There is a reason why founding members want to interfere in social traditions and established customs and habits during the nation-building process. One of the most effective weapons and tools for transformation they possess is the “law.” The primary goal of law in almost every nation state built in modern times is not to establish justice and to give everyone their due rights but to implement modernization policies and to create a modern society. The law regulates lifestyles through rules. In this way people’s lives change on their own, but in a way that challenges them and causes conflict with their own beliefs. In this way the law also functions as an instrument to modernize society. A majority of powerful elites in Turkey still perceives the law in this way.The second instrument that is used when building a nation is “education.” In modern times, the purpose of education is not to raise good individuals but to produce people who can become members of the nation state. Education is the means of conducting a special procedure in a laboratory called “school” with the purpose of changing and transforming the individual into a tamed citizen. The first issue of controversy between the Church and the bourgeoisie before the French Revolution was the separation of education from the Church followed by the introduction of policies that made education compulsory, secular and free of charge. The reason for this was that in order to build a new nation and to create a new society, every person living within the borders of the country had to go through the education system.
The third critical tool used in the development of nation states and modern societies is, of course, the “economy.” Liberals cover up the point that modern capitalist states focus on national markets by drawing up national boundaries and protecting wealthy classes against internal unrest and interventions with the police force and against external intervention with armies within the security forces system that is built. Still today, the continuing wealth of the liberal West is protected by states. If they hadn’t manipulated states and governments, would arms and oil companies and other lobbies and companies have been as successful and rich as they are today?
The role “culture” plays in nation and society-building processes is also significant. There is a basic point that misleads conservative rightists in Turkey, and it is that “national culture” means the culture that belongs to the state. They believe that culture can belong to the people. But by modernity’s nature and its historical mission, individuals and the public do not own a culture; instead, people have archaic traditions, practices and material and spiritual codes and reflexes that they have developed over the course of time.
These are changed and transformed with the practice of law, education, economy and other tool within the scope of modernization policies, and the “culture” that is envisioned by the state is produced. There are only two ministries in Turkey with the word “national” in their titles: The Ministry of National Defense and the Ministry of National Education. The purpose is to establish as a concept that which is “national” internally and to carry out this function of transformation via education at schools and universities, and recently -- following the shortcomings in schools and universities -- through the media as well. The fact is that what nationalists in Turkey call “national culture” is a futile claim because in every part of the world “national culture” since the day it began has meant the culture that belongs to the state.
That which belongs to the people are customs, traditions, practices and so on. If a society wants to protect itself, it must maintain its traditions whilst constantly revising them according to their own authentic religious norms and rules on the one hand, and have the determination to shield against culture and external attacks on the other.
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