The Turkishness Contract by Barış Ünlü

The Turkishness Contract places Critical Race Theory in conversation with literature on Turkey and nation-state making via a historical study enriched by in-depth interviews. In this new English-language edition, Barış Ünlü makes a number of comprehensive changes to his widely read and much discussed 2018 Turkish book, including a new preface and a new sweeping and theoretical introduction.

Ünlü uses Critical Race Theory to present a historical-sociological model to examine not only the historical constitution and contemporary functioning of the Turkish nation-state, but also the affective and bodily modalities of being Turkish. He also develops a framework for rethinking the complex relations between the socio-genesis of the Turkish nation and state and the psycho-genesis of the Turkish people, their cognitive habits and emotional orientations, and the structural privileges and unconsciousness strategies of Turkishness.

The Turkishness Contract addresses broader theoretical concerns including histories of colonialism, ethnic/racial social contracts, privilege, Armenian Genocide and the Kurdish question, as well as the unraveling of Turkey's social contract at a moment of contemporary right-wing authoritarianism.

Barış Ünlü is Assistant Professor, General Faculty, in the Department of Sociology at the University of Virginia.

2025