ABSTRACT
This chapter analyzes the familiar and familial images of Father State and Motherland through which Turkish national identity is conveyed. The fact that the family, nation, and church are each spoken of, and imagined as a unit obscures both the internal stratifications and the gendered hierarchies in these institutions. The notion of family as a natural unit not only naturalizes western notions of kinship as derived from blood relations resulting from sexual intercourse, but it also naturalizes power as it submerges asymmetries of age and gender as well as differing interests. Father State epitomized Ottoman rule. The state was both patriarchal and paternalistic, and the people, organized into millet, were dependent on its benevolence and its protection. Confessional groups, whether Muslim, Jewish, or one of various forms of Christianity such as Greek Orthodox, Armenian, or Syrian, were the basis of the millet system.
