Regimes of Ethnicity and Nationhood in Germany, Russia, and Turkey.

• Author: Kuru, Ahmet T.
• Position: Book review

Regimes of Ethnicity and Nationhood in Germany, Russia, and Turkey

By Sener Akturk

New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012, 304 pages, ISBN 9781107614253.

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THIS is a path-breaking book that contributes to the literature on ethnicity and nationalism from various aspects. Conceptually, it develops a typology of three regimes of ethnicity--monoethnic, multiethnic, and antiethnic. The monoethnic regime, unlike the two other types, prioritizes one ethnic group in terms of citizenship and immigration. The multiethnic regime differs from the two others by constitutionally recognizing multiple ethnic groups and even providing them territorial autonomies and some affirmative action policies. The antiethnic regime, in this regard, refuses to recognize a single or multiple ethnic identities as basis of state policy.

Empirically, the book examines three significant cases. Each of the cases is a typical example of one regime: Germany (monoethnic), Russia (multiethnic), and Turkey (antiethnic). (1) These cases are geographically, religiously, and politically very different but they are similar in terms of the dynamics of persistence and change in regimes of ethnicity. Although the three cases have preserved their main characteristics of regimes of ethnicity, they have also experienced substantial transformations in the last one and half decades. These changes have made their ethnicity regimes relatively more hybrid. Germany embraced a new citizenship law that allowed non-German ethnic groups to become citizens in 2000, Russia removed ethnic identifications in internal passports in 1997, and Turkey began broadcasting in non-Turkish languages in public TV in 2004.

According to Akturk, such transformations are only possible if a counterelite develops a new discourse and gains hegemonic political power. In Germany, the new citizenship law became possible when the coalition government of the Social Democratic Party of Germany and the Green Party possessed hegemonic power with new multiculturalist/ assimilationist, rather than mono-ethnic, discourses. In Turkey, the restrictions over the public usage of Kurdish and other languages were lifted due to the hegemonic power of the Justice and Development (AK) Party that had an Islamic multiculturalist discourse. In Russia, ethnic categories were removed from internal passports by the combination of Boris Yeltsin's hegemonic power and his supporters' liberal/assimilationist discourses. In...