sensory impairments which in interaction with various barriers may hinder their full and effective participation in society on an equal basis with others.

Laura during fieldwork in Nakivale Refugee Settlement, Uganda, 2013

Instead of placing the focus on the individual, the CRPD, both in Article 1 and throughout the remainder of its provisions, places the onus on societies. It forces us to think about the way our physical, social and legal structures differentially impact the various individuals who come into contact with them. For me, this critical reflection is also key to my growth as a sociolinguistics researcher.

For example, it may be easy to blame migrants for the various challenges they face: not being able to get a high-paying job, or having difficulty at school. But is this really about their individual ‘flaws’, or not trying hard enough, or does it have more to do with the legal, social, political and linguistic structures in our societies, which impact us all differently, advantaging some more than others?

In Chapter 6 of our book, for example, we discuss how a lack of work rights in many displacement settings greatly increased the risk of acquiring a disability, as refugees may be forced into exploitative and unregulated work.

Aside from legal status issues, language barriers played a significant role in access to a range of services – including gaining the knowledge that services existed in the first place. A comparison between the Syrian refugee populations in Turkey and Jordan provides an apt example: most Syrians in Jordan were able to communicate directly with locals, and even those who used Sign Language were more likely to find someone with whom they could communicate – Jordanian and Syrian Sign Language are mutually intelligible, and those literate in Arabic could also use written text to communicate. This obviously facilitated service provision, and access to work and education. By contrast, in Turkey, despite the government making very clear and concerted efforts to assist the Syrians there, language barriers created significant challenges in every aspect of life and access to services.

A refugee-run business in Za’atari Refugee Camp, Jordan, 2014

In places like Malaysia and Indonesia, although there were local disability rights organisations doing important work to advocate for greater inclusion, the invisibility of refugees living in their community, along with language barriers, meant that refugees largely missed out on benefiting from these groups. When we interviewed participants from Myanmar, the interpreters (themselves refugees) explained that they could not even translate ‘human rights’ as it was a completely unfamiliar concept – and we soon gave up asking. This contrasted with the situation in Uganda, where many of the refugees we met with had participated in programmes aimed at improving their rights, and when we spoke with them they were well versed in the ‘language’ of the CRPD and the concepts and rights it promotes.

Prolonged displacement situations are pertinent examples of how these types of linguistic barriers can play out quite differently over time depending on the particular structures in place in the host country. For example, in Malaysia, where young refugees have no access to the education system, their development of literacy and language skills is limited to what is offered by refugee volunteers. These classes are usually conducted in the language of the refugee group, and a range of barriers exist for children with disabilities, given the location of these ‘schools’ – in high-rise apartments, up narrow staircases – and the types of facilities they have – volunteer teachers with limited training, no assistance for those who need extra help, limited access to basic assistive technology like glasses or hearing aids. This understandably limits integration within the host society, and in any future country of resettlement, and the likelihood of being able to participate in the workforce in the future.

In contrast, in Uganda, where refugees are officially welcomed and permitted to settle permanently in the country, refugee children have the right to access local schools, and, in the case of a number of children who were deaf or hard of hearing who we met in camps in the south of the country, they may even be able to access specialised education, where needed.

In each setting, age-based policies that limited specific types of assistance to children (under 18 years) meant that those who had had disruptions due to their experiences as refugees or living through conflict situations may simply age out of opportunities that locals would have been able to access as soon as the need arose, following a ‘normal’ timeline.

It is unsurprising that these different levels of access would lead to different opportunities to participate in the host society, in both the short and long term, and very different experiences of what it means to have a disability. These experiences have reinforced for me the fundamental importance for social justice that we continue to question the way social, political and legal structures – and the beliefs and attitudes that underlie them – can impact on participation for the diverse individuals who make up our communities.

Reference

Crock, Mary, Laura Smith-Khan, Ron McCallum, and Ben Saul. 2017. The Legal Protection of Refugees with Disabilities: Forgotten and Invisible? Cheltenham, UK and Northampton, MA: Edward Elgar. Access the eBook and read the first chapter for free.

Images copyright of Mary Crock/University of Sydney.

Graduating students at Anadolu University (Source: Anadolu University)

The process of internationalization of education has been a pivotal issue across the world, in particular with regards to the higher education sector where internationalization is enacted most visibly and intensively. Within this process, the practices and policies of institutions lay so much emphasis on the incontestable role English plays, or more precisely, the role assigned to English, that it is not surprising to encounter the use of the term ‘internationalization’ with reference to the implementation of English as the language of tuition, particularly in non-Anglo tertiary education institutions.

In the following, I will focus my arguments on the dominant ideology that underpins the beliefs of students, the key stakeholders of higher education institutions, in relation to English and the concept of internationalization. In doing so, I will draw on my PhD study, which attempts to empirically explore perceptions of non-language major Turkish students and lecturers with regard to the notion of the ‘E’ in EMI (English-medium instruction only), with illustrative extracts taken from my own interview dataset with students.

Firstly, I would like to take issue with the widespread belief held by students that without English it is impossible to be international. According to this ideology, students consider English to be the vehicle that internationalizes their universities. Among the students I interviewed, many made statements which exemplify the perception that the choice of English as the language of instruction is the primary catalyst through which a university becomes international.

The following are some of the responses from students to the question of what role English plays in making their institution international:

Boğaziçi Üniversitesinde eğitim dili olarak İngilizce kullanılmasaydı, üniversite uluslararası olamazdı. Bu konuda çok netim.

Had English not been used in Bogazici University, it would not be international. I am quite convinced of this. (Female student of International Relations)

Bir üniversiteyi uluslararası yapan faktörler arasında en önemlisi İngilizcenin eğitim dili olarak kullanılıyor olmasıdır.

Among the factors that make a university international, the most important one is the use of English as the language of instruction. (Male student of International Relations)

Herşeyden önce, Bilkent üniversitesini bu derece popüler yapan başlıca etken İngilizce ile eğitim veriyor olmasıdır

In the first place, the chief determinant that makes Bilkent University so popular is its English-medium education. (Male Engineering student)

The interviews aimed to uncover why students equated English with internationalization, and my prompts elicited the notion that a number of policy implementations by the university promote the ideology that Englishization of the institution equates to achieving internationalization. Some of the policy implementations referred to by students are illustrate this:

 Üniversite Erasmus öğrenci değişim programı ile öğrencilerini değişime yollaması açısından uluslararası olarak düşünülebilir. Eğitim dili İngilizce olmamış olsaydı bu tarz öğrenci değişimleri mümkün olmazdı

The university might be considered international in terms of student exchange through the Erasmus exchange program. This kind of student exchange would not have been possible had the language of instruction been Turkish. (Female Engineering student)

Bir üniversiteyi uluslararsı yapan unsurlar yani okulun nerdeyse değil tamamında İngilizcenin gayet etkin bir rol alması bulunması ve eğitim sisteminin Amerikan Avrupa sistemine yönelik olması mesela bu AA, AB, BB gibi.

The elements that make a university international comprise the use of English all across the university in full rather than in part, and the fact that the education system is being grounded on American and European styles, such as the use of their marking symbols, AA, AB, BB, etc. (Male Engineering student)

Üniversitenin IELTS ve TOEFL gibi sınavları tanıması üniversitenin uluslararası olduğunu iddia edebilmek göstermiş olduğu bir çabadır. Aksi takdirde, yabancı öğrenciler okumak için bu üniversiteyi seçmezlerdi.

The recognition of international tests such as IELTS and TOEFL is an attempt by the university to be able to claim that it is international. Otherwise, overseas students would not choose to study at the university. (Female History student)

The excerpts above indicate quite clearly that the use of English as the medium of instruction in most institutions is viewed by students as the exclusive form of realizing internationalization. While EMI indeed contributes positively to the internationalization process of the institutions in many respects, it is not the sole facilitator, but rather simply one of several. Consequently, the narrow thinking which associates EMI with the realization of ‘internationalization’ within institutions originates, on the one hand, from the narrow understanding of the term internationalization, and the equation of the term with the adoption of English-medium instruction only (Kirkpatrick 2011); and on the other hand, over-reliance on English as the master key that will open every gate of an institution to the international arena.

To exemplify the confusion experienced by students as regards the role of English, the idiom of mixing apples and pears may be employed. In other words, they fail to distinguish the central role of English as the vehicle for internationalization of the institutions by allotting English an unrealistic role as the single means of being internationalized. One of the oft-cited definitions of internationalization of higher education is that of Knight (1999), who refers to it as ‘the process of integrating an international/intercultural dimension into the teaching, research and service functions of the institution’ (p. 21). Knight’s definition contains no reference to English or any other language, the main focus being on the incorporation of an intercultural aspect in the three main functions of a tertiary institution. In my opinion, the universities’ policy implementations (e.g. recognition of international language entry tests, student exchanges) as illustrated above play a key part in the proliferation of this ideology in students’ minds.

Taking for granted the fact that English makes it possible for universities to engage in all types of activities which are essential if they are to be truly international, students seem to miss an important point: that as well as being an indication of the degree of internationalization of higher education, the use of English-medium instruction paradoxically forms a barrier to the achievement of genuine internationalization. This is mainly because a truly internationalized university should not be reliant on a sole language, i.e. English, but should create opportunities for students to be able to study through the medium of languages other than English. It also goes unnoticed by many students that the dominance of English may pose a threat to their national identity and culture, while a truly internationalized university will strive to cherish the local language and culture along with others it hosts within its boundaries. Last but not least, some universities which are run through the medium of Turkish, such as Istanbul University and Ankara University, are ranked higher than their English-medium counterparts in the university ranking lists. Interestingly, it is a Turkish-medium university, Anadolu University, which has the highest number of international students in Turkey.

Clearly, students’ arguments for English as the sole driver of internationalization can be easily rebutted. Thus, it is the responsibility of tertiary institutions to prepare their students for global citizenship by producing individuals who can communicate not only in English but in other languages as well. To accomplish this, there is an urgent need for institutions of tertiary education to implement innovative policies that are more in line with the concept of a truly internationalized university. Changes of this kind will likely translate into the view of students that English is not the only way to become ‘international’, but rather just one of several.

References

Kirkpatrick, A. (2011). Internationalization or Englishization: Medium of Instruction in Today’s Universities. Hong Kong. Centre for Governance and Citizenship Working Paper Series 2011/003. Institute of Education.

Knight, J. (1999). Internationalization of higher education, in J. Knight (ed.) Quality of Internationalization in Higher Education, (pp. 13-28). Paris: OECD.

Barely legible today but evidence of ‘super-diversity’ in the 9th century: Runic graffiti in Hagia Sophia

On a parapet in Hagia Sophia’s gallery there is an obscure little graffiti written in Viking runes and dating back to the 9^th century. All that is legible today is ‘alftan,’ which refers to the Norse name ‘Halfdan’ and it is assumed that it was part of a formula such as ‘Halfdan carved these runes’ – the medieval equivalent of the modern graffiti formula ‘XY was here.’

How did a medieval Viking get all the way to what is today Istanbul and was back then Constantinople, the centre of the Byzantine Empire, the most powerful metropolis on earth? Maybe Halfdan was a mercenary in the Varangian Guard. Drawn from all over Northern Europe, the Varangian Guard were an elite army unit serving as personal body guards of the Byzantine Emperor. The Byzantine Emperors felt safer with foreigners as body guards who had no local loyalties. Little is known about the motivations of the young men who left Northern Europe to serve far from home in present-day Turkey but I imagine the usual mixture of lack of opportunities at home and the lure of the metropolis – a lure so powerful that medieval Constantinople drew migrants from all across the known world to this multilingual and multicultural city.

Evidence of contemporary ‘super-diversity:’ Chinese flier in Antwerp (Source: Blommaert&Rampton, 2011)

The Viking graffiti in Hagia Sophia reminded me of the Chinese flier in a contemporary Antwerp shop window that Jan Blommaert and Ben Rampton recently used as example to explain the scope of linguistic research under conditions of super-diversity. Arguing that the example – an ad for a room for rent – bears traces of worldwide migration flows which make language varieties and scripts globally mobile, they outline the theoretical and methodological implications of migration and globalization for contemporary sociolinguistic research. I largely agree with their conclusions but I cannot help but wonder that two qualitatively similar examples – Viking graffiti in 9^th century Constantinople and a hand-written Chinese flier in 21^st century Antwerp – have such different effects: why has sociolinguistics been oblivious to linguistic diversity through the ages and why is the recognition that linguistic diversity is fundamental to all research in language and communication relatively recent?

Why does evidence of contemporary linguistic diversity move us to re-think sociolinguistics in a way that evidence of linguistic diversity through the ages has not? I answered that question previously with reference to the position of key linguistic thinkers in monolingual environments. However, there is another answer, too, and – like the medieval Viking graffiti – it also stares you in the face here in Istanbul. That further explanation is that multilingualism has been actively expunged from the historical record.

Ottoman Turkish inscription above the gate through which Mehmed II entered the city: its Greek name is Χαρ[ι]σίου πύλη/πόρτα (‘Gate of Char[i]sius’) and its Turkish name is Edirnekapı (‘Adrianopole Gate’)

However, the transient nature of language is only part of the story why we fail to see linguistic diversity in the historical record. The other part of the story is that evidence of linguistic diversity has been systematically erased from the historical record.

This obelisk inscribed with Egyptian hieroglyphs has been part of Istanbul’s linguistic landscape since the 4th century when Emperor Theodosius had it brought in from Egypt. The pedestal with its bilingual Greek and Latin inscription was added at the same time.

When Halfdan wrote his Viking graffiti and, presumably, spoke some form of Old Norse with those of his fellow Varangians who shared his dialect, the main language of Constantinople – and the lingua franca of its diverse population – was (medieval) Greek. Latin was also widely used and then there were the languages of all the city’s migrants and visitors. Christian Constantinople was a hugely multilingual place.

The city’s linguistic make-up changed on May 29, 1453 when Mehmed II took the city: not only did the Christian city become a Muslim one – and the Hagia Sophia church a mosque – the city’s dominant languages also changed from Greek and Latin to Arabic, Persian and Turkish.

What did not change was the fact of the city’s multilingualism: Arabic was the language of prayer and religion, Persian was the language of the court and Turkish was the language of the troops. Greek found itself as the language of a now down-trodden and subjected population and, as before, there were many other languages spoken by the city’s diverse inhabitants: Armenian, Hungarian, Italian, Ladino, Russian and Serbian would have been particularly prominent.

The Turkish that came to predominate over the centuries as Istanbul’s lingua franca was itself a highly heteroglossic language. Ottoman Turkish was inflected particularly by Arabic and Persian but also by all the other languages of this great melting-pot city.

Arabic calligraphy in Hagia Sophia: Quranic verse inscribed in the dome

The city’s multilingualism and the multilingual character of Turkish officially came to an end with the proclamation of the Turkish Republic in 1923. The new Turkey wanted to sever its links with its Ottoman and ‘Eastern’ past and wanted to become modern and European. The multilingual laissez-faire of the past was now seen as decidedly ‘backward’ and ‘Eastern.’ Languages other than Turkish started to be repressed, with Kurdish as the most well-known victim of the new repression of linguistic diversity by the state. Not only was Turkey going to have only one language – Turkish – but that language was going to be ‘modernized,’ i.e. rid of the traces of other languages, particularly linguistic traces associated with ‘the East,’ i.e. Arabic and Persian.

The most well-known aspect of the Turkish language reform is the abolition of the Arabic script and its replacement with the Latin script. In one fell sweep, modern Turks lost access to their written historical record. Another target of the language reformers was Arabic and Persian vocabulary. Such words were replaced with ‘Turkish’ ones or loans from ‘modern’ European languages.

The futility of this undertaking – even if lost on everyone but the philologist – is nicely encapsulated by the word for ‘city’: Ottoman Turkish used ‘شهر‎ şehir.’ Because of its obvious association with Persian ‘شهر‎  šahr’ the language reformers saw no place for it in ‘Modern’ Turkish and cast around for a ‘pure’ Turkish word. They found it in the ancient ‘kent.’ The irony is that ‘kent’ is iself a much older loanword from Sogdian, the lingua franca of Central Asia before the Islamic Conquest.

Multilingualism has made a powerful comeback thanks to the tourism economy: this restaurant menu sports entries in 10 languages. And, no, this particular dish doesn’t sound appealling in any of them …

The reform was “a catastrophic success,” as the Turkologist Geoffrey Lewis has called it. As a result, most contemporary Turkish speakers are cut off from their linguistic and cultural heritage predating the 1930s. A famous – and also ironic – example of the monolingualization of Turkish is the fact that a major 1927 speech by Atatürk, the founder of the Turkish Republic, has had to be ‘translated’ repeatedly into contemporary Turkish so as to remain comprehensible to contemporary Turks.

In Istanbul, as elsewhere, contemporary examples of ‘super-diversity’ – the Russian ‘Sale’ signs in the shop windows, the tourist communications in all the languages of countries with strong currencies, the handwritten Arabic ‘for rent’ signs, the Kurdish music stalls – are impossible to ignore. By contrast, the fact that super-diversity has been a characteristic of Istanbul-Constantinople-Byzantium since time immemorial is easy to overlook.

Monolingualism and the Turkish language – just as all other standardized languages – are invented traditions. Diversity is, in fact, the normal human experience, as the anthropologist Ward Goodenough, who passed away last weekend, pointed out back in 1976. A research agenda that takes linguistic diversity as the basis of sociolinguistic inquiry must also include the hidden histories of linguistic diversity and modernity’s attempts to erase diversity.

Jan Blommaert, & Ben Rampton (2011). Language and superdiversity Diversities, 13 (2)
Goodenough, W. (1976). MULTICULTURALISM AS THE NORMAL HUMAN EXPERIENCE Council on Anthropology and Education Quarterly, 7 (4), 4-7 DOI: 10.1525/aeq.1976.7.4.05x1652n

Ernst Reuter, West Berlin’s post-war Mayor, was Professor of Urban Studies in Ankara from 1938 to 1946 (Source: turkishpress.de)

While the internationalization of higher education is a hot topic at the moment and is widely seen as unique to the present, internationalization of higher education is not new. The politics of internationalization at Istanbul University in the early years of the Turkish republic provide a fascinating case study (Ergin, 2009).

In the 1930s 38 out of 65 chair professors at Istanbul University were German. If university rankings had been around then, Istanbul University would obviously have done fantastically well on the ‘internationalization’ criterion. Two events in 1933 were responsible for this amazing level of internationalization: Hitler’s ascent to power meant that Germany’s Jewish and/or Socialist intellectual elite started to leave the country. Simultaneously, the Turkish republic undertook a major reform of higher education, which was to be a radical break from the Ottoman past.

In its efforts to modernize and Westernize, Turkey employed a large number of Western academics in the early years of the Republic (1923-1950), many of them refugees from Nazi Germany. The irony of employing the victims of Western modernity to achieve Western modernity was not lost on many of those academics who inhabited this paradoxical world.

The Turkish reformers largely accepted the Orientalist and racist world view of the time but wanted to switch sides. They accepted that ‘the West’ was superior to ‘the East’ but contested the idea that they were part of ‘the East.’ The humanities and social sciences of the reformed universities were expected to demonstrate exactly that: that historically, linguistically and racially Turkey was on par, if not superior, to Western modernity and civilization, conceived as an essential trait of culture and race. Specifically, academics were mobilized to demonstrate the ‘Europeanness’ of Turks and their membership in ‘the white race;’ to establish the ancient and enduring character of ‘Turkishness;’ and to show that the Turkish language was the source of Western languages.

In effect, refugees from Nazi Germany, which was ideologically built on exactly the same universalist conceptions of history, language and race (localized, of course, to “Germanness” rather than “Turkishness”), became the local personifications of Turkey’s modernization project. How did they live their paradoxical situation?

Ergin (2009) explores this paradox with reference to the work of Wolfram Eberhard, who was Professor of Chinese at Ankara University from 1937 to 1948. Eberhard, who was widely seen as one of the most talented sinologists of his generation, left Germany because he was under pressure to become a member of the Nazi Party in order to advance his academic career. His approach to language and culture did not fit in with the nationalistic and racial ideologies of the time (neither in Germany nor in Turkey) and his work thus provides an interesting case of intercultural communication in research.

Specifically, Eberhard sought to reject the then-prevailing idea of Chinese as an autonomous civilization and to demonstrate that Chinese language and civilization were as much a product of linguistic and cultural contact and exchange as any other. In one article, he identified five major influences on ancient Chinese, including a ‘Western’ influence “whose possessors were of Turkish stock” (quoted in Ergin, 2009, p. 117). While intended to contest notions of national and racial purity, this academic article was reinterpreted by Turkish academics and in the Turkish media as evidence that many achievements of Chinese civilization occurred because of Turkish influence. Eberhard’s anti-nationalistic and anti-essentialist argument thus came to be read as its exact opposite.

However, it would be wrong to assume that Turkey’s German academics only participated in the Turkish nationalist project inadvertently and through being misinterpreted, as in this example. They also had their careers and the interests of their employer – the Turkish state – to consider. Like many others, Eberhard, too, on occasion explicitly located his research agenda in Turkish nationalistic and racial positions. The tension between producing universalistic research for local purposes was continuously present.

While finding themselves welcomed and admired as ‘Western intellectuals’ these émigré scholars also found themselves resented and envied by their Turkish colleagues. One terrain where resentment against ‘Westerners’ could be openly expressed was language: most of the German academics taught in English, French or German and their contracts stipulated that, after three years, they would switch to Turkish. The assumption was that they would help to enrich and develop the Turkish language by lecturing and publishing in Turkish. In practice, unsurprisingly, only a relatively small number was able to achieve sufficient proficiency in Turkish to be able to teach in Turkish. For most, the contractually stipulated linguistic transition period went by and they quietly continued to teach in English, French or German.

Internationalizing Turkish academia in the early years of the republic was a creative response by the Turkish modernizers to turn Western academic Orientalism to their advantage. They tried to establish the Turkish origins of Western civilization with the help of Western knowledge and Western academics. Ergin’s article is a fascinating account of the entanglements in global and local power struggles that internationalizing discourses and international academics can find themselves in – then as today.

Ergin, M. (2009). Cultural encounters in the social sciences and humanities: western emigre scholars in Turkey History of the Human Sciences, 22 (1), 105-130 DOI: 10.1177/0952695108099137

Displaying the flag on Australia Day

Many things have changed in Australia since I first came here in the mid-1990s. One of these is a noticeable increase in displays of national ardour: for instance, there is the ever-expanding flag-waving and display of the national colours on Australia Day; or there is the fact that there has been a resurgence in ANZAC Day ceremonies since the 1990s after decades of decline; another example can be found in the introduction of citizenship testing for prospective citizens in 2007. I often discuss these changes with my students as we try to understand why Australia has become a more nationalistic place in the past two decades. The best argument is usually put forward by those who argue that nationalism is a reaction to globalisation and increased immigration, where the national flag becomes a symbol of stability in times of rapid change.

Indeed, the debate around the relationship between globalisation and nationalism is wide open. While increasing nationalism can be read as a reaction to globalisation, a diametrically opposed argument is also put forward. Two new studies (Ariely 2012; Machida 2012), for instance, have found that people in more globalised nations such as Australia are less ethnocentric, less patriotic and less inclined to fight for their countries than their counterparts in less globalised nations. These researchers suggest that nationalism is not a reaction to globalisation but that globalisation actually serves to reduce nationalism. Globalisation will eventually be the end of nationalism – or so this line of argument goes.

Both globalisation and nationalism are notoriously broad concepts and the contradiction between claims that globalisation increases or decreases nationalism must be sought somewhere in how the concepts are understood. If we define globalisation as the latest phase of capitalist expansion under the ideological banner of neoliberalism, a convincing case can be made that globalisation is likely to lead to an increase in state-sponsored nationalism, as Blad and Koçer (2012) do. Blad and Koçer (2012) provide a case study of the rise of Islamism as a political legitimation strategy in Turkey over the past decades. Specifically, they argue that

[…] contrary to analyses that point to political Islam as a cultural reaction to modernity or Western imperialism and facilitated by an ever-weakening state in the globalization era, we argue that the rise of political Islam in Turkey is tied to strategies to bring the state more in line with neoliberal, modernist governance and is a function of sustained state authority. (p. 370)

For Blad and Koçer (2012), the story goes like this: neoliberal economic globalisation has meant that states are increasingly losing their economic legitimacy. For most of the 20^th century, the legitimacy of the Turkish state had rested in the fact that it was seen to protect its population from the negative effects of economic inequality. It offered state-led development and with it social security. However, in the 1970s its foreign debt began to catch up with Turkey and it needed to turn to the IMF for a bailout. In exchange it was forced to devalue its currency and accept a range of austerity measures, which were intended to bolster production for export and to curb public spending. The latter in particular meant that the Turkish state largely lost its ability to ensure social stability through the remediation of economic inequality. Initially, the 1980 military coup ensured stability at gunpoint but then the problem for the state became how to return to democratic governance after having lost the ability to offer economic protection. And that is where “culture” comes in:

The neoliberal Turkish state clearly required authority to maintain stability if its economic reforms were to have any efficacy. However, it also needed to remove the state from its position of protectionist authority. The solution was an integration of cultural—that is, Islamist—legitimation strategies in two exemplary areas. The first was the Islamization of Turkish labor through the state advocacy of cultural, rather than the traditional class-based, trade union organizations. The second was the reduction of state-managed social service provision and the privatization of these services under Islamist patronage. (p. 45)

Blad and Koçer (2012) thus argue that the Turkish state wilfully adopted Islamism as a means to maintain state legitimacy while allowing for state withdrawal from the economic sphere. The latter is a direct requirement of the imposition of neoliberalism as a global ideology that requires the state to give up its economic regulatory capacity while still maintaining social stability.

Of course, there are as many differences between the Australian and Turkish cases as there are similarities. However, as our public transport, healthcare and education decline, it is obvious that the legitimacy of the state as a system to ensure social security is under threat. At the same time, cultural legitimacy comes cheap (in contrast to the provision of welfare).

The political economy of language and culture in neoliberal times will be a research problem for generations of students and I would recommend reading Blad and Koçer (2012) to all of them.

Ariely, G. (2012). Globalisation and the decline of national identity? An exploration across sixty-three countries Nations and Nationalism DOI: 10.1111/j.1469-8129.2011.00532.x
Blad, C., & Koçer, B. (2012). Political Islam and State Legitimacy in Turkey: The Role of National Culture in Neoliberal State-Building International Political Sociology, 6 (1), 36-56 DOI: 10.1111/j.1749-5687.2012.00150.x
MACHIDA, S. (2012). Does Globalization Render People More Ethnocentric? Globalization and People’s Views on Cultures American Journal of Economics and Sociology, 71 (2), 436-469 DOI: 10.1111/j.1536-7150.2012.00835.x