"It's not really about alcohol, you know"

Abstract: This paper is about the role that alcohol consumption plays in the (re)definition of Turkishness at a time where the secular foundations of the country are being challenged by the religious-conservative Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi (AKP). We see how alcohol consumption shed its marginal position in the middle of the 19th century, being elevated to the status of drink of the elites, how this in turn shaped the lifestyles of those growing up in the urban centers throughout the next century and a half, the native secularists, and how it is perhaps again on the way to a marginal position in the Turkish society. Taking a closer look on the interviews, we learn that the postulated dichotomy in reality takes on the appearance of a spectrum of attitudes toward alcohol consumption, and by inserting the ethnographical material in a historical context and analyzing it through literature on secularization and modernity, it becomes evident that alcohol consumption in Turkey assumes the position of an icon, or a counter-icon, used by some groups to claim ownership to the nation.