ABSTRACT
Turkish ‘flag hysteria’ needs serious consideration both as a symptomatic effect of a deeper crisis and as a metaphorical expression of the desire to resolve this crisis. For Kemalism as for any modernist discourse, the formation of the modern Turkish Republic, with its modern subjects, represents the rebirth of the Turkish nation. The term the ‘sick man of Europe’, implied the need both to be segregated and to be cured, that is, to be kept aside from Europe, whilst being subjected to therapy and correction from the imagined ‘social body’. A structural adjustment of the Ottoman economy accompanied political constitutionalism in the aim of integrating the Empire into the European capitalist networks through measures for the utilization of private commercial and industrial activities. The discursive territory of modern Turkish identity, Kemalism, which has existed under the discursive horizon of modernity, is called after the name of the founder of modern Turkey, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk.
