The Rise and Fall of Nine Lights Ideology
This article aims to shed light on the origins of the Turkish ultra-nationalist Nine Lights ideology and explain why this ideology failed to take root. Soon after the Turkish ultra-nationalists controlled the Republican Peasants' Nation Party (RPNP), the party leader Alparslan Türkeş embarked o...
| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
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| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group
2011
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| In: |
Politics, religion & ideology
Year: 2011, Volume: 12, Issue: 2, Pages: 145-160 |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
| Summary: | This article aims to shed light on the origins of the Turkish ultra-nationalist Nine Lights ideology and explain why this ideology failed to take root. Soon after the Turkish ultra-nationalists controlled the Republican Peasants' Nation Party (RPNP), the party leader Alparslan Türkeş embarked on a dual strategy which saw the party maintaining a racist and militaristic political discourse in informal circles while it officially embraced a moderate and liberal leaning ideology - the Nine Lights. Racist Nihal Atsız had been known as the party ideologue, but the ideas of liberal-leaning Mümtaz Turhan dominated the Nine Lights. The Nine Lights not only rejected nationalism based on blood, but also embraced the Charter of the United Nations and thereby issued a de facto recognition of the equality of all nations! In this article, I argue that the Nine Lights ideology failed because the Turkish ultra-nationalists treated it like a stillborn child and continued to embrace earlier forms of racist and militaristic political discourse. Even after the RPNP became the Nationalist Action Party and adopted the concept of the Turkish-Islamic Synthesis, it still indoctrinated its youth with the teachings of radical thinkers like Atsız, while the Nine Lights ideology existed only on paper. |
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| ISSN: | 2156-7697 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Politics, religion & ideology
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1080/21567689.2011.591979 |