A biopolitical perspective on national belonging in the early Turkish Republic

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article explores the degree to which citizenship in the early Turkish Republic was informed by a biopolitical logic of the administration of population as a social body. How this larger biopolitical logic is connected to understandings of the national project being ‘modern’ and/or ‘scientific’ is also explored, as well as how this approach is preferable to an account based on the perspective of Agamben. Furthermore, this analysis examines how limits to belonging were understood in the period, especially in relation to minority populations, and how they were categorized.