Reproducing the nation: ‘banal nationalism’ in the Turkish press Arus Yumul DEPARTMENT OF SOCIOLOGY, ISTANBUL BILGI UNIVERSITY Umut ¨ Ozkırımlı DEPARTMENT OF INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS, ISTANBUL BILGI UNIVERSITY Introduction Can we pretend that nationalism is just another manifestation of the atavistic forces of blood and passion, awakening from its presumed latency and making itself felt after years of repression? Can we confine nationalism to outbursts of aggression and irrationality pitting so many people around the world – especially in the so-called periphery – against each other? If yes, then, what about ‘our’ nationalism? If we see nationalism ‘as the force which creates nation-states or which threatens the stability of existing states’, then ‘what happens to nationalism once the nation-state is estab- lished’ (Billig, 1995: 43–4)? Can we, on the other hand, ascribe the resilience of nationalism in the developed and relatively stable parts of the world to the quest for identity and meaning in a bewilderingly complex world characterized by unqualified modernisation? Michael Billig, in his groundbreaking study Banal Nationalism (1995), challenges the orthodox conceptualizations of nationalism which tend to focus only on its extreme manifestations and project it on to ‘others’, there- by ignoring, even theoretically denying, ‘our’ nationalism. Such accounts, he contends, while depicting ‘their’ nationalism as oppressive, violent or racist, describe ‘our’ nationalist feelings as ‘patriotism’, thus as something beneficial. He is critical of interpretations that treat nationalism as a phenomenon that emerges only under certain ‘extraordinary’ conditions or Media, Culture & Society © 2000 SAGE Publications (London, Thousand Oaks and New Delhi), Vol. 22: 787–804 [0163-4437(200011)22:6;787–804;010000]