Designing a nationality
Historical lessons from Turkish national identity to Sri Lankans
One of my friends who live in Singapore started a Saturday morning topic following his conversation with a cab driver in Singapore. “You Sri Lankans Should not have changed the name Ceylon. It was a good brand name”. This sentence fueled an interesting conversation among three of our friends which finally ended up us speculating a new brand identity for Sri Lanka, starting from the name, new currency name, a new flag, passport covers and even police uniforms.
The analogy of seeing this task as a ‘redesigning and rebranding project’ triggered me to write this piece; something which I wanted to do since I visited Türkiye for my research. That is to compare how Sri Lanka and Türkiye, how both countries redesigned and rebranded their national identity in the early 20th century. In other words, If what we casually discussed on a Saturday morning turns out to be a design project, I wanted to write a precedent study research report for that project.
The differences in land size, economies, cultures, religions or geopolitics, make it almost impossible to compare Sri Lanka and Türkiye in any aspect. However, as a Sri Lankan who got the opportunity of spending some quality time and got the opportunity to expose to the local people and national identity of Türkiye, I started to see the possibility of comparing the two countries based on the way they reacted to socio-political influences of late 19th and early 20th century.
To put this article into a sensible narrative, I want to boil down (in a way I’m over-simplifying) all socio-political complexities of the late 19th and early 20th centuries into two underlying ideological desires of that era; the desire for a nation-state and the desire to purify things.
Rising desire for a modern nation-state
Historians often place the starting point of nationalism in the 19th century, specifically in the french revolution and the American declaration of independence. Consequently, the idea of Nation, nationality and nationalism became a tool to fight against monarchies and foreign territorial ruling. On the other hand, the discourse of the era of enlightenment emphasized national identity and developed an authentic view of cultural self-expression through a collective identity of people. The result was people around the world started to create nationalities out of available social material of their society or in casual terms we could say people created nationalities from ‘whatever you can find in your backyard’’. I want to emphasise the term ‘create’ here, as the idea of nationality did not exist before that, thus society created it by deconstructing what is known to them such as race, ethnicities, linguistic communities, tribes, territorial groups (regions), cast groups and different common identities prevailed in the era.
Quoting Wikipedia “Some countries, such as Germany and Italy were formed by uniting various regional states with a common “national identity”. Others, such as Greece, Serbia, Bulgaria, and Poland were formed by uprisings against the Ottoman or Russian Empires. Romania is a special case, formed by the unification of the principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia in 1859 and later gaining independence from the Ottoman Empire in 1878.”
Another interesting example is the creation of Indian nationality, where it says that the British conquered around 500+ princely states and got freedom as a nationality. This creation of nationalities by blending diverse social materials was then shaped and influenced by another underlying but very contradicting value of that era, which is the desire to purify things.
Rising desire for purification
The late 19th century and early 20th century can be defined through another common underlying value across different ‘isms’ that emerged in the era. May it be modernism, positivism or structuralism, what is common for these ‘isms’ are their desire to purify things and clearly define them. This was also influenced by the scientific approach of discovering objective truth by removing subjectivity from it (biasedness or opinions etc).
For instance, architects started to purify architectural design into two distinct features namely decoration ( the subject) and function (the object), thus suggesting forms need to follow the function (architecture needs to purify and only follow the objectivity). For another instance, Journalists wanted to purify facts from opinions. Furthermore, all disciplines started to make sharp demarcations among each other, saying this is economics, this is science and this is sociology. In general, people were not satisfied until they purify everything they encounter.
As result architectural features could not simultaneously cater for beauty and functionality, they had to be either functional or decorative. A phenomenon could not be both scientific and sociological at the same time; if it is scientific, scientists need to investigate it and if it is sociological sociologists come to the scene. No blurred boundaries were tolerated and all complex interconnections were denounced. William James (1907–1996) derisively called this assumption the salto mortale; the moment one departs the epistemological chasm of objectivity, one’s lands on subjectivity, and there is no in-between.
Designing something ‘pure’ out of old materials
Now pointing out these two contradicting desires of that time, you could imagine the nature of the invention of ‘symbolic nationality’ that happened during that era. On one end people were demanded to make something alien called ‘nationality’ by using available social notions. On the other end, this new symbolic identity needs to be a pure one, as something that existed with a historical purity (objectivity). Nations were supposed to design with available languages, ethnicities, races and so forth but they were supposed to be pure and once created, it needs to look as if it was there all the time.
The idea of ‘nation state’ or nationality is what we hold to now grew in this contradicting socio-political soil. This soil is what Sri Lanka and Türkiye shared in common. That is apart from one other factor, which both of these nations did not experience the complete discourse that paves the way for these two ideological changes. The idea of the modern nation-state originated in Europe and America while the desire for purification happened to discourse as well. Therefore both of the desires were borrowed and imitated by these two nations once fully grew into an ideology somewhere else in Europe.
In other words, these ideologies (nationalism, positivism, modernism etc) were never Sri Lankan or Turkish. This is what inspired me to compare the two cases of redesigning a national identity in Sri Lanka and Türkiye. Especially after hearing and then reading about Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the father of modern Türkiye.
Designing Turkey vs Designing Sri Lanka
Both Sri Lanka and Türkiye took the decision of forming their identity mainly around one group of people. Here I prefer to use the term “a group of people since the word ethnicity also falls into that contradicting anthropological desire of purifying things. In Türkiye, rulers decided to go with ‘Turk People’ and in Sri Lanka, rulers decided to align identity mainly with ‘The Sinhalese People’. Türkiye declared ‘Turkish’ as their national language whereas Sri Lanka declared Sinhala as their national language.
Needless to say, this is an oppression of complexity of the society. In both countries, there were victims of this purification and flattening of the complexity. For instance, the conflicts of Anatolian identity in Türkiye and Tamil conflicts could easily root back to this redesigning approach. However, here I want to emphasise a possible misconception. When I say Anatolians or Tamils were oppressed by the action, I do not want you to imagine the historical purity of these two identities. Neither Sinhala, Turkish nor Anatolians, Tamils poses a historical purity. Simply ethnic groups did not exist before western anthropologists started to purify them. Before that people were a mix of everything contented without knowing their ‘ethnicity or race’.
To illustrate this idea, I’m just imagining here a fictional and exaggregated conversion between a Western Anthropologist and a person who possibly lived in the Puttalam or Negombo area of Sri Lanka. This is based on some readings and personal experiences shared by people with me about a special group of people who has a complex identity according to modern definitions of ethnicity.
Anthropologist: ‘Who are your people?’ (The anthropologist wants to know the ethnicity of the person)
Person: ‘My people? We are Krava’ (The person gave the best possible name he could give)
The anthropologist has heard about ‘Krava’ but according to his categories Krava is a cast, so he is not ready to take this as an answer.
Anthropologist: ‘Hmmm according to previous research Krava is a cast, I’m asking your ethnicity ’
Person: “What is that?”
Now the anthropologist is going through the structure or the essence of an ethnic group according to his guidebook and trying to figure out this man.
Anthropologist: “hmm let's see … what is your religion ?”
Person: We are Catholics.
Anthropologist: “What language do you speak”
Person: “Well sometimes Tamil and sometimes Sinhala”
The anthropologist is highly unsatisfied as he is not ready to tolerate blurred boundaries and he will not give up until purify this person to one of two ethnicities he is aware of. As this person is not speaking a new language or does not believe in a new religion, he is not even ready to open a new ethnic identity for them. Even the physical features are not different. So he asks
Anthropologist: But mostly you speak?
Person: (Just to get rid of this annoying white person) Sinhala
Anthropologist: Yureka! Well, then your ethnicity is Sinhala!
As I said this is an exaggeration but historically a realistic outcome of trying to purify things. So, I do not want you to hold into any identities which I use here assuming they have purity instead see the possibility of thinking of it as a designed and branded notion; nothing new but nothing old at the same time.
Now coming back to our main story, though both Türkiye and Sri Lanka had the same initial approach towards redesigning national identity which is majorly based on one group of people, the succeeding steps were different.
Sri Lankan politicians decided to bring religion into the identity of Sri Lanka, while Türkiye decided to become a secular nation-state inspired by European thinking and decentralised the Islamic authority over the state and education. For instance, in Sri Lanka, Buddhist monks were included in the Five great forces of the nation (Pancha Maha Balawega), a concept coined by S.W.R.D Bandaranayake after independence as a part of Sri Lankan identity. Whereas, Atatürk, in his reforms, banned religious school’s authority and any religious insignia, such as turbans, fezes, bonnets and headdresses.
Meanwhile in Sri Lanka, though is no constitutional national dress, the colloquial term ‘male national dress’ refers to the dress of a long-sleeved shirt without collars up to the knee and a white Sarong is worn, which also known as the “Ariya Sinhala Dress”. Something probably any old people who lived before the 19th century would not call their dress. In the place of religion, Atatürk placed Science as the value system of Türkiye which is again influenced by the desire I mentioned earlier to purify and be objective. For instance, he declared the famous Hagia Sophia monument as a museum, which was first a byzantine church and then converted into a mosque by the Ottoman emperor. This was to reflect Atatürk’s idea of finding historical truth scientifically.
Out of every reform of Atatürk, my favourite and most pertinent to this article is changing the alphabet. Turkish had been written using a Turkish form of the Perso-Arabic script for a thousand years. As part of purifying modern Turkish identity from ottoman Turkish identity, Modern Turkey adapted a Latin Scripture-based alphabet, which they argued was a better way to communicate core Turkish grammar and vocabulary, which was rich in vowels and poorly represented by Arabic script. As I was pointing out, this was an attempt to purify the identity, but still, a bold design moves considering the historical roots of the Perso-Arabic script. A move that suggests national identity is an opportunity to invent rather than a discovery from the past.
However, this bold move which challenged the deep historical roots of writing was strategically balanced by a linguistic theory, which is known as ‘Sun language theory’’. The Sun Language Theory (Turkish: Güneş Dil Teorisi) was a Turkish nationalist linguistic hypothesis developed in Türkiye that proposed that all human languages are descendants of one proto-Turkic primal language. The theory suggests the idea of historical purity while allowing the freedom of borrowing and depending on Latin scriptures and English words which according to this theory just another descendant of the proto-Turkic language. For me, this is an interesting strategic move to balance the contradictory challenges of the socio-political soil I discussed earlier. How to purify a strong mixture of things? By telling that all the mixture belongs to you.
Similarly, I could continue to compare different approaches taken by Sri Lankan rulers and Turkish rulers, especially by Atatürk. However, I see one meta-level fundamental difference between these two approaches. Before telling it, I want to emphasise something. I do not want to praise one design approach over the other, but as I was telling you before, this is a precedent study and Turkey’s case can show a few things to us that we missed during designing our Sri Lankan identity. Especially as a country, that deals with a long history and as opposed to the nationality designers of the United States of America who had the advantage of designing it from Zero.
The fundamental difference I notice here is that Sri Lanka redesigning story was fundamentally shaped by the desire to gain power by appealing to the existing larger audience of the country (voters). It was passive and just echoed society. It did not take the best benefit of National identity being an invention, the opportunity of building it from scratch, but hold into ‘whatever the available materials and use them as it is’. It was less risk-taking and more like a design of greed. Whereas I see Atatürk, as someone who saw the pure flexibility and freedom of designing a symbolic national identity and thus use it to properly position Türkiye on the geopolitical map of that time.
I’m neither a historian nor a geopolitics specialist but rather a design enthusiast who just redefines a historical event through a design lens based on my informal interactions with people. So I decided to end this article with such an incident. After reading about Atatür, I brought the topic about him to a dinner table discussion with one of my Turkish friends whom I met during my research. He nicely summarised the bold design move of Atatür.
“You know some say Atatür made an entire generation of Turkish people invalid overnight and simply ignored them. Imagine you build the country and its language, values and all the practices are new that you have to learn from the beginning.”
He took a pause and then said:
“But for sure it made us different from the rest of neighbouring Islamic states”
I guess that is what Atatür’s redesigning and rebranding did. He treat Turkish nationality as a soft flexible material and strategically formed it into the desired design which took Türkiye away from neighbouring countries like Syria, Iran and Iraque and position it closer to Europe on the geopolitical map regardless is geographical proximity to these countries.
Probably my analogy killed the complexity of the history of Türkiye and was less concerned with the negative outcomes of Modern Turkish identity, but still, even with other factors and the current situation of Türkiye, we can not ignore the fact that Turkish national identity is an interesting design case.
With today’s discussion about ‘redesigning the Sri Lankan identity, this idea about Türkiye resurfaced in my mind. While I was chatting in the group, I was thinking to myself, if Atatür boldly crafted modern Turkish identity while deconstructing thousand years long historical materials, Sri Lanka and even the whole world needs new labels and new national identity design projects.
Design projects which ready to experiment with new concepts, do bold designs and more importantly see nationality not as an act of digging history or defining through current events but as an opportunity to reinvent our identity. Especially in developing countries, boldness is more demanded, for whom still the concept of ‘nationality’ is more appealing and impactful than some others. Finally What if we can design a nationality from scratch without a history but just with a future?
