An authentic experience of “multiculturalism” at the border city of antakya

Abstract

Antakya, a city on the Turkish border with Syria, has in contrast to many cities in Turkey, been successful historically in protecting its plurality and in this form it exhibits a good example of multiculturalism. However this is an authentic example peculiar to Antakya. The paper tries to put forth that the core of Antakya’s multiculturalism today is comprised of the intermingling of component of the Ottoman old “millet” system with elements of modernization process implemented during the Republican period. Thus the paper asserts that it is not possible to understand how this authentic culture within the border field of a Unitarian Nation State has continued without looking at the different historical periods that reveal the reciprocal relationship between local, national and global. In this context the impacts of Ottomanist governance and of Kemalism; of the debates about the entrance into the E.U. as well as the recent crisis in Syria on inter-ethnic relations and the identification processes in Antakya are being scrutinized.