Claiming civilizations: The geographical imagination of blue anatolianism in modern Türkiye

Abstract

Blue Anatolianism, first conceptualized by the Turkish intellectual Cevat Şakir Kabaağaçlı, asserts that, unlike the geographical imaginations of Ottomanism, Islamism, and Turkism, which were promoted as social identity projects during the Late Ottoman and Early Republican periods in today’s Türkiye, the various civilizations that have inhabited Anatolia have historically intertwined and synthesized on the peninsula, ultimately creating a distinct Anatolian identity. Blue Anatolianism, a new geographical imagination that focuses on cultural continuity rather than differences such as religion, language, or race, took root in Kabaağaçlı’s life during his period of exile in Bodrum (Halicarnassus) and gained recognition through the blue voyages he initiated immediately after World War II. Thanks to the semi-regular sea voyages made by a group of intellectuals along the Aegean and Mediterranean coasts of Turkey in the post-war period, Blue Anatolianism quickly gained both a core group and prominent supporters within the intellectual community. However, the political polarization in Türkiye during the Cold War, based on the left–right divide in the 1960s and 1970s and the nationalist-conservative ideology promoted as an antidote to socialism after the 1980 military coup, prevented Blue Anatolianism from reaching a wider audience and confined it to an intellectual circle. Nevertheless, revisiting Blue Anatolianism today as a geographical imagination holds the promise of overcoming the increasingly growing identity conflicts and social polarization in the country.