Yurttaşlık Düşüncesi Bağlamında Ulus Devlet ve Sorunları

Abstract

The subject of the stud is the breaking suffered by the idea and practise of citizenship in homogenous structures such as nation states, and idea and practise that has been deemed as a tool of privilege and existence throughout history. In ancient Greece, the concepts of state and citizenship have been discussed more as an object of ideal area while in Roman Empire this has been taken to a different dimension and revealed itself as a legal status that determines tangible relations and is guided and supervised by certain laws. Both of these cultures had significant effects in terms of both theoretical and practical terms, on European city states that re-appeared after a long period including medieval times and on the concept of citizenship, which has become being discussed again following the re-appearance of city states. Based on this background, the concept of citizenship has changed its original form through the modern ideology and became reshaped, and after the impact of the French revolution, it has taken its current form.In this sense,the thoughts of nation, nationalism and republic that have appeared through the re-processing of historical heritage have been mixed once the citizen-state relation has become more visible within the frame of bureaucracy, leading to a brand-new understanding of citizen and state. This is the actual breaking point, on which the subject of this thesis has been constructed. Any man who stops being a subject and becomes a citizen, is now the most important piece of the nation and has earned a historic status as the basis of legitimacy. This newly gained status of citizenship now has different meanings on a different plane. At this exact point, nation states sign a contract with every single individual that make up the community, giving him/her equality on the same plane with others and the political associations based on equality in terms of law have played an important role on the construction of this new type of citizen. However, unitary structures such as nation states have shaped citizenship as a singular, pure and refined subject and turned each single individual into a citizen and placed him/her within the political structure and at the same it has used nation and citizen as a tool to suppress regionals culture and variety. This citizen has become an instrument to turn people into a singular, same and homogenized individual in a compulsory manner, much different than the former type of citizen. As a result of such a breakage, and being the founding element of newly-appearing nation states, citizen has been placed at the centreof nation and an imaginary association where the thought of nation merges with national identity.