NATIONALITY INSCRIBED:
UTILIZATION OF TURKISH TRADITION IN PRODUCT DESIGN

Debates on establishment of an authentic 'Turkish design style' being at its peak, Turkish designers frequently resort to concepts, motifs and symbols considered 'traditionally' Turkish for original and creative ideas. One apparent strategy, in this regard, is to utilize such traditional elements in product styling. Thus, especially iconic use of these elements (object-concepts such as the 'sofa', the 'tulip-shaped tea glass'; spatial concepts such as the 'hamam' or the 'harem'; behavioural concepts such as 'hospitality'; surficial elements such as the 'Seljuk motifs', and symbols such as 'the crescent and the star' or the crescent alone) is often encountered under a common title, 'Turkish design'.

Besides the discussions regarding cultivation of 'local values' for 'global market success', such representations of Turkish culture is significant in ideological terms: Use of national icons refers in an essentially synecdochical manner to a supposedly uniform national culture, which is constructed selectively and therefore discriminatingly. This attitude reproduces certain touristic stereotypes, mythicizes nationality and tradition, and thus, naturalizes certain definitions ('Turkish culture', 'Turkish designer'), distinctions (Ottoman, Seljuk, Anatolian), antagonisms (the Orient vs. the Occident) and a particular version of history.

The aim of this paper is, mainly, to study the way in which nationality is inscribed on product form and surface together with its ideological connotations. For this purpose, a number of products carrying references to the idea of Turkish culture are selected and subjected to a semiological analysis; so as to expose the underlying processes of signification, indicate the myths they inherit and reproduce, and reveal their ideological functions.