Ethnic Turks and ‘Muslims’, and the Performance of Multiculturalism: The Case of the Drómeno of Thrace

Abstract

I discuss an emerging agenda of multiculturalism in the Greek public sphere in the late 1990s, through my reading of a cultural performance in the region of Thrace. In illustrating how the established reference to the category ‘Muslim’ is challenged in official/public discourse, I argue that there is an emerging visibility of the ethnic Other and, at the same time, a trade-off for it. Specifically it is by erasing the Other, in the process of making the Other visible, that this process may undermine the very radicalism it introduces. Despite this inevitable contradiction, the multiculturalist politics in question ought not to be seen as merely a de-politicization of difference (and hence reduced to a reaffirmation of hegemony). This event, I suggest, may serve as a metaphor for the staging of difference in contemporary Greece as a European locality, and offer some insights into the study of broader European agendas.