After Gallipoli: empire, nation and diversity in multicultural Turkey and Australia

Abstract

Gallipoli has played a critical role in the formation of national identity, and remains a significant part of contemporary identities for both Turkey and Australia.1 This chapter explores the ways in which the development of a racialised or ethno-culturally bound modernity in Australia and Turkey has followed a similar path, notwithstanding the very great differences in the histories of the countries, their political geographies, and their contemporary challenges. However real and important such differences may be, the struggle to create a state that can encompass diversity while claiming singularity offers a shared contradiction. As Bacek Ince has observed in her study of Turkey’s struggle with citizenship and identity, the formation of a fully republican citizenship requires the assertion of ‘constitutional patriotism’, where membership of the nation and full participation can accommodate cultural and linguistic pluralism.2 The challenges for Australia are not dissimilar.