Designing a National Uniform(ity): The Culture of Sumerbank within the Context of the Turkish Nation-State Project

Abstract

This article aims to re-define and re-conceptualize the concept of national uniform(ity) within the discursive framework of Turkish nation-state policies and display its concretization via the culture of the state textile factory Sumerbank, within the context of the Turkish nation-state project itself. On the basis of a comparative analysis of uniformity in the products of Sumerbank, we argue that the ideal of building a unified, collective and uniform(ed) nation-state can be identified at various levels. In the first section, the fundamental Kemalist reforms, policies, institutions and the way they affected the economic, social and cultural practices of Turkish modernization are examined. In the second section, the establishment of a Sumerbank culture peculiar to Turkish modernization and its contribution to the Kemalist ideal of creating a uniform(ed) Turkish citizen are treated. In the final section, the idea of uniformity is considered as expressed through body and space, both analogously functioning as a uniform. Accordingly, the authors provide a comparative analysis of uniform(ity) in the culture of Sumerbank based on disciplinary, conceptual and contextual scales as well as a critique of the Turkish modernization as a state-centred process, and Sumerbank culture as a problem field that exemplifies the local/global dichotomy of Turkish modernity.