Abstract
Many contemporary historians, who
are critical of official, or nationalist, Turkish historiography, date the
emergence of an alternative historiography to the 1980s. This essay, argues
that its beginnings can be traced further back. The essay starts by examining the
early phases of an emerging critique during the initial years of the Republic. Publications
critical of aspects of official historiography in the 1950s are recognized as
stepping-stones in the development of an alternative historiography. The focus of the essay, however, is on the period
between 1960-71, when the easing of restrictions on civil liberties, coupled with
the upsurge of social and political movements, produced a praxis of critical
thought and political action that gave impetus to the emergence of an
alternative historiography. The essay argues, that in this period, the taboos
of official historiography were directly challenged and many of its untold
aspects uncovered, pointing to the emergence of an alternative historiography.
Table of Contents
1 Introduction 3
2 Official Historiography 9
3 Establishment of Official Historiography in Turkey 12
3.1 ‘The Speech’ 13
3.2 The ‘Turkish History Thesis’ 15
3.3 The Sun Theory of Language 17
3.4 Contemporaneous Criticism 19
3.5 Was Official Historiography cast in stone? 19
4 Official Historiography in the 1950s 21
4.1 Early insights 22
4.2 Kazim Karabekir’s version 22
4.3 Geoffrey Lewis and ‘Turkey’ 24
4.4 Köprülü - The Origins of the Ottomans vs. Turkish History Thesis 25
4.5 Bernard Lewis 27
5 1960s: Challenges to Official Historiography 29
5.1 Mardin: The Young Ottoman legacy 30
5.2 Mardin: The Young Turk Legacy 32
5.3 Prince Sabahattin 34
5.4 The Elites of Turkey 35
5.5 Küçükömer 36
6 1960s: Political and social movements 42
6.1 The Kurdish Question 43
6.2 The Kurdish Question and the Left 45
6.3 Kurdish movements gather popular support 46
6.4 İsmail Beşikçi 47
6.5 The 1970 Congress of the LPT 48
7 Conclusion 48
1
Introduction
A significant body of scholarly
studies and publications exists today on how Turkish historiography was created,
to support the ideological and political needs of the State during the
formative years of the Republic.[1]
Since the 1990s, but even more so since the turn of the century, there has been
an explosive growth in the literature available on the subject, challenging one
or other aspect of the official version of history. These include a number of political and
historical analyses,[2]
a range of popular books critical of official history[3]
and numerous historical periodicals. In 1991, the founding of Tarih Vakfı [The History Foundation], by two
hundred sixty four academicians and intellectuals, was the first time that a non-governmental
organisation was established with the aim of advancing the independent study of
history. It will be argued in this essay that these developments pointed to the
coming of age of an alternative historiography.
The changing historiography scene
is of course not taking place in a vacuum, or in an intellectual-academic world
divorced from society, but is concomitant with the changes taking place in
political attitudes in Turkey; the predominant one being the shift of political
power since the 1990s, away from the bureaucratic–military elite, towards the
Islam-leaning Justice and Development Party. The cleavages this change created
in official, or State ideology, gave historians and social or political
analysts, academic and press freedoms unparalleled in the history of Turkey, including
the opportunity to research subjects that up to then were not allowed in any of
the academic institutions in Turkey. Two, relatively recent examples, point to the
growth of self-confidence in the Turkish academic community.
In 2005, Turkish scholars decided
to hold a conference on ‘The Ottoman Armenians during the Era of Ottoman
Decline.’ The conference was sponsored by three leading Istanbul Universities: Boğaziçi
(Bosphorous), Sabancı and Bilgi. Discussing the mass killing and removal of
Armenians from Anatolia was a taboo subject in Turkey, and the use of the word ‘genocide’
could be sufficient to prosecute people for insulting the national character.
One of the first Turkish academic to broach this subject in 1992 was Taner
Akçam, thanks to a large degree by being able to do his initial research work abroad.[4]
The conference was quite a radical
initiative coming from Turkish academic institutions. The conference was twice
blocked, the then minister of justice Cemil Çiçek, accused the organisers of
“stabbing Turkey in the back”.[5]
It seemed, as if the initiative would come unstuck, yet the scholars held their
ground, and in a political setting where Turkey had applied for entry to the
EU, the conference was allowed to proceed. This was a turning point in
overcoming the taboo on this question, although as Bali remarks, the number of
students, in universities where critical studies are encouraged, represents
only about 1% of the total university student population, so expectations of the
early demise of ‘conservative historiography’ should not be overstated.[6]
The second example is quite remarkable also. In 2013,
Boğaziçi University awarded sociologist İsmail Beşikçi an honorary
doctorate. Beşikçi was a post-doctorate research
student in the 1960s when he was driven out of university, and spent nearly
twenty years of his subsequent life in prison. His crime was to have chosen
Kurdish nomadic tribes as the subject of his research, research that eventually
led him to the conclusion that the subject of his study was in reality one of
national oppression. Boğaziçi University’s award was extremely commendable, belated
and symbolic as it may have been, but a clear indication of the change in
attitude in sections of academia towards subjects still considered by many to
be a betrayal of the unitary Turkish state.
In this essay, the two facets to
official historiography will be discussed. The explicit side was put in place, under
the tutelage of Atatürk: based
on Atatürk’s narrative of the
Nationalist Struggle, delivered in his Speech
of 1927; the Turkish History Thesis, formally
adopted by The Turkish History Society in 1931; and the Sun Theory of Language, advanced by the Turkish Linguistic Society.
This was a nationalist historiography, tracing the history of the Turkish
nation to the Neolithic era. A lot,
however, was left out of this narrative. As Renan, observing the unfolding of
the French Third Republic put it so aptly:
Forgetting, I
would even go so far as to say historical error, is an essential factor in the
creation of a nation, which is why progress in historical studies often
constitutes a danger for the nationality.[7]
The second aspect of official historiography
is a part of it mainly by virtue of its absence. It is a past that has been
buried, or distorted by the State under doctrines and authoritarian policies implemented
during the early period of the Republic, the legacy of which has left
unmistakable traces in contemporary Turkey. It includes the Kurdish and
Armenian questions mentioned earlier, but it is not restricted to these alone
as there were many other issues left out of official historiography, such as the
multi-ethnic cultural heritage of the Ottoman Empire; the continuities between
the late Ottoman Empire period and the Republic; and the legacy of the Young
Turks on the Kemalist[8]
leadership of the Republic. Also brushed over in the official history, are the causes
for the divisions in the leadership of the National Struggle (Milli Mücadele)[9];
the nature of the revolts during the founding period of the Republic, and the
Republic’s exclusivist or assimilationist policies towards minority groups.
Most of the historians, who look
favourably to the development of an alternative, or critical historiography,
consider that such works began to surface in the late 1980s. For Brocket, it is only in the past two
decades that the historiography of Turkey ‘has broken free of the shackles
imposed by nationalist ideology.’[10]
Eldem maintains that it was only in the 1980’s, taking advantage of the
gradually improving political liberalisation that a new and investigative
historiography slowly started to appear.[11]
For Göçek, another leading critical historian, writing in 1988, progress
towards an alternative historiography had barely started.[12]
This essay attempts to trace the critique of official historiography to its
beginnings, and examine to what extent they formed the building blocks of an alternative
historiography. The working hypothesis is that this process started before the
1980s. Also, that it was encouraged, to a very large degree, by the political
and intellectual movements of the 1960s.
The focus of this study is on the
politically and socially dynamic period in Turkey between 1960 and 1971, punctuated
as it was by two military interventions. Why this period and not an earlier period?
Not taking comfort in Antoine Prost’s aphorism that ‘the historian does not
throw his net haphazardly,’[13]
we relied on Mardin’s observation that ‘During both the thirties and the
forties not a single scholarly study of the origins of the Turkish Republic was
undertaken.’[14]
This was a period when official ideology and historiography was being consolidated
and criticism not tolerated by the regime. As for the 1950s, this was a period that heralded
the end of a single-party rule and the ascendancy of the Democratic Party. If
this led to an expectation that the repressive atmosphere of the previous two
decades would change for the better, then it was a false dawn. The economic
woes of the mid 1950s, and the stalemate in Cyprus, resulted in the DP to rely
increasingly on authoritarian methods, muzzling the press and intimidating
political opposition to stay in power.[15]
Although the 1950s wasn’t a period
conducive to critical historical analysis, the publication of previously banned
memoirs of military commanders of the National Struggle provided, for the first
time, vying narratives on the foundation of the Republic. A key publication on the origins of the
Ottomans, Köprülü‘s Osmanlı
Devleti’nin Kuruluşu [Origins of the Ottoman Empire]
was published in Turkish towards the end of the 1950s.[16]
Köprülü, had researched the origins of the Turks in Anatolia, and his findings
were not those of the Turkish History
Thesis. Although official ideology survived the 1950s, nonetheless, some of
the stepping-stones necessary for its critique were set in place in this period.
After the military coup of May1960, Turkey entered a period of intellectual and
political activity, the spread and breath of which was novel and
stimulating. This made 1960 a natural starting
point for our investigation. The ‘radicalism’ of the 1960s,[17]
was cut short by the military intervention of March 1971, when the country was
virtually controlled by the military and an authoritarian regime was
established. This event defines the end date for this essay.
The essay is structured over three
periods: 1923-1950 was the period of foundation and strict observance of
official historiography; the 1950s showed signs of cleavage in dominant
ideology, and saw the publication of previously banned material; in the 1960’s,
significant advances in the historical and political field took place. In terms
of the organisation of the essay, Part 1 discusses the concept official historiography,
Part 2 its establishment in Turkey. In Part 3, the publications and sources
that became available before 1960 are reviewed.
In Part 4 and 5, critical historical and social publications of the
1960s are discussed, focusing on academic works in Part 4, and on the impact of
political and social movements in Part 5. Part 6 concludes the essay.
The sources that provided the
background and primary material for the study include governmental, academic and
educational publications, political journals, historical and political tracts,
articles and books published in or on Turkey in this period. Recent books by
critical, or alternative historians were reviewed to establish the maturity, or
otherwise, of the state of alternative historiography today.
2
Official Historiography
Official historiography is a
contemporary phenomenon, associated with the process of nation-state formation,
and thus closely bound to both nationalist ideology and the modern State. It is
differentiated from earlier forms of historical writings, such as the work of chroniclers
that were dedicated to their patrons, or to ruling dynasties, by being an
outcome of a nation-state in formation or consolidation. In this sense, in the
epoch of nationalism, official historiography has been essentially nationalist
historiography.[18] It is premised in this essay, that official,
or nationalist historiography, terms which will be used interchangeably, is an
integral element of what has been termed variously as state-based nationalism,[19]
official and institutional nationalism,[20]
state-building or state-induced nationalism,[21]
nation-building nationalism[22]
or simply ‘official nationalism.’[23]
Brubaker, for example, defines ‘nationalising nationalism’ as the newly created
State ‘having the right, indeed the responsibility, to protect and promote the
cultural, economic, demographic, and political interests of the core nation,’ where,
the core nation is represented by its elite.[24]
The way in which the nation could
be promoted, and its interests made central to the sovereignty and unity of the
nation, preoccupied thinkers even before the French Revolution. For Rousseau it
was ‘education that must give soul to the nation.’[25]
For Herder, common cultural characteristics defined the nation. The French
Revolution embraced plans to re-educate the population to create a citizenship
that would fuse as a national entity.[26]
During the Third Republic, in France, historians became directly involved in
the State’s drive for mass education: school texts like historian Ernest
Lavisse’s popular history textbooks aimed to educate the population in history,
as well as in patriotic duties.[27]
By the late 19th Century, there
was a tested and tried blueprint in place that could be used for nation-state
building.
Success in building nation states depended
on having a sovereign nation-state to enable the cultivation and dissemination of
a nationalist ideology. In this process of top-down nation building, public and
national institutions became key promoters of official or state ideology. To be
successful required organs of state power that combined methods of coercion with
those of consent. According to Zimmer, coercion was relied on particularly in
state formations emerging from the collapse of bureaucratic states, or empires,
following the First World War, where the elites subscribed to hegemonic nationalism.
Zimmer defines hegemonic nationalism as a kind of nationalism that has little
regard for minorities, or even regards them as a threat to the nation-state.’[28]
The homogenisation of society under such a nationalism requires policies of forced
assimilation or the deportation of minorities on the one hand, and the creation
of institutions for the linguistic and cultural normalisation of the population
on the other.
Institutions aimed at establishing
the domination of State ideology was the subject of Gramsci’s analysis of
‘hegemony’ and ‘hegemonic apparatuses.’ Gramsci first used the concept of
‘hegemonic apparatus,’ when pointing to the crisis of the principle of
authority, following World War I.[29]
The concept included institutions, ideologies, practices and agents (including the
‘intelligentsia’), that informed Gramsci of how hegemony was exercised by
ruling elites.[30]
Althusser uses the term ‘ideological State apparatuses’ in a similar context, defining
them as functioning predominantly by ideology,
in contrast to repressive State apparatuses that function mainly by violence.[31]
The concept of ‘ideological State
apparatus’ expresses quite well the role of the institutions created in the
early years of the Turkish Republic that helped Kemalism establish itself as
the dominant ideology of the new State being built. The vision for the new
Republic, as projected by the Kemalist elite, was for an ethnocentric
nation-state that distanced itself from its Ottoman past and its Islamic roots,
replacing it with a modern and secular culture. The institutions created for
this purpose were not simply consent-based ideological Sate institutions,
aiming at a gradual process of national assimilation and cultural
homogenisation. Kemalism was a radical movement, and the pace of change would
match the pace and élan with which the Republic was formed. Those who disagreed
with official doctrines, or minorities and sections of the population who
refused to fall in line with the assimilationist nationalism of Kemalism, this
was seen a threat to the unity of the State. Thus, the balance between the
consent and coercion elements of ideological State apparatuses varied over the
years, with consent becoming more patent in time , but with the coercion element
never far behind.
3
Establishment of Official
Historiography in Turkey
Atatürk was conscious, from the
early years of the Republic, of the importance of a shared past in the makeup
of a nation. Historical and
anthropologic studies would play an important role in advancing Turkish
nationalism, and creating a Turkish national identity on firm ‘scientific’
foundations.[32]
The Turkish History Society (THS) founded in 1931, initially as a research foundation,
become a key instrument of State policy. Its mission was to develop and
disseminate the Turkish History Thesis,
and to produce educational programmes and history textbooks. The Turkish
Linguistic Society (TLS), formed soon after the History Society, adopted the History Thesis and developed the Sun
Theory of Language to complement the History
Thesis.
Atatürk considered the problems
that would be encountered in building a new nation-state in The Speech (Nutuk) well before he
founded the History Society. He suggested that it would be necessary to ‘fill
the heads of thinking people with a new faith… To give the nation a new moral
strength.’[33]
The emphasis on the State to shape the
nation was in line with the thinking of many nationalist leaders of the 19th
Century, in fact going as far back as to 1789, when Rabaut had declared: ‘We
must make of the French a new people’.[34] For Atatürk, the new faith was Turkish nationalism,
and the moral strength would come from uncovering the lost history of the Turks,
as the founders of Anatolian civilizations; to this end a nationalist ideology was
built, based on The Speech, with the
addition of the Turkish Historical Thesis
and the Sun Theory of Language.
3.1
‘The Speech’
The orthodox and widely accepted
version of the National Struggle is Mustafa Kemal’s The Speech, written and read
by him to the first Assembly of the Republican Peoples Party (RPP)[35]
during 15-20 October 1927. The Speech
remains to this day, the most celebrated document of the Republic. It is
Atatürk’s own account of the National Struggle and the founding of the Turkish
Republic. At the time he delivered it Mustafa
Kemal had consolidated his position; he was the President of the Republic and the
leader of the ruling RPP. He had
overseen the defeat of the Şeyh Sait rebellion and the promulgation of the
draconian Takrir-i Sükun Kanunu [Law for the Maintenance of Order]. The opposition party, the Progressive
Republican Party (PRP), was closed down and its leaders tried the following
year at the Independence Tribunals, accused of involvement in the Izmir assassination
attempt. The press had been muzzled, criticism of the government was no longer
allowed. Mustafa Kemal was virtually unassailable. In The Speech he was writing the narrative of a history in which he had
been the lead actor. The Speech however includes all-out accusations
against his former comrade-in-arms of the Nationalist Struggle. The division in
the leadership of the National Struggle is often explained the maxim that "the
Revolution devours its children."[36]
In the 1960s, however, different explanations would be forthcoming, arguing that
the divisions in the military leadership reflected a fissure that run deep in
society. Before we return to this subject we look at how the division in the
leadership came about.
The First Grand National Assembly
(GNA), elected in 1920, was divided into two factions. The First Group was the
majority supporting Mustafa Kemal; the Second Group was the opposition. In 1924,
the representatives of the Second Group formed the Progressive Republican Party
(PRP). The founders of the PRP included the key names of the National Struggle:
Kazım Karabekir, Commander of the Eastern Front; Rauf Orbay, Chief of Naval
Staff during World War I and first Prime Minister of the
provisional Government of the GNA; Ali
Fuat Cebesoy, overall commander of the nationalist forces in 1920, and Refet
Bele, commander of Western Front. They were the four of the five top military commanders
of the National Struggle, in addition to Mustafa Kemal. Mustafa Kemal reacted
bitterly when they formed the PRP, accusing the programme of the PRP to be the
‘handiwork of traitors,’ and of ‘assisting
external enemies to achieve the destruction of the young Turkish Republic.’[37]
Moreover, that they had ‘wished to strangle the Republic at birth.’[38]
They were accused of having encouraged the Şeyh Sait rebellion of 1925, their
Party was closed and they were tried accused of participating in an assassination
attempt on Atatürk’s life which effectively removed them from public life. It
is not possible to understand fully what had caused this rupture in the leading
cadre of the National Struggle by relying on The Speech alone,.
During the 50’s, the chronicles and
memoirs of the leading military commanders who had parted paths with Mustafa Kemal
were published. These publications, and the archival materials they included,
provided the first insights into the divisions within the leadership of the National
Struggle, and are discussed in Section 4 of this essay. It is also not possible
to get an understanding from The Speech
of the role the Kurds played in the National Struggle -which Kurds maintain, to this day, was a
common struggle. Mustafa Kemal wrote in The
Speech that the ‘Kurds joined with the Turks’,[39]
but insisted on the adoption of harsh measures against ‘Kurdish currents’[40],
which he considered to be foreign incited.[41]
The Speech describes how the Kurdish
question was shrewdly pushed aside during the peace process with the Allies, and
that by the time the Lausanne Conference took place ‘It [the Kurdish question]
was certainly not discussed.’[42]
Following a series of Kurdish revolts that were ruthlessly crushed, the Kurdish
question became a taboo subject in Turkey. The collaboration of the Kurds had
been useful during the National Struggle, but the new Republic no longer needed
it.
3.2
The ‘Turkish History Thesis’
With the Opposition in the Assembly
squashed and successive Kurdish revolts defeated, Atatürk had his hands free to
implement a series of radical reforms aimed at turning Turkey into a modern secular
state. The Ottoman historian İnalcık,
quoting Atatürk, tells how
modernisation became a ‘matter of life or death for the country’, hence why the
‘Atatürk revolution is a total revolution.’[43]
Afet İnan, one of the
founders of the Turkish History Society, and co-author of the Türk Tarihinin Ana Hatları [44]
[Outlines of Turkish History], recalls one year after Atatürk’s death how this
process was initiated and lead by him:
He made a
history for Turkey. And wrote history for Turkism. In writing this history I
became His writer and co-reader. I was his pupil in history. The number of
books we read together was innumerable. This study started in 1929. The Turkish
History Society was born as a result of these studies. The Society achieved its
first congress (1931) under his close attention and supervision. The Turkish History Thesis was first
launched and discussed at this congress. All the history teachers, historian
scholars were present. The four-volume school history books were produced after
this. [45]
Atatürk had hypothesized that a simple
Turkish tribe could not have created an empire in Anatolia. There must have been a different explanation,
and the onus was on science to uncover it.’[46]
To research Turkish history Türk
Tarih Tetkik Cemiyeti or the Turkish Historical Investigation Society was
founded in 1930, with politicians and historians as members; it then became the
Türk Tarih Kurumu or Turkish History
Society. The first result of the society
was published as Türk Tarihinin Ana
Hatları [Outlines of Turkish History], which underlined the pre-eminence of
the Turkish nation from pre-historic times to the present. This work would
provide the basis for the formulations in the Turkish History Thesis that was formally adopted at the first
Turkish History Congress, in Ankara, in 1932. The Thesis argued that Turks were the founders of civilisation, and
spread it form Central Asia towards the Aegean in the west, and Egypt in the
south. More significantly, extinct Anatolian civilisations, such as the
Hittites and Sumerians, were of Turkish origins. The Thesis aimed to infuse nationalist consciousness to a population
that hitherto had been the subject people of an Empire, and whose culture was predominantly
based on Islam; the means of spreading the message would be primarily through
education.
Work had been in progress since
1930 to prepare a four-volume set of history schoolbooks based on the Outlines of Turkish History. This was
used in the curriculum during 1931-32. Following the acceptance of the Turkish History Thesis, history books
were re-written to reflect the Thesis
and the founding of the Republic as outlined in The Speech. Nonetheless, the Theses
proved to be one of the more vulnerable aspects of official historiography. In
1940, a major work to mark the centennial of the Tanzimat was published, which according to Hanioğlu had a
significant impact on official historiography by affirming the continuity between
the Republic and the Ottoman Empire.[47]
During the National Educational Congresses, in 1943, 1946 and 1949, harsh
debates took place around the history thesis, and according to Copeaux a shift
to a more ‘humanist’ approach in history was considered after 1950, although Copeaux
ads that these did not have any significant affect on schoolbooks until the late
1980s.[48]
3.3
The Sun Theory of Language
Towards the end of the First
Turkish Historical Congress, Atatürk commented that it was ‘time to think about
language matters.’ [49] A few days after the Congress, Türk Dil Tetkik Cemiyeti or the Turkish Linguistic
Investigation Association Society, later called Türk Dil Kurumu or Turkish Linguistic Society (TLS), was formed. The
aims of the Society were to ‘elevate the Turkish language to the high rank it
deserved among world languages’ and to purify the Turkish language from foreign
influences.[50]
To this end, the intent was to cleanse Turkish of Arabic and Persian words, and
replace them with words from Turkish roots. The Society also developed a
linguistic theory aligned to the History
Thesis -in 1936, the Sun Theory of Language was adopted.
However, the enthusiasm for linguistic
purism did not persist for very long, as it become increasingly clear that the
public was unwilling to replace commonly used words with unfamiliar ones
suggested by the TLS. Purification of
the language was also becoming a less pressing ideological necessity once the Turkish History Thesis had been formally
adopted. If Central Asia was the home of the Turkish people, from where civilisation
spread, then it was reasonable to infer that Turkish was the ‘mother-tongue of
mankind’.[51]
Hence, the existing stock of words used in Turkish could be kept, as the
origins of all words were Turkish anyhow.[52]
This formula had the advantage of providing consistency between the History Thesis and the Sun Theory of
Language. [53]
3.4
Contemporaneous Criticism
The History Thesis could not be revised during the 1930s and 1940s. There
was a solitary attempt by Togan who presented a paper to the First Turkish
History Congress, in 1932, in which he criticised the central Asia ‘Migration
Theory’. He argued that the drought claimed
to have been the cause why Turks from Central Asia had migrated, spreading to all corners of
the world, had preceded human existence; other causes for the migration should
be investigated. His paper was not read at the Conference, and Togan paid a
price for his pains.[54]
He resigned from his post at the History Department of Istanbul University and
left for Vienna, returning to Turkey only in 1939. Köprülü, a proficient
historian, on the other hand, moderated his initial criticism of the Thesis, and thus maintained his leading position
in the new historical reality, only to criticise it from abroad, in 1940: ‘Nationalist History was
romantic and amateurish historiography’.[55] Altınay, author of İki Komite, İki Kıtal [56]
[Two Committees, Two Massacres],
who attended the First Congress of the History Association, but was critical of
the Thesis, was less fortunate. He lost
his post at Istanbul University where he was a history lecturer, and it is said
that he was heartbroken and died in abject poverty.[57]
3.5
Was Official Historiography carved in stone?
Not every historian is convinced
that official historiography is all that it is made up to be by contemporary
historians. Ortaylı, one of the scholars who can write authoritatively on the
late Ottoman Empire, considers that although the designation of official
historiography may reflect an understandable uneasiness with the historical
thesis of the first twenty years of the Republic, this is not the same as
saying that a fully-fledged official historiography was ever established. Ortaylı’s
argument is that official historiography requires a high degree of
organisation. It requires, Ortaylı argues, that firstly, in addition to the
centralised creation of the narrative, under the ideological control of the Party,
the full commitment of the giants of the academic and scientific communities. These
scholars would be expected, to a man, to become the representatives and
supporters of the official ideology. Secondly, this history needs to be
supervised and distributed to lower units using the rigidity of a hub and spoke
organisation. Examples which Ortaylı
gives for instances of effective official historiography are from the
totalitarian societies of the 1930’s, Germany and the Soviet Union -where regimes had competent technical and administrative
organisational structures. Considering the historiography of the 1930’s in
Turkey, however, Ortaylı argues that ‘it is not possible to see these elements,
especially to see them as an integral whole. An official view of history has
not been put forward in a well-organised way, it is difficult to find any links
between the historian patrons leading it.’ [58]
Furthermore, Ortaylı claims that
there were always groups and individuals who wrote and argued critically, and
opposed official historiography. The one example he gives, however, is not very
convincing: ‘The coffee shop nearby the University (Istanbul University –DN),
known as “Ash tray”, was an important meeting place attended by young
historians and authors, where conversations and discussions outside the thesis,
known as official historiography, took place frequently.’ [59].
For many, however, who were not a part of this avant-garde, the standard reference remained the history studied
from primary school to university level. Ortaylı argues that there was little
supportive material to sustain the official History
Thesis taught in school and universities. That may have been the case, but
then there was even less that offered or discussed an alternative discourse to
that of State ideology and historiography, at the very least until the 1960s. Ortaylı’s
main bugbear though, appears to be with contemporary historians, some which he
claims create their own icons of ‘official historiography and historians,’ so they
can then bring them down. This and other critical assessments will be discussed
in the conclusion section of the essay.
4
Official Historiography in the 1950s
In his memoirs, Doğan Özgüden recounts an episode immediately
after the elections of 1950 that brought the Democratic Party to power. He was
travelling in the 3rd class compartment of the train from Ankara to
Istanbul, where a middle age passenger, who emphasised repeatedly that he was a
schoolteacher of many years, was talking, saying that ‘Henceforth history books
will have to be rewritten. For years they used us to spread lies. The so-called
Victory of İnönü… There was no such victory, the battle of İnönü was on of the
biggest defeats in Turkish history,’ while others in the compartment agreed
with him. Özgüden describes the shock effect these words had on him, as an adolescent
who had undergone a Kemalist education. [60]
The middle-aged teacher, however, was not the only one who had noticed
something had gone awry with Turkish history.
4.1
Early insights
One of the
earliest published critical observations on the nature of Turkish historical
writing in the early Republican period was by Mardin, who viewed it as
reflecting ‘the governments need to infuse the Turkish with an ideology,’ while
at the same time edging out the Ottoman legacy.[61] Mardin also remarked that due to political
sensitivities, publications on the history of the Turkish Republic were kept at
the ‘level of panegyrics’ [62]
Lewis, writing a few years later in 1953, was also quite clear that Atatürk had taken the stewardship of
the history of Turkey in order ‘to destroy what remained of the Ottoman and
Islamic feeling of identity, and to replace it by one that was purely Turkish.’[63]
Lewis was in no doubt that the Turkish Historical Society had become the
instrument of state policy to impose historical theories to support the nationalist
ideology. Yet when giving reasons as to why a ‘mixture of truth, half-truth,
and error was proclaimed as official doctrine,’[64] Lewis
was less critical. We will return to this point when looking at Lewis’s major
work on Turkey.
4.2
Kazim Karabekir’s version
Karabekir’s case is telling in
terms of how far official historiography can be barrier to obtain a full view
of past events. After being tried and acquitted at the İzmir Assassination
trial, Karabekir retired in 1927. Following an attack on his wartime record in
a newspaper, he wrote İstiklal Harbimizin
Esasları [The Principles of our War of Independence] in 1933, a work that
matched The Speech in volume and supportıng
archival material. The books were confiscated while in the process of being
printed and were burned. Karabekir’s home was raided, original manuscripts and his
archival material were confiscated, after which he was kept under close
surveillance until his rehabilitation by İnönü in 1939. His book could not be published
in his lifetime. When it was published in 1951[65]
it provided the first documented insights at the tensions within the leading
cadre of the Nationalist War, and allowed for the first time a critical
reappraisal of The Speech.
In history books, until quite
recently, Karabekir’s role in the National Struggle was limited to a single
sentence stating that ‘Mustafa Kemal assigned Karabekir, the commander of the
15th Army Corps, to command the Eastern Front.’ [66] His role in the National Struggle had been
effectively written-off history. Karabekir’s memoirs are inevitably defensive; they
are an attempt by the second most influential soldier of the National Struggle to
clear his military record, and affirm his commitment to the Republic. Karabekir
was the commander of the 15th Army corps in the eastern front, when Mustafa
Kemal resigned his military post, having being recalled to Istanbul by the
Sultan. Karabekir then placed his forces under Mustafa Kemal’s command. This
was an exceptionally loyal deed coming from a career officer. Karabekir, with
great foresight, must have realised that Mustafa Kemal was better suited the
lead the National Struggle to a successful conclusion. Nonetheless, in his
memoirs he tried to set the record straight. Mustafa Kemal’s opening lines in The Speech states that the ‘Army had
been, and was being, disarmed and its ammunition taken away…’ Not so, Karabekir
contended. The 15th Army corps, which he commanded, had not given up any of
their arms or ammunition, and remained a fighting force; its presence enabled
the holding of the Erzurum Congress in the summer of 1919. It was under his command, in 1920, that the first
battles of the National Struggle were fought and won, not the First and Second
İnönü battles as claimed in The Speech.[67]
The leaders of the National
Struggle were gradually rehabilitated, Rauf, Fuad, and Bele during Atatürk’s
life, and Karabekir by İnönü in 1939. During
the 1950s they published their recollections and their views of the National
Struggle. What became clearer was that the divisions in the military leadership
of the struggle did not necessarily reflect counter-positions on the Republic; there
was patently no betrayal,
only differences on the tempo and nature of the reforms being carried out. The
PRP position was to moderate the reforms and postpone the removal of the
Caliphate, so as to maintain a level of influence on Arab lands, but also in
response to conservative and religious popular feelings. In light of these
publications, the National Struggle, at least from a historian viewpoint, would
need to be reassessed. During the 1950s there were a few other key books
published that are relevant to this essay, by Geoffrey Lewis, Fuad Köprülü and
Bernard Lewis
4.3
Geoffrey Lewis and ‘Turkey’
Geoffrey Lewis wrote one of the early
introductions to the history of Turkey. Turkey[68]
was one of the few, if not the only general account of the recent history of
Turkey in any language in the 1950s, possibly with the exception of Tunaya’s Türkiye'de
Siyasi Partiler 1859-1952 [Political parties
in Turkey]. One of
the most evident omissions in Turkey
is the fate of the Armenian population. This is not mentioned, not even in the
terms acceptable to nationalist historiography as a tehcir or deportation. Granted,
there were not many scholarly works on this subject at the time in English.
Nonetheless, there was the work of Esat Uras, Tarihte Ermeniler ve Ermeni Meselesi [69]
[The Armenians in History and the Armenian Question] , which would have been accessible to Lewis, as
he was a Professor of the Turkish language at Oxford University.
Uras’s work is couched in official terminology, but his references to the ‘emigration’
and ‘relocation’ of the Armenians includes ample ambiguities to draw the attentive
eye of a critical historian.[70]
There are many assertions in Turkey
that would have drawn approval of official historiography, such as when Lewis
states that ‘the plain truth is that it was a dictatorship’, and then adds, ‘this
dictatorship was the best possible thing that could have happened to the
Turks.’[71]
Nonetheless, Lewis, in commenting on the
Şeyh Sait revolt of 1925, reasons that it was partly due to resentment at
Turkish rule, and a positive desire for Kurdish independence, not simply due to
religious objections at the abolition of the Caliphate.[72]
Geoffrey Lewis was one of the first to make this observation, which would be
discussed again, but not before the late1960s.
4.4
Köprülü - The Origins of the Ottomans vs. Turkish
History Thesis
One of the tenets of official historiography
is the unbroken lineage from early Turkish civilisations, while minimising the
significance of the Ottoman Empire. There
were a number of reasons for this. Mustafa Kemal sought a thoroughgoing break
with the Ottoman Empire whose state ideology was Islam: ‘The Republic was to
start a new life under the aegis of nationalism; consequently it tried to
dissociate itself from the past and all that it entailed.’[73]
There were other reasons. The modest start of the Ottomans, ‘a tribe with two
hundred tents moving into Anatolia’, did not seem fitting beginnings on which
to found the new Turkish state. Consequently,
the History Thesis marginalised the
Ottoman period in favour of earlier civilisations. This aspect of official historiography was one
of its weakest links, as it was one of the most difficult to defend. Turkish
citizens lived their daily lives surrounded by Ottoman cultural artefacts and
traditions, even if this may have been a little less obvious in Ankara. Increasing
cultural exchanges with the outside world, and the growing number of students
in American Universities, made the defence of the racial explanations of the History Thesis, based on “brachycephalic Turks,’ more difficult. One
of the key publications to challenge the History
Thesis, albeit indirectly, was the publication of Osmanli Devleti’nin Kuruluşu [74]
[The Origins of the Ottoman Empire], by Köprülü, in 1959.
In a highly acknowledged piece of
historical research, Köprülü traced the Ottoman past to the ‘extinct Seljuk
sultanate and the Anatolian beyliks (principalities) which succeeded it.’[75] The beyliks had emerged from the Anatolian
Seljuks, themselves descendants of the Great Seljuk, who had moved into
Anatolia as part of the Oğuz invasion
in the 12th century.[76]
Köprülü made no attempt to link the Ottomans, or the Turks, to pre-historic Anatolian civilisations. As a
consequence, his research published as Les
Origins de L’Empire ottoman[77]
in Paris in 1935, and planned for publication by the Turkish History
Association, could not be published in Turkish. It would take twenty-four years
for the Turkish translation to go into print. [78]
Köprülü, had not challenged the Turkish History Thesis while a member of
the Turkish History Society, but had gradually distanced himself from the
anthropology sourced Turkish History
Thesis and the Turkish History Society. Given his status as an authority on
Ottoman history, the publication of his work in 1935, albeit in Paris and in
French, may have removed much of the enthusiasm for the defence of the History Thesis in academic circles.
4.5
Bernard Lewis
Lewis published The Emergence of Modern Turkey [79]
in 1961, but as the preface to the book is dated January 1960 it can be
considered to be the last word of the 1950s. The Emergence of Modern Turkey has remained a classic work of
Turkish history to this day, and remains in print in both English and Turkish.
Lewis’s extensive familiarity with the Middle East and his knowledge of the
Ottoman Empire makes the book a comprehensive narrative of the period and
events from which the Turkish Republic emerged. It is the story of an
uninterruptable process of modernisation. Lewis views the Turkish History Thesis and the Sun Theory of Language as dubious
doctrines, but that they were developed for a good reason, to restore Turkish
national self-respect, and as a defensive reaction against Western prejudice. In
this aspect his views remained consistent with those he had expressed in his
1953 article. One of the reasons Lewis gives for the manipulation of
historiography was that it discouraged irredentist Pan-Turkism and -Turanist ideas.
However, well before the creation of the History Society such ideas had lost
credibility and had no political support. There were voices, in the First Grand
National Assembly that did not approve of the Lausanne Treaty because of the
loss of Mosul, and other areas lying beyond the borders of the Republic, but
this was more a reaction in favour of Islamic unity and to retain as much of
the Ottoman Empire as was thought possible. It was not Pan-Turkism. To explain the reason for the imposition of
the new historical theories, Lewis falls back on justifications that had been common
currency since the 1930s, and argues it was to provide comfort for ‘Turkish
national self-respect’ and to encourage ‘Turkish pride.’[80]
This echoes what Peyami Safa was writing back in 1936, in relation to Kemalist
nationalism, which he argued was instituted to recover from the ‘inferiority
complex’ that resulted by the humiliation of the defeat in the First World War.
It had become necessary, Safa maintained, ‘to squirt forth a Turkish
consciousness that would look to the future with hope, and feel the pride of
all the glories of Turkish history.’ [81]
Most writers on Turkey tend to adopt similar explanations. For Geoffrey Lewis,
for example, the innovation of nationalistic myths ‘was beneficial to the
Turkish ego at a critical time.’[82] Oran, a prominent critique of nationalist
historiography, uses the same argument in his post-doctoral thesis published as
Atatürk Milliyetciliği
[Atatürk Nationalism] in 1988.[83]
With hindsight, it can be argued that it is one thing
to recognize that these dubious theories were asserted as official doctrine, to
reclaim national pride and enthuse patriotism in the new Republic, and quite
another, not to recognize that they were also used to rationalise the
continuation of assimilationist or exclusionist policies against the minorities
of the Republic. This may not have been evident in the 1950s, but by the late
1980s it should have been clear to Oran. Lewis reflects that the History Thesis never won much support
outside the inner circles of Kemalism, and after a time it was allowed to fade
into oblivion. But not before achieving its objectives, which include, for
Lewis, the ‘benefit’ of a new generation who grew up educated in the schools
and universities of the Republic ‘for whom the Empire was a burden now happily
cast off.’[84]
This was an odd comment, coming from a historian; jettisoning six centuries of
history was neither possible, nor desirable, one would have thought. But for Kemalism, casting-off Ottoman’s recent
past was central in creating a new nationalist historiography.
5
1960s: Challenges to Official
Historiography
By the 1960s, the
late-Ottoman period appeared to be
fading away from the past as a brand new didactic History replaced it.[85]
Jenkins’ reflection that ‘the past and
history float free of each other’ [86]
would have been a fitting description of Turkey in this period. In the 1960s
the work to link them back would start. It is one of the ironies of history,
that a military coup, which toppled an elected government, opened an era of unprecedented civil liberties in Turkey. The military oversaw the
drawing up of new constitution by a Constituent Assembly composed of Kemalist
scholars. The resulting 1961 Constitution provided legitimisation of the
military coup in the eyes of many who would traditionally have sided with the
RPP. There was anticipation of
a Second Republic, books were written on what it would mean, and it was even included
in the programme of the new government.[87] The Second Republic did not happen,
nevertheless, the 1960 coup and the ensuing 1961 Constitution opened up a
period of political debates focused on the analysis of Turkish society and on
strategies for economic growth and modernisation. Historiography took its cue
from these developments. We start by looking at Mardin’s work on the political
currents of the late Ottoman period.
5.1
Mardin: The Young Ottoman legacy
Mardin undertook one of the first studies
aimed at understanding the legacies of the recent Ottoman past, in his PhD
dissertation, published in 1962: The Genesis
of Young Ottoman Thought.[88]
This was a significant development in
Turkish historiography. It is not surprising that this study was done outside
Turkey. The political climate in the country at the time did not allow for
a critical study, or analysis, to be undertaken with respect to the historical
roots of the Republic.[89]
But what possible concern could the study of a political current, whose actors
lived a century earlier, have for official historiography? Young
Ottomans, or the New Ottomans, translated literally, were Turkish intellectuals
that were the product of the Tanzimat [90]
reforms, who organised, in 1865, as a secret society with the aim to conserve
the unity of the Empire and its survival.[91]
Mardin set out in the Genesis of Young
Ottoman Thought to show that: ‘there is hardly a single area of
modernization in Turkey today, from the simplification of the written language
to the idea of fundamental civil liberties, that does not take its roots in the
pioneering work of the Young Ottomans.’[92]
İnalcık agreed with Mardin’s analysis of the Young Ottomans: ‘The Young
Ottomans were the real forerunners of the nationalist and democratic movement
in Turkey’.’[93]
This view of the Young Ottomans, however, did not align with official
historiography, tended as it did, to disregard the Ottoman legacy, and assume
19 May 1919 as the start date for the history of the Republic, the day when
Mustafa Kemal landed at Samsun.
The Young Ottomans solution to the
Ottoman Empires loss of territory since the beginning of the 19th
Century, mainly on the western parts of the Empire, was to embrace a non-ethnic
version of nationalism, with a constitutional regime that would introduce
elements of Western civilisation, while preserving traditional Islamic-Turkish
culture. They aimed to create an Ottoman
nation, that did not resemble a nation-sate, but was loyal to the Ottoman
dynasty while offering equal political rights and a common notion of vatan (homeland) to all subject groups,
of different nationality or religion, under the banner of Ottoman. In this
sense, the 1876 Constitution (Kanunu-u
Esasi), which opened the first era of Constitutional Monarchy, was the
realisation of the Young Ottoman’s political objectives. Under the section on
the ‘Personal Liberties of the Ottomans’ of the 1876 Constitution, the
following articles are interesting, not only because
they precisely articulate the ideas of the Young Ottomans, but also because of
the similarities between the programme of the Constitutionalists and that of
the 1924 Constitution of the Republic.[94]
Article 8
of the 1876 Constitution stipulated: All subjects of the empire are called
Ottomans, without distinction whatever faith they profess; Article 11: Islam is
the state religion, but that the State will protect the free exercise of faiths
professed in the Empire; Article 12: The press is free; Article 15: Education
is free. Every Ottoman can attend public or private instructions on condition
of conforming to the law; Article 16: All
schools are under state supervision; Article 17: All Ottomans are equal in the
eyes of the law. They have the same rights, and owe the same duties towards
their country, without prejudice to religion; Article 18: Eligibility to public
office is conditional on knowledge of Turkish, which is the official language
of the State. [95]
In the 1924 Constitution of the
Republic, ‘Turk’, and Republic’ replaced ‘Ottoman’ and ‘Empire, little else needed
changing. It was only in 1928 that the article stating the religion of the
Turkish State is Islam was removed. Young Ottomans were influenced by
Enlightenment ideas but saw in Islam a framework that could hold the Empire
together. Secularist and nationalist approaches would emerge with the Young
Turk movement.
5.2
Mardin: The Young Turk Legacy
Mardin’s Jön Türklerin Siyasi Fikirleri 1895-1908 [96]
[The Ideas of the Young Turks 1895-1908] was another step in re-establishing
the links between modern Turkey and its recent Ottoman past. The Young Turks,
organised in the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP), were the main force
behind the establishment of the Second Constitutional Monarchy in 1908. Their
approach to the question of nationality differed from the Young Ottomans. During
the Second Constitutional period Ottomanism gave way to the ethnic Turkish
nationalism. Even before the Young
Turks, and the CUP, which was formed in 1889, interest in the Turkish millet [nation] was growing. In
1886, Mizan, published by
Murat Bey wrote: ‘Saadet, is an
Ottoman newspaper. Ottoman means Turkish.’[97]
After the military retreat from Crete in 1898, the following extract from a
report sent to the Sultan by the CUP in Geneva demonstrates the CUP homing on
the Turks, as the ethnic group with which to rebuild the State:
The remaining nation (millet)… the Turks, are hungry, naked
and oppressed. This tribe, obedient, patient and laidback by nature, is
according to some apathetic and quite lazy. In reality though, as one of our
elders said, Turks are like the bullet in a rifle.’[98]
The question thus posed, was whose
finger would be on the trigger. Mardin, points that the primary objective of
the Young Turks was not “freedom” per se
but to save the State, to save the Ottoman Empire from disintegration. To this
end Ahmet Rıza, a leading member of the Young Turks, and editor, publisher of Meşveret, had argued for the need of a
“political elite’ to lead the population. Ahmet Riza encouraged the officer
corps to become involved in politics, and for the military elite to lead in
civilian life also. Mardin suggests that
the concept of an officer corps as an elite capable to mobilise the population
echoed the ideas of the German military theorist Colmar Von der Goltz, whose
military treatise, Das Volk in Waffen[99]
[A Nation in Arms], was published into Turkish as Millet-i Musallaha. These ideas, where the linking of the military
with civilian elites is proposed to lead a nation that remains in a permanent
state of military alertness, became influential in the army, especially as Von
der Goltz Paşa, as he was known, taught young cadets in the prestigious Royal
Military Academy in Istanbul.[100]
Mardin argues that this the first time the Young Turk’s strategy for political
power was articulated clearly, and finds it thought provoking that these ideas
had been directly influenced by proto-totalitarian views.[101]
5.3
Prince Sabahattin
Another aspect of the Young Turks that
Mardin examines is the polarisation that occurred within the movement, leading to
the emergence of two opposing currents, described by Mardin as two ideological
‘teams.’[102] In terms of
political programme, the difference was in relation to the organisation of the
State: centralism versus de-centralisation.
For Prince Sabahattin[103],
the central problem of Ottoman society was its domination by civil servants. As
Mardin points out, in a country where the ‘elite’ was, without exception, composed
of civil servants, Prince Sabahattin siding against this elite, and proposing
radical measures for its removal, represented a very controversial social
critique. Prince Sabahattin’s view of for how the state should be run was liberal,
it emphasised the role of the provinces in the running of the country. De-centralisation
proposed to hand over power to sub-district, district and province assemblies who
would select their own functionaries, thus shifting political power in favour
of the Anatolian tradesman, merchant, and landlord. [104] In the context of
the Ottoman Empire, administered increasingly in centralised way since the 19th
century, and with a growing bureaucracy[105],
this was a radical proposal requiring radical change. It was completely out of
step with the CUP, where the emphasis was on empowering the political elite to
better manage the State. Both wings of the Young Turks were part of the same
military-civilian elite, had similar backgrounds, and a similar relationship to
their employer, which was without exception the State; politically, however, they
had diverged as to the social classes they aligned with.
5.4
The Elites of Turkey
As it was introduced earlier in the
essay, The First Grand National Assembly (GNA) formed in 1920 was composed of
two factions. Both factions operated within the organisation of the Anadolu Rumeli Müdafaa-i Hukuk-u Milliye
Cemiyeti [Society for the Defence of National Rights in Anatolia and
Thrace], formed at the congress in Sivas in September 1919. The Society
represented the Defence of Rights organisations across Thrace and Anatolia, founded,
after November 1918, by local CUP branches, in collaboration with
representatives from the provinces. Frey examined the sociological and
political backgrounds of the deputies that composed the GNA to find out what differentiated
the two group’s social background.[106]
Frey found that the First Group deputies were more representative of the
regions that had been occupied by foreign armies, which were also the more
modern, western parts of Turkey. The Second Group were predominantly from the North-eastern
and Black Sea regions, where the occupation was less extensive and local defence
organisations and the armed forces were more active. The Second Group contained
more local deputies and relatively more merchants and lawyers, while the
clerics were about equally distributed between the two factions. His findings
led Frey to observe that ‘In general, the differences in social background
between the First and Second Groups of the very First Assembly, presage later
differences between the People’s Party and the Democratic Party as well as
subsequent trends in the social composition of the Assembly.’[107]
The conclusion Frey draws is that ‘local commercial’ opposition to the Kemalist
program was evident from the very start of the Republic. This is a theme that
has elements of Mardin’s ‘two teams’ characterisation to the division in the
Young Turk movement. Karpat also
characterises this political landscape as the interior struggle dominated and
determined by the struggle of two groups: the ‘conservative-religious’ and ‘modernist-secularist’,
adding the factor of religion into the equation.[108]
Küçükömer writing in 1968[109]
would develop further this theme.
5.5
İdris
Küçükömer
In the early 1960s, Küçükömer wrote in Yön, the influential journal founded by Doğan
Avcıoğlu. Yön argued for a
modernisation strategy, based on the military-civilian elites and the youth
movement, seen as the dynamic forces (zinde
kuvvetler), of society, and a
statist economic development model. In 1969, Küçükömer distanced himself from Yön and advanced a different analysis to
explain the slow pace of Turkey’s modernisation process. The analysis was premised
on the historical split within the Turkish ruling elite, going back to the
Young Turk movement. Küçükömer credits Tunaya to have been the first to point
to this division, in Türkiye’de
Siyasi Partiler (1952) [Political Parties in Turkey], as a division that would result in
dividing the people of the empire into ‘two rival camps’. The picture that
emerged from his analysis is illustrated graphically in the table below, showing
the links in the progression of these two wings.[110]
|
LEFT BLOCK
Supported by the
Easternist-Islamic popular front composed by the janissary- tradesman-ulema:
|
RIGHT BLOCK
Representing the Westernising-secular
bureaucratic tradition:
|
|
THE PRINCE SABAHATTİN WING OF THE YOUNG TURKS
FREEDOM AND ENTENTE
SECOND GROUP
(In the First National Assembly in
the Society for the Defence of Rights)
PROGRESSIVE REPUBLICAN PARTY
FREEDOM PARTY
DEMOCRATIC PARTY
JUSTICE PARTY
?
|
THE UNION AND PROGRESS WING OF THE YOUNG TURKS
UNION AND PROGRESS
(Initially a committee, then
party)
FIRST GROUP
(In the First National Assembly
in the Society for the Defence of Rights)
REPUBLICAN PEOPLES PARTY (RPP)
RPP- N.U.C.
(National Unity Committee [Milli
Birlik Komitesi]) (post-1960 coup)
RPP (Centre Left)
?
|
The initial organisational expression of this break
into rival camps was the Committee of Progress and Union on the one hand, and the
League for Private Initiative and Decentralization on the other. These two
currents would in the 1908-1918 period form respectively Ittihat ve Terraki Partisi, or the Committee of Union and Progress
(CUP) and
the Hürriyet ve İtilaf
Fırkası or the Party of Freedom and Entente (PFE). Küçükömer argued that
the CUP represented the Westernising bureaucratic tradition, while the PFE
relied on the support of the ‘historical janissary-tradesman-clerical (ulema) opposition’. The latter,
Küçükömer maintained, always had the support of the majority of the population.
These views have a degree of similarity with those argued by Mardin and Frey.
Küçükömer, however, introduced another factor into his analysis; he argued that
in the Turkish context, the traditional roles of the left and right were
reversed: according to Küçükömer the statist bureaucratic elite was a barrier
to the development of capitalism in Turkey, and therefore represented the
conservative political wing, while the political elites that represented the
classes which owned the means of production were progressive, and thus on the
left.
One may be tempted, in view of the
current political balance in Turkey, to replace the question marks in the table
above with the Justice and Development Party on the left column, and the RPP on
the right. At least one political
analyst warns against doıng this. Aydınoğlu argues that Küçükömer’s
thesis was aimed at understanding the political conjuncture, in which Küçükömer
was himself not an insignificant actor,[111]
but that developments in the 1970s refuted his schema, as the Justice Party of
Demirel cooperated with the military to restrict democratic rights by making
changes to the 1961 Constitution, and Ecevit shifted the RPP to the left-of-centre,
and went into a coalition with the Islamist National Salvation Party of Erbakan
in 1974.[112]
It is beyond the scope of this
essay to examine whether developments since the late Ottoman period, and the
present of contemporary Turkey can be understood by the conflict between these
two political traditions, or how far into the past the roots of these divisions
go.[113]
Küçükömer thesis, however, had opened the debate as to the nature of Kemalism.
Were the military and civil bureaucracies, together with the intelligentsia,
the social forces capable of driving Turkey towards modernity? Or were they, on
the contrary, an impediment to development? Kemalism was already being
discussed critically in the early 1960s. In Kemalist
Devrim İdeolojisi [The Kemalist Ideology of
Revolution] Elçin attempted
to analyse what had gone wrong with Kemalism that had prevented the
modernisation of Turkey.[114]
Selek, in Anadolu Ihtilali [The
Anatolian Revolution], argued that the Nationalist Struggle was an elite
movement, led by the members of the CUP, and conducted in spite of the people.[115]
Küçükömer had not only framed the debate in a historical context, but he had also
reversed the perceived roles of the Kemalist elite and the traditional social
sectors of society. In spite of two
major future attempts to re-establish Kemalism as the official state ideology with
the 1971 and then the 1980 military coups, the process the critical
re-appraisal of Kemalism was not going to prove reversible.
In view the recent preponderance of
pro-Islamic political movements in Turkey, it would have been expected to see
indications of their activities in the 1960s. However, Islamic currents
remained in the background, possibly cowed by the 1960 coup and the execution
of the Prime Minister Menderes with two of his ministers. Kısakürek, poet and author, tried to unite
Islamic forces under Büyük Doğu [The Great East] of which he
was the editor and publisher. Kısakürek was a fierce opponent of the RPP mainly
for its secularism. His book Türkiyenin
Manzarası (The Sight of Turkey) is
in parts a satire on the National Struggle, belittling its claimed achievements;
otherwise the book, as wells as most of Kısakürek’s writings, is focused on scaremongering
against the communist threat, which he chose not distinguish from the RPP, and
believed was already established in positions of power, and could only be
dislodged by Islam.[116]
While the debate on Kemalism, the
nature of the National Struggle, and the continuity from the Ottoman Empire was
taking place in the 1960s, to a large extent in the midst of politically active
intellectuals and university youth, another strand of activity was developing
in relation to the Kurdish question.
6
1960s: Political and social movements
One of the outcomes made
possible by the 1961 constitution was the formation in 1961 of the first legal socialist
party since the 1920s, the Labour Party of Turkey (LPT), or Türkiye İşci Partisi. Twelve leading trade unionists acting in a
personal capacity were its founders,[117]
pointing to the trade unions increasing role in the social movements of the
1960s. The rapid economic growth during the 1950s [118]
had resulted in large-scale migration from rural areas to the cities, changing
the social composition of the urban centres and causing increased social
polarisation. By the second half of the
1950s, larger sized factories appeared and the number of factory workers
increased from 163 thousand to 334 thousand.[119]
The population of the largest four cities increased by 75%.[120] Trade
union struggles were on the increase, especially after the break from the Türk
İş (the Federation of Trade Unions) of DISK (the Revolutionary Worker’s’ Trade
Union ) in 1967, and the LPT made a remarkably
successful showing in the 1965 elections, winning seats not only from the
industrial centres but also, from Kurdish districts.
6.1
The Kurdish Question
In the second half of the
1960s, the LPT, and in its wake, the left student movement, became increasingly
aware of the Kurdish question, or as it was then called, the ‘Question of the
East’ or Doğu Sorunu. The
terms ‘Kurd’ and ‘Kurdistan’ were proscribed terms, and even Kurdish
nationalists refrained from using them in public. Doğu, ‘the East,’ was a neutral term used
to evade explicit reference to the Kurdish regions in Turkey, which carried
with it the potential accusation of Kurdish separatism. The Kurds were referred
to as Easterners, or Doğulu, a euphemism that expediently included Turks
and Arabs living in the region also. The Kurdish question was had not been
addressed addressed by either the Constitution or prevailing laws, except in
continuing to prohibit its debate in public.
The Kurdish question had
been simmering ever since the Kurdish revolt of Şeyh Sait in 1925, immediately
after which the Law for the Maintenance of Order was passed by the Assembly,
and Independence Tribunals formed which sentenced Şeyh Sait and forty-six of
his followers to death, as well as banning the Opposition PRP for suspected
involvement in the rebellion. The official account of the revolt claimed it was
a reactionary uprising to ‘overthrow the godless republic and restore the
Caliph’.[121]
Tuncay was the first Turkish academician
to challenge this view, when he wrote in 1967, that in reality the revolt
represented a Kurdish nationalist movement using religion as a cloak.[122]
Events since 1925 give weight to Tuncay’s view, as the Kurdish movements did
not end in 1925; from that date until the death of Atatürk not a single year
passed without a rebellion taking place in the region.[123] The Dersim revolt (1936-38) was one that was crushed
the most brutally. The revolt grew following resistance against the İskan Kanunu[124] [Resettlement Law] that was passed in 1934, aiming to ensure that the
Turkish culture was foremost in all regions of the country. The Law included measures
for the forced resettlement or evacuation of populations. A military governor was assigned to Dersim,
with a plan to relocate the population, mainly composed of Alevi Kurds,
speaking Zaza. When local tribes rose in
revolt they were suppressed. It took two years for the armed forces to defeat
the rebellion and the region was pacified at the cost of a large numbers of
civilian deaths.[125]
As ‘Turkishness’ took central position in the nationalist ideology, and ‘loyalty
to Turkish culture’ made a precondition of being a Turk, there was no room left
for any ethnic group to self-define itself culturally, linguistically or
ethnically, outside that of being Turkish. [126]
The growth of the Kurdish
movement in the 1960s was taking place against the background of the Kurdish
guerrilla struggle under the leadership of Molla Mustafa Barzani against Iraq's
central government. This war had a significant impact on the ethnic awareness
of Turkey's Kurds. A
number of short-lived cultural and political journals were published in this
period, and, in most cases, immediately banned: İleri Yurt (1958), Dicle-Fırat
(1962-63), Deng (1963), Roja Newê (1963). Aybar, was the first political leader
to bring the question into the open in 12 May 1963, during an executive
committee meeting, conducted in public, when drew attention to the large
population of Kurdish and Arabic speaking people, as well as people of the
Alevi denomination, who were not allowed to benefit from the privileges of
citizenship. [127]
Meanwhile, inspired by the Kurdish movement in Iraq,
where Barzani and the KDP were leading a successful guerrilla struggle against
the central government, young members of the Kurdish traditional elite founded
in 1965 the clandestine Kurdistan Democratic Party in Turkey (KDP-T). In
1966 Yeni Akış [New Course] edited by lawyer Mehmet Ali Aslan
began publication in Ankara. The ‘Kurdish Question’ and the ‘Kurdish people’ were
discussed, possibly for the first time in a Turkish journal without the
protection of the body armour afforded by treating it simply as a ‘question of
the East.’ In its 3rd issue, Kemal Burkay argued that the
backwardness of the East could not be overcome without recognizing this was in
large parts due to the discrimination the East suffered because of the ethnic
issue[128].
In the November 1966 issue of the journal, the editorial maintained that since
the creation of the Republic, the existence of Kurds had been denied, their
language and culture banned. In the issue the universal principle of ‘right of
nations to self-determination’ was discussed and defended. The journal was
banned and the leading contributors to the journal were arrested.[129]
As a long trial of the defendants followed; it looked as if he Kurdish question
could no longer be swept under the carpet.
6.2
The Kurdish Question and the Left
In the early 1960s both the
LPT and Yön saw the Kurdish question
primarily in terms of regional underdevelopment, which had been exacerbated by the
prevailing feudal relations in the east. The oppression of the State on the
population was increasingly recognized[130]
but like earlier generations of Kemalists, they identified the Kurdish aghas
and sheikhs (tribal and religious leaders) as the worst oppressors and
impediments to progress. They strongly disapproved of a Kurdish nationalism
that was led by a section of aghas and sheikhs. The LPT gradually came to
accept, however, that the "question of the East" was also a national
question. If there were a number of
factors that influenced this change of attitude, one of them was that the LPT had
a small but militant membership and an active electoral base, which included
the Eastern regions, where the Kurdish movement was becoming more vocal and
gathering grass-root support.
6.3
Kurdish movements gather popular support
During 1967, meetings were held in
the east and southeast of Turkey that became known as Doğu Uyanış Mitingleri or Awakening Meetings of the East. These were the first large
demonstrations that took place in the Kurdish regions of Turkey. The LPT had by
now 15 deputies in the Assembly, and their involvement in these meetings, sometimes
in an uneasy collaboration with the Turkish-KDP[131],
gave inceased confidence to Kurdish people. The term Kurd could not be used at
these meetings, but the ‘Question of the East’ had begun increasingly to occupy
the political scene. The first Kurdish associations that became active
were the “Revolutionary Cultural Societies of the East” (DDKO), which were
established in Ankara and Istanbul in 1969, soon to be followed by branches in
Diyarbakır and other Kurdish towns. Their monthly bulletins
discussed questions of cultural oppression and economic backwardness and called
for efforts to protect and develop Kurdish language and culture, to establish
libraries and folklore collections. Later issues reported human rights
violations and regional events and analysed the government's policies in the
East as ‘cultural imperialism’.
6.4
İsmail
Beşikçi
Beşikçi's most relevant
work in this period is Doğu Anadolu'nun Düzeni [The Order of East Anatolia],
published in 1969. This was the first significant study of the social and
political history of the Kurds to be published in Turkey. In his book there are two
fundamental propositions that went against official ideology and most hues of
thought in Turkey at the time. Beşikçi
argued against the general view held by both the Kemalist left and socialists, suggesting
that the East was not backward and underdeveloped because of feudal forms of
relations, rather that feudalism persisted as a consequence of State policies
inspired by fears of Kurdish separatism.[132] He
argued that ‘Turkey is a country inhabited mainly by two peoples’-one
having formed into a nation while the other had been held back. [133]
The publication of his book did
not go down well with Atatürk University where he was an assistant professor,
and disciplinary measures were taken against him. He was dismissed on the
grounds that by publishing this book he had violated Turkey's Constitution.[134]
This was the first time that a Turkish academician was seen defending views
that were to then only raised by Kurdish intellectuals.
Beşikçi’s views on the
Kurdish question had a number of implications for official ideology and
historiography. By defining the Kurdish Question as fundamentally one of
nationalism, no different in principal from the Turkish nationalism, Beşikçi
had challenged the self-image of the Kemalists as well as socialists. How could
the suppression of Kurdish national aspirations, through the State’s reliance
mainly on local tribal and feudal landlords, be reconciled with a Kemalist
ideology that claimed to be revolutionary and populist, as well as anti-feudal.
6.5
The 1970 Congress of the LPT
A turning point on the platform on
which the Kurdish question was debated occurred during the 4th Congress of the LPT
in 1970, where a series of resolutions where adopted stating that the East of
Turkey is inhabited by Kurdish people, and that repression, terror and
assimilationist policies had been applied on the Kurdish people. The Congress recognized
that to consider the ‘Question of the East’ a matter of regional underdevelopment
was nothing more than the extension of the government’s ‘chauvinist-nationalist
views and policies’.[135]
The adoption of this resolution articles would result, after the 12 March 1971
military coup, to the outlawing of the LPT, and the arrest of its leading
members on the basis that political parties were not allowed to argue that
there existed in Turkey minorities based on different national or religious
cultures, or language.[136]
The Kurdish taboo was broken, but at great cost to those that initiated the
debates and engagements on the Kurdish question. When the Kurdish movement
re-surfaced, after a further military coup in 1980, it would take quite a
different form than the political and cultural societies of the 1960s.
7
Conclusion
An official, or nationalist version
of history was created, in the early years of the Turkish Republic, to reflect and
support the Kemalist leadership’s vision for the Turkish nation as a modern and
secular nation-state. It was built on myths, such as the Turkish History Thesis, claiming the existence of the Turkish
nation from pre-historic times. The histories of the National Struggle and the
foundation of the Republic, were narrated based solely on Mustafa Kemal’s The Speech. Institutions, such as the History and
Linguistic Societies, performed as ‘ideological State apparatuses’: they
adopted these theses and narratives, and promoted their top-down diffusion in
society through, what Anderson has called, ‘the policy levers of official
nationalism.’[137] These ‘levers’ included textbooks prepared to
cover the curriculums form primary school to university education that were
aligned with official historiography. The press and a political regime based on
the rule of a single party complemented the instruments of ideological control.
Ortaylı’s objection to the
substance of official historiography was discussed earlier. For Ortaylı, the official
historiography of the 1920s and 1930s was not a convincing ‘historical
synthesis’, as it did not form a coherent unity of thought, and was not unflinchingly
supported by the top academic historians and social scientists of the time.
Neither was there, according to Ortaylı, a centralised communications infrastructure capable of supervising
the internal consistency of official historiography and its orderly diffusion,
such as may have existed in Nazi Germany or Stalinist Soviet Union.[138]
Evidently, many aspects of official
historiography were flawed, as were
the ideological State apparatuses created to maintain and develop the thesis
and theories. This essay has argued that it was thanks to the challenges to the
official version of history that these flaws became evident. For instance, it
became unsustainable to continue and defend that the Turks had been the
pre-historic indigenous peoples of Anatolia, after Köprülü’s The origins of the Ottomans, where he demonstrated
that the colonisation of Anatolia, by the Oğuz clans, had taken place in the 12th Century. The History Thesis could not be directly contested
at the time when Köprülü published his book in France, due to the authoritarian
nature of the regime; it was simply left to die out after the death of Atatürk,
although it still took a long time for school textbooks to reflect this, and adopt
a more universal, or ‘humanist’ approach to history. Similarly, we have argued,
a more balanced, and historically inclusive narrative of the period leading to
the founding of the Republic, could only be undertaken in the light of the primary
sources that became available following the publications by the leading
military commanders of the National Struggle, who had been side-lined in the
mid-1920s. Improved civil liberties in the 1960s were a significant
contributing factor for a critique of official historiography to develop.
Mardin’s analysis, of the Young
Ottomans and the Young Turks, in the 1960s, established the links between
political and ideological currents of the late-Ottoman Empire and the Republic.
Mardin and Frey discussed the social or class composition of the ruling
bureaucratic military-civil elite, and suggested reasons for the underlying
causes in the political differentiation and conflict within this elite. Küçükömer
further developed this approach, by arguing that the divisions reflected a
historical rift that ran deep in late-Ottoman society, and continued to do so
in the Republic. The debates in the 1960s, about the Ottoman’s legacy and the
continuity between its political institutions and those of the Republic, placed
the political nature of Kemalism and the RPP under a spotlight. Elçin’s essays in the early 1960s, were
an attempt to analyse where Kemalism had failed, and led Elçin to critically assess Kemalist ideology.
By the end of the 1960s, articles had started to appear in academic journals
also, such as Tezel’s article on whether the War of Independence was
anti-imperialist or not.[139]
History was coming out
of the straightjacket imposed by State ideology and official historiography.
One of the main points in relation
to official historiography, is that it was not composed solely of the various
thesis and theories put forward in the 1920s and 1930s; but also by what was
masked-out of the past. Specifically, the denial of the late-Ottoman legacy, the suppression of
Kurdish attempts for recognition after the National Struggle, the forced
re-settlements to promote assimilationist policies, and the policy of exclusion
applied to non-Muslim minorities. The Kurdish question was one of the key
issues confronted during he 1960s. It was supressed with the 1971 military
coup, and again by the 1980 coup. Nonetheless, key factors of the Kurdish national
question had been articulated in publications and political movements during
the 1960- 1971 period, and are encapsulated in the writings of Dr, Şıvan,[140]
Beşikçi, the many short-lived Kurdish journals of the period, and the practice
of societies and associations the sprang in the East of Turkey. Not all issues
buried under official historiography became apparent in the 1960 -1971 period.
The Armenian question was raised in the 1990s, and became a subject for
increased historical study in Turkey only during this century[141].
Publications on the fate of non Muslim-minorities, and the policies applied for
their exclusion during the Republic came in the 1990s.[142]
These point to the limitations of the critique of official ideology in the
1960s.
Another criticism raised by Ortayli
is in relation to the quality of the alternative historiography being produced.
Ortayli puts it quite bluntly: ‘from a historiographical viewpoint, it can be
observed that, the so-called alternative historiography being produced, has the
same technical shortcomings as the official one, and is imbued with the
feverishness of amateurism.’[143]
Eldem, an outspoken critique of official historiography, is also critical, arguing
that the gains of ‘good’ historiography is being eroded at a higher rate by
‘bad’ historiography.’ It is unlikely that either official or alternative historians
have a monopoly in producing poor quality historical works… Nonetheless,
subjects that were taboo in Turkey, not only for academic study, but also in
most areas of social and political life, are today the subject of analysis and
debate, to a significant extend as a result of the contributions by critical
and alternative historians. There are a significant number of present-day
Ottoman and Turkish studies, some which have won international acclaim in the
historical community, and many others that involve the collaboration of
scholars from universities in different countries, indicating that a high
degree of professionalism is becoming the norm in modern or new Turkish
historiography.
So, was the 1960-71 period the
‘beginnings of the emergence of an alternative historiography’? It is tempting
to look back and try to find the one idea, or the one proposition that created
a wedge in official
historiography. Was it Tolga’s critique of the ‘Central Asia migration” theory
in 1932, or Köprülü’s work on the origins of the Ottomans in 1935? Or was it
Karabekir’s rival narrative of the National Struggle? Perhaps it was Elçin’s first questioning of Kemalist
ideology in the early 1960’s, or the work of Mardin in stitching back the
history of the Republic with that of the late Ottomans? It was most likely all
of them. And the list can be made much longer. This essay has argued, however, that
the 1960s produced a praxis of critical thought and political movements that gave
impetus to the emergence of an alternative historiography, the epicentre of
which was the uncovering of the Kurdish question.
It must be expected that it will
not be possible to set the clock back on these, and more recent advances in
Turkish historiography.
****
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Zimmer, Oliver, Nationalism in Europe, 1890-1940 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2003)
[1] On the history of official Turkish historiography see Büşra Ersanlı’s Ph.D, The Turkish History Thesis: a Cultural Dimension of the Kemalist Revolution (Istanbul, Boğaziçi University, 1989); Etienne Copeaux, Espaces et temps de la nation turque: Analyse d'une historiographie nationaliste, 1931-1993 CNRS Paris (1997); Zafer Toprak, Cumhuriyet ve Antropoloji (Istanbul, Doğan Kitap, 2012); Ismail Beşikçi, Türk Tarih Tezi, Güneş-Dil teorisi ve Kürt sorunu (Yurt Kitap-Yayın, 1991)
[2] For critiques of official historiography, see Fikret Başkaya, Paradigmanın iflası ; resmi ideolojinin eleştirisine giriş (Istanbul, Doz, 1997); Ugur Ümit Üngör,, The Making of Modern Turkey: Nation and State in Eastern Anatolia, 1913-1950 (OUP Oxford, 2012)
[3] For example, Resmi Tarih Tartışmaları, Vol 1-11 [Debates on Official History] (Ankara, Özgür Üniversite, 2006-2012).
[4] Akçam, Taner, Türk Ulusal Kimliği ve Ermeni sorunu (İletişim Yayınları, 1992).
See also A Shameful Act: The Armenian Genocide and the Question of Turkish Responsibility (2006, New York)
[5] Ed. Ronald Grigor Suny, Fatma Gocek and Norman Naimark, A Question of Genocide : Armenians and Turks at the End of the Ottoman Empire: Armenians and Turks at the End of the Ottoman Empire (Oxford University Press, 2011), p7.
[6] Bali, Rifat, N., The Silent Minority in Turkey (Istanbul, Libra, 2012), p. 522.
[7] ‘L'oubli, et je dirai même l'erreur historique, sont un facteur essentiel de la création d'une nation, et c'est ainsi que le progrès des études historiques est souvent pour la nationalité un danger.’ 1882 Conference text, in Ernest Renan, Qu’est-ce qu’une Nation, (Pierre Bordas, Paris 1991), p. 34.
[8] Kemalism encapsulates the ideas and principles of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the founder and first president of the Turkish Republic. It is also referred to as Atatürkism, to describe official State ideology.
[9] The Turkish nationalist struggle during 1919-22 is referred to as both National Struggle [Milli Mücadele] and the Independence War [Istiklal Savaşı]. In this essay it will be referred to as the National Struggle, which avoids the awkward question of where had Turkey seceded from.
[10] Brockett, Gavin D., Towards a Social History of Modern Turkey: Essays in Theory and Practice (Istanbul, 2011) p. 15.
[11] Ethem Eldem, ‘Osmanli Tarihini Türklerden Kurtarmak’ [Saving Ottoman History form the Turks], in Tarihyaziciligi, Cogito S. 73 (Ankara, Yapi ve Kredi Yayinlari, 2013), p.273-4.
[12] Kieser, Hans-Lukas, ed., Turkey Beyond Nationalism: Towards Post-Nationalist Identities (I. B. Tauris, 2006), p. 90.
[13] ‘l’historien ne lance pa son chalut au hazard…’ in Antoine Prost, Douze lecon sur l’histoire (Seuil, Paris, 1996), p. 75.
[14] Mardin, Şerif, ‘Recent Trends in Turkish Historical Writing,’ Middle East Journal, Vol. 4, No. 3, (Jul., 1950), p. 357.
[15] Landau, Jacob M., Radical Politics in Modern Turkey (BRILL, 1974), p. 4.
[16] Köprülü’s highly acknowledged study was originally published in France, in 1935, titled Les Origines de l’Empire Ottoman.
[17] Landau, Jacob, Radical Politics in Modern Turkey.
[18] Exceptions can be found, for instance following the Russian Revolution, official historiography was statist and not nationalist, until it succumbed to what Lenin called ‘Great Russian chauvinism.’
[19] Hutchinson, John, and Anthony D. Smith, Nationalism (Oxford University Press, 1994), p.8
[20] Smith, Anthony D., National Identity (University of Nevada Press, 1991), p.102.
[21] Zimmer, Oliver, Nationalism in Europe, 1890-1940 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), p. 58
[22] Breuilly, John, Nationalism and the State (Manchester University Press, 1993), p. 225.
[23] Anderson, Benedict, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (Verso, 2006), p. 101
[24] Brubaker, Rogers, Nationalism Reframed: Nationhood and the National Question in the New Europe (Cambridge University Press, 1996), p. 104.
[25] Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, Considérations sur le gouvernement de Pologne: et sur sa réformation projettée (Cazin, 1782), p. 19
[26] Bell, David Avrom, The Cult of the Nation in France: Inventing Nationalism, 1680-1800 (Harvard University Press, 2009), p 15
[27] ibid, p. 209
[28] Zimmer, Oliver, Nationalism in Europe, 1890-1940 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), p. 60
[29] Thomas, Peter D., The Gramscian Moment: Philosophy, Hegemony and Marxism (BRILL, 2009), p. 225
[30] ibid, p 224.
[31] Althusser, Louis, Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses, 2008), p.19 -20. Historiography is not in Althusser’s list of ideological State apparatuses, which include religion, education and culture among others disciplines and functions, although history can be considered under the heading of culture.
[32] Hanioğlu describes the scientific approach as follows: ‘Mustafa Kemal wished to have a Turkish nationalism supported by scientism, fashionable racial models based on phrenology, and popular Darwinian theories of evolution.’ Sükrü Hanioğlu, ‘The Historical Roots of Kemalism’ in Kuru, Ahmet T., and Alfred C. Stepan, Democracy, Islam, and Secularism in Turkey (Columbia University Press, 2013), p.51.
[33] Atatürk, Kemal, Nutuk (1919 – 1927) (Ankara, Ataturk Araştırma Merkezi, 2012), p. 432
[34] Bell, David Avrom, The Cult of the Nation in France: Inventing Nationalism, 1680-1800 (Harvard University Press, 2009), p. 2.
[35] Some consider this to be the 2nd Assembly of the RPP, and that the Sivas Congress in 1919 was the 1st.
[36] For instance in Uğur Mumcu, in Kazim Karabekir Anlatıyor [Kazım Karabekir Narrates] (Ankara, Tekin Yayinevi, 1990), p. 10.
[37] Atatürk, Mustafa Kemal, Nutuk (1919 – 1927) (Ankara, Ataturk Araştırma Merkezi, 2012), p. 601
[38] ibid, p. 602
[39] ibid, p. 15
[40] In ibid ‘Absolutely no venues should be left open to Kurdish currents’ p. 87
[41] ibid, p.4, 15, 80, 87,
[42] ibid, p 510
[43] İnalcık, Halil, ‘Atatürk ve Türkiye’nin Modernleşmesi’[Atatürk and Turkey’s Modernisation], Belleten, v XXVII, No. 108, October 1963, p. 625-32.
[44] İnan, Afet, et al, Türk Tarihinin Ana Hatları [Outlines of Turkish History], (Istanbul Devlet Matbasi, 1930)
[45] İnan, Afet, ‘Atatürk ve Tarih Tezi’ [Atatürk and the History Thesis], Belleten, V. III N. 10 April 1939, Türk Tarih Kurumu, p. 5.
[46] ibid, p.6
[47] Hanioğlu,S., ‘The Historical Roots of Kemalism’ in Kuru, Ahmet T., and Alfred C. Stepan, Ed., Democracy, Islam, and Secularism in Turkey (Columbia University Press, 2013), p. 54
[48] Copeaux, Etienne, Türk Tarih Tezinden Türk İslam Sentezine (Istanbul, Iletişim, 2006),115
[49] Oran, Baskın, Atatürk milliyetçiliği: resmi ideoloji dışı bir inceleme (Dost Kitabevi, 1988), p. 184
[50] Heyd, Uriel, ‘Language Reform in Modern Turkey,’ Oriental Notes and Studies, The Israel Oriental Society, No. 5), Jerusalem I954, p. 404-5
[51] ibid, p. 405
[52] Oran, Baskın, Atatürk milliyetçiliği: resmi ideoloji dışı bir inceleme (Dost Kitabevi, 1988), p. 257
[53] ibid
[54] Ortaylı, İlber, Osmanlı düşünce dünyası ve tarihyazımı (Türkiye İş Bankası, Kültür Yayınları, 2010), p. 46
[55] Toprak, Zafer, Cumhuriyet ve Antropoloji (Istanbul, Doğan, 2012), p 276
[56] Altınay, Ahmet Refik, İki Komite İki Kıtal (Istanbul, Bedir Yay, 1999). The book, published on 1919, is an eyewitness account by a historian of the events surrounding the Armenian deportations, the first of its type to be published in Turkish.
[57] Mehmet Güler, Tarihi Sevdiren Adam, Ahmet Refik Altnay, Hayatı ve Tarihçiliği, manuscript at Sakarya University, History Education website.
[58] İlber Ortaylı Osmanlı Düşünce Dünyası ve Tarihyazımı [Ottoman World of Ideas and Historiography] (Istanbul, Türkiye Iş Bankası Kültür Yayınları, 2010), p. 45.
[59] ibid, p. 46.
[60] Özgüden, Doğan, Vatansız Gazeteci’' (Belge yayınları, 2010), p118 Also published as Journaliste ‘Apatride’, ASP editions, 2014
[61] ‘Recent Trends in Turkish Historical Writing,’ Middle East Journal, Vol. 4, No. 3, (Jul., 1950), p. 356
[62] ibid
[63] Bernard Lewis, ‘History-writing and National revival in Turkey, Middle Eastern Affairs, June-July 1953.
[64] ibid, p. 224.
[65] Karabekir, Kâzım, İstiklâl Harbimizin esasları (Sinan Neşriyat Evi, 1951).
[66] Nermin Serdarlar and Fethiye Çetinkanat, Türkiye Cumhuriyeti Tarihi: 1918-1964 (History of the Turkish Republic: 1918-1964] (Inkilap ve Aka, 1965)
[67] Mumcu, Uğur, Kazim Karabekir Anlatıyor, (Ankara, Tekin Yayinevi, 1990), 163
[68] Lewis, Geoffrey, Turkey ( F. A. Praeger, New York, 1955)
[69] Esat Uras, Tarihte Ermeniler ve Ermeni Meselesi Ankara, Yeni Matbaa, 1950).
[70] For instance in the following paragraph Uras leaves the reader guessing on numbers, yet he makes it certain that whatever the number of perished Armenians were, the Moslem losses were higher. ‘The truth is that while the number of the Armenians killed were exaggerated to reach 600,000, or 800,000 or even a million, even greater numbers of the Moslem population perished under the hands of the Armenian volunteer bands and guerrilla fighters during the Russian invasion, and also a great number died during emigrations and as a result of revolts.’ Esat Uras, Tarihte Ermeniler ve Ermeni Meselesi, (Ankara, Belge Yayinlari), 1988, p. 868
[71] Lewis, Geoffrey, Turkey (F. A. Praeger, 1955), p. 84.
[72] ibid, p
[73] Karpat, Kemal H., Turkey’s Politics: The Transition to a Multi-Party System (Princeton University Press, 1966), p. 251
[74] Fuad Köprülü, Osmanli Devleti’nin Kuruluşu (Ankara,Türk Tarih Kurumu,1959).
[75] Köprülü M. Fuad, The Origins of the Ottoman Empire, State University of New York Press (1992), p.117.
[76] ibid, p. 118
[77] Mehmet Fuat Köprülü, Les Origins de L’Empire ottoman (Paris, E. de Boocard, 1935)
[78] Toprak, Zafer Cumhuriyet ve Antropoloji [The Republic and Anthropology] (Istanbul, Doğan Kitap, 2012), p.273
[79] Bernard Lewis The Emergence of Modern Turkey (Oxford University Press, 1961)
[80] ibid, p. 353.
[81] Safa, Peyami, Reflections on the Turkish Revolution / (Atatürk Supreme Council for Culture, Language and History, Atatürk Research Center,, 1999), p.136
[82] Lewis, Geoffrey, Turkey (F. A. Praeger, 1955), p 99
[83] Baskin Oran argues that although ‘the history or language theses had absolutely no basis in reality’, they nonetheless gave the Turkish people the ‘dynamism and enthusiasm necessary for the building of a new nation’ Atatürk milliyetçiliği: resmi ideoloji dışı bir inceleme, p. 257
[84] Lewis, Bernard, The Emergence of Modern Turkey (Oxford University Press, 1961), p354.
[85] For a an author of historical novels, like Kemal Tahir, this was a tragic situation, as he bitterly remarked in an 1973 article: ‘just like there cannot be art with a history of fifty years, neither can art exist with a fantasized past.” In Cemil Meriç, Bu Ülke, (Istanbul, İletişim, 1974), p.250
[86] Jenkins, Keith, and Alun Munslow, Re-Thinking History (Psychology Press, 2003), p.5
[87] Koçak, Cemil, Tarihin Buğulu Aynası (Istanbul, Timas, 2013), p.333–4.
[88] Mardin book was published in Turkish in 1991
[89] Oran, Baskın, Atatürk milliyetçiliği: resmi ideoloji dışı bir inceleme (Dost Kitabevi, 1988), p. 97.
[90] Tanzimat means ‘regulations’ and covers the period of reforms aimed at modernisation from until the promulgation of the Kanûn-ı Esâsî which opened up the First Constitutional era in 1876.
[91] Namık Kemal (1840–1888) and İbrahim Şinasi(1826–1871), were two of the prominent members of the Young Ottomans.
[92] Mardin, Şerif , The Genesis of Young Ottoman Thought: A Study in the Modernization of Turkish Political Ideas (Princeton, 1962), p 3-4.
[93] Halil, Inalcık, ‘The Nature of Traditional Society’, in Ed. Ward, R. and Rustow, D., The Political Modernization in Japan and Turkey (Princeton, 1964), p. 62.
[94] In Boğaziçi University, Atatürk Institute of Modern Turkish History http://www.anayasa.gen.tr/1876constitution.htm or in Jstor,
http://archive.org/stream/jstor-2212668/2212668_djvu.txt
[95] See for the complete 1876 Constitution Earle, Edward Mead, ‘The New Constitution of Turkey’, Political Science Quarterly, 40 (1925), 73–100
[96] Mardin, Şerif, Jön Türklerin Siyasî Fikirleri 1895-1908 [Political Thoughts of the Young Turks](Ankara: Türkiye İş Bankası Kültür Yayınları, 1964)
[97] ibid, p. 74
[98] ibid, p. 103 "Türkler… geriye kalan bu millet açtır, çıplaktır, zulumdidedir. Muti, sabırlı, halim-i müteenni olan bu kavm bazılarınca miskin ve pek tembeldir. Türkler, hakikat-ı halde büyüklerimizden birinin dediği gibi tüfeğin içindeki kurşun gibi(dir)."
[99] Goltz, Colmar Von der, The Nation in Arms (Hugh rees, 1906)
[100] Hanioğlu, M. Sükrü, Ataturk: An Intellectual Biography (Princeton University Press, 2011)
[101] Mardin, Şerif, Jön Türklerin Siyasî Fikirleri 1895-1908 (Ankara: Türkiye İş Bankası Kültür Yayınları, 1964), p158-159
[102] This is a theme Mardin would develop in ‘The Just and the Unjust’, Daedalus, 120 (1991), 113–29
[103] Prince Sabahattin, was a Young Turk, who was part of the Ottoman dynasty but exiled because of his political activities.
[104] Prens Sabahhattin Bey, Genclerimize Mektup [Letter to Youth], Terakki, April 1906, quoted in Mardin, Jön Türklerin Siyasî Fikirleri 1895-1908 (Ankara: Türkiye İş Bankası Kültür Yayınları, 1964).
[105] According to Keyder since the 19th Century a civilian bureaucracy formed at the Porte, next to the Palace civil servants, the number of which had reached one hundred thousand by the last quarter of the century. The Young Turks support came to a large extent from this section who supported westernization. Keyder, Çağlar, State and Class in Turkey: A Study in Capitalist Development (Verso, 1987), p. 46.
[106] Frey, Frederick W., The Turkish Political Elite (M.I.T. Press, 1965)
[107] ibid, p. 376
[108] Karpat, Kemal H., Turkey’s Politics: The Transition to a Multi-Party System (Princeton University Press, 1959).
[109] Küçükömer, İdris, Bütün eserleri: Batılaşma ve Düzenin Yabancılaşması (Istanbul, Profıl Yayıncılık, 2009), p 84-5
[110] ibid, p. 86.
[111] Küçükömer was elected to the Central Executive Committee of the Turkish Workers Party in its Congress held during 9-12 November 1968.
[112] Aydınoğlu, Ergun, ‘Düzenin Yabancılaşması ya da Bir Tezin Tarihsel Kaderi Üzerine Bir Deneme’, Sosyal Bilimler Dergisi, Vol. 5. No.2, April 2013, p 66.
[113] In ‘Just and the Unjust’ Mardin, recounts the observation of Prince Korkut (1467–1513) who recognized the ordinary subjects of the sultans as the ‘team of the just,’ and the sultan’s servants as the ‘team of the unjust.’ Mardin adds that ‘the teams of the just and the unjust continued to be reformed and, in the new circumstances of modernity, the basic rift between the two has widened.’ Daedalus, 120 (1991), p. 117
[114] Eliçin, Emin Türk, Kemalist Devrim Ideolojisi: Niteliği ve Tarihteki Yeri (Ant Yayınları, 1970), includes his collected articles published in 1964.
[115] Selek, Sabahattin, Anadolu ihtilâli (Cem Yayınevi, 1963)
[116] Kısakürek, Necip Fazil, Türkiyenin Manzarası (Istanbul, Toker Yayinlari), 1968
[117] Landau, Jacob M., Radical Politics in Modern Turkey (BRILL, 1974), p. 123
[118] Following over two decades of statist economic policies and a slow-paced industrialization the election of the Democratic Party in 1950 gave a strong boost to the private sector, favouring especially investment and the mechanization of agriculture. The rate of growth of the economy was assisted by the post-war boom economy, as well as the influx of foreign loans and investments, including Marshall Aid.
[119] Keyder, Çağlar, State and Class in Turkey: A Study in Capitalist Development (Verso, 1987), p.112
[120] ibid
[121] Lewis, Bernard, The Emergence of Modern Turkey (Oxford University Press, 1961), p.261
[122] Tuncay, Mete, Türkiye’de sol akimlar 1908-1925 (Bilgi, 1978), p.367.
[123] Oran, Baskın, Atatürk milliyetçiliği: resmi ideoloji dışı bir inceleme (Dost Kitabevi, 1988), p. 201, also see p. 194-5, for full list of rebellions.
[124] İskan Kanunu, No 2510, Resmi Gazete, 14/16/1934
[125] One of the first detailed available reviews of Dersim is in Şivan, Dr., ‘Kürt millet hareketleri ve Irak’ta Kürdistan Ihtilali (1970)(Stocholm, APEC,1997)
[126] Oran, Baskın, Atatürk milliyetçiliği: resmi ideoloji dışı bir inceleme (Dost Kitabevi, 1988), p 202
[127] Ekinci, Tarik Ziya, Türkiye İşçi Partisi ve Kürtler (Istanbul, Sosyal, 2010), p. 17
[128] Burkay, Kemal, “Her Şey Açıkça’, Yeni Akış, No 3, October 1966, p. 9
[129] Those arrested included the founder Mehmet Ali Aslan, the editor Abbas İzol and Kemal Burkay. In Ekinci, Tarik Ziya’ Türkiye İşçi Partisi ve Kürtler (Istanbul, Sosyal, 2010), p 35
[130] Doğan Avcıoğlu of Yön, a staunch supporter of Kemalism and the unitary State deplored the double standards on the Kurdish issue. How come he asked, that although the government frequently discussed the Kurdish issue and Eastern intellectuals were repeatedly arrested and sentenced for the crime of Kurdish separatism (kürtçülük), and yet at the same time the existence of the Kurdish question was denied because there were no Kurds to start with. ‘Whatever the official thesis is, events show that there is a Kurdish question, and that the policies used over many years have proven unsuccessful at resolving the question.’ Yön , No 194, 16 December 1966.
[131] Inspired by the Kurdish movement in Iraq, where Mulla Mustafa Barzani and the KDP were leading a successful guerrilla struggle against the central government, young members of the Kurdish traditional elite in Turkey founded in 1965 the clandestine Kurdistan Democratic Party in Turkey (KDP-T).
[132] Beşikçi, İsmail, Doğu Anadolu’nun Düzeni (Yurt-Kitap, Ankara, 1992), p 34
[133] ibid p 186
[134] After the 1971 military coup, the court sentenced Beşikçi to 13 years imprisonment for violating the indivisibility of the Turkish nation.
[135] Ekinci, Tarik Ziya, Türkiye İşçi Partisi ve Kürtler (Istanbul, Sosyal, 2010), p. 80-1
[136] ibid, p. 93
[137] Anderson, Benedict, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (Verso, 2006), p 101
[138] Ortaylı, İlber, Osmanlı düşünce dünyası ve tarihyazımı (Türkiye İş Bankası, Kültür Yayınları, 2010), p. 4i-48
[139] Tezel, Yahya, “Birinci Büyük Millet Meclisi Anti-Emperyalist miydi? Chester Ayrıcalığı”, Ankara Üniversitesi, Siyasal Bilgiler Fakültesi Dergisi, C.25, No.4, 1970, s. 289
[140] Şivan, Dr., ‘Kürt millet hareketleri ve Irak’ta Kürdistan Ihtilali (Stocholm, APEC,1997)
[141] For example: Akcam, Taner, A Shameful Act: The Armenian Genocide and the Question of Turkish Responsibility (Macmillan, 2007); Suny, Ronald Grigor, Gocek, Fatma Muge, and Naimark Norman M. Robert, Ed., A Question of Genocide : Armenians and Turks at the End of the Ottoman Empire: Armenians and Turks at the End of the Ottoman Empire (Oxford University Press, 2011)
[142] See recent the publications by Rıfat Bali and Ayşe Hür for example.
[143] Ortaylı, İlber, and Mustafa Armağan, İlber Ortaylı ile tarihin sınırlarına yolculuk (Ufuk Kitapları, 2001)ö p 43
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