Kemalism Transnational Politics in the Post-Ottoman World

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To Alexandre Popovic, pioneer in Post-Ottoman studies and all-around warming presence

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Figure I.1 Girls in uniform in a secondary school in Istanbul, around 1930. Source: picture by Jean Weinberg, submitted for publication to the New York Times. United States National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), College Park, Maryland (306-NT-1246-J).

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Figure I.2 Picturing the new “kamalist” man. Source: La Turquie kamaˆliste, 13 June 1936, front cover.

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Figure I.3 Picture of the Great National Assembly in Ankara circulating in the French press. Source: L’Illustration, 24 February 1923, front page.

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Figure I.4 The Italian translation of Dagobert von Mikusch’s biography of Mustafa Kemal. Source: Dagobert von Mikusch, Gasi Mustafa Kemal. Il fondatore della nuova Turchia, Milan, Treves, Treccani & Tumminelli, 1932, front cover.

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Figure I.5 “Kemalist Turkey Hails Fascist Italy!” Cumhuriyet headline on the occasion of Prime Minister I˙smet Pacha’s (I˙no¨nu¨) official visit to Rome (22 May 1932). Source: Cumhuriyet, 22 May 1932, front cover.

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Figure 3.1 Detail of the Hakikat newspaper from 1928, stating “The biggest victory in history was achieved six years ago”. In today’s standard spelling it should be written “Tarihin kayıt ettig˘i en bu¨yu¨k zafer altı sene evvel bugu¨n kazanıldı”. As well as

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the common uncertainties about using the new script, the voicing characteristic of Cypriot-Turkish pronunciation is apparent (K>G, such as gazanıldı instead of kazanıldı). Source: Hakikat, 1 September 1928, front page.

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Figure 3.2 Short note using Ottoman script by Faiz Kaymak, chairman of the Federation of Cypriot Turkish Associations, to Fazıl Ku¨cu¨k, the Vice President of the same organisation, 1952. Source: Collection “Federation of Cypriot Turkish Associations”, 7 March 1952.

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Figure 4.1 Caricature of Atatu¨rk sweeping allies from Istanbul. Source: The National Archives, UK. (FO 371/8963/E10383). 146 Figure 4.2 Caricature of Sa’d Zaghlul dancing for John Bull. Source: Al-Kashkul, 12 October 1923. The National Archives, UK (FO 371/8963/E10383).

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Figure 4.3 Caricature of British Ambassador Percy Lorraine being taught his place by Atatu¨rk. Source: Ruz al-Yusuf, 28 August 1933, back cover.

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Figure 4.4 Caricature of John Bull staging a love affair between High Commissioner Lorraine and PM Ismail Sidqi. Source: Ruz al-Yusuf, 9 May 1932, front cover.

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Figure 4.5 Caricature of a sick Sidqi being consoled by Lorraine. Source: Ruz al-Yusuf, 13 June 1932, front cover.

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Figure 4.6 Caricature of Shaykh Bakhit and Shaykh Shakir discussing the justification of their association with the Afghan king, who wore a hat. Source: Al-Kashkul, 1 January 1928, p. 20.

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Figure 5.1 Muslim women from the city of Mostar, Bosnia-Herzegovina, 1904. Source: picture taken by Franjo Topic´, Zamaljski Muzej, Sarajevo (ZM – SPFT – 499).

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Figure 5.2 Muslim women from the city of Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina, at the funeral of reis-ul-ulema Mehmed Dzˇemaludin ef. Cˇausˇevic´ in 1938. Source: Adnan Jahic´,

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Islamska zajednica u Bosni i Hercegovini za vrijeme monarhisticˇke Jugoslavije (1918– 1941), Zagreb, BNZH and IZH, 2010, 554.

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Figure 5.3 Picture of Turkish girls doing gymnastics from La Turquie ke´maliste. Source: La Turquie ke´maliste, 18, 1937, p. 30.

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Figure 5.4 The same picture of Turkish girls doing gymnastics, published in Sarajevo by Sˇahinovic´ Ekremov as part of a collage on the cover of his book. Source: Munir Sˇahinovic´ Ekremov, Turska, danas i sjutra. Prosjek kroz zˇivot jedne drzˇave, Sarajevo Muslimanska Svijest, 1939, front cover. 190 Figure 5.5 Picture of student girls in a secondary school from La Turquie ke´maliste. Source: La Turquie Ke´maliste, 13, 1936, p. 17.

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Figure 5.6 The same picture incorporated into a Yugoslav Muslim book. Source: Edhem Bulbulovic´, Turci i razvitak turske drzˇave sa uvodom u kulturnu i politicˇku povijest islama, Sˇtamparija bosanska posˇta Sarajevo, 1939, no page number.

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Figure 5.7 A picture of unveiled Latifa, with her husband Kemal pasha and Mehmed pasha, presented as the model of Muslim female emancipation for Yugoslav Muslims. Source: Dragisˇa Lapcˇevic´, O nasˇim Muslimanima: sociolosˇke i etnografske belesˇke, Belgrade 1925, p. 62.

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Figure 5.8 European and Muslim women. Source: Mustafa A. Mulalic´, Orijent na zapadu: savremeni kulturni i socijalni problemi muslimana Jugoslovena, Belgrade, Sˇtamparija Graficˇki institut knjizˇare Skerlic´, 1936, 249.

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Figure 6.1 Picture of a woman lying on a sofa, accompanied by the script “S¸alvarlı, cebkenli bir elbise, elinde nargile, Tu¨rk hanımı kafes arkasında istirahat ediyor. I˙¸ste bizi tanımayanlar Tu¨rk hanımını bo¨yle tasvir ediyorlar.” (“Turkish woman dressed in ¸salvar [baggy trousers] and cepken [a traditional bolero], water-pipe in hand, reposing before a latticed window. Here is how those

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who do not know us describe the Turkish lady.”) Source: “Kadınlara Dair: Haremlerimiz ve Avrupa/Avrupalılar Haremlerimizi Nasıl Tasvir Ediyorlar?” (“On Women: Our Harems and Europe/How are Europeans Describing our Harems?”), Yeni I˙nci, 1, June 1338 [1922], p. 13.

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Figure 6.2 Picture of men in Oriental dresses, accompanied by the script “Sarık, kavuk, ¸salvar, potur, yatag˘an, cellat, hadımag˘ası . . . hep bunlar Tu¨rkiyeden kalkalı cok oldu; fakat Avrupa tiyatrolarından ayrılmaz. Bu resim ‘Aarif ve Akif’ isminde cocuklara mahsus kukla tiyatrosunda Berlinde oynanıyor.” (“Turban, quilted turban, ¸salvar, potur [breeches], yataghan, executioner, eunuch. . . It has been a long time since these were abolished in Turkey; but they have not left European theatres. This scene is being performed in Berlin at a puppet-theatre show for children entitled Aarif and Akif.”) Source: Resimli Uyanıs¸, 2, 13 December 1928, p. 29. 228 Figure 6.3 “Ay Hanımefendinin ‘Tu¨rk Odasından’ dig˘er bir ko¨¸se.” (“Another corner of Madame Ay’s ‘Turkish room.’”) Source: Fehmi Razi, “Ay Hanımefendi,” Resimli S¸ark, 11, 1931, p. 20.

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Figure 6.4 Topkapı Palace, Harem section, Istanbul. ¨ zlu¨. Source: photograph by Nilay O

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Figure 6.5 Picture of the entrance to the Turkish pavilion at the Paris Exhibition of Modern Industrial and Decorative Arts, accompanied by the script “Paris sergisinde Tu¨rk paviyonunun medhali. Kapı u¨zerinde cini levha Ku¨tahya mamulatındandır.” (“The entrance to the Turkish pavilion at the Paris Exhibition [of Modern Industrial and Decorative Arts]”). The tile panel above the door is a product of Ku¨tahya. Source: “Paris Sergisinde Tu¨rk Paviyonu,” Servet-i Fu¨nun, 44-1518, 17 September 1341 [1925], p. 281.

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Figure 6.6 “Paris sergisinde Tu¨rk paviyonunun dahili.” (“Interior of the Turkish pavilion at the Paris Exhibition [of Modern Industrial and Decorative Arts].”). Source: “Paris Sergisinde Tu¨rk Paviyonu,” Servet-i Fu¨nun, 44-1518, 17 September 1341 [1925], p. 281.

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LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS

Nathalie Clayer is Professor at the EHESS and Senior Research Fellow at the Centre d’e´tudes turques, ottomanes, balkaniques et centrasiatiques (CNRS-EHESS-Colle`ge de France, Paris). Her main research interests are religion, nationalism and the state-building process in Ottoman and post-Ottoman spaces, focusing on Albania, the Balkans and Turkey. Her publications include Aux origines du nationalisme albanais. La naissance d’une nation majoritairement musulmane en Europe (2007), Conflicting Loyalties in the Balkans (co-edited with Hannes Grandits and Robert Pichler, I.B.Tauris, 2011) and Europe’s Balkan Muslims (with Xavier Bougarel, 2017). Fabio Giomi is Research Fellow at the Centre d’e´tudes turques, ottomanes, balkaniques et centrasiatiques (CNRS-EHESS-Colle`ge de France, Paris). His research focuses on the social and cultural history of Southeastern Europe between the late nineteenth and mid-twentieth centuries, with a special focus on the Yugoslav region. Among his current research topics are voluntary associations and social movements, women and gender history, Balkan Muslims and transnational studies. He is currently working on a book entitled Making Muslim Women European. Voluntary Associations, Gender and Islam in post-Ottoman Bosnia and Yugoslavia (forthcoming). Be´atrice Hendrich is Assistant Professor at the University of Cologne, Chair of Turkey Studies. Her research focuses on the religious topoi and literary strategies in Turkish novels, the religious landscape of Turkey,

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and the Turkish community of Cyprus during the late colonial period. She has recently edited, together with Dilek Sarmı’s¸ a thematic issue of EJTS on the character and significance of media in the dissemination of Sufi content in the Turkish Republic, entitled The Message has to be Spread (2017). Her latest edited volume, Muslims and Capitalism - An Uneasy Relationship? (2018), reflects on the critique of capitalism by Muslim intellectuals and Islamic movements. Wilson Chacko Jacob is Associate Professor of History at Concordia University, Montre´al. His first book, Working Out Egypt: Effendi Masculinity and Subject Formation in Colonial Modernity, 1870-1940 (2011), locates Egyptian history in imperial and global frameworks. His second book, Sovereignty in Times of Empire: The Life of Sayyid Fadl b. Alawi (forthcoming), continues this engagement with global history, focusing on the Indian Ocean World as a site of interaction among and between empires, Sufi orders and local communities. Anna M. Mirkova specialises in the late Ottoman and post-Ottoman Balkans. She holds a PhD in history from the University of Michigan and has taught at universities in the United States and Bulgaria. Her book Muslim Land, Christian Labor: Transforming Ottoman Imperial Subjects into Bulgarian National Citizens 1878-1939 was published in 2017. Her next research project focuses on vakıfs in post-Ottoman Bulgaria. Specifically, she raises the question: what kind of modern Muslim subjectivity emerged in the intellectual and political space between post-Ottoman secular nationalisms in Southeastern Europe and Turkey, on the one hand, and religious conceptualisations of post-Ottoman Muslims as a political community, on the other? Emmanuel Szurek is Associate Professor at the EHESS, Paris. His research focuses on the educational and ideological elaboration of “modern Turkish” by transnational linguistics and orientalism, and the implementation of linguistic policies in interwar Turkey. He is working on revising his PhD dissertation, Governing with Words. A Linguistic History of Nationalist Turkey. He has co-edited Turcs et Francais. Une histoire culturelle 1860-1960 (with Gu¨nes¸ Is¸ıksel, 2014) and Transturkology. A Transnational History of Turkish Studies (with Marie Bossaert, 2017).

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Ece Zerman is a PhD candidate at the Centre d’e´tudes turques, ottomanes, balkaniques et centrasiatiques (EHESS) and Assistant Lecturer (ATER) at the Turkish studies department of Strasbourg University. Her research focusses on the question of self-representation, from the late Ottoman Empire to the early Republic of Turkey, as studied through egodocuments such as diaries, correspondence, photography as well as representations of interior spaces.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

We are indebted to the institutions that enabled the gathering of the workshop “Towards a Transnational History of Kemalism in the postOttoman Space beyond Turkey” held at the EHESS, Paris, on 8 –9 December 2011: The Centre d’e´tudes turques, ottomanes, balkaniques et centrasiatiques (EHESS-CNRS-Colle`ge de France), the Institut d’e´tudes de l’islam et des socie´te´s du monde musulman (IISMM-EHESSCNRS) and the Program TRANSTUR of the Agence nationale de la recherche (ANR-08-GOUV-0045). This workshop was the first step of the exchanges that led to the present edited volume. We are very grateful to the discussants and participants at the workshop that helped us refine our arguments and analysis: Hamit Bozarslan, Gu¨ldem Baykal Bu¨yu¨ksarac, Nicolas Came´lio, Anne-Laure Dupont, Howard Eissenstat, Burak Eskiasmacı, Falma Fshazi, Franc¸ois Georgeon, Elise Massicard and Bernard Heyberger. We would also like to thank I˙lker Aytu¨rk who provided very useful remarks on several parts of the book. We wish to thank the Program TRANSFAIRE of the Agence nationale de la recherche (ANR-12-GLOB-003), and particularly its main coordinator Marc Aymes, for hosting a useful discussion of the introduction of the book, and for cofinancing together with the CETOBAC the translation and editing process. Finally, we wish to thank Andromeda Tait and Adrian Morfee who took over this process, along with Arub Ahmed, our editor at I.B.Tauris.

INTRODUCTION TRANSATIONALISING KEMALISM:A REFRACTIVE RELATIONSHIP Nathalie Clayer, Fabio Giomi and Emmanuel Szurek

“Kemalism” Again? Some Theoretical and Historiographical Remarks Defining Kemalism is challenging; the term may refer to a party affiliation, a set of cultural affinities, a political ideology or a style of government (often deemed “pragmatic”) characteristic of early Republican Turkey. The periodisation of Kemalism also remains uncertain; while the term “Kemalist Turkey” is invariably mobilised to designate the interwar years, it is increasingly argued that Kemalism was in essence a prolongation of pre-World War I Young-Turkism.1 On the other hand, we can still sometimes read that 1930s “progressive” Kemalism should be distinguished from “conservative” Atatu¨rkism (Atatu¨rkcu¨lu¨k) post-1980 – although it has been argued that, as a national fetish, “Kemalism” was a creation of I˙smet I˙no¨nu¨ and Celal Bayar, the two politicians that succeeded Mustafa Kemal as presidents of the Turkish Republic in the 1940s and 1950s, even more than of Mustafa Kemal himself.2 Finally, many scholars still routinely use the word in reference to Turkish politics in the early twenty-first century. It is no wonder, then, that “Kemalism” is subject to a wide range of intellectual procedures. Though they may occasionally acknowledge its

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intrinsic fuzziness, if not inconsistency,3 political scientists and political historians often divide Kemalism up into sub-categories (“left-wing”, “right-wing”, “liberal”, “authoritarian” Kemalisms)4 or into chronological chunks (“first”, “second”, “third”, and “high” Kemalism).5 They also trace out its complex genealogy (Ottomanism, positivism, solidarism, corporatism, Social-Darwinism, Narodnism, anti-Westernism, anti-imperialism, etc.).6 Some attempt to compare Kemalism, understood as an ideology or as a coalition of Party and State actors, with other authoritarian regimes of interwar Europe (Fascist Italy, the USSR, Nazi Germany), or developmentalist ones from the “Global South” (Mexico, Egypt, Indonesia, India, China).7 Social historians investigate how Kemalism, as a self-professedly transformative movement, was mediated by local instances (electoral districts, sections of the Party, Schools of the Nation, People’s Houses) and “negotiated” by the “ordinary citizens” of Anatolia according to gender, ethnic or class affiliations.8 Finally, cultural anthropologists, sociologists and historians readily map out Kemalism at its heyday as a set of symbolic relations with “the West”: rather than class conflict, they reason in terms of “Modernity”, “Orientalism” or “internal colonialism”. They also investigate how waning Kemalism became a name for “modernist nostalgia” in some Turkish homes, when new hegemonic discourses, practices and aesthetics, both neo-liberal and conservative, started to set the tone in late twentieth-century Turkey.9 For us, Kemalism is a problematic category; by its very ubiquity, it is fundamentally the outcome of a propaganda campaign launched in the early 1930s, when the Turkish state endeavoured to impose a monolithic definition of the term, and to naturalise such phrases as “Kemalist Turkey”. As is well known, this campaign was closely related to the already well-established cult of Mustafa Kemal himself. It was developed through a variety of media (political speeches, the written press, photography, statues and busts, posters, banknotes, as well as schoolbooks and college material), the effect of which was the identification of “the Revolution” with the work of a single man. The French Turcologist Jean Deny had already recognised in 1934, in his “Psychologie du peuple turc” – originally a speech presented at the Parisian Acade´mie des Sciences Morales et Politiques – that Turkish propagandists were attempting to equate the history of “modern” Turkey with the life and deeds of its leader:

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First of all, they say that this is not an ordinary revolution, but an enframed [une re´volution encadre´e] one, even a disciplined one (discipline again, always discipline!), a directed one. Moreover, the revolution merges with Mustapha Kemal Pasha himself, by some sort of mysticism, to which not even the person concerned is immune, as shown by several of his discourses in which he identifies his individual personality with the collective one of the nation.10 This cult of the great man was further entrenched in Turkey by what is usually referred to as “official historiography” – something that has certainly survived under the current AKP (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi, Justice and Development Party) regime. Beyond official historiography, however, equating the life and deeds of one individual with the fate and history of an entire country is an operation that many observers and historians from the West have contributed to making self-evident throughout the twentieth century. Undoubtedly, scholars today are wellaware of this legacy. But the question remains: Why is it that notions such as “Kemalism”, “Neo-Kemalism”, “Post-Kemalism”, or even “Kemalist Turkey”, “the Kemalist Republic”, “Kemalist reforms”, “Kemalist nationalism”, “the Kemalist revolution”, “the Kemalist party”, “the Kemalist elite”, “the Kemalist bourgeoisie”, “Kemalist ideology” if not “epistemology”, are still omnipresent in the realm of Turkish studies? How did the lexical repository of the cult of Mustafa Kemal become the customary deposit with which we so casually ornate our prose when writing Turkish political or social or intellectual history? Why does our analytical discourse keep re-enacting the conceptual coup de force imposed upon us by the very narrative we claim to be critically revisiting? Judging from the persistence of these notions in academic output, one might be tempted to state that scholars have not quite yet completely emancipated themselves from the impassive gaze of Mustafa Kemal, and that, metaphorically, they find themselves still in the same position as early 1930s Turkish schoolgirls (see Figure I.1): no longer looking at the great man, but still haunted by his embarrassing presence. Thus, rather than claiming that the “Atatu¨rk” personality cult belongs to a long-gone era, or to a scholarship deemed “official” or “traditional”, we argue that there is more continuity than it might seem between the narrative of the “Turkish Revolution” – a label hitherto used by the Young Turks, and reappropriated as an official slogan by the

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Figure I.1 Girls in uniform in a secondary school in Istanbul, around 1930. Source: Picture by Jean Weinberg, submitted for publication to the New York Times. United States National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), College Park, Maryland (306-NT-1246-J).

Ankara regime in 1925 (if not earlier)11 – and the tropes of our way of writing history. “Historiographical Kemalism”12 or “Mustafa Kemalcentred history”13 might indeed be waning in academic circles. However, just as methodological nationalism is far from dead, it seems that methodological Kemalism is still thriving. By methodological Kemalism, we mean the practice of referring to Mustafa Kemal – or to his name – as a means for spontaneously periodising or conceptualising Turkish history. In other words, we argue that the practice of naming periods, ideas and people after the Turkish leader has everything to do with the propaganda campaign launched by the eponymous regime in its heyday – and that it still exerts its effects upon us. Be it on a strictly lexical level, and by sheer convention, the fact is that the “great man” still haunts our prose and collective consciousness (notwithstanding the enduring success of biographies of the Turkish leader, still teleologically entitled “Atatu¨rk”). Just as Turkey is still covered with marble busts and equestrian statues of Mustafa Kemal, our academic output is still lexically, that is, practically, crammed with the same meta-discourse –

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to the extent that we sometimes even lack a term with which to replace the word “Kemalist”. One useful experiment that can help us to grasp this latent tutelage consists in replacing the e of Kemal with an a. Indeed, at one point in his career (February 1935) – this was the time of the notorious “language revolution”, that is, the purification of the Turkish language from all its allegedly “foreign” components – the Turkish leader decided that his name should be written Kamaˆl (supposedly “fortification” in ancient Turkish) rather than Kemal (“perfection” in Arabic), as can be seen on his passport on display in Anıtkabir, the imposing mausoleum of Mustafa Kemal built in Ankara between 1944 and 1953. This presidential fantasy did not last; by 1937 the Turkish President had returned to his original lakab (surname). Nevertheless, for two years, the heralds of the regime applied this spelling to anything named after the national leader: Kamaˆlism, not Kemalism, became the official doctrine, while La Turquie ke´maliste, the international propaganda journal published (mostly in French) by the Directorate General of Press in Ankara, was rechristened La Turquie kamaˆliste (see Figure I.2). Of course, today notions such as “Kamaˆlist Turkey”, “the Kamaˆlist Republic”, or the “Kamaˆlist party” sound awkward to our ears. But this is exactly the point; they reveal how arbitrary it is to name a collection of historical and contemporary entities – a party, a period, a series of social reforms, a country itself – after that of an authoritarian leader who died eighty years ago, as if we were still indebted to the propaganda program launched by the Turkish authorities in the early 1930s.

Kemalism in the Making: The Transnational Fabric of a Polysemic Label The purpose of this book is not to write an intellectual history of Kemalism. Rather, its aims is to examine how a single label – in this case Kemalism – served as a common platform for the elaboration of various yet interdependent political and cultural practices within a given area: the post-Ottoman space. Debunking the hermeneutical circle of “Ke/amalism”, but also building an alternative historical definition of Kemalism (hereafter a word we will use without quotation marks) thus requires both a socio-semantic approach and a transnational perspective.

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Figure I.2 Picturing the new “kamalist” man. Source: La Turquie kamaˆliste, 13 June 1936, front cover.

A socio-semantic approach: rather than rely on its alleged ontology, we need to seek out the multiple social and political dynamics and contingencies, both local and global, that shaped the various semanticisations and uses of the term. A transnational perspective: just as a uniquely national frame is not the only appropriate scale of

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analysis for shedding light on the process of the nationalisation of societies and nationalism itself,14 we hold that the Turkish national lens is not the most adequate one for understanding the genesis and evolution of Kemalism. In other words, we have to think beyond the Turkish mantra Biz bize benzeriz (“we resemble no one but ourselves”) popularised by Mustafa Kemal himself (Speech at the Ankara National Assembly, 1 December 1921). As we try to show with this collective book, Kemalism was first of all shaped by agents from outside of the Turkish political scene, long before it was re-appropriated by Turkish intellectuals. And it continued to be shaped and used outside of Turkey by observers, but also by actors in the former Ottoman space, in the Muslim world and beyond. Thus, rather than explaining Kemalism somewhat tautologically with Turkey (Turkey ¼ Kemalism ¼ Turkey), we wish to observe what the concept stood for from multiple viewpoints and in specific spatial configurations. Constructing Kemalism was a transnational and collective endeavour: since the 1920s, it has been (re)shaped by a variety of foreign and domestic, state and non-state institutions as well as individuals with different, yet sometimes congruent agendas and influence. Of course, a comprehensive study of the multiple conceptualisations of the word “Kemalist” throughout the twentieth century would go well beyond the scope of this book. By confining our case studies to the interwar years, our goal is rather to point out how a semantic-transnational approach is likely to provide a more complex understanding of the forces that lay behind (and come through) the word. By using the notions of “refractive relationship”, we argue that it is important to focus on a variety of social worlds whose boundaries are multiform (i.e., political but also linguistic, religious and gendered), and that these boundaries have both a translational and transformative power. Finally, one should keep in mind that, even though the Turkish state played a major role in stabilising the meaning of the word, these different significations of “Kemalism” never ceased to coexist. Indeed, it might very well be its enduring polysemy that allowed the term to survive to this day as an analytical tool for historians and social scientists. Therefore, although historically layered and sometimes self-contradicting, the different uses of the word reviewed below should be considered as continually overlapping interpretations of “the K-word”.

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From Kemalist as a Partisan Group to Kemalism as an Islamo-Nationalism Kemalist, as an adjective, first appeared as a generally derogatory term under the pen of foreigners. In particular British, French and Soviet diplomats, journalists and politicians began to use this label to name the supporters of the Ottoman high officer who had taken the head of the Anatolian-Muslim uprising. In May 1920, for example, the French High Commissioner in Istanbul, Defrance, informed Paris that several groups in the city were hostile to the rebellion: “If it were possible to group and direct all the malcontents,” he assured, “it would be easy to overcome the Kemalists”.15 A year later, the situation on the ground had changed: “More than ever, the Government of Constantinople seems non-existent . . . The Muslim population of Constantinople is, at the moment, frankly Kemalist.”16 By then, the Ankara regime was perceived as a continuation of the Young Turk movement, and Kemalist was often considered a mere fig-leaf for Unionist (which had fallen out of favour); the French journalist Michel Paillare`s explained: “The Union and Progress Committee had to change its label and leader, [and] unionism being worn and discredited, it puts forward nationalism. Enver being emptied and withered, he falls under the banner of Mustafa Kemal.” “Kemalism,” he added, “succeeds Enverism.”17 Interestingly, Ottoman-Turkish opponents to the Anatolian rebellion and to the Young Turk movement would also use the word pejoratively when publishing abroad, as illustrated by O¨mer Kaˆzım’s eloquent L’aventure ke´maliste. Elle est un danger: pour l’Orient, pour l’Europe, pour la paix, published in Paris in 1921.18 As the Ankara Government gained power and recognition domestically and internationally, any Anatolian Muslim became a potential Kemalist. This was particularly true in the context of the Paris Peace Conference and throughout the Greco– Turkish war. As is well known, an abundant literature was published during these years, advocating the “national rights” of the different ethnic and religious groups of the former Ottoman Empire. An expatriated “paper war” was being waged as an extension of the ongoing conflict in Anatolia. Pamphlets published in Athens or Istanbul in favour of the Greeks or the Armenians, for example, would denounce in French or in English the “Kemalist atrocities” being perpetrated throughout Asia Minor by people referred to as “les Turcs de Ke´mal”.19 Likewise, a series of

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anonymous articles published in 1920 in the Journal de Gene`ve called for a campaign to protect the Christians from the “supporters of Mustapha Kemal, who seek to terrorize the country”.20 Thus, during the conflict, there were often religious connotations to the word when used by Westerners and non-Muslim Ottomans alike, as an equivalent for the Muslim, non-Arab section of the Anatolian population. This meaning was consistent with the very definition of “Turkish” nationals provided for in the so-called “National Pact” (January 1920). Significantly, this sectarian interpretation was also prevalent throughout the Muslim world. As Francois Georgeon and I˙skender Go¨kalp have underlined in their pioneering work, when Mustafa Kemal emerged on the military scene in the early 1920s, he was immediately able to benefit from the Muslim population’s “traditional or . . . structural”21 – although paradoxical – empathy toward the Ottoman Empire, particularly among urban populations in Algeria and Tunisia under French colonial rule.22 Despite the troubles and turmoil that the Ottoman Empire had been going through since 1908, it was still regarded by Muslim populations as “the last Muslim independent state able to cope with European Imperialism”.23 After the “War of Independence”, Mustafa Kemal, as “the Gazi” (a religious, honorific title conferred to Muslim warriors who have achieved a significant victory over non-Muslim forces on the battlefield), was enthusiastically celebrated as the long-awaited “revenge” of Islam over Western imperialism and, by extension, over Christianity. Such a massive Muslim approbation can above all be explained by the very fact that, after 1918, nine in ten Muslims in the world lived under de facto colonial domination. The Muslim press around the world played a crucial role in establishing an early personality cult around Mustafa Kemal. This process of heroicisation began in the weeks that followed the Battle of Sakarya (September 1921). The sound defeat inflicted on the Kingdom of Greece was considered to be a proxy for defeating its powerful protector, Great Britain; London was no longer invincible. The Muslim press in Syria and Tunisia, for example, expressed outright enthusiasm by calling for all Muslims to rally around the victorious Mustafa Kemal and the Caliph.24 As the Italian Orientalist publication Oriente Moderno noted, the “liberation” of I˙zmir/Smyrna (September 1922) was welcomed with truly trans-Islamic ebullience, as gatherings and rallies were organised in Palestine, Damascus and Tunis, as well as among the

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Muslims of Yemen, Addis-Abeba and, most massively, in India.25 Of course, this reaction was not uniquely the product of local Muslim fervour; the nationalists in Ankara had proven eager to stress the very Muslimness, holiness even, of their fight against Christian Europe. For example, the official opening day of the National Assembly, in Ankara, in April 1920 – which was a Friday – was the occasion for “a true lavishness of prayers and devotion”;26 the deputies met at the Hacı Bayram Mosque to say a few prayers, then went in procession to the building where the Assembly would convene (the former section offices of the Union and Progress Committee), to hear a recital of the Qur’an along with other religious texts and speeches. Thus, to many Muslims, Turkish or not, the military and diplomatic achievements that had brought the “New Turkey” into existence assumed a much wider significance; they were the beginning of the emancipation of all Muslim peoples. This early enthusiasm also gave way to two privileged genres that would enjoy stable fortunes in the following decades: the biography and the portrait. It seems that the first biography of the Turkish leader ever written was published in 1922 in Cairo, written in Arabic by two journalists, the Syrian Emin Muhammed Said and the Egyptian Kerim Halil Sabit. In this book, Mustafa Kemal was heralded as “a hero of Islam and the Orient”, while the Treaty of Se`vres was said to have been “smashed to pieces by the swords of the Kemalists” – al-kemaˆliyyin.27 Around the same period, portraits of Mustafa Kemal began to circulate in the Muslim world and became a relatively ordinary commodity in private homes and clubs.28 And over the years, these objects did not disappear, although their meaning certainly shifted: Mustafa Kemal’s portraits are mentioned adorning the walls of Muslims houses in Socialist Sarajevo in the sixties (side by side with portraits of Marshal Tito and Dzˇemal Bijedic´, the most popular Bosnian Muslim of that period).29 And still today, “one is likely to find, among family memorabilia in Pakistani homes various prints and photographs of Mustafa Kemal dating back to the early twenties of the previous century”.30 In sum, by the early 1920s there existed two distinct yet highly intertwined narratives surrounding the noun Kemal; one was the vilification of a leader, murderer of the Christian communities of Asia Minor, the other was the heroicisation of the Muslim liberator of

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Anatolia and the destroyer of imperialism in Western Asia. Neither of these narratives would prevail, as they were already beginning to be overshadowed by secular interpretations.

The Emergence of a “Secular” Understanding of Kemalism Among the first to interpret the events taking place in Anatolia as a radically new phenomenon were Soviet observers. As Vahram Ter-Matevosyan has shown, by the early 1920s Soviet diplomats – for example, Georgij Astakhov, head of the Soviet Press Bureau in Ankara (1922– 3) – had already acknowledged the ongoing transformation as “one of the defining periods of the Turkish revolution”, and reflected upon the “theoretical foundations” of the regime.31 This early attempt to apprehend “the ideology of Kemalism” was part of a global Soviet endeavour to propagate anti-imperialism in Asia, as had been illustrated by the Congress of the Peoples of the East (Baku, 1920). It was also a result of the Ankara leaders’ ability to brand themselves (or let themselves be branded) as anti-Western, if not “Islamo-Bolshevik”, and thus comply with the expectations of an ally whose gold rubles, arms and political support had proven crucial throughout the different stages of the Anatolian war.32 Lastly, beyond the interplay of geopolitical strategies, the Soviet and Turkish regimes shared rhetorical, and even ideological, commonalities (for example, their common fight against “Reaction” and “imperialism”).33 On the other hand, a West-European fascination with Mustafa Kemal had already begun to emerge by 1921, when a series of male and, most remarkably, female journalists, travellers and novelists began visiting “Anatolia in rebellion”. Several of them met with the Turkish leader, of whom they at once published apologetic portraits. As Timour Muhidine has pointed out, this lyrical, even enamoured literature was largely, but not exclusively, a French-speaking phenomenon.34 One explanation for this infatuation was the Turkish leaders’ skill in once again allowing foreign visitors to find exactly what they were looking for in Ankara, in this case the long-awaited Oriental incarnation of the (French) Enlightenment.35 By recasting their Muslim holy war and struggle against imperialism as an issue of predominantly if not exclusively, national sovereignty and parliamentary democracy, the Turkish leadership not only spoke the language of the Wilsonian “right of people to self-determination”, but in so doing, they also flattered the

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French yearning for universalism, observable in Kemal’s multiple, although not always accurate – and yet not necessarily insincere – homages to Rousseau and Montesquieu in the Turkish Parliament.36 In turn, the French increasingly deciphered the Anatolian uprising as a repetition of their “Grande re´volution”.37 Even before the Peace Agreement had been settled between the two countries (October 1921), it was commonplace in Parisian newsrooms to draw comparisons between Turkey and its alleged Jacobin model. This tendency only gained in importance as the regime shifted toward (an authoritarian form of) secularism. Opinion-makers like the first ambassador of France in Istanbul Albert Sarraut (1924) or the journalist Paul Gentizon (whose Mustapha Kemal ou l’Orient en marche, published in 1929, was one of the first comprehensive studies of the reformist policies implemented by the Turkish Government since 1923) concurred with each other, setting a standard according to which the “New Turkey” was walking in the footsteps of the Third Republic. Thus, even before laiklik had become an officialised tenet of the regime in 1937, the notion of “laı¨cite´ turque” was already widely accepted in French “Kemalophile” (rather than Turkophile) literature. Over thirty books, not to mention dozens of press articles, often repeating each other, glorifying the “New Turkey” and its “charismatic leader” were published in the interwar period in France.38 If its involvement was precocious, France was far from being the only country to exalt the Turkish regime. “Nowhere in the world, except for Turkey itself” writes Stefan Ihrig, for example, “were as many books on Atatu¨rk and the New Turkey published as in Interwar Germany.”39 Western observers at large were just as eager to acknowledge the parallels drawn by Ankara between “modernization” and “Westernization” in which, in turn, their own civilising mission found confirmation. Reforms such as the adoption of legal codes inspired by their Swiss, Italian and French counterparts, or the so-called “hat revolution” – and even more so the highly symbolic Romanisation of the Turkish script, hitherto written in Arabic letters – aroused flattered, sometimes ecstatic reactions in Europe and the United States.40 In Turkey, the cult of Mustafa Kemal had been state-sponsored since 1927.41 This Kemalomania, however, quickly began to be co-sponsored by Western state and non-state actors, so that, by the late 1920s, scrutiny of the “New Turkey” had become a transnational hobby, a literary subgenre and a truly pan-European niche market – of which Turkish authors and

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Figure I.3 Picture of the Great National Assembly in Ankara circulating in the French press. Source: L’Illustration, 24 February 1923, front page.

authorities were not (quite yet) the main participants. Several highly apologetic biographies and essays embarked upon international careers. A case in point is Dagobert von Mikusch, whose Gasi Mustafa Kemal, zwischen Europa und Asien (Leipzig, 1929) was presumably the first

Figure I.4 The Italian translation of Dagobert von Mikusch’s biography of Mustafa Kemal. Source: Dagobert von Mikusch, Gasi Mustafa Kemal. Il fondatore della nuova Turchia, Milan, Treves, Treccani & Tumminelli, 1932, front cover.

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biography of Mustafa Kemal written by a European author. Within a few months, the title was made available in Copenhagen, Stockholm, Helsinki, Paris, New York, London, Milan, Budapest and Bucharest, and translated into Danish, Swedish, Finnish, French, English, Italian, Hungarian and Romanian.42 Even significantly less favourable testimonies, such as the renowned Grey Wolf: Intimate Study of a Dictator (1932), by Harold Courtenay Armstrong43 – the importation of which was forbidden in Turkey until the 1950s44 – found a wide audience; in London, the title went through four editions within four months, and within a year it had been published in New York, Paris and Berlin. The editorial success of these opuses illustrates the fascination with which anything evoking Mustafa Kemal and the “New Turkey” was likely to be received throughout the global West.45 Thus, just as Anatolian squares and schoolyards everywhere were beginning to be thronged with busts of “the Gazi”, books and articles published all over Europe recognised Kemal – his full-page portrait often lavishly on display – not just as a brilliant commander but also as the “father of the country” and the dauntless instigator of the “Turkish revolution”. “‘Kemalism”, as a result, was a Soviet and Western discursive artefact before it ever became a Turkish one.

Mustafa Kemal as a Polarising Figure in the Muslim World and Beyond This shift in perceptions of the Turkish leader affected Muslim perceptions as well. The abolition of the Caliphate (March 1924), and other reforms, such as the ban of the fez (September 1925) or the alphabet reform (November 1928), provoked consternation, indignation and surprise, making Mustafa Kemal a highly divisive figure. A widespread anti-Kemalist discourse thus began making itself heard in Muslim public spaces, the intensity of which varied depending on regional, social and political belonging. In India, for example, where pan-Islamist ambitions had been cultivated since the 1880s, massive demonstrations were organised after World War I in support of the defeated Ottoman Empire. Yet, by 1920, after the Turkish nationalists claimed that the Caliph was held captive by the Allies and therefore no longer had any freedom of action, the allegiance of the Muslim Indians shifted from Istanbul to the headquarters of the emerging nationalist leadership, Ankara, along with their substantial financial support. Some

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activists even considered raising an “Ankara Legion” to fight alongside the Turks, and for the Caliphate. Following the victory of 1922, Mustafa Kemal was consequently bestowed the titles Saif ul-Islam (“Sword of Islam”) and Mujaddad-i Khilafat (“Renovator of the Caliphate”) by the leaders of the Indian Khilafat movement.46 It is no wonder that they considered the suppression of this most ancient and respected institution to be an open betrayal. In general, Islamic officials spoke out against the abolition of the Caliphate. A part of the Muslim clerical elite organised a series of gatherings that aimed to create a new caliphate (1925 Cairo, 1926 Mecca, 1931 Jerusalem), with no real success.47 The voices of opponents that had fled Turkey to Bulgaria, Greece or Egypt also contributed to spreading a new narrative in the Muslim global arena – that Mustafa Kemal was an anti-religious leader, and that the newly established Republic of Turkey was, in its efforts to imitate the Christian West, intrinsically anti-Islamic. Articles published in Turkish in Bulgaria, but also in Arabic in Cairo, were widely circulated and translated, also reaching Muslim communities that lived as a minority. In Yugoslavia, for example, the influential journal Hikjmet (Wisdom), established by two conservative religious officials, regularly translated anti-Kemalist articles from Arabic-speaking newspapers like Al-Fath, Al-Muqattam and Intibaˆh.48 Texts by the Druze intellectual and politician Shakib Arslan (1869–1946) were often translated in order to highlight the protuislamski (“anti-Islamic”), bezvjerski (“faithless”), farmasonski (“masonic”), even satanski (“satanic”) projects of Kemal and his entourage, no less of a menace than atheism and bolshevism.49 Unsurprisingly, the hostility to Islam that was imputed to Kemal and a few other figures originating from Salonika was also often attributed to their alleged Do¨nme (crypto-Jewish) identity.50 In some cases, these very same religious opponents to Kemal, well aware of his popularity within the Muslim world, tried to promote an alternative figure. For instance, they expressed interest in Abdulaziz bin Saud (1876– 1953), who was consolidating his power in the Arab Peninsula at that time. The aforementioned Hikjmet, again quoting Shakib Arslan, wrote that unlike Kemal, Saud “never distances himself from the Quran, the hadiths and the Islamic sciences”, and that “he is not modern, and he never will be”.51 On the other hand, some Muslim clerics and religiously oriented intellectuals, like the Egyptian scholar and minister Ali Abd al-Raziq,

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were prompt to support the reforms of Mustafa Kemal, even the abolition of the Caliphate, in the name of reformism and of the separation of the religious and political fields. Interestingly, Abd alRaziq’s book Al-Islam Wa Usul Al-Hukm (Islam and the Foundations of ¨ mer Governance), published in 1925, was translated into Turkish by O Rıza (Dog˘rul), a Turkish intellectual and journalist, the son-in-law of Mehmet Akif (Ersoy), himself a well-known poet and intellectual. Both had belonged to the Islamist and anti-imperialist circles active around the journal Sebilu¨rres¸ad (The Fountain of Orthodoxy) before and during World War I. In the foreword to the translation published in 1927, ¨ mer Rıza explained that Abd al-Raziq’s work was “a torch O illuminating the new horizons opened by the grand Turkish revolution in the world of science and philosophy”.52 Clearly, such approval for the abolition of the Caliphate by an Egyptian ulema was perceived to be helpful in legitimising the secularist policies of Ankara in the eyes of the Turkish religious officials and their followers. Additionally, in the Balkans several religious officials expressed a clearly positive stance toward the reforms implemented by the Turkish Government. One important example is Mehmed Dzˇemaludin Cˇausˇevic´ (1870– 1938), the ulema at the head of the Islamic Community of Bosnia and Herzegovina from 1914 to 1930. Educated at the Mekteb-i Hukuk (Law School) in Istanbul, Cˇausˇevic´ was a follower of the Islamic modernist doctrine of Muhamed Abduh, whose classes he had attended in Cairo. In 1928 he expressed open sympathy towards Turkish policies in several domains, in particular the reforms of the administration of pious endowments, the hat ban and the disincentive to wear the female veil. The Bosnian scholar maintained that the reforms implemented by the Turkish Government in the 1920s ought to be considered to be perfectly in line with religious precepts.53 Above all, a vocal segment of non-religious elites throughout the Muslim world saw the constitution of discrete, secularised nation states as an inevitable outcome, and therefore interpreted the suppression of the Caliphate positively, as a step toward the nationalisation of Muslim societies and, ultimately, “Muslim emancipation” on the whole. Indeed, in their eyes, Mustafa Kemal was a courageous reformer guiding the Muslims, forcing them if need be, onto the “path of progress”. A case in point is the non-clerical segment of the Muslim elite in India, which often possessed a Western educational background similar to that of

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many of the men in charge in Ankara. As illustrated by prominent intellectuals like Muhammad Iqbal, these men championed the implementation of the increasingly popular Turkish experiment among the Indo-Muslim population at large.54 Thus, one could well argue that something like a transnational Muslim Kemalophilia contributed to perpetuating late nineteenthcentury efforts to “reform Islam” and reframe the terms of a global Muslim self-awareness, be it either with explicitly political aims (as illustrated by Abdu¨lhamid’s strategic management of Islam)55 or guided by more intellectual concerns (Al-Afghani).56 In this respect, transnational Kemalism may very well have been something like a mutation of nineteenth-century cultural pan-Islamism. After all, even after a series of groundbreaking secularizing reforms, Mustafa Kemal remained “the Gazi”. In 1936, for example, the Bosnian Muslim Mustafa A. Mulalic´, a well-known secular intellectual and MP at the Belgrade Parliament, wrote Orijent na Zapadu (The Orient in the West), a book addressing the fate of Slavic Muslims in post-Ottoman Yugoslavia, and urging them to join Western civilisation. In the final chapter, Mulalic´ introduces kemalizam as the model par excellence that Yugoslav Muslims are encouraged to follow, and the President of Turkey is identified as “the saviour of Turkey” and as “the great Islamic reformist Gazi Mustafa Kemal Atatu¨rk”.57 In other words, far from undermining his prestige as a secular reformist, his enduring Islamic legitimacy actually reinforced Mustafa Kemal’s authority in the eyes of Muslim observers throughout the world, as both a Muslim and a secular role model. Conversely, let us underline the fact that the New Turkey also gained such popularity in the Muslim and non-Muslim world alike for reasons that were not religious at all. For what was at work under the guise of Turkish secular Islamo-nationalism (or of transnational Muslim Kemalophilia) was part of a much wider transformation of political self-perceptions throughout the Eurasian continent.58 Boosted by the victory of the Japanese Navy over the Russian expeditionary force in Tsushima (1905), a global contestation of Western imperialism was spreading in the aftermath of the Russian Revolution and World War I, which the Japanese pan-Asianist and Islamologist Oˆkawa Shuˆmei described in 1922 as “the rising tide of color against the white world supremacy”.59 And yet, because they remained staunch admirers of “the civilized West”, the Turkish nationalists embodied a different form

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of anti-Western nationalism than the Marxist-Leninists. Not only, for example, was the articulation of the Kemalist “Six Arrows” (which we return to below) contemporary to Sun Yat-sen’s elaboration of the “Three Principles of the People”, but the Turkish experiment most likely influenced Chiang Kai-shek’s subsequent articulation of Chinese nationalism.60 Finally, some of Turkish spokesmen of the 1930s even came to articulate early – in some respects pre-Saidian – criticisms of the cultural substratum that fed the European domination over Muslim countries – namely “Orientalism”, as illustrated by several articles from La Turquie ke´maliste.61

Domesticating Kemalism in a Post-Liberal World 1925 was the year of the so-called “Sheikh Said Revolt”. To some degree, by recasting the Kurdish revolt as a “religious reaction”, the repression was presented as having been accomplished in the name of rather than against the “progressive” tenets of the new-born Republic (and the French were eager to accept the idea that Turkey was indeed facing a nouvelle Vende´e). But in the following years, as the single-party system set in, Turkey’s international references also shifted. Rome and Moscow, as much as Paris or Geneva, became major sources of inspiration. To be sure, in so doing, Turkey was simply following a dominant trend in Europe and the world, where liberalism was increasingly being discredited as “romantic” and “outdated”. An early example of this trend can be found in Le monde turc et sa mission historique (1928) – a transnational artefact in many respects. Originally a series of papers published in the Istanbul newspaper Cumhuriyet (The Republic), the book was later translated into French and printed in Leipzig. Its author, Basri Gu¨ntekin (Dukagjin Zadeh or Dukakinog˘lu), presumably an Albanian national, although he identified himself as a Turk,62 claimed to be an admirer of “the two Mus”, as he nicknamed them: Mustafa Kemal and Benito Mussolini. Not only did Gu¨ntekin prematurely call for a rapprochement between “Fascist Italy” and “Kemalist Turkey”, but he also retrospectively drew parallels between the trajectories of the two countries, since “the triumph of Kemalism coincided with the Fascist March on Rome” (Autumn 1922). Both countries, he argued, were walking the same path to “radicalism” and “realism” as opposed to nineteenth-century idealism – which all nations would ultimately follow, along with an uncompromising nationalism, which he explicitly

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understood as a “secular religion”.63 Gu¨ntekin’s contribution is all the more interesting in that in Albania, in the very same years, Kemalism was becoming a household word through public debate. In this case, as Nathalie Clayer shows in her chapter, the Turkish influence was seen as a possible alternative to Italy’s growing hegemony over the country. Another case in point is Nazi Germany, where the above-mentioned biography of Dagobert von Mikusch (which reached its tenth edition in 1935) contributed to the shaping of “Turkish national-socialism” as a possible model for Germany, and even of Mustafa Kemal as a “Turkish Fu¨hrer”, since “For the Nazis, Turkey was not the old East, but a standard bearer for the modern nationalist and totalitarian politics that they wished to bring to Germany.”64 The early 1930s was precisely the time when Kemalizm was reinvented in Turkey (and in Turkish) as a domestic concept. It is said that the polymath Ahmet Cevat [Emre], a prominent educator and selftaught linguist who had been a member of the commission charged with elaborating the new alphabet, was the first to use the term (July 1930). The same year, the journalist Ali Naci published a series of articles in the periodical I˙nkılap (Revolution), one of which bore the title: “Just as There is Communism in Russia, and Fascism in Italy, We Must Have One Kemalism” (December 1930).65 Thus, by the early 1930s, Turkey’s political elite had ceased to think of its own historicity simply in terms of bourgeois filiation, and instead increasingly began to present itself as a pioneering manifestation of post-liberal statehood. To be sure, by that time, the notion of Kemalism could still be tainted with an allure of artificiality in the eyes of foreign observers. For example, in August 1932 the lawyer and MP of Edirne, Mehmet S¸eref [Aykut], issued a series of papers in Milliyet (The Nation) addressing the question “What is Kemalism?”. The US Consul Charles Allen subsequently reported to Washington, with some scepticism: “[The article series] is not greatly more saccharine than many accounts of the doings of Lincoln, Roosevelt and Wilson, not to mention Lenin, Mussolini or Hitler”.66 As seen from a transnational-historical perspective, the propagation of Kemalism as a global political concept had everything to do with a culture of leadership and management that actually transcended the distinction between liberal and non-liberal polities – and was rooted in a longue-dure´e transformation of the notion of authority that went even beyond the realm of politics.67

Figure I.5 “Kemalist Turkey Hails Fascist Italy!” Cumhuriyet headline on the occasion of Prime Minister I˙smet Pacha’s (I˙no¨nu¨) official visit to Rome (22 May 1932). Source: Cumhuriyet, 22 May 1932, front cover.

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But it remains that, by the early thirties, claiming one’s own “ism” had become one of the necessary components on the checklist of postwar authoritarian regimes. In 1932, at the same time as the Dottrina del Fascismo was issued by the philosopher Giovanni Gentile and Mussolini himself,68 the Turkish revolutionaries were engaged in re-appropriating Kemalism as their own flagship, both at home and abroad. Thus, from 1930, a variety of intellectuals – from the post-Marxist Kadro group to ¨ lku¨ team, along with prominent individuals such as the the right-wing U right-wing Turkist and former Minister of Justice Mahmut Esat Bozkurt, or the Jewish, Jacobin, French-inclined Tekin Alp (born Moiz Kohen) – took it upon themselves to provide Kemalism with a stable definition.69 For example, the former Marxist Burhan Asaf, a journalist trained in sociology and architecture in Berlin from 1916 to 1923, protested in Kadro against the way “our revolution” was being depicted in a paper published in Italy by the Turkologist Ettore Rossi in the Giornale di Politica e di Letteratura: Truly, Dr. Ettore Rossi could not escape the mistake that a few Turkish intellectuals have made, which is to define our revolution as a process of Westernization only, and then to enumerate the different aspects of the reforms without coherence: the abolition of the Sultanate and of the Caliphate, the adoption of the Italian criminal code and of the Swiss civil code, the separation of secular matters and religion, the adoption of the Latin alphabet, etc. If our revolution was simply about “Westernization”, its main business would be to scrutinize all Western social and political institutions as well as all Western regulations, and to bring the best back to the country from wherever it is. When carrying out a study on us and coming up with such conclusions, Dr. Rossi should know that this view started with the “Tanzimat”, continued in the time of Union and Progress, and was finally irrevocably left to History with the adventure of the Free Party in Izmir. The Turkish revolutionaries have announced that the time of imitation (taklit devresi) is over . . . 70 Neither an imitation of the French Revolution, nor a duplication of Fascism or of the Soviet transformation, as Burhan Asaf argued further, Kemalism was its own historical model: a reasoning that, in some

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respect, anticipated the post-colonial agenda and its ambiguous ambition of “provincializing Europe”. Kemalizm finally received endorsement from the Party-State in May 1935, when the “Six Arrows” (republicanism, secularism, nationalism, populism, statism, revolutionarism) – which had already been the program of the Republican People’s Party since May 1931 – were adopted as the official definition of a hitherto rather hazy label. Finally, as much as it was an ideological and historiographical endeavour (separating the Republic of Turkey from its own past), making Kemalism a discrete, native artefact was a strategic move. It should be noted here that Kemalism was tailored in, and for, a time of heightened geopolitical anxiety, marked by the ascension of Nazi Germany (a phenomenon followed with a mixture of dread and admiration by the Turkish official press), the affirmation of Fascist colonialism (by 1932, Italy, which already occupied the Dodecanese since 1912, had reclaimed the “Roman Empire”, and three years later it waged a ruthless war on Ethiopia), the brutalisation of the populations on the Ukrainian shore of the Black Sea under Soviet rule, notwithstanding ongoing Western colonialism in the former Arab provinces of the Ottoman Empire. In this context, establishing Kemalism was yet another way to give root to the dignity and international legitimacy of the New Turkey, while keeping at bay other “isms” perceived as potential threats to the country’s very existence. This was made explicit by Recep Peker, the RPP’s secretary-general, during the Party’s 5th congress in May 1935: The geographical situation of Turkey is such that all winds, whether coming from the north, the south, the east or the west, pass over its soil. This situation is the same in the field of politics and propaganda of ideas. We are the ones subjected to all sorts of propaganda, be it anarchist, fascist, Marxist, internationalist, “Khalifist”, etc. It is therefore by enclosing itself in a deeply nationalistic faith that Turkey will preserve itself against these harmful currents, which, moreover, maintain and animate each other.71 Originally delivered in Turkish, Peker’s speech was translated to French, and distributed to all the embassies. In this respect, it encapsulated well

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the contradiction of (the making of) Kemalism, which was about negotiating Turkey’s place on the global symbolic chessboard, while also attempting to isolate the country by affirming its uniqueness. In sum, as promoted by the Turkish elite in the 1930s, Kemalism was both intended to be a brand available for the international promotion of the regime, and an ideological straightjacket expected to lock the country down. And yet, although re-invented by the Turks, the concept continued to mutate in relation to space and time, within and outside of Turkey.

Transnational Kemalism: The Spatial Dimension of a Refractive Relationship When considered outside of Turkey, Kemalism has mostly been seen from a diffusionist perspective, with Turkey (or Ankara) as the emitting centre and “the rest” as a recipient periphery. This scholarship often focuses on the image of “Atatu¨rk” or of the “New Turkey” in various countries,72 but pays little attention to the brokers and artefacts involved. Without denying the dominance of Turkish state (and nonstate) actors in making Kemalism a global symbolic product, our wish here is to observe how the latter was elaborated through more complex patterns of circulation (entangled, triangular, two-way, circular) inside and outside of Turkey. Our case studies illustrate different ways in which national borders refracted and transformed the Kemalist label. Thus, we focus on how the objects in circulation were transformed in the very process of circulation, and how they came to assume different significations and forms in various time-space configurations. With this aim in mind, the volume investigates six different topics (language, alphabet, woman, law, dress, and Orientalism) in six areas of the postOttoman space during the interwar period (Turkey, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Albania, Yugoslavia, and Egypt). To be sure, fascination with the so-called Kemalist model was a worldwide phenomenon, and had spread from Japan to Argentina, via Australia and China.73 However this attention was particularly strong in the post-Ottoman space, where Turkey, despite its claim to erase all continuity with the Ancien Re´gime, was perceived as the most direct heir to the former Empire. In this area, circulations did not only depart from Turkey, but also led to Turkey. With this in mind, the ambition of this book is not to be

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exhaustive – rather, it is to provide new insights into the fabric of transnational Kemalism in a variety of settings in space and time.

Spatialising Kemalism Space is not just a background against which historical processes take place; indeed, it is instrumental in the making of history. Thus, thinking about Kemalism in terms of spatiality means, as Christian Jacob does in his study of the production of scientific knowledge, analysing trajectories, dynamics and configurations in relation to a geographical space, with its physical, but also political, linguistic and cultural dimensions. It also means giving crucial importance to locality, borders, channels of communication, scale, networks, distance and proximity, bypasses and crossroads.74 From the different chapters of the book, we see that each national configuration in space and time is indeed essential to understanding the way Kemalism was understood and re-engineered locally, but also that this process was dependent upon circulations of different natures and directions, implying different types of actors and artefacts, in different arenas. Locality was a determining factor: this is what the cases studied in the following pages demonstrate. Emmanuel Szurek and Ece Zerman insist on the weight of local conditions on the adoption of the Sun-Language Theory and on the emergence of an “aesthetic nationalism” based on a reframing of Orientalism. Local social and political balances of power were also key to understanding and shaping Kemalism in Bulgaria. There, in Anna Mirkova’s chapter, the re-appropriation of this label took place in a context of competition between different worldviews, and enduring debates on citizenship and the rights that the local Muslim population should claim or be given. Be´atrice Hendrich, on the other hand, shows how, contrary to the Turkish national(ist) narrative, the introduction of the Latin script in Cyprus should be understood both through a (British) colonial lens, and from a local perspective – coloured, among others, by the “Greek Question”. The absence of a ban of, or even of incentive for, the use of the Latin script led to a slower and more heterogeneous Romanisation process than the one in Turkey. In Egypt, Wilson Chacko Jacob’s contribution presents Kemalism as tied up in debates on modernity, but also local identities. As demonstrated by Fabio Giomi, the ways in which Kemalism was imagined and used in Yugoslavia by Muslim male notables was

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intricately linked to the need in Yugoslav society to promote the paternalistic gender and confessional de-segregation of the Muslim population. Finally, Nathalie Clayer shows that, in Albania, Qemalism as it was expressed in relation to the adoption of a Civil Code in 1928 – in the wake of the adoption of a similar Code in Turkey two years earlier – was a contested label, because of the tensions at stake between different lawyers trained in the Ottoman Empire and belonging to the political elite. The spatiality of Kemalism was shaped by multiple circulations of brokers and artefacts. Among the brokers, politicians played a major role in forging public policies in the name of Kemalism. However, other professionals were also involved: journalists, diplomats, teachers and scholars. Scientific congresses, kurultays and other kinds of temporary gatherings, as well as more permanent organisations such as associations and clubs, were essential to the circulation and refraction of Kemalism. In the aftermath of World War I, teacher, sports and youth organisations spread, while religious associations multiplied in the 1930s. National assemblies, schools and theatres all represented different arenas where this process was enacted. In the case analysed by Anna Mirkova, different kinds of “ordinary people” moving across the Bulgarian –Turkish border were involved in making Kemalism transnational. Indeed, in the Yugoslav case, family networks and tourists holidaying or visiting relatives in Turkey were key actors. The press, which can be conceived of both as a professional organisation, and as a set of material artefacts, was crucial to this process; hence the importance of typewriters and printing machines. Propaganda organs such as La Turquie ke´maliste, scientific journals like Tu¨rk Dili (The Turkish Language) but also the everyday press (from the New York Times to Al-Muqattam) played a significant role. Language too was an important matter, in this case the Turkish language of course, which bound together the elites of the former central Ottoman provinces in Turkey, the Balkans and Cyprus (even in the case of Albania and Bosnia), but also French, which still was the international lingua franca. The alphabet as such was a central signifier, as it carried a sacred or magical power for many actors, be it the former Arabic alphabet, the alphabet of Islam, or the new Romanised characters, often endowed with the charisma of “modernity”. Other visual artefacts that objectified transnational Kemalism (or anti-Kemalism) were widely circulated: not only the portraits of Mustafa Kemal, but also

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photographs of new buildings, cities, schools, women and girls, youth, etc. No less important were objects such as garments and furniture, as addressed by Fabio Giomi, Wilson Chacko Jacob and Ece Zerman.

The Multiple Geographies of a Transnational Artefact Our case studies illustrate different ways in which the Kemalist label was conditioned by the evolution of bilateral diplomatic relations. In the case of Bulgaria, studied by Anna Mirkova, we see that, after 1937, it was through a change in Bulgaria’s foreign policy towards Turkey – a change inspired by British foreign policy – that the Kemalist Latin alphabet, often associated with the nationalism and irredentism of the local Turkish-speaking population, began to be officially promoted by the Bulgarian Government in the teaching of the Turkish language in state schools. In Cyprus, the late 1930s were also synonymous with a turn in British colonial policies and, consequently, the political repositioning of the members of the Muslim community. Similarly, Fabio Giomi shows how the emergence of a new type of relationship between Yugoslavia and Turkey over the course of the 1930s influenced the domestic intellectual production of texts on Turkey. In February 1934, Romania, Yugoslavia, Greece and Turkey signed the Balkan Pact, by which they recognised the borders defined after World War I, and agreed to renounce all irredentist claims. Indeed, in most of our case studies, the issues of borders, state sovereignty, territorial integrity, loyalties and minorities are at the heart of the developments influencing the forging of Kemalism (or antiKemalism). The way in which objects circulated was part of an entangled nation-building processes, as Anna Mirkova asserts concerning the ways in which the Latin alphabet in Bulgaria was promoted or rejected by local actors – officials and members of the Turkish minority – as well as actors from Turkey. In the Albanian case, despite the absence of a Turkish minority in the country, the way in which Kemalism was conceptualised was also tied to the issue of sovereignty and political links with Turkey, because of the competition between Turkey and Italy for political influence in Albania. In the Egyptian case, Wilson Chacko Jacob shows that contestations over cultural borders (in this case the meaning of what one wears on one’s head) were equally important moments in the constitution of sovereignty and in international relations.

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The geography of Kemalism often assumed a triangular, if not even more complex relationship. As evidenced in Emmanuel Szurek’s contribution, the construction of the Sun-Language Theory was, to a great extent, the result of the circulation of artefacts from Western Europe, but also central Europe and Russia. Artefacts had often passed from Turkey to Western Europe before they even arrived in the rest of the post-Ottoman space. Some Albanian lawyers and publicists, for example, advocated the adoption of a Civil Code in the Albanian newspapers, arguing that the Turkish example should be followed. However, these arguments were based on echoes of the Turkish discourse on this reform that had been translated in the French press. This was also true when the relationship was not one of transferral, but of the rejection of a model. In another article, Fabio Giomi demonstrates that in Yugoslavia Kemalist artefacts arrived in the form of books and printed matter from Western Europe, and that the shaping of an “Islamic Kemalism” was brought about by the refutation of this literature and the rejection of a European vision of the Kemalist reforms. The Kemalist model was taken as a counter-model to the Western model of women’s emancipation. Other Bosnian actors rejected Kemalism as a “5th mezhep” (juridical school) contrary to Islam, and supported their arguments with articles written by opponents to Kemalism in Bulgaria and Egypt.75 More generally, through Wilson Jacob’s study, we see that Kemalism was a discourse that circulated within the entire post-Ottoman space, due to the existence of political and economic mediation by the West. Kemalism could also be filtered and refracted according to sectorial spheres. Let us take the example of Cyprus, where Be´atrice Hendrich demonstrates that the circulation of Kemalist artefacts did not have the same temporality in different public sectors (education, justice, currency). In the Albanian case, the choice of a model for the new Civil Code was not perceived in the same way in the political as it was in the juridical sphere, due to different constraints and possibilities. Moreover, Turkey continued to be a model in other domains, even after the adoption of the Turkish Civil Code was rejected in the Albanian political sphere. Finally, contrary to the commonly accepted schemes of transfer studies, we can assert that the circulation of the artefacts that made Kemalism transnational followed multidirectional itineraries: not only from point A to point B (or from A to B through C), but also from B to

INTRODUCTION

29

A (or from B to A through C). In the Turkey of the 1930s, the newspapers frequently reflected what was said about Turkey in Europe and the USA, and often had foreigners express themselves in their columns. This soon became a two-way street, however. In the 1930s, Ankara would increasingly feed the West with textual and iconographic sources (starting with the French, English and German translations of the Nutuk – Mustafa Kemal’s famous speech delivered in 1927 – published in Leipzig in 1929 using Turkish subsidies); and in the other direction, any Western endorsement of the “New Turkey” and Mustafa Kemal itself was considered material that was good for the regime’s domestic propaganda. The cult of Kemal was certainly an international joint venture. Indeed, by the late 1920s – and increasingly so throughout the 1930s – every reform led by Ankara was hailed in Europe as yet another step on the “Turkish-path-to-modernity”, while any approval of the Turkish regime by Western literati found immediate resonance in Turkey. Several of the following chapters exemplify the complex multidirectional refractive relationship that underlay the making of Kemalism, but also its plural (and sometimes contradictory) nature. In the shaping of the Sun-Language Theory, for example, studied by Emmanuel Szurek, rejection was coupled with fascination, condemnation with acculturation and counter-acculturation. There are tensions between transfer and negation of transfer by rejection. In the study conducted by Ece Zerman, the centrality of the Western gaze comes to the fore, but at the same time its rejection, or its channelling by Turkish actors. In the same way, the Albanian case shows the tensions that existed between the rejection/adoption of a code that was seen in different ways because of its plural characterisation as Turkish and/or Swiss, as Western and/or Oriental. As such, it reflected mirror games that blurred established physical and symbolic geographies.

Notes 1. Hamit Bozarslan, Histoire de la Turquie. De l’Empire a` nos jours, Paris, Taillandier, 2015, pp. 339– 43. 2. Ahmet I˙nsel, “Giris¸”, Kemalizm, Modern Tu¨rkiye’de Siyasi Du¨¸su¨nce, vol. 2, Istanbul, I˙letis¸im, 2004, pp. 17 – 27. 3. Erik Jan Zu¨rcher, Turkey: A Modern History, London and New York, I.B.Tauris, 2004 [1993], p. 181; Sinan Ciddi, Kemalism in Turkish Politics: The Republican

30

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

KEMALISM People’s Party, Secularism and Nationalism, London and New York, Routledge, 2009, p. 6. Temucin Faik Ertan, Kadrocular ve Kadro Hareketi (Go¨ru¨¸sler, Yorumlar, Deg˘erlendirmeler), Ankara, T. C. Ku¨ltu¨r Bakanlıg˘ı Bas¸vuru Kitapları, 1994, p. XIII. For a few examples of the different versions of Kemalism, see: Yes¸im Arat, “Women’s Movements of the 1980s in Turkey: Radical Outcome of Liberal Kemalism?”, in Fatma Mu¨ge Go¨cek and Shiva Balaghi (eds), Reconstructing Gender in the Middle East: Tradition, Identity and Power, New York, Columbia University Press, 1994, pp. 100–12; Ertan Aydın, The Peculiarities of Turkish Revolutionary Ideology in the 1930s: the U¨lku¨ Version of Kemalism, 1933–1936, unpublished PhD Dissertation, Bilkent University, Ankara, 2003; Sena Karasipahi, Muslims in Modern Turkey: Kemalism, Modernism and the Revolt of the Islamic Intellectuals, London and New York, I.B.Tauris, 2009. Hamit Bozarslan, “Kemalism, Westernization and Anti-liberalism”, in Hans Lukas Kieser (ed.), Turkey Beyond Nationalism. Towards Post-Nationalist Identities, Londres, I.B.Tauris, 2006, pp. 28 –34; Soner C¸agaptay, Islam, Secularism, and Nationalism in Modern Turkey. Who is a Turk?, London and New York, Routledge, 2006. Paul Dumont, “The Origins of Kemalist Ideology”, in Jacob Landau (ed.), Atatu¨rk and the Modernization of Turkey, Boulder, CO, Westview Press, 1984, pp. 25 – 44; Selim Deringil, “The Ottoman Origins of Kemalist Nationalism: Namik Kemal to Mustafa Kemal”, European History Quaterly, 23, 2, 1993, pp. 165– 91; Andrew Davison and Taha Parla, Corporatist Ideology in Kemalist Turkey: Progress or Order?, Syracuse, NY, Syracuse University Press, 2004; HansLukas Kieser, “An Ethno-Nationalist Revolutionary and Theorist of Kemalism: Dr. Mahmut. Esat. Bozkurt (1892 – 1943)”, in Hans Lukas Kieser (ed.), Turkey Beyond Nationalism . . ., pp. 20 – 7; S¸u¨kru¨ Haniog˘lu, Atatu¨rk. An Intellectual Biography, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 2011. Stefan Plaggenborg, Ordnung und Gewalt: Kemalismus – Faschismus – Sozialismus, Mu¨nchen, Oldenbourg, 2012; Berk Esen, “Nation-Building, Party-Strength, and Regime Consolidation: Kemalism in Comparative Perspective”, Turkish Studies, 15, 4, 2014, pp. 600– 20. Yig˘it Akın, “Reconsidering State, Party and Society in Early Republican Turkey: Politics of Petitioning”, IJMES, 39, 3, 2007, pp. 435– 57; Murat Metinsoy, “Fragile Hegemony, Flexible Authoritarianism, and Governing from Below: Politician’s Reports in Early Republican Turkey”, IJMES, 43, 4, 2011, pp. 699– 719; id.,“Everyday resistance to unveiling and flexible secularism in early republican Turkey”, in Stephanie Cronin (ed.), Anti-Veiling Campaigns in the Muslim World. Gender, Modernism and the Politics of Dress, London and New York, Routledge, 2014, pp. 88 – 117; Gavin D. Brockett (ed.), Towards a Social History of Modern Turkey, Istanbul, Libra, 2011; Hale Yılmaz, Becoming Turkish: Nationalist Reforms and Cultural Negotiations in Early Republican Turkey, 1923– 1945, Syracuse, NY, Syracuse University Press, 2013; Emmanuel Szurek, “Dil Bayramı. Une lecture somatique de la feˆte politique dans la Turquie du parti

INTRODUCTION

9.

10. 11. 12. 13. 14.

15.

31

unique”, in Nathalie Clayer and Erdal Kaynar (eds), Penser, agir et vivre dans l’Empire ottoman et en Turquie. Etudes re´unies pour Francois Georgeon, Peeters, Louvain, 2013, pp. 497– 523; Alexandros Lamprou, Nation-Building in Modern Turkey: The ‘People’s Houses’, the State and the Citizen, London and New York, I.B.Tauris, 2015; Nathalie Clayer, “An Imposed or a Negotiated Laiklik? The Administration of the Teaching of Islam in Single-Party Turkey”, in Marc Aymes, Benjamin Gourisse and Elise Massicard (eds), Order and Compromise. Government Practices in Turkey from the Late Ottoman Empire to the Early 21st Century, Leiden and Boston, Brill, 2015, pp. 97– 120. Nilu¨fer Go¨le, The Forbidden Modern: Civilization and Veiling, Ann Arbor, MI, University of Michigan Press, 1996; Esra O¨zyu¨rek, Nostalgia for the Modern: State Secularism and Everyday Politics in Turkey, Durham, NC, Duke University Press, 2006; Meltem Ahıska, Occidentalism in Turkey. Questions of Modernity and National Identity in Turkish Radio Broadcasting, London and New York, I.B.Tauris, 2010; Gavin D. Brockett, How Happy to Call Oneself a Turk: Provincial Newspapers and the Negotiation of a Muslim National Identity, Austin, University of Texas Press, 2011, p. 53; Emmanuel Szurek, “’Go West’: Variations on Kemalist Orientalism”, in Francois Pouillon and Jean-Claude Vatin (eds), After Orientalism. Critical Perspectives on Western Agency and Eastern Re-appropriations, Leiden, Brill, 2014, pp. 103 – 20. Jean Deny, “La psychologie du peuple turc”, Se´ances et travaux de l’Acade´mie des sciences morales et politiques, 93rd year, Paris, Librairie Fe´lix Alcan, 1934, pp. 116– 27: 122. Cf. Mustafa Kemal’s inauguration Speech of Ankara’s Law School, 5 November 1925. The full text is available online: www.law.ankara.edu.tr/wp-content/ uploads/sites/238/2013/07/Ataturkunkonusmasi.pdf. This expression is that of Marc Aymes. Discussion within the seminars cycle ‘Transfaire’, EHESS, 2013– 14. Hale Yılmaz, Becoming Turkish . . ., p. 221. See also Gavin D. Brockett, How Happy . . ., pp. XI– XVII. See Anne-Marie Thiesse, La cre´ation des identite´s nationales. Europe, XVIIIe-XXe sie`cle, Paris, Seuil, 2001; id., “National Identities. A Transnational Paradigm”, in Alain Dieckhoff and Christophe Jaffrelot (eds), Revisiting Nationalism. Theories and Processes, London, Hurst & Company, 2005, pp. 123– 43; “Zionism”, in Akira Iriye and Pierre-Yves Saunier (eds), The Palgrave Dictionary of Transnational History From the mid-19th century to the present day, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2009. Archives of the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs, E-Levant 1918 – 1940, Turquie, dossier ge´ne´ral, vol. 93, Telegram from High Commissioner Defrance to Paris, n8 794, Constantinople, 11 May 1920. Cited in Pınar Dost-Niyego, “L’image de Mustafa Kemal Atatu¨rk en France (1919– 1938)”, Master’s Thesis, Institut d’e´tudes politiques, Paris, 2003, p. 111. See also Pınar Dost-Niyego, Le bon dictateur. L’image de Mustafa Kemal Atatu¨rk en France (1919 – 1938), Istanbul, Libra, 2014.

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16. Ministe`re des Affaires Etrange`res, Bulletin pe´riodique de la presse turque (August – September 1921), 17, p. 1. 17. Le Ke´malisme devant les Allie´s, Paris, Editions du Bosphore, 1922, p. 40 ff, cited in Pınar Dost-Niyego, L’image . . ., p. 34. For other examples (also cited in Pınar Dost-Niyego), see E. Nicol, Angora et la France. Une re´ponse a` M. Franklin Bouillon, Paris, Socie´te´ Ge´ne´rale d’Imprimerie et d’Edition, 1922, p. 28, and Rene´ Pinon, La Cilicie et le Proble`me ottoman, Paris, Gauthier-Villars, 1921, p. 103. 18. O¨mer Kiazim, L’aventure ke´maliste. Elle est un danger: pour l’Orient, pour l’Europe, ¨ mer Kiazim, Ankara pour la paix, Paris, L’E´dition Universelle, 1921. See also O et Berlin. Le complot germano-ke´maliste contre le traite´ de Versailles, Paris, L’E´dition Universelle, 1922. 19. Cf. S.n., Les atrocite´s ke´malistes dans les re´gions du Pont et dans le reste de l’Anatolie, Constantinople, Patriarcat œcume´nique, 1922; C. Faltaı¨ts, Voila` les Turcs! Re´cits des massacres d’Ismidt, Athe`nes, Imprimerie Francaise du Progre`s, 1922 (trans. Georges Savakis). 20. Anonymous, “Les perse´cutions des Arme´niens”, Journal de Gene`ve, 1920, p. 3, quoted by Caroline Montebello, Euge`ne Pittard, un anthropologue genevois en Turquie nationaliste (1910 – 1950): ide´ologie d’exclusion, corruption intellectuelle et logiques sociales, MA Dissertation, EHESS, Paris, 2016, p. 23. 21. Francois Georgeon, “Ke´malisme et monde musulman (1919– 1938): Quelques points de repe`res”, in I˙skender Go¨kalp and Francois Georgeon (eds), Cahiers du Groupe d’Etudes sur la Turquie Contemporaine, 3, 1987, p. 4. 22. Carmel Sammut, “L’impe´rialisme capitaliste francais et le nationalisme tunisien (1881 – 1914)”, Paris, Publisud, 1983, 257 –60; Gibert Meynier, “L’Alge´rie re´ve´le´e. La guerre de 1914 –1918 et le premier quart du XXe sie`cle”, Geneva, Librairie Droz, 1981, pp. 621 – 2. 23. Francois Georgeon, “Ke´malisme”, p. 5. 24. Ibid., p. 14. 25. “Ripercussione delle vittorie kemaliste nei paesi di lingua araba”, Oriente Moderno, II, 1922– 3, pp. 290– 1. 26. Paul Dumont, Mustafa Kemal invente la Turquie moderne, Bruxelles, Editions Complexe, 2006 [1983], p. 70. 27. Zekeriya Kurs¸un (edited and translated by), Emin Muhammed Said and Kerim Halil Sabit, Gazi Mustafa Kemal Pas¸a’nın Hayatı. Anadolu’da Tu¨rk Milli Mu¨cadelesi, Istanbul, Dog˘an Kitap, 2011, p. 45. See the English translation by Cem Akas: The Life of Mustafa Kemal Pasha. The Turkish National Struggle in Anatolia by Amin Muhammad Said and Karim Khalil Thabit, Istanbul, Dog˘an Kitap, 2011. 28. S¸u¨kru¨ Haniog˘lu, Atatu¨rk . . ., pp. 64 – 5. 29. Filandra, Sˇac´ir, “Bosˇnjaci između kemalizma i panislamizma” (The Bosˇnjaks Between Kemalism and Panislamism), Odjek, 1 (2007): 17 – 21. 30. M. Naeem Qureshi, Ottoman Turkey, Atatu¨rk, and Muslim South Asia: Perspectives, Perceptions and Responses, Karachi, Oxford University Press, 2014, p. 143.

INTRODUCTION

33

31. Vahram Ter-Matevosyan, “Kemalism and Communism: From Cooperation to Complication”, Turkish Studies, 16, 4, 2015, pp. 510– 26: 512. 32. George S. Harris, The Communists and the Kadro Movement. Shaping Ideology in Atatu¨rk’s Turkey, Istanbul, The Isis Press, 2002; S¸u¨kru¨ Haniog˘lu, Atatu¨rk . . ., pp. 105– 9. 33. Samuel J. Hirst, Eurasia’s Discontent: Soviet And Turkish Anti-Westernism In The Interwar Period, PhD Dissertation, University of Pennsylvania, 2012. 34. Timour Muhidine, “Les voyageuses d’Anatolie: journalistes et reporters francaises dans la Turquie de Mustafa Kemal (1921– 1936)”, Gu¨nes¸ Is¸ıksel and Emmanuel Szurek (eds), Turcs et Francais. Une histoire culturelle 1860– 1960, Rennes, Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2014, pp. 213 – 24; for similar examples from England and Yugoslavia respectively, see Grace Ellison, An Englishwoman in Angora, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2014 (1st edn 1923), Grace Ellison, Turkey To-day, London, Hutchinson, s.d (1928) and Mirjana Teodosijevic´, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk u jugoslovenskoj javnosti, Belgrade, NEA, 1998, pp. 16 – 17. 35. An obsession that can be traced back to the end of the eighteenth century. Cf. See Antoine Lilti, “‘Et la civilisation deviendra ge´ne´rale’: L’Europe de Volney ou l’orientalisme a` l’e´preuve de la Re´volution”, La Re´volution francaise, Dire et faire l’Europe a` la fin du XVIIIe sie`cle. http://lrf.revues.org/290. Accessed on 25 February 2013. 36. Mete Tuncay, “Atatu¨rk’e Nasıl Bakmak”, Toplum ve Bilim, 1, 4, 1977, pp. 86–92. 37. This rapprochement, of course, was already commonplace at the time of the Young Turk revolution. Hamit Bozarslan, “Re´volution francaise et Jeunes Turcs (1908 – 1914)”, Revue du monde musulman et de la Me´diterrane´e, 52, 1 (1989): pp. 160– 72; and Francois Georgeon (ed.), « L’ivresse de la liberte´ ». La re´volution de 1908 dans l’Empire ottoman, Louvain, Peeters, 2012. 38. These are listed in the bibliography proposed by Pınar Dost-Niyego, Le bon dictateur . . ., pp. 259– 67; on the specific case of E´douard Herriot, see JeanFrancois Pe´rouse, “E´douard Herriot, un pe´dagogue laı¨c en Turquie (1934): la bonne foi et la me´prise”, in Ve´ronique Schiltz (ed.), De Samarcande a` Istanbul: e´tapes orientales. Hommages a` Pierre Chuvin – II, Paris, CNRS E´ditions, 2015, pp. 319– 29. 39. Stefan Ihrig, Atatu¨rk in the Nazi imagination, Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 2014, p. 151. 40. See, for instance, Maynard Owen Williams, “Turkey Goes to School”, The National Geographic Magazine, January 1929, XV, 1, pp. 95 – 108. 41. Aylin Tekiner, Atatu¨rk ve Heykelleri. Ku¨lt, Estetik, Siyaset, Istanbul, I˙letis¸im, 2010, p. 50ff. 42. Gasi Mustafa Kemal, zwischen Europa und Asien, Paul List, 1929; Mustafa Kemal. Et verdensriges undergang. En nationalstats fødsel, Copenhagen, Reitzel, 1930; Gasi Mustafa Kemal. Ett va¨rldsrikes underga˚ng En nationalstats fo¨delse, Stockholm, Natur och kultur, 1930; Ghazi Mustapha Kemal (La re´surrection d’un peuple), Paris, NRF-Gallimard, 1931; Mustafa Kemal: Uuden turkin luoja. Ela¨ma¨nkerta,

34

43. 44.

45.

46.

47. 48. 49.

KEMALISM Helsinki, WSOY, 1930; Mustapha Kemal. Between Europe and Asia. A Biography, New York, Doubleday, Doran & Co., 1931; Mustapha Kemal. Between Europe and Asia. A Biography, London, William Heinemann, 1931; Gasi Mustafa` Kemal: il fondatore della nuova Turchia, Milano-Roma, Treves-Treccani-Tumminelli, 1932; Kama´l Atatu¨rk (Ga´zi Musztafa Kema´l). Fe´l e´vsza´zad To¨ro¨korsza´g to¨rte´nelme´bo˝l, Budapest, Horva´th Bela, 1937; Gazi Mustafa Kemal. Intre Asia ¸si Europa, Craiova, Scrisul Romaˆnesc, 1944. The Turkish edition came much later: Gazi Mustafa Kemal: Avrupa ile Asya Arasındaki Adam, Istanbul, Remzi Kitabevi, 1981. Harold Courtenay Armstrong, Grey Wolf. Mustafa Kemal: An Intimate Study of a Dictator, London, Arthur Barker, 1932. Mustafa Yılmaz, “Harold C. Armstrong’un ‘Grey Wolf Mustafa Kemal, An Intimate Study of a Dictator’ (Bozkurt-Mustafa Kemal)’ Kitabı U¨zerine”, Atatu¨rk Aras¸tırma Merkezi Dergisi, 11, 1995, pp. 721– 56. The book was partly translated to Turkish by Peyami Safa (Bozkurt, Istanbul, Sel Yayınları, 1955) – but the later took care of “omitting the controversial portions as well as the irritating subtitle” (M. Naeem Qureshi, Ottoman Turkey . . ., pp. 189– 215:211). Another example is the biography of Philippe de Zara, Mustapha Ke´mal, Dictateur, Paris, Fernand Sorlot, 1936, which was also immediately banned from Turkey by the Cabinet (Prime Minister Archives, Ankara, 030.18.1.2/069.086). By “Global West”, we mean Westerners, but also Westernised elites from the non-West. See, for example, the case of Jinnah, who read Grey Wolf with great enthusiasm while living in exile in London. Qureshi, Ottoman Turkey . . ., p. 189. Qureshi, Ottoman Turkey . . ., p. 148. This work is rightfully saluted as “one of the rare cases where the Kemalist reforms and its perceptions are discussed from ‘non-Western’ perspectives” (Vahram Ter-Matevosyan, “Turkish transformation and the Soviet Union: Navigating Through the Soviet Historiography on Kemalism”, Middle Eastern Studies, 53, 2017, pp. 281– 96. The book is problematic in some aspects, though, in the sense that, in its endorsement of the Turkish perspective, it duplicates some of the most critical features of Turkish official historiography. See, for example, the way the Armenian Genocide is referred to, as “alleged Armenian massacres” in the introduction, p. xx. Martin S. Kramer, Islam Assembled: the Advent of the Muslim Congresses, New York, Columbia University Press, 1986. A. Jahic´, Hikjmet, op. cit., p. 175. Fabio Giomi, “Entre local et transnational. Penser la laı¨cite´ chez les musulmans de Bosnie-Herze´govine”, in Amin Elias, Augustin Jomier and Anaı¨s-Trissa Khatchadourian (eds), Laı¨cite´s et musulmans, de´bats et expe´riences, Berne, Peter Lang, 2014, pp. 241–58. On the same topic, see Nathalie Clayer and Eric Germain (eds), Islam in interwar Europe, London, Hurst & Co, 2008; Anne-Laure Dupont and Catherine Mayeur-Jaouen (eds), “De´bats intellectuels au Moyen-Orient dans l’entre-

INTRODUCTION

50.

51. 52. 53.

54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59. 60.

61.

35

deux-guerres”, Revue des mondes musulmans et de la Me´diterrane´e, 95–8, 2002; and Michel Bozdemir and Jean-Louis Bacque´-Grammont, “Mustafa Kemal et le Califat”, Les Annales de l’Autre Islam, 2, 1994, pp. 81–105. Riza Nour, “Phisionomie [sic] ancienne et actuelle de la langue turque”, Revue de turcologie, 2, 1932, pp. 32– 40, 38 –9; and Rıza Nur, Hayatım ve Hatıratım, Istanbul, Altındag˘ Yayınları, 1967, vol. 3, t. IV, pp. 1476– 80, 76 (cited in Emmanuel Szurek, Gouverner par les mots. Une histoire linguistique de la Turquie nationaliste, PhD Dissertation, Paris, EHESS, 2013, pp. 347 – 50). On recent allegations rearding Mustafa Kemal as being a “secret Jew”, and more generally and the Do¨nme mythology in Modern Turkey, see Marc Baer, The Do¨nme. Jewish Converts, Muslim Revolutionaries, and Secular Turks, Stanford, Stanford University Press, 2010, p. ix. William L. Cleveland, “Atatu¨rk Viewed by his Arab Contemporaries: the Opinion of Sati’ al-Husri and Shakib Arslan”, International Journal of Turkish Studies, ii/2, 1981, p. 21. Haniog˘lu, Atatu¨rk . . ., p. 139. Fabio Giomi, “Domesticating Kemalism. Conflicting Muslim Narratives on Turkey in Interwar Yugoslavia”, in Catharina Raudvere (ed.), Nostalgia, Loss and Creativity in South East Europe. Political and Cultural Representations of the Past, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2018, pp. 151–87. Qureshi, Ottoman Turkey . . ., pp. 151–5. Francois Georgeon, Abdulhamid II. Le sultan calife, Paris, Fayard, 2003, pp. 192– 212. Moazzam Anwar, Jamal al-Din al-Afghani: A Muslim Intellectual, Concept, New Delhi, 1984. Mustafa A. Mulalic´, Orijent na Zapadu: savremeni kulturni i socijalni problemi muslimana jugoslovena, Belgrade, Skerlic´, 1936, p. 433. Cemil Aydın, The Politics of Anti-Westernism in Asia. Visions of World Order in Pan-Islamic and Pan-Asian Thought, New York, Columbia University Press, 2007, pp. 127– 60. Cited in ibid., p. 150. See also Michael Adas, “Contested Hegemony: The Great War and the Afro-Asian Assault on the Civilizing Mission Ideology”, Journal of World History, 15, 1, 2004, pp. 31 – 63. It is worth noticing that Mao Tse-tung refered contemptuously to Kuomintang nationalism as “Kemalism”. Earl Swisher, “Review: China’s Destiny. By Chiang Kai-shek, Wang Chung-Hui, Lin Yutang, New York, Mac Millan, 1947; Philip Jaffe, China’s Destiny and Chinese Economic Theory, New York, Roy Publishers, 1947; Mao Tse-tung, China’s New Democracy, New York, Workers Library Publishers, 1944, The Far Eastern Quarterly, 10, 1, 1950, pp. 89 –95: 92. Emmanuel Szurek, “Go West: Variations on Kemalist Orientalism”, in Francois Pouillon and Jean Claude Vatin (eds), After Orientalism. Critical Perspectives on Western Agency and Eastern Re-appropriations, Leiden, Brill, 2015, pp. 103 – 20.

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62. Little is known about this figure. Originally from the Albanian provinces of the Ottoman Empire, he was elected deputy of Debre/Debar/Dibra in the Assembly of 1908. 63. In this respect, Gu¨ntekin is highly illustrative of Emilio Gentile’s classical assessment of Fascism in Il culto del littorio. La sacralizzazione della politica nell’Italia fascista, Roma, Laterza, 1993. Gu¨ntekin’s original quote: “Les adeptes des the´ories che`res aux libe´raux du XIXe`me sie`cle, he´ritiers de la re´volution francaise, he´sitent. Mais le mot d’ordre du ke´malisme et du fascisme leur re´pond en comparant les re´sultats. Et il n’y a aucun doute que le patriotisme universel suivra le meˆme chemin salutaire. C’est la` la religion des vivants; car l’avenir n’appartient pas aux morts . . .”. 64. Ihrig, Atatu¨rk. . ., pp. 7, 151. 65. For a summary see, Hakkı Uyar, “1930’lar Tu¨rkiye’sinde Kemalizm Algılamaları”, Atatu¨rkcu¨ Du¨s¸u¨ncenin Bilimsel ve Felsefi Temelleri, Gazi U¨niversitesi Yay., Ankara, 2007, pp. 1–8. 66. NARA, College Park, Maryland. Records of Foreign Service Posts, Diplomatic Posts, Turkey, Vol. 442, August 1932. 67. Yves Cohen, Le sie`cle des chefs. Une histoire transnationale du commandement et de l’autorite´, 1890– 1940, Paris, Amsterdam, 2012. 68. Enzo Traverso, Le Totalitarisme. Le XXe sie`cle en de´bat, Paris, E´ditions du Seuil, 2001, pp. 124– 36. 69. Clearly, the years that preceded the death of Mustafa Kemal were a moment of intense theorisation. According to Landau, the book of Tekin Alp, Kemalizm, “provided the first detailed analysis of Kemalism ever to appear in Turkish or in French” (Jacob M. Landau, Tekinalp, Turkish Patriot. 1883– 1961, Istanbul, Nederlands Historisch-Archeologisch Instituut te Istanbul, 1984, p. 12). The same year, though, the above-mentioned Mehmet S¸eref published his Kamaˆlizm – one of the most ecstatic handbooks on the “Turkish revolution” and a tribute to the “religion of Kemalism” (Kamaˆlizm: C.H. Partisi Programının I˙zahı, Istanbul, Muallim Ahmet Halit Kitap Evi, 1936). Another overlooked example is that of “The Principles of the Revolution of Kemalism” by the pedagogue Mehmet Saffet Engin, a truly encyclopaedic and comparative endeavour to assess the proprieties of “the Turkish race” in the history of mankind, and demonstrate the uniqueness of Kemalism, as a doctrine, in the history of philosophy (Kemalizm I˙nkilaˆbının Prensipleri. Bu¨yu¨k Tu¨rk Medeniyetinin Tarihıˆ ve Sosyolojik Tetkikine Methal, Istanbul, Cumhuriyet Matbaası, 1938, 3 vols). Finally, see the largely forgotten attempt to expose “l’originalite´ de la nouvelle philosophie kamaˆliste” by Djafer Tayyar, in his E´tude philosophique et analyse psychologique sur les origines de I, l’ultra-popularisme, philosophie moderne de Kamaˆl Atatu¨rk, II, la civilisation turque actuelle, III, l’e´mancipation de la femme turque, Paris, Librairie orientaliste Paul Geuthner, 1935. 70. Burhan Asaf (Belge), “Fas¸izm ve Tu¨rk millıˆ kurtulus¸ hareketi”, Kadro, 8, 1932, pp. 36 – 7. The “Free Party in Izmir” is a reference to the short-lived Serbest Cumhuriyet Firkası. We are grateful to Avi Mizrahi for letting us use this

INTRODUCTION

71.

72.

73. 74. 75.

37

quote, which he used in his presentation at the series of seminars “Sociohistoire de la Turquie re´publicaine” (EHESS, November 2016). The translation is ours. Recep Peker, “Les lignes essentielles du nouveau programme”, discours prononce´ a` la re´union du 13 mai 1935 du Grand Congre`s du Parti Re´publicain du Peuple (official translation), Deux discours de R. Peker, secre´taire ge´ne´ral du Parti re´publicain du people, Ankara, s.l., 1935. For an overview of the main foreign publications on Mustafa Kemal and Republican Turkey, see Azmi Su¨slu¨ (ed.), Atatu¨rk ve Tu¨rkiye Cumhuriyeti Konusunda Yurtdıs¸ında Yayınlanmıs¸ Kitaplar Bibliyografyası, Ankara, Atatu¨rk Aras¸tırma Merkezi, 2000. Go¨kalp and Georgeon, Ke´malisme. Christian Jacob, Qu’est-ce qu’un lieu de savoir, Paris, OpenEdition Press, 2014, p. 55 (and more generally the chapter “Spatial turn”). Giomi, Domesticating Kemalism.

CHAPTER 1 KEMALISM AND THE ADOPTION OF THE CIVIL CODE IN ALBANIA (1926—9) Nathalie Clayer

If we consider the opinion of certain authors of the period, it would appear that there were virtually no similarities between the civil code Albania adopted in 1928–9 and that adopted in Turkey in 1926, and hence with the Swiss Code the latter was largely based on. Professor Georges-Henri Bousquet, for instance, from Algiers University, argued that the Albanian Civil Code was an (almost) unique construct, and in any case very different from that drawn up in Turkey, affirming that: The Albanian Civil Code is a very curious and very interesting piece of work, and far more original than the Turkish Civil Code. With the exception of a few not very numerous and largely unimportant points, the latter reproduces the Swiss Civil Code, of which it is a simple translation, whereas the Albanian legislature has made so many borrowings and of such great variety that the resultant code almost amounts to an individual work, without even counting the fact that a certain number of provisions in this code are specific to Albania.1

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It was subsequently often stated – notably in Albania – that it had in fact been based on the French Code (with some arguing that it was the French Code as taken up and reworked in the Italian Code), or else a combination, in descending order of importance, of the French, Italian and Swiss Codes.2 However, examination of archival and press sources about the adoption of the civil code by the newly formed Albanian Republic3 brings a far more complex process to light, in which Turkey’s recent introduction, translation and adaptation of the Swiss Code4 was indeed also taken into consideration by the Albanians, precisely because it had just been carried out in Turkey. Although this option was eventually abandoned, this did not occur without a bitter struggle between those for and against the Kemalist Code, that is to say a Turkish model, and this despite the fact that debates focused on the Swiss Code rather than the Turkish Code, and on the differences between the Swiss Code and its Turkish adaptation.5 Why did things work out this way? Was the abandoning of the Turkish model associated with the balance of power within the legal and/or political fields within Albania? Or did it arise more from general reticence about the model afforded by Kemalist Turkey at that period, and from a preference for other models? In what terms did the Albanian actors think of the Kemalist model? When looking at this aborted transfer, should we not distinguish between, on the one hand, the principle underlying the reform (the axiology of reform as a means of political action) and, on the other hand, the actual content of the various reforms, in this case civil law? Policy transfer studies suggest that we need to enquire more specifically into the transfer object, its exact nature, its motifs, the actors involved and the ways in which the model was selected. Before examining these processes, it is worth pointing out how specific legal reform is, and more particularly reforms to civil law as conducted since the early nineteenth century. Jean-Louis Halpe´rin has argued that the nineteenth century saw the codification of private law spread across various continents.6 At first this was strongly influenced by the Napoleonic Civil Code. The French Code was taken as a model in various countries across Europe, as well as in North and Latin America, because it was perceived as a revolutionary symbol, as a tool for conservative states, or as a kind of talisman for modernising part of a country’s laws. However, as of the late nineteenth century there were

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various other codes to rival it (such as the German Civil Code, drawn up in 1896, and the Swiss Civil Code, formulated in 1907). The fact that Turkey and Albania adopted a civil code in the mid-1920s was part of this larger phenomenon and desire to codify private law, in which the talismanic modernising aspect was not wholly absent. We also need to be alert to the specific nature of the case of Albania with regard to Kemalist Turkey. Albania was a very recent (and small)7 state at that time, having issued from the Ottoman Empire and acquired its sovereignty in 1913, in the wake of the Balkan Wars. This sovereignty was fragile, having been brought into question during World War I when the country was occupied by various foreign powers, and, after having been recognised once again in 1920 – 1 by various states in the League of Nations, was once again being contested by its neighbouring countries (Italy, Greece and Yugoslavia). Albania’s territory was made up of former Ottoman provinces but, unlike the other Balkan states (Greece, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia and Romania), was not home to populations who spoke Turkish as their mother tongue, and so was not part of the space within which “national” Turkist or Panturkist policies were likely to be deployed (such as the introduction of the new alphabet, for example). The inhabitants sometimes spoke Turkish there, especially when they had studied in Ottoman schools. But the principal mother tongues were Albanian, Greek, Aromanian, Rom and various Slavic languages. Albanian was imposed as the official language to the detriment of the former languages of culture, namely Turkish, Greek and to a lesser extent Italian and the Slavic languages. But the majority of the population in Albania was, as in Turkey, Muslim (about seventy per cent of the population at that time). In addition to this its leaders, many of whom came from the same Ottoman mould as those in Kemalist Turkey, shared the latter’s “obsession with civilisation”8 and endeavoured to implement reforms to this end.9 And amongst such reforms legal reform had great symbolic significance. Adopting new codes – and in particular a civil code – seemed at the time to be an indispensable prerequisite to joining the circle of “civilised” countries and affirming sovereignty. It is this process – involving complex transfer mechanisms between Albania on the one hand, and Turkey and various Western European countries on the other – that I shall be studying here. An additional purpose is to understand how Kemalism, or the Kemalist model, was

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itself partially constructed by these processes. In order to do so I shall be distinguishing between three phases running over a short period lasting four years in all. The first phase, 1926, corresponds to when the project was set up to transfer the newly adopted Turkish Civil Code to Albania; the second phase, starting in early 1927, corresponds to when this project was rejected in favour of a transfer which, in theory, if we focus solely on the debates, was to be based on the French Code (though it was in fact a complex elaboration based on several models); the third phase, in 1928– 9, corresponds to the legitimisation of the new code, identified as the work of the Head of State, Zog – where this final phase corresponds to a redefining of the Kemalist model, to be drawn upon or not depending upon circumstances.

Imitating the “New Turkey” by Adopting the Swiss Code From the moment the Turkish Republic was founded, the idea of imitating the “new Turkey” was prevalent within the Albanian public sphere. In the field of law, the reforms undertaken in Turkey gave rise – as we shall see – to a project which, though preceded by internal debates, was one of mimetic isomorphism, with the circulation of men and texts between Turkey and Albania, and of normative isomorphism due to the Ottoman training of its lawyers.10 It was a matter of imitating the behaviour adopted by those who were or else were perceived to be similar (here the Turks adopting European legal codes) and of replicating models enjoying sizeable legitimacy capital (here the Swiss Code, due to the obsession with Westernisation). The transfer project was therefore clearly a response to the sense of urgency and uncertainty stemming from the fragile sovereignty of the Albanian state,11 hence the idea of translating a code. More specifically, the choice of the Turkish model (consisting in adopting the Swiss Code) arose from linguistic and cultural proximity, as well as from relations previously built up within the Ottoman realm.12 Most of the Albanian elites, who had attended Ottoman schools, continued to read the Turkish press and books published in Turkey.13 The choice of the Swiss Code, which had just been imported to Turkey and adopted in 1926, also stemmed from the fact that, during this first phase, the actors in the political sphere left the choice of model to those in the legal sphere, as we are going to see.

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The “new Turkey” as a reference model for Westernisation In the early 1920s, when Albania’s sovereignty was becoming more firmly established, local officials introduced various measures to organise the country’s administration, whilst politicians and journalists debated how to forge the new state and what actions were required. In 1923– 4, against the backdrop of the increasingly keen political contest between the supporters and opponents of Ahmet Zogu, the “new Turkey” and the measures being progressively adopted by the Turkish Government came to serve as reference points for Albanian intellectuals. This was the case in various domains, including justice, education, religion, the status of women and relations between the Army and the political sphere. In both parliament and the press, supporters of these reforms frequently contrasted this “new Turkey”, where they said the situation was to change radically, to an “old Albania” doomed to immobility.14 After 1925, when Ahmet Zogu forcibly resumed power,15 the regime drifted towards authoritarianism. But the desire to adapt the country’s laws and administration remained a recurrent theme amongst certain officials and young intellectuals. The new laws enacted by Mustafa Kemal and his government continued to be presented as examples to be followed. The basic idea was that it was a shame to see Turkey altering things and Westernising when it lay in the Orient, whilst Albania, though situated in Europe, continued to slumber and remain Oriental.16 In the specific case of justice and legal codes, there had been intense discussion in Albania prior to Turkey’s adoption/adaptation of the Swiss Civil Code in 1926, about replacing or improving the mecelle (mexhele in Albanian),17 particularly in 1924 under the “revolutionary”18 government. The mecelle was the code then in use, drafted in Istanbul between 1869 and 1876, and excluding personal law and family law. It was primarily a codification of Islamic jurisprudence.19 This debate as conducted in the press related, firstly, to the links between law and civilisation (or religion), and, secondly, to questions of social status and legitimacy within the legal field. Press articles also included technical analysis of the content of the codes, together with the question of whether commercial law and personal and family law should be taken into account, including women’s rights. Indeed, those who were in favour of replacing the mecelle – who tended to be young lawyers, such as the barrister Agjah Libohova20 – pointed to

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the gaps in the mecelle and its shortcomings in these various domains. But above all they delegitimised both it and its adepts by associating it with the Orient, presenting it as a theocratic form of Arab jurisprudence upheld by fanatical lawyers, incompatible with modern civilisation and with the mentality of the local population.21 They thus aligned themselves with what I refer to as the “Western Future” camp, thereby relegating their opponents to the “Oriental Past”. Their adversaries, for their part, such as Behxhet Shapati who had trained principally as a qadi (judge in a sharia court),22 presented themselves as “old patriots” enjoying the benefits of experience and education, and delegitimised the first camp by associating their views with inexperience. In defending their position the supporters of the mecelle thus inverted the Orient-West/Past-Future pairings, observing that their detractors were supporting a French Code dating back to the Napoleonic period.23 Though no (or little) reference was as yet made to Turkey, the debate in Albania and the course of events changed because of Turkey’s adopting not just a new civil code, but also a new penal code and a new commercial code between February and April 1926. This gave considerable impetus to a similar process to adopt new codes, at a time when the internal situation in Albania was also more favourable towards such a move. Politics had more or less stabilised with the instigation of authoritarian power under Ahmet Zogu. He had also just signed treaties with various neighbouring countries, and with Turkey, and was preparing to sign a treaty with Italy in November 1926. And so rather than just envisaging a similar process, the idea was of an actual transfer, involving a direct translation of the codes adopted by Turkey.

Albania on the way to adopting the Swiss Civil Code (in its Turkish version?) In November 1925 the Albanian minister of justice had already suggested to the cabinet that a committee be established to draft new laws to replace those he considered outdated and inappropriate.24 However, it was only a few months later, with the adoption of these new codes by the Turkish Great National Assembly, that the process to manufacture these new laws was actually launched. The events in Turkey led to a circulation of information, speeches and legal texts, both via direct channels between Turkey and Albania and more generally. This lent support to the idea of adopting the Swiss Code, as Turkey had

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done, out of mimetic isomorphism, thereby accelerating and remodelling the reform process. At first it was mainly people writing in the press who spread news of the reforms taking place in Turkey – most of whom were probably lawyers.25 In February and March 1926 two Albanian newspapers in Korce¨ (in the southeast of the country) published articles praising the Turkish example, and urging the Albanian authorities to follow it and adopt a new code.26 One of the authors of these anonymous articles made the more specific suggestion of translating the Swiss Civil Code as a compromise solution between, on the one hand, the young lawyers who had studied in Europe and, on the other, the older generation who had studied during the Ottoman Empire and who mastered the Turkish language. The Swiss Civil Code already existed in French, German and Italian versions, as well as in Turkish – at least in adapted form, something the article did not mention. For in the ensuing debates it was mainly a question of the Swiss Code rather than the Kemalist Code, the legitimacy of the former being far greater in this “Westernising” frame of mind, just as in Turkey it was a matter of the Swiss Code and not of a new code resulting from its adaptation to the local context. To support his argument, the author of this first article drew on reports about the Turkish measures published in the Western press, in addition to gathering information from Turkish newspapers or else by spending time in Turkey, just as his colleagues were wont to do.27 And so in order to explain the revolutionary nature and wholly magical “Westernising” effect of the Turkish reform, he translated the title and first part of an article published in the French newspaper Le Matin (Morning):28 The new Turkey casts down the past and Westernizes. Perhaps never in the world has there been such a revolution as the Turkish revolution, so utterly and rapidly transforming the country. It would be seriously mistaken to think this has merely modified the form of government. In fact it has transformed the very frame of mind of the nation, or at least minds of those who, belonging to the enlightened classes, are seeking to lead their country, which has been so cruelly afflicted, towards a great new destiny. A remarkable proof of this was afforded yesterday in Ankara. The Grand National Assembly unanimously decided to adopt the civil code throughout Turkey.

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And so by razing the mecelle, an ancient and outdated code of nearly 2000 articles, including 300 which were scarcely applicable, Turkey is calling on the West to provide clear, just, formulations. It is a very considerable event. Polygamy, which was once tolerated, has been wholly abolished at a single stroke. Civil marriage has been introduced. All religious denominations must now bow to the same law. Women, whom men could previously repudiate at will, are now not only defended by the law but may also file divorce proceedings against their husband. Matrimonial regimes have been introduced. All children have the same rights to inherit from their parents. In a word the family has been created in Turkey, and at the same stroke Turkish women have acquired all the rights of Western women. Discourse produced by the Kemalists about themselves and the “Turkish revolution” was thus taken up by the Western papers, which in turn acted as a legitimising authority for the Albanians. But if the Albanian newspapers appropriated this legitimising discourse, they also adapted it. Firstly, the author omits the part of the article in Le Matin about the new agreement between France and Turkey, which was not relevant to his purpose. Most importantly, in the translation into Albanian, the word “Swiss” is added when referring to the code that has been adopted “throughout Turkey”, where this was not specified in the original French. The author of the article in Le Matin probably had no wish to emphasise that the Turkish leaders had not opted for the French model. The Albanian author on the other hand points out that it is Swiss in origin following the prevalent tendency in Turkey at the time. This legitimisation via the Western point of view was a recurrent feature, often including some degree of adaptation. Albanian newspapers at the period contained other references, amplified via the international press, to Turkish governmental rhetoric vaunting the revolutionary transformations to Turkey’s civilisation, and the social transformations with regard to women and relations between the sexes supposedly stemming directly from these.29 At the same time articles were also published discrediting “reactionary” movements opposed to the Gazi and his “friends”.30 Certain Albanian newspapers went further and applauded dictatorial systems with their tendency to suppress all forms

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of opposition. Ahmet Zogu, considered as the saviour of the nation, was called upon to follow the path traced out by Mussolini and Mustafa Kemal.31 The idea was that in Albania, just as in Turkey, reforms needed to be imposed for the good of the nation. Other than through the press, Turkey’s legal reforms were immediately known in detail in Albania thanks to a second channel, namely the diplomatic network. In March 1926 Rauf Fico, the new Albanian Ambassador to the Turkish Government, arrived in Ankara following on from the establishment of relations between the two countries. Rauf Fico had graduated from the Ottoman School of Administration (the Mekteb-i Mu¨lkiye) in Istanbul, and held various positions as sub-governor (kaymakam) in the Balkans and Eastern Anatolia prior to 1912, when he joined the newly formed Albanian Government.32 Having been educated in the Empire, and having socialised within the Ottoman administration, he experienced no difficulties in following what was happening in Turkey and selecting what he deemed useful to the Albanian Government. One month after arriving in the new Turkish capital, he sent the minister of justice the new penal code and a series of press articles about the new laws, via the intermediary of the minister of foreign affairs. He also promised to send the civil code once it was published. He insisted particularly on the content of a newspaper interview of the Turkish Minister of Justice Mahmud Esat, which Fico argued clearly showed the line adopted by the Turkish Government in drafting the new laws.33 There is no doubt that this material was taken into account by the Albanian minister of justice. More generally, the legal professions were affected by events in Turkey either via this channel, or else direct contacts, the general and specialised Turkish press, and time spent in Turkey. We shall see later on how this circulation of men and objects (legal texts, books, specialised periodicals and written commentaries) fed into subsequent debates. At the ministry itself the issue was officially taken up as of June 1926. The minister decided to “improve the laws, starting with civil proceedings and justices of the peace”. He further chose to draw on specialists in the field, sending out a memorandum to the provincial public prosecutors, ordering them to call a meeting with judges and barristers so as to identify improvements to be carried out.34 This reform process only really got going when a new minister was appointed in

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August. The legislative committee envisaged nine months earlier was now set up, in order to “improve and modernise the laws”, as it was announced officially. The committee had five members: Faik (Shatku) Dibra,35 who was secretary general of the ministry, Avni Dabulla and Idriz Minga, judges from the Court of Appeal, and two barristers, Agjah Libohova (who had played an active part in the debates of 1924–5) and Thoma Orolloga.36 The committee was thus a committee of specialists. Faik Dibra, who had left Turkey as recently as 1924 to join the Albanian administration, had studied law in Istanbul, as had Agah Libohova and probably the two other members from the Court of Appeal. The only non-Muslim on the committee, Thoma Orolloga – an Orthodox Christian – had for his part studied law in Athens and Paris.37 The new minister drew even more extensively on the input of specialists when he sent out a new memorandum to the provinces three weeks later calling for their assistance to the committee. The purpose of this was to sound out the opinion of judges and barristers about “improving the laws”, thereby recognising their authority in the subject.38 In parallel to this the minister wrote to the Albanian representations in Vienna, Ankara and Geneva to obtain the legislative texts of the countries in question.39 It would appear that the minister already had the German, French and Italian Codes in his possession. In any case it may be noted that the Ministry and the committee saw fit to examine not just the Turkish Code, but also those from Western and Central European countries as well. But what did the legal profession think about this? The results of the survey carried out by the Ministry show that opinion at this stage was mainly in favour of translating the Swiss Civil Code, because this was the one that had just been adopted in Turkey.40 The reasoning behind this was that it was necessary to adopt the laws of “civilised countries”, but at the same time the culture of current and future Albanian lawyers needed to be taken into account as a matter of normative isomorphism. The solution was thus to adopt the Swiss Civil Code, considered as having two leading qualities: firstly, it was the most recent civil code to have been drawn up, and secondly, it had been adopted by Turkey. This was the general tenor of the response from the sub-prefecture of Libohove¨ (in the south of the country), for instance, which also suggested certain adaptations to the Albanian context:

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The [local] corps of barristers, considering that: the Albanian Republic needs to immerse itself in the life of Western principles and develop its citizenship, and, given equally that business relations with foreign countries are increasing daily, and further that the laws in force are so old as to no longer meet needs and necessities, is of the opinion that the laws of the most advanced states should be accepted. Amongst these, preference goes to the Swiss Civil Code, the Italian Penal Code, and the German Commercial Code, together with all their procedures. We would add that these laws will be more favourable to Albania for the following reasons: most of its lawyers have studied in Turkish universities, where these laws have been adopted and translated by the Turkish Republic, and that will facilitate things all round; but in the case of modernising laws and the wholesale adoption of the above-mentioned civil code, laws will need to be drawn up for the Administration and the Land Registry, etc., for these codes have effects on how the administration is organised. Equally, given the psychology of the Albanian people, the code relating to family law is not appropriate [. . .] Certain modifications are thus required.41 There was however a minority of specialists opposed to this way of seeing things. Whilst accepting that “laws from the civilised world” needed to be adopted, they recommended retaining the mecelle whilst making some improvements to it.42 These disagreements soon appeared in the press, and several legal specialists wrote articles,43 including committee member Thoma Orolloga, who confirmed that the committee had ruled in accordance with majority opinion, and went back over the arguments already presented: In the official gazette the president of the republic expressed his desire to improve and modernise the law, for it did not suit the needs of the people and no longer enabled the country to progress. The commission was set up at the suggestion of the new Minister of Justice, Kedhi, and asked to give its opinion about the needs for change. It presented its report, first setting out the drawbacks with current laws, then explaining the changes to be made. In tandem to this the minister of justice sent out a memorandum asking

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barristers and judges for their opinions, and on the basis of their responses on this point concluded that most lawyers are in favour of a general improvement to the law, and so the committee was tasked with modernising and improving the law. What basis did the committee adopt? In its report the committee suggested basing the penal code on the Italian Code, and commercial code on the German Code. And for the civil code? The civil code (mexhele) lacks sections on personal law, family law, inheritance, etc. That is why it was suggested to take the Swiss Civil Code, with certain modifications to comply to the customs and needs of our population. Why were these laws selected over others? The committee not only considered them to be the most complete codes, but in addition to this the work of judges will be facilitated for many judges and barristers will be able to use commentaries and books of jurisprudence written in the Turkish language, given that Turkey has just made new laws on the basis of said codes.44 Whereas the Albanian minister of justice had followed the president’s wishes and launched the process “to improve and modernise” the law, the alternative seems to have changed during the ensuing debate among specialists, crystallising around a view in which the two concepts no longer worked conjointly but were instead opposed. Modernisation became synonymous with adopting the Swiss Civil Code and the other codes adopted by Turkey, whereas improvement became synonymous with adapting the mecelle. In both cases the example of Turkey was accorded central place. The dispute clearly shows both parties referring directly to the public debate that had or was still taking place in Turkey. Behxhet Shapati, a barrister from Vlore¨, who was in favour of simply modifying the mecelle, referred to the Turkish press and more specifically articles published in the I˙kdam newspaper.45 Writing against him, Ymer Berati, a doctor in law from the Faculty in Istanbul, supported his case using the Explanatory Report drawn up by the Turkish minister on abrogating the mecelle and adopting the civil code, as well as the discussion he had had with the Albanian Ambassador to Turkey, Rauf Fico, who on returning to Ankara had told him about the speech the same minister had given at Izmir.46 Nevertheless, there was a degree of ambiguity within the majority opinion about the transfer process to be envisaged. Was it a matter of

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translating the Swiss Code, as Turkey had done (with some adaptations)? Was it a matter of translating from the Turkish into Albanian the Swiss Code as adopted and adapted by Turkish lawyers? Or was it a matter of enabling lawyers to use the translations into Turkish, and especially those of the provisions governing procedures and various commentaries? The wording used suggest that these various options were all envisaged, with some people – such as a lawyer writing in August 1926 in the Gjirokaste¨r newspaper Demokratia (Democracy) – simply suggesting that the new code as translated and printed in Turkey should be adopted outright so as to cut down on state expenditure and avoid having to translate the code into Albanian.47 Be that as it may, this transfer never took place. For surprisingly, in late 1926 or early 1927, when the new Penal code had been adopted – based on the Italian Penal Code as in Turkey – the political authorities imposed the idea of adopting a basis other than the Swiss Civil Code. The debate became a competition between two projects to adapt Western laws to the country, and finally a dispute about rejecting or adopting the Swiss Code, frequently assimilated to a Turkish model.

What was Being Rejected – the Swiss Model or the Turkish Model? How are we to understand this change? What caused it? Was it voluntary or involuntary – in so far as it is possible to assess degrees of constraint? Was it a matter of rejecting the Swiss model, or the Turkish model, or else was the new choice endowed with legitimacy because of other considerations? In order to answer these questions we need first to look at those involved. The involvement of one person – Mehdi Frashe¨ri – would appear to have been decisive here. Inspired by his contacts with the international networks gravitating around the League of Nations in Geneva, and thanks to his position close to the minister of justice and to the President of the Republic Ahmet Zogu, he was able to alter the choice of the committee and impose political and administrative authority over the legal field. This change led to certain people disparaging the previous choice, increasingly considered as being associated with basically opting for Turkish and “Oriental” civilisation. Finally, we shall see whether this decision had a broader effect on the way

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Albanian intellectuals and officials saw Kemalist Turkey as an example to be followed.

Changes in the people involved and a split in the committee It would appear that the main person behind abandoning the projected use of the Swiss Code was not a lawyer, but a high-ranking official within the Albanian administration, Mehdi Frashe¨ri, who held a ministerial portfolio on several occasions. He was close to Faik Shatku, the secretary general of the Ministry of Justice and chairman of the committee in charge of modernising the laws, who apparently suggested he join the committee.48 It is hard to ascertain exactly whether his joining the committee enabled him to put forward a different solution for the new civil code, or whether he was in fact appointed on the strength of having put forward a new solution. Current indications are that latter case is the more probable of the two, given the conflict surrounding the reconstitution of the committee,49 as we are going to see. But let us first see who Mehdi Frashe¨ri was. Like Rauf Fico he had studied at the Ottoman School of Administration (Mekteb-i mu¨lkiye), and like him had been an Ottoman sub-governor and governor in the Balkans and in Anatolia, joining the Albanian administration in 1913. After a period of exile between 1916 in 1918 spent in Switzerland and Italy, he had held various ministerial positions, before then becoming involved in the adoption of the civil code. His mastery of French meant it was not long before he was appointed as the newly formed state’s representative on international bodies, and in 1914 he was the Albanian delegate to the International Commission of Control overseeing the administration of the new Principality. At the end of World War I he was one of the Albanian representatives at the Peace Conference. He also represented the country at the Lausanne Conference of 1922, and was on the commission that drew up the borders between Albania and Greece and Albania and Yugoslavia. Importantly, as of 1922 he was sent regularly to Geneva as a delegate to the League of Nations.50 According to his memoirs51 he came into contact with French and Italian lawyers via his positions in Geneva and his international sociability stemming from the way the League of Nations operated. It was probably over the course of conversations about the legal changes envisaged in his country that these specialists recommended using the Franco-Italian project for that part of the civil code relating to

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obligations, which had just been drafted by a mixed committee and had not yet been adopted by either of the two countries in question. On returning to Tirana, Mehdi Frashe¨ri submitted this idea to the committee – in fact probably to the General Secretary of the Ministry Faik Shatku. In his memoirs he explains that the committee accepted his suggestion and that for the rest of the code it opted for the Italian Code, except for divorce, where it adopted the French Code as its model, also considering other codes for certain articles, including the German, Swiss, Egyptian and even Ottoman Codes.52 The account provided by Mehdi Frashe¨ri omits an important element in the political context of late 1926, when the choice of model to take for the civil code was shifting. It is quite possible that the rapprochement with Italy and the signing of the first Pact of Tirana between the two countries influenced the decision to opt for a solution that aligned the laws of the two countries. Mehdi Frashe¨ri states for his part that he preferred the Italian Code because it was more recent, but that the committee decided against using just one code. Albania’s new civil code did however borrow extensively from the Italian Code, though it is not possible to affirm that there was any external encouragement from Italian diplomatic circles.53 Public debate, for that matter, focused on the opposition between the French Code and the Swiss Code, not on that between the Italian Code and the Swiss Code, perhaps because the Italian Code was affiliated to the French Code. But even more importantly Mehdi Frashe¨ri’s account glosses over the conflictual nature of events. This change in model was imposed on most lawyers and on the committee too, and it was the changes he instigated and his position of authority within the political and governmental field that brought this shift about. In many ways the new model was imposed in authoritarian manner, as had been the case in Turkey in the wake of Mahmut Esat Bozkurt’s decision, and it triggered sharp tensions. It is true that Faik Shatku Dibra and the two barristers Agjah Libohova and Thoma Orolloga – who in October 1926 had still been arguing in favour of the Swiss Code – would appear to have supported the new project. But the two committee members from the Court of Appeal, Idriz Minga and Avni Dabulla, were against it, perhaps for linguistic reasons as we shall see. Irrespective of that, in a report drawn up with colleagues from the Court of Appeal, they explained that since the forces in favour of either project (Swiss on the one hand, versus French or

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Franco-Italian on the other) were evenly balanced on the committee, it was the Ministry which gave its authorisation to take the French Code, not the Swiss Code, as the model.54 This led to their being removed from the committee and replaced by Mehdi Frashe¨ri himself. Independently of Idriz Minga and Avni Dabulla’s reaction, the legal field remonstrated strongly. In addition to a request for arbitration the members of the Court of Appeal presented to the Head of State, other lawyers who had been consulted the previous year and had pronounced in favour of the Swiss Code (because it had been adopted by Turkey) also addressed petitions to the president of the republic, calling for what they referred to as the Swiss project.55 It was the new committee which replied.56 In the light of these numerous reactions the minister of justice considered calling a meeting. But in March 1927 the President of the Court of Appeal, Terenc Toci, who was in favour of the French Code, categorically refused the suggestion that there be an official debate, meaning that the only forum left for discussion was the press; he probably acted this way because the majority of lawyers were in favour of the Swiss Code, that is to say, the Kemalist Code. His main argument was the legal and legitimate authority of the committee. But this did not prevent him from delegitimising his opponents by presenting them as the supporters of a Turkish model said to be that of “the Turkey of the past”.57

When the Swiss Code became associated with a contested Turkish model While the commission was working on all these codes over the course of 1927, in particular on the Italian Code issued from the Napoleonic code, debate focused on the opposition between the French Code on the one hand, and the Swiss Code on the other. Why was this? Firstly, supporters of the Kemalist model were in favour of the Swiss Code because it was the code Turkey had adopted. Secondly, the Albanian Government apparently preferred not to be too openly dependent upon its neighbour across the Adriatic so soon after the rapprochement with Italy, sealed by the pact of late 1926, and this led it to back the French model rather than the Italian model. Be that as it may, given this new situation Albanian lawyers were now divided into three groups: those in favour of keeping the mecelle and “improving” it; those in favour of drawing up a civil code based on the

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Swiss Code; and those supporting the French model. In fact, less and less was heard from the first group, many of whom were lawyers who had trained to be a qadi and whose Muslim religious sensibility was no doubt stronger. Behxhet Shapati, who championed this option in 1926, apparently because he wanted the abandoning of the mecelle to go on the record, was the only one to produce an article calling on the two other groups to produce precise arguments for each article to be drawn up for the new code, citing inheritance as a sensitive topic.58 Shapati even pointed out that the debate now opposed most lawyers, including those on the Court of Appeal who were in favour of the Swiss Code, to the (new) committee which, whilst working on multiple codes in ever more complex manner, championed the French Code. If we look at the profile of those who called on the Head of State to intervene in favour of the Swiss code – when that profile is known, which is not always the case – what emerges is that this group included several judges from the Court of Appeal – Mehmet Karagjozi, Salih Toro, Harilla Theodhosi and Dervish Sulo – alongside their colleagues Idriz Minga and Avni Dabulla, who had resigned from the committee.59 They were thus at the pinnacle of the country’s legal hierarchy. They were Muslim and had studied in Istanbul, apart from Harilla Theodhosi who was an Orthodox Christian but who, like his colleagues, had studied in Ottoman establishments (in this case the idadi in Manastir/Bitola).60 They had often played a role in setting up the justice system in the new Albanian state, such as Mehmet Karagjozi and Dervish Sulo, who had formulated the regulations governing the work of barristers.61 The group also included barristers from Gjirokaste¨r in the south of the country – both Muslims and Orthodox Christians – Ali Gabeci, Veis Jaho, Sami Kokalari, Lame Dilo, Leonidha Dhima, Apostol Dhima, Emin Kokalari and Qazim Kurti, who in response to the Ministry of Justice’s survey in 1926 had pronounced themselves in favour of the Swiss Code they felt to be more modern, and who had sent a petition to Ahmet Zogu protesting against the fact that their opinion as specialists had been called into question.62 It also included the barristers Ferid Nepravishta, Fevzi Ruli and Ali Vasfi,63 born like Dervish Sulo to qadi families in around 1880, and who had studied law in the Ottoman capital. A few months before sending their petition in support of the Swiss Code to the Head of State, all three of them had called for the qadi diploma to be recognised as a legal qualification, in order to include

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those who had trained as a qadi in the professional body of lawyers.64 In addition to Harilla Theodhosi, who has already been mentioned, two other barristers from Korce¨ championed the Swiss Code in the pages of the press, namely Petraq Kondi and Sabri Qyteza.65 Kondi was an Orthodox Christian, and he too belonged to the generation born around 1880 and having studied in the Ottoman capital.66 Qyteza was a Muslim with a similar profile, having been born in 1882 and having studied law in Istanbul. Both became involved in politics in the early twentieth century, with Qyteza being elected to the Ottoman Parliament in 1912, the same year that Kondi had been appointed to the Council of the Korce¨ Republic under French occupation during World War I. They then went on to work as judge and barrister in the new state of Albania.67 They all used references taken from the Turkish public sphere: the report justifying the adoption of the civil code in Turkey, a work by Professor Mis¸on Ventura,68 speeches and articles by the Turkish minister of justice, articles by famous authors (such as Halide Edip) in the Turkish press, as well as a periodical of legal studies published in Istanbul, though they did not explicitly state which one.69 They drew on this material to put forward two arguments used in Turkey: firstly, the Swiss Code would, in their opinion, make it possible to unite three “different elements”70 and would thus help unify the nation; and secondly, the French Code was less appropriate than the Swiss Code as it was far older, and so a considerable number of modifications would be required in translating/adapting it. To their minds the fact that Turkey had opted for the Swiss Code proved its superiority given the competence of the Turkish specialists and the country’s “degree of civilisation”, deemed to be superior to that of Albania. However, if we read between the lines, it would appear that what mattered most to them was the position within the legal field of those who, like them, had trained in Ottoman institutions, and whether or not it would be possible for them to continue to practice. Choosing a code which existed in Turkish, together with its commentaries, would ensure its applicability in Albania, as they pointed out, but also safeguard the authority of lawyers whose legal education and socialisation had taken place in Turkish.71 The positions taken up by those in favour of the French Code throw even more light on the social and professional stakes underlying the debate. This group is harder to identify clearly, being smaller in number

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and rarely making any open pronouncements. In March 1927 a group of barristers from Korce¨ came out in favour of the French model, but they preferred to remain anonymous.72 Only two barristers wrote articles in support of the position held by Mehdi Frashe¨ri, by the three other members of the committee – Faik Shatku Dibra, Thoma Orolloga and Agjah Libohova – and by Terenc Toci (of arbe¨resh origin from southern Italy), who has already been mentioned. The two in question were Ymer Berati, of whom it is known that he obtained his doctorate in law at Istanbul, and Kol Dhimitri, a young Catholic lawyer from Shkode¨r who had graduated from the University of Rome in 1921.73 It may be deduced that this group contained proportionately more non-Muslims, especially Catholics, that its members were a bit younger, that some of them had not studied at Istanbul and spoke French or Italian, even if some of them had, like their opponents, trained in the Ottoman capital and, if we look at the example of Agjah Libohova, had trained both as a qadi and as a lawyer. Whilst it is possible that these actors were connected by one or several social and political networks, there is insufficient data to affirm so. Above and beyond the question of sociological profiles, we need to remember, as Roger Chartier has argued, that the debate as it took place in 1927 and the contests over representation it conveyed were instrumental in “ordering the social structure”. Strategies with regard to symbolism “determine positions and relationships” and “build up for each class, group, or milieu a ‘perceived-being’ which is part of its identity”.74 The champions of the French Code, justifying their choice in terms of Westernisation, tended to recategorise the supporters of the Swiss Code and align them not with Switzerland or the “new Turkey” but with “ancient Turkey”, a place associated with religion, an “Oriental” language, and conservatism. Kol Dhimitri, for instance, presented them as lawyers who had studied at the University or qadi School in Istanbul, or as lowly practitioners of Ottoman law without any theoretical knowledge, in opposition to legal specialists having trained in Western universities.75 In particular the supporters of the French Code took the Turkish language argument and turned it back against their adversaries. It was said that knowledge of this language was in no way associated with sufficient legal knowledge.76 It was connected to the past. The barristers from Korce¨ said that “Turkish is not the language of the future and of studies. It has been removed from schools [in Albania] and furthermore cannot lend any assistance to commerce”. They also insinuated that choosing the Swiss

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Code would necessarily involve privileging Turkish, including for future generations: “Are we to close the schools bringing us European civilisation? Is French to be replaced by Turkish? Are we to block the career of young people who study in these establishments?” They thus clearly aligned the Turkish language with the older generation, the past and the Orient: “must the Albanian nation receive the light of Western law from a country with an Oriental language?”77 For the President of the Court of Appeal, Terenc Toci, the Turkish language and culture were opposed to European culture: “there is something I find very troubling about this mentality, for this mentality means that they seek and strive to ensure that we never have any cultural ‘homogeneity’ in Albania, for they try to follow Turkish culture as opposed to European culture”.78 In order to confine the Turkish language and its supporters to the Orient, the supporters of the French Code placed them back in the past and the time of the mecelle. The supporters of the Swiss Code, having trained in the Ottoman capital, endowed with insufficient theoretical knowledge, and promoting the use of the Turkish language, were thus said to be supporters of the Turkey of the past and former supporters of the mecelle to boot. Kol Dhimitri thus ironised: “I do not wish to say ‘yesterday you were for the mecelle, and now you are for a civil code’”.79 The supporters of the Swiss model were also said to be guided more by faith than by reason – they had sacralised the mecelle, and were now defending the Swiss Code without any justification. This line of reasoning also confined Turkish judges to the past: the Korce¨ barristers wondered how the Swiss Code could be applied in Turkey “with judges without any experience of the new laws and trained solely in the provisions of the mecelle whose principles are totally different from those of Western laws”, further deeming that there was no comparison between “the services that would be rendered by the Turkish doctrine as it is emerging with their adoption of the new Swiss Code, and the benefit that would accrue from listening to the university professors and lawyers in France and other countries which have adopted the French Code”.80 As we may see, the discussion about the civil code led to the Swiss Code being associated with a Kemalist model to be rejected and that was, ultimately, incompatible with Western models. And yet, if we look outside the legal debate and examine contemporaneous debate about the reforms needed in Albania, the new Turkey continued to be

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invoked as a model during 1927, and not solely by supporters of the Swiss Code. Henceforth the emphasis was placed not just on one reform recently carried out in a specific domain, but on the series of reforms implemented as part of a coherent whole (including reforms relating to education, clothing, the new position of women within society, the struggle against “religious fanaticism”, and so on and so forth).81 In addition to this, the champions of this series of reforms now emphasised who was behind them, describing them as “the new generation” opposed to an “old generation”.82 More specifically, a group emerged based around Mustafa Kemal who came to act as its figurehead.83 A process of personalisation was thus under way, as we shall see. But whilst the term “Kemalists” was used in Albania in 1927 in the sense of supporters of Mustafa Kemal, there was as yet no talk of Kemalism to describe Kemal’s reformist policies and regime. There is one exception, which to a certain extent confirms this observation. The one and only time during this period when the term “Kemalism” appears in the Albanian context, it was used not in reference to a reformist ideology, but in the negative and disparaging meaning of political support for Mustafa Kemal within Albania. In June 1927, in an article published in the Telegraf newspaper under the title “These ‘Anatolian Turks’”, an Albanian responded to what the correspondent of an Italian paper in Tirana had written about the activities of the Turkish Legation in the Albanian capital. The Italian paper reported that the Legation had organised many lavish receptions in order to spread Kemalism (Qemalism) within Albania. The Albanian journalist points out that his Italian colleague did not use exactly these terms to depict the activities of the Legation, but it is not clear if his comment refers to the term “Kemalism” itself. In any event, the author of the article reacts sharply to the observations of his Italian colleague, putting forward three lines of argument: But we cannot say that the indirect conclusion of the Italian correspondent is true, and that these parties and receptions were held to spread Kemalism within Albania. The visiting correspondent’s indirect conclusion is not true. (1) For if one were to ask the Gazi Mustafa Kemal Pasha himself about “Kemalism”, even he would say that such an -ism does not exist;

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(2)

For there is no need for parties, receptions, tea, and champagne to make us admire what is already admirable in itself; nor to make us accept an idea, system, or – ism that does not fit in with our ideas. (3) For those of us have been here far longer than any Italian correspondent, and whose purpose and duty it is to detect the development of all types of propaganda, have not seen or detected any such propagandistic tendency in the form of “Kemalism”, or “Turkism”, and even less that of Islamism. [. . .] The Turkish Republic does not need any sort of propaganda or publicity for the great work that it has carried out. This monumental work alone suffices to elicit general admiration, and ours in particular, being incomparable and without equivalent in human history. A people or a nation that awakens from centuries of sleep one fine morning and gets rid of the remains of a primitive and barbaric period deserves to be presented as an example and a model to others.84 “Kemalism”, which is rejected here, is thus taken to designate a political link that could potentially be built up between the Turkey of Mustafa Kemal and Albanian intellectuals and politicians won over out of self-interest to the idea of placing themselves within the sphere of influence of the new Turkey. In this article the idea of “Kemalism” thus belongs to the same register as that of “Kemalist”, employed up until then to refer to the companions and supporters of Mustafa Kemal, both in Turkey and elsewhere. It is thus more associated with political influence than political ideas. It is for that matter introduced by an Italian observer assessing foreign political influence in Albania at a time of growing Italian influence, hence not within the context of the policies being put in place by the Albanian Government. It was only with the phase when the new civil code was being adopted in 1928 – 9, that the debate about it did in fact shift to the political field.

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Legitimisation in Terms of Westernisation, Zogism – and a Kemalist Model? Whilst during the previous phases debates were in part conducted in the pages of the press, thereby bringing the issue of the new civil code into the public sphere, most of the discussion took place solely between officials and professionals working in the legal field. Equally, the work of the committee only involved people from these two spheres. The issue was projected into the public realm once again with the process to adopt the new code that had been drafted by the committee. Except this time it did not appear solely in the press, for the text needed to be approved by Parliament and the Senate, before then being officially decreed by the Head of State and hence coming into force. The legitimisation process for the new code now needed to engage with international opinion and representatives of the population, some of whom had their misgivings, rather than address only lawyers. And the legitimacy of the Albanian state, the regime and the Head of State Ahmet Zogu were also caught up in this legitimisation process. The code was therefore now presented as a transfer from a Western country, without it being necessary to specify which one, or as a code inspired by Zog himself. We shall see how this process combined a Westernising component with one relating to the construction of Zogism, which was starting to assert itself at that time, as well as on occasion invoking the use of a new model that was also under construction, namely Kemalism.

Westernisation as justification for the new code The Explanatory Report85 drawn up by the committee was presented to the National Assembly and the Senate in March 1928, once the code had been drafted in full, after having been sent out to the members of the Assembly at the end of the previous year. It was no longer a matter of a debate between specialists, nor of a power relationship between the lawyers and a high-ranking official. The issue was now in the political ring. What terms does this lengthy text use to set out the whys and wherefores behind the choice of model and the drafting of the various parts of the new code, and present them to the people’s elected representatives? The report insists on the fact that the work of the committee was primarily guided by the decision to adopt a Western model:

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because of all these defects, together with others which cannot be cited [here], it would not have been reasonable to improve the current legislation, and it was judged not possible to add to the mexhele in a way that would have fitted harmoniously with the other parts of civil law which would have had to have been drawn up on the basis of modern legislations. That is why the Committee felt it necessary to draw up a new civil code, taking one of the codes of the Western states as its basis.86 The report presents a long series of precise technical arguments rehearsing the debates of 1927 about the spirit and form of the codes, expounding matters relating to civil status, family law, inheritance and property, and going over the chapter on obligations. Yet the preamble places the emphasis on ideological arguments, namely the fact that the old law was illegitimate, ill-adapted, unalterable, denomination-based and non-egalitarian.87 It thus states: unfortunately the Albanian nation, having been under Ottoman domination for so long, has been governed by legislation which cannot be used to develop the social and economic life of the population since it was not only imposed and foreign to the laws, customs, and spirit [of the Albanian nation], but also incompatible with present-day civilisation.88 It is referring of course to the mecelle, considered as a form of law incompatible with Westernisation: with a religious basis which cannot be changed and cannot comply with the requirements of civilisation, for the doctrines on which it is based cannot be modified. It is for these reasons that Turkey, although a totally Muslim state, has been obliged to radically change this legislation, thereby distancing itself from these doctrines.89 The political authorities imposed constraints limiting the ensuing debates in Parliament and the press. Members of Parliament, senators and journalists nearly all worked to legitimise this new law, with the exception of Catholic actors, who objected to the article on divorce, and

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of certain figures associated with the Muslim religious institutions who did not accept the new provisions relating to inheritance.90 With the exception of these points, which led to a wider dispute about the relationship between religion and the state,91 the debate focused less on the committee’s choice between the French model over the Swiss (or Turkish) model, and more on the abandoning of the mecelle, thereby harking back to the discussions of 1926. The main idea was that it was necessary to adopt such a code because of Albania’s European character. Senator Nafiz Dervishi thus explained that: hence we, the Albanian nation, who are at the heart of Europe and have relations, ever closer relations with Europe, are obliged to adopt this code in order to guarantee our life and future amongst them [Europeans], and to lay down the basis for progress, as well as for our general equality, for this code contains everything relating to the needs of humanity.92 The new civil code, as just drafted, was deemed to “comply with civilisation”, and perceived as ushering Albania into the “great family of civilised countries”, thus ensuring its sovereignty – in much the same way as the civil code was felt in Turkey to be indispensable to that country’s independence. The report by the chairman of the National Assembly’s legal committee, Petro Poga, is characteristic of this coercive mimetism, resulting in the vertical diffusion of a model via the imposition of norms: Equally the new civil code heals a very significant wound, for the absence of any such code had hitherto and rightly caused foreign opinion to be profoundly lacking in confidence [in Albania], not only hindering our progress, for it closed doors in foreign capitals, but also representing a sort of threat to the independence of the judiciary. It would have been dangerous to continue with the old code for, as we have observed, foreigners could on occasions intervene to safeguard their own rights in Albania, thereby threatening the independence of the judiciary. The threat to the independence of the judiciary affected the spirit of the state, for political independence is caught up with and dependent upon judicial independence. We are wholly certain that

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there is not one single Albanian who would today accept that his independence be threatened, having won it with so many sacrifices. It thus heals a wound to the body and spirit of Albanian society, both from the point of view of [foreign] relations, and from the point of view of the life [of our society], by assimilating its position to that of the West, thus banishing all doubts foreigners had about us.93 Whereas the new code, as presented here, was deemed synonymous with economic and social progress and the West,94 the preamble to the Explanatory Report confined the former code to the past of “ancient Turkey”, an Ottoman/Turkish past associated primarily – and typically – to the Orient. From there it was but a short step to associating this Orient with Islam, as MP Kristo Floqi did: “with the new code we have escaped from sharia and from the imposition of fatwas”.95 But the most forthright pronouncements were those made in the press. For instance, the front page of the Telegraf newspaper of Friday 9 March 1928 presented the debates in the Assembly in the following terms, set out in bold type: The Mexhele, the civil code inherited from Turkey and inspired by the religious principles of the Orient, has been declared dead and all but buried by the speakers in the House, who unsheathed their swords of oratory in support of the new civil code during the session of Wednesday 7 March, at three o’clock in the afternoon. Adopting the new code was thus a way of rejecting Turkey, religion and the Orient en bloc. Just in case the reader remained unconvinced, the same idea was repeated a few lines later, binding Turkishness and Islam ever tighter together thanks to the term “Turko-religious”: In this report the old Turko-religious legislation is attacked for hindering the social and economic life of the country, and because its religiously based laws are incompatible with the civilisation of the West, hampering the development of the Nation, as proved by the fact that Turko-religious laws accord women an inferior status within society, and social and family law in Albania has up until

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now been divided between the Muslim, Orthodox, and Catholic courts, whereas under this new code the rights of all our unified. The means used to legitimise the Albanian Civil Code thus drew extensively on a form of Orientalism stereotyping both West and East along very traditional lines – religion, the position of women and economic development.96 A more specific element attributable to the social space-time in which Albania found itself was the way Turkey and the Turks were associated with the Muslim world and the Orient, stemming from Albania’s Ottoman past and a certain type of nationalist discourse which had developed since the late nineteenth century, in which Albanians were Europeans and Turks were Asian, thereby legitimising the displacement of Ottoman sovereignty, which was threatened with extinction, by Albanian sovereignty.97 The Turkish model was thus to a certain extent ambivalent, since reference was made from the outset to the example of Turkey which had rid itself of the mecelle. This ambivalence came openly to the fore in the failure to distinguish clearly between “ancient Turkey” and the “new Turkey”. This Orientalism, stemming from the Albanian obsession with Western civilising influence not necessarily attached to any precise model, also fitted in with the need to affirm the authority of Ahmet Zogu by stating he was the one to have sired/authored this new code.

Zogism, authority and authorship The adoption of the civil code was announced by the Albanian government to the foreign press in March 1928 in the following terms: New civil code enthusiastically adopted by the Senate and sent to the president of the republic for decree. In approving this code which, amongst other provisions, introduces civil marriage, the final obstacle to the union between elements of different faiths – Muslim, Catholic, and Orthodox – has disappeared in Albania, greatly benefiting the idea of national unity amongst Albanians. The modern codes adopted by Albania – the penal code banning polygamy, and now the civil code – inspired by the attentiveness and activity of the President, His Excellency A. Zogu, not only guarantee a glorious future for the Albanian

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nation but also provide further proof of the great and historic period Albania is currently enjoying, being united to the Western nations not solely by historic treaties and its territorial position, but also by the shared thirst for culture and progress.98 The Orientalist theme is central to this press release. Nevertheless, the sole point of reference emphasised with regard to the civil code is the figure of Ahmet Zogu, presented as being the inspiration behind it. The speech given to Parliament by the Minister of Justice Hikmet Delvina – who had studied law at the University of Istanbul and was one of Ahmet Zogu’s most loyal supporters – also presents the new code as the work of the Head of State: So as you know, dear colleagues and Mr. President [of the Assembly], given these defects and wishing to develop and elevate the nation, and having long considered that the Albanian people should live in the same way as other civilised people, the dear Saviour of the Nation, in his opening speech of the autumn session, let it be known that he had ordered the relevant people to draw up the civil code as soon as possible. Here is the concrete fulfilment of his words, just as he has fulfilled his other promises whose sole and unique purpose is to elevate the nation.99 He thus declared it his duty: to thank the saviour of the nation whose sole preoccupation at all moments and on each occasion is to find a way to create the laws to elevate the prestige of the nation and the people, and to lead the people to a level enabling it too to enjoy the right and the opportunity to benefit from twentieth-century civilisation.100 That is why, after referring to various domains in which the code introduced significant change (citizenship, civil status, family, equality between men and women, inheritance and property), he enjoined his fellow MPs to vote unanimously to approve this new code.101 Promoting the new law was thus not only a way of furthering the process of nation-building, but also, given the authoritarian context, of promoting the figure of Zog as a “saviour”. Ahmet Zogu’s authority was

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bound up with the process to approve the code for, despite Delvina’s recommendations, certain MPs were voicing concerns, albeit in very muted fashion given the limited room for manoeuvre available to them within Parliament. Even the Catholic MPs who, in the name of their brethren, were opposed to a crucial point, namely the question of divorce, pronounced themselves unanimously in favour of adopting the code, whilst indicating that there was an issue that they found problematic and which they wished to discuss at a later date, without stating what that matter was. This discussion took place with Zog himself during an audience he granted to the representatives of the Catholic community.102 But this did not sway the Head of State or the government, and when the proposed law was put to the vote it was approved unanimously by the Senate.103 Promoting the new code also provided an opportunity to present Zog as a guide with “exceptional” qualities, as illustrated by an article published in one of the capital’s newspapers under the title “The new code and the excellent guide of the nation”: the new code represents the greatest step forward with regard to the modernisation of the law, conforming to the new era and to the various needs of the life of our people, as well as more generally to its social and intellectual life. It is no easy thing to impose something on our people [. . .] or to remove their old, primitive garb and dress them in wholly new clothes. This undertaking required a lot of courage. But courage alone was not sufficient, exceptional ability was also required – a deep thinker, a genius under such circumstances, in order to understand and make others understand that a new state edifice could only be based on healthy grounds, and that this healthy basis could only be composed of modern, quadrangular stones. [. . .] This capacity for deep thought, acting on the true principle of modernism, this exceptional ability, this genius was to be found naturally – and not by acquisition – in He who alone may be praised for having weeded and tended the garden of state from the earliest years of our independent existence, in He who put an end to the 4 –5 years of pseudo-revolts in our country, for with his iron fist he uprooted state anarchy once and for all – an anarchy which,

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we say, has so frequently brought to into diplomatic play the question of whether or not Albanians are capable of political independence. Be it solely for this excellent work, the excellent guide of the Albanian Nation deserves the title of ‘saviour of the nation’. Yes, we assert that not only do we owe our modernisation to the law, but we also owe more generally the social, cultural, and intellectual life of the Albanian nation to its ‘saviour’.104 Albania was under Italian tutelage at the time, and the pronounced personalisation of power went a stage further in the following months when the republican regime was changed to a monarchical regime (on 1 September 1928). In tandem with this process of personalisation, the Albanian leader was presented in juxtaposition with other political leaders, and in particular Mussolini and Mustafa Kemal. The article from which we have already quoted closes on the following lines: But he [the saviour of the nation] did not stop at this labour [the civil code] and has carried out [such work] on several occasions. [. . .] Such extraordinary statesmen as Mussolini, Mustafa Kemal, and Ahmet Zogu are not created by various circumstances as some claim, but are rather predestined to conduct their mission of salvation for the people amongst whom they were born, and [this] until they have completed their mission to lead their people along the path of salvation of modern reform and to the Haven of definitive salvation and the coronation of progress. No modern force may bar their route as they advance along the path of reform, no human power may wrench them from the bosom of the nation that adores them and envelops them in their unshakeable love.105 Zog, though presented not as the author but as the inspiration behind the civil code, is compared in his reforming mission, with which he is invested by nature, to both Mussolini and to Mustafa Kemal. But above and beyond this comparison, is it not the case that his reforming initiatives sought to draw inspiration from the emergent Turkish model of “Kemalism”?

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From reforms to the man of Providence – was Zogism modelled on Kemalism? In a recent apologia of the Albanian monarchy, a photograph portrays Zog standing behind his desk, where there is a book about the work of Mustafa Kemal, or at least that is what the caption states.106 Whilst there is no way of knowing if the book is indeed about the accomplishments of Mustafa Kemal, the image corresponds to what the publicist Albert Mousset, a French journalist and writer specialising in foreign affairs, mentioned in his book published in 1930, L’Albanie devant l’Europe, where it is said that Ahmet Zogu “aspires to playing in his country the historic role played by Kemal Pasha in Turkey”, whilst observing that he had “neither the selflessness nor the consistency” of the latter.107 To what extent does this image correspond to the reality characterising the phase in 1928 when the civil code was adopted and the Albanian monarchy established? If we look at the Albanian press of the period, which acted as a mouthpiece for intellectuals close to the regime, what we find is that the king and his supporters, in their construction of “Zogism” (zogizm) and other newly emergent intellectual currents such as “neo-Albanianism” (neoshqiptarizm), tended to make fairly frequent reference to the example of Turkey, and to present themselves as the champions of youth and an “enlightened dictatorship”, even though the Kemalists rejected the very notion of dictatorship.108 But what exactly did this Turkish example consist in, and was it linked to the idea of “Kemalism”? During this period over which Zog and his government were launching a series of reforms (to the civil code, the division of the country into administrative districts known as communes, the setting up of youth organisations, the establishment of the monarchy, the law on religious communities and agrarian reform), the Albanian press continued to carry articles about the reforms in Turkey, specifically with regard to law, religion, women and education. As in the preceding periods, some of these articles were taken from the foreign press, such as that reporting Count Leon Ostrorog’s lectures about the establishment of a new regime in Turkey based on the adoption of a series of reforms, including the Swiss Civil Code,109 or the article written by Friedrich Wallich, also insisting on the series of reforms undertaken in Turkey to Europeanise the country and thereby ensure its independence from

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Europe.110 It was in fact in an article of this kind that the term “Kemalism” appeared once again, one year after its first occurrence, only this time with a wholly different connotation. The text was taken from the Italian newspaper Giornale d’Italia (Journal of Italy), whose correspondent in Istanbul was writing about schooling and culture in Kemalist Turkey, on the basis of an interview with the minister for instruction. The article defines Kemalism as what occurred after the Ottoman period, bringing about a revolution in schooling and in culture: “with the arrival of Kemalism there has been a revolution in schooling and culture in Turkey”. The term would also appear to be used synonymously with “Kemalist regime”, an expression used twice in the article. It was thus no longer being used to designate the fact of being a supporter of Mustafa Kemal, but to refer to a regime characterised by its programme of reforms.111 Whilst in the wake of the enthronement of King Zog a rumour was floated in an attempt to invert the flow of models, with the possibility of re-establishing the monarchy in Turkey being mooted,112 the Kemalist model nevertheless played a central role in legitimising a group of young intellectuals who established themselves in 1928 as a driving force within political debate. In an article entitled “Mobilisation for moral conquest”, Branko Merxhani, an Orthodox Christian who spent time his shuttling back and forth between Albania and Turkey (where his father lived), addressed the Albanian youth in the following terms: “Turkey, a nation which was until yesterday our enemy and giving us orders [. . .], has now managed to become an example to us who can teach us lessons”.113 Merxhani goes on to point out how the columns of Western newspapers are full of admiring articles about social progress in Turkey – the same newspapers as once spoke of janissaries, revolts and invasions. To his mind the reason behind this change was quite simply Mustafa Kemal. He argued that the appearance of this “saviour” was not, however, wholly fortuitous since it was part of a “mobilisation for moral conquest”, which had originated in the nineteenth century in literature, poetry and the writings of various thinkers (mentioning in particular Ibrahim S¸inasi, Sami bey Frashe¨ri/S¸emseddin Sami and Ziya Go¨kalp). In the first issue of the periodical Shekulli i ri (The New Century), Merxhani thus exhorts young intellectuals to follow this example, acting in accordance with “moral values”, a “social ideal”, and a “national desire”, as he puts it.114 The force and legitimacy of the Turkish model derived once again here from the view Westerners had of it. This reappeared in another

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article by Merxhani,115 who subsequently became the guiding intellectual light behind “neo-Albanianism” and, after the introduction of the civil code and the law on “communes”, went on to call for reforms in the field of religion. He insisted once again on the Turkish model which, to his eyes, shows that a Muslim state could raise itself to the level of European civilisation. Turkey today has performed miracles for it has had the force to crush all reactionary endeavours. Turkey today has proved in the most perfect fashion that a Muslim state can indeed pull itself up and take its place alongside European civilisation.116 In support of this assertion he refers to the “scientific” opinion of Adolphe Ferrie`re, a Swiss educationalist who was invited to Izmir in 1928 (by a student he had taught during the Ottoman period) in order to assess the educational system in the region and to give lectures. It is reported that, on seeing what was happening in Turkey, Ferrie`re stated that: “the Turkish State will serve as a model which, perhaps, one day, will be envied by many peoples from the ancient civilisation”.117 The idea of a Turkish model to be followed was thus transnational, resulting from numerous circulations, in this instance not just between Turkey and Albania, but from Turkey to Europe and then from Europe to Albania.

Conclusion: The Construction of Kemalism as a Post-Imperial and Transnational Process “Kemalism”, with its six arrows or fundamental principles, was not officially defined in Turkey until 1931, when it was stated to be composed of republicanism, populism, laicism (laiklik), revolutionism, nationalism and statism. But the concept dated back further than this, and it is far from certain that this definition was still shared after 1931 by all those involved. Indeed, the case studied here shows how the idea first emerged in 1927, even though it was still very little used at the time, and that it appeared in articles by Albanian journalists following the example of their Italian counterparts. Though initially associated with the term “Kemalist”, used both in Turkey and abroad to designate the supporters of Mustafa Kemal and their political partisanship, it apparently took on a wholly different meaning in 1928, being used to

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refer to reformist initiatives and a reformist regime, hence implying a whole series of interconnected reforms. The idea of a Turkish or Kemalist model, which preceded the emergence of this concept, was associated with the second (reformist) meaning of the term, whereas the first meaning was associated primarily with the issue of sovereignty and the sphere of geopolitical influence. The first meaning (supporters of Kemal) probably never wholly disappeared, as may be seen in the debates about the civil code. It was even the dominant one in other Balkan States with Muslim minorities that included Turkish speakers, where supporters of the Kemalist reforms were viewed as lending political support to Kemalist Turkey, and hence liable to call into question the sovereignty of the various states in which they lived.118 This study also shows that the ideas of “Kemalism” and of the “Turkish model” were not formulated solely by Turkey’s leaders, but were also fashioned by external actors. Western opinion even played a central role in this process. The “obsession with civilisation” was a common feature of Turkish and Albanian leaders and intellectuals at this period, who took Europe as a point of reference, including for whether or not Albania should follow the Turkish model. Hence the frequent use made of Western pronouncements when legitimising the model. It may be seen, for that matter, with regard to Albania’s adoption of its civil code, that international and transnational circulations associated the Swiss model with the Turkish model, and the French model with models from other Balkan countries, thereby inverting the flow in East/West space-time. This case proves that a wholly diffusionist model is untenable for Kemalism, for it shows how the “Turkish model” – and “Kemalism” even – were partially constructed outside Turkey. The model was built up in relationship to other models (especially Western ones), and was particularly ambivalent with regard to how the Swiss model corresponded to the Turkish one. It was primarily built up by a complex set of transnational circulations of objects, know-how and representations (press articles, specialised articles, legal texts, legal knowledge, policies, representations of Turkey and Islam, representations of Europe and so on and so forth). But it was also built up by a complex set of power relations between local actors situated in different fields (the legal profession, the administration and politics) and between local and foreign actors, where these relations shifted over the various

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stages in the process (during the choice of model, the drafting of the code and its legitimisation). For as Roger Chartier has pointed out, works, representations and practices all signify and build up divisions within the social world.119 And so above and beyond the issue of the sovereignty of the newly formed state, the process by which the civil code was adopted in Albania, and Kemalism was constructed there, is probably one locus where Italian–Turkish rivalry over political influence was reflected and played out; as was the relation between law and religion, and that between religion and the state, both of which central to the process of implementing the new code. As, most importantly, were the relations between social professional groups whose skills were based on their (not) using the Turkish language, depending upon their profiles, denomination and generation, thus giving rise to the post-imperial dimension of the process; as was, lastly, the authority of Head of State Ahmet Zogu, and of his government. Nevertheless, the construction in Albania of Kemalism and of a Turkish model cannot be reduced to events attendant upon the drafting of a civil code, since even when the Swiss model was being rejected as a model, on the grounds that it was in fact the Turkish model, this Turkish model continued to act as the example to be followed in other domains, and indeed as a more general model for a “reformist regime” in a predominantly Muslim country. Kemalism acquired strength and was built up into a model in Albania, even though it did not give rise to any direct policy transfers there, at least in the case of the civil code.

Notes 1. G.-H. Bousquet, “Un exemple de laı¨cisation du droit musulman. Le code civil albanais”, Introduction a` l’e´tude du droit compare´, Recueil d’e´tudes en l’honneur d’Edouard Lambert, 3e`me Partie. Le droit compare´ comme science juridique moderne, 4e`me Partie. Le droit compare´ comme science internationale moderne, Paris: 1938, Librairie de la socie´te´ anonyme du recueil SireyLibrairie ge´ne´rale de droit et de jurisprudence, pp. 643– 6 (cf. 644). 2. Cf. Kastriot Dervishi, Historia e shtetit shqiptar. 1912 –1925, Tirana, Shte¨pia botuese ‘55’, 2006, p. 285; Arben Puto, Shqipe¨ria politike, Tirana, Toena, 2009, p. 470. Bousquet explains that most of the borrowings were from the French Civil Code (in its 1925 and 1926 versions), being either direct borrowings or else taken from the intermediary of the Italian Code; this was followed by borrowings from the Italian Code, those from the Swiss and German Codes

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3. 4.

5.

6. 7. 8. 9.

10.

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being secondary, with the odd instance being taken from other sources – such as an Egyptian decree, or the French law of 1920, etc. (ibid., p. 644). I wish to thank all those who helped me gain access to the documents held in Albania’s Central State Archives, and those at the National Library at Tirana, and especially Maks Gjinaj whose help was as precious as ever. For further discussion of the adoption of the civil code in Turkey, see in particular Hans-Lukas Kieser, Astrid Meier and Walter Stoffel (eds), Revolution islamischen Rechts. Das Schweizerische ZGB in der Tu¨rkei, Zu¨rich, Chronos Verlag, 2008, and Ruth Miller, “The Ottoman and Islamic Substratum of Turkey’s Swiss Civil Code”, Journal of Islamic Studies, 11, 3, 2000, pp. 335– 61. See Ruth Miller on this subject. She shows that contrary to official Turkish discourse and much of the historiography, the Swiss Code was not translated unaltered but was in fact adapted, in particular the part relating to family law, which drew heavily on Muslim law. The lawyers in charge of this adaptation were concerned to introduce new concepts without thereby upsetting current practice (Miller, “The Ottoman and Islamic Substratum”). Jean-Louis Halpe´rin, “Code civil”, in Akira Iriye and Pierre-Yves Saunier (eds), The Palgrave Dictionary of Transnational History, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2009, pp. 655– 6. With a surface area of about 28,000 km2 it is comparable in size to Belgium. Hamit Bozarslan, “La Laı¨cite´ en Turquie”, Mate´riaux pour l’Histoire de notre temps, 78, 2005, pp. 42 – 9. Cf. Nathalie Clayer, “The Albanian students of the Mekteb-i Mu¨lkiye. Social networks and trends of thought”, in Elisabeth O¨zdalga (ed.), Late Ottoman Society. The Intellectual Legacy, London, New York, Routledge Curzon, 2005, pp. 289 –339. The idea of isomorphism comes from Paul DiMaggio and Walter Powell: cf. Thierry Delpeuch, “L’analyse des transferts internationaux de politiques publiques: un e´tat de l’art”, Questions de Recherche / Research in Question, 27, 2008, Paris, Centre d’e´tudes et de recherches internationales, Sciences Po, www.sciencespo.fr/ceri/sites/sciencespo.fr.ceri/files/qdr27.pdf, p. 10 et seq Accessed on 1 October 2013. It relates to a phenomenon of convergence between organisations within a given field, but occurring due to reasons of institutional rivalry and legitimacy. As Delpeuch explains, the authors distinguish between three types of isomorphism: coercive isomorphism, relating to phenomena involving the vertical, generally voluntary dissemination of models (political dependency, and the imposition of norms; mimetic isomorphism (the circulation of men and information), relating to phenomena involving horizontal dissemination; and normative isomorphism, resulting from the role of educational and professional institutions. See too Constantin Iordachi, who uses these ideas in his comparative analysis of how legal frameworks were constructed in the Balkans, “The Making of Citizenship in the Post-Ottoman Balkans: State Building, Foreign Models,

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11. 12. 13. 14.

15.

16.

17.

18.

19.

KEMALISM and Legal-Political Transfers”, in Alina Mungiu-Pippidi and Win van Meurs (eds), Ottomans into European, London, Hurst, 2010, pp. 181– 222. Delpeuch, “L’analyse des transferts”, p. 34. Ibid., p. 47. In certain cases, even, they remained in contact with family and acquaintances living in Turkey. See, for example, “Turqia e Re dhe Shqipe¨ria e vjete¨r”, Politika 34, 1924, p. 1; “Turqi e Re”, Shqiptari i Amerike¨s, 10, 1922, pp. 5 –6 and 11, 1923, pp. 5 – 6; Ku vemi?, 1924, p. 1; Bisedimet e ke¨shillit Kombetar, 3, 1923, p. 48 and 4, pp. 49 – 56; “Vendimet e komisjonit arsimuer n’Angara”, Revista pedagogjike, 1923, pp. 306– 12. See also further references in Tayfun Atmaca, Krallık’tan Cumhuriyet’e tarihte iz bırakan dostlug˘un mimarları Zogu ve Atatu¨rk, Ankara, Laser Ofset, 2007, pp. 142– 7. Ahmet Zogu came from a dominant family in the region of Mat in central Albania. After having held various ministerial and military positions after 1920, and then becoming prime minister in 1922, he resumed power at the end of 1924 with the support of Yugoslavia. See, for example, Namik Selim, “Nje¨ ve¨shtrim pe¨r mbi Turqi e re”, Dajti, 90, 1925, pp. 1 – 2; “Nje¨ pe¨rgjigje e duhur ‘Dajtit’”, Independenca shqiptare, 1925, pp. 2 – 3; “Merhumja Turqi dhe Shqipe¨ri e re”, Independenca shqiptare, 39, 1925, p. 2; “Turqia dhe neve”, Labe¨ria, 23, 1925, p. 1; “Turqia dhe reformat”, Ze¨ri i Korce¨s (Korce¨), 1925, p. 2. See also Atmaca, Zogu ve Atatu¨rk, pp. 147– 8. Committees had in fact been at work in Turkey on the question of laws ever since 1923, but they were looking primarily at how to improve the mecelle, particularly in matters of private law, and they only made slow progress. It was in 1925 that the new Minister of Justice Mahmut Esat Bozkurt ordered a new commission to translate the Swiss Civil Code, probably chosen because he had studied in Switzerland. For further discussion of this see Gottfried Plagemann, “Die Einfu¨hrung des ZGB im Jahre 1926. Das neue ZGB als Bedingung eines sa¨kularen und souvera¨nen Nationalstaates”, in Kieser, Meier and Stoffel (eds), Revolution, pp. 21– 34. From 1924 onwards the Albanian press published articles about the possibility that the mecelle be abolished in Turkey, reproducing information that had appeared in Western and Turkish newspapers (cf. for example “Mexheleja ne¨ rezik”, Bashkimi, 9, 1924, p. 1). In June 1924 Ahmet Zogu was driven out of power in the wake of a revolution (cf. Bernd Fischer, King Zog and the Struggle for Stability in Albania, New York, Columbia University Press, 1984; Michael Schmidt-Neke, Entstehung und Ausbau der Ko¨nigsdiktatur in Albanien (1912 – 1939), Munich, Oldenbourg, 1987; Robert C. Austin, Founding a Balkan State: Albania’s Experiment with Democracy 1920– 1925, Toronto, University of Toronto Press, 2012). Interestingly, the drafting of this code gave rise to a debate within the Empire between those in favour of the French Code and those who preferred drawing up a code based on the fiqh (Islamic jurisprudence) (see Osman Berat

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20.

21.

22.

23.

24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30.

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Gu¨rzumar, “Die U¨bernhame westlichen Rechts in der Tu¨rkei vor 1926. Ein hinkender Versuch der Modernisierung”, in Kieser, Meier and Stoffel (eds), Revolution, pp. 35 –47). Most of the articles are unsigned, making it difficult to identify precisely who was involved in the debate, though it would appear that all of the authors came from the legal field. Agjah Libohova came from Libohove¨ (near Gjirokaste¨r in southern Albania) and was born in 1886 to a family of qadis. After attending school in Janina, Salonika, and Istanbul, he went on to graduate from the Faculty of Law in the Ottoman capital in 1908, where he also attended the qadi school. He then worked in justice institutions in the provinces up until the Balkan Wars. In 1913 he went to work for the newly formed Albanian State where he held various posts in the legal field and practised as a barrister, whilst also becoming involved in politics and in intellectual debate (cf. Uran Asllani, Agjah Libohova. Jeta dhe vepra e tij, Tirana, 2008). See in particular A.[gjah] L.[ibohova], “Reforma ne¨ ligj”, Politika, 19, 1924; “Nje¨ interviste¨ me min. e drejte¨sis”, Bashkimi, 8, 1924, p. 2; “Mexheleja ne¨ rezik”, Bashkimi, 9, 1924, p. 1; Nje¨ avokat i ri, “Reformat e drejte¨sis”, Bashkimi, 10, 1924, Nji avukat, “Cila e¨shte¨ mexheleja”, Bashkimi, 16, 1924, pp. 1 – 2; Nji Avukat, “Pe¨rgjigje”, Bashkimi, 30, 1924, p. 3. Little is known about Behxhet Shapati, who was the only supporter of the mecelle to sign his articles at the time. He came from Vlore¨ and studied in Istanbul to be a qadi, but worked as a barrister in the recently formed Albanian State. A draft law in 1924 stipulated that judges needed to have completed law studies other than those to be a qadi. See in particular “Nji bashk-fjalim me nji gjykate¨s te¨ nalte¨”, Dajti, 44, 1924, pp. 1– 2; B. Shapati, “Lete¨r e hapur ministris drejte¨sie¨s”, Dajti, 46, 1924, p. 2; Nje¨ Gjygjtar, “Z. Stavro Vinjaut Ministri i drejte¨sie¨s”, Dajti, 47, 1924, pp. 1– 2; “Mexhleja e mexhelexhit”, Dajti, 47, 1924, p. 4; “Fort te¨ ndrshmit drejtorit gazete¨s Dajti”, 49, 1924, pp. 1 – 2; B. Shapati, “Te¨ drejtat e femnie¨s ne¨ nje¨ barasim te¨ mexheles me kode¨r te¨ France¨s dhe Italis”, Dajti, 50, 1924, p. 2; nji avokat, “Pe¨rgjigje”, Dajti, 50, 1924, p. 2; B. Shapati, “Mexheleja e¨shte¨ kjo”, Dajti, 53, 1924, p. 4, and 54, p. 2. AQSh (Arkivi Qendror i Shtetit – Central State Archives, Tirana), collection 155 (Ministry of Justice), year 1925, folder II-172, folio 3– 4 and 5 – 8. Most of the articles were published anonymously. “Reformat ne Turqi. Ligjet e rea. Ne c’po be¨jme”, Gazeta e Korce¨, 267, 1926, p. 1; “Kodet e rinj te¨ Turqise¨”, Ze¨ri i Korce¨s, 62, 1926, p. 2; “Bisedimet ne¨ Parlament dhe Ligjet”, Ze¨ri i Korce¨s, 70, 1926, p. 2. The newspapers also had correspondents in Turkey. The article in question is “La Turquie nouvelle faisant litie`re du passe´ s’occidentalise” in issue 15319 dated 27 February 1926, p. 1. See for instance Gazeta e Korce¨s, 268, 20 March 1926, p. 1 and p. 4, and “Turqia e re”, Ze¨ri i Korce¨s, 74, 1926, p. 1. Gazeta e Korce¨s, 272, 3 April 1926, p. 1.

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31. See for example “Te¨ tjere¨t dhe na”, Rilindja shqiptare, 11, 1925, p. 1, and 12, 1925, p. 1; “Fashisma dhe Vatrat Turke”, Demokratia, 54, 1926, p. 2, and Demokratia, 73, 1926, p. 1. 32. Cf. Clayer, “The Albanian students of the Mekteb-i Mu¨lkiye”, pp. 289– 339. See too Shyqyri Hysi, Rauf Fico. Shtetar dhe diplomat i shquar, Tirana, Me¨sonje¨torja, 2007. 33. AQSh, collection 155 (Ministry of Justice), year 1926, file VII-76, folio 1, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to the Ministry of Justice, Tirane¨ 1926, folio 2, Rauf Fico to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ankara, 1926, and folio 4, the same, 1926. 34. AQSh, collection 155 (Ministry of Justice), year 1926, file II-273, folio 7, memorandum of 1926 from the Ministry of Justice to the public prosecutors. 35. He came from Dibe¨r /Debar and subsequently took the surname of “Shatku”. 36. Fletorja Zyrtare, 122, 1926, p. 1, and 127, 1926, p. 1. See too the Cabinet decision of 1926 in AQSh, collection 155 (Ministry of Justice), year 1926, file II-273, folio 23. 37. For further information about Agjah Libohova, see note 20. Faik Shatku Dibra was born in 1889 at Dibe¨r/Debar. After having attended the French Business School in Salonika, he went on to study law at Istanbul where his family had emigrated. He became a barrister there prior to moving to Albania in early 1924. He was appointed to the court in Elbasan, before going to that in Korce¨, and then the one in Tirana. In March 1925 he was appointed secretary general to the Ministry of Justice, a position he held until 1929 (cf. S. Shatku, “Faik Shatku pe¨rfaqsues i shquar i Jurisprudence¨s Shqiptare”, Rilindja demokratike, 4905, 2008, p. 19). Thoma Orolloga, or Orollogaj, was born in Korce¨ in 1888 and attended a French secondary school in Athens, before studying law in Athens and Paris, and then becoming a barrister in his town of origin (see Robert Elsie, A Biographical Dictionary of Albanian History, London, I.B.Tauris, 2012, p. 343). I have been unable to find any information about Avni Dabulla and Idriz Minga, other than about Avni Dabulla’s time as director general of justice during the Austro-Hungarian occupation of 1916– 18 (Sejfi Vllamasi, Ballafaqime politike ne¨ Shqipe¨ri (1897 – 1942), Tirane¨, Neraida, 2000, p. 138). 38. AQSh, collection 155 (Ministry of Justice), year 1926, file II-273, folio 34, memorandum of 1926 from the Ministry of Justice to public prosecutors. 39. AQSh, collection 155 (Ministry of Justice), year 1926, file II-273, folios 35, 36, 38, 54 and 55. 40. The file held in the archives does not contain any reply from the prefectures in northern Albania and central Albania, regions where the Muslim religion played a significant role at the period, and where dominant opinion probably did not chime with local views. 41. AQSh, collection 155 (Ministry of Justice), year 1926, file II-273, folio 57. 42. This transpires especially from the reports sent from Vlore¨ and Delvine¨ (AQSh, collection 155 (Ministry of Justice), year 1926, file II-273, folios 53 and 58 –9).

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43. “Mbi le¨vizjen rreth ndryshimit Ligjavet”, Gazeta e Korce¨s, 307, 1926, p. 1; Nje¨ avokat, “Ligjet dhe Drejtesia”, Demokratia, 63, 1926, p. 2; “Drejtesia”, Shqypnija, 5, 1926, p. 1; B. Shapati, “Rreth ligjeve”, Demokratia, 66, 1926, p. 1; “She¨nime”, Gazeta e Korce¨s, 315, 25/9/1926, p. 2; “Mejtimi i avokate¨ve te¨ Korce¨s mbi modernizimin e ligjeve”, Gazeta e Korce¨s, 317, 1926, pp. 1–2; Ymer Berati, “Modernizimi i ligjeve dhe kunde¨rshtimet”, Shqypnija, 15, 1926, p. 1; the same, “Modernizimi i ligjeve e veprimi i komisionit”, Shqypnija, 19, 1926, p. 1. 44. “Ligjet e rea. Interviste¨ me z. Th. Orolloga”, Gazeta e Korce¨s, 317, 1926, p. 1. Bold in the original document. 45. See note 43. 46. See note 43. 47. Nje¨ avukat, “Ligjet dhe Drejtesia”, Demokratia, 63, 1926, p. 2. 48. Mehdi Frashe¨ri, Kujtime (Vitet 1913– 1933), Tirana, Omsca-1, 2005. 49. The historiography does not refer to this reconstitution of the committee, and even less to its conflictual nature. 50. See Clayer, “The Albanian students”, pp. 316– 18. 51. Frashe¨ri, Kujtime, pp. 218– 23. 52. Ibid., pp. 221– 2. 53. It is nevertheless worth noting that the commercial code subsequently adopted in 1932 was based on the Italian Code, and not on the German Code in the wake of the Turkish example as envisaged in 1926. 54. AQSh, collection 155 (Ministry of Justice), year 1926, file II-273, folios 103– 9. 55. AQSh, collection 155 (Ministry of Justice), year 1926, file II-273, folios 125 and 127, barristers Ferid Nepravishta, Fevzi Ruli and Ali Vasfi to A. Zogu, on 4/2/1927, and barristers Ali Gabeci, Veis Jaho, Sami Kokalari, Lame Dilo, Leonidha Dhima, Apostol Dhima, Emin Kokalari and Qazim Kurti to the president of the republic, Gjirokaste¨r, telegram dated 17 February 1927. 56. AQSh, collection 155 (Ministry of Justice), year 1926, file II-273, folios 110– 22 (the committee’s reply was logged on 5 February 1927 by the Ministry of Justice). 57. AQSh, collection 155 (Ministry of Justice), year 1926, file II-273, folios 137– 138, Terenc Toci, president of the Court of Appeal to the Ministry of Justice, on 9 March 1927. 58. Av. B. Shapati, “Rreth ligjeve”, Demokratia, 91, 1927, p. 1. Behxhet Shapati became the head of the Albanian Islamic Institutions in 1929. 59. AQSh, collection 155 (Ministry of Justice), year 1926, file II-273, folios 103–9. 60. He refers to it in his press article (see Harilla Theodhos, “Dogmatizma dhe Kodi Civil i ri”, Ze¨ri i Korce¨s, 178, 1927, pp. 1 – 2). 61. Uran Asllani, Juriste¨t libohovite¨, Tirana, 2010, p. 195. 62. Cf. note 55 and AQSh, collection 155 (Ministry of Justice), year 1926, file II-273, folio 49. 63. Cf. note 55. 64. Uran Asllani, Juriste¨t libohovite¨, p. 186.

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65. Av. Petraq D. Kondi, “Reth modernizimit te¨ ligjave dhe aplikimit te tyre”, Ze¨ri i Korce¨s, 170, 1927, pp. 1 – 2; Av. Sabri Qyteza, “Modernizimi i ligjeve. Kodi civil i Helvetise¨ apo i France¨s duhet mare¨?”, Gazeta e Korce¨s, 365, 1927, pp. 2 – 3; and the same, “Modernizimi i ligjeve. Ane¨tare¨t e Kodit frances pa are¨sye”, Gazeta e Korce¨s, 4 May 1927, p. 2, and 8 May 1927. 66. http://mobile.gazetastart.com/index.php?cat¼18&hid ¼22326 (Accessed in 2013). 67. www.gazetarepublika.al/2012/09/kush-ishin-drejtuesit-e-partise-nacionaliste/# (Accessed in 2013). 68. It was probably his work about comparative law published in 1914 (Felsefeyi hukuk, Istanbul, Hukuk Matbaası). 69. Probably Istanbul U¨niv. Hukuk Faku¨ltesi Dergisi. 70. This is referring to different linguistic groups, of which there were in fact four, including Romansh. 71. See notes 54, 55 and 65. 72. Disa avokate, “Oportuniteti i pranimit te¨ Kodit civil Frances”, Ze¨ri i Korce¨s, 174, 1927, pp. 1 – 2. 73. Dr Ymer Berati, “Reth Kodit Civil”, Shqipnija, 42, 1927, p. 1; Kol Dhimitri, “Rreth polemikes per kodin civil te ri”, Shqipnija, 51, 1927, pp. 1 – 2. On Ymer Berati, see Dilaver Xhelili, “Juristi i tre¨ndafile¨ve te¨ zinj te¨ janarit: Jeta e ish – prokurorit Ymer”, Koha jone¨, 249, 2002, p. 15, and on Kol Dhimitri see www.facebook.com/StudioLigjoreVishaj/posts/747479158601293 (Accessed in 2013). 74. Roger Chartier, Au bord de la falaise, Paris, Albin Michel, 2009, p. 91. 75. Dr Ymer Berati, “Reth Kodit Civil”, Shqipnija, 42, January 26, 1927, p. 1; Kol Dhimitri, “Rreth polemikes per kodin civil te ri”, Shqipnija, 51, 1927, pp. 1 – 2. 76. Ibid. 77. Disa avokate, “Oportuniteti i pranimit te¨ Kodit civil Frances”, Ze¨ri i Korce¨s, 174, 1927, pp. 1 – 2. 78. See note 57. 79. Dr Ymer Berati, “Reth Kodit Civil”, Shqipnija, 42, January 26, 1927, p. 1; Kol Dhimitri, “Rreth polemikes per kodin civil te ri”, Shqipnija, 51, 1927, pp. 1 – 2. 80. Disa avokate, “Oportuniteti i pranimit te¨ Kodit civil Frances”, Ze¨ri i Korce¨s, 174, 1927, pp. 1 – 2. 81. Cf., for example, Mymtaz Zyhdi, “Shvillimi i Turqise¨. C¸udirat e nje¨ kllase¨ t’organizuar. Poligamia. Liria e gruas dhe fanatisma fetare. Ve¨ndin e callme¨s dhe te festes e zuri Kapelloja. Patrikana e¨shte¨ be¨re¨ si nuse”, Gazeta Korce¨s, 362, 1927, p. 1. 82. Mymtaz Zyhdi, “[illegible] e Republike¨s Turke. Lufta ne¨ mes te¨ breziut te¨ vjete¨r dhe te¨ brezit te¨ ri”, Gazeta Korce¨s, 1927, p. 1. 83. Cf. the article cited note 78, illustrated with a photo of Mustafa Kemal. 84. “Ke¨ta ‘Turquit e Anadollit’”, Telegraf, 33, 1927, p. 2.

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CODE IN ALBANIA

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85. “Raport-Justifikues”, Fletorja zyrtare, 46, 1928, pp. 5 –8; 48, 1928, pp. 1 – 8; 50, 1928, pp. 1 – 4. For the preamble see articles I – XXX of the text. 86. See paragraph XXXI, Fletorja zyrtare, 48, 1928, p. 3. This report also confirms that it was what I call the “Franco-Italian” model that was privileged, over the German or the Swiss model. The Italian Code was deemed to employ a more rational classificatory system than the French Code, and was presented as being part of the “French model”. Yet in addition to this, the report shows that the drafting of the code was still a complex operation, involving the authors drawing on other texts and adapting them if necessary, or even introducing specific paragraphs that they penned themselves. Mehdi Frashe¨ri and the three lawyers with whom he worked on the code – Faik Shatku, Thoma Orolloga and Agjah Libohova – justify the departures from the French and Italian Civil Codes in these terms: “but despite this, and as we shall see later in the index of the articles, the Committee did not merely produce a textual translation of this code [the French Code and its Italian adaptation], but, having also considered the German Code and that of Switzerland, borrowed from these the provisions it deemed necessary to complete this project, whilst being careful not to depart from its fundamental principles and detract from its harmony. Equally, the draft makes reference for certain issues to the customs of the country, and with regard to breaking off an engagement or marriage has adopted certain provisions as regulated by custom” (paragraph XXXI, p. 4). See also paragraphs XXXII – LXV in which the departures from the French Civil Code are justified in detail each time the Italian Code, or the Swiss Code, or some other code, was deemed preferable. 87. See paragraphs II to XXX in the report. 88. “Raport-Justifikues”, Fletorja zyrtare, 46, 1928, p. 5. 89. Ibid. 90. See the pronouncements by Senators Gjon C¸oba and Salih Vucitern in Fletorja zyrtare, 40, 1928, pp. 7 – 8, and 41, 1928, pp. 1 –8. 91. See Fletorja zyrtare, 41, 1928, p. 8; no. 42, 1928, pp. 1 – 5. 92. Fletorja zyrtare, 40, 1928, p. 7. 93. AQsh, collection 146 (Parliament), year 1928, file 87, folios 76. 94. The new law was also said to be synonymous with economic modernisation since it was expected to facilitate foreign investment. Eshref Frashe¨ri emphasised that “the Albanian nation has started to enter into economic relations with other nations, and it [therefore] needs a code which, like this one, is aligned with the regulations in these countries”. Lastly, the new law was to make it possible to reorganise family relations and guarantee women a fitting position within society, by rejecting polygamy and granting the same rights to men and women alike (Fletorja zyrtare, 42, 1928, p. 1). 95. Fletorja zyrtare, 50, 1928, pp. 5 – 7. 96. See Emmanuel Szurek, “Go West. Variations sur le cas ke´maliste”, in Francois Pouillon and Jean-Claude Vatin (eds), Apre`s l’orientalisme: l’Orient cre´e´ par l’Orient, Paris, Karthala, 2011, pp. 303–23.

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97. See Nathalie Clayer, Aux origines du nationalisme albanais, Paris, Karthala, 2007; Enis Sulstatova, Arratisje nga Lindja, Orientalizmi shqiptar nga Naimi te Kadareja, Tirana, Pika pa sipe¨rfaqe, 2013. 98. Gazeta e Korce¨s, 472, 29 March 1928, p. 1. 99. Fletorja zyrtare, 50, 1928, p. 4. 100. Ibid., p. 5. 101. Ibid., pp. 4 – 5. 102. Cf. “Komision nga Shkodra pe¨r ce¨shtjen e divorcit u prit n’Audience¨ prej Presidentit”, Telegraf, 1928, p. 1. 103. Fletorja zyrtare, 50, 1928, pp. 5 – 7. 104. P. Harizi, “Kodi civil i ri dhe udhe¨heqe¨si i shkelqyer i kombit”, Kombi shqiptar, 18, 1928, p. 2. 105. Ibid. 106. Patrice Najbor, Histoire de l’Albanie et de sa maison royale (5 volumes), vol. 2, Paris, JePublie, 2008. 107. Albert Mousset, L’Albanie devant l’Europe. 1912– 1930, Paris, Delagrave, 1930, p. 49. Albert Mousset is especially critical in this book of Italy’s protectorate over Albania. 108. I wish to thank Emmanuel Szurek for having drawn my attention to this point. 109. “Reformat e Turqise¨”, Gazeta e Korce¨s, 472, 1928, p. 1. 110. Friedrich Wallisch, “Turqia e re”, Gazeta e Korce¨s, 549, 16 October 1928, p. 2. 111. W. Y., “Shkolla e kultura ne¨ Turqin Qemaliste”, Shekulli i ri, 101, 1928, p. 1. 112. “Turqia transformohet ne¨ Monarhi me mbret M. Qemalin?”, Shekulli i ri, 114, 1928, p. 1. 113. B. Merxhani, “Mobilizim pe¨r pushtime morale”, Shekulli i ri, 1, 1928, p. 2. 114. Ibid. 115. “Reformat”, Demokratia, 1928 (article reproduced in Branko Merxhani, Vepra, Aurel Plasari and Ndricim Kulla (eds), Tirana, Plejad, 2003, pp. 16–18). 116. Ibid., pp. 17 – 18. 117. Ibid., p. 18. 118. See the papers by Anna M. Mirkova and Be´atrice Hendrich in this volume. 119. Chartier, Au bord de la falaise, p. 98.

CHAPTER 2 KEMALISM BETWEEN THE BORDERS:CONFLICTS OVER THE NEW TURKISH ALPHABET IN BULGARIA Anna M. Mirkova

In this chapter I look at the reception and re-appropriation of the Turkish project of nation-building and modernisation known as Kemalism (after its leader Mustafa Kemal) in interwar Bulgaria (ca. late 1920s– 1930s) among Muslims, and especially Muslim Turks. I examine this process by looking at the conflict spawned in Bulgaria around efforts to replace the Arabo-Persian with the Latin script for the Turkish language. This specific issue provides a glimpse into the broader question of how Muslims interpreted, rejected or adapted Kemalist ideas to fit competing visions of modern identity within the interwar Bulgarian nation state. Adherents to the new script viewed it as crucial to promoting identification with Turkish nationalism among Turkishas well as Slavic-speaking Muslims (Pomaks). Opponents of the Latin script tried to undermine the Kemalist project and its diffusion in the post-Ottoman world by advocating identification with the Muslim community (cemiyet) in Bulgaria rather than with the Turkish nation (millet). Meanwhile the Bulgarian authorities, particularly after the 1934 right-wing coup, followed anxiously and often tried to suppress the circulation of Kemalist ideas, viewing them as evidence that

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irredentist Turkish nationalism threatened Bulgarian sovereignty. In short, the shift in 19281 from the Arabo-Persian to the modified Latin script for Turkish as part of early Republican nation state-building caused Bulgaria’s Turkish-speaking Muslims to ask the question, “what does being a modern Muslim Turk entail in a Christian-majority Bulgarian state?”

Language Reforms in the Late Ottoman Empire and Early Republican Turkey Attempts to reform the Arabo-Persian alphabet or advocacy for replacing it with a modified Latin alphabet date back to the period of Ottoman reforms in the nineteenth (Tanzimat, 1839– 76) and early twentieth centuries, as do efforts to simplify the Ottoman Turkish language.2 It was a composite of Turkish, Arabic and Persian and, as such, the language of the imperial administration and the ruling elites as well as of literature. Many reformist intellectuals aimed to bridge the gap between the written and the spoken language (though often disagreed on methods and results) so as to promote a common Ottoman Turkish identity.3 This development occurred in the broader historical context of state-building in Europe and Asia when the standardisation of languages and their inculcation in expanding public education systems was an essential component of forging modern nations. From the second half of the nineteenth century grammars, dictionaries and journal articles revealed the conscious efforts of literati to shape the contours of the Turkish language that would supposedly ease communication between the elites and the “folk”, and perhaps lead the Ottoman people to shake off Sultanic despotism and achieve national unity, as the writer Namık Kemal hoped.4 Some writers urged Turkish speakers to rely less on Persian grammatical constructions and Arabic and Persian words.5 S¸emsettin Sami (1850– 1904) published his dictionary in 1901 as a Turkish-language Dictionary, having explained earlier in 1881 that, “I do not think the term ‘the Ottoman language’ is quite correct . . . The name of the people who speak this language is really ‘Turks’ and their language is Turkish. This name, which is regarded as a reproach by the ignorant masses and which some would like to see applied only to the peasants of Anatolia, is the name of a great community which ought to take pride in being so termed.”6

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More than a decade later, during the Greco-Ottoman War of 1897, the poet Mehmed Emin would refer to himself as a Turk in a poem that followed the meters of popular verse rather than those of Arabic and Persian classical poetry.7 And though he was mocked by some intellectuals,8 his move brings to light a trend for linking a “new” ¨ mer language to the emergence of a Turkish nation. In 1911, O Seyfettin – writer and member (along with Ziya Go¨kalp) of the literary group Yeni Lisancılar – insisted that a national literature would emerge only thanks to a new national language that unified “the language of writing and the language of speaking”9 while retaining familiar Arabic and Persian words as well as certain grammatical and poetic conventions. Likewise, for some, modifying and simplifying the orthography (if not overhauling the script) became synonymous with increasing literacy and education, ultimately strengthening the modernising late Ottoman society. And in 1913 orthographic changes were made for the purpose of facilitating the work of military telegraphists and were even briefly extended to other official correspondence.10 All these ideas and changes in language, connected as they were to Ottoman reforms and to the development of Turkish nationalism in the late Ottoman Empire, acquired a sense of urgency after the foundation of the Turkish Republic (1923), becoming a central component of Turkish nation state-building and modernisation, leading to the abandonment of the Arabo-Persian script and radical linguistic reform under the involved leadership of Mustafa Kemal.11 The modified Latin script was instituted in 1928, and followed over the next few years by linguistics conferences preoccupied with purifying the Turkish language of Arabic and Persian.12 Towards the end of the first language conference in 1932 Mustafa Kemal reportedly said, “We are going to defeat Ottoman. Turkish is going to be a language as free and as independent as the Turkish nation, and with it we shall enter the world of civilization at one go.”13 Seeking to entrench the Turks in Western civilisation, he was personally invested in promoting the modified Latin alphabet.14 The famous depictions of this project are stories and pictures of Mustafa Kemal (Atatu¨rk) travelling across the country with a blackboard and easel to teach villagers the new alphabet.15 Through these sweeping linguistic reforms, Republican Turks became disconnected from their imperial literature, history and culture, and thus made it easier for Kemalist narratives condemning the Ottoman past to take hold and

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justify all other modernisation reforms in education, culture, the economy and politics. In Bulgaria, Turkish Muslims who were inspired by the veritable Kemalist revolution unfolding across the border in Turkey had to work hard to persuade their fellow Turkish Muslims of the merits of embracing the secular Turkish national identity advanced by Turkey’s political and intellectual elites. This was so because during this time domestic and Turkish e´migre´ opponents of Kemalism, many of whom coalesced around Bulgaria’s Chief Mu¨ftu¨ Hu¨seyn Hu¨snu¨, also made great efforts to mobilise Bulgaria’s Turkish and non-Turkish Muslims around an agenda centred on the importance of Islam and Ottoman culture. Meanwhile, the Bulgarian authorities propagated their own modernisation ideas among the Pomaks in the country so as to convince them to identify as Bulgarians, rather than Turks. As we will see below, these ideological and power struggles in Bulgaria articulated Kemalism as a trans-national project of modern Muslim identityformation that was harnessed for rather divergent goals.

The Politics of Script Changes in Bulgaria Turkish and non-Turkish Muslims became subjects of the Principality of Bulgaria for the first time in 1878, when the Peace Treaty of Berlin formally brought an end to the short war between the Russian and Ottoman Empires. On this occasion, the Great Powers substantially modified the Preliminary Treaty of San Stefano signed earlier that year, which the victorious Russians had originally succeeded in imposing on the Ottomans, and which had provided for an autonomous Principality of Bulgaria that included most of Ottoman Macedonia and Thrace. The Berlin Treaty returned Macedonia to the Ottoman Empire and divided the remaining Russian conquests in the Ottoman Balkans into two new polities: the Principality of Bulgaria, where the Ottoman Sultan was only de jure the suzerain, and the administratively autonomous Province of Eastern Rumelia, where he remained the sovereign, but where the governor was a Bulgarian Christian who ruled with an elected legislature. In the autumn of 1885, after a revolt and coup in Eastern Rumelia, the Principality annexed the Province. The Ottoman Empire, the enlarged Principality and representatives of the Great Powers formalised the union in 1886, and Bulgaria became a fully independent constitutional monarchy after the Young Turk Revolution of 1908.

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Muslims were first given special legal attention in 1880 when the Principality’s Liberal government of Dragan Tsankov promulgated a set of regulations concerning religious practices and property.16 Perhaps building on Ottoman methods of governing non-Muslims, the regulations also extended to Orthodox Christians and Jews.17 But by the time the second set of regulations concerning Muslims appeared in 1895, Bulgarian governments had already set the governance of Muslims apart from that of Orthodox Christians and Jews. Again perhaps in reference to Ottoman practice (Sunni) Muslims were organised as a confessional community under the leadership of city mu¨ftu¨s who had to be approved by the government of the Principality and the administration of the Province. In the Ottoman Empire mu¨ftu¨s were juristconsuls who developed authoritative opinions on any aspect of Islamic law but in Eastern Rumelia and the Principality of Bulgaria mu¨ftu¨s also took on more administrative tasks with respect to Muslims, just like Orthodox Christian clergy had done in the Ottoman Empire. In Eastern Rumelia, thanks to the work of the Ottoman envoy, a Chief Mu¨ftu¨, who supervised all other mu¨ftu¨s, was appointed and confirmed by the Sheykh ul-Islam in Istanbul.18 In 1919 the Bulgarian Government promulgated the Statute for the Religious Organization and Rule of Muslims in the Bulgarian Kingdom (1919), which also set up Muslim Confessional Organizations (MCO).19 Required as they were to deal with nearly every aspect of the public and private affairs of Bulgaria’s Turkish- and Slavic-speaking Muslims, MCOs were charged to oversee religious, cultural, educational, as well as economic matters pertaining to Muslims. MCO administrators were required to be adult, literate (in Bulgarian or Turkish) Muslim men who were likewise elected to office by adult, literate Muslim men. The elected candidates had to be approved by the Ministry of Foreign and Confessional Affairs. Even though the Statute was built on previous regulations, it also reflected specific post-World War I concerns. The victorious peacemakers wished to maintain collective security by (among other measures) creating stable nation states on the ashes of the multi-ethnic and multi-religious Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian Empires. Stability became synonymous with national homogeneity. When this was impossible to achieve through border adjustments or population exchanges, minorities had to be ensured civil and political rights so as not to have cause for violence.20 For this reason, when Muslims in Bulgaria rejected or accepted and

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adapted Kemalist ideas, they also invoked, as we will see shortly, their minority rights as Bulgarian citizens. Debates on whether to adopt the Latin script for Turkish or not, and a host of other related issues that emerged from these disagreements about the script, reveal how Kemalist ideas provided a vehicle for defining what it meant to be a Muslim in Bulgaria. The Bulgarian Turkish Teacher’s Union endorsed the modified Latin alphabet and advocated its quick implementation.21 Meanwhile the Chief Mu¨ftu¨ Hu¨seyn Hu¨snu¨, who was one of the most influential Turkish Muslim public figures in Bulgaria, began lobbying the Ministry of Education to ban instruction in the new alphabet in Turkish schools in Bulgaria.22 However, under the pressure of the Turkish envoy in Sofia, Hu¨srev Bey, as well as the appeals of the Bulgarian Turkish Teacher’s Union, the Ministry of Education allowed instruction and printing in Turkish with the Latin script, though did not permit Turkey to send books in the new script.23 The Ministry of Education went so far as to ban the Arabo-Persian script in 1930,24 though the ban was not enforced, and many Turkishlanguage newspapers continued using the Arabo-Persian script. Conflicts over the new alphabet intensified also thanks to the continuous smuggling of Latin typesets from Turkey; in addition, newspapers like Deliorman25 and Turan,26 which sympathised with the reforms taking place in Turkey, frequently received some financial support from the government there, and even Latin typeface.27 Turan, in fact, was almost exclusively published in the modified Latin alphabet. The Turkish ambassador described the newspaper Halk Sesi (People’s Voice) – whose owner had asked Mustafa Kemal to be its patron – as “a humble servant of our great revolution”.28 While the Ministry of Education did not appear to care very much about how Turkish was written, the Ministry of Foreign and Confessional Affairs (MFCA), which supervised all Muslims, as well as the Ministry of the Interior (especially the police) supported the Office of the Chief Mu¨ftu¨ in its fight against the new alphabet at least until the late 1930s. Central and provincial authorities tended to view the Office and its supporters as allies, believing that their activities helped separate Muslim Turks from Kemalist Turkey.29 After the right-wing coup of 1934, however, the Ministry of Education became more involved in monitoring the curriculum and instruction in Turkish schools, for it also believed that the schools were channels of Kemalist propaganda.30

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The Bulgarian authorities feared that Turkish-speaking Muslims who supported the nation-building and modernisation occurring in Turkey, and who were working to emulate these changes, were disloyal Bulgarian citizens who endangered the country’s territorial integrity.31 This is the political backdrop against which the circulation of Kemalist ideas unfolded in Bulgaria, each side fashioning them to fit a particular agenda. The Chief Mu¨ftu¨, for example, condemned the adoption of the modified Latin alphabet, arguing that it disconnected Muslims from their Islamic civilisation and encouraged atheism.32 His position is best conveyed in an article published in May 1934 by the newspaper Medeniyet (Civilisation) which essentially served as the mouthpiece of the Office of the Chief Mu¨ftu¨. “Kemal the destroyer”, the article began, “imitated” (taklid) foreign practices and ideas and had dictatorially banned the Arabic letters even though the Qur’an, the Hadith and the foundations of Muslim canonical jurisprudence were penned in Arabic.33 Turkish-speaking Muslim authors had been using that very Arabo-Persian script for centuries. Worse still, the article continued, the “script revolution [yazı inkılabı]” deprived millions of people from their “glorious history and national literature”.34 This article was the second instalment of a series of articles that discussed Mustafa Kemal’s modernisation reforms in Turkey and their implications for Muslims in the post-Ottoman world, and ran in Medeniyet between May and June 1934.35 Under the section “A Historical Comparison” the newspaper dedicated five consecutive issues to comparing Mustafa Kemal (Atatu¨rk) to the Mongol ruler Hu¨legu¨ Khan, the grandson of Genghis Khan and the founder of the Ilkhanid dynasty.36 Entitled “Hu¨legu¨ Khan – Mustafa Kemal Pasha”, the articles presented both men as destroyers of Islam, Muslim communities and civilisation. The main argument, elucidated through discussions of specific actions by both men, was that “the Islamic religion/the Muslim world [islamiyet]” was compatible with “progress” and generative of “civilisation” – that is, renowned for its scientific as well as artistic knowledge and accomplishments throughout the world. The conclusion was thus that the Kemalist project of modernisation in Turkey as well as its sympathisers in Bulgaria were neither the first to claim progress, nor knowledgeable enough about the civilisation that produced them to be able to appreciate how important it was to ensure its continuation. Muslims in Bulgaria, Medeniyet seemed to suggest, had

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to be especially careful not to sever ties with their “glorious history and national literature”, which was embedded in islamiyet, that is, part of the universal Islamic civilisation to which the Ottoman Empire had belonged. If they did not take care to be part of that universal civilisation, they would be unable to transcend their particular status as a minority. With the Empire’s collapse, Mustafa Kemal and his supporters ultimately aimed to alter islamiyet; and what made it worse, one of the articles hinted,37 was that they were attempting to do so by circumventing the authority of the ulema, who were the custodians of Islam, its civilisation, and hence the only people who could lead change.38 Referring to a universal civilisation as a way to shape and lead the Muslim Turks in Bulgaria was exactly what Kemalist sympathisers advocated as well. That civilisation was modernist, nationalist and secular, and its particular manifestation was Turkish national identity, which connected them with other Turkic civilisations. Hence, those who supported the new alphabet saw in it not disconnection but reconnection as well as recognition of the pre-Islamic culture of the Turks. Linking the modified Latin script to national culture, a 1928 editorial in the newspaper Rehber (The Guide), entitled “Yeni Yazı” (“The New Script”), written in the Arabo-Persian script and published almost two months before the Latin alphabet became the law in Turkey, concluded with a rhyme in the new script. The rhyme was originally composed by the late Ottoman journalist and writer Kemalpas¸azade Sait and read thus: Arapca isteyen urbana gitsin Acemce isteyen I˙rana gitsin Frengiler frengistana gitsin Biz tu¨rku¨z bize Tu¨rki gerektir39 [Let the one who wants Arabic go to the Bedouin; Let the one who wants Persian go to Iran; Let the Franks go to their own land. For we are Turks; we must have Turkish].40 On the next page we see an announcement from Terakki (Progress), a publisher and bookseller publicising its preparations to begin using the new letters for printing books. Urging its readers to quickly learn the new script for both reading and writing, the publisher advertises, for this

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purpose, a method being developed for teaching first-graders. Below there is another announcement, explaining that newspapers published in Turkey are available for purchase at a kiosk adjacent to the mosque in Sofia (presumably the Banya Bas¸ı mosque in the city centre). Clearly there was an effort at community-building, one conversant with Kemalist ideas. Adopting the new alphabet seemed to promise a path for keeping up with the modern world. A year after Rehber’s publication, three members of Parliament from the city of Ruse (north-central Bulgaria) and three from the western town of Preslav wrote a letter to the newspaper in which they explained that the Latin alphabet did not concern Islam at all.41 The real issue, they opined, was the future of the youth. Students who had graduated from school without knowledge of the new alphabet for the Turkish language; were wrongly kept “behind a curtain”, that is deprived of the tools to shape their lives as they were being affected by the changes of the modern age.42 Muslim Turks, the newspaper Deliorman suggested, would only benefit from adopting certain positive developments among the modern youth. In an article entitled “Turkish Youths, Unite!” Deliorman congratulated Turkish youths for being in stride with the entire world after World War I by giving great importance to practicing sport for the development of mind and body.43 Muslim Turkish sports clubs also served as a springboard for discussing important political ideas and acted as a healthy, moral and vibrant environment for preparing Turks on the road to modernity; “. . . the youth we want today is a knowledgeable, healthy and idealistic youth that grasps our contemporary needs . . . it is our obligation to encourage our youth in the clean and innocent path it has taken.”44 Deliorman, though, also published articles by those who were distressed by the fact that, as they identified with progress, Turkish youths started becoming ashamed of their own culture.45 A minority of Turkish-speaking Muslims took this decadent path, one author warned, and “trampled upon their mothers and fathers, mistreated their fellow townspeople”, a painful demonstration of the need for “integrity [istikamet]”.46 Integrity was to be achieved through secular knowledge (bilgi) and continuous work (daima calıs¸mak) in formal and informal educational fora under the guidance of competent teachers, who, significantly, were also respectful of religion. This letter also betrays anxiety among those Muslim Turks in Bulgaria who sympathised with the Kemalist modernisation project, that “uncommitted” Muslims

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would be alienated or, perhaps even worse, that even the “committed” ones would develop feelings of inferiority to Europe. This was an old concern that went back to Ziya Go¨kalp’s articles from the late Ottoman period, which charted a path to modernisation that specifically addressed Turkish needs, and could thereby prevent feelings of inferiority to the West.47 Conflicts over the new alphabet quickly spilled out beyond the Turkish-language press, ultimately, they were conflicts about determining a way of life and a worldview as well as controlling the resources available to Muslim Turks to shape that way of life. Thus the Bulgarian authorities were drawn into the conflict because the alphabet became a question of citizenship rights. In 1931 eight men from the district of Kuˆrdzhali (southeastern Bulgaria, close to the Turkish border, and primarily Muslim) sent a worried telegram to the Bulgarian Ministry of Education, to the Chief Mu¨ftu¨ and to parliament representatives from their region. The telegram denounced the board of the Turkish school in Kuˆrdzhali for forbidding the Arabo-Persian script, the study of the Holy Qur’an and theology, and for mixing boys and girls in the upper classes.48 The petitioners characterised the introduction of the new alphabet as a breach of their “religious and constitutional rights that are available to every Bulgarian citizen”.49 The Chief Mu¨ftu¨ accused the school board of acting “as an instrument of the Turkish government”, branded it as “atheist” and concluded that “from a religious point of view” the board was subject to discharge.50 Within a few days he informed the Ministry of Education that the board would be dismissed and a temporary one would be formed until proper elections for the school board could be held. The Chief Mu¨ftu¨ proposed three names, and upon request received the Ministry’s approval.51 In the same year people from two villages in the southeastern Haskovo district and another village in the northeastern district of Provadia protested against efforts at introducing the modified Latin alphabet for Turkish.52 They also framed their indignation through the invocation of their rights as Muslim citizens of the Bulgarian nation state.

“Loyal” and “Disloyal” Citizens Without making explicit reference to it, these Muslims as well as the Chief Mu¨ftu¨ appealed to the authority of the Statute for the Religious

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Organization and Rule of Muslims in the Bulgarian Kingdom (mentioned earlier). The procedures for electing members of school boards and other Muslim organisations were outlined in that statute. It reiterated the autonomy of Muslims in religion, religious property and education, privileging Turkish as the language of Muslims. It also, at least on paper, made the process of election to office of the Muslim Confessional Organizations democratic. Every Muslim male was obliged to belong to the MCO of his place of residence and had the right to cast his vote in the election of the heads of the various offices of the MCOs. Elected candidates, however, had to be approved by the Chief Mu¨ftu¨ and the Ministry of Foreign and Confessional Affairs, a provision that often hindered the free nature of the election process. Hence MCOs became sites of constant ideological and, not less importantly, personal conflict among Muslims claiming community leadership.53 A case in point is a conflict in the town of Yambol in 1934. Mr Iusein Iuseinov, a former head of the MCO-Yambol, wrote to the Ministry of Foreign and Confessional Affairs, to the head of the Burgas Province, and to the Mayor of Yambol that: Our organization [MCO-Yambol] is religious, it needs intelligent people, not Turanists and other ignorant people. Thanks to our municipality we keep our faith and good morality among the Turks. Besides there are properties to be managed. For this we need educated people, people who have proven their honesty and loyalty to the religion.54 A few days later the MCO leadership also sent a letter to the Ministry of Foreign and Confessional Affairs, to the head of the Burgas Province, and to the Chief Mu¨ftu¨.55 The letter, written by Ismail Saidov, who was in charge of the MCO-Yambol, claimed that Iuseinov and the previous leadership had lost the trust of the people due to financial corruption. Saidov emphasised that he was not motivated by partisanship and concluded that the current leadership “governed for the good of our fellow nationals [suˆnarodnitsi] and to serve the Bulgarian state”.56 The Office of the Chief Mu¨ftu¨ followed up with its own correspondence with the Ministry of Foreign and Confessional Affairs. In it the Office explained that, “the financial condition of the [MCO] has deteriorated considerably and is headed for the worse”.57 To make matters worse, the

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MCO leadership had not paid its dues to the Office and did not follow its orders. The Chief Mu¨ftu¨ Office attributed these troubles to the fact that the leadership of the MCO “had fallen under the influence of the Kemalists in the country”.58 The Office then requested permission from the Ministry to dismiss the MCO leadership headed by Saidov and to appoint other people, among whom was Iuseinov himself. Iuseinov’s success was in no small part due to his skilful navigation of the fears and interests of both the Chief Mu¨ftu¨ Office and the Ministry of Foreign and Confessional Affairs, as both were in competition with Kemalist sympathisers in Bulgaria for influence over the Turkish Muslims. Both Iuseinov and Saidov insisted on their loyalty as Bulgarian citizens, but men like Saidov increasingly worried the Bulgarian government, and especially the one that had come to power thanks to a coup on 19 May 1934, led by a right-wing militaristic and nationalist group (with the secret approval of the Bulgarian King Boris III). The coup had toppled a conflict-ridden centrist coalition government that had tendered its resignation four days earlier, and that had been constituted in early 1933 from within the ruling Naroden Blok (National Coalition, 1931 –4), partly to address internal partisanship conflicts and partly to silence corruption allegations.59 Naroden Blok’s tenure was marked by the economic hardship caused by the global Great Depression, which increased the appeal of the agrarian and socialist movements, but also nourished a sense of apathy for democracy, and rapidly growing support for authoritarian conceptions of government. This period also witnessed the growth and radicalisation of Bulgarian nationalist organisations with irredentist agendas vis-a`-vis the parts of Macedonia and Thrace included in Turkey, Greece and Yugoslavia.60 Such organisations, many of which were tightly linked to members of the army, saw their ideals embodied in the coup leaders, though soon after 19 May, all political parties were banned and strict censorship was enforced. Changes in the administrative organisation of the country were also quickly accomplished so as to centralise and expand the authority of provincial governors who were appointed by and subordinated to the Ministry of the Interior.61 Within less than a year, Tsar Boris III began changing prime ministers and by the outbreak of World War II had effectively consolidated a monarchical right-wing regime.62 For a couple of years after the May coup governments continued their close relationship with the Office of the Chief Mu¨ftu¨ and the Chief Mu¨ftu¨

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Hu¨seyin Hu¨snu¨ in particular, probably motivated by the expectation that his strong hand would make Muslim Turks easier to manage. That Hu¨snu¨ enjoyed broad governmental support is evident from the fact that the Ministry of Education forced Turkish schools that had adopted the Latin script to go back to the Arabo-Persian one.63 In addition, the Office of the Chief Mu¨ftu¨ sponsored the establishment of Associations for the Protection of Islam throughout the country. This decision was intended to combat what they saw as Kemalist propaganda. In a blunt assessment of how the Bulgarian authorities should deal with the dissemination of Kemalist ideas among the country’s Muslim population, the Provincial Police Inspector of Shumen (northeastern Bulgaria), Mr Kostov, wrote to the Ministry of the Interior in October 1935 that: We should not strive to make Turkish schools reach the level of our schools because if we allow the establishment of the former, so that no one can claim that we trample upon the rights of the Turkish minority, we should not forget that it is against our interest for these schools to create inquisitive [suˆbudeni] and educated Turks. The more ignorant the Turkish masses are, the better for us. If we educate them, if we allow them to become nationally conscious, our problems will only increase.64 Kostov argued that under guidance from Turkey, young intelligent teachers in Shumen were working tirelessly to foster Turkish nationalism in the Muslim population.65 He recommended that the “old religiously fanatical hocas” (teachers) be preferred for teaching positions due to their unequivocal anti-Kemalism.66 He also cautioned against other educated Muslim Turks like lawyers and doctors; many among them, along with teachers, were members of and leaders in the organisation Turan and as such were vehicles of Kemalist propaganda in Bulgaria.67 Turan was officially registered at the Ministry of the Interior in 1927 as a sports and educational association.68 It was an umbrella organisation that, by 1926, had united several Turkish clubs that were devoted to modernising the Muslim Turkish population of Bulgaria.69 Kostov shared intelligence that some of the more prominent members of Turan travelled to Istanbul with the Bulgaria-based correspondent of the Turkish newspaper Cumhuriyet (The Republic) and also conspired to shut down the newspaper Medeniyet, which, we may recall, was the

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mouthpiece of the Chief Mu¨ftu¨ and enjoyed the support of the Bulgarian authorities.70 Police, army and administrative officials in Bulgaria’s southern regions, which were both heavily populated with Muslims and bordered Turkey, suspected anyone travelling between the two countries of disseminating Kemalist ideas. During the political crisis of Bulgarian democracy in the months preceding the coup on 19 May 1934, the Ministry of the Interior circulated information that Muslim Turks were taking advantage of partisan squabbles to accomplish “chauvinist goals”.71 “To the observant eye it is clear”, the Ministry report stated, that the Turkish schools in the districts of Shumen, Mestanli, Pashmakli, Petrich and others, “have become hotbeds of Kemalist propaganda. This population has come to believe that it can circumvent any law in the country”, especially because Muslims had retained weapons from the Balkan War and World War I.72 “Something is being fomented”73 the report continued, citing the journeys between Bulgaria and Turkey of “hocas without passports”, “healers” and “‘fake’ merchants” who traversed these areas to mobilise the Muslim Turkish population and instil anti-Bulgarian sentiment.74 In the autumn of 1934, Mr Katskov, who was the provincial governor of Plovdiv (the largest city in southern Bulgaria) sent a coded telegram to the Minister of the Interior as well as to the Director of Police informing them that the Plovdiv-based newspaper Rodopski Novini (Rhodope Mountains News) was gathering the names of potential visitors to Turkey to participate in events celebrating the foundation of the Turkish Republic.75 Three hundred and fifty-seven people had already signed up, Katskov noted in alarm, and all of them were from Kuˆrdzhali, the predominantly Muslim Turkish city in southeastern Bulgaria.76 Since the trip was intended to serve the goals of Kemalist propaganda, he explained, the authorities were obliged to ban it.77 It remains unclear how successful they were in preventing people from travelling to attend these commemorative events. There were also foreign policy considerations, especially the likelihood of another world war, which made Bulgarian authorities vigilant about the spread of Turkish nationalism among the country’s Muslim population. They were afraid of losing territories with large Muslim Turkish populations in the event of war, perhaps because they had their own territorial ambitions based on the logic of unifying all Bulgarians under one state. As a loser in World War I (as well as in the

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second Balkan War in 1913), Bulgaria was a revisionist power that hoped for territorial adjustments, the lifting of restrictions on its army, and the easing of the burden of reparations.78 This unrequited irredentism – “San Stefano Bulgaria” – dated back to the foundation of the country after the Russo-Ottoman War (1877– 8) when a sizeable Bulgarian state charted by the Russians was considerably shrunk by the Berlin Peace Treaty. Perhaps this was a major reason for persistent efforts, especially from the mid-1930s onward, to prevent the dissemination of Kemalist ideas among Turkish-speaking Muslims and especially among the Pomaks. Bulgarian border officials monitored the movements and actions of Kemalist activists during this tense period with increased caution. Two “dangerous Kemalists” from the primarily Turkish Muslim village of Gledka (south of Kuˆrdzhali, 40 km from the Turkish and 50 km from the Greek borders) were seen after dark with lanterns sending messages in Morse code towards the Turkish border.79 The Muslim population of Greek Western Thrace (Slavic-speaking or Pomak as well as Turkish-speaking) was itself deeply polarised by the modernisation reforms that were taking place in Turkey.80 Especially in the late 1930s, Bulgarian border officials were greatly concerned about the loyalties of the Pomaks and tensely watched their movements across the Greek– Bulgarian border. In November 1935 the governor of Plovdiv province Mr T. Ivanov sent a confidential letter to the Chief of Staff of the Army with a copy to the Minister of the Interior regarding the Muslim population of the Kuˆrdzhali district.81 Mr Ivanov explained that Kemalist propaganda had successfully penetrated this borderland region via Turkish tobacco commissioners, who travelled to the most remote villages to collect and price the tobacco leaves, while at the same time advocating Turkish nationalist ideas.82 Tobacco producers could be subject to the mercy of commissioners; the Pomaks made a living primarily from tobacco cultivation, and when they could not sell their tobacco leaves or sold them cheaply, were forced to sell their goats, sometimes even skipping the border south to Greece or east to Turkey.83 During Ottoman times the Pomaks had been especially involved in sheep-herding and would summer in the Bulgarian Rhodope and winter in the Greek Aegean. This type of lifestyle had become impossible in the world of nation states. Bulgarian authorities worried that because the Bulgarian economy had been weakened by World War I and then, like most Balkan

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states, hard hit by the spread of the Great Depression in the early 1930s, the Pomaks would support any state or political ideology, including Kemalism, as long as they could have access to Aegean Thrace and renew their pre-national economy.84 Teachers, though, made Bulgarian authorities especially nervous because they linked, as it were, the young generation of Bulgaria’s Muslims to the promises and dynamism of the Kemalist project in Turkey. The Turkish Government provided three annual scholarships to the best Turkish Muslim middle-school graduates to continue their education in Turkey.85 Winners were selected through a national competition under the auspices of the Turkish embassy and with the help of teachers from the Turkish schools in Bulgaria. Essay topics for the competitions included questions about the great qualities of Mustafa Kemal as a reformer, the history of the Turkish Republic, and of course only candidates who could read and write in the new Latin alphabet were allowed to participate.86 Apparently, students whose parents were considered to be “trustworthy for Turkey” were given preference in these competitions.87 Governor Ivanov listed Muslim Turkish teachers who were residents of Kuˆrdzhali and Kemalist activists, notably the director of the Turkish school in Kuˆrdzhali, Feyzi Ahmedov.88 Ivanov was especially alarmed that a former teacher was an activist of the outlawed Turkish nationalist organisation Altın Ordu (the Gold Army).89 Teachers from Turkish schools in the northeastern city of Shumen accompanied by a hoca also traversed Pomak villagers in the southeast spreading Kemalist ideas.90 Hocas from Turkey, according to the Ministry of War, travelled through Pomak villages in the border areas of southeastern and southwestern Bulgaria as well, and lived off the local population.91 While local groups espousing Kemalist ideas did not keep written records of their meetings, activities or membership, Ivanov explained, he knew about their goals from one Mu¨mu¨n Acikov whom Ivanov had interrogated twice after his return from Edirne: “The goal of the propaganda is to maintain a vigilant national spirit among the Turks and the Pomaks, and to spread the ideas of Kemal, as well as the belief that these lands are Turkish and soon will be joined to Turkey by an uprising”.92 Ivanov nonetheless wrote with cautious optimism, “I find that the plans of the Turks are hard to realise in practice because the local Turkish population does not give in so easily, and moreover opposition [reakciiata]

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to Kemalism is strong”.93 Officials from the southwestern region of Pashmakli had also observed that the Pomaks and the Turks from there were very attached to Islam, and cited with relief their success in preventing the organisations Turan and Altın Ordu from using local hocas and imams to stir up Turkish nationalism amongst the Muslims.94 Yet, Ivanov warned, “in a moment of mass infatuation” Turks from the Kuˆrdzhali region might pose a threat to the state, especially since in some municipalities there were only “5–6 Bulgarians and hence practically no one to rely on”.95 In an article taken out of circulation by the police a Bulgarian journalist explained that the Turks from the Kuˆrdzhali region were “lazy”, “easily infected with the propaganda spread among our Turks by Kemalist Turkey”, and “indulge in politics”.96 Such dangerous volatility could be addressed, Ivanov suggested, by gradually “assimilating [priobshtavane]” both the Turkish-speaking and the Pomak Muslims in the Kuˆrdzhali region.97 For both populations, Ivanov’s approach exhibited a number of similarities, such as the importance of Bulgarian-language instruction and the proliferation of Bulgarian schools as well as efforts at improving the region’s economy, and increased police surveillance. Curiously, this antagonism towards the Turkish national mobilisation and modernisation of Bulgaria’s Muslims co-existed in the late 1930s with the open endorsement of the Latin alphabet and the dismissal of Hu¨seyn Hu¨snu¨ in 1936 from his post as the Chief Mu¨ftu¨. This position stemmed from some of the same foreign policy considerations mentioned earlier. The looming danger of another war put Bulgaria’s ambitions for territorial adjustments in Thrace and Macedonia on the line, especially because Bulgaria’s leaders considered the other Balkan countries to be attempting to isolate Bulgaria. In September 1933 Greece and Turkey guaranteed their common border in Thrace. Meanwhile Turkey also signed non-aggression pacts with Romania and Yugoslavia. In February 1934 Romania, Yugoslavia, Greece and Turkey signed the Balkan Pact, by which they re-affirmed each other’s borders as set after World War I and agreed to suspend their territorial claims in the region.98 Turkey had strenuously pursued Bulgaria’s inclusion in the Pact as part of its policy to keep war out of the Balkans, or if such a war occurred to have a shared response. From this viewpoint Bulgaria’s refusal to join the Pact remained a problem for Turkey.99 This did not lead to open diplomatic conflict, however. In fact, in 1935 the Turkish

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ambassador to Bulgaria asked the Ministry of Foreign and Confessional Affairs to appoint “progressive persons rather than conservatives”100 to the Office of the Chief Mu¨ftu¨. Hu¨seyin Hu¨snu¨ Efendi was removed from his post in 1936, but appointed to serve as Inspector of Religious Education in Turkish schools, which gave him the power to punish schools that had adopted the Latin script.101 In 1938, the newly appointed Chief Mu¨ftu¨ Abdullah Sıdkı Devciog˘lu promoted the modified Latin script in complete reversal of Hu¨snu¨’s position on the matter. Prior to this appointment Devciog˘lu had served as mu¨ftu¨ in Ruse and Razgrad and, significantly, had also helped found a branch of the organisation Turan in Razgrad.102 Devciog˘lu’s appointment signaled that the Bulgarian Government was not interested in antagonising Kemalist Turkey and had become openly supportive of the new alphabet. Complaints in 1938 by the “Muslim citizens of the city of Shumen” that the children were not psychologically strong enough to deal with two alphabets for their mother tongue, and that the new alphabet encouraged atheism, must have fallen on deaf ears.103 This had to do with Great Britain’s efforts, as early as 1937, to prevent German expansion into the Balkans and the Mediterranean by fostering rapprochement between Bulgaria, Greece and Turkey. Turkey and Great Britain also mediated an agreement between Bulgaria and Greece,104 and Turkey was keen on fostering close ties with Britain against possible Italian and German aggression as well as future territorial adjustments from the French mandate over Syria.105 Bulgaria’s accommodation of Turkey’s request to support the new alphabet and to appoint a Chief Mu¨ftu¨ who was friendlier to Kemalist Turkey also enabled the Bulgarian authorities to divert Turkey’s attention away from another “Kemalist battle”, namely over the Pomaks. The Bulgarian state and the Orthodox Church had been trying to nationalise and occasionally convert the Pomaks to Christianity at least since the Balkan Wars (1912–13)106 on the basis of their shared language with Bulgarians, and nationalist myths about their ostensibly forced Islamicisation.107 This official view, which saw the Pomaks as potential Bulgarians who differed from Muslim Turks, had existed since Bulgaria’s foundation.108 The spread of Kemalist ideas among both groups of Muslims alarmed regional authorities especially. Back in 1935, Mr Ivanov had advised his superiors to encourage Bulgarians not to offend the religious feelings of the Pomaks, and not to cheat and

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mistreat them as transgressors of their “true” identity.109 Ultimately, by “cautiously revealing the national [narodni] truths”, as Mr Ivanov put it, the Pomaks would understand their true heritage. As a result, in 1937, a handful of Pomaks established, with active state support, the organisation Rodina (Bulgarian for motherland) dedicated to modernising Pomak culture and lifestyle. Rodina, central and local authorities hoped, would ultimately disconnect Pomaks from Turkish Muslims and gradually bring them into the fold of the Bulgarian nation.110 Put differently, anxious about the real and imagined successes of Kemalist propaganda, Bulgarian authorities initiated a “modernising shift” in their policy towards Muslims, so as to weaken the appeal of nationalist and modernisation values arriving from Turkey, while also encouraging division among Muslims.

Conclusion Muslim Turks in Bulgaria debated and forged modern Muslim identities during the interwar years by interpreting and adapting the Kemalist project of nation building and modernisation in neighbouring Turkey to address their own concerns as an ethno-religious minority in the ascendant Bulgarian nation state. At the same time, however, this process was an integral part of the nation-building anxieties of Bulgarian state-makers and their relations with Kemalist Turkey on the eve of World War II. The involvement of the Turkish ambassador and the Turkish Government in efforts to implement the modified Latin script for the Turkish language in Bulgaria also reveal how important post-Ottoman Muslim communities were to anchoring Kemalism in Turkey itself. In this sense conflicts over the adoption of the modified Latin script for the Turkish language in Bulgaria perhaps also show the extent to which nation-building projects in the Balkans were intertwined with each other.

Notes 1. The Grand National Assembly passed on 1 November 1928 Law No. 1353, “On the Adoption and Application of the New Turkish Letters.” It came into effect two days later and specifically prohibited the use of school books typed in the AraboPersian script as well as the printing of books in that script after the end of the year. See Geoffrey Lewis, The Turkish Language Reform: A Catastrophic Success Oxford and New York, Oxford University Press, 1999, pp. 37–8.

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2. Lewis, The Turkish Language Reform, pp. 13 – 15, 28 –30. 3. See Masami Arai, Turkish Nationalism in the Young Turk Era, Leiden, E. J. Brill, 1992, esp. Chapters 2, 3 and 4. Discussing the impact of Muslim Turkicspeaking e´migre´s from Russia on debates about, research on and changes in the Ottoman Turkish language, Arai argues that “Turkish nationalism emerged alongside and partly as a result of the rise of Turcological studies” (p. 66). 4. Arai, Turkish Nationalism in the Young Turk Era, Leiden, E. J. Brill, 1992, pp. 1 – 3. 5. Lewis, The Turkish Language Reform, pp. 9 –10, 14 –15, 16, 18 –21. 6. Quoted in ibid., p. 17. 7. Ibid., p. 18. 8. Ibid., p. 19. 9. Quoted in ibid., p. 23. 10. Lewis, The Turkish Language Reform, pp. 28 – 9. 11. M. S¸u¨kru¨ Haniog˘lu, Atatu¨rk: An Intellectual Biography, Princeton, Princeton University Press, p. 175. 12. Lewis, The Turkish Language Reform, pp. 43 – 9. 13. Quoted in ibid., p. 49. 14. Haniog˘lu, Atatu¨rk, pp. 172– 9, 215– 17; Lewis, The Turkish Language Reform, pp. 43 – 6. 15. Lewis, The Turkish Language Reform, p. 35. 16. “Ustav za dukhovnoto ustroistvo”, Chapter II; “Privremenni Pravila za dukhovnoto ustroenie na khristiianite, na miusiulmanite, i evreite” (Temporary Regulations for the Religious Organization of Christians, Muslims, and Jews), Duˆrzhaven Vestnik 56, 1880. 17. In brief: Orthodox Christians and Jews in the Ottoman Empire were entitled to ecclesiastical autonomy that also extended to issues of personal status and intercommunity affairs, as long as no Muslim was involved. Conflicts between Muslims and non-Muslims were taken to the kadı courts. After the foundation of the Bulgarian Exarchate in 1870, which established ecclesiastical autonomy from the Ecumenical Patriarch in Constantinople, religious affiliation became increasingly politicised along national lines. See Benjamin Braude, “Foundation Myths of the Millet System”, in Benjamin Braude and Bernard Lewis (eds), Christians and Jews in the Ottoman Empire: The Functioning of a Plural Society (Volume One: The Central Lands), New York, Holmes & Meier Publishers, 1982, pp. 69–88; Richard Clogg, “The Greek Millet in the Ottoman Empire”, in ibid., pp. 185–207; Zina Markova, Bu˘lgarskata Ekzarhiia 1870–1879, Sofia, BAN, 1989; Duncan M. Perry, The Politics of Terror: the Macedonian Liberation Movements, 1893–1903, Durham, NC, Duke University Press, 1988. 18. On the Principality see Zhorzheta Nazuˆrska, Buˆlgarskata Duˆrzhava i Neinite Maltsinstva (The Bulgarian State and Its Minorities), Sofia, LIK, 1999, pp. 14–25; on Eastern Rumelia see Mahir Aydın, S¸arkı Rumeli Vilaˆyeti (The Province of Eastern Rumelia), Ankara, Tu¨rk Tarih Kurumu, 1992, pp. 205–8.

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19. Duˆrzhaven Vestnik, 65, 1919. Muslim Roma were specifically excluded. 20. On the minorities regime that emerged after World War I see C. A. Macartney, National States and National Minorities, New York, Russell & Russell, [1934] 1968, esp. Chapters 7, 8, 11 and 13. 21. Bilaˆl S¸ims¸ir, The Turks of Bulgaria (1878 – 1985), London, K. Rustem & Brother, 1988, p. 96. 22. Ebru Boyar and Kate Fleet, “A Dangerous Axis: The ‘Bulgarian Mu¨ftu¨’, the Turkish Opposition and the Ankara Government, 1928– 1936”, Middle Eastern Studies, 44, 5, 2008, p. 776; S¸ims¸ir, The Turks of Bulgaria, pp. 98 – 100. 23. S¸ims¸ir, The Turks of Bulgaria, pp. 102– 3. 24. Ibid., p. 103. 25. The name (in Turkish) of the mountain range in northeastern Bulgaria where many Turkish Muslims lived. 26. The name of the newspaper invokes the pan-Turkist vision of the late Ottoman/early republican intellectual Ziya Go¨kalp (1876– 1924). His concept of Turan linked culturally and linguistically the Turks of Anatolia and Central Asia, the latter of course was under Russian and Soviet sovereignty. In 1911 he published a poem entitled “Turan” in the Salonika (Thessaloniki) newspaper Rumeli; see Ziya Go¨kalp, The Principles of Turkism, trans (and annotated) Robert Devereux, Leiden, E. J. Brill, 1968, p. 9, fn. 3. His essay “Turkism and Turanism”, p. 17 – 21 lays out his views. 27. Boyar and Fleet, “A Dangerous Axis”, p. 783–4. 28. Quoted in ibid., p. 783. 29. Mila Mancheva, “Image and Policy: the Case of Turks and Pomaks in Inter-war Bulgaria, 1918– 1944 (with special reference to education)”, Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations 12, 3, p. 357. 30. Mancheva, “Image and Policy”, pp. 367– 9. 31. TsDIA (Central State Archive), f. (collection) 166 k, op. (catalogue) 2, a. e. (entry no.) 121, l. (page) 67. 32. TsDIA, f. 471k, op.1 1, a. e. 41, l. 117–18. 33. Medeniyet, 23, 24 May 1934. 34. Ibid. 35. Medeniyet, 22 May to 26 June 1934. 36. Reuven Amitai, “Hulagu Khan”, Encyclopaedia Iranica, Online Edition, 15 December 2004, available at www.iranicaonline.org. 37. Medeniyet, 23, 1934. 38. I owe this formulation to Muhammad Qasim Zaman, The Ulama in Contemporary Islam: Custodians of Change, Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press, 2002, whose study analyses the rise of the ulema to political importance in the modern world by carving out a role for themselves as guardians of change. 39. Rehber, 34, 1928. 40. I have included here Geoffrey Lewis’ translation from The Turkish Language Reform, p. 25.

102 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 62. 63. 64. 65. 66. 67. 68.

69. 70. 71. 72. 73. 74. 75.

KEMALISM Rehber, 59, 1929. Ibid. Deliorman, 141, 25 June 1925. S¸ims¸ir, The Turks of Bulgaria, p. 72. Deliorman, 122, February 1925. Ibid. Taha Parla, The Social and Political Thought of Ziya Go¨kalp, 1876– 1924, Leiden, E. J. Brill, 1985, pp. 27 – 9, 38. TsDIA, f. 471k, op. 1, a. e. 41, l. 117. TsDIA, f. 471k, op. 1, a. e. 41, l. 115. TsDIA, f. 471k, op. 1, a. e. 41, l. 117– 18 (22 October 1931). TsDIA, f. 471k, op. 1, a. e. 41, l. 120 (28 October 1931). TsDIA, f. 471k, op. 3, a. e. 10. For more personal conflicts between Kemalist sympathisers see also for example, TsDIA, f. 370k, op. 6, a. e. 423, l. 49, 58 – 61. TsDIA, f. 471k, op. 1, a. e. 115, l. 11 (7 August 1934). TsDIA, f. 471k, op. 1, a. e. 115, l. 10 (10 October 1934). TsDIA, f. 471k, op. 1, a. e. 115, l. 10 (10 October 1934). TsDIA, f. 471k, op. 1, a. e. 115, l. 1 (8 March 1935). TsDIA, f. 471k, op. 1, a. e. 115, l. 1 (8 March 1935). Elena Statelova and Stoicho Gruˆncharov, Istoriia na Nova Buˆlgariia 1878– 1944 (Tom III) (The History of New Bulgaria 1878 –1944 (Volume III)), Sofia, Anubis, 1999, pp. 500 –7. Statelova and Gruˆncharov, Istoriia na Nova Buˆlgariia, pp. 490–8. Ibid., p. 521. Ibid., pp. 551– 76. Evgeniia Ivanova, Othvu˘rlenite “Priobshteni” ili Protsesa Narechen Vuˆzroditelen (Rejecting the “Assimilated” or the So-Called Revival Process), Sofia, Institut za Iztochnoevropeiska Khumanistika, 2002, p. 25. TsDIA, f. 370k, op. 6, a. e. 423, l. 24. TsDIA, f. 370k, op. 6, a. e. 423, l. 24. TsDIA, f. 370k, op. 6, a. e. 423, l. 24. TsDIA, f. 370k, op. 6, a. e. 423, l. 24. Mikhail Gruev, “Buˆlgarite miusiulmani i kemalistkoto dvizhenie v Rodopite (1919 – 1939 g.)”, in K. Grozev and T. Popnedelev (eds), Moderniiat Istorik: Vuˆobrazhenie, Informiranost, Pokoleniia, Sofia, “Daniela Ubenova”, 1999, pp. 218 –27. Gruev, “Buˆlgarite miusiulmani”, pp. 218– 27. TsDIA, f. 370k, op. 6, a. e. 423, l. 25 (6 September 1935). TsDIA, f. 370k, op. 6, a. e. 427, l. 100 (21 March 1934). TsDIA, f. 370k, op. 6, a. e. 427, l. 100 (21 March 1934). TsDIA, f. 370k, op. 6, a. e. 427, l. 100 gr. (21 March 1934). TsDIA, f. 370k, op. 6, a. e. 427, l. 100 gr. (21 March 1934). TsDIA, f. 264k, op. 7, a. e. 748, l. 1 (16 October 1934).

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81. 82. 83. 84. 85. 86. 87. 88. 89. 90. 91. 92. 93. 94. 95. 96. 97. 98. 99. 100. 101. 102. 103. 104. 105.

106. 107.

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Ibid. Ibid. Statelova and Gruˆncharov, Istoriia na Nova Buˆlgariia, pp. 586–7. TsDIA, f. 370k, op. 6, a. e. 917, l. 47 (May 26, 1938). See Yannis Bonos, “The Turkish Spelling Mistakes Episode in Greek Thrace, June 1929: Beyond Modernists Versus Conservatives”, in Nathalie Clayer and Eric Gemain (eds), Islam in Inter-War Europe, New York, Columbia University Press, 2008, pp. 362– 86. TsDIA, f. 264k, op. 1, a. e. 31, l. 3. TsDIA, f. 264k, op. 1, a. e. 31, l. 4. TsDIA, f. 264k, op. 7, a. e. 751, l. 2. TsDIA, f. 370k, op. 6, a. e. 427, l. 119, 119 gr. TsDIA, f. 370k, op. 6, a. e. 423, l. 86. TsDIA, f. 370k, op. 6, a. e. 423, l. 86. TsDIA, f. 370k, op. 6, a. e. 423, l. 86. TsDIA, f. 264k, op. 1, a. e. 31, l. 4 (22 November 1935). TsDIA, f. 264k, op. 1, a. e. 31, l. 4 (22 November 1935). TsDIA, f. 264k, op. 6, a. e. 751, l. 1 (29 May 1934). TsDIA, f. 264k, op. 6, a. e. 751, l. 1, 2. TsDIA, f. 264k, op. 1, a. e. 31, l. 4. TsDIA, f. 264k, op. 1, a. e. 31, l. 4. TsDIA, f. 370k, op. 6, a. e. 427, l. 119, 119 gr. (27 March 1934). TsDIA, f. 264k, op. 1, a. e. 31, l. 4. TsDIA, f. 370k, op. 6, a. e. 423, l. 11 (20 March 1935). TsDIA, f. 264k, op. 1, a. e. 31, l. 5, 6. William Hale, Turkish Foreign Policy 1774– 2000, London; Portland, OR, Frank Cass, 2000, p. 61. Brock Millman, “Turkish Foreign and Strategic Policy 1934– 42”, Middle Eastern Studies, 31, 3, 1995, pp. 489– 90. S¸ims¸ir, The Turks of Bulgaria, p. 115. Ibid., p. 117; Boyar and Fleet, “A Dangerous Axis”, p. 786. Osman Keskiog˘lu, Bulgaristan’da Tu¨rkler: Tarih ve Ku¨ltu¨r, Ankara, Ku¨ltu¨r ve Turizm Bakanlıg˘ı Yayınları, 1985, pp. 166– 7. TsDIA, f. 471k, op. 3, a. e. 10. Statelova and Gru˘ncharov, Istoriia na Nova Bu˘lgariia, p. 588. Millman, “Turkish Foreign”, p. 490. For Turkish – French disputes over the Province of Alexandretta, see Sarah D. Shields, Fezzes in the River: Identity Politics and European Diplomacy in the Middle East on the Eve of World War II, Oxford; New York, Oxford University Press, 2011. See the volume of documents on this process compiled by Velichko Georgiev and Staiko Trifonov, Pokruˆstvaneto na Buˆlgarite Mokhamedani, 1912– 1913 (The Conversion of the Bulgarian Muslims), Sofia, Marin Drinov, 1995. See Antonina Zheliazkova, “Formirane na Miusiulmanskite Obshtnosti i Kompleksite na Balkanskite Istoriografii” (“The Formation of Muslim

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Communities and the Inferiority Complexes of Balkan Historiographiesies”), in Antonina Zheliazkova, Bozhidar Aleksiev, and Zhorzheta Nazu˘rska Miusiulmnskite Obshtnosti na Balkanite i v Buˆlgariia: Istoricheski Eskizi (The Formation of Muslim Communities in the Balkans and in Bulgaria), Sofia, IMIR, 1997, pp. 11– 57; and Bozhidar Aleksiev, “Rodopskoto Naselenie v Buˆlgarskata Humanistika” (“The Rhodope Population in Bulgarian Humanities”), in Zheliazkova, Aleksiev, and Nazu˘rska Miusiulmnskite Obshtnosti na Balkanite i v Bu˘lgariia: Istoricheski Eskizi, pp. 57–113. 108. See Valeri Stoianov, Turskoto Naselenie v Buˆlgariia mezdu Poliusite na Etnicheskata Politika (The Turkish Population in Bulgaria in the Polarised Context of Ethnic Politics), Sofia, LIK, 1998. 109. TsDIA, f. 264k, op. 1, a. e. 31, l. 5. 110. On the modernisation efforts pursued by Rodina, see Mary Neuburger, The Orient Within: Muslim Minorities and the Negotiation of Nationhood in Modern Bulgaria, Ithaca, NY, Cornell University Press, 2004; as well as Gruev, “Buˆlgarite miusiulmani”, pp. 218– 27.

CHAPTER 3 FROM OTTOMAN TO TURKISH SCRIPT IN CYPRUS: CONCEPTION AND IMPLEMENTATION OF A ‘‘KEMALIST REFORM’’ AGAINST A COLONIAL BACKDROP Be´atrice Hendrich

Mete Tuncay, in his article on the character of the Kemalist state engineering, quotes a saying about the purposelessness of pondering about historical events that did not happen: “Just as it is not possible for things that happened to have not happened, it is not possible for things that did not happen to have happened”.1 However, not all historians judge “what-if ” questions (counterfactual history) so harshly.2 In the case of the Kemalist Revolutions (Atatu¨rk I˙nkılapları), political circumstances provide us with the rare opportunity to grasp – cum grano salis – what might have happened if. What might have happened if decisive cultural reforms and revolutions had been discussed in-depth by the people directly affected by them, and implemented according to the results of these discussions, instead of just decreed by state power?3 The transition from Ottoman to Latin Script in Cyprus appears to be a minor, neither exciting nor surprising, theme. As I will discuss and

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demonstrate in the following sections, the dominant discourse suggests that the Turks in Cyprus wholeheartedly welcomed the letters revolution (harf inkılabı/yazı devrimi), just as the Turks in the “Motherland” – this is a key term in the narrative – had done before them, and that they rapidly managed to force the colonial government to accept the change. The change supposedly did not prompt any substantial conflict within the Turkish community. This one-dimensional reading of the events, as an element of Turkish national history, disguises the fact that the script change in Cyprus took place under completely different political, legal and social circumstances, and consequently offers us an interesting opportunity for comparison. This article aims to describe the technical and administrative aspects of the process as it can be understood from the British documents, and to follow the discourse within the Turkish community, insofar as it was mirrored in the Cypriot newspapers and in some other documents. In order to discuss the historical process, we first need to do a general review of the harf inkılabı, and (academic) writing dealing with this process in Cyprus in particular. However, this article will focus primarily on the actors located in Cyprus – it is not a study of the actions of the Turkish state in this affair, or of how the script change in Cyprus was perceived by interested circles in the Turkish Republic. The importance of reading the history of the Turkish community in Cyprus, not so much as a part of a greater (national) Turkish history, but as a part of British colonial history, and as a history in its own right, becomes all the more apparent when we reconstruct the process at hand, which indeed appears to have been more characteristic of transition than of revolution.

Historical and Political Background: The British Crown Colony of Cyprus The Turkish language transitioned from using Arabic to Latin characters in Cyprus roughly speaking between 1928 and 1932. Implementation of the script reform took place against a specific political backdrop, which was determined by the policy of the young Republic of Turkey, by the British Empire’s approach to handling its colonies and by an early search for political identity within the Muslim, or Turkish, community.4

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Thus, before moving on to a more detailed account of the script change, I will provide a very short overview of the political situation in and related to Cyprus. The Turkish community of Cyprus dates back to the Ottoman conquest of Cyprus in 1571. Ottoman soldiers and civil servants, farmers and craftsmen forced or convinced to settle in the new province, banned criminals and converted Cypriot Christians constituted the predominantly but not exclusively Turkophone Muslim millet of Cyprus.5 While the demographic percentage of this community used to oscillate as an effect of political, economic and natural influences, it never exceeded 35 to 40 per cent.6 A census of the British administration counted 64,238 (18.5 per cent) “Turks” by 1931.7 Between 1878 and 1914, Cyprus had formally been a part of the Ottoman Empire, but “administered” by Britain. In November 1914, Britain declared war on the Ottoman Empire and annexed Cyprus the same day. However, after the Turkish War of Independence (1919–22), relations between the Turkish Republic and Britain began to improve progressively. In the Treaty of Lausanne (1923), the Turkish Republic waived any rights it had over Cyprus and accepted the British annexation of the island (Article 20). Article 21 of the same treaty regulated the citizenship issue; between 1924 and 1926, Cypriot Turks would have the choice either to stay in Cyprus as British nationals, or to emigrate to Turkey and obtain Turkish citizenship. In 1925 the Turkish Consulate in Cyprus was opened, in 1930 Britain and Turkey signed a Treaty of Commerce and Navigation, and subsequently Mussolini’s revisionist politics spurred Turkish– British cooperation in security matters.8 Turkey’s very pragmatic, non-expansionist foreign policy frustrated the hopes of those Cypriot Turks who had anticipated that their community be backed by the new Turkish state.9 Turkey refrained from interfering in Cypriot –Turkish affairs in a too demanding or obvious manner during the interwar period. Or as McHenry puts it: “The complex realities of the Crown Colony of Cyprus presented Turkey with an intricate diplomatic challenge”.10 On the other hand, Britain needed the support of the Turkish community in order to counterbalance anti-colonial activities in the Greek community. Thus, the degree of control and censorship that Britain exercised over the Turkish community varied throughout the years, depending on political parameters and administrative or legal

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measures, and by no means always and exclusively aimed to curtail the influence of Kemalist ideas – as I will demonstrate later on.11 The colonial government did not cut off intellectual or political exchange between the Turks in Cyprus and those in Turkey. Through personal contacts and newspapers, Cypriot Turks were well-informed about the political and cultural changes taking place in Turkey. Since the time of the Young Turks’ rule, teachers – Cypriots returning to Cyprus after graduating in Turkey, as well as citizens of the Turkish Republic coming to Cyprus in search of employment – had been playing a decisive role in disseminating new political ideas.12 With the victory of the Kemalists in the Turkish War of Independence (1919– 22), teachers began to organise pro-Kemalist activities together with their students, such as holding meetings, performing nationalist plays or publicly celebrating Turkey’s new national holidays. The Turkish schools13 became “hotbeds” of Kemalism in Cyprus.14 However, as Jeanette Choisi has clearly shown, despite the Cypriot Turks’ political discussions about, and interest in the changes taking place in the Turkish Republic, until the late 1920s “the greatest part of the Turkish Cypriot upper class followed political civil-servant careers and was allied with the colonial administration against the Enosis aspirations [union of the Cypriot island with Greece] of the Greek Cypriot elite”.15 In 1925, Cyprus was declared a British Crown Colony, a territory of the British Empire ruled by a governor appointed by the Monarch. However, this transition from an annexed territory to an official colony had in reality little impact on the administrative or political system,16 let alone on the daily lives of average people. In the Turkish Cypriot newspapers of that time, the change was mentioned, but not broadly discussed. The real change was felt in 1931, however, when the colonial government began to completely revise Cyprus’s political and administrative structure, insofar as the hitherto existing space for Cypriot autonomous decisions and political participation was concerned. The elections to the Legislative Council in 1930 stood at the beginning of this political turn, when the Turkish electorate turned away from their conservative politicians, who had supported the status quo for decades. Instead, they gave their votes to Kemalist, anti-British candidates. In April 1931, a Turkish delegate voted together with the Greek delegates against the unbalanced budget presented by the government.

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In November of that year, the Legislative Council was abolished, political parties banned, censorship established, Turkish and Greek history discarded from the curriculum and so on. “In particular for the next ten years Cyprus became a colony ruled in an openly dictatorial and despotic way”.17 The most commonly accepted reading of these events holds that such measures were in response to the (Greek) riots of 1931. The rising tensions between colonial rule and the Greek community had culminated, in October 1931, in rioting throughout the island, and the burning of the Governor’s house in Nicosia.18 However, according to Choisi, Britain had to abolish political and civic rights in order to maintain the “colonial peace”;19 that is, a stable colonial government without a cooperating Greek – Turkish opposition. 1931 was simply a most welcome pretext for the realisation of the above-mentioned changes, Choisi argues.20 Whatever the reasons for putting an end to the established system, for the Turkish community it meant a political rollback and stagnation in almost all spheres for the next few years. The period of World War II was the next political and economic setback for Cyprus. This was not the time to ask for specific political rights or for an increase in material standards. It was the time to fight together with Britain and the Axis powers. From 1938, Turkey steered an explicitly pro-British course, and many Turkish Cypriots joined the British Army (as did Greek Cypriots) in order to escape the disastrous economic situation.21 As I will show below, these circumstances even contributed to hampering the further dissemination of Roman characters.

Remarks on “Kemalism” and the Civilising Mission in Cyprus Before continuing to the script reform itself, a remark on terminology ought to be made. “Kemalism” and “Kemalist” are used throughout this paper. The comprehensive definition of these terms is a task in its own right, of which the introduction to this volume is an impressive demonstration. In this article, however, they either refer to the dominant political context in the (early) Turkish Republic in a rather general sense, or specifically to the discourse and practices of certain segments and representatives of the Turkish community in colonial Cyprus. In the latter case, self-attribution has to be distinguished from external assessment: the question of whom to call a Kemalist, or even more

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importantly an anti-Kemalist, and for which reason, dominates the Cypriot debate both in the past and the present. The political and historical situation in Cyprus yielded two major distinctions of what it meant “to be a Kemalist”. The first major difference between the Kemalists in Turkey and their contemporaries in Cyprus was that in the Turkish Republic, being a Kemalist was the socially appropriate norm for a citizen, and Kemalism the valid framework for arguing and acting, while the state implemented the whole project. In Cyprus, however, becoming a Kemalist was in the first instance an individual decision; because of the colonial context, being a Kemalist was an endeavour restricted to more or less symbolic activities, to lifestyle and fashion choices, and to openly welcoming the changes taking place in Turkey whether they could adopt them or not. Ideas requiring changes in the political system, on the other hand, such as Republicanism and Statism, were likely to attract suspicion and backlash from the colonial administration. The second distinction is related to the link between Kemalism and its focus on a civilising mission: “. . . modernity articulated by the Kemalist elite as the will to civilization . . . civilization as a project of modernity which was premised on the equation of modernity with progress . . . through the introduction and dissemination of Western reason and rationality”.22 As Christoph Ramm demonstrates, Cyprus had been under the influence of several civilising missions at once: The British-colonial project, the Greek-national idea of rescuing Cyprus from the “Ottoman yoke”, the quest for civilisation by the late Ottomans and finally the Kemalist project.23 Colonial Cyprus was not only exposed to the Western lifestyle and political concepts, it also provided the elite with the opportunity to become “part of the winning team”, as civil servants and by acquiring British citizenship. Thus, voting for a specific concept of civilisation was also a political decision with a potential for political conflict. A prevalent narrative in the historiography on Cyprus claims that in the 1920s and 1930s the Turkish community was split into two factions: the first “old-fashioned”, attached to the status quo, and the second revolutionary and anti-British. The former were called Evkafcılar, for those who supported the Administration of Pious Foundations, gelenekciler, for the traditionalists, and hu¨ku¨metciler, for those who supported British rule. The revolutionary faction was called Atatu¨rkcu¨ or Kemalist.24

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This narrative bases its claims, anachronistically, on the above-mentioned political controversy and riot of 1930–125 and on famous characters such as Sir Mehmed Mu¨nir Efendi, a Turkish Cypriot who had been a colonial servant since 1906.26 He held several offices at once; he was the General Administrator for the Evkaf (Administration of Pious Foundations), delegate at the Legislative Council – until 1931 – and head of many other boards, committees and so on. A member of the Turkish elite and British by nationality, he served the government as counsellor until the late 1940s. Because the Evkaf was the most important economic player in the Turkish community, all sides were eager to control the institution. Its stepwise integration into the colonial administration diminished direct control by the community,27 so Mu¨nir Efendi as General Administrator personified colonial oppression in the eyes of his opponents. His flashy appearance, wearing a fez and sporting a walking stick, added to the revolutionary faction’s aversion for him he faced at a time when the fez was taken as an outspoken affront to Kemalist civilisation.28 As the example of Mu¨nir Efendi and others show, however, conservatism, Muslim and Turkish consciousness, pro-British and proKemalist sentiments and most importantly, one’s “civilisational level” could intersect in many ways. A clear-cut distinction between the above mentioned two factions is not possible. The fez-wearing British Sir Mu¨nir was, without a doubt, a well-educated civilised person. Beyond that, Ramm states that Mu¨nir Efendi’s motivation “was evidently to secure Muslim communal interests through close cooperation with the colonial administration”.29 Another intriguing example of the broad variety of political opinions is Hacıbulgurzade Ahmed Hulusi Efendi, the author and editor of the newspaper Birlik (Union). He concentrated on the poor living-conditions of the Cypriot Turks, the improvement of their “civilizational level”, as he put it, and promoting a Cypriot identity instead of hope for salvation by the Kemalist Turkish Republic. At the same time, he vigorously defended a “modern lifestyle” for men and women; education, unveiling and monogamy.30 On the other hand, the Kemalists of Cyprus defended the continuation of the traditional Islamic institutions as part of their communal identity and political influence.31 Even the secular Family Law from 1951 still provided particular stipulations for Muslim women, which can be traced back to Muslim family law, as a Muslim woman was not allowed to marry a non-Muslim.

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In 1951, a British civil servant summarised the difficulty of accurately categorising the political orientation of the Turkish Cypriots thus: “The term ‘Kemalist’ has been used in this note for want of a better one, since the Turkish ‘parties’ in Cyprus do not bear any real relation to the Cu¨m Huriyet (sic!) Halk Partisi or the Democrat Partisi in Turkey.”32 Against this historical and political backdrop, Roman characters were replacing Arabic letters in Cyprus. In the next section, I will discuss some general questions with regard to the script reform both in Turkey and in Cyprus.

Harf I˙nkılabı as the Herald of a New Age? Discussing the script change in Cyprus means touching on at least four more fundamental issues: (1) Was Turkish language planning during the Republican period more a continuation of previous activities in Ottoman times, or a revolution? (2) Where should we situate the script change within the general field of Turkish language planning? (3) What is the (retrospective) Cypriot historiography of the implementation of the Kemalist Revolutions in colonial Cyprus? and (4) What were the general cultural and social effects of the script change, and in particular in Cyprus?

Turkish Language Planning and the Script Revolution There is no standardised terminology for speaking about measures taken to change a language; thus, I will follow the definition given by Ruth Bartoloma¨.33 According to Bartholoma¨, “language planning” in its broader sense includes activities by a variety of agents – state institutions as well as all kinds of academic, educational and individual initiatives – that influence the status and corpus of a language.34 A language’s corpus includes its script, grammar and vocabulary. This article deals with the implementation of the script change in Cyprus exclusively. To make a long story short, it is generally agreed that effective planning of the Ottoman/Turkish language was only implemented during the early years of the Turkish Republic, as part of a set of

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Kemalist reforms that aimed in turn to secularise, modernise and build a nation state.35 The need to introduce changes to the Ottoman language, however, was already being felt during the Tanzimat period (1839–76). Different solutions for modernising, and later Turkifying, the vocabulary and grammar, were discussed but subject to political conjecture.36 It was only when the Young Turks came to power (1908) that language planning was consistently propagated.37 Attempts were made to better adapt the Arabic script to the Turkish sound system. In 1913, Enver Pasha – the Ottoman officer, leader of the Young Turks and War Minister – decreed the use of “disjoined letters” (huruf-u munfasıla) for military telegraphists and for internal communications in the Ministry of War. Concurrently, a complete shift to a script based on Latin letters was discussed in various military and intellectual circles. If Latin letters were to substitute the Arabic ones, decisions would need to be made on the appropriate orthography. Should the new script be based on the French example – a practice exercised already in written communication between Ottomans and foreigners who could speak Turkish but not write Ottoman – or should a new “Turkish alphabet” be created?38 It was not until five years after the foundation of the Republic of Turkey that a decision was made on this matter. Finally, law 1353 “on the adoption and application of the new Turkish letters”, with its strict regulation came into effect on the 3 November 1928. In fact, what marks out the script change in Turkey is not the introduction of Latin letters as such. In the Ottoman Empire as well as in many other modernising world regions at that time, Romanisation – writing in Latin characters – was being discussed, put to the test and dropped or implemented.39 What distinguishes the script reform of 1928 is the speed of its implementation in all state institutions and the printing sector, as part of a top-down educational dictatorship, backed by a country-wide teaching campaign. However, in spite of all endeavours, actual use of the new script was neither so complete nor so quick as government policy may have made it appear. Hale Yılmaz has investigated the social experiences of people who had to learn to read (again) after 1928.40 The study shows that there was an intriguing “multiplicity of experiences of learning to read and write (the new letters)” as well as a not so insignificant “persistence of the Ottoman script”.41 Even among educated people, not everybody managed to learn the new characters; these people remained at the mercy of their children

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when it came to reading the newspapers, contemporary literature or official documents.42 Among those who had been successfully taught the new script, not everybody used it. Not only did the Ottoman script remain present in private correspondence and notes for the next few decades, but Yılmaz was able to document cases where teachers and civil servants continued to use the old writing system in the years following the changes.43 Another promise of the rigorous reform had been that it would drastically reduce illiteracy. I˙hsan Yılmaz Bayraktarlı compared percentages of illiteracy in countries with different writing systems. Based on the results of this comparison, he has argued that the use of Latin characters was not the most significant tool for improving literacy.44 As is the case for other changes and regulations introduced after the foundation of the Republic, it can be asked if they really were revolutions or merely reforms with an Ottoman background. As Nur Betu¨l C¸elik has pointed out, inkılapcılık (“Revolutionism”), one of the Kemalist Pillars (Atatu¨rk I˙lkeleri), implied a twofold meaning and duty when the term was created; it included a revolutionary aspect in the sense of overthrowing traditional institutions, but it also included a conservative aspect, because the new strong state and its institutions had to be protected, and further societal or economic development was to be a top-down project which excluded revolutionary autonomous activities on the people’s own initiative.45 Based on these considerations, and the history of pre-Republican efforts to change the script, however shortlived they may have been, I will use the term script reform. Following this short account of the 1928 script reform in Turkey, I will continue with a summary of the parallel discourse about the harf inkılabı in Cyprus.

Publications on the Script Reform in Cyprus When Atatu¨rk instituted his reform in the writing of the Turkish language in 1928, the new Latin script was immediately adopted by the Turkish Cypriot community, and teachers donated their time to conduct special literacy classes for children and adults.46 Most authors agree that the introduction of the new Turkish script in Cyprus did not provoke any tensions, either within the Turkish community, or between the colonial government and the Turkish Cypriots.

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Even an author critical of Kemalism as late Hu¨seyin Ates¸in shares this opinion: “Amongst the Kemalist reforms the alphabet conversion has been the one reform that was adopted without any difficulty and with speed”.47 Only Beria Remzi O¨zoran (1916–92), daughter of the founder of the outspoken Kemalist newspaper So¨z (Word), and Ali Nesim, ¨ zoran in much of his work, accuse the colonial government who copies O of blocking the script reform: “Indeed, those responsible had been working very hard to block the implementation of the new letter reform”48 (my translation). This “lack of conflict” could be a reason why the script reform has not as yet attracted much interest among scholars. If at all, it is usually briefly mentioned in relation to other subjects, such as press history,49 or as a minor aspect of language planning,50 and – as will be shown below – as an element in the Cypriot Kemalisation narrative.51 Some shorter articles, which do not always take a scholarly approach, deal with the reform.52 This scarcity of original research obviously makes it all the more tempting to satisfy oneself with the dominant account of an enthusiastic and speedy adoption of the script reform by all Turkish Cypriots, out of their unrestricted dedication to Kemalism (and love for the Turkish Motherland).53 Even an otherwise thorough work like that of James A. McHenry54 repeats this narrative, as we can see from the quotation at the start of this section. There are only a few exceptions to this: Strohmeier remarks that certain newspapers still published articles in Ottoman script “as late as 1934”,55 and Kızılyu¨rek/Gautier-Kızılyu¨rek are the only ones to mention that the reform “did not reach the majority of the Turkish Cypriots until the period following the Second World War” because of an insufficient provision of newspapers, but without further elaboration.56 ¨ zoran One of the earlier papers on this subject, the article by O mentioned earlier,57 though far from objective, still provides us with some important primary sources,58 citations from her father’s newspaper So¨z transliterated from Ottoman into Turkish script.59 The other papers published later often quote one another, instead of consulting primary sources. In order to demonstrate the effects of publication activity, which extolled and repeated the same discourse, I will retrace the narrative called “Atatu¨rk gave the first printing machine with Latin letters to

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Cyprus as a gift”. To begin with, let us first look at a quote from a more recent article on “The Turkish Cypriot Mass Media”, published in Zypern. Su¨dosteuropa Handbuch VIII, the reference book on Cyprus in Germany: “Later, in 1930, a printing machine with the Latin alphabet was sent to him [Mehmet Remzi]60 from the Turkish mainland. It was a gift from the Turkish government, made on the personal orders of Kemal Atatu¨rk”.61 Azgın draws his knowledge from a short account by Nas¸it Ulug˘. According to Ulug˘, between 1926 and 1928, money was sent on a regular basis from Ankara to Nicosia in support of Turkish newspapers on the island. Ulug˘ was at the time an employee at the Turkish newspaper Hakimiyeti Milliye (National Sovereignty). In this capacity he witnessed the arrival of Mehmet Remzi in Ankara, who had come in order to get “Turkish characters”. Atatu¨rk, says Ulug˘, had been very pleased about Remzi’s activities, and he gave a closed envelope to someone who could forward it to Remzi. On this occasion, Atatu¨rk is reported to have said: “In Cyprus, the Turkish language [Tu¨rk dili] must ¨ zoran recounts a similar story in 1970, referring not die away”.62 Beria O to a personal conversation with Dervis¸ Manizade, the same person that ¨ zoran, published Ulug˘’s account later. In his account, according to O Manizade referred to Ulug˘’s oral account, though in this version, Mehmed Remzi had ordered the Turkish characters from a German company. The Government of the Turkish Republic was used to ordering from the same company, which had mixed up the invoices and also sent those invoices for the characters ordered by Mehmed Remzi to ¨ zoran calls him, heard of this he Ankara. When “the Great Leader”, as O felt disposed to pay Remzi’s invoice, rhyming “Hay hay, SO¨Z gazetesinin siparis¸i de bizim tarafımızdan o¨densin. Kıbrıs’ta Tu¨rk sesi so¨nmesin!” (Aye! We shall pay the newspaper So¨z’s invoice. In Cyprus, the Turkish voice [Tu¨rk sesi ] must not die away!).63 The only contemporary reference to this event is an article by Mehmed Remzi himself in his newspaper: “o¨teden beri bu¨yu¨k milletimizin actıg˘ı ve yu¨ru¨du¨g˘u¨ yoldan gitmemiz lazım geldig˘ini tervic ediyoruz . . . Bu du¨¸su¨nce ile Yeni Tu¨rkce harfler getirttik” (For a long time I had been spreading the word that we have to walk down the path that our great nation has opened and has been walking down . . . For this reason, I ordered the New Letters).64 Dilek Yig˘it Yu¨ksel relates another version of this myth, which is worth quoting since the narrator is Rauf Denktas¸ (1924 – 2012), the

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Cypriot lawyer and politician, and so-called Founding President of the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (1983 – 2004): Despite British pressure, each reform implemented in Turkey came into being here [in Cyprus] spontaneously . . . During the script reform Remzi Pasha went at his own expense to C¸ankaya [Ankara] where he met Atatu¨rk’s assistant and told him: ‘Due to fate, we happen to live outside the borders of the National Pact. We are Turks. The island is a Turkish island. There are seventythousand martyrs. If we don’t bring about the revolution of the letters, we will lose touch with you in terms of culture. Then you will lose us completely. I’m a newspaper man, I don’t have money but I want to get the Latin letters.’ One week later, he was called to come [to the office]. Atatu¨rk’s assistant gave him a letter which said: “Mustafa Kemal Pasha congratulates you. You are on the right path. Go and get with this money the letters from this address.” After Remzi Bey’s return to Cyprus, he was sent money almost every month via the embassy so that his dedication to Turkey would not be forgotten.65 My intention for this section was to outline the general history of the Turkish script reform, to stress some key points in this issue and to give an account of the state of the art regarding the script reform in Cyprus. I would like to end the section with a quotation by Hadjioannou, from her article about language planning in Cyprus. The author ascribes great deal of importance to the script change as a means of breaking with the past: The modern period for the Turkish language commenced in 1928 with Mustafa Kemal Atatu¨rk’s language reform program; this involved a consistent attempt at breaking from Turkey’s Ottoman past, which, in terms of language, meant that the Arabic script was abandoned in favour of an almost phonetic writing system based on the Latin alphabet.66 In Cyprus, however, as mentioned before, the circumstances were quite different from those in Turkey; Ottoman hegemony had come to an end long before, the alphabet of the colonial rulers used Latin letters and,

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despite success in implementing the script reform, the political context remained absolutely unchanged. One might well wonder if, in the Cypriot case, the introduction of Latin letters could likewise herald such a radical break for the Turkish community?

The Perspective of the Turkish Community The main sources for the chain of events related to the script reform and the discourse within the Turkish community are the Turkish Cypriot newspapers (Birlik [Unity], Hakikat [Truth ], So¨z [Word/Promise ], and after 1931 Masum Millet [Innocent Nation ]).67 These newspapers copied articles from newspapers published in Turkey; simultaneously, they drew on correspondence, news agencies and news provided by travellers going to or coming from Turkey. The leading articles were usually written by the owner of the newspaper, and reflected his opinion. Unfortunately, we possess almost no personal documents commenting on the script reform, such as letters or diaries, save for the letters of one notorious theologian, which I will discuss below – his letters are preserved in the colonial government archives.68 The Turkish Cypriot newspapers followed the situation in Turkey closely. From the articles, it is clear that the issue was being discussed within the Turkish community long before the colonial government had begun to consider administrative measures. In early 1928, Hakikat reluctantly commented on the future implementation of the new script in Turkey: “Those who are familiar with the ideas and mentality of the Language Commission (Dil Encu¨meni),69 can be pretty sure that the Latin letters will be introduced after some changes and revisions have taken place. However, there will be a long transitional period insofar as its implementation by the government is concerned, which means that our schools will bring this about”.70 The educational system in colonial Cyprus, although not completely detached from the government, was independent enough to have become a hotbed for political and cultural debate The Education Law of 1895 made the Christian Board and the Moslem Board the policy-making authorities for the Greek and Turkish communities, respectively. However, the colonial government retained its indirect control.71 The Education Law

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of 1923 increased the indirect control of the government and the education laws of 1929 and 1933 changed it into a direct one (Persianis, 1978).72 It was the modern elite, consisting of teachers, journalist, lawyers and doctors, that spread new ideas within the Cypriot Turkish community. While journalists introduced and discussed political developments and new ideas for their readership, teachers passed on their enthusiasm to their students through direct interaction, teaching them nationalist poems and plays,73 or even taking the lead in processions on the national holidays of the Turkish Republic. Some teachers published newspaper articles, and others, like the above-mentioned Mehmet Remzi, founded their own newspaper. Against this background, both journalists and teachers campaigned for a quick and general implementation of the Latin letters. None of the newspapers criticised the script reform; the only discernible difference can be found in the expectations held about the outcome of the transition. I will turn back to this point after a short overview of the chronology of this process. Beria O¨zoran quotes an article by her father Mehmet Remzi from July 1928, who criticised the passivity of the Cypriot committee responsible for the Muslim schools, the Maarif Encu¨meni, with respect to the adoption of the new letters: “Up till now, we have not come across any ideas, or at least rumours on this issue from the responsible circles”.74 In August, the Turkish Teachers’ Association of Cyprus (Kıbrıs Tu¨rk Muallim Cemiyeti) decided to use the new alphabet in schools.75 In September 1928, the education committee headed by Canon Newham asked the teachers to familiarise themselves with the new alphabet by 1929, as books from Turkey printed in the new letters were to be used at the Muslim schools (mekatib-i islamiyesi).76 We should not confuse this situation, however, with the one in Turkey, where law 1353 made use of the new script compulsory in all public communication from the beginning of 1929. The decisions made in Cyprus in 1928 were rather loose declarations of intent, opening up an opportunity; those teachers that already mastered the new script were allowed to teach it in their schools from the beginning of the school year in September 1928.77 The newspapers recounted these changes in the Turkish community: merchants repainting their store signs,78 associations like Birlik Ocag˘ı (Hearth of Unity, a Turkist association) and volunteers offering evening

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courses, the elementary-school female teachers meeting on a separate occasion to learn the “Turkish letters”,79 the Girls’ Secondary School offering lessons prior to the official start of the school year, and even the Mu¨ftu¨ disclosing that he was learning the new script.80 The newspapers repeatedly printed and explained the new letters, adding motivational quotes by Atatu¨rk. The newspaper owners themselves were interested in using the new script, but material circumstances did not allow for a quick and complete change. At the same time, the newspapers had to adapt to the fact that their readership’s familiarity with the script was only increasing gradually. Despite the enthusiasm of the first months, it would take years to make every literate person familiar with the Latin letters. The newspapers used different strategies to include Latin letters alongside Ottoman script, before they finally began to exclusively use the former. Usually, the first step was to print the name of the newspaper in the new letters; the second step was then to print either

Figure 3 .1 Detail of the Hakikat newspaper from 1928, stating “The biggest victory in history was achieved six years ago”. In today’s standard spelling it should be written “Tarihin kayıt ettig˘i en bu¨yu¨k zafer altı sene evvel bugu¨n kazanıldı”. As well as the common uncertainties about using the new script, the voicing81 characteristic of Cypriot-Turkish pronunciation is apparent (K.G, such as gazanıldı instead of kazanıldı). Source: Hakikat, 1 September 1928, front page.

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complete articles (Birlik) or all of the headlines (So¨z) in Latin letters. The relationship between content and choice of script was inconsistent. When Masum Millet appeared for the first time in April 1931, its name was printed in both scripts, and the front page contained articles in Turkish, using the Ottoman script, and a lengthy article addressed to the government in English. In 1933, Masum Millet came out with five supplements, in addition to the regular issues, exclusively in the new script. Hakikat used the Ottoman script until 1933, and Masum Millet until 1934. None of these newspapers rejected societal or economic modernisation; they also promoted a Turkish (and Muslim) national identity. Their understanding of Turkishness, however, differed from most varieties of Turkish nationalism that existed at the same time in the Turkish Republic. This difference becomes discernible in their comments on the script reform, too. All newspapers expressed the hope that a higher civilisational level would be reached by increasing the literacy rate, due to “the world’s easiest orthography”.82 However, beyond this argument, we can observe differing perspectives, which focused around different geographies, and different blueprints for the future of the Turkish community. Under the headline “Script Reform” (“YAZIINKILABI” [sic!]), Birlik presented the advantages of the new script with the following arguments: every Turk, wherever he lived, would be familiar with the pleasant pronunciation of Istanbul Turkish; foreigners would no longer face problems with Turkish spelling; for the minorities (ekalliyetler) in Turkey – that is Jewish and Christian citizens – it would be much easier to have their communities represented (before the Turkish state and public), since they would be able to use the new script, too. Understanding between East and West would be much easier, and both sides would reap the benefits. As a result of the War of Independence, the Oriental nightmare would be over (“YAZIINKILABI”83). The transnational approach of the article84 fits well with the liberal Weltanschauung that the newspaper’s owner, Hacıbulgurzade Ahmed Hulusi Efendi (died in 1937) usually expressed in his editorials. In his opinion, the Turkish community of Cyprus could be rescued from its “backwardness” and (cultural and economic) poverty if people embraced Western modernity and enlightenment, without denying their own religious and cultural, Muslim and Turkish, background. In search of a

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path out of misery, the “civilisation” of their Greek Cypriot neighbours and the British political system appeared to be more promising than a struggle for a homogenised Turkified world.85 The argument in the quotation above, that an easier spelling of Turkish, by replacing Arabic letters with Latin letters, could be a means for creating a better understanding between East and West, Turkophones and nonTurkophones, can be considered as further evidence for Ahmed Hulusi Efendi’s stance. The newspaper So¨z, however, focused on the unifying power of the new script for Turks in different countries: not only was it of vital importance to follow developments in the Motherland (ana vatan), and the Turkish Republic, in every detail,86 but millions of Turks from outside of the Republic would also be able to benefit from this educational blessing. “God willing, in ten years’ time Turks all over the world will read, write and think the same way. What a great happiness this will be!”87 At the beginning of this section, I mentioned the complaints sent by a theologian to the colonial government. The notorious Yusuf Ziya Bey (or Yusuf Ziyaeddin) was at the time a retired schoolmaster and imam in his sixties. He was known by the government for constantly insulting Mustafa Kemal Atatu¨rk,88 criticising Mu¨nir Bey and other fellow Turks for cooperating with the colonial government in anti-Muslim decisions and sending letters of complaint and admonition to the government.89 Yusuf Ziya severely opposed the introduction of the new script, arguing in a letter to the governor that after World War I “Bolshevism, Communism was created and subsequently, upon the permission of the Victorious powers, Kemalism . . . ” Britain, as the “protector of religion”, was urged not to abolish “our Musulman letters, religious lessons and religious habits”.90 Yusuf Ziya claimed to have set up a body of Cypriot theologians who had investigated the situation, and found out that only one per cent of Cypriot Muslims believed in the “religion of Kemalism”. He mentioned a report prepared by this body, but this document is not included in the file or preserved elsewhere. If the government did not change its stance, Yusuf Ziya concluded, the Muslims of Cyprus would not remain silent. However, the government did not take him seriously: “He is known as a somewhat cranky and quarrelsome person, and as a violent opponent of Mustafa Kemal and his policy and of the Young Turks generally. He is not a man of great weight or learning”.91 As I

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mentioned previously, from what we know today, it is not possible to judge whether Yusuf Ziya’s opposition to the change was a complete exception or not. His position was certainly extreme, insofar as he even insulted people like the head of the Evkaf, Sir Mu¨nir Bey, who was an outspoken anti-Kemalist and reluctant to relinquish elements of Ottoman culture such as the fez or Ottoman script. After the first enthusiasm of 1928 and early 1929, the implementation process turned out to be a protracted endeavour. Even if the colonial government did not block the process, this matter was not of major importance in their eyes. (If the Turkish teachers were ready to teach the villagers, this was fine. But if this meant extra expenditures, it would have to be reconsidered.) By late 1931, prior to the official introduction of the script, “many of the Moslem Village Authorities are even now by no means conversant with the new Turkish characters”.92 The commissioner of Nicosia held the same opinion, adding that “In most, if not in every village, there are, however, one or two persons who can read the new characters. [. . .] I think that communications written by hand should continue to be sent in Arabic script or, as at present, in both”.93 Economic and political difficulties might go some way towards explaining why we find, even after 1932, several remnants of the Ottoman script, and why literacy did not flourish as much as expected. Another reason for the survival of Arabic letters here and there might be the fact that their use was never forbidden and persecuted, as had been the case in Turkey. The newspaper So¨z reflects the discontent felt by the Turkish community about the insufficient spread of the new script, and literacy in general, accusing the intellectuals of a lack of dedication in educating the people: In these happy days, when we have decided to implement the script reform, the intellectual class has its own duties. Our intellectuals have to educate the people, have to enlighten their minds, and have to be their real leaders. As long as this is not done we cannot expect the people to follow the [Kemalist] revolutions.94 In the next section we will turn our attention to the “British perspective”; that is, the colonial administration’s response to and

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evaluation of Turkish demands for the script reform. Since Turkish Cypriots also made up a part of the civil servant corps, this section also questions the common differentiation made between “the oppressing government” and “the Kemalist Cypriot Turk opposition”.

The Script Reform as a British Administrative Procedure On 11 April 1930, the Colonial Government published its decision concerning the “New Turkish Characters” in the Cyprus Gazette.95 In retrospect, the implementation program appears to have been rather ambitious. Only some of the regulations formulated in the decree were actually put into effect, and others were delayed or cancelled. Since the text is not easily accessible, and the comparison between announcement and application is telling, it seems appropriate here to quote the majority of the text. New Turkish Characters: (1) It is hereby notified . . . that Government proposes to introduce the new Turkish Characters recently adopted in the Republic of Turkey into general use in this Colony from the 1 January 1932. (2) As from the 1 June 1930, all Laws, Bills, Orders in Council and Bye-laws, and all Rules and Regulations issued by Government will be printed in the new characters only. (3) As from the 1 June 1930, or as soon thereafter is practicable, all Government notices, documents and official forms will be printed in both the old and the new characters and will continue so to be printed until the 1 January 1932. (4) As from the 1 June 1930, or as soon thereafter as is practicable, all official Communications emanating from Government Departments will be written in both the old and the new characters and will continue so to be written until the 1 January 1932. (5) The Government has under consideration a proposal for the giving of special courses of instruction throughout the Colony, which will be open to all persons desirous of acquainting themselves with the new characters.

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(6) All Moslem Government Officials, Mukhtars, Imams and other persons who come into official contact with the Government will be required to have made themselves conversant with the new characters before the 1 January 1932. (7) All Moslem Clerks in the General Clerical Staff and the Land Registry Department and all Moslem Officers of Customs and Excise will be required to have made themselves conversant . . . before the 1 January 1931. The British administration dedicated an extra file to the “Turkish Alphabet expressed in Latin Characters”: SA1/1320/1928.96 The minutes, letters and translations of Turkish newspaper clippings deal almost exclusively with the administrative, technical and material aspects of implementing the Latin characters. The only texts preserved in this file that discuss cultural aspects are written by the Turkish Cypriot Yusuf Ziya, mentioned above. The British administration, however, did not bother to comment on his objections. The earliest minutes of the file are from early October 1928. At this time, I˙smet [I˙no¨nu¨] Pasha’s speech on the implementation of the new characters97 was being published in the Cypriot newspapers: “The whole country will become a classroom!”98 Referring to a letter from a translator of Turkish (the letter itself is not included in the file), the file begins with: “The lead in this matter [the script reform] will presumably come from the local Turkish education authorities.” In fact, the British-Cypriot civil servant Sir Mu¨nir Bey remained reluctant to accept the new characters until 1944! His first reaction in October 1928 reads: “In Cyprus we have to take our time in such drastic innovations and we have to see how the scheme is going to work.”99 The colonial administration followed suit with this wait-and-see attitude until April 1929, when the minutes come at shorter intervals, pondering about the best way to implement the general use of the new characters. We read on 10 April: “I understand that the Latin Alphabet is now firmly established in Turkey and that the time has come to consider its adoption in the schools here.” The minutes of 1929 and 1930 tackle material and financial problems: ought official letters, decrees, administrative forms and laws be published in both scripts for a transitional period, as had been

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announced in the Cyprus Gazette? On this matter, the translator of Turkish disagreed; he would be unable to do all this work on his own, “single-handed” as he was. The printing office was also in disagreement, as there was already not enough space in the office. With a second set of printing equipment, the situation would become untenable. The idea was finally dismissed.100 The purchase of new Turkish typewriters was a subject of a heated discussion because it would exceed the budget. The next question was how to teach the villagers and elderly people: the teachers could give extra lessons, but would they have to be paid an extra salary? Posters with the new alphabet could be printed (at 1 piaster each) and put up by policemen in the coffeehouses. Because the alphabet was already being taught in elementary schools as of September 1929, and new reading books had been provided for the children, the villagers wouldn’t have to be supplied with any further books. They could use those of the pupils, it was argued in 1930. Another problem was that the thirty-two “mistresses” of the elementary schools in the villages were unable to teach extra reading classes (April 1930). The reason for this is not mentioned in ¨ zoran: “In that period, all female the file, but provided by Beria O schoolteachers and many male teachers were not familiar with the Latin alphabet”.101 The government’s suggestion was “to change the masters and mistresses around periodically”; in the meantime – while the villagers were waiting for the arrival of a new teacher conversant in the Latin letters – they could familiarise themselves with the aid of the posters. Thus, the schools were the first place in which the new script was introduced on a greater scale, though to the degree to which this happened was dependent upon each teacher’s personal capabilities. When it came to the government’s involvement, it was not before the beginning of 1932 that the new characters were officially introduced, in compliance with the 1930 announcement. In December 1931, the Colonial Secretary sent a minute to all Commissioners of Cyprus asking if they were aware of any reason why the introduction of the new characters should be postponed. For their part, the commissioners approved the change, though they mentioned that “many of the Moslem Village Authorities are even now by no means conversant with the new Turkish characters”, or “the majority of Moslems in villages still find a difficulty in reading the new Turkish characters”.102 It would take many more years to end illiteracy and to replace the Arabic characters – as I will show in the section “Latecomers”.

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The colonial government had the power to decide independently upon the general introduction of the new script in administrative and legal affairs. But they also turned several times to Turkish personalities and organisms to solicit their opinion. Among these bodies were the Maarif Encu¨meni (Educational Committee) and a committee composed by four Turkish dignitaries only for this particular case in March 1930.103 This committee opted concordantly for the general introduction and added further proposals to their written decision such as special courses for village dignitaries and simultaneous use of both scripts for a certain time period.104 These documents do not provide any reason to think that the colonial government was interested in hampering the script reform. ¨ zoran’s critique of the colonial administration, mentioned earlier, is O contradicted by Altay Nevzat, who wrote that “They [the British] played a very substantial role in instigating comparable changes in Cyprus, making it compulsory that government officials learn the modern Turkish. Why they took this position is not wholly certain”.105 In fact, in April 1929, an administrative minute reads: “I think it is essential that the Turkish community here should follow suit [with the development in Turkey]”.106 It is true that the government was not interested in spending extra money for disseminating or teaching the characters. This was in line with the government’s general approach, to “keep administration-expenses to a minimum”.107 But in the long run, the new letters and Cyprus’ adaptation to the situation in Turkey would make things easier and cheaper. After 1929 the new textbooks in Latin script from Turkey were to be also used in Cyprus, and successful high-school students would need to master the new script in order to continue their studies in Turkey, as there was no higher-education institution in Cyprus. The riots of 1931 are not mentioned in the file or other related documents. Political tensions obviously did not halt the implementation of this Kemalist Revolution, however slow. It could be argued that the colonial government was eager not to create further tensions with the Turkish community, since trouble with the Greek community was already big enough and for this reason took a stance on this issue that was at times neutral and at others supportive.108 The fact that Britain had some interest in elevating the “civilizational level” of its colonial subjects could be another reason for this stance:

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I need not remind you of the general reasons for regarding the care of elementary education as one of the first duties of the Government, but the condition of Cyprus appears to me to present features which render this duty specially imperative.109 In comparison with the French cultural idea of the civilising mission, however, British zeal for Anglicising and “improving” the culture of their colonised subjects was less pronounced. In his article on language planning in Kenya, Malaysia and Pakistan, Richard Powell emphasises that the Empire’s first objective with regard to the colonies was its own economic benefit, rather than spreading British culture. Using indirect rule and supporting traditionalism were considered to be appropriate means for maintaining political stability, which in turn should facilitate the highest possible economic exploitation with minimum investment.110 Clive Whitehead demonstrates a similar attitude to British colonies in Africa.111 “So we should not be surprised to find relatively little overt language or cultural planning”.112 Even the increase in investment in the educational sphere, which began in the 1930s, followed the rationale that it would “preserve its own global economic status”.113 Panayiotis Persianis, who has investigated the influence of the British policy on the educational institutions of the Greek Cypriots, describes a policy break after 1931, when “it was the turn of the colonial government to use education in promoting its political aims”.114 A letter by Sir Mu¨nir Bey from 1937 indicates the same tendency when he writes in favour of teaching more English classes and educating young boys “in order to prepare them for work in Cyprus”, instead of losing them to the universities in Turkey.115 Taking these considerations into account, one can argue that the initial British reluctance for implementing the new script – supported by Sir Mu¨nir Bey’s arguments – was due to the older policy of exerting control through traditionalism and “adapted education”.116 The first arguments in favour of the script’s implementation were still in accordance with this paradigm of “indigenous culture”; if the Turks in Turkey changed their script, it would be alright for the Turks in Cyprus, too. However, the script reform in Turkey gained momentum at a time when several contextual factors were on the brink of taking a new shape. On the one hand, the Empire was aiming more and more both to increase economic rule and to exert political control by influencing culture and

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education in the colonies. On the other hand, the government of Turkey and the Cypriot Turks became increasingly important as British allies, so it made sense politically to accept their demands and to implement the new script.

Latecomers As mentioned before, even if Turkish Cypriot newspapers were already starting to use Latin letters in 1928, it was only by the middle of 1934 that the last issue with articles in Ottoman script was published. Kızılyu¨rek/Gautier-Kızılyu¨rek argue that for a certain period after 1936, “no Turkish newspapers were published.117 As a result, the language reform [script reform] did not reach the majority of the Turkish Cypriots until the period following the Second World War”.118 Indeed, in Cyprus the Ottoman script was in use in different areas until well into the 1950s. A singular example is the publication of a poetry anthology written by Rıza Tevfik [Bo¨lu¨kbas¸ı] in Ottoman script in 1934. The Ottoman politician and poet Rıza Tevfik had been one of the signatories of the Se`vres Peace Treaty (1920); because of this he was exiled from Turkey in 1922, as one of “the 150” (persona non grata), and spent the years until 1943 in the Middle East.119 According to the Cypriot author Bener Hakeri, the poet visited Cyprus in 1934 and made his friend I˙smail Hikmet (Ertaylan) print his new anthology Serab-ı O¨mru¨m (The Mirage of my Life) in Ottoman script. This is all the more intriguing when we consider that, at the time, Ertaylan was not only the director of the Turkish High School in Nicosia and well-known for being a fervent Kemalist120 but he had also been a member of the Language Committee of Turkey since 1928,121 and the author of the reading primer for Cypriot schools, Cypriot Reading Lessons.122 A case of greater political importance was the retention of the Ottoman script at the “Muslim Court”, the S¸eri Mahkemesi.123 This particular court in Cyprus, which was responsible until 1954 for property (the possession of Evkaf), and family and heritage cases within the Turkish community, was in any case considered to be an anachronism, and its existence was the subject of heated debate. For whatever reason, the script reform of 1928– 32 had not touched the procedures of this court. It is noteworthy, in this context, that between 1938 and 1947, the colonial government refrained from translating their communications and laws into Turkish and

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Greek.124 Thus, further implementing the new script had little meaning to the British administration. In addition to this, the political tension and economic hardship mentioned earlier meant that the Turkish community was unable to carry out greater cultural endeavours, or to achieve further societal changes during the Thirties. Only after the outbreak of World War II did the colonial government hasten to improve their relations with the Greek and the Turkish communities. The reintroduction of communal elections was announced for 1941 (and postponed until 1943), and new Greek and Turkish political associations were established. In 1943, KATAK (Kıbrıs Adası Tu¨rk Azınlıg˘ı Kurumu, Association of the Turkish Minority of the Island of Cyprus) was founded, followed by KTMHP (Kıbrıs Tu¨rk Milli Halk Partisi, Turkish National People’s Party of Cyprus) in 1944, both set up by Fazıl Ku¨cu¨k, who would later become Vice President of Cyprus. In June 1944, KATAK addressed the colonial government requesting: the Sheri Courts of Cyprus to be instructed to use new Turkish characters . . . [Owing] to the fact that these Courts are still using the old characters justice is being embarrassed because most of the parties cannot read the old characters while deeds of dedication etc. registered in the said Courts will after some years be illegible for everybody in the island.125 The colonial government, in turn, did not consider this change to be a big affair. A letter to the District Sheri Judges was sent asking for their opinion. The judges were more than ready for this change: In the absence of any instructions from the respected Government . . . we had seen no reason for any deviation or change and the old characters are still in use . . . we beg to state that the use of the new characters is advisable. It would certainly be in keeping with the dictates of economy combined with practicalness gradually to replace the printed matter in old Turkish . . . 126 Only Sir Mu¨nir Bey was still reluctant in this matter. Although he approved of the transition to the “new characters” in principle, he still used phrases such as “at the present transitory stage” and “those who

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especially demand that an order of the Sheri Judge be delivered to them in new characters it should be done so”.127 The only detail that the colonial government dwelt upon in this matter – as late as 1944! – was finding an appropriate name for these characters: “new Turkish” or “Roman” characters? Finally, it was decided to call them Roman characters.128 In late August 1944, all Judges were advised to use Roman characters and to change printing material “as occasion arises”. A letter of complaint shows, however, that the clerks of Muslim religious institutions – at least – still continued to use the Ottoman script for several more years. The letter from 1952 was handwritten in Ottoman script and signed by Imams and Muezzins. They sent their complaint to the Federation of Cypriot Turkish Associations (KTKF, Kıbrıs Tu¨rk Kurumları Federasyonu), where it was transcribed into the new alphabet and kept in its respective file.129 In 1945, the Turkish Trade Union asked for the Arabic Letters on the seals of the village mayors (muhtar) to be replaced, as well as on currency notes.130 However, the latest example I could find of a seal with Ottoman script dates to 1953;131 the earliest currency notes without Ottoman inscription seem to be from 1955, when the decimal system was introduced.132 More recent research has demonstrated that – even in Turkey – the Ottoman script continued to be used in personal notes and letters throughout the decades following the forced script reform in 1928, regardless of whether the writer supported Kemalism and laicism or not.133 A specimen from Cyprus that exemplifies this fact is a short note from 1952 using Ottoman script, written by Faiz Kaymak, who, from 1949 to 1957 was the chairman of the Federation of Cypriot Turkish Associations, to Fazıl Ku¨cu¨k, the afore-mentioned Vice President.

Figure 3.2 Short note using Ottoman script by Faiz Kaymak, chairman of the Federation of Cypriot Turkish Associations, to Fazıl Ku¨c¸u¨k, the Vice President of the same organisation, 1952. Source: Collection “Federation of Cypriot Turkish Associations”, 7 March 1952.

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The short note mentions a “vital and very important issue” that would “better remain unpublished” without providing further details.134

The Script Reform and Cultural Transition It was the aim of this article to shed light on the technical and administrative implementation of the Turkish script reform in colonial Cyprus, to retrace some major arguments made by key actors, and to emphasise the particularities of the Cypriot case. Since the island, at the historical period in question here, was a British Crown Colony without any legal or administrative connection with the Turkish Republic, the implementation of the script reform was subject to contextual factors quite different from the situation in Turkey. Thus, the script reform in Cyprus has to be considered both through the lens of the Kemalist Revolutions, and as an issue of Turkish-Cypriot history in its own right. The script transition lingered between the Turkish community’s wish to follow the cultural changes taking place in the Turkish Republic, and a pragmatic policy on both the Turkish and the British side. The documents show that Turkish-Cypriot intellectuals and urbanites, teachers, journalists and merchants, were in favour of a fast transition from Arabic to Latin letters, whereas in the villages material difficulties made the transition process rather tedious. Based on the available documents, it has not been not possible to clarify why publications by religious institutions were printed in the Ottoman script until 1944. As for the British colonial government, in the early stages it did not take an active part in the implementation process; nevertheless, it never hampered the use of the new letters in public and private communication or teaching. At a point when the script reform looked like it had become cemented and irreversible in Turkey, the colonial administration began to consider the official regulation of the process. After 1932, Latin letters were exclusively used in administration; however, clerks with good knowledge of the “old script” could sit additional exams in this subject until 1934 at least. Some specimens from the 1950s show that Ottoman handwriting remained in use for the next few decades. The British side also continued to use the Ottoman script on Cypriot banknotes until 1954 – together with the Greek and the English inscription of the value.

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The Turkish script reform in Cyprus is in my opinion an appropriate opportunity to discuss the correlation between (any) script reform and cultural change. The prevailing idea that script change results inevitably in a change in the user’s cultural identity and historical consciousness can only be true if we ascribe an intrinsic cultural power to visual signs. However, cultural meaning and the importance of a writing system are ascribed by means of the (hegemonic) cultural discourse. Horng-luen Wang suggests we ask how and why changing a writing system turns “into a value-laden movement . . .? Why do people regard a certain form of script as superior to others? How did it happen, and what is its consequence?”.135 The Cypriot example is a rare case, insofar as the change was not state-induced, but promoted by the elite of the Turkish community. The supporters of this change attributed an almost magical power to Latin characters. Together with the other Kemalist Revolutions, Cypriots would be rescued from this Oriental nightmare, and they would not lose touch with their Motherland. The only available documents that questioned the appropriateness of the new script for the Muslim inhabitants of Cyprus are the letters of the elderly imam, Yusuf Ziya Bey. It should not be forgotten that the Cypriot island has always been a place, not only of multiple religions and languages, but also of multiscripturalism. It is true that maintaining different scripts in one country/nation/region can be an exclusivist tool for separating ethnicities or religious communities, when they are used in order to block communication and to “prove” “cultural incoherency”. In Cyprus, however, as in many other European countries,136 multiscripturalism was the rule, not the exception. During colonial times, advertisements in the Cypriot press often combined Greek, English and Turkish slogans in their respective scripts. We can also find examples of script switching: poems in the Cypriot Turkish vernacular, written in Greek letter,137 or Greek and English company names written in Arabic letters. In several publications, Christoph Ramm has shown the importance of “civilisation” (medeniyet) for the Cypriot Turks, as well as their perceived lack of civilisation in the way they conceived of themselves and criticised themselves.138 By means of the Latin letters, Cypriots could thus catch up with both the new Turkish World and Western civilisation; this was at least the hope expressed in newspaper articles, such as the example we saw earlier in Birlik in September 1928.

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The newspaper So¨z celebrated the Turkish community being rescued “from this merciless enemy”.139 This enemy was neither the colonial ruler, nor Greek nationalism, but “ignorance” (cehalet). “Since the main reason for all catastrophes the Cypriot Turkish community has been experiencing is ignorance, those who wish for this huge and merciless enemy to disappear as soon as possible, have directed their attention to the schools and pinned their hopes on the new generation”.140 The London Times expressed a similar view: “By this step [the adoption of Latin letters] the Turks, who for centuries were regarded as a strange and isolated people by Europe, have drawn closer than ever to the West”.141 (The British colonial administration, however, did not make much of an effort to disseminate British culture and civilisation in their colonies until the 1930s.) The question remains: did the script reform have any influence on Muslim identity in Cyprus? Tuncay rightly argues that in the religious sphere, writing systems possess a particularly high symbolic importance. Religions tend to continue to use the traditional script independently from changes in the script (and language) used by believers in the secular sphere. In the religion of Islam, Tuncay continues, the relationship between script and content is particularly strong, because God’s word was revealed in Arabic and written down in this language and alphabet.142 Intriguingly, champions of Kemalism such as the newspapers So¨z and Masum Millet stressed the importance of religion and Muslim identity for the Turkish community. According to them, Kemalism was by no means a threat to Islam; in fact, the Kemalist Revolutions and the spirit of the Gazi guaranteed the survival and strengthening of Islam. For these newspapers, the introduction of the new Turkish characters, even in the religious sphere, and the shift to Turkish in religious services would enable the Cypriots to correctly understand their religion. Unlike mosques and religious holidays, the unloved Muslim Courts never served as a symbol for Cypriot Muslim Turkish identity. The continued use of Ottoman script at this institution had little influence on the development of religious and national identity. The quest for the “Turkification of Islam” (I˙slamiyeti Tu¨rkles¸tirme143) constitutes an important element of Turkish nationalism; however, whereas in the Turkish Republic religion was being eliminated more and more from the public sphere and political discourse until the end of one-party rule

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in 1946, in Cyprus Islam continued to play a major role in political discourse and the construction of identity. For the Turkish community of Cyprus, the new script was considered to be a tool that would rescue the community from cultural and political extinction (“fading away”);144 for Cypriot Turkish nationalism, the new script was important because it was an element of the greater Turkish national project.

Notes 1. “Olmus¸ bir s¸eyin olmamıs¸ olmasına imkaˆn olmadıg˘ı gibi, olmamıs¸ bir s¸eyin de olmus¸ olmasına imkaˆn yoktur”. Tuncay, Mete, “I˙kna (I˙nandırma) Yerine Tecebbu¨r (Zorlama)”, Kemalizm (Modern Tu¨rkiye’de Siyasi Du¨s¸u¨nce, vol. 2), Istanbul, I˙letis¸im, 2001, p. 96. 2. For a thorough analysis of “what-if-history”, see Demandt, Alexander Ungeschehene Geschichte. Ein Traktat u¨ber die Frage: Was wa¨re geschehen, wenn . . .?, Neuausg. Go¨ttingen, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2011. 3. This research was supported by a Marie Curie Intra European Fellowship within the 7th European Community Framework Programme. My thanks go to the editors of this volume and Ruth Bartholoma¨ (Freiburg) for their precious remarks and input. 4. In this article, I will not discuss the terms “Muslim” versus “Turk/ish”, with regard to the community that belonged to the Muslim millet in Ottoman Cyprus. For the processes of reformulating the political and communal identity during the first half of colonial rule, see Nevzat, Altay, Nationalism amongst the Turks of Cyprus. The First Wave, PhD Dissertation, University of Oulu, 2005. Available at http://herkules.oulu.fi/isbn9514277511/isbn9514277511.pdf Accessed on 3 October 2013 and Eleni Bouleti, “Early Years of British Administration in Cyprus. The Rise of Anti-Colonialism in the Ottoman Muslim Community of Cyprus, 1878–1922”, Journal of Muslims in Europe, 4, 1, 2014, pp. 70–89. 5. Ronald C. Jennings, “Forced Population Transfers and the Banishment of Undesirables”, in Ronald C. Jennings (ed.), Christians and Muslims in Ottoman Cyprus and the Mediterranean World, 1571– 1640, New York, NYU Press, 1993, pp. 212– 39. 6. Mete Hatay, Is the Turkish Cypriot population shrinking?: An overview of the ethnodemography of Cyprus in the light of the preliminary results of the Turkish-Cypriot census (¼PRIO report), Oslo, International Peace Research Institute, 2007, p. 17. Available at: www.prio.org/Global/upload/Cyprus/Publications/Is%20the%20 Turkish%20Cypriot%20Population%20Shrinking.pdf. 7. C. H. Hart-Davis, Report of the Census of 1931, Nicosia, Cyprus Government Printing Office, 1932.

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8. James A. McHenry, The Uneasy Partnership on Cyprus, 1919– 1939. The Polit. and Diplomatic Interaction Between Great Britain, Turkey, and the Turk. Cypriot Community, New York et al., Garland, 1987, pp. 58 – 9. 9. Hu¨seyin Mehmet Ates¸in, Kıbrıs’ta I˙slaˆmıˆ Kimlik Davası, Istanbul, Marifet Yayınları, 1996, pp. 161– 5. 10. McHenry, The Uneasy Partnership on Cyprus, p. 226. 11. Many authors stress the British control and suppression of Kemalist activities in Cyprus. This view needs to be reappraised; even during the years of censorship, Turkish Cypriots were able to meet and discuss political affairs, to publish articles of criticism and to ask for legal rights or the improvement of their situation. If we compare the degree of freedom of opinion and of the press in Cyprus with the Turkish Republic in the 1920s and 1930s, it seems clear that in Turkey it was far more dangerous to take on an openly critical position. McHenry, The Uneasy Partnership, pp. 134– 42. 12. Nevzat, Nationalism amongst the Turks of Cyprus gives many examples of politically influential Turkish teachers in Cyprus. 13. Because the colonial administration had not altered the Ottoman system of distinct schools for different religious communities, the educational system remained mainly structured according to religious and ethnic belonging (see further Nevzat, Nationalism amongst the Turks of Cyprus, pp. 188– 9). This system has largely survived to the present day. 14. Jeanette Choisi, Wurzeln und Struktur des Zypernkonfliktes, 1878 bis 1990. Ideologischer Nationalismus und Machtbehauptung im Kalku¨l konkurrierender Eliten, Stuttgart, F. Steiner, 1993, p. 177; Nevzat, Nationalism amongst the Turks of Cyprus, p. 302. 15. Jeanette Choisi, “The Turkish Cypriot Elite – Its Social Function and Legitimisation”, Cyprus Review 5, 2, 1993, p. 10. 16. According to Paulos Tzermias, Cyprus was already being restructured from an Ottoman island to a British colony as early as 1880, when responsibility for Cyprus was moved from the Foreign Office to the Colonial Office (Paulos N. Tzermias, Geschichte der Republik Zypern. Mit Beru¨cksichtigung der historischen Entwicklung der Insel wa¨hrend der Jahrtausende, Basel, Francke, 2004, p. 27). 17. Hubert Faustmann, Divide and Quit? The history of British colonial rule in Cyprus 1878– 1960: including a special survey of the transitional period, February 1959– August 1960, PhD Dissertation, University of Mannheim, 1999, p. 49. 18. McHenry, The Uneasy Partnership on Cyprus, pp. 97 – 202; Faustmann, Divide and Quit?, pp. 46 – 9. 19. Choisi, “The Turkish Cypriot Elite”, p. 20. 20. In 1929, the worldwide economic recession also struck the UK. Thus, the proposed budget, which included raising taxes, was part of the British endeavour to overcome this crisis. In hindsight, the 1931 conflict can be seen as the beginnings of anti-colonial activities that would eventually bring about the end of colonial rule in Cyprus in 1960.

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21. Jan Asmussen, ‘Wir waren wie Bru¨der’. Zusammenleben und Konfliktentstehung in ethnisch gemischten Do¨rfern auf Zypern, Berlin, Lit Verlag, 2006, pp. 185–95. 22. Fuat Keyman, “Articulating citizenship and identity: the ‘Kurdish Question’ in Turkey”, in E. F. Keyman and A. I˙cduygu (eds), Citizenship in a Global World: European Questions and Turkish Experiences, Routledge, London, 2005, p. 274. 23. Christoph Ramm, Turkish Cypriots, Turkish ‘Settlers’ and (Trans) National Identities between Turkish Nationalism, Cypriotism and Europe, PhD Dissertation, Ruhr-University Bochum, 2009, pp. 51 – 79. 24. There are many examples for this claim in the historiography, e.g., Ulvi Keser, (2007), “Genc Tu¨rkiye Devleti’nin Cumhuriyet Kazanımları ve Bunların Kıbrıs Tu¨rk Toplumuna Yansımaları”, C¸ag˘das¸ Tu¨rkiye Tarihi Aras¸tırmaları Dergisi (C¸TTAD), VI,14, pp. 41 – 84. For details on conflicting factions in the 1930s see Alexis Rappas, Cyprus in the 1930s: British Colonial Rule and the Roots of the Cyprus Conflict, London, I.B.Tauris, 2014, pp. 94 – 6. 25. For the roots of the term’s use in its political sense at the beginning of the twentieth century see Ramm, Turkish Cypriots, p. 88. 26. For further information on Mu¨nir Bey see Asmussen, ‘Wir waren wie Bru¨der’, p. 172; Choisi, Wurzeln und Struktur des Zypernkonfliktes, pp. 169–70. 27. Rappas, Cyprus in the 1930s, p. 18. 28. A short documentary from 1947 shows Mu¨nir Bey, who still wears the fez, in front of his office (www.britishpathe.com/video/turkish-dervish-dancingcyprus/query/Cyprus). 29. Ramm, Turkish Cypriots, p. 96. 30. Be´atrice Hendrich, “‘Yu¨z Acmak Meselesi’ – The Matter of Opening One’s Face. Unveiling as an Element of “Civilizational Progress in the British Colony of Cyprus”, in Michalis Michael (ed.), Archivum Ottomanicum, Special Issue: From Muslims to Turks: The Turkish Cypriot Community (1856 – 1931), Harrassowitz Verlag, Wiesbaden, 2018, 35 (forthcoming). 31. Ramm, Turkish Cypriots, p. 100. 32. CO 67/368/2, “Note on the activities of the Mufti of Cyprus May 1951”. 33. Ruth Bartholoma¨, Tatarische Terminologie im Wandel. Lexikalische Umbru¨che durch Kultur- und Sprachkonktakt vom ausgehenden Zarenreich bis zum postsowjetischen Russland, Wiesbaden, Harrassowitz, 2012. 34. Bartholoma¨, Tatarische Terminologie im Wandel, pp. 34 – 5. 35. Jens Peter Laut, Das Tu¨rkische als Ursprache. Sprachwissenschaftliche Theorien in der Zeit des erwachenden tu¨rkischen Nationalismus, Wiesbaden, Harrassowitz, 2000, p. 23. 36. Laurent Mignon, “The Literati and the Letters: A Few Words on the Turkish Alphabet Reform”, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, 20, 1, 2010, p. 24. 37. Laut, Das Tu¨rkische als Ursprache, pp. 19 – 22. 38. Geoffrey Lewis, The Turkish Language Reform. A Catastrophic Success. Oxford and New York, Oxford University Press, 1999, pp. 28 – 31.

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39. Horng-Luen Wang, “Romanization Movements in Japan and China: Reforming National Language, or Universalizing ‘Tokens of Exchange’?” in Tamkang Review 37, 2, 2006, pp. 121– 5. 40. Hale Yılmaz, “Learning to Read (Again): The Social Experiences of Turkey’s 1928 Alphabet Reform”, International Journal of Middle East Studies, 43, 4, 2011, pp. 677– 97. 41. Ibid., p. 677. 42. Ibid., p. 688. 43. Ibid., p. 687, p. 690. 44. I˙hsan Yılmaz Bayraktarlı, Die politische Debatte um die tu¨rkische Schrift- und Sprachrevolution von 1928, Freiburg, Br, Maurer, 2008, p. 78. 45. Nur Betu¨l C¸elik, “Kemalizm: Hegemonik Bir So¨ylem”, in Murat Belge, Mehmet O¨. Alkan, Ahmet I˙nsel, Uyg˘ur Kocabas¸og˘lu, Tanıl Bora, Ahmet C¸ig˘dem et al. (eds), Kemalizm (Modern Tu¨rkiye’de siyasi du¨¸su¨nce, 2), Istanbul, I˙letis¸im, 2001, pp. 87 – 8. 46. McHenry, The Uneasy Partnership, p. 134. 47. Hu¨seyin Mehmet Ates¸in, “The Process of Secularisation of the Turkish Community 1925– 1975”, in Hubert Faustmann and N. Peristianis (eds), Britain in Cyprus. Colonialism and Post-colonialism, 1878– 2006, Mannheim, Bibliopolis, 2006, p. 341. 48. Beria O¨zoran, “Cumhuriyet I˙nkılapları ve Kıbrıs Tu¨rkleri”, Tu¨rk Ku¨ltu¨ru¨ Aras¸tırmaları 7 – 10, 1970, p. 76; Nesim, 1989, n.p. 49. Bekir Azgin, “The Turkish Cypriot Mass Media”, in Klaus Detlev Grothusen, Winfried Steffani und Peter A. Zervakis (eds), Zypern, Go¨ttingen, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1998, p. 646, Martin Strohmeier, “The Ottoman Press and the Turkish Community in Cyprus (1891 – 1931)”, in Horst Unbehaun (ed.), The Middle Eastern Press as a Forum for Literature, Frankfurt, Peter Lang, 1994, p. 163; Martin Strohmeier, “Economic issues in the Turkish-Cypriot Press, 1831– 1931”, in Gisela Procha´zka-Eisl and Martin Strohmeier (eds), The Economy as an Issue in the Middle Eastern Press. Papers of the VIth Meeting “History of the Press in the Middle East”, Wien, LIT (Neue Beihefte zur Wiener Zeitschrift fu¨r die Kunde des Morgenlandes), 2008, p. 173. 50. Niyazi Kızılyu¨rek and S. Gautier-Kızılyu¨rek, “The Politics of Identity in the Turkish Cypriot Community and the Language Question”, International Journal of the Sociology of Language, 168, 2004, p. 44; Xenia Hadjioannou, Stavroula Tsiplakou and Matthias Kappler, “Language policy and language planning in Cyprus”, Current Issues in Language Planning 12, 4, 2011, pp. 544 –5. 51. O¨zoran, “Cumhuriyet I˙nkılapları”, p. 76; Nesim 1989, n.p., Dilek Yig˘it Yu¨ksel, “Kıbrıs Tu¨rk Milli Mu¨cadelesi”, C¸ag˘das¸ Tu¨rkiye Tarihi Aras¸tırmaları Dergisi (C¸TTAD), 18 – 19, 2009, pp. 161– 84. 52. Nas¸it Hakkı Ulug˘, ”Gazi’nin Emri”, in Dervis¸ Manizade (ed.), Kıbrıs Du¨n Bugu¨n Yarın, Istanbul, Yaylacık Matbaası, 1975, pp. 15 – 18; Ali Galip Alcıtepe, “Harf I˙nkılabı’nın Kıbrıs’taki Yankıları”, in I˙smail Bozkurt,

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53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59.

60. 61. 62. 63. 64. 65. 66. 67.

68. 69. 70. 71. 72.

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Hu¨seyin Ates¸in and M. Kansu (eds), I˙kinci Uluslararası Kıbrıs Aras¸tırmaları ¨ niversitesi Kongresi 24– 27 Kasım 1998, Gazimag˘usa, Dog˘u Akdeniz U Basımevi (Kıbrıs Aras¸tırmaları Merkezi Yayınları 7), 1999, pp. 183– 91; Harid Fedai, “Dil Devriminin I˙lk On Yılında Kıbrıs’tan Saptamalar”, in Harid ¨ zyurt Matbaası, 2002, Fedai (ed.), Kıbrıs Tu¨rk Ku¨ltu¨ru¨, Bildiriler 1, Ankara, O pp. 104 –48. O¨zoran, “Cumhuriyet I˙nkılapları”, pp. 23 – 82, Nesim, 1989, n. p. McHenry, The Uneasy Partnership. Strohmeier, “Economic issues in the Turkish-Cypriot Press”, p. 173. Kızılyu¨rek, “The politics of identity”, p. 44. O¨zoran, “Cumhuriyet I˙nkilapları”, pp. 23 – 82; Nesim, 1989, n.p. Where I rely on sources used by Beria O¨zoran, I have verified the original Ottoman text myself. Since the generation of Beria O¨zoran, Hu¨seyin Ates¸in and others have passed away, there is a growing danger that there will be no further publications about Turkish and Muslim affairs in Cyprus in the 1920s and the 1930s. Ottomanists are usually not interested in the social and cultural affairs of such a late period, whereas sociologists can rarely read Ottoman. Mehmet Remzi [Okan] (1885– 1942) was a teacher, journalist and the owner of So¨z. He took an outspoken anti-British stance and had to spend the last years of his life in Turkey. Azgin, “The Turkish Cypriot Mass Media”, p. 646. Nas¸it Hakkı Ulug˘, “Gazi’nin Emri”, in Dervis¸ Manizade (ed.), Kıbrıs Du¨n Bugu¨n Yarın, Istanbul, Yaylacık Matbaası, 1975, p. 15. O¨zoran, “Cumhuriyet I˙nkılapları”, p. 79. ¨ zoran, “Cumhuriyet I˙nkılapları”, p. 81. So¨z, 24 January 1929, O Yu¨ksel, “Kıbrıs Tu¨rk Milli Mu¨cadelesi”, p. 173. Hadjioannou, Tsiplakou and Kappler, “Language Policy and Language Planning in Cyprus”, p. 5. It is almost impossible to correlate these newspapers to well-defined political camps, since some changed their political position throughout the years of publication, and others sided sometimes with the colonial government, and sometimes with the Cypriot Turkish opposition, depending on the particular topic. Sometimes, rivalry between newspaper owners exercised a stronger influence on the leading articles than ideologies did. However, Hakikat sided for the most part with the conservative elite around the Pious Foundations Office, and was the rival of So¨z (Nevzat, Nationalism amongst the Turks of Cyprus, p. 307). SA1 1320/1928; SA1/912/1930. The Language Commission was set up in 1926. Hakikat, 28.01.1928. Panayiotis Persianis, Church and State in Cyprus Education, Nicosia s.n., 1978. Panayiotis Persianis, “The British Colonial Education ‘Lending’ Policy in Cyprus (1878 – 1960): An intriguing example of an elusive ‘adapted education’ policy”, Comparative Education, 32, 1, 1996, p. 52.

140

73. 74. 75. 76. 77. 78. 79. 80. 81. 82. 83. 84. 85. 86. 87. 88. 89. 90. 91. 92. 93. 94. 95. 96. 97.

98. 99. 100.

KEMALISM On the importance of the educational system for the spread of Greek nationalism in Cyprus, see Nevzat, Nationalism amongst the Turks of Cyprus, p. 108. Ibid., p. 109. So¨z, 19.07.1928, quoting O¨zoran, “Cumhuriyet I˙nkılapları”, p. 75. Ibid., p. 76. Harid Fedai, “Dil Devriminin I˙lk On Yılında Kıbrıs’tan Saptamalar”, in Harid ¨ zyurt Matbaası, 2002, Fedai (ed.), Kıbrıs Tu¨rk Ku¨ltu¨ru¨, Bildiriler 1, Ankara, O p. 105, Hakikat, 22 September 1928. SA1 1320/1928, 10 April 1929. Birlik, 10 November 1928. Birlik, 15 September 1928. Birlik, 22 September 1928. For his help in describing this particularity of Cypriot Turkish, my thanks go to Matthias Kappler (Venice). Birlik, 29 September 1928. Ibid. According to the newspaper the article was written “by our traveling correspondent” (seyyar muharririmizden). Hendrich, “‘Yu¨z Acmak Meselesi’”, pp. 14 – 15. So¨z, 19 July 1928; transliterated in O¨zoran, “Cumhuriyet I˙nkılapları”, p. 75. ¨ zoran, “Cumhuriyet I˙nkılapları”, So¨z, 13 September 1928; transliterated in O p. 78. SA1 912/1930. The British file, however, only contains the translations of these letters into English, not the original texts. SA1/1320/1928, 21 April 1930. SA1/912/1930, 28 May 1930. SA1/1320/1928, 24 December 1931, the Commissioner of Famagusta to the Colonial Secretary. SA1/1320/1928, 23 December 1931. “Larnaka Mektubu”, So¨z, 01 January 1931. Cyprus Gazette, 11 April 1930, announcement No. 387, p. 324. When not stated otherwise, all British documents in this paragraph belong to this file. I˙smet [I˙no¨nu¨] Pasha (1884– 1973) was the second president of the Turkish Republic and Prime Minister for several terms. In his famous speech on 13 September 1928 in Malatya, he likened Turkey to a classroom, with Atatu¨rk as its headmaster (I˙no¨nu¨, I˙smet, I˙smet Pas¸anın Siyasıˆ ve Ictimaıˆ Nutukları 1920– 1933, Ankara, Bas¸vekaˆlet Matbaası, 1933, p. 213). So¨z, 4 October 1928. All the minutes are written in English. The statements of Mu¨nir Bey are in his own handwriting. A minute in the Cyprus Gazette in April 1930 announces this procedure, too.

FROM OTTOMAN 101. 102. 103. 104. 105. 106. 107. 108.

109. 110. 111. 112. 113. 114. 115. 116. 117. 118. 119. 120. 121. 122.

123. 124. 125. 126.

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O¨zoran, “Cumhuriyet I˙nkılapları”, p. 77. SA1 1320/1928, 23 December 1931. Several documents in SA1/1320/1928. SA1/1320/1928, 24 March 1930. Nevzat, Nationalism amongst the Turks of Cyprus, p. 349. SA1 1320/1928, 10 April 1929. Faustmann, Divide and Quit?, p. 31. Niyazi Kızılyu¨rek, “Modernity, Nationalism and the Emergence of the Ethnic Conflict in Cyprus”, in Giampiero Bellingeri and Matthias Kappler (eds), I quaderni di Merfor. Cipro oggi; [atti del convegno “Cipro oggi” Venezia, 20 March 2004], 1. Aufl. Bologna, CeiP, 2005, p. 26. Despatch of the Earl of Kimberley to the High Commissioner Sir R. Biddulph, 10 June 1881, quoting Persianis, “The British Colonial Education”, p. 53. Richard Powell, “Language Planning and the British Empire: Comparing Pakistan, Malaysia and Kenya”, Current Issues in Language Planning, 3, 3, 2002, p. 270. Clive Whitehead, “The historiography of British Imperial education policy, Part II: Africa and the rest of the colonial empire”, History of Education, 34, 4, 2005, p. 442. Powell, “Language Planning and the British Empire”, p. 209. Ibid., p. 271. Persianis, “The British Colonial Education”, p. 64. CO 67/281/14, 12.08.1937. Persianis, “The British Colonial Education”, pp. 45 – 68. Cemalettin U¨nlu¨, Kıbrıs’ta Basın Olayı: 1878– 1981, Ankara, Bas¸arı Matbaası, 1981, p. 92. Kızılyu¨rek, “The Politics of Identity”, p. 44. For further information on the colourful personality of Rıza Tevfik [Bo¨lu¨kbas¸ı] see Syed Tanvir Wasti “Feylesof Riza”, Middle Eastern Studies 38, 2, 2002, 83 – 100. Bener Haker, “Rıza Tevfik Bo¨lu¨kbas¸ı ve Kitabı”, in Kıbrıs Gazetesi 8 August 2009, www.kibrisgazetesi.com/index.php/cat//col/113/art/12102. Accessed on 4 February 2013. Laut, Das Tu¨rkische als Ursprache, p. 25. Kibris Kiraat Dersleri, Nicosia 1934. Laurent Mignon presents the very similar case of the Turkish author Refik Halit Karay (1888 – 1965) who was also exiled as one of “the 150” and had his works printed in Aleppo in Ottoman script during the 1930s (Mignon, “The Literati and the Letters”, p. 20). Achilles C. Emiliamides, Religion and Law in Cyprus, Alphen aan den Rijn: Wolters Kluwer, 2011, pp. 46 – 7. CO 67/303/10. SA1/1320/1928. SA1/1320/1928, 27 July 1944.

142 127. 128. 129. 130. 131. 132. 133. 134. 135. 136. 137. 138. 139. 140. 141.

142. 143. 144.

KEMALISM SA1/1320/1928, 5 August 1944. SA1/1320/1928, 22 August 1944. Collection, “Federation of Cypriot Turkish Associations”, 17 December 1952. Dimitra Karoulla-Vrikki, “Language and Ethnicity in Cyprus Under the British: A Linkage of Heightened Salience”, International Journal of the Sociology of Language, 168, 2004, pp. 28 – 9. Go¨khan S¸engo¨r, Osmanlıdan Gu¨nu¨mu¨ze Kıbrıs Tu¨rk Ars¸ivcilig˘i (Yu¨ksek Lisans Thesis Near Eastern University Nicosia), Nicosia, 2004, p. 38. For historic specimens see www.atsnotes.com/catalog/banknotes/cyprus.html. Mignon, “The Literati and the Letters”, pp. 11 – 24; Yılmaz, “Learning to Read (Again)”, pp. 677– 97. Collection, “Federation of Cypriot Turkish Associations”, 07 March 1952. My thanks go to Hu¨seyin Ag˘uicenog˘lu (Weingarten) for his help in reading this note. Wang, “Romanization Movements in Japan and China”, p. 105. Tomasz Dominik Kamusella, “Scripts and politics in modern Central Europe”, Mitteilungen der O¨sterreichischen Geographischen Gesellschaft, 154 (1), 2012, 9–42. Harid Fedai, “Rumca Bir Destan”, Harid Fedai (ed.), Kıbrıs Tu¨rk Ku¨ltu¨ru¨. Bildiriler 1. Ankara, O¨zyurt Matbaası, 2002, pp. 1 – 18. Ramm, Turkish Cypriots. “Mektep ve Muallimler”, So¨z, 04 September 1930. Ibid. The Times, 31 August 1928, cited in Geoffrey Lewis, The Turkish language reform, p. 38. A remark on the relation between writing systems and cultural belonging: whereas Turkish has been written in Latin letters since 1928, but is not an official language of the EU, the second official language of Cyprus is Greek, written in a minority alphabet that is supposed to be a major pillar of European culture. Tuncay, “I˙kna (I˙nandırma) Yerine Tecebbu¨r (Zorlama)”, p. 93. Ibid., p. 94. Fading away is a recurring topos and a fear mentioned in Cypriot-Turkish publications, from the beginning of the British administration to the modern day.

CHAPTER 4 TRANSNATIONAL HISTORY IN A HAT:EGYPT AND KEMALISM IN THE INTERWAR YEARS Wilson Chacko Jacob

Kemalism was at once a deliberate top-down program of social and political renewal and re-formation and an uncontrollable flow of signs and signifiers. The various contributions to this volume evince this double character of what some would insist is in essence merely an ideology fashioned by self-conscious agents of state. The subject of Kemalism is, perhaps in spite of itself and because of the historical conditions of its production, split between the intentional acts of a political sovereign and the unintended consequences of a discourse exceeding the bounds of its original points of application. This chapter examines some of the terms of that excess as part and parcel of a relatively recent history of “transnational” flows that were multidirectional and overdetermined. On 29 October 1932, a major celebration was held at Ankara Palace in honour of Turkish Republic Day. The Turkish leader Mustafa Kemal Atatu¨rk had invited foreign dignitaries and the local elite to the evening festivities. Among the distinguished invitees was the Egyptian ambassador, Abd al-Malik Hamza Bey. He arrived dressed in his formal regalia, topped off by the symbol of Egyptian (and, up to 1925, Turkish) officialdom – the tarbush.1 The tarbush (pl. tarabish), as it is called in Egypt, is more commonly known as the fez, signalling its supposed

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Moroccan origins. It is a brimless hat of red felted wool with a flat circular top and a tassel. Depending on the period, it came in varying heights, proportions, and styles of tassel. The fez was mandated as official headgear for Muslim men – except the ulama – in the Ottoman Empire as part of broader clothing reforms decreed by Sultan Mahmud II in 1829. In Egypt, Muhammad ‘Ali had already dressed his soldiers in a version of the North African fez. Atatu¨rk greeted the Egyptian representative coldly and ordered him to remove the tarbush while in his presence. When Hamza Bey hesitated, Atatu¨rk barked an order at one of his servants to demand from the guest his tarbush. In order to avoid a diplomatic incident, Hamza Bey acceded to the will of the Ghazi.2 In spite of the Egyptian diplomat’s effort to avoid controversy, the event escalated into an incident through, it seems, the provocation of the British press. Two weeks after the fact, the Daily Herald carried a report detailing the affront faced by the Egyptian ambassador in Ankara. Only after the publication of that article did the Egyptian press and public come to learn about “the tarbush incident”. Suddenly there were calls for action, including the severing of relations with Turkey. The incident was immediately framed as a question of national honour. The late Egyptian historian and columnist for the English-language al-Ahram Weekly, Yunan Labib Rizk, surveyed the coverage of the tarbush incident as it had been reported in al-Ahram, the leading Arabic daily.3 Although Rizk suggests that there were different “sectors of opinion in Egypt” – that is, pro- and anti-tarbush – the possible cultural meanings of these positions are subsumed by the larger, ostensibly more significant story of international relations between Egypt and Turkey after World War I. While the international as the concrete framework for inter-state political engagements in the interwar period is important to this history, my aim is to investigate the question of dress not simply for what it symbolised but also for how it participated in the performative constitution of a new cultural order on the level of competing and comparable national subjects, which in turn engaged actual social and individual bodies seeking to fashion themselves. From this perspective, “the international” signifies simultaneously a new juridico-political dispensation and an emergent cultural formation with palpable criteria for membership – from dress

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to physical comportment.4 Rizk’s account of the tarbush incident presupposes the existence of “Turkey” and “Egypt” prior to, or outside of, a discourse on modern dress; a more productive reading of this moment would regard them as being formed through such discourses. In other words, in the twentieth century, as dress became a question of fashion that spread across competing and sometimes conflicting spatial and temporal boundaries (Islamic, national and international, traditional, modern), it produced cultural tensions and anxieties that were textually represented, which affords to the historian a novel perspective on a subject of masculinity with new affective vectors and relationships to alterity that might best be labelled transnational.5 The fact that there were different public opinions about the tarbush suggests at the very least that identity was open to debate and not a given. The fact that the figure of Atatu¨rk and Kemalist policies in Turkey acted as a spark igniting an Egyptian debate, which would further reference fashion houses in Paris and Milan, the Rif War in Morocco and British free trade as imperialism in disguise, illuminates some of the transnational lines along which cultural and political norms were being renegotiated after World War I.6

Kemalism: The Hyphen in the Post-Ottoman Time-Space Since he seems to have instigated the tarbush incident, one way of beginning the story is to look to the figure of Atatu¨rk. Mustafa Kemal’s efforts to forcefully Westernise Turkey are well known.7 The papers in this volume make clear the wide scope and reach of Kemalism/kemalism as ideology and practice.8 Among the most famous dictates in the formation of republican Turkey are the codification of a secular state and the often misunderstood “banning” of the veil.9 Less well known is the banning of the tarbush in November 1925.10 In Egypt this act touched off a flurry of heated discussion on the merits and demerits of the tarbush that flared up periodically for well over a decade.11 The monumental actions of Mustafa Kemal, which continue in some ways to animate cultural and political life in contemporary Turkey, came on the heels of other significant world-historic events.12 In some ways, when regarded in the context of late-Ottoman history and from the ex-provinces, Kemalism’s ideological claims are on shakier ground and kemalism seems to become nothing but a place-holder. The question

Figure 4.1 Caricature of Atatu¨rk sweeping allies from Istanbul. Source: The National Archives, UK (FO 371/8963/E10383).

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after the war in a place like Egypt came to be about what exactly it was holding the place of: a past community, an unsettled present, or a(n im)possible future. At the end of World War I, France and Britain divided up the Arab provinces of the Ottoman Empire they had not previously occupied: Syria and Lebanon went to France, Palestine and Iraq to Britain.13 The Treaty of Se`vres in 1920 essentially completed a process of the slow stripping away of the sovereignty of the defeated Ottoman state.14 Meanwhile, guerrilla forces displayed their contempt for this dispensation, and Kemal assembled a national army of resistance in the Anatolian heartland. Over the next three years, through the exercise of military will and diplomatic negotiations, the dissident faction led by Kemal successfully procured the Treaty of Lausanne (24 July 1923), which affirmed Turkey’s national sovereignty and control of many of the territories it had lost in 1920. The events that unfolded in the theatre of war and the restructured field of international relations from 1914 into the 1920s, particularly those involving the defeat and dismemberment of the Ottoman Empire and the creation of the Turkish Republic, had far-reaching and conflicting implications for the political and cultural spheres of life in Egypt. Unlike Atatu¨rk’s widely publicised wresting of independence from foreign occupiers, the independence Egypt was granted by a unilateral British declaration in the midst of negotiations, on 22 of February 1922, was relatively hollow. The treaty’s loopholes – areas of strategic interest in which the British retained control – would remain a source of discontent and agitation for three decades. The political situation in Egypt during this period is usually characterised as a perennial struggle for power among three major parties – the Wafd, the King and the British. As the contests over the political sphere oscillated among these three poles, other struggles were waged in the seemingly separate cultural sphere about such seemingly trivial matters as the proper headdress of men.15 Within these debates, set against the backdrop of a self-conscious internationalised political order and absent national sovereignty, the tarbush was alternately celebrated and pilloried depending in part on the position taken towards culture.16 When culture was conceived hermetically and as ontologically unique, the tarbush appeared to be indispensable to national identity; when culture was regarded as always

Figure 4.2 Caricature of Sa’d Zaghlul dancing for John Bull. Source: Al-Kashkul, 12 October 1923, The National Archives, UK (FO 371/8963/ E10383).

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already a site of difference and hybridity, the change of headdress was viewed positively. A third stance assumed vis-a`-vis culture melancholically regarded it as a contemporary dystopia, and the passing of time, conceived as rupture, with subsequent ethical implications, became the object of concern over and against superficial objects like the change of headdress. The first two positions, which conceived of culture spatially, deemed the international and recognition within it fundamental to the working out of a national Egypt and by extension its proper subject.17 The international here, as seen from the Egyptian perspective, assumed and designated more than a field of legal application, the institutional form embodied by the League of Nations, or the numerous organisations, commissions and conferences to which Egypt sought and gained representation.18 It was the metaphorical gold standard of national value; international recognition was an ineluctable stage of national consciousness.19 Even as early as the last third of the nineteenth century the effendiyya, the cultural middle class, exhibited a growing appreciation of Egypt’s need to measure up to standards that were deemed not in its power to determine.20 This group of lettered, professional men played a major role in the cultural and political debates that shaped modern, bourgeois Egypt according to those standards. In the debates on dress that took place in the interwar period, the international appears as the familiar political order of sovereign nationstates as well as a transnational process of forming cultural subjects.21 On this view, the international, while formally manifested in the constitution of distinct sovereignties at the level of states and law, becomes intelligible through transnational terms; to the extent that similarly distinct or comparable formations of culture and its proper subject were determined. That process of the determination of cultural difference – presumably key to national identity, and, I contend, to sovereignty – was paradoxically possible only within a transnational frame of mutual recognition in which Self and Other, internal and external, were inextricably linked.22 There would always be ample disagreement about the best way to achieve recognition. Accordingly, in the 1920s the tarbush could simultaneously be a sign of the modern and the traditional, the civilised and the savage, the national and the foreign, the masculine and the effeminate. In the 1930s, most of which is beyond the purview of this chapter, the nationalist meaning of the tarbush acquired surplus value,

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so to speak, through the expansion of consumerism and a new politics of youth.23 By the time the 1936 Anglo-Egyptian Treaty was signed granting Egypt relatively more control over its own affairs, the tarbush had on the one hand become merely another commodity, while on the other hand the emergence of the next generation of political activists – the new effendiyya, as Israel Gershoni and James Jankowski refer to them – would revitalise debates over the essential meaning of national symbols in the face of incomplete independence and mounting social problems. A series of cartoons published in the popular magazine Ruz al-Yusuf provide a glimpse of how the shifting political horizons were broadly perceived among liberal-leaning effendiyya during that crucial decade. The first cartoon, depicting a meeting between the British Ambassador Percy Loraine, who had just been transferred from Cairo to Ankara, and Mustafa Kemal, on the surface portrayed the intimate and physical ties linking national honour, power and masculinity. Turkey under the leadership of a great, or at the very least a real, man did not suffer affronts to its honour or sovereignty like Egypt, whose leadership was by implication lacking virility and manliness. The political backdrop to this critique was the rise of the authoritarian government of Isma‘il Sidqi in 1930.24 As the second and third cartoons bluntly suggested, Sidqi courted the high commissioner for British support in keeping his unpopular government in office. The aim of this gendered and sexualised critique was in part to expose the profound weakness behind Sidqi’s reputation and self-styling as a strongman. More generally, as the cartoons and the furore over the tarbush incident reveal, also at stake in the question of national sovereignty for Egypt was the question of identity, figured as the possession of masculine virtues, primarily honour. When these image-texts are read more for what they do than for what they say, the circulation of figures like Hamza Bey, Sidqi, Atatu¨rk and Loraine – as well as the news about them and caricatures of them – assume a different significance. It was precisely the possibility of movement and the space it inscribed – what might be termed the transnational scene of national subject formation – that helped constitute a new norm of gender, which I have variously labelled elsewhere: bourgeois masculinity, national manhood and effendi masculinity. As I argue in the larger work, the three discursive fields

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Figure 4.3 Caricature of British Ambassador Percy Lorraine being taught his place by Atatu¨rk. Source: Ruz al-Yusuf, 28 August 1933, back cover.

had distinct yet overlapping genealogies whose relationship depended on the historically variable interrelations of capital and empire. In the Egyptian context, effendi masculinity was a condensation of the other two fields, bourgeois masculinity and national manhood, which existed in a relationship of temporal and spatial tension.25 The terms of bourgeois masculinity were developed over a long period coeval with the second wave of European colonial expansion, whereas national manhood became in some sense the political project of the latter at home and its unwitting outcome abroad (appearing as it did in an oppositional register).26 The cartoons and the diplomatic episode illuminate a differentiated field of modern masculinity whose intelligibility and reproduction were contingent on the implicit affirmation of the international. Such masculinity was also contingent on the denial of environmental determinism; regardless of historical differences, geographical specificities

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Figure 4.4 Caricature of John Bull staging a love affair between High Commissioner Lorraine and PM Ismail Sidqi. Source: Ruz al-Yusuf, 9 May 1932, front cover.

and political-economic asymmetries, the interwar conception of the international engendered a shared, transnational perception of modern culture’s publicity.27 The latter also implied a common grammar of political expression and a transposable subject of politics. Nevertheless, when that generic form of the public and masculinity was infused with national, religious and individual sentiments the meaning of modern culture appeared as anything but universal. The representation of Atatu¨rk, for example, as the paragon of masculinity, modernisation and nationalism in the post-Ottoman world did not go unchallenged. Kemalism’s reception in Egypt points to an ambivalent subject of modernity with a distinctly gendered valence – desirable for some and deeply problematic for others. Whether it was a model to be emulated was a question mediated by history, the terms of which were undergoing radical re-inscriptions.28

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Figure 4.5 Caricature of a sick Sidqi being consoled by Lorraine. Source: Ruz al-Yusuf, 13 June 1932, front cover.

As the form of headdress worn mainly by the effendi class of men, the tarbush was most consistently the signifier of an ambivalent bourgeois masculinity, which could be and was articulated in terms of tradition or in terms of modernity. That the tarbush became a contested site as the cast of characters involved in the production of cultural meaning expanded was not coincidental. Other examples from the period show that the proliferation of new cultural practices, such as sports, incorporated actors from a broader social base into an interwar public culture, wherein the gendered subject of Egyptian modernity was re-signified. The redefinition of the political and cultural relationship between Egypt – now an autonomous, detached republic – and its once-imperial overlord was necessarily freighted with the different outcomes of their international and local struggles for national sovereignty, which included a reevaluation of historical symbols of Ottoman masculinity.29

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The political and economic mediation of the West (which went back at least to the intervention of Britain in 1840 on behalf of the Ottomans to discipline the overly ambitious governor of Egypt, Mehmed Ali) quietly became a cultural mediation as well by the twentieth century, as the prior axes linking Cairo and Istanbul were intercalated and eventually usurped by the Cairo– Paris– London axes.30 The tarbush incident represented both the vanishing horizon of the former and the hazy new possibility of a Kemalist/Western modernity. In another contemporary account of the 1932 tarbush incident, Abd al-Malik Hamza Bey was given permission by Mustafa Kemal to remove his tarbush to be more comfortable. Apparently it was very hot in the palace halls that evening, and Kemal was simply being a gracious and thoughtful host who knew that Egyptian diplomatic protocol required the wearer to keep the tarbush on until invited to remove it. This version of events eventually became the official line that formally closed the file on this international incident involving the tarbush. After the initial outcry in Egypt, in which voices were calling for the severing of all ties with Turkey, positions on the tarbush incident largely reflected the views of the two poles that had emerged in the preceding half-decade or so: the pro- and anti-tarbush camps. Admirers of the Turkish model of modernisation, who were also generally anti-tarbush, were willing to wait for another explanation of the incident. Supporters of the tarbush, which had become re-coded during World War I as a specifically Egyptian nationalist symbol through its publicly visible expression of opposition to the British, read the incident as yet another example of Egypt’s Turkish-blooded leaders compromising its national honour.31 This schema of positions is admittedly simplistic and should be read as awkward shorthand used to designate a much more complex field of cultural debates, politics and subject formation. For example, the proponents of the Western-style hat were not always anti-tarbush, and defenders of the tarbush were not necessarily anti-hat; and those who wore turbans occupied a position that could be labelled rejectionist, uncertain, unaware or simply disinterested. It is in the details of individuals’ engagements with the politics of headdress that the irreducible realm of subject formation as a relationship of self to self, an aesthetic and ethics, becomes legible as a performance at once local and global.

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“The Perfection of Masculinity” or Dressing for the Times? In 1925 Fikri Abaza, the editor of a leading cultural magazine al-Musawwar, explained his decision to evaluate the implications of Mustafa Kemal’s social policies.32 He claimed that these policies were highly relevant to Egyptians since “Egypt is still tied to Turkey in many ways: in terms of religion, kinship, and Eastern traditions.”33 His criticism of Atatu¨rk’s prohibition of the veil and the tarbush and legislation of European dress echoed turn-of-the-century critics in calling for a deeper understanding of what it meant to be modern, but differed in the particulars. Just as the class of effendi men began to grow in numbers, critiques about the “blind imitation” of superficial aspects of Western culture began to appear.34 Whereas those critics maintained their focus on uplifting others like them, for Abaza, national renaissance required a commitment to mass education and other unstated fundamental social reforms. Addressing leaders and intellectuals, he concluded, “Reforming the basic conditions of life is what is important. Outward accoutrements that do not develop or retard are best left on heads and bodies as an eternal marker of the renascent nation that has retained its traditional image, its special character. Then, the crucial factor becomes what is inside the head and chest, not what covers the head and chest.”35 In other words, becoming modern was a much more complicated process than simply imitating foreign dress or rejecting local traditions. Abaza’s consideration of modernity’s proper constitution and its relationship to tradition was taking place against the backdrop of a specific political struggle in Egypt sparked by the new Turkish Republic’s abolishment of the caliphate in 1924. Most ulama and palace supporters in Egypt favoured the restoration of this highest office in Islam with King Fuad as the new caliph. The political parties spearheaded by the Wafd supported a reform of religious institutions in Egypt – from the shari‘a as a source of legal practice to the office of the mufti – but initially avoided getting involved in the caliphate question.36 In this context, Abaza’s position could be seen as an attempt to bait the Palace into a debate on cultural modernity to expose its secularist outlook. Abaza’s problem with the Turkish model of reaching modernity was explicitly gendered. Although Abaza objected to Kemal’s decree of European dress for both men and women, his reasons for each were quite different.

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While he did not say so explicitly, as a wearer of the suit himself, his objection to the Kemalist reforms of men’s dress was registered in terms of the antidemocratic measures underlying them as opposed to some strong commitment to the preservation of traditional male costumes. In the case of women and the hijab (signifying here both the face veil and seclusion), his argument assumed a different course. He said, “I used to be an ‘extreme conservative’, but the fierce attacks of the ‘fairer sex’ have gradually weakened my passionate attachment to the venerable past.”37 (The remarks that follow make one wonder what he thought about women when he was in his extreme conservative phase.) Abaza’s first salvo against the Kemalist program for women’s emancipation was personal. He attacked Kemal’s hypocrisy by pointing to his failed relationship with his wife, Latifa Hanim, who was a model of European culture. He suggested that despite Kemal’s public proclamations, in fact it was his wife’s unveiling and her appearance in mixed company that led to the collapse of their marriage. Abaza’s next move was to assemble a list of European luminaries who also had cautioned against “permissive freedom for women”. Some would find it interesting that Oscar Wilde appeared here alongside George Bernard Shaw and Arthur Schopenhauer. Abaza emphasised the import of their warnings of disastrous consequences by underlining the geographical and cultural specificity of their utterances. In other words, if social failure was feared in Western Europe as a result of giving women more freedoms, then imagine what was in store for Eastern Turkey.38 It seems Abaza did manage to elicit a response from the pro-Palace camp. His views on the Turkish path towards modernity were denounced by the editor of al-Nil al-Musawwar as reactionary and shortsighted.39 The editor of al-Nil did not raise the question of women’s dress explicitly, an omission that may reflect the Palace’s desire to support the new Turkish Republic without alienating its religious supporters.40 On the other hand, given the content of Abaza’s article, the criticism was directed implicitly at his claims about women and the hijab. The editor of al-Nil endorsed the Turkish project on the grounds that Turkish reformers grasped the nature of the changed world in which they lived. They understood the need to dress for the times: new clothes were required to meet the new fast-paced lifestyle. In addition to the

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efficiency and productivity enabled by Western dress, the author pointed to their suitability for the weather. Apparently the suit and brimmed hat could shield the wearer from Egypt’s climate better than the ancient gallabiya and tarbush. The author tried to shame Egyptian reformers (mujaddidun) further by asserting that Egypt, which was actually a part of Europe, should have preceded the Turks in instituting cultural changes. Then, somewhat contradictorily – relocating Egypt geographically again – he declared, “Alas, the East ambles along in its same old way”. Taking a step away from the Turkish model, though, he concluded by framing the question of dress as a matter of having the freedom to choose. In a postscript addressed personally to Abaza, the editor of al-Nil pointed out that the cost of a baladi (traditional) costume was more than double that of one of his European suits. He ended by inquiring of Abaza, “So why do you want to block the way of others to economy?”41 The mocking query aimed to mute Abaza’s call for Egypt to deal with its basic social problems before debating superficial cultural matters. What the editor of al-Nil failed to point out and what Abaza did not recognise in his own argument as contradictory was that the question of dress was a problem precisely because it was a deeply political issue perceived as having dire social consequences, something of which the preindependence critics were more conscious. Al-Fath, a magazine representing the Islamic press, opposed the move to do away with the turban but sided with the pro-tarbush camp against the proponents of Western-style hats. It enlisted the likes of Shakib Arsalan, Ahmad Zaghlul and Ahmad Taymur in its efforts.42 By yoking the turban and the tarbush into one seamless Islamic history, al-Fath was insisting on a national identity that embraced Egypt’s Arab and Ottoman past simultaneously while refusing an exclusively secular conception of modernity. The debate over headgear became an active platform from which specific claims on Egyptian modernity could be forwarded to a broader public. In the case of al-Fath, this entailed the rearticulation of the terms of national and masculine subjectivity in a modified Arabo-Islamic register – perhaps an ambivalent one, in the wake of Kemalist Turkey’s abolition of the caliphate two years earlier. Arsalan’s article used the visit of the Moroccan prince and anticolonial activist Muhammad ibn Abd al-Karim al-Khattabi to

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Europe to deliver a lesson to Egyptians on the value of customary dress.43 He linked the shame or pride a man had in his nation’s traditional fashion to colonial penetration but also to a process of wilful self-fashioning. In other words, it was the total submission of Egyptian elites to European culture in the face of colonial domination that accounted for the nation’s emasculation. Arsalan demonstrated through the body of Prince Abd al-Karim that the loss of masculinity was usually self-inflicted. Contrary to some people’s expectations, he claimed, the prince and his entourage were celebrated and honoured in Europe for preserving the Islamic fashion of the Moroccan Rif, the turban and the hooded cloak: “They do not see themselves as less than Europeans nor do they recognise the hat and trousers as signs of authority or markers of superiority.”44 Their pride in themselves and their culture was recognised and respected. Furthermore, Arsalan argued, their dress was not an obstacle to progress or to functioning in the modern world. In fact, the will to adapt to the modern world (adaptation was understood here as the acquisition of knowledge) without renouncing one’s heritage, sartorial and otherwise, held the key to a genuine and complete masculinity: “The perfection of masculinity [kamal al-muruwwa] is through obtaining knowledge by whatever means and acquiring wisdom from whichever direction, while retaining national character and native dress [al-mushakhkhisat al-qawmiyya wa al-aziya’ al-asliyya ] so that we are not like slaves in love with imitating their masters.”45 He also registered the possibility of achieving a more physical, or martial, masculinity enabled by respect for Islamic traditions – in this case expressed in dress. He cited the valour of the Rif Moroccans on the battlefield, where dress was not an impediment in their destruction of the mighty armies of Spain and France. Arsalan underscored this accomplishment by locating the might of their opponents on a global geopolitical scale: “[France and Spain] are not second-class states like Greece or Bulgaria”.46 For Arsalan, the terms of the sartorial debate exceeded the bounds of national territories, which in themselves seemed strange formations against the backdrop of a proud and martial Arabo-Islamic heritage. He rejected the Kemalist model of modernisation-at-all-costs, finding reform by the sword unacceptable. For Azmi and the editor of al-Nil, the debate was more firmly rooted in the specific terms of Egypt’s recent

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Figure 4.6 Caricature of Shaykh Bakhit and Shaykh Shakir discussing the justification of their association with the Afghan king, who wore a hat. Source: Al-Kashkul, 1 January 1928, p. 20.

history as a British occupied territory that had been a part of the Ottoman Empire, facing a new dispensation in the postwar period. Dress, often dismissed as unworthy of comment by contemporary authors, was nonetheless heatedly debated because it was an important

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surface on which modernity was marked and through which cultural dependence and independence were simultaneously expressed. Determining a distinctively Egyptian headdress was thus essential to the gendered constitution of the post-Ottoman order of the nation state, which had at once to be the same as and different from other nation states. However, dress did not simply play surface to some mysterious deeper level of the subject. The final section examines the publicity of the intimate self as an exemplary site for both the reenactment of effendi masculinity and the performance of a necessary labour suturing over those very social fissures revealed in and through dress.

(Ad)Dressing Affect Through the public expression of intimacy – in this case, the individual feelings of prominent figures in relation to fashion – the question of social reality and its transformation could be deferred. The cultural work performed by public intimacy was at least threefold: it brought disparate social classes within one affective space, elided the class differences that Egypt’s colonial and capitalist modernity was in the process of multiplying and intensifying and performatively reinstated effendi masculinity at the centre of the nation.47 Ali Abd al-Raziq (1888– 1966), in Paris at the time of the hat/ tarbush controversy, contributed a poignant analysis of the Egyptian clothing debates to al-Siyasa al-Usbu‘iyya.48 Abd al-Raziq belonged to an old landed family whose members were highly influential in the Liberal Constitutionalist Party. He was an al-Azhar-trained shaykh who had also studied at Oxford. After his return to Egypt, he was appointed as a shari‘a court judge in 1915. The publication of his 1925 book al-Islam wa usul al-hukm (Islam and the Principles of Government) angered the King and members of the ulama, resulting in the revocation of his degree from al-Azhar.49 The political turmoil caused by the attempts to silence him included the resignation of the Liberal Ministers in protest, leaving a totally pro-palace Cabinet. Perhaps his flight to France was to weather this storm. After his return, he practised as a lawyer and went on to serve in the Majlis al-Nuwwab, followed by the Majlis al-Shuyukh. He also taught fiqh at the University of Cairo for twenty years. He began the article in question, “Farewell to the Turban”, with the claim that for most people in the world dress was an issue of importance

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on par with food and drink, and possibly of even more importance. In any case, only a minority saw in the issue of dress no significance whatsoever. He intimated from the start that it was not only in terms of meeting basic needs that dress commanded attention but also in terms of a contested cultural terrain. Abd al-Raziq continued by making explicit some of the ways in which dress assumed social, economic and political significance in modern times. He argued that “the institutions of modern life” presupposed the importance of different styles of dress. In other words, each social context determined its own sartorial image, and conversely that image reflected a particular social context. This, he suggested, would come as no surprise to anyone who knew of the “fashion houses” (buyut al-moda) in the world’s capitals and of “their influence on our economic life, on our character, and our customs”.50 Of course, all women, with “no difference between ages, colours, or classes”, were members of this “madhhab”,51 which accorded fashion a central place in their lives. Men were slightly more differentiated in that there was a small minority who believed that clothes had absolutely no signifying value. The minority opinion, according to Abd al-Raziq, rejected all the prior social and political claims made on dress and denied the transformative power that others liked to accord to it. Essentially, ugly was ugly, violent was violent, ignorant was ignorant and there was nothing that dress could do about it. They also opposed the connections made between nationalism and fashion, because the latter was ephemeral – “a form that fluctuates with the fluctuation of time” – while the nation was beautiful and eternally stable. Finally, they found the ascription of religious significance to dress objectionable and misguided. Abd al-Raziq’s rhetorical use of this unnamed group of men52 and their views on dress was metaphorical, signifying a political position that was disconnected from its social and cultural bases. He argued that the truth was found between the two extreme positions and that that truth should be acceptable to both. The middle ground – between those who viewed dress as an issue of primary importance and those who denied it any importance – was surprisingly a categorical prohibition. Men could not be allowed to discuss, act on or even think about the question of dress. Hence, in the name of mediation, Abd al-Raziq staked

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out political and moral grounds of his own based on the non-question of dress. He argued that even if the majority considered dress to be of great significance, men should concern themselves with other, more pressing issues. He did not elaborate on what those issues were or on the questions of how or by whom they would be determined. The rest of the article was a personal testimony by which he bid farewell to the turban. He admitted that this discourse contradicted his previous statements about dress; nevertheless, due to the turban’s special position within Islamic history and its “beloved status in spirit”, it was deserving of a formal elegy.53 “Even if the departed Shaykh Muhammad Abduh hated the turban and disparaged it”, wrote Abd al-Raziq, there was a time when it signified a kind of virtue – social and religious.54 Moreover, it held a “special place” in the life of the author and his family. The “noble tradition” (turath karim) of the Abd al-Raziq family was briefly narrated to illustrate the grand heritage of which the turban was an important symbolic marker. Although he was nostalgic for that past time and melancholic that he would not be able to pass on the turban to his sons as his ancestors had before him, he acknowledged that the time had come for its retirement. This was true in part because the changing times had rendered the noble tradition of the turban archaic; moreover, a class he alluded to as being composed of ignorant and violent types were now its bearers. So in a wistful tone he brought his elegy to a close, literally bidding farewell to “the beloved turban”. Shaykh Ali Abd al-Raziq’s article on dress and the extinction of the turban expressed a number of different concerns or anxieties about his society and the place of people like himself within it. Before turning to an analysis of these issues, it might be instructive to consider another personal testimony from a different perspective. Mahmud Azmi was a noted journalist who worked with the legendary man of letters Muhammad Husayn Haykal on al-Siyasa. His story of switching from the tarbush to the hat appeared, however, in al-Hilal in 1927, a year after Abd al-Raziq’s article.55 Azmi informed the reader at the start that he had been invited by the magazine to offer a personal account of switching to the hat. Interestingly, his narrative included a version of the history of the earlier tarbush/hat controversy that took the reader from the turn of the century to the author’s present. Azmi wrote that the social and political significance of dress first occurred to him during his adolescent years as a student in secondary school.

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He remembered it as the time when everyone was talking about Qasim Amin’s recently published books on women and the veil. After listening to numerous opinions on the books and then reading them for himself, he became a staunch opponent of the veil. He recalled that he had opposed the veil mainly because of its foreign origins and its introduction into Egypt through conquest. His thinking on the issue had been guided by two questions: what constituted modest dress, and what dress was Egyptian in material and make? Early in the century, prior to the War, the same sort of concern for proper national attire turned some against the tarbush. According to Azmi, some had declared the tarbush foreign and unhealthy and called for a return to the ancient Egyptian headdress. He remembered himself being driven by similar reasons to reject the veil and the tarbush and feeling a powerful nationalist sentiment in doing so. However, as his understanding of nationalism changed while studying in Paris, so too did his attitude towards dress. Of course it could very well have been the opposite: that his attitude towards nationalism changed as his appreciation of fashion changed. It is possible to read his testimony as saying that the experience of dressing differently, this very “superficial” act, was the cause of an intellectual and political shift. Nonetheless, in a retrospective account justifying the controversial decision to switch to the Western hat it was important that the explanation be couched in terms of nationalism. So, it was in France that Azmi had come to regard nationalism as a “feeling of pride” that one should have within oneself and not “spread on [one’s] surface”.56 Consequently, the symbolic meaning of dress was also revalued, but not erased entirely as per Abd al-Raziq’s recommendation. For Azmi dress and fashion assumed a new significance as signs of modernity’s internationalism. He had been inspired at the time, he wrote, by the prevailing spirit of “harmony”,57 and had realised that dress was one of the most visible sites expressing this new attitude. According to Azmi, this kind of cultural fusion had always been evident in Egypt. Over time, Egyptians on a popular level borrowed all manner of dress from different dominant cultures. There was, however, one item of foreign clothing that had been denied popular approval because it was the symbol of Ottoman tyranny – “the symbol of the power of Cairo and the autocratic Sultan”.58 This was the tarbush.

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The tarbush, however, was not to remain forever a despised symbol. According to Azmi, the tarbush was re-coded with the exact opposite signification during the War. It was re-signified and re-politicised, Azmi argued, as the British imposed a protectorate on Egypt in 1914. The sudden declaration of Egypt as an unwilling supporter of the British war effort against the Ottomans had surprising ramifications on the popular level. Azmi did not refer to the tremendous human suffering caused by British exploitation of Egyptian resources and labour during this time, but surely this was a major factor in radicalising the political landscape and preparing the grounds for the re-appropriation of the symbol of “Turkish” despotism as a distinct sign of a more popular Egyptian nationalism. Azmi drew a connection between the way Egyptians viewed the Ottoman-Circassian elite59 during wartime and the stigma attached to the hat. He suggested that those who switched from the tarbush to the hat were trying to “flee from ‘Ottomanism’ and get closer to the protector state, or avoid the hostility of Australian soldiers”.60 He alluded to how this sartorial switching by the members of the ruling class was read by the masses as cowardice. Lack of courage, a key masculine virtue, combined with the aristocracy’s alignment with the Protectorate were the two main reasons Azmi gave for the symbolic transformation of the tarbush into a marker of the authentic popular will, which was ostensibly pro-Ottoman and Egyptian. In other words, by wearing the tarbush in public the wearer was expressing his willingness to defy the occupying forces openly, stand up to whatever “humiliation” he was subjected, and restore Egypt to its proper historical place among Eastern nations. Azmi referred to the period following the war as a nahda. It was through this renaissance – ostensibly enabled by the new nationalist consciousness manifested in the popular uprising of 1919 – that Egyptians generally came to view the tarbush as a symbol of the reborn nation, an essential accessory for being modern, “Eastern and Egyptian.” However, it was precisely as the nahda became an ordinary feature of everyday life (institutionalised in Egypt’s new constitution and representative government), as “freedom” became an important principle to all, and as an understanding of sorts was reached with the British, that a new space for moderate public discourse emerged. Azmi was now talking about his own scene of writing.

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Within this space, Azmi continued, some began to revisit the question of modern culture, and thus the tarbush again became a contested symbol. He depicted the climate in which these debates occurred as markedly different from the past. The most telling example of how much the times had changed was in the apparent absence of accusations of blasphemy.61 In fact, there was change everywhere. Azmi cited the progress of women, which was illustrated best by their “liberation from the veil”. He noted the advances made in Turkey without religious opposition. Throughout the Arab lands there was also nahda and movements for independence. In the Arab world, however, there was a split emerging, which Azmi described as a civilisational choice: between being Arab and being modern. Some had come to the conclusion that attempts at finding common ground were futile because of the deep rift that existed between the past and the present of Islamic societies. He did not explain this further, but mentioned the speed with which modern society was moving forward. Perhaps he believed that with such a rapid pace of change reconciling with the past was impossible. He wrote that he himself had made the choice to draw on modern civilisation; furthermore, he felt that it was a choice society as a whole needed to make. After delineating the historical context and illustrating the social and political significance of dress, he finally narrated the details of the precise moment in which he took the decision to switch from the tarbush to the hat. This sort of autobiographical writing was rare and yet emblematic of this period. Publicly presenting the intimate thoughts of a private person as he self-consciously embarked on making a change, of refashioning himself, was of course a quintessentially modernist performance. Autobiography as such was not rare in 1920s Egypt, but he was unique in giving the reader an exceptionally vivid picture of how agonising a process a seemingly simple, ordinary act like choosing between two hats could be. In other words, giving an account of oneself that exposed one’s interiority publicly, if not entirely new, was still a novelty for the time.62 Azmi wrote that he had resolved in the summer of 1925 to put his convictions about being modern to the test. He announced to his friends and family that he would be switching to the bowler hat on 1 July. He said that he gave this date so that they would have some time to adjust to the idea.

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Then he described in great detail the anxiety he was struck with when the day finally arrived for him to make the switch. As he approached the hat store on Qasr al-Nil Street, he noticed that his footsteps had gotten heavier and that moving forward was becoming increasingly difficult. When he finally reached the front of the store, he froze and found that he could not open the door, much less enter. Eventually, he turned around and walked back in the direction he had come from. He wrote: “I noticed that I had started to accuse myself under my breath of cowardice and of still being under the influence of al-akhta’ al-wirathiyya.”63 This phrase literally means “inherited flaws or weaknesses”, but could also be interpreted in this context to mean “backward traditions”. Extirpating the inherited defects from within himself and from society was deemed a significant and necessary step towards becoming modern. For Mahmud Azmi, this project of overcoming the inertia of tradition and expunging the past took another full year. He confessed that he was emboldened by the ruling on the tarbush issued by the Egyptian Medical Association in the summer of 1926: “I headed directly the next morning – the third Saturday in the month of July, 1926 – to the hat salesman, and I bought a summer hat . . . And since that day I have been wearing the hat, alternating between different types depending on the season”.64 From the two reactions that Azmi relayed, it seems that his wearing of Western hats was received favourably, even lauded. One of his friends, whom he described as a leading Arab writer and intellectual, said the following: “Now the Easterners are beginning to think with their heads!”65 Another friend was inspired to write to al-Siyasa with his own views on the headdress question. Azmi quoted from his article: “The struggle is not between the turban, the tarbush, and the hat, but rather it is a struggle between different visions of thought and taste (suwar mukhtalifa min al-tafkir wa al-dhawq) each of which wants to be dominant”.66 With that said, this friend also sided with the Western hat and pronounced the turban and the tarbush as outmoded forms of headdress – and by extension, they symbolised obsolete forms of thought and taste. The personal testimonies of Ali Abd al-Raziq and Mahmud Azmi richly illustrate the complicated negotiations of the effendiyya with their sartorial presence in an emergent interwar Egyptian public sphere. They also attest to a self-conscious engagement with modernity as a

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universal experience. The tension between the particular and the universal was most evident in the manner by which the two authors negotiated the relationship of dress and national identity. However much they differed in their positions on the question of dress, both were deeply conscious of its significance to culture, in terms of the relationship of form and content. Abd al-Raziq accepted the passing of the turban because it no longer signified a virtuous life, and Azmi was ready to adopt the hat when it seemed to him that the tarbush no longer signified emancipation. While Abd al-Raziq’s reasoning was routed through an intimate knowledge of Islamic law and tradition, both men were critically engaged in translating modernist notions of self, community and time in a historical moment when the stakes were well-nigh existential. Manhood, nationhood, progress and even the possibility of an ethical life hung in the balance. Ali Abd al-Raziq’s formal farewell to the turban inscribed the passing of a world in which men of religious learning had represented moral – and mediated political – authority. The cultural landscape that he surveyed, from “exile” in Paris, had necessarily to foreclose a desire for the turban since its proper genealogy had been terminated by the social and political transformations of Egypt in the preceding decades. Although he longed to pass on this symbol of a noble tradition to his heirs, the kind of masculine personhood represented by the turban was no longer an ideal worthy of aspiration. This melancholic situation was only amplified by the politics in which Abd al-Raziq found himself embroiled and embattled; his thoughts on Islam, tradition and authority were repudiated by the self-serving guardians of a moribund moral order symbolised poignantly by the now meaningless turban. Mahmud Azmi’s confession relating his decision to take up the Western hat repeated many of the terms of the cosmopolitanism prevalent in the “international” that was taking shape during the interwar period. The individual subject and citizen imagined therein represented an extension and deepening of a prior bourgeois and liberal understanding of the modern as a steady progression towards a future utopia. The past was inscribed in his story of personal transformation as part of a forward-moving trajectory and teleology, not as a site of loss. The self-constituting individual was the desired subject position of Azmi’s narration. It was a subject position endorsed by science and resisted by an irrational Eastern mind. His courage in overcoming both

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the conservatism of his social milieu and his own internalised repression were publicly offered as testimony to the possibility of changing traditional tastes and frames of mind. Thus, the hat became the symbolic marker not only of modernity and the modern individual, but also of a possible future.

Conclusion When the tarbush incident instigated by Mustafa Kemal came to the Egyptian public’s attention at the end of 1932, the cultural field had already been, in a sense, worked over to a large extent in the 1920s and was prepared for its reception. This might explain why a controversy that aroused loud outcries in late November was a dead issue by late December on the diplomatic level and in public discourse alike.67 The cultural debates about the modernity and appropriateness of the tarbush for Egyptian men had already taken place. Its position as a nationalist icon had been secured against internal assault. Turkey and Egypt as discrete formations were firmly established with separate pasts and independent futures in a new international order. And the final chapter of the tarbush story would be written two decades later with the abolishment of the Egyptian monarchy.68 At another level, the tarbush incident brings to light an emergent transnational economy and politics of signs and signifiers that repositions Kemalism as an overdetermined discourse, which circulated in post-Ottoman spaces beyond the Turkish heartland and appeared at times in the gendered figure of Atatu¨rk. Kemalism as an ideological formation deployed in a specific nation state context was at once the same and different from the kemalism that insinuated itself into Egyptian debates about national identity and modernity. The condition of possibility for its contemporary salience in Egypt of the 1920s and 1930s rested on three intersecting historical trajectories. The first was a prior history of shared Ottoman reforms and global models of an aspirational bourgeois culture that (re)produced new norms of subject formation in the long nineteenth century. The second was the more immediate reality of differential claims to sovereignty and recognition in the new international order following World War I. The third was the accelerating flow of transnational cultural practices that promised a future emancipation through the annihilation of history.

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Kemalism moved beyond its intended domain because it represented a successful means of engaging these three modes of being in and apprehending time’s passing, which spoke not only to emerging Turkish national identity but also to the new Egyptian, Iranian, Syrian, Albanian and so on. That new national subject simultaneously aspired to history, to overcome history and to leap into a future free of the past. Kemalism’s radical policies, which touched even the minutest element of the physical body’s appearance, attended to all three temporalities which for some signified a successful claim to modernity.

Notes 1. For detailed information on the production, styles and consumption of tarabish during the interwar period, see Nancy Young Reynolds, Commodity Communities: Interweavings of Market Cultures, Consumption Practices, and Social Power in Egypt, 1907– 1961, PhD Dissertation, Stanford University, 2003, pp. 344– 59. For a rereading of Ottoman reforms up to 1829 through the lens of the clothing law, see Donald Quataert, “Clothing Laws, State, and Society in the Ottoman Empire, 1720– 1829” International Journal of Middle East Studies, 29, 1997, pp. 403–25. For a comparison of the cultural significance of the decree in 1829 mandating the fez and the decree in 1925 banning it, see Patricia L. Baker, “The Fez in Turkey: A Symbol of Modernization?” Costume, 20, 1986, pp. 72 – 85. Baker’s analysis situates the movement for and against the fez within the frameworks of modernisation and nationalism and relies on religious – secular and East – West dichotomies to explain these two moments in Ottoman-Turkish history. In the Egyptian case I analyse here, by looking at the gendered aspects of men’s anxieties about dress, one sees that the tarbush makes visible a much more complex, transnational field of cultural signification. 2. The Arabic term ghazi is very old and in this context refers to the warriors who dwelled among Turkic tribesmen on the frontiers of Islam and launched raids against the Byzantines in Anatolia beginning in the eleventh century. A note on usage: Mustafa Kemal would be known as Atatu¨rk (an honorary designation meaning “father of the Turks”) only after a law on surnames was passed in 1934. One of the aims of the law was to promote authentic Turkish names over Arabic-derived (read: Muslim-sounding) ones. However, the image of Mustafa Kemal as the founder and emblem of a distinctively Turkish, secular cultural order circulated earlier, so I occasionally refer to him as Atatu¨rk even in periods prior to 1934, though such usage is technically incorrect. 3. “The Ambassador’s Tarboush”, Al-Ahram Weekly On-Line 650, 7 – 13 August 2003, http://weekly.ahram.org. Accessed on 10 December 2003. 4. I develop these themes and the significance of the international as cultural formation in far greater detail in my book Working Out Egypt: Effendi Masculinity

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KEMALISM and Subject Formation in Colonial Modernity, 1870– 1940, Durham, Duke University Press, American University in Cairo Press, 2011. “Transnational” is used here as an analytical category. Transnational history, a relatively recent field, might be defined negatively in terms of capturing what national, regional and international histories fail to capture and positively in terms of flows and connections. The massive acceleration in the movement of objects, ideas and people from the mid-nineteenth century onward created its own (until recently unlabeled) space generative of meaning. For some, like David Armitage, that space has always existed: “Are We All Global Historians Now?,” Itinerario, 36, 2, 2012, pp. 7 – 28, 16. For recent examples of writing a transnational history of the Middle East, see Keith Watenpaugh, “Being Middle Class and Being Arab: Sectarian Dilemmas and Middle Class Modernity in the Arab Middle East, 1908– 1936”, in A. Ricardo Lopez and Barbara Weinstein (eds) The Making of the Middle Class: Toward a Transnational History, Durham, NC, Duke University Press, 2012 and Cyrus Schayegh, “The Many Worlds of ‘Abud Yasin; or, What Narcotics Trafficking in the Interwar Middle East Can Tell Us about Territorialization”, American Historical Review, 116, 2, 2011, pp. 273– 306. Erez Manela, for example, has shown the ways in which the new internationalism enshrined in Woodrow Wilson’s Fourteen Points and the League of Nations was transnational, seized upon by nationalist projects from Egypt to Korea. Erez Manela, The Wilsonian Moment: Self-Determination and the International Origins of Anticolonial Nationalism, New York, Oxford University Press, 2007. For a pre-history to the institutionalised and organised politics of the international, see David Armitage, Foundations of Modern International Thought, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2013 and idem., The Declaration of Independence: A Global History, Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 2007. The unwieldiness of the term “Westernise” as a historical phenomenon might be thought of this way: if one delinked it from late European colonialism and the process of mimicry it generated, then one could trace “Turkish” Westernisation back to the first Ottoman footholds in the Balkans in the fourteenth century. Indeed, if one rejected the imaginary lines dividing Europe from Asia and viewed the Byzantines as a continuation of Western civilisation, then the timeline would have to be moved back even further. One way of signaling the diffuse nature of Kemalism as a discursive formation in excess of ideology might be to revert to the lower case. Indeed, considering the long afterlife of Kemalism and its circulation in sometimes unexpected orbits, such usage seems justified. Interestingly, given the provenance of this book in an EHESS workshop, in the first session of Jacques Derrida’s 2001– 2002 seminar on sovereignty at EHESS, he invoked the legacy of Mustafa Kemal as simultaneously “father” and “wolf” to introduce his subject. Derrida, The Beast and the Sovereign, vol. 1, trans. Geoffrey Bennington, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 2009, p. 17.

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9. For a laudatory history of the Kemalist project, see Bernard Lewis, The Emergence of Modern Turkey, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1961; for a more critical assessment, see Taha Parla and Andrew Davison, Corporatist Ideology in Kemalist Turkey. Progress or Order?, Syracuse, NY, Syracuse University Press, 2004. 10. In fact, whereas the fez was banned by law in Turkey, the veil was restricted through administrative regulations – e.g., prohibiting it in government schools and other facilities. 11. I examine some of these debates in detail below, but for a helpful overview based primarily on reports in al-Ahram, see Yunan Labib Rizk, “Demise of the Red Headgear”, Al-Ahram Weekly On-Line, 525, 15 –21 March 2001, http://weekly. ahram.org. Accessed on 29 June 2007. 12. On contemporary Turkey, see the pathbreaking work of Nilu¨fer Gole, The Forbidden Modern: Civilization and Veiling, Ann Arbor, MI, University of Michigan Press, 1997; also see Yael Navaro-Yashin, Faces of the State: Secularism and Public Life in Turkey, Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press, 2002. On the historical dimension, which locates Mustafa Kemal in a line of reformers from the late Ottoman period, see Michael Meeker, A Nation of Empire: The Ottoman Legacy of Turkish Modernity, Berkeley, CA, Univeristy of California Press, 2002 and Eric Zu¨rcher, The Young Turk Legacy and Nation Building: From the Ottoman Empire to Atatu¨rk’s Turkey, New York, I.B.Tauris, 2010. 13. For an excellent overview of the political and military history of this critical period, see William L. Cleveland, “World War I and the End of the Ottoman Order”, in William L. Cleveland, A History of the Modern Middle East, Boulder, CO, Westview Press, 2000, pp. 146– 67. 14. No matter how much historians revise the Ottoman story and demonstrate its active participation in the shaping of the modern world, it remains true that the Empire’s sovereignty, not to mention its size, was compromised from the mideighteenth century onward. For an optimistic assessment of the Empire’s ability to persist in the world had it not been dismantled, see Donald Quataert, The Ottoman Empire, 1700– 1922, New York, Cambridge University Press, 2000. 15. The relegation of dress to the domain of the trivial is not simply a bias of the past. See Philippe Perrot’s critique of historians in Fashioning the Bourgeoisie: A History of Clothing in the Nineteenth Century, trans. Richard Bienvenu, Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press, 1994. On the perils of minimising culture’s significance in the face of its overvaluation by right-wing politics in the present, see Lisa Duggan, The Twilight of Equality?: Neoliberalism, Cultural Politics, and the Attack on Democracy, Boston, Beacon Press, 2003. 16. Martti Koskenniemi in his magisterial work, The Gentle Civilizer of Nations: The Rise and Fall of International Law, 1870– 1960, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2001, provides a fascinating account of how law and culture were intertwined for the early architects of international law as a discipline and professional practice. Culture, perceived Eurocentrically as civilisational progress and as a property one possesses (or does not possess), was central to the theorisation and organisation of a modern international juridico-political order.

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KEMALISM Although beyond the scope of Koskenniemi’s work, the representatives – broadly construed – of polities that emerged in the post-Ottoman space were deeply conscious of the imbricated legal, political and cultural criteria for membership in the “family of nations.” The argument in this chapter adds historical nuance to political theorists’ rethinking of sovereignty beyond the conventional liberal story of contract. By highlighting the centrality of the international system of states, which began to emerge after the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, they describe the constitution of mutually dependent, uneven forms of citizenship and sovereignty within global webs of imperial relations. See, for example, Barry Hindess, “Citizenship and Empire”, in Thomas Blom Hansen and Finn Stepputat (eds), Sovereign Bodies: Citizens, Migrants, and States in the Postcolonial World, Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press, 2005, pp. 241–56; and David Strang, “Contested Sovereignty: The Social Construction of Colonial Imperialism”, in Thomas J. Biersteker and Cynthia Weber (eds) State Sovereignty as Social Construct, New York, Cambridge University Press, 1996, pp. 22–49. This work departs from such treatments by showing that contestations over cultural borders were equally important moments in the constitution of sovereignty and the international. Egypt became a regular member of the League of Nations following the Anglo-Egyptian Treaty of 1936, which renegotiated some of the terms of independence established in the declaration of 1922. See Chapter 6 of Working Out Egypt for a discussion of the controversy surrounding Egypt’s attempts to secure an Arabic-speaking Egyptian as the representative of the International Olympic Committee. For Egypt’s participation in the International Geographical Union, Commission on Population and the World Population Conference of 1927, see Omnia el-Shakry, The Great Social Laboratory: Subjects of Knowledge in Colonial and Postcolonial Egypt, Stanford, CA, Stanford University Press, 2007; and for international women’s groups, see Margot Badran, Feminists, Islam, and Nation: Gender and the Making of Modern Egypt, Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press, 1995. For a detailed analysis of what they term “supra-Egyptianism” as the emerging framework for imagining and enacting Egypt as part of wider Arab and Islamic worlds in the 1930s and 1940s, see Israel Gershoni and James Jankowski, Redefining the Egyptian Nation, 1930– 1945, New York, Cambridge University Press, 1995. Kurzman explores the signs of the “global within the national” in the Iranian context in “Weaving Iran into the Tree of Nations”, International Journal of Middle East Studies, 37, 2005, pp. 137– 66. I thank Setrag Manoukian for this reference. Also see Manela, The Wilsonian Moment. For a somewhat different treatment of how the international was crucial to national formations, see Kris Manjapra, “The Illusions of Encounter: Muslim ‘Minds’ and Hindu Revolutionaries in First World War Germany and After”, Journal of Global History, 1, 2006, pp. 363– 82. Also see, Ilham Khuri-Makdisi, The Eastern Mediterranean and the Making of Global Radicalism, 1860– 1914, Berkeley, CA, University of California Press, 2010.

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21. For a similar argument for the post-colonial period, see Andrew Ivaska, Cultured States: Youth, Gender, and Modern Style in 1960s Dar es Salaam, Durham, NC, Duke University Press, 2011. 22. Such a prior cultural affinity among Europeans helped demarcate and develop a shared legal space within the geography of empire. Lauren Benton, A Search for Sovereignty: Law and Geography in European Empires, 1400– 1900, New York, Cambridge University Press, 2010. 23. See Reynolds, “Commodity Communities”. Although there is some overlap in our sources and analyses, my focus on the tarbush as a contested site of cultural signification and gendered subject formation within an international order and through transnational flows complements Reynolds’s reading of the materiality of the tarbush in its circulation through relays of production and consumption. 24. Sidqi’s government fell one month after this cartoon was published. 25. Jacob, Working Out Egypt. 26. See, for example, Robert Nye, Masculinity and Male Codes of Honor in Modern France, Berkeley, University of California Press, 1998 and Mrinalini Sinha, Colonial Masculinity: The ’manly Englishman’ and The’ Effeminate Bengali’ in the Late Nineteenth Century, Manchester and New York, Manchester University Press, 1995. 27. The literature on the role “publicity” played made in the formations of a selfconscious modern culture across the globe is too vast to cite here. I use the word here both in the common sense of a circulation of information that draws attention and in the less common but related sense of public-ness produced by the latter. 28. Yoav Di-Capua, Gatekeepers of the Arab Past: Historians and History writing in Twentieth Century Egypt, Berkeley, University of California Press, 2009. 29. I consider the kind of masculinity constituted by turban-wearers in my book. 30. As the occasion for the satirical cartoon in Figure 4.6 indicates, Cairo – Kabul and other similar axes of the Muslim world were also being redrawn at this time to account for the international order emerging in the wake of World War I and the vacuum resulting from the disappearance of the Ottoman caliphate. 31. Ironically for some, predictably for others, the tarbush was retired from active symbolic duty under accusations of embodying feudal, aristocratic and antinationalist sentiments after the revolution in 1952. 32. Fikri Abaza came from a wealthy landed family and was noted for his Westernised appearance and secularist worldview. At the time he was a member of the Watani Party, which had been founded by the Egyptian nationalist Mustafa Kamil before his death. Al-Musawwar, which literally means “illustrated”, was perhaps the magazine par excellence of Egyptian modernity in the interwar period. Its new photographic layouts represented the latest objects of cultural and technological innovation. It was launched by Emile and Shukri Zaydan as a more popular complement to their other, relatively highbrow journal, al-Hilal. Ami Ayalon, in his historical survey of the Arabic

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KEMALISM press, classified al-Musawwar as nonpolitical; he was contrasting it to the obviously political organs affiliated to one party or another and the satirical press. Ami Ayalon, The Press in the Arab Middle East: A History, New York, Oxford University Press, 1995, p. 78. Fikri Abaza, “Mustafa Kemal: His Triumphs in the World of Fashion”, al-Musawwar, 11 September 1925, p. 2. Perhaps the most popular critique was that of Abdallah Nadim, “‘Arabi tafarrnuj” (Europeanised Egyptian), al-Tankit w-al-Tabkit, 6 June 1881, pp. 7–8; also see, Anonymous, “Blind Imitation”, al-Ajyal, 3 July 1897, p. 36. For an extensive discussion of Nadim, see Michael Gasper, The Power of Representation: Publics, Peasants, and Islam in Egypt, Stanford, CA, Stanford University Press, 2009. Abaza, “Mustafa Kemal”, ibid. According to Panayiotis J. Vatikiotis, The History of Egypt, Baltimore, Johns Hopkings University Press, 1986, p. 303, the Wafd remained neutral in order not to drive the ulama further into the arms of the king, thereby increasing his influence. The history that Abaza was invoking in which the fairer sex launched its attacks was the rise of Egyptian feminism from the last years of the nineteenth century. Abaza, “Mustafa Kemal: His Triumphs in the World of Fashion”, p. 2. The dichotomous geography Abaza described worked by instituting a temporal difference in the relations to modernity occupied by East and West such that any hasty attempt to cover the gap could only result in a fall – in this case of Turkish society. The Editor, “Between the Turban and the Tarbush”, al-Nil al-Mussawar, 25 February 1926, p. 7. As far as I could ascertain, al-Nil al-Musawwar was a Palace-oriented magazine. A seemingly neutral article covering the radical changes declared by Mustafa Kemal had also appeared in al-Nil al-Mussawar, 10 September 1925, p. 24, a day before the al-Musawwar issue featuring Abaza’s article. At this time King Fuad was financing the efforts of the Azhari Caliphate Committee to organise an Islamic congress in Cairo against the wishes of the Wafd. Al-Nil al-Musawwar, 25 February 1926, p. 7. It is not clear how he arrived at this cost ratio, but it is conceivable, given the amount and quality of material and the workmanship involved in producing a traditional costume for the elite with turban, quftan, jubba and undergarments, that as an ensemble it was more expensive than a factory-made suit, especially in a market of diminishing demand. Arsalan (1869 – 1946) was an intellectual from an elite Druze family in Lebanon who was exiled during the French Mandate and lived in Geneva. He was a widely read activist who advocated pan-Islamic unity to resist imperialist aggressions, and he published frequently in the Arabic press throughout the region. His pro-Ottoman sympathies were replaced by a vehement rejection of republican Turkey following Atatu¨rk’s modernisation program. Zaghlul was

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the nephew of Sa‘d and the son of Fathi Zaghlul, who had died in 1914. Taymur (1871 – 1930) belonged to a distinguished Egyptian family. He was the father of the famous literary figures Muhammad and Mahmud Taymur and an author of note himself. Two of his principal works were a biography of nineteenthcentury notables, Tarajim ‘ayan, and a collection of colloquial Egyptian proverbs, al-Amthal al-‘ammiyya. Shakib Arsalan, al-Fath, 30 June 1926, p. 14. Amir Abd al-Karim had waged a successful war against the Spanish in the early 1920s. It took a combined Spanish and French force to suppress his movement, which had been accomplished merely a month before Arsalan’s article was published. On this trip to Europe Prince Abd al-Karim was most likely en route to exile on the island of Re´union in the Indian Ocean. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ostensibly, Arsalan also believed that to be defeated in the end by such major powers bore no shame and as such did not merit an explicit consideration in his argument. One could also read the reference to Greece and Bulgaria, former provinces of the Ottoman Empire, as an effort to diminish the growing cult of personality around the rabidly secularist Mustafa Kemal, the great liberator of Turkish lands from Greek armies. One of the most compelling works to chart the relationship between public intimacy, popular culture and political change is Lauren Berlant’s The Queen of America Goes to Washington City: Essays on Sex and Citizenship, Durham, NC, Duke University Press, 1997, which connects the rightward turn in America during the 1980s to a “privatization of citizenship” that took place in, among other locations, the realm of fantasy. Ali Abd al-Raziq, “Farewell to the Turban”, al-Siyasa al-Usbu‘iyya, 1926, p. 17. This weekly was an offshoot of the Liberal Constitutionalists’ newspaper al-Siyasa that was established in 1922 and edited by Muhammad Husayn Haykal. The book raised questions about the concept of, and need for, a caliphate in Islam and in turn interrogated the bases of political authority. For a fuller analysis of the controversy this book sparked and its intellectual and political context, see Chapter 3 of Gershoni and Jankowski, Egypt, Islam, and the Arabs: The Search for Egyptian Nationhood, 1900– 1930, New York, Oxford University Press, 1986. Al-Raziq, “Farewell”, p. 17. Madhhab (pl. madhahib) usually refers to a school of Islamic legal thought, of which there are four in Sunni Islam, but it literally means a “way of going”. His use of madhhab here to designate an aspect of a secular phenomenon like fashion underscored the significance he assigned it; even if he intended it ironically, there was still in the parody an acknowledgement of significance. The only distinguishing marker he cryptically attributed to them was that they were middle-aged.

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53. In his confused statement about fashion Abd al-Raziq was in good company. Walter Benjamin, who commented extensively on fashion in The Arcades Project and elsewhere, apparently oscillated between regarding it “as a manifestation of commodity culture” and “as the manifestation of a long-repressed utopian desire, to be reenergized at a moment of historical awakening”. Peter Wollen, “The Concept of Fashion in The Arcades Project”, Boundary 2, 30, 1, 2003, pp. 131– 42, quote on p. 131. 54. Ibid. He might have been referring to Abduh’s Transvaal fatwa of 1903. Responding to a query from a Muslim in southern Africa about wearing European hats, Abduh answered that if the context – social or climactic – required it then it was not haram. Marius Canard, “Coiffure europe´enne et Islam”, Annales d’Institut d’etudes orientales, 8, 1950, p. 205; cited in Baker, “The Fez in Turkey”. 55. Mahmud Azmi, “Why I Wore the Hat”, al-Hilal, November 1927, pp. 52 – 6. An extract from this was incorporated into another article published nearly a decade later titled, “The Hat as a Symbol of Culture: The Issue of the Tarbush and the Unity of Fashion”, al-Majalla al-Jadida, November 1936, pp. 17 – 20. 56. Azmi, “Why I wore the Hat”, p. 53. 57. Azmi used the word al-tadammun here, which could mean comprising/ including, while the cognate al-tadamun means solidarity. In this context, “harmony” captures best the reference he was making to the growth of a new cosmopolitanism in the years leading up to World War I, which was predicated in some circles on peaceful cultural convergence around a supposed universal modernity. For an interesting take on this moment, see Leela Gandhi, Affective Communities: Anti-Colonial Thought, Fin-de-Sie`cle Radicalism, and the Politics of Friendship, Durham, NC, Duke University Press, 2006. 58. Azmi, “Why I wore the Hat”. 59. Azmi never explicitly named or categorised this group, but from the context it would have been clear to the contemporary reader to which class he was referring. 60. “Australian” units stationed in Egypt during World War I were specifically remembered for their violence against Egyptians. The 1915 defeat of Allied forces at Gallipoli by the Ottomans under the leadership of young Mustafa Kemal left tens of thousands of soldiers, many from Australia and New Zealand, dead; hence, upon their evacuation to Egypt there were likely incidents wherein visible signs of Ottoman loyalty were attacked in the thirst for vengeance. Azmi, “Why I wore the Hat”, p. 54. 61. It is very curious that Azmi thought blasphemy had been removed from the public sphere as a potentially censorious device, since it was still being wielded by members of the religious establishment to police its own boundaries against intruders or rebels and was occasionally put at the service of the reigning monarch.

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62. In “Postcoloniality and the Artifice of History: Who Speaks for ‘Indian’ Pasts”, Representations, 37, 1992, pp. 1 – 26, on pp. 9 – 10, Chakrabarty notes a similar difference in Indian autobiographies since the mid-nineteenth century. There were indeed present most of the trappings of bourgeois individualism in Indian novels, biographies and autobiographies, but largely absent was the “endlessly interiorized subject” of the European context. The example he cites is from Bengal in 1932. Of course his larger argument pertains to the issue of historical translations of cultural difference when “Europe” remains the “silent referent”. 63. Azmi, “Why I wore the Hat”, p. 56. 64. Ibid. The excerpt of Azmi’s confession that appeared in al-Majalla al-Jadida in November 1936 ended here. 65. Azmi, “Why I wore the Hat”. 66. Ibid. 67. After an exchange of secret notes between the Foreign Ministries in December, Ankara, in the absence of any further response from Cairo, decided the affair was over. 68. For an interesting story of cultural life in Egypt that takes the tarbush as a central metaphor and is told from the perspective of one of its cosmopolitan communities, see Robert Sole´, Le Tarbouche, Paris, Seuil, 1992.

CHAPTER 5 SEDUCED BY GENDER CORPORATISM:MUSLIM CULTURAL ENTREPRENEURS AND KEMALIST TURKEY IN INTERWAR YUGOSLAVIA Fabio Giomi

Refashioning gender . . . implies the creation of new images of masculinity and femininity that involve the repudiation of the old as well as the espousal of the new. These images and styles are selectively appropriated by different sections of society, making gender a contested and polyvalent marker of class, social extraction, and cultural preference.1 During the interwar period, in Yugoslav society there was increasing interest for the Republic of Turkey. In the 1920s and especially in the 1930s, journalists, diplomats and academics were the most common professional categories to turn their attention to the political, economic and social transformations of the newly established Turkish state. This interest crystallised in different ways. Many authors, influenced by the cult of the charismatic political leader, so widespread in the interwar period, focussed their attention on the man considered to be the main author of the political order established in Turkey in 1923: Mustafa Kemal. Atatu¨k – “the Father of the Turks”, as he was

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re-baptised in 1934 by the Turkish Parliament in homage of his supposedly generative power – became the object of growing attention, which reached its peak in 1938, the year of his death. Yugoslav cultural entrepreneurs – people who invested their time and cultural capital in the public space, notably through writing and activism in civil society organisations, and who drew their social legitimacy from this investment – also took an interest in the nation that had risen – according to a well-established propaganda formula – from the ashes of the Ottoman Empire, that is, the Turkish nation, or even the state that was considered to be an expression of that nation: the Republic of Turkey. Since the early 1930s, several Yugoslav authors had also become interested in the set of principles that Mustafa Kemal’s entourage was systematising at that time, according to the well-known altı ok (“the six arrows”), a synthetic ideological formula that was rapidly equated to Kemalism. This production of texts on Turkey involved men and women from virtually every ethno-confessional group in Yugoslavia, and its intensity was not homogeneous across time. As several researchers have already shown, the political transformations in Yugoslavia and Turkey, the evolutions in international relations between Ankara and Belgrade and the circulation of pro- and anti-kemalist texts elaborated abroad influenced the fortunes of this kind of domestic production.2 Representing approximately ten per cent of the entire population, mostly speaking the Serbo-Croatian language and located in the southern regions of the country, Muslims were the confessional group that spilled the most ink on this topic.3 This phenomenon was far from an exclusively Yugoslav prerogative; as highlighted by Francois Georgeon and I˙skender Go¨kalp, Muslims from different parts of the world keenly followed the political transformations being experimented by the Republic of Turkey.4 Historians usually see this special interest displayed by the Muslims of Yugoslavia as a consequence of the centuries-long rule of the Ottoman Empire over Southeastern Europe, and of the fact that Turkey was considered to be the most direct successor state of the Ottoman Empire. According to the Bosnian historian Sˇac´ir Filandra, for the Muslims of Yugoslavia Mustafa Kemal represented “a reminiscence of the glorious sultan, the protector and the guide of Muslims around the world”.5 If we follow this reasoning and consider Mustafa Kemal to have been a surrogate sultan, the importance of Turkey in orienting Muslim debates in Yugoslavia brings to light an eminently post-Ottoman story.

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A domain in which the Turkish model was abundantly mobilised was in gender relations. In the interwar years, the Turkish State outlawed polygamy, granted equal rights to both partners in divorce and child custody, launched campaigns for women to have greater access to education and salaried work and discouraged the practice of veiling. In 1930 women obtained the right to vote (in local elections and, in 1934, in the general election). These policies were followed with the greatest interest by Muslim cultural entrepreneurs in Yugoslavia.6 Several scholars noted that Muslim cultural entrepreneurs calling themselves naprednjaci (“progressives”) imagined Turkey to be a sort of paradise of appropriate gender relations, where – to quote their own expressions – “female emancipation” (emancipacija zˇena), “male-female equality” (ravnopravnost) and even “feminism” ( feminizam) had finally been realised on earth, sooner and better than in Western Europe. Turkey became an example, and increasingly the best example, of how to engineer Muslim post-Ottoman femininity in Yugoslavia. This paper takes into account texts written in the Serbo-Croatian in interwar Yugoslavia and aims to explore the reasons behind, and the contents of, the Muslim fascination for the kemalist gender regime. As can be seen from its title, this chapter takes inspiration from Taha Parla and Andrew Davison’s well-known thesis: that kemalism, that is, “the name given to Mustafa Kemal Atatu¨rk’s and his party’s political thought and practice and the persistently official and semiofficial, hegemonic ideology of the Turkish Republic”,7 should be considered as a variation of corporatism. Based on the Latin root word corpora, plural of corpus (“body”), corporatism is understood here to signify a specific model of political organisation based on the perception of society “as an organic whole consisting of mutually interdependent and functionally complementary parts”.8 Groups, and more precisely occupational groups, and not individuals, “compose the building blocks of its political vision”.9 Even though there are several definitions of corporatism – differing from one another in their interpretations of the relationship between the individual, society and the state – common to all versions of corporatism, in political science analysis, is the rejection of divisiveness within society. Under the coordination of the state, different groups work for the preservation and development of this organic, non-conflictual community, while individuals are well-preserved from the risk of anomie, i.e., the lack of moral guidance produced by the industrial capitalist division of labour.10

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The thesis proposed in this paper is that Muslim cultural entrepreneurs in Yugoslavia gave recognition to and praised kemalist Turkey for its gender corporatism. By this I mean a state-led approach to coping with the transformation of gender relations, with three characteristic features: (a) the pursuit of legal equality between the two allegedly constitutive gender groups of society, that is, men and women, (b) the prevention of autonomous feminine/feminist mobilisation, seen as a divisive force, and (c) mitigation of the (mostly masculine) anxieties connected to female emancipation and in particular to the end of gender and confessional segregation. Amongst the feast of gender regimes proposed and imposed in Europe and the Mediterranean space in the interwar period, the kemalist one seemed to be the best mean for attaining modern gender relations for a Muslim population, while at the same time safeguarding the national and community as non-conflictual, organic bodies.11 Drawing a homological relationship between the female body and the social body, Muslim cultural entrepreneurs in Yugoslavia used the female body to remake, or at least to re-imagine, society as a whole. The chapter is structured across three parts. The first deals with the development of debates around the “Muslim woman question” and “kemalist Turkey” in the Yugoslav space, and looks at how these debates intertwined in the interwar period. The two following sections focus on the pro-kemalist discourse produced by Muslim cultural entrepreneurs, and explore the two main characteristics that “progressives” assigned to the kemalist gender regime: its capacity to realise female emancipation while avoiding autonomous feminine action, and its effectiveness in curtailing the undesirable consequences of female emancipation, in particular the loss of men’s control over the female body. The goal of this chapter is threefold: first, it aims to highlight that the production of discourses on the “Muslim woman question” and “kemalist Turkey” in the Yugoslav space was the result of local, national and trans-/international circulations of ideas, goods and people across state borders. Second, the chapter aims to shed new light on the political projects of the Muslim “progressives” in Yugoslavia, and in particular on the meanings, forms and limits of the female emancipation they proposed.

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Lastly, exploring the gaze of Muslim observers from Yugoslavia, the paper aims to contribute to gaining a deeper knowledge of actual gender politics settled in interwar Turkey, and their reality alongside the official kemalist discourse.

Yugoslav Muslims and the Example of the Turkish Woman Reflections on gender, Islam and modernity in the Yugoslav space date back at least to the end of the nineteenth century, several decades before the establishment of a common Yugoslav state. The area where this debate developed most was Bosnia-Herzegovina, a region that after four centuries as an Ottoman rule was first occupied (1878), and later annexed (1908) by the Habsburg Empire until the end of World War I. In post-Ottoman Bosnia, Muslims were not only particularly numerous – 39 per cent of the entire population, the second confessional group after the Orthodox community12 – but they were also less affected than other Balkan Muslim populations by the flight of religious and economic notables, that is, the so-called muhadzˇir (“refugee”), Muslims who fled the Balkans for lands still under Ottoman sovereignty. In Bosnia-Herzegovina, the Habsburg authorities strove to maintain the ethnic balance as they had found it in 1878, in particular aiming to prevent Serbs from becoming the absolute majority of the population – which would have given further legitimacy to Belgrade’s claims to the province. For these reasons, Vienna pressed both Muslim religious officials (ilmija) and land-owners (begovat) to stay, and strove to co-opt them into the newly established Habsburg provincial administration.13 The artisans of the debate on gender relations were composed of a small and sociologically diverse group of Muslim notables. On the one hand, there were individuals trained in the cultural climate of the Tanzimat era, such as Mehmed Kapetanovic´ Ljubusˇak (1839– 1902) – an Ottoman official and landowner from Herzegovina who decided to cooperate with the Habsburg government as a civil official – or Hasan Spaho (1841– 1915) – a teacher educated in Istanbul who, after having taught in several ruzˇdije (reformed elementary schools) in the Ottoman Balkans, became a teacher of Arabic in the Habsburg high school in Sarajevo, and later director of Sarajevo’s school for sharia judges.14 At the turn of the twentieth century, a different generation of Muslim notables

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joined this circle, including the teacher and school inspector Edhem Mulabdic´ (1862–1954), the physician and deputy in the Bosnian Parliament Hamdija Karamehmedovic´ and the teacher Sˇemsudin Sarajlic´ (1887– 1960). These men had mostly received their secondary and university education in the Habsburg schools, and very often became white-collar workers in local administrations.15 While the majority of the ilmija and begovat showed mistrust, and even open opposition, towards the Habsburg presence in Bosnia, this circle openly supported it. Since the late 1880s, they had become very active, establishing journals, printing houses, reading rooms and cultural associations whose main goal was to spread literacy among Bosnian Muslim children and to help them gain access to the Habsburg school system. Thanks to their linguistic skills – besides the Serbo-Croatian language, many of them also had a good knowledge of German and Ottoman (and sometimes Arabic) – and a pronounced mobility between Vienna, Istanbul, Zagreb and Budapest, these Muslim cultural entrepreneurs developed a familiarity with the debates and ideas circulating both in the Ottoman and Habsburg cultural spaces.16 Muslim cultural entrepreneurs had to face increasing attacks directed at the Muslim community from several non-Muslim authors from the Habsburg space. Texts such as Bosniens, Gegenwart und na¨chste Zukunft (Bosnia, its Present and Near Future)17 published anonymously in Leipzig in 1886, or Islam i njegov uticaj na dusˇevni zˇivot i kulturni napredak naroda mu (Islam and its Influence on the Spiritual Life and Cultural Progress of its People), published in Novi Sad by a Serbian professor in 1892, openly proposed that Muslims in South-Eastern Europe were socially “backward” (zaostao), and that Islam in itself was responsible for this.18 Insofar as they were intrinsically incapable of acclimatising to the post-Ottoman context, their fate was either to emigrate to “Asia” – meaning here Anatolia – or to meet with extinction ( prestajanje, odumiranje).19 In order to prove this theory, these authors mobilised a recurring topos: the status of the Muslim woman. Returning to a wellestablished Orientalist repertoire circulating widely in Europe at the time, the Muslim female body – represented as enslaved in the harem, exposed to the sexual caprices of their men, detached from society and education through the veiling practice – was a metaphor for, and the best proof of, Muslim backwardness and their inability to adapt to the post-Ottoman context.20

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The Muslim cultural entrepreneurs mentioned earlier used their journals to contest these assertions and propose an alternative discourse, though also imbued with social Darwinist rhetoric. Even though they generally accepted the idea of being “backward”, they strongly contested the assumption that Islam in itself was responsible for it. They proposed that, in order to “survive” (opstati) and “adapt” ( prilagoditi), Muslims should introduce a set of reforms in communal life; for example, improve literacy and education in state schools, establish journals and associations and reform Islamic institutions such as the vakuf (pious endowments), mekteb and medresa (communal Muslim schools). Only then could they bridge the gap separating them from non-Muslims and find their way back onto the path to “progress” (napredak) lost sight of centuries before.21 This process of adaptation was eminently gendered; it required Muslim women to receive an extra-domestic, state-led primary education that included pedagogy, hygiene and handiwork as its main pillars. As stated by a Muslim progressive journal published in Sarajevo in 1910: Many people think they have accomplished their religious duties [ farz] only by learning certain obligations, e.g. how to pray, fasting, washing before praying. In doing so, they forget that besides religious duties, there is the obligation to learn the basic knowledge of your trade, your ilmi-hal. Besides religious sciences, the blacksmith is obliged by his religion to learn the knowledge of his trade; the same goes, according to Islam, for the shopkeeper, who has to know how to be a shopkeeper; the kadija [judge of Islamic law] has to know the knowledge of the kadija; the muftija [interpreter of Islamic law] that of the muftija, the peasant that of the peasant, etc. because that is their ilmi-hal. Consequently, everyone has to master the skills needed for their status [stanje], and the ilmi-hal of our women is to learn how to be good housewives and mothers. The importance of female education in the life of the people is comparable to the importance the locomotive represents for the train. If the locomotive is weak and unable to move, the whole train is motionless. So are mothers, who are the first to transmit to the human spirit faith, morality, the awareness of being a human being, and other similar feelings. If they are unable to fulfil this duty any other progress languishes.22

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The goal of the Muslim progressives was to produce better wives, practised housewives and skilful mothers who would be able to raise new generations of Muslim children. The path out of the private space and towards the state school was seen as merely a temporary interlude, which did not imply female access to the public space. Interestingly enough, and in contrast with what was going on in other Muslim regions at the same time, in particular in Egypt, in this pre-war debate the veil – called in Bosnia the feredzˇa or zar depending on its shape (see Figures 5.1 and 5.2) – remained substantially unchallenged.23 Exploring the corpus of pre-1918 texts – articles, pamphlets and books – produced by Muslim cultural entrepreneurs that addressed the “Muslim woman question”, it is possible to detect some very contrasting intellectual and political references. Western scholars, in particular Immanuel Kant, Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Auguste Comte, were regularly cited in support of the need for female schooling. Extracts, and more often syntheses of these philosophers’ theories had been circulating in the Muslim public space through different mediums since the very

Figure 5.1 Muslim women from the city of Mostar, Bosnia-Herzegovina, 1904. Source: picture taken by Franjo Topic´, Zamaljski Muzej, Sarajevo (ZM – SPFT – 499).

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Figure 5.2 Muslim women from the city of Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina, at the funeral of reis-ul-ulema Mehmed Dzˇemaludin ef. Cˇausˇevic´ in 1938. Source: Adnan Jahic´, Islamska zajednica u Bosni i Hercegovini za vrijeme monarhisticˇke Jugoslavije (1918–1941), Zagreb, BNZH and IZH, 2010, 554.

beginning of the twentieth century. The Sˇkolski vjesnik (School Journal), the official Habsburg pedagogical journal printed for Bosnian teachers, had since 1894 been regularly translating texts by European scholars from French, German and English into Serbo-Croatian.24 At the same time, Bosnian students in Habsburg universities began to translate Western authors in Bosnian Muslim journals, for example, the Muslim teacher Salih Kazazovic´ (1873– 1943), who had been educated in Gottingen, translated extracts, and often produced syntheses of the writings of the principal nineteenth-century German philosophers in Bosnian newspapers.25 However, Western thinkers were not the only intellectual references that emerge from the corpus on the “Muslim woman question”. Indeed, Muslim cultural entrepreneurs referred regularly to social reformers from the Ottoman and more broadly Muslim space, such as the Ottoman writer Mehmed Akif Ersoy (1873– 1936), the Crimean Tatar intellectual Ismail Gasprinski (1851– 1914) and especially the Egyptian jurist Muhammad Abduh (1849– 1905). These authors circulated both in unabridged translations – like Muhammad Farid Wadjdi’s (1875– 1954) book Almar’a almuslima (The Muslim woman),26 translated from Arabic in 1915 by Musa C´azim C´atic´

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(1878– 1915), a Bosnian writer educated in Istanbul and Zagreb27 – and also more often in syntheses or excerpts. References to authors from the Habsburg and the Ottoman cultural spaces often coexisted in the same author and text. This group of Muslim intellectuals, who since 1905 had been timidly accompanied by the first Muslim women to write in public,28 had in the beginning an almost total monopoly over the Muslim public space. It was only in 1911 that a circle of Muslim notables, converged around the Association of Teachers of Muslim Schools (Mualim), expressed their opposition to both the aspirations of the Empire and the spirit of collaboration of the Muslim secular notables, and defended the idea that Muslim girls did not need to go to state schools. According to the religious teachers, the solution was to remain faithful to the practices in use in the Ottoman period; women should receive an exclusively oral and religious education, imparted in the home and at best in the neighbouring mekteb. Women’s bodies had to remain protected by both the veil and the house’s walls in order to safeguard Muslim women against decadence, immorality and sexual misconduct. There was also a visibly transnational element to this counter-discourse on female education; opponents to female schooling referred not only to Islamic jurisprudence, but also to texts against female schooling that were circulating at that time in the Yugoslav space – in particular the pamphlet Pisma u obranu muslimanskog zˇenskinje (Letter in Defence of Muslim Women) written by a Serbian woman author, a certain Sofija Pletikosic´.29 Though the debate on the “Muslim woman question” had, up until that point, focused above all on the limits, contents and spaces of female education, it went through a radical transformation after World War I, when the Yugoslav space became a unified political entity – the Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (Yugoslavia, since 1929). The famine that struck the southern provinces of the country during the war, followed by the effects of the agrarian reform in the 1920s and the Great Depression in the 1930s, dramatically affected the lives of urban Muslim families. In this context of social crisis, a number of Muslim men and women preached for the first time in favour of extra-domestic salaried work for Muslim women. When in 1918 women gained access to university education by law, the issue of whether education for Muslim women should remain limited to teaching women a scientificised approach to motherhood was also raised. The practices of gender and confessional

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segregation that had characterised the life of the Muslim urban population until that time were for the first time being openly contested.30 This post-1918 debate on the “Muslim woman question” was led by a new kind of Muslim cultural entrepreneur, who gained visibility after the war. Openly pro-Western, and wholeheartedly convinced that the future of Muslims lay in their deeper integration into a Yugoslav society in formation, these men assigned the greatest importance to the nationalisation of the Muslim population. In their view, Slavic-speaking Muslims had to stop defining themselves purely in religious terms – as muslimani (“Muslims”), as they mostly did both in the private and public space – and had to “discover” and “awaken” their sense of belonging to a common national community with their non-Muslim fellow citizens, that is, as “Serbs of Muslim faith”, “Croats of Muslim faith”, or simply as “Yugoslavs”. Expressions of pro-Serbian, pro-Croatian or pro-Yugoslav orientation were mostly dependent upon educational trajectory (Muslims students educated in Zagreb tended to define themselves as Croats, and those educated in Belgrade as Serbs) but also on political sensibility, friendship and family networks.31 This process of integration of the Muslims into a broader political body affected the debate on gender relations; the female veil, considered an external and visible marker of Muslim difference, as well as the male fez, were openly attacked by progressive journals as symbols of shameful backwardness, ignorance and national divisiveness. These garments, which publicly inscribed upon Muslim bodies of both sexes their religious difference, were considered to be an impediment to the successful incorporation of Muslims into the broader national community. In support of ending gender and confessional segregation, Muslim cultural entrepreneurs mobilised different models of women in their texts; Muslim educated women from the first centuries of Islamic history – the time of the Rightly Guided Caliphs – early twentiethcentury Muslim women from the Caucasus, Egypt or the Ottoman Empire, educated and economically active women from the West, and in particular France, England and the United States. Nevertheless, the turska zˇena or turkinja, the Turkish woman of the republican period, rapidly became the most frequently cited model of appropriate Muslim femininity. Already visible in the mid-1920s, her success seemed to be unstoppable; the Turkish woman forged her way in Muslim newspapers, in the pages of associative gazettes, and became the main protagonist of

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dozens of different articles, from critical essays to gossip pieces. Muslim cultural entrepreneurs glorified her catalogue of virtues in public lectures in towns and villages, and even a few religious officials expressed sympathy, if not open support, for her. The construction of a common perception of the Turkish woman was nourished by different kinds of sources. Bibliographies, introductions and footnotes in texts written by Muslims dealing with the “Turkish woman” allow us to track the trajectories that contributed to building this female model. Insofar as many Muslims from the Yugoslav space had relatives in the Turkish Republic, conceptions the Turkish woman were sometimes the result of direct observation. The growing tourism to Turkey also was instrumental in bringing upper-middle-class Muslims in direct contact with Turkish society.32 However, direct experience remained a privilege for a limited number; Muslim cultural entrepreneurs mostly elaborated their representations of the Turkish woman through a composite set of printed sources circulating in the Yugoslav space. There were of course sources that came directly from Turkish official institutions; the journal La Turquie Kemaliste (Kemalist Turkey), published since 1934 by the Turkish Ministry of the Interior mostly in French, and sometimes even in English and German, was regularly used as a source both of texts and iconographic material (see Figures 5.3, 5.4, 5.5 and 5.6).33 Other official publications, such as The Turkish Woman in History, a book published in 1937 by the Press Department of the Turkish Ministry of Interior, are also cited in the bibliographies of books published by Yugoslav authors.34 Muslims progressive notables were not the only ones to showcase the Turkish woman as a model for the emancipation of Muslim women in Yugoslavia. On the contrary, this figure had been widely used in Yugoslavia since the mid-1920s. In 1925, the Serb Dragisˇa Lapcˇevic´ (1867– 1939), founder of the Yugoslav Social-Democratic Party, writer and historian, published the book O nasˇim muslimanima (About our Muslims).35 Conceived as a set of “sociological and ethnographic notes” on Muslims in Yugoslavia, the book concludes with a chapter dedicated to Turkey, and in particular to the Turkish woman. The book ends with a picture of Latifa, Mustafa Kemal’s wife, in the company of her husband and Mehmet Pasˇa (see Figure 5.7). Latifa, whose head and face are completely unveiled, is put forward by this text as the best example of an emancipated woman for the Muslim women of Yugoslavia. The Croat

Figure 5.3 Picture of Turkish girls doing gymnastics from La Turquie ke´maliste. Source: La Turquie Kemaliste, 18, 1937, p. 30.

Figure 5.4 The same picture of Turkish girls doing gymnastics, published in Sarajevo by Sˇahinovic´ Ekremov as part of a collage on the cover of his book. Source: Munir Sˇahinovic´ Ekremov, Turska, danas i sjutra. Prosjek kroz zˇivot jedne drzˇave, Sarajevo Muslimanska Svijest, 1939, front cover.

Figure 5.5 Picture of student girls in a secondary school from La Turquie ke´maliste. Source: La Turquie Ke´maliste, 13, 1936, p.17.

Figure 5.6 The same picture incorporated into a Yugoslav Muslim book. Source: Edhem Bulbulovic´, Turci i razvitak turske drzˇave sa uvodom u kulturnu i politicˇku povijest islama, Sˇtamparija bosanska posˇta Sarajevo, 1939, no page number.

Figure 5.7 A picture of Latifa, unveiled, with her husband Kemal pasha and Mehmed pasha, presented as the model of Muslim female emancipation for Yugoslav Muslims. Source: Dragisˇa Lapcˇevic´, O nasˇim Muslimanima: sociolosˇke i etnografske belesˇke, Belgrade, G. Kon, 1925, p. 62.

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Maksim Svara, a journalist from Sarajevo, did the same, publishing in 1931 the book Emancipacija muslimanke u svjetu i kod nas (The Emancipation of Muslim Women around the World and at Home).36 In the mid-1930s, the Russian-born journalist, writer and painter Ana Delijanic´ Mirit worked during her stay in Istanbul as correspondent of the Serbian journal Ilustrativni list nedelja (The Sunday Illustrated) to report on the kemalist reforms in the domain of gender, and again to cite the Turkish woman as the most useful example for Muslim women in Yugoslavia.37 This local pro-kemalist textual production was nourished by several texts from the West, in particular H. C. Armstrong’s worldfamous Grey Wolf: Mustafa Kemal, An Intimate Study of a Dictator,38 a book that was translated and reprinted at least twice in Yugoslavia before the beginning of World War II, or Walter Lierau’s book from 1923, Die neue Tu¨rkei (The New Turkey).39 Imagining the Turkish woman, and the gender policies that had produced her, was thus a transnational venture.

Taming Yugoslav Feminism The success of the Kemalist model in the debate on gender relations was dependent upon several changes in the Yugoslav public space. In the interwar period Muslim notables were no longer alone in discussing the “Muslim Woman Question” in public, and in mapping out, at least on paper, the emancipation of Muslim women. Following the establishment of a unified Yugoslav state, female associations that were active in different areas of the country began to coordinate with each other, giving rise to the first attempts at federation in the name of Yugoslav sisterhood. Within the vast galaxy of women’s associations – which were mostly religious, philanthropic, or nationalist – some organisations based in Belgrade, Zagreb and Ljubljana expressed an explicit feminist agenda. Aware of the fact that the struggle for female emancipation also needed to be led beyond state borders, feminists from Yugoslavia rapidly joined the International Woman Suffrage Alliance (later rebaptised International Alliance of Women, IAW), the worldwide associative network founded in 1909 in Berlin whose key aims were equality between men and women, and for women to achieve full political rights.40 As a matter of fact, the first Yugoslav constitution gave some cause for optimism for feminist activists; the text adopted in 1921 did not explicitly exclude women from the vote, which meant that the issue

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was yet to be resolved by the future electoral law. In the same months, the feminist association Zˇenski Pokret (Women’s Movement), which had been established in Belgrade and Sarajevo in 1919 mostly by secondary school teachers, publicly invited the major political parties of the kingdom to take a stand on this point, and show that a good proportion of them was in favour of the vote for women.41 In the aftermath of the war, feminist activists throughout Yugoslavia showed a pronounced interest for the “Muslim woman question”. Journals such as Zˇena i Svet (Woman and the Word) and Zˇenski Pokret, the former association’s gazette, dedicated many articles to those who were often referred to as “the sisters of Muslim faith”, calling for their emancipation and participation in the Yugoslav feminist movement. In 1920 Zˇenski Pokret announced that “from now on, this journal will regularly publish contributions on the Muslim women issue [muslimansko zˇensko pitanje]”,42 as they effectively did.43 Muslim notables, and in particular Muslim progressives, were thus no longer the sole masters of the debate. The feminist interest for Muslim women seemed at first to be mutual; a couple of feminist associations, in particular in Sarajevo and Banja Luka, attracted to their ranks some Muslim women. In June 1920 Rasema Bisic´, a primary school teacher from Sarajevo, attended for the first time a feminist conference in Zagreb, cause for a great deal of curiosity and enthusiasm for the feminist activists.44 Similar first attempts at a rapprochement between Muslim and non-Muslim women, and in particular non-Muslim feminists, were regarded with coldness and hostility by Muslim male notables. The press reported that Bisˇic´’s participation at the Zagreb conference was accompanied by a telegram from Sarajevo, in which some unspecified “conservatives” enjoined her not to speak in public and to return immediately to Sarajevo.45 In those same months, the Jugoslovenska Muslimanska Organizacija (JMO, Yugoslav Muslim Organization), the largest religiously oriented party, which during the interwar period had garnered the vast majority of Muslim votes, was the only party in the country that did not even respond to Zˇenski Pokret’s invitation to express its opinion on the feminist agenda.46 Interestingly enough, the clearest explicit expression of support for the feminist agenda to come from within the Muslim community came from a religious leader, Mehmed Dzˇemaludin Cˇausˇevic´ (1870– 1938), an alim educated in

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Istanbul and Cairo and deeply influenced by the ideas of the Islamic modernist thinker Muhamed Abduh. A promoter of several journals and associations in the Habsburg period, he had held the position of reis-ululema since 1914, the head of the hierarchy of Islamic religious officials in Bosnia-Herzegovina. In 1919, Cˇausˇevic´ accepted to meet several activists of Zˇenski Pokret in Sarajevo and spoke out in favour of the female vote. However, it would be a mistake to regard Cˇausˇevic´’s words as having been representative of the view held by other Islamic officials; in 1928 the organ in charge of electing the reis ul-ulema, would officially condemn the positions of its head as anti-Islamic, and after his retirement, Islamic religious officials would condemn feminist theories as incompatible with Islam.47 Mistrust towards the feminist network and ideas was not an exclusive prerogative of the Muslim politicians gathered around the JMO and – with the exception of the aforementioned Cˇausˇevic´ – of religious officials. Even Muslim cultural entrepreneurs proved themselves unconformable with the feminists’ agenda. Of course, some Muslim intellectuals did explicitly express openness to the feminists, such as the pro-Croatian novelist and playwright Ahmed Muradbegovic´ (1898– 1972), who constantly stressed the importance of the women’s vote as a radical answer to the “Muslim woman question”.48 However, people like Muradbegovic´ remained in the minority; the majority of Muslim “progressives” seem to have been very unsympathetic to feminist demands, and even to an autonomous rapprochement of Muslim with non-Muslim women. In 1920, for example, when women all over the country were enthusiastically gathering in a unique movement, the journal Buduc´nost (Future), at that time led by the pro-Serbian writer and political activist Sˇukrija Kurtovic´, felt the need to stress that progressive Muslims “do not want our women to take the English suffragette [sifredzˇetkinje] for a model, but we want each and every modern science institution to be open to them”.49 The same year the journal Domovina (Motherland), directed by the Muslim pro-Serbian Avdo Hasanbegovic´, who would soon become the president of the most important Muslim cultural association of the pre-1941 period, Gajret (Zeal), officially opposed the Narodni Zˇenski Savez (National Female Council, the umbrella association based in Belgrade that united hundreds of female associations all around the country) in its plans to recruit Muslim women into its ranks. According to an unsigned article published in

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Domovina in 1921, “our Muslim woman still has much to learn from the more cultivated sisters of other faiths”, but this should not happen through direct participation in inter-confessional female associations. The reason given was that the “Muslim woman has not yet matured [ josˇ nije dorasla] and is not yet able to participate as an active member in the Association”.50 This paternalist attitude towards Muslim women, and mistrustful stance towards the feminist movement, did not seem to have altered much even after the promulgation of the electoral law excluding women from the vote. If the emancipation of the “English Suffragettes” did not seem to be the most appropriate model, different paths towards emancipation became of increasing interest in the eyes of the Muslim cultural entrepreneurs, and in particular the kemalist one. Among the first to turn his attention to the specifically Turkish way of transforming gender relations was Sˇemsudin Sarajlic´ (1887–1960), a pro-Croatian writer from Sarajevo, who was already active before the war as an editor of the literary magazine Biser (Pearl). His book Nova Turska (The New Turkey), published in 1926 in Sarajevo, analyses Turkey’s economic, foreign and educational policies.51 The chapter dealing with the latter subject is an opportunity for the author to focus on the specificities of the kemalist emancipatory process. According to Sarajlic´: The ladies of today’s [Turkish] elite are well-educated and they take an active part in everyday issues. Many of them, as schoolgirls, have been educated in renowned German schools and speak French and German fluently. Despite this, something extremely important is missing from them: a clear vision of their practical lives. The efforts they made autonomously in the past towards emancipation have failed. It seems that even the progressive [napredni] Enver Pasha was against their behaviour. And even though he had a completely modern [moderan] view on the woman question, and he did not hesitate to defend his ideas in discussions with his friends, he also argued that the Turks ought to show respect for other Islamic peoples, because the Turks had to set an example, as effectively happened. On female emancipation, Mustafa Kemal has backtracked. Now there is a specific female party, but it has nothing in common with the ideas of the suffragettes. Its main goal is social equality between men and women

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through the marriage law. And even if women do not have the right to vote in elections, they can be chosen as deputies under the new electoral law.52 In this text Sarajlic´ considers there to have been a break between the pre-kemalist and kemalist periods. According to the Bosnian writer, the way in which women gained access to the public space before 1923 was ultimately dysfunctional; thanks to an education received in foreign schools, women expressed their opinions randomly, showing themselves to be out of touch with reality. We can detect in Sarajlic´’s words an echo of the criticism that was brought against Turkish women organisations during that time, considered to be – according to Kathryn Libal – “divisive and distracting from the concerns of the majority of the women in Turkish society, who labored in fields and homes, worked long hours in factories, or struggled as war widows to provide for their families”.53 Sarajlic´ does not of course deny the fact that Turkish women in the republican period were visible and active in the public space. In his 1926 book he briefly mentions a “female party” that has “nothing in common with . . . the suffragettes,” probably a reference to the short-lived Kadınlar Halk Fırkası (Women’s Popular Party) established in 1923 by Nezihe Muhiddin (1898 – 1958), already a central figure in the women’s movement of the late Ottoman Empire. At the time that Sarajlic´ was writing, this experiment had already been dismantled; when in 1924 the republican leadership balked at having a separate women’s party, Muhiddin created the Tu¨rk Kadın Birlig˘i (Turkish Women’s Union), a voluntary association based in Istanbul made up of writers, doctors, lawyers and educators. Under Nezihe Muhiddin’s leadership, the Turkish Women’s Union became the most prominent women’s organisation in Turkey.54 Interestingly, Sarajlic´ seems to have been confused about the Turkish women’s party and even about the advancement of women’s political rights in Turkey; confusing feminist demands with political reality, in 1926 he stated that Turkish women had already obtained political rights, thus anticipating history by almost ten years. Besides these imprecisions, Sarajlic´ is adamant about one thing – the kemalist period represented a reassuring, positive backtrack in the respect to the previous years – an interpretation confirmed by recent scholarly research.55

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This perception of the kemalist emancipatory process seems to have been common to many Muslim cultural entrepreneurs in Yugoslavia, such as Edhem Bulbulovic´. Educated in Istanbul, a supporter both of the Young Turks and of the Serbian nationalists in pre-war Salonika, he was imprisoned in Russia during World War I, where he embraced Communist ideas. Elected at the Yugoslav constituent assembly from the ranks of the Communists, he retired from direct political activity after the party was banned, and focussed on writing, especially about Turkey. Declaring himself to be Serbian and at the same time a veliki turkofil i kemalist56 (“great Turkophile and Kemalist”), in the 1920s and 1930s he put a great deal of energy into popularising Kemalist Turkey in several public lectures, pamphlets and Muslim newspapers – notably Reforma (Reform), published in Sarajevo in 1928.57 In his book Turci i razvitak turske drzˇave (Turks and the Development of the Turkish State), published in Sarajevo in 1938 and widely circulating among the Muslim youth,58 Bulbulovic´ addressed the issue of kemalist gender politics: The Turks have understood that women have been brave and kind since the time of the war for independence. In that war, Turkish women, like harem slaves, showed dedication and commitment to their caretakers. They assisted them without rest, they supplied them with food and ammunition, they took care of victims, sparing little effort or work for themselves and their offspring. Through this effort they have helped to achieve victory, as well as recognition from the same Kemal. This service [zasluga] done by the Turkish women is also commemorated by the great monument to independence in Ankara. For this service, they have been rewarded with the unification of their rights with those of men; in this way Turkish men let the prisoners out of their homes and into the great world of light and freedom. In this way, Turkish women have achieved even more than they themselves had tried or even hoped for. So they have not fought for and won their rights and freedoms, but have redeemed themselves through their service and efforts for their homeland. And all this has happened before Turkey had even managed to get to a women’s rights movement.59 In the 12 years separating Sarajlic´’s text from that of Bulbulovic´’s, many changes had occurred in Turkey. Since 1927, with the election of Letife

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Bekir as president of the Turkish Women’s Union, the most widespread Turkish feminist organisation’s agenda had shifted, orienting its activities towards philanthropy and weakening the struggle for political rights. The association nevertheless played a role in securing the right for women to participate in the Municipal elections in 1930 and to gain access to the Turkish parliament in 1934. In 1935, the Turkish Women’s Union took centre-stage at the 12th IAW Congress, held in Istanbul between 18 and 25 April. As noted by Kathryn Libal, “the organization [of the Congress] provided evidence to the West that Turkey’s national transformation deserved recognition; it signalled the seriousness of Turkish reforms and Turkey’s commitment to participation in international institutions and processes. On the other hand, writers for Turkey’s lively satirical press criticised Turkish feminists and women’s organizations for being divisive and ‘out of touch’ with the realities faced by most Turkish women.”60 Immediately after the end of the Congress, the Turkish Women’s Union was shut down – “voluntarily” according to the press, under pressure from Kemal’s entourage according to recent scholarship. Libal states that “this step coincided with the closure of other autonomous or semi-autonomous organisations in the 1930s. The kemalist regime asserted that corporatist solidarity would provide the basis for a strong society and, within this worldview, all sources of ‘division’, whether based on gender, class, ethnicity, or religion, would not be tolerated by the state.”61 According to Bulbulovic´, kemalist gender politics were important, not only because of what they achieved for the Turkish woman, but also for what they avoided. Women were rewarded by the state, and more precisely by the “Father of the Turks” Mustafa Kemal, for their efforts during the war. Their rights had been graciously and paternalistically granted by a (male) political elite, without women having become involved in an independent political movement. The Turkish emancipation of women was thus deemed positive because it had been granted to them, which made unnecessary – and indeed superfluous, useless, even dangerous – any female autonomous mobilisation. The Muslim progressives’ reticence about female agency appears to have also been observable in Yugoslavia, and especially in the structure of the two most widespread Muslim cultural associations of the interwar period, Gajret and Narodna Uzdanica (Popular Hope), whose primary function was to support Muslim male and female education through

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scholarships, and to foster a sense of national sentiment in the Muslim population.62 The internal organisation of these associations, which in the interwar period mobilised thousands of men and women throughout Yugoslavia, is somewhat representative of the place these Muslim cultural entrepreneurs assigned to women. Both in Gajret and Narodna Uzdanica women were recruited into separate “local female branches”, which flanked “local branches” (without specification) composed only of men. Each association was directed by its Central Branch based in Sarajevo, which had total control over the decision making process. These central branches were reserved only for men, the same cultural entrepreneurs asking for female emancipation mentioned earlier. A lone attempt to include female representation in the central committee can be credited to Gajret. Following the reform of its statutes in 1929, the association had made provisions for a woman to be admitted to its central decision making body, to represent its female members. At the association’s annual assembly the following year, a proposition was made to nominate Halka Hasanbegovic´, a doctor and non-Muslim, to the office representing the association’s female component. Hasanbegovic´’s greatest merit consisted of her status as a Gajret activist but especially as the wife of the president, Avdo Hasanbegovic´. The idea, however, was not pursued further, and by the following reform of the association’s statutes in 1932, the passage that provided for female representation within the association had been removed, leaving Muslim women excluded from the decision making process.63

Preventing Gender Anomie In 1929, almost a decade after the establishment of the first Yugoslav state, a Muslim newspaper from Sarajevo published an article eloquently titled “Prodiranje sveta u zˇivot Muslimanke” (“The World Penetrating the Lives of Muslim Women”). The text opens as follows: Initially, I wanted to entitle this text “A Muslim Woman Enters the World”, but soon after I decided to change it to the one you see above because it fits so much better. The awareness with which a Muslim woman follows her path, as well as the goals she sets for herself, are almost completely erased by the forces the world uses to decide both her paths and goals for her.

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So what is this world like and how powerful are these forces? It is abominable and rotten in its entirety and its forces are like those of morphine for a morphine addict. The abomination and decay are international and there is not a single nation that hasn’t been corrupted by them yet. When I say the world I mean the world of films, jazz bands, journalism, luxurious cars, beaches, magazines full of women’s legs; in a word, it is this thin layer of humankind ruling the Earth with an absolute power that, by feverishly sucking the souls and flesh of all the people, is getting fatter and fatter. Fighting against these masters is futile. Their weapons are invisible, their means omnipotent. They have a unifying slogan that goes above and beyond all the racial, national, and religious ideas that still divide people, the objects of their reign. And the slogan is: animalistic pleasure, regardless of its cost, regardless of the sacrifice involved . . . Our enlightened Muslim women can be counted on the fingers of one hand. What we have today is ten times more Muslim women who sport short hair, wear lipstick, show their necks and knees in silk stockings, than those who finished any secondary school. What we have today is a decent number of Muslim prostitutes, yet not a single one who would work towards the mitigation of this social evil. What we have today is a considerable number of Muslim women who visit suspicious nightclubs, yet we cannot see a single one taking a stand for social work. What we have today is a fine number of women who easily and eagerly engage in entertaining interactions with people of other faiths [inoverni svet] at various beaches and thermal resorts, yet we hardly have 10 of them who seek to take part in the cultural and social associations of women of other faiths.64 Such a pessimistic picture of the evolution of gender relations was not unique. As a matter of fact, since at least 1928 Islamic religious officials of conservative orientation had been stepping out of the shadows and had begun to publicly condemn the transformations in the living practices of women, and in particular the weakening of gender and confessional segregation in urban society. Nevertheless, the article quoted above was published in neither of the two principal traditionalist Muslim journals – Hikjmet (Wisdom, printed in Tuzla) and

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El-Hidaje (The Right Path, printed in Sarajevo)65 – but instead in the Gajret journal which, since its establishment, had enthusiastically promoted female emancipation according to Western standards. The article is even more interesting when we take into consideration that the author was Dzˇevad Sulejmanpasˇic´ (1893– 1976), a journalist descended from one of the richest land-owning families of Bosnia, educated in the universities of Vienna and Zagreb. In 1918, he had become well-known (and for many notorious) in Bosnia after publishing the pamphlet, Jedan prilog rjesˇenju nasˇeg muslimanskog zˇenskog pitanja (A Contribution to the Solution for our Muslim Woman Question), in which he called for the immediate, and even forced, renunciation of veiling practices for the Muslim women of Yugoslavia, and for their full integration into the educational, economic and national life of the newly established Yugoslav state.66 This publication, which was immediately burned in the courtyard of Sarajevo’s main mosque by religious officials at the head of a furious crowd, irremediably marked him as champion of the emancipation of Muslim women in Bosnia – an idea that has survived in the historiography even today.67 Ten years after this first text, Sulejmanpasˇic´ seems to have developed more nuanced ideas about the end of gender and confessional segregation. He presents Muslim women as powerless, at the mercy of a global process that reduces them to luxury consumers and luxury goods. Instead of taking advantage of the end of segregation to work for the common good of the community in schools, associations and in the family, they had lost themselves to a set of new institutions and practices. Ten years later, Muslim women had not gained access to the world, but the opposite; it is the word, which, “abominable and corrupt”, had entered into them. The Muslim cultural entrepreneurs of Yugoslavia were not the only ones to express, in the period between the two World Wars, similar anxieties concerning the body of the emancipated woman. In her book on the transformation of masculinity from the Ottoman Empire to the Turkish Republic, for example, Ays¸e Saracgil highlights very similar tensions among male progressive men.68 As in the Yugoslav case, these generations of Muslim men educated in European, or at least in Western-style schools, had appropriated the Orientalist assumption that the Muslim woman was a metaphor for – or better yet, the synecdoche of – the decadence of the Muslim community as a whole, both at a Yugoslav and a global level. The adoption of a new gender regime in accordance with Western expectations thus became a

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matter of survival, of safeguarding the community against decay and ensuring it resume the path to progress alongside non-Muslim peoples. Loudly promoted in ideas and (in the Turkish case) in politics, the byproduct of this new post-Ottoman model of gender relations was a series of recurrent anxieties, above all over the loss of control over women’s bodies. The contours of these fears were always erotic; transforming gender relations could lead to the production of a boundless feminine sensuality capable of leading women to moral decadence, and men to enslavement and loss of control, thus destroying both the family and the community. As in the Turkish case, these kinds of anxieties, blending emancipation, uncontrolled feminine sensuality and (individual and collective) decadence, are recurring themes in Bosnian Muslim literature. Iza zˇaluzija (Behind Jealousy), a novel published by the Muslim writer Ahmet Muradbegovic´, which tells the story of Selmana, a Bosnian woman who embraces a European lifestyle outside of the domestic space and falls victim to her uncontrolled sensuality, is a good example of this.69 One of the most striking examples testifying to this contiguity between the desire for female emancipation and the fear of a liberated female eroticism can be found in a text by Mustafa A. Mulalic´ (1896 – 1983), who was a fairly typical example of a Muslim progressive cultural entrepreneur in his life experience and activities as a writer and activist in nationalist and pro-schooling associations, and who even became a deputy in the Yugoslav parliament for a certain period.70 His book Orijent na zapadu. Savremeni kulturni i socijalni problemi muslimana jugoslovena (The Orient in the West: Contemporary Cultural and Social Issues of Yugoslav Muslims) was published in Belgrade in 1936. Like other texts written by Muslim authors at the time, the book’s principal thesis argued in favor of the complete integration of Muslims (eloquently called “the Orient in the West”, given their minority condition in a European state), and of the abandonment of Ottoman dress codes, in particular the female veil, following the example of Kemalist Turkey (specularly called “the West in the Orient”). Mulalic´’s book is enriched by several picture montages, put together by the author himself, and one of them deals with female emancipation (see Figure 5.8). The illustration presents different images of female bodies, cut and pasted over one another according to the collage technique. The accompanying text, framed in two opposing corners of the page, reads:

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While European women [evropljanka] freely expose their bodies to the sun on beaches, our Muslim woman is enslaved within the feredzˇa [i.e., the type of veil used in Bosnia in urban spaces before World War I]. Even today she hides her face before a non-Muslim when he addresses her or when she meets him on the street (because the Muslim woman is afraid).71 The European woman (evropljanka) evoked in the caption is presented in two enlarged photographs in the background, in different positions. The Muslim woman (muslimanka) is represented by smaller pictures of women wearing different veils in use in post-Ottoman Bosnia. The pictures are interesting for two reasons; first, the emancipated (and thus allegedly positive) female model is represented by images of a half-naked woman with short wavy hair, lipstick and makeup, a petticoat and pantyhose. Her pose, explicitly erotic, leads one to wonder if Mulalic´ took these two pictures from an erotic journal. Secondly, the most erotic attributes of the female European body – hair, breasts, buttocks, thighs – are partially covered by the photographs of veiled Muslim women and mahalas – the semi-private residential districts of the Ottoman city. We do not know if there was some irony intended in the way these pictures have been arranged. However, it seems clear that the allegedly positive emancipation of female bodies went hand-in-hand with their sexualisation. Given this room for ambiguity between female emancipation and eroticism, since the late twenties Muslim cultural entrepreneurs have felt the need to distinguish between a right and a wrong emancipation. The Muslim cultural associations in particular, led by Muslim cultural entrepreneurs, charged themselves with the task of showing the Muslim population what positive emancipation looked like. In 1932, an educational play entitled Emancipovana zˇena (The Emancipated Woman) was written to be performed by local branches of the association Gajret in several Yugoslav towns. Set in a small Bosnian town, the play presented the “right” and “wrong” kind of emancipation through two characters, Suada on the one hand (a primary school teacher, described in the text as “a young educated woman, dressed in work clothes with long sleeves, no low neckline, no makeup”)72 and her cousin Fadila on the other (“a hyper-modern girl from the city with a modern hairstyle [hipermoderna gradska djevojka sa modernom frizurom],

Figure 5.8 European and Muslim women. Source: Mustafa A. Mulalic´, Orijent na zapadu: savremeni kulturni i socijalni problemi muslimana Jugoslovena, Belgrade, Sˇtamparija Graficˇki institut knjizˇare Skerlic´, 1936, p. 249.

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wearing a short sleeveless dress with a low neckline. Lots of makeup”).73 The play ends with Suada marrying a young and promising Muslim physician, and their union is blessed by the local beg and ulema – the representatives of the two traditional powers in the village. The “punishment” for Fadila, who throughout the play attempts to seduce every man she meets, is to remain single and not found a family. An even more explicit diptych is offered by the public lecture Prava i losˇa emancipacija (Right and Wrong Emancipation), held in 1931 in Mostar and published in the association’s journal the same year.74 The author, a secondary school teacher and Gajret activist, began his public lesson by showing his audience: two photographs. I’ll present a picture of an emancipated and progressive woman [emancipovana i napredna zˇena], who has all the qualities of the liberated woman in the right sense, and [secondly] that of a woman who thinks she’s emancipated, but in truth is not, as she has taken only the negative aspects of Western civilization.75 This dualism, according to the author, could be found in every situation “at home, in the family, in our associations, on the street and just about anywhere”.76 The speaker focuses primarily on the “picture” of a negative emancipation: Emancipation meant removing the zar and pecˇa [two traditional female garments covering the head and face of Muslim women], wearing their hair short, wearing a hat, painting their nails, even drinking alcoholic beverages, not to mention make-up and cosmetics, which have now become a daily necessity for the modern woman. Sadly, emancipation also means this: that it has become necessary to have scarves and blouses made with the most expensive silk, without consideration for their affordability. Emancipation also means this: that they send their children to a babysitter, or even leave them alone in the house, just to go to summer gardens to listen to gypsy music and stay out until late at night. “Emancipated woman” also means a woman who is lazy when looking after her father, brother or husband, letting them walk on the streets in miserable dress, ripped and worn out,

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without being bothered by this, while she dresses according to the latest fashions, and walks beside them without blushing. Not respecting any of the Islamic precepts, and worse still mocking them in public: this is also female emancipation . . . This kind of emancipated woman is not emancipated from the main characteristics of a primitive and backward woman [ primitivna i zaostala zˇena], i.e., inactivity and laziness, and also gossip, defamation, envy, intolerance.77 The wrongly emancipated body is identifiable here through notably erotic elements: makeup and short hair, and the latest fashion trends. According to Vehbija Imamovic´, this kind of emancipation brought about the ruin not only of a woman’s moral life, but also of her family as a cooperative unit; following the sirens of a wrong emancipation, a woman stopped collaborating for the common good of the family, sacrificing all to luxury and individual pleasure. “Father, brother and husband” are ruined and humiliated in public. The stress on women remaining economically inactive (nerad), was a theme destined to gain increasing importance in the 1930s, when the consequences of the Great Depression reached Yugoslavia. Where on earth was a “positive emancipation” to be found? For the authors of the public lecture, it could be found in the Republic of Turkey. Turkey became the site of the most appropriate female emancipation, and female emancipation became the most powerful metaphor for the entire process of the regeneration of the Turkish nation. The author continues: Last year I was on holiday in the Turkish Republic. Before going, I was naturally very curious to see the modern Turkish woman [moderna turkinja]. To be honest, I’m not sure I imagined I’d be presented with a good show, especially with regard to morality. I spent several days there, not only visiting Istanbul but also smaller places, and I was really surprised. I observed the Turkish woman in every situation, among the people, on the streets or in offices, in general, in every place where I found men. Everywhere I went I found seriousness, modesty, zeal, industriousness, bustle, and full devotion to their duties. I did not find any trace of licentiousness, nosiness, and the thing that surprised me the most,

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no trace of makeup or overdressing, what we encounter here amongst the people at every step.78 The author that found the definitive example of appropriate postOttoman gender relationships in the Turkish context was in good company. The principal progressive authors dealing with the Muslim Woman question referred to the “Turkish woman” as the most vivid example.79 Moreover, the kemalist form of emancipation had already received a prestigious, and somewhat unexpected, endorsement– from Mehmed Dzˇemaludin Cˇausˇevic´ (1870– 1938), the reis-ul ulema of Bosnia-Herzegovina. Combining a career in religious institutions with close collaboration with the main journals and associations of Bosnia, he had become a figure capable of bridging the gap between the secular and religious notables. In 1927, attending a joint conference with Gajret’s activists, he declared himself a supporter of kemalist politics in the domain of gender relations; after explaining to journalists that he had recently visited Turkey and had received “the best impression” of Muslim women there, he declared that he “would look more sympathetically upon Muslim women walking with unveiled faces and honestly earning a living from trade or skilled work for example, than upon women with hidden faces, walking on the boulevard or going out at night in cafes”.80 This statement – which was at the origin of the bitterest debate on the Muslim woman issue in pre-1945 Yugoslav history81 – seems to confirm the general pattern; the Turkish woman was the example of a positively emancipated, sober and active woman. Equality between genders could only be accomplished by bringing female sexuality under control.82 The de-sexualisation of the emancipated Turkish woman was accompanied, in Yugoslav male Muslims’ writings, by another process: de-personalisation. Until the mid-1920s, in strong continuity with the pre-war period, Muslim authors of the Yugoslav space had celebrated, and often translated into Serbo-Croatian, Turkish female writers and poetesses, in particular Nigar bint Osman (1856– 1918) and Fatma Aliye (1862– 1936). Besides Latifa, Mustafa Kemal’s first wife, who was exalted as a nationalist and devoted supporter of her husband’s project of national palingenesis,83 the most celebrated Turkish woman of the period was, unsurprisingly, Halide Edib (1884–1964). Her trajectory was taken as a model because it conjugated higher education, devotion to

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the nation, impeccable public morality and the capacity to reconcile all of this with motherhood.84 Her literary texts, translated into SerboCroatian by several Muslim male authors,85 was considered to be particularly inspiring for Yugoslav Muslim women: “may our women see how a Turkish woman can love her people and her state in such a passionate way. With the same passion and love our women should love the people and our state, for which we have paid a sea of blood.”86 In the second half of the thirties, after the Turkish state had curtailed, and then definitively put an end to autonomous feminist activism, individual Turkish women disappeared from the Muslim newspapers in Yugoslavia; they were replaced by anonymous Turkish women (mostly teachers and students), almost always represented collectively and in the service of the Turkish nation.

Conclusions: Turkey as a Third-Way Route to Emancipation Imagining kemalist gender politics and its most important showcase product – the turkinja, the Turkish woman – was, for the Muslim cultural entrepreneurs of the Yugoslav space, an exercise that mobilised different practices. As this chapter has shown, the cultural entrepreneurs who wrote about this topic nourished their reflections through travelling, reading texts, observing pictures, listening and giving public lectures. Their gaze on the Kemalist gender regime developed gradually, assembling ideas and keywords produced in different languages and spaces. This creative process involved the circulation of goods, ideas and people largely transcending the Belgrade –Ankara axis; imagining the Kemalist gender regime implied exchanges between Western, Central and South-Eastern Europe. As anticipated in the introduction, the predilection Muslim cultural entrepreneurs showed for Kemalist Turkey had of course a post-Ottoman dimension. After the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, the Muslims of Yugoslavia, who in the new state were considered from a juridical point of view to be a minority, saw Ankara as a special reference. Despite Kemal entourage’s efforts to found a new state in diametric opposition to its Ottoman past,87 the perception of a continuity between the epoch of the sultans and that of Kemal remained strong for the Muslims of Yugoslavia, as it probably did for the Muslims of the post-Ottoman space more in general. Turska, as the Turkish Republic was called in

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Serbo-Croatian, benefited from the emotional bond Muslims had cultivated with the Ottoman Empire – also called, at that time, Turska. Commenting on the abolition of the fez and the way the veil was being discouraged in Turkey, an article published in 1928 in a progressive journal from Sarajevo noted that “these reforms are being implemented in the land that was the cradle of Islam; all these reforms are being implemented by the same people that brought Islam to our lands and taught it to us”.88 Nevertheless, the post-Ottoman dimension does not entirely explain Kemalist Turkey’s success among Muslims in the interwar period. Thanks to its military success in the liberation war against the European powers, and to the impressive set of reforms implemented after 1923, Kemalist Turkey became historical proof that being Muslim was not incompatible with being modern, and that even a segment of Muslim people, once it had (re)discovered its national identity, could attain and even surpass the level of European civilisation. The kemalophilia of progressive Muslims thus also had a meta-Ottoman dimension, linked to the specific policies implemented by Ankara in the interwar period and to the specific position and needs of the Muslims in Yugoslavia. In a cultural space rigidly polarised between opposing categories such as West and East, progress and backwardness, modernity and tradition, Turkish gender corporatism offered a way out. If corporatism in classic political science is often considered to be a third-way ideology, that is, aiming to trace a path different from liberal-pluralism and socialism,89 gender corporatism also seems to play the role of tertium genus; it made it possible to trace a path to women’s emancipation that took women far from the obsolete traditional, while also avoiding the dangers of a Western-style emancipation. According to this analysis of Yugoslav Muslim sources, the Turkish emancipatory formula was attractive for two main reasons: it produced male-female juridical equality, it gave Muslim women access to education, work and political rights, and at the same time pre-empted autonomous female (and in particular) feminist initiatives, thus allowing Muslim progressive notables to retain control over female bodies and their emancipation. Did this version of Kemalism, as it was imagined in Yugoslavia, have anything to do with the “real” kemalism in Turkey? If we go back to Parla and Davison’s text we might be tempted to agree:

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Kemal was . . . the archpatriarch. It is difficult to discern any explicit interest on his part in attacking the relations of authority characteristic of patriarchy. It was not a goal close do Kemal’s mind, even if his regime advanced some liberties for women. We would say that the reforms that amounted to a lessening of the patriarchal chains were only partly liberalizing. After all, the ideological emphasis in Kemalism is solidarist and cooperative, not individualist and participatory. The stress is on harmonious relations between the occupational groups of the solidaristic whole, not on individual development and unpredictable social growth. Moreover, sartorial requirements for men were issued in all social spheres and for women in state and public institutions. If there had been a greater stated interest in securing liberty in the broadest sense for everyone – male or female – we might interpret the cultural reforms differently. But the language, calendar, and sartorial reforms and even the adoptions of the last names were all part of an ideologically explicit and conscious strategy of cultural reform to make the Turks “civilized” – to transform them in that sense – not to make them politically freer.90 According to the Muslim progressives of Yugoslavia, Kemalist gender corporatism was a reassuring paradigm; it made both gender and confessional de-segregation seem attainable for the Muslim population, while avoiding the anxieties connected to it. Kemalist Turkey was elected as a privileged model because it provided Muslim male notables with a paternalist form of emancipation – more a modernisation of patriarchy than a de-patriarchalisation of modernity.

Notes 1. Deniz Kandiyoti, “Some awkward questions on women and modernity in Turkey”, in Lila Abu-Lughod (ed.) Remaking women. Feminist and modernity in the Middle East, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1998, p. 284. 2. On the construction of pro- and anti- kemalist discourses in the Yugoslav space, see respectively: for Serbia, Mirjana Teodosijevic´, Kemal Ataturk u jugoslovenskoj javnosti, Belgrade, NEA, 1998 (by the same author, but in Turkish, see also “Yugoslav Basın ve Yayınında Mustafa Kemal Atatu¨rk. Bir Bibliyografya Denemesi”, Uluslararası Tu¨rk Dili Kongresi 1988, Ankara, Tu¨rk Tarih Kurumu,

212

3.

4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11.

12. 13. 14.

15. 16.

17. 18.

KEMALISM 1996, pp. 11–27); for Croatia, see And¯elko Vlasˇic´, “The perception of Turkey in Croatian Press, 1923–1945”, unpublished paper; for the Muslims of Yugoslavia, see Fabio Giomi, “Domesticating Kemalism. Conflicting Muslim Narratives on Turkey in Interwar Yugoslavia”, in Catharina Raudvere (ed.), Nostalgia, loss and creativity. Political and cultural representations of the past in South East Europe, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan (2018), pp. 151–87. For an overview of the Muslim populations in the Yugoslav space in the interwar period, see in particular Alexandre Popovic, L’Islam balkanique: les musulmans du Sud-Est europe´en dans la pe´riode post-ottomane, Berlin-Wiesbaden, Otto Harrassowitz, 1986, pp. 311 –36 and Nathalie Clayer and Xavier Bougarel, Europe’s Balkan Muslim: A New History, London, Hurst & Co, 2017. Francois Georgeon and I˙skender Go¨kalp (eds), Kemalisme et monde musulman, Paris, Maison des Sciences de l’homme, 1987. Sˇac´ir Filandra, “Bosˇnjaci izmedu kemalizma i panislamizma”, Odjek, 1, 2007, pp. 17 – 21. For a general overview of kemalist politics on women, see Nilu¨fer Go¨le, Forbidden Modern: Civilization and Veiling, Ann Arbor, MI, University of Michigan Press, 1996, pp. 63–78. Taha Parla and Andrew Davison, Corporatist Ideology in Kemalist Turkey. Progress or Order?, Syracuse, NY, Syracuse University Press, 2004, p. vii. Parla and Davison, Corporatist Ideology, p. 28. Ibid., p. 12. For a historical overview of the concept, see Howard J. Wiarda, Corporatism and comparative politics: the other great “ism”, Armonk, New York and London, M. E. Sharpe, 1997, pp. 27 – 46. For a comparative – and fascinating – overview of the gender politics implemented in Italy, Russia, Turkey, Germany and Spain in the first half of the twentieth century, see Paul Ginsborg, Family Politics. Domestic Life, Devastation and Survival, 1900– 1950, Yale, Yale University Press, 2016. Popovic, L’islam balkanique, p. 271 (figure for the 1879 census). Clayer and Bougarel, Europe’s Balkan Muslim, pp. 76 – 85. On Mehmed beg Kapetanovic´ Ljubusˇak, see Esad Zgodic´, Bosanska politicˇka misao. Austro-ugarsko doba, vol. I, Sarajevo, DES, 2003, pp. 39 – 68. On Hasan Spaho, see M. E. Dizdar, “H. Hasan ef. Spaho”, Kalendar Narodne Uzdanice, 1940, pp. 243– 6. Zgodic´, Bosanska politicˇka misao, pp. 39 – 68. Fikret Karcˇic´, Drusˇtveno-pravni aspekt islamskog reformizma, Sarajevo, Islamski Teolosˇki Fakultet, Sarajevo, 1990; Fikret Karcˇic´, The Bosniaks and the Challenges of Modernity, Sarajevo, El-Kalem, Sarajevo, 1999; Enes Karic´, Prilozi za povijest islamskog misˇljenje u Bosni i Hercegovini XX stoljec´a, Sarajevo, El-Kalem, 2004. Anonymous, Bosniens, Gegenwart und na¨chste Zukunft, Leipzig, F. A. Brockhaus, 1886. Milan Nedeljkovic´, “Islam i njegov uticaj na dusˇevni zˇivot i kulturni napredak naroda mu. Kulturno-istorijske studija”, Letopis Matice Srpske, 175, 1893, p. 98.

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19. On the development on this kind of discourse among Western scholars, see Clayer and Bougarel, Europe’s Balkan Muslim, pp. 52 – 7. 20. Meyda Yeg˘enog˘lu, Colonial Fantasies. Towards a Feminist Reading of Orientalism, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1998. 21. Enes Karic´, “Islamic Thought in Bosnia-Hercegovina in the 20th Century”, Islamic Studies, 41, 3, 2002, pp. 391– 444. 22. Hazim Muftic´, “Zˇenska naobrazba ili izostavljeni farz”, Gajret, 5, 1910, pp. 73 – 4. 23. On the specificity of the Muslim woman question in Habsburg BosniaHerzegovina, see Fabio Giomi, “Forging Habsburg Muslim girls: gender, education and empire in Bosnia and Herzegovina (1878– 1918)”, History of Education, 44, 3, 2015, pp. 274–92. 24. Maida Vukovic´, Doprinos cˇasopisa Sˇkolski vjesnik razvoju pedagosˇke misli u Bosni i Hercegovini, MA Dissertation, University of Sarajevo, 2013. 25. Zgodic´, Bosanska politicˇka misao, pp. 293– 303 and pp. 317– 19. 26. Muhamed Ferid Vedzˇdi, Muslimanska zˇena, Mostar, Prva muslimanska nakladna knjizˇara i sˇtamparija, 1915. 27. For a biography of Musa C´asim C´atic´, see Dubravko Jelcˇic´, Povijest hrvatske knjizˇevnosti, Vol. II, Zagreb, Naklada Pavicˇic´, 2004, p. 329. 28. Fabio Giomi, “Daughters of two Empires. Muslim Girls and Public Writing in Habsburg Bosnia-Herzegovina”, Aspasia, 9, 2015, pp. 1 – 18. 29. Safijje-hanum [pseudonym for Sofija Pletikosic´], Pisma u obranu muslimanskog zˇ enskinje, Sarajevo, Izdanje urednisˇ tva Muallima, 1911. For more information on this intriguing debate, see in particular Fatima Zˇutic´, “Sofija Pletikosic´, Safijja-hanum, i rasprava o emancipaciji i sˇkolovanju zˇene muslimanke”, Glasnik Rijaseta Islamske Zajednice Bosne i Hercegovine, 7 – 8, 2009, pp. 664 – 75. 30. Fabio Giomi, Entre genre, classe, confession et nation: la ‘question de la femme musulmane’ et la culture associative en Bosnie-Herze´govine (1903 – 1941), PhD Dissertation, University of Bologna and EHESS, 2011. 31. Xavier Bougarel, Survivre aux empires. Islam, identite´ nationale et alle´geances politiques en Bosnie-Herze´govine, Paris, Karthala, 2015, pp. 59 – 93. 32. Among the Muslim cultural entrepreneurs who claimed to have forged their ideas on Turkish women thought direct travels, there is, for instance, Prof. Vehbija Imamovic´, whose contribution will be analysed in paragraph 3. Publications on important Yugoslav Muslim notables, such as that of Philippe Gelez on Safvet-beg Basˇagic´ (Philippe Gelez, Safvet-beg Basˇagic´ (1870 – 1934). Aux racines intellectuelles de la pense´e nationale chez les musulmans de BosnieHerze´govine, Athens, E´cole francaise d’Athe`nes, Mondes me´diterrane´ens et balkaniques, 2010) or of Enes Karic´ and Mujo Demirovic´ on Mehmed Dzˇemaludin Cˇausˇevic´ (Enes Karic´ and Mujo Demirovic´ (eds), Reis Dzˇemaludin Cˇausˇevic´: Prosvjetitelj i reformator, Sarajevo, Ljiljan, 2002) show that Yugoslav Muslims continued to visit friends, teachers and family in the Ottoman Empire, and later Turkish Republic.

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33. Tanju Inal et Mu¨mtaz Kaya, “La Turquie Kamaˆliste: voie/voix francophone(s) pour une Turquie ke´maliste”, Documents pour l’histoire du francais langue e´trange`re ou seconde, 38/39, 2007, http://dhfles.revues.org/336. Accessed on July 2018. 34. The Turkish woman in History, Press Department of the Ministry of Interior, Ankara 1937, quoted in the Bibliography of Zoran Sv. Tomic´’s book Kamal tvorac nove Turske, Belgrade, no publisher information, 1939. 35. Dragisˇa Lapcˇevic´, O nasˇim Muslimanima: sociolosˇke i etnografske belesˇke, Belgrade, G. Kon, 1925. 36. Maksim Svara, Emancipacija muslimanke u svjetu i kod nas, Sarajevo, Komisiona naklada J. Studnicˇka i dr., 1931. 37. On Delijanic´ Mirit, see Teodosijevic´, Ataturkova Turska, pp. 216– 17. 38. H. C. Armstrong, Grey Wolf. Mustafa Kemal, An Intimate Study of a Dictator, London, Arthur Baker LTD, 1933, pp. 249– 50. 39. Lierau’s book deeply influenced, even in the title, Sˇemsudin Sarajlic´’s Nova Turksa: sa visˇe tabela i 1 kartom, Sarajevo, Hrvatska tiskara d. d., 1926. 40. On the female/feminist organisations in Yugoslavia between the wars, see in particular Jovanka Kecman, Zˇene Jugoslavije u radnicˇkom pokretu i zˇenskim organizacijama 1918– 1941, Belgrade, Institut za Savremenu Istoriju, 1978. 41. For information on the genesis and early years of activity of Zˇenski Pokret, see Gordana Krivokapic´-Jovic´, “Drusˇtvo za prosvec´ivanje zˇene i zasˇtitu njenih prava – Radikali i zˇensko pravo glasa posle prvog svetskog rata”, in Latinka Perovic´ (ed.), Srbija u modernizacijskim procesima 19. i 20. veka, II, Belgrade, Institut za Noviju Istoriju Srbije, 1998, pp. 299 – 308 and Thomas A. Emmert, “Zˇenski Pokret: The Feminist Movement in Serbia in the 1920s”, in Sabrina P. Ramet (ed.), Gender Politics in the Western Balkans, University Park, The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1999, pp. 33– 50. 42. Hasan Rebac, “Pojava Muslimanke med¯u sestrama jugoslovenkama”, Zˇenski pokret, 4 – 5, 1920, p. 26. 43. For some texts published by feminist journals in the 1920s, see among others Hamza Humo, “Nasˇa nova muslimanka”, Zˇena i svet, 12, 1926, pp. 12 – 13, Sonja Feter-C´uk, “Za slobodu muslimanke zˇene”, Zˇenski Pokret, 1 – 2, 1924, pp. 48 – 51. 44. Rebac, “Pojava Muslimanke”, p. 26. 45. Ibid. 46. Emmert, “Zˇenski Pokret”, pp. 33 – 49. 47. On the 1928 debate that culminated in the condemnation of Cˇausˇevic´’s ideas, see Xavier Bougarel, “Le Reis et le voile: une pole´mique religieuse dans la Bosnie-Herze´govine de l’entre-deux-guerres”, in Nathalie Clayer, Benoit Fliche and Alexandre Papas (eds), L’autorite´ religieuse et ses limites en terre d’islam, Leiden, Brill, 2013, pp. 109– 57. 48. Bougarel, “Le Reis et le voile”, pp. 107 – 57. 49. Dr Bec´ir Novo, “Muslimansko zˇensko pitanje”, Buduc´nost, 2 – 3, 1920, p. 22. 50. “Jedan apel Narodnog zˇenskog Saveza”, Domovina, 100, 1921, pp. 1 – 2. 51. Sarajlic´, Nova Turska.

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52. Ibid., p. 48 (emphasis mine). 53. Kathryn Libal, “Staging Turkish Women’s Emancipation, Istanbul 1935”, Journal of Middle East Women’s Studies, 4, 1, 2008, pp. 31 –52. 54. On Nazihe Muhiddin, see Serpil C¸akır, “Muhittin, Nezihe (1889– 1958)”, in Francisca de Haan, Krassimira Daskalova and Anna Loutfi (eds), A biographical dictionary of women’s movements and feminisms: Central, Eastern, and South Eastern Europe, 19th and 20th centuries, Budapest and New York, CEU Press/Central European University Press, 2006, pp. 356 – 9. 55. “While the series of wars between 1911 and 1918 provided a period of florescence for the women organizations, the War of Independence and the subsequent foundation of the Turkish Republic seems to have meant the end of almost all of the women’s organizations founded in Ottoman times”, in Nicole A. N. M. Van Os, “Ottoman Muslim and Turkish Women in an International Context”, European Review, 13, 3, 2005, pp. 459–79 (cit p. 465). On the same topic, see also Cagla Diner and S¸ule Toktas¸, “Waves of feminism in Turkey: Kemalist, Islamist and Kurdish women’s movements in an era of globalization”, Journal of Balkan and Near Eastern Studies, 12, 1, 2010, pp. 47–57; Deniz Kandiyoti, “End of Empire: Islam, nationalism and women in Turkey”, in Deniz Kandiyoti (ed.), Women, Islam & the state, Philadelphia, Temple University Press, 1991, pp. 41–2. 56. Edhem Bulbulovic´, Turci i razvitak turske drzˇave: sa uvodom u kulturnu i politicˇku povijest islama, Sarajevo, Bosanska posˇta, 1939, Introduction (no page number). 57. Fabio Giomi, “Reforma – The Organization of Progressive Muslims and its Role in Interwar Bosnia”, Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs, 29, 2009, pp. 495– 510. 58. For its pedagogical content, the book was distributed in the libraries of Narodna Uzdanica’s student dorms throughout the country. See Historijski Arhiv Sarajevo - Narodna Uzdanica – 96 (1939), Central Branch to Edhem Bulbulovic´ (6 March 1939). 59. Bulbulovic´, Turci, p. 145 (emphasis mine). 60. Libal, Staging Turkish Women’s emancipation, p. 33. 61. Ibid., p. 45. 62. On these two associations and their functioning, see Ibrahim Kemura, Uloga Gajreta u drusˇtvenom zˇivotu Muslimana Bosne i Hercegovine 1903 –1941, Sarajevo, Veselin Maslesˇa, 1986 and Ibrahim Kemura, Znacˇaj i uloga Narodne Uzdanice u drusˇtvenom zˇivotu bosˇnjaka (1923 – 1945), Sarajevo, Bosˇnjacˇki Institut, fondacija Adila Zulfikarpasˇic´a i Institut za Istoriju u Sarajevu, 2002. 63. Kemura, Uloga Gajreta, p. 266. 64. Dzˇevad Sulejmanpasˇic´, “Prodiranje sveta u zˇivot Muslimanke”, Gajret, 10, 1929, pp. 285– 6. 65. On Hikjmet, see Adnan Jahic´, Hikjmet, Rijecˇ tradicionalne uleme u Bosni i Hercegovini, Tuzla BZK Preporod and Opc´insko drusˇtvo 2004 and on El-Hidaje, see Muharem Dautovic´, Uloga El-Hidaje u drusˇtvenom i vjersko-prosvjetnom zˇivotu bosˇnjaka (1936– 1945), MA Dissertation, University of Sarajevo, 2005.

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66. Dzˇevad beg Sulejmanpasˇic´, Jedan prilog rjesˇenju nasˇeg muslimanskog zˇenskog pitanja, Sarajevo, Daniel and A. Kajon, 1918. The pamphlet has recently been reprinted in Enes Karic´ (ed.), Bosanske muslimanske rasprave, Vol. III, Sarajevo, Sedam, 2003, pp. 9 – 39. 67. Evelin Memic´, “Politicˇka i socijalna misao Dzˇevada Sulejmanpasˇic´a”, Godisˇnjak Preporod, 4, 2004, pp. 109– 24. 68. Ays¸e Saracgil, Il maschio camaleonte: strutture patriarcali nell’Impero ottomano e nella Turchia moderna, Milan, Mondadori, 2001. 69. Enita Kapo, “Likovi zˇena u djelima bosˇnjacˇkih pisaca od Edhema Mulabdic´a do Ahmeda Muradbegovic´a”, Godisˇnjak Preporod, 9, 2009, pp. 323–40. 70. For a biography of Mustafa Mulalic´, see Alija Nametak, Sarajevski nekrologiji, Sarajevo, Biblioteka Dani, 2004, pp. 311 – 12. 71. Mustafa A. Mulalic´, Orijent na zapadu: savremeni kulturni i socijalni problemi muslimana Jugoslovena, Belgrade, Sˇtamparija Graficˇki institut knjizˇare Skerlic´, 1936, p. 249. 72. Mustafa Alikalfic´ an Vehbija Imamovic´, Emancipovana zˇena, Sarajevo, Vlasnisˇtvo i naklada Gajreta, 1932. 73. Ibid. 74. Prof. Vehbija Imamovic´, “Prava i losˇa emancipacija”, Gajret, 4, 1931, p. 84. 75. Ibid. 76. Ibid. 77. Ibid. 78. Ibid., p. 85. 79. For Sulejmanpasˇic´ and Bulbulovic´’s predilection for the kemalist gender regime, see Giomi, “Reforma”, pp. 495 – 510. 80. “Vazˇne izjave Reis-ul-uleme”, Jugoslavenski list, 282, 1927, p. 3. 81. For a skilful analysis of this debate, Bougarel, “Le Reis et le voile”, pp. 109 – 58. 82. Go¨le, Forbidden Modern, pp. 81 – 4. 83. “Brak Kemal Pasˇe, Emancipovana Latifa Hanuma”, Gajret, 19 – 20, 1925, p. 318. 84. Rasˇida R. “Jedna turska Djevica orleanska”, Gajret, 18, 1924, pp. 286– 7. 85. Hadiba Elid hanuma, “Molitva”, Gajret, 3, 1925, p. 41. 86. Ibid. 87. Emmanuel Szurek, “Go west. Variations on Kemalist Orientalism”, in Francois Pouillon and Jean-Claude Vatin (eds), After Orientalism. Critical Perspectives on Western Agency and Eastern Re-appropriations, Leiden, Brill, 2014, pp. 103–20. 88. “Jedna korisna reforma u Turskoj”, Reforma, 2, 1928, p. 5. 89. Wiarda, Corporatism. 90. Parla and Davison, Corporatist Ideology, p. 139.

CHAPTER 6 REAPPROPRIATING THE ORIENTALIST GAZE IN THE MATERIAL CULTURE OF KEMALIST TURKEY: THE FORMATION OF AN “AESTHETIC NATIONALISM” Ece Zerman

In his essay “Sadrazamın Go¨zleri (Bir Kars¸ı Pencere Hikaˆyesi)” (“The Eyes of the Grand Vizier (The Story of a Facing Window)”), the contemporary author Murathan Mungan recounts an anecdote about one of his short stories. At the time that he was working on “Ulak ile Sadrazam” (“The Courier and the Grand Vizier, published in the late 1980s”), he was living in an apartment across from that of a famous photographer.1 Mungan knew the photographer, but he was not sure if the photographer knew him. In a moment of exasperation over his work, he stood up and looked out the window, and saw the photographer looking back at him. He thereupon returned to his story and wrote the section that describes a courier trying to imagine how the grand vizier perceived him.2 One day, the story goes, the courier stood alone in the room of the grand vizier and looked out the window at the room where he (the courier) lived by himself – and from which he often watched the very room he was standing in (the room of the grand vizier):

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One day, as I happened to be alone in your room for some reason, I went timidly to the window, and, from that window I had always watched, this time I looked at my own window through your eyes, searching for my face in that window . . . I was not able to see myself in the facing window. The window was completely vacant. I could not even imagine anything. It was then that I understood that I am not able to think of myself through your eyes, and that I never have.3 This article proposes to seek out such “stories of facing windows” in Kemalist Turkey. We discuss how late Ottoman and early Kemalist literati perceived the Orientalist gaze directed upon them,4 how they reflected on the ways in which they were perceived through the eyes of others (in this case, Europeans, Orientalists), and how they aimed to create their own representations in constant interaction with – and in response to – it. This also explains the article’s inclusion in a volume on the transnational history of Kemalism. In this article, Kemalism is seen as a “flexible concept”,5 stemming from the ideas of the Young Turks, but one that was the result of the intermingling of diverse mechanisms on both the national and transnational levels. In terms of periodisation, I will be focusing mainly on cases from what Zu¨rcher describes as: the period when the “structure of the state was changed and the one-party state established once again” (1922– 6), and the “heyday of Kemalism” (1926– 45). However, some earlier examples from the first two decades of the twentieth century will also be considered. Most of the cases I have identified from the 1920s and 1930s were, in fact, also subjects of debate during the first two decades of the twentieth century. However, as the Kemalists gradually established their power and created their own state apparatus, it is obvious that the degree or scope of the patterns I will identify also changed. This idea was very clearly articulated by Yakup Kadri [Karaosmanog˘lu]6 in his novel Ankara, published in 1934, in which the protagonist describes the difference between his own generation (born in the late Ottoman era) and those born during the republican period as follows: “Yes, we thought. We fantasized, we wished. But in them, our thoughts became fact; our fantasies reality; our wishes determination.”7 For Yakup Kadri, the Republican generation actively took up many of the aspirations of the late Ottoman generation, aspirations that the author had picked up on in his prose as early as the 1910s.

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In the 1920s and 1930s, Kemalist Turkey tried to give a more systematic, concrete and institutional form to what had already been in discussion since the turn of the century – or imagined, as in the case of Yakup Kadri’s fictional character. As is well-known and relatively welldocumented, since the 1920s radical transformations had been taking place that aimed to sever existing ties to the Ottoman regime, to turn the Ottoman Empire into an Ancien Re´gime, and to eliminate the new state’s “Oriental” characteristics. A series of radical reforms – consisting, among others, of moving the state capital to Ankara, abolishing the caliphate, banning dervish orders and lodges, passing the “Hat Law” that replaced the fez with the Western hat, as well as a new dress-code, eliminating the Ottoman coat of arms and imperial cipher from official buildings, changing the alphabet and so forth – contributed to the project of modernising and secularising the new state, while trying to break, as far as possible, Turkey’s connections to its Ottoman, Oriental heritage. “What distanced us from being Oriental moved us closer to becoming Turkish, to becoming national”8 writes Falih Rıfkı [Atay]. Being Oriental might not once have been seen as contradictory to being Turkish, but these two categories were reconfigured in Kemalist Turkey as mutually exclusive. In this regard, the search for what lay behind Falih Rıfkı’s statement left its mark on the intellectual debates of the 1920s and 1930s: the search for a “national essence”, through the reappropriation of the Ottoman and the Oriental as Turkish. In the domains related to material culture, from interior design to arts and crafts, these debates crystallised in particular around the production of a national heritage, through the nationalisation and “folklorisation”9 of existing forms. This process aimed to redirect the image of alterity and exoticism that the Western gaze saw in the Kemalist regime, and to which they had been accustomed for centuries, stemming from their Orientalist baggage. Kemalist intellectuals also constructed their own representations of themselves in constant reference to the Orientalist gaze directed upon them. Edward Said’s groundbreaking book Orientalism,10 first published in 1978, gave rise to many responses and debates, critiques and adaptations. A considerable part of this literature is given over to putting into perspective and nuancing the dichotomous perception of Orientalism defined as the domination of a passive Orient by an active Occident – and instead postulating a multiplicity of Orientalisms.

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In the field of Ottoman and Turkish studies, we may cite, on the one hand, works that deal with the Orientalists’ representations of the Ottoman Empire,11 and on the other, those who have brought a gendered dimension to the topic, distinguishing the perceptions of Orientalist women from those of Orientalist men, but also looking at how they made use of gendered and sexualised categories.12 Studies that discussed the “Orientals’” own representations of the “Orient” have complicated the picture even further. These include several analyses of late Ottoman and early republican Turkish reappropriations of Orientalism – displaced onto an imagined “other”, or projected onto themselves – using theoretical categories such as Ottoman Orientalism,13 “borrowed colonialism”,14 Orientalism “alla turca”,15 “performance of heritage”,16 Kemalist Orientalism17 and Turkish Orientalism.18 The present article, positioning itself within the perspectives opened by this literature, focuses on late Ottoman and early Kemalist intellectuals’ own perceptions of Orientalists and Orientalism. I will be discussing how Kemalist intellectuals interacted with the Orientalist gaze and aimed to construct their national identity in relation to this vision. From this perspective, this discussion begins by quoting the first few lines of Ziya Go¨kalp’s Principles of Turkism; published in 1923, this text is considered to be one of the founding texts of Turkish nationalism, and also influenced Kemalist cultural politics.19 Setting out from a citation where Go¨kalp described the fashion of Turquerie in Europe, I first attempt to understand the late Ottoman and early Turkish republican literati’s perceptions of Western – and more specifically Orientalist – writers. Then, by analysing the representations of what their contemporaries called “Oriental/Turkish rooms/salons”, I focus on their perception of the (self-)Orientalising attitudes of the Ottomans/ Turks themselves. In the third section, I will dwell upon their search for a “national essence”, a “Turkish style”. I discuss the process of Turkification – along with folklorisation and appropriation as national heritage – of some elements related to material culture. It is here that I refer to the concept echoed in the title of this article, namely “aesthetic Turkism”20 (bediıˆ Tu¨rkcu¨lu¨k) put forward by Ziya Go¨kalp. The fourth and final section of the article provides some examples of this change in discourse in the search for an aesthetic national heritage. I analyse cases linked to the spread of a national image to a European audience, inside

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and outside of Turkey, and discuss the Kemalists’ attempts to redirect the Orientalist gaze.

Responding to a “Pathological Love”: The Orientals’ Perception of Orientalists Before Turkism made its appearance in our country two Turkishoriented movements had arisen in Europe. The first21 was Turcophilia or what, in French, is called Turquerie. The attention and admiration of the connoisseurs of Europe were captured by Turkish-made silks and woolens, rugs and carpets, tiles, and iron and wood products; by bindings and illuminations produced by Turkish bookbinders and chrysographists; and by such other products of Turkish craftsmanship as braziers, candlesticks, etc. They collected these beautiful Turkish-made objects at a cost of thousands of Turkish pounds so that they could create in their homes a “Turkish salon” or a “Turkish room.”22 Thus begins the famous Principles of Turkism by Ziya Go¨kalp (1876 – 1924), a sociologist known as the “father of Turkish nationalism” who also influenced Kemalist thought. He continues his description by adding to the category of Turquerie “paintings of Turkish life by European artists and books describing Turkish moral values written by poets and philosophers”.23 As examples of such writings, he mentions those of Lamartine, Comte, Laffitte, Mismer, Loti and Farre`re, whom he qualifies as “friendly”. How should we interpret the fact that a book on nationalism like the Principles of Turkism begins with a description of minor decorative elements such as rugs and carpets, or of a Turkish salon? What did these elements of material culture – in their use both on an international and national level – signify to a Turkish nationalist during the first decades of the twentieth century? What was the role attributed to material culture and aesthetic objects in the formation of Turkish nationalism? Before discussing these questions, we must first understand the ambiguous relationship that late Ottoman intellectuals and writers developed vis-a`-vis Western writers, and more specifically some Orientalists, also cited by Go¨kalp. At that time, not everyone agreed on what Go¨kalp

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wrote in 1923, regarding the perception of Orientalists, including their “friendly” writings. At least since the turn of the nineteenth century, some late Ottoman writers had been aware of Orientalist artistic and literary productions, and had positioned themselves with regard to them in their own writings. We can observe this awareness of a specifically (Orientalist) “way of seeing”24 in the ways in which late Ottoman authors made their European characters speak. This is the case, for instance, with the French governess Mademoiselle de Courton in Halid Ziya [Us¸aklıgil]’s novel As¸k-ı Memnu (Forbidden Love), published in 1899; or with the fictional letters written by Yakup Kadri [Karaosmanog˘lu]’s imaginary English traveller Miss Chalfrin in 1911 and 1919. To put it another way, these authors mirrored the Orientalist gaze so as to make their European characters more credible, and then intervened with their own positions. For example, Halid Ziya gives voice to his character Mademoiselle de Courton as follows: She had imagined a grand hall furnished in marble, a dome placed on stone columns, here and there divans inlaid with mother-ofpearl and covered with Oriental carpets; above these, pairs of women with hennaed hands and bare feet, kohl-lined eyes, faces always veiled, sleeping from morning till night to the sound of black men beating goblet drums or holding on to the ruby- and emerald-covered hoses of cut-crystal water-pipes as the scent of amber was spread by a small silver brazier in a corner.25 In this extract, we see the principal cliche´s of what we might identify today as an Orientalist decor: a hall furnished in marble, a dome, divans covered with Oriental carpets, veiled women with hennaed hands and feet, lazy and languorous. . . Immediately following this imaginary description, the novel’s omniscient narrator contradicts Mademoiselle de Courton’s imagining of the room. The house is, in fact, not at all how Mademoiselle de Courton imagines it to be; a large bookcase full of books covers one wall, and a collection of calligraphic panels hang on another. Diverse objects like picture frames, fans and a bust decorate the room. The narrator even intervenes more directly in the novel, stating that, in fact, “she [Mademoiselle de Courton] had not considered it possible that a Turkish house might be anything other than the distant

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keepsakes that remained in her memory from the superstitions and myths of all these Occidental writers and painters.”26 The description of her preconceptions as the “superstitions and myths of all these Occidental writers and painters” is worth emphasising, since it reveals an awareness of existing Orientalist European literature, as well as, on a secondary level, a value judgement that questions the validity of these preconceptions by qualifying them as “superstitions and myths”. Two decades later, in 1919, Yakup Kadri directed his criticism this time upon a real person, Pierre Loti.27 He voiced his ambiguous relationship vis-a`-vis Loti by drawing an analogy between the way his own fictional character Miss Chalfrin loved Istanbul and that of Loti and Farre`re: “With a pathological love”.28 In this particular context we may note that the question of love29 – and specifically pathological love – greatly intrigued late Ottoman society, especially from the turn of the century, seen mainly as a destructive and harmful force. The novels and medical discourse that dealt with this issue highlighted the controversies concerning love. Thus, for instance, Yakup Kadri focused on the same motif in a short story he wrote the following year, in 1920: “We are in a century that denies everything; no one remains among us who even believes in love. Young people these days consider it a strong carnal inclination, or a more or less pathological nervous condition.”30 A similar reference to love appears in a poem by Naˆzım Hikmet published in 1925, in which he attacked Loti: You, the French officer forgot that almond-eyed Aziyade´ faster than one forgets a whore! Her tombstone which you planted in our hearts became a wooden target for your cannon-fire.31 Although Yakup Kadri and Naˆzım Hikmet gradually diverged politically, here they use similar motifs: a love that is fleeting (“forgot . . . faster than one forgets a whore”) and destructive (“became a wooden target for your cannon-fire”). It is no coincidence that the first critics of a specifically Orientalist vision came from literary circles, since it is they who were most familiar with European literary and artistic productions. This conceptualization of the Orient was, in Nazım

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Hikmet’s words, “the Orient seen by the French poet!/the Orient of books/printed at the rate/of 1,000,000 per minute”.32 An article published in 1922 in the Ottoman periodical Yeni I˙nci entitled “Kadınlara Dair” (“On Women”) was subtitled “Haremlerimiz ve Avrupa/Avrupalılar Haremlerimizi Nasıl Tasvir Ediyorlar?” (“Our Harems and Europe/How are Europeans Describing our Harems?”) and criticised European writers’ perceptions of the Orient more directly: European writers and novelists who do not know that here too, as in Europe, there are women who attend university, who have the right to participate in public life, and who are even preparing themselves for professions such as chemistry and medicine, have invented mysterious myths about our harems.33 The author then explains how, following the publication of Pierre Loti’s novel Les De´senchante´es, the European public developed an interest for this topic, and that every journal and magazine began to publish articles on “harem life” in order to satisfy this interest. The main part of the article consists of translations of a selection of descriptions from an unspecified European magazine, which the author qualifies as “exhibiting in a very obvious manner the ignorance of the Europeans concerning us”.34 These selections include descriptions of a certain conception of domestic decoration that went hand-in-hand with a particular – Oriental – way of life. A room adorned with cushions and carpets, empty walls (implying a lack of images), a sofa and latticed windows were among the details that created a “typical” Oriental domestic atmosphere. The space was occupied by women smoking water-pipes and eating Turkish delight or sugar-candy, women who constantly looked at themselves in silver mirrors, preoccupied with their beauty. . . There are similarities between these motifs and those that Halid Ziya attributed to the French governess’s perception of a Turkish room. The assertion that “European writers and novelists . . . have invented mysterious myths about our harems” also parallels Halid Ziya’s complaint about “the superstitions and myths of all these Occidental writers and painters” mentioned earlier. Not content with merely translating these texts, the author of the magazine article also provides some visual evidence to emphasise his point. For example, a photograph illustrating the article features a

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reclining woman, an image that also appeared in postcards at that time (Figure 6.1). The caption reads: “Turkish woman dressed in ¸salvar [baggy trousers] and cepken [a traditional bolero], water-pipe in hand, reposing behind a latticed window. Here is how those who do not know us describe the Turkish lady.”35 In addition to “the superstitions and myths of all these Occidental writers and painters”, one might thus add photography – and postcards – to literature and painting, as another tool that spread a certain Orientalist image. The same motif was addressed by Burhan Belge in an article in French published in La Turquie Ke´maliste in 1934: “Qu’importe . . . Restez tels que vous eˆtes!” (“No Matter . . . Remain as You Are!”). Belge depicted some travellers’ perceptions of Turkey in a manner that echoes Halid Ziya’s French character. Thus, for instance, he described a

Figure 6.1 Picture of a woman lying on a sofa, accompanied by the script “S¸alvarlı, cebkenli bir elbise, elinde nargile, Tu¨rk hanımı kafes arkasında istirahat ediyor. I˙¸ste bizi tanımayanlar Tu¨rk hanımını bo¨yle tasvir ediyorlar.” (“Turkish woman dressed in ¸salvar [baggy trousers] and cepken [a traditional bolero], water-pipe in hand, reposing before a latticed window. Here is how those who do not know us describe the Turkish lady.”) “Kadınlara Dair: Haremlerimiz ve Avrupa/Avrupalılar Haremlerimizi Nasıl Tasvir Ediyorlar?” (“On Women: Our Harems and Europe/How are Europeans Describing our Harems?”), Yeni I˙nci, 1, June 1338 [1922], p. 13.

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mise-en-sce`ne in which some foreigners who bought coffee imagined the following scene: A Turkish woman wearing an “entari” [a loose robe], crouching by the “mangal” [brazier] is preparing coffee for the bey [lord] who is reclining on a sofa. On the floor, carpets, on the walls, carpets, little Arabic stools; in short, the traditional decor one finds in every postcard.36 Here, the postcard is blamed for being the instrument of the spread of an Orientalist image, what Belge called “the traditional decor”, with a brazier, a sofa, carpets and Arabic stools and so on. For Belge, this depiction did not reflect the realities of the new Turkey. “This is no longer the way in which we prepare coffee at home”, he wrote, echoing Halid Ziya describing a Westernised interior in response to Mlle de Courton’s fantasy of an Oriental home. He goes on to explain how hundreds of kilograms of coffee are ground in Ankara using electricity, adding that people no longer keep braziers in their homes, and instead use “Junker”brand stoves, while coffee is prepared using modern utensils and methods. Along the same lines, the aforementioned article in Yeni I˙nci declared that “One of I˙nci’s aims is to acquaint Europe with Turkish women, and to help correct, as much as possible, the incorrect and bizarre notions concerning us.”37 It is likely that Yeni I˙nci’s goal was not fully realised, especially given the fact that it was published in Ottoman and circulated among a narrow Ottoman reading public. What it did, however, was at least to create an awareness in local Ottoman readers – on the scale of the journal’s readership – of their image in Western eyes. That is, it showed them, by means of translations of Orientalist texts, their own image in the Western “funhouse mirror”. This term is borrowed from Dror Ze’evi’s analysis of changes in discourses on sexuality in the Ottoman Middle East throughout the course of the nineteenth century. Ze’evi dedicated the last chapter of his book to the study of travel accounts, where he states: European travelers to the Middle East . . . arrived with preconceived notions and mindsets. Their writings made Ottoman sexuality into a palpable “thing” for the inhabitants of the Middle East. Moreover, these sexual practices, tendencies, and preferences, formerly

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unquestioned and part of the fabric of culture, were made tangible through reflection in a funhouse mirror.38 Yeni I˙nci’s quotation of Orientalist descriptions served a dual function. Even if the periodical’s first and avowed function of “acquaint[ing] Europe with Turkish women” was only fulfilled to a very limited degree, the magazine acquainted Turkish women with themselves by holding up to them their own distorted images, and thus taught them what they were not, and therefore what they should be: modern women. Other publishers did not hesitate to reproduce European representations of “Orientals”, if only to refute them. Another example can be found in a 1928 issue of the journal Resimli Uyanıs¸, in which an illustration depicts a scene from a performance in Germany. The caption clearly indicates the writer’s position: “Turban, quilted turban, ¸salvar, potur [breeches], yataghan, executioner, eunuch . . . It has been a long time since these were abolished in Turkey; but they have not left European theatres. This scene is being performed in Berlin at a puppettheatre show for children entitled Aarif and Akif”39 (Figure 6.2). Unlike the critiques that appeared in journals like Yeni I˙nci and Resimli Uyanıs¸, which remained limited to Ottoman/Turkish reading audiences, the state disposed of new instruments for self-representation. Thus, the journal La Turquie Ke´maliste – mentioned earlier in the context of Burhan Belge’s article – was published bimonthly between 1934 and 1947 by the General Directorate of the Press of the Ministry of Interior. Its aim was to extend the scope of the spread of the Republic’s self-representations deemed appropriate by the state, and to refute perceptions prevalent in Europe that some late Ottoman intellectuals considered to be misconceptions, and against which they were already struggling.40 The journal consisted, to a large extent, of articles in French, but there were also some in English and German, in an attempt to reach, at least ideally, a larger European public. Whereas there were always those who praised authors and artists like Pierre Loti for their friendship with and sympathy for the Turkish people, critical attitudes towards the alteritist ways in which Turks were represented by Orientalists appear to have increased with the establishment of the Republic of Turkey.41 For instance, although Mustafa Kemal Atatu¨rk is known to have voiced some favourable views on Loti, particularly in recognition of his political support for the

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Figure 6.2 Picture of men in Oriental dresses, accompanied by the script “Sarık, kavuk, s¸alvar, potur, yatag˘an, cellat, hadımag˘ası . . . hep bunlar Tu¨rkiyeden kalkalı cok oldu; fakat Avrupa tiyatrolarından ayrılmaz. Bu resim ‘Aarif ve Akif’ isminde cocuklara mahsus kukla tiyatrosunda Berlinde oynanıyor.” (“Turban, quilted turban, ¸salvar, potur [breeches], yataghan, executioner, eunuch. . . It has been a long time since these were abolished in Turkey; but they have not left European theatres. This scene is being performed in Berlin at a puppettheatre show for children entitled Aarif and Akif.”) Resimli Uyanıs¸, 2, 13 December 1928, p. 29.

Turkish people, Yakup Kadri wrote in his biographical analysis of the founder of the Republic that: neither Loti, nor those Frank writers who, like Loti, think us strange and miserable, and love us accordingly, ever earned Mustafa Kemal’s respect. Because he felt himself a ‘New Man’ and knew that a lively and advanced society would emerge from the Turkish nation, he was more angry with those who wished to see our country as a museum than with those who were openly hostile towards us.42 Not only did the Kemalist regime need to reconstruct the “New Republican Man”, it also needed to exercise control over the gaze turned towards it. This meant that it was no longer sufficient to create what it called “The New Turkey” and promote its new image among its own citizens; Kemalist Turkey now had to guide the outsider’s gaze, which had persisted in viewing it through the stereotypes of a

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“backward, undeveloped, primitive, naive, Oriental, picturesque, exotic Other”. While undertaking a series of radical social and political reforms, Kemalists were, at the same time, constantly glimpsing through the corner of their eyes their – changing – image among Europeans. Thus, they found themselves needing, on the one hand, to reform the “Oriental” aspects of their own society, to “turn their faces towards the West” and “rise to the level of contemporary civilization”, and, on the other, to struggle against the Orientalist gaze.43 This struggle, however, was not only directed towards Europeans but also, in some cases, towards the Turks themselves, who had internalised some particularly Western ways of seeing and adopted (self-)Orientalising attitudes. It is this particular dimension that I will discuss in the following section.

“Becoming Europeanised” by Orientalising The construction of rooms and halls qualified as “Oriental” or “Turkish” in the late Ottoman Empire and the early Republic of Turkey, and especially their reception or representation, provide a context in which the case of (self-)Orientalism may be discussed fruitfully. It is difficult to determine precisely when the fashion of setting up “authentic” rooms – that is, spaces in which a certain “Oriental” style was able to survive within fixed and confined boundaries – began in the Ottoman world. As an example, we may note the testimony of the English journalist Grace Ellison, whose travelogue An Englishwoman in a Turkish Harem appeared in 1915. There, she noted: The Turkish home in which I am staying at present has little in common with the harem described by most Western writers, and no doubt those readers accustomed to the usual notions of harem life will consider my surroundings disappointingly Western . . . For a long time now, European furniture has been the fashion in Turkish homes . . . And now the pendulum will swing the other way. She described a movement she called “Turkey for the Turks” as a new phenomenon. Accordingly, her hostess Faˆtima had begun to collect furniture, ornaments and embroideries for what she called a

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“real Turkish room”, which would be reserved for Grace Ellison the next time she visited Istanbul, so that she would “not have the disappointment of traveling all these miles to sleep in a room furnished with an Empire suite (however beautiful it may be), a Western sofa, armchairs and tables.”44 In most cases, “Oriental rooms” were not described as “Oriental” constructs in themselves. On the contrary, the use of vernacular objects did not have to be identified or labelled with a designation reflecting one’s own identity. In his novel Sodom ve Gomore, Yakup Kadri described a private room in an Istanbul restaurant as follows: This was a dim and secluded corner with a sunken ceiling, and it was decorated in the manner that the Franks call the Oriental style. Carpets were spread everywhere. Deep, cushiony sofas were laid out. Low tables inlaid with mother-of-pearl were set before these sofas, while fringed dark-coloured oil lamps were hung from various points on the ceiling.45 By qualifying the room as “decorated in the manner that the Franks call the Oriental style”, the omniscient narrator here introduces a second level, a distinction between what might have been a genuine “Oriental style” – if such a style exists – and what “Franks call the Oriental style”. As is clear from the narrator’s description, this latter was an invented style consisting of decorative cliche´s related in one way or another with the Orient (carpets, sofas, tables inlaid with mother-of-pearl, oil lamps etc.) and placed together in an eclectic manner. Another sitting room in the “Oriental style” (S¸ark is¸i salon) appears in the house of one of the novel’s characters, the English officer Major Will, who, “in his eagerness to fully apply the Oriental aesthetic of the movies” (sinemalardaki S¸ark estetig˘ini tamamıyla uygulamak hevesiyle), had not neglected to place several incense burners there. Major Will also enjoyed showing his visitors a large veranda overlooking the Bosphorus that had been transformed into a “so-called Turkish coffee shop”: Some sofas covered with prayer rugs from Bokhara and Persia, and before them water-pipes with magnificent hoses, smoking stools inlaid with mother-of-pearl, round silver platters containing longstemmed tobacco pipes (cubuk) and clay pipe-bowls (lu¨le), and

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several bird-cages hanging from the ceiling together constituted an incomprehensible whole.46 These various qualifications – “in his eagerness to fully apply the Oriental aesthetic of the movies” and “so-called”, just like “in the manner that the Franks call the Oriental style” – underlines the fact that Yakup Kadri considered “Oriental rooms” to be a Western construct. ¨ nver],47 entitled In 1925, an article written by Ahmed Su¨heyl [U “S¸ark Odası” (Oriental Room), appeared in Milli Mecmua. Ahmed Su¨heyl explicitly argued, like Yakup Kadri, that the “Oriental room” was “nothing but a room seen through the Occidental gaze and perceived with Occidental taste”.48 Ahmed Su¨heyl not only emphasised the Western origins of the “Oriental room”, but also turned his attention to the Turkish case in particular, to local “imitations” of the “Oriental rooms”: A subject that is incorrectly conceptualized among us is the arrangement of rooms in the Oriental style . . . The rooms that many of us think we have furnished in the Oriental style, rooms that look like shops in the Bedesten [covered bazaar, also a part of Istanbul’s Grand Bazaar], are of no concern to us, given that they are completely Oriental.49 Ahmet Su¨heyl’s fellow Turks, had, in his opinion, adopted a Western way of seeing what was “Oriental”. In other words, in this case they were not self-Orientalising, projecting the Orientalist gaze upon themselves, but rather perceiving themselves as sharing the same space and gaze as the West. Yet another revealing example of an “Oriental room” is described in ¨ c Istanbul,50 first published in 1938. Midhat Cemal Kuntay’s novel U During World War I, the protagonist Adnan discovers that Moiz, who has just returned to Istanbul from Berlin where he has been since the declaration of war, and who is thought to have acquired his wealth by some questionable means,51 has bought [the furniture and objects of] an “Oriental room”,52 a room that Adnan had wished to buy at auction but had been unable to. “The moon might have risen from the ceiling of this Oriental room”53 noted the narrator, to emphasise the extent to which it seemed authentic. After dinner, they retired to the “Oriental room”,

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where coffee was served in a ceremony with four Greek maids disguised as odalisques. During the ceremony, Moiz’s wife “Ras¸el became completely Europeanised in the Oriental room, as if she were walking around in her black slippers in the Mosque of Su¨leymaniye”.54 This may better be understood in light of the words the author has her utter on another occasion: After all, all our furniture comes from Europe or America . . . The Oriental room is the only one we bought in Istanbul. Not that it can really be called an Oriental room! Anyway! . . . You should go see the Oriental hall in Paris, in the private museum within the house of Camondo.55 In other words, the “Oriental room” was described in the novel as an annex to a super-Westernised56 house. Descriptions of “Oriental rooms” in the novels and articles of the 1920s and 1930s are generally not neutral but carry negative connotations. Even when little direct criticism is articulated, the overall language employed reveals the authors’ unfavourable attitude towards them. If we return to Ahmed Su¨heyl’s article, one of the earlier discussions on the subject, we might see that he likened “Oriental rooms” to shops in a covered bazaar. It is interesting to note that a very similar analogy appears in Halide Edip Adıvar’s novel Sinekli Bakkal, first published in English in 1935 under the title The Clown and His Daughter, a story that takes place during the reign of Sultan Abdu¨lhamid II. The narrator of the novel notes that: “Even the room Zaˆti Bey furnished with the greatest care as an ‘old Turkish room’ resembles a corner of the antiquarian Hayim’s shop”.57 Along with this kind of comparison, the motifs of imitation, vulgarity, confusion and chaos were often evoked to describe “Oriental rooms”; Ahmed Su¨heyl, for example, states that “Numerous imitations and coarse additions express this lack of taste”.58

The Search for a “Turkish Style” and “Aesthetic Turkism” Following this criticism, Ahmet Su¨heyl offered some illustrated examples of “rooms furnished in the authentic Turkish style”. Discussing on the one hand how these rooms might be modernised – with such details as raising

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the height of the (traditional) sofa to that of (modern) chairs – on the other, he emphasised a certain “authenticity” that might be found, for instance, in the motifs of a carpet or the fabric, that expresses a “national taste” (zevk-ı millıˆ).59 At this point, we might turn our attention to Ziya Go¨kalp’s Principles of Turkism – with which we began this article – in order to understand how he dealt with the Orient/alism. Go¨kalp proposed a solution to these critiques focused on Ottoman/Oriental objects, in what he theorised as “aesthetic Turkism” (bediıˆ Tu¨rkcu¨lu¨k). He gave as one example the statesman and writer Ahmet Vefik Pas¸a (1823– 91) – whom Go¨kalp considered to be one of the founders of Turkism by virtue of his translation of S¸ecere-i Tu¨rkıˆ (Genealogy of the Turks) and his compilation of the Turkish lexicon Lehce-i Osmanıˆ (The Ottoman Dialect) – who, according to him, practiced “aesthetic Turkism” in addition to his “scholastic Turkism” (ilmıˆ Tu¨rkcu¨lu¨k): Thus, the furniture in his home and the clothes worn by himself and the members of his family were mostly of Turkish manufacture. In fact, when his beloved wife once wished to buy some European-type slippers, he forbade her to do so, declaring that “nothing not made by Turks can enter my house”.60 It is in the same spirit that Ahmed Su¨heyl suggested an alternative to the “Oriental room”, which he found in references to the past. It was not an Ottoman heritage, however, that he saw when observing old rooms, but a specifically “Turkish taste”. The fact that he had recourse, for instance, to notions like “the ardour of Turkishness” (Tu¨rklu¨k heyecanı), “the genuine Turkish manner” (asıl Tu¨rk tarzı), “national taste” (zevk-i millıˆ), “the Turkish style” (Tu¨rk u¨slubu) and “national sentiment and taste” (millıˆ duygu ve zevk) in describing his views, illustrate this idea. An article published in the journal Resimli S¸ark in 193161 provides us with a clear-cut example of this approach. Here, the room is no longer identified as “Oriental”, but as “Turkish”. To emphasise this point, the author feigns a misstatement: “In the large Oriental hall – no, I misused the term: Ay Hanımefendi [Madame Ay] has named it the ‘Turkish room’ (Tu¨rk odası), and all her distinguished and elegant guests also refer to this hall as the ‘Turkish room’”.62 At a time when the Kemalist regime was attempting to eliminate the “Oriental” characteristics of its

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Ottoman legacy, it was no longer deemed suitable to qualify a particular space as “Oriental”. Thus, all the “distinguished and elegant guests” called it the “Turkish room”, or, conversely, if someone wished to be a distinguished and elegant person, to find her/himself a place among the favoured citizens of the new Republic, s/he ought rather to call the room “Turkish”. To use Bourdieu’s term, “distinction” was also obtained through conformity with the newly constructed national discourse. The irony lies in the fact that the illustration accompanying the article and purporting to show “a corner of Madame Ay’s Turkish room” is in fact a hall in none other than the harem of the Topkapı Palace, the residence of generations of Ottoman Sultans!63 (Figures 6.3 and 6.4). The break was thus only at a discursive level; whereas elements related to material culture remained the same, the meanings, identities and discourses attributed to them had changed. The fact alone that the word “Turkish” is used no fewer than twelve times in the first half-page of the article is enough to give an idea of the article’s language: For the author, “even the smaller things that catch your eye remind you of your Turkishness”, “this hall is so purely Turkish”, “its colour, its furnishings, its elegant and distinguished ornaments are always Turkish”. There is a “wonderful

Figure 6.3 “Ay Hanımefendinin ‘Tu¨rk Odasından’ dig˘er bir ko¨¸se.” (“Another corner of Madame Ay’s ‘Turkish room.’”) Source: Fehmi Razi, “Ay Hanımefendi”, “Ay Hanıefendi,” Resimli S¸ark, 11, 1931, p. 20.

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Figure 6.4 ¨ zlu¨. O

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Topkapı Palace, Harem section. Source: photograph by Nilay

Turkish carpet” on the floor, and “various historical objects belonging to Turkishness” are placed around the room. In short, “everything in that room is Turkish”! The reasoning put forward by Celal Esad [Arseven] in his Tu¨rk Sanatı (Turkish Art) published in 1928 clearly echoed this sentiment:

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Nowadays, when we set out to construct a building, though we wish it to be in the “Turkish style”, we do not actually know what we want . . . Just as a European cannot conceive of a Turk without a turban, baggy trousers, and a tobacco pipe, likewise he cannot imagine an Oriental building without dome and minaret. What is strange, however, is that Europe has transmitted this mode of thinking even to us. We have begun to see the art of our ancestors with foreign eyes and foreign taste. Even the “Tulip Night” we organize to revive the past, with its women wearing turbans and baggy trousers, looks like a cover of [the French magazine] Illustration. The buildings that we construct under the banner of national architecture, with their unnecessary domes and meaningless arches, resemble the buildings in the Oriental quarters of European exhibitions.64 While the first part of this citation underlines the difficulty the author had in defining the “Turkish style”, the second part raises another issue: the fact that the European vision of Turkey also affected Turkish people’s perceptions of themselves, and that early republican citizens had “begun to see the art of [their] ancestors with foreign eyes and foreign taste”. It was not only “Oriental” elements that the Kemalists thought they needed to fight against, but also the European way of seeing them. Thus, they were confronted with a dilemma; they considered that the country needed to be modernised, but that they should not be exactly like the Europeans, since they needed to preserve their national characteristics in order to find their place in the community of nations. This they could not do with reference to the “Oriental”, Ottoman past as it was usually represented by Europeans, since such references were not, for them, sufficiently “modern” or “civilized”. As Sibel Bozdog˘an has argued in her book on modernism and nation building, “as much as they rejected the country’s Ottoman and Islamic past as the ‘civilizational other’ of the new nation, the image of a liberal, cosmopolitan, and individualistic Western society was equally threatening to their conception of a patriotic and homogeneous Turkish nation.”65 How then would they tackle this dilemma in order to construct their new (national) identity? Ziya Go¨kalp’s well-known theoretical distinction between culture (hars) and civilisation (medeniyet) was in part a response to this quandary. He claimed to have observed a dichotomy between the Ottoman and the

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Turkish in various areas, and asked: “Are these two coeval patterns, Turkish and Ottoman, so diametrically opposed to each other? Why is everything Turkish so beautiful and everything Ottoman so ugly?” The answer he came up with was that “the Ottoman pattern travelled the road of imperialism, which was so detrimental to Turkish culture and life. It was cosmopolitan and placed class interests above the national interest.” After citing a series of domains – such as language, music and literature – where he saw a duality stemming from the division between Ottoman and Turkish, he argued that “these social dichotomies, however, were limited to intellectual activities”, and that certain other fields had remained “Turkish”: In those times, manual work was considered the domain of the avam (lower-class) and the havas (upper-class) remained aloof from all technical skills. As a result, there was only one form, that of the avam, of the practical skills such as architecture, calligraphy, engraving, book-binding, gilding, joinery, iron-work, dyeing, carpet-making, weaving, paintings and manuscript illumination. These arts, which, in general, attained a high aesthetic level, can only be termed Turkish arts, for they were elements of Turkish culture, not of Ottoman civilization.66 “Having been created by the people, our other arts are completely national”, Go¨kalp noted in another chapter, and: “The Ottoman elite left these crafts to the common people, since they considered as degrading anything requiring physical or hand labor”.67 It in in this context that a “return” to the people, to folk(lore),68 and to the countryside69 provided the Kemalists with the means to find and construct their national “essence”. As Celal Esad complained in 1928 concerning the domain of architecture, they did not know what they really wanted when talking about the “Turkish style”. The countryside70 had demonstrated to the Kemalists that the “Turkish style” need not pass through Ottoman or “Oriental” taste, as Europeans were wont to think. They had found an alternative: their own territory was the cradle of their “essence”71 (in Yakup Kadri’s words), of the “Turkish style” (in Celal Esad’s). This is also the context that helps us to situate Ahmed Su¨heyl’s use, in his critique of “Oriental rooms”, of an image of a room in an Anatolian village by the painter Hoca Ali Rıza.

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Once the Republicans thought they had discovered the cradle of their national culture, what sorts of institutions did they think they would require to help it “attain a conscious state”, in Go¨kalp’s words? Go¨kalp answered his own question by listing a number of institutions, such as a national museum, an ethnographic museum, the national archives, a national historical library and a statistical directorate. He lamented the fact that: the screens, carpets, shawls, silk textiles, antique joinery and iron works, tiles, calligraphic inscriptions, illuminated books, beautifully copied Qur’ans, coins that document our national history, etc., etc., which are living testaments of the aesthetic genius of the Turkish people and which are being removed piece by piece from old Turkish homes fallen on hard times and sold in the bazaars, are being bought by foreigners and taken to Europe and America.72 In Go¨kalp’s view, all these elements of material culture had to be “exhibited for the benefit of lovers of our national aesthetics”.73 The Ethnography Museum of Ankara, on which construction began in 1925 under the architect Arif Hikmet [Koyunog˘lu], aimed to serve precisely this purpose. In an article published in the journal Hayat on the Ethnography Museum of Ankara, the author described passing through a section dedicated to “primitive people” and arriving in a second section which, he affirmed, was “completely national” (tamamen millıˆ) – just as the author of the article on the “Turkish room” published in Resimli S¸ark had written that “everything in that room is Turkish”. This section of the museum contained domestic utensils, collections of tiles, popular ornaments and embroideries. “Their colour and harmony are pleasing to the eye”, noted the author, who celebrated these “works of art created by the spirit of the Turkish nation that worships beauty” (Tu¨rk milletinin gu¨zellig˘e tapan ruhunun yarattıg˘ı san’at eserleri). For him, “the Turkish taste brings forth in these [objects] such a fine and aesthetic capacity for harmony!”74 Go¨kalp begins his chapter “Aesthetic Turkism” by asserting that “the aesthetic taste of the ancient Turks was very high”.75 To justify his claim, he cites the French sociologist Gaston Richard:

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the ability of the Turkmen girl to produce, without tools or patterns or any technical education and training, exquisite carpets decorated with inimitable designs can only be explained by her possession of a natural artistic talent.76 Further in the text, this “natural artistic talent” is formulated in another way, by associating it with the “Turks’ great ability in the field of aesthetics”. The citation from Richard also appears, with a reference to Go¨kalp, in an article by Hikmet Turhan [Dag˘lıog˘lu] published in the journal Resimli S¸ark under the title “Tu¨rklu¨k ve Medeniyet” (“Turkishness and Civilization”). Having recourse to European thinkers’ views on the “glorious” aspects of Turkish civilisation in order to support and justify their Turkish nationalist views was a common strategy. On the other hand, Hikmet Turan argued that: Now our most important duty is to work tirelessly in order to make our culture and civilization known to the entire world. Hereafter, we shall endeavour to examine our own civilization not through other people’s eyes but rather through our own views and intuition, our own judgement and logic.77 This call to “examine our own civilization not through other people’s eyes but rather through our own views and intuition” may be read in parallel with Ahmet Su¨heyl’s comment that the “Oriental room” was “nothing but a room seen through the Occidental gaze and perceived with Occidental taste”, or Celal Esad’s statement that “we have begun to see the art of our ancestors with foreign eyes and foreign taste”. If the gaze projected upon another object confers a certain authority to the viewer, then Kemalist intellectuals thought that they had to gain this authority by being liberated from the gaze of other people directed upon them, and to develop their own, independent gaze. It may be useful now to turn to how Go¨kalp dealt with Western writers’ perceptions of Turkey. We saw earlier that he mentioned Turquerie (and Turcology) in Europe as a “Turkish-oriented movement” that appeared before Turkism in Turkey. His understanding of Turquerie encompassed, on the one hand, European collections of products of Turkish craftsmanship and, on the other, paintings and books on Turkish life – among which he cites the works of Loti and Farre`re. His views on

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the latter varied somewhat from those of some of the other late Ottoman and early republican authors we mentioned in the first part of this article, who were highly critical of them. The views of the Turkish intellectual and author Ahmed Hamdi [Tanpınar] reveals this difference of opinion. In a 1934 journal article entitled “S¸ark ve Garb” (“Orient and Occident”) he stated: The reason behind Maurice Bedel’s despondent rage is not that he cannot watch strange costumes or that he cannot pass through dirty and narrow streets that end at a plaza coffeehouse in the shade of plane trees. It is that we are robbing him of the depraved pleasure of personally witnessing an inferiorite´. How fortunate, on the other hand, was Pierre Loti, and how beautiful were those days, when they would come and travel in our midst, then return home, glad to be Europeans and proud of their superiority.78 Where Tanpınar saw inferiority attributed to Turkey, Go¨kalp found superiority. After his description of Turquerie, the latter concluded that “this European movement [Turquerie] consisted entirely of a manifestation of the high qualities to be found in the aesthetic arts and moral values of the Turks of Turkey”.79 Elsewhere, he declared that: the real thinkers and artists of Europe, for example, the Lamartines, the Comtes, the Laffittes, the Lotis, the Farre`res, admire the genuine artistry, the modest and unostentatious morality and the deep and unbigoted piety of the Turks, that is, his humble but happy life which comprises contentment and submission along with unending optimism and idealism. But the things they love are not the contrived and imitative works of Ottoman civilization but the inspired and original works of Turkish culture.80 As soon as Go¨kalp interpreted the admiration of European authors as being directed towards the works of Turkish rather than Ottoman or Oriental culture, he created a paradigm shift. It is in this new paradigm that he was able to make pragmatic use of the admiration of Westerners in constructing his concept of Turkism. The section that follows provides some examples of such a change in discourse, and cases where attempts were made to apply the principles discussed

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above to what might be resumed as the spread of a national image in Europe.

Exposing the National Image: “A Nation does not Exist for the Gratification of Tourists” Of interest, in this context, is the way in which Yakup Kadri had his fictional character Miss Chalfrin, a traveller visiting Istanbul, engage in self-criticism in 1919 for something she had said back in 1911: My hair stands on end when I remember the curses I wrote to you eight years ago about this city and its inhabitants. I said then that Turks had lived in this city for centuries as strangers, adding nothing of their own to it. Yet, now, everywhere, even in the air that I breathe right now, I feel nothing but the splendid melancholy of the Turkish world, its proud insouciance and quiet power. How can it be that I never saw the domes atop those hills? How is it that these minarets – akin to majestic arrows falling from the quiver of a giant rending the air as he crosses from one sphere to another – never caught my eye?81 This description is revealing, in that it demonstrates how new meaning can be re-inscribed onto an already existing form. In other words, it was not what was seen, material culture – in this example, domes and minarets – that had changed over time; it was the “way of seeing” of the viewer – here, the foreign visitor as depicted in the novel. What made Yakup Kadri’s protagonist perceive the city in which she lived in a new way and feel what she had not felt eight years earlier was a specific historical phenomenon: the rise of nationalism. This was the magic wand of nationalism that transformed the meanings attributed to each and every aspect of the material word. On another occasion, Miss Chalfrin exclaimed “One of these mosques is a wonderful example of the Turkish style. I have not seen anywhere else in the world anything that expresses the idea of magnificence and sultanate with as much eloquence as this building.”82 Mosques, domes, minarets. . . all elements of the Ottoman city for many centuries, they were re-interpreted as examples of the “Turkish style”. The city regained significance through the lens of rising

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nationalism, while part of the Ottoman heritage was transformed into a Turkish, national heritage.83 The question of how a foreign traveller should approach Turkey had preoccupied late Ottoman and early Republican intellectuals since the period of modernisation in the social and cultural life. Yakup Kadri put forward, as early as 1911, his own critique of European travellers, through the voices of Turks that his fictional character Miss Chalfrin met in Istanbul and mentioned in her letters. For instance, she wrote of a Turk she had met on the day she first arrived in Istanbul, back in 1911; with evident sarcasm, he had said to her: So you came to visit Istanbul, to learn about the Turks? It is very easy! One day you get into a car and wander around the mosques; another day you visit the Mevlevıˆ and Rıfaˆıˆ dervish lodges; and finally you see the “Grand Bazaar”, that marketplace of ours that is so famous among your people. And that is it . . . Every European who comes here does this, and, upon his/her return home, writes volumes about us.84 Some twenty years later, writer and journalist Yas¸ar Nabi Nayır ¨ lku¨: (1908– 81) voiced a similar criticism in an article published in U There is no denying that our country used to be richer in terms of the picturesque. With its wooden houses, men wearing odd hats and attire, veiled women, and strangely-coloured marketplaces, it was possible to encounter every variety of the Oriental picturesque in our country. As a nation endowed with enough moral dignity not to stoop to turning scenes of misery – with their narrow and dusty streets covered with piles of dogs and their ridiculous costumes – into commodities, however, Revolutionary Turkey has eradicated all the bizarre aspects of our past.85 For his part, Vedat Nedim To¨r (1897–1985) complained, in an article entitled “Les aˆnes et les photographes e´trangers” (Donkeys and Foreign Photographers) published in La Turquie Ke´maliste in 1936, about the interest shown by foreign photographers in Turkey for photographing donkeys, which To¨r considered to be a symbol of poverty. “It is not worth traveling to Turkey”, he wrote, “just to photograph a donkey!”86

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Turkish intellectuals were, as we have seen, dissatisfied with, and in many cases critical of, the image produced by Orientalists, who, they thought, persisted in seeing in them the old, immobile, backward Orient. During the 1930s, the Kemalist regime had, rather than fictional characters of the novels, genuine Westerners on its side writing in the pages of La Turquie Ke´maliste. For instance, Walter L. Wright, president of the American College for Girls and of Robert College, wrote an article entitled “Romance and Revolution” in 1936. It began: Americans think of Turkey as the land of Romance. The tourist who has seen from his Pera hotel the silhouette of Istanbul against a setting sun, who has viewed the incomparable treasures of art and architecture which the metropolis offers, takes away with him a never-fading impression of grandeur . . . But a nation does not exist for the gratification of tourists.87 The citation above is exactly the kind of reaction that late Ottoman writers attributed to their fictional foreign characters in order to criticise it, but with one difference: the critique expressed here was not from the fictional creation of a Turkish writer, but from a real Westerner. At this point we may return to Vedat Nedim To¨r’s complaint about foreign photographers who liked to take pictures of donkeys, and his statement that “it is not worth traveling to Turkey just to photograph a donkey!” But then, what was worth photographing? How did the Kemalists plan to replace the “picturesque Oriental”? An article by I. Sefa published in La Turquie Ke´maliste and entitled “The Enchanting Bosphorus”88 gives an idea of how a Turkish writer might present their own image for a foreign audience. We may see here a perspective similar to the examples of “Turkification” of “Oriental rooms” mentioned earlier, with the difference that, written in English, Sefa’s article aimed to reach an English-speaking audience. Topkapı Palace, described as “the old palace of the Ottoman Sultans”, deserves special mention in this article. After first mentioning “Ottoman” Sultans, subsequent statements of identity are of the form “Turkish Sultans”, “Turkish Baths”, “Turkish tiles of the most exquisite gold and blue designs”, “early Turkish artisans”. This is in fact typical of the historical context, in which history was re-written as a Turkish past, and where some elements were elided from national discourse, while

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others were reappropriated. The country’s cultural heritage was selectively interpreted. On the one hand, some elements of Ottoman art and architecture were selected for praise as part of “Turkish” heritage, especially in order to be presented to tourists’ gaze and, on the other hand, some were handled in a typically Orientalist fashion. When it came to depictions of the harem, for instance, the idea of “Oriental despotism” was combined with a certain degree of “Orientalist eroticism”, presented in the form of beautiful slave girls dancing, singing or swimming naked, or of women involved in palace intrigues whose necks inevitably ended up in the strangling hands of the Janissaries. While tourism was thought to be a suitable channel for conveying an appropriate image of the country, remaining within its geographical boundaries; international exhibitions provided opportunities for spreading that image abroad. They constituted an arena in which the new Republic of Turkey could go beyond the Orientalist cliche´s and its centuries-old Ottoman/Oriental legacy, and expose its national selfimage to an international public. “Aesthetic Turkism” provided a convenient theoretical ground for planting the seeds of a national heritage made up of elements of “Turkish” material culture. In order to better understand a practical application (or at least an attempt thereof) of what had been theoretically discussed by Ziya Go¨kalp, we now focus on a case study: the participation of the Republic of Turkey in the International Exhibition of Modern Industrial and Decorative Arts (L’Exposition internationale des arts de´coratifs et industriels modernes, translated into Turkish as Milletlerarası Sanayi-i Tezyiniye Sergisi) held in 1925 in Paris. This was an important occasion for the new Turkey to exhibit its self-representation on an international arena (Figures 6.5 and 6.6). The curator of the Turkish pavilion, Faik Sabri [Duran],89 selected in a restricted timeframe and with a modest budget a number of objects for exhibition. They included tiles from Ku¨tahya, Turkish bath paraphernalia (hamam takımı) from Bursa, handicrafts produced by “Turkish girls”, items inlaid with mother-of-pearl, a work of calligraphy and illumination on a plate by Hasan Fehmi from I˙zmir, silk fabrics and carpets from the Hereke factories, a tablecloth from Antep, a divan, table, and armchairs made of cornhusk and produced in Rize prison, objects of amber, tobacco and Turkish delight.90 The idea of exhibiting “diversity in unity”91 – “everywhere there was a piece of our beloved

Figure 6.5 “Paris sergisinde Tu¨rk paviyonunun medhali. Kapı u¨zerinde
ini c levha Ku¨tahya mamulatındandır.” (“The entrance to the Turkish pavilion at the Paris Exhibition [of Modern Industrial and Decorative Arts]”). The tile panel above the door is a product of Ku¨tahya. Source: “Paris Sergisinde Tu¨rk Paviyonu,” Servet-i Fu¨nun, 44-1518, 17 September 1341 [1925], p. 281.

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Figure 6.6 “Paris sergisinde Tu¨rk paviyonunun dahili.” (“Interior of the Turkish pavilion at the Paris Exhibition [of Modern Industrial and Decorative Arts].”). Source: “Paris Sergisinde Tu¨rk Paviyonu,” Servet-i Fu¨nun, 44-1518, 17 September 1341 [1925], p. 281.

Turkey”, in the words of one an article on the exhibition – was not a new concept, and its roots are to be found at the numerous Universal Exhibitions in which the Ottoman Empire had participated. However, in this case, diversity was not defined with respect to Ottoman culture across imperial boundaries, but rather in terms of the wealth inherent to national – that is, Turkish – identity. In this line of thought, an analysis of the vocabulary used in the articles that discussed the 1925 Paris exhibition demonstrates a pattern of constant referral to Turkishness. In particular, the journal Servet-i Fu¨nun published a series of articles on the exhibition. One declares that “the new images [of the exhibition, sent by the journal’s Paris correspondent] makes Turkishness (Tu¨rklu¨k) proud”. The “Turkish section” (Tu¨rk ¸subesi), also referred to as the “Turkish hall” (Tu¨rk salonu), the “Turkish pavilion” (Tu¨rk pavyonu) or the “Turkish village” (Tu¨rk ko¨yu¨) contained Turkish products (Tu¨rk mamulatı), Turkish carpets (Tu¨rk halıları)

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and products of Turkish art (Tu¨rk sanatı). Handicrafts had been produced by “Turkish girls” (Tu¨rk kızları). The terms of (a manifestation of) “national taste” (zevk-ı millıˆ) and national identity (millıˆ hu¨viyet), as (preservation of) the glory of the nation (s¸an-ı millıˆyi muhafaza) were emphasised in the article. This emphasis on national identity was not, of course, unique to the Turkish case, but the language used in these descriptions reveals the Republic of Turkey’s adoption of a national discourse in order to situate itself in the arena of national powers. One of the authors who wrote about the Exhibition in Servet-i Fu¨nun complained throughout his article that he was unable to find anything novel in the various pavilions, with the exception of the Turkish section. He added: At this exhibition, on this competition field at which the entire world participates with countless millions and infinite means at its disposal, a Turk has managed to place Turkey, which does not have much money, in the same class as the greatest states, as it well deserves! I said to myself: “Behold the new Turkey”.92 Turkish people who visited the exhibition were also preoccupied with how their self-representation was received by foreigners. The writer of the Servet-i Fu¨nun article noted: I have seen the ideas published in the French press on the occasion of both the official opening of our section and the visits that followed. They are unanimous in stating that the Turkish section manifests national taste and identity through its construction and arrangement.93 It is worth noting, however, that there was a significant discrepancy between the opinion articulated by this Turkish journalist and the assessment of a guidebook published in Paris to accompany the Exposition. “The Turkish pavilion has a rather traditional appearance”94 is how the guidebook began its description. The author went on to add: It is certain that despite the desire of the Young Turks to modernize their national arts, the methods and techniques could not be changed within a few years. Thus we could not expect the

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carpets and coppers to reveal a new state of mind, any more than the delicate and voluptuous perfumes, exhibited here without any special attempt at presentation.95 Along with the objects exhibited, the writer thought particularly noteworthy the Turkish restaurant, with its Turkish orchestra and garden in the Turkish style on the banks of the Seine (according to the writer of the guidebook, a stand-in for the Bosphorus on which one could take a ride in a caı¨que). However, all these elements were far, in the eyes of the writer, from representing a purely “national taste and identity”, as claimed by the author of the Servet-i Fu¨nun article. In the final analysis, and very ironically, the impression the guidebook writer professed to have had was of being “in a poetic atmosphere delightfully evoked by Loti”.96 Despite all the efforts made on the Turkish side to assert their national identity and rid themselves of Orientalist perceptions, the European gaze persisted in perceiving them in the manner to which they were accustomed, as determined by Orientalist artistic and literary productions – in this particular case, from the widely read books of Pierre Loti. Nor was all of Turkish public opinion in agreement with the author of the Servet-i Fu¨nun article and his claim that the “Turkish pavilion manifest[ed] the national taste and identity”. Six years later, on the occasion of the construction of another Turkish pavilion – this time for the international fair in Budapest – debates resurfaced on the Turkish pavilion at the 1925 Paris Exhibition: The most important reason [Turkey’s participation at] the 1925 Paris exhibition was unsuccessful was the pavilion building. It had been designed in the style of a Turkish mosque by a foreigner who therefore did not have the right feel for it. For this reason, the manner in which the goods were exhibited and the building in which the exhibition was held damaged the idea that they were supposed to convey about the new Turkey.97 As we learn from the exhibition guidebook, the architect of the Turkish pavilion had been Monsieur Fildier, and the decorator Monsieur Alexandre Raymond, both of whom were reportedly known for their erudition in the field of Islamic art.98 But the very fact that the pavilion had been designed

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and built by Western architects was blamed for its poor conception in representing the “new Turkey”, for they had chosen “the style of a Turkish mosque” without, being foreigners, having “the right feel for it”. Presumably the pavilion was uncomfortably close to the Orientalist vision that the Kemalists had wanted to leave behind. In fact, this judgement was voiced mainly in order to draw a lesson from earlier mistakes that had led to an unsuccessful representation. It was therefore necessary, according to the organisers, for the architect to be charged with building the Turkish pavilion for the new exhibition to be a national, Turkish figure, one who would be able to properly reflect the new Turkish taste. It is with this in mind that, for the exhibition of 1931, the organisers “decided to have recourse to a Turkish architect . . . [and] wished to have an architectural style that would better represent contemporary Turkey.”99

Conclusion “The author of these lines knows that there is not a single Orient, and therefore that neither the term ‘Orient’ nor the concept of ‘Oriental civilization’ has a definite meaning in itself.”100 So writes Ahmed Hamdi Tanpınar in 1934, in his essay “S¸ark ve Garb”. However, he then goes on to justify his use of the term by noting that “in any case [the author] does not have the right to be so scrupulous in this respect. For the juxtaposition of Orient and Occident was made very many years before him by those who compared them.”101 Tanpınar’s assertion is also true in the context of this article and represents one of the methodological difficulties involved in this type of study. This is why I have focused, as far as possible, on late Ottoman and Kemalist intellectuals’ own perceptions of Orient/alism and their attempts to reappropriate them. In an age of radical transformation, this reappropriation was a complicated process, which goes some way to explaining the relative fluidity of positions and the contradictory attitudes taken by the intellectual circles in question. The entire process discussed throughout this article must not be understood within a chronological schema, a linear progression that resulted in the Turkification of material culture. Rather, in a period when national identities were in the process of being constructed, several positions and strategies co-existed, producing a sentiment of uneasiness and a search for equilibrium.

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The history of this unease is also reflected in a history of (a constant reversal of) gazes. While trying to form a suitable Turkish identity, Kemalist intellectuals were also preoccupied with how this image would be perceived by foreigners, especially Europeans. They tried in the early Republican period to intervene more directly in the Western gaze directed upon them, and that persisted in seeing in them the exotic, romantic and picturesque Other. They were forced to cope with an Orientalist perception turned towards them, and did so through various mechanisms, ranging from denial to reframing or displacement. The project of Kemalist Turkey was also an effort to redirect this outsider’s gaze while aiming to develop the power to be the subject and not only the object of the gaze. This constant play on gaze – looking from the facing window at their own image – which echoes this book’s title and principal object, a Transnational History of Kemalism, shows the extent to which a nation-building process is part and parcel of transnational networks, ideas and perceptions, since “we” cannot exist without (the mirror of) “them”. The entire issue of “representing contemporary Turkey” correctly was especially difficult in a period of modernisation and transition from multi-ethnic empire to nation state. Whereas efforts were made, on the one hand, to turn the Ottoman Empire and its legacy into an Ancien Re´gime, and to suppress its various “Oriental” elements, whether in language or history, on the other hand some constituents of material culture were selectively transformed, at least at a discursive level, into a “Turkish” national heritage. In other words, some elements of the Ottoman and “Oriental” legacy, especially those that deserved to be presented to foreigners, were reappropriated as Turkish, since the nation was in need of a national heritage. It is precisely at this point that Go¨kalp’s concept of “aesthetic Turkism” entered the picture. As we have seen, Go¨kalp considered manual work and practical skills to belong to the culture of the people, and thus, for him, these products of manual work were Turkish – which he believed to have evolved naturally among the people – rather than Ottoman – which he considered “an artificial amalgam”. These products, which had attained a “high aesthetic level” should be termed, according to Go¨kalp, as “Turkish arts”. In the Turkish nation-building process, various debates focused around these elements of material culture, from architecture to works of art, where a “national essence” was sought.

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This explains why, to end where we began, the title of this article reiterates the concept of “aesthetic nationalism”, with reference to Ziya Go¨kalp’s emic concept of “aesthetic Turkism”, for I believe that it was Go¨kalp’s concept of “aesthetic Turkism” that formed a convenient theoretical framework for Kemalist intellectuals, in their efforts to form a national heritage made up of elements of Turkish material culture in their search for a national essence, a national taste and a national style.

Notes 1. I am grateful to Hamit Bozarslan, Nathalie Clayer, Yeliz C¸avus¸, Fabio Giomi, ¨ ztu¨rk, I˙rvin Edhem Eldem, Ahmet Ersoy, Avi Mizrahi, Nilay O¨zlu¨, Mutlu O Cemil Schick, Emmanuel Szurek and Andromeda Tait for their valuable comments and feedback during the writing of this article. 2. Murathan Mungan, “Sadrazamın Go¨zleri (Bir Kars¸ı Pencere Hikaˆyesi)”, in Stu¨dyo Kayıtları, Istanbul, Metis, 2011, pp. 202– 3. 3. Murathan Mungan, Lal Masallar, Istanbul, Metis, 2004 [1989], p. 117. “Bir gu¨n bir sebeple odanızda yalnız kaldıg˘ımda, cekinerek pencereye kadar gitmis¸, her zaman go¨zledig˘im o pencereden, bu kez de sizin go¨zlerinizle kendi pencereme bakmıs¸, o pencerede kendi yu¨zu¨mu¨ aramıs¸tım . . . Kendimi kars¸ı pencerede go¨rememis¸tim. Bombos¸tu pencere. Hayal bile edememis¸tim. Sizin go¨zlerinizle kendimi du¨¸su¨nemedig˘imi, hic du¨¸su¨nmemis¸ oldug˘umu o zaman anlamıs¸tım.” 4. Paulette Dellios discusses a very similar phenomenon in another context, by examining the responses of three contemporary Turkish women artists (Gu¨lsu¨n Karamustafa, Selma Gu¨rbu¨z and Reyyan Somuncuog˘lu) to Orientalist art: Paulette Dellios, “Reframing the Gaze: European Orientalist Art in the Eyes of Turkish Women Artists,” Studia Universitatis Petru Maior, 9, 2010, pp. 619 –31. 5. Erik J. Zu¨rcher, Turkey: A Modern History, New York, I.B.Tauris, 2004, p. 181: “The set of ideas or ideals that together formed Kemalizm (Kemalism) or Atatu¨rkcu¨lu¨k (Atatu¨rkism) as it came to be called in the 1930s, evolved gradually. It never became a coherent, all-embracing ideology, but can best be described as a set of attitudes and opinions that were never defined in any detail . . . As a result, Kemalism remained a flexible concept and people with widely differing worldviews have been able to call themselves Kemalist.” 6. Yakup Kadri [Karaosmanog˘lu] (1889 – 1974): in addition to having been a contributor to the magazine La Turquie Ke´maliste, he collaborated from the early 1930s with intellectuals like S¸evket Su¨reyya [Aydemir], Vedat Nedim [To¨r], Burhan Asaf [Belge] and I˙smail Hu¨srev [To¨kin] in the publication of the journal Kadro, which appeared from 1932 to 1934 and formed the basis of the Kadro Movement. Spearheaded principally by a group of socialists, this movement endeavoured to formulate an ideological framework for Kemalism, until it was challenged by Mustafa Kemal himself, and Yakup Kadri was sent

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8. 9.

10. 11.

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KEMALISM to Tirana as a diplomat in 1934. The early writings of Yakup Kadri very clearly reflect the transition from the Ottoman Empire to the Kemalist regime, mapping out its main themes and conflicts: the social effects of the dissolution of the Empire in both the private and public domains in Kiralık Konak (1922); conflicts over the dervish lodges in Nur Baba (1922); the occupation of Istanbul and the question of Westernisation in Sodom ve Gomore (1928); the new republican lifestyle in Ankara (1934); and the problem of the countryside and the peasantry in Yaban (1936). Yakup Kadri Karaosmanog˘lu, Ankara, Istanbul, I˙letis¸im Yayınları, 2014 [1934], p. 218. “Evet, biz du¨¸su¨ndu¨k. Biz, tahayyu¨l ettik, biz, istedik. Fakat bizim du¨¸su¨ncemiz onlarda vaka; bizim hayalimiz onlarda hakikat; bizim istedig˘imiz, onlarda irade oldu.” Falih Rıfkı Atay, “Bir Temsil Kars¸ısında Bazı Du¨s¸u¨nceler”, Gu¨zel Sanatlar, October 1941, p. 30. “Bizi ¸sarklı olmaktan uzaklas¸tıran ¸sey Tu¨rk olmaya, milli olmaya yaklas¸tırdı.” “Folklorisation” is a term particularly used in the disciplines of folklore, anthropology and ethnomusicology. In an article dealing with folklorisation in Ecuador, the folklorist McDowell defines it as such: “In its most common acceptation today, ‘to folklorise’ means to remove traditional expressive culture from an original point of production and relocate it in a distanced setting of consumption.” John H. McDowell, “Folklorization in Ecuador: Multivocality in the Expressive Contact Zone”, Western Folklore, 69, 2, 2010, p. 182. What interests us the most in this context, in terms of the “folklorisation” of some elements of material culture in Kemalist Turkey, is the concept of relocating and distancing, be it through consumption culture or in an exhibitionary order. (I use the term “exhibitionary order” with reference to Timothy Mitchell, “Orientalism and The Exhibitionary Order”, in Nicholas Dirks (ed.), Colonialism and Culture, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 1992, pp. 289 –317.) Edward W. Said, Orientalism, New York, Pantheon Books, 1978. Among many others, we might cite the works of Jill Beaulieu and Mary Roberts (eds), Orientalism’s Interlocutors, Durham and London, Duke University Press, 2002; Semra Germaner and Zeynep I˙nankur, Oryantalistlerin I˙stanbulu, Istanbul, Tu¨rkiye I˙s¸ Bankası, 2002; Jocelyn Hackforth-Jones and Mary Roberts (eds), Edges of Empire: Orientalism and Visual Culture, Malden, MA, Blackwell Pub., 2005; Zeynep I˙nankur, Reina Lewis and Mary Roberts (eds), The Poetics and Politics of Place: Ottoman Istanbul and British Orientalism, Istanbul, Pera Mu¨zesi, 2011; Mary Roberts, Intimate Outsiders: The Harem in Ottoman and Orientalist Art and Travel Literature, Durham, Duke University Press, 2007. I˙rvin Cemil Schick, The Erotic Margin: Sexuality and Spatiality in Alteritist Discourse, London and New York, Verso, 1999; Reina Lewis, Rethinking Orientalism: Women, Travel and the Ottoman Harem, London, I.B.Tauris, 2004.

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13. Ussama Makdisi, “Ottoman Orientalism,” The American Historical Review, 107, 3, 2002, pp. 768– 96. According to Makdisi, who first coined the term, “In an age of Western-dominated modernity, every nation creates its own Orient” (Makdisi, p. 768). Makdisi discusses Ottoman representations of their own Arab periphery, within a Western framework of representations, acknowledging the latter – the West – as the site of progress (going hand-in-hand with nationalist modernisation) and the former – the East – as a site of backwardness. 14. As early as the late 1990s, Selim Deringil argued in a seminal work that “the Ottomans had internalized much of the West’s perception of the ‘Orient.’” Selim Deringil, The Well-Protected Domains: Ideology and the Legitimation of Power in the Ottoman Empire, 1876– 1909, London and New York, I.B.Tauris, 1998, p. 157. Later, in an article on “the late Ottoman Empire and the PostColonial Debate” where he analysed the late Ottomans’ “civilising mission” and “modernisation project” discernible in their provincial administration, Deringil developed the concept of “borrowed colonialism”. Adapting the term “borrowed imperialism”, which Dietrich Geyer coined for the case of late-imperial Russia (Dietrich Geyer, Russian Imperialism: The Interaction of Domestic and Foreign Policy 1860 – 1914, Hamburg and New York, Leamington Spa, 1987, p. 124), he argued that in the nineteenth century the Ottoman elite had begun to conceive of their periphery within a colonialist framework, that of “borrowed colonialism”. Selim Deringil, “‘They Live in a State of Nomadism and Savagery’: The Late Ottoman Empire and the Post-Colonial Debate”, Comparative Studies in Society and History, 45, 2, 2003, pp. 311– 42. 15. Christoph Herzog and Raoul Motika, “Orientalism ‘alla turca’: Late 19th/ Early 20th Century Ottoman Voyages into the Muslim ‘Outback’”, Die Welt des Islams, 40, 2, 2000, pp. 139–95. Ursinus, Marius, “Ottoman Travels and Travel Accounts from an Earlier Age of Globalization”, Die Welt des Islams, 40, 2, 2000, pp. 139– 95. 16. In her analysis of the “self-Orientalizing” performances of Ottoman Jews, Julia Phillips Cohen argues that these may be considered “attempts to identify and celebrate their Ottoman imperial heritage during an era when people around the globe were turning to folkloric nationalism as an anchor in a rapidly changing world” – or, to put it another way, “a gesture of anticolonial, romantic, and folkloric imperial identification” that explains her choice of “performance of heritage” as an analytical category in the title of her article. Julia Phillips Cohen, “Oriental by Design: Ottoman Jews, Imperial Style, and the Performance of Heritage”, American Historical Review, 119, 2, 2014, pp. 368, 397. 17. Focusing on the Kemalist period, Emmanuel Szurek has argued that “Kemalist Orientalism was not only a reaction to ‘the West’ or an ‘internalization’ of the Western gaze; rather, it was a flexible set of discursive and representational tropes that helped the elites of the ‘New Turkey’ define, justify, and implement their own domestic agenda according to a process of

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social refinement through which the progressive, secularist, nationalist camp (the West within) needed to be separated from the reactionary, clerical, Kurdish, or backward camp (the Orient within)”. Emmanuel Szurek, “‘Go West’: Variations on Kemalist Orientalism”, in Francois Pouillon and Jean-Claude Vatin (eds), After Orientalism. Critical Perspectives on Western Agency and Eastern Re-appropriations, Boston and Leiden, Brill, 2015, p. 105 (French edition of the book, Apre`s l’orientalisme. L’Orient cre´e´ par l’Orient is published by ISMM/Karthala, 2011). 18. In his book published alongside his exhibition Consuming the Orient, Edhem Eldem analysed Western representations of the Orient through consumer items, drawing up a comprehensive picture of this complex phenomenon. Of particular interest to the present article is the chapter in which, having covered the book’s four themes – the exotic, ethnographic, erotic and historical – Eldem discusses the “Turkish case”. From the mid-nineteenth century, he writes, the late Ottomans and then the republican Turks came to have a selective understanding of Orientalism, which included a wide range of attitudes, namely anti-Orientalism and denial, self-Orientalisation or Turkish Orientalism, which he defines “under different guises – Ottoman, Republican, Kemalist, etc. – [and that] aimed at different social, ethnic, cultural, or religious groups – ‘real’ Orientals, Arabs, nomads, peasants, Kurds, Islamists, the ‘traditional’ masses, etc.” Edhem Eldem, Consuming the Orient, Istanbul, Ottoman Bank Archives and Research Centre, 2007, p. 15. “The Turkish case”, pp. 214–27. See also Edhem Eldem, “Les Ottomans, un empire en porte-a`-faux”, in Francois Pouillon and Jean-Claude Vatin (eds), Apre`s l’orientalisme: L’Orient cre´e par l’Orient, Paris, Karthala, 2011, pp. 285–302; Pouillon and Vatin (eds), After Orientalism, pp. 89–102. 19. Halil I˙nalcık points out that Ziya Go¨kalp’s teachings provided an intellectual resource for Turkey’s modernisation (Halil I˙nalcık, “Ziya Go¨kalp”, Tu¨rk Yurdu, 103, March 1996, pp. 3 – 4). Orhan Kocak has argued that Go¨kalp’s synthesis of culture (hars) and civilisation (medeniyet) influenced the cultural politics of the Kemalist period. Kocak distinguishes between two main periods, the first from 1923 to 1938 [the focus of this article], which he calls the time of “Ziya Go¨kalp, during which religion was de-emphasized”, and the second from 1938 to 1950, summarised with the formula “Ziya Go¨kalp plus Hasan Aˆli Yu¨cel” (Orhan Kocak, “1920’lerden 1970’lere Ku¨ltu¨r Politikaları,” in Modern Tu¨rkiye’de Siyasi Du¨s¸u¨nce: Kemalizm, Istanbul, I˙letis¸im, 2009, pp. 370– 418). For an analysis of Ziya Go¨kalp and Kemalism, see also Taha Parla, Ziya Go¨kalp, Kemalizm ve Tu¨rkiye’de Korporatizm, Istanbul, I˙letis¸im Yayınları, 1993. 20. The concept of “aesthetic nationalism” in the title of this article derives from Ziya Go¨kalp’s emic concept of bediıˆ Tu¨rkcu¨lu¨k (aesthetic Turkism). I also encountered the term “aesthetic nationalism” in an analysis of the Japanese Meiji period, more specifically of the works of Okakura Kakuzo¯ (also known as Okakura Tenshin, 1862– 1913), a Japanese scholar who worked as a curator,

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21. 22. 23. 24. 25.

26. 27.

28.

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but also contributed to Japanese Art History: John Clark, “Okakura Tenshin and Aesthetic Nationalism”, East Asian History, 29, 2005, pp. 1 – 38. Clark states that “from the general post-1945 perspective, Okakura should be understood politically as the holder of ideas which in respect to the 1930s would be called ‘ultranationalist’ (kokusuiteki)”. He later focuses in a footnote on the complex term kokusui, which he defines as “national essence”. “According to the dictionary Nihongo Dmjiten (Tokyo, Shogakkan, 1974), vol. 8, kokusui means ‘the aesthetic aspect of the spiritual or material strengths particular to a country’ and is thus tied perfectly to the complex of aesthetic nationalism”. (Clark, p. 2). It is interesting to note the extent to which this term resonates with the search for a national essence during the early Republic of Turkey. On the relationship between aesthetics on the one hand, and politics and nationalism on the other, see also Marc Redfield, The Politics of Aesthetics: Nationalism, Gender, Romanticism, Stanford, Stanford University Press, 2003. “The second movement was Turcology”: Ziya Go¨kalp, The Principles of Turkism, tr. and annot. by Robert Devereux, Leiden, E. J. Brill, 1968, p. 2. Ibid., p. 1. Ibid. We owe the term to John Berger, Ways of Seeing, London, British Broadcasting Corporation; New York, Penguin Books, 1972. ¨ zgu¨r Yayınları, 2014 [1899], Halid Ziya Us¸aklıgil, As¸k-ı Memnu, Istanbul, O p. 86. “O, mermer mefrus¸ azim bir sofa; tas¸tan su¨tunlar u¨zerine kondurulmus¸ bir kubbe; cabeca, sedef is¸lenmis¸, s¸ark halılarıyla do¨¸senmis¸ sedirler; bunların u¨zerinde elleriyle cıplak ayakları kınalı, go¨zleri su¨rmeli, bas¸ları daima yas¸maklı, sabahtan aks¸ama kadar zencilerin darbukalarıyla uyuyan yahut bir kenarda ku¨cu¨k gu¨mu¨¸s mangaldan amber kokuları etrafa dag˘ılırken elmastras¸ nargilelerinin yakutlara zu¨mru¨tlere mu¨stag˘rak marpuclarını ellerinden bırakmayan cifte cifte kadınlar tahayyu¨l etmis¸[ti].” Ibid. “[Mademoiselle de Courton ] bu¨tu¨n o garp muharrirlerinin, ressamlarının ¸sarka dair hurafe ve efsanelerinden hatırasında kalan uzak yadigaˆrlarla bir Tu¨rk evinin bas¸ka bir ¸sey olabileceg˘ine ihtimal vermemis¸ti.” In the 1930s, critiques of Pierre Loti appeared regularly in the pages of La Turquie Ke´maliste. Having analysed a series of articles from this periodical, Edhem Eldem concluded that “once Turkey had gained its independence and, more importantly, had started to sever its links with the Ottoman past, Loti’s orientalist style had turned into a liability. Aziyade´ was no longer a character modern Turks wanted to identify or be associated with”. Eldem, Consuming the Orient, p. 223. An extensive study of Turkish writers’ perceptions of Loti’s vision of Turks is: I˙nci Enginu¨n, “Loti’nin Tu¨rklere Bakıs¸ı ve Edebiyatcıların Yorumu”, Aras¸tırmalar ve Belgeler, Istanbul, Dergaˆh Yayınları, 2000, pp. 400– 16. Yakup Kadri Karaosmanog˘lu, Alp Dag˘ları’ndan ve Miss Chalfrin’in Albu¨mu¨nden, Istanbul, I˙letis¸im, 2015, p. 104 (first published in I˙kdam,

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29. 30.

31. 32. 33.

34. 35. 36.

37.

38. 39.

KEMALISM 1919). “O, zaten I˙stanbul’u ‘Loti’ler, ‘Farre`re’ler gibi marazıˆ bir muhabbetle seviyordu.” On this topic see Alan Duben and Cem Behar, Istanbul Households: Marriage, Family, and Fertility, 1880– 1940, New York, Cambridge University Press, 1991, pp. 87 – 103. Yakup Kadri Karaosmanog˘lu, “Bir As¸k Cilvesi”, I˙kdam, 8368, 1920; reprinted in Yakup Kadri Karaosmanog˘lu, Hikaˆyeler, Istanbul, I˙letis¸im Yayınları, 1985, p. 99. “Her ¸seyi inkaˆr eden bir asırdayız; icimizde as¸ka bile inanan kalmadı. Zamane cocukları bunu ¸siddetli bir cinsıˆ temayu¨l veya sinirlerin az cok marazıˆ bir haˆleti olarak telaˆkkıˆ ediyorlar.” Naˆzım Hikmet, 835 Satır: ¸siirler 1, Istanbul, Adam Yayınları, 1995, p. 20. “Fransız zabiti sen,/ o u¨zu¨m go¨zlu¨ Azadeyi/ bir orospudan/ daha cabuk unuttun!/ Kalbimize diktig˘in/ Azadenin tas¸ını/ bir tahta hedef gibi topa tuttun!” Ibid., p. 18. “I˙¸ste frenk ¸sairinin go¨rdu¨g˘u¨ ¸sark!/ I˙¸ste/ dakikada 1.000.000 basılan/ kitapların/ ¸sarkı!” “Kadınlara Dair: Haremlerimiz ve Avrupa/ Avrupalılar Haremlerimizi Nasıl Tasvir Ediyorlar?” (“On Women: Our Harems and Europe/ How are Europeans Describing our Harems?”), Yeni I˙nci, 1, 1938 [1922], p. 13. “Bizim de Avrupa’da oldug˘u gibi Daru¨’l-fu¨nuna devam eden, resmi hayata is¸tirak etmek hakkına haiz olan, hatta kimyagerlik, doktorluk gibi serbest mesleklere hazırlanan hanımlarımız oldug˘unu bilmeyen Avrupalı muharrir ve romancılar haremlerimiz hakkında esrarengiz efsaneler icad etmis¸lerdir.” Ibid., “O zaman nes¸r olunan bir mecmuadan iktibas etdig˘imiz ber vech-i ati malumat Avrupalıların ¸simdikinden farklı olmayan hakkımızdaki cehaletini pek bariz bir surette tasvir etmektedir.” Ibid., “S¸alvarlı cebkenli bir elbise, elinde nargile, Tu¨rk hanımı kafes arkasında istirahat ediyor. I˙¸ste bizi tanımayanlar Tu¨rk hanımını bo¨yle tasvir ediyorlar.” Burhan Belge, “Qu’importe . . . Restez tels que vous eˆtes!”, La Turquie Ke´maliste, 3, 1934, p. 1. “Une femme turque, reveˆtue de son ‘entari’, accroupie pre`s du ‘mangal’ pre´pare le cafe´ du bey, e´tendu sur le sofa. Sur le plancher, des tapis; aux murs, des tapis; de petits tabourets arabes; bref le de´cor traditionnel que l’on retrouve sur toutes les cartes postales”. The Turkish terms in quotation marks appear in the original. “Kadınlara Dair: Haremlerimiz ve Avrupa/Avrupalılar Haremlerimizi Nasıl Tasvir Ediyorlar?” (Concerning Women: Our Harems and Europe/How are Europeans Describing our Harems?), Yeni I˙nci, 1, 1338 [1922], p. 13. “I˙nci’nin gayelerinden biri de Tu¨rk kadınlarını Avrupa’ya tanıtmak, hakkımızdaki yanlıs¸ ve garib telakkileri mu¨mku¨n mertebe tashihe medar olmakdır.” Dror Ze’evi, Producing Desire: Changing Sexual Discourse in the Ottoman Middle East, 1500 –1900, Berkeley, University of California Press, 2006, p. 164. Resimli Uyanıs¸, 2, 1928, p. 29. “Sarık, kavuk, ¸salvar, potur, yatag˘an, cellat, hadımag˘ası . . . hep bunlar Turkiyeden [sic.] kalkalı cok oldu; fakat Avrupa tiyatrolarından ayrılmaz. Bu resim ‘Aarif ve Akif’ isminde cocuklara mahsus kukla tiyatrosunda Berlinde oynanıyor.”

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40. Edhem Eldem observes that “besides publishing images of progress and modernity, a standard feature of this magazine, La Turquie Ke´maliste made it a point to try to challenge and destroy orientalist cliche´s that had for so long stigmatized the image of Turkey and the Turks”. Consuming the Orient, p. 222. 41. As discussed earlier, such criticism did not begin with the establishment of the Republic of Turkey. In her article on the perception of Loti among Turkish writers, Enginu¨n notes that Turkish writers criticised Loti’s imaginary scenes in their literary works, especially after the systematisation of the Turkism ¨ mer Seyfettin in the early movement, as was the case, for instance, with O 1910s. I˙nci Enginu¨n, “Loti’nin Tu¨rklere Bakıs¸ı ve Edebiyatcıların Yorumu”, Aras¸tırmalar ve Belgeler, Istanbul, Dergaˆh Yayınları, 2000. “O¨zellikle Tu¨rkcu¨lu¨k akımının sistemli bir ¸sekilde ortaya cıkmasından sonra yazarlarımızın edebiyat eserlerinde bu tavra tepki go¨sterdikleri dikkati cekmektedir”. 42. Yakup Kadri Karaosmanog˘lu, Atatu¨rk: Biyografik Tahlil Denemesi, Istanbul, I˙letis¸im, 2000 [1946], pp. 95 – 6. “Ne Loti, ne de Loti gibi bizi acayip ve zavallı bularak seven frenk muharrirleri, Mustafa Kemal’in itibarını asla kazanamamı¸slardır. O, kendisini bir “Yeni Adam” hissettig˘i ve Tu¨rk milletinden bir canlı ve ileri cemiyet cıkacag˘ını bildig˘i icin, memleketimizi bir mu¨ze halinde go¨rmek isteyenlere kars¸ı, bize dog˘rudan du¨¸smanlık edenlerden ziyade kızıyordu.” 43. On this aspect of the problem, Szurek writes: “In defining their own political mission, the Kemalist intellectuals first came to perceive the West – and the collection of enduring Orientalist and Turcophobic prejudices noisily clanking along behind it – as the main obstacle to international recognition of the ‘New Turkey’”. Emmanuel Szurek, “‘Go West’: Variations on Kemalist Orientalism,” in Francois Pouillon and Jean-Claude Vatin (eds), After Orientalism: Critical Perspectives on Western Agency and Eastern Re-appropriations, Boston and Leiden, Brill, 2015, p. 105. 44. Grace Ellison, An Englishwoman in a Turkish Harem, London, Methuen & Co., 1915, pp. 19 – 20. 45. Yakup Kadri Karaosmanog˘lu, Sodom ve Gomore, Istanbul, I˙letis¸im, 2014 [1928], p. 79. “Burası tavanı basık, los¸ ve kuytu bir ko¨s¸e idi ve frenklerin S¸ark usulu¨ dedikleri tarzda do¨¸senmis¸ti. Her tarafa halılar serilmis¸ti. Derin ve yumus¸ak sedirler kurulmus¸tu. Bu sedirlerin o¨nu¨nde sedef kakmalı alcacık masalar duruyor ve tavanın ces¸itli yerlerinden birtakım sacaklı, koyu renkli kandiller sarkıyordu.” 46. Ibid., pp. 100– 1. “Major Will’in go¨stermek istedig˘i odalardan biri Bog˘az’a bakan ¨ zerleri bir bu¨yu¨k veranda idi ve burası da so¨zde bir Tu¨rk kahvesi haline sokulmus¸tu. U Buhara ve Acem seccadeleriyle o¨rtu¨lu¨ bir takım sedirler, bunların o¨nu¨nde muhtes¸em marpuclu nargileler, sedef kakmalı sigara iskemleleri, yuvarlak gu¨mu¨¸s tepsiler, iclerinde cubuklar, lu¨leler ve tavanda birtakım kus¸ kafesleri hep bir arada anlas¸ılmaz bir bu¨tu¨n tes¸kil etmekte idi.” ¨ nver] was a medical doctor who attended the Medresetu¨’l47. Ahmet Su¨heyl [U Hattatıˆn (School for Calligraphers), dabbled in the Islamic Arts of the Book and collected material on Ottoman popular culture. His article is discussed by

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48. 49. 50.

51.

52. 53. 54. 55. 56.

57. 58. 59. 60.

KEMALISM Carel Bertram in her Imagining the Turkish House: Collective Visions of Home, Austin, University of Texas Press, 2008, pp. 89 – 90. Julia Phillips Cohen also cites (via Bertram) part of Ahmet Su¨heyl’s description: “[B]y 1923, the year the Turkish Republic was founded, the Muslim author Ahmet Su¨heyl U¨nver wrote that the homes of a ‘great many’ residents of Istanbul featured Oriental rooms, suggesting that the pattern had become commonplace among affluent families of the late Ottoman capital”. Cohen, Oriental by Design, p. 382. Ahmed Su¨heyl, “S¸ark Odası”, Millıˆ Mecmuˆa, 38, 1341 [1925], p. 626. “Garblı nazarıyle go¨ru¨len ve garblı zevkiyle du¨¸su¨nu¨len bir odadan bas¸ka bir ¸sey deg˘ildir.” Ibid. “Bizde yanlıs¸ telakkiye ug˘rayan is¸lerimizden birisi de ¸sark tarzında oda tanzimidir. [. . .] Pek coklarımızın s¸ark tarzında do¨¸sediklerini zann ettikleri, Bedesten du¨kkanlarına benzeyen odaları tam ¸sarklı olmak sıfatıyla bizi alakadar etmez.” The Oriental room in Midhat Cemal Kuntay’s U¨c Istanbul was described by Handan I˙nci Elci in her book on houses in the Turkish novel. I˙nci Elci considered this Oriental room to be a consequence of “the Westernization of the traditional Turkish house”. In a footnote referring to Kuntay, she also refers to the “Oriental rooms” in Yakup Kadri’s Sodom ve Gomore and Halide Edip’s Sinekli Bakkal. Handan I˙nci Elci, Roman ve Mekaˆn: Tu¨rk Romanında Ev, Istanbul, Arma Yayınları, 2003, pp. 133– 4. The fact that this Jewish character is portrayed in the novel as someone who had made his money through questionable means during the war must be understood in its historical context. Kuntay’s book was published in 1938, a time of rising antisemitism in Turkey as elsewhere. ¨ c Istanbul, Istanbul, Sander Yayınları, 1983 [1938], Mithat Cemal Kuntay, U pp. 407 –8. Ibid. Ibid. “Ras¸el, siyah terlikleriyle Su¨leymaniye camiinde dolas¸ıyor gibi, S¸ark odasında bu¨sbu¨tu¨n Avrupalılas¸mıs¸tı.” Ibid. “Zaten bu¨tu¨n es¸yalarımız Avrupa’dan, Amerika’dan . . . Yalnız S¸ark odasını Istanbul’da aldık. Buna da S¸ark odası denmez ya! Neyse! . . . Siz, S¸ark salonunu gidin de Paris’te Kamando’nun evindeki hususi mu¨zesinde go¨ru¨n.” I borrow the term from S¸erif Mardin, “Super Westernization in Urban Life in the Ottoman Empire in the Last Quarter of the Nineteenth Century”, in Benedict Peter, Erol Tu¨mertekin and Fatma Mansur (eds), Turkey: Geographic and Social Perspectives, Leiden, Brill, 1974. Halide Edib Adıvar, Sinekli Bakkal, Istanbul, Can Yayınları, 2015 [1935], p. 188. “Hatta Zaˆti Bey’in ‘Eski Tu¨rk odası’ diye o¨zenip bezenip do¨¸sedig˘i oda bile, antikacı Hayim’ın du¨kkaˆnının bir ko¨¸sesine benziyor.” Ahmed Su¨heyl, p. 626. “Bir cok taklitler ve kaba bir takım ilaveler bu zevksizlig˘i ifade eder.” Ibid. Go¨kalp, p. 3.

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61. Fehmi Razi, “Ay Hanımefendi”, Resimli S¸ark, 11, Tes¸rin-i sani [November] 1931, pp. 19 – 21. For a discussion on this article, see also Bertram, pp. 71 – 4. 62. Razi, p. 19. “Bu¨yu¨k s¸ark salonunda, hayır, tabiri yanlıs¸ kullandım. Bu salona ’Tu¨rk odası’ diye Ay hanımefendi ad koymus¸tu. Ve onun bu¨tu¨n secme, kibar davetlileri Tu¨rk odası derler, bu salona.” 63. I would like to thank Nilay O¨zlu¨ for drawing my attention to this point at the Spring School themed on “Reviving Previous Times and Expanding Horizons: Islam and Modernity in Global Historical Perspective” at the Research Centre for Anatolian Civilizations (RCAC) of Koc University in March 2016. I am also grateful to Mercedes Volait, chair of the workshop “Entangled Temporalities” at the Spring School for her comments during the discussions in the workshop. 64. Celal Esad [Arseven], Tu¨rk Sanatı, Istanbul, Aks¸am Matbaası, 1928, p. 181, cited in Yavuz Sezer, The Perception of Traditional Ottoman Domestic Architecture as a Category of Historic Heritage and a Source of Inspiration for Architectural Practice (1909– 1931), MA Dissertation, Bog˘azici University, 2005, pp. 8 – 9. “Bugu¨n bir binaˆ yapacag˘ımız vakit ‘Tu¨rk u¨sluˆbunda olsun’u istemekle beraber ne istedig˘imizi bilmiyoruz . . . Bir Avrupalı bir Tu¨rk’u¨ nasıl sarık, ¸salvar ve cubuksuz du¨¸su¨nemezse bir S¸ark binaˆsını da kubbe ve minaˆresiz tasavvur edemez. Fakat garibi ¸su ki Avrupa ¸su du¨¸su¨nu¨¸su¨nu¨ bize bile siraˆyet ettirdi. Ecdaˆdımızın sanatını yabancı go¨zle, yabancı zevkle go¨rmeye bas¸ladık. Maˆziyi ihyaˆ icin yaptıg˘ımız ‘Laˆle Gecesinde’ bile sarıklı ve ¸salvarlı kadınlara verdig˘imiz vaziyet bir Illustration kapag˘ını andırıyor. Millıˆ mimarıˆ diye yaptıg˘ımız binalar, lu¨zuˆmsuz kubbeleri maˆnaˆsız kemerleriyle Avrupa sergilerindeki S¸ark mahalleleri binalarına benziyor.” 65. Sibel Bozdog˘an, Modernism and Nation Building: Turkish Architectural Culture in the Early Republic, Seattle and London, University of Washington Press, 2001, p. 240. 66. Go¨kalp, p. 28. 67. Ibid., p. 99. 68. For a discussion of Ziya Go¨kalp and folklore, see Arzu O¨ztu¨rkmen, Tu¨rkiye’de Folklor ve Milliyetcilik, Istanbul, I˙letis¸im Yayınları, 1998, Chapter 1 on “the ideas of the late Ottoman intellectuals on folklore”, particularly pp. 25 – 7. For a discussion of Boratav’s ideas on Go¨kalp (in the context of folklore and nationalism), see pp. 180– 6. 69. A rising romanticism vis-a`-vis rural areas might be better understood within the context of the ambiguous relationship between the Kemalist elites and the countryside and peasantry during the early Republican era. For a discussion of the subject in the late Ottoman context, see Donald Quataert, Ottoman Reform and Agriculture in Anatolia, 1876– 1908, PhD Dissertation, University of California, 1973. For the early Republican period, see Asım Karao¨merliog˘lu, Orada bir Ko¨y var Uzakta: Erken Cumhuriyet Do¨neminde Ko¨ycu¨ So¨ylem, Istanbul, I˙letis¸im Yayınları, 2006. 70. This aspect was noted by Edhem Eldem: “It was clear to most that if a transition was being made from Orient to Occident, large sections of the

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72. 73. 74.

75. 76. 77.

78.

KEMALISM population were still in an ‘oriental’ stage and still awaited their promotion to the ranks of modern Turks. It was therefore crucial to find a way to depict these people in such a way as to avoid falling into the trap of self-admission of backwardness and forms of oriental resilience. Folkloric representations and the depiction of the Anatolian peasant or nomad as a ‘national’ Oriental seem to have been the principal means through which the regime tackled this delicate issue”. Eldem, Consuming the Orient, p. 224. For illustrations of peasant women in folkloric dresses, see pp. 240– 3. Seeking the essence of the nation in the countryside, the rising ideology of nationalism encouraged a certain romanticism vis-a`-vis villages and an appeal for pastoral scenes. In the journal La Turquie Ke´maliste, we find several reappropriations of images from rural areas. Such articles as “Anatolische Dorfkinder” (“Anatolian Village Children”) or “Anatolische Reiseerinnerungen” (“Reminiscences of Anatolian Travels”) published in the journal in 1938 were accompanied by images of peasant children as well as smiling young peasant girls whose demeanour implied that they were delighted to be working and proud of their products. . . Any reference to labour and suffering or to the difficulties imposed by social conditions was silenced and neutralised. Peasants, ox-driven carts, agricultural products, wheat fields and pastoral scenery entered the nation’s visual vocabulary more than ever, giving a sense of the pure beauty found in the countryside and emphasising the fertility of the nation’s soil. See, for example, Albert Ecstein, “Anatolische Dorfkinder”, La Turquie Ke´maliste, 23 – 4, 1938, pp. 10 – 14; Gunnar Jarring, “Anatolische Reiseerinnerungen”, La Turquie Ke´maliste, 28, 1938, pp. 6 – 13. Go¨kalp, The Principles of Turkism, p. 66. Ibid. “Ankara’daki Mu¨esseseleri Ziyaret: Etnografya Mu¨zemiz”, Hayat, 108, 20 December 1928, pp. 9– 14. “Birinci camekanda mevcut sırmalı is¸lemelerin renk ve ahenkleri go¨z alıcıdır. Tu¨rk zevki bunların u¨zerinde o kadar hos¸ ve bedii bir imtizac kabiliyeti go¨steriyor ki!” Go¨kalp, The Principles of Turkism, p. 95. Ibid. Hikmet Turhan Dag˘lıog˘lu, “Tu¨rklu¨k ve Medeniyet”, Resimli S¸ark, 34, 1933, p. 4. “S¸imdi bize du¨¸sen en bu¨yu¨k vazife ku¨ltu¨r ve medeniyetimizi yorulmak bilmeyen bir calıs¸ma ile aleme tanıtmaktır. Bundan sonra kendi medeniyetimizi bas¸kalarının go¨zu¨ ile deg˘il, kendi go¨ru¨¸s ve sezis¸imizle, kendi muhakeme ve mantıg˘ımızla tetkik edecek bu yolda ug˘ras¸acag˘ız.” Ahmed Hamdi Tanpınar, “S¸ark ve Garp: II. Go¨ru¨s¸me”, Yeni Adam, 18, 1934, p. 8. Reprinted in Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar, Mu¨cevherlerin Sırrı: Derlenmemis¸ ¨ zdemir, eds, Yazılar, Anket ve Ro¨portajlar, I˙lyas Dirin, Turgay Anar and S¸aban O Istanbul, Yapı Kredi Yayınları, 2002, pp. 36 – 7. “Maurice Bedel’in meyus hiddetinin sebebi acayip kıyafetler seyredememesi veya sonu cınarlı bir meydan kahvesinde biten pis ve dar sokakların arasından gecememesi deg˘ildir. Bir inferiorite´’yi

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79. 80. 81.

82. 83.

84.

85.

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bizzat go¨rmenin vereceg˘i mu¨tereddıˆ hazlardan onu mahrum bırakmamızdır. Halbuki Pierre Loti ne bahtiyardı, ne gu¨zel gu¨nlerdi o gu¨nler, geliyorlar icimizde geziyorlar ve Avrupalı olmaktan bahtiyar, faikiyetin gururu icinde do¨nu¨yorlardı.” Likewise, Yakup Kadri embarked on an almost psychological analysis of Loti in his book on Atatu¨rk, writing: “[Loti’s] haggard and anxious soul had set out to explore archaic and picturesque scenery around the world so as to console itself.” (Onun bezgin ve endis¸eli ruhu, kendini avutmak icin yeryu¨zu¨nde arkaik ve pitoresk manzaralar kes¸fine cıkmıs¸ bulunuyordu.) Go¨kalp, The Principles of Turkism, pp. 1– 2. Ibid., p. 28. Yakup Kadri Karaosmanog˘lu, Alp Dag˘ları’ndan ve Miss Chalfrin’in Albu¨mu¨nden, Istanbul, I˙letis¸im, 2015, p. 110. “Size bundan sekiz yıl evvel bu s¸ehre ve bu s¸ehirde oturanlara dair yazdıg˘ım ku¨fu¨rler hatırıma geldikce tu¨ylerim u¨rperiyor. Demis¸tim ki Tu¨rkler bu s¸ehirde asırlarca bir yabancı gibi yas¸amıs¸lar ve ona kendilerinden bir ¸sey katmamıs¸lar. Halbuki ¸simdi her yerde, ¸simdi teneffu¨s ettig˘im havada bile Tu¨rklu¨k aˆleminin azametli melaˆlinden, mag˘rur kaygısızlıg˘ından ve sessiz sedasız kuvvetinden bas¸ka bir ¸sey hissetmiyorum. S¸u tepelerdeki kubbeleri nasıl olmus¸ da go¨rmemis¸tim? Havaları yararak, bir ku¨reden dig˘er ku¨reye gecen bir devin kuburundan do¨ku¨lmu¨¸s mehip okları andıran s¸u minareler nasıl olmus¸ da go¨zlerime batmamıs¸?” Ibid. The idea of forming a national heritage did not, of course, suddenly arise out of nowhere with the establishment of the Republic of Turkey; in fact, the issue was alive at least by the end of the nineteenth century in the Ottoman Empire’s search for an imperial heritage. See Wendy M. K. Shaw, Possessors and Possessed: Museums, Archaeology, and the Visualization of History in the Late Ottoman Empire, Berkeley, University of California Press, 2003. For the domain of archaeology see Edhem Eldem, “From Blissful Indifference to Anguished Concern: Ottoman Perceptions of Antiquities, 1799 – 1869”; Wendy M. K. Shaw, “From Mausoleum to Museum: Resurrecting Antiquity for Ottoman Modernity”; and Zeynep C¸elik, “Defining Empire’s Patrimony: Late Ottoman Perceptions of Antiquities”, in Zainab Bahrani, Zeynep C¸elik and Edhem Eldem (eds), Scramble for the Past: A Story of Archaeology in the Ottoman Empire, 1753 – 1914, Istanbul, SALT, 2011. In the domain of architecture, see Ahmet Ersoy, Architecture and the Late Ottoman Historical Imaginary: Reconfiguring the Architectural Past in a Modernizing Empire, Burlington, Ashgate, 2015. Yakup Kadri Karaosmanog˘lu, Alp Dag˘ları’ndan ve Miss Chalfrin’in Albu¨mu¨nden, Istanbul, I˙letis¸im, 2015 [1911], p. 95. “I˙stanbul’u go¨rmeye, Tu¨rkleri o¨g˘renmeye mi geldiniz? Bu pek kolay! Bir gu¨n arabaya biner camilerin etrafında dolas¸ırsınız; dig˘er bir gu¨n Mevlevıˆ ve Ru¨faıˆ dergaˆhlarını ziyaret edersiniz ve nihayet “Bu¨yu¨k pazar”ı bizim, sizce pek mes¸hur olan cars¸ımızı go¨ru¨rsu¨nu¨z, is¸te bu kadar . . . Buraya gelen her Avrupalı bo¨yle yapar ve memleketine avdetinde bizim hakkımızda ciltlerle kitap yazar.” Yas¸ar Nabi, “Turizm Meselesi ve Tu¨rkiye”, U¨lku¨, 2, 67, 1938, p. 57. “Eskiden memleketimizin pitoresk bakımdan daha zengin oldug˘unu inkar edemeyiz. Ahs¸ap

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87. 88. 89. 90.

91.

92.

93.

94.

KEMALISM binaları, acaip sepus¸lu ve kılıklı erkekleri, cars¸aflı kadınları, garip renkli cars¸ıları ile ¸sark pitoreskinin her ces¸idine memleketimizde rastlamak mu¨mku¨ndu¨r. Fakat inkılap Tu¨rkiyesi, u¨stu¨nde ku¨me ku¨me ko¨pekler yatan dar ve tozlu sokakları, gu¨lu¨nc kıyefetleriyle bir sefalet manzarasını ticari metag˘ olarak satmaya tenezzu¨l etmeyecek kadar medeni haysiyet sahibi bir millet sıfatiyle, mazinin bu¨tu¨n acaip taraflarını aramızdan so¨ku¨p atmıs¸tır.” Vedat Nedim To¨r, “Les aˆnes et les photographes e´trangers”, La Turquie Ke´maliste, 15, 1936, p. 1. This point on photography and the obsession with the outsider’s gaze is a recurrent theme during this period. On this topic, Szurek writes: “They [the writers of La Turquie Ke´maliste ] were notably sensitive to the way their country was represented in the photography of foreign journalists . . . Photography is directly connected to the technology of modernity . . . The writers of La Turquie Ke´maliste regularly noted the weight of the oppressive gaze, or the ‘evil eye’, of the Western photographer who was reluctant to see how Turkey had changed. Indeed, Ercu¨mend Ekrem Talu entitled one of his 1935 editorials ‘Oculos habent sed. . .’ [Latin for ‘They have eyes, but . . .’], concluding, ‘but they see not!’” Szurek, pp. 106– 7. Walter L. Wright, “Romance and Revolution”, La Turquie Ke´maliste, 14, 1936. I. Sefa, “The Enchanting Bosphorus”, La Turquie Ke´maliste, 25 – 6, 1938, pp. 18 – 21. Faik Sabri [Duran] (1882 – 1943) studied in Paris between 1908 and 1912. He later returned to Turkey where he worked as a geographer and writer. This information is drawn from two articles published in the journal Servet-i Fu¨nun, which provide detailed descriptions of the Turkish Pavilion at this exhibition: “Paris Sergisinde Tu¨rk Paviyonu”, Servet-i Fu¨nun, 44–1518, 17 September 1341 [1925], p. 138; and “Paris Sanayi-i Tezyiniye Sergisi”, Servet-i Fu¨nun, 46–1520, 1 October 1341 [1925], pp. 307–10. Zeynep C¸elik uses this term in her analysis of Les Costumes populaires de la Turquie (by [Osman] Hamdy Bey and Marie de Launay, Constantinople, Imprimerie du “Levant Times & Shipping Gazette”, 1873) in Displaying the Orient: Architecture of Islam at Nineteenth-century World’s Fairs, Berkeley, University of California Press, 1992, p. 42. “Paris Sanayi-i Tezyiniye Sergisi”, Servet-i Fu¨nun, 46 – 1520, 1 October 1341 [1925], p. 310. “Bir Tu¨rk, bu¨tu¨n du¨nyanın hesabsız milyonlarla namu¨tenahi vasıtalarla, is¸tirak etdig˘i bu sergide bu mu¨sabaka meydanında, parası pek bol olmayan Tu¨rkiye’yi, hak oldug˘u vechiyle en bu¨yu¨k devletlerle bir sınıfda bulundurmag˘a muvaffak olmus¸! I˙s¸te yeni Tu¨rkiye dedim.” “Paris Sergisinde Tu¨rk Paviyonu”, Servet-i Fu¨nun, 44 – 1518, 17 September 1341 [1925], p. 138. “S¸ubemizin gerek resmıˆ ku¨¸sadında ve gerek bi’l-ahire tevaˆlıˆ eden ziyaretler dolayısıyla Fransız matbaatında intis¸ar eden fikirleri go¨rdu¨m. Tu¨rk ¸subesinin ins¸aat ve tertibat itibarıyla milli zevk ve hu¨viyyeti tecelli ettirdig˘ini beyanda cu¨mlesi mu¨ttefiktir.” Paris, Arts De´coratifs 1925: Guide Pratique du Visiteur de Paris et de l’Exposition, Paris, Librairie Hachette [1925], p. 266.

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95. Ibid., p. 310. “Il est certain que malgre´ le de´sir des jeunes Turcs de moderniser leurs arts nationaux, les formules et les techniques ne sauraient se modifier en quelques anne´es. Nous ne pouvions donc nous attendre a` ce que les tapis et les cuivres fussent la re´ve´lation d’un nouvel e´tat d’aˆme, pas plus que les parfums de´licats et voluptueux qui sont expose´s ici sans recherches bien spe´ciales de pre´sentation.” 96. Ibid., p. 266. 97. Mimar, 6, 1931, pp. 187– 92. “1925 Paris sergisinin muvaffak olamamasının en mu¨him sebebini paviyon binası tes¸kil ediyordu. Bina bir ecnebi tarafından ve dolayısile yanlıs¸ hissedilmis¸ bir Tu¨rk camii u¨sluˆbunda yapılmıs¸tı. Bundan dolayı sergide tes¸hir edilen es¸yanın yeni Tu¨rkiye hakkında vermesi laˆzım olan fikre tes¸hir tarzı ve binası zarar veriyordu.” 98. Paris Arts De´coratifs 1925 Guide Pratique du Visiteur de Paris et de l’Exposition. Paris, Librairie Hachette, p. 266. 99. Mimar, 6, 1931, pp. 187– 92. The architect selected to build the Turkish pavilion in Budapest was Sedad Hakkı [Eldem] (1908 – 88) who would, in the years that followed, become known for his efforts on behalf of a “national” architecture. His own studies on the “Turkish house” reflect this nationalist trend. For more on Sedad Hakkı, see Edhem Eldem, Ug˘ur Tanyeli and Bu¨lent Tanju, Sedad Hakkı Eldem I: Genclik Yılları, Istanbul, Osmanlı Bankası Ars¸iv ve Aras¸tırma Merkezi, 2008; and Ug˘ur Tanyeli and Bu¨lent Tanju, Sedad Hakkı Eldem II: Retrospektif, Istanbul, Osmanlı Bankası Ars¸iv ve Aras¸tırma Merkezi, 2009. 100. Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar, Mu¨cevherlerin Sırrı: Derlenmemis¸ Yazılar, Anket ve Ro¨portajlar, I˙lyas Dirin, Turgay Anar and S¸aban O¨zdemir, eds, Istanbul, YKY, 2002. “Bu satırların muharriri tek bir S¸ark mevcut olmadıg˘ını binaenaleyh ne S¸ark ne de S¸ark medeniyeti so¨zlerinin tek bas¸larına muayyen bir maˆnaları olamayacag˘ını bilir.” 101. Ibid. “Zaten bu hususta fazla titizlig˘e de hakkı yoktur. C¸u¨nku¨ S¸ark ve Garb terkibi kendisinden cok evvel bu mukayeseyi yapanlar tarafından kullanılmıs¸ bulunuyor.”

CHAPTER 7 THE MAN SICK OF EUROPE: A TRANSNATIONAL HISTORY OF KEMALIST SCIENCE Emmanuel Szurek

It is moreover amusing to see how each wants everything to stem from his language or from the one he is fond of. Goropius Becanus and Rodornus from low German (without distinguishing between new inflexions and what comes from the old language), Rudbeckius from Scandinavian, a certain Otroski from Hungarian, the Abbe´ Francois (who promises us the origin of nations) from low Breton or Cambian, Praetorius (the author of the Orbis Gothicus) from Polish or Sclavonian. Thomassin, following on from several others and Bochart even, from Hebrew and Phoenician, and Ericus the German, living in Venice, from Greek. And I believe, if the Turks and Tartars become learned in our manner one day, then they will find in their language and their country words and allusions, with which they will prove with as much right as Mister Rudbeckius, that the Argonauts, Hercules, Ulysses, and other Heroes were once there, and that the Gods come from their country and their Nation. Leibniz, letter to Johann Gabriel von Sparfvenfeldt, 7 April 16991

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The drive to popularise the Sun-Language Theory (Gu¨nes¸-Dil Teorisi, henceforth SLT) was launched in Turkey in November 1935. From the outset it was presented to the Turkish public as a matter of “Turkish science” responding to “European science”, which, against the backdrop of feverish nationalist ardour, was denounced as racist, imperialistic and Turkophobic.2 The SLT draws on historical linguistics, physical anthropology, the history of religions and the philosophy of language, and may be reduced to three basic propositions: (1) it was in contemplating the sun that humanity emitted its first articulate sounds several thousand years before our era, and language was subsequently built up around the sun cult amongst primitive men; (2) the advent of language took place within a superior race referred to as “Alpine brachycephalic Turks” who lived in Central Asia, where a brilliant civilisation emerged in tandem with a refined language, called “proto-Turkish”; (3) this race spread out across the surface of the Earth in the wake of a great climate catastrophe, taking the benefits of civilisation to men everywhere and bringing the gift of speech in general together with its own language in particular; Turkish thus stands at the origin of all “civilised tongues”, and is arguably the mother-language of humanity. The SLT enjoyed various forms of media attention. This is an important point, for the sheer extent of its diffusion, both in Turkey and around the world, is often underestimated. It was far from being the mere hobbyhorse of a handful of scholars shut away in their ivory towers, and for three years it took on the status of State truth. It was taught as a separate course at the Faculty of Letters (DTCF) of Ankara, as well as being extensively relayed to the general public via the radio, national and local press, and the many public talks that were laid on in the occasion of the so-called “Language Festivals”, reaching as far as remote small towns out on the Anatolian plateau.3 It was also relayed to international academia at two learned conferences (held in Istanbul and Bucharest) and via numerous publications in French. But the SLT, though it burned bright in the intellectual firmament, did not last long. It disappeared from the landscape far more discretely than it

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had arrived, shortly after the death in November 1938 of its main political proponent and one of its most zealous contributors, Mustafa Kemal. It then sank into “decent oblivion” (Bernard Lewis).4 “It would be cruel and useless to insist on this subject. Suffice it to say that it made most of the world’s languages derive from Turkish”, observes Nicolas Vatin.5 Turkologists suppressed mention of the “infamous Sun-Language Theory” (Bernt Brendemoen)6 and it long remained an object of scholarly embarrassment. Yet it has never been officially disavowed in Turkey, where the national press still views it on occasions as part of the national heritage, some kind of whimsical page in the great narrative of the “revolution”, though one devoid of any genuine historical significance. And the odd academic publication still credits it with authentic scientific merit, thereby perpetuating the cult of the “genius of Atatu¨rk”.7 Ten or so authors have enquired seriously into the subject over the past three decades.8 New sources have also been published that shed light on its genealogy.9 If we wish to understand the animosity Kemalist intellectuals nurtured towards “European science” and the increasing power of intellectual fantasy in 1930s Turkey, we need to bear in mind how unfavourably the Turks were classified in various Western disciplinary traditions. From this point of view this paper carries on in the wake of the path-breaking research conducted in an article published in 2004 by I˙lker Aytu¨rk. Aytu¨rk insisted primarily on the role played by Western linguistics in the crystallisation of Turkish academic fantasy.10 I too interpret the latter as caught between rejection of Europe (perceived as imperialistic and Turkophobic) and fascination with the West (viewed as modern and civilised), and so the developments within ”Turkish learning” as a reaction to nineteenth-century European scholarly output. Methodologically speaking, that presupposes taking into account the objective transactions (the intellectual transfers from Western Europe, Central Europe and Russia towards Turkey) and discursive developments (the mechanisms of epistemic disdain and rancour) linking these worlds together, in a transnational history of the humanities and social sciences. In this chapter, I wish to expand the field of study to take in other considerations. First, by briefly resituating the unease voiced by the SLT within the local politics of Kemalist linguistic reforms, that were taking a particularly chaotic turn in the mid-1930s. Then, by including racial anthropology within the analysis, for it permeates the entire SLT to just as great extent as does the linguistic tradition properly speaking. Finally,

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by proposing a new interpretation of Kemalist linguistic-anthropological science, which oscillated between three different approaches: outright condemnation of the European legacy; acculturation, by partially incorporating it; and lastly counter-acculturation, that is to say projecting the stigmata back onto the West. Far from being mutually exclusive, these three stances (contesting, correcting and subverting), I argue, coexisted most of the time. In that they are symptomatic of a one-of-a-kind political schizophrenia that can only be partially explained by reference to the “impact of the West”.

Oscillating Between Orientalism and Nationalism: The Local Conditions for Political Schizophrenia In the introduction to this book, we have pointed out to just what extent the events which occurred as part of the “Turkish revolution” were based on the principle of importing and adapting “international”, that is to say predominantly European norms. And far from being self-contradictory, the nationalisation and Westernisation of Turkish society were in fact two interdependent processes. The Kemalist civilising/nationalising mission was backed up by fundamentally Orientalist discourse, with Progress, Enlightenment and Knowledge said to illuminate the West, whilst Obscurantism, Fanaticism and Ignorance were rife in the Orient. Linguistic material itself was subject to the same axiology, being nationalist and Orientalist at one and the same time.11 Initially, in a period running from 1928 to 1930, the government imposed the adoption of a modified Latin alphabet to replace the Arabic alphabet, the former being judged better suited to Turkish phonology and hence more conducive to increasing general levels of literacy, as well as more likely to hasten Turkey’s integration within “the circle of civilised [that is to say Western] nations” (1928–30). Within the space of 19 months the Semitic script was eradicated from publications and the public sphere. The next stage, running from 1932 to 1935, consisted in a vast undertaking to purify the lexicon, referred to as the “language revolution”. The objective of this was to systematically root out Arabic and Persian vocabulary, which still accounted for more than half of the lexical corpus at the time, and to replace it with words of (real or imagined) Turkish etymology. This task was entrusted to a body which, though formally a private association, was in fact very close to the group in power, called the Society for the Study of the

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Turkish Language (founded in 1932). Within the space of a few years the members of this organisation forged a large number of neologisms made up from lexical roots that drew on various literary and dialectical sources, as well as a few words invented from scratch. These new words related to all aspects of daily life. At the same time “international” (preferably French) terminologies tended to be adopted within technical, philosophical and scientific fields, taking their place within official vocabulary.12 In short, this new Kemalist language – called “Pure Turkish” (o¨ztu¨rkce) – provides yet another illustration of the convergence between the two guiding principles at work within the “Turkish revolution” as a whole, namely nationalisation and Westernisation. The use of this new form of Turkish was strongly encouraged and sometimes imposed even within the administration, the written press and schools, as well as within cultural organisations with links to the single party. The elites were even requested to lead by example, and to banish as many “foreign” words from their speeches and writings as possible. But this second operation was not an unmitigated success. On the one hand, it is certain that a large number of Arabic and Persian components that had been in use within Turkish up until the 1920s now rapidly fell into obsolescence, something which was greatly facilitated by the adoption of the Latin alphabet. But on the other hand, the Kemalist dream of a language that would be wholly purged of its alien components turned out to be a communicational and intellectual chimera. Everyday Arabic and Persian words resisted government attack, and with the general public struggling to appropriate the countless neologisms flooding the lexical market, the communication became increasingly cacophonic.13 And so without renouncing its project the government was obliged to introduce a pause to the process of purification in 1935. It was at precisely this moment that the Sun-Language Theory moved into the limelight. Indeed, the dominant interpretation of the advent of the SLT is that it was fundamentally a tactical retreat, orchestrated by the head of state, to justify the slowing down and degree of backpedalling even with its language policy; for if it turned out that Turkish was the mother of all languages, and if well-known words that the official Newspeak banned on the grounds that they were of Arabic or Persian origin actually turned out to be of distant proto-Turkish etymology, then all of a sudden it was no longer necessary to proscribe them. The discovery of the Turkish linguists was, on this interpretation, a good opportunity for the

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governing group to spare themselves the indignities of open disavowal by attributing the slowdown in purification to “scientific progress” rather than political zigzagging. This also made it possible to protect the figure of Mustafa Kemal from general opprobrium, and of presenting his actions in a flattering light even, for it could be argued that, far from being fooled by the intellectual imposture, he had in fact lent his support to the SLT in full knowledge of the facts as a way to reassert control over the situation after the country found itself on the brink of catastrophe. This explanation based on circumstances, that is to say by the specific political rationales at work in single-party Turkey, and in which the lexical purge is viewed as having spun out of control, is the first possible interpretation of the SLT. There is no denying that it offers a fairly good explanation for why the SLT fantasy was officially taken up in Turkey at the time that it was. And the profile of the SLT theoreticians lends support to the idea that the intellectual agenda in Turkey was subservient to the strategic interests of an authoritarian government. They tended to be autodidacts, being bureaucrats and army officers rather than trained linguists, and part of an intelligentsia that, as such, had been gravitating around the head of state since the late 1920s, and who were all the readier to take up the cause of linguistic purification and the Sun-Language, even if this meant a few contortions, as they had benefited from all sorts of material and symbolic rewards stretching back several years now, with sinecures, paid positions, dinners at the president’s Dolmabahce Palace, seats in the Turkish National Assembly and so on and so forth.14 But this cynical interpretation, which views them as the willing instruments of power, fails to throw light on precisely that thing which needs to be explained, namely the fantasy itself. It is also contradicted by the numerous proofs showing that Mustafa Kemal himself, was in fact directly involved in, and genuinely inspired by, the SLT, and so were many of the self-proclaimed linguists that authored the theory. Here a different explanation may be put forward, one which takes seriously the profound epistemic resentment Turkish intellectuals felt against the West in general and “European science” in particular. For though they were Westernists, the Kemalist were also fervent patriots who, in the name of nationalism and anti-imperialism, strove to counter the pejorative ways in which, they quite rightly felt, the Turks had been viewed almost systematically ever since the Renaissance in countless learned tracts and in European discourse more generally.15

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In other words the evolutionist and Orientalist overtones to the idea that a backwards Turkey needed to play catch-up with the European nations soon entered into collision with the redemptionist and jingoistic tendency deep within Kemalist nationalism. Imitating the West in all matters amounted to admitting Turkish inferiority, and thus endorsing the offence cast against the nation by imperialist and Turkophobic Europe; repudiating the West, however, meant impeding the Kemalist reformist project itself. The fact that the discourse used by the “Turkish revolution” in self-justification contained these two contradictory ways of relating to the West – an outwards-turning vision fascinated with the West, and another, resentful view which saw Turkey as under siege – soon created the preconditions for what could be termed political and cultural schizophrenia.16 And so the fact that Kemalist organic intellectuals came up with an intellectual narrative which inverted the symbolic relationship the Turks had to “Europe” and to “proper” civilisation is in fact best understood as a means of establishing discursive coherence, and perhaps even as a form of psychological rationalisation. It is noteworthy that the first visible stage in this operation was the much-discussed “Turkish thesis of history”, of which more later. Suffice it to say for the time being that this thesis, which was developed from 1929 onwards and was soon being taught in the schools of the Republic, held that the Turks – or rather the brachycephalic Alpine proto-Turkish race of Central Asia – were the ancestors of civilisation. The Sun-Language Theory is the second component of the Kemalist fantasy, confirming that not only did the proto-Turkish Alpine race bequeath humanity the gift of civilisation, but even gave it the grace of language itself. This narrative makes it possible to reconcile the two contradictory tendencies within Kemalist legitimisation, namely imitation of the “modern” West on the one hand, and on the other the pride taken in having been born Turkish. And so by Westernising, the Turks were in fact simply taking back what they had once given to the European barbarians – better even, they were merely becoming themselves once again. In short, the SLT lent consecration to the culmination of a process that had been visible since the late 1920s, and which consisted in making the human sciences in Turkey handmaiden to the attempt to resolve dissonances within the Kemalist identity project.

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The Turks in the Long Shadow Cast by European Science There are two intellectual traditions, one linguistic and the other anthropological, which are of particular note with regard to Turks and the Turkish language.17 The first of these is the comparative approach, which emerged in Indo-European philology, dating back to the early nineteenth century. The other is physical anthropology as this developed from the mid-nineteenth century onwards. Aryan racism arose largely from the merging of these two intellectual traditions in the last quarter of the nineteenth century.

Aryans and Turanians In 1818 August Wilhelm von Schlegel (1767– 1845), developing the work of his brother Friedrich (1772– 1829), proposed a threefold division of the world’s languages (isolating, agglutinative and inflectional), which was later taken up and developed in turn by Wilhelm von Humboldt (1767 – 1835).18 Whilst this ternary classification contained a hierarchical dimension from the outset, it was only with August Schleicher in the middle of the century (Die Sprachen Europas in systematischer Uebersicht, 1850) that it took on a historical19 and biological20 evolutionary perspective. Inflection was said to be characteristic of greater “cerebral” maturity than agglutination, which in turn corresponded to a greater level of development than isolating languages. In other words, Indo-European and Semitic languages were placed at the top of the hierarchy; agglutinative languages – for which Turkish rapidly became the archetype – were associated with more archaic forms of thought; as for isolating languages (represented by Chinese), they were placed at the bottom of the ladder. And so “the door was open to linguistic racism, a component of scientific racism”.21 Like August Schleicher, Oxford Professor Max Mu¨ller thought that “every inflectional language was once agglutinative, and every agglutinative language was once monosyllabic”.22 In his Lectures on the Science of Language given in 1861, he argued that the origins of civilisation (which he placed somewhere between the Caspian Sea and Transoxiana) resulted from a basic opposition between two irreducible entities, namely agricultural Aryans and nomadic Turanians.

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This duality was based on an antinomy, “the Aryans would seem to have chosen this name for themselves as opposed to the nomadic races, the Turanians, whose original name Tura implies the swiftness of the horseman”. Inversely, ”the name Turanian is used in opposition to Aryan, and is applied to the nomadic races of Asia as opposed to agricultural or Aryan races”.23 The primitive Aryans as portrayed by Max Mu¨ller equate to a sort of historiographical archetype, mastering the arts of tilling the land, building roads, working metals and domesticating animals. In the wake of the Indo-European hypothesis the works of many other nineteenth-century authors teemed with similar descriptions of a people with discreet origins yet providential gifts, and destined to success on a planetary scale.24 The specificity of Max Mu¨ller’s thought resides in the way he hitches the taxonomy specific to anthropology mentioned earlier – Turanian vs. Aryan – to the linguistic evolutionism he borrows from August Schleicher – advancing from agglutination towards inflection. Mu¨ller agrees that these two distinct processes provide a principle of morphological differentiation, with on the one hand the affixed accumulations characteristic of “Turanian languages”, and on the other the phonetic transformations that make it “impossible after a time to decide [for Aryan languages] which was the root and which the modificatory element”: The difference between an Aryan and Turanian language is somewhat the same as between a good and bad mosaic. The Aryan words seem made of one piece, the Turanian words clearly show the sutures and fissures.25 In explaining why he combines the order of ethnos with that of language, Mu¨ller refers to the role played by literature and politics in conserving linguistic material. But these can carry out this function “only among people whose history runs on in one main stream; and where religion, law, and poetry supply well-defined borders which hem in on every side the current use of language.” Mu¨ller goes on: Among the Turanian nomads no such nucleus of a political, social, or literary character has ever been formed. Empires were no sooner founded than they were scattered again like the sand-clouds of the

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desert; no laws, no songs, no stories outlived the age of their authors.26 Hence Turanian agglutinative languages remain quite literally gluing together in a state of “immobility” – as observed by the German philologist Louis Benloew living in France (1818– 1900)27 – due to the forever repeated process of suffixation perpetuating the divide between Aryan inflection and Turanian agglutination, with it being understood that “Turkish is a Turanian dialect; its grammar is purely Tataric or Turanian”. It is for that matter the conjugation of the Turkish verb bakmak (meaning “to watch”) that Max Mu¨ller gives as an example to illustrate verbal variation of the agglutinative phenomenon.28 Max Mu¨ller’s Lectures were soon translated into French, in 1864, and gained widespread acceptance, as illustrated by the work of the librarian and translator of the Grimm brothers’ fairytales Fre´de´ric Baudry (1818– 85), for whom “Turkish is comparable only to the impoverished dialects of Asia, which are unknown, without literature, and with no consequential role in history on a grand scale. When compared to our classical languages they shed no direct light on them, whereas Sanskrit, their older brother, immediately brings out all their secrets”. Despite this Baudry develops his own ethno-linguistic taxonomy:29 the more barbaric people are, and the more regular their language is. It is as if instinct builds words and thought spoils them [. . .] In African languages, such as Wolof, spoken in Senegal, things are even more transparent than they are in Turkish [. . .] If language acts as a faithful mirror of a people’s mind, that of the savages of America is no doubt the most rudimentary, for their state as nomadic hunters is at the bottom of the ladder. Most American languages, built up using the method of agglutination and synthesis, stand out for their particular character, a sign of the extreme impoverishment of ideas and how frequently they are repeated.30 In this period of imperialism Chinese was no longer at the bottom of the ladder, where Schleicher had put it, and was now replaced by the idioms of people destined to be colonised: “finally, the only true primitives are people with agglutinative languages (including Amerindian and African

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languages amongst others)”.31 And whilst it was not necessarily the most harshly regarded, Turkish remained the canonical example of an agglutinative language. In other terms, it is quite possible that the scholarly attention legitimately paid to the “providential couple” of Aryans and Semites32 involuntarily contributed to the Aryan/Turanian pair being accorded a secondary role in the historiography, and even on occasions being omitted from it, even though it turns out to be quite important for understanding how imperial European epistemogonies were structured in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.33

The Fair-Haired Darlings of Racial Science, and Those There Villainous Turks Those unclassifiable Turks (1850s– 1870s) Whilst the Turkish language was soon promoted to the status of the archetypal agglutinative language, the “Turkish race” only became established within the Western anthropological imaginary at a later date. The main proponents of Aryanism in the 1850s, such as Arthur de Gobineau (1816– 82) and Adolphe Pictet (1799–1875), held the Turks to be an aggregate of poorly identified tribes. Gobineau, the author of An Essay on the Inequality of Human Races,34 did not exclude that even originally “the Oghuz were an Aryan nation”, observing that ”there would be something to be said about that”. But he does not pursue this very far, for what conclusion may be drawn from “the history of a people of such mixed race as the Turks”?: Centuries elapsed from the time of the first appearance of the Turanian hordes to the day which saw them the masters of the city of Constantine, and during that period, multifarious events took place; the fortune of the Western Turks has been a checkered one. Alternately conquerors or conquered, masters or slaves, they have become incorporated with various nationalities [. . .] The Osmanli were not yet existing at that time, and their predecessors, the Seldjuks, were already greatly mixed with the races that had embraced Islamism. [. . .T]here is every reason to believe that already in the 13th century, the ancient Oghuse branch was strongly tinctured with Shemitic blood.35

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Adolphe Pictet, for his part, writing in 1859, put forward a vague formulation of the idea that for primitive Aryas the “barbarians” were: All those who did not share their blood and their language, and this proved they had a strong feeling of superiority over neighbouring races. In all probability these must have been the Finno-Tartars to the North, and perhaps the Semites to the West, before they descended towards Mesopotamia from the regions of Armenia where they first lived.36 A similar hesitancy may be detected in the writings of Paul Topinard (1830– 1911), who was head of the School of Anthropology founded by Paul Broca in Paris: The actual existence of a particular group designated by the name of the Turks, and in subjection to that portion of the Mongolian race which has been given that of Turanians, is therefore indisputable. But are there any remains of them, and what is their type? The Tchuvatches of whom we thought, speak a Taˆtaˆr language, but as regards physique they are Fins. The Yakuts are absolutely Tungooses; the Turcomans, the Uzbeks, and the Kirghis are also Mongolians in various degrees. The Osmanlis have so crossed with the Circassians and the Greeks that they have become Europeans. The Taˆtaˆrs of Kashan and of the Crimea are intermediate as regards their physiognomy. To sum up: a primitive Turk must have existed, but it is impossible to determine at what period. It is probable that it approximated to the Mongolian type.37 In short, uncertainty abounded over how to categorise the Turks throughout most of the nineteenth century. It was not until the last two decades that the Turanian, closely followed by the Turk, appeared on the racial anthropological horizon under the name of the brachycephalic Alpine race.

The Turkish race apprehended by its skull (1880– 1900) Let us briefly go back in time to see whence came this category, which went on to have a fine career in 1930s Turkey. Physical anthropology had been practised since the mid-eighteenth century, and it underwent a

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decisive turn with the publication of the Me´moire sur les formes du craˆne chez les habitants du Nord (1846, first edition in German in 1845). It was in this work that the Swedish naturalist Anders Adolf Retzius (1796– 1860) put forward a new epistemic tool for conceiving of the diversity of the species, namely the cephalic index (this designation itself was coined subsequently by Paul Broca), that is to say the ratio of the maximum width and the maximum length of the skull. Armed with this new tool for somatic differentiation, Retzius distinguished between dolichocephalic (long-headed) and brachycephalic (short-headed). He also considered the respective position of the jaws, leading him to distinguish between orthognate (with aligned jaws) and prognate. Let us quote a contemporary digest of Retzius’s classification of mankind: The first class, orthognate dolichocephalic nations, with a long head and aquiline face, include the Celtic and Germanic tribes; the second class, prognate dolichocephalic nations, with a long head but protruding lower jaw, consist of the Negroes, Australians, Oceanians, Greenlanders, Caribbeans, Aztecs, etc.; the third class, orthognate brachycephalic nations, with short heads but an aquiline face are comprised of the Lapps, Finns, Slavs, Turks, Persians, etc.; the fourth class, prognate brachycephalic nations, with a short head and protuding lower jaw, equate to the Tatar, Mongol, Malay, Inca or Peruvian, and Papua tribes, etc.38 Retzius’s typology soon won “undisputed scientific credit amongst pioneers in the physical anthropology of all nationalities”.39 But it was not until the late 1870s that the German authors Theodor Poesche (1824– 99) and Karl Penka (1847– 1912) took Retzius’s dolichocephalic and Gobineau’s Aryan and fused them into a single entity – the blond dolichocephalic Aryan. This new epistemic creature was said to originate not in Asia, where the comparatists placed the origins of Indo-Europeans, but in the cradle of northern Europe. And so “after the works of Poesche and Penka it became the fashion in a rapidly widening circle of scholars to speak of Baltic blonds as having constituted an aristocratic minority amongst the Greeks, the Romans, and even farther afield”.40 In turn in the 1880s the French librarian Georges Vacher de Lapouge, a lawyer by training, systemised the distinction between “long skulls” and “round skulls” (or “short skulls”).

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For him the European population could be broken down into two fundamental groups: Homo Europaeus and Homo Alpinus.41 Lapouge’s Europaeus, or Aryan dolicho-blond, is the same as that of Poesche and Penka, and also comes from northern Europe. Homo Alpinus, on the other hand, was Lapouge’s invention. He was brachycephalic, darkhaired and short, and said to live in mountainous zones, equating in France to the Massif Central and the Alps, whence his name, even though he was non-indigenous to Europe. This physiological differentiation was accompanied by a difference in psychology and sociology; Europaeus was confident and dominant, ambitious, a good warrior and particularly prevalent amongst the upper classes; as for Alpinus, “he is inert, mediocre, but a good breeder. His patience knows no bounds; he is a subservient subject, a passive soldier, an obedient minor official”.42 The relationship between the two groups was agonistic. History may thus be resumed to the “unconscious struggle between races”, benefiting the brachycephalic component. Lapouge recasts the French Revolution, for example, as the “supreme and victorious effort of the Turanian population”, that is to say of the brachycephalic race, to the detriment of the mainly dolichocephalic aristocracy.43 Finally, and in order to counter the otherwise inevitable dwindling of the Aryan component, Lapouge, working with the German Otto Ammon,44 suggested founding a new science, “anthropo-sociology”, also known as “social selection”,45 which, as we shall see a bit later, was referred to by the Kemalist men of science. In short, Lapouge went back to the ancient antinomy between Aryans and Turanians only now motivated by modern racism, under the guise of the opposition between the “dolicocephalic” and the “brachycephalic”, where the latter equates to ”Turanian”, a term that became increasingly synonymous with “Turk” over the last two decades of the nineteenth century.46 Although the project to establish the new discipline of anthroposociology was a failure in academic terms, the conceptual kinship, if not utter equivalence established by Lapouge between the labels “Alpine”, “Turanian” and “brachycephalic” entered the mainstream at the turn of the twentieth century, a factor which was instrumental in (re)making the Turk the very archetype of the Anti-European. The concept of the “Alpine race” appears for example in The Races of Europe, a comprehensive study published in 1899 by the American William Zebina Ripley,

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a lecturer in anthropology at Columbia University (who was appointed at Harvard University in 1901). Ripley borrows Lapouge’s distinction between the Northern Aryan (rechristened the “Teuton”) and the Alpine race, represented by the Turks and the Turcomans: The fact is that the Asiatic Turkomans, whence our Osmanli Turks are derived, are a highly composite type. A very important element in their composition is that of certain brachycephalic Himalayan peoples, the Galchas and the Tadjiks, who are for all practical purposes identical with the Alpine type of western Europe [. . .] So close is this affiliation [. . .] that the occurrence of this type in western Asia is the keystone in any argument for the Asiatic origin of the Alpine race in Europe.47 Despite the Turks being of composite racial type they are here presented as the keystone for the hypothesis that the European brachycephalics originated in Asia. But not all brachycephalics were placed on an equal footing, with the Turks of Anatolia being more brachycephalic than those from the Balkans, and thus a sliding scale of brachycephalisation could be detected as one moved away from Europe: West of the Bosporus the Turks differ but little from the surrounding Slavs in head form. They have been bred down from the former extreme brachycephaly, which still rules to a greater degree in Asia Minor.48 In other words, Ripley – whose book was to inspire the proponents of white supremacy in the USA – hammered the point home; within the Western anthropological imaginary, the Turk was the very epitome of brachycephaly, just as brachycephaly was epitomised by the Turk.49 And so when in 1926 Frank Hankins, a professor at Northampton (Massachussetts), published a critical overview of the history of the Nordic school of thought, he was quite right in portraying Alpinus as “typified” since Vacher de Lapouge, “by the Turk and the Auvergnat”.50 The comparative and anthropometric traditions we have just looked at assign all things Turkish and Turanian – both words and men – either to the intermediate phases in the great book of Speech, or else to a

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status of hereditary cretinism within the diversity of homo sapiens as a species. It is thus easy to appreciate why the Turkist nationalists of the late Ottoman Empire and newly formed Republic of Turkey bundled them all into the same hated epistemic category labelled “European science”. It would here be in vain to plead the complexity and polyphony within Western science.51 For the axiom of the non-congruence of linguistic and raciological classifications was a principle that was in fact followed very imperfectly, and it only became authoritative within learned and semi-learned production of the nineteenth and early years of the twentieth century most laboriously.52 This left the organic intellectuals of the Kemalist regime with more than enough time to nourish their resentment, and it is now time to examine the multiple forms in which this transpired.

A Place in the Sun: Variations on Kemalist Epistemic Resentment In 1930s Turkey the disciplines of history and linguistics were considered to be the twin pillars of a single entity known as “Turkish science”. Illustration of this is provided by the founding of two “sister societies” in Ankara in 1931 and 1932, respectively: the Society for the Study of Turkish History (Tu¨rk Tarihi Tetkik Cemiyeti, subsequently the Tu¨rk Tarih Kurumu, henceforth referred to as the TTK), and the Society for the Study of the Turkish Language (Tu¨rk Dili Tetkik Cemiyeti, subsequently the Tu¨rk Dil Kurumu, and henceforth the TDK).53 These two organisations were separate from the University, though they did at times have strong links with it. They were given the task of drawing up the regime’s linguistic and historiographical dogma. As for anthropology, it had a foot in each institute since “the Turkish historical and linguistic sciences, these twin sisters, are thus tasked with building Turkish anthropology”.54 Thus the TTK and the TDK regularly held history kongre and linguistics kurultay (“assemblies” or “congresses”). These symposia were broadcast over the radio and amounted to celebrations of political dogma, lasting several days and attended by hundreds of participants from all over Turkey, as well as by all the intellectual, bureaucratic, military and even economic elites within the country. Scholarly publications (conference proceedings, journals and press articles) by the TDK and the TTK constituted the very corpus of what I would

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preferably be referring to as “Kemalist science”. Three main tendencies may be detected here: contestation, acculturation and counteracculturation. Far from being mutually exclusive these three stances of oppugning, correcting and subverting were in fact co-present within Kemalist intellectual endeavour most of the time, illustrating just how complex the patterns of discursive circulation and appropriation actually were. Indeed, it would be reductive to see the matter as simply one opposing Turkey to the “West”, for we need to take into account the three-way and even four-way circulation of ideas between Turkey, Western Europe, Eastern Europe and Soviet Russia.

Oppugning: The Kemalist Critique of “Indo-Europeanism” A Kemalist form of anti-racism? The attitude of contestation was to be found from the very first Congress of the Society for the Study of Turkish History, which was held in Ankara in July 1932, with the outright denunciation of European learning. In his capacity as Dean of the Faculty of letters of the University of Istanbul, the historian Ko¨pru¨lu¨zaˆde Mehmed Fuad (1890–1966) castigated the “sort of fanaticism of Indo-Europeanness [bir nevi Hint-Avrupaıˆlik taassubu] [which] has developed amongst European men of letters” – a way of thinking which he viewed as deeply linked to “nineteenth-century European imperialism” – and which he detected in Gobineau and his “numerous German adepts”.55 The same denunciation rang out at the 1934 kurultay (this time on linguistics), where the head of the grammar section of the Society for the Study of the Turkish Language, Ahmet Cevat Emre (1876– 1961), condemned “a mentality linked to the nineteenth-century imperialism of the Europeans” within Western publications on linguistics.56 His paper was a direct and systematic attack on the “conservative dogma” within European universities: European universities today are all in thrall to the most extreme form of conservatism. The linguistics inherited from the great thinkers of the previous century is now in the hands of the apprentices, who use the professorial chairs they hold as a barricade57 against new schools of thought; they are unable to bring anything new to the science and smirk quietly58 whilst denouncing new discoveries as charlatanism.59

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Even though they are forced to admit that the division into inflectional, agglutinative, and isolating languages is of no value with regard to kinship, the proponents of the conservative dogma are unable to quench the flames of Aryanism and Germanism that burn in their hearts.60 The paper by the medical doctor Saim Ali Dilemre (1880– 1954) focused on denouncing the “racism” of the comparatists, and though the style is more spoken the ideas clearly come from the same stable: Which are the oldest of these families or syste`mes linguistiques?61 For some the problem is insoluble. But others hold that isolating languages are the oldest, whilst inflectional languages are the most recent. Agglutinative languages are somewhere between the two. And these systems follow one from the other. They only correspond to stages of development. They say that all languages come from a single family, and that the inflectional system, being the most recent, is proof of a more advanced stage; for them this question of language is, with the inflectional system, the hallmark of superior skill. And the nations which speak inflectional languages are more evolved racially, they say that they are more resourceful. It is staggering to see the extent to which politics, racism makes its way into the arguments set out in these works.62 When they speak of sagas, the oldest surviving pieces of literature, Scandinavian linguists sing the praise of the Vikings. In his discussion of the Indo-European languages, the great Professor Meillet sings the praises of the race on almost every page, along the lines of: “these heroic Indo-Europeans, thanks to their intellectual resourcefulness and thanks to the courage which is specific to them, discovered Iceland using the most primitive of boats”. And everywhere that inflection is to be found, those who speak it are the dominant class. They are the classe dirigeante.63 That is how all Europeans view things.64 Let us last look at the virtually Leninist cavalry charge to be found in a SLT textbook for students in the faculty of letters at the Faculty of letters of Ankara, published in 1936 by the national printing agency:

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nowadays there is not a single serious linguists or historian left who would not agree that the factors which shaped the emergence of the Indo-European school of thought in linguistics and history are: colonialism, avarice for material resources, and the priest mentality ( papas zihniyeti).65 These words, written by the professor of Turkology Abdu¨lkadir I˙nan, almost prefigure the anti-racism of UNESCO and the teachings of Le´viStrauss in the 1950s:66 The Indo-European linguistic school has presented the IndoEuropean or Indo-Germanic language, which it calls inflectional, as the most involved language in the world and as that which created culture. As if the race which spoke this language, endowed with a very superior mind, had first stirred in India and, by dint of chanting hymns, had found itself in Europe where it is said to have brought culture and language. That is the romantic aspect of IndoEuropeanism, mixed with politics. As for the science, it runs fully contrary to this romanticism. The findings of the latest research have shown that the classification of languages into monosyllabic, agglutinative, and inflectional is wholly without foundation. In Tibetan, a language in the Sino-Indian group (I˙ndo-C¸ini diller) considered as belonging to the category of primitive languages and viewed as “monosyllabic”, agglutination and internal inflection have been found side-by-side. As for the Malay-Polynesian language (Malay-Polinez dili), which is considered to be the most primitive, it has been established that there are dialects which include prefixes.67 This quotation is given extra edge by the fact that it comes from a university textbook, the sole purpose of which was to champion and illustrate the Sun-Language Theory – which is virtually indistinguishable in its jingoistic tone from the “Indo-Europeanist romanticism” castigated by its author. But that does not prevent it from illustrating how Kemalist meta-linguistic discourse was shot through with an antagonistic vision of the world of learning, which systematically opposed “Turkish intellectual endeavour” to “European intellectual endeavour”, the “Turkish school” to the “classical school”, “Turkish

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linguistics” to “Indo-European linguistics”, the “Turkish science of etymology” to the “European science of etymology”. Turkish and European (in fact it is a matter of Western European) here form the dual faces of an absolute antinomy, that drew its sources of rhetorical and intellectual inspiration from across the Black Sea, in Russia and in Central Europe.

Epistemic national Bolshevism Since the 1920s the exiled intellectuals of the Prague Linguistic Circle had been opposing “Russian science” (Roman Jakobson) or “Eurasian science” (Nikolaı¨ Trubetzkoy) to “Romano-Germanic science”.68 The Georgian Nikolaı¨ Marr (1865– 1934), dean of the faculty of Oriental languages at Saint Petersburg (1911– 18), was for his part militating for the rehabilitation of “minor languages” against the “imperialism” of European comparatists. On the eve of World War I he was arguing that the languages of the Caucasus, known as the “Japhetic” languages, predated “Aryo-European dialects”.69 After the Bolshevik Revolution Marr reworked his “Japhetic theory”, which had until then been marked by Caucasian nationalism, to adapt it to the canons of Marxist Leninism. This proved a decisive turn which enabled his doctrine to be promoted to the status of official truth in the Soviet Union, whilst Marr himself was appointed president of the State Academy for the History of Material Culture, a position he held from 1919 until his death. “Indo-European linguistics is the purest expression of decadent bourgeois society based on the European oppression of the Oriental peoples placed under the yoke of a murderous colonial policy”, Marr wrote.70 As an alternative to Western “bourgeois linguistics” he put forward his new “proletarian scientific theory”, renamed the “new theory of language” in 1925.71 Marr visited Istanbul and Ankara in March 1933, and was a prime source of inspiration for the linguists in Ankara.72 It was within this context that Abdu¨lkadir I˙nan was tasked with translating from the Russian a text by Marr about “the birthplace of Turkish dialects” for his colleagues at the TDK. Abdu¨lkadir/Fethu¨lkadir I˙nan (1889– 1976) was the son of a Tatar imam from Bashkiria, and he started out as a teacher in Muslim secondary schools in the Tsarist Empire. Shortly after World War I he was involved in Russian Muslim independentist struggles. But the Bolshevik victory forced him into exile, first in India in 1924, and then

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in Marseille, Paris and Berlin.73 Like many other Muslim nationalist militants from the Russian Empire who saw their project to found an independent Turkic Republic on Anatolian soil come to fruition,74 Abdu¨lkadir Bey moved to Turkey in 1925 where he became assistant to the historian Ko¨pru¨lu¨zaˆde Mehmed Fuad. He was soon co-opted to the Society for the Study of the Turkish Language, and in 1936 was appointed to the chair of Turkology at the brand-new faculty of letters at the University of Ankara. Abdu¨lkadir I˙nan spoke perfect Russian, and basically ferried ideas back and forth across the Black Sea. In his introduction to his translation into Turkish of Marr’s writings, he highlights the areas of convergence between Soviet and Kemalist linguistics: Marr’s great contribution to the field of linguistics lies in his revolt against the fanaticism of the Indo-European classical school and against the condescending attitude and neglect it entailed for languages not viewed as deriving from Latin, Greek, and Sanskrit. “Indo-Europeanism”, as Marr sees it, is an illness which does as much to hinder the progress of science as the fanaticism of Catholic priests did during the mediaeval period.75 In this passage the customary charges of “fanaticism” and suspicions of obscurantism – archetypally laid against the things deemed Oriental – are cast back onto the Europeans, with medieval priests and contemporary intellectuals being lumped together. But Abdu¨lkadir I˙nan brings out a major difference between the Kemalist scholarship and the (updated) Marrist orthodoxy. The Kemalists, despite their recriminations against the excesses of “Indo-Europeanism”, were basically convinced of the heuristic benefits of raciological classification, whilst Nikolaı¨ Marr’s “universal theory of language”, adapted to the postulate of historical materialism, sought to embrace all of humanity within its epistemic horizon. Hence Abdu¨lkadir I˙nan does not conceal his scepticism of Marr’s “anti-racism”, a shift he views as indicating that science was now subservient to politics in the Soviet Union, thus portending scientific impoverishment: Over recent years Marr has endeavoured to make his “Japhetidological theory” comply with official State principles in Russia today, and to make it an instrument serving the purposes

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of Marxist propaganda. As the racist movement has become inflamed, especially in Germany, the Russian Communists have used their Japhetidological theory as a weapon against nationalist and racist movements. They have launched a pitiless combat mobilising all intellectuals interested in anthropology, the history of material culture, folklore, and ethnography [. . .] It is doubtful whether Japhetidology will be very effective against German racism with these “theories”. But it is clear that it will be an effective way of corrupting the ideas of racial and national unity, of kinship of blood and language amongst non-Russian nations living in Russia. As a result of the form and course recently taken by Marr’s highly important theory, it has lost much of its intellectual value.76 Interestingly enough, in this passage Bolshevik anti-racism is being interpreted not only as a strategic reaction to the tenets of German supremacy but also as a weapon against the non-Russian within the Soviet Empire, among whom the Turkic peoples subjugated to forced assimilation. In other words, according to Abdu¨lkadir I˙nan, racism, rather than “anti-racism”, appears to be the ideological tool for emancipation of the Turks as one transnational ethno-nation. The attitudes of the Russian-speaking supporters of Marrism and Eurasianism towards European science has been described thirty years ago by the Slavic specialist Patrick Se´riot as “anti-western thirdworldism”.77 More recently, the political scientist Marle`ne Laruelle has linked the proponents of Eurasianism to a constellation of nationalBolshevik intellectuals. The notion of “national-Bolshevism” refers to a converging set of ideas and political actors that emerged in Germany shortly after World War I, which went on to spread rapidly across Central and Soviet Europe. The national-Bolsheviks replaced the Marxist motif of class struggle with that of defending the “proletarian nations” against the liberal and imperialist West, thereby linking up with the project for a “conservative revolution” (and notably in Germany) and giving way to a re-ethnicisation of national identities.78 Precisely, the ultimate purpose of the Kemalist linguists was not at all to rehabilitate peoples who had been colonised or despised by the West. The common objective they all rallied around was, rather, to reinstate the grandeur of the Turkish race. The virulent anti-imperialism of Kemalist

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intellectuals and their protests against the “racism” of European linguistics is thus more reminiscent of the German conservative revolution than some kind of forerunner of post-World War II thirdworldism. Kemalist linguistics in its dissenting stance is indeed a form of “epistemic national-Bolshevism”. And so it was not just a matter of disputing the narrative of Indo-Europeanism but also of correcting it, thereby reinstating the Turks and their language to their rightful place within the history of civilisation.

Correcting: The “Turko-Indo-European Family” and the “Turo-Aryan Race” At the first congress of “Turkish linguistics” held at Dolmabahce Palace in Istanbul in September–October 1932, a professor of medicine and member of the Society for the Study of the Turkish Language, Saim Ali [Dilemre], acknowledged that “in order to understand the rank that is properly due to the Turkish language, we need to imitate very precisely the methods of philology as practised in Europe, and pay attention to the procedures and rules used there”.79 As we shall see, the corrective approach taken by Kemalist intellectuals involved not only working with the epistemic forms they took from the comparative and raciological European tradition, but also adopting a fair share of its doctrinal content, with the odd minor correction here and there due to the specifics attributed to the Turks. Thus the Kemalist linguists validated for example the idea of linguistic “families” and human “races”. Equally, they adopted the doctrines presiding over how these categories were used (linguistic evolutionism, the doctrine of the inequality between the races and social Darwinism). Lastly, they adhered to the fundamental dogmas of the aforementioned traditions (with inflectional languages being the most evolved, and the Aryan race superior). What differed was that they stated that the Turkish language belonged to the group of Indo-European languages and/or that the Turks belonged to the Aryan or the white race. This concern to whiten their skin (or to Indo-Europeanise their language) was in complete contradiction with the attitude of contestation discussed earlier. Before going any further and seeing just how much the Kemalist intellectuals borrowed from the Western comparative tradition, be it willingly or not, it is important to pause for a moment to examine what I shall be calling the epistemic mindset of Kemalist linguistics.

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A word of warning about the Kemalist epistemic mindset In his 2004 paper I˙lker Aytu¨rk clearly shows how, as of the last third of the nineteenth century, certain Ottoman scholars (as well as certain Europeans living in Constantinople, many of whom had converted to Islam) endeavoured to demonstrate that Turkish was related to the European languages, in which they were followed by certain intellectuals in the Turkish Republic. Aytu¨rk establishes an important distinction on the basis of this observation, identifying two clearly distinct attitudes within the trajectories taken by Kemalist metalinguistic discourse: First was the attempt to blur the line distinguishing the inflectional from the agglutinative categories and to assert that Turkish is an IndoEuropean language. The second form of reaction was even more daring than the first. It aimed at establishing Turkish as the Ursprache, the original mother language of all human beings. The apogee of the second movement was the notorious Sun-Language Theory of 1936.80 I wish to add two details to this bipartite distinction. Firstly, blurring the line between the inflectional language group and the agglutinative language group whilst at the same time asserting that Turkish belongs to the group of IndoEuropean languages can only work if the comparatists’s taxonomic equivalence based on morphological criteria (Indo-European languages ¼ inflectional languages) is first broken. And the only place to turn to for an alternative taxonomy was the axiology of race (Indo-European languages ¼ languages of the white race or languages of the Aryan race). In other words, in addition to and independently of the general political context in 1930s Turkey that was eminently favourable to promoting racial categories, the outright repudiation of Schlegel’s tripartite classification was an internal – and strictly intellectual – factor at work within the racialisation of Kemalist linguistic thought. Secondly, the alternative presented by Aytu¨rk – ushering Turkish into the Indo-European “family” or else making Turkish the mother-language of humanity – is an etic and not an emic distinction, that is to say it is an ex post assessment produced by the analyst, and not an in situ one produced by the Kemalist men of learning. The latter were in fact little bothered by any such distinctions. And above all they did not perceive the two as coming from antagonistic epistemic orders. However, whilst the first statement (“Turkish belongs to the IndoEuropean languages”) relates back to the nineteenth-century, polygenic episteme of comparative grammar, the second statement (“Turkish is the mother language of humanity”) proceeds from what Foucault has called the “classical” episteme, and is related to the proto-nationalist but still monogenic theories which, from the sixteenth through to the eighteenth century, sought to downplay the biblical antecedents of Hebrew as humanity’s original language and replace it with low German, Hungarian, low Breton, Polish and so on and so forth, to return to the theories mocked by Leibniz in the epigraph to this article. “Suffice it to recall”, Foucault writes, “that the quest for the primitive language, a perfectly acceptable theme up to the eighteenth century, was enough, in the second half of the nineteenth century, to throw any discourse into, I would not say error, but rather into a world of Schumacher and revelry – into pure and

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simple linguistic monstrosity”.81 But Kemalist linguistics, on the contrary, displayed a bewildering degree of epistemic volatility, and so the two attitudes that Aytu¨rk envisages, rather than following chronologically from one another for the most part actually coexisted. Very frequently Sun-Language theoreticians claimed that Turkish had sired only “civilised languages”, that is to say European ones, going so far as to claim that “the Turkish linguistic school is not monogenic”.82 But they also bluntly affirmed that Turkish was the original language of humanity.83 The joint presence of these strictly contradictory statements affords a perfect illustration of how the SLT, with its theoretical eclecticism, and its multiple authors who were hailing from disparate disciplines and prone to the epistemic profligacy, was in fact more of an aggregate of heteroclite reasonings than it was a unified demonstration drawn up under the aegis of some form of common and cumulative rationality. In other words, it would be a nominalist fallacy to persist in believing that the beguiling name of the “Sun-Language Theory” points to any cohesive discursive substance.

Indo-Europeanising the language It was Constantin Borzecki who conducted “the earliest attempt to link the Turkic languages to the languages spoken by Indo-Europeans, the so-called Aryan people”.84 In this he exactly prefigured the corrective stance of the Kemalist organic intellectuals. He was a Polish e´migre´ who had fled the repression of the 1848 insurrection, going first to Paris and then to Constantinople, where he converted to Islam, took the name Mustafa Celaleddin, became a teacher at the School of War and was granted the title of Pasha by Sultan Abdulmecid. In 1869 he published Les Turcs anciens et modernes, a work which is well-known to Turkologists and considered as a cornerstone of Turkish nationalism. The second part of this work bears the eloquent title of L’Europe et le touro-aryanisme. It is worth quoting the declaration of intent that the author placed at the head of his typescript, the original of which is held by the Bibliothe`que nationale de France: In writing these few pages about the Turkish nation I wished to enclose myself within certain limits. However, the recent declaration by M. Casimir Delamarre in his petition to the Senate of the French Empire, calling for the teaching of a history programme in which the Turks and Muscovites are ejected from the family of European Aryans and relegated to the race representing the barbarity of Asia, compels me to add a few words.

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These few lines have been crossed out and replaced by the following handwritten introductory lines: Contemporary ethnological theory, which excludes the Turanian races from the family of the Aryans of Europe, in addition to revealing an ignorance of the languages of Asia, also violates the historical rights of the Turks to their due place amongst the principal branches of humanity. Here is the thesis that I have started to draw up using historical data and data from comparative philology.85 Demonstrating “the characteristic Aryanism of the Turkish language”86 or else proving the existence of a great “Turo-Aryan race” that introduced humanity to civilisation are typical examples of this corrective approach, which consisted in forcing open the door of Fortress Europe in order to let the Turks in – even if this involved battering down the morphological lines of defence (the old categorisation taken from Schlegel of isolating, agglutinative and inflectional languages) that underpinned its scientific definition and adopting racial categories as an alternative taxonomy. This is a point that gets us to the heart of the matter: the racialisation of the linguistic discourse in Turkey does not date back only to the “discovery” of the Sun-Language Theory in 1935, for race, together with the “purification” and “nationalisation” of the language, was already a major obsession of the first kurultay of Turkish linguistics held in autumn 1932. This partially invalidates the “instrumentalist hypothesis” mentioned earlier, for in its racialist dimension the SLT is more the end result of a lengthy intellectual process than it is the expression of a short-term political strategy intended to resolve the difficulties encountered over the course of the “language revolution”. The programme of the first kurultay is explicit here, for those attending were invited to address various subjects including the question of “the antiquity of the Turkish language and its relation with (a) IndoEuropean languages, (b) all languages of the white races, (c) other languages from Asia and from Europe”.87 Doctor Saim Ali [Dilemre], who we encountered earlier sniping at the “racism” of Europeans, worked in the department of urology (bevliye) at the Istanbul medicine faculty. It was he who gave one of the first

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papers at the 1932 kurultay, with the to-the-point title “Turkish philology: The Turkish language is an Indo-European language”, in which he puts forward the idea of a “Turko-Indo-European linguistic unity”. For there is no doubt that: the advent of the Neolithic revolution in Europe, which is part and parcel of the same event as the brachycephalic invasion (Brakisefal istilaˆsı), that is to say the appearance of Alpines (Alplılar), made it inevitable that the language of Central Asia, which is ancient Turkish, should enter Europe; a large number of Alpine waves spread the Turanian language in Europe; and this is why the roots of the Altaic language are, at the same time, European.88 The following speakers were not linguistic aces either. After the urologist-Turkologist, the primary schoolteacher Mehmet Saffet took it upon himself to examine “the antecedents and sovereignty of the Turkish language. The kinship between Turkish and the Aryan languages”.89 The head of the development office at the Istanbul Chamber of Commerce gave a paper on “the relationship and affinities between Turkish and other languages, the origin of the specificity of Turkish, the mother-language of Indo-Europe”.90 The Turkist activist Raifpas¸azaˆde Fuat (later Fuat Ko¨seraif) held forth inter alia, and perhaps with slightly greater moderation, on the “common points and differences between the Indo-European languages and our Turkish”.91 The address by the Armenian Artin Cebeli, apparently a teacher in the Armenian Catholic school in Istanbul, did not go unnoticed either. He suggested toppling Sanskrit and replacing it with Turkish in the Indo-European phylogenesis, thus reinventing the idea of “TurkoEuropean kinship” 60 years after Moustafa Djelaleddine: It has been explained that the Turkish language belongs to the same family as the Turko-European languages, and with the languages of all the white races. Etymology will bring into broad daylight the treasure of the Turkish language. The mother of the languages in the Aryan family is not Sanskrit, but Turkish.92

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Whitening the race If we now turn to raciology, we will find the same attitude transpiring in the whitening of Turkish skin, that is to say in disassociating the Turks from the “yellow” or “Mongol” race. The historian Ko¨pru¨lu¨zaˆde – to who, as we noticed supra, displayed patent hostility towards the Indo-European tradition in general and the figure of Gobineau in particular – only brought his paper at the July 1932 history congress to a close once he had paid due respect to the “beauty of the Turkish race”, thereby illustrating how porous the boundaries were between an oppugning form of antiracism and a merely corrective form of raciology: In truth, the numerous literary and historical documents that I have seen hitherto incontestably show that the Turkish race is not an example of ugliness [bir cirkinlik nu¨munesi], as is written in certain books of anthropology, but on the contrary the epitome of beauty [gu¨zellik timsali]. In works of anthropology, including the most recent publications, it may be seen that those who are undeniably Turkish, such as the Turks of Anatolia or Rumelia, do not belong to the so-called Mongol or mongoloid race.93 Afet I˙nan (1908–85), the adopted daughter of Mustafa Kemal, was very active as an intellectual throughout the 1930s. In 1941 she published her thesis, completed in Lausanne under the supervision of Euge`ne Pittard, a Swiss anthropologist and professor at the university there. Her thesis is based on an anthropometric survey purportedly carried out on 64,000 inhabitants in Anatolia in the late 1930s.94 She opens her thesis with a childhood memory: As for me, what led me to those studies was the reaction I felt as a schoolgirl on seeing the Turkish people sometimes, and all too frequently, being presented in the history and geography textbooks as one of the representatives of the yellow race. I saw, I thought that that was not correct. My inspiration, which is taken from Atatu¨rk’s ideas on history, incited me to lay claim for the Turkish people to the high rank that is its due within history.

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This recently graduated Kemalist anthropologist now had at her disposal the weapons she required to protest against however since the works of Georges Cuvier, in the early nineteenth century: Turks have been placed amongst the Mongols or amongst the Yellows or, at least (in Deniker), among men with white-yellowish skin [. . .] But the Turks do not present any of these mongoloid characteristics they are sometimes attributed with; they are indubitably from the white race. Amongst them individuals of mongoloid origin may be encountered due to migrations, conquests, and the various means by which human populations mix. As is the case with certain Tatars, where I insist that it is only certain of them, for many of them have no mongoloid characteristics.95 Hence the corrective stance of the Kemalist basically amounted to repudiating the existing classification of the races and setting up a new one, where these races could, depending upon one’s wishes, be described either from a linguistic perspective (“Indo-European”, “TurkoEuropean”, or “Turko-Indo-European”), or else from a biological one (“white”, or “Aryan”). We can now assess the schizophrenia in fulminating against the racism of European linguists and anthropologists, before then, and sometimes as part of the same intellectual move, calling for a place for the Turkish language within the set of IndoEuropean languages, or rather within the bosom of this “family”, or for the Turks themselves to take their place within the bosom of the white “race”. Nevertheless, to be utterly precise, Kemalist linguistics was not bipolar. It was in fact tripolar.

Subverting: Brachycephalic is Best, Brachycephalic is Beautiful The third attitude of Kemalist men of learning consisted in reproducing the system of classification of the European comparative and raciological traditions, and then taking this mimetism one stage further. For instead of coming just to some kind of accommodation with the content of these traditions, it actually brought about a reversal in the hierarchies they instituted. Hence the acculturation was no longer corrective, but subversive. It was a matter of counter-acculturation, to use a standard

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distinction within American anthropology, in which the arms of “enemy” are turned back against him. The historiographical doctrine of the Turkish state, known as the Turkish “thesis of history”, contains numerous examples of how the stigmata were projected back against the Europeans, before “Turkish linguistics” then repeated the same pattern, reaching its apogee in the theory of the Sun-Language.

The Turkish thesis of history The “thesis of history” (Tarih Tezi) as developed by Kemalist organic intellectuals from 1929 onwards and then refined throughout the 1930s constitutes a sort of originary account that accorded the Turks a central role in universal history. Let us briefly summarise it. Very long before our era, during prehistoric times, there was a vast expanse of water at the heart of Central Asia called the Great Turkish Sea. The date and exact geography of this inland ocean vary considerably from one author to another. Still, let us note that a 1938 article in Afacan, a weekly magazine for children, pinned down the appearance of the Great Turkish Sea to exactly 22 million years ago, locating it where the Gobi and Taklamakan Deserts are, straddling Mongolia and Chinese Turkestan.96 According to Kemalist scholars, the shores of this inland sea were home to a population that was very advanced in comparison to the rest of humanity, namely the brachycephalic Alpines, or the “brachycephalic Turkish Alpine race”. And then, sometime towards the end of the eighth millennium before our era – when they had already reached the Old Stone Age – a major climate change caused the Great Turkish Sea to rapidly dry up, condemning the proto-Turks (Prototu¨rkler) to disperse. This led them to China, southern Asia, Europe, North Africa and as far as the Americas even. The various races that existed around the globe at that time lived in a very archaic manner. Hence the arrival of the Alpines brought these primitive races many benefits. It was thanks to them that the various races acquired the wheel, learnt how to grow barley, domesticate horses and work metal – in short, underwent nothing less than the Neolithic revolution.97 Were it a bit less racist and a bit more allegorical, the history thesis would look like something straight out of Greek mythology. Equally, it is most surprising that the comparison has never yet been made between the narrative structure of this original dispersal and certain Biblical motifs such as the parting of the Red Sea and the Exodus. To be sure,

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the departure from Egypt is admittedly a return to the homeland. But this is not the only mythological inversion carried out by the Tu¨rk Tarih Tezi, which is also a paradoxical avatar of the Atlantis, with the dried-up sea at the heart of the Asiatic continent being the structural obverse of the drowned continent in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, where the barrenness of the deeps and of the desert steppes both stand testimony to the same original catastrophe. According to the official account, the arrival of the proto-Turks gave rise to the most brilliant civilisations – the Nile civilisation with its pyramids, the Sumerian civilisation which invented writing, the Aegean, Minoan, Phrygian and Etruscan civilisations, whilst the Maya civilisation in Central America is also presented as a splinter group from this original great dispersal. Occurring at the peak of naturalist scientism, the Kemalist account could very well be interpred, in fact, as a modern duplication of ancient Platonic cosmogony,98 providing yet further illustration of the epistemic volatility of the Kemalist organic intellectuals. Finally, let us add that the Arcadian motif of a race of prehistoric shepherds based around a lake in the centre of the Asiatic continent – but predestined to dominate humanity thanks to its natural talents – is an exact replica of the Aryanists’ epistemogonies which, ever since the 1830s, had situated the Proto-Indo-Europeans in a peaceful valley in Bactria or on the foothills of the Hindu Kush.99 Hence the “thesis of history” is the archetypal instance of this rationale, which consists in turning racist dogma forged in the West back against the West.

The Turkish thesis of linguistics The Sun-Language Theory, also known as the “Turkish Thesis of Linguistics”, follows directly on from the “thesis of history”. At the Eighteenth International Congress of Prehistoric Archaeology and Anthropology, held at Bucharest (in September 1937), the Turkish delegate Hasan Res¸it Tankut, a member of the central committee of the Society for the Study of the Turkish Language, gave a perfect demonstration of the intellectual solidarity between these two aspects of “Turkish science”: The Turkish thesis of linguistics and thesis of history work together. Their main principles may be summarised in the following brief terms:

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The Turkish thesis of history holds that “High Culture originated in Turkish lands – Central Asia and later Anterior Asia – and it was the Turks themselves who first created culture and spread it throughout the world.” Our thesis of linguistics states that: “After Asia, this people bore with it to Europe, America, and everywhere else in the world the names for the works of culture it had created, as well as the associated systems of ideas, spreading them amongst those nations where it penetrated”.100 A similar fantasy of far-flung diffusion is to be found from one discipline to the next. For Agop Dilaˆcar (1895– 1979), the SLT quite simply justifies “the principle of the predominance of the Turkish language in world culture”. This Armenian from Istanbul had studied at Robert College before the war, before becoming a teacher in Sofia in the 1920s. He wrote several studies about the origin of the Turkish language which caught the attention of the Kemalist intellectuals. In 1934 he was appointed as a “specialist” by the Tu¨rk Dil Kurumu, placing his vast learning at the service of the Kemalist fantasy.101 In an article called “The bio-psychological basis for the gu¨nes¸-dil theory” published by the TDK bulletin in 1937, he wrote: in addition to the Sumerian languages and the Ural-Altaic group, the Turkish language has been affiliated with the following languages: Indo-European, Indo-Aryan, Greek, Welsh, German, Armenian, Scythian, Dravidian, Elamite, Hittite, Etruscan, Basque, Egyptian, Bantu, and Amerindian, or in other words all of the world’s languages.102 The professor of literature I˙brahim Necmi Dilmen (1889– 1945), who was general secretary to the TDK, formulated this intellectual kinship even more clearly in the same issue of the Tu¨rk Dili journal (The Turkish Language): “the Turkish thesis of linguistics, the sister of the Turkish thesis of history, demonstrates to the scientific world that the source and mother of all languages is the Turkish language”.103 This logic of counter-acculturation also transpired in the denunciation of European raciogical classifications, and their being turned back against their creators. Let us here quote the words of the general secretary

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to the Society for the Study of Turkish History, Res¸it Galip, to the July 1932 history Congress: Our race’s complexion, its size, and the question of its beauty or ugliness, have been the subject of considerable preoccupation for European writers. I have already said [. . .] that recent, robust research has determined that we were the offspring of the brachycephalic Alpines who were the ancestors of civilisations. It would be entertaining to pause for a while to consider the errors European science has traditionally made on this subject.104 For any who might still doubt that the Kemalist intellectuals drank deep at the wellsprings of European scientific racism, here is Agop Dilaˆcar professing his creed: We accept the “Sozialanthropologie” of Otto Ammon and the principle of “social selectionism”. It is our opinion that the race which naturally and socially forms the human elite is the brachycephalic race, which is known under various names and designations [. . .] From Ripley to G. Montandon, Asia has been recognised as the birthplace of brachycephalics. [As for] Dudley Buxton [of Oxford University, he] makes no essential distinction between Alpine Turks and Alpine Europeans.105 The brachycephalic peoples here form the elite of the species, whilst the dolichocephalic ones are the lowly offshoots of inferior races from the Mediterranean or African continent. This idea was presented by Doctor Saim Ali [Dilemre], once again, at the September 1932 linguistics kurultay: It has to be acknowledged that in the most ancient of times, prior to the Neolithic period, the Mediterranean races and the African races made up the dolichos [sic] of Europe, and that the dolichos of the North are from the same progeny, but that due to certain historical events they remained in the North. It goes without saying that the brachycephalics brought a language from Central Asia with them, and that this language

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and its derivatives are the ancestors of the Indo-European languages.106 It was the same story four years later, at the August 1936 kurultay, this time as told by I˙brahim Necmi Dilmen: History proves that the earliest human civilisation arose from the brachycephalic Turks of Central Asia and their migration across Europe, Africa, America, and Australia. It is observed that they were in a far more advanced stage of civilisation than the dolichocephalic Africans [. . . ] It is thus impossible that when the brachycephalic Turks from Central Asia spread out across the Earth, taking their culture with them, which was superior to that of the dolichocephalics, that they did not also take the new words created by this culture with them.107 The third stance, which we have been calling subversive, consists, like the corrective stance, in validating the cardinal doctrines and categories of Indo-Europeanism and Aryanism. Here the Kemalist linguists pushed their imitation of its forms to the point of annexing some of its epistemic tools (such as the cephalic index) and certain narrative tropes (the pastoral beginnings and original catastrophe); however, they completely overthrew the comparatist’s hierarchy, with the Kemalist proto-Turk replacing the proto-Indo-European as the originary figure, and the Alpine brachycephalic Turk toppling the blonde dolichocephalic Aryan from his place on the throne of civilisation. There was no question of sharing supremacy with the Europeans in some “Turo-Aryan race” or “Turko-Indo-European family” anymore. There was no room left now except for the Turks, whilst the Europeans found themselves relegated to the subaltern echelons of humanity, taking their place alongside the Africans.

In Search of the Singularity of the Kemalists: Towards an Internalist Hermeneutics of the Sun-Language Theory The “thesis of history” and the SLT both provide a way of combining cultural outwardness and self-glorification.108 If it was the Turks who gave language and culture to the West, then the whole Westernisation of

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Turkey and the Turkish language itself (with the adoption of the Latin alphabet and Western terminologies) was no longer a form of alienation but instead a way for the nation to return to its origins. Furthermore, by yoking together the golden age of an Arcadia in Central Asia with the radiant future of a race that was now reawakening to its true nature, the Kemalist civilising mission presented itself as a historical revolution in the strict meaning of the word. What I would call “Kemalist Prometheanism” here turns out to be a particularly original and creative form of political mythology, in which various biblical, Greek or contemporaneous myths – of Atlantis, the Exodus, the pastoral idyll of an original people – are re-set and given new meaning. Having said that, close analysis of Kemalist anthropological and linguistic racism reveals that it does not merely follow a logic of duplication. Confronted with the systematic disparaging of the Turkish language and the Turks themselves within European comparative and raciological systems of classification, “the Turkish school of linguistics” did not proffer any coherent counter-discourse. Instead, without making any real choice, it oscillates between three different modes of denial which, though mutually exclusive, are frequently found occurring at the same time, drawing on multiple, inconsistent arguments in an instance of Freudian kettle logic (chaudron freudien). On occasions the Kemalist intellectuals oppugned European models, arguing that comparative linguistics was a racist product spawned of European imperialist and missionary interests. They also sometimes made room to accommodate this legacy, with Turkic and Indo-European languages, and Turks and Aryans, being the brothers and sisters from the same linguistic or biological family called upon to dominate the rest of the world. But most of the time they turned the tables on the Europeans, presenting Turks as the dominant race, as those who had civilised the world, including the Barbarians (Africans and Mediterraneans) who had peopled Palaeolithic Europe prior to their arrival; Turkish was the mother of all languages. It therefore seems reductive to interpret the Kemalist re-setting of European racial terminology as an “attempt to neutralise the racist condemnation of the Turks from within by utilising the same jargon”.109 The SLT is rooted in the context of 1930s Turkey, which was haunted not only by the phantom of racial purity, but also by the actual policies of ethnic engineering that carried directly on from those of the

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Young Turk period, though of course in gentler form.110 Secondly, it is hard to gain any proper understanding of the Kemalist fascination with racial purity unless we realise that it occurred within the context of an obsessive undertaking to purify the language. And so instead of continuing to merely justify racism on the grounds of rationales imposed from without – be it the need to put an end to the excesses of linguistic purification, or else an attempt to resolve the identity contradictions with which nationalist Turkey was embroiled in its relationship to the West – we now need to envisage something rather different: namely, to explain the SLT as a period of authentic collective glossomania borne aloft by a small group of “fanatics” who believed in their myths, and whose intellectual conviction was only equalled by their passing political influence. If we are to understand Kemalist raciology, which went far further than turning European racism back against itself in a merely puerile and mimetic way, then there is only one thing to do, as practitioners well know– we must take seriously the sickness the man is suffering from – even if he is sick of Europe.

Notes 1. Harald Wieselgren (ed.), Leibniz’bref till Sparfvenfelt, Stockholm, Antiquarisk Tidskrift fo¨r Sverige, VII, 3, 1884–5, p. 40. 2. I˙lker Aytu¨rk, “Turkish linguists against the West: the origins of linguistic nationalism in Atatu¨rk’s Turkey”, Middle Eastern Studies, 40, 2004, pp. 1 – 25. 3. As illustrated by the vast collection of documents held in the Prime Minister’s Archives in Ankara, that I present in Emmanuel Szurek, “Dil Bayramı. Une lecture somatique de la feˆte politique dans la Turquie du Parti unique”, in Nathalie Clayer and Erdal Kaynar (eds), Penser, agir et vivre dans l’Empire ottoman et en Turquie. E´tudes re´unies pour Francois Georgeon, Leuven, Peeters, 2013, pp. 497– 523. 4. Bernard Lewis, The Emergence of Modern Turkey, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1961, p. 429. See also the somewhat allusive words by the French Turcologist Jean Deny “Publications about the ‘Sun-Language’ (gu¨nes¸ dil) Theory were also eliminated”, Jean Deny, “L’osmanli moderne et le turk de Turquie”, in Jean Deny et al. (eds), Philologiae Turcicae Fundamenta, Wiesbaden, Franz Steiner Verlag, 1959, vol. 1, pp. 182– 239: 220; equally note the absence of all reference to the SLT in Gyo¨rgy Hazai, “Linguistics and Language Issues in Turkey”, Current Trends in Linguistics, 6, 1970, pp. 183– 216. 5. Nicolas Vatin, “De l’osmanlı au turc de Turquie. Les aventures d’une langue”, Revue d’e´tudes du monde musulman et de la Me´diterrane´e, 50, Aix-en-Provence, 1989, pp. 68 – 80: 79.

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6. This expression of Bernt Brendemoen’s is taken up in Murat Ergin, ‘“Is the Turk a white man?’ Towards a theoretical framework for race in the making of Turkishness”, Middle Eastern Studies, 44 – 6, 2008, pp. 827– 50: 833. 7. Cf. the improbable monograph on the “traces of Turkishness on the New Continent” by I˙smail Dog˘an, Mayalar ve Tu¨rklu¨k, Ankara, Ahmet Yesevi U¨niversitesi, 2007; see too the rough drafts of Mustafa Kemal, which have been republished by the Turkish military press: T. C. Genelkurmay Bas¸kanlıg˘ı, Atatu¨rk’u¨n ‘Dil Yazıları’ I. (So¨zlu¨k C¸alıs¸maları), Ankara, Genelkurmay Askerıˆ Tarih ve Stratejik Etu¨t Bas¸kanlıg˘ı Yayınları, 2011; lastly, see my remark concerning the inaugural paper given at the conference in Istanbul in 2008 on the occasion of the eightieth anniversary of the reform to the alphabet: Emmanuel Szurek, “Le recteur, le professeur et le Bu¨yu¨k O¨nder. La the´orie de la langue-soleil sous l’œil de Jean Deny”, Turcica, 42, 2010, pp. 279– 303: 300n et seq. 8. The bibliographical survey does not take long: Erik Jan Zu¨rcher, “La the´orie du ‘langagesoleil’ et sa place dans la re´forme de la langue turque”, in Sylvain Auroux et al., La linguistique fantastique, Paris, Denoe¨l, 1985, pp. 83 – 91; I˙smail Bes¸ikci, Tu¨rk Tarih Tezi, Gu¨nes¸-Dil Teorisi ve Ku¨rt Sorunu, Ankara, Yurt Kitap Yayınevi, 1991; Geoffrey Lewis, “The Turkish Language Reform: The Episode of the Sun-Language Theory”, Turkic Languages, 1, 1997, pp. 2540; Jens Peter Laut, Das Tu¨rkische als Ursprache? Sprachwissenschaftliche Theorien in der Zeit erwachenden tu¨rkischen Nationalismus, Wiesbaden, Harrassowitz, 2000; Ays¸e Tetik, “Der sowjetische Linguist N. Ja. Marr und die tu¨rkische Sonnensprachtheorie”, Archivum Ottomanicum, 20, 2002, pp. 231– 67; Mehmet Uzman, “La The´orie de la Langue-Soleil: une entreprise sans espoir aux marges de la science”, Cahiers de l’ILSL, 17, 2004, pp. 301– 14. 9. Jens Peter Laut, Das Tu¨rkische als Ursprache?, pp. 95 – 149; idem, “Noch einmal zu Dr. Kvergic´”, Turkic Languages, 6, 2002, pp. 120– 33; Hamit Bozarslan, “Jean Deny et le Troisie`me Congre`s de la langue turque (Istanbul, 1936)”, Turcica, 39, 2007, pp. 201– 52; I˙lker Aytu¨rk “H. F. Kvergic´ and the SunLanguage Theory”, Zeitschrift der deutschen morgenlandischen Gesellschaft, 159, 1, 2009, pp. 2344; Emmanuel Szurek, “Jean Deny. Rapport au recteur Charle´ty sur le 3e kurultay de la langue (1936)”, Turcica, 42, 2010, pp. 305–28. 10. I˙lker Aytu¨rk, “Turkish linguists against the West”. This seems the appropriate place to acknowledge how indebted I am to this pioneering article. 11. For discussion of Kemalist Orientalism/Westernism, see Emmanuel Szurek, “Go West. Variations sur le cas ke´maliste”, in in Franc¸ois Pouillon and Jean-Claude Vatin (eds), Apre`s l’orientalisme. L’Orient cre´e´ par l’Occident, Paris, Karthala, 2011, pp. 303–23. 12. For this and the following paragraph, the standard reference with regard to matters of language is Geoffrey Lewis, The Turkish Language Reform. A Catastrophic Success, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1999. 13. “[. . .] and for a while Babel set in”, in the words of Lewis, The Turkish Language Reform, p. 50.

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14. For discussion of the group of organic intellectuals associated with the Kemalist regime, see Erik Jan Zu¨rcher, “La the´orie . . .”, p. 90; Szurek, “Le recteur . . .”, pp. 290– 1; and my “The linguist and the politician. The Tu¨rk Dil Kurumu and the field of power in single-party period”, in Marc Aymes, Benjamin Gourisse and Elise Massicard (eds), Order and Compromise: Government Practices in Turkey from the Late Ottoman Empire to the Early 21st Century, Leiden, Brill, 2015 pp. 68 – 96. 15. As yet there has been no definitive work about the cultural history of Western Turkophobia in the modern era. For the early modern era see Clarence D. Rouillard, The Turk in French History, Thought and Literature (15201660), Paris, Boivin, 1941; John W. Bohnstedt, The Infidel Scourge of God: The Turkish Menace as Seen by German Pamphleeters of the Reformation Era, Philadelphia, The American Philosophical Society, 1968; Mustafa Soykut, Image of the ‘Turk’ in Italy. A History of the ‘Other’ in Early Modern Europe: 1453– 1683, Berlin, Klaus Schwarz, 2001; Aslı C¸ırakman, From the ‘Terror of the World’ to the ‘Sick Man of Europe’. European Images of the Ottoman Empire and Society From the Sixteenth Century to the Nineteenth, New York, Peter Lang, 2002; Nedret Kuran-Burcog˘lu, Reflections on the Image of the Turk in Europe, Istanbul, Isis, 2009; James G. Harper (ed.), The Turk and Islam in the Western Eye, 1450– 1750, Burlington, VT, Ashgate, 2011; Gilles Veinstein, “La question du despotisme ottoman. La pole´mique Tott-Peysonnel”, in Basch, S. et al. (eds), L’orientalisme, les orientalistes et l’Empire ottoman de la fin du XVIIIe a` la fin du XXe sie`cle, Paris, Acade´mie des inscriptions et belles lettres, 2011, pp. 187– 203; Re´my Labrusse, “The´ories de l’ornement et ‘Renaissance orientale’: un mode`le ottoman pour le XIXe sie`cle?”, in ibid., pp. 145– 72. For discussion of the modern period see Alexandrine N. St Clair, The Image of the Turk in Europe, New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1973; John Van der Lippe, “The ‘Terrible Turk’: the Formulation and Perpetuation of a Stereotype in American Foreign Policy”, New Perspectives on Turkey, 17, 1997, pp. 39 – 57; Erdal Kaynar, “Les Jeunes Turcs et l’Occident”, in Francois Georgeon (ed.), ‘L’ivresse de la liberte´’. La re´volution de 1908 dans l’Empire ottoman, Paris, Peeters, 2012, pp. 27 – 64: 59; Ste´phane Yerasimos, ‘“Quel bonheur de se nommer Turc!”’, in Ste´phane Yerasimos (ed.), Les Turcs: Orient et Occident, islam et laı¨cite´, Paris, Autrement, 1994, pp. 1654; Nedret Kuran-Burcog˘lu (ed.), The Image of the Turk in Europe from the Declaration of the Republic in 1923 to the 1990s. Proceedings of the Workshop Held on 56 March 1999, CECES, Bog˘azici University, Istanbul, Isis, 2000. 16. This state of tension was not specific to Turkey. See Daryush Shayegan, “Le de´calage ontologique”, Itine´rances, 1, reprinted in Le regard mutile´. Schizophre´nie culturelle: pays traditionnels face a` la modernite´, Paris, Albin Michel, 2008 (1st edn 1989), p. 114 et seq. It is nevertheless clear that the radical nature of the root-and-branch transformation of the Turkish language lent a specifically political dimension to this cultural schizophrenia. 17. A warning against overly liberal usage of Foucault’s idea of tradition is to be found in Paul Se´riot, “A` quelle tradition appartient la tradition grammaticale

302

18.

19. 20.

21.

22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29.

KEMALISM russe?”, Langages, 2007/3, 167, pp. 5369. Rather than using the culturalist terms adopted by the Kemalist intellectuals themselves (“European” and “Turkish”), this chapter will whenever possible use various other adjectives based on discipline (“linguistics” and “anthropological”), on episteme (“comparative” and “racialist”), or on socio-political terminology (“Kemalist”). Sylvain Auroux, “Introduction. E´mergence et domination de la grammaire compare´e”, in Sylvain Auroux (ed.), Histoire des ide´es linguistiques, vol. 3, Bruxelles, Mardaga, 2000, pp. 9-22: 18, Piet Desmet, “Abel Hovelacque et l’e´cole de linguistique naturaliste: de l’ine´galite´ des langues a` l’ine´galite´ des races”, in Claude Blanckaert (ed.), Les politiques de l’anthropologie. Discours et pratique en France, Paris, L’Harmattan, 2001, pp. 55–93: 56. I˙lker Aytu¨rk, “Turkish linguists against the West”, p. 3. For discussion of Schleicher’s Hegelianism, see Otto Jespersen, Language, its Nature, Development and Origin, London, George Allen & Unwin, 1949 (1st edn 1922), p. 77 et seq. It was Schleicher who, for instance, borrowed the term “morphological” from natural history and applied it to linguistics. It is worth noting that Schleicher’s naturalism was influenced more by the idea of progressive transformation found in Lamarck than it was by the contemporary theory of Darwinian evolution. See August Schleicher, (eds), Die Sprachen Europas in systematischer Uebersicht, Konrad Koerner (ed.), Amsterdam-Philadelphia, John Benjamins Publishing Company, 1983 (1st edn 1850), pp. xxv –xxxi; Piet Desmet, La linguistique naturaliste en France (1867 – 1922). Nature, origine et e´volution du langage, Leuven, Peeters, 1996, pp. 65 and 77. Marina Yaguello, Les langues imaginaires. Mythes, utopies, fantasmes, chime`res et fictions linguistiques, Paris, Seuil, 2006, p. 99. See also Sylvain Auroux, Gilles Bernard and Jacques Boulle “Le de´veloppement du comparatisme indo-europe´en”, in Sylvain Auroux (ed.), Histoire des ide´es linguistiques, pp. 155–71: 167 et seq. Max Mu¨ller, Lectures on the Science of Language: Delivered at the Royal Institution of Great Britain in April, May, and June 1861, London, Longmans, Green, and co., 1861, pp. 317– 18. Ibid., p. 226, p. 276. Maurice Olender, Les langues du paradis. Aryens et Se´mites: un couple providentiel, preface by Vernant, J. P., Paris, Gallimard-Le Seuil, 1989. Mu¨ller, Lectures on the Science of Language, p. 279. Ibid., p. 277. It was I˙lker Aytu¨rk who drew my attention to this passage by citing it in the above-mentioned article, p. 6. Louis Benloew, De quelques caracte`res du langage primitif. Lu a` l’Acade´mie des inscriptions et belles lettres le 30 octobre 1861, Paris, Librairie A. Franck, 1863, p. 47. Mu¨ller, Lectures on the Science of Language, pp. 71 –2, 280. Baudry rejects in particular the taxonomic ragbag of the “Turanian languages” in Max Mu¨ller. This opinion was shared by many of his contemporaries, such as the French philosopher Barthe´lemy Saint-Hilaire (Piet Desmet, La linguistique naturaliste, p. 144) and the Yale Professor of Sanskrit William

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30. 31. 32. 33.

34.

35. 36. 37. 38. 39.

40.

41.

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Dwight Whitney (William Dwight Whitney, Language and the Study of Language, London, N. Tru¨bner & Co. 1867, p. 325). Fre´de´ric Baudry, De la science du langage et de son e´tat actuel, Paris, Auguste Durand, 1864, pp. 7, 21 et seq. Yaguello, Les langues imaginaires, p. 100. Le´on Poliakov, Le mythe aryen: essai sur les sources du racisme et des nationalismes, Brussels, E´ditions Complexe, 1987 (1st edn 1971); Maurice Olender, Les langues du paradis. By “epistemogony” I mean the particular category of systems to explain the world constituted by scholarly cosmogonies. The use of this term is intended to highlight the extent to which beliefs and myths lie hidden within rational forms of thinking which present themselves as purely scientific constructs. For discussion of this topic see the book by Jean-Paul Demoule, already a reference in the field: Mais ou` sont passe´s les Indo-Europe´ens? Le mythe d’origine de l’Occident, Paris, Seuil, 2014. Essai sur l’ine´galite´ des races humaines (1853), first translated into English by Henry Hotze in 1856 and published under the title The Moral and Intellectual Diversity of Races, subsequently published under the title Essay on the Inequality of Human Races, trans. by Adrian Collins, London, Heinemann, 1915 (Count Joseph Arthur de Gobineau, The Moral and Intellectual Diversity of Races, Bristol, Thoemmes Press, 2002). Arthur de Gobineau, The Moral and Intellectual Diversity of Races, pp. 354– 7. Pictet, A., Les origines indo-europe´ennes ou les Aryas primitifs. Essai de pale´ontologie linguistique, Paris, Joe¨l Cherbuliez, 1859, p. 55. Paul Topinard, L’anthropologie (1876), translated into English by Robert Bartley under the title Anthropology, London, Chapman and Hall, 1878, pp. 469 –70. Collective, Biographie universelle (Michaud) ancienne et moderne, second edition, Paris, Leipzig, Desplaces-A. Brockhaus, undated, vol. XXXV, p. 481. Claude Blanckaert, De la race a` l’e´volution. Paul Broca et l’anthropologie francaise (1850–1900), Paris, L’Harmattan, 2009, p. 209; id., “L’indice ce´phalique et l’ethnoge´nie europe´enne: A. Retzius, P. Broca, F. PrunerBey (1840–1870)”, Bulletins et me´moires de la Socie´te´ d’anthropologie de Paris, nouvelle se´rie, I: 34, 1989, pp. 165–202: 166. Frank H. Hankins, The Racial Basis of Civilisation, New York and London, Alfred Knopf, 1926, p. 59. Cf. Theodor Poesche, Die Arier, ein Beitrag zur historischen Anthropologie, Jena, H. Costenoble, 1878; Karl Penka, ‘Origines ariacae’, linguistichethnologische Untersuchungen zur a¨ltesten Geschichte der arischen Vo¨lker und Sprachen, Vienna, Teschen, K. Prochaska, 1883. Georges Vacher de Lapouge, Les se´lections sociales, cours libre de science politique professe´ a` l’Universite´ de Montpellier, 1888 –1889, Paris, Albert Fontemoing, 1896, p. 13. In this work Lapouge re-labels the categories created by Linnaeus in his Systema Naturae (1735). It is worth pointing out that Lapouge also identified a third type, which he called Homo contractus or Mediterranensis,

304

42. 43.

44. 45.

46.

47. 48. 49.

50.

KEMALISM said to be dolichocephalic, dark-haired and short, contrary to the ”dolichoblond”. Id., L’Aryen, son roˆle social, cours libre de science politique, professe´ a` l’Universite´ de Montpellier (1889– 1890), Paris, Albert Fontemoing, 1899, p. 481. Id., “L’anthropologie et la science politique”, Revue d’anthropologie, 15 Mar. 1887, pp. 135 – 57: 155. Lapouge subsequently abandoned the term “Turanian”, rejecting the idea that European and Asian brachycephalics had a common origin. Id., Les se´lections sociales, p. 20 et seq. Otto Ammon, Die Gesellschaftsordnung und ihre natu¨rlichen Grundlagen, Jena, Verlag von Gustav Fischer, 1896. This is a prime example of a eugenicist social Darwinist doctrine, based on the inference from the supposedly proven correlation between the social and biological fields that societies needed to be governed by controlling heredity. Cf. Pierre-Andre´ Taguieff, La couleur et le sang. Doctrines racistes a` la francaise, Paris, Mille et une nuits, 2002, pp. 199–326; Benoıˆt Massin, “L’anthropologie raciale comme fondement de la science politique. Vacher de Lapouge et l’e´chec de ‘l’anthroposociologie’ en France (1886 – 1936)”, in Claude Blanckaert (ed.), Les politiques de l’anthropologie, pp. 269– 334; Jean-Marie Augustin, Georges Vacher de Lapouge (1854 – 1936), juriste, raciologue et euge´niste, Toulouse, Presses de l’universite´ Toulouse 1 Capitole, 2011, pp. 287– 304. The association between the concepts of “Turanian” and “Turk” is illustrated in negative fashion by an incidental remark made by the French author Joseph Deniker about “the Turkish race, which we would readily call Turanian, were it not for the fact that this term is far too compromised”. Joseph Deniker, Les races et les peuples de la terre. E´le´ments d’anthropologie et d’ethnographie, Paris, Librairie C. Reinwald, 1900, p. 348. William Z. Ripley, The Races of Europe. A Sociological Study, New York, D. Appleton & Co., 1899, p. 417. Ibid., p. 418. The idea of “Turkish hyperbrachycephaly” emerged around 1900, notably in the writings of Joseph Deniker (who, however, makes only limited use of Alpinus), Les races et les peuples de la terre, pp. 390 and 439. Another example of the increasingly widespread use of the concept of the “Alpine race” is provided by a French work of “military science” by A. Constantin, Le roˆle sociologique de la guerre et le sentiment national, Paris, Fe´lix Alcan, 1907, pp. 12 and 23. Frank H. Hankins, The Racial Basis of Civilisation, p. 107. Alpinus also figured prominently in the works of racist theoreticians of Nordic supremacy who inspired fascism and National-Socialism such as British Captain George H. L. F. Pitt-Rivers (The Clash of Cultures and the Conflict of Races, 1927) and the German theoretician Hans F. K. Gu¨nther (Rassenkunde des deutschen Volkes, 1922), who defined Alpinus as “the inherent enemy of Nordicity”. On Pitt-Rivers, see Elazar Barkan, “Mobilizing Scientists against Nazi Racism”, in George Stocking (ed.), Bones, Bodies, Behavior. Essays on Biological Anthropology, Madison, The University of Wisconsin Press, 1988,

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51.

52. 53.

54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 62.

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pp. 180– 205: 193. On Gu¨nther, see Christian Ingrao, Croire et de´truire. Les intellectuels dans la machine de guerre SS, Paris, Fayard, 2010, p. 106. On Hankins himself holding to the view that “the general backwardness of the negro . . . must be sought in differences of body and brain structure”, see Stanford M. Lyman, Militarism, Imperialism, and Racial Acommodation. An Analysis and Interpretation of the Early Writings of Robert E. Park, Fayetteville, The University of Arkansas Press, 1992, p. 144. By pointing out once again how little the ideas of a figure such as Vacher de Lapouge were taken up by French academe, or by referring, for instance, to Max Mu¨ller’s famous warning three decades after the first publication of his Oxford lectures: “To me an ethnologist who speaks of Aryan race, Aryan blood, Aryan eyes and hair, is as great a sinner as a linguist who speaks of a dolichocephalic dictionary or a brachycephalic grammar. It is worse than a Babylonian confusion of tongues – it is downright theft. We have made our own terminology for the classification of languages; let ethnologists make their own for the classification of skulls, and hair, and blood.” Max Mu¨ller, Biographies of Words and the Home of the Aryas, London, Longmans, 1888, pp. 120 –1. Let us point out that without necessarily affirming any such congruence, Schleicher’s evolutionism continued to be topical within certain areas of French linguistics up until the 1920s. Desmet, La linguistique naturaliste, p. 77. Being respectively renamed in 1935 as the Turkish Institute of History (Tu¨rk Tarih Kurumu) and the Turkish Institute of Language (Tu¨rk Dil Kurumu). For discussion of the TDK see Szurek, “The linguist and the politician”. Hasan Res¸it Tankut, “Le mot ‘Alp’ et le foyer de la race alpine”, Tu¨rk Dili, 27 – 28, Feb. 1938, pp. 149– 65: 149. Ko¨pru¨lu¨zaˆde Mehmed Fuad, “Tu¨rk tarihi hakkında bazı umumıˆ meseleler”, in Tu¨rk Tarih Tetkik Cemiyeti, Birinci Tu¨rk Tarih Kongresi. Konferanslar, Mu¨zakere Zabıtları, Istanbul, T. C. Maarif Vekaˆleti, 1932, pp. 42 – 7: 45. Ahmet Cevat Emre, “Tu¨rkcenin HintAvrupa diliyle mukayesesi”, in Tu¨rk Dili, 11, June 1935, pp. 2 – 120: 34. Barikad. In italics in the original since the author is using the French term. The Turkish here employs the felicitous image of “smiling behind their moustaches” (bıyık altından gu¨lmek). S¸arlatanlık. Italics in the original. Ibid., p. 3 et seq. It is the reading put forward by I˙lker Aytu¨rk in “Turkish linguists against the West” that brought my attention to this reference and to the publications by Saim Ali Dilemre and Abdu¨lkadir I˙nan quoted infra. In French in the text. This formulation is all the more remarkable since the use of the word “racism” (rasistlik) only started to enter the mainstream in the late 1920s and in the 1930s, in particular in French, to describe what was at the time more commonly referred to as “Hitlerism”. The italics are in the original.

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63. In French in the text. 64. Saim Ali Dilemre, “Dr. S. A. Dilemre’nin Tezi: Eski Dil Mefhumu”, Tu¨rk Dili, 12, June 1935, pp. 73 – 83: 74 et seq. 65. Afet I˙nan, Gu¨nes¸Dil Teorisi U¨zerine Ders Notları. Tu¨rkoloji. II, Ankara, Devlet Basımevi, 1936, p. 53. 66. Cf. Claude Le´vi-Strauss, Race et histoire, Paris: UNESCO, 1952, who also published the English version the same year under the title Race and History. 67. Inan, Gu¨nes¸Dil Teorisi U¨zerine Ders Notları, p. 55. 68. Paul Se´riot, “Eurasistes et marristes”, in Sylvain Auroux (ed.), Histoire des ide´es linguistiques, pp. 473–97: 478 et seq. 69. Lawrence L. Thomas, The Linguistic Theories of N. Ja. Marr, Berkeley, University of California Press, 1957, p. 32. 70. Quoted in Yaguello, Les langues imaginaires, p. 152 et seq. 71. For discussion of this doctrinal shift, see Lawrence, The Linguistic Theories of N. Ja. Marr, pp. 83 –90. 72. And especially the method known as lexical palaeontology, via the place accorded to totemism in the birth of language. Cf. Ays¸e Tetik, “Der sowjetische Linguist N. Ja. Marr”. 73. See Su¨leyman Tu¨lu¨cu¨, “Prof. Abdu¨lkadir I˙nan U¨zerine Bazı Notlar”, ¨ niversitesi Tu¨rkiyat Aras¸tırmaları Enstitu¨su¨ Dergisi, 15, 2000, Atatu¨rk U pp. 201–11. 74. Howard Eissenstat, “Turkic Immigrants/Turkish Nationalism: Opportunities and Limitations of a Nationalism in Exile”, The Turkish Studies Association Bulletin, 25/2– 26/1, 2001– 2, pp. 25 – 50: 47. 75. Afet I˙nan (translation and preface), “Akademisiyen N. Marr. Dillerin ve Ulusların Ayrılması ve Tu¨ rk S¸ ivelerinin Ana Vatanı Meselesi”, undated [c. 1936], p. v, unpublished typescript held at the TDK library (in Ankara). 76. Ibid., p. xii et seq. 77. Se´riot, “Eurasistes et marristes”, p. 478. 78. Marle`ne Laruelle, “La triangulaire ‘Russie’, ‘exil russe’, ‘culture d’accueil’: le prisme occidental inassume´ de l’eurasisme”, Actes des Premie`res rencontres de l’Institut, conference held on 2 – 4 Dec. 2004 at the ENS-LSH, available online at: http://russie-europe.ens-lsh.fr/article.php3?id_article¼51 (last accessed 8 Aug. 2012); for discussion of the idea of national Bolshevism see Louis Dupeux, National-bolchevisme: strate´gie communiste et dynamique conservatrice, Paris, H. Champion, 1979, 2 vols. 79. Saim Ali [Dilemre], “Tu¨rk Filolojisi – Tu¨rk dili bir HintAvrupa Dilidir”, TDK, Birinci Tu¨rk Dili Kurultayı 1932. Tezler, Muzakere Zabıtları, Istanbul, Devlet Matbaası, 1933 pp. 65 – 81: 81. 80. Aytu¨rk, “Turkish linguists against the West”, p. 7 – 8. 81. Michel Foucault, “Orders of discourse”, translated by Rupert Swyer, in Social Science Information, Apr. 1971, 10, 2, pp. 7– 30: 16. See also Daryush Shayegan, “Le de´calage ontologique”, p. 114 et seq.

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82. Hasan Res¸it Tankut, “Les e´tudes e´tymologiques au point de vue ‘Gu¨nes¸Dil’: avant-propos”, Tu¨rk Dili, 27/28, Feb. 1938, pp. 133– 6: 135. 83. Conversely I˙lker Aytu¨rk has shown that Samih Rifat, who went on to be the president of the TDK, was defending a monogenic theory in 1923 in which Turkish was the mother language of all languages. Aytu¨rk, “Turkish linguists against the West”, p. 13 et seq. 84. Ibid., p. 8. 85. Moustapha Djelaleddin, L’Europe et le touro-aryanisme, typescript, p. 229 [1]. 86. Ibid., pp. 229 [2], 236 [9]. 87. “Birinci Tu¨rk Dili Kurultayının Mu¨zakere Programı”, TDK, Birinci Tu¨rk Dili Kurultayı 1932, p. viii. 88. [Dilemre] S. A., “Tu¨rk Filolojisi”, p. 73. 89. Mehmet Saffet, “Tu¨rk dilinin kidemi ve hakimiyeti – Tu¨rkcenin Aˆri dillerler mu¨nasebeti”, in ibid., pp. 110– 24. 90. Hakkı Nezihi, “Tu¨rkcenin dig˘er dillerle alaˆka ve mu¨nasebeti – Tu¨rkcenin mens¸eıˆ hususiyeti – Hint-Avrupa ana lisanı”, in ibid., pp. 129– 47. 91. Raifpas¸azade, F., “Hindu Avrupa Dilleri ve Tu¨rkcemiz arasında birlikler ve ayrılıklar”, in ibid., pp. 226– 31. 92. Artin Cebeli, “Tu¨rk dilinin umumıˆ tarihi – Tu¨rk yazıları – Tu¨rkcenin etimolojisi”, in ibid., pp. 125– 9: 129. 93. Ko¨pru¨lu¨zaˆde Mehmed Fuad, “Tu¨rk tarihi”, p. 47. Gobineau is referred to on various occasions in the proceedings of the Congress, without any pejorative connotations: Afet [I˙nan] “Tarihten Evel ve Tarih Fecrinde”, in Ibid., pp. 18 – 41: 39; Res¸it Galip, “Tu¨rk Irk ve Medeniyet Tarihine umumıˆ bir Bakıs¸”, in ibid., pp. 99 – 161: 136 et seq. 94. A study for which she apparently received the logistical support and drew on the manpower of several ministries – though of course the figures put forward does leave one wondering. 95. Afet I˙nan, L’Anatolie, le pays de la “race” turque. Recherches sur les caracte`res anthropologiques des populations de la Turquie (enqueˆte sur 64 000 individus), preface by Euge`ne Pittard, Geneva, Georg et Cie, 1941, pp. 46 and 49 et seq. 96. Anon., “Dil Bayramı ve Turk Dili”, Afacan, 201, 22 Sep. 1938, document reproduced in Yetis¸, K. (ed.), Atatu¨rk ve Tu¨rk Dili 3, vol. II, Ankara, TDK, 2005, p. 1554. 97. For discussion of the thesis of history see I˙smail Bes¸ikci, Tu¨rk Tarih Tezi; Bu¨s¸ra Ersanlı, I˙ktidar ve Tarih: Tu¨rkiye’de “Resmi Tarih” Tezinin Olus¸umu (1929 – 1937), Istanbul, Afa Yayınları, 1992; and E´tienne Copeaux Espaces et temps de la nation turque: analyse d’une historiographie nationaliste (1931 – 1993), Paris, CNRS E´ditions, 1997; id., Une vision turque du monde a` travers les cartes de 1931 a` nos jours, Paris, CNRS, 2000. 98. See Pierre Vidal-Naquet, The Atlantis Story: A Short History of Plato’s Myth, translated by Janet Lloyd, Exeter, University of Exeter Press, 2007 (1st edn 2005). Kemalist organic linguists displayed interest in another avatar of this myth, the drowned continent of Mu, in the heart of the Pacific, about which

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100.

101. 102. 103. 104. 105. 106. 107. 108. 109.

110.

KEMALISM British Colonel James Churchward (1851– 1936) wrote several books, now classified as “children’s literature”, “spirituality”, or “science fiction”. This is where Adolphe Pictet had in 1859 imagined the primitive Aryas to have developed their innate predisposition to world domination, sheltered from any interbreeding: “at a time prior to any historic accounts and which is lost in the mists of time, a race predestined by Providence to go on to dominate the entire globe was gradually growing in the primitive birthplace where it resided prior to its brilliant future.” Adolphe Pictet, Les origines indoeurope´ennes ou les Aryas primitifs, p. 1. Hasan Res¸it Tankut, “Trace´ linguistique en direction de la pre´histoire et l’explication de la the´orie ‘Gu¨nes¸-Dil’ (Soleil-Langue)” [Paper given at the Eighteen International Congress of Prehistoric Archaeology and Anthropology at Bucharest (Sep. 1937)], Tu¨rk Dili, 27 – 28, Feb. 1938, pp. 120– 8: 120 et seq. Kaya Tu¨rkay, A. Dilaˆcar, Ankara, TDK, 1982. Agop Dilaˆcar, “Les bases biopsychologiques de la the´orie gu¨nes¸dil”, Tu¨rk Dili, 21 – 22, Feb. 1937, pp. 80 – 92: 83. I˙brahim Necmi Dilmen, “Les lignes fondamentales de la The´orie ‘Gu¨nes¸Dil’”, Tu¨rk Dili, 21 – 22, Feb. 1937, pp. 30 –55: 55. Res¸it Galip, “Tu¨rk Irk ve Medeniyet”, p. 157. Dilaˆcar, “Les bases biopsychologiques”, p. 82. [Dilemre], “Tu¨rk Filolojisi”, p. 76. Dilmen, “Les lignes fondamentales”, p. 38. Aytu¨rk, “Turkish linguists against the West”, p. 19. To place this quote in its context: “the appearance of ethnicity and race based terminology in the linguistic writings of that period does not in any way indicate the wholesale conversion of an academic elite to the racist ideology. Rather than being the result of a profound change of mentality, the use of that terminology was an attempt to neutralize the racist condemnation of the Turks from within by utilizing the same jargon.” I˙lker Aytu¨rk, “Turkish Linguists against the West”, p. 19. Recent research has shown that the Kemalist vision of the social world was steeped in the paradigms of race. See Copeaux, Espaces et temps de la nation turque; Ahmet Yıldız, ‘Ne Mutlu Tu¨rku¨m Diyebilene’. Tu¨rk Ulusal Kimlig˘inin EtnoSeku¨ler Sınırları (1919 – 1938), Istanbul, I˙letis¸im, 2001; Howard Eissenstat, “Metaphors of race and discourse of nation: racial theory and the beginnings of nationalism in the Turkish Republic”, in Paul Spickard (ed.), Race and Nation: Ethnic Systems in the Modern World, New York, Routledge, 2005, pp. 239– 56; Nazan Maksudyan, Tu¨rklu¨g˘u¨ O¨lcmek: Bilimkurgusal Antropoloji ve Tu¨rk Milliyetcilig˘inin Irkcı Cephesi, 1925– 1939, Istanbul, Metis, 2005; Murat Ergin, “‘Is the Turk a white man?’”; id., “Biometrics and anthropometrics: the twins of Turkish modernity”, Patterns of Prejudice, 42, 3, July 2008, pp. 281– 304; Emmanuel Szurek, “To Call a Turk a Turk: Patronymic Nationalism in Turkey in the 1930s”, online: www.cairn-int.info.

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INDEX

Abaza, Fikri, 155–7, 173, 174 Abd al-Raziq, Ali, 16, 17, 160, 161–3, 166, 167 Abduh, see Muhammad Abduh Abdulaziz bin Saud, 16 Abdu¨lhamid II, 18, 232 Abdu¨lmecid, 288 adaptation, 39, 42, 44 – 5, 47, 49 – 50, 55, 61, 73, 79, 81, 86, 99, 113, 120, 127, 128, 158, 183– 4, 219, 267, 283– 4 Addis-Abeba, 10 Adıvar, Halide Edip, 55, 208, 232 administration, administrative, 17, 42, 46, 47, 48, 50, 51, 68, 71, 82, 85, 92, 94, 106, 107– 8, 110– 11, 118, 123, 124– 9, 130, 132, 134, 136, 142, 171, 182, 183, 268 Afacan (magazine), 293 agrarian, 68, 92, 187 Ahmet Vefik Pas¸a, 233 Al-Afghani, 18 Al-Ahram (weekly), 144 Al-Azhar, 160, 174 Albania, Albanians, 19, 20, 24, 26 – 8, 29, 36, 38 – 80, 169 Aleppo, 141 Al-Fath (newspaper), 16, 157 Algeria, 9

Algiers, 38 Al-Hilal (newspaper), 162, 173 Al-Muqattam (newspaper), 16, 26 Al-Musawwar (newspaper), 155, 173 Al-Nil al-Musawwar (newspaper), 156 alphabet (see also script), 15, 20, 22, 24, 26, 27, 40, 81 – 104, 113, 115, 116, 117, 119, 125– 6, 131, 134, 142, 219, 267– 8, 298, 300 al-Siyasa (newspaper), 160, 162, 167, 175 Altı Ok, see Six Arrows Altın Ordu (organisation), 96, 97 ambassador, 12, 46, 49, 86, 98, 99, 143, 144, 150, 151 America, American (see also United States), 39, 175, 232, 238, 243, 273, 277, 293, 294, 295, 297 Ammon, Otto, 277, 296 Anatolia, Anatolian, 2, 8 – 9, 11 –12, 15, 46, 51, 58, 82, 101, 147, 169, 183, 237, 260, 265, 278, 284, 291 Anglo-Egyptian Treaty (1936), 150 Ankara, 4, 5, 7, 8, 10, 11, 12, 15 –18, 24, 29, 44, 46, 47, 49, 143, 144, 150, 177, 179, 198, 209– 10, 218, 219, 226, 238, 260, 265, 279, 280, 281, 283, 284

334

KEMALISM

anti-colonial, anti-colonialism, 107, 136, 157, 253 anti-imperialism, 2, 11, 217, 69, 269, 285 anti-Kemalism, 15, 16, 26, 27, 93, 110, 123, 179 anti-Western, 2, 11, 19, 285 Arab(s), Arabic, 5, 9, 10, 12, 16, 23, 26, 43, 81 –3, 86 – 8, 90, 93, 99, 106, 112– 13, 117, 121, 123, 126, 131– 4, 143– 78, 182, 183, 186, 226, 253, 254, 267–8 Architecture, architect(s), 22, 171, 236– 8, 243– 4, 248– 50, 263 Armenia, Armenian(s), 8, 34, 275, 290, 295 Armstrong, Harold Courtenay, 15, 193 army(ies), 42, 92, 94, 95, 109, 147, 158, 175, 269 Arseven, Celal Esad, 235–6 Arslan (or Arsalan), Shakib, 16, 157–8, 174, 175 art, artist, artistic, 221– 3, 227, 235– 40, 243– 8, 250, 251 Aryan(s), Aryanism, 271– 4, 276– 8, 281, 286, 288– 90, 292, 294–5, 297– 8, 305 Asia, Asian, Asiatic (see also Central Asia), 11, 18, 64, 82, 170, 183, 272, 273, 276, 278, 288– 9, 293– 6, 304 Asia Minor, 8, 10, 278 Association of Teachers of Muslim Schools (Sarajevo), 187 Astakhov, Georgij, 11 Atatu¨rk, Atatu¨rkism (see also Mustafa Kemal), 1, 3, 4, 12, 18, 24, 36, 110, 114– 17, 120, 140, 143–7, 150– 2, 155, 168, 169, 174, 178, 180, 227, 251, 266, 291 Atay, Falih Rıfkı, 219 Ates¸in, Hu¨seyin, 115, 139 atheism, atheist(s), 16, 87, 90, 98 Athens, 8, 47, 76

Atlantis, 294, 298 Australia, Australian, 24, 164, 177, 276, 297 Austro-Hungarian Empire (see also Habsburg), 76, 85 authoritarian, authoritarianism, 5, 12, 22, 42, 43, 52, 65, 92, 150, 269 authority, 18, 20, 45, 47, 50, 53, 55, 64– 70, 72, 85, 88, 90, 92, 158, 167, 175, 211, 239 autobiography, 165, 176–7 Aykut, Mehmet S¸eref, 20 Aytu¨rk, I˙lker, 266, 287– 8, 302, 305, 307 backward, backwardness, 121, 166, 183, 184, 188, 207, 210, 229, 243, 253– 4, 260, 270, 305 Balkan(s) (see also Southeastern Europe), 17, 26, 40, 46, 51, 71, 73, 75, 84, 94– 9, 170, 182, 278 Balkan Pact, 27, 97 Balkan Wars, 40, 75, 94, 95, 98 Banja Luka, 194 Bashkiria, 283 Baudry, Fre´de´ric, 273 Bekir, Letife, 198– 9 Belge, Burhan Asaf, 22 –3, 225– 7, 251, 256 Belgrade, 18, 179, 182, 188, 192– 3, 194, 195, 203, 209 Benjamin, Walter, 175 Benloew, Louis, 273 Berati, Ymer, 49, 56 Berlin, 15, 22, 193, 227, 228, 231, 257, 284 Treaty of, 84, 95 Bible, biblical, 287, 293– 4, 298 Bibliothe`que Nationale de France, 288 Bijedic´, Dzˇemal, 10 biographies (of Mustafa Kemal), 4, 10, 13– 15, 20, 34, 228– 9 Birlik (newspaper), 111, 118, 120, 121, 133, 140

INDEX Birlik Ocag˘ı (organisation), 119 Biser (magazine), 196 Bisic´, Rasema, 194 Bitola, 54 Body, bodies, 63, 89, 144, 155, 158, 169, 180, 181, 183, 187– 8, 202– 5, 207, 210 Bolshevism, 11, 16, 122, 283–6 Bo¨lu¨kbas¸ı, Rıza Tevfik, 129, 141 book(s), schoolbooks, textbooks, 2, 12, 15, 17, 18, 19, 28, 36, 41, 46, 49, 68, 86, 88, 99, 119, 126, 127, 160, 163, 175, 185, 186, 189– 93, 196– 8, 203, 221– 2, 224, 237–9, 247– 8, 281– 2, 291, 308 Bosnia-Herzegovina, Bosnian, 10, 17, 18, 26, 28, 179, 182– 3, 185– 6, 195, 197, 202, 203, 205, 208 border(s), boundaries, 7, 24, 25, 26, 27, 51, 81 – 104, 117, 145, 169, 172, 176, 181, 193, 229, 244, 246, 272, 291 Boris III, 92 borrowing, 38, 52, 72, 79, 163, 220, 253, 272, 278, 286, 302 bourgeois, bourgeois culture, bourgeoisie, 3, 20, 149, 150, 151, 153, 167, 168, 176, 283 Bousquet, Georges-Henri, 38, 72 Bozkurt, Mahmut Esat, 22, 46, 52, 74 Brendemoen, Bernt, 266 Britain, British, 8, 9, 25, 27, 98, 106– 12, 117, 121– 32, 134, 136, 139, 142, 144, 145, 147, 150, 151, 154, 159, 164, 304, 308 Broca, Paul, 275 Bucharest, 15, 265, 294 Budapest, 15, 183, 248, 263 Buduc´nost (newspaper), 195 Bulbulovic´, Edhem, 190– 1, 198– 9 Bulgaria, Bulgarian(s), 16, 24 – 27, 28, 40, 81 – 104, 158, 175 Bulgarian Turkish Teacher’s Union, 86 Buxton, Dudley, 296

335

Cairo, 10, 16, 17, 150, 154, 160, 163, 173, 174, 177, 195 Caliph(s), Caliphate, 9, 15, 16, 17, 22, 155, 157, 173, 174, 175, 188, 219 calligraphy, 222, 237– 8, 244, 258 capital, capitalism, 62, 151, 160, 180 carpet(s), 221– 2, 224, 226, 230, 233, 235, 237– 9, 244, 246, 248 cartoons, 150– 1, 173 Catholic(s), 56, 61, 64, 66, 284, 290 C´atic´, Musa C´azim, 186 Caucasus, 188, 283 Cˇausˇevic´, Mehmed Dzˇemaludin, 17, 194–5, 208 Cebeli, Artin, 290 censorship, 92, 107, 109, 136, 176 Central Asia, 101, 265, 270, 290, 293, 295, 296– 8 Central Europe(an), 28, 47, 266, 283 Chartier, Roger, 56, 72 citizen(s), citizenship, 2, 25, 48, 65, 73, 86, 87, 90 – 9, 107, 108, 110, 121, 167, 172, 175, 188, 228, 234, 236 civilisation, civilised, civilisational, 18, 40, 42, 43, 45, 47, 48, 50, 55, 57, 61, 62, 63 – 5, 70, 71, 83, 87 – 8, 110–11, 120, 121, 127, 133– 4, 149, 165, 170, 171, 206, 210, 211, 229, 236– 7, 239, 240, 249, 254, 265– 7, 270, 271, 286, 288, 289, 294, 296, 297, 298 civilising mission, 12, 64, 109– 12, 128, 253, 267, 298 Chiang Kai-shek, 19 Chief Mu¨ftu¨ (office of), 86, 87, 90, 91, 92, 93, 98 child, children, childhood, 45, 98, 113–14, 126, 180, 183, 185, 206, 227–8, 260, 291, 293, 308 Christian(s), Christianity (see also Catholic; Orthodox), 9, 10, 16, 82, 84, 98, 107, 118, 121 Choisi, Jeanette, 108, 109

336

KEMALISM

circulation, 10, 16, 24 – 8, 41, 43, 46, 70 – 1, 73, 81, 87, 94, 97, 150, 168, 169, 170, 173, 179, 181, 183, 185, 186, 187, 189, 198, 209, 226, 280 class(es) (social), 2, 17, 44, 56, 90, 108, 123, 149, 153, 155, 160, 161, 164, 176, 178, 189, 199, 237, 277, 281, 285 cloth(es), clothing (see also dress), 58, 66, 144, 156, 160– 1, 163, 169, 205, 233 coffee, coffeehouses, 126, 226, 230, 232, 240 colonial, colonialism (see also anticolonial), 2, 9, 23, 25, 27, 105– 42, 151, 158, 160, 170, 220, 253, 282– 3 communication, communicational, 25, 82, 113, 119, 123– 4, 129, 132, 133 Communism, Communist (see also Bolshevism), 10, 122, 198, 285 community, communities, 10, 16, 17, 27, 66, 68, 81, 82, 85, 87, 89, 91, 99, 100, 106, 107, 109– 11, 114, 118– 23, 127, 129– 30, 132– 8, 147, 167, 173, 177, 180– 3, 188, 194, 202– 3, 236 Comte, Auguste, 185, 221, 240 confession(s), confessional (see also religion), 26, 85, 86, 91 – 2, 98, 179, 181, 182, 187–8, 196, 201, 202, 211 Congress(es), 11, 23, 26, 174, 199, 279, 280, 286, 289– 91, 294, 296–7, 307, 308 Congress of the Peoples of the East (Baku, 1920), 11 conservative(s), conservatism, 1, 2, 16, 39, 56, 98, 108, 111, 114, 139, 156, 168, 194, 201, 280– 1, 285– 6

Constitution, constitutional, 84, 90, 164, 193 consumerism, consumption, 150, 169, 173, 202, 252, 254 Copenhagen, 15 Corporatism, 2, 180– 1, 199, 210– 11 cosmopolitan, cosmopolitanism, 167, 176, 177, 236– 7 coup of, 19 May, 1934 (Bulgaria), 92, 94 Croats, Croatian, pro-Croatian, Serbo-Croatian, 179– 80, 183, 186–9, 193, 195, 196, 208– 10 cult of personality, 2, 3, 9, 12, 29, 175, 178, 266 culture, cultural, 1, 5, 18 – 19, 25, 27, 29, 40, 41, 47, 57, 65, 67, 69, 83, 84, 85, 88, 89, 99, 101, 105, 108, 112, 117, 118, 121, 123, 125, 128, 130, 132– 5, 139, 142, 144–5, 147, 149, 152– 9, 161, 163, 165, 167–9, 171– 3, 175– 7, 178–216, 217–63, 267–8, 282, 283, 285, 295, 297, 301, 302 Cumhuriyet (newspaper), 19, 21, 93 Cuvier, Georges, 292 Cyprus, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 105– 42 Dabulla, Avni, 47, 52, 53, 54, 76 Dag˘lıog˘lu, Hikmet Turhan, 230, 260 Daily Herald (newspaper), 144 Damascus, 9 Davison, Andrew, 180, 210 decay, 201, 203 Defrance, Commissioner, 8 Delijanic´ Mirit, Ana, 193 Deliorman (newspaper), 86, 89 Delvina, Hikmet, 65 –6 Delvine¨, 77 democracy, democratic, 11, 92, 94 Demokratia (newspaper), 50 Deniker, Joseph, 292, 304 Denktas¸, Rauf, 116– 17 Deny, Jean, 2

INDEX Dervishi, Nazif, 62 Devciog˘lu, Abdullah Sıdkı, 98 Dhima, Apostol, 54 Dhima, Leonidha, 54 Dhimitri, Kol, 56 Dibra, Faik, cf. Shatku, Faik dictator, dictatorship, dictatorial, 15, 45, 68, 87, 109, 113, 193 Dilaˆ
car, Agop, 295, 296 Dilemre, Saim Ali, 281, 286, 289, 296, 305 Dilmen, I˙brahim Necmi, 295, 297 Dilo, Lame, 54 diplomacy, diplomatic, diplomat(s) (see also ambassador; embassy, embassies), 8, 10, 11, 26, 27, 46, 52, 67, 97, 107, 144, 147, 151, 154, 168, 178, 252 divorce, 45, 52, 61, 66, 180 Dog˘rul, O¨mer Rıza, 17 Dolmabahc
e Palace, 269, 286 Domovina (newspaper), 195, 196 Do¨nme(s), 16 dress, dress code (see also cloth; fez; hat; tarbush; turban; veil), 24, 27, 66, 143– 77, 188, 203, 205– 8, 219, 225, 260 Duran, Faik Sabri, 244, 262 East, Easter, Easterner(s) (see also Orient, Oriental), 11, 20, 23, 64, 71, 121, 122, 155, 157, 164, 166, 167, 169, 174, 210, 253 Eastern Europe, 280 Eastern Rumelia, 84, 85 Eastern Turkey, 156 economy, economic, 28, 61, 63, 64, 79, 84, 85, 92, 95 – 7, 107, 109, 111, 114, 121, 123, 128, 130, 136, 152, 154, 157, 161, 168, 178, 182, 188, 196, 202, 207, 279 education (see also school), 17, 20, 28, 42, 43, 46, 55, 58, 68, 70, 73, 82 – 6, 89 – 91, 93, 96, 98, 111,

337

112, 113, 118– 19, 122, 123, 125, 127–8, 136, 155, 180, 182– 4, 186, 187– 8, 194–8, 199, 202, 205, 208, 210, 239 Effendi, Effendiyya, 149– 51, 153, 155, 160, 166 Egypt, Egyptian, 2, 10, 16, 17, 24, 25, 27, 28, 52, 73, 143– 77, 185, 186, 188, 294, 295 Egyptian Liberal Constitutional party, 160 Egyptian Medical Association, 166 Elbasan, 76 El-Hidaje (newspaper), 201– 2 Ellison, Grace, 229– 30 elite(s), 3, 16, 17, 20, 24, 26, 34, 41, 82, 84, 108, 110, 111, 119, 133, 139, 143, 158, 164, 174, 196, 199, 237, 253, 259, 268, 279, 296, 308 embassy, embassies (see also ambassador), 23, 96, 117 Emin Muhammed Said, 10 Emre, Ahmet Cevat, 280 Enlightenment, 11, 121, 267 Enosis (union of the Cypriot island with Greece), 108 Enver Pasha, Enverism, 8, 113, 196 equality, 62, 65, 180–1, 193, 196, 208, 210 erotic, eroticism, 203, 205, 207, 244, 254 Ersoy, Mehmet Akif, 17, 186 Ertaylan, I˙smail Hikmet, 129 ethics, ethical, 149, 154, 167 ethnic, ethnicity, 2, 8, 85, 133, 136, 182, 199, 250, 254, 285, 298, 308 Eurasian, Eurasianism, 18, 283, 285 Europe(an) (see also Central Europe, Western Europe, Eastern Europe, Southeast Europe), 28, 29, 39, 41, 42, 44, 57, 62, 64, 68 – 71, 82, 90, 133–4, 142, 151, 155, 156– 8, 170, 173, 175, 176, 177, 181,

338

KEMALISM

183, 186, 202– 5, 210, 218, 220– 42, 248, 250, 264– 308 Evkafc
ılar, 110 exhibition(s) (international, universal), 236, 244– 9, 254, 262 faith, denomination, confession, cf. religion family(ies), family law, 10, 26, 42, 45, 48, 49, 54, 61, 63, 65, 74, 76, 80, 111, 129, 160, 162, 165, 173, 174, 187, 188, 197, 202– 3, 206– 7, 213, 233 Farre`re, Claude, 221, 223, 239 –40, 256 fascination, 11, 15, 24, 180, 266, 270, 299 Fascism, Fascist(s), 2, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 36, 304 fashion, 110, 145, 158, 160, 161, 163, 175, 207, 220, 229, 244, 276 Fatma Aliye, 208 female (see also women), 11, 17, 119, 126, 180– 1, 183– 5, 187, 189, 192– 3, 195– 7, 199– 203, 205– 8, 210– 1 femininity, feminine, 178, 180, 181, 188, 203 feminism, feminist, 174, 180, 181, 193– 200, 209, 210 feredzˇa (female garment), 185, 205 fez (see also tarbush), 15, 111, 123, 137, 143– 4, 169, 171, 188, 210, 219 Ferrie`re, Adolphe, 70 Fico, Rauf, 46, 50, 51 Filandra, Sacˇir, 179 fiqh (Islamic jurisprudence), 42 – 3, 75, 87, 160, 187 Floqi, Kristo, 63 folk, folklore, folklorisation, 82, 219– 20, 237, 252– 3, 259– 60, 287 foreign, foreigner(s), foreign policy, 5, 7, 8, 11, 20, 27, 29, 37, 40, 46,

48, 59, 61 – 4, 68, 71, 79, 85 – 7, 91– 2, 94, 97 – 8, 107, 113, 121, 136, 143, 147, 149, 155, 163, 177, 196, 197, 226, 236, 238– 9, 241–3, 247– 50, 262, 268, Foucault, Michel, 287 France, French, 2, 5, 8, 9, 11 –12, 15, 19, 22, 23, 26, 28, 29, 39, 41, 43– 5, 47, 51 – 7, 62, 68, 71, 72– 3, 75, 76, 79, 98, 147, 158, 160, 163, 174, 175, 186, 188, 189, 196, 221– 5, 227, 236, 238, 247, 254, 265, 268, 273, 276, 277, 288, 299, 302, 304, 305 Frashe¨ri, Eshref, 79 Frashe¨ri, Mehdi, 50 – 3, 56, 79 Frashe¨ri, S¸emseddin Sami bey, 69, 82 Fuad (King), 155, 174 furniture, 27, 229, 231– 3 future, 43, 47, 56 – 7, 62, 64, 89, 98, 118, 121, 147, 167– 9, 183, 188, 195, 298, 308 Gabeci, Ali, 54 Gajret (newspaper and association), 195, 199–200, 202, 205, 206, 208 Gallipoli, 176 Gasprinski (Gasprali), Ismail, 186 gaze, 3, 17, 20, 29, 183, 205, 218–64 Gazi/Ghazi (aka Mustafa Kemal), 9, 15, 18, 45, 58, 134, 144, 169 Geneva, 19, 47, 50, 51, 174 gender (see also masculinity, men, women), 2, 7, 26, 90, 143– 77, 178–216, 220 generation, 44, 55, 57, 58, 72, 96, 134, 139, 150, 182, 185, 202, 218, 234 Gentile, Giovanni, 22 Gentizon, Paul, 12 Georgeon, Franc
ois, 9, 179 Germany, German, Germanism, 2, 12, 20, 23, 29, 40, 44, 47 – 9, 52, 72, 77, 79, 98, 116, 172, 183, 186, 189, 196, 212, 227, 264, 273,

INDEX 276, 277, 280– 1, 285– 6, 287, 295, 304 Gershoni, Israel, 150 Giornale d’Italia, 69 Gjirokaste¨r/Gjinokaste¨r, 50, 54, 75 Gobineau, Arthur de, 274, 276, 280, 291, 307 Go¨kalp, I˙skender, 9, 179 Go¨kalp, Ziya, 69, 83, 90, 101, 122, 220– 2, 233, 236– 40, 244, 250– 1, 254– 5, 259 Go¨ttingen, 186 Grand Bazaar, 231, 242 Great Depression, 92, 96, 187, 207 Greece, Greek(s), 8, 9, 16, 25, 27, 40, 51, 92, 95, 97, 98, 107, 108– 10, 118, 121, 127– 30, 132– 4, 140, 142, 158, 175, 232, 264, 275, 276, 284, 293, 295, 298 myth(s), mythology, 35, 98, 116, 223–5, 293, 294, 298–9, 303, 307 Greek-Ottoman War (1897), 83 Greek-Ottoman War (1922), 8, 10 – 11 Grey Wolf (by Harold Courtenay Armstrong), 15, 193 Gu¨ntekin, Basri (Dukagjin Zadeh or Dukakinog˘lu), 19 Habsburg, 182– 3, 186– 7, 195 Hacıbulgurzade Ahmed Hulusi Efendi, 111, 121– 2 Hakikat (newspaper), 118, 120– 1, 139 Hakimiyeti Milliye (newspaper), 116 Halide Edip, see Adıvar, Halide Edip Halk Sesi (newspaper), 86 Halpe´rin, Jean-Louis, 39 Hamza Bey, Abd al-Malik, 143– 4, 150, 154 harem, 183, 198, 224– 5, 229, 234–5, 244, 256 Hasanbegovic´, Avdo, 195, 200 Hasanbegovic´, Halka, 200 Haskovo, 90

339

hat(s), Hat Reform, Hat Law (see also fez), 12, 17, 143–77, 219, 242 Haykal, Muhammad Husayn, 162, 175 Helsinki, 15 heritage (national, cultural), 99, 158, 162, 219– 20, 233, 242, 244, 250–1, 253, 259, 261, 266 hijab (veil, seclusion), 156 Hikjmet (newspaper), 16, 201 Hikmet, Naˆzım, 223– 4, 256 history, 4, 22, 83, 87, 88, 96, 106, 109, 120, 152, 157, 162, 168– 9, 188–9, 238, 243, 250, 270, 273–4, 277, 279–80, 282, 284–6, 288, 291, 293– 7 hoca(s) (Muslim teachers), 93, 94, 96, 97 Hoca Ali Rıza, 237 Humboldt, Wilhelm von, 271 Hu¨seyn Hu¨snu¨, 84, 86, 97, 98 identity, identities, 16, 25, 56, 81, 82, 84, 88, 99, 106, 111, 121, 133, 134–5, 145, 147, 149, 150, 157, 167, 168– 9, 210, 220, 230, 234, 236, 243, 246– 50, 270, 285, 299 ideology, ideological, 1 – 3, 11, 23, 24, 58, 61, 84, 91, 96, 139, 143, 145, 168, 170, 179, 180, 210– 11, 251, 260, 285, 308 Ihrig, Stefan, 12 ignorance (Cehalet), 134 I˙kdam (newspaper), 49 Ilustrativni list nedelja (magazine), 193 Ilmi-hal (Islamic catechism), 184 imam(s), 97, 122, 124, 131, 133, 283 Imamovic´, Vehbija, 207 imitation, imitating, 16, 22, 41 – 50, 87, 155, 158, 231, 232, 240, 270, 286, 297 imperialism, imperialist, imperialistic (see also anti-imperialism), 9, 11, 18, 145, 174, 237, 253, 265– 6, 270, 273, 280, 283, 285, 298 I˙nan, Abdu¨lkadir, 282– 5, 305

340

KEMALISM

I˙nan, Afet, 291 independence, independentist, 9, 62 – 3, 66 – 9, 83 – 4, 107, 108, 118, 121, 147, 157, 160, 165, 168, 172, 198, 19, 215, 255, 283, 284 India, Indian(s), 2, 10, 15 – 16, 17, 175, 176– 7, 282, 283 I˙no¨nu¨, I˙smet, 1, 21, 125, 140– 1 International Alliance of Women/ International Woman Suffrage Alliance, 193 Intibaˆh (newspaper), 16 intimacy, intimate, 15, 150, 160– 8, 175, 193 inheritance, 45, 49, 54, 61, 62, 65 intellectual(s), 1, 3, 5, 7, 16– 17, 18, 22, 27, 42, 51, 59, 66, 67, 68– 71, 75, 82 – 4, 101, 108, 113, 123, 132, 155, 163, 166, 174, 175, 185– 7, 195, 219– 21, 227, 237, 239, 240, 242– 3, 249– 51, 254, 257, 265, 266, 268, 269– 71, 279– 99, 301, 302 international, internationalism, internationalist, 5, 8, 13, 19, 23, 24, 26, 27, 29, 45, 50, 51, 60, 144, 145, 147, 149, 152, 153– 4, 163, 167– 73, 179, 181, 193, 199, 201, 221, 244, 248, 257, 265, 267, 268, 294 International Control Commission (Albania, 1913– 14), 51 Iran, Iranian, 88, 169 Iraq, 147 irredentism, irredentist, 27, 82, 92, 95 Islam, Islamic, 8 –11, 15, 16, 17, 18, 26, 28, 42, 59, 63, 71, 75, 78, 84, 87, 88, 89, 93, 97, 111, 119, 134– 5, 145, 155, 157– 8, 160, 162, 165, 167, 169, 172, 174, 175, 182– 4, 187, 188, 195, 196, 201, 207, 206, 236, 248, 254, 274, 287, 288

Islamic Community of Bosnia and Herzegovina, 17 Islamic Congress in Cairo, 174 Islamicisation, 98 I˙slamiyet (Muslim World), 87, 88 Islamo-Bolshevism, 11 Istanbul/Constantinople, 4, 8, 12, 15, 17, 19, 42, 46, 47, 49, 54, 55, 56, 57, 65, 69, 75, 76, 85, 93, 100, 121, 146, 154, 182, 183, 186, 193, 195, 197, 198, 199, 207, 223, 230– 2, 241–3, 252, 258, 265, 280, 283, 286– 9, 290, 295, 300 Italy, Italian, 2, 9, 12, 14, 15, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 27, 39, 40, 43, 44, 47– 53, 56, 58 –9, 67, 69, 70, 72, 77, 79, 80, 98, 212 Iqbal, Muhammad, 18 Izmir, 22, 49, 70 Jacob, Christian, 25 Jaho, Veis, 54 Jakobson, Roman, 283 Janina, 75 Jankowski, James, 150 Jerusalem, 16 Jew(s), Jewish (see also Do¨nme), 2, 16, 22, 35, 85, 100, 121, 253, 258 Journal de Gene`ve (newspaper), 9 journalist(s), journalism, 8, 10, 11, 12, 17, 20, 22, 26, 42, 58, 61, 68, 70, 88, 97, 119, 132, 139, 162, 178, 193, 201, 202, 208, 229, 242, 247, 262, Jugoslovenska Muslimanska Organizacija (party), 194 Kadınlar Halk Fırkası (organisation), 197 Kadro (movement and magazine), 22, 251 Kant, Immanuel, 185 Kapetanovic´, Mehmed (Ljubusˇak), 182

INDEX Karamehmedovic´, Hamdija, 183 Karagjozi, Mehmet, 54 Karaosmanog˘lu, Yakup Kadri, 218– 19, 222– 3, 228, 230, 231, 237, 241– 2, 251– 2, 256– 8, 261– 2 KATAK (Association of the Turkish Minority of the Island of Cyprus), 130 Kazazovic´, Salih, 186 Kedhi, Josif, 48 Kemalism, Kemalist(s), 1 – 37, 39 – 41, 44, 45, 51, 53, 57 – 9, 60 – 72, 81 – 104, 105, 108, 109– 15, 122, 123, 127, 129, 131–4, 136, 143, 145– 54, 156, 157, 158, 168–9, 170, 179– 82, 189, 193, 196–9, 208, 209– 11, 218– 21, 228– 9, 233, 236, 237, 239, 243, 249– 54, 257, 266– 70, 277, 279– 88, 292– 9, 302, 307, 308 Kemalophile(s), Kemalophilia, Kemalomania, 12, 18, 210 Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, see Yugoslavia Kokalari, Emin, 54 Kokalari, Sami, 54 Kondi, Petraq, 55 Ko¨pru¨lu¨zaˆde, Mehmed Fuad, 280, 284, 291 Korc
e¨, 44, 55, 56, 57, 76 Koyunog˘lu, Arif Hikmet, 238 KTMHP (Turkish National People’s Party of Cyprus), 130 Ku¨
cu¨k, Fazıl, 130– 1 Kuntay, Midhat Cemal, 231, 258 Kurds, Kurdish, 19, 254 Kuˆrdzhali, 90, 94, 95 – 7 Kurti, Qazim, 54 Kurtovic´, Sˇukrija, 195 Laicism (laiklik), 12, 70, 131 landowners (begovat), 182– 3 language, linguistic, 5, 7, 20, 24 –9, 40 – 1, 44, 49, 52, 56 – 7, 72, 78,

341

81– 4, 86, 89, 91, 97 – 101, 106, 112–18, 128, 129, 133, 134, 142, 144, 179, 183, 209, 211, 232, 237, 250, 264– 308 Language Commission (Dil Encu¨meni) 118, 129, 139 Latin, 22, 25, 27, 81– 3, 86 – 90, 93, 96– 9, 105– 6, 113– 20, 122, 125–7, 129, 132–4, 142, 267, 268, 284, 298 Laruelle, Marle`ne, 285 Lausanne, 291 Lausanne, Treaty of, Conference, 51, 107, 147 Latifa Hanim (Mustafa Kemal’s wife), 156, 189, 192, 208 La Turquie Ke´maliste (magazine), 5, 6, 19, 26, 189– 91, 225, 227, 242–3, 251, 255–7, 260, 262 law(s), legal, courts, 12, 17, 24, 38 – 80, 85, 88, 94, 99, 106, 107– 8, 111, 113, 118– 19, 124– 6, 129–30, 132, 134, 136, 149, 155, 160, 167, 169, 171, 172, 173, 175, 180, 181, 184, 187, 194, 196, 197, 219, 272, 273 lawyer(s), 20, 26, 28, 41 – 4, 47 – 58, 60, 73, 79, 93, 117, 119, 160, 197, 276 leadership (culture of), 20, 83, 150, 176 League of Nations, 40, 50, 51, 149, 170 Lebanon, 147, 174 Leibniz, 264, 287 Leipzig, 13, 19, 29, 183 legitimisation, legitimate, 17, 18, 23, 41– 5, 50, 53, 60 – 70, 71 – 3, 179, 182, 270, 274 Le Matin (newspaper), 44 – 5 Lepcˇevic´, Dragisˇa, 189, 192 Les Turcs anciens et modernes, 288 Lewis, Bernard, 265 Libal, Kathryn, 197, 199 Libohova, Agjah, 42 – 3, 47, 52, 56, 75, 79

342

KEMALISM

Libohove¨, 47, 75 library, libraries, librarian, 215, 238, 273, 276 Lierau, Walter, 193, 214 lifestyle, 95, 99, 110, 111, 156, 203, 252 literacy, illeteracy, 83, 114, 121, 123, 126, 183, 184, 267 literature, literary, 12, 83, 175, 196, 209, 222, 223, 248, 257, 268, 272, 291 Ljubljana, 193 London, 9, 15, 134, 154 Loraine, Percy, 150 Loti, Pierre, 221, 223– 4, 227– 8, 239– 40, 248, 255– 7, 261 love, 67, 115, 152, 158, 162, 209, 221– 9, 233, 238, 240, 244 Macedonia, 84, 92, 97 magic, magical, 26, 27, 39 – 40, 44, 241 Mahmud II, 144 Mahmud Azmi, 162, 166– 7 Mahmut Esat, see Bozkurt Majlis al-Nuwwab, 160 Majlis al-Shuyukh, 160 Manastir/Monastir, see Bitola Marr, Nikolaı¨, 283– 5 marriage, 45, 64, 79, 111, 156, 197, 206 Marrism, 284– 5 Marseille, 284 Marxism, Marxist, 19, 22, 23, 283, 285 masculinity, masculine, 143– 77, 178, 181, 202 masses, 82, 93, 164, 254 Masum Millet (newspaper), 118, 120– 1, 134 Mat (region), 74 material culture, materiality, 26, 125, 163, 173, 174, 217–63, 269, 283, 285 Mecca, 16 mecelle/mexhelle (Ottoman code), 42–3, 45, 48–9, 53–4, 57, 61–4, 74, 75

Medeniyet (newspaper), 87 – 8, 93 – 4 Mehmed Mu¨nir Efendi, Sir, 111, 123, 125, 128, 130 Mehmet Emin, 83 Meillet, Antoine, 281 men (see also masculinity), 143– 77, 203 Merxhani, Branko, 69– 70 Mesopotamia, 275 Middle East, 129, 226 Mikusch, Dagobert von, 13 – 15, 20 Milan, 15, 145 millet (religion community, nation), 81, 107, 116, 118, 120– 1, 134, 135, 238 Milliyet (newspaper), 20 minister, ministry, 16, 21, 22, 43, 46– 53, 55, 65, 69, 74, 76, 85, 86, 90– 4, 95, 96, 98, 113, 160, 177, 189, 227, 307 Minga, Idriz, 47, 52, 53, 54, 76 Minority, minorities, 16, 27, 71, 85 – 6, 88, 93, 99, 121, 130, 142, 203, 205, 209 model(s), 12, 18, 20, 22, 24, 28, 39– 41, 42 – 3, 45, 50 – 72, 73, 79, 152, 154– 8, 168, 180, 188– 9, 192, 193, 195– 6, 203, 205, 208, 211, 298 modern, modernising, modernisation, modernity, modernist, 2, 4, 12, 16, 17, 20, 25, 26, 29, 39 –40, 43, 47– 9, 51, 54, 61, 66 – 7, 79, 81– 4, 87 – 90, 93, 95, 97, 99, 112–21, 127, 145, 149, 151– 8, 160–1, 163– 76, 181, 182, 195, 196, 205– 6, 203, 205– 7, 210–11, 219, 226– 7, 232–3, 236, 242, 247, 250, 253– 4, 257, 260, 262– 3, 266, 270, 277, 288, 294 monarchy, 67 – 9, 84, 92, 108, 168 Mongol(s), Mongolia, Mongolian, Mongoloid, 87, 275, 276, 291– 3 Montandon, Georges, 296

INDEX Montesquieu, 12 moral, morality, 69, 89, 91, 162, 167, 180, 184, 187, 203, 207, 209, 221, 240, 242 Morocco, Moroccan, 144, 145, 157– 8 Moscow, 19 Mostar, 185– 6, 206 mosque(s), 10, 89, 134, 202, 232, 241– 2, 248– 9 mother, motherhood, 184– 5, 187, 205 motherland, 99, 106, 115, 122, 133, 195 Mousset, Albert, 68 mufti/mu¨ftu¨/muftija, 85 – 7, 89 – 94, 97 – 8, 155, 184 muhadzˇir (Muslim refugees), 182 Muhammad ‘Ali/Mehmed Ali, 144, 154 Muhammad (Muhamed) Abduh, 17, 162, 176, 186, 195 Muhammad ibn Abd al-Karim al-Khattabi, 157 Muhiddin, Nezihe, 197 Muhidine, Timour, 11 Mulabdic´, Edhem, 183 Mulalic´, Mustafa, 18, 203– 5 Mu¨ller, Max, 271– 3, 302, 305 Muradbegovic´, Ahmed, 195, 203 museum, 228, 232, 238 Muslim(s), Muslim world, 7 – 11, 15 – 19, 25 – 7, 40, 54, 55, 61, 62, 64, 70 – 2, 73, 76 – 7, 81 – 101, 106– 7, 111, 119, 121, 122, 129, 131, 133, 134, 135, 139, 144, 169, 173, 176, 178– 216, 283– 4, Muslim Confessional Organization(s) (MCO), 85, 91 –2 Mustafa Celaˆleddin (aka Constantin Borzecki), 288, 290 Mustafa Kamil, 173 Mustafa Kemal (see also Atatu¨rk, Gazi/ Ghazi), 1– 5, 7 – 13, 15 – 20, 26, 29, 42, 45, 46, 58– 9, 67 – 72, 79, 81, 83, 86 – 8, 96, 117, 122, 143,

343

145, 150, 154, 155, 168, 169, 170, 171, 175, 176, 178– 80, 189, 193, 196, 199, 208, 227– 8, 251, 257, 266, 269, 288, 291, 300 Mussolini, 19, 20, 22, 46, 67, 107 Nahda, 164– 5 Namık Kemal, 82 Napoleon, Napoleonic, 39, 43, 53 Naroden Blok (party), 92 Narodna Uzdanica (Association), 199–200, 215 Narodni Zˇenski Savez (Council), 195 national assembly, assemblies (see also parliament), 7, 10, 26, 43, 44, 60, 62– 3, 65, 99, 198, 269 nation, national, nation state, national identity, nationalism, 1 – 11, 15, 17– 20, 23 – 8, 40, 44, 46, 55, 57, 59, 61 –7, 69 – 70, 79, 81– 5, 87– 8, 90 – 100, 106– 8, 110, 116, 116–19, 121, 133– 5, 140, 144–5, 147, 149–74, 179, 181, 188, 193, 198, 199, 200– 2, 207–10, 218 –21, 228, 233– 4, 236–51, 253 –5, 260– 1, 263–70, 274, 276, 279, 281, 283–6, 288– 89, 295, 298, 299 National Pact (Misak-ı Millıˆ), 9, 117 Nazi Germany see Germany Neo-Albanianism, 68, 70 Neolithic, 290, 293, 296 Nepravishta, Ferid, 54 New Turkey, New Turkish, 10, 12, 15, 18, 23, 24, 29, 41 – 3, 44, 56, 57, 59, 64, 81, 113, 123, 124, 1226, 130–1, 133, 134, 144, 155, 156, 193, 196, 226, 228, 244, 249, 253 New York, 15 Nigar Bint Osman, 208 non-Muslim(s) (see also Christian, Catholic, Orthodox), 9, 18, 47, 56, 85, 100, 111, 183, 184, 188, 194–5, 200, 203, 205

344

KEMALISM

North Africa (see also Algiers, Morocco, Tunisia), 144, 293 Novi Sad, 183 Nutuk, 29 Okan, Mehmed Remzi, 116– 17, 119, 139 ˆ kawa, Shuˆmei, 18 O ¨ mer Kaˆzım, 8 O ¨ mer Seyfettin, 83, 257 O Orient, Oriental(s) (see also East, Eastern), 8, 10, 12, 18, 29, 42 –3, 50, 56, 57, 63, 64, 121, 133, 203, 219– 20, 221– 54, 260, 267, 283– 4 Oriental/Turkish room/salon, 220– 1, 229– 39, 243, 258 Orientalism, Orientalist, Self-Orientalism, 2, 9, 19, 24, 25, 64, 65, 183, 202, 217–63, 267–71, 284 Oriente Moderno (journal), 9 Orolloga, Thoma, 47, 48, 52, 56, 76, 79 Orthodox (Christian), 47, 54, 55, 64, 69, 85, 98, 100, 182 Ostrorog, Count Leon, 68 Ottoman(s), Ottoman Empire (see also post-Ottoman), 7 – 9, 15, 23, 26, 36, 40, 41, 44, 46, 51, 52, 54 – 7, 61, 63 – 4, 69, 70, 75, 82 – 5, 88, 90, 95, 100, 101, 105, 107, 110, 112– 15, 117, 120–1, 123, 129, 131– 2, 134– 6, 142, 144– 5, 147, 153– 4, 157, 159, 163– 4, 168– 9, 170, 171, 173–6, 179– 80, 182– 3, 186– 8, 197, 202, 203, 205, 209–10, 215, 218– 20, 222– 4, 226– 7, 229, 233– 4, 236– 7, 240– 4, 246, 249– 50, 252, 253, 254, 256, 258, 261, 279, 287, Ottomanism, 2, 164 passport(s), 5, 94 Pact of Tirana (1926), 52, 53

Paillare`s, Michel, 8 painter(s), painting, 193, 221, 223– 5, 237, 239 Palestine, 9, 147 pan-Islamism, pan-Islamist, 15 – 16, 18, 174 Paris, Parisian, 2, 8, 12, 15, 19, 47, 76, 145, 154, 160, 163, 167, 232, 244–8, 258, 262–3, 275, 284, 288 Parla, Taha, 180, 210 parliament (see also national assembly), 11– 12, 18, 42, 55, 60 – 1, 65, 66, 89, 90, 179, 183, 199, 203 party, parties, 1– 3, 19, 22 – 3, 49, 92, 109, 112, 130, 134, 147, 155, 160, 173– 4, 180, 189, 194, 196–8, 218, 268–9 past, 23, 43, 44, 53, 56, 57, 63, 64, 83, 110, 117, 147, 156, 157, 162, 165–9, 171, 196, 209, 233, 236, 242, 243, 255 paternalism, paternalist, 26, 196, 199, 211 patriarchy, 211 Peace Conference (Paris), 8, 51 peasant(s), 82, 184, 252, 254, 259, 260 pecˇa (veil), 206 Peker, Recep, 23 Penka, Karl, 276– 7 Persia, Persian, 81, 82, 83, 86, 88, 90, 93, 99, 229, 267, 268, 276 philantropy, 199, 199 philosophy, philosophers, 17, 22, 36, 185–6, 221, 265, 268, 302 photography, photograph(s), photographic, 2, 10, 27, 31, 68, 79, 83, 173, 205– 6, 217, 224– 5, 242–3, 262 Pictet, Adolphe, 274– 5, 308 picture(s), see photograph(s) pious foundations (waqf, vakif, efkaf), 17, 110, 111, 122, 129, 139, 184 Pittard, Euge`ne, 291

INDEX Plato, 294 pleasure, 201, 207, 240 Pletikosic´, Sofija, 187 Plovdiv, 94, 95 Poesche, Theodor, 276–7 Poga, Petro, 62 Poland, Polish, 264, 287, 288 police, 86, 93 – 4, 97, 126, 176 political, politics, politician(s), 1– 3, 5 – 8, 11, 15, 16 – 18, 20, 22 – 3, 25 – 8, 39, 41 – 3, 50, 52, 55 – 6, 58 – 62, 67, 69 – 73, 75, 84 –5, 87, 89, 92, 94, 96 – 7, 100, 101, 105, 106– 13, 117– 19, 121, 123, 127– 30, 134– 7, 139, 143, 145, 147, 149– 55, 157– 8, 160– 76, 178– 82, 185, 187– 8, 193– 9, 203, 208– 11, 220, 223, 227, 229, 254, 255, 257, 266– 70, 272, 279, 281– 2, 284, 285, 287, 289, 298, 299, 301, 302 polygamy, 45, 64, 80, 180 Pomaks (Slavic-speaking Muslims), 81, 84, 95 – 9 populism, 23, 70 portrait(s) (of Mustafa Kemal), 10, 11, 15, 26 positivism, 2 postcard(s), 225– 6 poster(s), 2, 126 post-Ottoman, 5, 18, 24, 28, 81, 87, 99, 145– 54, 160, 168, 172, 179, 181– 3, 203, 205, 208, 209– 10 present, 61, 110, 147, 162, 165, 183 press, periodicals, newspapers, 2, 5, 9, 11, 12, 16, 19 – 20, 22 – 3, 26, 28 – 9, 39, 41, 42, 44 – 6, 48 – 50, 53, 55, 58 – 61, 63 – 6, 68 – 9, 71, 74, 86 – 9, 90, 93, 94, 101, 106, 108– 9, 111, 114– 22, 125, 129, 133, 136, 139, 144–5, 150, 155, 157, 162, 173– 4, 180, 186, 188– 9, 194, 196, 198– 201, 209, 224,

345

227, 236, 247, 251, 255, 257, 265–6, 268, 279, 293 print, printing, 10, 26, 28, 50, 86, 88, 99, 113, 115– 16, 119, 120, 124, 125–6, 130– 2, 183, 186, 189, 193, 224, 281 progress, progressive(s), 1, 19, 48, 62, 63, 65, 67, 69, 87 – 9, 98, 110, 158, 165, 167, 171, 180– 1, 183–5, 188– 9, 194, 195–6, 199, 202–3, 206, 208, 210– 11, 253, 254, 257, 267, 269, 284, 302 propaganda, 2, 4, 5, 23, 29, 59, 86, 93– 7, 99, 179, 285 Provadia, 90 public, public sphere, public space, 15, 20, 26, 28, 41, 55, 60, 134, 166, 168, 173, 175, 176, 179, 185, 187–9, 193– 4, 197– 8, 201, 206–7, 209, 211, 224, 226– 7, 244, 248, 252, 265, 267– 8, publicity, 59, 88, 147, 152, 160, 173 qadi/kadija (judge in a sharia court), 43, 54– 6, 75, 100, 130– 1, 160, 182, 184 Qasim Amin, 163 Quran, 10, 16, 87, 90, 238 Qyteza, Sabri, 55 race(s), 36, 265, 270, 272, 274– 5, 277–8, 281– 2, 285, 286–98, 304, 305, 308 racial anthropology, 266– 98 racism, 271, 277, 280– 1, 284– 6, 289, 291–2, 296, 298–9, 305 radio, 265, 279 Raifpas¸azaˆde Fuat, 290 Ramm, Christoph, 110, 111, 133 Reis-ul-ulema (Chief of Bosnian ulemas) 195, 208 reform(s), reformist, reformers (mujaddidun) 3, 5, 12, 15, 17, 18, 22, 28, 29, 39 – 41, 42, 44, 46,

346

KEMALISM

57 – 8, 67, 68 – 72, 82 – 6, 87, 95, 96, 105– 6, 109, 112– 19, 123–9, 131– 4, 144, 155– 8, 158, 168, 169, 171, 182, 184, 186– 7, 193, 198– 200, 210– 1, 219, 229, 266, 270, 300 Reforma (newspaper), 198 Rehber (newspaper), 88, 89 rejection, 27, 28, 29, 41, 50 – 9, 63, 68, 72, 80, 81, 85, 121, 154, 155, 158, 161, 163, 170, 174, 180, 236, 266, 302, 304 religion, religious (see also Catholic, Christian, confession, Islam, Jew, Orthodox), 7, 8 – 10, 16 – 20, 22, 26, 36, 42, 45, 54, 56, 58, 61 –4, 68, 70, 72, 76 – 7, 85, 87, 89– 91, 93, 98 – 100, 121– 2, 131– 4, 136, 152, 155, 156, 161, 162, 165, 167, 169, 176, 182, 184, 187– 9, 193– 5, 199, 201– 2, 208, 254, 265, 272 republic, republican, republicanism, 1, 3, 5, 12, 19, 23, 39, 48, 59, 64, 67, 70, 82, 83, 94, 96, 106, 110, 145, 153, 174, 179, 180, 197, 218, 227– 8, 234, 236, 238, 244, 254, 270, 284 resentment, 269, 279– 80 Res¸it Galip, 296 Retzius, Anders Adolf, 276 revolution(s), revolutionary, revolutionism, 2, 3, 5, 11, 12, 15, 17, 18, 20, 22, 23, 36, 39, 42, 44 – 5, 69, 70, 84, 86, 87, 105– 6, 110– 14, 117, 123, 127, 132– 4, 173, 242, 243, 266– 8, 270, 277, 283, 285– 6, 289, 290, 293, 298 Richard, Gaston, 238– 9 Rif, 158 Rif War, 145 Ripley, William Zebina, 277– 8, 296 Rizk, Yunan Labib, 144 Robert College, 243, 295

Rodina (organisation), 99 Romania, 40, 97 romanisation of the script, 12, 22, 25, 26, 27, 81 – 3, 86 – 90, 93– 9, 105– 6, 109, 112– 14, 118–19, 125, 129, 132, 134, 267, 298 romantic, romanticism, 19, 250, 253, 259, 260, 282 Rome, 19, 21, 56 Rossi, Ettore, 22 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 12, 185 Ruli, Fevzi, 54 Russia, Russian(s), 18, 20, 28, 84, 95, 100, 101, 193, 198, 266, 280, 283–5 Russo-Ottoman War (1877 –8), 95 Ruz Al-Yusuf (magazine), 150– 3 Sabit, Kerim Halil, 10 Said, Edward, 19, 219 Saint Petersburg, 283 Salonika, 16, 75, 76, 101 San Stefano (Treaty of), 84, 95 Sarac
gil, Ays¸e, 202 Sarajevo, 10, 182, 184– 6, 193– 6, 198, 200, 202, 210 Sarajevo’s School for sharia judges, 182 Sarajlic´, Sˇemsudin, 186, 196–7 Sarraut, Albert, 12 Schlegel, August Wilhelm von, 271, 287, 289 Schleicher, August, 271, 272, 273– 4, 302, 305 Sakarya (Battle of), 9 school(s), schooling, 2, 4, 15, 26, 27, 40, 41, 56 – 7, 69, 75, 76, 86, 89, 90, 91, 93, 94, 96 – 9, 108, 118, 119, 122, 125– 7, 129, 134, 136, 162, 171, 182– 7, 194, 196– 7, 201, 202– 3, 205–6, 268, 270, 283, 290, 291 School of Administration (Mekteb-i Mu¨lkiye), 46, 51

INDEX Schopenhauer, Arthur, 156 script (see also alphabet), 12, 25, 81– 90, 93, 98, 99, 105– 42, 267 Sebilu¨rres¸ad (magazine), 17 secular, secularist, secularisation, 11 – 15, 17 – 18, 20, 22, 23, 84, 88, 89, 111, 113, 134, 145, 155, 157, 169, 173, 175, 187, 208, 219, 254 segregation/desegregation, 26, 181, 187– 8, 201– 2, 211 self-determination (right to), 11 S¸emseddin Sami, see Frashe¨ri, S¸emseddin Sami bey Senegal, 273 Serbia, Serbian, Serbs, Serbo-Croatian, 179– 80, 182– 3, 186, 187, 188, 189, 193, 195, 198, 208– 10 Se´riot, Patrick, 285, 301 Servet-i Fu¨nun(magazine), 245–8, 262–3 Se`vres (Treaty), 10, 129, 147 Shapati, Behxhet, 43, 49, 54, 75, 78 sharia (Islamic Law), 43, 63, 85, 155, 160, 167, 184 Sharia Courts /Muslim Courts /S¸eri Mahkemesi, 43, 64, 100, 129, 130– 1, 134, 160 Shatku, Faik (Dibra), 47, 51, 52, 56, 76, 79 Shaw, George Bernard, 156 Sheikh Said (revolt), 19 Shekulli i ri (newspaper), 69 Shkode¨r, 56 Shumen, 93, 94, 96, 98 Sidqi, Isma’il, 150, 152, 153, 173 S¸inasi, Ibrahim, 69 Six Arrows (republicanism, secularism, nationalism, populism, statism, revolutionarism), 19, 23, 70, 179 Sˇkolski vjesnik (magazine), 186 Slav(s), Slavic, 18, 40, 81, 85, 95, 188, 276, 278, 285 Social-Darwinism, 2, 184, 286, 302, 304

347

Sofia, 86, 89, 295 Southeastern Europe (see also Balkans), 179, 183, 209 Southern Africa, 176 sovereignty, 11, 27, 40 – 1, 42, 62, 64, 71, 72, 82, 84, 101, 116, 143, 147, 149– 50, 153, 168, 170, 171, 172, 182, 290 Soviet Russia, see Russia So¨z (newspaper), 115, 116 space, spatial, spatiality, 7, 15, 24 – 9, 40, 64, 71, 125, 145– 54, 160, 168, 170, 172, 173, 179, 181, 182, 183, 185– 9, 193, 197, 203, 205, 208– 10, 211, 212, 224, 229, 231, 234 Spaho, Hasan, 182 Spain, Spanish, 158, 175, 212 sport(s), 26, 89, 93, 111, 153, 201 Statute for the Religious Organization and Rule of Muslims in the Bulgarian Kingdom, 85, 90, 91 Statism, 23, 70, 110 Stockholm, 15 subjectivity, 157, 160– 8 Suffragette(s), 195–7 Sulejmanpasˇic´, Dzˇevad, 202 Sulo, Dervish, 54 sultan, sultanic, Sultanate, 22, 82, 84, 144, 163, 179, 209, 232, 234, 241, 243, 288 Sun-Language Theory, 25, 28, 29, 265–70, 281, 288– 9, 295, 297–9 Sun Yat-sen, 19 Supra-Egyptianism, 172 Svara, Maksim, 193 Switzerland, Swiss, 12, 22, 29, 38 – 62, 68, 70 –4, 79, 291 Syria, Syrian, 9, 10, 98, 147, 169 Tankut, Hasan Res¸it, 294 Tanpınar, Ahmet Hamdi, 240, 249, 261, 263

348

KEMALISM

Tanzimat, 22, 82, 113, 182 tarbush (see also fez), 143– 77 Tatar(s), Crimean Tatar(s), Tataric, 186, 273, 275, 276, 283, 292 Taymur, Ahmad, 157, 174 –5 teacher(s), 26, 86, 89, 93, 96, 108, 114, 119, 123, 126, 132, 136, 139, 182– 3, 186– 7, 194, 205, 206, 209, 213, 283, 288, 290, 295 Tekin Alp (aka Moiz Kohen), 22 Telegraf (newspaper), 58, 63 Ter-Matevosyan, Vahram, 11 Theodhosi, Harilla, 54, 55 Thrace, 84, 92, 95, 96, 97 time(s), time-space (see also future; past), 5, 20, 22, 23, 24, 25, 28, 57, 64, 71, 125, 128, 145–54, 155– 60, 161, 162, 163, 165, 167, 169, 170, 174, 179, 188, 227– 9, 237, 238, 241, 254, 274, 293, 296, 308 Tirana, 38 –80, 252 Tito, 10 tobacco, 95, 230, 236, 244 Toc
i, Terenc, 53, 57 tongue(s), see language Topinard, Paul, 275 Topkapı Palace, 234– 5, 243 Toro, Salih, 54 tourism, tourist(s), 26, 189, 241– 9 tradition, traditional, traditionalists, traditionalism, 3, 9, 110, 111, 114, 128, 134, 145, 149, 153, 155– 8, 162, 166– 8, 174, 201, 206, 210, 225– 6, 233, 247, 252, 258 translation, translating, translate, 7, 15, 16, 17, 19, 23, 28, 29, 34, 38 –9, 41, 43 – 5, 47 – 8, 50, 55, 73, 74, 79, 125, 129, 167, 177, 186, 193, 208– 9, 224, 226, 233, 244, 273, 283, 284 transfer, 28, 29, 39 – 41, 43, 49 – 50, 60, 72, 266

transnational, 5 –7, 12, 18– 20, 24 – 9, 70– 2, 121, 143, 145, 149– 50, 152, 168– 70, 173, 181, 187, 193, 218, 250, 266, 285 Trubetzkoy, Nikolaı¨, 283 Tsankov, Dragan, 85 Tsushima, 18 Tunc
ay, Mete, 105, 134 Tunisia, 9 Turan (newspaper), 86 Turan (organisation), 93, 97, 98 Turan, Turanism, Turanist(s), 91, 101 Turanian(s), 271– 5, 277– 8, 289– 90, 302, 304 Turkology, Turkologist(s), 22, 239, 266, 282, 284, 288, 290 Tu¨rk Dil Kurumu/Tu¨rk Dili Tetkik Cemiyeti, 267–8, 279, 283, 295, 307 Tu¨rk Kadın Birlig˘i (Turkish Women’s Union), 197, 199 Tu¨rk Tarih Kurumu/Tu¨rk Tarihi Tetkik Cemiyeti, 279 Turkish Thesis of History, 270, 293– 4, 295, 297 Turkism, pan-Turkism, Turkist(s), 22, 40, 59, 101, 119, 220, 221, 232–41, 244, 250– 1, 254–5, 257, 279, 290 Turkology, turkologist, 22, 265, 282, 284, 288, 290 Turkophobia, 257, 265, 266, 270, 301 turban, 154, 157– 8, 160– 7, 173, 174, 227–8, 236 Turkish Republic Day, 143 Turkish War of Independence, 9, 107, 108, 121, 198, 215 Turquerie/Turkophilia, 12, 198, 221, 239 ulama/ulema, ilmiyya (Islamic religious officials) (see also reis ul-ulema, mu¨ftu¨/mufti, hoca), 17, 88, 101,

INDEX 144, 155, 160, 174, 182– 3, 189, 195, 201– 2, 206 ¨ lku¨ (newspaper), 22 U Union and Progress (Committee), 8, 10, 22 United States, 12, 188 University, universities, 48, 56, 57, 128, 183, 186, 187, 202, 224, 279, 280, 282, 291 University of Algiers, 38 University of Ankara, 265, 284 University of Cairo, 160 University of Columbia, 278 University of Harvard, 278 University of Istanbul, 65, 280 University of Oxford, 296 University of Rome, 56 University of Vienna, 202 University of Zagreb, 202 ¨ nver, Ahmet Su¨heyl, 231– 3, 237, U 239, 258 Us¸aklıgil, Halid Ziya, 222, 224– 6, 255 Vacher de Lapouge, Georges, 276– 8 Vasfi, Ali, 54 Vatin, Nicolas, 266 veil, veiling, unveiling (see also feredzˇa, hijab, zar), 17, 111, 145, 155, 156, 163, 165, 171, 180, 183, 185– 9, 192, 202– 5, 208, 210, 222, 242 Ventura, Mis¸on, 55 Vienna, 47, 182, 183, 202 virility, 150 Vlore¨, 49, 75, 77 voluntary associations, 26, 93, 119, 130, 131, 166, 183, 184, 187, 188, 193– 203, 205– 6, 208, 267 Wadjdi, Farid Muhammad, 186 Wafd (party), 147, 155, 174

349

Wallich, Friedrich, 68 Watani Party, 173 water-pipe, 222, 224– 5, 230 West, Western, Westerners, Westernisation, Westernise (see also Western Europe), 2, 3, 9, 12, 15 – 18, 22 –3, 28, 29, 41– 5, 48, 50, 56, 57, 60 – 70, 71, 74, 83, 90, 110, 121, 122, 133, 134, 145, 154– 7, 163, 166, 167, 169, 170, 173, 174, 180, 185–6, 188, 193, 199, 202– 3, 206, 209, 210, 219, 220, 221, 226, 229– 32, 236, 239, 240, 243, 249, 250, 253– 4, 257– 8, 262, 266, 267– 70, 274– 5, 278–80, 283, 285, 286, 294, 297–9 Western Europe, 11, 28, 40, 47, 156, 180, 266, 278, 280, 283 Wilde, Oscar, 156 woman, women, women’s emancipation, women’s question (see also female, feminist), 24, 27, 28, 42, 45, 58, 63 – 5, 68, 80, 111, 155– 6, 161, 163, 165, 179–211, 213, 215, 220, 222, 224–7, 229, 236, 242, 244, 251, 256, 260, World War I, 1, 15, 17, 18, 26, 27, 40, 51, 55, 85, 89, 94, 95, 97, 122, 144– 7, 154, 168, 173, 176, 182, 187, 198, 205, 231, 283, 285 World War II, 92, 99, 109, 115, 129–30, 193, 286 Yambol, 91 Yemen, 10 Yeni Lisancılar, 83 Young Turks, Young Turkism (see also Union and Progress), 1, 4, 8, 33, 84, 108, 113, 122, 198, 218, 247, 299

350

KEMALISM

Youth, 26 – 7, 68, 69, 89, 150, 198 Yugoslavia, Yugoslav, 16, 18, 24, 25 – 6, 27 – 8, 40, 51, 74, 92, 97, 178– 216 Zaghlul, Ahmad, 157, 174 Zagreb, 183, 186, 188, 193, 194, 202

zar (female garment), 185, 206 Zˇenski pokret (association and magazine), 194–5 Zˇena i svet (magazine), 194 Zogism, 60 – 70 Zogu, Ahmet (Zog), 41, 42, 43, 46, 50, 54, 60, 64 – 9, 72, 74