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

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