Winning ground through transnationalization of cultural-political claims: Circassian Diaspora in Turkey

Since the deepening of the European integration process in the early 2000s, the Circassians have become more vocal in raising their claims on the recognition of their right to education in mother tongue, recognition of their ethno-cultural identity, right to dual citizenship, recognition of their contribution to the foundation of the Republic made by the politicians, military officers and bureaucrats of Caucasus origin, and removal of descriptions of Çerkes Ethem as a “traitor” from school textbooks. One of the important elements which differentiate the Circassian diasporic communities from the former indigenous communities is the ways in which they have recently discovered the power of transnationalizing their cause in order to make a pressure on the Turkish state for extending political and cultural rights to the Circassians. European Parliament and the Council of Europe have become important venues for the Circassian diaspora to express their concerns in international platform. Transnational connections and global communication channels have shaped the ways in which Circassian diaspora have recently started to raise their claims in a way that transcends the hegemonic power of their countries of settlement such as Turkey. The main premise of this paper is that the Circassians are no longer content with the ways in which they are perceived by the Turkish state; they rather want to be recognized by the Turkish state as a collective group, but not only as individuals. It will be argued that they want to do so by means of extending their cause to transnational networks in a way that that challenges the traditional patriarchal structure of Circassian communities as well as the hegemony of the Turkish state.