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Constructing Turkish Identity as the "Other": The Erasure of a Civilization in Balkan Memory

2025    Dolgun, Uğur

This article examines how European discourses that othered the “Turk” were taken up by Balkan nationalisms and translated into violent policies during the transition to nation-states from the late nineteenth century onward. It shows how a Europe-made adversarial frame legitimated this shift and fed practices of forced displacement and mass killing. Methodologically, the study draws on a systematic review of the literature and comparative readings in historiography. Backed by Western and Russian powers, separatist movements targeted the Ottoman legacy, dismantled a long-standing multi-confessional order, and normalised a security politics that accelerated ethnic homogenisation. The findings indicate that claims to legitimacy advanced in step with waves of violence, fracturing cultural and social continuities. Building the post-imperial political architecture on this basis kept the regional order brittle well into the twentieth century, helped trigger genocides, and left durable effects that marginalised minority communities. Without a careful reckoning with this trajectory, Europe’s self-narrative will remain partial and misleading