Marrying the Enemy? Turkish Nationalism, Citizenship, and the Public Debate over Mixed Marriages in the 1940s Turkish Press

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article analyses a series of 16 articles, published in the daily newspaper Yeni Sabah, between late April and mid-May 1940 under the title ‘Our big survey: Is it right for Turks to marry foreigners?’ This series of articles allow us to understand better the various opinions among the Turkish cultural elite regarding the larger question of ‘who is a Turk’, and especially regarding mixed children. This article argues that even when the state promoted a relatively progressive agenda for the benefit of women such as the right to marry foreigners, this right was criticized by members of the cultural elite who based their objection on what they perceived as a contradiction between this right and the Turkish homogenization project, based on dominant ideas of race, ethnicity, eugenics, gender, religion, and education.