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Reframing the Ideal Citizen in Turkey: National Belonging and Economic Success in the Era of Neo-Liberalism

Abstract This paper explores how discourses of nationalism and neo-liberal conceptualizations of economic performance interact in Turkey, by analyzing cultural productions about business elites and workers in the media. I take up both business elites' attempts at self-representation and how mainstream media portrays them to argue that these actors attempt to draw the contours of national belonging with respect to economic success. Even though the representations are diverse in definitions of national identity, they all formulate service to the nation in terms of business success and market performance. In addition, struggles with syndicated labor also produce relevant discourses of economic necessity and rationality only to be challenged by other ideas of political belonging, drawing their force from social rights. These reveal the contingency of formulations that construct desirable citizenship on the basis of one's ability to contribute to economic growth. Through these examples, I suggest that discourses about market economies do not necessarily divest themselves of nation-state frameworks. Instead, they interact with cultural tools in local contexts, producing new social and political constellations that attempt to explain shifting social stratifications. I argue that these struggles over representation are part of a terrain of banal nationalism, transforming connotations of economic rationality, national belonging, and citizenship.