EUROPE'S OTHER: Nationalism, transnationals and contested images of Turkey in Austria¹ Open Access

Controversial positions of whether Turkey should become a full member of the European Union have frequently been addressed during the last decade among EU member state populations. No other enlargement process has ever caused so much concern about Europeanness (Kastoryano 2006) and so much contestation in media and public debates. Objectors describe Turkey's economy as state-dominated and as relying heavily on agriculture, which would result in high costs of economic adaptation. In the view of accession proponents, however, it provides a prosperous new market for EU economies and a young population representing an enormous spending capacity (Flam 2004). There are similar controversial positions concerning democracy and human rights, protection of minorities and efforts to combat violence against women (Önis 2003; Rumford 2003). Whereas those who advise against Turkey's accession perceive the region as a security risk, others find it advisable to incorporate this strategic zone and NATO ally in order to create a greater sphere of influence for the EU in the Middle East and to turn the Union into a global player (Reiter et al. 2006). The main reason for public agitation is the expected increase of Muslim migrants from Turkey to the EU. There are about 3.5 million Turkish migrants² and about 20 million Muslims (European Monitoring and Advocacy Program)³ living in the EU. Despite the fact of a predominantly peaceful Muslim presence in different EU member states, Islam since 9/11 and the bombings of Madrid and London is increasingly perceived as the demarcation line of civilization and as incompatible with EU democratic values. Muslims are depicted, in particular by populist right-wing parties, as a threat for Western democracy, freedom and equality and are exposed to discrimination and racist attacks (Fekete 2004, 2006).

Against this backdrop my interest will neither be focused on a further analysis of whether Turkey was sufficiently prepared for EU accession nor on the European Union's absorption capacity, but on the extensive rejection of Turkey in Austria and the emergence of hegemonic and counter-hegemonic cultural practices of selfing and othering. People make use of essentialism in educating their children in order to allow them to identify with ‘us’ Austrians, Kurds, Muslims, or to claim cultural rights. Yet, all essentialist assumptions are intersected by mutually constituting differences and cleavages in practice. Culture is, as Gerd Baumann (1996, 1999, 2004) puts it, not only essences but simultaneously processes and thus a ‘dual discursive competence’, sometimes essentialized and dominant, but for others or in other contexts in the process of making. If we agree with Gerd Baumann's insightful suggestion of simultaneous and successive dual competence, we can try to find out who, under which conditions, and for which purpose uses fixed dominant and negotiable dissident versions of culture in the context of Austria's multicultural struggles related to EU negotiations with Turkey. This approach allows us to trace complex and contested experiences of belonging, processes of othering and identification or self-authentication in national and transnational spaces and to show how cultural fundamentalism (Stolcke 1995) on the one hand and cultural complexity (Hannerz 1992) on the other hand provide people with options for coping differently with experiences of anger, anxiety, or threat. I will first trace some examples from public discourse and political responses indicating Austria's remarkable rejection of Turkey's accession. I will then describe Austria's images of Turkey in popular versions of ‘frontier myths of orientalism’⁴ and link these perceptions with intersecting fields of power such as gender, class and nationalism. Additionally, I will compare these examples of othering and self-authentication with counter-hegemonic tactics as used by members of the Turkish diaspora in order to juxtapose the meaning of cultural essentialism and cultural complexity in the contest of Turkey's EU accession in Austria.

Opinion polls from 2002 to 2006 have shown that the Austrian population's rejection of Turkey ranks above the EU average. Whereas only 20 percent of Austrians would object to Croatia and 30 percent would even support the Ukraine, only 11 percent would have supported Turkey in 2005 (APA, June 7, 2005; OGM 2005; Eurobarometer 63, Spring 2005). Particularly noteworthy is the further decrease in the acceptance of Turkey in 2006 (Eurobarometer 66, December 2006). Polls show that only 5 percent among Austrians would still support Turkey in becoming an EU member state, 87 percent on the other hand say ‘no’ to Turkey's admission.

The Austrian public recently has also displayed one of the lowest support rates for further EU enlargement within the EU27 (Eurobarometer 67, June 2007) and simultaneously refuses Brussels’ bureaucracy as well as higher levels of immigration. Andre Gingrich (2006) uses the term ‘tripartite hierarchy’ for this ideological pattern that is shared in recent forms of ‘neo-nationalism’ in Europe. In a tripartite hierarchy:

While the ÖVP-lead Austrian governments between 2000 and 2007 had to keep in line with European council resolutions, policy makers of different parties, including the governing ÖVP (Österreichische Volkspartei/Austrian Peoples Party), had reiterated their support for a referendum before accession, had insisted on open-ended negotiations with a ‘stop button’ and on alternatives to full membership for Turkey. Chancellor Schüssel was particularly worrying about the Austrian constituency's anxieties.⁵

Whereas the junior coalition partner in the government, the BZÖ (Bündnis Zukunft Österreich/Covenant Austria's Future), had been against negotiation from the very beginning, Jörg Haider, former leader of the FPÖ and one of the founders of the BZÖ,⁶ had been in favour of Turkish EU membership until the rejection of the EU Constitution in France and The Netherlands.⁷ Since then he has been demanding an immediate halt to negotiations.

The then opposition party, the SPÖ (Sozialdemokratische Partei Österreichs), going against the grain of EU social democracy, declined negotiation of full membership altogether and suggested a special relationship status. Alfred Gusenbauer (then Chairman of the SPÖ, now Chancellor), in line with popular opinion and in agreement with Chancellor Schüssel, held the EU's absorption capacity responsible for increasing rejection of enlargement among the public.

The demarcation line went not only across right-left ideologies but also across political parties:⁸ despite of the position of the SPÖ's chairman, Austrian Federal President Heinz Fischer and the mayor of Vienna, Michael Häupl, strongly supported negotiations. Among the ÖVP it was the mayor of Graz who, against the party's line, decidedly rejected negotiations, along with the independent (ÖVP sponsored) finance minister Grasser (former FPÖ).

Local and federal elections during the preparation of the start of negotiation with Turkey in summer 2005 and the decreasing support of the EU and Turkey in Austria obviously shaped Austrian policy makers’ standpoints and the government's ambivalent strategies. Despite a new coalition government (SPÖ/ÖVP), since January 2007 parties and actors in the field did not change their attitude radically and still agree upon the priority of South-Eastern European countries as basis for an Austrian enlargement policy.⁹

To better understand this clear rejection of Turkey's EU membership by the Austrian public, I shall now consider contradictory processes of selfing and othering among the most evident antagonists: the right-wing nationalists and diasporic Turkish transnationals.

In March 2005, German citizen and well-known writer Feridun Zaimoglu ‘veiled’ the front of the Kunsthalle, one of the exhibition halls of the Vienna Museum Quarter, with Turkish flags. He called this installation ‘KanakAttack. The Turks’ Third Siege’¹⁰ apparently was an ‘offensive counter-attack’ in the public sphere by providing ‘a screen for projections’ with a ‘symbolic language’ observers have to analyze and interpret themselves.¹¹

The press release, however, assisted in interpreting the banners as symbols for the obvious presence of Turkish people in Vienna and the difficulties of Austrians in coping with this. In particular, Zaimoglu challenged the Austrian population's anxieties concerning a possible EU accession by Turkey and Turks. In this respect Vienna is a ‘highly symbolic city’, Zaimoglu commented (Falter 10, 2005) and therefore particularly qualifies for this exhibition. Media reactions were enormous; almost every newspaper and weekly magazine reproduced the colourful provocation of ‘Red-White-Red in Turkish’.¹²

Turkish-German Feridun Zaimoglu told Austrians that they were acting as if there had just been a Third Turkish Siege and as if Austrians had to protect the Occident in 2005 just like they remembered having done in 1529 and 1683, but this time against Turkey's EU accession and further immigration of Turkish citizens.

Right-wing populist Heinz-Christian Strache (chairman of the Freedom Party, FPÖ) duly felt insulted by the installation and reacted with a rather ambiguous poster slogan ‘Vienna must not become Istanbul’. Fierce attacks against immigration, Turkey and Turks/Muslims were also the single topic of the party's following campaign for the Vienna city council elections in October 2005.¹³ Throughout this campaign the Freedom Party had deployed slogans like ‘Free women instead of enforced veiling’ (Freie Frauen statt Kopftuchzwang) and ‘Pummerin statt Muezzin’, giving preference to Christian church bells over Muslim voices, but also stresses Austrianness and belonging to the Occident. The famous bell of St. Stephen's cathedral (die Pummerin), also called the ‘Voice of Austria’,¹⁴ was produced in 1711 out of 300 cannons the Turks had left at the outskirts of Vienna after the Second Siege in 1683. To ensure that the ‘real’ and original Viennese population will not disappear,¹⁵ immigrants and Muslims are rejected openly by this right-wing populist party. Furthermore, in January 2007 Strache founded an association with the telling name ‘SOS Occident’. In a press release Strache plays on cultural anxieties:

The menace referred to in this press release is not surprisingly Islamism, which, according to Strache, obviously and openly aims at the destruction of ‘Occidental society’. He hauntingly warns of ‘hate preachers’ and ‘parallel societies’ and calls for values like democracy, human rights and constitutionality (Rechtsstaatlichkeit) as opposed to theocracy, dictatorship and authoritarianism. The disappearance of piggybanks in Great Britain in order not to insult Muslims or the foundation of Muslim hospitals to support Muslim men's desire that no non-Muslim ever touches their wives are, in his view, further examples of the demise of the Occident and the threat of Islam. In the name of multiculturalism that has collapsed on all levels, we shall, according to Strache, end up in a mono-cultural future of Islamism, if ‘we’ (the endangered Christian Occident), do not fight back.

‘The Turkish Siege’ (Türkenbelagerung) has been referred to not only since Zaimoglu's provocation and Strache's response to it, but is again and again present in different political contexts and especially in the collective memory of eastern Austrians: right-wing populist and FPÖ leader from 1986 to 2000, Jörg Haider, identified anxieties connected to the defence of the Occident and mobilized by the use of anti-immigration slogans such as, ‘For what reasons did our ancestors defend our country against the Turks if we are now letting them in again?’ (Gingrich 1998: 104).

In the 1990s Austria was shocked by a series of letter bombs. Several policy makers and activists concerned with asylum and immigration issues were injured, and a pipe-bomb placed in the town of Oberwart, located in the province of Burgenland, killed four Romas. The attacks were apparently carried out by the ‘Bajuvarian Liberation Army’ and sent in the name of Count Rüdiger of Starhemberg, who was the leader of the defence against the Turkish Siege in 1683. According to Andre Gingrich (1998), who identified these ‘frontier myths of orientalism’, every person in eastern Austria with a formal education is familiar with this name which represents the heroic defender of Austria or the Occident against the Turks/Orientals/Muslims.¹⁶

Furthermore, the former Archbishop of St. Pölten in 2002 identified Islam as an ‘aggressive religion’ and maintained that the Islamic invasion of Europe can be compared to a ‘Third Siege’ (Oberösterreichische Nachrichten, August 18, 2002). The mayor of Graz was most outspoken in July 2005 (Press release of the Communist Party Graz July 7, 2005) when he directly compared Turkey's EU accession with the ‘Third Turkish Siege’.

Noteworthy in this context is the differentiation between Turkish Muslims as ‘Orientals’, and European Bosnian Muslims who were generously supported when they arrived in Austria during the civil war in 1993. Austrian collective memory apparently still differentiates between ‘good Muslims’ who support us (our Hapsburg army), and ‘evil Muslims’ who threaten us and our Occidental culture (Gingrich 1998).

These processes of differentiation between ‘us’ and ‘them’ have been fuelled by the global ‘war against terror’ in the aftermath of September 11, 2001 and the bombs of Madrid and London. In 2005 the former Minister of Domestic Affairs, Liese Prokop, sponsored a study on the integration of Muslims in Austria in order to investigate the potential for radical behaviour among them. Interestingly enough, only Turks and Bosnians were represented as Moslems in this study, and even before it was published the minister announced that 45 percent of the Muslim population in Austria were ‘not willing to integrate’ (see Rohe 2006).¹⁷ The study does not explicitly use the term ‘integrationsunwillig’ (not willing to integrate), and the minister had to legitimize the unclear usage of the term in the following days and weeks. Yet, the public debate was shaped by the expression ‘not willing to integrate’ and by the assumption of dangerous Muslim ‘parallel societies’ in Austria.

Turks were transformed into Muslims living in patriarchal parallel societies in the course of these debates on Islam and terrorism. Austrian myth-history shaped by frontier orientalism facilitated further conflation of Turks and ‘bad Muslims’, now approved as evil by their attitude of ‘not willing to integrate’. Since Turkey, successor of the Ottoman Empire, has been constructed as a ‘threat’ in the collective memory of eastern Austrians for centuries, cultural anxieties concerning EU enlargement and anti-Turkish Muslims resentments have been shaping Turkey as ‘Europe's other’ during the preparation of EU accession negotiations.

Simultaneously, another debate unsettled Austria's population in 2005: The issue of ‘harmful traditional practices’ such as forced marriages, import brides, and honour killings. Despite the fact that NGOs all over Europe had pointed to violence against women among minorities for years and had called for special shelters and urgent measures (including the right to permanent residency independent of respective spouses for persons entering a country on a family reunification permit), it was only in the course of increasingly restrictive immigration policies during the crisis of multiculturalism (Bauböck 2002; Joppke 2003) that media and policy makers detected ‘parallel societies’ all over Europe and decidedly proclaimed their will to combat violence against minority women.¹⁸ The Austrian Minister of Health and Women's Issues launched an initiative on behalf of all women ministers in the Austrian government to combat violence against minority women and put ‘troublesome issues’ on the political agenda during Austria's EU Presidency in 2006. A European network against harmful traditions (NAHT) was founded and the Austrian government finally has introduced some (predominantly legal and inexpensive) measures. Sherene Razack (2004) rightly points to the fact that the achievement of efforts like these can be summarized as stigmatizing, controlling and punishing minorities instead of effectively combating violence.

‘Harmful traditions’ were explicitly not presented as Muslim or Turkish/Kurdish, but as ‘traditional’ in different religious and ethnic groups. Nonetheless, the notion of ‘tradition’ portrays violence against women as imported, produced by one or more different cultures and backward. Gender inequality has become a problem of others. ‘We’ have learned to treat women and men as equals, and to respect human rights and democracy, whereas ‘they’ (and among them Turks/Kurds and Muslims) have to be integrated. ‘We’ have learned in the context of ‘terror’ and the study done by the Ministry of Internal Affaires who is actually meant as far as being ‘integrationsunwillig’ (not willing to integrate) is concerned. Even representatives from ideologically patriarchal social segments that never supported gender equality now perceive themselves as civilized, non-discriminatory and, of course, superior. ‘Free women instead of forced veiling’, states right-wing populism and claims the right to defend ‘our’ occidental traditions against these brutal and patriarchal ‘others’. We can easily trace that these ‘others’ in Austria are already depicted in history and presented in the public discourse as distinctive others: the ‘Turks/Kurds/Muslims/Orientals’ we learned about in the myth history of eastern Austria.

What is noteworthy here is the interrelation of different fields of power: Male violence, immigration restrictions and the rejection of EU accession of Turkey ‘in the name of human and women's rights’. The culture of the other (Turkis h/Muslim/Oriental/poor male) is construed as a threat to ‘our’ equality paradigm and allows us not only to accuse them of being violent, but also to demand a stop to immigration, cultural diversity and EU enlargement. Whereas ‘our’ occidental culture has to be protected against a Turkish Siege, violence against women among minorities in the name of honour has further confirmed the superiority of gender equality and human rights in Austria/Europe.¹⁹ Even though policy makers and minority associations tried to convince the public that neither religion nor culture should be perceived as responsible for these practices, the measures, namely control and punishment, fit the suspicious attitude and anxiety nurtured by the notion of Turkish/Muslim/Oriental males as being violent. There are still only a few examples of anti-racist responses to violence against minority women (Sauer and Strasser, forthcoming).

Unsurprisingly, Turkish citizens in Austria as well as EU/Austrian citizens with a Turkish background react to these forms of ‘orientalizing’ and the way ‘Turks’ and Turkey are becoming ‘bad Muslims’ and ‘Europe's other’. There are different options for members of the Turkish diaspora to cope with cultural anxieties of the majorities and populist orientalizing: protecting oneself from exposure (withdrawal), trying harder to be integrated (assimilation) or challenging populist othering (counter-orientalizing). In the following section examples from my anthropological fieldwork give insight to counter-hegemonic tactics among Turkish transnationals.

I was meeting Nihal G. Ongan²⁰ and another friend in a coffee shop coincidentally called ‘Europe’. We enjoyed our Wiener Melanche coffee and had been chatting quite a while in Turkish when a man from the next table asked which language we were talking. ‘Turkish’, was the brief answer and we were not interested in any further conversation. Yet the middle-aged man was not willing to leave it at that. He had become curious and simply could not avoid asking ‘Have you all been forced into marriage?’ Obviously, forced marriage is not only topical in all the Austrian newspapers but also on everybody's mind (Vienna, February 2006).

On this occasion I could feel the devaluation of the language we were speaking and I understood why Nihal had repeatedly expressed her anxiety concerning ‘ordinary Austrians’ although she, like her social environment, is usually recognized in the public as Western, European, educated and upper middle class. However, she is Turkish and for this very reason vulnerable: a female victim of a society that is perceived as unprepared for EU membership, suspicious concerning human rights, traditionally practicing violence against women, overpopulated and predominantly Muslim.

Contrary to these expectations Nihal comes from an upper class, strictly secular, transnational family in Turkey. Her family estate, a turn of the century Greek house, is situated in Trabzon, the capital of an eastern province on the Black Sea coast. Her grandfather was a successful business man in the region, married to an educated, well-respected woman. The family lived not only in Trabzon but also in Istanbul and Marseille. The grandmother was permanently ill, so Nihal's father was brought up by a nurse and his first language was French; consequently, he studied in Belgium. After having finished his university studies he returned to Turkey, entered his father's business and married. It was his sister who found him a suitable wife: the younger sister of her schoolmate from a private American School in Istanbul. Her family was associated with high-ranking Kemalist civil servants who believed in republican principles and the blessings of a ‘Western’ education. After getting married, Nihal's mother moved from urban Ankara to provincial Trabzon, but, for the next 30 years, never got accustomed to living in this setting. However, Nihal considers herself a Trabzonian because, as she puts it, ‘There, I am somebody!’

At the age of 11, Nihal passed the entrance exam at an international private school, the Austrian ‘St. Georgskolleg’ in Istanbul.

The teaching methods used by the nuns largely coincided with the Kemalist ideals of education. The young girls were not to be spoiled. On account of the fact that the school was ‘European’, the teachers and their educational methods were beyond any doubt. After all, were not discipline and strictness the values that had brought Europe the economic success Turkey did not have?

Lessons at this school were in German, and passing the final exam in this college gave access to universities in Austria. Nihal came to Vienna in 1985. She was 27 at the time and expected to get an excellent drama education in a city with such a rich tradition in arts and music. The story of her first years in Austria is marked by bewilderment at the discrimination she experienced. Given her privileged upbringing in Turkey this came as a surprise to her and influenced her political orientation and affiliations in Austria. It also changed her views on minorities and human rights issues in Turkey, in the past and today. As she put it: ‘All this gave me a terrible shock’.

Nihal describes how she wished people recognized the similarities between her and the Austrian students instead of constantly emphasizing the differences. After all, she had a European education and knew more about Austrian literature than most of her Austrian colleagues. She did not want to be looked upon as a stereotypical ‘poor Turkish woman’.

She concentrated her studies on the history of National Socialism and anti-Semitism and wrote an MA thesis on the role of Auschwitz in theatre. Events such as the ‘Waldheim Affaire’ 1986,²¹ the rise of Jörg Haider, mail bombs sent to people who were known anti-racists between 1993 and 1996,²² and the widely reported case of asylum seeker Marcus Omofuma who died from police brutality during his deportation in 1999, prepared the ground for rising tensions in society.

As the ‘Black and Blue’²³ government was established in 2000, Nihal became increasingly dissatisfied with her work in a publicly sponsored and thus politically dependent support centre. She wrote for the press, accepted interviews, and participated in panel discussions. The cultural divide between supporters and opponents of the government provided an opportunity for Nihal to become a spokeswoman for migrant and minority issues. She still rejected the category ‘migrant’, but social tensions and struggles against racism opened a window of opportunity for her and her co-activists to speak for themselves and become publicly recognized. She criticized the leadership of certain established anti-racist organizations. She declared herself personally affected by racism and discrimination, and activists with a migrant background became her favourite allies in struggling for self-representation and political participation.

Being a migrant woman, however, does not constitute a political program for Nihal. She maintains that only those people should appear in public as representatives of minorities and immigrants who are up to the job. She advocates positive discrimination for people at a disadvantage on account of racism, specifically when appointing high-ranking staff; she also demands self-representation in politics, but not without adequate achievement, education, correct behaviour, and intellectual abilities. If somebody were assigned an official task because she is a poor Turk, Nihal would never publicly speak out against it, but, as a matter of principle, she rather supports intellectual circles. People should not be assigned on account of their personal experience alone, but because he or she is able to present his/her experience effectively and professionally in order to challenge assumptions about migrants in the public. However, what she thinks to be strategically correct representation has of course been shaped by her conception of education, social status, and in particular by a ‘good family's daughter's (iyi bir ailenin çocugu) sense for “good taste”’.

The antagonistic tendencies in her biography, i.e., to become nobody in spite of her knowing to be someone special, first cause her to be silent and invisible; then, however, she develops an outstanding commitment and special efforts to speak up, especially on occasions when the audience are not particularly eager to listen or does ‘others’ not allow to intervene (Austrian history and nationalism). Her tactics have been directed against majorities that refuse to treat her with respect.

Nihal's social environment is transnational, cosmopolitan, multi-lingual and intellectual. Her family and friends share an interest in theatre, cinema, music and literature and view different nationalities, religions and sexual orientations as normal. Diversity is ideologically appreciated and indicates a shared experience of distinction – a distinction based on the rejection of cultural essentialism, homogenization, nationalism and orientalism. She is co-operating with anti-racist activists in general, but in particular supporting those parts of the network with a similar Turkish or at least migrant/orientalized background. This ‘inner circle’ of anti-racist activists collaborated extensively after the 1999 national elections and founded TuschuschInnenPower.²⁴ ‘No coalition with racism’, was the motto of the main demonstrations against the ÖVP-FPÖ coalition, during which activists of TuschInnenPower did not want to be represented but to make use of a window of opportunity and speak up for themselves. The network published a migrants’ manifesto and criticized from the ‘others’ point of view’ nationalist and racist populism of the FPÖ.

Their counter-orientalizing tactics can be illustrated with the talk show ‘Leitkultur (dominant or majority culture) light. Introduction to the Occidental-Austrian Culture’, that took place in the Jewish Museum in March 2001. The talk show was framed by readings from an email correspondence between Hikmet Kayahan, co-founder with Nihal and others of TschuschInnenPower, and Walter Strobl, a People's Party representative of the Vienna City Council. In response to Strobl's reference to ‘Occidental-Austrian culture’, Hikmet Kayahan asked Strobl for an accurate explanation and definition of Occidental-Austrian culture.

After five weeks of emails and remails, Kayahan, a ‘migrant prepared to be integrated’, was disappointed, because he did not get satisfactory answers about the culture he was expected to adapt to. Strobl had suggested requesting advice from an immigration centre, but had unintentionally chosen the very same centre, Hikmet had been representing for years. Strobl further had assumed Hikmet was not sufficiently prepared for Austria when he had decided to migrate to this beautiful country. Hikmet reacted by giving him a range of options why people come ‘unprepared’ (refuge, war, guest worker) or just had a wrong, partial picture of the country. When Strobl had realized he was making a fool of himself he questioned Hikmets migrant identity and assumed that he in fact was a political opponent from the Social Democrats. Hikmets questions and suggestions were sarcastic, well worded, and, of course, distributed electronically every week among co-activists.²⁵

The talk show Leitkultur light in the Jewish Museum was announced by a poster showing a veiled Austrian foreign minister, Benita Ferrero-Wallner, on her diplomatic trip to Iran. Experts on ‘Austrian Occidental Culture’ were academics with migrant or minoritized backgrounds.

This event got much attention among anti-racist activists because of its various forms of representation. National culture was presented as diversified (intellectual circles in coffee shops, workers’ culture, etc.), the idea of homogeneity was ridiculed, and the Austrian experts with minoritized or migrant backgrounds did not focus on migration and integration policy, but on social, political and cultural issues in general. They refuted interventions from the audience (symbolizing the majority) and commented on Europe and Austrian cultural politics. TschuschInnenPower claimed knowledge and power as experts (not because of their ‘migrant identity’) to deconstruct the notion of Austrian culture as well as to define Europe and discuss Europeanness.

‘Counter-Orientalizing’ rejects strategies of orientalizing and provides activists like Nihal and her network with a tool to regain self-confidence by criticizing dominant society's illegitimate claims to superiority. They share moral claims of equality with an intellectual anti-racist movement in Austria, but position themselves differently by the appropriation and reversal of the derogatory term ‘Tschusch’. However, despite the shared experience of being a ‘migrant’, they simultaneously and emphatically reject the ‘migrant experience’ as a fixed commonality. Their anti-essentialist approach provides them with political tactics of counter-orientalizing or ‘stereotyping back’: they are bad (essentializing/homogenizing) so we are good (deconstructing/diversifying).²⁶

Juxtaposing popular versions of orientalism (frontier myths, tradition-based violence, Austrian occidental culture) and counter-hegemonic tactics of political activists offers insight to the remarkable rejection of Turkey's EU accession in Austria. Anxieties about a globalizing world and an insecure future are increasingly channelled by nationalism and populist policies into cultural anxieties (Grillo 2003) about ‘them’ not willing to integrate. The transformation of the multiply differentiated Turkish diaspora into Turkish Muslim males as cultural threat and Turkish Muslim women as their victims fuels the perception of insurmountable differences. Defending ‘our’ culture is an explicit justification of populist and culturalist policies as shown by right-wing populist election campaigns and the foundation of ‘SOS Occident’. Simplified dichotomies and devaluations representing ‘them’ as traditional, uneducated and patriarchal threatening ‘us’ gender equal democrats give rise to political tactics of ‘counter orientalizing’ among the Turkish diaspora.

Baumann's (1996, 1999, 2004) suggestions of culture as a dual competence including essentializing and re-mixing are instructive to understand the processes of selfing and othering in Austria. Turkish diaspora's response to homogenization, devaluation and exclusion, however, is neither shaped by essentialism nor by re-mixing. Nihals network's counter-orientalizing tactics successfully challenge cultural ascriptions and essentialism, yet do not offer an alternative for less privileged groups that feel incarcerated in a tripartite hierarchy (Gingrich 2006) between Brussels's ambitions and working-class immigrants. Nihal and her network are not representing the working class ‘them’, but are part of the transnational elites associated with Brussels and the volatile threat of a globalizing economy. Despite the fact that Nihal is time and time again victimized as a ‘poor Turkish woman’ suppressed by violent and desperate Turkish men and is constantly associated with the essentialized ‘oriental Muslim other’, she is acting transnationally, multilingual, and as an intellectual European feminist.

Including class, nationalism and gender for analyzing the image of Turkey as ‘Europe's other’ in Austria provides a better understanding of how ‘we’ (the Austrians) perceive ‘them’ (the Turks) as penetrating Europe in history and present. Constructing ‘Turks’ as ‘Europe's other’ as a consequence of myth-history and gender relations allows ‘Europeans’ to depict ‘them’ as uncivilized, threatening and traditional, and, consequently, to refuse them immigration and accession to the EU.

Sabine Strasser is Associate Professor at the Middle East Technical University, Ankara and Senior Researcher at the Centre for Studies in Asian Cultures and Social Anthropology, Social Anthropology Research Unit, Austrian Academy of Sciences.