Millet News editor Salih Canbaz releases a major academic study: A comparative look at Turkish identity

The academic article by Salih Canbaz, one of our newspaper’s writers, which comparatively examines the different constructions of Turkish identity in Türkiye and Greece, has been published in National Identities, one of the most prestigious international journals in the field of national identity and nationalism studies.

Published by Taylor & Francis, National Identities is known as a globally recognized reference journal in the fields of the nation-state, nationalism, ethnicity, and identity studies, distinguished by its selective peer-review process. Studies published in this journal are regarded as high-quality research that directly contributes to theoretical and methodological debates in the field.

The article titled “Discovering the Janus Face of Turkishness: A Comparative Study of Hegemonic and Marginalized Constructions of Turkishness in Türkiye and Greece” questions approaches that treat Turkish identity as a singular and immutable phenomenon. The study seeks to answer the question of in what ways the identity perceptions of two communities—who once lived within the same borders and might therefore be expected to share the same understanding of identity—have diverged. The article comparatively demonstrates how this identity has been reproduced in a hegemonic position intertwined with state ideology in Türkiye, and in a marginalized position shaped by minority status, exclusion, and suppression policies in Greece.

Based on qualitative research methods, the study analyzes in-depth interviews and observations conducted with a total of 42 participants in Türkiye and Greece. By examining in detail the decisive role of collective memory, historical traumas, religious and cultural symbols, language use, and everyday nationalism practices in the construction of national identity, the article fills an important gap in the literature.

One of the most striking aspects of the research is its demonstration that Turkish identity is shaped not only by state policies but also by individuals’ everyday experiences, family memory, and historical ruptures. In this respect, the study moves beyond essentialist approaches to identity and offers an analysis sensitive to context, time, and politics.

Salih Canbaz is pursuing his doctoral studies in the Department of Sociology at Sakarya University. He is also known for his sociology writings in our newspaper and for his role as an editor at Millet News. This study, published in an international academic journal, is regarded as a significant contribution both to identity debates in the Türkiye–Greece context and to the global literature on nationalism.

You can access the article via the link below:
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14608944.2025.2598008?src=#d1e1041