The Formation of Turkish Republicanism 9781400885220

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T he For m aT ion oF T u r k ish r epu bl ic a n ism

T he For m aT ion oF

Turkish Republicanism

Banu Turnaoğlu

Pr i nc eT on U n i v e r si T y Pr e ss Pr i nc eT on & ox For d

Copyright © 2017 by Princeton University Press Requests for permission to reproduce material from this work should be sent to Permissions, Princeton University Press Published by Princeton University Press, 41 William Street, Princeton, New Jersey 08540 In the United Kingdom: Princeton University Press, 6 Oxford Street, Woodstock, Oxfordshire OX20 1TR press.princeton.edu Jacket art: İnkılap Yolunda (“On the Road of Transformation”), by Zeki Faik İzer, 1933. From the collection of the Istanbul Painting and Sculpture Museum, Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University. Courtesy of Professor Ayșegül İzer. All Rights Reserved Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Turnaoğlu, Banu, 1983- author. Title: The formation of Turkish republicanism / Banu Turnaoğlu. Description: Princeton : Princeton University Press, 2017. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2016059881 | ISBN 9780691172743 (hardback : acid-free paper) Subjects: LCSH: Turkey—Politics and government. | Turkey—History—Ottoman Empire, 1288-1918. | Atatürk, Kemal, 1881-1938—Political and social views. | Republicanism— Turkey—History. | Islam and politics—Turkey—History. | Liberalism—Turkey— History. | Turkey—Intellectual life. | BISAC: HISTORY / Middle East / Turkey & Ottoman Empire. | HISTORY / Modern / 20th Century. | POLITICAL SCIENCE / History & Theory. Classification: LCC DR486 .T875 2017 | DDC 320.45609/03—DC23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016059881 British Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available This book has been composed in Miller. Printed on acid-free paper. ∞ Printed in the United States of America 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

For my beloved family

con T e n Ts

Acknowledgments · xi Dramatis Personae · xiii inTroducTion

chapTer 1

chapTer 2

chapTer 3

1 Revival of Turkish Interest in Republicanism

3

Republicanism as a Political Tradition

4

Shaping the Empire

12

Early Stages of Ottoman State Formation

14

Ottoman Political Thought in the Classical Age

15

Ottoman Perceptions of Decline during the Seventeenth Century

23

The Turn to the West

29

Conclusion

32

The Age of Transformation in Ottoman Political Thought: The Reigns of Selim III (r. 1789–1808) and Mahmud II (r. 1808–39)

34

Reactions to the French Revolution

34

The New Order and Reforms of Selim III

40

The Reforms of the Absolutist Sultan Mahmud II

43

Conclusion

49

The Tanzimat Era and the Republicanism of the Young Ottomans

50

The Rise of Bureaucratic Authoritarianism and the Reform Movement

51

Ottomanism (Osmanlıcılık)

54

[ vii ]

[ viii ] con Ten Ts

chapTer 4

chapTer 5

chapTer 6

The Political Thought of the Young Ottomans: Liberalism, Islamism, and Radicalism

56

Conclusion

84

The Positivist Universalism and Republicanism of the Young Turks

86

Comte’s Universalism: Uniting the Occident and the Orient through Positivism

88

The Young Turks’ Idealism, Republicanism, and Positivist Universalism

92

Humanity in Two Senses

103

Reactions to Ottoman Positivist Universalism

112

Conclusion

113

The Political Thought of the Young Turk Revolution

115

Political Activism and Reorganization of the Young Turks

115

The Young Turk Revolution of 1908

118

The New Vision of the Ottoman State and the Impact of French Republicanism: Liberty, Equality, Justice, and Fraternity

126

Conclusion

137

Political Thought in the Balkan Wars: The Rise of Authoritarianism, Militarism, and Nationalism

138

The Shift toward Authoritarianism

139

The New Theory of War

141

The Shift from Universalism to National Idealism

147

The New Formation of the State as a War Machine

160

Conclusion

163

con Ten Ts [ ix ]

chapTer 7

chapTer 8

chapTer 9

conclusion

Ottoman Political Thought during World War I

165

The Conceptualization of the War and Public Opinion

165

The International Turn (1914–17)

169

The Social and National Turn (1917–18)

180

Conclusion

194

The War of Independence (1919–22): Road to the Independent Turkish Republic

196

Hâkimiyet-i Milliye (National Sovereignty) and İrâde-i Milliye (National Will)

197

The Political Language of War Propaganda

207

Conclusion

217

The Victory of Radical Republicanism

219

Abolition of the Ottoman Sultanate

220

The Proclamation of the Republic

235

Conclusion

241

The Ideology of the Early Republic

243

Bibliography · 253 Index · 283

ack now l edgm e n Ts

This book is based on my doctoral dissertation written at the University of Cambridge in the Department of Politics and International Studies (POLIS). It has been several years in the making, and during the course of its research and writing, many people and institutions have put themselves out to help me generously. Foremost, I am deeply grateful for the understanding, patience, and lucidity of my supervisor, Professor John Dunn, throughout my efforts to craft, organize, and successfully complete it. His instructive judgment, attentive and patient help, directness, and continued encouragement and faith in my work and ideas have been very much appreciated. I am greatly indebted to him for sharpening and clarifying my thinking by intensive intellectual interaction and for investing huge amounts of time and energy in my academic career. I should also like to extend my gratitude to Professor Şükrü Hanioğlu and Dr. Christopher Brooke for their constructive suggestions and their strong encouragement to turn my dissertation into a book. I have had indispensable and prompt aid from many scholars in Cambridge and beyond. I am particularly indebted to Dr. Duncan Kelly for his assistance, encouragement, and kindness. Chapters 6 and 7 are the outcomes of my research as a Research Assistant for his book project on the history of political and economic ideas during World War I at POLIS. I would also like to acknowledge the graciousness and inspiration of several teachers who taught me early on in my career: Dr. Yonca Köksal, who first instilled in me an enthusiasm for Ottoman history and commented on several chapters of this study; Professor Fuat Keyman, Professor Ziya Öniş, and Dr. Şuhnaz Yılmaz, who introduced me to the historical study of political theory and remained a constant and valuable source of guidance over the years; Professor Michael Freeden, who introduced me to academic discussions on republicanism and political ideologies during my MSc at Oxford; Dr. Isabel DiVanna, who taught me much about positivism at Cambridge; and Professor Stuart White and Dr. Karma Nabulsi, who urged me to think further and deeper on radical republicanism. A version of chapter 9 of this book appeared as “Ideological Struggle during the Formative Years of the Turkish Republic,” Middle Eastern Studies 52, issue 4 (2016): 677–96. I am grateful to Professor Ayşegül İzer for the permission to use Zeki Faik İzer's İnkılap Yolunda (On the Road of [ xi ]

[ xii ] ack now ledgmen Ts

Transformation, 1933, from the collection of the Istanbul Painting and Sculpture Museum, Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University) for my cover image. I should like to acknowledge the assistance of a number of institutions and thank their knowledgeable archivists and staff: the ISAM (Centre for Islamic Studies), Atatürk Kütüphanesi (Atatürk Library), and Koç University Library in Istanbul; Milli Kütüphane (National Library) in Ankara; La Maison d’Auguste Comte and the Bibliothèque Nationale de France in Paris; and the University Library in Cambridge. I am grateful to POLIS and King’s College, Cambridge, for providing me with the facilities and conducive conditions for my book. I owe a particularly heartfelt word of thanks to Selahattin Öztürk for responding to my numerous queries and requests with promptness, patience, and kindness; providing me with archival material and rare books; and helping me transcribe the Ottoman texts. The final stages of writing owe a great debt to Elizabeth Hubert and Laura Morley, who have thoroughly read, edited, and commented on my book in whole or in part, yielding numerous refinements, and who saved the work as a whole from a number of errors and failings of consistency. The shortcomings that might remain are my own responsibility. I am deeply grateful to my friends in a variety of settings for their help, encouragement, and intellectual companionship: Alia Al-Kadi, Nayla Aramouni, İrem Köprülü, Sukhneel Toor, Selin Öztürk Jami, Samir Puri, and especially Victoria Phan, who nudged me in the right direction, shouldered many of my burdens, and selflessly supported me from the beginning until the very last moment of this journey. Words cannot express how grateful I am to my family, to whom I affectionately dedicate this book with love. I could not have embarked on this project without the will and stalwart encouragement of my uncle, Ergun Tuncay. I am delighted to thank my cousin and best friend, Gizem Apak, for her unfailing moral support at a very low time. I owe everything to my remarkable parents, Gülgün and Ali Turnaoğlu, and grandparents, Emel and Kazım Tuncay, for what they have given and taught me. Warmest thanks go to my mother for making all the sacrifices on my behalf, providing me with much needed nurture, always keeping things in perspective, and unswervingly supporting me at every stage of its writing. Above all, I am indebted to my grandfather (now passed on), who originally inspired me to study politics, philosophy, and history. Cambridge, November 2016

dr a m aT is per sona e

ağaoğlu, ahmed (1869–1939) Azeri-born essayist, nationalist, journalist, statesman. Originally Ahmed Agayef, later Ağaoğlu Ahmed, and after 1934 Ahmet Ağaoğlu. Moved to Paris in 1889. Attended seminars at College de France and came under the influence of Ernst Renan and James Darmesteter. Returned to Azerbaijan in 1894 and moved to Istanbul in 1909, where he joined the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP). Promoted Turkish nationalism actively together with Ziya Gökalp, Yusuf Akçura, and Mehmed Emin (Yurdakul). In 1913, was appointed professor of Turkish history at Istanbul University. Elected deputy to the parliament and a member of the Central Committee (Merkez-i Umumi) of the CUP. In 1919, was exiled to Malta. Upon his return in 1921, joined the nationalists in Ankara and became the editor of the new Turkish government’s official propaganda organ, Hâkimiyet-i Milliye (National Sovereignty). Drafted the Constitution of 1924 together with Ziya Gökalp. One of the founders of the short-lived opposition Liberal Party (Serbest Fırkası) of 1930. Following its abolition of the same year, withdrew from political life. Between 1931 and 1933, taught law at the Istanbul Faculty of Law. ahmed riza (1859–1930) Leading positivist universalist Young Turk and statesman. Born in Istanbul, educated at the Lycée de Galatasaray. In 1883, went to Paris to study agriculture at Grignon. Joined a French positivist society and attended Pierre Laffitte’s lectures. Formed the Parisian branch of the CUP in 1895. Disseminated positivist universalism and ideas of liberty and Ottomanism through Meşveret in Turkish and Mechveret Supplément Français in French, both founded in Paris in 1895 with the goal of shaping French and Ottoman public opinion. In 1908, following the Young Turk Revolution, returned to Istanbul and became the first president of the Chamber of Deputies. In 1912, appointed president of the Senate. Leading negotiator between France and Turkey during the War of Independence. Fell into opposition with Mustafa Kemal and his followers after the war. Withdrew from political and intellectual life in the 1920s. Died in 1930 in Istanbul. alİ suavİ (1839–78) Journalist, controversial pamphleteer, and political activist, born in Istanbul. One of the pioneers of Islamic republicanism. [ xiii ]

[ xiv ] dr a m aTis persona e

Studied the Islamic sciences at a madrasa. Held various administrative and teaching posts in Istanbul and Bursa. Together with Namık Kemal and Ziya (later Paşa), published Muhbir in London as the official mouthpiece of the Young Ottoman Society, but later because of ideological differences, broke away from them. In 1869, published Ulûm (“The Sciences”) in Paris. In 1876, returned to Istanbul. Two years later, rebelled against Abdülhamid II, led a few hundred Balkan refugees in an assault against the Çırağan Palace. celal nurİ (İlerİ) (1881–1938) Turkish modernist, writer, publicist, journalist, and statesman. Educated at the Lycée de Galatasaray and studied Law at Istanbul University. Entered politics in 1919 as a deputy for Gelibolu in the last Ottoman parliament, exiled to Malta. Upon his return to Turkey in 1921, elected to the Grand National Assembly four times. Headed committee that drafted the Constitution of 1924. Editor in chief of İleri from 1919 until 1924. Initially allied with Yunus Nadi and Ağaoğlu, but departed from them later because of his strong criticism of the regime’s authoritarian measures. Died in Istanbul in 1938. cemal paşa (1872–1922) Young Turk soldier and statesman, member of the Triumvirate. Having graduated from the Imperial Military College (Mekteb-i Harbiye) in 1895, commissioned as a captain in the general staff, and posted to the Third Army in Thessaloniki, joined the CUP. Following the Young Turk Revolution of 1908, became a member of the CUP’s central committee (Merkez-i Umumi). After the coups d’état on the Sublime Porte, rose to power. From November 1914 until December 1917, the commander of the Fourth Army, with headquarters in Damascus, and military governor of the Syrian Provinces. In 1918, fled with Enver and Talat from the Empire. In 1922, assassinated in Tbilisi by two Armenians. enver paşa (1881–1922) Young Turk soldier and statesman, Ottoman Turkish general and commander of the Ottoman armies during World War I. Educated at the Imperial Military College (Mekteb-i Harbiye). Joined the CUP in 1906 and initiated a revolt against the Ottoman government in 1908, together with Ahmed Niyazi and Eyyüb Sabri in Macedonia, leading to the Young Turk Revolution. Widely acclaimed as the hero of revolution and liberty. In 1913, carried out a coup d’état on the Sublime Porte with a group of Unionist officers and soldiers, bringing to power a Unionist party cabinet with its long-term effects on authoritarianism and militarism. Main figure behind the Ottoman entry

dr a m aTis persona e [ xv ]

into World War I. Found guilty for war crimes and escaped the country in 1918. In 1922, died in battle in Tajikistan, while organizing Muslims against the Bolsheviks. gökalp, mehmeT zİya (1869–1924) One of the most prominent thinkers of late Ottoman and early Turkish political thought. An essayist, poet, and nationalist, a self-taught sociologist, highly influenced by Durkheim. Known by his pen name “Gökalp” after 1911. His “Three Currents of Thought” (Üç Cereyan, 1913) synthesized three competing intellectual currents, Turkism, Islamism, and Westernization. In 1919, convicted in a war tribunal for participating in the Unionist activities and exiled to Malta. Upon his return in 1921, joined the nationalist movement, later participated in the preparation of the constitution and the social and political reform program of the Republican People’s Party. His Principles of Turkism (1923) articulated his nationalist theories. halİde edİp (adivar) (1882–1964) A prolific female writer of the late Ottoman and early Republican periods. Born in Istanbul, the first Muslim-Turkish woman to graduate from the American College for Girls in Üsküdar (1901). Close to the inner circle of the CUP, became a regular columnist in the newspaper Tanin (The Voice). Inspired by the Turanist and nationalist ideas of Gökalp, wrote the novel Yeni Turan (New Turan, 1911), and joined the activities of the Türk Ocağı (Turkish Hearth) and published in Türk Yurdu (Turkish Homeland). During the Turkish independence struggle, emerged as a prominent public figure, but after the foundation of the Republic, maintained distance from the Kemalists. hüseyİn cahİT (yalçin) (1875–1957) Ottoman Turkish author, writer, journalist, and statesman. Editor in chief of Tanin. Leading representative of liberal republicanism. Enrolled in Mülkiye (School of Political Science). Began his career as a man of letters, entered politics after the Young Turk Revolution. In 1908, published with Tevfik Fikret and Hüseyin Kazım Kadri the newspaper Tanin, the official voice of the CUP. Between 1908 and 1912, served as a member of Chamber of Deputies, and became deputy for Istanbul in 1912. Fell into opposition with the CUP and forced to close down Tanin. Exiled to Malta in 1919, returned to Istanbul in 1922. Published Renin, later changed its name back to Tanin. Translated Durkheim’s Les formes élémentaires de la vie religieuse (Din Hayatının İbtidaî Şekilleri, 1924); Pareto’s Les Systèmes Socialistes (Sosyalist Meslekleri, 1924); Mill’s On Liberty (Hürriyet, 1927). Fell into opposition with the Kemalists because of his liberal

[ xvi ] dr a m aTis persona e

democratic republican ideas and his critique of the regime’s authoritarian measures. Trailed, exiled, and silenced by the new republican regime. In the 1930s, returned to politics and journalism. mehmeT TalaT paşa (1872–1921) One of the Triumvirate members and leading Unionist. Joined the CUP in Thessaloniki and founded the Ottoman Freedom Society (Osmanlı Hürriyet Cemiyeti), affiliated with the CUP. In 1908, became a deputy for Edirne in the new Ottoman parliament, and then in 1909, minister of the interior intermittently up until 1917, and then appointed as grand vizier with the rank of Paşa. Found guilty for war crimes and fled to Berlin. Assassinated by an Armenian nationalist there in 1921. musTaFa kemal aTaTürk (1881–1938) Ottoman military officer during World War I; first president of the Turkish Republic (1923). Born in 1881 in Thessaloniki. Between 1899 and 1902, enrolled in Ottoman Military Academy. Graduated from the Imperial Military College (Mekteb-i Harbiye) in 1905. Joined the CUP in 1907. Led the national struggle between 1919 and 1922. Modernized Turkish society; conducted a political and social revolution in education, secularization, and language. His principles, republicanism, statism, populism, laicism, nationalism, and reformism constituted Kemalism, the regime’s official ideology. Emulated in the Republican People’s Party (Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi, CHP) program of 1935, later in the 1937 constitution, and remained in effect until 1961. namik kemal (1840–88) Ottoman Turkish journalist, poet, and writer during the Tanzimat era. Leading figure in the Young Ottomans, who spearheaded the constitutionalist movement in the Ottoman Empire. Joined the Young Ottomans in 1862, exiled from the Empire in 1867, and fled to Paris, where he published Hürriyet (Liberty), a chief Young Ottoman propaganda tool. Upon his return to Istanbul in 1870, contributed to the newspapers Diyojen, İbret, and Hadika. Inspired by Montesquieu’s constitutionalism and political liberty, harmonized with Islamic concepts. Along with the other Young Ottomans and Grand Vizier Midhat Paşa, succeeded the opening of the first Ottoman parliament and promulgation of the first constitution in 1876. Exiled by Abdülhamid II to Mytilene, where he died in 1888. Tekİnalp (moİse cohen) (1883–1961) A leading theorist of PanTurkism and Kemalism. Born in Serres near Thessaloniki to an Orthodox Jewish family. After completing his education, moved to

dr a m aTis persona e [ xvii ]

Istanbul, started his career as a journalist, and joined the nationalist circles. Published articles in İslam Mecmuası (Journal of Islamic Review), Bilgi Mecmuası (Journal of Knowledge, 1913–14), and Yeni Mecmua (New Journal, 1917–18). Between 1914 and 1918, taught political economy and law at Istanbul University. As an enthusiastic nationalist and supporter of the Mustafa Kemal’s republican principles, wrote Türkleştirme (Turkification, 1928) and presented the ideology of the new regime in Kemalizm (Kemalism, 1936). velİd ebüzzİya (1884–1945) Turkish Ottoman journalist, leading advocate of liberal republicanism. Born in Istanbul as a son of Ebüzziya Tevfik, a prominent journalist and member of Young Ottomans. Educated at the Lycée de Galatasaray and Saint Benoit, studied law at Istanbul University, and later earned a doctorate degree in Law at the Sorbonne. Upon his return to Istanbul in 1912, started his career as a journalist at his father’s newspaper Yeni Tasvîr-i Efkâr. In 1920, exiled to Malta. Upon his return to Istanbul in 1921, published his new newspaper, Tevhid-i Efkâr. Criticized the authoritarianism of the radical republicans and fell into opposition with the Kemalists. In 1925, he was tried in the National Independence Tribunals along with Hüseyin Cahit and others, for creating social unrest. Banned from journalism for the rest of his life. Briefly in 1935 formed the newspaper Zaman, but died in 1936. yunus nadİ (abalioğlu) (1879–1945) Turkish writer, publicist, journalist, and statesman. Editor of the early Republic’s propaganda newspaper Cumhuriyet. Leading representative of radical republicanism. Educated at the Lycée de Galatasaray and studied law at Istanbul University. In 1908, joined the CUP and started his career as a journalist in İkdam and Tasvir-i Efkâr. In 1912, became a deputy for Aydın. In 1918, established the newspaper Yeni Gün after leaving Tasvir-i Efkâr because of disagreements with Velid Ebüzziya. In 1920, moved to Ankara; the same year, formed Anadolu’da Yeni Gün, supporting the War of Independence. Established the Anatolian Agency in 1920 with Halide Edip in order to inform the public about the national struggle. The same year, joined the Grand National Assembly as deputy for Izmir, and later for Muğla. Upon Mustafa Kemal’s request, formed Cumhuriyet and remained as its editor in chief until 1936. Died in Geneva in 1945. yusuF akçura (akçurİn or akçuraoğlu yusuF) (1876–1935) A Tatar-origin nationalist, leading essayist, and historian. Entered the Harbiye Mektebi (Military College) in 1895, then moved to Paris in 1899

[ xviii ] dr a m aTis persona e

to study science politique and history at the L’Ecole Libre under Émile Boutmy and Albert Sorel. In 1903, returned to Russia and joined the Jadidist movement. Published a series of articles “Üç Tarz-ı Siyaset” (Three Ways of Policy) in the journal Türk (Cairo) in 1904, regarded as the manifesto of Turkism. Moved to Istanbul following the 1908 Revolution and supervised the publication of leading nationalist periodicals Türk Yurdu (Turkish Homeland, 1911), Halka Doğru (Towards People, 1912), and İslâm Mecmuası (Islamic Review, 1912). Established nationalist organizations like Türk Derneği (Turkish Association, 1908) and Türk Ocağı (Turkish Hearth, 1912). Upon the foundation of the Republic, became a member of the Turkish parliament, and in the 1930s, worked as a professor of the Turkish Historic Society, shaping the official narrative of national history of Turkey. zİya paşa (born abdülhamİd zİyaeddİn) (1829–1880) Young Ottoman essayist, poet, and statesman. In 1867, fled to Paris with Namık Kemal, and then moved to London, where initially they published Hürriyet (Liberty) together. Later took the newspaper alone to Geneva. Translated Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Émile ou de l’éducation into Turkish. Upon his return to Istanbul in 1871, took on several roles in executive and legislative branches of the government. Collaborated with Namık Kemal in the Constitution Commission. In 1877, assigned by Abdülhamid II as governor to Syria and then to Konya and Adana, where he died in 1880.

T he For m aT ion oF T u r k ish r epu bl ic a n ism

Introduction

The Turk ish r epublic has undergone recurrent political crises of internal and external origin since its establishment, but today it faces the greatest challenge.1 “It is in the nature of politics,” John Dunn insists, “that new political challenges should arise all the time. But some such challenges are manifestly far more formidable than others.”2 Because a political crisis is itself an important political phenomenon, it is pertinent to study its sources and potential consequences. To determine how far, and in what sense the Turkish Republic is today in crisis, it is necessary to consider whether the crisis comes principally from ideas or facts. This book will argue that its source is inherently intellectual. The Republic was established following the Turkish Revolution of 1923. The postrevolutionary regime forged a new social and political order by breaking sharply with its recent historical past. Caught between the conflicting demands of order and change, innovation and stability, religious orthodoxy and laicity, national unity and ethnic diversity, the young Republic became an ideological battleground. Kemalism emerged as the victor and became the dominant state ideology, characterized by fundamental principles of nationalism, secularism, populism, statism, revolutionism, and Westernization. In 1931, with the incorporation of these principles into the Republican People’s Party program (Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi, CHP, founded by Mustafa Kemal in 1923) in the form of “six arrows” (altı ok), republicanism became a partisan engagement. Unlike its 1. E. F. Keyman and Banu Turnaoğlu, “Neo-Roma ve Neo-Atina Cumhuriyetçiliği: Cumhuriyetçilik, Demokratikleşme ve Türkiye,” Doğu Batı, 11 (2008): 37–65. 2. John Dunn, “Contemporary Crisis of the Nation State?,” in The History of Political Theory and Other Essays (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 198.

[ 1 ]

[ 2 ] in TroducTion

French counterpart,3 Turkish republicanism was championed and preserved by a particular formation of military, political, and intellectual elites, but failed to permeate wider society. Over the course of its history, Kemalist republicanism has proven itself an inelastic ideology. To maintain national cohesion, republican governments have adopted authoritarian measures, excluding liberal, socialist, conservative, and Islamic challenges. This inflexibility has served to inhibit the development of a strong democratic culture and prevented the recognition of different minority groups and demands. Political opposition has at times been suppressed through the dissolution of political parties; military interventions in 1960, 1971, 1980, and 1997; and police violence, particularly against leftists in the 1970s. In the late 1980s, the rise of political Islam in Turkish politics posed the greatest threat to date to Kemalist values, and particularly to that of laicity. It highlighted the governing authority’s inability to renew its ideology to accommodate the demands of religious and traditionalist groups for political representation. The rise of the conservative Islamist Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi, AKP) in the new millennium, and its recent electoral victory in 2015, deepened the ideological crisis, pitting the Kemalists against the Islamists. The new government set out its own vision of democracy and republicanism. The former exists merely as an electoral process, a competition between parties, and gives its victors the absolute authority to govern by all means. The sovereignty of the nation is supplanted by a system of government by self-serving elites; instead of distancing religion from politics, the AKP actively uses religion to serve political goals; and in the place of democratic institutions, there exists only the power of the president, Tayyip Erdoğan. Being supremely confident in his power and in “the order of egoism,”4 he protects the interests only of those who vote for the AKP, and of the media, press, and businesses, which side only with them. The current government has weakened both Kemalist opposition and the influence of the military in politics. It has used its leverage over the media to limit public debate about government actions, punished journalists and media owners who disputed government claims, curtailed individual liberties, exerted tight control over economic policy, policing, the media, and has been involved in bankruptcy 3. On the French republican tradition, see Sudhir Hazareesingh, Political Traditions in Modern France (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), 65–97. 4. I borrow this term from John Dunn. See John Dunn, Setting the People Free: The Story of Democracy (London: Atlantic Books, 2005), 156.

in TroducTion [ 3 ]

and bribery, all of which have deepened the country’s political and social polarization. The sense of crisis thus incorporates and reflects a series of new and formidable challenges to the military, religion, democracy, and, most significantly, republicanism.

Revival of Turkish Interest in Republicanism The current crisis has led to a resurgence of debates on republicanism in Turkish academia. The terms “republican” and “republicanism” have had a high valence in Turkish politics, but their meaning remains ambiguous. In Turkish political thought, the word cumhuriyet (“republic”) retains a powerful emotive significance, but it carries no singular connotation of what the Republic was or how it came into existence. In one sense, the term “republic” merely evokes images of a fatherland at risk of partitioning, rescued by General Mustafa Kemal and his followers from the “traitor” Sultan Vahdettin (r. 1918–22) and its Western enemies. In another sense, the word’s meaning is purely institutional, and in contrast with its antonym “Ottoman monarchy,” “Turkish Republic” has been understood as the highest and most civilized form of government. A particularly prominent misconception has been the equation of republicanism with Kemalism. Numerous studies of the foundations of Turkish republican thought stress the personal ability and commanding force of Mustafa Kemal. Their narrative promulgates the idea that the Republic and its doctrines emerged abruptly in 1923 without an intellectually substantial foundation.5 This orthodox interpretation persists even in the most recent scholarship on the subject, and continues to have serious ramifications in contemporary politics. Yet this orthodoxy is historically and intellectually incoherent. In the history of political thought, “no such moment of sudden transition can be observed.”6 The main purpose of the present book is to uncover the origins of republican thinking and conceptions of the state in Turkey, and situate their development within the prerepublican intellectual and political context of the Ottoman Empire. 5. See Enver Ziya Karal, Atatürk’ten Düşünceler (Istanbul: Türkiye İş Bankası Kültür Yayınları, 1969), 832–45; “Atatürk ve Cumhuriyetin Duyurulması,” Türk Dili ve Edebiyatı Dergisi, no. 278 (1978); Atatürk ve Devrim: Konferanslar ve Makaleler, 1935–1978 (Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu Basımevi, 1980). 6. Quentin Skinner, Visions of Politics, Vol. 2, Renaissance Virtues (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 2.

[ 4 ] in TroducTion

Republicanism as a Political Tradition To gain a better grasp of Turkish republicanism, it is necessary to understand what “republicanism” means. There has been extensive Western academic debate over republicanism’s historical identity, intellectual content, and trajectory through time and space. Many adjectives—neo-Roman, neo-Athenian, perfectionist, civic, liberal, communitarian—have been employed to qualify it,7 but there is no consensus on how to define these categories best, or distinguish it from competing political doctrines like liberalism, communitarianism, or socialism. There is strong disagreement about its core conceptions. Many authors have emphasized the importance of freedom as its core value,8 while others prioritize the role of civic virtues,9 the community,10 or the struggle against domination.11 It is most illuminating to see it as a historical tradition, a train of thought with aims and objectives defined anew in each generation, but transmitted across generations. It comes in a variety of shapes, and the principal challenge for its analysis is to trace areas of continuity and discontinuity and identify how it changes and adapts over time while retaining its central tenets of liberty, the common good, political participation, and virtue.12 Classical and modern republicanisms have in common a deep concern with the design of durable political institutions for allocat7. For the neo-Roman and neo-Athenian debate, see Banu Turnaoğlu, “An Inquiry into Civic Republicanism: Neo-Roman and Neo-Athenian Conceptions of Liberty as Justifications” (MSc Thesis, Oxford University, 2008). 8. See Quentin Skinner, “The Idea of Negative Liberty: Philosophical and Historical Perspectives,” in Philosophy in History, ed. R. Rorty, J. B. Scheewind, and Q. Skinner (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984); “The Republican Ideal of Political Liberty,” in Machiavelli and Republicanism, ed. Gisela Bock, Quentin Skinner, and Maurizio Viroli (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990). 9. Richard Dagger, Civic Virtues: Rights, Citizenship and Republican Liberalism (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1997); Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013); On Revolution (London: Penguin, 1965). 10. Michael J. Sandel, “The Procedural Republic and the Unencumbered Self,” Political Theory (1984): 81–96; Democracy’s Discontent: America in Search of a Public Philosophy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998); Charles Taylor, Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998); “What Is Wrong with Negative Liberty?” in The Liberty Reader, ed. David Miller (Edinburgh: Paradigm Publishers, 2006). 11. Philip Pettit, Republicanism: A Theory of Freedom and Government (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997). 12. Sudhir Hazareesingh and Karma Nabulsi, “Using Archival Sources to Theorize about Politics,” in Political Theory: Methods and Approaches, ed. David Leopold and Marc Stears (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 153–55.

in TroducTion [ 5 ]

ing power among different social groupings and channeling its exercise to maintain a lasting public good.13 Republicanism had its origins in Roman political thought. Ancient Roman republicanism was concerned essentially with the special value of a nonhereditary and nonmonarchical government. Liberty was its central tenet, as manifest in the notion of “living freely in a free state.”14 A free person was the antonym of a slave, defined in the Digest as “someone who, contrary to nature, is made into the property of someone else.”15 A free state, for its part, was a political entity in which citizens were not subjected to the arbitrary power of a ruler, a monarch, and that was not dominated by a foreign power.16 After the fall of imperial Rome, republicanism was overshadowed for centuries by Christian monarchism, but it revived in the late medieval Italian city-states, which prepared the ground for classical republicanism. As Quentin Skinner has shown, the Italian republicans drew on their own political experience and on a series of Roman sources, particularly the works of Cicero, Sallust, Livy, and Tacitus, to elaborate and understand the principles of political organization and secure a free way of life.17 Liberty was contrasted with slavery and seen as the source of virtue, which encouraged iustitia, cultivated commune bonum, produced concordia and pax, and enabled the state to seek gloria.18 Drawing from the experience of these self-governing, prehumanist Italian city-states, Machiavelli and his contemporary Renaissance republicans reworked this vision of a free political life, and turned to Roman historians and moralists in search of the conditions through which the Republic could be secured, and for a formulation of vivere libero to engender grandezza.19 In his Discorsi, Machiavelli argued that the free way of life required political participation as a necessary condition to protect political institutions from corruption and stagnation, motivate citizens to 13. John Dunn, “The Identity of the Bourgeois Liberal Republic,” in The Invention of the Modern Republic, ed. Biancamaria Fontana (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 217. 14. Quentin Skinner, Liberty before Liberalism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 39. 15. Ibid. 16. Ibid., 38. 17. The Foundations of Modern Political Thought, Vol. I, The Renaissance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978); “Machiavelli’s Discorsi and the Pre-Humanist Origins of Republican Ideas”; Visions of Politics. 18. Eric Nelson, The Greek Tradition in Republican Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 9. 19. Skinner, “The Idea of Negative Liberty: Philosophical and Historical Perspectives.”

[ 6 ] in TroducTion

commit themselves to the common good, and display a high degree of civic virtue.20 Following the demise of the Renaissance city-states, republican theory took fresh political life as a challenge to absolutist monarchies throughout Europe. The Dutch overthrew their monarch Philip II in 1581,21 and successfully established a federated republic, while the English executed their king, Charles I, in 1649 during the Civil War, and set up “a Commonwealth and Free State.”22 English republican theorists Marchamont Nedham, John Milton, and James Harrington also consulted Roman sources for inspiration and preserved or adapted elements of Italian Renaissance humanism. Their usage of the terms “republic” and “commonwealth,” nonetheless, was not quite like the classical use of these concepts as antonyms of monarchy. It signified a representative government, held in check by a mixed constitution to secure liberty and limit the arbitrary will of the king or the House of Lords.23 Although the distinctive appeal of republican government remained a vivid presence in the intellectual history of Western Europe, for a long time it had limited political effect. By the middle of the eighteenth century, none of the most dynamic and militarily powerful states of Europe was still a republic. But the dawn of the nineteenth century witnessed a pronounced shift in favor of republicanism. Still rare in Western Europe itself, this system of governance gained momentum among populations on the eastern seaboard of North America.24 Inspired by a rich corpus of Enlightenment thinking and practice, republicans in America had since the eighteenth century challenged the British theory of “virtual representation,” and in 1776 they declared their independence from Britain in the name of greater political freedom and civic equality. Their revolution showed clearly and in the end conclusively that instead of being the preserve of 20. “[I]t is easy to understand the affection that people feel for living liberty, for experience shows that no cities have ever grown in power or wealth except those which have established as free states.” Quoted in “The Republican Ideal of Political Liberty,” 301. 21. See Martin Van Gelderen, The Political Thought of the Dutch Revolt 1555–1590 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002). 22. Blair Worden, “English Republicanism,” in The Cambridge History of Political Thought 1450–1700, ed. James Henderson Burns and Mark Goldie (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 444. 23. In his republican utopia Oceana, James Harrington asserted that this government would represent “the empire of laws and not of men” under which citizens are free not “from the law but by the law.” See James Harrington, The Commonwealth of Oceana and a System of Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 8. 24. John Dunn, “Conclusion,” in Democracy: The Unfinished Journey, 508 BC to AD 1993, ed. John Dunn (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1992), 245.

in TroducTion [ 7 ]

small city-states, republican institutions and the mechanisms of limited government could be combined to guarantee the prosperity and security of a larger national territory.25 The burgeoning impetus for republicanism soon returned to European shores, and most prominently and significantly to France. The sudden collapse of the French monarchy paved the way for a republican solution that only a few years earlier would have appeared utopian. Radically different from the classical republican tradition, the new “bourgeois liberal republican model” combined the principles of the separation of powers and the representation of popular sovereignty.26 Departing from classical republicanism’s emphasis on expansive military power and the quest for grandezza, this new model proclaimed a vision of a peaceful world, in which all nations would be bound together by commerce and through the universal values of liberty, equality, and fraternity.27 The French Revolution set in motion further republican revolutionary events, on the Continent and beyond, spreading to the Caribbean and Latin America in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, inflaming Polish insurrections and the Spring of Nations in 1848, and contributing to the Turkish Revolutions of 1908 and 1923. This broad array of republican movements had a profound influence on the way republican traditions cohered and evolved worldwide. The bourgeois liberal republican model has become the most common form of government in today’s world, but, as Dunn has contended, its endurance is a measure of the failure of alternatives in the twentieth century with the collapse of numerous monarchies after World War I, and of Marxism in the 1990s, far more than an indication of the model’s own decisive practical success.28 As there exists today more than one type of 25. Bernard Manin, The Principles of Representative Government (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 102–31; “Checks, Balances and Boundaries: The Separation of Powers in the Constitutional Debate of 1787,” in The Invention of the Modern Republic, ed. Biancamaria Fontana (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007). 26. Pasquale Pasquino, “The Constitutional Republicanism of Emmanuel Sieyès,” in The Invention of the Modern Republic, ed. Biancamaria Fontana (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2007), 107–8. 27. Keith Michael Baker, “Political Languages of the French Revolution,” in The Cambridge History of Eighteenth-Century Political Thought, ed. Mark Goldie and Robert Wokler (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006); Biancamaria Fontana, “The Thermidorian Republic and Its Principles,” in The Invention of the Modern Republic, ed. Biancamaria Fontana (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994); Jeremy Jennings, Revolution and the Republic: A History of Political Thought in France since the Eighteenth Century (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011). 28. Dunn, “The Identity of the Bourgeois Liberal Republic,” 206–7, 212.

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republic, there are many conceptions of republicanism, with unique histories that developed and evolved in different contexts. Despite this variety, studies of republicanism have been limited largely to the Anglophone world, and typically present it merely as a European and American phenomenon. In the extensive works of J.G.A. Pocock on Anglophone republicanism,29 and in the multivolume analysis of European republicanism edited by Quentin Skinner and others,30 there is virtually no mention of republicanisms elsewhere. The role played by republics and republican values in the formation of the modern state has been discussed only within the confines of Europe, and the histories of non-Western republican states and their own traditions have not so far not been studied systematically and carefully. This study of the evolution of the Turkish republican tradition from its Ottoman intellectual foundations seeks to transcend the conventional geographical boundaries between Western and non-Western political thought by illustrating the striking and highly consequential exchange of ideas between these spheres. Studying political history in this way helps us to rethink republicanism, and understand political thinking as an interaction between ideas from different settings across the world. It undertakes to recognize political thinking in its full plurality, trace the complex process involved in the formulation of ideas, and widen the scope of Western history of political thought, which is “still very far from enjoying such a cosmopolitan vision.”31 This book uncovers the rich intellectual heritage of Turkish republican thinking and the resources through which the change from the monarchy to the Republic came about, and elucidates how and why this change occurred. The works of Feroz Ahmad, Bernard Lewis, Şerif Mardin, Stanford Shaw, and Tarık Zafer Tunaya32 have acknowledged the debt of the eigh29. J.G.A Pocock, Politics, Language, and Time: Essays on Political Thought and History (London: University of Chicago Press, 1971); The Machiavellian Moment: Florentine Political Thought and the Atlantic Republican Tradition (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2009); John Greville Agard Pocock, Political Thought and History: Essays on Theory and Method (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009). 30. Martin Van Gelderen and Quentin Skinner, Republicanism: Volume 1, Republicanism and Constitutionalism in Early Modern Europe: A Shared European Heritage (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002). 31. John Dunn, The History of Political Theory and Other Essays (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 14. 32. Feroz Ahmad, Turkey: The Quest for Identity (Oxford: Oneworld Publications, 2003); Kemal Karpat, İslam’ın Siyasallaşması: Osmanlı Devleti’nin Son Döneminde Kimlik, Devlet, İnanç ve Cemaatin Yeniden Yapılandırılması (Istanbul: İstanbul Bilgi Üniversitesi Yayınları, 2004); Bernard Lewis, The Emergence of Modern Turkey (New York:

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teenth- and nineteenth-century reforms, the political thinking of the Young Ottomans and Young Turks, and intellectual developments in the Second Constitutional period (1908–18), which Tunaya saw as the “laboratory of the republic.”33 These works, nevertheless, remain limited by their singular focus on Westernization as a response to external pressure, and fail to appreciate the full intellectual richness and originality of Ottoman thinkers. Erik Zürcher and Zafer Toprak have illuminated the institutional links between the Empire and the Republic, but neglect the latter’s intellectual foundations.34 Niyazi Berkes’s account, on the other hand, maps the process of modernization and secularization from the eighteenth century that generated the Republic. His narrative, unlike these other treatments, proceeds through a range of categories, but ultimately presents a teleological account of a procession of social changes that reached their apotheosis with the Kemalist Republic. It is a mistake to understand Turkish republicanism exclusively in Kemalist terms as a force for modernization and secularization, and see its history as a linear, progressive evolution. Turkish republicanism is not a rigid ideological construct. Its real essence lies in its capacity to accommodate different republican conceptions. This book argues that modernday Turkish republicanism represents the outcome of centuries of intellectual disputes between Islamic, liberal, and radical conceptions of republicanism. It is this battle for ideas that makes the study of Turkish republicanism a unique and interesting case. To grasp republican tradition accurately and understand how it came about, it is necessary to analyze how intellectuals, groups, and decision-makers evaluated and imagined politics, society, morality, and economics during distinct time periods; how they employed categories like freedom, society, religion, justice, and citizenship; and how these categories changed in meaning over time. Oxford University Press, 2002); Şerif Mardin, The Genesis of Young Ottoman Thought (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1962); Continuity and Change in the Ideas of the Young Turks (Ankara: School of Business Administration and Economics, Robert College, 1969); Stanford J. Shaw, From Empire to Republic: The Turkish War of National Liberation, 1918–1923, Volume 2, A Documentary Study (Ankara: Turkish Historical Society, 2001); Stanford J. Shaw and Ezel Kural Shaw, History of the Ottoman Empire and Modern Turkey: Volume 2, Reform, Revolution, and Republic: The Rise of Modern Turkey 1808– 1975 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977). 33. Tarık Zafer Tunaya, Türkiye’de Siyasal Partiler: İkinci Meşrutiyet Dönemi 1908– 1918, vol. 1 (Istanbul: Hürriyet Vakfı, 1984), 21. 34. Zafer Toprak, Türkiye’de Popülizm 1908–1923 (Istanbul: Doğan Kitap, 2013); Erik J. Zürcher, Turkey: A Modern History (London, New York: I. B. Tauris, 2004); The Young Turk Legacy and Nation Building: From the Ottoman Empire to Atatürk’s Turkey (London and New York: I. B. Tauris, 2014).

[ 10 ] in TroducTion

Ottoman political thinking was profoundly embedded in historical, institutional, and social contexts, and in contingencies of space and time. Context is not mere historical background, but an active, dynamic force that defines the visions of intellectuals, and decisively shapes the use of political concepts and language.35 Political texts, including advice literature, newspapers, documents, declarations, pamphlets, speeches, and books are understood in historical terms, and seen as the products of intellectual and political engagement with other texts originating locally and across Europe. Against the insistence on seeing the Turkish Republic merely as an emotive term, or the “highest” form of government, this book will argue that the term encompasses a complex set of political values, a sequence of thought, and a way of political life. The complexity of Turkish republicanism is best understood through a detailed investigation of its historical developments. This account begins by examining the foundations of Islamic, liberal, and radical republican conceptions. The Islamic conception of republicanism took its inspiration from the Islamic state in the period of the four caliphates and medieval Islamic thought, the latter of which profoundly shaped the Ottoman political thought of the Classical Age and was revived in the intellectual debates of the 1860s and 1870s. In the republican debates of the 1920s, a group of ulema and political conservatives believed that the most suitable type of regime for the new Turkey was an Islamic Republic, because the indigenous Islamic state exhibited elements of direct democracy and republic, and monarchy was a deviation from it. The roots of liberal republicanism lie in French republican traditions. In the nineteenth century, Ottoman intellectuals articulated a political philosophy designed to challenge bureaucratic and sultanic authoritarianism. Following the French republican model, the Young Ottomans’ political thought stressed that modern freedom required material and social equality as a precondition for the regulation of social and political life. They introduced a Montesquieuan model of constitutionalism, and a strict separation of powers to limit the arbitrary will of rulers and to secure liberties and life. Their intellectual successors, the Young Turks, laid the foundations for a republican conception of Ottoman society, and adopted a Comtean approach to attaining universal peace. They valued republicanism for its ideas, rather than its institutions. Like their French counterparts, they believed that an ideal state must provide formal legal liberty and equality, and must embody both justice and fraternity. The Young 35. Hazareesingh and Nabulsi, “Using Archival Sources to Theorize about Politics,” 154.

in TroducTion [ 11 ]

Turk Revolution of 1908 brought these universal republican principles to Ottoman society with a transformative power. Radical republicanism, too, was rooted in the political thought of the Young Ottomans in the 1860s and was inspired by French republicanism. Despite sharing many core ideas with liberal republicans, like liberty, sovereignty, and constitutionalism, the meanings attached to those concepts were dramatically different. Radical republicans were inherently revolutionists and activists, who placed popular sovereignty and liberty at the heart of their ideology. Radical republicanism, however, failed to become established throughout the nineteenth century. The eve of World War I witnessed the rise of Darwinism, nationalism, and militarism in Young Turk political thought, which challenged the liberal republican ideas of the Revolution of 1908. German militarism and nationalism, the idea that every nation should have its own state and every state should be a single nation, was adopted effectively by the Turkish authorities in their pursuit of Balkan War and World War I military campaigns. Although there was nothing inherently republican in German militarism, it strongly shaped contemporary Turkish conceptions of the state, society, and nation. The great geographical shift of World War I extended the nation-state as a political format, and the War of Independence (1919–22) reinforced it as an ideological option and witnessed the revival of radical republicanism, attaching World War I ideas of nationalism, militarism, and statism. The escape of the monarch from the country in 1922 rapidly ushered in the Republic. In the formative period of the new state, radical republicans crushed all contesting and rival political viewpoints. The new state’s foundational ideology was the sole victor among competing conceptions of Islamic and liberal republicanism. The genealogy of the Turkish republicanism presents a striking new narrative and an analysis of an immensely important historical process. This can help us understand Turkish politics today and cast more light on what in the long run its future is likely to prove.

ch a p T er on e

Shaping the Empire

The medieva l mediTerr a ne a n wor ld had inherited a long tradition of government, beginning with the magistracies of the ancient citystates and culminating in the monarchies of the Roman and Byzantine Empires. A second tradition came from the Arabs, who spread the Islamic type of government from the Arab Peninsula to North Africa, the Iberian Peninsula, Central Asia, and northern India. From the eleventh century onward, these lands were invaded by the akıncıs (raids) of the Turks from Central Asia, Berbers from the Sahara and the High Atlas, and Arabs from the Libyan Desert, who brought with them their own nomadic cultures, which transformed Mediterranean societies and forged new states. The most dramatic outcome of the process was the formation of the Ottoman state, which successfully combined and blended the three traditions of Mediterranean monarchy, Arabo-Islamic governance, and Turco-Asian nomadic culture in its government.1 Although Ottoman state philosophy had little in common with its Western counterparts during its formative years and the classical imperial period (1453–1789), it shared many similarities with Eastern (for example, Indian, Persian, and Chinese) governments and with the political, social, and moral thought of the East, at least until the nineteenth century. European Renaissance and Reformation observers often described the Ottoman regime as an atrocious tyranny where the people stood relative to the sultan as slaves to a master.2 François de La Noue wrote that “[T]he 1. Michael Brett, “State Formation and Organisation,” in The New Cambridge History of Islam, ed. Maribel Fierro (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 549–50. 2. For a discussion of the Renaissance perception of the Ottoman Empire, see Nancy Bisaha, Creating East and West: Renaissance Humanists and the Ottoman Turks (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004).

[ 12 ]

sh a ping The empir e [ 13 ]

Turkish kingdome [is] a terrible tyranny, whose subjects were wonderfully enthralled: their wars destitute of all good foundation: their politique government being well examined to be but a basenesse: their ecclesiastical regiment to be none.”3 Similarly, Paul Rycaut portrayed Ottoman sultans as spreading the “cruelty of the sword in the most rigorous way of execution, by killing, consuming and laying desolate the countries.”4 The impact of this experience shaped the conception of “Oriental despotism.” In his The Spirit of the Laws, Montesquieu described despotism as an Oriental regime exclusively to be encountered in Asia. Ottoman society epitomized a typical Oriental society and political system, bound to be ruled by a despot because of its peculiar manners, customs and the warmth of its climate, which enervated the people, rendering them slaves.5 This way of viewing the Ottoman state persisted in Europe for centuries.6 Ernest Gellner saw the Ottoman Empire as a “slave soldier” state, whose protection and security depended on the sultan’s slaves.7 For Max Weber, this dependency, in contrast to Western European states, was an aspect of the way in which power was exercised in the Ottoman state. The state was the personal property of the sultan, evolving out of patriarchalism into patrimonialism as its personnel expanded beyond the monarch, his kinsmen, and household to encompass a professional army of secretaries and soldiers.8 Until recently, this Eurocentric view of Ottoman politics dominated Western and even Turkish academia.9 3. François de La Noue, The Politicke and Militarie Discourses of the Lord De La Noue, trans. Edward Aggas (London: Printed for Thomas Cadman and Edward Aggas by Thomas Orwin, 1589), 242. 4. Paul Rycaut, The Present State of the Ottoman Empire (London: Printed for John Starkey and Henry Brome 1668), 67–68. See also Linda T. Darling, “Ottoman Politics through British Eyes: Paul Rycaut’s The Present State of the Ottoman Empire,” Journal of World History 5, no. 1 (1994): 72–74. 5. Charles de Secondat Baron de Montesquieu, The Spirit of the Laws, trans. A. M. Cohler, B. C. Miller, and H. Stone (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 228–69. 6. See Nicolas Antoine Boulanger, The Origin and Progress of Despotism in the Oriental, and Other Empires of Africa, Europe and America, supposed trans. John Wilkes (Amsterdam and London, 1764); Simon Nicolas Henri Linguet, Du Plus Heureux Gouvernement: Ou Parallele des Constitutions Politiques de l’Asie avec Celles de l’Europe, Servant d’Introduction a la Théorie des Loix Civiles, vol. 1 (London: Éditions d’Histoire sociale, 1774). See also Aslı Çırakman, “From Tyranny to Despotism: The Enlightenment’s Unenlightened Image of the Turks,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 33, no. 1 (2001), 46–68. 7. Ernest Gellner, “Flux and Reflux in the Faith of Men,” in Muslim Society, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983). 8. Bryan S. Turner, Weber and Islam: A Critical Study (London: Routledge, 1974). 9. See, for example, Paul Coles, The Ottoman Impact on Europe (London: Harcourt,

[ 14 ] ch a pTer 1

This conception of the Ottoman state, however, is neither accurate nor coherent. Classical Ottoman political thought rejected tyranny and acknowledged checks on the sultan’s conduct and limitations on his rights. It saw legitimacy as resting on the provision of justice and the maintenance of order. This deeply conservative vision began to alter with the advent of Westernization during the eighteenth century. Although the state philosophy had carried elements of a republican government since its foundation, Ottoman thinkers of the classical period did not see this as an alternative to monarchy. The word “republic” (cumhuriyet) appeared as a political category, but little attention was paid to republic as a type of government until the French Revolution, and there was certainly nothing that could be mistake for a republican tradition.

Early Stages of Ottoman State Formation The emergence of the Ottoman state from a small principality (beylik) to a world-leading empire is still very poorly understood not least because of the scarcity and inadequacy of early written sources. Until the twentieth century, historical studies relied heavily on borrowings from legendary accounts, including fifteenth-century frontier narratives such as that of Âşıkpaşazâde,10 histories by Oruç Bey11 and Neşrî,12 and anonymous folktales. Herbert A. Gibbons’s controversial book The Foundation of the Ottoman Empire initiated the modern debate over the rise of Ottoman power, presenting the religious conversion of the Christian populations in Byzantine Bithynia to Islam as the major reason for the demographic, cultural, and institutional origins of the Ottoman state.13 In response, Paul Wittek argued that early Ottoman society inherited the traditions of the Islamic military frontier organization, and the Islamic tradition of Brace & World, 1968); Metin Heper, “Patrimonialism in the Ottoman Turkish Bureaucracy,” Asian and African Studies 13, no. 1 (1979), 3–21; Şerif Mardin, “Power, Civil Society and Culture in the Ottoman Empire,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 11, no. 3 (1969), 258–81. 10. Âşıkpaşazâde, Āshiqpashazādeh Taʾrīkhī: A History of the Ottoman Empire to AH 883 (AD 1478) (London: Gregg International, 1970). See also Halil İnalcık, Essays in Ottoman History (Istanbul: Eren, 1998). 11. Oruç Bey, Osmanlı Tarihi: 1288–1502: Uç Beyliğinden Dünya Devletine (Istanbul: Çamlıca, 2009). 12. Mehmed Neşrî, Kitab-ı Cihan-Nüma: Neşri Tarihi (Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu, 1957). 13. Herbert Adams Gibbons, The Foundation of the Ottoman Empire, 1300–1403 (New York: Century Company, 1916).

sh a ping The empir e [ 15 ]

gaza, an ideology of holy war in the name of Islam (jihad), which provided a dynamic spur for conquest and innovation.14 Until recently, Wittek’s gaza thesis continued to be the most prominent account of the foundation of the Ottoman state, among both Anglophone and Turkish historians.15 In the 1980s, a revisionist historiography has criticized the Wittek thesis for downplaying much of the relational and cultural dynamism of the region, and offering a simplistic account of the rise of the Ottomans, their ethnic and religious force and ability to overwhelm through gaza. The Ottomans did not see the defense and extension of Islam as their primary purpose, but implemented strategic and tactical ways to exert their power. Heath Lowry and Colin Heywood insisted that gaza/gazi in Turkish language meant at the time akın/akıncı (“flow”/”those who flow”), and that the process of state-building cannot be reduced to a gaza movement.16 Rather, it must be understood as a series of moments when contenders for power had at hand minimal organizational structures but numerous social relations and ties, which they could deploy to influence, control, and increase their social and cultural resources. State-building and the consolidation of power were the results of complex activities, combining the formation of strategic alliances with different groups, intermarriage, and religious conversion.17 The centralized state was an accumulation of these networks.

Ottoman Political Thought in the Classical Age The conquest of Constantinople in 1453 by Mehmed II (r. 1451–81) was a key event in the Ottoman transition from a state into an empire (Devlet-i Âliyye; Sublime State), a robust political entity with a centralized administrative system, strong army, and ruling elite.18 During the reign of Sultan 14. Paul Wittek, The Rise of the Ottoman Empire (London: Royal Asiatic Society, 1938). 15. Even the leading Ottoman historian Halil İnalcık has incorporated the Wittek thesis into his own works. See Halil İnalcık, “The Question of the Emergence of the Ottoman State,” International Journal of Turkish Studies 4 (1980); Devlet-i Aliyye-Osmanlı İmparatorluğu Üzerine Araştırmalar (Istanbul: Türkiye İş Bankası Yayınları, 2009); Halil İnalcık and Donald Quataert, An Economic and Social History of the Ottoman Empire, 1300–1914 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994). 16. Colin Heywood, The Frontier in Ottoman History: Old Ideas and New Myths (London: Macmillan, 1999); Heath W. Lowry, The Nature of the Early Ottoman State (Albany: SUNY Press, 2003). 17. Karen Barkey, Empire of Difference: The Ottomans in Comparative Perspective (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 28–29. 18. The Ottoman transformation into an empire coincided with the revival of France, the unification of Spain, and the formation of the Habsburg Empire.

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Süleyman the Magnificent (r. 1520–66), the Empire developed across Western Asia, reaching as far as the Danube in the North, the Euphrates in the East, and the Balkans in the West, and experienced its “Golden Age.” It became a formidable war machine. The sixteenth and early seventieth centuries saw the Mediterranean and Black Seas encircled, the Safavid Empire pushed back, and the Arab world added to the Empire together with the Maghrib as far as Morocco. This expansion generated a sophisticated political, philosophical, social, and cultural synthesis.

Nİzam as The basis For sTaTe power, socieTy, and moraliTy Central to Ottoman classical thought was the conception of nizam (“order”). It denoted the conservation of custom, tradition, and law, and referred to a category of ethics, politics, and morality. Its origins lay in neo-Aristotelian theory, taken up by medieval Islamic theorists and later transmitted to the Eastern world. Like its Indian counterpart dharma, nizam contained a caution or warning against the consequence of the disturbance of tradition.19 All things—human beings, society, politics, and the cosmos—had an internal and ideal nizam, which must be in harmony with the metaphysical or spiritual order. The preservation of the nizam was the primary duty of the state. This notion of the state was inherited from Plato and Aristotle, transmitted through the works of al-Farabi, al-Miskawayh, Ibn Sina, and Ibn Rushd and in Sassanid-Persian views on statecraft and Islamic legal precepts.20 Through the Ottoman genius for government and administration, these different elements were blended into a new dispensation with a distinctive character.21 The state apparatus was constituted as the outcome of the contract between the rulers and the ruled. As in the Turko-Islamic states, the simultaneous separation and harmony between the rulers and the ruled in Ottoman society was essential to the effective functioning of the state. The society was seen essentially as a political and moral entity, divided into four segments (warriors, bureaucrats, agriculturalists, and merchant-guild members), and grouped into two components. The first 19. Charles Drekmeier, Kingship and Community in Early India (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1962), 7–8. 20. Patricia Crone, Medieval Islamic Political Thought (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2005), 94, 190–94. 21. Norman Itzkowitz, Ottoman Empire and Islamic Tradition (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1972), 38–39.

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group, the askeri or the ruling class, included officers of the court and the army, civil servants and ulema, while the second, the reaya, comprised Muslim and non- Muslim taxpayers— that is, agriculturalists and merchant-guild members.22 To maintain nizam, both the reaya and askeri had to perform the duties and obligations assigned to one another: the reaya’s duty was to produce wealth, while the askeri’s duty was to protect them. A sharp separation between these groups was necessary for the operation of politics and successful functioning of society. If traders or agriculturalists were to become soldiers or soldiers to become traders or artisans, society would begin to disintegrate. In other words, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the institutional basis of the Ottoman constitution included a balance between the rulers and the ruled. The ulema and the Janissaries played a major role in curbing the arbitrariness of the monarch and preventing the regime from becoming despotic.23 The sultan-monarch was responsible for orchestrating and upholding the nizam and protecting the reaya from harm and from the arbitrariness and oppression of the askeri.24 This essential feature of the sultan’s relationship with society was determined by his primary duty to God. His duty to society was part of the universal covenant between man and God, as encountered in the Qur’an: “Is one who knoweth that what is revealed to thee from thy Lord is the truth like one who is blind? But only men of substance take heed, those who abide by the covenant [ahd] of God, and break not the tryst” (Qur’an 13:19–20). This verse warns a ruler that should he abuse his power, and rule for his egoistic enjoyment and not the common good of the people, he would become a tyrant. This notion of an anti-patrimonial and anti-despotic state was derived from the early Islamic state as it existed under the Prophet Mohammed and his immediate successors, the four caliphs.25 The Islamic polity was a self-governing political community ruled by the 22. Halil İnalcık, “The Nature of Traditional Society,” in Political Modernization in Japan and Turkey, ed. Robert E. Ward, Dankwart A. Rustow, and John Whitney Hall (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press 1964), 44. 23. For a comprehensive study on early Ottoman constitutionalism, see Baki Tezcan, The Second Ottoman Empire: Political and Social Transformation in the Early Modern World (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010). 24. Justin McCarthy, The Ottoman Turks: An Introductory History to 1923 (London and New York: Routledge, 1997), 106–11. 25. Michael Cook, “Is Political Freedom an Islamic Value?,” in Freedom and the Construction of Europe, ed. Quentin Skinner and Martin van Gelderen (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 292.

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caliph, a nonhereditary, elective sovereign subject to the Shari’a law.26 The members of this state were all regarded as equals, and treated as freemen, not slaves. The Qur’an stated that “the noblest among you in the sight of God is the most godfearing of you” (Qur’an 49:13), and one tradition, although not one to be found in authoritative collections, has the Prophet say that “people are equals like the teeth of a comb.”27 These features of the Islamic conception of rule resembled the government of an Italian republican city-state, although the medieval Muslim state did not feature the concept of republic (cumhuriyya) in its early incarnation.28 In the second half of the nineteenth century, the early Islamic state led Ottoman intellectuals to conceive the origins of the Ottoman state as republican,29 and in the twentieth century this early state form came to be idealized by the ulema and the clerics, who believed that monarchy was a deviation from the pure Islamic state. The resources of the early Islamic state had increased dramatically with its conquests outside Arabia, generating a transition from caliphate rule to rule by kingship (malik), sultanate, or monarchy. Mohammad’s way of ruling (şur’a) almost disappeared. During the period of classical Arabic thought (ca. the ninth to twelfth centuries), the concept of djumhurriya was recognized as a category but seldom featured in political writings. Arab intellectuals directed their attention to the study of ancient Greek political philosophy, not the republican philosophy of ancient Rome. Blending elements of the early Islamic state with Plato’s Politeia, a concept translated as al-madīna al-fādila (“a virtuous state”),30 Al-Farabi defined the ideal state as a religious community bound by common faith in revelation and ruled by a “philosopher king,” whose power was granted by divine authority.31 In writings throughout the following centuries, Arab authors and observers employed no specific term for res publica, although they were aware of the republican regimes of Renaissance Italy. They described the Venetians, for example, as having “a king from among them26. Bernard Lewis, “Djumhurriya,” in Encyclopaedia of Islam, ed. B. Lewis, Ch. Pellat, and J. Schlacht (Leiden: E. J.Brill, 1965), 594–95. 27. Quoted in Cook, “Is Political Freedom an Islamic Value?,” 292–93. 28. Crone, Medieval Islamic Political Thought, 279. 29. See for instance, Namık Kemal, “Usul-ü Meşveret,” Hürriyet, 14 September 1868. 30. Abu Nasr al-Farabi, Al-Madina Al-Fadila [on the Perfect State], trans. Richard Walzer (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985). See also, Erwin I. J. Rosenthal, Political Thought in Medieval Islam: An Introductory Outline (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1958), 120–60. 31. Bernard Lewis, “The Concept of an Islamic Republic,” Die Welt des Islams 4, no. 1 (1955): 7.

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selves (malikuhum min anfūsihim) called the Doge (al-Dūj),”32 and the Tuscans as having “no king ruling them but rather notables (akābir) arbitrating among them.”33 But there was no substantial analysis of the operation of the republican city-states. The Arabic terms djumhur and djumhurriya were transmitted to Ottoman Turkish by dragomans, Ottoman Christian translators of the Sublime Porte, mostly Greek in origin.34 From the fifteenth century, the Ottomans sent envoys to the Republic of Venice, which later became its great rival in the Mediterranean.35 In search for Turkish equivalents of res publica or Repubblica di Venezia, the dragomans discovered the Arabic words djumhur and djumhurriya and changed them to cumhur and cumhurriya or cumhuriyet.36 Cumhur came to mean “the mass of people, or the public.”37 The Turkish suffix -yet modified it to carry the sense of collection of people living in a specific place, without the connotations of the Republic as a particular form of government. In their letters to Venice, the Ottomans generally referred to the rule of the Doge or the Signoria (Venedik Beyi), rather than to the form of government.38 Neither republics nor a republican tradition featured in Classical Ottoman political thought, or throughout the Ottoman and Arabic worlds.39 Until the nineteenth century, the term cumhuriyet appears rarely, and solely as a term to refer to the Christian enemy, but following the French Revolution cumhur or cumhuriyet began to appear widely in Ottoman documents. Yet, neither egali32. Alī ibn Mūsā, Kitāb al-Djughrāfiyya (Beirut, 1970), 182. 33. Abul-Fidā, Taqwīm al-Buldān (A Tableau of the Countries; from 1321 A.D.), trans. J. T. Reinaud and S. Guyard (Paris, 1840), 199–200. 34. Lewis, “The Concept of an Islamic Republic,” 5. Cumhur and djumhur are phonically the same. The Arabic djumhurriya today means “republic.” 35. These envoys had only symbolic functions such as confirming treaties, sending or receiving letters, and attending coronations. From the fifteenth century onward, Venice sent its official envoys to Istanbul to establish permanent diplomatic relations with the Ottomans. For foreign relations between the Ottoman Empire and the Republic of Venice, see especially Suraiya Faroqhi, “The Venetian Presence in the Ottoman Empire, 1600–30,” in The Ottoman Empire and the World-Economy, ed. Huri İnan-İslamoğlu (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004); Maria Pia Pedani, “Ottoman Envoys to Venice (1384– 1644),” Arab Historical Review for Ottoman Studies 13/14 (1996), 111–15; “Ottoman Diplomats in the West: The Sultan’s Ambassadors to the Republic of Venice,” Tarih İncelemeleri Dergisi 11 (1996); “Ambassadors’ Travels from the East to Venice,” Annali di Ca’ Foscari 48 (2009). 36. Lewis, “Djumhurriya,” 594. 37. Sir James Redhouse, “Redhouse Türkçe/Osmanlıca–İngilizce Sözlük (Redhouse Turkish/Ottoman–English Dictionary),” ed. U. B. Alkım et al. (Istanbul: SEV Matbaacılık ve Yayıncılık, 2000), 230–31. 38. Lewis, “The Concept of an Islamic Republic,” 2. 39. Cook, “Is Political Freedom an Islamic Value?,” 295.

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tarianism nor the anti-despotic and anti-patrimonial features of the early Islamic state were entirely forgotten during the Classical Age.40 Ottoman sultans adopted grandiose titles from East and West to enhance their almighty image: shāhanshāh (king of kings) from the Sassanids, Khakan from the Mongols, Caesar from Byzantium, and caliph from the Abbasids.41 The sultan was the head of government, the Divan-ı Hümayun, and his power was exercised by the Vezir-i Âzam (grand vizier), who was responsible for supervising the chancery and issuing the sultan’s decrees and letters. The sultan appointed his officers, vezirs (viziers), kazaskers (military judges), defterdars (the treasurers), and nişancıs (the chancellor), and presided over the Divan (council), ministries, or boards. These officers were his kuls (servants or slaves). Kul had a different connotation to its European equivalents. In contrast to the Western notion of the slave deprived of rights and privileges, Ottoman kuls were legal persons who could hold even the highest offices in the sultan’s household.42 Kuls were recruited to serve the sultan as ministers, provincial governors, or soldiers, and were paid through the Treasury or by the allocation of fiefs. The kul system was inherited from the Abbasid Empire, which had created armies of slave troops and used trained slaves (mamluks) in the administration. The purpose of the mamluk institution was to avoid the development of a blood-nobility and maintain a well-trained group of officials unconditionally loyal to the ruler.43 During the fifteenth century, the Ottomans introduced the devşirme system, comprising cohorts of boys from Christian households located mainly in the Balkans, who were forced to convert to Islam and pledged to create loyal ties only with the sultan and the state.44 The majority of these captives formed the Janissary corps (the sultan’s personal infantry troops), qualifying through years of manual labor, while future members of the bureaucracy were educated in the Palace School (Enderun).45 This kind of slavery did not mean subjection to the arbitrary power of a master. A slave of this kind was not a person dominated by the master’s will and trans40. Michael Cook, Ancient Religions, Modern Politics: The Islamic Case in Comparative Perspective (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2014), 310. 41. Halil İnalcık, Turkey and Europe in History (Istanbul: Eren, 2006), 24–43. 42. İnalcık, “Capital Formation in the Ottoman Empire,” Journal of Economic History 29, no. 1 (1969): 102–4. 43. Metin Kunt, The Sultan’s Servants: The Transformation of Ottoman Provincial Government, 1550–1650 (New York: Columbia University Press, 2001), 32–33, 41–42. 44. Colin Imber, The Ottoman Empire, 1300–1650: The Structure of Power (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002), 134. 45. Ibid., 136–38.

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formed into his property, and hence without personal liberty in the Western sense.

The oTToman law The functioning of the social and political order was ensured by the law, which combined religious and secular features of the legislative systems of the Persian and Islamo-Turkish Empires. All laws and practices had to conform to God-given laws, the Shari’a, interpreted by the ulema and executed by kadıs (the judges); these could not be changed by the sultan or statesmen.46 The Shari’a covered all aspects of life, encompassing matters of personal status, family, inheritance, and property in the Muslim community, and provided principles of public law for the government. The religious laws of the non-Muslim communities were enforced by religious leaders of their own.47 The need to regulate areas where the provisions of the Shari’a were missing or too much at odds with criminal law, taxation, and administration led to the creation of secular law.48 During the reign of Mehmed II, written versions of medieval customs and traditions were drawn up by state officers and named the örf-î kanun (customary law).49 The örf-î kanun was concerned with taxation and crime, and separated the kuls from tax-paying subjects.50 It took three forms: yasaknâmes (laws, banning certain acts or establishing regulations for new circumstances), adaletnâmes (decrees, requiring the authorities to act within the boundaries of the Shari’a or örf-î kanun), and decrees for implementation by kadis.51 In theory, the sultan was the legislator of these laws, which originated in his commands (ferman), but in practice they were prepared by the bureaucrats, ulema and küttab, and later authorized as ferman or laws after the sultan approved.52 Jean Dumont’s description of the 46. Madeline C. Zilfi, “The Ottoman Ulema,” in The Cambridge History of Turkey, Volume 3: The Later Ottoman Empire, 1603–1839, ed. Suraiya Faroqhi (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 210. 47. Mehmet Akif Aydın, “The Ottoman Legal System,” in History of the Ottoman State, Society & Civilisation, ed. Ekmeleddin İhsanoğlu (Istanbul: Research Centre for Islamic History, Art and Culture, 2001), 445–46. 48. Imber, The Ottoman Empire, 1300–1650, 71. 49. Erol Özbilgen, Bütün Yönleriyle Osmanlı Âdâb-ı Osmâniye (Istanbul: İz Yayıncılık, 2007), 122–23. 50. Aydın, “The Ottoman Legal System,” 445. 51. M. Şükrü Hanioğlu, A Brief History of the Late Ottoman Empire (Princeton, NJ, and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2010), 18–19. 52. Cornell H. Fleischer, Bureaucrat and Intellectual in the Ottoman Empire: The Historian Mustafa Âli (1541–1600) (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1986), 50–51.

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Ottoman legal system was therefore seriously misleading: “He [the sultan] is not curbed by any written law or custom and those whom he oppresses have not so much as a right to complain. He may take away any man’s estate and either keep it or give it to another.”53

JusTice (adalet) The purpose of the Ottoman constitution was justice, and the purpose of its laws was to ensure the operation of a just and moral order. In Islam, Allah was held to have placed everything in its right place through his perfect laws, and man’s moral duty was to keep everything in its right place on earth. In man, just action was an expression of morality and spirituality. Applying it to state and society, justice in classical Ottoman thinking stressed both the personal benevolence of the sultan and the recognition of the mutual rights and obligations between him, his kuls, and his subjects. Justice demanded harmony between the different segments of the society, a concept derived from the medieval Arabic treatise Kitab sirr al-asrar, translated into Latin in the mid-twelfth century as Secretum Secretorum, on the good ordering of statecraft and later labeled by the Ottomans the daire- i adliyye (circle of equity or circle of justice).54 Kınalızâde (1510–72) summarized its normative formula in eight points: There can be no royal authority without the army There can be no army without wealth The subjects produce the wealth Justice preserves the subjects’ loyalty to the sovereign Justice requires harmony in the world The world is a garden, its walls are the state The Holy Law orders the state There is no support for the Holy Law except through royal authority.55

He inscribed this conception of justice as a circle, in which the end of the last injunction ran into the beginning of the first, suggesting an unending 53. Jean Dumont, A New Voyage to the Levant: Containing an Account of the Most Remarkable Curiosities in Germany, France, Italy, Malta, and Turkey; with Historical Observations Relating to the Present and Ancient State of Those Countries (London: Printed by T. H. for M. Gillyflower, T. Goodwin, M. Wotton, J. Walthoe, and R. Parker, 1696), 232. 54. Brett, “State Formation and Organisation,” 571. 55. Quoted in Fleischer, Bureaucrat and Intellectual in the Ottoman Empire, 43.

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chain of causation in the functioning of the Ottoman state. The most momentous of the reciprocal rights that God made obligatory was the right of the ruler over the subjects, and the right of the subjects over the ruler. The subjects would not be righteous except through the righteousness of the rulers, and the rulers would not be righteous except through the uprightness of the subjects. To ensure justice, the sultan’s primary duty was to keep a watch on all officials,56 and distribute justice equally to his subjects to maintain the Islamic principle of social welfare (maslaha). In his Kitāb-ı Müstetāb, Idris Bitlisi, a prominent sixteenth-century Ottoman thinker, stressed the four virtues of a just ruler: benevolence (şefkat), devotion (sadakat), fidelity (vefa), and beneficence (hüsn-ü mükafat).57 Ultimately, if his subjects broke the rule of the circle, the sultan was obliged to exert coercive power through punishment to maintain nizam. It was coercion that ruled subjects and protected all. Behind this concept lay the Islamic belief that evil is inherent in human nature, and that only fear would make man righteous. Thus, strong authority was required to impose restraints on the people. The state without sanctions was no state at all.

Ottoman Perceptions of Decline during the Seventeenth Century The administrative, military, and economic structures during the Classical Age changed profoundly during the seventeenth century. As it became extremely difficult to govern from one center, a vast territory spread across three continents, power began to decentralize, dissipating to newly emerging constituents and being transferred partially to local governors (ayans), who emerged as powerful warlords and came to occupy key positions in the state administration.58 The sultan’s power became dispersed and 56. Symbolic of the sultanic power was the Tower of Justice (Adalet Kulesi) in the Topkapı Palace, built during Mehmed II’s reign. This was located strategically so that it could be seen by all subjects from everywhere in the city. From its height, the sultan could theoretically “watch” everyone and observe any act of tyranny being committed by any of his officials. His gaze, or the spirit of justice, spread over the whole capital, and from the capital to the Empire in its entirety. 57. Boğaç A. Ergene, “On Ottoman Justice: Interpretations in Conflict (1600–1800),” Islamic Law and Society 8, no. 1 (2001): 59. 58. Bruce McGowan, “The Age of the Ayans, 1699–1812,” in An Economic and Social History of the Ottoman Empire, 1300–1914, ed. Halil İnalcık and Donald Quataert (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994).

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contested, shifting to elite households.59 The government expanded and, with the further differentiation of services within the ruling class, many of the administrative functions, previously concentrated in the palace, moved out to new headquarters, among them the Bab-ı Âli (the Sublime Porte).60 The transformation of the administration was accompanied by prolonged internal disorder and territorial losses. In 1571, the Ottomans suffered their first serious defeat, at the battle of Lepanto against the Holy League.61 This led to the loss of territory to the Habsburg Empire during the Long Turkish War (1596–1606), to Iran (with some interruptions for more than five decades from 1578 to 1639),62 and to Russia (1595), the greatest rising threat on the Black Sea.63 Along with the loss of military power, the Ottomans ceded their naval superiority over the Western powers to the English and Dutch, and to the Venetians in the Mediterranean. Commerce shifted from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic and the Cape, while Russia gained control of the route from Central Asia. Even the sea routes that linked the capital with the centers of trade and pilgrimage in Egypt and the Levant began to be taken over by foreign ships.64 Financial and administrative weaknesses led to social unrest and to a series of rebellions in Anatolia, known as the Celali Revolts.65 59. The sultan’s sons-in-law (damad) emerged as heads of factional alliances and united powerful imperial figures and ruling elite, and the sultan’s mother (valide sultan) became more influential in politics. Leslie P. Peirce, The Imperial Harem: Women and Sovereignty in the Ottoman Empire (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), 21–22, 58–79. 60. Carter V. Findley, Ottoman Civil Officialdom: A Social History (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1989), 63–64, 267–68; “Political Culture and the Great Households,” in The Cambridge History of Turkey: The Later Ottoman Empire: 1603–1839, ed. Suraiya Faroqhi (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 66. 61. İnalcık and Quataert, An Economic and Social History of the Ottoman Empire, 41. 62. Against the Safavid, Murad IV (r. 1623–40) achieved some great successes. The treaty of Kasr-ı Şirin of 1639 established a permanent border between the Ottomans and the Safavids. 63. Stanford J. Shaw, History of the Ottoman Empire and Modern Turkey, Vol. 1: Empire of the Gazis: The Rise and Decline of the Ottoman Empire 1280–1808 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976), 175–81. 64. İnalcık and Quataert, An Economic and Social History of the Ottoman Empire, 42–43. 65. The first revolt arose in 1519 under Sultan Selim I. It was led by an Alevi preacher, Şeyh Celâl, who claimed to be the Mahdi. His name Celali was later used by Ottoman historians to signify other similar uprisings in 1526–28, 1595–1610, 1654–55, and 1658–59. The rebels made no attempt to overthrow the Ottoman government, they reacted to social and economic crises, like currency depreciation, heavy taxation, the decline in the devşirme system through the admission of Muslims into the army, and increases in the number and

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To identify the reasons for the degeneration and weakening of Ottoman power and to heal its illness, Ottoman statesmen sought new conceptions of reform. In response, a number of thinkers presented these conditions as evidence of a decline and submitted treatises to the Porte or sultans on how to save the Empire, initiating a novel literary genre, nasihatnâme (“treatise on advice for kings”).66 Its roots lay in premodern Eastern literature, drawing on early Indo-Iranian traditions and the Islamo-Turkic traditions of the eleventh and fifteenth centuries.67 The most influential of the Ottoman nasihatnâme works were Keykavus bin İskender’s Kabusnâme,68 the Seljuk vizier Nizamülmülk’s Siyasatnâme,69 and al-Ghazali’s Nasihat al-Muluk.70 Despite variations in the advice they gave, these authors all saw the remedy mainly in returning to the ideal nizam, and reestablishing and fixing the broken links in the circle of justice through reforms.71 To grasp how they understood the challenge of decline, it is necessary to examine the key works of Ottoman nasihatnâme authors Koçi Bey, Kâtip Çelebi, and Naima.72 dominance of the Janissaries both in the capital and in the provinces. These revolts were crushed by Murat IV. For two different views on the causes and effects of the Celali Revolts, see Mustafa Akdağ, Türk Halkının Dirlik ve Düzenlik Kavgası, Celali İsyanları (Ankara: Bilgi Yayınları, 1975); Karen Barkey, Bandits and Bureaucrats: The Ottoman Route to State Centralization (New York: Cornell University Press, 1994). 66. See Virginia Aksan, “Ottoman Political Writing, 1768–1808,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 25, no. 1 (1993): 53–54; Howard Reed, “Ottoman Historiography and the Literature of ‘Decline’ of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries,” Journal of Asian History 22 (1988), 52–77; Ira Lapidus, A History of Islamic Societies (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 186–91. 67. Aziz al-Azmeh, Muslim Kingship: Power and the Sacred in Muslim, Christian and Pagan Polities (London: I. B. Tauris, 1997). 68. Keykavus bin İskender, A Mirror for Princes: The Qābūs Nāma, trans. Reuben Levy (New York: E. P. Dutton, [1082] 1951). 69. Nizamülmülk, Siyasetname, trans. N. Bayburtlugil (Istanbul: Emek Matbaası, [1090] 1981). 70. Al Ghazali, Ghazālīs’ Book of Counsel for Kings (Nasīhat Al-Mulūk), trans. Frank Ronald Charles Bagley (London: Oxford University Press, 1964). 71. Carter V. Findley, Bureaucratic Reform in the Ottoman Empire: The Sublime Porte, 1789–1922 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1980). 72. Some other examples of this genre in the seventieth century were Veysi’s Habnâme (The Book of Dreams), presented to Sultan Ahmed I (r. 1603–17) in 1608, and Hezarfen Hüseyin Efendi’s Telhisü’l-Beyan fi Kavanin-i Al-i Osman (The Summary of the Explanation in the Laws of the Exalted Ottomans), presented to Mehmed IV (r. 1648–87) in 1672. There were also various works written by anonymous authors, such as Hirzü’l Mülûk (Spells of the Sultans), Kitâb-ı Müstetâb (The Beautiful Book), Veliyüddin Telhisleri (The Abstracts of Veliyüddin), Kanûnnâme-i Sultânî Aziz Efendi (Aziz Efendi’s Law Book of the Sultan), and Kitâbu Mesâlihi’l-Müslimîn ve Menâfi’i’l-Müminîn (The Book of Doings of

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koçİ bey (?–1650) Albanian by birth, Koçi Bey was recruited through the devşirme and received his education in the Enderun. He later entered the service of successive Ottoman sultans, giving him the opportunity to observe the functioning of the state administration and examine state policies closely.73 In his Risale (Treatise) presented to Sultan Murad IV (r. 1623–40) in 1630, he glorified the Golden Age of the Empire, when justice prevailed and reaya and beaya were responsible for undertaking their own duties and no others. But bribery, corruption, and oppression of the reaya had destroyed this ideal order.74 The withdrawal of the sultans after Süleyman the Magnificent from direct control of statecraft had led to the demise of central authority, which in turn had caused disintegration and decadence in the political, social, military, and economic life of the Empire.75 Koçi Bey saw the restoration of the circle of justice as the chief remedy required: “The state’s supremacy and strength is dependent upon the askeri, the askeri’s presence upon the wealth, the collection of wealth upon the reaya, and the reaya’s presence upon the distribution of justice and right.”76 As the permanence of the Shari’a depended on ilim (“religious science”), and ilim depended on the ulema, he admonished the sultan to appoint only wise men as ulema.77 A reform of the system of religious appointments, especially to that of the office of Şeyhülislam was necessary.78 For military reform, he argued that the Janissaries should be recruited only from the devşirme, the levy of Christian children in employ of the Ottoman administration and military, and their number should be decreased. Recalling the Persian notion of kingship, he believed that order could be restored to perfection by the swift and resolute action of the sultan, independent of any external interference, particularly from harem politics.79

the Muslims and the Benefits of the Believers). See especially Mehmed Öz, Osmanlı’da Çözülme ve Gelenekçi Yorumcuları (Istanbul: Dergah Yayınları, 2005). 73. For bibliography of Koçi Bey, see especially Koçi Bey, “Koçi Bey ve Eseri Hakkında,” in Koçi Bey Risaleleri, ed. Seda Çakmakçıoğlu (Istanbul: Kabalcı Yayınevi, 2007), 9–20. 74. Ibid., 32–40. 75. Ibid., 48, 51–66. 76. Ibid., 66. 77. Ibid., 45. 78. Ibid., 77. 79. Ibid., 87–88. Koçi Bey presented a second Risale to Sultan İbrahim I (r. 1640–48) in 1641. See “Sultan I. İbrahim’e Osmanlı Devlet Teşkilatı Hakkında Sunulan Risale,” in Koçi Bey Risaleleri, 101–57. He wrote similar observations about the causes of the decline and gave similar advice on the abolition of bribery and corruption, regulation of the taxa-

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k ÂTİp çelebİ (1609–57) A few decades later, at the behest of Sultan Mehmed IV’s Grand Vizier Tarhuncu Ahmed Paşa, Kâtip Çelebi in 1653 compiled a book of advice, the Dustûr al-Amel li Islâh al-Halal (The Rule of Action for the Rectification of Defects), to explicate the causes of financial crises.80 Drawing on Ibn Khaldūn’s theory of the rise and fall of states set forth in the Muqaddime, Kâtip Çelebi saw the state as an organism subject to the laws of birth, maturation, decline, and death. He observed that signs of deterioration in the Ottoman state were becoming obvious in his time.81 “The long-lived Ottoman state has reached its three hundred and sixty-fourth year of the Hegira 1063 [1653],” he wrote, “and in conformity with divine custom and humanity’s nature, signs of abnormality have become apparent in the temper of this sublime state and traces of fracturing in its natural powers.”82 The coming of the third stage, decline, was reflected in the state’s symptoms, which could be diagnosed only by physician-philosophers and treated only by the state’s rulers.83 Drawing an analogy between the human body and the exercise of government, he wrote that “the human body is composed of four chief members (arkan), and held together by the guide-rope of its leadership and government by means of the great men of the state (a’yan-ı devlet) who correspond to the body’s heart and natural vigor. It can only be secured by the sure hand of the almighty Sultan, who represents the rational soul.”84 The Empire’s “disease” was caused by an imbalance between the classes.85 Drawing on Dawwānī’s analogy with Galenic medicine, he related the four humors of the human body to four pillars of society, with blood corresponding to the ulema, phlegm to the asker (soldier), yellow gall to the tüccar (merchants), and black gall to the reaya.86 In a healthy human body, like in a well-organized society, the four liquids must be balanced. tion system, restoration of the military and administrative system, and protection of the reaya against oppression. 80. See Orhan Şaik Gökyay, “Kâtip Çelebi: Hayatı-Şahsiyeti-Eserleri,” in Kâtip Çelebi: Hayatı ve Eserleri Hakkında İncelemeler (Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu Basımevi, 1991), 3–19; Bernard Lewis, “Ottoman Observers of Ottoman Decline,” Islamic Studies 1, no. 1 (1962): 214–18. 81. Kâtip Çelebi, Dustûr Al-Amel li Islâh Al-Halal (Istanbul: Tasvir-i Efkâr Matbaası, 1653), 1. 82. Ibid. 83. Ibid., 119–23. 84. Ibid., 120. 85. Ibid., 116, 25–28. 86. Ibid., 120.

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In seeking remedies for the ills of the state to rebalance the duties between the rulers and the ruled, Kâtip Çelebi, like Koçi Bey, called for the restoration of the circle of justice. He pleaded for a return to kadim kanun (“traditional law”) by revitalizing the treasury, lifting the heavy burden of taxation from the reaya to encourage them to return to their land to produce wealth, reducing the size of the army, and replacing corrupt officials with experienced administrators.87 To avert decline and reestablish the old order, strong and determined rule by a man of the sword (sahib-i seyf) was needed. In his Mîzânü’l-hakk f î İhtiyâri’l-ehakk (The Balance of Truth),88 Kâtip Çelebi stressed the “scientific and philosophical decline” that had taken place since the end of the age of Süleyman.89 Writing in reaction to the Kadızadeliler (1621–85), an influential extreme fundamentalist movement aiming to restore the Sunna and return to the pure Islamic principles of the Prophet Mohammad’s time,90 he advised the sultan to be learned, mastering the sciences, philosophy, and history as his ancestors had done to enlighten his subjects.91 The need for rulers to acquire geographical knowledge was the main theme of Kâtip Çelebi’s major work Cihannüma (The View of the World).92 He was one of the earliest Ottoman authors to propose not only domestic reforms to maintain order, but looking outward and taking external pressures more seriously. He saw the West as a great military danger to the Empire, and advised the Empire’s rulers to take more interest in scientific developments and geographical discoveries: “By virtue of felicitous coincidence and prudent measures, they [Europeans] took over the ports of those provinces and occupied them. If they are left to act freely for much longer, they will find the way to the Red Sea and seize the shores of the Hijaz and Yemen.”93 He warned the Ottomans about the risks of falling behind in the exact sciences, particularly in astronomy and geography. 87. Ibid., 5. 88. Kâtip Çelebi, The Balance of Truth (Mîzânü’l-Hakk Fî İhtiyâri’l-Ehakk), trans. G. L. Lewis (London: Allen and Unwin, [1656] 1957). 89. Ibid., 23. 90. Christoph Neumann, “Political and Diplomatic Developments,” in The Cambridge History of Turkey, Volume 3: The Later Ottoman Empire, 1603–1839, ed. Suraiya Faroqhi (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 49. 91. Kâtip Çelebi, The Balance of Truth, 147. 92. Kâtip Çelebi, Cihannüma (Istanbul: İbrahim Müteferrika Matbaa-i Amire, 1732). 93. Quoted in Mustafa Kaçar, “History of Ottoman Geography and Astronomy,” in Kitab-ı Cihannüma, ed. Bülent Özükan et al. (Istanbul: Boyut Yayın Grubu, 2008), 29.

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musTaFa naİma (1655–1716) The treaty of Karlowitz (1699) with the Holy League marked the first-ever formal recognition in the annals of the Ottoman state of major territorial excisions. Despite these serious external pressures, Ottoman thinkers failed to produce new means for handling decline and the problems of security. They continued to propagate the image of an ideal order, but gave little attention to the economic and political rise of Europe, as epitomized in Mustafa Naima’s Ravzat el-Hüseyin fi hulâsât ahbâr el-hâfikayn (The Garden of Hüseyin, Being the Choicest of News of the East and West).94 Here, Naima reiterated Ibn Khaldūn’s circle of life analogy and, like Kâtip Çelebi, argued that the Empire had reached the middle of its life span by the end of the seventeenth century, entering a period in which administrative capabilities became more necessary than military skills. In this period of stagnation (tranquility and consolidation), there was a serious danger that civilians might take over governance and serve their own interests.95 In both Koçi Bey’s and Naima’s accounts, the intrusion of the reaya upon the domain of askeri was seen as one reason for the economic, political, and social chaos. Invoking Kınalızâdeli’s circle of justice formula, Naima reached the familiar conclusion that wise and powerful rule by the sultan and the grand vizier was necessary to maintain order and unity. He, too, called for return to the kadim kanun, and reminded the subjects of their duties: “This eternity-joined Ottoman state is the benefactor of each and every Muslim. . . . Therefore it is necessary and incumbent that all who are able should serve this state with their property and with their bodies.”96

The Turn to the West The conservative thinking of the Classical Age remained dominant until the devastating defeat by Venice and Austria, concluded by the treaty of 94. Mustafa Naima served under the patronage of the grand vizier Amcazâde Hüseyin Paşa, a prominent member of Köprülü. The Köprülü family provided the Empire with grand viziers and imperial bureaucrats from 1656 to 1703. Their dominance in politics marked a shift in power from the sultan to the household of viziers. Upon his request in 1700, Naima wrote the six-volume work Ravzat el-Hüseyin fi hulâsât ahbâr el-hâfikayn, which covered the events of the Empire from 1591 to 1659. See Lewis Victor Thomas, A Study of Naima (New York: New York University Press, 1972), 30–33. 95. Naima, Tarih-i Naima: Ravzat ül-Hüseyn fi Hulasat-ı Ahbar el-Hafıkayn, vol. 6 (Istanbul: Tabhane-yi Âmire, 1863), 19–36. 96. Ibid., 52.

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Passarowitz in 1718.97 This reversal alerted the Ottomans to the need not only to focus inward in order to maintain and reestablish nizam but also look outward and take the measure of external threats. The shift toward the West began with the establishment of long-term diplomatic relations to secure the borders. It has been widely assumed that this marked the first step toward Westernization and modernization in Ottoman history. For both Niyazi Berkes and Bernard Lewis, the incentive to move toward the West came merely from the Ottomans’ realization of their own inferiority to the West: the Ottomans had hitherto maintained a comfortable illusion of the immeasurable and immutable superiority of their own civilization to all other,”98 and they “. . . steadfastly remained aloof from Western developments because they were convinced of the superiority of their own system.”99 But this assessment ignores the fact that the turn toward and opening up to the West were an outcome of the failure in practice of centuries-long theories of order and the circle of justice. It was the failure of this entire conception that led to a search for new ideas to cope better with internal and external pressures, and for new ways to secure the state. Once diplomatically opened to the West, military, cultural, and last intellectual influences permeated the Empire, changing its social and political structure and ways of thinking. The initial diplomatic relations were launched with France in 1720 under the guidance of Sultan Ahmed III’s son-in-law Grand Vizier İbrahim (1718–30),100 and were followed by arrangements with Russia, Austria, Poland, and Sweden. A new political genre, ambassadorial reports (sefaratnâme), was developed by envoys sent abroad to record their observations of the West and report on the elements suitable for application in the Ottoman Empire.101 These reports did not focus on politics or the in97. Neumann, “Political and Diplomatic Developments,” 545. 98. Lewis, The Emergence of Modern Turkey, 34–35. 99. Niyazi Berkes, The Development of Secularism in Turkey (New York: Routledge, 1998), 24. 100. France and the Ottomans had a long history of strategic association based on their common interest in countering the Habsburg Empire, their principal rival. Thus, France, as the most formidable continental power of the century, alone became the primary focus for Ottoman diplomacy. For pragmatic reasons, France also recognized the necessity to establish diplomatic relations with the Ottomans, whose absence would create a power vacuum in the region. Ibid., 25. 101. Yirmisekiz Çelebi Mehmed Efendi was the first ambassador to France in 1720. In his Sefaratname-i Fransa, he compiled observations on social life and military establish-

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tellectual currents of the West, but merely presented descriptions of “strange and distant” worlds. Despite the increasing contact with Europe, the emulation and adaptation of Western ideas by the Ottoman ruling class remained limited during this period, though these reports provide an important record of the Ottomans’ changing perceptions of their Western counterparts.102 During the eighteenth century, the nasihatnâme literature also persisted. Ottoman sultans and statesmen continued to ask advice from authors whom they charged to investigate the reasons for aberrations in the organization of the Ottoman state and for the rise of European states, and to suggest how most effectively to respond to internal and external threats. A significant example was İbrahim Müteferrika’s Usûlü’l-Hikem f î Nizâmi’l-Ümem (Philosophical Principles for Organizing Nations), which sought to answer the question of “why Christian nations begin to dominate so many lands in modern times and even defeat the once victorious Ottoman armies.”103 Drawing on Kâtip Çelebi’s Cihannüma,104 printed and edited in his press, he advised the rulers to learn from the strategies of their successful enemies, and acquire “the general condition of neighboring states”105 to catch up with European progress in learning and technology. In seeking the remedy for the state’s domestic weaknesses, he argued ments in France. Although his report portrayed the immense change in Ottoman perceptions of the West, signifying some broadening of curiosity and fascination with French culture, it did not contain any significant observation on the political institutions or political ideas in France. See Yirmisekiz Mehmet Çelebi, Paris’te Bir Osmanlı Sefiri: Yirmisekiz Mehmet Çelebi’nin Fransa Seyahatnamesi (Istanbul: Türkiye İş Bankası Kültür Yayınları, 2010). 102. See Mustafa Hattî Efendi, Mustafa Hattî Efendi Viyana Sefâratnâmesi (Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu Basımevi, 1999). For a comparative study of embassy reports, see Fatma Müge Göçek, East Encounters West: France and the Ottoman Empire in the Eighteenth Century (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press 1987). 103. Adil Şen, İbrahim Müteferrika ve Usûlü’l-Hikem f î Nizâmi’l-Ümem (Ankara: Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı Yayın Kurulu, 1995), 18. 104. İbrahim Müteferika (1670?–1754), a Hungarian convert from Unitarianism, was the founder of the first Arabic-script printing press in 1727 in partnership with Mehmed Said Paşa, who had accompanied his father, Yirmisekiz Mehmed Çelebi, on his embassy mission to France. See Franz Babinger, Müteferrika ve Osmanlı Matbaası (Istanbul: Tarih Vakfı Yurt Yayınları, 2004); Halil Necatioğlu, Matbaacı İbrahim Müteferrika ve Risale-i İslamiye (Ankara: Elif Matbaacılık, 1982); Orlin Sabev, İbrahim Müteferrika ya da İlk Osmanlı Matbaa Serüveni 1726–1746: Yeniden Değerlendirme (Istanbul: Yeditepe Yayınevi, 2006); Fikret Sarıcaoğlu, Müteferrika: Basmacı İbrahim Efendi ve Müteferrika Matbaası (Istanbul: Esen Ofset, 2008). 105. Şen, İbrahim Müteferrika ve Usûlü’l-Hikem f î Nizâmi’l-Ümem, 145.

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that the wise and strong personal rule of the sultan and the grand vizier was necessary to restore power106 and the Shari’a.107 Müteferrika’s contribution to political thought lay in his novel attention to understanding Western political systems. Identifying a trio of governmental forms—monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy—the treatise offered one of the earliest examples of the analysis of Western systems of government. Drawing on Plato, Müteferrika defined monarchy as “a type of government where the sovereign power is concentrated in the hands of a just and wise ruler, and the people, as his subjects, are obliged to obey his opinions and measures in all state affairs.”108 It “is the most common form of government in Europe.”109 In an aristocracy, “sovereignty resides in the dignitaries of the state. The ruler is elected among the dignitaries, but he is dependent upon the rest of the counsel.”110 He gave Venice as an obvious example of an aristocracy. “A democracy differs from monarchy and aristocracy in that the sovereign power belongs to the whole of the people, or to the greater part of the people.”111 In a democracy, the majority of the people avoid the potential arbitrariness of rule through the method of popular representation, parliaments, and mechanisms whereby representatives of the people control the government. He saw the Netherlands and England as instances of democracy.112

Conclusion The advice of these authors began in the eighteenth century to be put into practice. First attempts to modernize the Ottoman army in line with the armies of the West were undertaken during the reign of Mahmud I (r. 1730–54). Predominantly inspired by France, the reform program involved the recruitment of French officials like Comte de Bonneval113 and Baron 106. Ibid., 142–43. 107. Ibid., 152. 108. Ibid., 129. 109. Ibid. 110. Ibid., 130. 111. Ibid. 112. Ibid. 113. Comte de Bonneval was a French nobleman having served in the armies of France and Austria to reform the Bombardier Corps on European lines. He was assigned to reorganize the small and outdated Corps of Bombardiers (Humbaracı Ocağı) as a model for the reorganization of the entire Ottoman army. In his reports to the sultan, he described the recruitment, organization, and tactics of the French and German military forces, insisting on the need “to imitate them [the French and Germans] and adopt their methods.” After converting to Islam and adopting the name Humbaracı Ahmed Paşa, Bonneval set off a

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François de Tott114 for military advice, the introduction of instruction in applied sciences, the opening of engineering schools, the transformation of the School of Mathematics into the Bahriye (School of Naval Engineering) in 1776, and the translation of various European scientific works into Ottoman Turkish.115 These reform movements in the military sphere marked the beginning of a protracted era of French official or semi-official military and technological assistance to the Empire. A new phase of extensive Western-inspired reforms continued under Sultan Selim III and his successor Mahmud II. But despite this turn to the West, there remained little Ottoman interest in Western political thought or regime types until the nineteenth century. This attitude changed radically with the French Revolution. program of military and technical reform with the assistance of several other European officers. For further details of his life, see Bashaw Count Bonneval, Memoirs of the Bashaw Count Bonneval, from His Birth to His Death: Shewing, the Motives, 2 vols. (London: Printed for E. Withers, G. Woodfall, 1750). 114. Baron François de Tott was a Hungarian-born French consul, who offered military advice to Mustafa III (1757–74), and briefly to Abdülhamid I (1774–89). Under his supervision, a new cannon foundry was established, the designs of Ottoman cannon carriages were improved, new corps of engineers and artillery were trained, and the gun-foundry was reorganized. In these tasks, he was assisted by further French military officers and technical advisers who began to arrive in Istanbul. See İsmail Hakkı Uzunçarşılı, Osmanlı Tarihi, vol. 4/1 (Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu Basımevi, 1956), 479–80. 115. Ali İhsan Gencer, Bahriye’de Yapılan Islahat Hareketleri ve Bahriye Nezareti’nin Kuruluşu (1789–1867) (Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu Yayınları, 2001), 23–26.

Ch a p t er t wo

The Age of Transformation in Ottoman Political Thought t he r eigns of sel İ m iii (r . 1789– 1808) a n d m a h m u d ii (r . 1808– 39)

t he r eigns of su lta n sel İ m iii (r. 1789–1808) and Mahmud II (r. 1808–39) witnessed significant changes in Ottoman political thought and the idea of a modern state. With the French Revolution (Fransız İhtilâli), fresh ideas migrated from Europe to the Empire, and concepts like republic (cumhur or cumhuriyet), liberty (hürriyet), independence (serbessiyet), equality (müsavat), and nation (vatan, millet) began to appear widely in political writings. This change in political language was affected largely through the efforts of French missionaries, promoting republican ideas in the Ottoman sphere to win the support of the Porte. For the first time in Ottoman political thought, a republic was discussed as a form of a government, but still not as an alternative to the Ottoman monarchy. An extensive reform process changed the traditional ideas of nizam (order) and adalet (justice), improved relations with the West, and generated a modern bureaucratic centralized state.

Reactions to the French Revolution The French Revolution brought a paradigmatic shift that irrevocably changed the way in which Ottomans thought about, spoke of, and conducted politics. A new conception of the role of secular ideology and revolutionary principles inspired nineteenth and early twentieth century Ottoman intellectual movements. Initially, the Ottomans saw the Revolution [ 34 ]

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as a domestic French problem, of no significance to their own Empire.1 Even after Louis XVI, whom Selim III regarded as a close friend, was executed and the revolutionary wars began to spread to Western Europe, the Ottomans remained aloof and uninterested, believing that a struggle between European powers would keep them preoccupied with each other and reduce their interference in Ottoman affairs. As Ahmed Efendi, the privy secretary of Selim III, noted in 1792: “May God cause the upheaval in France to spread like syphilis to the enemies of the Empire, hurl them into prolonged conflict with one another, and thus accomplish results beneficial to the Empire, amen.”2 The same year, to retain their diplomatic relations with France, the Ottomans declared neutrality, disappointing the Europeans at war with France.3 Mehmed Raşid Efendi believed that France’s new form of government would not influence Ottoman thinking about politics: The friendship of the Sublime State for the French is not contingent on its form of government, be it a republic or a monarchy, but it is a friendship with the French people. . . . We do not consider their costume and symbols important, and interfering in these matters means disapproving of their conduct. Even disapproving is enough to be deemed to be taking the side of their adversaries, and this is contrary to neutrality.4

Ottoman neutrality enabled French revolutionaries to propagate their ideas freely in Ottoman lands, especially in Istanbul itself.5 They formed 1. İsmail Soysal, Fransız İhtilâli ve Türk-Fransız Diplomasi Münasebetleri (Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu, 1999), 101–2. 2. Tahsin Öz, “Selim III’ün Sırkatibi Tarafından Tutulan Ruzname,” Tarih Vesikaları Dergisi 3, no. 13 (1944): 184. 3. As expressed in the observations of the official Ottoman historian Ahmet Cevdet Paşa: “One day the Austrian chief dragoman came to the Reis-ül Küttab Raşid Efendi and said. ‘May God punish these Frenchmen as they deserve; they have caused us much sorrow. For heaven’s sake—if only you would have those cockades stripped off their heads.’ To this request Raşid Efendi replied: ‘My friend, we have told you several times that the Ottoman Empire is a Muslim state. No one among us pays any attention to those badges of theirs. We recognise the merchants of friendly states as guests. They wear that headgear they wish on their heads, and attach what badges they please. And if they put baskets of grapes on their heads, it is not the business of the Sublime Porte to ask them why they do so. You are troubling yourself for nothing.’ ” Cited in Bernard Lewis, “The Impact of the French Revolution on Turkey: Some Notes on the Transmission of Ideas,” Journal of World History 1, no. 1 (1953): 121. 4. Quoted in Caroline Finkel, The History of the Ottoman Empire: Osman’s Dream (New York: Basic Books, 2005), 396. 5. Lewis, “The Impact of the French Revolution on Turkey: Some Notes on the Transmission of Ideas,” 114.

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societies, distributed leaflets in both Turkish and French on their revolutionary principles and the evils of the ancien régime6 and bulletins on the victories of the republican armies,7 held public ceremonies to celebrate the Revolution,8 and flew Ottoman flags alongside those of the French and American Republics as a symbol of union that “had not soiled their arms in the impious league of tyrants.”9 Most activities were directed and organized by French ambassadors sent to Istanbul. Three ambassadors of the Republic, Marie Louis Descorches, Raymond de Verninac, and Aubert du Bayet, were instructed by the French government to pursue a revolutionary propaganda initiative and convince the Porte to support the republican regime. Descorches established two revolutionary societies, the Société Républicaine des Amis de la Liberté et de l’Egalité and the Société Populaire Républicaine.10 In 1795, he was charged by the Committee of Public Safety to establish a French printing press in Istanbul to spread revolutionary ideas to the Ottoman public. Verninac was involved with the missionary activities of the press.11 Newspapers like the Gazette Française de Constantinople and the Bulletin de la Légation de la République Française près la Porte Ottomane were published by the French Embassy to inform Ottoman public opinion about the Revolution and its universal ideology.12 The Constitution of the French Republic, the Declaration of the Rights of Man, and other revolutionary documents were translated, but most French concepts and expressions lacked their Turkish equivalents at that time.13 In response to French propaganda, Britain financed antipropaganda activities in Istanbul, and the Austrian embassy in Istanbul distributed an anti- revolutionary French newspaper printed in Frankfurt.14 6. Stanford J. Shaw, Between Old and New: The Ottoman Empire under Sultan Selim III, 1789–1807 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1971), 195. 7. In July 1795, Descorches reported that he had distributed a bulletin in Turkish on the victories of the republican armies. Albert Sorel, L’Europe et la Révolution Française (Paris: Plon, 1907), 248. 8. Soysal, Fransız İhtilâli ve Türk-Fransız Diplomasi Münasebetleri, 113. 9. E. de Macère, Une Ambassade á Constantinople. La Politique Orientale De La Révolution Française (Paris: Félix Alcan, 1927), 12–15. 10. Shaw, Between Old and New, 195. 11. Soysal, Fransız İhtilâli ve Türk-Fransız Diplomasi Münasebetleri, 119–22. 12. Shaw, Between Old and New, 196. 13. Ibid. 14. Lewis, “The Impact of the French Revolution on Turkey: Some Notes on the Transmission of Ideas,” 116–17.

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The Ottomans maintained their neutrality until the Napoleonic invasions. A shift took place with the partition of the territories of the Republic of Venice by the treaty of Campo Formio of 1798, which annexed the Ionian Islands to the French Republic.15 Cevdet Paşa wrote that the treaty “meant the glory of the ideas of the republic (cumhuriyet) and freedom (hürriyet). The shape of politics has changed and a new episode of European history has begun.”16 The Revolution and the approaching threat of revolutionary expansionism generated heated opposition and reaction, skepticism, and fear about the conception of a republic and its principles. Halet Efendi, Ottoman ambassador in Paris from 1802 to 1806, accused the French of attempting to “fool” the Ottomans over the greatness of republic (cumhuriyet) and liberty (serbessiyet),17 while “stir[ring] up evil” throughout the Empire.18 In his lâyiha, the Reis-ül Küttab Ahmed Atıf Efendi criticized French revolutionaries for enticing common people (avam-ı nas) to follow their corrupt principles with promises of equality and freedom (müsavaat ve serbessiyet) for the attainment of “complete happiness.”19 He abhorred French Enlightenment thinkers for engendering these principles, especially secularism, which he held only led to chaos, bloodshed, and anarchy: The known and famous atheists Voltaire and Rousseau, and other materialists (dehrîler) like them, had printed and published various works, consisting, God preserve us, of insults and vilification against the pure prophets and great kings, of the removal and abolition of all religion, and of allusions to the sweetness of equality and republic (müsavaat ve cumhuriyet), all expressed in easily intelligible words and phrases, in the form of mockery, in the language of the commoners. . . . When the revolution (ihtilâl) became more intense, none took offence at the closing of churches, the killing and expulsion of monks, and the abolition of religion and doctrine: they set their hearts on equality and freedom (müsavaat ve serbestiyete), through which they hoped to attain perfect 15. Virginia Aksan, Ottoman Wars: An Empire Besieged (London and New York: Routledge, 2007), 229. 16. Cevdet Paşa, Tarih-i Cevdet, 6, 279. 17. Enver Ziya Karal, Halet Efendi’nin Paris Büyük Elçiliği (1802–1806) (Istanbul: İstanbul Üniversitesi Yayınları, 1940), 32–35. 18. Ibid., 62. 19. Lewis, “The Impact of the French Revolution on Turkey: Some Notes on the Transmission of Ideas,” 121.

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bliss in this world, in accordance with the lying teachings increasingly disseminated among the common people (avam-ı nas) by this pernicious crew, who stirred up sedition and evil because of selfishness or self-interest. . . . Nor were they satisfied with this alone, but finding like-minded supporters in every place, in order to keep other states busy with the protection of their own states and thus forestall an attack on themselves, they had their rebellious declaration which they call “The Rights of Man” (hukuku insan) translated into all languages and published in all parts, and strove to incite the common people (avam-ı nas) of all nations and religions to rebel against the kings to whom they were subject.20

Similarly, Ahmed Âsım Efendi, an official imperial chronicler, denounced the Republic (cumhuriyet),21 with its principles of secularism and “the equality (eşitlik) of rich and poor.”22 He was worried that revolutionary ideas would spread to the whole of the Empire and instill chaos, leading to the disintegration of different communities.23 Ebubekir Katib Efendi, ambassador to Vienna in 1792 and 1793, where he observed the Franco-Austrian War,24 saw the revolution as a “mob uprising” (erâzil ü esâfil), which reduced France’s prestige in the international arena. “If the country [France] were to be ruled by a monarch, it would regain its former power and its glory.”25 He argued that the Revolution also introduced ambiguous concepts like freedom: “They [Austrians] say ‘we are free’ [serbestsiz dirler] but I cannot understand what it means.”26 Originating in Persian, the concept of serbest used to mean “exempt, untrammeled or unrestricted.”27 In earlier Ottoman political writings, it meant hürriyet (freedom) from limitations or restrictions.28 Its first appearance in an official document as “political independence” was in the third article of the 20. “Memorandum of Reis-ül Küttab Ahmed Atıf Efendi.” Quoted in Lewis, The Emergence of Modern Turkey, 66–67. 21. Ahmed Âsım, Âsım Tarihi, vol. 1 (Istanbul: Ceride-i Havadis Matbaası, 1870), 78. 22. Ibid., 62. 23. Ibid. 24. Faik Reşit Unat, Osmanlı Sefirleri ve Sefaretnameleri (Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu Yayınları, 1987), 154–58. 25. Quoted in Fatih Yeşil, “Looking at the French Revolution through Ottoman Eyes: Ebubekir Ratib Efendi’s Observations,” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 70, no. 2 (2007): 289. 26. Ibid., 303. 27. Bernard Lewis, “Hurriya,” in The Encyclopedia of Islam, ed. B. Lewis, V. L. Menage, and Ch. Pellat (Leiden: Brill, 1971), 589. 28. Ibid.

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treaty of Küçük Kaynarca (1774), which granted a short-lived independence to the Crimean Tatars. Russia and the Ottoman Empire had agreed to recognize the Tatars as “free and entirely independent of any foreign power,” and regarded the sultan as their religious head but “without thereby compromising their political and civil liberty as established.”29 With the French Revolution, the concept serbessiyet acquired a broader meaning. Moralı El-Seyyid Ali Efendi, the Ottoman ambassador under the Directoire, used serbessiyet in his sefaretname as an equivalent of liberté.30 Another important concept that gained a new meaning was the term millet. In the Ottoman state, millet denoted administrative arrangements of central-local communal rule, organized around their dominant religious institutions (the millets in question were Greek Orthodox, Armenian, and Jewish).31 The idea that a state should be populated exclusively by a particular millet was unfamiliar in Ottoman thinking. After war broke out between Austria and France in 1792, Ratib Efendi presented to the Porte a translation of the full French text of the declaration of war, where nation was translated as millet. The old institutional meaning remained in use until the Tanzimat, and was then replaced its novel French meaning. The French occupation of Egypt and Palestine prompted discussion of the meaning of a republic and its principles in the Arabic-speaking provinces of the Empire. What a republic was and what it implied was not yet clearly appreciated.32 While seeking an Arabic equivalent of the république, French translators in the occupied lands faced a conceptual and lexical challenge. They used mashyakha (or mashīkha) and djumhur interchangeably.33 Jabartī described the djumhur, “the [new] order they contrived” (al-tartīb allathī abtada’uhu), as camiya (jam’iyya)—literally “an association or grouping.”34 In this “blameworthy innovation (bid’a) which they had fabricated . . . they have neither head nor sultan with whom they would all agree.” Having “killed their sultan,” the people “unanimously agreed that there was not to be a single ruler; instead, their government, territories, laws and the administration of affairs should be 29. Ibid., 590. 30. Lewis, “The Impact of the French Revolution on Turkey: Some Notes on the Transmission of Ideas,” 107. 31. Karen Barkey, “Islam and Toleration: Studying the Ottoman Imperial Model,” International Journal of Politics, Culture, and Society 19, nos. 1–2 (2005): 15–16. 32. Ami Ayalon, Language and Change in the Arab Middle East: The Evolution of Modern Arabic Political Discourse (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987), 99. 33. Ibid. 34. Cited in ibid., 101.

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in the hands of the intelligent and wise men among them.”35 The term mashyakha was more widely used than djumhur. It is the plural form of the noun shaykh, meaning “an elder, i.e., a distinguished person, usually of an advanced age,”36 and thus designated to the group of elders or notables, who exercise considerable political power, and act as virtual advisory councils to local rulers.37 But, erroneously, the Arabs understood a republic merely as “a government by elders.”38

The New Order and Reforms of Selim III The threat from France, the disasters of the Russo- Ottoman War (1768– 74) with the consequent Treaty of Küçük Kaynarca, which gave Russia the right to protect the Orthodox Christians in the Balkans, and the loss of Crimea in 1783 alarmed Ottoman statesmen into undertaking urgent military and administrative reforms to halt the demise of the Empire. Selim III’s reform program aimed to create Nizâm-ı Cedid (“the New Order”).39 The connotation “new” marked the symbolic opening of a new era and the end of classical Ottoman thinking about politics and society. Unlike the eighteenth-century reforms, which aimed to return to an ideal order and maintain it, Selim III’s reform program pointed toward the future and toward progress. Reform proposals were prepared by the Nizâm-ı Cedid group. Comprised of over two hundred people from varying professions—judges, administrators, scribes, and teachers, military officers and soldiers40—they submitted proposals to the meşveret-i kebîr (Sublime Council of Consultation), which convened at the Bab-ı Âli (the Sublime Porte). During the meclis-i meşveret (consultation assembly), these proposals were openly discussed by all partakers, and decisions were reached through mutual deliberation and consensus.41 After Selim III’s approval, the regulations were issued in the form of kanunname (the secular law). 35. Ibid. 36. Ami Ayalon, “Mashyakha,” in Encyclopedia of Islam, ed. C. E. Bosworth et al. (Leiden: Brill, 1991), 725. 37. Ibid. 38. Ayalon, Language and Change in the Arab Middle East: The Evolution of Modern Arabic Political Discourse, 101. 39. Enver Ziya Karal, Selim III’ün Hat-tı Hümayunları: Nizam-ı Cedit, 1789–1807, vol. 2 (Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu Basımevi, 1946), 30–34. 40. Ünal Uğur, “İdari ve Sosyal Alanlarda Nizâm-ı Cedîd Çabaları,” Osmanlı Tarihi Araştırma ve Uygulama Merkezi Dergisi 14, no. 14 (2003): 282–83. 41. Quoted in Fatih Yeşil, “Nizâm-ı Cedîd,” in III. Selim: İki Asrın Dönemecinde

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During the reign of Selim, meşveret (maşwara or shûra in Arabic, meaning “consultation by the ruler of his advisers,” or “a deliberative assembly”) became an important administrative body. Its origins can be traced back to early Islamic state practices during the time of Mohammed and the four caliphates. Meşveret assemblies had also existed in the Empire since the sixteenth century, but had been ineffective.42 For Şânizâde, an official chronicler, Selim III’s meclis-i meşveret exercised a representative role,43 and resembled the parliamentary system of European düvel-i muntazame (well-organized states).44 Toward the end of the century, the meşveret developed into the first Ottoman parliament assembled in 1876, and was replaced by a meclis (parliament). Selim III directed a significant part of his reformist efforts toward centralizing the government structure and strengthening imperial power.45 By his time, the military-administrative and religious establishment had become highly decomposed, while the authority of the grand vizierate at the Bab-ı Âli and the role of the scribes had gradually eclipsed it. Selim III’s administrative reforms aimed to reestablish channels of authority and lines of control in the offices of the Bab-ı Âli, and create a disciplined army. The Nizâm-ı Cedid Ordusu (the New Order Troop) established in 1793 modern naval and engineering schools— Mühendishane-i Berr-i Hümayun (Army Engineering School), set up in 1795, and Mühendishane-i Bahr-i Hümayun (Naval Engineering School), in 1796.46 What was innovative about the administrative reforms was the idea of “giving order to everything.”47 For Ebubekir Ratip, this new political order reflected the characteristics of modern states like the Habsburg Empire or Prussia.48 İstanbul, ed. Kemal Beydilli, İskender Pala, and Coşkun Yılmaz (Istanbul: İstanbul 2010 Avrupa Kültür Başkenti, 2010), 108. 42. Bernard Lewis, “Mashwara,” in The Encyclopedia of Islam, ed. C. E. Bosworth, B. Lewis, and Ch. Pellat (Leiden: Brill, 1991), 724–25. 43. Şânizâde Mehmed ‘Atâ’ullah Efendi, Şânî-Zâde Târîhi (1223–1237/1808–1821), vol. 1 (Istanbul: Çamlıca, 2008), 66, 73–75, 199–201. 44. Ibid., 201. 45. Findley, Bureaucratic Reform in the Ottoman Empire, 117. 46. Supreme executive authority in the expanded Bab-ı Âsafi (the administrative department of the grand vizier), was given to the Kethüda-ı Bab-ı Âsafı (the lieutenant), who became the administrative director of the central government, assisted by the Reis ülKüttab (the chief scribe). 47. Cevdet Paşa, Tarih-i Cevdet, 6, 221. 48. Kemal H. Karpat, “The Transformation of the Ottoman State, 1789–1908,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 3, no. 3 (1972): 252.

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diplomaTic reForms The establishment of permanent embassies and consulates was an important step toward developing peaceful relations with Europe.49 The exposure of Ottoman bureaucrats to European ideas, and the opportunity to observe the workings of the government changed the ways in which the Ottomans understood politics and what they expected of it. The first embassy was established in London in 1793, followed by one Vienna in 1794, Berlin in 1795, and Paris in 1797.50 The choice to establish their first embassy in Britain was tactical. Having experienced worsened relations with France upon the advent of the Revolution, the Ottomans were struggling to find new European allies, and approached a traditional trading partner, Britain.51 The first permanent ambassador to London was Yusuf Agah Efendi. During his three-year stay, he regularly reported back to the Porte on British politics, economy, and armed forces by sending newspaper articles and parliamentary speeches, which were later compiled as Havadisnâme-i İngiltere (News from England) in 1797.52 He saw the British system of government as “the most advanced (ileri) in Europe at this time”53 and compared the Ottoman meşveret to the House of Commons, “the consultative assembly of the people (erbab-ı meşveret).”54 A more detailed account of the British Parliament and Constitution was produced by Mahmud Raif, Yusuf Agah’s chief secretary.55 In his Journal du voyage de Mahmoud Raif Efendi en Angleterre, écrit par lui meme,56 he stressed the unique nature of the English Constitution’s “blend 49. Thomas Naff, “Reform and the Conduct of Ottoman Diplomacy in the Reign of Selim III, 1789–1807,” Journal of the American Oriental Society (1963): 303–4. 50. Unat, Osmanlı Sefirleri ve Sefaretnameleri, 45. 51. Aksan, Ottoman Wars, 224–25. 52. Yusuf Agah Efendi, Havadisnâme-i İngiltere, Fatih Millet Kütüphanesi (Fatih National Library), Ali Emiri, no. 840, 1796. Other documents consisted of treatises like the peace treaty between the king of Sardinia and the French Republic, and the peace treaty between the French Republic and Spain, both signed in 1796. See Havadisname-i İngiltere, 20a, case 37; 21a–b, case 39. 53. Ibid., 10a, case 136. 54. Ibid., 5b, case 65. 55. Mehmed A. Yalçınkaya, Mahmud Raif Efendi as the Chief Secretary of Yusuf Agah Efendi (Istanbul: İsis Press, 2010). 56. Mahmud Raif Efendi, “Journal du Voyage de Mahmoud Raif Efendi en Angleterre, Écrit par Lui Meme,” in Mahmud Raif Efendi as the Chief Secretary of Yusuf Agah Efendi (Istanbul: İsis Press), 186–98. The original text is available in Topkapı Sarayı III. Ahmet Kütüphanesi (Topkapı Palace Ahmet III Library), no. 3707. For the Turkish text, see

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of monarchy and republic (monarşi ve cumhuriyet).”57 The Parliament, composed of two chambers, the House of Lords and the House of Commons (avam meclisi), had the right to execute the laws (kanun yapma yetkisi),58 but “it cannot be concluded that the King has no power (yetki) over Parliament.”59 Rather, the laws executed by Parliament are in force only after the king’s consent. Power to convene or adjourn Parliament also resides with the king. This mixed constitution, Raif wrote, is “a composition of three powers (iktidar kaynağı); that of the people (halk), or the House of Commons; that of the Lords; and that of the King, and in all decisions these three powers should be in agreement.”60 The monarch is at the center, and the power of the nobles and the people are the balances. The role of the English government is to provide a stable social network, within which private enterprise could regulate itself freely: “All [these] companies govern themselves; the English government does not interfere in their affairs.”61 Another English characteristic was its “enlightened” literate public and its advanced education system, especially the universities of Cambridge, Oxford, and Edinburgh:62 “There is a lot of science and education; the people . . . are better educated than those of other nations; they acquire knowledge by reading public papers.”63

The Reforms of the Absolutist Sultan Mahmud II The state apparatus and power balance changed significantly during the reign of Sultan Mahmud II (r. 1808–39). By taking Austrian and Prussian Çağpar Fıkırkoca, “Bir Osmanlı Gözlemcinin İngiliz Siyasal Sistemine Bakışı,” Tarih ve Toplum Dergisi 10 (1984): 65–67. 57. Yalçınkaya, Mahmud Raif Efendi as the Chief Secretary of Yusuf Agah Efendi 190. [La constitution d’Angleterre diffère de toutes les autres, étant un mélange de monarchie et de république . . .] 58. Ibid. [le Parlement compose de deux chambres, celle des Pairs et celle des communes, a Seul le droit de créer des Loix, comme Le Roi Seul a celuy de les faire exécuter.il ne faut point en conclure que le Roi n’a aucun pouvoir sur le Parlement.] 59. Ibid. [il ne faut point en conclure que le Roi n’a aucun pouvoir sur le Parlement.] 60. Ibid. [La constitution d’Angleterre est donc un compose de trios pouvoirs: celuy de people ou de la chamber de communes, celuy des Pairs, et celuy du Roi; et ces trios pouvoirs dans toutes les decisions doivent entre d’accord.] 61. Ibid., 282. 62. Ibid., 197. 63. Ibid.

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monarchies as models,64 he consolidated power in the hands of the sultan and bureaucrats for the implementation of a sharper and more decisive reform program, initiating an important shift from a traditional state toward a modern bureaucratic state.

The end oF adem-İ merkezİyetçİlİk (decenTralizaTion) The first move to bolster central control over the periphery was the elimination of intermediate authorities. Breaking the pact of the Sened-i İttifak, the Deed of Agreement, signed between Mahmud II and the local notables (ayans) in 1808 confirming the mutual duties and responsibilities of each party, the state relocated the members of powerful ayans to different regions of the Empire to prevent their empowerment in any single region,65 appointed loyal ayans to important administrative positions, while severely punishing dissident ones.66 The most radical step toward centralization was the abolition of the Janissaries in 1826, known as Vak’a-i Hayriye (Auspicious Event).67 To break the traditional connection to the Janissaries, the government outlawed the Bektaşi Sufi orders, which had been affiliated with the corps for centuries, and forced them to renounce their faith, or leave the capital.68 In the place of the Janissaries, a new modern army, Asâkir-i Mansure-i Muhammediye (Trained Victorious Troops of Muhammed) was established, trained by French officers and British naval advisers.69 To equip the administration with educated officials, a Medical School for army personnel (1827) and the School of Military Sciences (1834), modeled on the French officers’ training academy, were founded.70 Both were to later be the birthplace of scientific, materialist, and revolutionary ideas, and train64. Enver Ziya Karal, “Gühane Hatt-ı Hümâyû’nda Batı’nın Etkisi,” Belleten 28, no. 12 (1964): 599. 65. Ahmet Cevdet Paşa, Tarih-i Cevdet, vol. 10 (Istanbul: Sabah, 1972), 148. 66. Şânizâde Tarihi, vol. 2, 304, 349–50, 353. 67. The regime charged the court chronicler Esad Efendi to record the events. Mehmed Es`ad, Üss-i Zafer (Istanbul: Matbaa-i Süleyman Efendi, 1876). 68. Tarih-i Cevdet, vol. 12 (Istanbul: Sabah, 1972), 166–88. The surviving Bektaşi members who escaped to Albania became key supporters of the Albanian uprisings of 1903, and the Young Turk Revolution of 1908. See Peter Bartl, Die Albanischen Muslime zur Zeit der Nationalen Unabhängigkeitsbewegung (1878–1912) (Wiesbaden: R. Trofenik, 1968). 69. Avigdor Levy, “Mahmud II,” in The Encyclopaedia of Islam, New Edition, ed. C. E. Bosworth et al. (Leiden: Brill, 1991), 59. 70. Shaw and Shaw, History of the Ottoman Empire and Modern Turkey, 2, 23–24.

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ing sites for the Young Turks and republican leaders. Following Mehmet Ali, a group of Ottoman students from the officer corps was sent to Europe for advanced study of sciences.71 Prussia also rendered effective military service in modernizing the army, starting with the appointment of Helmuth von Moltke in 1835, and increasing to twelve officers in two years.72 This military socialization had a lasting effect on the formation of Ottoman military thinking. The next step toward generating a central government was to limit the power of the ulema, a traditional ally of the Janissaries. To impoverish the ulema, Mahmud II did away with a major source of their vakıf (endowments) income by establishing the Evkâf-ı Hümayun Nezareti (Ministry of Imperial Vakıf ) in 1826, which placed all endowments under state control. The consolidation of state power through the abolition or weakening of two of its major opponents changed the centuries-old power structure, previously comprised of the sultan, the Imperial Council (Divan-ı Hümayun), the bureaucrats, the Janissaries, and the ulema, and terminated the traditional constitution and its basis, the circle of justice. The collapse of the opposition led to the inevitable rise of sultanic and bureaucratic absolutism. Until the Young Turk Revolution of 1908, political power shifted between those two.73

changing percepTions oF wesTernizaTion Having institutionalized centralized power, Mahmud II carried out reforms rapidly from 1826 until 1839 to modernize, Westernize, and empower the state.74 During his reign, internal and external pressures seriously threatened the state’s unity and security: the 1821 Greek Rebellion and independence movement, which turned into an international crisis, the 1828–29 Ottoman-Russian War, the invasion of Algeria by France in 1830, the granting of an autonomous administration to Serbia with the right to a hereditary princedom following the Serbian uprising, and the Egyptian crisis in 1831.75 In response to this threat, the Ottomans established permanent diplomatic and consular representations (şehbenderlik) 71. Adnan Şişman, Tanzimat Döneminde Fransa’ya Gönderilen Osmanlı Öğrencileri, 1839–1876 (Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu, 2004), 2. 72. Avigdor Levy, “The Officer Corps in Sultan Mahmud II’s New Ottoman Army, 1826–39,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 2, no. 1 (1971): 21. 73. Hanioğlu, A Brief History of the Late Ottoman Empire, 60. 74. Tarih-i Cevdet, vol. 10, 87. 75. Shaw and Shaw, History of the Ottoman Empire and Modern Turkey, 2, 28–34.

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in England, Russia, Prussia, the Netherlands, Spain, Sardinia, Denmark, Sicily, Portugal, Greece, America, and Iran to secure peace and enable integration into the Concert of Europe.76 “Concord” and “peace” became dominant themes. In his Avrupa’nın Ahvâline Dair Risâle (A Treatise on Conditions of Europe),77 Sadık Rıfat Paşa, ambassador to Vienna between 1837 and 1839,78 argued that for a state to prosper (i’mârât-ı mülkiye), it must secure its borders and create conditions for “universal peace” (müsalâha-i umûmiyye). Peace must always be preferred to war. He referred to the European Concert as a way of “civilization” because it was based on the idea of sustaining friendly relations between states.79 To establish international peace, the state must ensure domestic peace by “protect[ing] people’s life, property, honor and pride”80 with laws. European states were governed by “national laws” (hukûk-ı millet) and “the rule of law” (kanûn-ı devlet),81 which prevented the rulers from treating their subjects “cruelly and forcefully” (gadr ve cebr).82 Arbitrary rule would lead to the decline of a state, because the insecurity of its subjects would prevent them from freely and actively engaging in economic and political life.83 Respect for the rule of law would mutually benefit the state and society. Here, Rıfat Paşa introduced a new conception of state: the state is for the people and it is not above the people.84 If the Ottoman state wished to prosper like its European counterparts, Rıfat Paşa insisted, it must also become a modern constitutional state. The source of laws must be the comfort of the subjects (istirahat-ı tebaa), the abundance of the treasury (vefret-i hazîne), and the power of the army (kuvve-i askeriyye),85 not God himself. The establishment of a state of law was the fundamental precondition for Europeanizing and joining the Eu76. Carter V. Findley, “The Legacy of Tradition to Reform: Origins of the Ottoman Foreign Ministry,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 1, no. 4 (1970) 334–57; “The Foundation of the Ottoman Foreign Ministry,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 3, no. 4 (1972): 388–416. 77. The full text is available at http://yunus.hacettepe.edu.tr/~mehmets/sadikrifatpasa.pdf. 78. Seyit Battal Uğulu and Mehmet Demirtaş, “Mehmet Sadık Rıfat Paşa ve Tanzimat,” History Studies 2, no. 1 (2010): 45–46. 79. Sadık Rıfat Paşa, Müntehâbât-ı Âsâr, 2 (Istanbul: Matbaa-yi Ali, 1877), 3–4. 80. Ibid., 4. 81. Ibid., 5. 82. Ibid., 2. 83. Ibid., 5. 84. Sadık Rıfat Paşa, Avrupa’nın Ahvâline Dair Risâle, 6. 85. Ibid., 3.

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ropean Concert. The phrase “Avrupalılaşmalıyız!” (We have to Europeanize!)86 powerfully expressed the sentiments of the time. The requirements for Westernization or Europeanization began to be perceived not only in the form of reform of the military-bureaucratic establishment but also as a way of civilized life and a model of progress and science. For Sadık Rıfat Paşa, the European civilization (sivilizasyon) had to be taken as a model, because in European states, “the essential habits of civilization (usûl-i me’nûsiyyet ve medeniyeti), requirements for the benefits of progress (ilerleme), have been made possible with the increased number of soldiers, the improvement of property and obtaining of public security.”87 Similar conceptions of civilization and the superiority of the rule of law were also seen in Mustafa Reşid Paşa’s political writings. Civilization was “the cultivation of the people and the execution of order” (terbiyeyy-i nâs ve icrây-ı nizâmât).88 Like Sadık Paşa, he believed that if “the new institutions were administered with wisdom and discernment, everyone would feel the real advantages of an immutably established system, tyranny would diminish, affection for the government would increase, the peoples would rally with all the strength of their heart to useful and beneficial innovations.”89 By innovation, he meant the “way of civilization,” which was by introducing modern education and the observance of laws devoid of reference to the Shari’a.90 He was concerned to change the European public’s negative opinion of the Empire, especially in France, through informing them of the ambitious Ottoman reforms.91 Reşit Paşa’s propagandist efforts were successful in winning over support for Mahmud II’s reforms, especially in the European press. Reşit Paşa saw Westernization as advancement above all in the sciences: “The sciences, however, are not religious sciences, but . . . mathematical sciences and philosophy (ulum-ı riyâziye ve hikemiye), such as logic, astronomy, medicine, accounting, chemistry, history, poetry, geo86. See Mustafa Sâmi Efendi, Avrupa Risalesi (Ankara: Gündoğan Yayın, [1838] 1996), 25. He was an ambassadorial chief secretary in Paris (Paris Sefâreti Başkâtibi) in 1838. 87. Sadık Rıfat Paşa, Avrupa’nın Ahvâline Dair Risâle, 4. 88. Cited in Reşat Kaynar, Mustafa Reşit Paşa ve Tanzimat (Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu Basımevi, 1991), 69. 89. Frank Edgar Bailey, British Policy and the Turkish Reform Movement: A Study in Anglo-Turkish Relations, 1826–1853, vol. 51 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1942), 271. 90. Kaynar, Mustafa Reşit Paşa ve Tanzimat, 69. 91. Halil İnalcık, “Gülhane Hatt-ı Hümâyunu’nda Batı Etkisi,” in Tanzimat: Değişim Sürecinde Osmanlı İmparatorluğu, ed. Halil İnalcık and Mehmet Seyitdanlıoğlu (Istanbul: Türkiye İşbankası Kültür Yayınları, 2011), 124.

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graphy and philosophy.”92 The notion of the superiority of scientism as the essence of European progress widely appeared in newspapers, such as Ceride-i Havâdis (1840), Tercüman-ı Ahvâl (1860), and Tasvir-i Efkâr (1862), and in the journal of Ottoman Scientific Society, Mecmua-i Fünûn (1862), which had a profound influence in the formation of Ottoman political thought in subsequent periods.93 Economic advancement through commerce was another important component of modernization and a precondition for integration into the European liberal economic system. Western economic thought began to penetrate into the Ottoman Empire through newspapers like Le Spectateur Oriental, published by Charles Trikon in Izmir in 1824.94 Under the editorship of David Urguarth, a British official at the British Embassy in Istanbul between 1830 and 1837, it became a powerful means for propagating liberal economic ideas. “Liberalism, appropriate for natural laws and reason,” he argued, “is the best economic policy from which both Turkey and England will benefit.”95 He became an influential figure in persuading the Ottoman statesmen to adopt a laissez-faire economy. To gain British support on economic and political issues, the AngloTurkish Commercial Convention of Baltalimanı was signed in 1838.96 The British requested the lifting of existing trade barriers and the dissolution of all commercial monopolies in return for their support in the struggle against Mehmed Ali Paşa, the khedive of Egypt.97 However, the convention granted privileges under Article II to the British, permitting them “to purchase in all locations within Ottoman Dominions, whether for the purposes of internal trade or exportation, all articles without any exception whatsoever towards the produced goods or manufactures of said Dominions” and “to abolish all monopolies of agricultural products.”98 Thereafter, British merchants could purchase all goods produced in the Ottoman Empire, and pay a customs tariff equal to that paid by domestic mer92. Cited in Mustafa Reşit Paşa ve Tanzimat, 37. 93. Şükrü M. Hanioğlu, “Batıcılık,” in Tanzimattan Cumhuriyete Türkiye Ansiklopedisi (Istanbul: İletişim Yayınları, 1985), 1382–84. 94. İlber Ortaylı, İmparatorluḡun En Uzun Yüzyılı (Istanbul: Timaş Yayınları, 2008), 196. 95. David Urguarth, Turkey and Its Resources: Its Municipal Organization and Free Trade (London: Saunders and Otley, 1833), 168. 96. Ibid., 196. 97. Carter V. Findley, Turkey, Islam, Nationalism, and Modernity: A History, 1789– 2007 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2010), 43. 98. Treaties between Turkey and Foreign Powers 1535–1855 (London: Foreign Office, 1855), 277. For the full text of the treaty followed by the French translation of the firman issued by the sultan, see 276–83.

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chants. In practice, a three percent tariff was levied on British goods entering the Ottoman market, whereas Ottoman exports were taxed at a rate of sixty percent on entering the English market.99 The Ottoman authorities hoped that the benefits of increased trade and production would compensate for the losses stemming from the abolition of the monopolies and lower tariffs. Although this treaty helped forge an Anglo- Ottoman alliance, which was to become a major diplomatic goal of the Tanzimat, and Ottoman exports to Britain expanded greatly in the short run, it had a negative impact on Ottoman manufacturing and its economy in the long run.100

Conclusion The excessive centralization of power in the hands of the sultan and the bureaucrats as the outcome of the abolition of the Janissaries and weakening of the ulema entirely transformed the traditional structure of power, marking a major step toward a modern bureaucratic state. When Mahmud II died in 1839, the grounds for the proclamation and implementation of the Tanzimat reforms of 1839–76 had been fully prepared by these structural and ideological changes. Grasping the political context of the reign of Mahmud II is a prerequisite for understanding the Tanzimat and the process of Westernization, which led to the flourishing intellectual movement, the Young Ottomans, in reaction to the “tyranny of rulers” in the second half of the nineteenth century. 99. Mübahat S. Kütükoğlu, Osmanlı-İngiliz İktisâdî Münâsebetleri (1580–1838) (Ankara: Türk Kültürünü Araştırma Enst., 1974), 109–10. 100. Şevket Pamuk, The Ottoman Empire and European Capitalism, 1820–1913: Trade, Investment, and Production (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 23–30.

ch a p T er T hr ee

The Tanzimat Era and the Republicanism of the Young Ottomans

The Ta nzİm aT per iod was formally inaugurated with the promulgation of the Tanzimat Gülhane Hatt-ı Şerif (the Tanzimat Edict of Gülhane) in 1839, and ended in 1876 with the enactment of the Kânûn-ı Esâsî (the Ottoman constitution), known as the Tanzimat-ı Hayriye (Auspicious Reordering).1 Derived from the Arabic root “n.z.m” (the roots of nizam), the term tanzimat (the plural of tanzim) meant “giving order,” “regulating,” and “rearranging institutions.”2 The Tanzimat reforms were a continuation of Mahmud II’s reforms, especially the Tanzimat-ı Hayriyye (Beneficial Reforms) of 1838.3 During the Tanzimat era, the emphasis of reforms was on the modernization 1. Some historians view the death of Grand Vizier Keçecizade Mehmed Emin Âli Paşa in 1871, the exile of Midhat Paşa in 1877, or the beginning of the reign of Sultan Abdülhamid as the events that ended the era. See Reed, “Ottoman Historiography and the Literature of ‘Decline’ of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries,” 215. I chose to treat 1876 as the era’s end, as this year marked the crucial change in the political structure of the Empire. 2. Tuncer Baykara, “ ‘Nizam,’ ‘Tanzimat’ ve ‘Medeniyet’ Kavramları Üzerine,” in Tanzimat’ın 150. Yıldönümü Uluslararası Sempozyumu: Bildiriler, 25–27 Aralık 1989, Milli Kütüphane, Ankara, ed. Işın Duruöz and Gönül Büyüklimanlı (Ankara: TC Kültür Bakanlığı, Milli Kütüphane Başkanlığı, 1991), 61–62. 3. Ali Akyıldız, “II. Mahmud Döneminde Merkez İdaresinde Yapılan Düzenlemeler (Reforms Carried Out in the Central Administration during the Era of Mahmud II),” in II. Mahmud: Yeniden Yapılanma Sürecinde İstanbul, ed. Aykut Can et al. (Istanbul: İstanbul 2010 Avrupa Kültür Başkenti, 2010), 68–70.

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and Westernization of the Ottoman administrative system, and the fostering of full participation in the Concert of Europe, all to be enacted through a series of legal codes and institutional reforms.4 Under a triad of grand viziers—Mustafa Reşid Paşa, Mehmed Emin Âli Paşa, and Keçecizâde Mehmed Fuad Paşa, collectively the Tanzimatçılar (the Tanzimat-men)— the civil bureaucratic elite consolidated its hold as the most influential branch of the administration, leading to a shift from sultanic power to bureaucratic authoritarianism.5 This “bureaucratic despotism” and Westernization of sociopolitical and moral life instigated the birth of the first organized intellectual opposition movement, the Young Ottomans. The foundations of modern Turkish republicanism can be traced back to debates about their political thought. Three discrete, if overlapping, subdivisions of republicanism can be identified: liberal, Islamic, and radical. The idea of republic was no longer merely a word, but rather, it became a political category and was discussed as a possible alternative to sultanate. Moreover, Young Ottoman republican ideas about political liberty, parliamentary constitutionalism, and patriotism inspired successive secular republican traditions.

The Rise of Bureaucratic Authoritarianism and the Reform Movement The Tanzimat era opened with the promulgation of the Gülhane Hatt-ı Şerif (The Rescript of Gülhane)6 drafted by Minister of Foreign Affairs Mustafa Reşit Paşa and promulgated in the name of Sultan Abdülmecid II (r. 1839–56) in 1839.7 This Tanzimat Edict was not merely a legislative act; it was a social contract, expressing the duties and responsibilities of the state and subjects to one another. The state existed to ensure the security of life (emniyet-i can) and the protection of honor and pride (mahfûziyyet-i ırz ve namus) and property (mal) of the people, while the 4. Roderic H. Davison, Reform in the Ottoman Empire, 1856–1876 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press 1963), 36. 5. Findley, Bureaucratic Reform in the Ottoman Empire, 152. 6. Yavuz Abadan, Tanzimat Fermanının Tahlili (Istanbul: Maarif Matbaası, 1940); Butrus Abu-Manneh, “The Islamic Roots of the Gülhane Rescript,” Die Welt des Islams, no. 2 (1994): 173–203. The original Turkish text of the Tanzimat Fermanı (Edict) used in this chapter is available in “Tanzimat Fermanı,” in Cumhuriyet’e Devreden Düşünce Mirası, Modern Türkiye’de Siyasi Düşünce, ed. Tanıl Bora and Murat Gültekin (Istanbul: İletişim Yayınları, 2001). For the English text, see http://www.anayasa.gen.tr/gulhane.htm. 7. İlber Ortaylı, Batılılaşma Yolunda (Istanbul: Merkez Kitaplar, 2007), 10.

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subjects must fulfill civic duties like paying taxes and serving the army, forgoing private gain for the sake of the public good.8 The Edict was proclaimed at a time when the European powers were divided in their approach to the Eastern Question, an issue that concerned what should become of the Ottoman Empire.9 The Egyptian crisis of 1839–41 and a series of diplomatic negotiations among the Great Powers manifested their conflicting interests in the Middle East. In domestic politics, the Ottomans confronted their first serious separatist threat in the Greek revolt of 1831. These external pressures made the Ottomans realize that to sustain the unity and integrity of their Empire, they must secure the protection of European allies, among whom Britain stood out as the most powerful candidate, by entering the European Concert.10 The domestic reforms of the Tanzimat aimed to contain the separation of the non-Muslim populations of the Empire, prevent external intervention in Ottoman domestic politics, and Westernize political institutions, a goal expressed in the Edict as an effort to seek “new institutions to give to the provinces composing the Ottoman Empire the benefit of a good administration,” and “an alteration and complete renovation of the ancient usages.”11 Mustafa Reşid Paşa’s political influence ended before his death in 1858, and his authority was eclipsed by his younger rivals, Âli and Fuad Paşas, each at various times grand viziers or foreign ministers.12 With the establishment of the Meclis-i Âli-i Tanzimat (High Council of Reform) in 1853 led by Âli Paşa, reform initiative relocated to the Porte. Inspired by Metternich’s modernizing authoritarianism,13 Âli and Fuad Paşas believed that to secure the Empire and maintain its order and integrity, especially at such dangerous times of struggle against the increasing tug of separatist movements, the government must have absolute control in politics.14 Âli Paşa insisted that “the Lord had entrusted the well-being of the state to five 8. “Tanzimat Fermanı,” 449. 9. Austria and Russia planned to dismember the Ottoman Empire, while England and France supported its unity to obstruct Russia from moving south toward the Mediterranean and threatening the routes of British India. See Davison, Reform in the Ottoman Empire, 1856–1876, 38. 10. Hanioğlu, A Brief History of the Late Ottoman Empire, 73. 11. “Tanzimat Fermanı,” 449. 12. Davison, Reform in the Ottoman Empire, 83. 13. Ibid., 86. 14. “Âli to Thouvenel, 25 November 1858,” in Trois Années de la Question d’Orient, 1856–1859: D’après les Papiers Inédits de M. Thouvenel, ed. Louis Thouvenel (Paris: C. Lévy, 1897), 316.

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or six people. These should govern the fate of the state.”15 Together with a small core of civil-bureaucratic associates, the bureaucrats (Fuad Paşa, Kıbrıslı Mehmed Emin, Mütercim Mehmed Rüşdi, Yusuf Kâmil Paşa, and Âli Paşa) controlled the key posts of the Porte and established oligarchical rule.16 Echoing Machiavelli, Âli Paşa contended that the leaders must “be feared at the same time as [they were] respected and loved.”17 But maintaining healthy fear was no easy task, at least if one did not wish to create too many enemies. Laws were needed to coerce the subjects to abandon selfish separatist desires and demands, and must apply equally to all subjects of the Empire regardless of their creed, religion, or ethnicity.18 The Edict introduced the principle of “equality before the rule of law” formally for the first time as an official policy. Its purpose was to offset the negative European perception that the Ottomans discriminated against their Christian subjects to prevent foreign interventions into Ottoman affairs in the name of protecting non-Muslim minorities. Drafted by Âli Paşa, the Islahat Fermanı of 1856 (Imperial Reform Edict), an extension of the Tanzimat Edict, formalized this policy. Its promulgation was a result of the influence of France and Britain, which assisted the Empire against Russia during the Crimean War (1853–56). It was issued shortly before the Peace Treaty of Paris of 1856, which ended the war, formally admitted the Empire as a member of the Concert of Europe, and guaranteed its territorial integrity. It pledged the protection of the rights of “all imperial subjects of every religion and sect” (bila tefrik-i cins-ü mezheb-i müsavat).19 The Reform Edict promised to provide equality in education,20 public appointment to government posts and the administration of justice, taxation, and military service.21 Legal action would ensue against anyone, whether public official or private individual, who used “any injurious or offensive term.”22 15. Quoted in Mardin, The Genesis of Young Ottoman Thought, 111. 16. Findley, Bureucratic Reform in the Ottoman Empire, 154. 17. “Âli to Thouvenel, 25 November 1858,” 316. 18. Fuat M. Andıç and Suphan Andıç, The Last of the Ottoman Grandees: The Life and Political Testament of Âli Paşa (Istanbul: Isis Press, 1996), 40. 19. The original Turkish text of the Islahat Fermanı used in this chapter is available in “Islahat Fermanı,” in Cumhuriyet’e Devreden Düşünce Mirası, Modern Türkiye’de Siyasi Düşünce, ed. Tanıl Bora and Murat Gültekin (Istanbul: İletişim Yayınları, 2001), 452. 20. Ali Çankaya Mücellioğlu, Son Asır Türk Tarihinin Önemli Olayları İle Birlikte Yeni Mülkiye Tarihi ve Mülkiyeliler: Mülkiye Tarih (Ankara: Mars Matbaası, 1968); Şişman, Tanzimat Döneminde Fransa’ya Gönderilen Osmanlı Öğrencileri, 1839–1876. 21. “Islahat Fermanı,” 452–53. 22. Ibid., 453.

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Ottomanism (Osmanlıcılık) Through the removal of legal distinction among Ottoman subjects, the Tanzimat-men hoped to eliminate demands to grant privileges to specific ethnic and religious minority communities, and end separatism by promoting cohesiveness and fostering among all subjects the sentiments of Ottoman patriotism and brotherhood.23 The ideas of equality, cohesiveness, and brotherhood (kardeşlik) aimed to construct an Ottoman citizen (Osmanlı vatandaşı)24 on a common legal and secular basis. The notion of Ottoman citizenship (Osmanlı vatandaşı) was formalized first in the Law of Citizenship (Tabiyet-i Osmaniye Kanunu) of 1869, stating that “all subjects of the Empire are without distinction called Ottomans, irrespective of the religion they profess.”25 In formalizing equality in legal terms, the traditional distinction between Muslim and dhimmī (an Islamic category designating non-Muslim subjects who received protection from a Muslim ruler in exchange for loyalty, subservience, and payment of taxes) was set aside, and in its place, the term Osmanlı (Ottoman) introduced instead for all citizens. The old meaning of Osmanlı, which had referred merely to the ruling elite, was reworked to cover all the people of the Empire. To promote this vision, formulae like “fellow citizens” (vatandaşlar), “Ottoman compatriots” (muwātinīn), and “Ottomans” (Osmanlılar) began to feature widely in speeches and political writing.26 To give content to the new citizenship, a range of legal, political, and social rights were introduced, most translated directly from French law. A penal code (Ceza Kanunnamesi) was introduced in 1840 to ensure the principles of the security of life (emniyet-i can) and the protection of honor, pride (mahfûziyyet-i ırz ve namus), and property (mal) of the people, as prescribed in the Tanzimat Edict.27 To exercise citizenship, the right to representation at both local and central levels was granted to nonMuslims. In 1856, they gained the further right to representation in the Meclis-i Vâlâ-yı Ahkâm-ı Adliyye (Supreme Council of the State), reconfiguring its membership to contain some thirty percent non-Muslims. 23. Selçuk Akşin Somel, “Osmanlı Reform Çağında Osmanlıcılık Düşüncesi (1839– 1913),” in Cumhuriyet’e Devreden Düşünce Mirası, Modern Türkiye’de Siyasi Düşünce, ed. Tanıl Bora and Murat Gültekin (Istanbul: İletişim Yayınları, 2001), 96–97. 24. Ibid., 88. 25. The law gave people resident in Ottoman domains the right to become Ottoman citizens. Michelle Campos, Ottoman Brothers: Muslims, Christians, and Jews in Early Twentieth-Century Palestine (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2010), 61. 26. Ibid., 77. 27. “Tanzimat Fermanı,” 449.

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Mixed tribunals and commercial courts of both Muslims and non-Muslims were established in 1847. The 1864 Law for Provincial Administration allowed non-Muslims to access the state bureaucracy.28 The point of these political rights, nonetheless, was explicitly not to introduce a representative parliamentary system, as the reformers feared this would trigger separatism. In Âli Paşa’s words: “If the representatives, whom they nominate by way of elections, were to be brought together today, such a national assembly would instantly give rise to all scandals imaginable.”29 He insisted that Ottoman citizens were not “prepared for a constitutional rule.”30 A major problem for the reforms was the coexistence of the traditional and the modern in various areas like education.31 The laws and regulations failed to create solidarity, instead generating extensive local resistance against Ottoman rule. The reforms, intended to construct an Ottoman citizen, were seen as imposing an identity and provoked separatist ethnic nationalism in the Balkans, supported by Russia.32 Nationalist rebellions of Serbians, Montenegrins, and Romanians won semiautonomous status for these groups. In Crete, local Christians rebelled against Ottoman rule in 1866, demanding independence and unification with the Greek kingdom, triggering international conflict, and earning the island a special administrative status in 1868.33 The new regulations increased the demands of millet leaders, and augmented the political power of laymen to administer ecclesiastical affairs while reducing the powers of religious leaders like the patriarchs. The millets acquired a greater degree of autonomy and were transformed into self-governing bodies regulated by their own local constitutions, prompting the ultimate collapse of the millet system by the century’s end.34 Many Muslims, for their part, saw the Reform Edict as an imtiyaz femanı (a decree of special concessions), 28. Mehmet Seyitdanlıoğlu, “Divan-ı Hümayun’dan Meclis-i Meb’usan’a Osmanlı İmparatorluğu’nda Yasama,” in Tanzimat: Değişim Sürecinde Osmanlı İmparatorluğu, ed. Halil İnalcık and Mehmet Seyitdanlıoğlu (Istanbul: Phoenix Yayınevi, 2006), 281–82. 29. Âli Paşa, Réponse à son Altesse Moustafa Fazil Pacha au Sujet de sa Lettre au Sultan (Paris, 1867), 24. 30. Ibid, 20. 31. Ortaylı, İmparatorluğun En Uzun Yüzyılı, 76–80. 32. Halil İnalcık, “Tanzimat’ın Uygulaması ve Sosyal Tepkileri,” in Tanzimat: Değişim Sürecinde Osmanlı İmparatorluğu, ed. Halil İnalcık and Mehmet Seyitdanlıoğlu (Istanbul: Phoenix 2006), 144–48. 33. Kenneth Bourne, “Great Britain and the Cretan Revolt, 1866–1869,” Slavonic and East European Review 35, no. 84 (1956): 76–77; Nazan Çiçek, The Young Ottomans: Turkish Critics of the Eastern Question in the Late Nineteenth Century (London and New York: I. B. Tauris, 2010), 5. 34. Davison, Reform in the Ottoman Empire, 1856–1876, 114–35, 20; Cevdet Küçük,

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as it diminished their dominant status in the society over non-Muslims.35 The Tanzimat-men won ruthless opponents among the more conservative statesmen and ulema, who feared the subversion of Islamic law.36

The birTh oF Journalism The press in this era became a vibrant site of opposition and reserved strong criticism for the ruling elite, who ironically had initially created it. The Tanzimat Paşas expected it to be a powerful means for connecting state and society. As Âli Paşa expressed it: “To forge this link and to make the Government accessible to Your [the sultan’s] subjects, we propose that the press and all written work be granted the widest freedom possible. As a result, the press will deal with political issues, will pass judgment on the actions of the Government, and signal the country’s needs.”37 With this initiative, new private newspapers, like Ceride-i Havâdis (1840), Tercüman-ı Ahvâl (1860), and Tasvir-i Efkâr (1862) appeared. Mecmua-i Fünûn (1862) introduced scientism to the Ottoman public.38 The immediate outcome of these developments was the expansion of a reading public, the formation of a forum for public opinion, and the birth of underground opposition groups, among which the Young Ottomans were the most influential.

The Political Thought of the Young Ottomans: Liberalism, Islamism, and Radicalism The Young Ottomans (Yeni Osmanlılar) were a group originally formed by six intellectuals: Mehmed, Nuri, Reşad, Ayetullah, Namık Kemal (editor of Tasvir-i Efkâr), and Refik. Established as a secret society under the name İttifâk-ı Hamiyet (the Patriotic Alliance), the group’s members were guided by the principles of the Carbonari.39 Like many European secret “Osmanlı İmparatorluğu’nda ‘Millet Sistemi’ ve Tanzimat,” in Mustafa Reşit Paşa ve Dönemi Semineri Bildiriler (Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu, 1994), 396–98. 35. Fatma Müge Göçek, “Decline of the Ottoman Empire and the Emergence of Greek, Armenian, Turkish, and Arab Nationalisms,” in Social Constructions of Nationalism in the Middle East, ed. Fatma Müge Göçek (New York: SUNY, 2002), 29. 36. Roderic H. Davison, “Turkish Attitudes Concerning Christian-Muslim Equality in the Nineteenth Century,” American Historical Review 59, no. 4 (1954): 42. 37. Fuat M. Andıç and Suphan Andıç, The Last of the Ottoman Grandees, 56. 38. Ali Budak, Batılılaşma Sürecinde Çok Yönlü Bir Osmanlı Aydını: Münif Paşa (Istanbul: Kitabevi, 2004), 171–83. 39. Ebüzziya Tevfik, “Yeni Osmanlılar,” Yeni Tasvir-i Efkâr, 7 June 1909, 3. On the first

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societies in the late nineteenth century, especially Young Europe,40 they aimed to create an egalitarian and free society and offered new understandings of constitutionalism, state, society, and patriotism. Their oaths reflected a practice of conspiracy, echoed in their rituals, symbolic language, and the confraternities they organized on the model of Freemasonry.41 Their initial “mission” (meslek) was to launch a revolution to replace autocracy with a constitutional regime and restore “the correct execution of the Shari’a.”42 Conspiracy was understood as a necessary moral and patriotic mechanism for pursuing order and justice in politics. Shortly after the secrecy of the organization was broken, a coup d’état plotted by Mehmed Bey against the government was discovered, and the members of the Alliance were forced to leave the country for Paris in 1867, where they formed the Young Ottoman Society under the leadership of Ziya (later Paşa).43 With the financial support of Mustafa Fazıl Paşa,44 the members published newspapers to channel their ideas and criticism and smuggled these secretly into Ottoman territory. The main concern of the Young Ottomans was to restore the greatness of the Ottoman Empire and prevent the abuse of political power and its concentration in the hands of the ruling elite. They saw the Empire as undergoing a political, cultural, and moral decline in their time. They decried all special privileges granted to particular ethnic and religious groups and rejected the interference of the foreign powers in relations between the sultan and his non-Muslim subjects. They saw authoritarianism and the abandonment of the commands of the Shari’a,45 “the essence of our state” (devletimizin temeli),46 as sources of political and moral decay. Cultural decline was caused by Westernizing social, political, and cultural life. Although the Young Ottomans accepted the Western concepts of

meeting in 1856, Ayetullay Bey had brought with him books on the organization of the Carbonari to provide guidance on their own organization. 40. Karma Nabulsi, “Patriotism and Internationalism in the Oath of Allegiance to Young Europe,” European Journal of Political Theory 5, no. 1 (2006), 61–70. 41. Paul Dumont, Osmanlıcılık, Ulusçu Akımlar ve Masonluk (Ottomanisme, Mouvements Nationaux et Franc-Maçonnerie), trans. Ali Berktay (Istanbul: YKY, 2000). 42. Ebüzziya Tevfik, “Yeni Osmanlılar,” Yeni Tasvir-i Ekfâr, 7 June 1909, 3. 43. Ebüzziya Tevfik, “Yeni Osmanlılar,” Yeni Tasvir-i Efkâr, 26 September 1909, 4. 44. Mustafa Fazıl Paşa (1829–75) was the former Egyptian heir apparent, who had lost his position to his brother, the Khedive İsmail, in a deal brokered by Fuad Paşa, and appeared to give substance and support to the secret organization from Paris, where he set himself up after being forced to leave his country by the Ottoman government in 1866. 45. Ziya, “Hatıra,” Hürriyet, 4 January 1869, 7. 46. Ziya, “Mes’ele-i Müsavat,” Hürriyet, 15 October 1868, 1.

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progress and civilization,47 they believed that the appropriateness of these principles must be assessed by how they fitted into Ottoman society. As Ziya’s poem Terkib-i Bend put it: To impute fanaticism to men of zeal To ascribe wisdom to men without religion is now the fashion. Islam, they say, is a stumbling-block to the progress of the state This story was not known before, and now it is the fashion. Forgetting our religious loyalty in all our affairs Following Frankish ideas is now the fashion.48

Despite the bleak picture painted in their writings, the Young Ottomans still hoped to avert decline. Patriotically attached to their state, they rejected the European belief that the Ottoman Empire was in its death throes. The adjective “young” in their name implied a readiness to make vital changes in their society’s life and the intention to revive it as a fresh state.49 The Young Ottomans, settled, at least in part, on a number of leading principles which included provisions for an elected constitutional government (meşveret), the toleration of all religions and the secularization of education. However, they soon became divided over the question of how to restore the political apparatus. Three different republican conceptions emerged: liberal, Islamic, and radical. Namık Kemal and Ziya represented the moderate liberal republican dimension of the movement, as featured in articles in Hürriyet (Liberty) and İbret (Warning), their newspapers, and in poems, letters, and plays. Principally patriots but not necessarily anti-monarchical, their chief goal was the promulgation of a written constitution and the opening of an Ottoman parliament without recourse to violent and revolutionary means. In the second camp lay Ali Suavi espousing revolution, the use of violence, and mass mobilization and advocating living within the inherited Islamic framework and preserving the continuity of the Islamic tradition. He gave voice to his arguments in the periodicals Muhbir (Messenger) and Ulûm (Science), published in Paris and London. The third line of thought was represented by three radical republicans, Mehmed, Reşad, and Nuri, who remained true to the indigenous principles of the Alliance, placing popular sovereignty, liberty, and politi47. Namık Kemal, “Medeniyet,” in Namık Kemal ve İbret Gazetesi, ed. Mustafa Nihat Özön (Istanbul: Remzi Kitabevi, 1938), 212. 48. Quoted in Lewis, The Emergence of Modern Turkey, 139. 49. Ali Suavi, “Civan Türk Tarihi,” Ulûm, 16 February 1870, 793.

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cal action at the core of their philosophy. Mehmed, the most radical of the three, disseminated his ideas through İttihad (Union), published in Paris in 1869 and later through İnkılâb (Revolution) and its French bulletin, La Révolution, both published in Geneva in 1870, while Reşad and Nuri contributed to both İttihad and Hürriyet simultaneously, and later to İbret.

The conservaTive liberal republicanism oF namik kemal and zİya paşa Namık Kemal and Ziya Paşa constructed an elaborate and powerful body of argument, fusing traditional Islamic thought with French contractarian theory and constitutionalism. At the heart of their conception of the social contract was the belief that political legitimacy, authority, and obligation were derived from the consent of the governed, as artificial products of the voluntary agreement of free and equal agents. They presented government in its ideal form as performing functions, against which a variety of existing forms of government could be rejected as dysfunctional. Namık Kemal’s writings on politics began with the theological axiom of the existence of a benevolent God, who provided the Shari’a for the moral and political regulation of people’s lives. In the state of nature, what was common to all was the right to liberty, granted as a divine right by God: “Man is free. He always requires freedom. To deprive humanity of it is as if one were to deprive it of food.”50 Another feature of human beings was that they acquired by birth the right to equality because, as creatures of God, they were equally subjected to the divine law, the Shari’a.51 Namık Kemal depicted a rather pessimistic conception of human nature, stressing that “men in the state of nature are naturally inclined to harm one another,” and “intervene in one another’s natural freedom,”52 since they were dominated by strong passions and selfish desires.53 Ziya’s formulation of social contract theory in his “Hatıra-i Evveli” (The Past Memory)54 echoed aspects of Rousseau’s Discours sur l’origine et les 50. Namık Kemal, “Hürriyet,” Hürriyet, 31 August 1868, 4. 51. Namık Kemal, “Mesele-i Müsavat,” Hürriyet, 5 October 1868, 2. 52. Namık Kemal, “Wa-Shāwirhum Fī’l-‘Amr,” Hürriyet, 20 July 1868, 1–4. For the English translation of this article by M. Şükrü Hanioğlu, see “And Seek Their Counsel in the Matter,” in Modernist Islam, 1840–1940: A Sourcebook, ed. Charles Kurzman (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), 144. 53. Namık Kemal, “Usul-ü Meşveret’e Dair Mektuplar I,” Hürriyet, 14 September 1868, 6. 54. Ziya, “Hatıra-i Evveli,” Hürriyet, 14 December 1868, 5–8. This article is the first one among the series of eight articles titled “Hatıra” (Memory) in Hürriyet: “Hatıra,” Hürriyet,

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fondements de l’inégalité parmi les hommes, without mentioning the work or its author by name. He imagined men living in a fictional state of nature (ahval-i umummiye-i tabiiye) as isolated individuals outside society, with a basic instinct for self-preservation and uncomplicated wants and needs.55 Like other animals, they were reluctant to harm others of their species. What distinguished them from other animals was their freedom and faculty of reason, enabling them to invent tools and manufacture, and advance in sciences.56 The common features of human nature were ambition, greed, and “the desire of the victorious one to subjugate the defeated.”57 Men were unreliable, and greatly damaged the possibilities for peacefully living together. Ultimately, “dispute and enmity”58 resulted from men’s natural desire for superiority and domination. As the state of nature was a discouraging condition in which to live, men abandoned it and agreed, at a certain moment in the past, to form an association to defend and protect their own liberty under the rule of law.59 In a civil society, Ziya believed, men agreed to form such an association among themselves. They chose a body of judges (hakim), the wisest and oldest men in the society, and appointed an executive body “to protect the community from the attacks of the enemy and enforce the execution of the orders of the judge.”60 This voluntary consent between the people and their rulers, Namık Kemal argued, “is the reason for the establishment of a government.”61 Because the people as a whole could not busy themselves with administrative matters, they appointed an imam (leader), and delegated “the performance of their duties to some of their members.”62 No 14 December 1868, 5–8; ibid., 4 January 1869, 4–8; ibid., 15 February 1869, 1–5; ibid., 1 March 1869, 6–8; ibid., 8 March 1869, 6–9; ibid., 15 March 1869, 6–8; ibid., 29 March 1869, 7–8; ibid., 5 April 1869, 5–8; ibid., 12 April 1869, 7–8; ibid., 3 May 1869, 1–4. 55. Rousseau’s state of nature echoes in Ziya’s words: “At first a few families were roaming the mountains completely naked, remaining high upon an elevation in summer and living lower in the winter, in caves and feeding on wild fruit.” Ziya, “Hatıra-i Evveli,” Hürriyet, 14 December 1868, 6. 56. Ibid. 57. Ibid. 58. Ibid., 8. 59. Namık Kemal, “ ‘Hukuk-u Umumiye,’ 1872, İbret,” in Namık Kemal ve İbret Gazetesi, ed. Mustafa Nihat Özön (Istanbul: Yapı Kredi Yayınları, 1997), 97; Ziya, “Hatıra-i Evveli,” 8. 60. Ziya, “Hatıra-i Evveli,” 7–8. 61. Namık Kemal, “And Seek Their Counsel in the Matter,” 145. 62. Ibid. Namık Kemal used the terms “government” and “state” interchangeably. “The government (hükümet) or the state (devlet) is the name given to the way in which the delegation of the powers of the community (ümmet) is exercised.” Namık Kemal, “Bazı

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one had a natural right to rule, and no one, not even the sultan, was appointed by God to do so. In his search for a moderate mode of government for the Empire, Namık Kemal adopted Montesquieu’s typology of governments from De l’esprit des lois (Ruhü’l-şerayi). He divided the types of governments (devlet-i müstakile) into absolutism (mutlakî hükümet), the Republic (cumhur), and constitutional monarchy (devlet-i meşruta).63 What distinguished a good, moderate government from a bad, immoderate one was the locus of power: “In an absolutist government, the executive power is united with the legislative. As long as both are held in the same hands, the actions of the government can never be saved from the unfettered exercise of will.”64 In societies ruled by absolutist governments, there was no justice or political freedom (hürriyet-i siyasiye).65 For Namık Kemal, the most fundamental component of political liberty was freedom of expression. “Human liberty derives from autonomy, and thus free will derives from having opinion. In this sense . . . the essence of freedom is the faculty of deliberation (kuvve-i müfekkir).”66 As the form of freedom originated from opinion, to reject the form of opinion would mean to reject autonomy and freedom. In poetic tones, he asked “would it be possible to change a man’s opinion that he himself believes to be true even if one crushed his brain with stones? Would it be possible to drag out a man’s conscious will from his heart with a dagger?”67 Therefore, all kinds of opinion— political, philosophical, scientific, and personal—were free and natural. The inalienability of the natural right to freedom was one of Namık Kemal’s crucial premises. As liberty was a natural right, no one would want to give it up, even to preserve his own life by subjecting himself to the arbitrary power of another. From this analysis, Namık Kemal inferred that an absolutist government was illegitimate because “nobody, in his right mind, would agree to it.”68 “Individuals entered into political society particularly to protect their natural liberty,”69 not lose it or transfer it to another body. As a loss Mülâhazat-ı Devlet ve Millet,” in Namık Kemal ve İbret Gazetesi, ed. Mustafa Nihat Özön (Istanbul: Yapı Kredi Yayınları, 1997), 132. 63. Namık Kemal, “Sadaret,” Hürriyet, 1 March 1869, 1. 64. Namık Kemal, “Hukuk-i Umumiye,” 103. 65. Namık Kemal, ““Hukuk,” İbret, 19 June 1872,” 65. 66. Ibid. 67. Ibid. 68. Namık Kemal, “And Seek Their Counsel in the Matter,” 146. 69. Namık Kemal, “Usul-ü Meşveret III,” Hürriyet, 29 September 1868, 6.

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or transfer would contradict the original rationale for entering into civil society, people retained the legitimate right to break the contract and depose the government: “If the authority of a government is established as an outcome of the umum (the people), the institutions must also observe the consent. If otherwise, again as an outcome of the majority, the khalif or the sultan must be changed, as they shall find it most for their safety and good.”70 Namık Kemal observed in the Ottoman Empire a march toward absolutism, because “the government is dominated by Âli and Fuad Paşas and their greedy servants.”71 His counterpart Ziya argued that during the Tanzimat political and social decline had reached its peak.72 An assiduous political observer who served as secretary to Sultan Abdülmecid, he expressed his discontent with the shift of sultanic power and imperial authority into the hands of the bureaucrats at the Porte: “There have been so many tyrant-like ministers in the history of this Empire who manipulated and controlled the sultan but none did so much damage to the state as Âli and Fuad Paşas.”73 Politics began to serve the interest only of a particular group of people, which led to corruption and bribery. To understand why the Ottoman government, like all others, tended toward despotism, Namık Kemal adopted the same historical method that Montesquieu employed in his Considerations sur les causes de la Grandeur des Romains et de Leur Décadence, which he began translating in 1863 at the Translation Office.74 In his inquiry into the causes of the Ottoman Empire’s decline, and his efforts to identify the ideal government most suitable for “the soul of the Ottoman state,” he did not apply a purely normative method but, inspired by Montesquieu, whom he described as “the French philosopher who earned the status of ‘teacher’ in political science,”75 drew on theology, psychology, geography, and history. 70. Namık Kemal, “And Seek Their Counsel in the Matter,” 145–46. 71. Namık Kemal, “İstikraz-ı Cedid Üzerine Osmanlı Cemiyeti’nin Mütââlâtı,” Hürriyet, 1–2. 72. Ziya, “Hatıra,” Hürriyet, 1 March 1869, 6–8. 73. Ziya, “Karınca Kanatlandı,” Hürriyet, 22 February 1869, 1. Ziya’s hostility toward Âli Paşa echoed in his famous satiric work Zafername (Book of Victory). He described Âli Paşa as an “extremely virtuous character” who accepted “the sultan’s gift or Khedive’s offers of bribes.” See “From Zafername,” in A History of Ottoman Poetry, ed. E.J.W Gibb (London: Luzac, 1907), 96. For the Turkish text, see Ziya Paşa, Zafername, ed. Fikret Şahoğlu (Istanbul: Tercuman 1001 Temel Eser, 1968). 74. Lewis, The Emergence of Modern Turkey, 142. 75. Namık Kemal, “Sadaret,” 1.

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Namık Kemal dwelt on the central themes of the Considerations, the tendency of power to aggrandize itself, leading to loss of liberties, and causing the collapse of Rome’s Empire and the moments when states rose and fell. He wrote a two-volume Osmanlı Tarihi (History of the Ottoman Empire), covering events from the polity’s foundation until the present. Rejecting Montesquieu’s statement that “the Turks are barbarians” and his characterization of Ottoman government as Oriental despotism,76 he argued that it was not inherently despotic,77 but free and legitimate. The tribes of Osman Bey had brought to Anatolia the conditions for liberty, in the same way as the Germanic tribes from the North had done to Roman lands, and this “presented one of the most beautiful examples of freedom to mankind.”78 As he wrote in his famous “Hürriyet Kasidesi” (Poem on Freedom): “We are that noble family of Ottomans. For centuries, this liberty had reigned within Ottoman territory, making the people slaves of your [liberty] love.”79 Liberty had been preserved and sustained by a balanced Ottoman constitution that checked each power and prevented one component dominating the others.80 In the past, the ulema had held the legislative power, the sultan and the viziers the executive power and the Janissaries had controlled the executive.81 The sultan, as the chief overseer of society, ruled not for his personal enjoyment but for the common good of the people, and distributed justice to all segments of society.82 Namık Kemal called this balance of power a customary practice of usul-ü meşveret, which helped “the public . . . to exercise their will through the government,” and one that had served to maintain the freedom of the state for many centuries.83 However, unlike Şerif Mardin’s characterization of his views, Namık Kemal was not strongly attached “to an imaginary golden age of Ottoman culture which he took as an ideal to be approximated in the present.”84 He 76. “Amongst the Turks . . . where these three powers are placed upon the head of the Sultan, there exists a terrible despotism.” Montesquieu, The Spirit of the Laws, 397. 77. Namık Kemal, “Sadaret,” 1. 78. Namık Kemal, Osmanlı Tarihi, trans. Mücahit Demirel and Ahmet Nuri Yüksel, 2nd ed., vol. 1 (Istanbul: Bilge Kültür Sanat, [1908–09], 2008), 149. 79. Quoted in Findley, Turkey, Islam and Nationalism, 124. 80. Namık Kemal, “İzar-i Mevhume,” Hürriyet, 22 February 1869, 8. 81. Namık Kemal, “Hasta Adam,” Hürriyet, 7 December 1868, 1. 82. Namık Kemal, “Usul-ü Meşveret’e Dair Geçen Numaralarda Münderiç Mektupların Beşincisi,” Hürriyet, 19 October 1868, 7. 83. Namık Kemal, “Usul-ü Meşveret’e Dair Mektuplar 1,” 3. 84. Mardin, The Genesis of Young Ottoman Thought, 266.

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was aware of the impossibility of returning to the past.85 The purpose of his historical analysis was to show that the principle of Ottoman constitution was inherently political liberty, but that was threatened by encroaching autocratic power (istibdad-ı hükûmet).86 This political equilibrium was destroyed with the abolition of the Janissaries, which Namık Kemal called the “unfortunate event” (hayırsız vaka), in contrast to its official designation, the “auspicious event” (vak’a-i hayriye).87 It was followed by a gradual decline in the power of the ulema, who had been inclined to align with the Janissaries against the court and bureaucracy,88 eroding two major sources of opposition within the traditional meşveret structure. This event marked the beginning of political decay and tyranny. With the destruction of equilibrium, political power concentrated excessively in the hands of the sultan or the Porte, which led to the loss of political liberties and the destruction of the old Ottoman constitution. Montesquieu’s exploration of Rome’s decline and Namık Kemal’s reflections on the Janissaries may be read as extended accounts of how these events reflected influence of individual historical agents. Unlike the nasihatnâme authors of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, who saw the state as an organic body whose death naturally followed a period of decline, Namık Kemal was not pessimistic about the future of the Ottoman state. In his “Hasta Adam” (The Sick Man; a derogatory European nickname for the Ottoman Empire), he criticized Ibn Khaldūn’s view of the inevitability of decline: “Do we have to lose our hope of life from our patient? No. The state is not an individual but legal entity (şahs-ı manevi). As Ibn Khaldūn said, it does not have a natural life (ömr-ü tâbii). . . . If he (the Sick Man) acted according to the laws of nature (muktezâ-yı tabiat), he could only find health, gain his strength, and continue his existence even if the world stops turning.”89 Namık Kemal wanted his readers to recognize that moderate governments were fortunate exceptions to the general rule of uniform auto85. Cited in B. S. Boran, “Namık Kemal’in Sosyal Fikirleri,” in Namık Kemal Hakkında (Istanbul: Vakıt Matbaası, 1942), 261. 86. Namık Kemal, “Hasta Adam,” 2. 87. Namık Kemal, “Hubb al-watan min al-iman,” Hürriyet, 29 June 1868, 1. 88. The decline of the ulama, Namık Kemal argued, had already begun during the rule of Ahmet III (r. 1703–30), characterized by the privileging of the worldly fields of knowledge to the detriment of the religious sciences. See “Devlet-i Aliye-ye bais-i tenezzul olan maarifin esbab-i tedennisi,” Hürriyet, 3 August 1868, 2. 89. Namık Kemal, “Hasta Adam,” 2.

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cratic power, resulting from historical accidents like the abolition of the Janissaries, or the rare insight of a legislative genius like that of the Tanzimat-men of his own time. Polities possessed no inherent tendency to return to a ground state of moderate equilibrium once they had departed from it, unless active steps were taken to correct the negative effects of the current despotic government, which must be replaced with a moderate one. Both Namık Kemal and Ziya discussed whether constitutional monarchy or a republic was best suited to govern the Ottoman state. They started their inquiries by considering the republic. In “İdare-i Cumhuriyye ile Hükûmet-i Şahsiyenin Farkı” (The Difference between Republican Rule and an Absolutist Regime), Ziya described republican government by contrasting it with government by a single man or a group of men.90 What distinguished a republican government from personal rule (hükûmet-i şahsiye) was that in the latter the monarch or emperor ruled according to his arbitrary will,91 and power was essentially lawless, destructive by principle and corrupt by nature. The tyrants “send the ones they want either to heaven or hell. They save the one under their patronage from the paw of the law even if he is criminal. If they are found guilty in a trial, they know the way to reverse the decision. They can send the innocent to prison, send him into exile, and no one has the right to raise their voice against their injustice.”92 Ziya ranked existing absolutist governments in ascending order from Iran, Turkey, Russia, Italy, Austria, Prussia, and France to England.93 In a republic, by contrast, “there is no sultan, emperor or grand vizier. The sultan of the state is always the people of the state. The people are not the slaves of the individual interests of a group of people but everyone’s right to liberty is secured.”94 Ziya presented a republic as a regime of virtue without corruption. People were bound by a strong sentiment of patriotism, a love of their country that served as a symbol of the durable community that they enjoyed.95 Members of a republican community thought of “We” instead of 90. Ziya, “ ‘İdare-i Cumhuriyye ile Hükûmet-i Şahsiyenin Farkı,’ Hürriyet, no. 99, 14 June 1870,” in Modern Türkiye’de Siyasî Düşünce, Cumhuriyet’e Devreden Düşünce Mirası: Tanzimat ve Meşrutiyet Birikimi, ed. Tanıl Bora and Murat Gültekin (Istanbul: İletişim Yayınları, 2006), 474–76. 91. Ibid., 474. 92. Ibid. 93. Ibid. 94. Ibid. 95. Ibid.

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“I” and, therefore, were always ready to fight and die for the unity of their community. Ziya believed that the community could be perfected by military virtue and stressed the need to understand the relationship between the military and civic capacities of the individual, or between soldier and citizen. Military virtue necessitated political virtue because both could be presented in terms of the same end.96 This link between patriotic virtue and citizenship echoed Machiavelli’s The Art of War and the Discourses, a source for ideas that was later picked up by Montesquieu and Rousseau. From his observations during a stay in Geneva in 1870, Ziya cited its regime as a great example of this type of polity, and admired the Genevans for reconciling military with civic virtues.97 In a republican regime, political power was divided into branches, each with separate and independent powers and areas of responsibility so that each branch could check the powers of the others. “The laws are enacted by the majority of the National Assembly. The National Assembly observes the compatibility of all administrative affairs with the laws, whereas the head of the assembly executes the laws. The judiciary is fully independent from the government, and all cases are held in free trials. Neither the national assembly, nor the president has the right to intervene in the decisions of the judiciary.”98 Republican governments, in contrast to absolutist ones, were neither corrupt nor immoral, because they fostered better education, shaping individual morality and, thereby, the moral character of the whole nation. Ziya argued, “It was not enough to say that the citizens must be good, they must be taught to be so, and they must be formed from childhood to love their country and respect the law.”99 His educational thought was largely shaped by his engagement with themes and arguments from Rousseau’s Émile, which he began to translate in 1870, “to introduce the notion of moral education to our [Ottoman] people.”100 Ziya was a great admirer of Rousseau. In one passage, he depicted Rousseau as a celebrated philosopher,101 in another, expressed his wish to have had a tutor like 96. Ibid. 97. Ziya announced that he moved the press to Switzerland in the 89th issue of Hürriyet. 98. Ziya, “İdare-i Cumhuriye ile Hükûmet-i Şahsiyenin Farkı,” 474–75. 99. Ziya, “Ziyâ Paşa merhumunun (Jan Jak Russo)nun te’lîfâtından olup tercümesine muvaffak olduğu (Emil) nâm kitâba yazdığı mukaddimedir,” in “Ziya Paşa’nın Emil Çevirisinin Önsözü,” Mustafa Apaydın, Çukurova Üniversitesi Sosyal Bilimler Dergisi 7 (2001): 146. 100. Ibid., 148. 101. Ibid., 158.

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him,102 and recommended the Confessions to his contemporaries as an example of good writing and a way to understand his life and ideas.103 Like Rousseau, he believed that patterns of domination and subservience, mastery and enslavement were the ineluctable upshots of innate human propensities. Although human nature was deficient, it was educable. If a society were ruled by moral politicians, capable of distinguishing between right and wrong, good and bad, moral and immoral, then political corruption and bribery would disappear, and men would not rule for their own egoistic desires.104 He left unanswered the question of whether a republican regime should or could be an alternative for his country, but his admiration for a virtuous, patriotic, self-governing political society was clear. Citing Book II of The Spirit of Laws, Namık Kemal defined a republican government in Montesquieu’s terms as a government “where everyone or, only a part of people possess the supreme power.”105 From this, he inferred that the early Islamic state was “a kind of Republic” at its inception. “What does it mean to state that once the right of the people’s sovereignty has been affirmed, it should be admitted that the people can create a republic? Who can deny this right?”106 Although in theory a republic would be suitable for the Ottoman government, it was an undesirable option in practice for two main reasons. To advocate republican government would necessitate a revolution, something that he expressly tried to avoid in his political theory.107 Further, having considered the vulnerabilities of nineteenth-century republics, he did not trust the ability of this type of regime to contain itself. Citing the rebellions of the Italians against Victor Emmanuel II, he expressed his skepticism about republican regimes: “The republic that they [the Italians] are aiming to establish is similar to the Paris Commune, nevertheless Europe regarded this Commune Republic as an interregnum, and everyone hated it. . . . The people with the idea of forming a republic are not reasonable and receive hatred from the public.”108 An attempt to establish a republic in Turkey “would cause our downfall and this idea would not occur to anybody in our country, but the 102. Ibid. 103. Ibid., 160. 104. Ibid., 146–49. 105. Namık Kemal, “Sadaret,” 1: [Cumhur odur ki umumen ahali veya ahalinin bir fırkası kuvvet-i hakimine malik olur.] 106. Namık Kemal, “Usul-ü Meşveret’e Dair Mektuplar I,” 5. 107. Ibid. 108. Namık Kemal, “İbret’in Mülâhazası,” in Tanzimat Dönemi Basınında Siyasal ve Anayasal Fikir Hareketleri, ed. Necdet Kurdakul (Ankara: Kültür Bakanlığı Kültür Eserleri, 2000), 72.

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right to create [such a system] has not lapsed, because of the mere fact that it has not been used.”109 Having ruled out a republican government, the only option left was a constitutional monarchy. To overcome the threat of absolutism by reinstating political equilibrium, the executive in any new formulation should be separated from the legislature. From this premise, Namık Kemal postulated the doctrine of the separation of powers (kuvvetler taksimi) to safeguard political liberty and establish justice. Echoing Locke, he wrote that “to keep the government within the limits of justice, there are two basic devices. The first of them is that the fundamental rules by which it operates should no longer be implicit or tacit, but should be published to the world. . . . The second principle is consultation, whereby the legislative power is taken away from the government.”110 The introduction of a “system of consultation” (meşveret), or “representative government” in Namık Kemal’s vocabulary, the concept that conveyed a Qur’anic justification for the principle of representation in chapter 3, verse 153,111 would be suitable for the Ottoman state structure, since it had proved itself successful and effective in the past.112 What he meant by meşveret was that the sovereign authority must not be concentrated only in the government but communicated to as many branches as necessary. It was unclear what this implied: was the separation of powers a separation of legislative, executive, and judicial powers and thus a system of check and balance, in which legislative will might be restrained by an independent judiciary? Or was it, on the contrary, the Rousseauian notion of the separation between a superior legislative power and a subordinate executive power, the former by expressing the general will by the sovereign will of the people? Many have argued that Namık Kemal derived his concept of sovereignty and the separation of powers from the latter.113 Although both Rousseau and Namık Kemal used the same phrase, “the sovereignty belongs to the people,” in the language of Namık Kemal this meant something quite different from that intended by Rousseau. In “Usul-ü Meşveret’e Dair Mektuplar” (Letters on the Principle of Consultation), he pointed to Rousseau’s distinction between “the 109. Namık Kemal, “Usul-ü Meşveret’e Dair Mektuplar 1,” 1; “Sadaret,” 1. 110. Namık Kemal, “And Seek Their Counsel in the Matter,” 145. 111. Namık Kemal, Joseph G. Rahme, “Namık Kemal’s Constitutional Ottomanism and Non-Muslims,” Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations 10, no. 1 (1999): 32. 112. Namık Kemal, “Hukuk-i Umumiye,” 103. 113. Recai Galip Okandan, “Devletin Şahsiyeti,” İstanbul Üniversitesi Hukuk Fakültesi Mecmuası 15, no. 4 (1949): 483–526.

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will of all” (mecmuu irade, volanté de tous), described as the collective wills of the citizens, and the general will (umumî irade, volanté générale)— that is, the reflection of the common good created as an outcome of the intents and activities of individuals in a society.114 For him, such a distinction was excessively ambiguous and unnecessary. Sovereign will was neither something created in a civil society, nor an abstract term, as the expressions “community” (umum) and “the people” (ahâli) implied. Rather, it was the right to independence (istiklâl) congenitally present in every man by birth.115 Echoing Locke’s reasoning on natural law, Namık Kemal contended that “every one is the sultan of his own world.”116 Because God made man “sovereign over things,”117 it was the natural right of a community composed of numerous individual sovereigns to govern itself freely. Therefore, in every society the right to sovereignty belonged not to the majority or to a group of people or to one single person, since it could neither be alienated nor transferred from individuals to anyone, but only to the whole community. This idea, too, was expressed in the Islamic term bay’a,118 denoting the act by which a certain number of persons, acting individually or collectively, recognize the authority of another person.119 By introducing the concept of sovereignty, Namık Kemal transformed the traditional understanding that this belonged to the sultan. To assert that political power was the ultimate source of sovereignty was to say that people had the ultimate right to govern themselves, for they had reason and knew what was good for themselves.120 In the multinational Ottoman society, sovereignty must be exercised by a representative body in parliament, which enabled the citizens to participate equally in making policy and restraining the government. Namık Kemal contended that representative government would secure the liberty and interests of all citizens, and do so by entrusting the key functions of active citizens to people from all segments of the society. He saw the usul-ü meşveret as a remedy for the diseases of the Empire, and believed that once it was introduced all abuses would gradually come to an end, as would the separatist tendencies of non-Muslims, since once these were satisfied with the government they would no longer be duped and provoked by the enemies of the 114. Namık Kemal, “Usul-ü Meşveret’e Dair Mektuplar 1,” 1. 115. Namık Kemal, “Hukuk-u Umumiye,” 102. 116. Ibid. 117. Namık Kemal, “İfade-i Meram,” 252. 118. Namık Kemal, “And Seek Their Counsel in the Matter,” 146. 119. A. Tyan, “Bay’a,” in The Encyclopedia of Islam, ed. H. A. Gibb et al. (Leiden: Brill, 1986), 1113. 120. Namık Kemal, “Hukuk-i Umumiye,” 85.

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Empire: “If we cause non-Muslims to love the country through good administration, they will make good citizens and be ready to shed their blood in defending their fatherland. Thus we will not only establish brotherhood between the two creeds but also save the Muslim population from becoming extinct.”121 To affirm the nation as ultimate source of all sovereignty was not necessarily to claim that it must exercise that sovereignty directly and immediately: he advocated election of “the wisest and most virtuous”122 (en hamiyyetli ve mâlumatlı), but did not explain how the voting should be conducted. Ziya asserted that “among the people, the one who has a good talent and has most wisdom is elected as the head of the National Assembly by the people.”123 He did not imply that the representatives should be superior to their fellow citizens.124 For him, there was no blind faith in wise elites. Representatives must be checked by the laws to reflect the wishes of the majority of the people. These were binding on every citizen, on representatives and the president; “no one can escape this obligation.”125 It is misleading to contend, as Bernard Lewis has, that “[Ziya Paşa] was by no means enthusiastic about the granting of equal status to nonMuslims.”126 On the contrary, egalitarianism was a main commitment of his constitutionalism. What he rejected was the application of the equality principle expressed in the Tanzimat Edict, equality in honors: “The equality which was proclaimed with the Rescript of Gülhane was restricted to private law, which is everybody being afforded judicial remedy. Consequently to say that the Porte proclaimed complete political equality in the first place by passing the Rescript of Gülhane is a statement of ignorance which is contrary to fact and merits being laughed at.”127 The Imperial Edict’s principle of equality in honors “would dislocate the pillars of the state and have destructive effects on Muslim society.”128 What was important for him, like Rousseau, was that political equality, which could be realized only by active political participation.129 Every subject must be 121. Namık Kemal, “Usul-ü Meşverete Da’ir Geçen Nümerolarda Münderiç Mektubların Nihayeti,” Hürriyet, 23 November 1868, 1. 122. Ziya, “İdare-i Cumhuriye ile Hükûmet-i Şahsiyenin Farkı,” 474. 123. Ibid. 124. Ibid., 475. 125. Ibid. 126. Lewis, The Emergence of Modern Turkey, 139. 127. Ziya, “Mes’eleyi Müsavat,” 3. 128. Ziya, Zafername, 89. 129. Ziya, “Mes’eleyi Müsavat,” 3.

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equally represented in the parliament. The government must be reorganized so that all subjects regardless of race and ethnicity have an equal share in the parliament, seen as the only way to preserve the integrity of the Empire. For Namık Kemal, the introduction of a new type of moderate representative government that subsumed both monarchical and republican regimes would best suit the particular nature of the Ottoman state. He had in mind a monarchy with a constitutional parliamentarian government, retaining the sultan as a powerful overseer and animating principle of the state, acting little himself but responsible for the action of the whole. Ziya formulated his design for a parliamentarian system in “Sultan Aziz Han, Ziyâ Bey, Âlî Paşa,”130 known as the Ziya Paşa’nın Rüyası (The Dream of Ziya Paşa).131 He, too, envisaged a strong executive authority unitary in the person of the sultan; along with a divided legislative power, to be shared between the monarch, a senate, and an elected house of representatives; and an independent judiciary that would be composed of the ulema. A national assembly would check and balance the actions of the rulers to prevent arbitrariness in the future, and bring the Empire into line with the civilized states: Now condescend to look at the states of this continent of Europe. Apart from Russia, does arbitrary government remain anywhere? And is not even Russia gradually trying to imitate the systems of government of the other European states? Are the Emperors of France and Austria, the Kings of Italy and Prussia, the Queen of England less than the Russian in might and majesty? . . . Since the lofty Dynasty is also considered one of the family of Europe, it is not within the bounds of possibility for us to remain in this way at variance with all the world.132

For Namık Kemal, the ruler must be the servant and the public the beneficiaries. Citing a hadith, he wrote, “the leader of the tribe is its servant.”133 The duties of the sultan should be limited: “Accordingly, monarchs have no right to govern other than the authorization granted to them by the ümmet in the form of allegiance (bay’a), and the authorization granted to ministers through appointment by monarchs.”134 Monar130. Ziya, “Sultan Aziz Han, Ziya Bey, Âli Paşa,” Hürriyet, 11 October 1869; “Sultan Aziz Han, Ziya Bey, Âli Paşa 2,” 18 October 1869. 131. Ziya, Edebi Muhterem Merhum Ziya Paşa’nın Rüyası (Istanbul: Tefeyyüz, 1932). 132. Quoted in Lewis, The Emergence of Modern Turkey, 139–40. 133. Namık Kemal, “And Seek Their Counsel in the Matter,” 145. 134. Ibid.

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chy was admirable because it suited the multicultural and ethnic differences accommodated within the Ottoman territory. Namık Kemal argued that the separation of powers must be expressed and maintained by a written constitution. Expressing his disappointment in liberal and constitutional aspects of the Tanzimat,135 he looked to current European models for inspiration in drafting the basis of the Ottoman state’s constitution. He admired Britain’s parliamentarian system, embodied in the “majestic” Parliament building that he saw as “the symbol of justice of the whole world”136 and of the freedom that “even makes the poor feel like the sultan in his own world.”137 There was no clear evidence as to whether Namık Kemal was influenced by Montesquieu in his analysis of the English Constitution, but his views owed as much to first-hand experience, on his visit to England from 1868 through 1870, as to reading: “England is the freest and wealthiest country in the world. The system itself is the symbol of justice. . . . In London, even the beggar feels himself the master of his own world.”138 He believed, nonetheless, that the British model would not be suitable for the Ottoman Empire because the power of the king of England was too limited.139 Namık Kemal ruled out too the constitution of the United States, because it was a republic, and that of Prussia because it was an aristocracy.140 Of all the models surveyed, he favored most the constitutional model of France because it provided the most suitable combination of checks and balances for the Ottoman state. Its constitution generated “an era of happiness” in France, a country generally given to violent revolution.141 Inspired by the French monarchy, Namık Kemal advised the creation of a system of government composed of three organs: a council of state, a senate (Senato), and a lower chamber (Meclis-i Şûra-yı Ümmet), with the 135. Namık Kemal, “Had the [Tanzimat] Edict not confined the general precepts of law set forth in its preamble to personal freedom (hürriyet-i şahsiye) alone, which it interpreted as security of life, property and honor, but also proclaimed such other basic principles as freedom of thought (hürriyet- i efkâr), sovereignty of the people, and the system of government by consultation [that is, representative and responsible government], then only could it have taken the character of a fundamental charter.” Cited in İhsan Sungu, “Tanzimat ve Yeni Osmanlılar,” in Tanzimat I (Istanbul: Maarif Matbaası Basımevi, 1940), 845. 136. Namık Kemal, “Terakki,” 180. 137. Ibid. 138. Ibid., 182. 139. Namık Kemal, “Usul-ü Meşveret’e Dair Mektuplar 1,” 6–7. 140. Ibid., 7: [Mesela düveli muazzamanın en muntazamları Amerika, İngiltere, Almanya, Fransadır. Amerika cumhurdur, İngiltere ve Almanyada zadegân (aristocracy) var, onlar bize nümune olamaz kala kala elde Fransa kalır.] 141. Ibid.

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whole arrangement supervised by the sultan. In this scheme, the council of state would be given the task of preparing laws and ironing out difficulties that might arise in administrative matters.142 The legislative body, composed of elected members, and the senate, whose members were to be nominated by the sovereign, were to approve or reject the projects of law prepared by the council of state, and the lower chamber was to control the budget.143 What Namık Kemal and Ziya advocated was to reform the state apparatus without a revolution and changing the regime to a constitutional republican monarchical model resting on the principles of the rule of law and strict separation of powers to protect individual and political liberties. In other words, their liberal republicanism, which placed liberty, rationality, and constitutionalism at its core, was antithetical to despotism but not necessarily to sultanate.

The revivalisT islamic republicanism oF alİ suavİ Ali Suavi diverged from Namık Kemal and Ziya Paşa in his revivalist approach to politics and society. Unlike them, Ali Suavi was highly critical of Western political thought and maintained that the moral decline of the Ottoman society arose from the neglect of the true principles of Islam. Disseminating his ideas through the periodicals Muhbir (Messenger) and Ulûm (Science), he asserted that Islam could form the moral basis of a modern, progressive Ottoman society. His main concern in devising a suitable government for the Ottoman state was the principle of representation. He argued that Islam was compatible with democracy and a republic but he was neither entirely a monarchist nor entirely a republican, rather a “monarchical republican.” Ali Suavi’s writings on politics began with an analysis of the notions of hâkim and souverain (sovereign).144 Hâkim connoted “judgment” or “adjudication” and indicated a ruler or souverain, while hâkimiyet referred to souveraineté, to the province of the hâkim. Ali Suavi attacked Western understandings of the “popular sovereignty”: This term is a translation from French. Its original reads: “souveraineté du peuple.” Now let us inquire into the meaning of these French words. 142. Namık Kemal, “Usul-ü Meşveret’e Dair Mektuplar 2,” Hürriyet, 21 September 1868, 6. 143. Ibid. 144. Ali Suavi used souverain in his writings, without its Turkish equivalent.

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What does “souveraineté” mean? This word is originally from the Latin “soprenos” which means “does what he desires.” Sole master of his self (hâkim-i bennefs), absolute authority (âmir-i mutlak), free in his actions (fail-i muhtar). Well, what is it, in fact, that rules by itself and has absolute power over things?145

For him, the Western view of popular sovereignty violated the true principle of hâkimiyet (sovereignty). In contrast to Namık Kemal and Ziya, who attributed hâkimiyet to the people, Ali Suavi argued that the hâkim was the one with profound understanding of the divine guidance of human life, and hâkimiyet consisted in “doing whatever one wants to do absolutely.”146 It was not men but Allah who possessed the absolute knowledge, truth, and souveraineté.147 Derived from the Arabic word hükm (arbitration or judgment, authority) of Allah, hükümet (government), Ali Suavi wrote, was “a political institution, responsible for serving the needs of the political community with reason and experience.”148 Drawing on Islamic and classical Ottoman political thought, he described an ideal government wherein Allah was the seat of political sovereignty, the Shari’a was the divine law, the ulema were the interpreters of the law, and rulers were merely the executors of fetvas of the ulema. The distribution of justice (adalet) and the provision of equality and liberty to the subjects were the primary duties of the government.149 Ali Suavi argued that the typical Western notion of justice was utterly false. Justice must be distributed from the government above to the people downward, and could not emerge upward from below. “For justice is like an enormous stone which when pushed from above by a single person will fall in motion, while to push it up-grade requires a great many forces. It is reported by Şehristani that even Homer who lived three thousand years ago said the equivalent of the Arabic.”150 Ali Suavi’s view of justice derived from the term’s old meaning in Ottoman classical political thought. Draw145. Quoted in Mardin, The Genesis of Young Ottoman Thought, 367. See, Ali Suavi, “Al-Hakim Huwullah,” Ulûm, 1 August 1869, 18. 146. Quoted in İsmail Doğan, Tanzimatın İki Ucu: Münif Paşa ve Ali Suavi (Istanbul: İz Yayıncılık, 2005), 287. 147. Ibid. 148. Ali Suavi, “Mesâil-i Müteferrika,” Ulûm, no. 12, 723. 149. Quoted in Mardin, The Genesis of Young Ottoman Thought, 366. See Suavi, “Şahsiyet,” Muhbir, 23 March 1868, 2. 150. Ibid., 380. See also Ali Suavi, “Serbestlik,” Muhbir, I, 4 April 1867, 2.

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ing on the allegory of the scales of justice, he argued that a government must regulate and bring balance, ensuring fairness in the relationship between the rulers and ruled. This notion of justice was crucial to prevent arbitrariness or absolutism (hükümet-i mutlaka) on the part of the rulers. If the rulers dominated the subjects, the scales of justice tilted toward the rulers, leading to the destruction of the balance of justice and the dissolution of a just Islamic political order.151 If rulers misused their power and became tyrants, then Ali Suavi—in contrast to Namık Kemal or Ziya, who advocated peaceful means to restore the political regime—espoused revolution, the use of violence, and mass mobilization. The government was also obliged to protect equality and liberty, the natural rights of men. For Ali Suavi, everyone was equal in front of Allah by creation and must therefore be treated as equals regardless of their status, creed, race, or religion. This was a key principle that referred to the notion of “respecting the justice of mercy in the Shari’a (şeriat- ı İslamiyecede adl-ü insafa riayet.)”152 Liberty (hürriyet) and equality (müsavat) do not conflict with one another. He defined liberty in the classical Ottoman sense, as acting according to the Shari’a, not in the Western liberal sense of doing whatever one wishes according to one’s own will and without external force and constraints. The latter would lead to disorder and loss of morality.153 Having laid out the principles of a good government, Ali Suavi sought to define the most suitable form of government for the Ottoman state. In an ideal political system, Islam mandated no particular form of government. As the Qur’an and the hadiths did not dictate a specific type of Islamic government, following the death of the Prophet Muhammad in 632 ˙ CE, the major problem the Muslims faced was the selection of a caliph and a type of government. “According to Islam, the form of the government is not limited to the Shari’a but depends on the views of the politicians and the wise men.” Therefore, “each nation is free to choose the type of government in accordance with its needs.”154 This meant that there was not one single type of government that would suit all nations. The Ottomans thus had to deliberate upon and were free to choose a form of government under which they should live freely and equally. 151. Ali Suavi, “Meşveret Meclisi olmadıkça Devlet yaşamaz,” Muhbir, 6 February 1868, 3. 152. Ali Suavi, “Müsavat,” Muhbir, no. 29, 3. 153. Ali Suavi, “Serbestlik,”2. 154. Ali Suavi, “Mesâil-i Müteferrika, Ulûm, no 12, 723.

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In his “Demokrasi: Hükûmet-i Halk, Müsavat” (Democracy: Government by the People, Equality),155 Ali Suavi identified three principal forms of government: monarchy (padişahlık, sultanate), aristocracy (hükümet-i ayan, government of notables), and democracy (hükümet- i halk— müsavat, government by the people—equality). He eliminated aristocracy as a possibility because he held that by privileging the notables, this type of government violated the equality of all subjects: “Since freedom and equality are among the rights of man, the proper form of government is the one that guarantees these rights.” This highest form of an egalitarian and free government, the one most in accord with the Holy Law, was democracy, defined as “the government by the people.”156 In discussing democracy, Ali Suavi examined actual historical polities that really existed rather than a pure abstraction or model, and distinguished between ancient and modern democracy. The earliest model of democracy originated from the ancient Greek polis. The word demokratia, Ali Suavi wrote, was composed of demos (“the people”), and kratos (“the government”). Therefore, it originally meant not a basis for legitimacy or a regime but simply a particular form of government, under which “the people gather and decide in consultation on whatever regulations need to be made or decision taken.”157 It was a method of self-government through the direct participation of citizens in legislative and judicial functions. The early caliphate, too, displayed similar characteristics to a Greek democracy. Its values, like the Greeks’, were “equality” and “deliberation.”158 Central to the Islamic understanding of democracy as manifested in the early caliphate was shura (“consultation”). This principle of mutual consultation was the basis for the election of early representative leaders by the people and government institutions, which promoted just rule and public interest. Ali Suavi esteemed this form of pure democratic polity because in it the government satisfied both the material and moral needs of the ümmet, a “single united, loyal, observant, and pious community” that genuinely served Allah.159 Greek and Islamic democracies were ended by the rule of kingdoms or empires, and came back to life as a real political option in the Western 155. Ali Suavi, “Demokrasi: Hükûmet-i Halk, Müsavat,” vol. 2, no. 18 (18 May 1870), 1083–1107. For the English translation of this article by M. Şükrü Hanioğlu, see “Democracy: Government by the People, Equality,” in Modernist Islam, 1840–1940: A Sourcebook, ed. Charles Kurzman (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), 138–43. 156. Ibid., 140. 157. Ibid., 141. 158. Ibid., 138. 159. Ibid., 139.

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world in the late eighteenth century. The modern liberal democratic model, for Ali Suavi, had two flaws. First, it was based on factional interests and failed to promote real political equality, unity, and freedom; second, it lacked morality. Therefore, most Western democracies were destined to vanish in the very near future.160 Acknowledging that the early Islamic government existed only as a nostalgic idea and that it was impossible to return to the past, Ali Suavi argued that the Ottomans had to revive the indigenous Islamic institutions and democratic values, without infusing into them the modern liberal democratic values of the West, in order to avert moral and political decline. The main obstacle was that the Ottoman Empire, unlike the early ümmet, was divided between various continents, inhabited by many peoples differing in language, custom, and religion.161 Ali Suavi therefore asked: “While it may be possible to govern a little state with a small population, how could this [democracy] work in a larger state? How could the individuals composing such a population congregate? Doesn’t everybody have work to do? How and when would they satisfy their needs?”162 In answering these questions, he contemplated a republic and a sultanate as the two possibilities where equality, democracy, and liberty could best be attained. Ali Suavi promulgated a narrow description of a republic (cumhuriyet). It was a form of state led by a reis-i cumhur (president) and based on ara-i âmme (public voting): “If [the principle of] ara-i âmme is violated, a republic disappears.”163 At the core of a republic lay the concept of parliamentary representation. In seeking an alternative for the Ottoman nation, Suavi examined modern-day republics. The small scale of the territory and the small size of the citizen body in the republics of San Marino (with a population of 8,000) and Lübeck (with a population of 30,000), each of which lived under the protection of external powers, did not present emulable examples for the Ottomans.164 He then turned his attention to larger republics like France and America. He did not admire the Second French Republic because French society was morally corrupted and its citizens failed to grasp the value of ara-i âmme. He criticized French foreign policy toward the East and accused the country of hypocrisy: 160. Ibid. 161. Ibid.,141. 162. Ibid. 163. Ali Suavi, “Fransa Cumhuriyeti’nin Sabit Olamayacağı,” Ulûm, no. 2, 6 October 1870, 24. 164. Ali Suavi, “Democracy: Government by the People, Equality,” 141.

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The French republic assaulted the Orient as her initial act. She compelled the Ottoman state to enter into extremely harmful alliances with England and Russia. Yet how long-lasting these republics were to prove! Strangely enough, while the republicans in England and France speak about democracy, equality, and freedom, they have no wish to relinquish their hold over Canada, India, or Algeria. Just look how these Frenchmen talk pretentiously about freedom and equality, all the while seeking world domination like Caesar.165

Ali Suavi then considered an American-style federal republican system as a possibility, but ultimately rejected it for the Ottoman case: “To believe in the possibility of such an alliance is to believe in the possibility of Serbia in Europe forming a federation with Egypt in Africa or Bulgaria in Eastern Europe forming one with Tunisia in Arab Africa—what a fantasy!”166 The central features of a republic that the Ottoman Empire could adopt were morality, necessary to maintain social and political stability; a larger scale of territory and population; the equality of citizens; and political representation. The greatest example satisfying these criteria appeared to be Switzerland, a federal republic without huge diversity in terms of language and religion. Unlike the French, Swiss Christians were pious and devout, making their republic a moral and stable one.167 Switzerland exhibited the best example of a modern functioning representative democracy and showed the greatest possibilities as a stable republican model— one that Ali Suavi, like Ziya Paşa, greatly admired. Having assessed existing models of republican governance, Ali Suavi found them all unsuitable for and impractical to apply fully in the Ottoman Empire because of its large population, territory, and diversity in religion and languages. This does not mean that he rejected republican institutions and ideology. On the contrary, for him the Islamic state from its inception had entailed republican ideas of liberty, equality, and democracy long before the West discovered these ideas and constructed their own republicanism. What Ali Suavi attempted to do was to uncover the principles of Islamic democracy, combining them with republican ideas of liberty, equality, and representation through the introduction of a parliamentarian system. The main objective of the political reform was to oppose political despotism and the usurpation of the people’s rights, and thus to stand for political freedom and true democracy. 165. Ibid., 142. 166. Ibid. 167. Ibid.

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Ali Suavi proposed a set of political reforms that entailed the enlargement of the High Council of Reforms (Meclis-i Ali-i Tanzimat) and the establishment of a chamber of deputies elected by Ottoman citizens. Good government required that those responsible for policy-making, implementation, and public expenditure must be held morally accountable for their actions. While being required to consult the parliament about their proposals and conduct of policy, ministers could keep their offices following the parliamentary elections if supported by bare majority, or be removed by a nonconfidence vote.168 In Ali Suavi’s view, a sultanate based on public elections and parliamentary voting would exhibit the key republican component: “If a state accepts a chamber of deputies, it possesses the spirit of republican form of government as far as is practicable.”169 He advocated something quite unique: “an Islamic representative republican democratic monarchy.”

The radical republicanism oF mehmed, reşad, and nurİ In contrast to both liberal and Islamic republicanisms, radical republicanism was antithetical to a monarchy, in which the abolition of sultanate and substitution of a republican government by election was a central aim. The chief value of Ottoman radical republicanism, as represented by Mehmed, Reşad, and Nuri, was the ideal of the republic. For the radicals, to be a republican was not simply to believe in a particular form of government. Rather, it was also to assert the traditional trinity of liberty, equality, and fraternity, all of which would find their expression in an open and tolerant democracy under the rule of law.170 Ottoman radical republican freedom was defined in many dimensions. Understood in classical republican terms, its first meaning referred to living freely in a free state. Liberty was a natural right that no one would want to give up, even to preserve their own life through subjecting themselves to the arbitrary power of another. It involved the absence of state oppression and the refraining of rulers from imposing their own conception of the good life on society.171 Republican freedom was defined not narrowly in negative terms as the absence of restraints, but in the posses168. Ibid., 142. 169. Ibid. 170. The commitment to republicanism was proclaimed in the first issue of İttihad. Mehmed, “untitled,” İttihad, no. 1, 14 May 1869, 1. 171. Nuri, “Kanun,” İbret, no. 2, 15 June 1872, 1.

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sion of certain individual and collective, social, political, legal and moral rights. Employing a mid-nineteenth century French republican conception of freedom,172 Mehmed, like Namık Kemal, emphasized the importance of freedom of conscience, freedom of thought, freedom of speech and of the press, freedom to write and to publish.173 These essential rights and liberties, Nuri complained, were curtailed by the Sultan and especially the Grand Vizier Âli Paşa, whose infamous regulations, Kararnâme-i Âli, which introduced censorship of the press in 1865, were viewed as the greatest obstacle to people’s freedom of expression and their right to receiving information.174 Freedom, in Nuri’s view, required also the development and improvement of intellectual faculties and critical thinking. Ottoman people were not free because they lived in ignorance and fear and were unable to think, decide or act for themselves, making them easy to manipulate by the ruling elite.175 The culprit of this predicament was the Ottoman government, which failed to fulfill its responsibility to ensure a good quality of education for every citizen. This resulted in social, scientific, technological, political, economic, and artistic backwardness in the Empire when compared to Europe and America.176 Freedom would be developed by the spreading of education and the wider dissemination of knowledge by the state.177 Public instruction was thus an essential element of Ottoman radicals’ conception of liberty, just as it was key to French republicanism. A further dimension of freedom was political liberty. The right to liberty, for Nuri, was not the right to do anything that is not injurious to others, nor did it consist merely in the absence of interference. “If freedom would involve the power to do whatever one desires to do, a society would cease to endure its existence due to the chaos and disorder produced by the lack of rules and regulations.”178 Political liberty meant to live under a system of the rule of just law. The act of obeying public law thus was entirely consistent with freedom, because without just laws, 172. For French republicanism during the Second Empire, see Sudhir Hazareesingh, From Subject to Citizen: The Second Empire of Modern French Democracy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998), 244–45. 173. Mehmed, “untitled,” İttihad, no. 1, 14 May 1869, 1. 174. Nuri, “Medeniyet,” İbret, no. 8, 25 June 1872, 2. 175. Ibid. 176. Ibid. 177. Nuri, “untitled,” İttihad , no. 1, 14 May 1869, 2. 178. Nuri, Mebâhis-i İlm-i Servet, İstanbul, Mahmut Bey Matbaası, 1882, cited in Şemsettin Şeker, Sadık Bir Muhalif: Yeni Osmanlılar’dan Menapirzade Nuri Bey (Istanbul: Dergâh Yayınları, 2012), 126.

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human societies would regress into a chaotic and dangerous state of existence or anarchy.179 Drawing on Montesquieu’s classification of laws like Namık Kemal, Nuri maintained that public law was directed by human reason, the foundation of all societies, and devised with a view to security and freedom.180 This law, Mehmed wrote, “is the expression of the will of the majority,” not that of a particular will, and the outcome of public deliberation and decision.181 He believed that as men are reasonable, they would not make laws that would cause them harm, threaten life and security, or curtail individual liberties. From this, it followed that as the will of the majority could not err, the representatives that the nation chooses through a system of consultancy (usûl-i meşveret) would most certainly not be in error. The Ottoman nation, Mehmed contended, must be ruled by its elected representatives who should be freed from constraints imposed by the particular wills of the ruling elite and should serve only the common good of the nation (millet menfaati).182 Through this form of representation, he transformed the doctrine underpinning the absolute sovereignty of the sultans into a doctrine of the absolute sovereignty of the people. Sovereignty, for the Ottoman radicals, resided in the people. Mehmed insisted that the people were the legitimate source of law and political power, the national will was always right, and it had the absolute freedom to do whatever it wishes to do under the law. From this statement followed the radical implication of popular sovereignty: the idea of revolution (inkılâb). A revolutionary language was taken up and developed in the journal İnkılâb and its French Bulletin La Révolution when Mehmed left the Young Ottomans and moved to Geneva in 1870 where he began publishing those two propaganda journals along with Hüseyin Vasfi Paşa and others nicknamed Râtib, Emîr Abbas, and Aristidi.183 Despite never mentioning the term “the social contract,” these radicals assumed that that there existed an implicit agreement between the people and the state by which both parties owe each other duties and responsibilities. The role of the government was limited to the execution of the national will as expressed by the people as sovereign,184 but if the government usurped na179. Nuri, “Kanun,” 1. 180. Mehmed, “untitled,” İttihad, no. 1, 14 May 1869, 1. 181. Mehmed, “Usûl-i Meşveret,” İttihad, no. 1, 14 May 1869, 1. 182. Ibid. 183. M. C. Kuntay, Namık Kemal, vol.1 (Istanbul: Türkiye İş Bankası Kültür Yayınları, 2010), 418-19. 184. Mehmed, “Matbuat-ı Efkar-ı Umumiyenin Galeyanı Mizanundandır,” İnkılâb, no.1, 28 April 1870, 1–2.

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tional sovereignty, the people had the right to disobey the government and to express their will without limitations, free to use violence and rebellion.185 Like their radical European counterparts during the first half of the nineteenth century, Ottoman radicals constantly invoked the interests of the people as a justification for their actions. The will of the people, for Mehmed, was above all a force and no other external force could stop the people from doing whatever they want to as the sovereign will is always right. In the Spanish case, Queen Isabel was deposed by the Spanish people in a revolution, which ushered the Republic into existence.186 While stressing what happened in Europe, Mehmed insisted that sovereignty resided in the people, not in a private person or group of ruling elite: “A nation does whatever it wishes to do. No external force is able to stop it [from doing so] . . . A nation can meet its aspirations . . . Every government, which denies the national will and ignores public opinion will be ultimately punished.”187 This point was an obvious jibe at Sultan Abdülaziz’s efforts to restrict freedom of thought and expression and suggested the right of the Ottoman nation to overthrow the Sultan if their sovereignty were usurped. Attacking the Sultan, Mehmed wrote: “He [Abdülaziz] never cares about the condition of his nation. Robbing the people’s money by wreaking their spirits, he is leading a life of grand splendor and unimaginable pleasures. Leaving the duty of ruling his country to two tyrants [Âli and Fuad Paşas], he entertains himself with Karagöz shadow plays and eulogy shows.”188 Mehmed saw the Sultan as the real source of evil and cause of moral, political, social and economic decadence and corruption, a “tyrant,” who stole the sovereignty from the people “like he did their property,” his aim to hold absolute power and control over the country. Vigilantly opposing the dangers of a civic slumber, blind to despotic machinations, Mehmed proclaimed İnkılâb’s purpose to be the waking of a nation disabled by its experience of oppression.189 This was a clear call to popular insurrection against the sultan to regain the most sacred of rights and the most indispensable of duties of the nation. Mass action was viewed as the ultimate and true aim for the trans185. Hüseyin Vasfi, “Millet’e Hitâb,” İnkılâb, no.1, 28 April 1870, 2. 186. Mehmed, “İrâde-i Millet,” İttihad, no. 1, 14 May 1869, 2. 187. Ibid. 188. Mehmed, “Hürriyet Gazetesine Cevap,” İnkılâb, no. 3, 1870, 1. The exact date of this issue was not specified. 189. Ibid.

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feral of sovereignty from the Sultan back to the nation.190 Provoking various ethnic groups in the Ottoman Empire, including Bulgarians, Armenians, Bosnians, and Serbians,191 Hüseyin Vasfi incited the Ottomans to take up arms for rapid, violent political change.192 Drawing on a Jacobin language of friends and enemies, the call for intense revolutionary action was voiced as the ultimate means of purging the Ottomans of their enemies, as revealed by İnkılâb’s motto: “Les tyrans verront bientôt par quelle révolution ils seront renversés!”193 A revolution was not simply the arousal of popular passions. Rather, it had deeper meanings and purposes, as Mehmed laid out in detail: Revolution is the [act of] expelling the cruelties of immoral [rulers] from the honorable [people]. Revolution is salvation from the degradation of servitude and the attainment of the blessings of freedom and progress. Revolution is to have direct control over important matters of the nation and to enact laws that reflect all its wills. Revolution is not to be forced to obey under the dominance of an unelected party. Revolution is justice (adâlet), equality (müsâvât), and fraternity (uhuvvet). Revolution is safety (selâmet), wealth (servet), peace (sulh) and security (emniyet).194

Revolution, Mehmed hoped, would bring about the process of social and moral refashioning and rejuvenate the Ottoman nation which had been corrupted by the arbitrary rule of the Sultan and his government. It would lead to the regeneration of an entire population through the revival that would spring forth immediately from the recovery of liberty. It would mark the revelation of truth and progress and the beginning of a new harmonious, just, and lawful epoch in the development of Ottoman history, 190. Mehmed, “Hürriyet Gazetesine Cevap” [continued], İnkılâb, no. 4, 13 June, 1870), 1-2. 191. Hüseyin Vasfi, “Boşnaklara Hitâb;” Râtib, “Zavallı Ahâlî,” İnkılâb, no. 2, 14 May 1870, 1-2. 192. Hüseyin Vasfi, “Millet’e Hitâb,” 2-3. 193. This motto appeared in French on the first page of all five issues of İnkılâb and its French bulletin La Révolution. 194. Mehmed, “İrâde-i Millet,” 2.

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where people would be united around common interests. This new order would be based on democracy, equality, secular values, a scientific faith in reason and progress, political equality and the steady extension of property and art. This new social, political, and moral republican order, Mehmed argued, would be the most suitable system for the Ottoman community because, nos constitutions sont toutes républicaines (our constitutions are republican).195 The indigenous Islamic state exhibited elements of direct democracy and a republic. The goal of Islam, for Mehmed, was essentially a republic, because during the four caliphates all administrations were based on consultation. Like Ali Suavi, he believed that a monarchy was a deviation from the true essence of the early Islamic state, but republican elements were still preserved in Ottoman state philosophy.196 A revolution therefore meant a return to the indigenous republican system of the early caliphate, the system most compatible with the spirit of the Ottoman nation. In this model, the Sultan had to be replaced not by a president but by a caliph elected by a representative assembly.197

Conclusion Whether liberal, radical or Islamist in their political philosophy, the Young Ottomans were united in their condemnation of the theory and practice of the Tanzimat government’s authoritarianism and endorsed the values of freedom, Ottomanism, equality, fraternity, and patriotism. They suggested that freedom was best safeguarded by a combination of the rule of law and a constitution in which ethnic and national diversity could check the tendencies of the sultan or the statesmen to centralize and self-aggrandize. The debates between the opponents of the three conceptions of republicanism were remarkable in the sense that they were to be revived once again in the formative years of the Republic. The end of the Tanzimat era, however, saw the names of the radicals forgotten, and even to this day, not much is known about their biography and ideology. Mehmed never returned to Istanbul from his exile, dying in Geneva in 1874. Reşad and Nuri became integrated into the state administration. Reşad became a public administrator and gained the title of 195. Râtib, “untitled,” La Révolution Bulletin Français, no. 1, 1 May 1870, 1. 196. Ibid. 197. Mehmed, “Hürriyet Gazetesine Cevap” [continued], 1-2.

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Paşa, and Nuri was appointed secretary of the Council of the State and later executive of the Ottoman Tobacco Company. Radical republicanism did not perish, their key ideas of national sovereignty, revolutionism, liberty, and activism were to be revived by Kemalists in the 1920s. Islamic republicanism, on the other hand, was silenced with Ali Suavi’s assassination at a failed coup attempt against the Sultan Abdülhamid II (r. 1876– 1908). The political victors of the Tanzimat were the conservative liberals. Their theory of constitutionalism was put into practice when Namık Kemal and Midhat Paşa were commissioned to draft the Ottoman Constitution (Kanûn-u Esâsî) during the reign Abdülhamid II. Liberal republican ideas were picked up and continued by the positivist strand of their successors, the Young Turks.

ch a p T er Fou r

The Positivist Universalism and Republicanism of the Young Turks

The you ng Turk in TellecTua l mov emen T continued the liberal republican conception of Ottoman society, and an idealistic conception of how universal peace might be attained. No previous study has fully captured how and why they did so. The dominant scholarship on Young Turk political thought is still to be found in the works of Şerif Mardin, who failed to grasp the complexity of their political thought or its persistent impact on modern Turkey. He claimed that “the reasons behind people’s struggles between 1895 and 1908 are still having a ghost effect on us now,” because “the Young Turks failed to provide an original political formulation or an ideology to keep them constantly contemplating.”1 Because of this lack of originality, Mardin argued, they adopted the “popularized versions” of dominant European ideas, deployed by “second-class thinkers” like Gabriel Tarde and Gustave Le Bon.2 Recently, prominent historians like Şükrü Hanioğlu and Erik Zürcher have challenged this view, providing a more thorough historical account of the Young Turk movement.3 The works of French scholars of Turkey like François Georgeon, Paul Du1. Şerif Mardin, Jön Türklerin Siyasi Fikirleri, 1895–1908 (Istanbul: İletişim Yayınları, 2011), 24–25. For a similar view, see also Tarık Zafer Tunaya, “Türkiye’nin Siyasi Gelişme Seyri İçinde İkinci ‘Jön Türk’ Hareketinin Fikri Esasları,” in Ord. Prof. Dr. Tahir Taner’e Armağan (Istanbul: İÜHFY, 1956), 185. 2. Mardin, Jön Türklerin Siyasi Fikirleri, 24–25. 3. See especially, the seminal works of M. Şükrü Hanioğlu, The Young Turks in Opposition (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1995); Preparation for a Revolution: The Young Turks, 1902–1908 (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2001). See

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mont, and Stéfane Yérasimos have broadened the scope of cultural history to encompass a history of mentalities, which attempts to chart society’s attitudes over time.4 Although these studies have shaped our understanding of the movement, the Young Turks are still conventionally seen merely as champions of a national cause, limited to overthrowing despotism, reinstating the constitution of 1876, and restoring constitutional monarchy5 to gain political power within the Ottoman bureaucracy.6 This analysis fails to register the broader aims of the Parisian branch of the Young Turks: to guarantee peace, order, and progress, both at home and abroad, by adopting a Comtean universal positivism. What it misses is the specifically international dimension of their thinking and its engagement with the fundamental challenge of generating a peaceful world order. The few works on Ottoman positivism fail to capture the centrality of the French republican tradition in the Young Turks’ thinking, and the particular conception of humanity that informed it.7 The Parisian positivist Young Turks conceived humanity in light of a universal world history that progressed through the application of developmental laws, and saw a shared humanity as the foundation of a universal moral order. They sought to eliminate conventional intellectual, historical, and geographical boundaries between East and West, and aspired to transcend these through an ideal universal order. In so doing, they challenged Western domination and its subjugating foreign policy, and asserted the multiplicity of world civilizations, offering one of the earliest formulations of a modern, pluralist worldview. As positivist Young Turks did not promulgate a single, comprehensive text that laid out their positivist republican program in its entirety, it is necessary to uncover the sophistication and coherence of their social and political theory through archival research and in-depth analysis also Erik J. Zürcher, The Young Turk Legacy and Nation Building: From the Ottoman Empire to Atatürk’s Turkey (London and New York: I. B. Tauris, 2010). 4. Paul Dumont, Méropi Anastassiadou-Dumont, and François Georgeon, Vivre dans l’Empire Ottoman: Sociabilités et Relations Intercommunautaires (XVIIIe–XXe Siècles) (Paris: Editions L’Harmattan, 1997). 5. Hasan Kayalı, Arabs and Young Turks: Ottomanism, Arabism, and Islamism in the Ottoman Empire, 1908–1918 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), 50. 6. See Aviel Roshwald, Ethnic Nationalism and the Fall of Empires: Central Europe, Russia, and the Middle East, 1914–1923 (London and New York: Routledge, 2001), 58. 7. See, for example, Z. Fahri Fındıkoğlu, “Auguste Comte ve Ahmet Rıza,” Türkiye Harsî ve İçtimaî Araştırmalar Derneği Yayını, İstanbul, no. 40 (1962), 3–15; Kemal Karpat, “Secularism and Islam: 19th Century Modernism, Positivism, and Faith,” in Elites and Religion from Ottoman Empire to Turkish Republic (Istanbul: Timas Yayınları, 2010); Murtaza Korlaelçi, Pozitivizmin Türkiye’ye Girişi ve İlk Etkileri (Istanbul: Hece Yayınları, 2002).

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of their personal correspondence and of newspaper articles produced from 1895 to 1908.8

Comte’s Universalism: Uniting the Occident and the Orient through Positivism Universalism is a religious, spiritual, and philosophical viewpoint with overarching social and political applications. The aspiration to think impartially between and on behalf of different communities present in the world has taken very different forms in the political thinking of distinct communities over time. Nineteenth-century conceptions of universalism were largely shaped by positivism, which was preoccupied primarily with the implications of social change for political institutions and the prevention of further destruction and disruption in domestic and international politics.9 Positivism appeared first in France, in the works of Saint-Simon (1760–1825) and Auguste Comte (1798–1857), and spread to the rest of Western Europe, dominating global social and political thinking until the early twentieth century.10 Comte’s philosophy had the practical aim of establishing harmony in society, essentially through a doctrine, reconciling order with progress:11 “Order is the precondition of all Progress; Progress is always the object of Order.”12 Order and progress would provide the basis for broader political harmony and even for the unity of mankind. The precondition for the triumph of positivist approaches, for Comte, lay in overcoming discord between the Occident and the Orient, “the two necessities of Humanity,”13 the former representing progress and the latter representing order. “Positivism alone, by virtue of its relative character, 8. I would like to give my special thanks to Fabio Boni and Anouk Bottero for their help with translating French texts. 9. H. Stuart Jones, The French State in Question (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 22. 10. Auguste Comte’s Cours de Philosophie Positive was published between 1830–42. Following this, in England, John Stuart Mill published A System of Logic (1843) and August Comte and Positivism (1866). In Germany, Ernst Mach’s Die Mechanik in ihrer Entwicklung (Science of Mechanics) appeared in 1883. See Rom Harré, “Positivist Thought in the Nineteenth Century,” in The Cambridge History of Philosophy 1870–1945, ed. Thomas Baldwin (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 13–15. 11. Robert Nisbet, History of the Idea of Progress (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1994), 255. 12. Auguste Comte, A General View of Positivism, trans. J. H. Bridges, 2nd ed. (London: Trübuer, 1880), 77. 13. Comte, System of Positive Polity, trans. B. Franklin, vol. 4 (London: Longmans, Green, 1877), 10.

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can organize missions. . . . By these missions it will gradually unite all nations with the unity which is its characteristic, the only unity which is worthy of universal extension.”14 To spread this mission universally, the positivist project must prevail primarily in Western Europe, which encompassed all nations that had been under Roman dominion.15 Once the ultimate regeneration of humanity was established in the Occident, positivism would spread to the Orient peacefully.16 To converge with the Orient, Comte contended, “the Mussulman nations [need] to put themselves under our [the West’s] guidance.”17 The union that Comte envisaged was not a cosmopolitan political cooperation. He believed that cosmopolitanism was too vague to indicate how a true and solid unity among different nations could be brought about. In a letter to John Stuart Mill, Comte wrote that “the basic situation of the elite of humanity requires everywhere, and with urgency, the hegemony, not of an unsatisfactory cosmopolitanism, but of an active European, or rather, a profoundly Western (Occidental) disposition, corresponding to the necessary solidarity of the diverse elements of the great modern republic [of the West].”18 He rejected cosmopolitanism because it placed the French and Germans on the same developmental level as the Turks or Chinese, in Comte’s view an undue elevation of the latter two. Cosmopolitanism could not create true political cooperation, because unity among nations required “the constant attitude of a more broadly based sympathy [for other nations], which is at once intellectual and social.”19 Comte described the kind of union to which he aspired in his Catechism of Positive Religion as necessarily “religious, not political.”20 This spiritual and universal union would be knitted firmly together by the establishment of la Religion de l’Humanité, a positivist religion with a secular and homogeneous character, which disavowed God and the supernatural.21 His ordre universel would be realized in practice by creating a “holy 14. Comte, The Catechism of Positive Religion, trans. Richard Congreve (London: John Chapman, 1858), 360. 15. John Stuart Mill and Auguste Comte, “Auguste Comte to John Stuart Mill, 23 January 1846,” in The Correspondence of John Stuart Mill and Auguste Comte, ed. Oscar A. Haac (London: Transaction Publishers, 1995), 361. 16. Comte, The Catechism of Positive Religion, 30. 17. Mill and Comte, “Auguste Comte to John Stuart Mill, 23 January 1846,” 362. 18. Ibid. 19. Ibid., 361. 20. Comte, The Catechism of Positive Religion, 358. 21. See especially, “Chapter VI: The Religion of Humanity,” in A General View of Positivism.

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league” of the monotheistic religions, Catholicism, Protestantism, Islam, and Judaism, linked together by a common past.22 Once the religion of humanity spread across the globe and “positivist homogeneity was sufficiently complete,” he professed that Paris would lose its preeminence, and Constantinople, the “true eternal city which will condense all great human memories,”23 would become the “final capital of the human planet,” one that would “unite the Orient and the Occident.”24 The Ottoman Empire, which he saw as part of an “Oriental Europe,” not of “Occidental Asia,”25 occupied a key role in his universalism, enabling the ending of wars and the upholding of a new and peaceful world order. To initiate the universal propagation of his enterprise and launch the positivist process in Constantinople itself, Comte contacted the Westernist Grand Vizier Mustafa Reşid Paşa, a leading Tanzimat reformer,26 in an 1853 letter, inviting the Ottoman Empire to join the “positive faith,” a religion universel.27 He expected Islam to adopt positivism effortlessly, because it “tended more toward reality due to its simpler beliefs and more practical disposition.”28 The transition to this new faith would be achieved by replacing worship of “Allah” with “the cult of Humanity.” Positivism would enable the Ottomans to promote uniformity of opinions and customs, an objective Comte deemed to overlap with “the spirit of Islam,”29 and would serve as a powerful tool uniting different groups within the Empire to prevent foreign intervention.30 Comte later sent Reşid Paşa the latest vol22. Quoted in Mary Pickering, Auguste Comte: An Intellectual Biography, vol. 3 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 521. 23. Ibid. 24. Ibid. 25. Comte, System of Positive Polity, 4, 508. 26. Only with a short interruption in 1848, Mustafa Reşid Paşa served as grand vizier from 1846 to 1852. 27. “Auguste Comte’dan Mustafa Reşit Paşa’ya Yazılan Mektup,” in Cumhuriyet’e Devreden Düşünce Mirası Tanzimat ve Meşrutiyet’in Birikimi, ed. Tanıl Bora and Murat Gültekin (Istanbul: İletişim Yayınları, 2006), 480. Comte also approached Tsar Nicholas I of Russia before the Crimean War to attract his support for his universal faith. 28. Ibid., 481. 29. Ibid. 30. Positivist philosophy did not find a significant resonance during the Tanzimat. Some elements of positivism can be found in the early Tanzimat thinker İbrahim Şinasi Efendi (1826–71) through his acquaintance with positivist thinkers like Ernest Renan and Emile Littré while staying in Paris. At the center of Şinasi’s political thought lies the idea of an enlightened public guided by an enlightened elite to reach civilization and to progress toward the perfection of Ottoman state and society. The words “progress” (terakki) and “civilization” (medeniyet) in Şinasi’s vocabulary refer to human improvement, aiming at a better world order, achieved and represented by the West (Garb), and described by him as

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umes of Système de politique positive and his Appel aux Conservateurs, but his appeals received no response. Although Comte’s universal project was never completed, his sketchplan for it in his Politique positive clarified the general features of its design.31 The Comtean positivist doctrine, with its universal claims, had a powerful impact on the intellectual life of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It was interpreted in diverse ways in different geographical contexts, and underwent a series of radical transformations.32 In Japan, intellectuals used positivism to criticize the old order’s feudalism.33 In a number of settings in Latin America, it was adopted to facilitate the continent’s integration into the modern world:34 in Brazil, Comtean principles were adopted to resolve the problem of slavery and advocate a decentralized republic. The motto on the Brazilian flag, Ordem e progresso, was a proclamation of positivism.35 In Mexico, the positivist movement of the Científicos, led by Miguel S. Macedo, aimed to establish a society grounded on the laws of science.36 The Ottoman positivists, manifested as the Parisian branch of the Young Turk movement, provided one of the most effective interpretations of global positivist thinking. It must be seen in a global, not merely a local context, but in order to understand how positivism was received by Ottoman intellectuals, it is necessary to talk about the emergence of the Young Turk movement.

a union of civilized, wealthy, and powerful nations. Although his political thought conveyed some core ideas of positivism like progress and civilization, he did not express his admiration for it in any of his political writings. See Murtaza Korlaelçi, “Pozitivist Düşüncenin İthali,” in Cumhuriyet’e Devreden Düşünce Mirası Tanzimat ve Meşrutiyet’in Birikimi, ed. Bora and Gültekin (Istanbul: İletişim Yayınları, 2006), 214–15. 31. Andrew Wernick, Auguste Comte and the Religion of Humanity: The Post-Theistic Program of French Social Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 68. 32. Christopher A. Bayly, “European Political Thought and the Wider World,” in The Cambridge History of Nineteenth-Century Political Thought, ed. Gareth Stedman Jones and Gregory Claeys (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 851; Walter Michael Simon, European Positivism in the 19th Century: An Essay in Intellectual History (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1963). 33. Yoko Arisaka, “Beyond ‘East and West’ Nishida’s Universalism and Postcolonial Critique,” Review of Politics 59, no. 3 (1997): 542–45. 34. For positivism in Latin America, see Ralph Lee Woodward, Positivism in Latin America, 1850–1900: Are Order and Progress Reconcilable? (Lexington, MA: Heath, 1971). 35. Isabel DiVanna, “Reading Comte across the Atlantic: Intellectual Exchanges between France and Brazil and the Question of Slavery,” History of European Ideas 38, no. 3 (2012), 452–66. 36. Leopoldo Zea, Positivism in Mexico, trans. Josephine H. Schulte (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1974), 156–61.

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The Young Turks’ Idealism, Republicanism, and Positivist Universalism early FormaTion The Young Turk movement originated as a secret society, İttihâd-ı Osmani (The Union of Ottomans) in 1889. Formed by five students, İbrahim Temo, Abdullah Cevdet, İshak Sükûti, Hikmet Emin, and Mehmet Reşid, at the Royal Medical Academy in Istanbul (Tıbbiye Mektebi), it was set up to resist the despotism of Sultan Abdülhamid II (r. 1876–1909). Abdülhamid II had established total political domination over his people and exerted autocratic control over political, educational, and religious institutions by suspending the Constitution of 1876, closing down parliament in 1878, and centralizing and regulating control of the government.37 He was obsessed with maintaining social stability, preventing the disintegration of the state, and securing support from European powers (especially Germany) to avoid isolation in the international domain. Revolts, most notably the Armenian and Greek uprisings (1894–96, and 1896, respectively), were brutally repressed. Paranoid about security, he formed a secret police organization (hafiye) and a system of conspiracy under it to counter threats to his authority. State spies (jurnalci) were appointed to every department of the government to monitor and log the actions and thoughts of individual bureaucrats in memoranda (jurnals), which were used to promote, dismiss, or even imprison those deemed loyal or disloyal.38 Adopting a censorship law based closely on one promulgated in France by Napoleon III, Abdülhamid II controlled information tightly, and many prominent newspapers, including Muhbir, Vatan, İbret, and Diyojen were closed. Key political words, including “republic” (cumhuriyet), “liberty” (hürriyet), “nation” (vatan), “equality” (eşitlik), “constitution” (kânûn-ı esâsî), “plot” (suikast), “revolution” (ihtilal), and “reform” (ıslahat), were censored in the press to control revolutionary impulses.39 The circulation and publication of important Western philosophical texts, including Alfieri’s De la tyrannie, Cicero’s De la République and Harangues au peuple 37. Benjamin C. Fortna, “The Reign of Abdülhamid II,” in The Cambridge History of Turkey: Turkey in the Modern World, ed. Reşat Kasaba (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 47–48. 38. Some of these jurnals were the products of mere rumors. The surviving ones are compiled as a book. See Asaf Turgay, İbret: Abdülhamid’e Verilen Jurnaller ve Jurnalciler (Istanbul: Okat Yayınevi, 1961). 39. Cevdet Kudret, Abdülhamit Devri’nde Sansür, vol. 1 (Istanbul: Yeni Gün Haber Ajansı, 2000), 5–6, 48, 53.

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et au sénat, Huxley’s Science et Religion, Machiavelli’s Le Prince, Mirabeau’s Discours, to Montesquieu’s Lettres persanes and De l’esprit des Lois, Rousseau’s Contrat social, and Voltaire’s Histoire de Charles XII, Le Fanatisme, and Dictionnaire philosophique were banned.40 The pressure exerted on liberty during this period prompted countless underground societies throughout the Empire from İttihâd-ı Osmani to Freemasons’ lodges, Le Comité Turco-Syrien, La Parti Constitutionnel en Turquie, and Cemiyet-i İlmiye.41 Like most nineteenth-century European secret societies,42 İttihâd-ı Osmani was composed of cells, utilized rituals, secret oaths, and mystic signs that remained largely intact up until the Young Turk Revolution of 1908. Its founding members advocated revolutionary means to overthrow the sultan and sought to extend the franchise in the service of democracy and liberty, and break from traditional forms of authority and paternalism. They approached political change conspiratorially through violence, terror, and assassination. Their revolutionism and radicalism were not republican, but upheld the retention of a limited monarchy by restoring the constitution. The intellectual background of the members of the İttihâd-ı Osmani shaped their conceptions of violent revolution. The Royal Medical Academy was the central Ottoman institution for disseminating knowledge of new scientific practices. It served as the focus of a new, young, intellectual group, who accepted science and scientific investigation as truth and the sole way to access that truth.43 This approach drew heavily on the German materialism of the classical triumvirate of Ludwig Büchner, Karl Vogt, and Jacob Moleschott. Büchner’s Kraft und Stoff, translated into Turkish by the leading Young Turk ideologist Abdullah Cevdet (1869–1932) in 1890,44 was widely read and recognized in Ottoman scientific circles.45 Abdullah 40. “Catalogue, des Livres et des Brochures dont l’Entrée dans l’Empire Ottoman a Été Interdite, Istanbul, 1318 [1910],” in Philosophia Ottomanica, ed. Remzi Demir (Istanbul: Lotus Yayınevi, 2005), 187–88. 41. M. Şükrü Hanioğlu, “Notes on the Young Turks and the Freemasons, 1875–1908,” Middle Eastern Studies 25, no. 2 (1989): 186. 42. For nineteenth-century radicalism, see Gregory Claeys and Christine Lattek, “Radicalism, Republicanism and Revolutionism,” in The Cambridge History of NineteenthCentury Political Thought, ed. Gareth Stedman Jones and Gregory Claeys (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 203. 43. M. Şükrü Hanioğlu, Doktor Abdullah Cevdet ve Dönemi (Istanbul: Üçdal Neşriyat, 1981), 8–9. 44. Abdullah Cevdet, Fizyolociya-i Tefekkür: Mehazımın Esası Kraft und Stoff Ünvanlı Kitabın Tefekkür Bahsidir (Istanbul: İstepan Matbaası, 1892). 45. M. Şükrü Hanioğlu, “Blueprints for a Future Society: Late Ottoman Materialists on

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Cevdet saw the physical universe as composed of matter and force: “We cannot think of anything not composed of matter or the product of matter.”46 His counterpart İbrahim Temo (1865–1939) explained life in purely mechanical terms, as the result of chemical and physical events and reproduction.47 This secular Weltanschauung carried a powerful political significance. The materialists believed that social phenomena behaved predictably, as science showed natural phenomena to do, and tried to create a science of revolution. By comparing social reactions to chemical reactions, the radicals stressed the need to unite disparate forces to create a greater opposition to the despot: the greater the union, the more powerful the force, and the more likely the success of the revolution.48 The movement gradually branched out and incorporated many members associated with the Royal Military School (Mekteb-i Harbiye), who brought militarism, activism, and patriotism into its radicalism. In 1892, when movement was discovered by the Hamidian secret police, intensifying reprisals against its members followed. With most of the İttihâd-ı Osmani members forced to leave the capital, branches of the organization formed farther afield, in the Ottoman cities of Izmir, Thessaloniki, and Cairo and beyond the Empire in European cities including Geneva. The Parisian branch was formed in 1895 by the positivist intellectual Ahmed Rıza (1859–1930), who renamed İttihâd-ı Osmanlı as İttihat ve Terakki Cemiyeti (Committee of Union and Progress, CUP).49 As the movement’s European center, the Parisian branch intermittently spearheaded the entire movement up until the Revolution of 1908. Its early years were marked by conflicts over the methods and ideologies for overthrowing despotism and establishing a democratic society through consultation (meşveret). The movement split into two competing groups. The first, led by Ahmed Rıza and composed of intellectuals like Halil Ganem, Dr. Nazım, and Şerif Bey, promoted pacifism and nonactivScience, Religion, and Art,” in Late Ottoman Society: The Intellectual Legacy, ed. Elisabeth Özdalga (London: Routledge, 2005), 28. 46. Abdullah Cevdet, “Muktesebât-ı Fenniye: Herkes İçün Kimya,” Musavver Cihan, no. 4, 23 September 1891, 30. 47. İbrahim Temo, “Tegaddi ve Devam-ı Hayat,” Musavver Cihan, 12 December 1892, 123. 48. See Rıza Nur, Tıbbiye Hayatından (Istanbul: Matbaa-i Hayriye ve Şürekâsı, 1911), 7. 49. Ahmed Rıza initially suggested renaming the committee “Order and Progress” (Nizam ve Terakki) to express their full commitment to positivist theory, but the members in Istanbul preferred “Union and Progress” (İttihat ve Terakki). See Ahmed Bedevî Kuran, İnkılap Tarihimiz ve Jön Türkler, 2nd ed. (Istanbul: Kaynak Yayınları, 2000), 46–47.

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ism.50 The second, led by Mizancı Murad Bey (1854–1917), a RussianTurkish émigré intellectual activist and historian,51 and supported by Çürüksulu Ahmed Bey, İshak Sükûti, and Dr. Şerafettin Mağmumi from the Parisian branch, and Tunalı Hilmi and Abdullah Cevdet from the Geneva branch, advocated activism, revolution, and radicalism. The latter initially defeated the former, and Murad Bey assumed the movement’s leadership in 1897. But that same year, he made his peace with the sultan, accepting the offer of a post in the state administration,52 and the leadership reverted to Ahmed Rıza, whose own refusal of rapprochement with the government reinforced his reputation as a “freedom fighter.”53 Thereafter, his leadership defined the philosophical outlook of the Parisian Young Turks, who disseminated their ideas through two main propaganda newspapers, Meşveret in Turkish and Mechveret Supplément Français in French, both founded in Paris in 1895 with the goal of shaping French and Ottoman public opinion.54

idealism, and republicanism wiThouT a republic The positivist group of Parisian Young Turks were republican monarchists and anti-revolutionary idealists who stressed the central role of ideas in interpreting society and politics. Their views were irreconcilable with the materialism of other Young Turk branches, rejecting metaphysics and emphasizing the nature, values, and essence held in common by all humanity.55 Echoing Comte’s emphasis on ideas as the motor of history, Halil 50. Halil Ganem was an influential Lebanese leader of the Turkish-Syrian Committee, which merged with the Union and Progress in 1895. M. Şükrü Hanioğlu, “The Young Turks and the Arabs before the Revolution of 1908,” in The Origins of Arab Nationalism, ed. Rashid Khalidi (New York: Columbia University Press, 1991), 36–37. 51. For Mizancı Murad Bey’s life and works, see Birol Emil, Son Dönem Osmanlı Aydını Mizancı Murad Bey (Istanbul: Kitabevi, 2009). 52. Mizancı Murad, Mücahede-i Milliye: Gurbet ve Avdet Devirleri (Istanbul: Nehir Yayınları, 1994), 246. 53. Hüseyin Cahit (Yalçın), Siyasal Anılar (Istanbul: Türkiye İş Bankası Kültür Yayınları, 2000), 61. 54. Mechveret appeared as the supplement of the Turkish Meşveret but not as its direct translation. It contained different articles with a more positivist tone. Meşveret was published only for two years. From 1897 until the Young Turk Revolution of 1908, Mechveret served as the major newspaper of the Young Turks in Paris. Because of Abdülhamid II’s censorship, the newspapers were smuggled secretly into the Ottoman Empire to reach the Ottoman intellectual elite. 55. Ahmed Rıza, “Les Positivistes et la Politique Internationale,” Mechveret, 15 September 1898, 6.

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Ganem argued that “the strength of ideas destroys what is bad, [and] grow[s] what is good, noble, and great.”56 Similarly, for Ahmed Rıza, “in a nation, a concrete idea (fikir), a great ideal (emel) must exist; this idea and ideal must lead the nation toward a political plan (maksad-ı siyasiye).”57 The positivist Parisian Young Turks valued republicanism for its ideas, not its institutions. Like French republicans, they believed that an ideal state must provide formal legal liberty (hürriyet) and equality (müsavat), and embody both justice (adalet) and fraternity (uhuvvet). Liberty was their principal commitment in its classical republican sense, allowing man to direct and organize himself; be his own master, not the property of someone else; think, speak and work freely; and make use of the fruits of his own labor. They saw liberty as freedom from coercion, and the absence of arbitrary restraint or interference with individual action. Equal rights were the fundamental basis of a free society. The people, not the arbitrary will of the sultan, were the source and subject of the law. This notion of legal equality meant the subjection of each citizen to a set of laws common to all, and the removal of any kind of privilege.58 This notion of “equality before the rule of law” was based on the Tanzimat conception of egalitarianism, which affirmed the extension of rights to all Ottoman citizens, regardless of their race and religion.59 Besides this legal equality, the Young Turks advocated gender equality. In the first decade of the twentieth century, Mechveret and Abdullah Cevdet’s İçtihad emerged as powerful voices for female liberation. In his treatise “Kadın” (Woman), Ahmed Rıza highlighted women’s suffering and exploitation in Ottoman society. This was not an argument for their greater cultural and civic participation in the community, but for bringing women out of subjugation to their husbands in the family. Ahmed Rıza insisted on expanding women’s role in raising moral individuals within the family to facilitate generational progress, and serve both the nation and humanity.60 Liberty and equality could be achieved only by combined effort, and this collaboration was possible only if fraternal love was recognized and felt among all Ottoman citizens. Fraternity would remedy hostilities and social conflicts by bringing citizens together, through their representatives 56. “Banquet de la Jeune Turquie,” Mechveret, 1 January 1897, 3. 57. Ahmed Rıza, “İhtilal,” Meşveret, 15 January 1898, 2. 58. Ahmed Rıza, La Crise de l’Orient: ses Causes et ses Remedes (Paris: Comité ottoman d’union et de progrès, 1907), 55–57. 59. Somel, “Osmanlı Reform Çağında Osmanlıcılık Düşüncesi (1839–1913),” 88. 60. Ahmed Rıza, “Kadın,” in Ahmet Rıza Bey ve ‘Vazife ve Mesuliyet’ Eserleri, ed. Mustafa Gündüz and Musa Bardak (Ankara: Divan Kitap, [1908] 2011), 113–52.

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in parliament, to enact all their rights, while they remained free and equal. Uhuvvet lay at the core of Ottomanism (Osmanlıcılık). As had been the case during the Tanzimat era, Ottomanism implied affection and commonality, and promised, by dedication to shared goals and love of the fatherland (vatan), the salvation of the Empire. It did not formulate a myth to heighten common beliefs, ceremonies, or symbols, emphasize Turkic roots or privilege the Empire above other societies or above the idea of self-determination. Rather, it aimed to construct Ottoman citizenship (Osmanlı vatandaşı) on a common legal and secular basis without “separating the Turks from the Armenians and the Greeks,” enabling Ottoman subjects to reinterpret their social worlds and describe their own society.61 As Bahaeddin Şakir expressed it: “Unlike Muslim and Christian committees, only considering the interest of their people, our committee is not a nationalist party.”62 The Parisian positivist Young Turks advocated patriotism and categorically rejected Turkism, nationalism, and religious fanaticism, seeing them as threats to sociopolitical unity and order.63 Instead, they introduced an organic conception of the state, which embodied social totality and power, deriving its authority from the sovereignty of the people. In the words of Ahmed Rıza, “the state is a body inseparable from the people, it is the impersonal protector of the people, and the institution looking after the affairs of the country.”64 The extant Ottoman state, however, was some way from this ideal. Under the Hamidian regime, the dramatic expansion of the state and centralization of sultanic authority dominated its citizens through arbitrary and coercive rule, incompatible with political liberties, justice, and unity. The state became a person and a machine, terrorizing and conspiring against its people, polarizing society and constraining freedom of expression.65 As a result, the Ottoman people became subject to increasing administrative regulation in all spheres of their lives. This observation was not merely a complaint, or in Şerif Mardin’s terms, “moaning literature,”66 describing a daily irritation, but a diagnosis of Ottoman sociopolitical decay under despotic government. To avert further degeneration, the Pa61. Ahmed Rıza, “Hükümetsizlik,” Meşveret, 21 August 1896, 1. 62. Quoted in Erdem Sönmez, Ahmed Rıza: Bir Jön Türk Liderinin Siyasi-Entellektüel Portresi (Istanbul: Tarih Vakfı Yurt Yayınları, 2012), 117. 63. Ahmed Rıza, “İcmal-i Ahval,” Meşveret, 20 September 1896, 1–2. 64. Ahmed Rıza, “Mukaddime,” in Ahmet Rıza Bey ve ‘Vazife ve Mesuliyet’ Eserleri, ed. Gündüz and Bardak (Ankara: Divan Kitap, [1908] 2011), 40. 65. Ahmed Rıza, “Ben mi Aldaniyorum Padişah mı Aldanıyor,” Meşveret, 8 October 1897, 1. 66. Mardin, Jön Türklerin Siyasî Fikirleri, 193.

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risian positivist Young Turks sought the most suitable form of government for the Ottoman state to maintain order and stability, and ensure liberty, fraternity, and equality. Invoking Montesquieu’s typology of governments in their search for a moderate mode of government, the Parisian positivist Young Turks discussed whether constitutional monarchy or a republic was best suited to govern the Ottoman state. Like their Young Ottoman predecessors, they believed that a republican government would, in theory, be suitable for the Ottoman state, because the first Islamic state during the time of the four caliphs was at its inception “a kind of Republic” that “recognizes, in principle, the ruler as someone elected by a decision of the national assembly.”67 But while they repeatedly affirmed their devotion to republican ideals, they did not champion a republic in place of the monarchy. The evident vulnerabilities and instabilities of nineteenth-century republics made them doubt the capacity of republics to secure stability and order. Moreover, the transition from a sultanate to a republic would require a revolution, which the Parisian positivist branch, in sharp contrast with those of Geneva and Istanbul, wished by all means to avoid, like their predecessors Namık Kemal and Ziya Paşa. The transformation to an orderly society would be achieved not abruptly, but only through intellectual and peaceful means without changing the dynasty, and it would take place primarily in collective thought, attitudes, and values.68 In “İhtilal” (Revolution), Ahmed Rıza responded to letters from the Istanbul branch that criticized pacifism: “It is impossible to propagate a great revolution (inkılâb-ı kebîr) through short sighted uprisings. . . . It is easy to provoke the people. However, it is hard to bring an imprudent and uncalculated revolution to a successful end.”69 His anti-revolutionary view was derived from the postrevolutionary crisis in France, which brought more unrest and chaos to the country. The ideal political regime envisaged by the Parisian Young Turks was quite a novelty in Ottoman political thought. Like the moderate mode of government proposed by their liberal Young Ottoman predecessors, it was a centralized “republican constitutional monarchy,” with a representative government of ministers (meşveret) drawn from the ranks of learned men, equipped with a sense of freedom of conscience, and assured freedom of the press. Halil Ganem argued that, because ordinary people were often 67. Ahmed Rıza, Le Revue Occidentale, 2nd series III, 1891, 116. 68. Fuad, “Indépendence & Intégrité de l’empire Ottoman,” Mechveret, 1 July 1896, 3; Ahmed Rıza, “Confusion de Pouvoirs en Turqui,” Mechveret, 15 December 1895, 1. 69. Ahmed Rıza, “İhtilal,” 2.

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mistaken in their moral judgments, the only solution to Ottoman degeneration was guidance of the grande masse. He saw the population at large as lazy and incapable of thinking for themselves,70 part of an Ottoman state and society “subject to cyclical illnesses.”71 Like Comte, who favored the rule of an enlightened elite, he believed that “the doctors of the society”72 must heal the masses by awakening them to the prospect of an ideal state and society, and peacefully transforming sociopolitical life. Ahmed Rıza’s contention was that democracy, in the hands of an unenlightened people, would fail to produce good government. Echoing Condorcet, he proposed a representative democracy, in which people had the right to choose from the educated elite a group of representatives to legislate on their behalf.73 Similarly, for Halil Ganem, the foremost right of “the liberal elite” was to rule, not only because they possessed the personal qualities necessary for leadership, but also because an organized minority, acting in a coordinated manner, always triumphed over a disorganized majority.74 Unlike Le Bon, he denied that parliaments necessarily operated with the logic of the crowd; rather he believed in the ideal of impartial, reasoned debate among independent and educated representatives. This insistence that elites must rule was not novel in Ottoman political thought. It was stated by Namık Kemal and Ziya Paşa, too. The originality of the Parisian positivist Young Turks’ view was to attribute elite legitimacy to societal and organizational rather than psychological or moral factors. Their conclusion was that the progressive development of Ottoman society could occur only through a strong, centralized state, represented by an elite with transformative power. Centralization was an essential means for creating a sense of national identity and unity, and breaking down particularistic attachments. Previous efforts of the Young Ottomans had taught the Parisian Young Turks that a transformation to an ideal social and political system could not be achieved merely through political means like opening the parlia-

70. Ahmed Rıza, “Le Sultan et les Princes,” Mechveret, 1 September 1905, 1. 71. Ahmed Rıza, Vatanın Hâline ve Maarif-i Umûmiyenin Islahına Dair Sultan Abdülhâmid Han-ı Sânî Hazretlerine Takdim Kılınan Altı Lâyihadan Birinci Lâyiha (London: Imprimerie Internationale, 1895), 17. This text was an advice treaty, addressing the sultan. 72. Ibid. 73. For the reference to Condorcet, see “Asker” in Ahmet Rıza Bey ve ‘Vazife ve Mesuliyet’ Eserleri, ed. Gündüz and Bardak (Ankara: Divan Kitabevi, [1908] 2011), 91. 74. Halil Ganem, “La Constitution et le Peuple Ottoman,” Mechveret, 15 September 1889, 4.

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ment and drafting a constitution.75 Rather, it could be realized by orchestrating a radical transformation in collective thought, attitudes, and values under the guidance of positivist philosophy.76

oTToman posiTivism The commitment of the Parisian Young Turks to positivism was proclaimed in the first issue of Meşveret: An intellectual elite must implement positivist proposals for constitutional and political change to lead the Empire towards an era of stability and integrity. We believe that to maintain order, there is no need to overthrow the existing dynasty. We should work together to spread the concept of progress to achieve its triumph by peaceful means. Our principles are order and progress.77

The committee’s name, Union and Progress, implied its dedication to positivist doctrine. “Union” (ittihat), associated with “connecting” or “making whole,” was emphasized as a weapon against the nationalist separatism of ethnic and religious groups within the Ottoman Empire. It also referred to the importance of the organic society, the community, crucial to both Comte and Islam. Linked to union was the concept of “order” (intizam), implying both domestic and international stability. The third principle, “progress” (terakki), as for Hegel and Comte, was viewed dialectically and explained in evolutionary terms: to secure progress, order and stability were indispensable. Thus, in Ahmed Rıza’s reading of Comte,78 “progress can only come out of order” (le progrès ne peut sortir que de l’ordre).79 Positivism must infuse into all aspects of life, including society, politics, morality, religion, and international relations. But to realize this positivist order, Fuad noted, “the Ottomans must have patience.”80 The Parisian Young Turks aligned themselves with positivist orthodoxy, a version of the ideology that emerged after Comte’s death in 1857 under the leadership of Pierre Laffitte (1823–1903) in contrast to the heterodoxy of Émile Littré (1801–81) and his followers. While Laffitte ac75. Ahmed Rıza, “La Politique du Sultan,” Mechveret, 1 April 1896, 1. This article appeared in Justice on 29 March 1896. 76. Fuad, “Indépendence & Intégrité de l’Empire Ottoman,” Mechveret, 1 July, 3; Ahmed Rıza, “Confusion de Pouvoirs en Turqui, Mechveret, 15 December 1895, 1. 77. “Mukaddime,” Meşveret, 1 January 1895, 1. 78. Ahmed Rıza, La Crise de l’Orient, 3. 79. Ahmed Rıza, “L’Orient à l’exposition II,” Mechveret, 1 July 1900, 4. 80. Fuad, “Patience!,” Mechveret, 15 April 1896, 1–2.

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cepted the idea of faith in the religion of humanity, he eschewed the idea that there should be a high priest of humanity, taking on instead the presidency of “the religious committee,” renamed later “positivist committee.”81 In a stream of books and articles in La Revue Occidentale, and lectures at the Salle Gerson and the Collège de France as professor of the histoire générale de sciences, Laffitte extended and popularized Comtean ideas.82 His influence on the Young Turks came through Ahmed Rıza, who took part in positivist debates at the Collège as a student and became one of Laffitte’s disciples. Under the influence of Laffitte, Ottoman orthodox positivism diverged from Comte’s own views on two major points. While acknowledging the importance of the positive spirit, Laffitte and Ahmed Rıza were less enthusiastic about the religion of humanity, the Positivist Church, or religious rituals of positivism.83 Moreover, both disagreed with Comte on the boundaries and borders of Europe. Laffitte insisted that “with the spread of Positivism, the use, as a political expression, of the purely geographical term “European” must be dropped; for it was applied in an utterly irrational way to an assemblage of very distinct and dissimilar peoples.”84 To accomplish the goal of positivism, Comte’s vision of the triumph of Western superiority must be abandoned, and the intellectual and spiritual unity of positivism must be broadened to render it genuinely universal. In contrast to Comte, he argued that this Roman vision of the world must include Eastern populations like Turkey and Russia, but exclude colonies of the West.85 The Young Turks were actively involved in French positivist and intellectual circles, contributing to the universalization of positivism. Their impact on positivism in France itself became more apparent when Ahmed Rıza joined the Société Positiviste in 1906 and became one of the thirteen founding members of the Société Positiviste Internationale, the chief French positivist society, led by Émile Corra (1848–1934). He wrote extensively in leading positivist journals like La Revue Occidental and La Revue 81. See Leslie Bethell, Ideas and Ideologies in Twentieth-Century Latin America (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 150; Terry N. Clark, Prophets and Patrons: The French University and the Emergence of the Social Sciences (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1973), 101–2; Jennings, Revolution and the Republic, 363. 82. Simon, European Positivism in the 19th Century, 39. 83. Ahmed Rıza, “La Construction d’une Mosquée à Paris,” Mechveret, 1 December 1895, 1. 84. Pierre Laffitte, The Positive Science of Morals: Its Opportuneness, Its Outlines and Its Chief Applications, trans. J. Carey (London: Watts, 1908), 196–97. 85. Ibid.

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International Positiviste. His desire to reconcile reform with social stability and progress with order prompted intense interaction with contemporary French positivists and intellectuals, who recognized and supported the Young Turks in their own writings. Georges Clemenceau, the statesman and future French prime minister, defended the Young Turks’ goals of liberal and parliamentary politics and just reforms under a controlled government. By failing to support them effectively, he argued, “we [the French] are letting the Asian despot direct policy and laws. We pretend to spread the ideas of liberty and equality outside our borders yet we let the Asian despot . . . rule.”86 Similarly, Édouard Conte of L’Echo de Paris criticized the French government for its inconsistency in pursuing liberal revolutionary aspirations whilst attempting to expel Ahmed Rıza from France at Abdülhamid II’s command: “How illogical is it to reject strangers from France who became liberals in Turkey thanks to the influence of French education?”87 A banquet organized by the Young Turks in Paris in 1896 to celebrate the twentieth anniversary of the promulgation of the suspended Ottoman constitution was a clear demonstration of French recognition and support for the Young Turks’ demands for a peaceful, anti-despotic regime.88 Thanks to Mechveret, the Young Turks’ positivism extended beyond European geographical boundaries, reaching Latin America.89 In Lettre à M. Ahmed Rıza, Juan Enrique Lagarrigue, a leading Chilean orthodox positivist, expressed his appreciation for the Young Turk movement, and thanked Ahmed Rıza for inspiring Latin American positivist movements by instilling the hope of establishing a religion de l’humanité.90 Similarly, the Mexican positivist Augustín Aragón hailed Ahmed Rıza “nuestro querido y distinguido correligionario turco.”91 The Parisian Young Turks’ efforts to spread positivism echoed Comte’s mission to unite the Orient and the Occident through intellectual means. Like Comte himself, they believed that positivism provided the basis for domestic and universal order, and could be effective only when all restraints on human conduct were removed. But, unlike Comte, they did not believe that Eastern nations must be guided passively by their Western 86. Georges Clemenceau, “Pour faire plaisir au Sultan,” La Dépéche, 14 April 1896, in Mechveret, 15 April 1896, 7. 87. Éduard Conte, “Le Jeune Turquie,” Mechveret, 15 April 1896. 88. “Banquet de la Jeune Turquie,” ibid., 1 January 1897, 4. 89. Hanioğlu, Preparation for a Revolution, 39. 90. Juan Enrique Lagarrigue, Religion de l’Humanité . . . Lettre à M. Ahmed Riza, par Juan Enrique Lagarrigue (Santiago: Ercilla, 1901). 91. Augustín Aragón to Ahmed Rıza, Mexico, César 10, 117/2 May 1905.

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counterparts, insisting on the imperative to recognize equality and fraternity between nations in realizing the universal ideal of a united humanity (l’humanité, and insaniyet). By placing humanity at the heart of their positivism, they offered a new ideal for East and West relations, and an alternative to Westernization.

Humanity in Two Senses universal world hisTory and The laws oF Three sTages For the positivist Young Turks, humanity had two senses, and operated on two levels, mental and ethical, as it unfolded, promising the evolution of a world civilization. In the nineteenth century, Europe was still the center of historians’ attention. The development of world history was seen as a linear story of gradual but steady progress from the lowest, crudest, and most primitive to the highest, finest, and most complex, epitomized in the evolution of Western civilizations. The Young Turks rejected this Eurocentric conception of progress for one they saw as truly universal, stressing contributions of Eastern civilizations, and presenting the evolution of world history as the progress of humanity as a whole toward betterment. To reveal its totality, they deployed the Comtean evolutionary theory of humanity, with its foundation in the primacy of human reason, progressing through the developmental laws of three stages. Following Comte, Ahmed Şuayb (1876–1910), a prominent positivist who sympathized with the Young Turks in exile, identified these laws as “hâl-i mevzu” (theological stage, état fictif), “hâl-i mücerred” (metaphysical stage, état abstrait), and “hâl-i müsbet” (scientific stage, état positif).92 In the first stage of mental evolution, the human mind was dominated by superstitious conceptions of knowledge, explaining reality by reference to divine powers. Beşir Fuad (1852–87), commonly recognized as the first Turkish positivist who adopted a similar philosophical stand to Ahmed Şuayb’s,93 argued that throughout the Middle Ages only what was accepted by the Church was recognized as truth, eclipsing the “minds and reason of the people.”94 The Renaissance marked a transition to the sec92. Ahmed Şuayb, Hayat ve Kitaplar (Ankara: Salkımsöğüt, [first edition 1899–1900, second edition 1911] 2005), 70. 93. See M. Orhan Okay, Beşir Fuad: İlk Türk Pozitivist ve Natüralisti, 2nd ed. (Istanbul: Dergâh Yayınları, 2008). 94. Beşir Fuad, “Mukaddime,” in Voltaire, ed. Erdoğan Erbay and Ali Utku (Istanbul: Babil Yayınları, [1886] 2003), 103.

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ond stage (état abstrait) of mental development, the Enlightenment, a triumph of reason over superstition.95 In this phase, the beginnings of progress were to be found in the works of Newton, Bacon, Descartes, and Bruno.96 Beşir Fuad described the Encyclopédie, ou dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers as “the ocean of human knowledge,” and its authors as advancing ideas indispensable to any sane theory of progress.97 He praised Voltaire as “one of the geniuses who was able to attain salvation of the mind” and illuminate the minds of others, and admired his courage in denouncing the Catholic creeds and helping “break the chains of civilization and progress from slavery.”98 In the final scientific or positive stage, humanity passes into an age of positive thought, freed from religious dogma and fanaticism99 and the metaphysical content of earlier philosophies, and characterized by a new scientific knowledge.100 Following Comte, Ahmed Şuayb argued that there were only two modes of thinking, “the speculative” (nazarî) and “the scientific or positif (müsbet).”101 The former’s explanations were formulated in terms of deities and abstract spirits, or other entities without empirical foundation, while the latter’s were rooted in the study of nature and the discovery of actual laws by an appropriate combination of techniques of observation, experimentation, and comparison.102 Beşir Fuad insisted that as “truth (hakikat) only lies in experience,”103 claims about beings beyond our sensual experience do not contain any truth, for we cannot recognize them.104 Knowledge and science, for Ottoman positivists, reached their height in the scientific-industrial phase of history. Unlike Marx and Engels, who were suspicious of economic liberalism in industrial society, Ahmed Rıza, 95. Ibid., 104. 96. Ibid., 105. 97. Ibid., 139. 98. Ibid., 164. 99. See also, Ahmed Rıza, Tolérance Musulmane (Paris: Clamaron-Graff,1897); “Le Fanatisme,” in La Crise de l’Orient, 16–19, 39–42. 100. Şemseddin Sami asserted that ancient philosophies “were based upon empty imaginings and illusions.” Şemseddin Sami, “Felsefe,” Hafta, no. 9 (1881): 142. Similarly, Ömer Suphi bin Edhem maintained that, “all the philosophies of Socrates, Plato and Aristotle derived from empty imaginings and did not promote scientific progress, hence the progress of civilisation.” Ömer Suphi bin Edhem, Yunanistan-ı Kadîm Mader-i Medeniyet Midir, Istanbul University Library, Turkish Manuscripts, no. 3225, f. 12. 101. Ahmed Şuayb, Hayat ve Kitaplar, 135. 102. Ibid. 103. Beşir Fuad, “Cümel-i Müntehabe,” Envar-ı Zekâ, June 1884, 519. 104. Beşir Fuad, Victor Hugo (Istanbul: Özgür Yayınları, [1885] 2011), 181.

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with Comte and Hegel, was optimistic over a successful transition to modernity out of absolutism and progress toward a better future through industrialization. The most advanced country at the time and the epitome of the achievement of modern industrial society was France. French enthusiasm for science and progress, Ahmed Rıza wrote, “makes man see Humanity in an extended manner and recognize the people who have led the way. This feeling of recognition should be the motivating force behind people who wish to carry the ‘flag’ of progress forward, handed down to them by their ancestors.”105 Ahmed Rıza saw the law of three stages as applying to all civilizations, but different civilizations as evolving at different rates. To aid the spirit of progress, all nations must help one another remove barriers to improvement. Despite advancements in the Tanzimat period,106 the spirit of progress in the Empire had been abruptly disturbed by Abdülhamid II, whose lack of interest in science left the Empire lagging dramatically behind the scientific and industrial developments of the West.107 Positivist Young Turks saw it as their duty to do away with despotism, as it harmed the evolution both of their society and humanity. “To attain this great goal,” Fuad wrote, “we demand the help and moral support of those who love their family, their patrie, and Humanity.”108 This statement did not express an acceptance of foreign intervention in Ottoman domestic affairs, but signaled the Young Turks’ desire for humanitarian assistance or support from Western nations. While Ahmed Rıza believed that to perpetuate the spirit of progress, the Ottomans must invest more in industry and scientific knowledge to boost wealth and lead to peace,109 by contrast to 105. Ahmed Rıza, “L’Orient à l’exposition,” Mechveret, 1 June 1900, 2. Ahmed Rıza published a series of articles “L’Orient à l’Exposition” in Mechveret to express his fascination with the celebration of the hundredth anniversary of the French Revolution and the extravagant Universal Exposition held on the Champ de Mars from the 6th of May until the 31st of October 1889. Paris presented a distinguished international image with its high culture, industry, art, and technology. 106. Ahmed Rıza, “L’Orient à l’Exposition II,” Mechveret, 1 July 1900, 2–4. Ahmed Rıza argued that Sultan Abdülaziz (r. 1861–76) particularly showed this incentive by attending the London Exposition in 1862 to present Turkish products to other nations. It opened a “route between the Orient and Occident,” enabling the Ottomans to compare their products with those of the West, and better understand the level of their development in order to improve their industry. 107. Ahmed Rıza, “Devoir du Calife,” Mechveret, 1 June 1896, 3; “L’Orient à l’Exposition III,” Mechveret, 15 July 1900, 2. 108. Fuad, “Les Arméniens & le Self- Government,” Mechveret, 1 June 1896, 4. 109. Ahmed Rıza, “L’Orient à l’Exposition II,” 2.

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Abdullah Cevdet, he did not mean to emulate the modern West or accept Western civilization and values in its entirety, but aimed to keep up with the scientific and industrial developments of the West to serve the evolution of humanity. “The cult of science and progress,” Ahmed Rıza remarked, “is the only international doctrine which invoked the feeling of altruism”110 between civilizations. “Civilization” here did not refer exclusively to the West, but to “a collection of truths, based on the acquisition made by human intelligence in all the various domains of knowledge; truths that have been accumulated and transmitted from generation to generation.”111 By stressing the collection of truths, Ahmed Rıza highlighted the integrated past of Islamic and Christian civilizations to emphasize that European progress would have been impossible without the contributions of Islamic civilization, a point forgotten or ignored by European thinkers at the time. Littré, the main positivist opponent of Laffitte, disputed the significance of Islamic civilization during the Middle Ages, arguing that Arabs had simply copied the learning and books of the ancient Greeks, and failed to assimilate the literature and fine arts of the Hellenes. In reply, Ahmed Rıza insisted that “Littré, though a positivist, failed to observe in his search for truth the correlation of general phenomena, thus violating accepted historical method which prohibits the formation of theories on the basis of isolated facts.”112 Like Comte and Laffitte, he believed that Islam was essentially progressive and more open to modernization than the Catholic Church during the Middle Ages.113 It preserved and developed the spirit of science from the seventh to the fifteenth centuries, demonstrating that for hundreds of years the Oriental civilizations were more organized and advanced than their Occidental counterparts.114 He insisted on the debt owed by modern civilization to Muslim scholars like Farabi, Ibn-i Sina, Al-Biruni, Ibn-il Rushd, and Ilıgh Bey, who together had paved the way for the Renaissance, and helped humanity to pass from the theological to the metaphysical stage.115 By revealing the mixed heritage of European civilization, Ahmed Rıza summoned Europeans to rethink their identities and 110. Ahmed Rıza, La Révue Occidentale, 2nd series III, 1895, 374–76. 111. Ibid. 112. Ahmed Rıza, The Moral Bankruptcy of Western Policy towards the East, trans. Adair Mill (Ankara: Ministry of Culture and Tourism, [1922] 1988), 147. 113. Ahmed Rıza, “Pierre Laffitte,” Mechveret, 1 February 1903, 4. 114. Ahmed Rıza, “L’Orient à l’Exposition III,” 2–3. 115. Ahmed Rıza, Moral Bankruptcy, 18, 111–37.

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to redefine their relationship with the rest of the world, and the Ottoman Empire in particular.

laiciTy and moraliTy as The FoundaTion oF a universal order Positivist Young Turks saw humanity as a vast, progressing organism, a continuous moral spirit, developing and evolving without geographical constraints throughout the course of history. This deterministic moral philosophy predicted the full realization of humanity in a universal order, whereby all people from different religions were spiritually tied together to live in peace and harmony. Order was the foundation of morality. Ahmed Rıza saw the Empire as mired in political and moral decadence, anarchy and interstate conflict, “a disastrous crisis (buhran-ı felaket) never heard before,”116 since it had no basis to unite minds in shared convictions, and since the ruler himself was so irresponsible. Because Abdülhamid II subordinated the common good to his selfish interest, and failed to protect the national interest of his people,117 the imperial powers had taken advantage of the regime’s weakness by intervening and economically exploiting the Empire, deepening the crisis in the Orient and harming humanity as a whole.118 A new secular order must be reestablished based on the laicity of contemporary French republican ideology.119 Positivist Young Turks were the first to introduce this term into Ottoman language. Laicity indicated the need for Islam, in a positivist form to bind together a divided society as a spiritual norm, an effective institutional force, and a collective discipline, imposing itself with the overpowering authority of habit on Ottoman society. For Ahmed Rıza, it still offered hope and consolation to the unhappy, and inspired a love of virtue.120 Like Comte, he believed that central to religion was its integrative and socially expressive function in reinforcing group identity prompting group action, and connecting people together as a union.121 “The mosque is not only a place of worship but also as its name 116. Ahmed Rıza, “Mukaddime,” 40. 117. Ahmed Rıza, “Padişah,” in Ahmet Rıza Bey ve ‘Vazife ve Mesuliyet’ Eserleri, ed. Gündüz and Bardak (Ankara: Divan Kitabevi, [1908] 2011), 49. 118. Ahmed Rıza, La Crise de l’Orient, 12–13. 119. Ahmed Rıza, “Laicisation du Protectorat,” Mechveret, 1 December 1904, 1–2. 120. Ahmed Rıza, Moral Bankruptcy, 213. 121. Aykut Kansu, “20. Yüzyıl Başı Türk Düşünce Hayatında Liberalizm,” in Tanzi-

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cami indicates, a center of attractions and reunions, a gathering place for the community.”122 Pan-Islamism, practiced with love and tolerance would produce conciliation and rapprochement among Ottoman people, end conflicts, and promote progress.123 Laicity divided the private sphere, where religion belongs, from the public sphere, in which each individual should appear as a citizen equal to all other citizens, devoid of ethnic, religious or other particular characteristics. As Ahmed Rıza put it: “[I]t is not a part of our program to bring religion into politics; we have respect for all faiths, but as long as other people talk about religious principles and include them in questions and national politics, [we] have a duty to give them an answer.”124 His answer was that governing state affairs according to religious doctrine was a practice that belonged not to the scientific stage but to past eras, and that secularization was required for society to progress.125 Laicity also implied that the government should play no part in religious affairs and refrain from taking positions on religious doctrine. It did not preclude state interest in moral questions, but required official neutrality between different faiths. The state must guarantee people’s freedom of religious affiliation (hürriyet-i mezhebiye), without interfering in their private life, and allow all to practice their faith in a sphere that would not cause harm to social order.126 This laic vision could be promoted through education. Positivist Young Turks aimed to establish positivist schools in which the traditional curricular emphasis on religion was replaced by scientific teaching.127 By providing equal educational opportunities for men and women, they would improve the morals of the whole nation, providing the basis for a harmonious, orderly and civilized society, leading ultimately to international harmony and coexistence. mat ve Meşrutiyetin Birikimi, ed. Bora and Gültekin (Istanbul: İletişim Yayınları, 2006), 291. 122. Ahmed Rıza, “Devoir du Calife,” 3. 123. Ahmed Rıza, “Panislamisme,” in La Crise de l’Orient, 39. 124. Ahmed Rıza, “Une Nouvelle Tactique,” Mechveret, 15 June 1896, 3. 125. Ahmed Rıza, Vatanın Haline ve Maarif-i Umumiyenin Islahına Dair Sultan Abdülhamid Han-ı Sani Hazretlerine Takdim Kılınan Layihalar Hakkında Makam-ı Sadarete Gönderilen Mektuptur. (Geneva: Imprimerie et Lithographie A. Friedrich, 1895), 21. 126. Ibid. 127. Beşir Fuad, İlk Türk Materyalisti Beşir Fuad’ın Mektupları (Istanbul: Arba, 1988), 28–29.

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Positivist Young Turks believed that a positivist concept of morality would develop through a social sentiment, which would replace the selfishness by a conduct that regards the good of others as the end of moral action. Echoing Cicero, Ahmed Rıza wrote that “everywhere, duties and obligations are the foundations of justice, and good morality; pertaining to bonds and relations between people’s minds.”128 The new ethics encompassed all multifaceted social obligations and duties, individuals, the families, countries, and humanity as a whole. These duties matched different sentiments: pity (merhamet), filial sentiment (aile duygusu), compassion (şefkat), and altruistic love (altruism).129 Like Comte, Ahmed Rıza hoped by cultivating these sentiments and duties at each stage to resolve the social, political, and moral problems brought on by despotism, and reestablish order and political cohesion by supporting the “brave people” working for the interests of both East and West.130 Politics, for Ahmed Rıza, was the practice of morality in social life, not a domain for antagonism. To forge a just society, the rulers must know their moral duties toward their citizens.131 The sultan’s most important duty was to distribute justice to his citizens, which only a welleducated prince was equipped to do. In his pamphlet “Duty and Responsibility” (Vazife ve Mesuliyet), Ahmed Rıza listed the sultan’s duties: to act responsibly for his nation; to refrain from conspiracy, compulsion, and control; to eschew physical force as a legal penalty; and to rule according to the constitutional law.132 Only moral rulers, who respected the wishes and interests of the people, could help end internal political strife and social conflict. But citizens, too, had duties to one another, as well as to the state. The ultimate duty of the Ottoman citizen was to obey the state and its just laws, an essential condition for maintaining unity, political cohesion and the integration of different ethnic nationalities within a united Empire. They needed to love their country and to be Ottoman patriots. Once order was established in particular societies, contradictions and hostilities between nations would be resolved, and altruistic love and mo-

128. Ahmed Rıza, “Mukaddime,” 40. 129. Ahmed Şuayb, Hayat ve Kitaplar, 149. 130. Ahmed Rıza, “Mukaddime,” 1. 131. Ahmed Rıza, “Şehzâdeler,” 54. 132. Ahmed Rıza, “Padişah,” 47–50.

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rality would transcend their societal boundaries to a universal order, binding a humanity hitherto divided between East and West.133 Positivist Young Turks traced the roots of humanity’s division to the struggle between Islamic and Christian civilizations in religious wars and crusades, which had “produced poverty, weakened the established order and undermined the security of property relations,”134 replacing solidarity with hatred and vengeance.135 Ahmed Rıza observed the world divided by religions, and this divide was deepened by European colonialist and interventionist policies. Every nation was autonomous and must primarily protect its own national interests against external pressure or domination, and each nation must respect this national autonomy. Western powers, however, undermined this principle by foreign intervention and economic exploitation through the capitulations and only harmed Ottoman unity and security.136 Their behavior showed that “they [the Europeans] think of their own interests rather than Humanity for the solution of the Eastern Question.”137 Fuad condemned the foreign interventions as “sinful and revolting.”138 Positivist Young Turks were particularly critical of the hypocrisy of France’s universalism. Within its frontiers, the Republic nurtured and enforced a constant belief in the civic power of universal suffrage, supremacy of art, sciences, culture, and philosophy, while, beyond its frontiers, it propagated colonial ambitions under the pretext of “universality” and “civilization.” This mission civilisatrice, for Ahmed Rıza, contradicted France’s esprit laique and image as a modern, industrialized, and scientific nation.139 Commercial expansion in the colonies was far from the mission civilisatrice it purported to be, and more a brutal and repressive exploitation of indigenous peoples that could bring only chaos, disorder, and unhappiness.140 133. Ahmed Rıza, “Mukaddime,” 1. 134. Ahmed Rıza, Moral Bankruptcy, 138. 135. Ibid., 30. 136. Quoted in Hanioğlu, “Private Papers of Ahmet Rıza (2),” in The Young Turks in Opposition, 190. 137. Ahmed Rıza, “Pourquoi l’Europe ne réclame pas le Établissement de la Constitution en Turquie,” Mechveret, 15 October 1896, 3. 138. Fuad, “Indépendence & Intégrité de l’Empire Ottoman,” 4. 139. Ahmed Rıza, “Pourquoi l’Europe ne réclame pas le Établissement de la Constitution en Turquie,” 3. 140. Ahmed Rıza, “Laicisation du Protectorat,” 1–2.

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A divided humanity would not be overcome merely through diplomatic relations, as positivist Young Turks did not trust politicians to establish relations between states on honest and moral grounds. Politicians, Ahmed Rıza argued, “make no attempt to dispel the memories of religious hatred and to weaken racial prejudice, the real sources of antagonism and war.”141 Persisting religious intolerance, prejudice, and fanaticism could not be solved by political measures or diplomacy, because they were merely an “art of deception,” which had damaged relations between Christian and Muslim nations at length in the past.142 Positivist Young Turks did not envisage a politically cosmopolitan or internationalist union between nations, or, unlike Comte, a unification of mankind through the creation of a homogeneous religion of humanity. Instead they simply used the term “human union,” which would be created by applying positivist moral principles, and the fulfillment of every nation’s duties toward its counterparts: “The conception of unity appears . . . as an aspect of human unity. This is also the tendency of all religions.”143 The key text of this viewpoint and universal morality and peace was later developed in Ahmed Rıza’s La faillite morale de la politique occidentale en Orient, published in 1922 in the context of the Turkish War of Independence. For the Parisian Young Turks, the universal positivist project was no utopia. They saw Japan’s victory over Russia in 1905 as a symbolic triumph of humanitarian values over Europe’s mythical invincibility, intolerance, ignorance, and suppression.144 “[W]e wish to see [Japan] universalised,” Ahmed Rıza wrote, “because it is the fruit of a principled, faithful and highly intelligent organization, because it is based on a conception of human destinies that excludes holy icons and false sentimentalities.”145 Japan’s victory also strengthened the Ottoman positivists’ hope that constitutionalism and freedom would triumph over decaying despotism and slavery in the world at large.146 The realization of humanity was an immi141. Ahmed Rıza, Moral Bankruptcy, 210. 142. Fuad, “La Diplomatie & la Question d’Orient 2,” Mechveret, 15 August 1896, 2. 143. Ahmed Rıza, “Panislamisme,” 28. 144. Ahmed Rıza, “Muharebe ve İhtilal,” Şûra-yı Ümmet, 6 April 1905, 1–2; “Port Arthtur’un Sükutu,” 19 February 1905, 1–2. 145. Ahmed Rıza, “Légions Japonaises,” Mechveret, 1 March 1905, 1, cited in Renée Worringer, “ ‘Sick Man of Europe’ or ‘Japan of the Near East’?: Constructing Ottoman Modernity in the Hamidian and Young Turk Eras,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 36, no. 2 (2004), 207–30. 146. Ahmed Rıza, “Küstahlık,” Şûra-yı Ümmet, 20 May 1905, 1.

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nent possibility, fulfilling Comte’s prophecy, in which the order of the Orient would unite with the progress of the Occident to forge a new universal order.

Reactions to Ottoman Positivist Universalism Ottoman positivists saw their theory as an overarching social and political philosophy, offering wide-ranging perspectives on Ottoman society and politics, justifying public authority, informing international ethics, and elucidating many features of Ottoman life: relations between state and society; the principles of leadership, patriotism, religion, education; and public and private morality. It was not just a system of thought or assembly of ideas but also a scrupulously defined moral code for reorganizing Ottoman society as a whole to achieve constant progress. Because of its doctrinal weaknesses, republicanism without a republic, progress without much change, religion without much content, Ottoman positivism was soon challenged by Prince Sabahaddin (1877–1948), the leader of the Liberal opposition, Osmanlı Hürriyetperverân Cemiyeti (Ottoman Freedom-Lovers’ Committee), who categorically rejected centralization as “at the heart of despotism.”147 The positivists’ commitment to centralization (merkeziyetçilik) as a means of ensuring political order through dynastic stability meant that the Empire would remain subject to the despotism of the elites.148 Instead, Sabahaddin suggested a decentralized model borrowed from Anglo-Saxon political structures, according to which the various parts of the Empire would have their own governments to handle administrative, municipal, and judicial affairs, and finance and public works be managed locally. He took issue with the fundamental positivist notions of progress and universal ethics. Employing the language of Victorian imperialism, he insisted in the name of universal progress on the legitimacy and even necessity of the Empire’s receiving aid from a superior and civilized Europe, particularly Britain, which had effectively aided development and improved living standards in underdeveloped countries like India and Egypt.149 “It is desirable that the action of Europe in the East should be more equitable and more respect-

147. Sabahaddin, “Merkeziyet ve Adem-i Merkeziyet,” Terakki, 1 April 1906, 10. 148. Ibid., 9–10. 149. Ali Erkul, “Prens Sabahattin,” in Türk Toplumbilimcileri, ed. Emre Kongar (Istanbul: Remzi Kitabevi, 1982), 134.

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ful to human dignity. It is on this condition only that progress and peace may be secured.”150 Another major point of contention with Ottoman positivists was the means by which to overcome despotism. Against the nonactivist stance of the positivists, the liberals advocated putting philosophy into action, and turning the Young Turk movement into an activist, revolutionary organization. To achieve this, Sabahaddin planned a coup d’état to overthrow Abdülhamid II. In this, he sought the help of Great Britain, formed alliances with Armenian separatist groups, and established new organs (komite) in the Balkans and in activist communities like İntikamcı, Yeni Osmanlılar, and İstirdat.151 The dispute between the positivists and the liberals reached its peak at the First Congress of Ottoman Opposition Parties held in Paris in 1902, which led to the gradual decline of the positivists within the movement.152 A further challenge came from militarism. Although the positivist wing of the Young Turks, like their positivist counterparts across the world in the late nineteenth century, rejected militarism because of its fundamentally aggressive, separatist, and activist emphasis, in the early 1900s activism and militarism defeated positivism and this intense struggle over ideas prepared the ground for the 1908 Revolution.

Conclusion Positivist Young Turks pioneered a modern, pluralist worldview that transcended the conventional geographical boundaries between Western and non-Western political thought by underlining the interaction of ideas in a striking and highly consequential way. It bridged East and West by drawing determinedly on the resources of each, which still had relevance in contemporary international politics. The participation of Ahmed Rıza, as president of the Chamber of Deputies, and another prominent positivist, Dr. Rıza Tevfik, as Turkey’s representatives at the First Universal Races Congress, convened in London in 1911 to discuss East-West relations and 150. Sabaheddine, “ ‘The Sultan and the Pan-Islamic Movement,’ Times, 13 August 1906, 6,” in Prens Sabahaddin: Gönüllü Sürgünden Zorunlu Sürgüne, ed. Mehmet Ö. Alkan (Istanbul: Yapı Kredi Yayınları, 2007), 155. 151. M. Şükrü Hanioğlu, “Der Jungtürkenkongress von Paris (1902) und seine Ergebnisse,” Die Welt des Islams 33 (1993): 61–63. 152. On Ahmed Rıza’s side were Hoca Kadri, Khalil Ghanem, Ahmed Ferid, Doctor Nazım, and Mustafa Hamdi. See Hanioğlu, Preparation for a Revolution, 3–4.

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to develop mutual understanding, demonstrated the Young Turks’ international recognition in their own time.153 The positivist, universal project of spiritual union between East and West was to fail in the aftermath of World War I and the successive War of Turkish Independence (1919–22), but its role in shaping the ideological foundations of the early Republic remained substantial. With the Young Turk Revolution of 1908, Young Turk positivists in exile returned to Istanbul and brought their ideas of democracy, republicanism, laicism, and anti-imperialism with them, slowly transforming the terminology of Ottoman politics, and laying the primary intellectual and institutional foundations for the young Republic. 153. “Preface,” in Papers on Inter-Racial Problems Communicated to the First Universal Races Congress Held at the University of London July 26–29, 1911, ed. G. Spiller (London: P.S. King & Son; Boston: World’s Peace Foundation, 1911), v.

ch a p T er F i v e

The Political Thought of the Young Turk Revolution

The you ng Turk revolu Tion oF 1908 had provided a different conception of what politics should mean and how it should operate in the Ottoman Empire, along with a new conception of state and society. Drawing on the political language of the French Third Republic, democracy and liberal republican ideas slowly transformed the terminology and categorization of central issues in Ottoman politics and laid the most salient intellectual and institutional foundations for the young Republic. These transformations in Turkish political thinking and the reasons behind them are still inadequately understood. The revolution opened the Second Constitutional period (1908–18). Its first phase, which covered the period from the revolution until 1913, revitalized the liberal constitutionalism of the Young Ottomans. Political thinking drew heavily upon Montesquieu’s formula for the separation of powers in combination with the ideas of the Third Republic and Ottoman positivism.

Political Activism and Reorganization of the Young Turks The Young Turk Revolution of 1908 was the product of intense and often devastating political struggles. What had caused the revolution and what it meant to the revolutionaries were crucial and intensely political questions for Ottoman intellectuals in the early years of the Second Constitutional period. The institutional key to the most radical aspects of the Young Turks lay in the urban, popular militias of the Ottoman provinces— above all, in the secret Ottoman Freedom Society (OFS), founded in [ 115 ]

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Thessaloniki in 1906. By the efforts of two founding members, Mehmed Talat Bey and Enver Bey, the OFS spread rapidly by recruiting associates in the civilian bureaucracy and the military (primarily the Third Army).1 Revolutionary ideas had begun to appear within the CUP at the turn of the century. Bahaeddin Şakir, a leading CUP activist in opposition to the Young Turk positivists, noted that “to make our nation prosperous by taking our revenge”2 upon Abdülhamid II, the current political system must change by incorporating “revolutionary principles into the evolutionary program.”3 In 1906, Bahaeddin Şakir, Ali Haydar Mithat, and Dr. Nazım drafted a revolutionary program, published in Şûra-yı Ümmet,4 which stressed the need for a more activist organization with a strong central committee. In 1907, the Young Turks had taken up arms in union with the OFS. The formation of this alliance was a pivotal moment for the revolution, which began to take shape shortly after the merger took place. The revolutionaries believed that it was their responsibility to “guide the people in the gaza,”5 and saw themselves as “the eyes of our society and the true lovers of the fatherland.”6 For Ömer Naci, the Empire’s salvation depended on a patriotic sacrifice and a bloody revolution.7 Hüsrev Sami maintained that the army was the only institution capable of carrying out a revolution, and the only tool by which a dreaded foreign intervention could be thwarted:8 Dear comrades in arms! We are the most responsible among the members of the nation. It is we who more than anybody provide protection for this source of tyranny; this soiled and abominable body of a sixtyseven-year-old. . . . The target is appointed! What is needed is only a 1. Among them were Niyazi Bey and Kazım Karabekir, both of whom later became key influential figures during the formation of the Republic. Nader Sohrabi, Revolution and Constitutionalism in the Ottoman Empire and Iran (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 90. 2. Quoted in Hanioğlu, Preparation of Revolution, 185–86. 3. Bahaeddin Şakir, “Osmanlı İttihad ve Terakki Cemiyeti,” Haftalık Şûra-yı Ümmet, no. 203, 1–2. 4. Hey’et-i Merkeziye, “Osmanlı Terakki ve İttihad Cemiyeti Hey’et-i Merkeziyesi’nin Teşkilât-ı Dahiliyesi,” Şûra-yı Ümmet, 1 October 1906, 1. 5. Hüsrev Sami, “Silah Arkadaşlarıma 4,” Şûra-yı Ümmet, 1 December 1907, 1–2. 6. Hüsrev Sami, “Şaşmaz Mısınız?,” Şûra-yı Ümmet, 15 October 1907, 2. See also, Hanioğlu, Preparation for a Revolution, 220. 7. Ömer Naci, “İstanbul Kapularında,” Şûra-yı Ümmet, 15 November 1907, 1. 8. Hüsrev Sami, “Silah Arkadaşlarıma 3,” Şûra-yı Ümmet, 15 November 1907, 1.

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sincere union, a union like a passionate love. Serving at the frontier and in the struggle for freedom are different matters. The former is a duty to the fatherland, but the latter is both a duty to the fatherland and a social duty.9

The second young Turk congress oF 1907 In seeking remedies to the social, economic, and political crisis of the Empire, the CUP convened the Second Young Turk Congress in Paris in 1907 under three principal opposition leaders, Ahmed Rıza, Sabahaddin Bey, and Khachatur Maloumian of the Armenian Dashnaks. Because of the failure of arguments on peaceful means, they agreed to adopt an official revolutionary manifesto.10 Its signatories pledged to defend the constitution to the last drop of their blood; force Abdülhamid II to abdicate the throne; restore the rights of the Ottomans; strive for the establishment of a system of meşveret (“consultation”) and parliamentary government, representing all Ottoman citizens; and protect them from the control of the oppressive Ottoman monarchy.11 Its Articles affirmed the sovereignty of the people, the responsibility of elected representatives to their electors, the absolute right of free speech as the foundation for a free constitution, and the denominationally impartial admission of all citizens to the militia.12 Despite the precedent of France’s revolutions, a revolution in the Empire itself had been thus far avoided. Namık Kemal argued that the chaos and bloodshed of revolution were worse even than severe bureaucratic and sultanic despotism. Ahmed Rıza rejected revolution because of the danger of future disorder and unrest. While stressing their commitment to French revolutionary principles of fraternity, freedom, equality, and justice, like the Ottoman positivists, the new militarized political elite, by contrast, taking up a radical language, saw revolution as the only possible means to 9. “Silah Arkadaşlarıma 2,” Şûra-yı Ümmet, 1 April 1907. Quoted in Hanioğlu, Preparation for a Revolution, 220. 10. A number of methods were recommended: armed resistance, inviting the public to participate in a general uprising, striking, refusing to pay taxes, and propagandizing within the army. “İlk Adım,” Şûra-yı Ümmet, 1 February 1908, 1. 11. “Osmanlı İttihad ve Terakki Cemiyeti: Vesâik-i Tarihiyeden,” Haftalık Şûra-yı Ümmet, 20 January 1910. 12. “Osmanlı Muhalifîn Fırkaları Tarafından Avupa’da İn’ikad Eden Kongre’nin Beyannâmesi,” Şûra-yı Ümmet, nos. 128 and 129, 1 February 1908, 3.

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reestablish order and peace in Ottoman society.13 Yet, at no point did they define themselves as a republican movement.

The Young Turk Revolution of 1908 A few months after the Congress, a revolt broke out in Thessaloniki in response to the Ottoman government’s agreement to meet with Britain and Russia to resolve the Balkan conflict. The revolutionaries saw this as a direct foreign intervention into Ottoman autonomy and, in July a further revolt broke out, which spread rapidly. Imperial troops sent from Anatolia failed to crush the rebellion and, on 23 July 1908, the Thessaloniki-based CUP unilaterally declared the reinstatement of the suspended constitution. Forced by news from the Balkans that military rebels intended to march to Istanbul, Abdülhamid II declared the restoration of the constitution the following day, announced elections to a new parliament, and promised widespread political and social reforms, including individual freedoms and regulation of all government bodies.14 The revolution revitalized the faded political life of the Empire under his despotic rule. When government censorship was lifted and the secret police were banned in 1908, the key issues in contemporary politics changed strongly. Individual and political freedoms expanded, and the possibility for political action was greatly extended. Young Turks and intellectuals exiled in Europe and Russia returned to their country, and brought their ideas to the Empire.15 With the easing of the censorship that had accompanied the Young Turk Revolution, the public sphere expanded rapidly. By 1912, some 134 periodicals had appeared throughout the Empire.16 Most significant among these were the newspapers Şûra-yı Ümmet (Council of the People), which acted as the official newspaper of the CUP; Tanin (Boom, or Buzz), whose editor Hüseyin Cahit was a prominent 13. The CUP adopted a coat of arms engraved with their own adaptation of this French motto. See Hanioğlu, Preparation for a Revolution, 218. 14. Tarık Zafer Tunaya, Türkiye’de Siyasal Partiler: İttihat ve Terakki Bir Çağın, Bir Kuşağın, Bir Partinin Tarihi, vol. 3 (Istanbul: İletişim Yayınları, 2009), 45–47. 15. When Ahmed Rıza returned to Istanbul in 1908, he closed Mechveret. Positivist journals like Ulum-i İktisadiyye ve İçtimaiyye Mecmuası were published in 1908. Leading positivist intellectuals were Ahmed Şuayb, Rıza Tevfik, and Cavid Bey. See Ümit Akca, Sosyolojinin Türkiye’ye Girişi: Ulum-i İktisadiyye ve İçtimaiyye Mecmuası (Istanbul: Doğu Kitabevi, 2013). 16. Selahattin Öztürk, Abdurrahman M. Hacıismailoğlu, and Muhammed Hızarcı, Hakkı Tarık Us Kütüphanesi Kataloğu: Süreli Yayınlar (Istanbul: İstanbul Belediyesi Kültür Müdürlüğü, 2006), 490.

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member of the CUP central committee and its de facto spokesman; and İkdam (Perseverance). The immediate outcome of these developments was the infusion of positivism and French republican thinking into the Ottoman state, the cultivation of a reading public and the rise of an educated intellectual group, informed of and alert to the social and political problems of their country, and thinking critically about its dire shortcomings. The meanings of previously censored concepts like despotism, republic, revolution, rebellion, justice, independence, constitution, parliament, and liberty were freely discussed and deliberated in public speeches and press.17

a real revoluTion or noT? In Ottoman historiography, the term “revolution” is most commonly applied to the events of 1908. Contemporary historians debate whether the Ottomans really experienced revolution or not. From a point of view, it is plausible to think that the 1908 Revolution was not a real revolution, because the events of 1908 neither deposed the sultan, nor caused, to use Dunn’s description of modern revolution, “a form of massive, violent and rapid social change.”18 Rather, the goals which inspired them were idealistic, abstract, optimistic, and humanitarian. Hanioğlu asked “if indeed it could be considered a revolution at all,”19 and wrote that the İkdam issued on 24 July what took place as an “implementation” (icra’at), a “period of implementation and action” (harekat-ı inkılâbiye).20 Even the term inkılâb did not specifically denote revolution, but merely radical transformation.21 To judge whether it is right to view it as a revolution, it is necessary to grasp how the Ottomans themselves saw the events of 1908, and what kind of a new political system and society they imagined for themselves. Bahaeddin Şakir believed that the achievements and ideals of the “Ottoman Great Revolution” (Osmanlı İnkılâb-ı Kebîri) were as important as the other two great “July events” (Temmuz İntikılâbâtı), the American and French Revolutions.22 In Ottoman political language, inkılâb referred to 17. Campos, Ottoman Brothers, 33–34. 18. John Dunn, Modern Revolutions: An Introduction to the Analysis of a Political Phenomenon (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 12. 19. M. Şükrü Hanioğlu, “The Second Constitutional Period, 1908–1918,” in The Cambridge History of Turkey (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 65. 20. Ibid. See also, “Tebligât-ı resmiye,” İkdam, 24 July 1908, 1. 21. Ibid. 22. Private Papers of Dr. Bahaeddin Şakir, “Temmuz İntikılâbât ve İhtilâlâtı ve Osmanlı

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“a radical transformation” and was used as a synonym of the term revolusyon (“revolution”). Zöhrap Bey (delegate for Istanbul) stated in his parliamentary speech that the events of 1908 were “a revolution (revolusyon), not an evolution (evolusyon).”23 Similarly, Ruhi al-Khalidi (delegate for Jerusalem who later became deputy to the head of the parliament) argued that the events of 1908 constituted a legitimate revolution (inkılâb) rather than a disobedient revolt (thawra). Whereas a revolt was “insubordination and a departure from obedience and upholding the legitimate government,” a revolution “advances the nation a step toward progress and climbs a rung on the ladder of prosperity.”24 For a revolution to be real, there need not necessarily be massacres or bloodshed. A true revolution was not merely a political change but a transformation of values, customs, thoughts, and political language.

The “new” versus The “old” poliTical order In disputing the significance of the revolution and its proper course, Ottoman intellectuals drew on a vocabulary largely taken from the French Revolution. Like French revolutionaries, they named the system they abolished or changed the “old regime” (eski yönetim). Ahmed Rıza, who became the head of deputies upon his return to Istanbul, claimed in his first parliamentary speech that “the old regime” belonged to “the era (hal) prior to the 10th of July.”25 In naming the old regime, the Ottomans stressed that they wished to create a complete break with the past. The Cairene newspaper Al-Manar (The Lighthouse) insisted that “the difference between the past and present is like the difference between night and day, or darkness and light, or justice and injustice, or knowledge and ignorance, or strength and weakness.”26 “New versus old” was not the only dichotomy used in the revolutionary period. There was also broad reference to images of “healthy versus sick,” “light versus dark,” “good versus İnkılâb-ı Kebîri.” See Hanioğlu, Preparation for a Revolution, 134. It was read at the first postrevolutionary congress of the Committee of Union and Progress in October–November 1908. 23. Zöhrap Bey, Meclisi Mebusan Zabıt Ceridesi, 1. devre (period), 3. içtima senesi (term) (Ankara: TBMM Basımevi, [1908] 1982), 1134. 24. Quoted in Campos, Ottoman Brothers, 46. 25. In the Rumi Calendar, 10th of July refers to the 24th of July of the Miladi Calendar, the day of the Revolution. Ahmed Rıza, Meclisi Mebusan Zabıt Ceridesi, 1. devre (period), 1. içtima senesi (term) (Ankara: TBMM Basımevi, [1908] 1982), 52. 26. “Holiday of the Ottoman Nation,” Al-Manar, 28 July 1908. Quoted in Campos, Ottoman Brothers, 36.

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evil,” and “happy versus unhappy,” all stressing a dramatic rupture with and inversion of the past. By leaving the despotic regime behind, reestablishing the constitution, and relaunching parliament, the Ottomans thought of the postrevolutionary era potentially as a prelude to decisive innovation, a creation of something truly new. The revolution was destructive in the sense that it ended an era, inaugurating a more rational form of sociopolitical order than had hitherto existed. The Ottoman revolutionary elite viewed the constitution as the most visible and symbolic manifestation of a people’s determination to devise a new political order (yeni düzen) where justice, popular sovereignty, political and social progress, and constitutionalism were closely associated and mutually supported one another.27

consTiTuTionalism, progress, and sovereignTy: FoundaTions oF a new poliTy For the Ottoman revolutionary elite, a revolution was a necessary precondition for progress and movement toward the heights of civilization. The term “civilization,” like its nineteenth-century usage, continued to signify the improvement of the Ottoman nation to rationalize human needs and design a better world order. A civilized order was achieved in and represented by Europe, above all by France. Hüseyin Cahit argued that the sources of European civilization28 did not merely lie in Europeans’ rationality or morality but also in their extraordinary progress in arts and sciences, and political institutions.29 To reach the level of the civilized nations to ensure a better and more just future, the Ottomans must benefit from the political experiences of the West and learn how an orderly society and a civilized nation are governed.30 The effort to reform the Ottoman constitutional monarchy into a modern and civilized form of government took shape amid long and heated National Assembly debates. In a debate with Ahmet Ferit Bey (deputy for Kütahya), Babanzade İsmail Hakkı Bey (deputy for Baghdad) expressed his admiration for the French constitutional republican model. “Would Europe have reached the level of civilization today, if they [the French revolutionaries] had not existed? . . . Their theories made Europe a para27. Hüseyin Cahit, “Taşralarda Adalet,” Tanin, 6 July 1909, 1. 28. Hüseyin Cahit, “Avrupa Seyahatleri,” Tanin, 15 May 1910, 1. 29. Hüseyin Cahit, “Avrupada Tahsil,” Tanin, 16 January 1910, 1. 30. Hüseyin Cahit, “Maarif Islahat,” Tanin, 17 September 1908, 1; “Memurinin Terfii ve Tayini,” Tanin, 25 February 1911, 1.

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dise. Based on these, we should also bring a constitutional system into our country.”31 A crucial response came from Talat Bey (deputy for Ankara), who argued that current European models should not be simply copied, but seen as one source of inspiration for the Ottoman constitution: “Our constitutional government (meşrutiyet) is a constitutional government based on the Shari`a (meşrutiyet-i şer’iye), [and it is] a legal constitutional government (meşrutiyeti meşrua). We will not surrender to Europe. We will adopt a type of constitutional government that suits our peculiar Shari’a principles (şeriat-ı mütahhar-ı İslâmiye).”32 The most coherent analysis of constitutional arrangements was advocated by Hüseyin Cahit (deputy for Istanbul), in a series of articles published in Tanin. The Constitution of 1876 must be restored because “it was insufficient to grant secure and imprescriptible liberty.”33 To secure the new regime, there must be new regulations and laws suiting “the present spirit of the people” (halkın ahval-i ruhiyesi).34 “The good or vices of a political regime are not absolute but relative.”35 He defined the good of a nation by “its need, benefits, progress, and the level of conformity (derece-i tevafuk).”36 Like Talat Bey, Hüseyin Cahit argued that in restoring the constitution, current European models must be looked to for inspiration but not copied fully, because a universal type of constitution cannot apply to all nations.37 Echoing Namık Kemal’s and Ziya Paşa’s conception of the spirit of the laws, he claimed that the laws must be revised according to the “spirit of a state,”38 embodying “distinctive customs, races, ways of administration and civilization, and different climates.”39 Of all European constitutional models, Hüseyin Cahit favored the French republican model and the flexibility of its laws and centralized system of government as the most suitable to Ottoman customs.40 In his “Türkler ve Fransızlar” (Turks and French), he insisted that “the Turks and French are the same in essence” because they share “common moral values

31. Meclisi Mebusan Zabıt Ceridesi, 1. devre, 3. içtima senesi, 1194–98. 32. Ibid., 1323. 33. Hüseyin Cahit, “Avrupa Seyahatleri,” 1. 34. Hüseyin Cahit, “İntihabat,” Tanin, 8 August 1908, 1; “Yapılacak Kanunlar,” Tanin, 16 September 1908, 1. 35. Hüseyin Cahit, “Adem-i Merkeziyet,” Tanin, 4 September 1908, 1. 36. Ibid. 37. Hüseyin Cahit, “Heyet-i Vükelayi Nasıl Teşkil Etmeli?,” Tanin, 28 November 1910, 1. 38. Hüseyin Cahit, “Memurınde İnzibat,” Tanin, 8 February 1909, 1. 39. Hüseyin Cahit, “Müsteşarlar Meselesi,” Tanin, 19 May 1909, 1. 40. Hüseyin Cahit, “Adem-i Merkeziyet,” 1.

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and aspirations, leading them towards the same path and goals.”41 Like his predecessor Ahmed Rıza, whom he greatly admired, he valued republican principles and ideas, but did not mention a transition from a monarchy to a republic in his early writings. During the foundation years of the Republic, he was to become a leading republican, who strongly opposed Kemalist authoritarianism.

consTiTuTional modiFicaTions and The separaTion oF powers The new regime faced severe opposition and threat from within. After the unsuccessful counter-revolutionary attempt by İttihad-ı Muhammedi (Muhammedan Union) against the CUP on 31 March 1909 to reinstate the Shari’a, Abdülhamid II was deposed and replaced by Mehmed V,42 which completed the political revolution, and created a new balance of power in Ottoman politics. After lengthy constitutional debates, the deputies reached a decision to restore the existing constitutional order, and construct it with modifications to certain articles of the Constitution of 1876. The amendments were prepared by a commission (Encümen-i Mahsûs) and passed by parliament in August 1909.43 The constitution had a sharper expression of the separation of powers, as previously envisioned by Namık Kemal, to prevent concentration of power in the executive and falling back into the injustices and vicissitudes of the old regime. Its arrangements included a weaker executive authority in the person of the sultan and a divided legislative power, shared between the sultan, a senate (Meclis-i Âyan) with members chosen for life, a stronger elected house of representatives (Meclis-i Mebusan), and an independent judiciary to restrain legislative will. To contain despotism, Article 54 was amended to preclude an absolute royal veto for the sultan. According to the amended Article 3, the sultan could not dissolve the parliament and suspend the constitution on his own arbitrary will. Parliament could be dissolved only if the cabinet lost a vote of confidence and, in the event of dissolution, elections must take place within three months. Legislation and the conclusion of treaties became the prerogative of the 41. Hüseyin Cahit, “Türkler ve Fransızlar,” Tanin, 11 September 1908, 1. 42. On the 31 March Rebellion, see especially İsmail Hami Danişmend, 31 Mart Vak’ası (Istanbul: Kitabevi, 1986). 43. Burhan Gürdoğan, “İkinci Meşrutiyet Devrinde Anayasa Değişiklikleri,” Ankara Üniversitesi Hukuk Fakültesi Dergisi 16, nos. 1–4 (1959): 91.

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parliament. Articles 27 and 30 reduced the authority of the sultan and the grand vizier. All ministers, governors, and members of the Council of State were to be chosen by the grand vizier, with the sultan’s assent, and all lower bureaucrats were to be appointed by the responsible ministers and governors in a similar way, with promotions and dismissals still subject to confirmation at higher levels. With these provisions, the sultan had the right to appoint only the grand vizier and the Şeyhülislam,44 and was reduced to a symbolic figure, and no more than a further representative of the nation. National Sovereignty (Hâkimiyet-i Milliye) and Sovereign Nation (Millet-i Hâkime) The shift from sultanic toward popular sovereignty was one of the most enduring commitments with which the CUP endowed the revolution. To express this shift, the Ottoman intellectuals coined a new term, hâkimiyet-i milliye (“national sovereignty”), in contrast with hâkimiyet-i mutlaka (“absolute sovereignty”):45 “National sovereignty means the selfgovernance of a nation. . . . Whatever the type of government of a nation, it is based on national sovereignty. A person or a group of persons can never govern a nation composed of millions of individuals.”46 In contrast to Comtean positivism, which disavowed the parliamentary system as founded on a metaphysical doctrine of popular sovereignty,47 the CUP saw national sovereignty as collective or popular, and held that it must be bound by the principles of majority rule, representation and, in Zögrap Efendi’s words, “criticism and deliberation.”48 National sovereignty was a source of law, hâkimiyet-i kanuniyye (“the sovereign law”).49 “A constitutional rule,” Hüseyin Cahit wrote, “means the unification of the nation (milletin tevhidi).” In a constitutional system, “the nation is the sovereign,”50 and has the ultimate authority to make 44. Filiz Karaca, Osmanlı Anayasası, Kânûn-ı Esâsî (Istanbul: Doğu Yayınları, 2009), 27–28. 45. As examples of the dispute between these two types of sovereignty, Şûra-yı Ümmet gave Russian and Ottoman Empires. “Kânûn-ı Esâsî Tadili,” Şûra-yı Ümmet, 23 February 1909, 3. 46. Zeynizade Mehmet Hazık, Malûmât-ı Medeniye ve Ahlakiye (Istanbul: Kasbar Matbaası, 1328 [1910/11]), 27. 47. Jones, The French State in Question, 27. 48. Zöhrap Bey, Meclisi Mebusan Zabıt Ceridesi, 1134. 49. “Kânûn-ı Esâsî Tadili,” 3. 50. Hüseyin Cahit, “Şanlı İttihat ve Terakki Cemiyeti’nin Siyasi Programı,” Tanin, 24 September 1908, 1.

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decisions and settle disputes. “The Constitution is the code of laws showing that the sovereign (hükümran) in a country is the nation.”51 The highest political power vested in the people, not in the sultan, but the people could not set itself above the law. This view accorded a virtually sacred status to the constitution. To assert that the nation was the ultimate source of sovereignty was not necessarily to say that the nation must exercise sovereignty directly or immediately. Rather, it implied a less demanding conception of sovereignty. Representative government was seen as a device adopted in place of direct democracy to compensate for the impossibility of assembling the large numbers of the Empire’s people in a single place. The representatives, Hüseyin Cahit wrote, “are directly responsible to their constituents” and “the ministers are directly responsible to the parliament.”52 One of the primary duties of the parliament, Ahmed Rıza contended, was “to work for the establishment of national sovereignty and serve to increase the executive power of the government, which acts as the servant to safeguard law and national interests.”53 Another important constitutional debate concerned the need to balance the interests of the diverse ethnic and religious groups of the Empire. The issue of what range of interests existed within the polity, and which of those interests must be represented, provoked bitter debates. In his “Millet-i Hâkime” (Sovereign Nation), published before the elections, Hüseyin Cahit expressed his concerns over the introduction of the system of universal representation. Pointing to the dangers posed by the separatist demands of the Rums and Bulgarians, he argued that if more non-Muslims were represented in the parliament, it would fail to serve the common interests of national sovereignty.54 As “the sovereign nation is the Turks and will belong to them,”55 they had the right to demand greater representation. “They are the founders of the Ottoman nation” and had served for centuries for the common good of all the nations in the Empire. To avoid losing a dominant share of representation to the non-Muslims in parliament, he urged the Turkish people vehemently to participate in elections, because “to gain the majority in the parliament is a matter of life and death for the Turkish people.”56 51. Ibid. 52. Ibid. 53. Ahmed Rıza, Meclisi Mebusan Zabıt Ceridesi, 1152. 54. Hüseyin Cahit, “Millet-i Hâkime,” Tanin, 27 September 1908, 1. 55. Ibid. 56. Ibid.

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In response to Hüseyin Cahit, Rıza Nur (deputy for Sinop) argued that the dispute over the millet-i hâkime was utter nonsense. For centuries, Muslim Turks had perceived the Christians as aliens to their land, and this had led the latter to develop separatist feelings and rely on foreign powers for support. Their mutual enmity changed with the revolutionary sentiments of brotherhood, unity, and fraternity. In this optimistic atmosphere, raising dispute over the concept of millet-i hâkime would only trigger more distrust, unrest, and anxiety, ruining the revolutionary efforts.57 The debate on representation ended with the Muslim-Turks majority in the parliament in the 1909 elections. The concepts of hâkimiyet-i milliye and millet-i hâkime were to become central to republican thinking in 1920s.

The New Vision of the Ottoman State and the Impact of French Republicanism: Liberty, Equality, Justice, and Fraternity After its victory in the parliamentary elections, the CUP became the new elite. They saw themselves as the founders of the new regime and rescuers of Ottoman society from despotism, and sought to ensure a strong centralized state.58 The state was seen as a product of the contract between the rulers and the ruled, defining mutual rights, duties, and responsibilities toward each other. This was a contract in which the people promised obedience to the ruler, who in turn guaranteed their security and enjoyment of their rights. It was based on mutual trust and responsibilities between the two parties, and a failure to fulfill these responsibilities would break the contract: “If the transgression comes from the government it is called despotism, and if it comes from the people, it is called stagnation.”59 The contractarian notion of state echoed Namık Kemal’s and Ahmed Rıza’s conceptions of the state. Its presence was maintained through the presupposition that the state was the guardian of the long-term interests of the nation. Hüseyin Cahit defined the state’s essential vocation as ensuring “security and discipline[,] because if the state fails to provide security for its citizens, give trust, and make felt the presence of its existence, there will remain neither social community nor the state.”60 With the model of France in mind, like Ahmed Rıza, he wrote, “the more powerful the state 57. Rıza Nur, Siyasî Risaleler (Istanbul: Şehir Yayınevi, 2005), 22–24. 58. Hüseyin Cahit, “Vezaif-i Hükümete Müdahale,” Tanin, 15 August 1908, 1. 59. “Eşitlik,” Şûra-yı Ümmet, 16 November 1908, 3. 60. Hüseyin Cahit, “Beşikaş Vaka-i Elimesi,” Tanin, 16 October 1908, 1.

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is, the easier it becomes to apply the principles of justice (adalet), freedom (hürriyet), fraternity (uhuvvet), and equality (müsavat).”61 He envisioned a state committed to French republican ideas, expressed in the hope of seeing “Turkey as the France in the East,”62 and committed to the attempt to “gallicize” Turkey. Yet though the Ottoman State adopted republican ideals, it remained institutionally a constitutional monarchy. To understand the categories through which Ottoman intellectuals imagined the state, it is necessary to grasp how the concepts of liberty, equality, justice, and fraternity were understood.

liberTy (Hürrİyet) Liberty was the principal value of the Ottoman state. The Revolution of 1908 was seen as a victory for liberty over the evil and ruthlessness of the old regime, which had been expressed in a proliferation of kinds of servitude. The proclamation of the constitution was celebrated as the İlân-ı Hürriyet (Declaration of Liberty), Enver and Niyazi as “the heroes of the revolution,”63 and the new period as a whole dubbed devr-i hürriyet (the era of liberty). Newspapers, parliamentary speeches, and books were full of expressions praising liberty as the ultimate goal of the constitution, not merely the protection of individual liberty from arbitrary power but the effort to help it flourish within a constitutional regime.64 Liberty consisted of the faculty of allowing man to direct and organize himself, be his own master, and not the property of someone else. Echoing Namık Kemal, Hüseyin Cahit wrote, “Liberty is the most essential right of a man.”65 He amplified this definition of liberty as including the freedom of each person to think, speak, and work freely, and make use of the fruits of his labor. It was not the right of a person to do whatever he wanted.66 Similarly, Dr. Hazık, who was commissioned by the Ministry of Public Instruction to write a civic catechism for the new regime, wrote in his Malûmât-ı Medeniye ve Ahlakiye (Knowledge of Civilization and Moral61. Hüseyin Cahit, “Memleketin Ahval-i Umumiyesi,” ibid., 18 October 1908, 1. 62. Hüseyin Cahit, “Türkler ve Fransızlar,” 1. 63. Falih Rıfkı Atay, Batış Yılları (Istanbul: Bateş, 1963), 32. 64. Fatma Müge Göçek, The Transformation of Turkey: Redefining State and Society from the Ottoman Empire to the Modern Era (London and New York: I. B. Tauris, 2011), 72–78. See especially Palmira Brummett, Image and Imperialism in the Ottoman Revolutionary Press, 1908–1911, (New York: SUNY, 2000). 65. Hüseyin Cahit, “İttihat ve Hürriyet,” Tanin, 1 February 1908, 1. 66. Hüseyin Cahit, “Memurınde İnzibat,” 1.

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ity) that liberty was not the right to do whatever one wishes to do, but “the moral right to be protected.”67 Its basic definition was “not to do something to others that a man does not wish to happen to himself either.”68 He distinguished between two types of liberty: “natural liberty” (hürriyet-i tabiiye) and “individual and civil liberties” (kişisel ve toplumsal özgürlükler). The former referred to the “freedom to act within the laws, already existing in nature.”69 It was decomposed further in two parts. “Maddi” (material) liberty was a person’s basic freedom to do the things that he wanted under the natural law, driven by survival needs like eating and drinking, while “manevi” (moral) liberty was “the liberty of conscience, the liberty of speech, the liberty to write and to publish.”70 “Individual and civil liberties” consisted of “the collection of the liberties individuals in a society enjoy in that political or civil society under the protection of its law.”71 These were divided further into “civil liberty” (hürriyet-i medeniye, the right not to be accused, arrested or detained without proper authority), “religious liberty” (hürriyet-i diniye, the right to practice one’s faith freely), and “political liberty” (hürriyet-i siyasi, the right of the citizen to obey only those laws authorized by his representatives and pay only those taxes to which he had consented).72 Hüseyin Cahit believed that there must be limits to liberty because too much freedom threatens the authority of the state, increasing the level of public disobedience to the laws. Liberty did not suggest the absence of law. It was only arbitrary domination that limited individual liberty, the act of obeying a law to which you have given your consent is entirely consistent with freedom. “In a modern political system, there is only obedience to the law, not to an individual.”73 He defined law in a Rousseauian sense as “an obligation that people establish through their free will (ihtiyar) and agreement.”74 What he called “free will and agreement” was shared will, which would embody the common good of the society, rather than the benefit (or will) of any particular person or an arbitrary will. Echoing Montesquieu, Hüseyin Cahit wrote, “people can only be free if they live under just laws and obey them.”75 A system of law imposed constraints on 67. Hazık, Malûmât-ı Medeniye ve Ahlakiye, 110. 68. Ibid. 69. Ibid., 101. 70. Ibid. 71. Ibid. 72. Ibid., 101–2. 73. Hüseyin Cahit, “İttihat ve Hürriyet,” 1. 74. Ibid. 75. Ibid.

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people but law did not comprise freedom, but rather placed conditions on it. The law protected people from all forms of personal dependence, ensuring the functioning and control of the political apparatus and rendering legitimate civil engagements, without which the people would fall back into despotism. To secure liberty from arbitrary power, he suggested establishing properly constituted institutions and distinctive ideals in a resilient manner, embracing the values of “public welfare” (selamet-i umumiye) or the “welfare of the nation” (selamet-i vatan).76 These features of liberty allowed individuals to determine which ends they would pursue without being constrained by an arbitrary will. They did not require individuals to participate actively in politics to realize their freedom. The state should rely upon a legalistic definition of liberty as “the power to do everything that does not harm others: everything that does not infringe upon the rights of others.”77 The duty of the state was to respect and protect the liberties of all citizens. While arguing against state interference with freedom of thought, discussion, and action, Hazık saw suicide and murder as instances in which free will had harmful effects and might therefore be legitimately restricted. In such cases, the state must have the positive right to interfere with an individual’s freedom of action with the aim of “helping those to improve their bad habits”78 and protecting its members from behavior that might damage their interests.

equaliTy (müSaVat) Equality was the necessary corollary of liberty. The new regime aimed to create a nation of equal citizens subject to a set of laws common to all. Article 8 defined “the Ottoman” (Osmanlı) as the “whole of the people, regardless of their religion or creed, subject to the Ottoman State,” and Article 17 defined the law as the same for all: “all Ottomans . . . are equal before the law in terms of their rights and duties.” A tangible expression of equality was found in Articles 18 and 19, stating that access to public office required knowledge of Turkish, “the official language of the State.” Unlike the rights to liberty, security, resistance to oppression, and property (Articles 9, 10, and 21), these laws did not list equality among the natural and inalienable rights of man.79 Civil equality did not entail political equality, 76. Hüseyin Cahit, “Cemiyet-i Matbuat-ı Osmaniye,” Tanin, 12 September 1908, 1. 77. Hazık, Malûmât-ı Medeniye ve Ahlakiye, 101. 78. Ibid. 79. “7 Zilhicce 1293 Tarihli Kanunu Esasinin Bazı Mevaddı Muaddelesine Dair Kanun.” Düstur, İkinci Tertip, vol. 1, 638–44.

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which was to be achieved only by and through the law. These principles became part of the heritage of constitutionalism and appeared later in Turkish Republican constitutions. The meaning of equality was widely discussed in the Ottoman press. “Eşitlik” (Equality) stated that equality was necessarily “the principal blessing every civilized state has to provide to its people.”80 It was a value that had no presence in nature but must be attained by the people and safeguarded by the state. This concept was highly controversial or even paradoxical. Natural inequality was legal and acceptable and resulted from creation, race, nations, societies, and appearance, strength, and mental capacity between individuals. But the human mind (akl-ı beşer) tended to deny this inequality, because everyone wished for himself riches, honor, power and authority to progress and gain status in society.81 Because of this conflict, it was hard to create laws to overcome social inequality while satisfying the demands of the human mind. Equality required everyone be given the same entitlements or treated identically in some specified way. All civilized nations must safeguard the equal treatment of citizens because “the real equality is legal equality.”82 Thus, the provision of equal rights must be a first principle of the Ottoman state because this was a primary condition for the nation to progress. The right to equality would encourage everyone to work, gain wealth, and promote the good of the society. Yet, the attainment of civil equality did not require the imposition of economic equality. Another important article on the concept of equality, “Müsavat” (Equality), was published in İkdam by Babanzade İsmail Hakkı. In seeking a clear meaning, he traced the roots of equality in ancient Greek political thought. Equality, as he saw it, did not acquire a significant meaning until Rousseau’s discussion of the foundation and character of equality and inequality, in his Discourse on Inequality and The Social Contract. With the French Revolution, the term expanded to mean “no more privileges, no more distinctions, no more castes, and no more classes,” and became central to political discussions.83 The concept of equality presented pressing questions: equal to whom, to what, and in what respect? Drawing on Rousseau’s terminology of natural inequality, he stated that men are not born equal in their capacity for achievement, physical and mental 80. “Eşitlik,” Sura-yı Ümmet, 16 Novemeber 1908, 2. 81. Ibid. 82. Ibid., 3. 83. İsmail Hakkı, “Müsavat,” İkdam, 15 August 1908, 2.

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strength, moral virility, luck and talents. Although this natural inequality would not be overcome, “men must be legally equal to each other.”84 What equality entailed should not be limited to equality before the law, but apply to civil, political, and moral equality. İsmail Hakkı’s analysis of equality conveyed the importance of democratic citizenship. It demanded that each Ottoman citizen be equally ensured of the right of inheritance from father to son, the right to equal taxation, taxation, and a set of basic rights. Freedom of expression and faith should be ensured, and all should share the right to vote and the right to equal protection by the law. The latter provision was construed as forbidding laws that assigned benefits or burdens in ways that discriminate arbitrarily on the basis of factors such as race, creed, gender, sexual orientation, and ethnicity. Everyone should be granted the right not to suffer imprisonment or deprivation at the hands of the state without due process of law. Echoing Sieyès, İsmail Hakkı stressed the supremacy of equality because it was impossible to define the nation except as an association of individuals possessing equal rights, a condition without which the Ottoman nation could not be regarded as one and indivisible. Treating people equally meant applying the relevant rules to people in a fair way. Therefore, “equality is another form of justice.”85

JusTice (adalet) Justice was understood as rendering to each person what was due to him. The essential question was to determine what was owed to each and why and how this could best be rendered to him. Since the foundation of the Ottoman state, justice had been one of the primary qualities of a good political order, and central to Ottoman political language. In classical Ottoman thought, justice was understood as the matter of correctly ordering the segments of society, and considered as a political virtue. In the new revolutionary language, there was a significant shift from this traditional understanding of justice, which had associated it with the sultan as the distributer of rights and the source of just law and the reaya as the rightholders. In this respect, Nader Sohrabi’s claim that the Young Turks, “expressed [justice] in the medieval sense of the ‘Circle of Justice’ [and it] was clearly present still”86 is misleading. 84. Ibid. 85. Ibid. 86. Sohrabi, Revolution and Constitutionalism, 128.

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For the Young Turks, the notion of injustice belonged to the past, the era of the arbitrary rule of the despot. Seeing justice as “a need for which we [the Ottomans] have been yearning for centuries,”87 Hüseyin Cahit’s hope for the new regime (yeni idare) was the establishment of just rule: “If a nation is not ruled with the power of justice, it [the government] will only spread fear to the hearts of people. However, we wish to see our new government attached to love, not to fear. The only means for a government to be loved by the people is to provide justice.”88 He saw constitutional government as a political procedure, designed to provide higher-order security for basic rights. The source of law no longer lay in the will of the sultan but in the people, and there was no higher authority than the law. The notion of justice suggested both respect for the law made by the representatives of the people and the existence of established rights in the new political order.89 In determining what justice required, a close connection between justice and the law was drawn: being just entailed being law- abiding. In Malûmât-ı Medeniye ve Ahlakiye, Hazık defined two types of laws: “natural” (hukuk-ı tabii) and “social or positive” law (hukuk-ı mevzua or ictimaiye).90 At the heart of the natural law was the belief that beyond (and more fundamental than) positive law there was a natural “fitness of things.” He defined it as the “totality of the laws that men possess by birth.”91 The source of the law was not God-given. Rather, he defined law in the Ciceronian sense as being in agreement with Nature; it is of universal application, unchanging and ever-lasting. This law cannot be altered. Fundamental rights existed as basic discoverable truths that exist in the world of nature. As in his conception of liberties, these rights existed in two forms: “material” (maddi) and “moral” (manevi) rights. The former covered those basic or essential areas of one’s life associated with survival. From these he extrapolated moral rights, referring to the collection of natural laws (kavanin-i tabiiye) that man possesses in the form of moral, mental (fikren) and spiritual (ruhen) rights.92 Liberty rights demanded an individual not be interfered with or subjected to another’s directions or control, and it was the foremost type of rights. 87. Hüseyin Cahit, “Taşralarda Adalet.” 88. Ibid. 89. Hüseyin Cahit, “Memleketin Ahval-i Umumiyesi,” 1. 90. Hazık, Malûmât-ı Medeniye ve Ahlakiye, 92. 91. Ibid. 92. Ibid., 93.

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The second category of laws that Hazık set out drew a distinction between positive or social laws (hukuk-i mevzua or ictimaiye), grounded in natural law, and public law. Public law, in contrast, to natural and social/ positive law, defined and constituted the existence of the state and the rights that citizens could vindicate against the state or the state against the citizen. It had three constituents: civil law (hukuk-i medeniye), political law (hukuk-i siyasi), and religious law (hukuk-i diniye). These laws were the most basic and decisive for the shape and organization of a society. Hazık commented that if laws were grounded on “superstitious laws,” it would lead to the destruction of a society, as had occurred with the Inquisition. Therefore, even “religious laws must be based on and respond to positive needs.”93 To secure a system of just rule, these secular principles must be clearly understood and accepted. Feminism The debates on equality and justice for all citizens regardless of gender were initially framed as a fundamental aspect of the debate over feminism (feminizm).94 Debates over what feminism was and how to understand it were pursued in the press; in women’s periodicals like Kadın, Mehasın, and Demet; and clubs, associations, and the affiliated women’s section of the CUP. Many intellectuals, like Baha Tevfik and Yusuf Osman, looked to feminist movements in England and France to explain what feminism meant for a society.95 Ottoman feminists were neither radical nor anarchist, but reformist.96 Their basic formula appeared in Abdullah Cevdet’s article, “İcmâl- i Mukadderât-ı Nisâ” (Summary of Women’s Destiny): “Feminism is inclined to and aimed at equality between men and women before the law. It can only be legitimate and durable if there is equality in duties.”97 Similarly, A. Ulvî stated that feminism concerned “the acceptance and right of 93. Ibid., 94. 94. Rabia Ahmed, “ ‘Musâhabe-i Nisâiyye: Fatma Seniye Hanımefendi’ye,’ Kadın, 14 January 1908 “ in Yeni Harflerle Kadın: II.Meşrutiyet Döneminde Bir Jön Türk Dergisi (1908–1909), ed. Fatma Kılıç Denman (Istanbul: Kadın Eserleri Kütüphanesi ve Bilgi Merkezi Vakfı, 2010), 184. 95. Baha Tevfik, “ ‘Fransa’da Kadının Hukuk-ı Siyâsiyyesi,’ Kadın, 3 February 1909,” in ibid., 292–95; “ ‘Fransa’da Kanûn-i Medenî Önünde Kadınlar,’ Kadın, 14 January 1908 “ in ibid., 183–85; Yusuf Osman, “ ‘Kadınlar Hakkında,’ Kadın, 17 May 1909,” in ibid., 535–37. 96. For different motives of first-wave feminism, see Susan James, “Feminism,” in The Cambridge History of Twentieth-Century Political Thought, ed. Terence Ball and Richard Bellamy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003). 97. Abdullah Cevdet, “ ‘İcmâl-i Mukadderât-ı Nisâ,’ Kadın, 8 January 1909,” in Yeni

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entrance to all occupations and professions available for men.”98 This meant removing all injustices women faced and extending equality to women. In seeking a solution to injustice and inequality between genders, Ottoman feminists sought to diagnose the roots of this problem in society. Moiz Levi saw it in the lack of legislation,99 while Nigâr bint-i Osmân identified more extensive forms of subordination, originating in the centuries-old Ottoman patriarchal system. By demanding justice and equality, she challenged both the deeply embedded assumptions that women were incapable of conforming to the norms of governance in the political realm and the workplace, and that they were a commodity within the household.100 Emphasis on the nature of women’s disadvantages, Abdullah Cevdet thought, was relatively unimportant in identifying the systematic social causes behind it. How the disadvantages came about could be separated from what should be done to put matters right. These injustices were not to be cured through the positive intervention of a strong state. Their real solution lay in reforming marriage and property law, educating women, and changing the attitudes of men.101 Equality between women and men operated for two practical reasons. As in France, Ottoman women were seen as a potential source of support for revolutionary programs, and the press mobilized them in support of the constitutional regime:102 “Let’s rejoice, let’s celebrate, and let’s come and pledge whole-heartedly: In the name of God, we swear that we should sacrifice our lives for the everlasting endurance of the Constitution and the parliament.”103 The immense support of Ottoman women for the constitutional regime was celebrated with joy: “Long live honorable women! . . . Today it is understood that our women, who had hitherto not been considered seriously, are the mothers of our nation (vâlide-i vatan) with Harflerle Kadın: II.Meşrutiyet Döneminde Bir Jön Türk Dergisi (1908–1909), ed. Fatma Kılıç Denman (Istanbul: Kadın Eserleri Kütüphanesi ve Bilgi Merkezi Vakfı, 2010), 328. 98. A. Ulvî, “ ‘Yunan ve Roma Medeniyetinde Kadın [2],’ Kadın, 21 December 1908,” in ibid., 199. 99. Moiz Levi, “ ‘Mukayese-i Hukuk-ı Nisvân,’ Kadın, 18 January 1910,” in ibid., 277. 100. Nigâr bint-i Osmân, “ ‘Kadın’a Dair,’ Kadın, 23 November 1908,” in ibid., 121. 101. Abdullah Cevdet, “ ‘İcmâl-i Mukadderât-ı Nisâ,’ 8 January 1909,” in ibid., 328. 102. James T. Lehning, To Be a Citizen: The Political Culture of the Early French Third Republic (Ithaca, NY, and London: Cornell University Press, 2001), 95. 103. Quoted in Ayfer Karakaya-Stump, “Debating Progress in a ‘Serious Newspaper for Muslim Women’: The Periodical Kadın of the Post-Revolutionary Salonica, 1908–1909,” British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, no. 2 (2003): 161.

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sublime sentiment.”104 This image of womanhood was to develop later into the image of Turkish republican motherhood.105 Ottoman feminists had a strong conviction that women’s suffrage was an essential step toward the moral improvement and intellectual development of Ottoman society. Mehmed Câvid stated boldly that “neglecting you [women] is neglecting one half of the value of a nation and disregarding the concern of the future.”106 In similar terms, Müfide Ferid insisted that the progress of Ottoman society required everyone, especially women, to be freed from the assigned social roles into which they were born and given opportunities to develop their talents and pursue their desires in participating in Ottoman political life. “Progress would be only promoted with the emancipation of women and equality between sexes (cins).”107 Equality between men and women was seen as a symbol of civilization. As A. Senî claimed, “The more advanced people are in their civilization, the more they respect human rights (hukuk-ı insâniyyet) and the equality of their women.”108 Baha Tevfik, too, wrote that “It is a necessity for every civilized individual to see women and men of the community at the same level and capacity,”109 and admired republican regimes for their ability to treat their citizens equally.110 The Ottoman political system must change incrementally to institute civil and political rights for women. This would give them greater independence and freedom, allowing them to participate in civil and political life on an equal footing with men, for the benefit of the community as a whole. The conservatives, however, feared the potential social upheaval that might follow from female emancipation, and were anxious about the demands for female sexual freedom that might stem from copying European movements and entirely corrupt Ottoman cultural values and habits and “misguide the morality of the nation.”111Although feminism presented 104. “Kadınlarımızdaki Hamaset-i Vatanperverâne,” İkdam, 28 July 1908, 2. 105. See especially, Paul Ginsborg, Family Politics: Domestic Life, Devastation and Survival, 1900–1950 (Cornwall: Yale University Press, 2014), 69–138. 106. Mehmed Câvid, “ ‘Kadın’a Dâir 2,’ Kadın, 30 November 1908,” in Yeni Harflerle Kadın, 134. 107. Müfide Ferid, “Kadınlarımızda Fikri Teşebbüs,” Tanin, 31 August 1908, 2. 108. A. Senî, “ ‘Kadınların Melekât-ı Rûhyesi 2: Suver-i Netâyic-i Mesâî,’ Kadın, 3 February 1909,” in Yeni Harflerle Kadın, 289. 109. Baha Tevfik, “Fransa’da Kadının Hukuk-ı Siyâsiyyesi,” 295. 110. Ibid., 292. 111. “ ‘Ta’lîm ve Ta’allüm: Kadın,’ Kadın, 26 October 1908,” in Yeni Harflerle Kadın, 42.

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itself as a practical program striving to achieve social reform, debates about it remained mostly at an abstract theoretical level. Yet, these debates prompted the gradual recognition of women as legal persons capable of exercising their own rights, which was to be put into practice in the early years of the Republic.

FraTerniTy (UHUV Vet) Liberty, equality, and justice could be ensured only through the recognition of fraternity (uhuvvet) among Ottoman citizens. “Fraternity leads citizens, brought together through their representatives in parliament, to reconcile all their rights, in such a way that they remain free men whilst, as far as possible, becoming equals.”112 As expressed in the program of the Osmanlı Demokrat Fırkası (Ottoman Democratic Party), founded by İbrahim Temo and Abdullah Cevdet in 1909, “fraternity binds us [the Ottomans] together, each to each, fraternity is the strong cord which gives the power of the whole.”113 Fraternity and brotherhood among Ottomans irrespective of religion, sect, ethnicity, or status would unite the Ottoman people (halk) in all its diversity, and safeguard the sovereignty and security of the nation. Fraternity was seen as a remedy for former hostilities and conflicts, which were viewed as products of the “old regime.” Like the Young Turk positivists, Suleiman al-Bustani, a Christian parliamentary candidate in Beirut, blamed the old Hamidian regime for its politics of division and sectarianism, took to task tyrannical religious leaders for serving the government, and called on Muslims and non-Muslims alike to overcome their historic prejudices.114 In the “new era,” fraternity continued to be seen as a remedy to bond the fractured Ottoman nation. Fraternity lay at the core of Ottomanism, the patriotic policy that the CUP pursued during the first years of the Second Constitutional period, from 1908 until the outbreak of the Balkan Wars. Echoing its usage in the Tanzimat era, Ottomanism implied relationships between Ottoman citizens characterized by feelings of affection and commonality and by dedication to shared goals, primarily the salvation of the Empire. Yet, one element distinguishing the CUP’s Ottomanism from its earlier meaning was the former’s attempt to formulate a myth of revolutionary brotherhood by articulating and elevating a sys112. Hüseyin Cahit, “Anasır-ı Osmaniye,” Tanin, 15 November 1908, 1. 113. Quoted in Somel, “Osmanlı Reform Çağında Osmanlıcılık Düşüncesi (1839– 1913),” 110. 114. Campos, Ottoman Brothers, 74.

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tem of common beliefs, ceremonies, and symbols. Fraternal rituals were established in the assumption that, while the potential for fraternity might originate in accidents of birth and rearing, its actual development depended on willed or chosen commitments.115 Phrases like “fellow citizens,” “Ottoman compatriots,” and “all Ottomans” appeared widely in parliamentary speeches and articles, stressing the strong links among Ottomans.116 Moreover, fraternity was seen as like friendship, uniting Ottoman people in common roles. Fraternity, like friendship, implied equality. But unlike equality, it was a virtue to be cultivated. Hazık stated that “the great nation is that of the Ottoman. Notwithstanding, all nations we [the Ottoman Turks] had once conquered are brothers (kardeş) with each other. It is the duty of all Ottomans to view each other as brothers, and to work and contribute together to assure happiness in the country (vatan), nation (millet), and people (umum).”117

Conclusion The revolution brought liberal constitutional republicanism and positivism, as well as militarism, activism, and revolutionism to the fore. Soon, nevertheless, liberal republicanism and positivism were challenged and overturned by their opponents on the basis of Darwinism, nationalism, and German militarism in the second phase of the Second Constitutional period in the context of the Balkan Wars and World War I. But they were not forgotten and emerged again in the republican debates of the 1920s. 115. Şükrü M. Hanioğlu, “Osmanlıcılık,” in Tanzimat’tan Cumhuriyet’e Osmanlılar Ansiklopedisi (Istanbul: İletişim Yayınları, 1985), 1392. 116. Campos, Ottoman Brothers, 75–77. 117. Hazık, Malûmât-ı Medeniye ve Ahlakiye, 36.

ch a p T er si x

Political Thought in the Balkan Wars T he r ise oF au T hor i Ta r i a n ism, mil i Ta r ism, a n d naT iona l ism

Quaeritur belli exitus, non causa. (Of war men ask the outcome, not the cause.) — seneca1

The second consTiTu Tiona l per iod (1908–18), with its three decisive wars (in the Balkans and across the continent), had a huge impact on the ways in which the population of the Empire felt about politics and on what they expected from it. It saw the birth of a new social, political, religious, and military idealism, which overturned the universal republican commitments and liberalism of the Young Turk Revolution. This shift was consolidated by the Triumvirate of Enver, Cemal, and Talat Paşas, whose collective decisions dominated Ottoman politics from 1913 to 1918. They took up decisively a blend of German militarist, nationalist, and idealist elements, combining elitism and mass mobilization, positively valuing violence, and normalizing war. Revolutionary ideals and the values of rationalism, progress, liberty, brotherhood, equality, and liberalism were set aside in the name of struggle, threat, leadership, unity, power, and heroism. Their rise in politics, which left them unchallengeable and seem1. Seneca, Hercules Furens, in Seneca’s Tragedies, vol. 1, trans. Frank Justus Miller (London: Heinemann, 1917), line 407.

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ingly invincible, consolidated executive and military power and radically changed the orientation of Turkish politics.

The Shift toward Authoritarianism To understand fully this shift in political thinking, it is necessary to understand the international and domestic contexts in which it occurred. In the international sphere, the years following the revolution saw increasing foreign intervention in Ottoman domestic politics and disastrous wartime losses. In 1908, Austria-Hungary annexed Bosnia-Herzegovina, which it had occupied since 1876; Crete and Greece united; and Bulgaria declared independence. With Italy’s attack on Tripolitania in 1911, the Ottoman Empire lost its last province in Africa, and with the Balkan Wars (1912–13), it lost its last major territories in Europe itself, including Thessaloniki, the key symbolic city of the 1908 Revolution.2 These cumulative losses caused an acute crisis within the Empire and forced Ottoman statesmen to take stricter measures to retain control of the lands still remaining. In domestic politics, power struggles among opposition groups and political parties between 1909 and 1913 developed into a battle over fundamental political ideas. The first years of the revolution saw the birth of a lively press and a miscellany of conflicting doctrines, from positivism to socialism, Westernism, Islamism, militarism, and nationalism, but these contending political views generated struggles in parliament and beyond, driving growing social and political unrest. The 31 March Incident followed the opposition threat to CUP rule the formation of Hürriyet ve İtilaf Fırkası (Liberal Entente) in November 1911.3 This group was intent on supplanting “the CUP by all means and at all costs,” by launching a counter-revolution, as one of its leading positivist and cosmopolitan members, Rıza Nur (later a prominent supporter of the republican regime and deputy of the Great National Assembly) put it.4 To counteract and neutralize the opposition’s threat, after the CUP’s victory in a by-election in Istan2. Tunaya, Türkiye’de Siyasal Partiler, 3, 480–83. 3. This was composed of factions of a variety of groups of Albanian, Arab, Armenian, and Bulgarian nationalists, former members of Ahrar Fırkası, Mutedil Hürriyetperveran Fırkası (the Moderate Liberals), Osmanlı Sosyalist Fırkası (the Ottoman Socialist Party), liberals and Islamists opposed inter alia to Young Turk centralization and authoritarianism. Ali Birinci, Hürriyet ve İtilaf Fırkası (Istanbul: Dergâh Yayınları, 1990), 50–53. 4. Rıza Nur, Hürriyet ve İtilâf Fırkası: Nasıl Doğdu? Nasıl Öldü? (Istanbul: Kitabevi, [1916] 1996), 19.

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bul in January 1913, a group of patriotic militarist Unionists led by Enver and Talat launched a coup d’état on the model of the Jacobins against the government at the Bab-ı Âli (Sublime Porte), sparked by the desire to recover Edirne, lost during the First Balkan War (October 1912–May 1913). This prompted the forced resignation of the grand vizier Kamil Paşa and his replacement by Mahmud Şevket Paşa. Soon afterward, the assassination by opposition members of the head of the new pro-Unionist government caused a fresh political crisis, and gave the CUP the opportunity to annihilate the opposition permanently. In its aftermath, the grand vizier Said Halim Paşa formed a new pro-Unionist cabinet,5 and the Young Turks’ Committee (cemiyet) officially declared in their political program of 1913 the formal inauguration of their political party (fırka).6 This battle of ideas among religious, liberal, and militarist fractions resulted ultimately in the victory of militarism and nationalism, and inaugurated the period of single-party Young Turk rule. To its champions, the transition to a one-party system promised to stabilize politics, and thereby both to “secure the Empire from a possible threat to liberty and regime” and “safeguard the constitutional regime.”7 This new line of political thinking assumed that power and security should be the primary ends of politics. Political power came to reside within the Young Turk Party, centralized in its internal organ the Merkez-i Umumî (the Central Committee), which acted as the main executive authority, issuing directives to government agencies and the Chamber of Deputies.8 As its opponents predicted, with the rise of the Triumvirate in politics (Üç Paşalar İktidarı), the regime took on a heavily authoritarian character: the appointment of Talat Bey (later Paşa) as minister of the interior in 1909 and later as grand vizier (in 1917) gave him absolute control over domestic politics, and in 5. The cabinet was composed of Ahmed İzzet Paşa as Minister of War; Mahmud Paşa, Minister of Marine; Talat Bey, Minister of the Interior; Halil Bey, President of the Council of State; Rıfat Bey, Minister of Justice; Osman Nizami Paşa, Minister of Public Works; Süleyman Bustani Efendi, Minister of Commerce and Agriculture; and Hayri Bey, Minister of Education. See Ahmet Şeyhun, Said Halim Pasha: An Ottoman Statesman and an Islamist Thinker (1865–1921) (Istanbul: Isis Press, 2003), 85–86. 6. Osmanlı İttihat ve Terakki Cemiyeti Program ve Nizamnamesidir: 1329 Senesi Umumi Kongresi’nde Tanzim ve Kabul olunmuşdur (Istanbul: Matbaa-ı Hayriye ve Şürekası, 1913), 14. 7. Hüseyin Cahit (Yalçın), Talât Paşa’nın Hatıraları (Istanbul: Cumhuriyet, 1998), 11. 8. Its prominent members included Mehmed Cavid, the Minister of Finance; Dr. Bahaeddin Şakir; Dr. Nazım, and Kara Kemal, all responsible for mobilizing guilds and forming cooperatives; and Ziya Gökalp, responsible for developing the Turkish national ideology. See Findley, Turkey, Islam, Nationalism, and Modernity, 199.

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1914 Enver’s appointment as minister of war, and Cemal’s as minister of the navy, gave them absolute control over the military. The new regime subjected the Porte to the Triumvirate’s authority, and diminished the sultan’s power and standing. The CUP believed that a state required a distinctive national and military ideology to face its enemies at home and abroad. Until the Balkan Wars, Ottomanism had served this purpose. But the defeats powerfully influenced Ottoman state ideology, war aims, and aspirations. With the Empire having shed all its European territory except Thrace, and reduced to Anatolia and the Arab provinces,9 the CUP recognized the inadequacy of this old ideal for holding Ottoman society together in an age of nationalism. To create fresh ideological resources to strengthen the state that could stand against enemies, they defended a militant and transformative conception of national destiny in intense dialogue with public opinion in the prelude to World War I.10

The New Theory of War In the years before World War I, there was widespread press discussion of the changing character of modern warfare and its implications for Ottoman policy. Defeat in the First Balkan War had been a traumatic shock, generating an entire new language of war, society, politics, and philosophy, and a fresh set of aspirations. The defeat aroused shame and humiliation, and prompted hatred and a drive for revenge against the state’s enemies, but it also offered challenge, and the opportunity to learn from mistakes: to grasp what had produced defeat, analyze the actions of the belligerents, recognize the character of modern warfare, and forestall future losses. Unlike previous conflicts, driven mainly by jihad or the desire for economic expansion in trade and territory, modern warfare was seen as a complex blend of psychological, military, religious, political, idealistic, and socionational factors. The new vision of warfare acknowledged that the state’s survival could be ensured only on the battlefield, and required the strengthening of national spirit and morale. For the Ottomans, the Balkan Wars had validated 9. Edward J. Erikson, Defeat in Detail: The Ottoman Army in the Balkans, 1912–1913 (Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers, 2003), 331–32. Edirne was recaptured in 1913. 10. For a comprehensive study of military thinking in the period from 1908–14, see Handan Nezir-Akmeşe, The Birth of Modern Turkey: The Ottoman Military and the March to WWI (London and New York: I. B. Tauris, 2005).

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the ideas expressed by Gustave Le Bon. Major Hafız Hakkı’s (1878–1915) experiences had led him to focus carefully on the mass psychology of modern warfare. In Bozgun (Rout), he attributed the mass disorientation and confusion on the battlefield to uncontrollable fear and irrationality.11 Ottoman soldiers in the Balkan conflicts had proved lazy, unmotivated, unpatriotic, and unwilling to sacrifice their lives for national goals.12 Morale, Hakkı argued, was now the primary factor in military success: “War is a question of spirit, more [important] than that of science.”13 Following Le Bon’s conception of the psychologie des foules (ruh’ül cemaat),14 he insisted that mass groups require a “myth,” or “race ideal” to organize themselves into a conscious entity. To win future wars, Ottoman intellectuals must organize the masses and manipulate their shapeless, unconscious, and unstable attitudes to reinforce a stronger spirit. This implied a Darwinian struggle between nations. In Filibeli Ahmed Hilmi’s words: “The struggle [in the Balkans] is over, but struggle itself will start again. Living means struggling. The absence of struggle can only be found in cemeteries. Only the dead are without struggle.”15 He saw states as permanently at war. A state had absolute liberty to do what it judged most conducive to its advantage, and there was neither justice nor injustice between nations. In the absence of applicable international law, a state could resist, invade, or exploit other states as it needed.16 The sole law that applied to humanity, for Ethem Necdet, an officer who joined the 11. Hafız Hakkı Paşa, Bozgun (Istanbul: Tercüman 1001 Temel Eser, [1913] 1973), 50–51. 12. Ibid.,83. 13. Ibid.,115. 14. Gustave Le Bon’s Les Lois Psychologiques de l’Évolution des Peuples [1894] and Aphorismes du temps présent [1913] were translated by Abdullah Cevdet into Ottoman Turkish in 1907 and 1913 respectively, which helped popularize his theories in Ottoman intellectual circles. See Gustave Le Bon, Ruhü’l-akvam, trans. Abdullah Cevdet (Istanbul: Matbaa-i İctihad, 1907); Asrımızın Nusûs-ı Felsefiyesi (Istanbul: Matbaa-i İctihad, 1913). See also Abdullah Cevdet, “Doktor Gustave Le Bon,” İçtihad, June 1905, 120. For a detailed analysis of the political thought of Abdullah Cevdet, see Hanioğlu, Doktor Abdullah Cevdet ve Dönemi. 15. Quoted in Mustafa Aksakal, The Ottoman Road to War in 1914: The Ottoman Empire and the First World War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 30. See Şehbenderzade Filibeli Ahmed Hilmi, Türk Ruhu Nasıl Yapılıyor? Her Vatanperverden Bu Eserciği Okumasını ve Anlatmasını Niyaz Ederiz [How to Form Turkish Spirit? We Ask of Each Patriot to Read and Explain This Booklet] (Darülhilâfe: Hikmet Matbaa-ı İslamiyesi, 1913), 4. 16. On the reception of Darwinism in the Ottoman Empire, see Atilla Doğan, Osmanlı Aydınları ve Sosyal Darwinizm (Istanbul: Küre Yayınları, 2012).

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Tripoli and Balkan campaigns, was the Darwinian law: “The right to live belongs to the strongest. The weak are condemned to die. . . . Life is an endless war.”17 War was needed biologically to purify and renew humanity, and without it nations would become weak and effeminate.18 The Darwinian vision required the mobilization of all human and material resources for war under the absolute control of a military elite, and a state of permanent readiness, even in peacetime.19 The martial virtues of the Turks and their proud independence needed an effective leadership it had long lacked and a nation living exclusively for war.20 The aim of warfare was to exhaust the enemies’ armed forces, territory, and will, or permanently incapacitate them. An annihilative victory, which brought peace, far from a crime, was a natural right. Such total war involved civilians wholesale as active participants. The phase “a nation in arms” (millet-i müsellaha) entered Ottoman military thought at the end of the nineteenth century through Colmar von der Goltz’s famous work Das Volk in Waffen, translated into Ottoman Turkish in 1884 and used as a textbook at the Mekteb-i Harbiye (Royal Military Academy) from 1886 onward.21 Goltz was invited by Abdülhamid II in 1882 to modernize the army and improve military education, and remained in this post until 1895. His teachings at the Harbiye influenced the thinking of a new generation of Young Turk leaders,22 military thinkers, 17. Edhem Necdet, Tekâmül ve Kanunları [Evolution and Its Laws] (Istanbul: Matbaa-yı İctihad, 1913), 4–5. 18. Ibid. 19. Hafız Hakkı, Bozgun, 120. 20. Ibid., 130–34. 21. Mehmet Beşikçi, The Ottoman Mobilization of Manpower in the First World War: Between Voluntarism and Resistance (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 218. The work was published as Colmar von der Goltz, Millet-i Müsellaha: Asrımızın Usûl ve Ahvâl-i Askeriyesi, trans. Mehmed Tahir (Istanbul: Matbaa-i Ebüzziya, 1886). 22. After the Revolution, in military books and journals (particularly in Asker), translations of German military thinkers’ works, notably Goltz’s, became widespread, preparing public opinion for a war and the defense of the fatherland. Other German instructors who had served the Ottoman army, like the infantry instructor Marshal Kamphövener Paşa and the artillery instructor Lieutenant- General İmhof Paşa, also published in this journal. See Lieutenant-Colonel Osman Senai, “Almanya’da Harbiye Nezareti,” Asker, nos. 1, 3 September 1908, 23–28; “Alman Erkan-ı Harbiye Dairesi,” Asker, no. 2, 14 September 1908; Major Ali Vasfi, “Almanya Ordusu,” Asker, no. 14, 14 April 1909, 84–88. On Goltz’s translations, see Goltz Paşa, “Bir mukayese-i Tarihiyye,” trans. Binbaşı Ali Fuad, Asker, no. 5, 14 November 1908; “Keşf-i İstikbal Şarkın Maneviyatı,” trans. Miralay Hüseyin Cemil, Asker, no. 3, 28 September 1908; “Türkiye İnkılab-ı Siyasi Dahili,” trans. Mehmed Rüşdü, Asker, no. 11, 25 February 1909, no. 12, Asker, 14 March 1909.

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and future leaders of the Republic, among them Mustafa Kemal and Kazım Karabekir.23 The new vision of warfare did not preclude the earlier conception of justification by religious goals. Tüccarzade İbrahim Hilmi saw parts of the Balkan conflict as total war, and the combined armies of the Balkan League (Bulgaria, Serbia, Greece, and Montenegro) as a crusader force.24 He imagined a future total war against the crusaders as an opportunity to take revenge on Christian civilizations (Hristiyan medeniyeti), a term that connoted evil, barbarism, cruelty, injustice, and mercilessness, unlike its counterpart for European civilizations (Avrupa medeniyeti), which connoted science, progress, civilization, liberty, equality, rights, and modernity.25 As in the past, Christianity attempted to annihilate Islam and threaten the whole of humanity (insaniyet), and the real enemy of the Ottoman Empire and Islam was Christianity, not Europe itself.26 In time, there would come a just war to purge Islam and humanity of all its religious enemies, free Muslim nations from Western slavery and form a PanIslamic unity.

germany as The ideal social and poliTical model For renewal The issue of the hour was whether a glorious and spiritually powerful nation could rise from the ashes of humiliating defeat in the Balkans, and build a state to win wars. The model nation to answer both questions for Ottoman thinkers was the inspiring example of Prussia. Its lessons in the Napoleonic period impressed numerous Ottoman soldiers and writers. Its wars of the era were seen as inspiring German national consciousness to take up arms in defense of the fatherland under the guidance of its military leaders. Captain Osman Naci admired von Scharnhorst’s vigorous system of national militia, and his use of conscription to transform the army into the school of the nation.27 Colonel Pertev praised von Moltke for turning Germany into a nation-in-arms by infusing military education and discipline throughout society and its civil institutions: “The military 23. M. Şükrü Hanioğlu, Atatürk: An Intellectual Biography (Princeton, NJ, and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2011), 35–39. 24. Tüccarzade İbrahim Hilmi, Türkiye Uyan [Turkey Awake] (Ankara: Alter Yayıncılık, [1912] 2013), 26. 25. Ibid., 39–45. 26. Ibid., 42. 27. Osman Naci, “Bölük Kumandanı,” Asker, 28 December 1908, 355.

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institution is a school, teaching them (the next generation) order, punctuality, cleanliness, obedience, and fidelity.”28 For many Ottoman intellectuals, the battle of Jena of 1806, in which Napoleon’s armies had crushed Prussia decisively, became a symbol of the demise of the old Prussia and the birth of the new, reformed nation-state. Moise Cohen Tekinalp compared the years of 1912 and 1913 in the Ottoman Empire to October 1806 in Prussia with the hope that they too would be followed by a comparable sequence of reform: The awakening of the German nation came at the time of its greatest misfortune. . . . At that time, great poets, philosophers, and orators rose, summoned the youth of the nation to resist, and rallied the national thought by word and deed. The foreign yoke of France was shaken off in fierce battles, Germany’s political independence was won, and the influence of the French language, literature and civilization was weakened and dispelled.29

Numerous works on Prussia’s rebirth were translated into Ottoman Turkish.30 Ottoman interest in German idealism had risen already in the late nineteenth century. Beşir Fuat (1852–87) praised Kant’s contributions to philosophy, astronomy and metaphysics,31 while the Tanzimat writer Münif Paşa (1828–94) referred in his Telhis-i Hikmet-i Hukuk (Philosophie du Droit; Philosophy of Rights) to Kant and Fichte.32 In Schopenhauer’in Hikmet-i Cedidesi (Schopenhauer’s New Philosophy, 1887), 28. Colonel Pertev, Rus-Japon Harbinden Alınan Maddi ve Manevi Dersler ve Japonların Esbab-ı Muzafferiyeti (Istanbul: Kanaat Kitabhane ve Matbaası, 1913), 133. 29. M. Cohen (Tekinalp), “The Turkish and Pan-Turkish Ideal,” in Tekinalp, Turkish Patriot 1883–1961, ed. Jacob M. Landau (Leiden: Nederlands Historisch-Archaeologisch Instituut te Istanbul, [1916] 1984), 135. Tekinalp published this book in 1914 in Turkish, titled Türkler bu muharebede ne kazanabilirler? Büyük Türklik: en meşhur Türkçülerin mütalaatı. In 1915, it was enlarged and translated it into German as “Türkismus und Pantürkismus,” which was later translated into English by E. Denison Ross. Tekinalp (Moise Cohen), was one of the most influential theorists of Pan-Turkism, along with Ziya Gökalp. For a short biography, see Landau, Tekinalp, Turkish Patriot, 3–43. 30. An important work translated by Recai in 1913 was Antoine de Tarlé’s La préparation de la lutte économique par l’Allemagne. Recai, foreword to Amanya Nasıl Dirildi? Harbe Nasıl Hazırlanıyor? [How Germany Revived and How It Is Preparing for War], translation of La préparation de la lutte économique par l’Allemagne, by Antoine de Tarlé (Dersaadet: Nefaset Matbaası, March 1913–March 1914). 31. Okan Orhan, Beşir Fuad: İlk Türk Pozitivist ve Natüralisti (Istanbul: Dergah Yayınları, 2008), 131–32, 166. 32. Münif Paşa, Telhis-i Hikmet-i Hukuk (Istanbul: İdare-i Sirket-i Mürettibiye, 1895), 227.

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Ahmet Mithat Efendi offered a Kantian interpretation of Schopenhauer’s philosophy, and championed his characterization of Will (irade) in the world as an absolutely free, entirely self-determining and all-powerful force.33 In 1911, to introduce “a philosophical language and way of living” capable of raising up a powerful nation like those in the contemporary West, Baha Tevfik (1881–1914), a strong influence on the political thinking of Ömer Seyfeddin and Ziya Gökalp, founded Felsefe Mecmuası (Journal of Philosophy), in which consciousness, obligations, ethics, and Kantian philosophy were all extensively discussed.34 These translations did much to introduce new conceptions of the state and philosophical idealism to the Ottoman world. Their role became more prominent after the Balkan defeat, as Ottoman thinkers focused on the role of philosophy and literature in constructing a new national idealism freeing Germany from the influence of French language, literature, and civilization, and endowing it with the national conviction and power that defeated France in 1871.35 Tekinalp praised Fichte for promoting a national ideal and consciousness (vicdan-ı milli) among Germans,36 and Hafız Hakkı insisted that the Empire needed a “Turkish Fichte, worshipping this [national] ideal”37 to move his contemporaries through philosophy and popular writings. If the Turkish state, too, was to rise and endure as a great and united nation, Ottoman intellectuals must draft a new idealist program to mobilize the nation and counter the destructive plans of the West and Russia.38 Readiness for war required the formation of an entirely new spirit “in the Age of Nations. The most powerful force over the mind of this age is national idealism.”39 Without “a great national ideal (emel-i milli),” Can Bey (Sadri Maksudi) argued argued, “a nation cannot live, and even if it lives, cannot progress. To revitalize the Turkish nation, the intellectual elite must uncover its soul and ideals, which would lead to an empowering ‘na33. Ahmet Mithat, Schopenhauer’in Hikmet-i Cedidesi, Felsefe Metinleri (Erzurum: Babil Yayınları, 2002), 39. 34. Harun Anay, “Ödev Ahlâkının Türk Düşüncesine Girişi ve Baha Tevfik’in Kant Hakkındaki Yazıları,” Dini Araştırmalar 13, no. 36 (2010): 154. 35. Tekinalp, “The Turkish and Pan-Turkish Ideal,” 135. 36. M. Cohen [Tekinalp], “Alman Müteallimlerinin Yaşayışı,” Bilgi Mecmuası 1914, 311–23. 37. Hafız Hakkı Paşa, Bozgun, 88. 38. Recai, Amanya Nasıl Dirildi?, 9–11. 39. Ziya Gökalp, “ ‘Mefkûre’ (Ideal), Türk Yurdu, no. 32, 1913, Reprinted in Türkleşmek, İslâmlaşmak, Muasırlaşmak (Istanbul, 1918),” in Turkish Nationalism and Western Civilization: Selected Essays, ed. Niyazi Berkes (London: Allen and Unwin, 1959), 72.

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tional awakening (intibah).’ ”40 After the regeneration, there would be “no discord, and not even the devil could disturb souls united in this blessed belief.”41 In future, warfare would be a “battle of national idealisms,”42 and its outcome determined by the power of ideas.

The Shift from Universalism to National Idealism National idealism was a novel philosophical and cultural phenomenon that placed nation-building at the heart of reshaping state and society. It rejected the French universalism that had dominated Ottoman politics since the Young Turk Revolution, replacing it with a vision of discrete and incommensurable civilizations. Akçura rejected universalism in politics and the utopian aim of serving an imaginary humanity.43 Instead, humanity was divided into nations, each with its own peculiar character as the source of all political power. The nation was seen as the bearer of shared values and traditions, bonding its members together as an internally unified entity. This Turkish conception of “nationality” was a reaction against the French liberal model, predicated upon universal revolutionary principles of conscious individual will, freedom, and equality, previously appropriated by the reforming Ottoman elite. Instead, Ottoman nationalists now adopted a German model of nationality based on “one race, one language and one tradition,” rooted in the Uralo-Altai race (termed “Turanians”), forging a dynamic new nationalist appeal, racial, ethnic, and cultural in extension.44

cenTers oF idealism: Thessaloniki and isTanbul Two cities, Thessaloniki and Istanbul, played special roles in constructing the new doctrine. Administrative reforms in the former, the largest Ottoman city in Rumelia, had since the late nineteenth century brought a 40. Can Bey [Sadri Makdusi], “Büyük Milli Emeller, 2,” Türk Yurdu, 14 January 1911, 29. National awakening was a popular theme in poems, pamphlets, articles and books in the context of the Balkan Wars. See especially, Tüccarzade İbrahim Hilmi, Türkiye Uyan [Turkey Awake], 15–27. 41. Hafız Hakkı, Bozgun, 82–83. 42. See Tüccarzâde İbrahim Hilmi, Balkan Harbi’ni Neden Kaybettik? [Why Did We Lose the Balkan Wars?] (Istanbul: İz Yayıncılık, [1913] 2012), 86. 43. See Jeremy Jennings, ed., “Introduction,” in Reflections on Violence, Georges Sorel (Cambridge: Cambridge University, 2002), iix–x. 44. Taner Akçam, A Shameful Act: The Armenian Genocide and the Question of Turkish Responsibility (New York: Macmillan, 2006), 39–41.

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renaissance in social, economic, and intellectual life. The city expanded, its walls were torn down, and the first tram service started in 1888. With its modern face, Thessaloniki projected toward the West an openness and willingness to integrate fully into Europe. After the 1908 Revolution, it became the symbolic city of “freedom,” and with the establishment of the CUP headquarters, its political significance rose dramatically and many Ottoman intellectuals migrated to it.45 An official initiative for a new national program was drafted by Kemal Bey, secretary of the CUP branch in Istanbul, and Ziya Gökalp, a former delegate from the branch committee in Diyarbakır, appointed to chair the Central Committee as theorist of the nation in 1910. In 1911, Gökalp, Ömer Seyfeddin, and Ali Canip launched Genç Kalemler (Young Pens) to advance this program and the national movement, promoting a new national language (yeni lisan), consciousness (milli vicdan), and ideal (yeni bir ülkü) to fashion a new generation and build a better future.46 The centrality of language in nation-building was stressed in Seyfeddin’s articles “Yeni Lisan” (New Language), insisting that a New Life (Yeni Hayat) required a New Language (Yeni Lisan).47 Turkish was the preeminent vehicle of the national spirit and rooted in the native culture, but it had been invaded by foreign tongues, and rendered artificial, “diseased,” and “cosmopolitan.” A new autonomous Turkish language purified of Arabic and Persian traces was a prerequisite for a national awakening.48 It became a philosophical movement, New Life, New Language (Yeni Hayat, Yeni Lisan), with ambitious goals: “We must be ourselves, that is, we must build up our intellectual life on our national traditions and cultivate our new talents. We must borrow from Europe method and technique only. Our whole literature, which is not Turkish in any respect, must be reformed and founded on a new basis, it must become purely national in character.”49 The figures who formed it drew their inspiration from Alfred Fouillée, Gustav Le Bon, Henri Bergson, Arthur de Gobineau, and Friedrich Nietzsche, and in due course especially from Émile Durkheim, a looming presence in the social and political thought of the late Empire and early Republic. 45. Toprak, Türkiye’de Popülizm, 1908–1923, 117. 46. Tahir Alangu, Ömer Seyfettin: Ülkücü Bir Yazarın Romanı (Istanbul: Yapı Kredi Yayınları, 2008), 154–59. 47. Ömer Seydeddin, “ ‘Yeni Lisan,’ vol. 2, no. 3, 19 May 1911,” in Genç Kalemler Dergisi, ed. İsmail Parlatır and Nurullah Çetin (Ankara: Türk Dil Kurumu Yayınları, 1999), 127. 48. Ibid., 128–29. 49. Tekinalp, “The Turkish and Pan-Turkish Ideal,” 106.

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The most pressing question for the champions of the new nationalism was how to complete the political revolution with a social revolution that secured progress, and roused the sleepy nation. They saw the 1908 Revolution and the repromulgation of the constitution as necessary steps to revitalize the declining Empire, but blamed the failure of the ruling elite to identify an effective vision of how to reconstruct and reorganize the new society. Only a social revolution, a slow and patient transformation in Ottoman society itself, led by its elite and working peacefully through philosophy, could discover the values and ideals to carry Ottoman society steadily and reliably forward. The new program was advanced by Gökalp in his “New Life and New Values.”50 He saw values as social forces embedded in collective representations, “ideals,” “the real factors in the evolution of humanity.”51 Ideals did not exist only in the imagination, nor were they Platonic standards of perfection. Instead, following Fouillée and his rendering of Kant, they were constructed by individuals in a society and had no existence independent of individual mind and consciousness. His idealism was neither metaphysical nor anti-realist, but grounded in deep social structures and the collective spirit of a nation. The Young Turk Revolution had not been a genuine revolution, since it merely appealed “the machinery of a constitutional regime to government.”52 Declaring republican ideals, the idéesforces of liberty, equality, and fraternity, meant nothing unless they combined with the particular sentiments-forces, a further term borrowed from Fouillée, the products of social consciousness and cohesiveness, and sources for a genuine revolution.53 This union would give Turks a new life of harmony and unity, bound collectively together as a stronger nation than ever before: “The Übermensch ( fevkalbeşerler), envisaged by the German philosopher Nietzsche, are the Turks. They are the new people of every century. Therefore, the new life will be born from Turkism, the mother of all youth.”54 Alongside this nationalist vision, a different line of Pan-Turkism began to develop in Istanbul.55 It was formulated originally by Crimean Tatars 50. Gökalp, “ ‘Yeni Hayat ve Yeni Değerler’ (New Life and New Values), Genç Kalemler, no. 8, 1911,” 56. 51. Ibid., 57. To describe an ideal, he used the word mefkûre derived from the Arabic word fıkr (idea), just as the European term “ideal” is derived from the Greek notion idea. See “Mefkûre,” 70. 52. Gökalp, “Yeni Hayat ve Yeni Değerler,” 55. 53. Ibid. 54. Ibid. 55. During the reign of Abdülhamid II, a scholarly interest in Turcology, by historians

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beyond the imperial boundaries as a social and cultural program of response to the pressures of Pan-Slavism and the prevailing Russification policy in Crimea.56 The leading Tatar intellectual İsmail Gaspıralı (Gasprinski, 1851–1914)57 inspired among Muslim Tatars the Jadidist movement, a cultural initiative aimed to reform education by implementing a secular “new method” (usul-i jadid) and restore the power, wealth, and dignity of the Tatar Turks.58 It aroused Pan-Turkist sentiments, disseminated mainly through Gaspıralı’s journal Tercüman (Translator, 1883– 1918) with its motto “unity in language, thought and action” (dilde, fikirde, işte birlik) for all Turkic groups in Russia.59 Hüseyinzâde Ali, Yusuf Akçura, and Ahmed Ayaoğlu were all close and keen followers of this movement. Within the borders of the Empire, Pan-Turkism was not yet an influential political current at the turn of the century: Ottoman intellectuals feared it would trigger separatism and threaten the Empire’s multiethnic unity. Ali Kemal’s Türk was the first journal to cultivate in 1903 a cultural and historical awareness of the Turkish race (ırk),60 and Yusuf Akçura’s articles of 1904, “Üç Tarz-ı Siyaset” (Three Ways of Policy),61 formed its first systematic manifesto.62 Akçura rejected Islamism, and Ottomanism for its failure to respond to separatism and Western imperialism, and championed “a political union of Turks based on race,” or Pan-Turkism, as the best and only reasonable choice to maintain the social and religious unity of the Empire.63 like Ahmet Vefik Paşa, aimed to identify the history, lands, and language of the Turks, and fostered academic studies, translations from other languages and research on Turkish origins and heritage. Necip Asım (1861–1935) translated Léon Cahun’s Introduction Générale à l’histoire de l’Asie [1896]. Şemsettin Sami (1850–1904) compiled a Turkish dictionary, Kâmûs-i Turkî. 56. Landau, Pan-Turkism in Turkey, 8. 57. For the life and works of İsmail Gaspıralı,, see Yusuf Ekinci, Gaspıralı İsmail (Ankara: Ocak Yayınları, 1997). 58. John L. Esposito, “Jadidism,” in The Oxford Dictionary of Islam (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), 153–54. 59. Landau, Pan-Turkism in Turkey, 10. 60. For the intellectual activities of Türk, see especially, M. Şükrü Hanioğlu, “Turkism and the Young Turks 1889–1938,” in Turkey beyond Nationalism: Towards Post-Nationalist Identities, ed. Hans-Lukas Kieser (London and New York: I. B. Tauris, 2013), 3–20. 61. Yusuf Akçura, “Üç Tarz-ı Siyaset,” Türk, 14 April 1904; ibid., 28 April 1904; ibid., 5 May 1904. 62. François Georgeon, Türk Milliyetçiliğinin Kökenleri, trans. Alev Er (Istanbul: Yurt Yayınları, 1986), 37. 63. Akçura, “Üç Tarz-ı Siyaset,” 1. The publication of this article produced prolonged

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After the revolution, the atmosphere of freedom encouraged prominent Tatar intellectuals like Akçura, Ağaoğlu, and Gaspıralı to return to the Empire, bringing their ideas to the capital. Under Akçura’s supervision, periodicals like Türk Yurdu (Turkish Homeland, 1911) and Halka Doğru (Toward People, 1913–14) were launched, and nationalist organizations like Türk Derneği (Turkish Association, 1908)64 and Türk Bilgi Derneği (Turkish Association of Knowledge) established with Türk Ocağı (Turkish Hearth, 1912), with its periodical Türk Yurdu, the most influential.65 They did much to shape a sense of national idealism and awakening national consciousness, founding clubs and schools, organizing public lectures and literary and artistic meetings, and publishing books and periodicals. Despite initial declarations from these publications and associations that they would stay outside politics and lead a strictly social movement, the Young Turk Party supported them financially and collaborated with them to give the state an ideological agenda. With the loss of Thessaloniki from the Empire in 1912, the leading idealists of Genç Kalemler settled eventually in Istanbul, bringing the visions of Thessaloniki, Crimea, and Istanbul itself to the capital of the Empire. The new Turkish idealism that emerged as an outcome of colliding viewpoints was a synthesis of elements from three broader intellectual enterprises. From French sociology, it drew a stress on the ineluctable place of religion in individual existence; from German idealism, the notions of national language, Bildung, economy and Staat; and from Pan-Turkism, a revivalism and populism along with a drive for modernization. discussion within intellectual circles, and in general the idea of Turkism was not well received among the intellectual elite. Ahmet Ferid (1877–1971) refused to abandon Ottomanism despite its lack of promise for the future since it still provided the best basis for protecting and assimilating all those subjects to Ottoman rule at the time. See Ahmet Ferit, “Bir Mektup,” in Üç Tarz-ı Siyaset (Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu Yayınları, 1991), 60–63. 64. Yusuf Akçura in 1908 founded Türk Derneği with the support of Ottoman intellectuals Veled Çelebi (İzbudak) and Necib Asım (Yazıksız) to explore the past and present activities of all ethnic groups of Turks and inform the public of the Turks’ cultural richness. They explored Turkish history, language, literature, ethnography, and ethnology; arranged public lectures; issued journals and pamphlets; and opened branches throughout the Empire. 65. Türk Ocağı was open only to Muslim Turks. Its goal was “To work for the national education of the Turkish people which forms the most important division of Islam; to work for the raising of her intellectual, social and economic standard, and for the perfection of the Turkish language and race.” Tekinalp, “The Turkish and Pan-Turkish Ideal,” 116. The union spread quickly and reached 1,800 members in Istanbul alone, including 1,600 students and academics. It had established 16 branches throughout the Empire by 1914.

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gök alp and his üç CereyaN (Three currenTs oF ThoughT) The founding document of the new idealist program was drafted by Gökalp, the official chief ideologue of the Young Turks. His Üç Cereyan (Three Currents of Thought), serialized in Türk Yurdu as of 20 March 1913 before the loss of Edirne, expressed a new social and national idealist program, later reprinted as a book, Türkleşmek, İslamlaşmak, Muasırlaşmak (Turkism, Islamism, Modernism) in 1918, and republished in 1923 as Türkçülüğün Esasları (The Principles of Turkism). It was adopted by the CUP and applied later in practice throughout World War I. What Gökalp did was to synthesize Turkism, Islamism, and modernization (or Westernization) harmoniously, despite the apparent contradictions between them: “We are of the Turkish nation (millet), of Islamic religious community (ümmet), of Western civilization (medeniyet).”66 Nationally, Turks belong to a Turkish culture, while internationally they belonged to the Islamic ümmet and Western civilization. “Turkism means furthering the ascendancy of the Turkish nation”67 by extolling indigenous Turkic customs, habits, and virtues. Like his contemporary Turkists, Gökalp believed that the Turkish nation was a bearer of shared values and traditions, which would bind its members together and define the culture, but he did not attempt “to reinstitute the ancient Turkish civilization”68 by reviving fossilized ancient Turkish words or dialects as Çağatay, Kazak, or Tatar had done. Rather, he aimed “to discover national ideas peculiar only to the Turkish people”69 by eliminating artificial values taken from other civilizations while concurrently discovering institutional similarities between different nations.70 This inquiry must be the goal of the New Life, which would be “realized only with the awakening of the national Culture.”71 In defining “culture” (hars), Gökalp distinguished this term from civilization (medeniyet). In his interpretation of Gökalp’s social and political 66. Gökalp, “ ‘Üç Cereyan’ (Three Currents of Thought), Türk Yurdu, vol. 3, no. 35, 1913,” in Turkish Nationalism and Western Civilization: Selected Essays, ed. Niyazi Berkes (London: Allen and Unwin, 1959), 76. 67. Gökalp, “ ‘Millet Nedir?’ (What Is a Nation?), Küçük Mecmua, no. 28, Diyarbakır, 1923,” ibid., 137. 68. Gökalp, “ ‘Milli Terbiye’ (National Education), Muallim, nos. 1–4, 1916,” ibid., 237. 69. Gökalp, “ ‘Türkçülük Nedir?’ (What Is Turkism?), Yeni Mecmua, no. 28, 1917,” ibid., 284. 70. Ibid., 287. 71. Ibid., 284.

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thought, Niyazi Berkes treated culture and civilization as a binary opposition and regarded the question of how to modernize and Westernize the Turkish nation while combining it with Islam as Gökalp’s main concern.72 Writing the modernization history of Turkey with a certain political taste, he believed that Gökalp’s main sociological interest lay in differentiating these two concepts. Gökalp himself did not define these concepts as mutually exclusive, but as complementary to one another. In his “Hars ve Medeniyet” (Culture and Civilization), he wrote that both concepts overlap on religious, moral, legal, intellectual, aesthetic, economic, linguistic, and technological spheres of social life. The major difference between culture and civilization was that “culture is national; civilization is international.”73 Whereas culture refers to the composition of those aspects of social life of an individual nation, civilization “consists of the sum total of the common features of several national Cultures.”74 For instance, Western civilization consisted of European and American nations. Within this civilization, there were different and independent cultures like English, German, and French.75 The analytical distinction between culture and civilization was important for Gökalp because when conflated, it would lead to the isolation of true Turkish culture and discarding national history and tradition.76 He saw around him social decay and disintegration, the obliteration of tradition and the alienation of the elite from the common people (halk). Its roots lay in the Tanzimat elites’ uncritical admiration and imitation of Western civilization, their neglect of national culture, and their failure to assimilate Western science, technology, and knowledge into it.77 To reverse the cultural decline, the Empire must keep pace with the technology of the age, and emulate the civilization of the West.78 Yet for Gökalp, unlike Abdullah Cevdet and his journal İçtihat, Turkey should not adopt Western values wholesale, but embrace theoretical, material, and practical sciences and techniques from Europe without absorbing its moral and cul72. See Niyazi Berkes, “Ziya Gökalp: His Contribution to Turkish Nationalism,” Middle East Journal 8, no. 4 (1954). 73. Gökalp, “ ‘Hars ve Medeniyet’ (Culture and Civilization), Türkçülüğün Esasları,” in Turkish Nationalism and Western Civilization: Selected Essays, ed. Niyazi Berkes (London: Allen and Unwin, 1959), 104. 74. Gökalp, “Türkçülük Nedir?,” 284. 75. Gökalp, “Hars ve Medeniyet,” 104. 76. Gökalp, “An’ane ve Kaide,” 94. 77. Ibid. 78. Ibid., 75.

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tural elements.79 The Turkish nation must be modernized enough to incorporate the aspects of European civilization compatible with its own culture and faith, while developing its own alternative forms of modernity and science. It was also necessary to identify indigenous cultural patterns, adopt an insider’s view of culture and carefully explore its folklore, tradition, and history. Gökalp’s method, a form of social psychology,80 required him to uncover the memories of the “national mind,” a term borrowed from Bergson,81 in which habits and traditions had accumulated. National memories were never lost, merely forgotten, and continuing to operate in the subconscious of the people, its folklore and tradition. To make them apparent, they must be excavated, awakened, and elevated to the level of consciousness.82 Turkism was “the work of making this unconscious conscious.”83 In this way, “Turks will find their Turkish Ideal still surviving in the life of their words, proverbs, folk-tales, and epics.”84 Revivalism was rife at the time across the world, in a context when empires crumbled and nationalisms emerged. With the rise of new nations, there were rising demands to reassess and reassert old traditions.85 Gökalp attached notions of cultural vitality to cultural and traditional ideals, asserting that the more a nation protects and maintains its local traditions, the healthier it will remain. He saw tradition as creative and progressive, connecting memories of the past with the present, and thrusting the nation toward the future.86 To show the Turkish nation their true identity, he devised programs about their traditions and opened cultural institutions, museums, and libraries.87 Gökalp also set himself, like the Russian Narodniks “to go to the people,”88 seeing the common people (halk) and peasants as the true bearers of cultural values with their folk-tales, epics, and proverbs pre79. Gökalp, “Türkçülük Nedir?,” 288. 80. Gökalp, “Millî İçtimâiyât,” 171. 81. Ibid. 82. Gökalp, “Türkçülük Nedir?,” 288. 83. Ibid., 284. 84. Gökalp, “An’ane ve Kaide,” 95. 85. Roger D. Abrahams, “Phantoms of Romantic Nationalism in Folkloristics,” Journal of American Folklore (1993): 7–8. 86. Gökalp, “An’ane ve Kaide,” 94. 87. Uriel Heyd, Foundations of Turkish Nationalism: The Life and Teachings of Ziya Gökalp (London: Luzac & Harvill Press, 1950), 115. 88. Zafer Toprak, “Osmanlı Narodnikleri: “Halka Doğru” Gidenler,” Toplum ve Bilim 24 (1984).

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served in purity in their own language and lives.89 Alienation from society since the Tanzimat era had left them isolated, ignorant, and backward, and deprived them of any sentiment of patriotism. It was the duty of the intellectual elite to enlighten the common people and link forces with them, in order to unify the divided society and become a stronger nation.90 Gökalp, Akçura, Ağaoğlu, Kazım Nami, Köprülüzade Mehmet Fuat Köprülü, and Halide Edip united to promote this populist vision in a new journal, Halka Doğru (Toward the People), published by the Türk Yurdu Cemiyeti (Community of Turkish Homeland) in 1913 and 1914. The movement remained short-lived, and in essence, it failed because the socalled Ottoman Narodniks idealized an image of the rural Anatolians and saw them as intellectuals like themselves, but the majority of the peasants were illiterate and had no interest in relating intellectually to the elite.91 Moreover, the Narodnik message was often criticized by thinkers like Reşit Galip for treating rural life naively and unrealistically, and failing to address their ordinary concerns and troubles like poverty and healthcare of the peasantry.92 While Turkism became its cultural and national, and Westernization its international ideal, Islam remained its spiritual counterpart, forming a collective discipline that had imposed itself on society with the overpowering authority of habit. Since Gökalp believed that Turks were part of a conjoined Islamic civilization, he saw no contradiction between Turkism and Islamism:93 “Turkism is simultaneously Islamism.”94 In its evolution over time, the Turkish nation had drawn cultural elements from Arabic and Persian traditions and institutions, gradually diluting the distinctively Turkish character of its religious practices. The primary task of TurcoIslamic scholars was to discover by scientific study the inherent local customs, habits, beliefs, and practices of Islam, while eliminating foreign intruding elements. To disseminate this nationalization of Islam, Gökalp and Halim Sabit published İslâm Mecmuası (Islamic Review, 1914–18), stressing the need to unify the divided ümmet of Islam and prevent further 89. Ziya Gökalp, Kızıl Elma [The Red Apple] (Istanbul: Elips Yayınları, [1914] 2008), 80. 90. Ahmed Ağaoğlu, “Türk Medeniyeti Tarihi, Mukaddime,” Türk Yurdu, 29 May 1913, 292. 91. This was what happened with the Russian Narodniks. See Franco Venturi, Roots of Revolution: A History of the Populist and Socialist Movements in Nineteenth Century Russia (New York: Knopf, 1960). 92. Reşit Galip, “Ziya Bey’in Yeni Hayat’ı Hakkında,” Fağfur, 3 October 1918, 2–7. 93. Gökalp, “Üç Cereyan,” 75. 94. Gökalp, “Türkçülük, İslamcılık, Medeniyetleşme,” 230.

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division between Turks and Muslims in the face of religious antagonisms.95 He envisaged not a greater Pan-Islamic community united as a single nation, a view pressed by rival intellectuals in the Islamist journal Sebilü’r-Reşad edited by Eşref Edip Fergan and Mehmet Âkif, on the grounds of its vagueness and impracticality, but a wider Turkic-Islamic alliance.96 If Turks could come to understand that they belonged nationally to Turkish culture, while belonging internationally both to the Islamic ümmet and to Western civilization, they could raise a successful nation and state, capable of surviving the international struggle between idealisms. Only by instilling this ideal into the people would these philosophical viewpoints become practical and useful for everyone.

concepTualizing The sTaTe Executing this idealist program required a political organization. After the Young Turk Revolution and the constitutional reforms that followed it, Ottoman thinking about state and society changed profoundly. In the age of Abdülhamid II’s absolutism, the state had no real connection to society. Its sole unity lay in the personality of the sultan. The revolution changed the conception of the state from a person to a French model of the state as a provider of formal legal liberty and equality that embodied both justice and fraternity. In the debates of the second half of the Constitutional period (1913–18), it shifted again profoundly toward a German understanding as a particular type of organization and a spiritual and social organism.97 Like the German “organic state theorists” of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century,98 Ottoman national idealists saw the state as the true embodiment of social power and national spirit, with an authority 95. Gökalp, “ ‘Cemaat Medeniyeti, Cemiyet Medeniyeti’ (The Civilization of Community and the Civilization of Society), Türk Yurdu, vol. 4, no. 47, 1913,” in Turkish Nationalism and Western Civilization: Selected Essays, ed. Niyazi Berkes (London: Allen and Unwin, 1959), 101. 96. Gökalp, “Üç Cereyan,” 71. 97. Gökalp, “ ‘Millet ve Vatan’ (Nation and Fatherland), Türk Yurdu, vol. 6, no. 66, 1914,” in Turkish Nationalism and Western Civilization: Selected Essays, ed. Niyazi Berkes (London: Allen and Unwin, 1959), 78. 98. See especially, Duncan Kelly, The State of the Political: Conceptions of Politics and the State in the Thought of Max Weber, Carl Schmitt, and Franz Neumann (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 79–81.

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derived from the collective conscience of society and a personality that mirrored the national identity.99 Citing Hegel, Recai wrote that “All power held by a nation will serve the exaltation of the state.”100 Tekinalp especially admired the German state: “Deutschland, Deutschland über alles . . .” Every German knows this song from his childhood, all through his life it rings in his ears and with those words on his lips he dies—“Deutschland, Deutschland über alles,” and in very truth every German longs with his whole soul and will to see his nation “über alles.” In striving for this ideal, the Germans have become so great and powerful a nation that they are now able to defy a whole world of assailants.101

To rise as the German state had done, the Turkish nation must also exalt its state above all and must make that elevation its national ideal. As Hegel put it: “The State is an absolute state above the reality of mankind, it is a divine will on earth.”102 This view abandoned the traditional view that the authority of the sovereign stemmed from God, and for a new conception of sovereignty as resting in the nation and state. It suggested that the sultan must stand below the state, holding power much less sovereign than before, while the legislative power of the political elite or rulers, the Triumvirate, was to be elevated. Through the creation of this profoundly new Turkish state and nation, great successes in war, science, and economics would be achieved, and the superiority of Turkishness would prevail. The new Turkish state had to nationalize economy and education, and militarize the society. There was nevertheless nothing inherently republican in this German idea of the state and militarism but later in the 1920s, militarism and nationalism were to be combined with radical republicanism. National Economy The state as the supreme administrator of human affairs had the right to compel its wards for their own welfare. Inspired by Friedrich List’s economic thinking, the Young Turk leaders and intellectuals rejected British 99. Gökalp, “Millet ve Vatan,” 78. 100. Recai, “Mukaddime,”1. [Millette hayy olan her kuvvet; devletin i’lâsına hizmet için müsabaka edecektir.] 101. Tekinalp, “The Ideal,” The Turkish and Pan-Turkish Ideal, 137. 102. Recai, “Mukaddime,” 1. [Devlet; hakikat-i beşeriyenin fevkinde bir devlet-i mutlakadır; yeryüzünde ilâhî bir kudrettir.]

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economic liberalism, advocated by the prominent economist Mehmet Cavit Bey, and promoted a state-controlled economy free from foreign imposition. Israel Lazarevich Helphand (1867–1924), a German socialist (known widely by his nickname, Alexander Parvus) who spent the years between 1909 and 1914 in Istanbul,103 attributed the decline of the Ottoman Empire to its capitulations, as they made the state economically dependent to the West.104 Unlike Marx, Parvus did not call for a socialist revolution to overthrow existing structures. Like List, he pressed instead for the creation of a strong national economy through rapid industrialization.105 Parvus engaged with nationalist intellectuals and published articles, mainly on political economy in Türk Yurdu. His close contacts with the CUP leaders shaped the latter’s wartime economic policy. To nationalize the economy, Muhittin Birgen encouraged the creation of a new Muslim-Turkish bourgeoisie through opening banks, provision of financial support, and protecting craftsmen from foreign competition,106 principles put into practice by the Young Turk Party during World War I. National Education Since devout and earnest attachment to the state was necessary to strengthen the state sufficiently, as Germany had shown by cultivating spiritual union within the nation and state through university reforms, Turkish intellectuals were convinced that it must form its citizens actively through the provision of national education.107 This would establish a dialectic between state and nation in which each would determine the other: the state would express the nation, and the nation form the social and spiritual basis for the state. On the model of the Bildung zum Menschen, Ottoman national idealists believed that education must promote the moral and material improvement of the nation, producing “good Turks in place of useless Ottomans.”108 Ağaoğlu argued that “Education is for the

103. Asım Karaömerlioğlu, “Helphand-Parvus and His Impact on Turkish Intellectual Life,” Middle Eastern Studies 40, no. 6 (2004): 145. 104. Parvus, “Türkiye’de Avrupa’nın Maliye Boyunduruğu Altındadır 2,” Türk Yurdu, 1912; “Türkiye’de Ziraatin İstikbali,” Türk Yurdu, 1913. 105. Parvus, “Esaret-i Maliyeden Kurtulmanın Yolu,” Türk Yurdu, 1912, 587. 106. Muhittin, “İktisadî Hasbihâl: En Büyük Eksiğimiz,” Halka Doğru, 26 May 1913, 48. 107. Tekinalp, “Alman Müteallimlerinin Yaşayışı,” Bilgi Mecmuası, 1914. 108. Cami [Abdurrahman Cami Baykut], Osmanlılığın Âtisi: Düşmanları ve Dostları [The Ottoman Future: Its Enemies and Friends] (Istanbul: İfham Matbaası, 1913), 10–11.

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common good of the nation if it serves the national aims. Nations trained without a national education will never be content.”109 Following Albert Sorel, Akçura criticized the universal history taught in Ottoman school books since the revolution, and Comte’s idéalisme historique in particular,110 for undermining the distinctive history of Turkish nations and alienating people from their pasts.111 It was necessary to introduce national history, so students could discover the richness of the Turkish past, discern the features of the Turkish nation, and arouse their patriotism by studying the lives of national heroes like Attila and Cengiz Khan. A further purpose of national education was to educate pupils in true religion.112 In face of the deficiencies of the maktabs and many madrasas, the nationalists advocated religious reform to free pupils’ minds from Islamic fatalism, prompt social revolution (içtimaî inkılâb), and “nurture a modern Turkish nation.”113 Stressing Martin Luther’s role in the Reformation, Hafız Hakkı stressed the need for an “Islamic Luther, who would sacrifice life to purify Islam,” and launch an Islamic reform.114 National education was to foster a sense of civic responsibility within the community and teach a rising generation to subordinate selfish desires, cultivate a collective identity, and unite the Turks in pursuit of a common interest. It would make stable and infallible patriots of good will, and free-spirited, complete, and responsible citizens. The Young Turk Party opened new and modern elementary schools, passed the law Tedrisât-ı İbtidâiye Kanun-u Muvakkatı of 1915 (Interim Primary School Law), and opened İttihat ve Terakki Mektepleri (Schools of Union and Progress) with a secular and scientific curriculum, along with a number of elementary and secondary schools, using Turkish exclusively as the language of instruction.115 Militarism The final component of this conception of the state, and the most obviously pertinent to its eventual entry into World War I, was the doctrine of militarism. The state would realize its full existence only after destroying 109. Ahmed Ağaoğlu, “Terbiye-i Milliye,” İçtihad, 28 July 1911, 783. 110. Yusuf Akçura, “Tarihî Görüşe Dâir,” Türk Yurdu, 1912. 111. Akçura, “Portekiz İhtilâli Münasebetiyle,” Sırat-ı Müstakim, 21 October 1910, 119. 112. Ahmed Ağaoğlu, “Türk Medeniyeti Tarihi,” Türk Yurdu, 29 May 1913. 113. Nafi Atuf, “Maarifimiz Hakkında,” ibid., 1 June 1916, 94. 114. Hafız Hakkı Paşa, Bozgun, 88–89. 115. S. A., “Maarif Yılı,” Türk Yurdu, 23 March 1916, 24.

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all internal and external threats to its unity. In this view, violence and war were not the sole means used by the state, but those most specific to state action. The end of the state was to provide security, and its duty was to militarize the nation in preparation to fight through conscription. Alongside Germany, Japan appeared as a second striking example of a modern militarist state and society. In Rus-Japon Harbinden Alınan Maddi ve Manevi Dersler ve Japonların Esbab-ı Muzafferiyeti (Material and Spiritual Lessons from the Russo-Japanese War and the Reasons for Japanese Victory), Colonel Pertev, a reporter on the Russo-Japanese War, argued that the Japanese victory had been secured by its military’s unhesitating sacrifice of human life, a product of a nation united in one goal thanks to the state militarization of society: “Like the Japanese, if we teach our children starting from the primary school, love of fatherland and martial spirit, and if we train the army as heroes who are ready to die for the Sultan, the fatherland, and nation, then the Ottoman Army will fear no-one in the world except Almighty God.”116 Like the Japanese state, the Turkish state must modernize itself and its society and retain its commitment to tradition.

The New Formation of the State as a War Machine Unflinchingly committed to a strong state, the Young Turks’ ideological and moral considerations converged with the German conception of the constitution, laid down by Bismarck in 1871, which Enver Paşa deeply admired.117 To ensure the national unity of the Ottoman community and political order through dynastic stability, Cemal Paşa, too, pressed for centralization, since decentralization could bring only the end of the Empire.118 From advocates of a strong centralized state came new understandings of sovereignty challenging revolutionary notions of liberal democracy and representation. For both Enver and Said Halim Paşas, the notion of the general will was too abstract to serve as a foundation for successful governance. “How can a regime be called democratic,” Said Halim Paşa contended, “when it receives its support from only fifty percent plus 116. Cited in Nezir-Akmeşe, The Birth of Modern Turkey, 79. 117. Enver Paşa, Kendi Mektuplarında Enver Paşa, ed. M. Şükrü Hanioğlu (Istanbul: Der Yayınevi, 1989), 175. This work contains Enver Paşa’s personal letters in French and Turkish. 118. Cemal Paşa, Hatıralar [Memoirs] (Istanbul: İşbankası Kültür Yayınları, [1919] 2006), 344–46.

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one of all votes cast?”119 For him, the source of sovereignty lay not in the people but in the sacred laws of the Shari’a.120 He discarded the liberal notion of the right to natural freedom because “there is nothing more false and anti-liberal than advocating that man possesses natural laws (droit naturel) and natural rights. Rights are not given but created only after the accomplishment of duty.”121 Enver Paşa did not fully reject parliamentarianism but adopted a limited and elitist view of representation, in which sovereign power rested in the will of the wisest and best-fitted to rule: the Triumvirate. Echoing the principle of “the state above all,” he wrote, “the parliament is necessary for our [the Triumvirate] control over the state, but a strong centralized state is more important [than a representative system].”122 To secure its power and control over society, the state sought to mold public opinion through Young Turk societies, nationalist societies, publications, and organizations across the Empire. The Party formed new branches of women, ulema, and the army to increase mass support and strengthen its image as an all-absorbing mass party, with all other affiliations extraneous and eliminable. To regulate social life, the state enacted a series of laws and reforms. In 1913, it introduced a new law of inheritance, based on the German code, the same year it made primary education compulsory for girls. At first, it limited women’s higher education to teacher training colleges, but from 1914 a number of courses at the University of Istanbul were opened to female students.123 The “nation in arms” project was implemented following Enver Paşa’s self-promotion to the minister of war in 1914. To rejuvenate the army, an imperial decree was passed enforcing compulsory retirements for senior officers, and replacing them with younger successors.124 A German military mission, led by General Liman von Sanders, was created to reform the army and reorganize the offices of the Ministry of War, German commanders appointed to head various departments, and military schools, hitherto subordinate to the General Inspectorate of Education and Instruction, attached to a new General Directorate of Military Schools, and placed under state control. The new 119. Said Halim Pasha, Les Institutions Politiques Dans La Société Musulmane (Rome: Imprimerie Editrice Italia, 1921), 10. 120. Ibid. 121. Ibid. 122. Kendi Mektuplarında Enver Paşa, 175. 123. Zürcher, Turkey: A Modern History, 121–22. 124. This retirement included 2 marshals, 3 generals, 30 lieutenant-generals, 95 majorgenerals, and 184 colonels. See Cemal Paşa, Hatıralar, 100.

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hierarchy placed Enver Paşa higher in the chain of command than the sultan himself.125 To raise a young generation of healthy and fit people, morally and physically ready to serve their nation as soldiers and defend the fatherland, the state organized sports and youth clubs. The Ottoman Strength Clubs (Osmanlı Güç Dernekleri) were founded in May 1914 on Enver Paşa’s initiative,126 and during World War I, to supply manpower for the army, the Ottoman Youth Clubs (Osmanlı Genç Dernekleri), a further paramilitary organization, were created in 1916 in Istanbul under the supervision of Colonel Von Hoff, a disciple of Goltz,127 and associational networks propagated in various cities of the Empire. In contrast to the Young Turk positivists and liberals, the Young Turk militarists saw politics as an endless struggle between friends and enemies.128 Conspiracy, corruption, fear, and suspicion permeated the Young Turk political language and agenda. The state became a bulwark against conspiratorial elements in society. To discover and punish traitors and internal enemies, the volunteer officers (fedais) who had carried out confidential missions before 1908 were formally organized by Enver Paşa in 1914 as the Special Organization (Teşkilât-ı Mahsusa), a secret committee to carry out missions and “unmask” traitors in Anatolia, the Arab peninsula, and the Caucasus. In defense of public safety and in an effort to maintain peace, the use of violence and the elimination of all those hostile or apathetic toward CUP rule were justified: “For domestic peace, the government must be more severe than Nero. What Nero did for his amusement, the government must do if it is necessary to calm the country.”129 The pace of violence accelerated during World War I. The government struck out against perceived traitors and internal enemies, unleashing vio125. Nezir-Akmeşe, The Birth of Modern Turkey, 161–63. 126. The Ottoman Strength Clubs absorbed the Ottoman Scout Committee (Keşşaflık Cemiyeti İzci Ocağı), established in Istanbul in April 1914 under the supervision of Harold Parfitt, at Enver Paşa’s invitation. These clubs were mainly established in Istanbul, Bursa, Izmit, and Beirut. See especially Zafer Toprak, “II. Meşrutiyet Dönemi’nde Paramiliter Gençlik Örgütleri,” in Tanzimat’tan Cumhuriyet’e Türkiye Ansiklopedisi (Istanbul: İletişim Yayınları, 1985); “Meşrutiyet ve Mütareke Yıllarında Türkiye’de İzcilik,” Toplumsal Tarih 9, no. 52 (1998) 13–21. 127. Goltz had founded a similar association in Germany in 1911, der Jungdeutschlandbund, which functioned as a part of the German military and aimed to prepare young German boys for military service. Through this association, Goltz became acquainted with Von Hoff, whom he recommended for the supervision of the Ottoman Youth League. Beşikçi, The Ottoman Mobilization of Manpower, 216–18. 128. Kendi Mektuplarında Enver Paşa, 175. 129. Ibid.

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lence to frighten national enemies and prevent future traitors. Arab nationalists and leaders were executed in Beirut and Damascus in 1915–16 on the orders of Cemal Paşa, and Armenians were massacred in 1915.130 International politics, too, was seen as an arena of struggle. Cemal Paşa stressed that the Balkan Wars had shown the impossibility of maintaining peace without annihilating the enemy. In its wake, the Young Turks broke completely from their earlier pacifist foreign policy and adopted an entirely new, active, aggressive, and determined militarism. They saw war as “the only way to save Turkey from the complications which threatened on every side, building up her strength and giving her a true place among the nations.”131 Enver Paşa, in particular, was a strong believer in the need for a war from which the Empire, with Germany’s support, would emerge victorious, end the Russian threat, and restore the honor and pride of the Turkish nation.132 This view was widely shared in public opinion and among Unionists, and war became a “national goal.”133

Conclusion The war arrived at a time when militaristic youth organizations were barely formed, the army had yet to recover fully from its Balkan defeats, and the economy was still weak, but neither Young Turk leaders nor the public saw the outbreak of hostilities as a shock. They expected it, after this intense literary and ideological work had prepared Ottoman minds and spirits for it. Complex theories and shifts in the conception of the state did much to determine how the war was imagined, experienced, and remembered. It was seen as the fulfillment of the new national ideal. As Enver Paşa proclaimed: “Our participation in the World War represents the vindication of our national ideal. The ideal of our nation and our people leads us toward the destruction of our Muscovite enemy, in order to obtain thereby a natural frontier to our Empire, which should include and unite all branches of our race.”134 130. See especially, Ronald Grigor Suny, Fatma Müge Göçek, and Norman M Naimark Robert, eds., A Question of Genocide: Armenians and Turks at the End of the Ottoman Empire (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2011). 131. Cited in Nezir-Akmeşe, The Birth of Modern Turkey, 145. 132. Şuhnaz Yılmaz, “An Ottoman Warrior Abroad: Enver Paşa as an Expatriate,” Middle Eastern Studies 35, no. 4 (1999): 44–46. 133. Ahmed Emin, Turkey in the World War (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1930), 68. 134. Cited in Nezir Akmeşe, The Birth of Modern Turkey, 189.

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It was these ideas and new conceptions of state, society, and politics that motivated the Ottomans to fight, and served as propaganda tools in World War I itself. When applied in practice, however, they brought the Empire not success but defeat. Despite this massive failure, they did much to found the central radical republican ideas of nationalism, populism, and a strong centralized state. They became three of the six arrows of Kemalism.

ch a p T er se v e n

Ottoman Political Thought during World War I

wor ld wa r i broughT a bou T deep ch a nges in Ottoman social, political, and intellectual life. International comparative studies and Turkish historiography, however, have neglected the intellectual heritage of the four long years. It has been widely assumed that no significant intellectual work was produced during World War I, as the Empire struggled for life and was preoccupied with its own survival, and that modern Turkish culture, national identity, and political ideology were shaped merely within the post-1923 context. Books written in the context of the war were fundamental in shaping the perception of its outbreak and in determining how that it was imagined, fought, and remembered. Wartime experiences, expressed in propaganda works and political decisions, altered the ways in which Ottoman political leaders and intellectuals saw their state, society, and politics. During its first stage (1914–17), the war was imagined as an opportunity to free Muslim and Turkic populations by establishing a new Turkic-Islamic state based on religious and international solidarity. Territorial losses, particularly of Arab provinces, led to a rapid shift from internationalism toward nationalism. The second stage of the war (1917–18) witnessed the birth of ideas of solidarity (tesanütçülük or solidarizm) and a sovereign nation-state, which were to become central to a radical republican ideology of the new state.

The Conceptualization of the War and Public Opinion The Ottoman Empire joined the war as a result of a secret diplomatic agreement signed in August 1914 by three members of the Young Turk inner circle (Enver, Talat, Said Halim Paşas) and Germany, shortly before [ 165 ]

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the outbreak of the international crisis.1 The events leading up to Turkey’s entry into the war involved two German ships, the Goeben and Breslau, which arrived in Istanbul in the same month and were acquired by the Turks through a fictitious sale, ordered by Enver Paşa. The two ships attacked the Russian fleet in October, leading the Allied Powers to declare war on the Ottoman Empire, but the Empire remained neutral until making its official war declaration on the side of Germany and Austria in November 1914. The Ottoman Empire’s entry into World War I has been widely discussed by diplomatic, military, and political historians. They have seen the ideas of the Young Turks’ military leaders, the Triumvirate of Enver, Talat, and Cemal Paşas, above all as fixated and myopic personal ambitions, pushing the Ottoman state blindly toward disaster. In Turkish historiography, this view was developed primarily by Yusuf Hikmet Bayur in his Türk İnkılâbı Tarihi (History of the Turkish Revolution), published between 1940 and 1967. He argued that the Ottoman Empire was drawn into the war on the side of Germany and Austria-Hungary “without compelling reason,”2 because the Ottoman leaders were below average, simpleminded, and unable to think and decide rationally.3 His formulation, with its singular emphasis on the Ottoman leaders’ incompetence as the main cause of the Empire’s entry into the war, has widely influenced military historiography and the publications of the Turkish General Staff.4 Recent Western scholarship also instructs us that the Ottoman entry into the war was a consequence of “unforeseen events.”5 Erik Zürcher attributed the 1. Y. T. Kurat, “How Turkey Drifted into World War I,” in Studies in International History, ed. K. Bourne and D. C. Watt (London: Longmans, 1967). 2. Yusuf Hikmet Bayur, Türk İnkılâbı Tarihi, 1914–1918 Genel Savaşı, vol. 3 (Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu, 1982), 267–69. 3. Yusuf Hikmet Bayur, Türk İnkılâbı Tarihi, Paylaşımlar, vol. 2 (Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu Basımevi, 1983), 2–5. 4. Chief of the General Staff Republic of Turkey, Birinci Dünya Harbi’nde Türk Harbi, Osmanlı İmparatorluğu’nun Siyasi ve Askeri Hazırlıkları ve Harbe Girişi, ed. Cemal Akbay, vol. 1 (Ankara: Genelkurmay Basımevi, 1970, rev. 1991), 1–154, 201–20; Kâzım Yetiş, “İkinci Meşrutiyet Devrindeki Belli Başlı Fikir Akımlarının Askeri Hareketlere ve Cepheye Tesiri,” in Bildiriler: Dördüncü Askeri Tarih Semineri (Ankara: Genelkurmay Basımevi, 1989), 59–69; Veli Yılmaz, Birinci Dünya Harbi’nde Türk-Alman İttifakı ve Askeri Yardımlar (Istanbul: Cem, 1993), 1–16, 73–94; Doğan Hacipoğlu, 29 Ekim 1914: Osmanlı İmparatorluğu’nun 1.Dünya Harbine Girişi (Istanbul: Deniz İkmal Grup Komutanlığı, 2009), 5–25, 103. 5. Feroz Ahmad, “War and Society under the Young Turks, 1908–18,” in From Empire to Republic (Istanbul: Bilgi University Press, 2008), 242; “Great Britain’s Relations with the Young Turks, 1908–1914,” Middle Eastern Studies 2 (1966): 302–29.

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Ottoman entry into the conflict to a “miscalculation,” short-term delusions about the war, and the naïveté of the leaders: “They [the Ottomans] probably expected a war with Russia only, and in that war they could expect Germany and Austria to win.”6 Eugene Rogan, too, neglected the significance of public opinion in developing Ottoman foreign policy.7 A far more complex set of philosophical, political, psychological, and military ideas developed in the course of the Balkan Wars lay behind Turkey’s entry into the war. The world views of the Triumvirate and Ottoman military and nationalist thinkers at that time, influenced by German military theory and idealist philosophy as well as French social theory, played a pivotal role in framing their political ambitions. They and their intellectual allies glorified the state and justified a new theory of offensive war, while public opinion itself had always assumed that offense conferred an advantage in warfare. The most striking characteristic of Ottoman public opinion in 1914 was the degree to which the war captured the public’s interest. The conflict galvanized a sense of national community and a popular appetite for political involvement that had been growing since the Balkan Wars. Newspapers filled their pages with stories about the war, to the exclusion of almost everything else. Illustrated magazines, especially Harb Mecmuası (Journal of War), carried photographs of soldiers, military equipment, and battlefields. Literary magazines published articles on the philosophy, culture, and aesthetics of war. Pamphlets containing the fetvas, along with fervent elaborations, were distributed to the public throughout the capital and other major cities of the Empire. Popular rallies in support of the campaign were held in various parts of Istanbul.8 National idealists showed the greatest enthusiasm and support for the government’s decision in the face of the international crisis. Few were taken by surprise or shocked because literary works and national initiatives of the preceding period had done much to prepare the spirit and morale of the Ottoman nation for a forthcoming war.9 From one perspective, World War I was viewed within the Empire as an offensive and total 6. Zürcher, Turkey: A Modern History, 112. 7. Eugene Rogan, The Fall of the Ottomans: The Great War in the Middle East, 1914– 1920 (London: Allan Lane, 2015). 8. Stanford J. Shaw, The Ottoman Empire in World War I, vol. 2 (Ankara: Turkish Historical Society, 2008), 758. 9. A[kçuraoğlu].Y[usuf], “1329 Senesinde Türk Dünyası,” Türk Yurdu, 16 April 1914, 2135–36.

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war. From another, it was seen as an act of self-defense against an enemy intent on occupying the homeland of Muslim and Turkic nations.

propaganda and censorship The Young Turk leaders capitalized on these popular perceptions of the war. Unable to rely on overwhelming military force to convince the public of the likelihood of victory, the leadership sought to control and shape public opinion through two channels: censorship and propaganda. Censorship aimed to safeguard security and promote consensus. With the introduction of a temporary law in August 1914, the establishment of new newspapers and press agencies was banned, all existing news outlets required the approval of the censorship office in Istanbul (Erkân-ı Harbiye Riyaseti), and telegrams were permitted only in Turkish, Arabic, or French.10 Anti-war views in parliament were silenced. Ahmed Rıza, as a member of the Senate, and his liberal followers fell into sharp opposition with the CUP. All opposition newspapers were shut down or like Hüseyin Cahit’s Tanin, which openly criticized the CUP’s policies, taken over by the government. In 1908, 730 different magazine and newspaper titles had been published within the Empire, 370 of them in Istanbul.11 By the war’s end, only 14 publications in the capital survived, and these were forbidden to report territorial losses or failures, like the Sarıkamış disaster of 1915, so as not to demoralize the nation. Propaganda was used as a significant tool to boost the public spirit and morale, mobilize public opinion, and sustain the war effort. Most of the Empire’s propaganda initiatives were driven and controlled directly by Enver Paşa. Taking Ludendorff ’s propaganda strategy as a model, he believed that mobilization was the precondition for all future military success, and a powerful propaganda campaign would be a decisive factor for victory, which turned the war into a “propaganda war.” To sustain the war enthusiasm or “the spirit of 1914,” propaganda was disseminated by academicians, professionals, novelists, painters, journalists, ministers, and nationalists, like Ziya Gökalp, Celal Nuri, Mehmed Emin, Mehmet Akif, Halide Edip, and Tekinalp. It was published in newspapers, like Tanin, Türk

10. Kazım Karabekir, Cihan Harbine Neden Girdik? Nasıl İdare Ettik?, vol. 2 (Istanbul: Emre, [1937] 1994), 166–70. 11. Orhan Koloğlu, Aydınlarımızın Bunalım Yılı 1918: Zafer-i Nihai’den Tam Teslimiyete (Istanbul: Boyut, 2000), 59.

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Yurdu, Sebilü’r-Reşad, and Harp Mecmuası, and in novels, poems, and pamphlets.

The International Turn (1914–17) Ottoman nationalists saw World War I as the perfect moment to realize prewar spiritual and philosophical viewpoints with overarching social, religious, and political applications. Internationalism (beynelmilliyetçilik) had begun to emerge in Ottoman political thinking in the context of the Balkan Wars, and now predominated over nationalism (milliyetçilik, or nasyonalizm). Having observed the world divide into antagonistic international camps, associations, and ideologies during World War I, Ottoman nationalists realized how inadequately nationalism responded to international challenges, and how necessary it was for nations and states to cooperate. They believed that united international cooperation in economic, military, political, and religious affairs would make Turks, Muslims, and their allies stronger, and even invincible, against their enemies. The relationship between allies and enemies became self-consciously international in the early stage of the war (1914–17). Ottoman nationalists rejected the utopias of Comtean universalism or Durkheim’s cosmopolitanism. For Durkheim, sentiments directed toward one’s own nation and humanity in general were “equally highminded.” He termed them, respectively, “patriotism” and “world patriotism,” the latter implying “cosmopolitanism.”12 He did not study nationalism, and until his later work, Leçons de Sociologie Physique des Moeurs et du Droit, he rarely mentioned the concepts of nation or nationalism. In L’Allemagne au-dessus de tout, a pamphlet written in 1915 to explain the causes of the war to the French public, he criticized Germany’s “attempt to rise ‘above all human forces’ to master them and exercise full and absolute sovereignty over them,”13 seeing this as an act that separated the Germans from humanity.14 Here, he explicitly rejected Treitschke’s notion of a self-sufficient state, on the basis that no genuinely cosmopolitan conception of morality can be grounded solely on statist or nationalist premises. Nationalism was actively dangerous to cosmopoli12. Émile Durkheim, The Division of Labor in Society (New York: Free Press, [1893] 1964), 33. 13. Émile Durkheim, “Germany above All”: The German Mental Attitude and the War (Paris: Colin, 1915), 44–45. 14. Ibid., 4.

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tan peace and order. Therefore, there must be only cosmopolitanism, not nationalism or internationalism. In stark contrast to Durkheim, Gökalp proclaimed that humanity was realized only in national and international life,15 and rejected the cosmopolitan vision of world citizenship advocated by his contemporary Tevfik Fikret, who asserted that “My people is mankind and my home the earth.”16 Cosmopolitanism was an old and dead ideal, replaced by internationalism: “Every person is first of all a member of a nation and then of an international community. Among us, because the meaning of nationalism is not understood in its real sense, the fiction of cosmopolitanism is in vogue over internationalism.”17 He did not refer to the Marxist conception of internationalism, but a unity of nations, sharing the same religion, culture, language, and political goals, and ideals beyond national boundaries belonging to the same civilization group. Therefore, “Sociologically, internationality refers to the nations that belong to the same civilization.”18 A civilization was a totality of national cultures sharing common ideals,19 and a “Society of Nations.”20 Peace and stability could be achieved only by eliminating threats to a civilization, which justified destroying and fully incapacitating the enemy through violent war. This viewpoint saw international politics as a source of intense antagonism between friends and enemies.21 The Allied Powers were not only the military enemy but also a foe to liberty and a perpetrator of crimes against humanity, because they enslaved Muslim nations and occupied the homeland of the Turkish and Muslim nations. Yusuf Akçura traced the origins of the war to the Eastern Question, which was also the direct cause of the Balkan Wars.22 Despite tremendous destructive effects, the Balkan defeat awakened a nation that had for centuries been in slumber, oblivious to European political and economic oppression.23 He saw World War I not merely as a war between the Entente (İtilaf) and Central (İttifak) Powers, 15. Gökalp, “Yeni Hayat ve Yeni Değerler,” 58. 16. Gökalp, “Hars ve Tehzib (Culture and Refinement),” in Turkish Nationalism and Western Civilization: Selected Essays, ed. Niyazi Berkes (London: Allen and Unwin, 1959), 281. 17. Gökalp, “ ‘Türkçülük Nedir?’ (What Is Turkism?), Yeni Mecmua, no. 28, 1917,” ibid., 287. 18. Gökalp, “Üç Cereyan,” 75. 19. Gökalp, “Türkçülük Nedir?,” 287. 20. Gökalp, “Hars ve Tehzib,” 281. 21. Kendi Mektuplarında Enver Paşa, 175. 22. A[kçuraoğlu].Y[usuf], “1330 Senesi,” Türk Yurdu, 1915, 2516. 23. A.Y., “1329 Senesinde Türk Dünyası,” 2137.

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but as “an extremely important historic moment (ehemiyet-i azime-i tariyye),”24 which would eventually resolve the long-lasting Eastern Question,25 rescue the Turks and the caliphate from Western oppression and slavery, and restore to Muslim nations the honor they deserved.26 Reflecting this belief, Halide Edip saw the war as an unavoidable “battle for salvation” (halâs muharebesi),27 which would bring peace to the East and West. Therefore, the day of victory, Mehmed Emin asserted, will be “the day of independence” from Western domination.28 Russia and Britain were depicted as Turkey’s cruelest enemies. A pamphlet prepared and distributed by the CUP to its branches in Turkey reveals clearly how the decision-makers perceived the enemy and justified the war: For two centuries, the outer powers of Europe have directed their expansion on land and sea against the Turkish and neighboring Mohammadan countries. The Central Powers, who were being shut in and isolated by the outer nations, were obliged to confine their natural desire for expansion to themselves, being careful to watch the circle which was hemming them in. In consequence of this an enmity, having its origin in the very nature of things, grew up between the two groups of powers.29

Anti-Slavism reflected not xenophobia or a sense that Slavic nations were ethnically inferior to Turks but, as Sultan Mehmed Reşad’s war declaration stated, centuries of historical enmity.30 For Tekinalp, Russia had long aimed, since the last will of “Deli Peter” (Peter the Lunatic), to destroy the Ottoman Empire, control the Black Sea Straits, and secure for itself an exit into the Mediterranean. When Russia expanded, northern Ottoman provinces were lost and the Black Sea came under Russian dominion. To spread Pan-Slavism, Russia provoked the Balkan nations to break away from the Ottoman Empire, and supported the formation of the Balkan League.31 Immediately after the Balkan Wars, Russia began to attack Eastern Anatolia, threatening an important part of the Turkish homeland. In this narrative, Russia was “the colossus of darkest barba24. Akçura, “Cihan Harbi ve Türkler,” Türk Yurdu, 24 January 1914, 2446. 25. Akçura, “1330 Senesi,” 2517. 26. Akçura, “Türklük Şuunu, Osmanlı Şimâl Ordusunun Kafkasya’da İlerlemesi ve Ardahan Zabtı,” Türk Yurdu, 1915, 2446. 27. Halide Edip, “Halâs Muharebesi,” Tanin, 11 December 1914. 28. Mehmed Emin, Turan’a doğru. Ey Türk Uyan, 1918. 29. Tekinalp, “The Turkish and Pan-Turkish Ideal,” 129. 30. Ceride-i İlmiye, vol. I, 14 November 1914, 433–34. 31. Tekinalp, “The Turkish and Pan-Turkish Ideal,” 128.

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rism” and perpetuated “the cruellest oppression”32 in spreading despotism by occupying Muslim and Turkish lands.33 Britain, too, was depicted as a greedy “monster,” “the colossus of a degenerate civilisation and shameless exploitation of his people,” which tried to annihilate Islam and threatened the sovereignty of the Ottoman Empire.34 It was not British civilization that the Ottomans denounced, but its imperialist threat, discernible in its desire to possess the Arab peninsula and the coast of the Persian Gulf. These territorial gains would enable Britain easily to reach the Indian Ocean, which would become a de facto “English ocean,” and set up a Gibraltar-Singapore line.35 If Britain realized these imperialist goals, the Ottoman Empire would lose its preeminence in the Arab peninsula, transferring “the monopoly of trade in the Old World” to its enemy.36 To avert Russian and British expansionism and save “Mohammedan countries like India, Tunisia, Algeria, [and] Morocco” from Christian domination and violence, and “to end [their] tyranny,”37 the Young Turks and propagandists called upon all patriots and believers to mobilize and take up arms, strengthen their spirit and morale to produce a glorious victory, and save the Islamic and Turkic lands and the caliphate, not only for the sake of Turkish peoples, but for Islam and all humanity.38 This propaganda sought to bring out certain shared interests and objectives across boundaries, allowing sympathetic countries to solve their problems by pooling their resources and promoting transnational cooperation, and in this way pursue coordinated approaches. Germany was seen as the Ottoman Empire’s most loyal friend and a real supporter of Islam.39 Further justification for the Ottoman- German alliance came from the premise that “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.” Tekinalp wrote that “the fact that the Turks are today the allies of Germany is no mere whim of destiny, but the conscious expression of an unconscious brotherhood in arms which has existed between the two nations for a thousand years. For ten centuries, both nations have had one common enemy—the Slavs.”40 Slav opposition, in this reckoning, blocked both Pan32. Ibid. 33. Ibid., 139. 34. Ibid., 128. 35. Ibid. 36. Ibid. 37. “İngiltere ve Âlem-i İslam,” Tanin, no. 2128, 24 November 1914. 38. “Müttefiklerimizin Düşündükleri,” Türk Yurdu, no. 119, 12 October 1916, 174–75. 39. Tekinalp, “The Turkish and Pan-Turkish Ideal,” 131. 40. Ibid., 127.

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German and Pan-Turanist irredentist aspirations, posing a great threat to these nations’ unity and security. Grand Vizier Said Halim Paşa declared in an interview with the New York Times that as “the only way to put an end to Russia’s aggression would be an alliance with Germany,”41 “enter[ing] into relations with Great Britain, France, and Russia would have been a harmful factor in respect to the country’s interest.”42 Similarly, Talat Paşa argued, “it would be wrong to consider our alliance with Germany as a temporary political combination. The Turco-German alliance is the result of a concrete policy based on the community of interests. The quadruple alliance which has proved itself during three years of war will, with the help of God, be able to triumph over the difficulties of the moment and ensure for our countries a glorious peace and a future of prosperity.”43 To achieve victory, Tekinalp contended, the Ottoman Empire needed two things: iron (demir) and fire (ateş). The former signified military strength and diplomacy. By siding with Germany and Austria, who possessed the most modern and scientific military organization and equipment in the world, the Empire had guaranteed for itself a future victory, which would avert the decline of the Turco-Islamic world. Fire referred to “the power of ideas” (fikirlerimizin gücü), which would awaken the national consciousness and spirit, and prove a decisive factor in war’s outcome.44 This shows the ideological component of modern warfare, seen as denoting a “battle of ideas on the road to justice” (hak yolunda fikir mücadelesi).45 The ideas in question in the first period of the war were Pan-Islamism and Pan-Turkism.

İttİHad-I İSlam (islamic union, or pan-islamism) Pan-Islamism referred to the idea of an international Islamic union (İttihad-ı İslam) bound by a spiritual solidarity in standing against Christian armies, seen as “a twentieth century crusade.”46 This view, which saw modern warfare as a Holy War, had developed during the Balkan Wars. To purge Islam and humanity of this “evil threat,” Şeyhülislam Ürgüplü Mus41. Said Halim Paşa, L’Empire Ottoman et la Guerre Mondiale (Istanbul: Éditions Isis, 2000), 8. 42. “Turkey Distrusted Allies, Says Halim,” New York Times, 22 February 1915. 43. Quoted in Aksakal, The Ottoman Road to War in 1914, 191–92. 44. Tekinalp, “Yeni Cengizlik,” in Tekinalp, Turkish Patriot, 1883–1961, ed. Jacob M. Landau (Leiden: Nederlands Historisch-Archaeologisch Instituut te İstanbul, 1984), 99–100. 45. Orhan Koloğlu, “Savaşın Üç Paşası: Talat, Enver, Cemal,” Atlas Tarih, 2014, 31. 46. Tekinalp, “The Turkish and Pan-Turkish Ideal,” 129.

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tafa Hayri Efendi declared jihad against enemies of Islam (France, Russia, and Great Britain) in November 1914.47 Enver Paşa also issued an order, calling Ottoman Muslim soldiers to rise up in arms to defend Islamic lands and free their brothers in India, Central Asia, and Africa from their enemies’ domination: “Forward always forward for victory, glory, martyrdom, and paradise will be the rewards of those who push forward, while death and disgrace will belong to those who remain behind!”48 These official declarations were followed by intensive jihad propaganda in the Ottoman and German press.49 Germany was the greatest supporter of the jihad. To spread German and Pan-Islamic propaganda, Max Freiherr von Oppenheim established the Intelligence Bureau for the East (Nachrichtenstelle für den Orient) in Berlin.50 In cooperation with Teşkilât-ı Mahsusa, it published pamphlets 47. The fetva reads as follows: If several enemies unite against Islam, if the countries of Islam are sacked, if the Moslem populations are massacred or made captive; and if in this case the Padishah in conformity with the sacred words of the Koran proclaims the Holy War, is participation in this war a duty for all Moslems, old and young, cavalry and infantry? Must the Mohammedans of all countries of Islam hasten with their bodies and possessions to the Djat [jihad]? Answer: “Yes.” The Moslem subjects of Russia, of France, of England and of all the countries that side with them in their land and sea attacks dealt against the Caliphate for the purpose of annihilating Islam, must these subjects, too, take part in the holy War against the respective governments upon which they depend? Answer: “Yes.” Those who at a time when all Moslems are summoned to fight, avoid the struggle and refuse to join in the Holy War, are they exposed to the wrath of God, to great misfortunes, and to the deserved punishment? Answer: “Yes.” If the Moslem subjects of the said countries should take up arms against the government of Islam, would they commit an unpardonable sin, even if they had been driven to the war by threats of extermination uttered against themselves and their families? Answer: “Yes.” The Moslems who in the present war are under England, France, Russia, Serbia, Montenegro and those who give aid to these countries by waging war against Germany and Austria, allies of Turkey, do they deserve to be punished by the wrath of God as being the cause of harm and damage to the Caliphate and to Islam? Answer: “Yes.” Source Records of the Great War, Vol. III, ed. Charles F. Horne, (New York: National Alumni, 1923). 48. Sabah, no. 9036, 13 November 1914. 49. Shaw, The Ottoman Empire in World War I, 2, 749–57. 50. Donald M. McKale, “ ‘The Kaiser’s Spy’: Max Von Oppenheim and the Anglo-

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and newspapers like Al-Cihad in Arabic, Turkish, Hindi, and Urdu, and spread them via secret agents over Muslim nations.51 Oppenheim saw Islam as the “greatest weapon” to unite Muslims and raise them against the Allies, which would lead to their withdrawal from their colonies and weaken their power.52 Within Young Turk circles, Prime Minister Said Halim Paşa was the leading advocate and ideologue for Pan-Islamism, who had been actively involved in mobilizing religious spirit since the Balkan Wars.53 In 1913, he had initiated a propaganda campaign, addressing Muslim populations under colonial rule, particularly Indian Muslims, exhorting them to rebel against Britain. He became the first secretary general of the Ottoman Benevolent Society (Cemiyet-i Hayriye-i Osmaniye), known as the PanIslamic League, established to promote cultural interaction and humanitarian cooperation in the Muslim world. It included prominent Islamic scholars like Salih al-Sharif Tunisi (chief of the Teşkilât-ı Mahsusa in Cairo), Abbas Hilmi Paşa (the last Khedive of Egypt), Şekib Arslan (the Druze leader in Lebanon), and Sharif Ali Haydar Paşa (the governor of Mecca).54 During World War I, it cooperated with the Ottoman government and the Teşkilât-ı Mahsusa in establishing branches in the Middle East, Northern Africa, Central Asia, and India, recruiting volunteers and distributing arms.55 Its main objectives were spreading Muslim consciousness; liberating colonized Muslim nations from imperial powers; uniting independent Muslim nations like Iran, Afghanistan, and Morocco with these liberated colonies; and creating a new powerful political system

German Rivalry before and during the First World War,” European History Quarterly 27, no. 2 (1997): 201–2. ˇ ihād: Eine Deutsche Propagandazeitung im 1. Weltkrieg,” Die 51. Peter Heine, “Al-G Welt des Islams 20, nos. 3/4 (1980): 197–99. 52. Politisches Archiv des Auswärtigen-Amts, Der Weltkrieg, Nr.11. Unternehmungen und Aufwiegelungen gegen unsere Feinde. Allgemein, Bd. 1. Die Revolutionnierung der islamischen Gebietge unserer Feinde. Treue, Max Freiherr von Oppenheim, 61–64, quoted in Mustafa Çolak, Alman İmparatorluğu’nun Doğu Siyaseti Çerçevesinde Kafkasya Politikası: 1914–1918 (Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu, 2006), 24–25. 53. Said Halim Paşa believed that Westernization only created slavery in Muslim nations. He claimed that to free themselves from the Western cultural and political yoke, Muslims must discover their own authentic values and institutions, and create their own synthesis of modernity and Islam. See İsmail Kara, Türkiye’de İslamcılık Düşüncesi, vol. 1 (Istanbul: Kitabevi, 1986), 193. 54. Jacob M. Landau, The Politics of Pan-Islam: Ideology and Organization (Oxford: Clarendon, 1990), 92–94. 55. 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), 109.

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under the leadership of a caliph, where all Muslims would live freely and equally in service of humanity.56 Celal Nuri (deputy for Gelibolu and journalist in Tanin, and later editor in chief of İleri), Yunus Nadi ( journalist in Tasvir-i Efkâr, and later editor in chief of the radical republican propaganda newspaper Cumhuriyet), and Ziya Gökalp were among the prominent Pan-Islamist intellectuals and propagandists during these campaigns, all of whom were later to become intellectual founders of the Republic. In İttihâd-ı İslâm ve Almanya (Islamic Union and Germany, 1914), a successor to his İttihâd-ı İslâm (Islamic Union, 1913), Celal Nuri justified the fight against the enemy on the basis of a classical historiography of the rise and fall of the nations. He drew on Ibn Khaldūn’s theory of the “infancy, youth, adulthood, old age and death” of the nations,57 and predicted victory for the Ottomans and their Allies over the Entente Powers. The English and French had undergone the Enlightenment, an age of state adulthood, and progressed through economic and intellectual development, but their colonialist ambitions harmed “the material and spiritual well- being of Humanity”58 and created hatred and resentment between Christian and Muslim nations. Through the unjust treatment of its colonies, the West had begun to decline morally, entering a stage of death.59 It was now time for the Muslim states to rise up, take up arms, and gain revenge upon the West. Only by completely incapacitating the enemy would peace, order, and unity be maintained in the world.60 Muslim victory would augur the golden age or adulthood of the Muslim nations, and herald “the dawn of a new age in geography, law, commerce, administration, art and reform [in the Islamic lands]. 1914 would be a more important year than 1789, or even an entire century of the Renaissance.”61 The victors of the Holy War, Yunus Nadi believed, would definitely be the Muslims. To win this war to end all wars, “the sacred and exalted obligation” of the Ottoman state was to mobilize Muslim nations and armies against the “tyrants” in the name of Islam.62 This Islamic unification, ümmet, was the precondition for victory. 56. Shaw, The Ottoman Empire in World War I, 2, 1150–51. 57. Celal Nuri, İttihad-i İslam ve Almanya: İttihad-i İslam’a Zeyl (Istanbul: Yeni Osmanlı Matbaa ve Kütüphanesi, 1914), 12. 58. Ibid., 57–58. 59. Ibid. 60. Ibid. 61. Ibid., 15. 62. Yunus Nadi, “Cihad Yolunda,” Tasvir-i Efkâr, no. 2119, 15 November 1914, quoted in Shaw, The Ottoman Empire in World War I, 2, 1164.

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Ümmet, Gökalp stated, is a community of “the universal religions, which unite several ethnic groups,”63 specifically Christianity, Islam, Judaism, and Buddhism. Like Celal Nuri, he perceived humanity as divided by religions64 and within religious communities, as was the case for the Ottoman Empire’s Turks and Arabs. To cultivate solidarity within the Islamic ümmet, he proposed the reorganization of Islam through linguistic, spiritual, political, and educational reforms. These would encompass the use of Arabic characters in all Muslim languages, the creation of a uniform scientific terminology, and the introduction of a common calendar.65 Once these reforms were successfully carried out, the Islamic ümmet could reunite under the spiritual leadership of the caliph, and create an international society by the federation of free Islamic nations: “Only in this way can a humane international Islamic community create real equality of nations, universal justice and kindness, brotherhood and solidarity.”66 This great federation of Islamic nations would include Turks, Arabs, Persians, Africans, and Asians, comprising one-sixth of the world’s population. In creating this new international order, Muslim nations must collaborate effectively with their European allies. Yet, Celal Nuri was concerned about Germany’s future colonialist and expansionist attitude toward China and East Africa after the war. To avert this threat, he proposed a close diplomatic and economic alliance between Germany and the Islamic world. In this way, “Germany would find customers for its industries and would not need old-fashioned imperialism.”67 Aggression and colonialism were unnecessary to become a great and powerful nation. China, for example, had “reached a stage of civilization no European has”68 through the incorporation of a pacific philosophy. Hence, Celal Nuri argued, the lessons of China’s yin and yang philosophy were universal: Muslims, Jews, and Christians alike were taught to live by the principle that “you reap what you sow.”69 The first years of the war brought considerable success to Pan-Islamic propaganda. The appeal to jihad was most effective in India. Intellectual 63. Gökalp, “Millet Nedir?,” 129. 64. Gökalp, “Cemaat Medeniyeti, Cemiyet Medeniyeti,” 101. 65. Heyd, Foundations of Turkish Nationalism, 93. 66. Gökalp, “Türkçülük Nedir?,” 289. 67. Celal Nuri, İttihad-i İslam ve Almanya, 31. 68. Ibid., 53–54. 69. York Norman, “Islamism and the Wheel of History: Celal Nuri (Ottoman Turkey, 1914), Sayyid Qutb (Egypt, 1964), and Mohammad Khatami’ (Iran, 1998),” 10. Retrieved from http://history.appstate.edu/sites/history.appstate.edu/files/Paper%20-%20York% 20Norman.pdf.

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groups were formed by Western-educated Aligarh Muslims and ulema to resist the British yoke.70 In the Middle East, Arab secret societies like alFatat (Young Arabs) and al-Ahd (The Covenant) were established, which provoked massive strikes against foreign intervention. Cemal Paşa convinced a group of Syrian literati to spread solidarity and unification among Ottomans and Arabs, and join the Ottoman army. However, Arab opinion in Syria and Iraq remained largely responsive to Istanbul’s initiatives, and dissidence declined or moved to sites beyond Ottoman control, particularly Cairo.71 Pan-Islamism was widely perceived by the Arabs as a Turkification policy, fostering a highly reactive Arab nationalism, which the British eagerly supported. After the Arab revolts of 1916, and the consequent gradual loss of the Arab lands, Islamism weakened in its appeal to Turkish leaders and thinkers as an ideology to unify Islamic nations, and lost ground to Pan-Turanism.

tUrCaNCIlIk (pan- Turanism) Pan-Turanism referred to the internationalization of the social revolution, which started with the awakening of Turkish nationalism during the Balkan Wars.72 It aimed at the reunification of the Turkic people, the awakening of Turkish culture, and the creation of prosperous and modern Turkic states through the spreading of a common soul, consciousness, and civilization as far as Turan, the national homeland of the Turks, presently occupied mainly by Russia and China. By declaring war against Russia, supported by the most modern and scientific military organizations, Halide Edip saw an opportunity to realize this overarching ideal.73 Gökalp’s poetry book Kızıl Elma (Red Apple), which symbolized Turan, propagated and popularized this vision. The first two lines of the opening poem were the same as those of his earlier poem “Turan,” indicating its continuity with his political dream: The homeland of the Turks is not Turkey, nor yet Turkistan, Their homeland is a broad and everlasting land: Turan.74

The imagined territory of Turan spanned from the Mediterranean Sea in the West to the Pacific Ocean in the East, and from North to South cov70. Mushir U. Haq, Muslim Politics in Modern India, 1857–1947 (Delhi: Meenakshi Prakashan, 1970), 91–92. 71. Findley, Turkey, Islam Nationalism and Modernity, 293. 72. Ibid., 103. 73. Halide Edip, “Halâs Muharebesi,” 1. 74. Gökalp, Kızıl Elma, 13.

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ered parts of Europe, North Africa, and North and Central Asia as far as China, encompassing between eighty and one hundred million people.75 Over time, Gökalp held, the Turkish nations had mixed with other nations and civilizations, drifted away from their indigenous homeland and traditions, and forgotten their “noble” and “glorious” past. Despite their diversity in culture, tradition, and even physical appearance, the Turkish people within Turan had maintained certain well-marked common traits throughout history. Among these, the most significant was language.76 It was now the duty of the Turks to “know themselves” and discover their concealed identity by returning to their “promised land.”77 Tekinalp asserted that saving Turan and disseminating Turkism to those who lived beneath the pall of Western slavery and oppression or ignorance was the primary duty of the Ottoman Turks, now that the latter had discovered their idealism during the Balkan Wars.78 The awakening would start in “the Little Turan,” including the territory stretching from Istanbul to Lake Baikal, and from Kazan to Mongolia, and later spread to Greater Turan, which extended from the frontiers of Japan to the Scandinavian mountains and from the Arctic Ocean to the Tibetan Plateau.79 He called this mission New Genghizism (Yeni Cengizlik), or irredentism:80 The Irredenta . . . is a political and social necessity for the Turks. The motive of the Turkish Irrendenta is not, as with other nations, greed for conquest, because Turkey has no need of increased territory or conquest. The fruitful land of Anatolia would provide good homes and food for a population three times greater than the present number. The Turkish element at home not only requires material but moral expansion and strengthening.81

Through irredentism, a spiritually, morally, and intellectually powerful “Greater Turkey,” consisting of a federation of free Turkic nations—the Turks of Azerbaijan and the Crimea, the Turcomans, the Kirghiz, the Uzbeks, and the Kippchaks82—would be bound together through common practice and solidarity. Istanbul would be the capital of this Golden Fa75. Halide Edip, Yeni Turan (Istanbul: Özgur Yayınları, [1912] 2005), 12–15. 76. Gökalp, “Millet ve Vatan,” 78. 77. Gökalp, Kızıl Elma, 25. 78. Tekinalp, “The Turkish and Pan-Turkish Ideal,” 140. 79. Tekinalp, Turan (Istanbul: Türk Yurdu Kütüphanesi, 1914), 113. 80. Tekinalp, “Yeni Cengizlik,” 99. 81. Tekinalp, “The Turkish and Pan-Turkish Ideal,” 143. 82. Gökalp, “Yeni Atilla,” in Kızıl Elma, 127.

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therland (altın yurt).83 The Turanists did not consider the formation of a Turkic federation a utopian dream, but an imminent possibility, citing past Turkic states created and ruled by great Turkic leaders like Attila, Cengiz Han, and Timur. Gökalp believed that Enver Paşa was to be the new Turkish hero who would realize this Turan dream and lead the Turks to their salvation.84 Enver Paşa was indeed the greatest advocate of Turanism, using it as propaganda to mobilize Crimean Tatar-Turks living under Russian rule to rise up against the Tsar. A CUP member expressed this plan: “This is the Caucasian frontier. . . . We shall advance from here. We shall cross Iran. From there we shall proceed in two different directions. Our right flank will finish off Afghanistan while our left flank enters Turan. . . . Turan will be conquered quickly. After this, our forces will reunite. Like lightning they will cross the Himalaya Mountains and enter into India.”85 To establish a greater Turkistan, Enver Paşa launched an unsuccessful Caucasian campaign of 1915, with the disastrous loss of 50,000 troops, and occupied Azerbaijan in the wake of the Russian Revolution, intending to free the Crimean Turks. In the course of the Russian Revolution, Gökalp called for a union with the Crimean Tatar-Turks, and encouraged them to seize their unique opportunity to obtain full independence and unite with the Ottoman Empire. This was another dream that failed in practice.

The Social and National Turn (1917–18) The incapacity of internationalism to realize Ottoman war aims led to a shift from internationalism toward nationalism during the second period of the war (1917–18). The novelty of wartime nationalism was in its strong sociological emphasis. The near-total collapse of the Empire through World War I created great disturbance and a sense of melancholy in Ottoman society. Themes of social disintegration, moral crisis, individual alienation or estrangement, and the disruption of values appeared widely in intellectual writings. Despite deploying a pessimistic view of the current state of Ottoman society, Ottoman intellectuals predicted a revival and 83. Tekinalp, Turan, 76. 84. Gökalp, “Enver Paşa,” in Yeni Hayat, Doğru Yol, ed. Müjgân Cunbur (Ankara: Güneş Matbaacılık, [1918] 1976), 45. 85. Ziya Şakir (Soku), 1914–1918 Cihan Harbini Nasıl İdare Ettik? (Istanbul: Muallim Fuat Gücüyener Anadolu Türk Kitap Deposu, 1944), 69–70. Quoted in Erol Köroğlu, Ottoman Propaganda and Turkish Identity: Literature in Turkey During World War I (London, New York: I. B. Tauris, 2007), 73.

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rebirth. Tekinalp believed that national awakening or nationalism, which commenced in the political awakening (intibah-ı millî) of the 1908 Revolution, evolved into a cultural awakening (harsî intibah) during the Balkan Wars and then into economic awakening (iktisadi intibah) during World War I, “would bring good results and enable us to reach our [national] ideals,”86 but only if completed by its final stage, social awakening (içtimaî intihab).87 In other words, hope lay in reestablishing social bonds and moral authority, reactivating the collective conscience, and re-creating a social community and political order. This social awakening could be attained only by the discovery and full understanding of social reality through the objective science of sociology, which Gökalp defined as the study of social facts and laws.88 Modeled on L’Année Sociologique, two journals were dedicated to sociological enquiry, Yeni Mecmua (New Journal) and İçtimâiyât Mecmuası (Sociological Review),89 published between 1917 and 1918 and supported financially by the Young Turk Party. The authors had been extensively influenced by Durkheim’s thought and helped popularize his political and moral sociology among Ottoman intellectuals through translations and discussions. Comtean positivism had influenced the study of society and morality in the Empire since the late nineteenth century, but, as Necmeddin Sadık (Sadak) pointed out, it did not go far beyond the study of the history of philosophy (felsefe-i tarih).90 Having recognized the significance of the pioneers of sociology, including Spencer and Tarde, he criticized them for seeking explanations and collective ways of behavior in elements of individual consciousness, and reducing the social to the biological or psychological. Durkheim was the first true sociologist and the founder of modern sociology, as he made it a distinct discipline by defining the boundaries and scope of the social.91 Like Durkheim, Gökalp took society to have a real and autonomous existence, governed by collective consciousness.92 This view opposed the 86. Tekinalp, “Tesanütçülük: İçtimaî Siyaset II,” Yeni Mecmua, 30 January 1918, 21. 87. Ibid. 88. Gökalp, “Halkçılık,” Yeni Mecmua, 14 February 1918, 104. 89. The first six issues of the İçtimâiyât Mecmuası were latinized and printed. See İçtimâiyât Mecmuası, Sayı:1–6, Yıl: 1917 (Istanbul: İstanbul Üniversitesi Edebiyat Fakültesi, 1997). It has been digitalized at http://www.journals.istanbul.edu.tr/iusosyoloji/issue /view/1019001987. References are to the website. 90. Necmeddin Sadık, “İçtimâiyat Bir İlim Midir?,” İçtimâiyât Mecmuası, May 1917, 95. 91. Necmeddin Sadık, “İçtimâiyat Nedir?,” İçtimâiyât Mecmuası, April 1917, 95. 92. Gökalp, “Millet ve Vatan,” 76.

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individualistic liberalism advocated by one of his contemporaries, Rıza Tevfik, and his Young Ottoman predecessors, Namık Kemal and Ziya Paşa, who claimed that “individuals are ontologically prior to society.”93 Rather, Gökalp conceived individuals as forged by society. A society cannot exist without individuals, but only in society is the individual and personality to be discovered.94 Drawing on Durkheim’s Les Règles, Mehmed Emin argued that each society has peculiar principles, customs, traditions, collective consciousness, or distinctive sets of laws,95 which “constitute an independent system, sui generis.”96 Echoing Montesquieu’s De l’esprit des lois, Gökalp stressed that “each society cannot be compared with any other, nor can the institutions of one society be valid for another.”97 A sociological study was necessary to discover the laws governing Turkish life throughout its history and to understand its future direction and progress.98

naTion- sTaTe and solidariTy For Gökalp, state and society rest on the complementarity and interdependence of cooperatively functioning individuals and groups. Despite the social, moral, and political decline of the Empire, it was possible to avert its disintegration through the strengthening of social bonds and solidarity. This conception of solidarity (tesanüt), which was to become the central doctrine of Turkish nationalism and republicanism, penetrated Ottoman political thought from France in the 1910s through intellectuals like Gökalp, Tekinalp, Necmettin Sadık, M. Zekeriya (Sertel), and Yusuf Kemal (Tengirşenk).99 Espoused by Léon Duguit, Léon Bourgeois, Albert Fouilleé, and Émile Durkheim himself, solidarité took the place of the republican principles of liberty, equality, and fraternity, which they saw as too abstract.100 Opposing laissez-faire liberalism, Marxist collectivism, 93. Gökalp, “Milliyet Mefkûresi,” 79. 94. Gökalp, “ ‘İçtimâiyât ve Fikriyat: Cemiyette Büyük Adamların Tesiri’ (Sociology and Ideology: The Influence of Great Men on Society), İslâm Mecmuası, vol. 1, no. 2, 1917,” in Turkish Nationalism and Western Civilisation: Selected Essays of Ziya Gökalp, ed. Niyazi Berkes (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1959), 164. 95. Mehmed Emin, “Ahlak Ne Vakit İlim Olabilir?,” İçtimâiyât Mecmuası, June 1917, 132. 96. Gökalp, “İçtimaî Nevileri,” 123. 97. Ibid. 98. Ibid. 99. Zafer Toprak, “II. Meşrutiyet’te Solidarist Düşünce: Halkçılık,” Toplum ve Bilim Dergisi, 1 (1977). Retrieved from http://www.obarsiv.com/cts_zafer_toprak.html. 100. Solidarism was the official philosophy of the Third Republic: “Le ‘solidarisme’

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and Catholic corporatism, it emphasized state interventionism, social legislation, and voluntary associations.101 In formulating their theory of solidarism (solidarism or tesanütçülük), Gökalp and Tekinalp owed much to Durkheim’s definition of solidarité in De la division du travail social. They employed the social and economic ties of solidarity in renovating and providing a forum for social ideals, values, and morality. Explaining society as an organic unity bound together by solidarity,102 Gökalp identified two types of societal dynamic corresponding to the premodern and the modern. “Mechanical solidarity” holds together premodern societies of family, clans, and tribes, sustained by an intense conscience collective grounded in action. The more a society grows, the more complex its web of functional relationships and interdependencies, and the more specialized the tasks of its individual members become. In modern society, this evolution ultimately leads to a division of labor (içtimaî taksim-i âmâl) and spontaneously to the transformation of mechanical solidarity into what Gökalp, like Durkheim, calls “organic solidarity.” The division of labor creates a host of new intermediary groups— religious, political, economic, occupational, and professional groupings (içtimaî meslekler) among them—binding a divided society together, promoting social progress, and serving as instruments to develop harmony, solidarity, and altruism.103 A nation, for Gökalp, is an organic society with a moral homogeneity and an intensity of conscience collective compared to that generated within traditional mechanical society.104 It promotes moral conduct, and embodies collective consciousness. He persisted in seeing the nation as a value, an ideal and a reflection of culture, rather than an empirical or abstract unity: “[A] nation is not a racial, ethnic, geographical, political, or voluntary group or association. [A] nation is a group composed of men and women who have gone through the same education, who have received the semble en passe de devenir, pour la troisième République, une manière de philosophie officielle.” Célestin Bouglé, Le Solidarisme (Paris: V. Giard et E. Brière, 1907), 1. See especially Laurent Dobuzinskis, “Defenders of Liberal Individualism, Republican Virtues and Solidarity, the Forgotten Intellectual Founding Fathers of the French Third Republic,” European Journal of Political Theory 7, no. 3 (2008): 289. 101. Jack Ernest S. Hayward, “The Official Social Philosophy of the French Third Republic: Léon Bourgeois and Solidarism,” International Review of Social History 6, no. 1 (1961): 19–28. 102. Gökalp, “Millet ve Vatan,” 76. 103. Gökalp, “İçtimaî Neviler,” 124. 104. Ibid.

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same acquisitions in language, religion, morality, and aesthetics.”105 In his search to discover the ideal nation for Turkish life, he rejected the view that there is one overarching ideal type. Instead, he stressed the multiplicity of nations, classifying them into five categories according to their social structures: “feudal,” “communal,” “city-states,” “societies with a compound structure,” and “corporative societies.” The basic units of the latter were corporate bodies and guilds with a national character originating in federative councils in metropolitan centers composed of their delegates. “This form of civilization may be called metropolitan, and is today the highest form of civilization. The most advanced nations of Europe are developing in this direction.”106 Another classification was among “tribal-theocratic” nations like Moroccans, “theocratic-legislative” nations like Russians, “semi-independent nations” like Finns, and “legislative-cultural” nations like Germans, British, and Americans.107 Gökalp concluded that the Turkish nation belongs to the communal type and must aim at transforming itself into a modern or Western nation in the form of a corporative society and a legislative cultural nation.108 He projected his sociological analysis of the nation toward a future formation of the state. Since the Balkan Wars, Ottoman intellectuals had developed an acute awareness of the increasing centrality of the nation-state as the dominant emerging form of sociopolitical organization in the modern age. During World War I, in the Ottoman Empire, as in Germany and France, there were active political debates over the ideological and practical consequences of nationalism, the future formation of states, and the fate of minorities. For Gökalp, the main characteristic of modern nations was their tendency to acquire their own state: The British state is a nation-state in Great Britain, but an empire-state over in Ireland and overseas. The people who constitute the nationstate in France are called citizens, whereas the people of the French empire are called subjects. During this war, the Austrian and Russian empires seem to be changing into confederations of nation-states. It seems, therefore, that the future of all states will be in the direction of nation-states.109

105. Gökalp, “Millet Nedir?,” 137 [sic]. 106. Gökalp, “İçtimaî Neviler,” 125. 107. Gökalp, “ ‘Bir Kavmin Tetkikinde Tâkibolunacak Usûl,’ Millî Tetebbular Mecmuası, vol. 1, no. 2, 1915,” ibid. (London), 121. 108. Ibid.,122. 109. “Millet Nedir?,” 128 [sic].

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Germany, Tekinalp maintained, appeared as the only true example of a modern nation-state.110 The war revealed the will of the ethnic communities, which after a long period of fusion within an empire, strove to revive their ethnical, cultural, and moral identities. This view assumed the birth of a new Turkish sovereign nation-state from the dissolution and disintegration of the Ottoman Empire. In a series of articles “Tesanütçülük” (Solidarism), published in Yeni Mecmua, Tekinalp analyzed the ends of the ideal state and its reciprocal obligations with the individuals comprising it, and developed a theory of the modern nation-state through a critique of liberal, socialist, and absolutist views. He rejected the liberal minimalist state’s remoteness from individuals, and its laissez-faire, laissez-passer economic principles, because of their promotion of inequality, social disorder, disintegration, and anarchy. Although a socialist state appeared more ethical in contrast with the corruption of capitalist liberal states, he repudiated its emphasis that “the state must wither away,” because, as experienced in Russia, this would lead to a revolution, provoking reaction and social instability. An absolutist view of the state postulated an end superior to individuals, and placed the state above international laws, civil society, and morality.111 Tekinalp’s conception of the state mediated between these positions. The state was not simply the instrument of canalizations and concentrations of the life of the collective, nor the locus of a power struggle or source of domination. Echoing Durkheim’s analysis of the state in De la division du travail social and Leçons de Sociologie,112 Tekinalp defined the state as an organ of social thought or national mind, whose essential function was to think and deliberate, and whose authority is derived from the sovereignty of the people, resting in social power or collective consciousness.113 Similarly for Gökalp, the state was a communications system, an organ of conscious reflection upon society, and hence the organizational center of occupational and professional groups. To prevent a state from becoming authoritarian, these secondary groups, occupational associations, must become its main organizational form, mediating between the state and the individual, supplanting both Marxist classes and other forms of intermediary organizations. Although class conflict was one of the key pathologies of modernity for both Gökalp and Marx, the former strongly opposed the latter’s idea of a classless society for its undermining of the plurality of oc110. Tekinalp, “The Turkish Ideal and Pan-Turkish Ideal,” 135. 111. Gökalp, “Tesanütçülük: İçtimaî Siyaset III,” Yeni Mecmua, 13 February 1918, 61–63. 112. Gökalp, “Milletçilik ve Beynelmilliyetçilik,” 162. 113. Tekinalp, “Tesanütçülük: İçtimaî Siyaset III,” 63.

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cupational groups and interests, which he argued was the precondition of national unity.114 To create an orderly state and society, Gökalp suggested the promotion of sustainable unity and cooperation between different occupational groups and guilds “because in sharp contrast to the existing classes [they] need each other and are friends with each other.”115 As he famously stated: “Sınıf yok, meslek var!” (There is no class but occupational groups!) This conception of an egalitarian and social nation-state carried with it elements of French republicanism. Tekinalp insisted that “the duty of the state is to provide liberty and equality for its citizens.”116 In contrast to authoritarian statist politics, the new political order had to be based on the recognition of the rights of the individual and on freedom of thought. The duty of the state was both to represent the authority that stemmed from collective consciousness, and crystallize rational thinking. Unlike Durkheim, but like Maistre and Bonald, who had opposed the individualism of the eighteenth century and the Revolution of 1789 and denied the conception of rights,117 Gökalp insisted that there were no rights, only duties. These contending ideas about rights, duties, and the function of the state inspired a generation of republicans and philosophers. Despite embracing republican principles, a republic as an alternative form of government to the Empire was still not discussed in the press in the 1910s. A significant example, showing that even decision-makers had the idea of a transition to a republic in mind can be found in a private letter written by Şeyhülislam Mustafa Hayri on 12 April 1914 to Vehbi Efendi, the kadı of Egypt. He described his long struggle with the former Sultan Abdülhamid II and his conviction of the need to abolish the caliphate and sultanate and establish a republic after the proclamation of the constitutional regime in 1908, and insisted that many intellectuals and decisionmakers shared these views. Although the Republic had not been declared at this time, he argued, the sultan’s powers were restricted and his status had declined, which implied that the Empire had moved closer to becoming a kind of a republic.118 114. Gökalp, “Milletçilik ve Beynelmilliyetçilik,” 162. 115. Ibid. 116. Tekinalp, “Tesanütçülük—3: İçtimaî Siyaset.” 117. Susan Stedman Jones, Durkheim Reconsidered (Cambridge: Polity, 2001), 167. 118. [Sulṭān ʿAbdülḥamīd ḫilāfet ṣıfatının nüfūẕunu ne yolda suʾistiʿmāl ettiğini ve dīn perdesi arkasında ne roller oynadığını reʾyülʿayn müşāhede ettiğim cihetle ẕāten ḥaḳīḳat-ı ḥālde kuru bir nāmdan başka bir şey olmadığını bildiğim şu ʿünvān-ı ḫilāfetin ilġāsıyla bir cumhūriyyet teʾsīsinin şiddetle ṭarafdārı idim. Müceddidīn meyānında bu fikirde bulunan bu faḳīr gibi daha pek çok kimseler bulunmuş olmalıdır ki: iʿlān-ı

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For Gökalp, political leaders of a nation-state were cultural authorities for the people, “personified by the representations of their culture.”119 In his İçtimâiyât ve Fikriyat: Cemiyette Büyük Adamların Tesiri (Sociology and Ideas: The Influence of Great Men on Society), he distinguished between premodern and modern leaders. The premodern leader was a reformer, a messenger of religion, a conqueror, a great revolutionary, and a hero from a premodern society defined by mechanical solidarity. Drawing on Durkheim, the modern leader, on the other hand, was an inventor, who emerges as a product of modern society and can embrace the leadership qualities of the “consciousness of society” as its “unifying spirit” and act as the personification of the nation’s will. This inventor was not chosen but created by a natural drive to fulfill “the need felt by the social conscience and preexisting conditions.”120 These leaders were “great personalities recognized as leaders in the fields of morality, economy, fine arts, literature, and pure and applied sciences.”121 Besides these “great men,” there also were “men of genius,” who might appear only at the most inspirational moments of a nation. The man of genius was a person who, “beyond his will, made his own soul a reflecting surface to the ingenious power concealed in the nation.”122 In the context of World War I, this man of genius could not be the sultan, because he did not arise from the need of the people. Instead, the man of genius was to be found among the CUP leaders, especially in Enver and Talat Paşas.123 This sociological aspect of leadership was later important in justifying the rise of Mustafa Kemal. The duty of political leaders and the state was to promote economic, cultural, and moral solidarity through a nationalist ideology, Turkism. The duty of Turkish thinkers and sociologists was “to make national researches in accordance with these [sociological] methods.”124 A key document of nationalism was Türkleşmek, İslamlaşmak, Muasırlaşmak (Turkism, Islamism, Modernism, 1918), the reprinted version of Üç Cereyan (Three meşrūṭiyyet ʿaḳībinde ḫilāfet resmen ilġā olunmadı ve salṭanat da Cumhūriyyet’e taḥvīl kılınmadı ise de: Pādişāh’ın nüfūẕu ifrāṭ derecede taḥdīd olunduğu gibi ḫilāfet ʿunvānı da aṣlā ḳaāle alınmaz oldu.] I am grateful to Ali Suat Ürgüplü, the great grandson of Şeyhülislam Ürgüplü Mustafa Hayri Efendi for sharing the private letter with me. 119. Gökalp, “Bir Kavmin Tetkikinde Tâkibolunacak Usûl,” 121. 120. Gökalp, “İçtimâiyât ve Fikriyat: Cemiyette Büyük Adamların Tesiri,” 164. 121. Gökalp, “Bir Kavmin Tetkikinde Tâkibolunacak Usûl,” 121. 122. Gökalp, “ ‘Fıkh ve İçtimâiyât’ (Islamic Prudence and Sociology), İslâm Mecmuası, vol. 1, no. 2, 1914,” 195. 123. Gökalp, “Enver Paşa, Tal’at Paşa,” in Yeni Hayat, Doğru Yol, ed. Müjgân Cunbur (Ankara: Güneş Matbaacılık, [1918] 1976), 45–46. 124. Gökalp, “İçtimâiyât ve Fikriyat: Cemiyette Büyük Adamların Tesiri,” 165.

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Currents of Thought). Turkism required nationalizing economy, religion, and morality. Economy In line with List’s thought, Tekinalp argued that because nations varied in character, their economic policies should depend on their own needs and circumstances at any particular historical moment, and must be implemented by the state. Similarly, Gökalp also insisted on the subjectivity of economic policies and blamed the liberal economic policy adopted since the Tanzimat for the Ottoman state’s agricultural backwardness and lack of significant exports. With the gradual Westernization of Turkish life, traditional crafts had been ruined, and important economic positions were passed into the hands of foreigners and members of the non-Muslim communities who had previously played a part in commerce and industry.125 From these observations, he concluded that liberalism did not suit the Turkish national and economic character, and the state must discover its own national economic ideal, which was “itself a product of [the national ideal].”126 Gökalp and Tekinalp both thought that the national economy should be controlled and directed by the state, which should base its policies on empirical observations of Ottoman realities, and at least temporarily introduce economic protectionism. The primary economic ideal of the Turks was to prevent the appropriation of social wealth by individuals without abolishing private ownership, and to try to preserve and increase this wealth for use in the interest of the whole. They also sought to endow the country with a large and successful industry, without completely abandoning agricultural production.127 The accumulated state capital would be used to implement social reforms to modernize the country, and develop state-owned estates and useful industries. In time, this would generate a strong and modern independent economic model and, correspondingly, a strong and modern independent state.128 With the abolition of capitulations in 1914, the state promoted the creation of a new Muslim-Turkish bourgeoisie.129 The wartime minister of supplies, Kara Kemal believed that the creation of a bourgeois class would 125. Gökalp, Türkleşmek, İslâmlaşmak, Muasırlaşmak (Ankara: Kültür Bakanlığı Yayını, 1976), 5–6. 126. Gökalp, “Tarihi Maddecilik ve İçtimaî Mefkûrecilik,” 66. 127. Gökalp, Türkleşmek, İslâmlaşmak, Muasırlaşmak, 123. 128. Gökalp, Türkçülüğün Esasları, 167–68. 129. Toprak, “Osmanlı Narodnikleri:‘Halka Doğru’gidenler,” 80.

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secure “the Committee of Union and Progress’s continued existence. The CUP must encourage the establishment of national firms, a national bank and the unif ication of Muslim tradesmen and merchants in associations.”130 These ideas pointed the way to a peculiar form of state capitalism that developed in Kemalist Turkey. Religion Drawing his analysis of religion from Durkheim,131 Gökalp believed that the core of religion was its integrative and socially and nationally expressive function in reinforcing group identity and directing action.132 “Religion,” he insisted, “is the sum total of all beliefs that are taken as sacred by an ümmet.”133 Belief played a fundamental role in both Gökalp and Durkheim’s claims.134 The first system of representations stems from collective beliefs, constructing reality in single social communities. This line of thinking can be traced back to the post-Kantian tradition, which regards belief as a matter of practical interest, thus as collectively constructed. Gökalp must have inherited this thought from Durkheim’s Les formes élémentaires de le vie religieuse.135 In arguing that beliefs stem from the collective, he held that all religion originated in collective states of mind.136 Hence, religion was not God-given, but a socially and nationally constructed reality and a collection of secular ideas and practices. As the nation is the outcome of the social and religion is socially constructed, religion must be national. As nations develop and evolve in history, religious life also “changes and evolves alongside the mores [of the people].”137 Gökalp argued that the national religion of Turks was Islam. 130. Zafer Toprak, Türkiye’de Milli İktisat 1908–1918 (Istanbul: Doğan Kitap, 2012), 3. 131. For Durkheim’s thoughts on religion, see Jones, Durkheim Reconsidered, 201–17. 132. Gökalp, “Dinin İçtimaî Vazifeleri,” 186. 133. Gökalp, “ ‘İslamiyet ve Asrî Medeniyet’ [Islam and Modern Civilization], İslâm Mecmuası, vol. 2, nos. 51–52, 1917,” ibid. (London), 216. The French translation of this article appeared as “L’État islamique peut-il être un état moderne?,” La Pensée Turque, nos. 5–9, 16 February–16 April 1917. 134. For Durkheim, belief has a constituting role vis-à-vis both religious and social reality. “The collective state which gives rise to religion is the communion of consciences.” Quoted in Jones, Durkheim Reconsidered, 202. 135. Émile Durkheim, The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life, trans. Joseph Ward Swain (London: George Allen & Unwin, [1912] 1915 ), 14. 136. Gökalp, “ ‘Örf Nedir?,’ İslam Mecmuası, vol. 1, no. 14, 1914,” in Turkish Nationalism and Western Civilization: Selected Essays, ed. Niyazi Berkes (London: Allen and Unwin, 1959), 155. 137. Gökalp, “Türkçülük Nedir?,” 286.

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As the Turkish nation evolved over time, it accumulated cultural elements from Arabic and Persian traditions and institutions, depleting Islam of its Turkish characteristics. As a part of his nationalist program, he proposed to purify Islam by “Turkifying” it.138 The primary task of Turco-Islamic scholars was to discover innate beliefs, local customs, habits, beliefs, and practices of Islam, while identifying foreign elements by scientific study, and removing them. He suggested conducting religious worship like namaz and ezan in the national language,139 which was later put into practice after his death by Mustafa Kemal in 1931.140 Gökalp’s definition of religion refers to the notorious term the “sacred” as opposed to the “profane.”141 For him, this categorical division between the sacred and the profane, taken from Durkheim’s Les formes élémentaires, was a common foundation for all religions. “The things worshipped and everything connected with it are sacred; everything outside of the sacred is profane. The fundamental discipline of religion consists of prohibiting the profane thing from approaching or from being in contact with that which is sacred.”142 Sacred here refers to a prohibited object, to be discovered in a state of emotional and communal ecstasy, through what Gökalp called “positive rituals.” Positive rituals have practical and social functions, due to their nature as constructs of a certain society at a given time and place, whereby “a sense of holiness in souls” is produced. The role of this collective functionality of rituals is the cementation of the moral good in society, because the sacred power “makes the coward courageous, the slothful industrious, the sick healthy, the immoral virtuous, the indifferent an idealist, the weak determined, the egoist altruistic.”143 Echoing Ahmed Rıza, who had stressed the sociability of religious places like the cami (mosque), Gökalp emphasized the importance of religious sites in cultivating a sentiment of unity and collectivity.144 This religious collectivism assumes a national consciousness.145 To create a national religion, all religious dogmas must be abandoned. This 138. Gökalp, “Millî İçtimâiyât,” 171. 139. Gökalp, “Vatan,” in Yeni Hayat, Doğru Yol, 11. 140. Gökalp, “ ‘Lisan’ [Language], Türk Yurdu, vol. 3, no. 36, 1913, reprinted in Türkleşmek, İslâmlaşmak, Muasırlaşmak,” in Turkish Nationalism and Western Civilisation: Selected Essays of Ziya Gökalp, ed. Niyazi Berkes (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1959), 84. 141. Gökalp, “Dinin İçtimaî Hizmetleri,” 186. 142. Ibid. 143. Ibid., 192. 144. Ibid., 191. 145. Ibid., 192–93.

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new religion of secular Turkish society, Gökalp insisted, is “moral individualism.”146 Echoing Durkheim’s conception of the “cult of the individual,” he argued that as the sacred is collective, individuals, society, and nations are all also sacred. The nation itself is a new secular religion of Turkish life. Durkheim reached a similar conclusion for France, while writing in the context of the Third Republic, aiming to turn the object of faith from God to society to harness the power of belief to make and underwrite society.147 The political consequence of a national and secular religion as the foundation of society was a formulation of a narrow version of laicization. Its major principle was the separation of religion from politics, as promoted by the works of Ahmed Rıza at the turn of the century. Gökalp believed that laicity was inevitable in modern politics, which had primarily started in France under the Concordat regime.148 Its fundamental principle was to terminate the domination of religion over political and social affairs. “Not only politics, but even ethics, law, and philosophy have freed themselves from their previous dependence on religion and have gradually won their autonomy.”149 Religion and the state inherently belong to completely different spheres: religion was part of social life, while the state is part of political life. However, throughout history, Islam has artificially dominated politics. In the pre-Islamic era, pagan Arabs lacked an organized form of government. With Islam, religious and political institutions developed simultaneously and interdependently. In time, the ulema gained increasing political power in administration while losing their ecclesiastical independence. From his positivist premises, Gökalp argued that all remnants of theocracy and clericalism must be eliminated from political life, and full internal sovereignty must be secured for the state. It must enact secular laws independent from religious laws, whereas in matters of belief and worship “the Qur’an and Sunna must decide, and in case of doubt the Muslim has to ask for the advice of the mufti.”150 Gökalp’s secular proposals were not confined to theory. In 1917, he submitted to the Congress of the Union and Progress Party a detailed memorandum, demanding the virtual abolition of the office of the Şeyhülislâm in its traditional form by transferring his legal authority (kaza) to the 146. Gökalp, “Milliyet Mefkûresi,” 79. 147. Jones, Durkheim Reconsidered, 217. 148. Gökalp, “Islam and Modern Civilization,” 220. 149. Gökalp, “Cemaat Medeniyeti, Cemiyet Medeniyeti,” 102–3. 150. Gökalp, “Halife ve Müftü,” in Yeni Hayat, Doğru Yol, 28.

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state, and removing all his political power to make him just a religious scholar like any other mufti.151 The party leaders accepted his views, and decided to transfer the administration of the religious courts to the Ministry of Justice and the supervision of the religious schools to the Ministry of Education. Most of these reforms of the Young Turk government, however, were cancelled after the 1918 Armistice. In the first years of the Republic, these secular proposals were once again put into practice. The office of the Şeyhülislâm was abolished in 1924 and replaced by the Ministry for Religious Affairs (Diyanet İşleri Başkanlığı).152 In the same memorandum, Gökalp called for the abolition of the system of endowments (evkaf or vakıf), central to the religious and economic life of the country for centuries. He believed that these autonomous institutions with their own constitutions and budgets prevented the establishment of efficient, centralized economic planning in towns and big cities. Moreover, they promoted religious fanaticism, impeding the progress of society. He proposed to transfer the administration of the “genuine vakıf ” (evkaf-ı mazbute) to the local authorities in the villages to the district councils and in the towns to the municipalities. On the other hand, “central vakıf ” (evkaf-ı mülhaka) should continue to remain under the supervision of the Ministry of Pious Foundations.153 His proposal was partly fulfilled during the republican era. In March 1924, the Ministry of Pious Foundations was abolished, and a General Waqf Administration was established in its place, under the supervision of the prime minister. In the field of academic education, Gökalp wanted to put an end to the dualism of secular and religious systems by merging the main religious colleges (medrese) with the Theological Faculty of Istanbul. This proposal was also put in practice during the early republican era, but the Theological Faculty was closed in 1933. Morality The final aspect of society and national solidarity is morality. “A society is a group of men united by moral solidarity.”154 Echoing Durkheim’s arguments in L’éducation morale,155 the distinctiveness of his approach lay in its insistence on the centrality of the society. It underlines the importance of the people as the source and object of moral life, the place of the indi151. Ibid. 152. Heyd, The Foundations of Turkish Nationalism, 90. 153. Ibid., 90–91. 154. Gökalp, “İçtimaî Neviler,” 123. 155. See Émile Durkheim, Moral Education (New York: Free Press, [1925] 1961), 190.

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vidual in relation to the group and society as a whole, and the individual’s dualist nature in which passions must be subjected to discipline and submitted to social and political authority. As “morality is not, in origin, individual but social,”156 it is a reality, subject to scientific study. In “Ahlak Ne Vakit İlim Olabilir?” (When Can Morality Be a Science?), Mehmed Emin was concerned with morality as science. He did not extract morality from the positive sciences, but meant to establish it as a science in its own right. Echoing Durkheim’s positivist methodology, he saw this as an autonomous science, which explains the facts and rules through sign, symbol, representation, and conscience.157 The science of morality would discover an ideal (mefkûre), which would be able to move the Turkish nation toward a bright future. He saw this in Fichtean terms,158 whereas Gökalp’s account remained Durkheimean. Gökalp persisted in seeing an ideal as relative and historical, but it was the supreme good of conduct, central to transformation: “Ideals imply something for which we believe it is worth sacrificing our lives and the object of morality implies the same thing. Thus, an ideal is nothing but society or an intensive experiencing of social life.”159 The chief characteristics of morality are duty and goodness. Gökalp’s “Ahlâk İçtimaî Midir?” (Is Morality Social?) provided the clearest formulation of his moral sociology. He described duty as “the manifestation of moral rules in the form of obligation and the sense of the good of their manifestation in the form of desirability.”160 Discarding the Comtean notion of duty of submission to order and the positive state, Gökalp followed Durkheim’s conception of duty, which rejects the Kantian notion of “duty for duty’s sake.”161 As solidarity establishes a reciprocal system of rights and duties, duties are derived from social consciousness. Consequently, they are internalized, self-imposed, and obligatory.162 Hence, the duties of the individual toward himself are actually duties toward society. The replacement of primary duties to monarchy and caliphate with duties toward society implied a republican aim: if Turkish society were to prescribe obligatory rules to itself and be stable in its moral relations, it would become a self-governing body. 156. Ibid, 150. 157. Mehmed Emin, “Ahlak Ne Vakit İlim Olabilir?,” 134. 158. Ibid., 138. 159. Gökalp, “Ahlâk İçtimaî Midir?,” 152. 160. Ibid., 150. 161. Ibid. 162. Ibid.

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The obligatory character of moral duty and rules is manifested by social sanctions. To invoke discipline and sanctions in social relations was not to call for a social police, but to harness human forces. Discipline and sanction as constructive forces of morality both create and constrain action. Nonetheless, they are good because they encourage desirability to act in a moral way, regulate society, and generate authority.163 As Gökalp contended, “The existence of this sanctioning power is an indication of the fact that moral rules are not products of our instincts. It is a society that proposes them to us.”164 A system of authority is therefore the basis of moral life, and discipline is the authority in operation. The acceptance of discipline is justified on the grounds that self-control is essential to the integrity of the individual. Without discipline, no society could sustain itself. Morality, therefore, consists in a state of dependence, and moral action concerns collective interest. In other words, moral discipline reminds the individual what to do so as not to damage collective interests and disorganize the society that he belongs to. The state, as the social apparatus, serves as the realization of morality and constitutes the ideal of humanity in moral action. The future implication of this formulation of morality in Turkey was an authoritarian moral discipline and state, designed to avoid anarchy in a newly established Turkish republican society by confining the private lives of individuals.

Conclusion With German assistance, the Ottomans fought on five fronts and achieved notable victories over the British at the Dardanelles and in Iraq during the first half of the war, but the defeats at the Suez Canal and in Egypt led to their expulsion from Transcaucasia and the Arab provinces and brought about their ultimate collapse. Subsequently, the Istanbul cabinet resigned and the Triumvirate fled from the country immediately after the official signing of the armistice in October 1918. The new cabinet prosecuted Ottoman wartime political and military leaders and accused them of “entering the war without a reason,” hiding the decision to enter the war from deputies and the public, destroying the economy, infringing upon the freedom of the press, and causing administrative chaos by issuing arbitrary 163. Ibid. 164. Ibid., 149.

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laws, ordinances and regulations.165 Modern historiography on the Empire’s entry into the war was shaped extensively by the trial records, which mostly blamed the Triumvirate for their egoistic desires and myopic ambitions in blindly entering the war, while ignoring the enthusiasm of the public on its eve. The peace-making process of the postwar period marked drastic political projects in which the power and influence of ideas shaped the future of newborn states. The failed empires were seen by the Allied Powers as new opportunities for economic and territorial gains. Foreign intervention varied in both form and substance, and inevitably created resistance movements in subjugated nations. Some of these failed, while others led to the formation of new sovereign nation-states. In the Ottoman case, the defeat was followed by the War of Independence in 1919. The experiences of World War I were essential in reshaping a political and intellectual agenda. Political policy moved from reform, aiming to defend a historical civilization with a long-formed, deeply grounded political framework, to the rebuilding of a nation-state for the Turks alone in a narrower geographical setting and through more insistent, exclusionary, and local loyalties. This was a choice imposed by the outcome of the war, and it was an enforced lesson that was learned very rapidly. Pan-Turanism and Pan-Islamism failed in practice but the war experiences saw the birth of the concepts of sociological nationalism, statism, secular morality, and solidarity which were included later to the radical republican ideology of the new Turkish state. 165. Said Halim ve Mehmed Talat Paşalar Kabinelerinin Divan-ı Âliye Sevkleri Hakkında (Divaniye) Mebusu Fuad Bey Merhum Tarafından Verilen Takrir üzerine Bera-ı Tahkikat Kura İsabet Eden Beşinci Şube Tarafından İcra Olunan Tahkikat ve Zabt Edilen İfadatı Muhtevidir [Fifth Parliamentary Investigation Committee] (Istanbul: Meclis-i Mebusan Matbası, 1334 [1918]), 5–6; Osman S. Kocahanoğlu, İttihat-Terakki’nin Sorgulanması ve Yargılanması: Meclis-i Mebusan Tahkikatı, Teşkilât-ı Mahsusa, Ermeni Tehcirinin İçyüzü, Divan-ı Harb-ı Örfi Muhakemesi (Istanbul: Temel Yayınları, 1998), 52–53.

ch a p T er eigh T

The War of Independence (1919–22) roa d To T he i n depe n de n T T u r k ish r epu bl ic

The oT Tom a n deFe aT was preceded by the War of Independence in 1919 against Britain, Greece, Italy, and France. The Turkish Republic was born in a succession of wars. Its painful birth shaped its representations, practices, values, and ideas. At its core lay national sovereignty (hâkimiyet-i milliye), linked with the idea of independence and freedom. Turkish historiography has long overlooked the Republic’s origins in earlier successive revolutions, above all the Constitutional Revolution of 1876, and later the Young Turk Revolution of 1908. Each reinforced the others and pressed toward the ultimate republican Revolution of 1923. There were two decisive moments in its concluding phase during the War of Independence, the establishment of the parliament in 1920, and the monarch’s flight from the country in 1922, which smoothly ushered in the young Republic after years of preparation and collective effort by patriots and revolutionaries. To grasp how the Republic came about, it is necessary to recognize their political goals, imbued with passion, spirit, ideology, principles, and an unwavering commitment to practice them in harsh political struggle. Without reading their words, analyzing their propaganda and speeches, it is impossible to grasp the true meaning of the ideals that drove them. What tied them together in a distinct tradition was a pattern of political ideas, articulations, tactics, strategies, and ideologies, united through the republican principles of national sovereignty, independence (bağımsızlık), and unconditional liberty (kayıtsız şartsız özgürlük). This period of political crisis saw the rejuvenation of a radical republican language, incorporated with militarism and nationalism. Without study[ 196 ]

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ing the political thinking of this period, it is impossible to understand the victorious ideology of the young Republic.

Hâkimiyet-i Milliye (National Sovereignty) and İrâde-i Milliye (National Will) The terms imposed on the Ottoman Empire by the Allied Powers in the Mudros Armistice on 30 October 1918 made it totally dependent on their arbitrary will, and brought its ultimate collapse. In the wake of the Empire, the Middle East took a new shape under the special protection and mandate of France and Britain. Its remaining heartland, Anatolia, the Straits, its systems of communication, and the army itself were all controlled by the Allied Powers.1 Not long after the Armistice, under Article 7, which asserted the right of the Allied powers to occupy the strategic points in the Empire in the event of a threat to their security, Britain, France, Greece, and Italy began to partition Anatolia along the lines of their previous secret Sykes-Picot Agreement of 1916. The French occupied parts of southeastern Anatolia, the Italians occupied the south, the Greeks invaded Thrace and western Anatolia in May 1919,2 and the British invaded Istanbul, arrested leading Unionists and intellectuals like Ziya Gökalp, Ahmed Ağaoğlu, Celal Nuri, Hüseyin Cahit, and Mithat Şükrü (Bleda), and sent them to Malta in exile, isolating them from the intellectual life of the Empire, and helping them crystallize their republican ideas.3 The national resistance movement began as a reaction to the menaced sovereignty of the state and the failure of the Istanbul government to respond effectively to foreign occupation. Immediately after the Armistice, the CUP established the secretive Karakol (Guardpost) at the instigation of Talat Paşa to provide postwar security and strengthen resistance in Anatolia and the Caucasus. To form an armed resistance and prepare a popular base for defense in Anatolia, the CUP organized local “Defense of National Rights Societies” (Müdâfaa-i Hukuk Cemiyetleri), committed to the secure sovereignty of Wilson’s twelfth point, and demanded it for the Turkish portion of the Empire.4 These scattered organizations lacked a 1. Jacob Coleman Hurewitz, Diplomacy in the Near and Middle East: 1914–1956, vol. 1 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1956), 1. 2. Erik J. Zürcher, “The Ottoman Empire and the Armistice of Moudros,” in At the Eleventh Hour: Reflections, Hopes, and Anxieties at the Closing of the Great War, 1918, ed. Hugh Cecil and Peter H. Liddle (London: Leo Cooper, 1998), 268–70. 3. Bilâl N. Şimşir, Malta Sürgünleri (Istanbul: Bilgi Yayınevi, 1985), 121–22. 4. Findley, Turkey, Islam, Nationalism, and Modernity, 221.

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military leader and central command to control provincial administrations, unify local resistance organizations, and mobilize the people and the remnants of the army.5 The postwar context produced a charismatic leader, Mustafa Kemal, the military hero of the Dardanelles (1915), who set his stamp on the unfolding events. His genius was to unite the forces at work, collaborating with key military commanders, Rauf Paşa, Kazım Karabekir Paşa, Ali Fuad Paşa, and Refet Paşa, providing the movement that emerged with a coherent strategy, and developing a viable national civil war of independence.6 Sovereignty and independence became the key goals of the war, and dominated the series of congresses convened in Anatolia, shaping the means and ends of the resistance movement. The first steps establishing national sovereignty were taken at the Amasya Circular, convened on 21–22 June 1919. A declaration by Mustafa Kemal, Hüseyin Rauf, Rıfat Bele, and Ali Fuad highlighted existing threats to a united fatherland and the independence of the nation, formed a national representative committee (heyeti milliye) to lead the national effort and convince the world of the legitimacy of its aims, and called for a national congress to be held in Sivas to decide the legitimate means to secure sovereignty nationwide. In the meantime, the Defence of National Rights and the Rejection of Annexation Societies sent representatives to the forthcoming regional congress in Erzurum.7 At Mustafa Kemal’s instance, the regional Congress in Erzurum was assembled by representatives of the Eastern Societies, and convened on 23 July 1919, the symbolic date of the eleventh anniversary of the 1908 Revolution, celebrated as “the proclamation of Liberty.”8 After fourteen days of meetings, a declaration by the representatives from the Eastern regions approved the ideals of the Amasya Circular, which defined the purpose and direction for the resistance movement as “the integrity of the Ottoman fatherland, the assurance of our nation’s independence, and the inviolability of the sultanate and caliphate.”9 The Congress voiced its famous slogan “either independence or death (ya istiklal, ya ölüm!),” vowing no compro5. Ergün Aybars, İstiklâl Mahkemeleri: 1923–1927, vol. 1 (Ankara: Kültür ve Turizm Bakanlığı, 1982), 8–9. 6. A. L. Macfie, The End of the Ottoman Empire, 1908–1923 (London: Addison Wesley Longman, 1998), 189. 7. Gazi Mustafa Kemal, Nutuk Muhteviyatına ait Vesail (Ankara: n.p., 1927), Vesika 26, 13–14; ABE, III, 107–8. 8. Stanford J. Shaw, From Empire to Republic: The Turkish War of National Liberation, A Documentary Study, vol. 2 (Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu Basımevi, 2000), 689–98. 9. Mustafa Kemal, Nutuk Muhteviyatına ait Vesail, 107–8.

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mise on national sovereignty, and proposing a defensive war in the face of the partition of the fatherland and the nation. The nation itself was understood not merely as a Turkish community, but more inclusively as “the country of Turks and Muslims,”10 including Kurds, Circassians, and Lazs, all fighting for the independence. The declaration insisted on the need to strengthen the bonds and brotherhood of all Muslims within and beyond the borders against “the Christian invasion,” seen as “the policy of exterminating Islam.”11 To unite all national organizations in the East, the Society for the Defense of Rights of Eastern Anatolia was created, assuming all Muslim citizens as natural members of society. It opposed special privileges for the Christians, implying the rejection of Armenian claims in the East, and Greek-Rum demands on the Black Sea coast.12 To preserve the unity and independence of the vatan (“homeland”) and millet (“nation”), the delegates accepted scientific, industrial, and economic “humanitarian” aid from other states.13 The content of this “aid” became the key subject of political debate in the forthcoming Congress in Sivas.

sİvas congress: a deTerminaTion For Full independence and deFense oF naTional sovereignTy The Sivas Congress convened on 4 September 1919 to determine effective strategies for rescuing the unity and integrity of the fatherland, and to publicize Turkish commitment to independence.14 The most striking debate was over what it meant to be a sovereign state, and how to secure and guarantee that state’s independence. This divided the delegates over the 10. ATASE arşivi, ATA-ZM 4/102; TITE Arşivi 31/227. 11. ATASE arşivi, ATA-ZM 4/102; TITE Arşivi 29/73. 12. In the document, there was no explicit implication of changing the dynasty or forming a new type of government or establishing laicity. Although Mazhar Müfit (Kansu), one of the participants, wrote in his memoirs that, prior to the congress, Mustafa Kemal outlined his long-range objectives like the establishments of a republic; the elimination of the padişah; the removal of the veil; the replacement of the fez by the hat as in “civilized nations”; and the implementation of a Latin alphabet, it is doubtful that Mustafa Kemal was clear in his aims in the early days of the resistance. See Mazhar Müfit Kansu, Erzurum’dan Ölümüne Kadar Atatürk’le Beraber, vol. 1 (Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu, 1997), 131. 13. Selahattin Tansel, Mondros’ tan Mudanya’ya Kadar, vol. 2 (Ankara: Milli Eğitim Basımevi, 1991), 57–58. 14. Three from each of the 61 sancaks, it was expected to have 183 delegates present. The Representative Committee of the Eastern Anatolian Defence of Rights Association was present with its 63 representatives, but only 38 out of 120 delegates from other sancaks of Anatolia were present. Sina Akşin, Turkey from Empire to Revolutionary Republic: The Emergence of the Turkish Nation from 1789 to the Present (London: Hurst, 2007), 139.

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issue of mandate and full independence. The delegates, who advocated a mandate, believed that the scheme, proposed by Woodrow Wilson with the lofty aim of transcending the traditional ideas of statehood and sovereignty by new forms of international supervision, was the best guarantee for national unity and sovereignty. The mandate issue permeated Ottoman debates in the aftermath of World War I, but what a mandate was and what it implied for the future of a nation remained ambiguous. In December 1918, the Wilsonian Principles Society was founded in Istanbul to influence public opinion over the advantages of an American mandate. Its members believed that America was the greatest democracy in the world, still embracing humanitarian and altruistic values, and only through America’s mandate could the Ottoman State attain salvation, civilization, and the ability to govern itself.15 The idea of an American mandate attracted members of the CUP, who believed that the Empire could not survive without foreign aid, and those who had been critical of CUP’s policies in the time of World War I. Rıza Nur wrote that: If America were to accept the mandate and behave in a just and honest manner, it could within twenty years bring us a degree of development which Turks, left to themselves, would not be able to achieve in a century. It would make Turkey prosperous, rich and happy and turn Turks into a strong and civilized nation. Look at Egypt under the British. Its population has grown by some ten million in thirty years. The country is totally prosperous and orderly, the nation rich. Such a nation can gain independence in a trice. At least that’s one way of thinking at a time of such justified despair. True, slavery is bad even in paradise. But the nation risked losing everything.16

Lloyd George encouraged Wilson to accept a mandate for Anatolia, and especially for the provinces claimed by the Armenians. In response, Wilson sent two commissions, one to Syria, led by Henry King and Charles Crane to investigate the situation in the Middle East, and another to Anatolia under General James Harbord.17 The King-Crane report suggested

15. Enclosure no. 3 in Vice Admiral Sir J. de Robeck to Earl Cruzon, 18 October 1919 (Foreign Office 406/41, pp. 293–93, no.139/2), reproduced in Bilâl N. Şimşir, İngiliz Belgelerinde Atatürk (1919–1938), vol. 1 (Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu, 1975), 168. 16. Cited in Mango, Atatürk, 246. 17. Shaw and Shaw, History of the Ottoman Empire and Modern Turkey: Volume 2, Reform, Revolution, and Republic: The Rise of Modern Turkey 1808–1975, 2, 331.

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the division of the Ottoman territory into Istanbul and its environs, Armenia, and the rest of Anatolia, and placing them under US mandate.18 The idea of an American mandate was greatly favored in nationalist circles. An Ottoman staff officer, Ahmet İzzet Paşa, and his protégé, Colonel İsmet (İnönü), suggested that Mustafa Kemal seek a US mandate.19 Halide Edip, too, wrote a letter to Mustafa Kemal before the Sivas Congress, insisting that the Ottoman state would be unable to survive a future war against the more powerful Allied nations, and must thus accept the option of an American mandate. Mustafa Kemal rejected these suggestions because he was against an external supervisory state in achieving real independence.20 The mandate issue was introduced at the Sivas Congress by a group of delegates, with a proposal, which discussed how best to maintain present and future national sovereignty.21 After stressing the need to protect the caliphate in the face of challenges posed by nascent Arab nationalism and the Hejaz emirate Sharif Hussain, who claimed from his family lineage to be the real caliph of all Muslims and to be recognized officially by the British, the delegates insisted on strengthening ties with the Muslim communities in Anatolia,22 and showing the foreign powers that the Ottomans were fully able to protect their independence “within the vein of the declarations of [other] republics.”23 They argued that the war had left the state in debt and famine, and abjectly dependent economically on other states. “There cannot be independence without money in the world. . . . Governments can only exist with the trust of the nation, likewise states can only be sustained according to the material standards of that nation.”24 Kara Vasıf, a reporter and the Karakol leader, saw no possibility of full independence without accepting the foreign aid, needed to attain the economic level of other nations. In these desperate circumstances, he argued, “we [the Ottomans] have to grab at a snake” to survive.25 This “snake” must be 18. Hasan Kayalı, “The Struggle for Independence,” in The Cambridge History of Turkey: Turkey in the Modern World, ed. Reşat Kasaba (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 118. 19. Karabekir, İstiklâl Harbimiz, 165–76. 20. Halide Edip [Adıvar], The Turkish Ordeal (New York and London: Century Company, 1928), 88. 21. It was signed by Bekir Sami Bey, a member of the representative committee and a retired navy officer, and twenty-five other delegates. 22. Sivas Kongresi Tutanakları (Istanbul: Türk Tarih Kurumları, 1986), 118–19. 23. Ibid., 119. 24. Ibid., 121. 25. Ibid., 122.

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neither Great Britain nor France since these had been engaged for two years in campaigns in Mesopotamia, Cilicia, and Syria with disastrous results for the inhabitants.26 The proposal discussed in detail which form the foreign aid must take, and the advantages and disadvantages of a protectorate (himaye) and mandate (manda) were discussed in the proposal in detail. A mandate was an authorization granted by the League of Nations to a member nation.27 A protectorate was an autonomous territory protected diplomatically or militarily by a stronger state. In return for accepting a mandate, the protectorate would demand obligations, which might create conditions of dependency. Although in theory a protectorate still retained formal sovereignty, in reality it was often reduced to the status of a colony by establishing indirect rule. A protectorate was formally established by a bilateral agreement with the protector, while mandates were stewarded by the body that represented world community, with or without a de facto administering power.28 Hence a protectorate must be rejected, a mandate must be accepted, and the Empire must immediately become a member of the League of Nations.29 This did not mean giving up fully on national sovereignty, but surrendering a portion of it for a short time until the Ottoman state regained its economic and political autonomy. The delegates advocated that America, with its resources, experiences, and geographical position, was best placed to undertake a responsibility of this magnitude, with the added advantage that its geographical distance from Anatolia gave it no interest in intervening in Ottoman domestic affairs. Unlike France and Britain, America would only contribute to the well-being and development of Turkish people, and guarantee them liberty of conscience and religion, with no limitations other than those that may be imposed by the necessity of maintaining order. It would also provide a gradual but steadily progressive education and training for Turkish people (or Turkey), while advancing their economic independence and progress. In a lengthy speech on the advantages of the American mandate, Refet (Bele) Bey, a leading army officer, suggested sending a committee of wise men to Washington to persuade the Americans to undertake such a mandate.30 The proposal’s recommendations divided the attendees and opened a significant debate, which was to change the course of events in the war. 26. Ibid. 27. Ibid. 28. Ibid., 123. 29. Ibid., 127. 30. Ibid., 201–5.

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The delegates for full and unconditional independence were skeptical of the vague international diplomatic language that governed the mandate system, with its concealed implications. Ahmet Nuri Bey, an instructor at the School of Science (İlmiye), argued that the drawing of boundaries and the rules for governing mandated territories were matters of secret negotiation among the Entente Powers during World War I. Under the guise of “mandate” or “protectorate,” Great Britain, France, Italy, and Greece sought valuable additions of territory, and there was no guarantee that America would act differently. He did not trust American altruism to improve the financial and political situation of Turkey, and accused his opponents of naïveté. Rejecting the argument of geographical distance, he claimed that the practical problem presented by this momentous proposal was unquestionably whether America should be made an active party to the centuries-old Eastern Question.31 Raif Bey, a member of the representative committee and a lawyer from Erzurum, shared Ahmet Nuri Bey’s position and saw the utilization of the correct political language in the quest for foreign aid as of extreme importance. Against Hami and Bekir Sami Beys, he argued that instead of using the term “mandate,” the committee must adopt a language of full and unconditional independence and humanitarian assistance, all of which were republican in nature.32 Foreign aid would potentially create economic dependence, and mandate status would lead ultimately to dependence, reducing the Turkish state to a lifeless entity. He insisted that: “This nation is not dead. Like all nations, it has the natural right to live.”33 Full independence could be achieved through creating strong military organization and a self-sufficient national economy, the acquisition of sufficient wealth, and securing the territory defined by geographical boundaries against external threats. These goals could be attained through careful strategic planning and successful use of propaganda. He also saw a military advantage for the Turks. Britain, France, and Italy lacked sufficient forces to crush a widespread and well-organized armed resistance. While Greece wished to commit a large military force, it required financial and diplomatic support to achieve its territorial ambitions in western Anatolia. The ambitions of the Slavs, the new state formations in Eastern Europe, the instability in the Caucasus, and the new regime in Russia frightened England and France. Raif ’s analysis showed that in the postwar context, Tur31. Ibid., 205–7. 32. Ibid., 53–54. 33. Ibid., 60.

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key’s current condition was less desperate than it seemed. He concluded that “a mandate is completely to our political disadvantage,”34 and must be rejected. Mustafa Kemal, too, rejected “mandate” and “foreign aid,” and, drawing on a republican language, advocated full and unconditional independence.35 In the end, the delegates for unconditional independence won the debate, and the mandate formula was rejected by the majority. Ratified in full, the decisions of the Erzurum Congress in a ten-point manifesto were Turkey’s first official statement of full independence and national sovereignty. Without naming the type of a new regime, the new manifesto stressed republican ideals of liberty, sovereignty, and national unity, laying the foundations of the first Turkish Constitution of 1921. It identified the aims of the national movement as defending borders, ensuring independence, receiving suitable assistance, and ensuring rights for minorities. Its opening phrases proclaimed that the nation is one and indivisible, vesting ultimate power in the national will. It also raised the issue of territoriality. Within the national boundaries, no foreign intervention could be legitimate and must be met with force. Those at the Congress were unanimously of the opinion that because the Istanbul government was under Allied influence, and “because it was impossible to expect national sovereignty from a place in imprisonment,”36 the nation must take matters into its own hands to preserve its independence with its national will (irade-i milliye). To defend the country, a central command was authorized, unifying the scattered resistance movements and local defense and rights organizations under the Anatolia and Rumelia Defense of Rights Committee (Anadolu ve Rumeli Müdâfaa-i Hukuk Cemiyeti), led by Mustafa Kemal. The declaration also called for the formation of a stronger government in Istanbul to support the national movement and negotiate a satisfactory peace settlement with the Entente Powers. The initial success of the Erzurum and Sivas Congresses persuaded Sultan Vahdettin to call for elections and the assembling of a new parliament. Convened in January, the newly formed Ottoman Chamber of Deputies (Meclis-i Mebusan) supported the decisions at Sivas, and after much debate issued a document, the National Pact (Misâk-ı Millî), long regarded as the blueprint of the resistance’s territorial objectives and a fu34. Ibid., 60–61. 35. Seçil Karal Akgün, “Louis E. Browne and the Leaders of the 1919 Sivas Congress,” in Studies in Atatürk’s Turkey: The American Dimension, ed. George Sellers Harris and Bilge Criss (Leiden: Brill, 2009), 42. 36. Sivas Kongresi Tutanakları, 114.

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ture national manifesto.37 It stressed the ideals of the national movement, insisted on the preservation of an independent Ottoman state ruled by an Ottoman sultan-caliph, rejected restrictions imposed by the Great Powers on the future political, judicial, and financial development of the state, and championed national sovereignty within the boundaries drawn up in the Armistice of 1918, comprising “an Ottoman Muslim majority united in religion, race and aspirations.”38 It also demanded self-determination in areas deemed under foreign occupation, Western Thrace, the three regions of Kars, Ardahan, and Batum in the East, and in Arab provinces by a free plebiscite. Although the efforts to secure the appointment of a new government in Istanbul were initially successful, they proved in the end disappointing. The Supreme Council of Allied Leaders disregarded these declarations, placed Istanbul under martial law on 5 March 1920, occupied it for the second time on 16 March, and eventually closed the parliament. They arrested many deputies and sent them to Malta for internment, among them Celal Nuri, Kara Vasıf, and Hasan Tahsin.39 Some managed to flee from Istanbul and join the nationalist movement, and the representative committee moved to a new center of resistance, Ankara, transforming it into the new locus of power.40 This marked a significant move toward an independent state in the making.

revoluTionary governmenT in ank ara: revival oF radicalism and consTiTuTionalism With an inactive parliament and a suspended constitution, there was consensus on the need to open a new parliament with a government of extraordinary powers and a new constitution capable of sustaining the existence of the nation and the state. A new assembly with five elected representatives from each subprovince (sancak) convened in Ankara, and after a two-tier election, a new parliament, the Grand National Assembly (Büyük Millet Meclisi) was formed on 23 April 1920, and Mustafa Kemal elected president (reis).41 With 380 deputies, of whom 23 were former 37. The text was published on 17 February 1920. Shaw, From Empire to Republic, 2, 800–801. 38. Şevket Süreyya Aydemir, Tek Adam: Mustafa Kemalʾin Hayatı, vol. 2 (Istanbul: Remzi Kitabevi, 2003), 201–2. 39. Şimşir, Malta Sürgünleri, 219–20. 40. Ahmed Ağaoğlu, “Hakimiyet-i Milliye, 18 May 1922,” in İhtilâl Mi, İnkılâb Mı (Ankara: Alâeddin Kıral Basımevi, 1942), 28–29. 41. Kazım Karabekir, İstiklâl Harbimiz, vol. 1 (Istanbul: Türkiye Yayınevi, 1969), 607–8.

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Ottoman chamber deputies, a fairly large assembly was representative of different professions and occupations. There were government officials, teachers, soldiers, and lawyers, active or retired merchants, substantial farmers, doctors, religious leaders, ulema, landowners, tribal chiefs, and engineers, though the franchise firmly excluded women, Christians, factory workers, and smaller farmers. Parliament’s goal was to unite the nation around the common interest in saving the fatherland regardless of ethnicities and political stances within it, permitting the representation of a rich variety of ideas, ranging from liberal, nationalist, traditional, secular, to religious. This new formation marked the rebirth of radical republicanism. Convened under extraordinary conditions, the parliament assigned itself extraordinary powers. It ratified a constitution on 20 January 1921, as the Law of Fundamental Organisation (Teşkilât-ı Esasîye Kanunu), a brief document of twenty-three Articles, regarded as the first constitution of the new Turkey. By contrast to the 1908 Constitution, which had stressed the separation of powers, the new constitution rested on their unity, and aimed to deepen the powers of the government. The term “grand” underscored a strong and all-powerful chamber vested with executive and legislative powers. The distinguishing mark of sovereign power was the enactment of the national will (irâde-i milliye) through law making, exercised by the representatives of the new parliament, not the sultan-in-parliament. As Ağaoğlu argued, the sovereignty of the government was derived from the people, and, echoing Gökalp, the source of the law was the collective consciousness.42 As the master of the state was the people, the nation had the right to govern itself, implying a shift from constitutional monarchy toward a republic.43 The concept of national sovereignty (hâkimiyet-i milliye) was central to the radical revolutionary language. But this principle was no novelty in Turkish political thought. Its origins traced back to nineteenth-century Ottoman philosophy, particularly to the radicalism of the Young Ottomans. The Constitution of 1921 brought back and solidified national sovereignty in legal language. Articles 1 and 2 introduced the republican principle that “Sovereignty (egemenlik) belongs unconditionally to the nation (millet). . . . The executive and legislative functions are united in the Grand National Assembly which is the true and sole representative of

42. Ağaoğlu, “Hâkimiyet-i Milliye, 11 May 1922,” in İhtilâl Mi, İnkılâb Mı, 12. 43. Ağaoğlu, “Hâkimiyet-i Milliye, 1 June 1922,” Ibid, 37.

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the nation.”44 Article 3 implied the formation of a new Turkish State (Türkiye Devleti) with its “government of the Grand National Assembly (Büyük Millet Meclisi Hükümeti).” Articles 4, 5, and 6 identified the electoral system, based on direct popular vote to be held every two years. As the nation had the right to determine and take control of their own fate, Article 7 granted the assembly “basic rights such as the ratification of treaties and the declaration [of war] for the defense (müdafaa) of the fatherland.”45 The executive power was delegated to a cabinet and Mustafa Kemal, who served as the commander in chief during the war of independence against the Allied powers. The shortcomings of the constitutional language led to future political crises. The formation of a new government meant the dual existence of two distinct governments and constitutions within the same national boundaries, which created a struggle for legitimacy within the struggle for independence, especially during the peace settlements. The constitution barely referred to judicial powers and the rights of citizens. While it served as a legal document until 1924, in the course of proclaiming of the Republic, the true meaning of national sovereignty, the idea of representation, the form of government, the notions of the separation of powers, and citizenship became subjects of intense political discussion.

The Political Language of War Propaganda To persuade the nation of the legitimacy of the newly formed Ankara government, and spread its political ideals and goals, war propaganda was used as a powerful tool to motivate and mobilize the people to fight and defend the fatherland. One propaganda tool was direct communication with the Anatolian people in villages and towns to attract popular support. Mustafa Kemal sent educated deputies and nationalists like Mehmed Emin (Yurdakul), Halide Edip, and her husband, Dr. Adnan (Adıvar), to spread patriotic sentiment to Anatolia.46 The other was the press. The Ankara government censored numerous foreign, Ottoman, Greek, and Armenian newspapers, opposing the national cause, while promoting an information service the Anatolian Agency (Anadolu Ajansı) formed by 44. Ergun Özbudun, 1921 Anayasası (Istanbul: Atatürk Araştırma Merkezi, 2008), 10–12. 45. Ibid.,12–15. 46. Donald Everett Webster, The Turkey of Atatürk: Social Process in the Turkish Reformation (Philadelphia: American Academy of Political and Social Science, 1939), 182–83.

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Yunus Nadi, Halide Edip, and Dr. Adnan.47 Two official newspapers, İrâde-i Milliye, issued in the aftermath of the Sivas Congress, and Hâkimiyet-i Milliye in Ankara disseminated the political goals of the independence movement. The latter was to become the republican propaganda newspaper in the formative years of the Republic. By establishing these newspapers and editing articles, Mustafa Kemal directly controlled wartime political language. The World War I political language of “friends and enemies” persisted into the independence movement, while the allegiances themselves shifted drastically. To justify the independence movement and a degree of punishment for counterresistance, a sharp line was drawn between proponents as friends, patriots, and supporters of the national cause and their good and moral virtues, and opponents as ruthless and cruel enemies. The enemy’s intent was portrayed as a will to “annihilate, suppress, kill and destroy our [Turkish] nation,”48 and a perpetrator of crime against humanity.49 The West was not only the military enemy but also a foe of liberty, and “despotic” because it intended to “enslave the Eastern civilizations,” and especially the “free homeland of the Turks.”50 Like its French republican counterpart, liberty was understood in contrast to slavery and dependence on the external power of an enemy that could be secured only collectively through uniting national and international forces together as “friends.” Freedom required a fully independent state, as defined during the Sivas Congress, capable of governing itself according to its national will. The theme that the Turkish people were always free and that slavery was wholly unnatural for them was expressed in the national anthem, penned by Mehmet Âkif (Ersoy) and officially adopted in 1921 to motivate people to fight for freedom: “Freedom is the natural right of my God-worshipping nation. I have been free since the beginning and forever shall be so. What madman shall put me in chains! I defy the very idea.”51 This notion of liberty as non-slavery became central to Turkish republicanism. 47. To evaluate the international public opinion about the Turkish cause, Halide Edip was also commissioned to follow the British and French press, regularly receiving copies of the Times, Manchester Guardian, Daily Herald, and the Daily Chronicle, in her words “the voice of mouthpiece of Mr. Lloyd George.” See Halide Edip, The Turkish Ordeal, 87–88. 48. “Kundakçılık Siyaseti,” İrâde-i Milliye, 8 March 1920, 1. 49. H. T., “Ferit Paşa Kabinesi,” ibid., 19 April 1920, 1. 50. “Meclis-i Millî-i Fevkalade,” ibid., 12 April 1920, 1. 51. Retrieved from http://www.turkishculture.org/music/marches-and-anthem/na tional-anthem-lyrics-694.htm?type=1.

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The enemy wiThouT: briTain and France The patriotic love of freedom and the desire to protect it justified a defensive war. The cruelest enemy was no longer Russia since after the Revolution of 1917, its new regime had begun to support the Turkish independence movement. It was now Britain, which “defeated its enemies with force, and its friends with politics. . . . Its politics are dishonest, deceitful and wrecking (kundakçılık).”52 Britain was an enemy of mankind (âlem-i beşeriyet) because its selfish desires only brought harm, violence and despair to the people.53 Greece was a puppet under its control, used to realize its territorial desires on the Western coast of Turkey. Further reason for hostility toward Britain came from its occupation of Istanbul, which was seen as not just a military occupation, but an insult to Islamic religion and civilization and “a blow (darbe) to the heart of the Ottoman State, the sixhundred year old protector (hami) of the 1,300- year- old Islamic civilization.”54 The other external enemy was France, but the language used to describe it was less grim than that reserved for Britain. After the Mudros Armistice, the French Army began to occupy strategically important coalmining regions in the Black Sea (Zonguldak and Karadeniz Ereğli), but it was defeated there in 1920. In Cilicia (Çukurova) in the South, it initiated the Franco-Turkish War, known as Güney Cephesi (Southern Front) in Turkey and la campagne de Cilicie in France. A series of military encounters between French and Turkish forces from 1920 to 1921 concluded with the Treaty of Ankara of 1921, the first official treaty signed by the Ankara government with a European power. Throughout the war, France, like Greece, was seen as led astray by Britain. Alliance with an enemy of Islam was wholly at odds with the French nation, “the true defender of civilization and mankind.”55 Echoing the late nineteenth-century language of the positivist Young Turks, France was described as “a shining civilizing ideal,” arising from the “black clouds of selfish ambitions and despotism of Europe.”56 To return to its true self, France must be reminded of its own humanitarian and ethical values.57 Ahmed Rıza undertook this task as the old friend of French universalism. 52. H. L., “Kabus,” İrâde-i Milliye, 22 March 1920, 1. 53. Ibid. 54. Ibid. 55. “Âlem-i İslam ve Fransa,” İrâde-i Milliye, 18 March 1920, 1. 56. Ibid. 57. Ibid.

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The revival oF posiTivism During World War I, Ahmed Rıza fell into opposition with the CUP and Triumvirate. Upon the dissolution of the Young Turk Party, Ahmed Rıza once again rose as a prominent political and intellectual figure. In 1919, his presidency of the Meclis-i Âyan (Senate) brought positivism once again to the forefront of political life. He formed the Vahdet-i Milliye Heyeti (Committee of National Unity) of thirty-three deputies to unite scattered opposition groups within parliament and find means to preserve and defend the unity of the nation according to Wilsonian principles. The committee’s objective was to ensure justice, duty, and responsibility, and maintain order in the fatherland, a recurring theme of positivist ethics.58 To ensure the unity and integrity of Turkey, it issued a series of demands to the Allied Powers, for the just application of the Wilsonian principles of self-determination to the Empire, and suggesting self-government (muhtariyet) in Arab lands.59 To bring French intervention to an end, Ahmed Rıza contacted French General Franchet d’Espray directly.60 The committee supported the independence movement in Anatolia and its ideal of freedom. While sharing Mustafa Kemal’s principle of national sovereignty and rejection of an American mandate,61 Ahmed Rıza differed from him in advocating the supervision, not protectorate, of France to maintain order, stability, and integrity of Turkey. His view of France as universal example had not changed since 1890s. In his “Ma voix s’élève vers la France,” he praised the republican values of the Great Revolution, urging France, “the most advanced and civilized of all nations,” to help or instruct the Ottomans to progress in both material and spiritual terms: “The true greatness of France in the East was expressed in its role as a peace-maker, seeding liberal views, but not in warfare.”62 To persuade European public opinion of the immorality of the war and the justness and legitimacy of the independence movement, Ahmed Rıza deployed his positivist allegiance in speeches, interviews, and writings in 58. “ ‘Vahdet-i Milliye Heyeti Nizamname-i Esasisi Suretidir,’ 6 March 1919,” in Türkiye’de Siyasal Partiler: İttihat ve Terakki: Bir Çağın, Bir Kuşağın, Bir Partinin Tarihi, ed. Tarık Zafer Tunaya (Istanbul: İletişim Yayınları, 2009), 442. 59. İkdam, 2 April 1919, 1. 60. Vakit, 7 August 1919, 1. 61. Ahmed Rıza, Ahmet Rıza Bey’in Hatıraları [the Memoirs of Ahmed Rıza Bey] (Istanbul: Arba Yayınları, 1988), 34–35. 62. Tunaya, Türkiye’de Siyasal Partiler, 3, 435–38.

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Turkish and French newspapers.63 He continued to conceive positivist idealism as an overarching philosophy, offering wide-ranging formulations for the ethical lives of nations, and for solving international conflicts. Mustafa Kemal challenged Ahmed Rıza’s pacifism in a letter, prior to the Sivas Congress, arguing that meetings or publications would not help reach greater ends, and peace could be attained only through an active resistance movement unifying the patriotic forces in Anatolia and Istanbul. To raise support for the Anatolian movement, Mustafa Kemal requested Ahmed Rıza to use his prestige as the old heroic Young Turk leader to influence his wide circle of acquaintances in Istanbul in the active support of Turkey’s national rights.64 Instead, Ahmed Rıza moved to Paris to shape public opinion elsewhere for the termination of wars between nations.65 In contrast to Mustafa Kemal, who famously stated that “yurtta sulh, cihanda sulh” (peace at home, peace in the world), he claimed that “la paix au-dehors et la paix au-dedans” (peace outside and peace within) and saw international peace as a prerequisite of domestic peace.66 During his stay in Paris from 1919 until 1922, Ahmed Rıza used his long-standing intellectual contacts and acquaintances with leading politicians like Georges Clemenceau, who had earlier recognized and supported the Young Turks in his writings;67 Georges Leygues, the prime minister of France; and his friends Raymond Poincaré and Aristide Briand to shape opinion on the Turkish national cause of freedom.68 He became an active and highly ambitious propagandist. In lectures and publications in French newspapers Le Temps, Matin, and L’Oeuvre, he criticized the French government severely for its unjust and immoral actions against humanity, and the West for its immorality and irresponsibility toward other nations.69 The Universal Moral Principles of Positivism To remind the French of their moral duties toward other nations, Ahmed Rıza produced his key text on positivist ethics, La faillite morale de la politique occidentale en Orient in 1922, championing a universal union 63. Atatürk, Nutuk, vol. 1, 25–26. The letter was written on 22 June 1919. For the full letter, see appendix 3. 64. Ibid. 65. Tunaya, Türkiye’de Siyasal Partiler, 3, 436–37. 66. Ahmed Rıza, “L’Orient à l’Exposition II,” Mechveret, 1 July 1900, 2. 67. Georges Clemenceau, “ ‘Pour faire plaisir au Sultan,’ La Dépéche, 14 April 1896,” in Mechveret, 15 April 1896, 7. 68. Demirbaş, Ahmet Rıza Bey’in Hatıraları, 15. 69. “Ahmet Rıza Bey ‘Ower’ Gazetesine Beyanatta Bulunuyor,” İrâde-i Milliye, 8 April 1920, 4.

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serving humanity built upon his early writings of international peace. This propaganda piece spoke of creating a perpetual peace through the adoption of Comte’s universal ethics by all nations, and relied on the axioms of equal worth, respect and dignity of all, mutual recognition, nonintervention, and anti-imperialism, all clearly cosmopolitan in bearing. The principle of equal worth viewed humanity as a single moral realm, in which each person and nation deserved equal respect and consideration, a moral judgment, rather than an empirical claim. Ahmed Rıza blamed humanity’s current division on the European imperial powers’ immoral treatment of other states. Their arrogance, prejudice, and treatment of Eastern people as “barbarians” or “members of an inferior race”70 hurt national pride and honor, worsening the relations between East and West and causing a struggle between nations:71 “Before insulting the members of another nation, one should first of all prove that one is at least less guilty than they are.”72 In this, he acknowledged Laffitte’s influence: “My mentor, Pierre Laffitte, would often say to me: ‘The West must carry out its own regeneration before being more worthy to transform the East. I can imagine nothing more absurd or impertinent than the claim of Christians to assume the guidance of the human species.’ ”73 Each nation must recognize the autonomy and liberty of other states.74 The principle of mutual recognition meant that each state must accept the cultural, social and ethnic variety of other nations:75 There is no reasoning with pride and animosity based on ignorance. Those who love only themselves disdain others simply because they are incapable of any true recognition or charitable appreciation of another’s worth, and it is practically impossible to come to any sort of agreement with those one hates. The instinct of self-preservation, it is true, sometimes draws together men who have no love for one another, but that type of “entente” ironically described as “cordial” is never enduring.76

Civilizations had something important to learn from each other in improving their moral and material qualities: “Let us try to know each other better, to reach a better understanding, and to act only in full awareness of our motives. The free exchange of ideas between our respective countries 70. Ahmed Rıza, Moral Bankruptcy, 29. 71. Ibid., 14. 72. Ibid., 29. 73. Ibid., 14. 74. Ibid., 27. 75. Ibid., 207. 76. Ibid.

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seems to me to be as necessary as the exchange of food products—without any fraud or swindling.”77 The principle of anti-imperialism and nonintervention, while underlining a commitment to these related principles of equal worth, dignity, and mutual recognition, required the creation of understanding, communication, and interconnections between people and nations. Reiterating his earlier views at the turn of the century, Ahmed Rıza believed in national autonomy and a nation’s right to protect its own interests against external pressure or domination. Western interventionism and colonialism reflected only selfish desires and interests, at the expense of the needs and wishes of other human beings: When no other pretext can be found for the military occupation of other countries and the pillage of the local inhabitants’ goods and property, the unfortunate natives are proclaimed to be of an inferior race and a danger to Humanity, and a claim is laid to the divine right of endowing them with the blessings of civilization; in exactly the same way as politicians who wish to overturn a ministry but can find no serious motive to justify their action, have recourse to lying pretexts, claiming that their sole aim is the happiness and welfare of their fellow citizens. . . . Have they at least contributed to the happiness of the people they have subdued? I direct that question to all men of good faith, to the Americans with regard to their Red Indian tribes, to the English with regard to the Australian Aborigines, to the French with regard to the African negro, and, with even greater reason, to the Germans with regard to the Namibian tribes!78

Each state must be aware of and accountable for any of its actions, direct or indirect, intended or unintended, that might radically restrict the choices of others. Once individual countries grasped international moral principles and fulfilled their duties to one another, humanitarian values would triumph and the salvation of humanity could be pursued. Ahmed Rıza supposed optimistically that aggression would become increasingly futile as the benefits of peace became more obvious: “Let us therefore work primarily to co-ordinate the tried and tested ideas and principles that we hold most dear, and combine them with exalted sentiments of duty. Order can only be established by men of energy, conviction and virtue.”79 77. Ibid., 209. 78. Ibid., 6. 79. Ibid., 214.

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Ahmed Rıza saw these positivist principles as prerequisites for grounding a universal moral order, and believed their implementation would help end the wars and conflicts among nations.80 His positivist language for persuading both domestic and international public opinion of the immorality of the war was extremely influential.81 He helped arrange the mission to Ankara of Franklin-Bouillon, who signed the first peace agreement between France and the Ankara government on behalf of the French government.82 Upon his return to Istanbul after the war, Ahmed Rıza and his positivist universalism were nevertheless forgotten and overshadowed by Mustafa Kemal’s and his followers’ more radical ideals.

The enemy wiThin: The isTanbul governmenT The other connotation of “enemy” in wartime political language was that the supporter or friend of my enemy must also be my enemy. As the Istanbul government under the pro-British grand vizier Damad Ferid Paşa reacted feebly to occupation, it was seen as the greatest public enemy. The Ankara government believed that by signing the extremely unfavorable Treaty of Sèvres on 10 August 1920, the Istanbul government allowed the partitioning of Ottoman territory and reduced the state to slavery. This caused the greatest harm to the unity and integrity of the nation by aiding the cruel aims of its enemies. In propaganda newspapers, Damat Ferit was figured as the most hated “ominous” figure and was blamed for his arbitrariness (keyfiyet), endangering the existence of the caliphate and the future of the Islamic world.83 Depicting him as a tyrant, Dervişoğlu stated that “this country does not belong to one man but to the entire nation’s common good.”84 The Istanbul government was portrayed as “traitor,” allied with enemies to execute “the death sentence” on the Ottoman state.85 By failing to fulfill its primary duty to provide security for its citizens and the unity of the nation, it had broken the tacit contract with them and forfeited its legitimacy as a government. The only legitimate government, Ağaoğlu claimed, was the Ankara government, since it 80. Ibid., 211. 81. Tarık Zafer Tunaya, Türkiye’de Siyasal Partiler, 4th ed., vol. 2 (Istanbul: İletişim Yayınları, 2010), 37. 82. Demirbaş, Ahmet Rıza Bey’in Hatıraları, 15. 83. Ağaoğlu, “Hâkimiyet-i Milliye, 18 May 1922,” 23; H. T., “Ferit Paşa Kabinesi,” 1. 84. Havzalı F. Dervişoğlu, “Vezaif-i Milliye, Vecaib-i Vataniyye,” İrâde-i Milliye, 24 May 1920, 1. 85. H. T., “Ferit Paşa Kabinesi,” 1.

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fought for the sovereignty, freedom, and rights of the nation, and represented the national will.86

Friends This potent patriotic republican language, which had been developed by the Young Ottomans, was deployed to delineate and motivate friends of the Ankara government. The fatherland (vatan) was a common house where friends and patriots of the nation lived freely with people of sympathetic views bound by patriotic love. The national borders were defined by the presence of Islamic elements, intimately linked together as brothers, who respected each other’s racial (ırki), social, and geographical rights.87 These comprised Edirne in the West, Iskenderun in the South, and as far as Mosul, Süleymaniye, and Kerkük in the East. The right to live in the fatherland was a natural right (kanun-ı tabii) bestowed on the people to continue its existence, protecting it from contamination.88 In Rousseau’s formula, “a nation writes its own destiny. . . . If it desires to be free and independent (hür ve serbest), it will do so. Otherwise, a terrible disaster is inevitable.”89 Resonating Namık Kemal’s notion of patriotism, the distinctive feature of this kind of republican patriotism was the value of liberty as good of all and for all, and a spirit that conceived the fatherland as an ideal and value, not only as a physical place, and considered territoriality as implementing the universal values of humanity in a specific place. “It was the duty of a true believer and a lover of Humanity to save the Ottoman dynasty and nation, which had not been imprisoned and enslaved even at its harshest times. . . . We will defend the endurance of our existence, and in the end get our justice and revenge.”90 To regain independence, violence and punishment were justified to a certain extent. In these emergency conditions, the Grand National Assembly passed the Law against Treason (Hiyanet-i Vataniye Kanunu) on 29 April 1920, and the Law of Independence Courts on 11 September, instituted mainly to punish rebels, deserters, and traitors.91 86. Ağaoğlu returned from the exile in 1922, joined the independence movement, and became the editor of the Hâkimiyet-i Milliye. 87. TBMM Zabıt Ceridesi, I, 16–7, 165. 88. “Halasa Doğru,” İrâde-i Milliye, 15 March 1920, 1. 89. Ibid. 90. H. L., “Kundakçılık Siyaseti,” İrâde-i Milliye, 8 March 1920, 1. 91. Erik J. Zürcher, The Unionist Factor: The Role of the Committee of Union and Progress in the Turkish National Movement, 1905–1926 (Leiden: Brill, 1984), 146.

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The most powerful bond between the patriots and friends was seen as religion, as in the context of World War I. But this religious call was not a jihad, rather a Pan-Islamic call to create a spiritual solidarity and maintain unity that would prevent the Ottoman nation from dissolving and disintegrating further. The language of politics was increasingly anchored in the struggle to reconstitute the nation and preserve Muslim devotion. During the War of Independence, Turkish nationalists declared that they fought to save the caliphate and maintain the unity and solidarity of the Muslim world, and that the fate of the caliphate, and hence the Muslim world, lay in their own hands. In this way, Turkish nationalists aimed to garner national and international support from their Muslim friends and brothers for their national cause.92 Mustafa Kemal invoked a Pan-Islamic unity and patriotism in most of his speeches to mobilize the Turkish nation.93 On the day of the British occupation, he released a statement, claiming that this fortunate event terminated the life and sovereignty of the Ottoman state. “Today, the Turkish nation was called apparently for the defense of its own civilization, the right to live and to independence, and above all, to its future. Humanity, the wishes of the Islamic world, and the salvation of the exalted caliphate from foreign powers depend on the defense and provision of national independence as it was in the past glorious days.”94 It was the duty of all patriots and believers to save the nation and the caliphate, not only for the sake of Turks, whose “natural right to live” had been taken away,95 but for the sake of Islam and humanity. This language implied a religious struggle between Christian and Islamic nations. Taking up the Pan-Islamic language of the Balkan Wars and World War I, Mustafa Kemal denounced the enemies as “crusaders” (ehl-i salib), and appealed to religious sentiments, “the passion and duty of the conscience (vicdan) of all our Muslim brothers,” calling upon “friends” in Azerbaijan, North Caucasus, Turkistan, Afghanistan, and India to join the national cause. To spread this message of religious solidarity, military commanders in eastern Anatolia were instructed to contact tribal chiefs and Muslims in Iraq, Syria, Azerbaijan, and the Caucasus and ask for their help.96 92. Reza Pankhurst, The Inevitable Caliphate?: A History of the Struggle for Global Islamic Union, 1924 to the Present (London: Hurst, 2013), 37. 93. “Meclis-i Millî-i Fevkalade,” İrâde-i Milliye, 12 April 1920, 1. 94. Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, Nutuk, vol. I (Ankara: Türk Dil Kurumu Yayınları, 1981), 286–87. 95. “İşgal Azim ve Tesanüd-i Milliyi Takviye Etmiştir,” İrâde-i Milliye, 22 March 1920, 1–2. 96. Gawrych, Young Atatürk, 102.

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Among the Muslims abroad, Indian Muslims were the greatest supporters of the Turkish national movement. The Ottoman defeat generated a fear among them that unless the caliph’s political salience and temporal and spiritual power was reasserted, the Islamic world would decline and disintegrate. The All-India Muslim Conference held in September 1919 declared the spiritual power of the sultan of Turkey bound to his temporal power and the proposed division of the Ottoman Empire an assault upon Islam.97 The preservation of Ottoman sovereignty was seen as immensely important, and it summoned Muslims to support the Turkish state.98 The Indian Khilafat movement was founded the same year by a group of prominent Muslim figures to lobby the British government for the protection and integrity of the Ottoman caliphate in any postwar settlement, and continued its activities until the abolition of the caliphate in 1924. AbulKalam Azad, a leading figure in the movement, declared its core aim as Indian freedom, with the caliphate providing a symbol of Muslim solidarity built upon widespread sympathy with the Ottomans.99 The Khilafat movement supported the Ankara government financially and politically in their defensive war for the caliphate,100 while also boldly expressed that support in a French journal Echos de l’Islam to influence French public opinion.101 Effective aid did come from the influential religious leader and Libyan resistance fighter, the Sufi sheikh Ahmad al-Sanussi (1873–1933). During his stay in Turkey from 1918 until 1924, he became one of Mustafa Kemal’s emissaries in the provinces of Anatolia, and in 1922, he was commissioned to arbitrate a peace among the Arab tribes in southeastern Anatolia by deploying his spiritual prestige.102

Conclusion The political language of radicalisim, independence, patriotism and PanIslamism, and war propaganda deployed to mobilize the nation and influence both domestic and foreign public opinion, along with effective 97. Gail Minault, The Khilafat Movement: Religious Symbolism and Political Mobilization in India (New York: Columbia University Press, 1982), 75. 98. Mahmoud Osman Haddad, Rashid Rida and the Theory of the Caliphate: Medieval Themes and Modern Concerns (New York: Columbia University Press, 1989), 193. 99. Ibid. 100. Aydın, The Politics of Anti-Westernism in Asia, 135. 101. Ibid., 136. 102. A. H. De Groot, “Al-Sanusi, Shaikh Sayyid Ahmad (1873–1933),” in Biographical Encyclopedia of Sufis: Africa and Europe, ed. N. Hanif (New Delhi: Sarup & Sons, 2002), 149–50.

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military strategies and tactics were the decisive factors in the outcome of the war. General Mustafa Kemal’s army defeated the so-called army of the caliphate, sent against him by the sultan, and confronted and even on occasion fought the occupation forces of the Entente Powers. Finally, after a series of indecisive engagements against the Greeks, culminating in the battle of Sakarya (August–September 1921), ultimate victory for Anatolian forces came in 1922. The first armistice concluded in Mudanya on 11 October 1922 between the Allied forces and the Ankara government conceded most of the patriots’ demands. The dualism between the Istanbul and the Ankara governments weakened the legitimacy of the former and initiated an intense debate on the notions of national sovereignty and liberty.

ch a p T er n i n e

The Victory of Radical Republicanism

The procl a m aTion oF The r epublic in 1923 was the final stage in a revolutionary process with two decisive moments. In the aftermath of the War of Independence, the abolition of the monarchy in 1922 was followed by the monarch’s flight from the country, ushering in a smooth establishment of the new regime. Modern Turkish historiography has assumed that abolishing the sultanate and proclaiming the Republic ensued with little debate or deliberation, and both were made possible by the outstanding character of Mustafa Kemal. Historians have generally accepted Mustafa Kemal’s assertion in his Great Speech that even before the beginning of the national struggle, he contemplated a republican revolution but had concealed his intentions from the public to secure those objectives.1 This interpretation is drastically incomplete and intellectually incoherent. The abolition of the sultanate and the proclamation of the Republic were not the outcome of the revelation of one man’s secret plan, nor were they entirely spontaneous and accidental,2 nor did Mustafa Kemal “for the first time in Turkish political thought pronounce republic bravely as a [possible] form of government.”3 A coherent understanding of Turkish conceptions of republicanism cannot be gained by examining solely the 1. See Berkes, The Development of Secularism in Turkey, 449–50; Lewis, The Emergence of Modern Turkey, 259; Ahmad, Turkey: The Quest for Identity, 83–84. 2. M. M. Finefrock, “From Sultanate to Republic: Mustafa Kemal Atatürk and the Structure of Turkish Politics 1922–4,” Thesis, Princeton University, 1976. 3. Hamza Eroğlu, “Mustafa Kemal ve Cumhuriyet,” in Atatürkçü Düşünce El Kitabı (Ankara: Atatürk Araştırma Merkezi, 1998), 30.

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political thought, actions, and plans of a single individual.4 Even Mustafa Kemal’s contemporaries could readily judge that the Republic did not have a single founder, but many. As Ağaoğlu insisted: “The Turkish Republic was founded by numerous men, unlike the Third Republic of France which was established mainly by a few men.”5 The Republic was born in an intellectual context torn by deep contradictions and oscillations between multiple groups and ideas. The claim that Turkish republicanism was shaped merely by Mustafa Kemal’s ideas deliberately ignores the competing conceptions of republicanism—radical, Islamic, and liberal—that fought one another in the revolutionary context for political dominance. It also understates the depth of republican thinking within opposition circles and groups. The radical republican interpretation of the Kemalists defeated rival interpretations by force and repression and became the sole victor. To understand why and how it achieved its dominance, it is necessary to reconstruct the public and parliamentary debates of the years 1922 and 1925.

Abolition of the Ottoman Sultanate The first aspirations for a transition to a nonmonarchical regime emerged in the public debates that followed immediately from the decisive victory of Turkish over Greek forces in August 1922. The ensuing peace settlement, the Armistice of Mudanya, signed on 11 October between the Grand National Assembly and the Allied Powers (Italy, France, Britain, and Greece) was a tremendous diplomatic success for the Ankara government. It implied the first international recognition of a new and independent Turkish state as defined in the Turkish national pact.6 The final settlement between parties was completed when the Treaty of Sèvres was suspended by a new agreement negotiated between the Western Allies and Turkey at the Conference of Lausanne, held, with breaks, between 20 November 1922 and 17 July 1923. The diplomatic success at Mudanya raised questions over the issue of sovereignty, generating public debate about the form of the new Turkish 4. Anıl Çeçen, Atatürk ve Cumhuriyet (Ankara: Türkiye İş Bankası Kültür Yayınları, 1981); Zafer Toprak, Türkiye’de Popülizm 1908–1923, 338–410; Şerafettin Turan, Atatürk’ün Düşünce Yapısını Etkileyen Olaylar, Düşünürler, Kitaplar (Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu, 2010); Atatürk: Founder of a Modern Turkey (London: C. Hurst, 1981). 5. Ağaoğlu, “Hâkimiyet-i Milliye, 11 May 1922,” 30. 6. Stanford J. Shaw, From Empire to Republic: The Turkish War of National Liberation, 1918–1923, A Documentary Study, vol. 4 (Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu, 2000), 1876.

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government. This debate emerged in the aftermath of a speech by a representative of the Ankara government, General Refet (Bele) Paşa, delivered at Istanbul University. He maintained that the only real victor of the national struggle was the sovereign nation, saltanat-ı milliye (“the rule of the nation”), represented by the Grand National Assembly.7 The major difference between a monarchy and a republic was where power and authority resided: “In the former, a person governs the dynasty, whereas, in the latter, the ruler is not the head of the dynasty.”8 He embraced the notion of a unitary legislature, and the concept of undivided sovereignty as represented by the National Assembly, urging that the power and strength of the nation must belong to the people (cumhur), not to a sultan or caliph.9 He did not wish for a representative republican government, but a form, neither fully republican nor quite monarchical. “We want a government of the nation (milletin hükümeti). . . . It is what is meant by national sovereignty and national rule (saltanat-ı milliye).”10 In response, Lütfi Fikri Bey, president of the Istanbul Bar Association, published a brief pamphlet (risale) criticizing Refet’s preferred political system for its lack of warrant and impracticality.11 He believed instead that the constitutional monarchy of Great Britain offered the best form of government, and a constitutional monarchy conflicted neither with “national sovereignty”, nor with the so-called national rule: “A monarch gives . . . identity, character, and also power and strength [to a nation].”12 A dramatic turn of events and regime change in extraordinary times would bring only further chaos and disorder to society. While desiring the preservation and restoration of the constitutional monarchy, Lütfi argued that the public, not the National Assembly, had the sole right to determine the fate of the sultanate, since the latter could not function as a Constituent Assembly (Kurucu Meclis).13 Süleyman Nazif, an eminent poet and author, attacked Lütfi for applying Western political terms to interpret the Turkish government without acknowledging the political values, experiences and culture unique to Tur-

7. Vakit, 23 October 1922; Sabah, 23 October 1922. 8. Ibid. 9. Vakit, 23 October 1922. 10. Ibid. 11. Lütfi Fikri, “Hükümdarlık Karşısında Milliyet, Mes’ûliyet ve Tefrik-i Kuvâ Mesaili,” in Saltanattan Ulusal Egemenliğe: Saltanat, Hilafet ve Millî Hâkimiyet, ed. Dursun Ali Akbulut (Istanbul: Temel Yayınları, [1922] 2006), 169. 12. Ibid., 172. 13. Ibid., 182–83.

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key.14 Comparing current political conditions in Turkey to those in the aftermath of the French Revolution, he stressed that “When the French tried to liberate themselves from the oppression of their kings living in luxury and splendor, they found that the entirety of Europe utterly betrayed and abandoned the French nation. . . . In our [the Turkish] case, when the entirety of Europe was standing against us, a much more treacherous tyrant [the Sultan Vahdettin] than all enemies appeared to us.”15 Therefore, there could be no valid reason to defend, preserve or protect the monarchy.16 Another response to Lütfi came from Fuad Şükrü, a bar association member. In his pamphlet “Halk Saltanatı” (People’s Rule), he rejected Lütfi’s view that monarchical regimes can maintain social order better than republics,17 insisting that France was one of the wealthiest and happiest countries, because a republic was better able to provide these values and democracy to its people with wealth and happiness than a monarchy.18 The diplomatic preliminaries to the Lausanne Treaty precipitated a political crisis when, on 17 October 1922, Ottoman Grand Vizier Tevfik Paşa telegrammed to Ankara proposing to end Turkey’s dual governance by dispatching to the upcoming peace conference a joint delegation representing both the Ankara and Istanbul governments.19 “This twofold invitation,” Mustafa Kemal later contended, “led to the final abolition of personal monarchy.”20 He rejected the grand vizier’s proposal, arguing that the victory of the National Assembly’s army meant that the National Assembly was the only legitimate representative of the Turkish state at the upcoming peace conference.21 When Tevfik Paşa sent a second letter, insisting on joint attendance at the conference, Mustafa Kemal acknowledged the urgent need to resolve the problem of dualism. On 30 October, he brought the issue before parliament alongside the source of sovereign 14. Süleyman Nazif, “Lütfi Bey’e Cevap,” in Saltanattan Ulusal Egemenliğe: Saltanat, Hilafet ve Millî Hâkimiyet, ed. Dursun Ali Akbulut (Istanbul: Temel Yayınları, [1922] 2006), 188. 15. Ibid., 189. 16. Ibid., 190–91. 17. Fuad Şükrü, “Halk Saltanatı: Lütfü Fikri Bey’in Hükümdarlık Karşısında Milliyet ve Mes’uliyet ve Tefriki Kuva Mesaili Hakkındaki Mübahesatına Cevap,” in Saltanattan Ulusal Egemenliğe: Saltanat, Hilafet ve Millî Hâkimiyet, ed. Dursun Ali Akbulut (Istanbul: Temel Yayınları, [1922] 2006), 201. 18. Ibid., 203–5. 19. Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, The Great Speech (Ankara: Atatürk Research Center, 2008), 564–67. 20. Ibid., 564. 21. Ibid.

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legitimacy from the people (“the rule of the nation,” saltanat-ı milliye) rather than the monarch (“personal rule,” saltanat-ı ferdiye). Some deputies viewed the grand vizier’s invitation as a serious threat to the absolute sovereignty of the Grand National Assembly, as defined in the Law of Fundamental Organization of January 1921. One group, Hoca Rasih (deputy for Antalya), Feyzi Paşa (deputy for Diyarbakır), and Hüseyin Avni (deputy for Erzurum), accused Vahdettin of pride, arrogance, and illegality. Despite the decline in his power and influence since the 1908 Revolution, they feared the sultan might still provide a focal point for opposition to national sovereignty. Others insisted that since the beginning of the national liberation movement, the sultan and his government had had a destructive effect on national unity, and were the enemies of the true representatives of Turkey, the Ankara government. Tunalı Hilmi Bey (deputy for Bolu) suggested deputies submit motions on the future status of the sultanate.22 The most revolutionary was a six-article motion proposed by Rıza Nur (deputy for Sinop and minister for public health) and signed by 81 other deputies, including Mustafa Kemal. It was the first official proposal to abolish the monarchy and found a new regime, where authority resided in the nation, and people would govern themselves, clearly implying a republic. By the proposal’s terms: 1. The introduction of autocratic government brought the Ottoman Empire to an end. 2. Based on the principle of the people’s national rule, a young [and] dynamic government of the Grand National Assembly was established, taking the name of the Turkish state. 3. The new Turkish government was founded in place of the former Ottoman Empire, and it is the only successor [state] within the national boundaries. 4. As the Law of Fundamental Organization granted the legal authority to the national will, the sultanate in Istanbul has come to an end. 5. No legal government exists in Istanbul, and Istanbul and its surrounding areas belong to the Grand National Assembly (GNA). Therefore, their governance shall be transferred to the GNA’s officials. 6. The Turkish government will free the legal office of the caliphate from the hands of foreign slavery.23 22. TBMM Zabıt Ceridesi, I. Devre, III. Sene, C. III, 294. 23. Ibid., 292–93.

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While the proposal received wide-ranging support, including the principal military leaders of the national movement (Kazım Karabekir, Rauf, Ali Fuat, and İsmet Paşas), it also attracted significant opposition. An ensuing debate on its final item, the status of the caliphate, proved significant in the evolution of Turkish republican thinking. Conservatives and clerics like Colonel Selahattin Bey (deputy for Mersin) and Ziya Hurşit (deputy for Lazistan) opposed separating the caliphate from the sultanate and abolishing the latter, fearing that without sultanate’s support, the caliphate would be left powerless. The clerics believed that the caliph must be the absolute sovereign and the state be ruled according to the Shari’a. Since the assembly’s founding, this so-called second group had pressed for a ministry of Shari’a to oversee and approve the school curriculum. In 1920, they passed a religious law, prohibiting drinking, gambling, and card playing.24 To counteract this “second group,” Mustafa Kemal organized a Parliamentary Group in May 1921, representing the Society for Defense and Rights.25 Although outnumbered, these clerics regained power toward the end of the first National Assembly, and sought to convince the committee to rephrase the sixth article as “The caliphate belongs to the Turks, the Ottoman dynasty. The Turkish state will rescue the legal office of the caliph from foreign slavery.”26 The proposal was passed to the joint committee for further consideration and reopened for parliamentary debate on 1 November 1922. Mustafa Kemal launched an attack on the clerics, arguing that the caliph was not and had never been sovereign. Seeking to prove the illegitimacy of the institution, he outlined the history of the caliphate in a lengthy speech: “the execution of Caliph Mutassam by Hulagu put an end to the Caliphate. If Yavuz, who conquered Egypt in the year 1517, had not attributed importance to a fugitive who held the title Caliph, we should not have had the title handed down to our days.”27 Drawing on Rousseau,28 he saw sovereignty (egemenlik) as a collective being (kollektif bir varlık), inhering in the people. While sovereignty was not transferrable, political power could be obtained by force, as was evident from Ottoman history:29 “It was 24. Berkes, The Development of Secularism in Turkey, 447–48. 25. Tunaya, Türkiye’de Siyasi Partiler, 3, 553. 26. TBMM Zabıt Ceridesi, 304. 27. Mustafa Kemal, The Great Speech, 569. 28. Rousseau’s Le Contrat Social was translated into Ottoman Turkish by Ziya Paşa in 1913 as Mukavele-i İçtimaiyye. Mustafa Kemal read it and highlighted and put notes on sections on the general will and sovereignty. See Gürbüz Tüfekçi, Atatürk’ün Okuduğu Kitaplar (Istanbul: Türkiye İş Bankası Yayınları, 1983), 396. 29. Mustafa Kemal, The Great Speech, 569.

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by violence that the sons of Osman acquired the power to rule over the Turkish nation and to maintain their rule for more than six centuries. It is now the nation that revolts against these usurpers, puts them in their place and actually carries on their sovereignty.”30 Echoing the rhetoric of the Young Ottoman radical republican Mehmed Bey, Mustafa Kemal argued that to secure this right to sovereignty, it was legitimate and necessary to crush opposition by force, suppression, and violence. Asserting the existence of an absolute sovereign order of the people, which political authorities must seek to institute regardless of resistance, affirmed the superiority of the popular will. This became the guiding spirit of revolutionary radicalism. Ultimately, this parliamentary debate separated the offices of the sultanate and the caliphate, and brought an end to the Ottoman dynasty on the same day. The Ankara government declared itself the highest and only legitimate authority in Turkey, Tevfik Paşa’s cabinet resigned, and Abdülmecid Efendi, son of Sultan Abdülaziz, was appointed caliph by the Grand Turkish National Assembly. In many quarters, the 1922 Revolution was viewed as the greatest and most meaningful event in Turkish history. In interpreting it, journalists and deputies alike were attracted to a vocabulary drawn largely from the 1908 Revolution, in turn drawn from that of the French Revolution. The 1908 Revolution, for Necmeddin Sadık (Sadak) Bey, a sociologist, journalist, and future minister of foreign affairs of the Turkish Republic, had only restored the monarchy, it did not end individual sovereignty.31 National sovereignty had awoken in the turmoil of World War I, as the Turkish people came to realize that neither Ottoman government nor sultan could be trusted to secure and guarantee the life and liberty of the nation. They fought for their own freedom and independence through their sovereign will and power.32 The power of national sovereignty gave the Turkish people the right to form a new state through the revolution, and marked the death of the centuries-old “sick man.”33 Ağaoğlu saw the revolution as a victory for a “revitalizing force,” a “spirit of liberty,” “honor,” “prestige,” and “eternity” manifested in Anatolia against the “corrupt,” “evil,” “unfaithful,” “deceptive,” “corrupt,” and “rotten spirit lurking within the Porte and the 30. Ibid., 570. 31. Necmeddin Sadık, “Milletin İradesi,” in Hilâfet ve Millî Hâkimiyet (Ankara: Matbuat ve İstihbarat Müdüriyet-i Umûmiyyesi, 1923), 95–96. 32. Necmeddin Sadık, “Hükûmet Hakimiyeti’nden Millet Hakimiyeti’ne,” Millî Mecmua, 1 January 1924, 1. 33. Ahmed Emin, “İki Teşrîn-i Sânî İnkılâbı,” in Hilâfet ve Millî Hâkimiyet (Ankara: Matbuat ve İstihbarat Müdüriyet-i Umûmiyyesi, 1923), 114.

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Sultan.”34 This dichotomy of new and old was recaptured by Yunus Nadi: “A world is collapsing, while another one is rising. The declining world is the old Turkey along with its caliphate and sultanate, whereas the world rising in place of the former is the new Turkey, forcing everyone and every nation to submit to its new belief.”35 There was no preestablished form for the new regime, a republic, a new dynasty, or a biat. Novel but new contested terms were proposed to characterize it: milli halk saltanatı (the rule of the national people), millet saltanatı (national rule), halk hükümeti (people’s government), or milli halk hükümeti (national people’s government), all of which implied a republic.36 The first description of the new regime as a republic came from Hüseyin Cahit, the editor of Renin, later renamed Tanin, the leading positivist republican thinker of the Second Constitutional period and a devotee of Ahmed Rıza. In his “İnkılâb” (Revolution), he stressed that abolishing the sultanate continued the Revolution of 1908: It is overtly clear that our [new] type of government, which came into being as a necessary product of the events, is a republic (cumhuriyet). . . . The Revolution of the 10th of July [1908] gave birth to a sunny-faced and golden-blonde-haired sturdy child. This child grew up in a thousand kinds of danger and sufferings, experienced a challenging life, and today, he announces his age of maturity. The freedom and independence flag of the thousand years of glorious Turkishness flies now in his hands. Let us cry out together as the entire nation: Move on, a bright future is yours!37

The new regime was greeted as a republic by the Bulgarian newspaper Echo de Bulgari, in an article claiming that the Grand National Assembly had avoided openly calling the new regime a republic as it feared provoking strong reactions or opposition from conservative deputies and the public. The political regime in Turkey was a “non-named Republic.”38 At its conclusion, the article posed an open question to its reader: “Does the revolutionary movement of Ankara have a future?”39 34. Ağaoğlu Ahmed, “Padişahlığın Türkiye’nin Başına Getirdiği Felaketler,” ibid. (Ankara: Matbuat ve İstihbarat Müdüriyet-i Umûmiyyesi), 66–67. 35. Yunus Nadi, “Hükümet ve Hilafet,” Anadolu’da Yeni Gün, 21 November 1922. 36. Dursun Ali Akbulut, Saltanattan Ulusal Egemenliğe: Saltanat, Hilafet ve Millî Hâkimiyet (Istanbul: Temel Yayınları, 2006), 21–22. 37. Hüseyin Cahit, “İnkılâb,” Renin, 4 November 1922. 38. Hüseyin Cahit, “Yeni Türk İnkılâbı Hakkında Tenkitkar Bir Fikir,” Anadolu’da Yeni Gün, 27 October 1922. 39. Ibid.

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Yunus Nadi (head of the Anatolian Agency and deputy for Izmir) responded sharply: “The final Turkish Revolution emerged from the deepest slavery, therefore it has a bright, exact and noble future.”40 He believed the short-term task of the new government was to consolidate revolutionary action and prevent unsettling fluctuations provoked by royalists, against whom he campaigned in his newspaper Anadolu’da Yeni Gün (New Day in Anatolia). He saw the greatest current enemy as “Vahdettin’s monarchy,” because of the Sultan’s alliance with Britain, and the clerics’ support of the sultan and caliph. To save the state from future threats, those who defended the sultan, betrayed the nation, or were suspected of conspiring to undermine the revolution must be severely punished under the Law of Treason (Hıyanet-i Vataniye Kanunu).41 Anti-monarchist press propaganda escalated after Vahdettin’s flight on a British battleship on 17 November 1922. Renin and Tevhid-i Efkâr declared him the worst sultan in Ottoman history, and the “fallen” enemy of religion and nation.42 Vatan, similarly, proclaimed him a “traitor of the nation” (vatan haini) who had fled from his national responsibilities.43

debaTing sovereignTy The sultan’s escape ruled out despotism and constitutional monarchy as potential future forms for a Turkish government, leaving only one possibility for the new constitution: a republic. However, the ambiguity about the new regime’s leadership and the nature of its sovereignty prompted heated debate. Two opposing conceptions of sovereignty, national against divine sovereignty, sharpened battle lines between Islamic and radical secular republicans, which reflected the earlier dispute between the Islamist and the radical Young Ottomans. The former saw an Islamic republic as the most suitable type of regime for the new Turkey, because the indigenous Islamic state exhibited elements of direct democracy and republic and was endorsed by the people on the basis of their belief in the sovereignty of truth and Qur’anic justice. Absolute sovereignty belongs to God, who has made man master of his own destiny. This divine right cannot be subordinated to the interests of a particular group: the people are to exercise it, and the caliph must be their spiritual and political leader. İsmail Şükrü Efendi, a former CUP member and deputy for Afyon, added 40. Yunus Nadi, “İnkılâbımızın Telakkisi,” Anadolu’da Yeni Gün, 29 October 1922. 41. Yunus Nadi, “Fesat Ocağı,” Anadolu’da Yeni Gün, 13 November 1922. 42. Renin, 18 November 1922; Tevhid-i Efkâr, 18 November 1922. 43. Vakit, 18 November 1922.

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that a traditional biat ceremony must be introduced to elect a new caliph.44 A motion promoting the establishment of a system of şur’a was brought to parliament by Yusuf Ziya Bey (deputy for Bitlis) on 18 November 1922.45 The radical secularist deputies were outraged. Throughout the initial debates, and consistently thereafter, Yunus Nadi, like his predecessor Mehmed Bey, protested against the notion that in modern Turkey absolute sovereignty belonged to an individual or a supernatural being. The highest sovereign was the Turkish people, who had assumed their sovereignty when 1922 Revolution transferred it from the monarchs, who had usurped it for centuries, to the nation as a whole. While Yunus Nadi endowed the nation with many features of Rousseau’s conception of the people, most notably as an association of equal citizens bound together by a common will, he placed no emphasis on a social contract as the explicit basis of its collective being. Instead, like Mustafa Kemal, he saw it as a social organization of equal individual citizens with common interests. Unlike the clerics, he viewed the notion in purely secular terms as inhabitants of an ultimate natural order, unimpeded in exercising their sovereign will in a representative assembly, which enabled them to formulate a truly unitary will through discussion among the deputies. He denied that there was a common will outside the National Assembly,46 and insisted that the nation became one only in the collective person of its representative body. To prevent the National Assembly from dominating the people and deviating from the national will, he argued for a citizen’s veto to scrutinize the decisions of the National Assembly.47 The realization of the sovereign power though this form of direct democracy would make the new Turkish state free, while denying national sovereignty would return it to despotism.48 To forestall Turkey slipping back into an ancient lethargy before the work of transformation was fully complete, Yunus Nadi called for “bloody revolutionary action” against the clerics. He was clearly affected by the radical de-Christianizing movement of the French revolutionaries:49 44. TBMM Gizli Celse Zabıtları, vol. 3 (Ankara: Türkiye İş Bankası Yayınları, 1985), 1057–58. 45. Ibid., 1050–51. 46. Cited in İleri, 25 March 1924, 1 from Yunus Nadi, “Hakimiyet-i Milliye’ye İlk Vurulan Darbe,” Yeni Gün. 47. Ibid. 48. Yunus Nadi, “Hükümet ve Hilafet.” 49. Yunus Nadi, “Yeni Bir Cidal Devri,” Anadolu’da Yeni Gün, 26 November 1922.

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We executed people who failed to understand the legitimacy of the Grand National Assembly in its darkest and most bewildering times without hesitation. In its brightest times, will we stay incapable and ineffective against those who find the Grand National Assembly’s power weak and therefore do not want to recognise its existence? No. . . . If necessary, we will paint all Istanbul with blood, until we finalise the revolution.50

In Yunus Nadi’s view, the excision of “the corrupt and miserable souls” from the society was a patriotic duty for securing the new regime.51 His radical revolutionary language was taken up by Celal Nuri (deputy for Gelibolu and editor and owner of İleri). Following the Revolution of 1922, “A new state was born with its laws, army, cannonballs, cannons, sword, government, parliament, glory, prestige and Mustafa Kemal.”52 Those who refused to recognize this were “opponents of national sovereignty” (hâkimiyet-i gayri milliye), and excluded from society.53 In his “Saltanat-ı Milliye” (The Reign of the Nation), Celal Nuri argued that the despotic nature of the Ottoman dynasty had distanced it categorically from its Islamic roots. Reiterating Mustafa Kemal’s arguments, he claimed that the caliphate had ended with the Umayyads, and the Ottoman Empire’s caliph-sultanate institution had been illicit throughout its history: “Caliphate was only a title of the Ottoman sultans and nothing more than that. A ruler called himself caliph; that was it!”54 Caliphate meant an Islamic government (hükümet-i İslâmiye), and it could not exist in the new Turkey for two reasons.55 As the Grand National Assembly was to be the sole representative government of the Turkish people, it was impossible to allow the coexistence of secular and religious governments within national boundaries.56 As the caliph was a supreme spiritual leader, representing a sovereign body of all Muslims, responsible for maintaining justice among them and safeguarding their rights, “considering the caliph as the leader 50. Yunus Nadi, “Fesat Ocağı.” 51. Ibid. 52. Celal Nuri, “Yeni Devletin Mişvarı,” Anadolu’da Yeni Gün, 18 January 1923, 1. 53. Ibid. 54. Celal Nuri, “Saltanat-ı Milliye,” ibid., 9 January 1923. 55. Celal Nuri, “Hilâfet ve Halife,” ibid., 10 January 1923. 56. Celal Nuri, “Saltanat-ı Milliye.” Hoca Ubeydullay Efendi, an old member of the ulema and the Committee and Union made a similar claim, arguing that the Turkey’s new government is the Grand National Assembly, where the power of the caliph is manifested. Therefore, the caliph cannot exercise power independently from the control and supervision of the parliament. See Hoca Ubeydullah Efendi, “Hilafet-i Sahîha,” in Hilâfet ve Millî Hâkimiyet (Ankara: Matbuat ve İstihbarat Müdüriyet-i Umûmiyyesi, 1923), 53–54.

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of our state limits his duties. Therefore, the duty of the caliphate is possible only if the Islamic world permits and collectively agrees on it.”57 The revolutionary debate reached its peak with the distribution of the pamphlet “Hilâfet-i İslâmiye ve Büyük Millet Meclisi” (Caliphate and the Grand National Assembly), drafted and signed by İsmail Şükrü Efendi. In its introduction, he expressed the concerns of the ulema and the clerics over the decline of Islam, and their duty to enlighten the minds of misguided Muslims. He implicitly accused Celal Nuri and other journalists and deputies of ignorance of the duties of a caliph, abusing people’s beliefs, fermenting hatred for Islam, and invoking gratuitous public conflict.58 He insisted that a caliphate was the sole legitimate government for the Turkish state, and the divine rights of a caliph could not be taken away by the people or indeed by any institution: “The caliph belongs to the parliament, and the parliament belongs to the caliph.”59 Calling for a PanIslamic state, stretching from China, India, and Afghanistan to the Middle East and North Africa, he demanded an omnipotent caliph, independent of the protection and patronage of the National Assembly.60 The deputies for Muş (İlyas Sami), Antalya (Hoca Rasih Kaplan), and Siirt (Halil Hulki) counterattacked İsmail Şükrü in a pamphlet, “Hâkimiyet-i Milliye ve Hilâfet-i İslamiye” (National Sovereignty and Caliphate), accusing the clerics of religious fanaticism (irtica) for privileging another sovereign power and thus violating national sovereignty, the central tenet of the Fundamental Law of 1921.61 Rules and principles were not static and unalterable regardless of the passage of time. To see them as though they were was anachronistic and misconceived the nature of religion. The temporal and spiritual powers of religions were inseparable. Islam, like all other religions, was subject to temporal changes, and the questions that had faced the four caliphates were very different from today’s.62 Therefore, there could be no return to the early Islamic state. This pamphlet battle marked the decisive split between the secularists and conservatives that persists to this day. It showed how, without strong leadership, a onceunited parliament had begun to dissolve into factional strife, and under57. Celal Nuri, “Hilâfet ve Halife,” 2. 58. Hoca Şükrü, Hilâfet-i İslâmiye ve Büyük Millet Meclisi, 15 January 1923, 3–4. 59. Ibid., 4. 60. Ibid., 17. 61. Halil Hilmi, Hacı İlyas Sami, and İlyas Sami, Hâkimiyet-i Milliye ve Hilafet-i İslamiye: Karahisar Sahib-i Mebusu Hoca İsmail Şükrü Efendi’nin Bu Meseleye Dair Neşir Ettiği Risaleyi Reddiyedir (Ankara: Yenigün Matbaası, 1922), 3. 62. Ibid., 10.

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lined the urgent need to give the new regime a clear and unambiguous definition. In a series of press interviews in January, Mustafa Kemal hinted at his intention to end the chaos by declaring a republic, and affirmed this in an interview with the Austrian newspaper Neue Freie on 22 September 1923: In the articles of our Fundamental Law, sovereignty belongs unconditionally to the nation. The executive power manifests its legal national authorization in parliament. If you search for a single exact word in any dictionary to explain these two sentences, it will appear as Republic (Cumhuriyet). Turkey’s internal evolution has not completely reached its end. More developments and progress will occur and all evolution will come to an end during the Republic[an period]. In the future, Turkey will be a democratic Republic and, in principle, will not be different from the occidental republics.63

Mustafa Kemal’s statements came as no surprise to the public, as earlier debates had already made clear where the regime was heading. Celal Nuri argued that the term “republic” was no novelty to the Turkish political system, because Turkey had officially become a republic with the National Assembly’s establishment on 23 April 1920. “Republic” was one term among others with similar meanings, like “people’s state” (halk devleti) and “people’s government” (halk hükümeti). The primary issue was not what to call the state, but how to amend and improve the constitution.64 Yunus Nadi agreed that the regime had since 23 April been a republic in all but name.65 Others, like Velid Ebüziyya, insisted that Turkey had become a republic when it abolished the sultanate. He was less concerned with what to call the regime than with how to secure its freedom and express its sovereignty in parliament.66

debaTing consTiTuTionalism Despite clarifying the future form of his new government, Mustafa Kemal’s statement did not settle all ambiguities. How would the unitary powers of parliament be restored? What powers would the president and the 63. This short paragraph from Mustafa Kemal’s speech was first published in İkdam on 23 September 1923. The full speech was published on 27 September in Hâkimiyet-i Milliye and Tanin. 64. Celal Nuri, “Cumhuriyet-i Seniyye,” İleri, 26 September 1923. 65. Yunus Nadi, “Hiç Yoktan Bir Mesele,” Anadolu’da Yeni Gün, 30 September 1923. 66. Ibid.

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government possess? What model or form of republic should the Turkish Republic adopt? Division over these aspects of the new constitution occurred not simply between clerics and secularists but among the latter, with the Istanbul press, Tanin, Tasvir-i Efkâr, and Vatan, on one side, and the Ankara press, İleri, Anadolu’da Yeni Gün, and Hâkimiyet-i Milliye, on the other. Each developed its own model of republicanism: one a liberal representative democratic, the other popular radical. Public debates began with leaked news that the Fundamental Laws were to be amended by a commission of “eighteen wise people,” including Gökalp and Ağaoğlu, and led by Mustafa Kemal, not by the National Assembly.67 Liberal republicans were critical of the way the commission conducted such an important task in secrecy. Velid Ebüziyya mocked a meeting of the commission at Ankara train station on 14 October, in ironical terms: “As far as we know, a republic does not come into being in stations, but in a national assembly. . . . However, the masters Ağaoğlu Ahmed and Ziya Gökalp Bey feel so sure of themselves that they could even produce a republic and constitution from the station, and a fast train from the National Assembly.”68 Velid Ebüziyya was concerned about the government’s tendency to isolate people from the flow of knowledge and act as a political organ separate from the people. If the representatives made decisions in secret, the governed would have no adequate means to form their opinions on political matters, and so no real control over decision-making. By separating political and social life, there was every danger that, even if it did not interfere in the lives of individuals, the government would become totally arbitrary and unaccountable to its citizens.69 To curb this despotic tendency, Hüseyin Cahit insisted that the people must be given free access to political information to form their opinions on political matters.70 They must be free to express their opinions and bring their wishes to the attention of their representatives, which would enable them to take part in political life as autonomous citizens. The less isolated people felt, the more they would be aware of each other’s opinions. The more they united, the more they could exercise control over the govern67. Faruk Alpkaya, Türkiye Cumhuriyeti’nin Kuruluşu (1923–1924) (Istanbul: İletişim Yayıncılık, 2013), 55–56. 68. Velid Ebüzziya, “Ankara İstasyon Binası Cumhuriyet Doğurabilecek mi?,” Tevhid-i Efkâr, 19 October 1923, 1. 69. Velid Ebüzziya, “Teşkilât-ı Esasîye ve Cumhuriyet Meselesi,” Tevhid-i Efkâr, 15 October 1923, 1. 70. Hüseyin Cahit, “Hâkimiyet-i Milliye ve Cumhuriyet,” Tanin, 29 September 1923, 1; “Teşkilât-ı Esasîye Kanunda Tadilat,” Tanin, 1 October 1924, 1.

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ment, and the stronger the incentive for those who governed to take public opinion into account.71 Echoing Durkheim, he claimed that political openness, greater transparency, and accountability would promote democracy, an orderly and harmonious society, and progress.72 Further conflict concerned the despotic tendencies of the People’s Party (Halk Fırkası, founded by Mustafa Kemal in September 1922 as the sole political party), which began to dominate politics and act as the exclusive representative of the people, regardless of the public interest. It could do so under the existing constitution—power was unified, and extraordinary powers had been assigned to the government. Liberal republicans pushed to restrict the scope of governmental power as experience with the CUP underlined the force of this criticism with devastating thoroughness. Thus, Hüseyin Cahit insisted, “It is necessary to transform the irregular and disorderly power structure into an acceptable, practical and useful one”73 by forging a completely new republican constitution.74 Invoking Montesquieu, he reintroduced to this proposed constitution the separation of powers of the 1908 Constitution, in which legislative power was restrained by an independent judiciary, and practical decisions were reserved for the executive.75 To prevent the legislative branch from dominating the others, its function must be divided between a chamber of representatives and a superordinate Senate, in which groups of experts and intellectuals would sit to give advice to deputies.76 İsmail Müştak shared this view in his “Meclis-i Âyan’a İhtiyaç Var mı?” (Do We Need a Senate?), arguing that like France, the Turkish Republic must adopt a bicameral system to create a balanced assembly, with the upper house indirectly elected and the lower house filled through direct election for five-year terms.77 Building on this initial definition of the separation of powers, the Istanbul press sought a liberal constitutional republican model. Vatan published an anonymous article instructing the public on the constitutional systems of France and America, the “greatest” republics. Although both nations embraced a separation of powers, they divided these in different 71. Hüseyin Cahit, “Ne Var?,” Tanin, 24 October 1923, 1. 72. Hüseyin Cahit, “Yüce Mahkeme,” Tanin, 11 August 1923, 1. He translated Les formes élémentaires de la vie religieuse into Ottoman Turkish. See Émile Durkheim, Din Hayatının İbtidai Şekilleri, trans. Hüseyin Cahit, vols. 1, 2 (Istanbul: Tanin Matbaası, 1924). 73. Hüseyin Cahit, “Hâkimiyet-i Milliye ve Cumhuriyet,” 1. 74. Hüseyin Cahit, “Etraflı Düşünelim,” Tanin, 27 September 1923, 1. 75. Hüseyin Cahit, “Halk Fırkası ve Muhalifler,” Tanin, 25 August 1923, 1; “Teşkilât-ı Esasîye Kanununda Tadilat,” ibid., 1 October. 76. Hüseyin Cahit, “Etraflı Düşünelim,” 1. 77. İsmail Müştak, “Meclis-i Âyan’a İhtiyaç Var mı?,” Tanin, 28 September 1923, 2.

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ways. Whereas the three branches of the American government (the president, congress, and the courts) each had a degree of active influence over the others, in the French system the president was a mere figurehead, connected with the legislative body only through his ministers and practically neutral and distant from party politics. The major difference between the American and French presidents lay in the strong, independent, and sultan-like role of the former.78 Liberal republicans contended that the powers of the president must be weakened to prevent these aspirations being exploited by a charismatic figure. They continued to favor the presidential model of the Third Republic, because it was more democratic and shied away from entrusting high office to an individual for any extended period of time.79 The preference for the French over the American presidential model was driven partly by fear that the future president, presumably Mustafa Kemal, would continue to be the chairman of the People’s Party, which would inevitably lead to a dictatorship. In Velid Ebüzziya’s view, Mustafa Kemal’s desire to become an all-powerful president came from his will to magnify his personal power.80 Confronted with the clear and compelling logic of their Istanbul counterparts, the Ankara press challenged the idealization of Montesquieu’s system by Rousseau’s conception of popular sovereignty. Suphi Nuri, like his brother Celal Nuri, employed a radical republican language and embraced the concepts of a unitary legislature and of undivided and inalienable sovereignty. The latter required that laws emanated from not the citizens themselves, but exclusively from parliament and that they were submitted to the people for ratification. By contrast to Hüseyin Cahit and Velid Ebüzziya, Suphi Nuri contended that although political activity required a measure of openness, the representatives need not keep citizens informed at every stage of the law-making process. Dividing the legislature, as in France’s constitutional model, would weaken political authority: “When a power can hold the parliament in check, national sovereignty is violated.”81 Like Mahmut Esat (Bozkurt), deputy for Izmir and a populist socialist politician,82 he argued that instead of seeking ideal republican models abroad, Turkey must create a unique and novel republican 78. Vatan, 26 September 1923. 79. Hüseyin Cahit, “Etraflı Düşünelim,” 1. 80. Velid Ebüzziya, “Meclis Reisliği ile Bir Arada Olmaz. İkisinden Birini Tercih Etmelidir,” Tevhid-i Efkâr, 20 October 1923, 3. 81. Suphi Nuri, “Yaşasın Cumhuriyet,” İleri, 30 September 1923, 1. 82. Mahmut Esat, “İzmir’de Cumhuriyet Meselesi,” Tevhid-i Efkâr, 19 October 1923.

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model without greatly amending its existing constitution: “Let us accept partisanship. Let us empower executive power (kuvve-i icraiye). In our country, we need a strong administration. The more powerful the government, the better the country is ruled. The leader (reis) of the Grand National Assembly can also be the president.”83 This view was largely driven by the experience of the War of Independence. As the Grand Assembly acted as sovereign, defeated the country’s enemies, and founded the new state, it must retain its absolute sovereign.

The Proclamation of the Republic These prerepublican debates lasted one further month until a parliamentary crisis on 27 October, when the assembly elected Hüseyin Rauf (Orbay) and Sabit (Sağıroğlu) vice president of the assembly and home secretary in place of the government candidates. Mustafa Kemal persuaded the government of Prime Minister Ali Fethi (Okyar) that this constituted a motion of no confidence in its administration, and the government duly resigned. The assembly was charged to replace it with a new council of representatives, but once Mustafa Kemal had instructed his more prominent followers not to accept posts within it, this proved impossible. On 29 October, he submitted proposed amendments to the constitution, drafted with İsmet Paşa the previous night. The first affirmed that “the form of Government of the Turkish State is a Republic.” Article 3 declared that “The Turkish State is administered by the Grand National Assembly. The latter directs the individual branches of the administration into which the Government is divided through the mediation of the Ministers.” Articles 8 and 9, too, were amended to read: The President of the Turkish Republic will be elected in a full sitting of the Grand National Assembly by its members and for the time of a legislative period. The mandate of the President lasts till the election of a new President. The President is eligible for reelection. The President of the Republic is the head of State. In this capacity he presides over the National Assembly as well as the Council of Ministers when he believes it necessary. The President of the Council is elected by the Chief of the State from the members of the Assembly, after which the other ministers will be elected by the President of the Council from among its members. Thereupon the President of the Republic submits the list of 83. Suphi Nuri, “Yaşasın Cumhuriyet,” 1.

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the entire Cabinet to the Assembly for approval. If the Assembly is not sitting, the approval will be postponed till the next sitting.84

This proposal was accepted by the majority in the assembly on 29 October 1923, and the Turkish Republic, with its capital at Ankara, was proclaimed the same day. Mustafa Kemal was announced its first president, İsmet (İnönü) its first prime minister, and Fethi (Okyar) as president of the assembly.85 The proclamation of the Republic and the inauguration of a new era were celebrated all over the country with public demonstrations. The motto Yaşasın Cumhuriyet! (“Long Live the Republic!”) echoed in parliamentary speeches and public celebrations. Newspapers published parliamentary speeches.86 Public places were decorated with Turkish flags, and 29 October was declared a public holiday.87 The legacy of this Republican Revolution on Turkish republican tradition has been profound and durable. The leaders of the revolution believed that their actions were of world significance, and the values they promoted marked a complete break from the past. Mustafa Kemal, Yunus Nadi, and Celal Nuri expressed these sentiments with particular trenchancy.

debaTing republicanism Three very different forms of republicanism were in conflict once again in 1923: Islamic, liberal, and radical. With the proclamation of the Republic, clerics and conservatives saw a real possibility of establishing an Islamic Republic, since Article 2 affirmed that “The religion of the Turkish State is Islam, and its official language is Turkish.”88 Hoca Rasih Kaplan (deputy for Antalya) held that the Republic would facilitate the true expression of religion. Refik Bey (deputy for Konya) believed that the Republic would revive the golden age of Islam, the age of the four caliphs.89 Similarly, Marshal Mustafa Fevzi (Çakmak) (deputy for Istanbul) stated in an interview with Hâkimiyet-i Milliye, “The goal of Islam is essentially a republic, and it is the first and original type of rule of the Islamic world. The administrations during the times of Hz. Ebubekir, Ömer, Osman, and Ali were all republics. After fourteen centuries, we return to this rule. Our style of Republic does not resemble any other. We have accepted the type most 84. Mustafa Kemal, The Great Speech, 641. 85. Ibid., 648–49. 86. İkdam, 30 October 1923. 87. İkdam, 31 October 1923. 88. TBMM Zabıt Ceridesi, II. Devre, I. Sene, C. III, 90. 89. İleri, 25 September 1923.

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suited to us.”90 Echoing Ali Suavi’s ideas, Islamic republicans believed that a monarchy was a deviation from the true essence of the early Islamic state, but the Ottoman Empire had preserved its republican elements in its state philosophy from its foundation. Thus, they supported the Republican Revolution in the hope of establishing an Islamic Republic. The split in public and parliamentary opinion in the early days of the Republic, as Falih Rıfkı Atay stressed, “was no longer between traitors and monarchists on one side, and nationalists and fighters for independence on the other. The separation came between the latter, the liberal and authoritarian republicanisms of the Istanbul and Ankara presses.”91 The proponents of authoritarian republicanism began with the fate of political institutions. They saw the republic merely as a type of government that has defeated all its extant rivals, and used an authoritarian license to secure their relatively sudden and widespread victory. Republicanism was the ideology of the new state, and was to be equated with Kemalist doctrines. For liberal republicans, in contrast, the term “republic” denoted not just a political institution, or a “miraculous” resuscitation, springing immediately from the overthrow of the monarchy and consequent institutional changes. In “Efendiler devletin adını taktınız işleri de düzeltebilecekmisiniz?” [Sirs, you named the state, will you be able to correct the state affairs?], Ebüziyya criticized the ill-founded self-satisfaction of republican victors who assumed they had solved the problems of state and society just by dubbing the government a republic, without identifying the unresolved tensions in society. Elsewhere, he used allegorical language to express his concerns about the future of the Republic: “The balloon has been let loose! But apparently they have lost the string! . . . The wheels of the mill turned under the pressure of the water, but in which direction?” He asked: “You are right, Gentlemen, to give the State a name; but will you be able to arrange its affairs in the same way?”92 In his article “Yaşasın Cumhuriyet” [Long Live the Republic], Hüseyin Cahit, too, criticized the Republican Party and Ankara press for exalting the Republic and creating an egoistic political order, while completely ignoring past political and intellectual efforts since the Revolution of 1908, and attributing all revolutionary achievements only to themselves.93 His verdict still carries force 90. Hâkimiyet-i Milliye, 11 November 1923. 91. Falih Rıfkı Atay, Çankaya (Istanbul: Pozitif Yayıncılık, 1984), 350. 92. Velid Ebüzziya, “Efendiler Devletin Adını Taktınız İşleri de Düzeltebilecek misiniz?,” Tevhid-i Efkâr, 31 October 1923. 93. Hüseyin Cahit, “Yaşasın Cumhuriyet,” Tanin, 31 October 1923, 1.

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today: “Do not worship this term [the republic] as a cult. . . . The fortune of a republic depends on the hands of the people who will govern it.”94 A republic, for the liberals, was a ground of political commendation, and a way of capturing a complex set of values, experiences, and ideas in organizing people’s social lives. Their republicanism took its inspiration from French republican tradition and developed throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, through the efforts of the Young Ottomans and the Young Turks. Liberal republicans believed that for a representative government to be genuinely popular and republican, its representatives must reflect the will of the nation and deliberate on important decisions in open public discussions. İsmail Müştak contended that the current government had disregarded this principle by hurrying through the victory of the Republic over the monarchy without instructing the people on the nature of republican government.95 “It is impossible to find another example in history,” Ahmed Emin (Yalman) complained, “where the [future] form of a state (devlet şekli) is debated and changed within an hour.”96 Their objection was not to the proclamation of the republic, but to the government’s undemocratic procedures, which excluded from the decision-making process leading figures in the national movement, like Ali Fuat (Cebesoy) and Rauf Orbay, and reflected the will only of an intellectual elite who failed to accept the importance of diversity among ideas.97 Velid Ebüzziya was concerned about the misuse of governmental powers, and saw Turkey shifting toward an oligarchical republic in which power was concentrated in the hands of a new triumvirate, specifically Celal Nuri, “the Westernist Ahmed Agayef,” and “the Turanist Ziya Gökalp.”98 Similarly, Hüseyin Cahit’s republican convictions were not satisfied with the selection of a wise elite, since one should not place blind faith in their decisions. In the new cabinet, supreme power was not truly retained by the people, but resided in a group of men that put national sovereignty under threat by deviating from true republican principle.99 The key aim of the republican government, for Hüseyin Cahit, was the provision of liberty. This argument can be traced back to Namık Kemal’s 94. Ibid. 95. İsmail Müştak, “Türkiye Cumhuriyetinin İlanı,” Tanin, 31 October 1923, 2. 96. Ahmet Emin, “İstanbul Gazeteleri’ne Bir Nazar- Gazeteler İçin Mühim Bir İmtihan Günü,” Vatan, 2 November 1923. 97. Hasan Rıza Soyak, Atatürk’ten Hatıralar (Istanbul: YKB Yayınları, 1973), 193–95. 98. Velid Ebüzziya, “Efendiler İstical Ediyorsunuz,” Tevhid-i Efkâr, 30 October 1923. 99. Hüseyin Cahit, “Yeni Kabine,” Tanin, 1 November 1923, 1.

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conception of political liberty, picked up by Ahmed Rıza and put into practice in the 1908 Revolution. Liberty, as a political value, refers to the idea of a person’s emancipation from arbitrary or brutal rule, and a person’s capacity to act in accordance with their own choice, without encroaching on similar liberties for others. In developing his conception of liberty, Hüseyin Cahit was greatly impressed by John Stuart Mill’s On Liberty, translated into Turkish in 1927.100 The appropriate region of human liberty was liberty of thought, expression, and public opinion. The worst form of republican nonliberty was a dictatorship, toward which Hüseyin Cahit believed the regime had begun to drift with the election of Mustafa Kemal as president and party chairman.101 However extraordinary Mustafa Kemal’s charisma and abilities, his dictatorial tendencies, manifested in his control over the new parliament and the Ankara press, could ruin his national prestige: “The day Mustafa Kemal Paşa becomes a dictator, he will lose all his spiritual influence and the gratitude of his nation. He will need to rely on the material power of his supporters.”102 In an open letter to Mustafa Kemal, Ahmet Emin advised him to withdraw from his positions as party chairman and president, and instead remain a kind of national guide, since his extraordinarily strong position might otherwise lead to a sharp decline in the immeasurable national respect and love for him.103 Dictatorship would undo all the republican achievements. Hüseyin Cahit’s worry was driven partly by his knowledge of the French experience under Napoleon III, who, as elected president, had abolished the Second Republic and restored hereditary rule under the Second Empire.104 To prevent growing infringements on the liberty of citizens, a legally constituted republican order being overthrown by force, and a political system established in which power was exercised by a single individual and not by the people, executive power must be restricted. Seeing himself and his Istanbul colleagues as “true and genuine republicans,” Hüseyin Cahit bluntly denounced Mustafa Kemal’s authoritarian republicanism: “We do not trust your ‘republicanism’ because of the arbitrary and nontransparent policies of the government. Our fear does not come from the deed [the proclamation of the Republic], but from its pro100. John Stuart Mill, Hürriyet, trans. Hüseyin Cahit (Istanbul: Akşam Yayınevi, 1927). 101. Hüseyin Cahit, “Korktuğumuz Nedir?,” Tanin, 9 November 1923. 102. Hüseyin Cahit, “Mühim Bir Münakaşa,” Tanin, 1923. 103. Ahmet Emin Yalman, Yakın Tarihte Gördüklerim ve Geçirdiklerim, vol. 3 (Istanbul: Yenilik Basımevi, 1970), 81–85. 104. Hüseyin Cahit, “Riyaset-i Cumhur ve Fırka Riyaseti,” Tanin, 25 November 1924, 1.

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cedure and from the possibility that this might bring about dictatorship in the future.”105 In response to such criticism from the Istanbul press, the Ankara press overall failed to develop a coherent theoretical articulation of their position. The latter persisted in accusatory rhetoric against their Istanbul counterparts, which they charged with failing to fully embrace the Republic and the significance of the Republican Revolution. Against Tanin, Hâkimiyet-i Milliye insisted that proclaiming the Republic was a real revolution.106 Echoing the radical view of revolution of the Young Ottoman Mehmed, the Republican Revolution was seen as the act of destroying the old established order and constructing a new constitution: In the Turkish land, the Republic was born following extreme difficulties. This type of government, proclaimed three times in France, was declared abruptly on three separate occasions. No one has criticized the Republic for the abruptness of its declaration. At first, the Republic was proclaimed even a without a parliamentary resolution, on the second occasion, it was declared by a revolutionary coterie, and on the third time, it was once again proclaimed unofficially on the streets. We witness a proclamation of the Republic in our national parliament [after many years of evolution], [in contrast to] an outcome of sudden revolution on the streets of Europe.107

The short-term objective of the new government was to stop the unsettling fluctuations of revolutionary action and reaction in Turkey’s political institutions as they consolidated. In Celal Nuri’s view, to sustain peace and stability, the government must abandon its tolerant policy and must harshly suppress or silence any opposition. “The purpose, operation, and idea of the Republic cannot be understood from the venomous critiques of Tanin, vulgar provocations of Tevhid-i Efkâr, blatant enmities of İkdam, and the hired of Vatan.”108 He reaffirmed a Jacobin commitment to a unitary conception of the state to deliver political stability, maintain social cohesion, and protect the country from the subversive inclinations of counter-revolutionaries. Mustafa Kemal himself adopted such radical republican language in his Great Speech. He accused his adversaries of lacking enthusiasm for the proclamation of the Republic, and saw them as a threat to its very founda105. Hüseyin Cahit, “Korktuğumuz Nedir?.” 106. Ahmet Emin, “İlk Cumhuriyet Kabinesi,” Vatan, 1 November 1923. 107. “Bazı Tereddütler,” Hâkimiyet-i Milliye, 2 November 1923. 108. Celal Nuri, “Cumhuriyet ve Muhalifler,” İleri, 8 November 1923.

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tion.109 He attacked directly Hüseyin Cahit’s “Long Live the Republic,” calling him an “alleged republican” for underestimating the value of the Republic: “Was the aim pursued by the writer of these articles to get the public to love the Republic or to make them understand that it was not an adorable idol?”110 He criticized Müştak’s “Proclamation of the Turkish Republic” for its depressing language and fomenting popular doubt of the Republic’s future.111 Without actually naming him, he also attacked Velid Ebüzziya, claiming that “nobody believed that its proclamation was impending, in spite of all the rumors, circulating in recent days.”112

Conclusion The early years of the Republic were dominated by an atmosphere of political instability, intellectual tension, and ideological confusion. Mustafa Kemal relied on his omnipotent personal authority and the construction of a cabinet able to secure broad allegiance and weld together the amorphous collection of republican deputies. Although he and his devoted deputies and journalists claimed that the sovereignty of the nation had been conferred on the people, the people were given no genuine opportunity to exercise their sovereignty, and laws and reforms were whatever the Kemalist elite pronounced them to be. Through these developments, notions of representation, freedom of expression, and democracy were increasingly challenged by conceptions of popular sovereignty and political virtue. Radical republicanism defeated Islamic republicanism with the abolition of the caliphate in 1924 after little parliamentary debate. To prevent clerical opposition, Mustafa Kemal pushed through further laws, abolishing religious schools and tribunals and banning all dervish orders together with their lodges, shrines, and titles. Many clerical deputies were not reelected to parliament, and a large number were later executed. Later, the Constitution of 1928 removed from Article 2 the idiom that proclaimed Islam the state religion, and from Article 26 the statement that the Grand National Assembly itself executed the Shari’a. Authoritarianism of the radical republicans was soon challenged inside the Republican People’s Party (RPP). In November 1924, twenty-nine dep109. Ibid., 652. 110. Mustafa Kemal, The Great Speech, 651. 111. Ibid. 112. Ibid.

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uties, including Mustafa Kemal’s closest military companions, Rauf Orbay, Kazım Karabekir, and Ali Fuat (Cebesoy), resigned from the RPP, forming an opposition, the Progressive Republican Party (Terakkiperver Cumhuriyet Fırkası, PRP). Its manifesto emphasized political and economic liberalism, greater freedom of expression, and respect for religious sentiments, while rejecting statism, despotism, and administrative centralization.113 It was supported by the Istanbul press and set up local organizations in big cities and the eastern provinces to spread its influence.114 Tension between the two parties continued until the February 1925 outbreak of the Sheikh Sait rebellion among the Kurdish tribes in eastern Anatolia, when the government declared martial law and suppressed political opposition on grounds of public safety and security. In March 1925, the government passed the Maintenance of Order Law (Takrir-i Sükûn Kanunu), restoring the Independence Trials (İstiklal Mahkemeleri), and ordered the disbandment of the PRP. The RPP subsequently dominated Turkish politics as the nation’s single party until after World War II.115 These authoritarian laws silenced the opposition press and defeated liberal republicanism. The first wave of suppression came in 1923, when Hüseyin Cahit, Velid Ebüzziya, Fevzi Lütfü, and others were arrested and put on trial at the Eastern National Court in Diyarbekir. Though these trials ended in acquittals, further trials in March 1925 closed down Tanin, Tevhid-i Efkâr, İkdam, and Vatan for provoking agitation and chaos and imprisoned their editors; Hüseyin Cahit received a life sentence. Even Celal Nuri, who was initially aligned with Ahmed Ağaoğlu, Gökalp, and Yunus Nadi, fell into opposition with them due to his criticism of the regime’s authoritarianism, and his İleri was closed down in 1924. The Ankara press meanwhile flourished; under Mustafa Kemal’s order, Yunus Nadi on 7 May 1924 merged Hâkimiyet-i Milliye and Anadolu’da Yeni Gün to form Cumhuriyet; dominating public opinion, this publication became the public voice of the RPP.116 In the end, the moderate, liberal republican alternative and its proponents were buried and forgotten in Turkish history. 113. Erik J. Zürcher, Political Opposition in the Early Turkish Republic: The Progressive Republican Party, 1924–1925 (Leiden: Brill, 1991), 42–43, 55. 114. Ergun Özbudun, “Development of Democratic Government in Turkey: Crises, Interruptions and Reequilibrations,” in Perspectives on Democracy in Turkey, ed. Ergun Özbudun (Ankara: Turkish Political Science Association, 1988), 10–11. 115. Mete Tunçay, TC’de Tek Parti Yönetiminin Kurulması (1923–1931) (Istanbul: Yurt Yayanları, 2000), 25–46. 116. Aysun Köktener, Bir Gazetenin Tarihi: Cumhuriyet (Istanbul: YKY, 2004), 13.

Conclusion: The Ideology of the Early Republic

The v icTor ious r a dica l v ision of republicanism became a coherent theory in the single-party period and continues to claim the exclusive right to define and implement Turkish republicanism. Turkish historiography has conflated republicanism widely with Kemalism and seen it as the “product of the Turkish Revolution, which started with the Turkish Independence War and resulted in the formation of a national secular Turkish state.”1 Although the transformation of the 1920s marked a definitive shift in political thought, the republican ideology adopted did not emerge abruptly in the context of the war and revolution, but was born in the radical political thinking of the Young Ottomans and grew out of the intellectual context of the Balkan Wars and World War I. Leading members of the republican intellectual elite, Celal Nuri, Ahmet Ağaoğlu, and Ziya Gökalp, alongside others, like Hilmi Ziya (Ülken), Peyami Safa, and İsmail Hakkı (Baltacıoğlu), had been formed politically and intellectually in the 1910s as active members of the Union and Progress Party, and continued to occupy key positions in Turkish public life in the 1920s and 1930s, decisively shaping the form of the final republican victory. Most reform policies discussed during World War I were never put into practice, but it became possible to apply them during the early years of the Republic. Their projects and actions were driven by a desire to generate a unified, homogeneous, orderly state and society, founded on republican principles

1. Enver Ziya Karal, “The Principles of Kemalism,” in Atatürk: Founder of a Modern State, ed. Ali Kazancıgil and Ergun Özbudun (London: C. Hurst, 1981), 11.

[ 243 ]

[ 244 ] conclusion

of nationalism, laicity, and Westernization, predominantly inspired by the tradition of Durkheim. Durkheim loomed large in Turkish political thought throughout the first half of the twentieth century, and his influence on the republicanism of modern Turkey’s founders merits close attention. In the early republican period, he became one of the most widely read and studied European social thinkers in Turkey.2 In 1923, the National Assembly appointed Orhan Midhat (Barbaros) and the following year Hüseyin Cahit to translate De la division du travail social3 and Les formes élémentaires de la vie religieuse4 into Turkish. Durkheimian conceptions of the division of labor, functional differentiation, and professional ethics were introduced in progovernment journals, and helped shape the public’s view of a new Turkish society and state through a positivist philosophy.5 Having witnessed the near-total collapse of the Ottoman Empire during World War I, Ağaoğlu and Gökalp were preoccupied with the construction of a unified society and a just social state.6 Their constructivism was not conservative,7 but progressive and reformist, assuming that social change could and would sustain itself by highlighting and addressing the conflicts and contradictions inherent in a society. Society was “an organism and net. Each of its chains is successively tied to one another. The existence, maintenance, continuation and life [of an individual chain] depend on others’ existence, maintenance, and continuation.”8 Society reflected the ideological community of republican hopes, and was the forum for solidarity and progress. Solidarism (tesanütçülük) became the central doctrine of Turkish republicanism, which had dominated political thinking during World War I, and continued into the early republican debates. Gökalp believed that occupational associations were destined to become the main organizational form, mediating between the new Turkish state and the individual. The main task of the Republic was to ensure the maintenance of solidarity and harmony, but he did not envisage the state as an organ separate from the 2. Zafer Toprak, “Anayasal Monarşi ve İttihatçilerin Dramı,” 10. 3. Émile Durkheim, İçtimaî Taksim-i Amal, trans. Orhan Midhat (Istanbul: Amire Matbaası, 1923). 4. Durkheim, Din Hayatının İbtidai Şekilleri, vol. 1-2, trans. Hüseyin Cahit (Istanbul: Tanin Matbaası, 1924). 5. “Durkheim,” Hâkimiyet-i Milliye, 5 October 1923. 6. See Gökalp, “Halkçılık,” 104. 7. Nazım İrem, “Turkish Conservative Modernism: Birth of a Nationalist Quest for Cultural Renewal,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 34, no. 1 (2002): 87–89. 8. Ahmed Ağaoğlu, Hukuk-i Esasiye (Ankara, 1926), 12.

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nation and society, and persisted in seeing it as a communications system, an organ of conscious reflection upon society. Political power and authority should derive from the collective conscience of society, and thus from the Turkish nation.9 This new establishment of solidarity would ensure “professional ethics, which our present occupational groups lack.”10 The Turkish Republic, Ağaoğlu contended, lacked this type of ideal solidarity. The phenomena of labor division and functional differentiation had come into being in Western societies after the French Revolution, which enshrined the increasing value of individual and political freedom and rights. This produced the development of functional groups and promoted social ties, unity, and progress.11 In contrast, people in Eastern societies had been suppressed, undervalued, and weakened under egoistic despots, a situation that atomized and isolated individuals, hindering the development of societal ties and unity.12 Social reforms implicit in the Republican Revolution freed them from the centuries-old slavery of Ottoman sultans. Now they no longer depended on an external authority, individuals’ characters and personalities could flourish, a prerequisite for solidarity. Ağaoğlu defined republican liberty as freedom of action, thought, and expression, all favoring the development of mutual understanding and collective conscience.13 Republican liberty could not be ensured if Turkish citizens failed to recognize the limits to their own liberty, profited from personal strength and advantages, or used their liberty in a selfish fashion.14 It was therefore necessary for the new political and social order to be based on recognizing the rights and duties of the individual as neither abstract nor subjective but concrete, definitive, and objective: “For every 9. Ibid. 10. Ziya Gökalp, “Ethical Turkism,” in The Principles of Turkism (Leiden: Brill, 1968), 107. This view was adopted by the RPP’s first program in 1931 as the Second Article, stating that the people of the Turkish Republic are a society divided into different occupations for the sake of the division of labor in individual and social life. Cumhuriyet Halk Fırkası Nizamnamesi ve Programı (Ankara: TBMM Matbaası, 1931). 11. Ahmed Ağaoğlu, Üç Medeniyet (Ankara: Türk Ocakları Merkez Heyeti Matbaası, 1928), 29. 12. Ağaoğlu, Devlet ve Fert (Istanbul: Sanayiinefise Matbaası, 1933), 27. 13. Ibid. 14. This view was inserted in the Constitution of 1924, which he drafted with Gökalp. Article 68 stipulated that “Every Turk is born free, and lives free. Freedom is to do everything without harming the others. The limits of someone’s freedom, one of the natural rights, are the limits of someone else’s freedom. This limit is drawn by the law.” See T. Düstur, vol. 26, 170. Resmi Gazete 15/1/1945–5905, Kanun No Kanun Tarihi 4695 10/1/1945.

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right a duty, for every duty a right; that’s the meaning of these principles. Now there are no rights without duties, and no duties without rights.”15 These rights and duties would make Turkish citizens realize the mutual debt they owed each other that would help them control their egoistic desires and quests for individualistic happiness, and prompt them instead to serve the common good.16 Gökalp saw the creation of reciprocity and the strengthening of social bonds among individuals as the duty of a ruler. Following Durkheim’s sociological conception of leadership, he saw the leader as inventor, emerging from society, embracing its consciousness, “unifying spirit,” and personifying the nation’s will. He was not chosen but created by natural force or drive to fulfill a society’s needs at the time. In the context of World War I, Gökalp saw Enver and Talat Paşas as figures of genius. Changing social and political conditions produced a new leader: “When a nation possesses a great personality who has proven by great victories his genius, selfsacrifice and heroism, he can easily affect all sorts of reforms through his ability to create collective representation. Today we have such a genius,”17 Mustafa Kemal, seen as the new source of Turkish idealism.18 This new version of idealism was Turkism. The difference from earlier Turkism, for Gökalp, was that the latter had been the prerogative of a small group of intellectuals, but at that point, its supporters had stretched to the entire Turkish nation. Mustafa Kemal defined a millet (“nation”) as an assemblage of people who share a rich historical legacy, have a sincere desire to live together, and manifest a common will to preserve their shared heritage. In the early years of the Republic, Young Ottomans, particularly Namık Kemal, were praised for introducing the term vatan (“homeland”) into Turkish.19 Republican vatan, Celal Nuri underlined, abandoned the old romantic Turanist aspirations, and addressed only the “national homeland” (milli vatan), with its heartland in Anatolia, whose territory was defined by the National Pact and recognized by the Lausanne Treaty.20 It was the Turkish nation who had defeated the foreign and domestic enemies, and now had the full authority to determine its fate. To exalt millet and vatan and strengthen national solidarity, Gökalp produced the founding document of the new nationalist program of the Re15. Ağaoğlu, Üç Medeniyet, 81. 16. Ağaoğlu, Hukuk-i Esasiye, 11. 17. Gökalp, “Tarihi Maddecilik ve İçtimaî Mefkûrecilik,” 52. 18. Ibid., 53. 19. Celal Nuri [İleri], Taç Giyen Millet (Ankara: Berikan Yayınları, [1923] 2010), 91. 20. Ibid., 76, 81.

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public, Türkçülüğün Esasları (The Principles of Turkism), a revision of the 1913 Üç Cereyan (Three Currents of Thought, 1913), which outlined linguistic, aesthetic, ethical, legal, religious, economic, political, and philosophical features of Turkism. Türk Yurdu and Türk Ocağı continued to play a prominent role in spreading nationalism,21 and reignited a strong interest in German political thought, particularly that of Fichte and Herder. Hasan Cemil (Çambel), one of the founders of Türk Tarih Kurumu (Turkish History Association), published a translation of Reden an die Deutsche Nation in Türk Yurdu in 1924 and 1925, and Celal Nuri praised Herder’s impact on the development of a German national union.22 To boost solidarity among citizens and form an orderly and homogeneous society, the Republic imposed an oppressive Turkification (Türkleştirme) policy in the 1920s and 1930s, stressing citizens’ obligations to adopt Turkish “language, sentiments, ideas and culture.”23 Although advocated by Talat Paşa during World War I, it was not fully enforced due to wartime conditions. Mustafa Kemal saw language as a prerequisite for Turkishness: “A person who says he belongs to the Turkish nation should first and under all circumstances speak Turkish. It is not possible to believe a person’s claims that he belongs to the Turkish nation, to the Turkish culture, if he does not speak Turkish.”24 The policy that everyone should speak Turkish in public was promoted through the Vatandaş Türkçe Konuş! (“Citizen, Speak Turkish!”) campaign. The 1934 Law of Family Names encouraged citizens to adopt Turkish family names, prohibiting the adoption of the names of tribes, foreign races, and other nations. Simultaneously, Turkish society was homogenized through population exchange: in 1923 and 1924, Orthodox Christians were deported to Greece, while in 1938 the government welcomed Turkish-speaking Christian migrants from the Balkans.25 The Republic also promoted the teaching of “Turkishness” through civic education programs, which sought to instill the belief that there is no individual happiness beyond the happiness of 21. Turkish Hearts grew to 217 branches and thirty thousand members by 1925. In the 1930s, they were merged with the Republican People’s Party and replaced by People’s Houses (Halkevleri), to exert excessive state control over these organizations. See Findley, Turkey, Islam, Nationalism, and Modernity, 244–45. 22. Celal Nuri [İleri], Taç Giyen Millet, 22. 23. Taha Parla, Türkiyeʾde Siyasal Kültürün Resmî Kaynakları: Kemalist Tek Parti İdeolojisi ve CHP’nin Altı Oku, vol. 3 (Istanbul: İletişim Yayınları, 1995), 27. 24. “Mustafa Kemal’in Adana Türk Ocağı’ndaki Nutku,” Vakit, 19 February 1931, 1–2. 25. For the population exchange policy, see Umut Özkırımlı and Spyros A. Sofos, Tormented by History: Nationalism in Greece and Turkey (London: Hurst, 2008).

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society, hence the student oath “Ne mutlu Türküm diyene” (How happy is the one who says “I am a Turk”). Turkification, nevertheless, ignored minority rights. For Celal Nuri, minorities or non-Muslim citizens had in the past threatened social unity and harmony. As the new vatan now belonged only to the Muslim-Turks, the non-Muslims, who wished to stay, must adopt Turkishness, but if they were to resist doing so, “they must be viewed as undesirable and the possibility for them to join the vatan must be rejected.”26 Similarly, İsmet Paşa, the first Turkish prime minister, pointed out strikingly: “Our immediate duty is to make all those who live in the Turkish fatherland Turks. We will cut and throw away those minorities who are opposing Turks and Turkism.”27 The Turkification program for minorities was set out by Tekinalp in his Türkleştirme (1928). To become Turkish citizens, minorities must “Turkify their names,” “speak Turkish,” “send children to state schools,” “socialize with Turks,” “eliminate the [Jewish or other minority] community spirit,” “read prayers in Turkish,” “do their special duty in the field of national economy,” and “know their constitutional rights.”28 Ethnic and religious minorities perceived this policy as an imposition of a so-called üst kimlik (“superior identity”), fearing the loss of their own culture. Rather than creating national unity, it created polarization and tension within the society, laying the groundwork for today’s Kurdish Question. A further area for Turkification was economic policy. From 1923 until 1929, the Republic aimed at financial reconstruction and independence along nationalistic lines. The Izmir Economic Congress (1924) put forward the Republic’s national economic principles, which in theory constituted a continuation of the Young Turk economic policy during World War I. These policies proved fairly successful in protecting and promoting the economy. Foreign control over essential transport infrastructure was eliminated, new railways were built, and state monopolies over alcohol, tobacco, and fuel importation established. At Gökalp’s suggestion for promoting economic solidarity, the Law for Encouragement of Industry (1927) introduced tax exemptions and incentives for newly established enterprises. It aimed to promote the rise of a new Muslim-Turkish merchant and industrial elite by facilitating their access to key positions in 26. İleri, Taç Giyen Millet, 45. 27. Vakit, 27 April 1925, quoted in Füsun Üstel, İmparatorluktan Ulus-Devlete Türk Milliyetçiliği Türk Ocakları (1912–1931) (Istanbul: İletişim Yayınları, 1997), 173. 28. Tekinalp, Türkleştirme (Istanbul: Resimli Ay Matbaası, 1928), 63–65.

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banking, trading, and manufacturing sectors and actively replacing nonMuslims in such posts. In 1925, tithes (aşar) were abolished to protect small peasant landholdings. As the global economic crisis developed in the late 1920s, the Turkish economy became protectionist, adopting a statist policy (devletçilik) and launching its first five-year economic plan in 1931.29 In one of the most ultimately divisive ideological moves of the early Republic, the founders committed themselves to the notion that national, territorial, linguistic, and financial unity required the unity of the moral and spiritual dimensions of life. This was, as under the Third Republic, the function of laicity. The principles of laicity, the notions of freedom of conscience, neutrality of the state toward any faith, and nondiscrimination had already been introduced by the Young Turks at the turn of the century. The real innovation of republican laicity was to put these premises into practice through a series of radical reforms. The abolition of the caliphate in 1924 was the first and most radical step toward removing Islam from politics. Like the French state, which emphasized control over religion, the Turkish state also increased its own power to regulate ecclesiastical affairs, establishing a Ministry of Religious Affairs (Diyanet İşleri Başkanlığı) under the prime minister. This did not mean that the state no longer recognized Islam, but it did prompt its secularization and nationalization. To reframe religion as a private matter, the government abolished all intermediary religious institutions and bodies. In 1925, derviş orders, türbes (tombs of Muslim saints), tekkes, and zaviyes were closed, and religious titles like şeyh, derviş, dede, emir, and mürit were banned. Civil status, marriage, and equality of rights regardless of creed had already been discussed by Ottoman intellectuals from Ahmed Rıza and Hüseyin Cahit to Baha Tevfik, Ağaoğlu, Akçura, Halide Edip, and Gökalp, but had not been comprehensively enforced during the imperial period. With the adoption of the Swiss Code in 1926, the ceremony of marriage was laicized, as were birth and death records, and citizenship itself was divorced from religious affiliation. The organization of public education, free and secular at all levels, became one of the duties of the Republic. As with Jules Ferry’s reforms, which were to be carried out after 1908, the Republic insisted on a monopoly over education. Gökalp was adamant that the dualism of parallel secular and religious systems must end. The parliament in 1924 passed the Tevhid-i Tedrisat (Unification of Education Act), which closed medre29. Roger Owen and Şevket Pamuk, A History of Middle East Economies in the Twentieth Century (London: I. B.Tauris, 1998), 14–16.

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ses, replacing them with a system of state schools based largely on the French system and employing laicized teachers. To Turkify religion, a committee was set up in 1928 by the Faculty of Theology in Istanbul. Most of its policy recommendations from professors and reformers, who were disciples of Gökalp, were rejected, including the modernization of sacred instrumental music, allowing shoes and pews in mosques, and excluding nonphilosophers of religion from delivering sermons; nonetheless in 1928, upon the committee’s recommendation, the government did introduce Turkish ezan, prohibiting the Arabic form of the call to prayer.30 The union between religion and the state officially ended with the Constitution of 1928, which removed Islam as the official religion. For the republican elite, the only basis on which a modern Turkey could exist was laid down by secular principles. Muslim conservatives, who made up the vast majority of the nation, were labeled backward, regressive, and hostile to republican principles. This attitude required them to abandon their identity, culture, and soul to be recognized as modern republican Turkish citizens, creating great resentment and tension. Although republican secularists claimed to have freed the state from religion, they failed to eliminate religion from people’s social lives and practices. Thus the principle of laicity, like Turkificataion, also became a source of lasting conflict between conservatives and the secular republican elite, which is strongly felt today. Republicans believed that science was central for state and social progress. This belief had its roots in Ahmed Rıza’s Comtean conception of state and society, which were later picked up by the positivists like Ahmed Şuayb. Although Kemalist republicans were not followers of Comte, many writers showed an interest in the scientific basis of ethics and religion. Yet, their major inspiration came from the scientific materialist branch of the Young Turks, not from the positivists. Science opposed religion and the old basis of authority, and was taken as a defining characteristic of the West and a path to civilization that the new Turkey must follow. Mustafa Kemal famously stated his primary goal to bring the country to the level of contemporary Western civilizations. Westernization had been a focal topic in Ottoman political thought since the eighteenth century. Its roots in republican form lay in the Garpçılık (Westernization) movement, pioneered by Abdullah Cevdet, Kılıçzade Hakkı, and Celal Nuri in the İçtihad during 30. This law was ultimately abolished in 1950, and the whole country immediately reverted to the Arabic form.

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the Second Constitutional period.31 Celal Nuri defined civilization as “behavior and courtesy in contrast with brutality, manners and modesty, living orderly and neatly in accordance with the laws of progress, enjoyment, science, business, trade and security, and prosperity,”32 traits that he took as characteristic of Europe and America.33 To advance and to maintain social and national unity, the Republic must abandon its Ottoman traditional, backward, and religious past, and initiate and adopt the values and beliefs of the modern, scientific, and prosperous West. Celal Nuri and most republicans continued to regard the Third Republic as the most civilized of all nations, the intellectual, scientific, and aesthetic model for the new Turkish state.34 Hasty reform movements aimed to gallicize Turkish individuals and society. In 1925, the international clock and calendar was adopted, replacing their religious (hicri) and solar (rumi) counterparts. The dress revolution (kıyafet inkılâbı) compelled men to wear Western-style hats rather than the fez, and discouraged women from veiling. In 1928, the alphabet revolution (harf inkılâbı) saw the replacement of the Arabic script with Latin letters and European-style numbers, another policy that had been discussed earlier by the Young Turks but never previously put into practice. This current of a somewhat authoritarian imposition of Westernization, linked with laicity, has generated long-running conflict between conservatives and the secular republican elite up to the present day. Radical republicanism carried within it a polemical characteristic: the belief that “a society which aspires to govern itself, has above all need of intellectuals,” an elitist democracy view that was not novel in Turkish political thought. Because of their fear of opposition, republicans resisted the full implications of representative democracy. They persisted in seeing politics as a site of antagonism and the exercise of a craft, requiring the deployment of skills and forms of judgment; not political principles readily imported from Western democratic societies.35 İsmail Hakkı Baltacıoğlu believed that there was no single model for democracy, instead individual democracies, like the American, French, or British democra31. M. Şükrü Hanioğlu, “Garbcılar: Their Attitudes toward Religion and Their Impact on the Official Ideology of the Turkish Republic,” Studia Islamica, no. 86 (1997): 133. 32. Celal Nuri, Türk İnkılâbı (Istanbul: Atatürk Kültür Merkezi Yayınları, [1926] 2000), 302–3. 33. Celal Nuri, Taç Giyen Millet, 59. 34. Ibid., 65. 35. Hilmi Ziya Ülken, “Demokratik Cemiyetlerde İleri Geri,” İstanbul Mecmuası, 15 July 1946, 4–5.

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cies, each displayed different characteristics.36 Similarly, Peyami Safa insisted that “democracy depends on the social body to which it is adapted.”37 Rather than imitating Western democratic models, Turkey must seek to develop its own version of democracy, best suited to its cultural, social, and historical conditions.38 The specifics of this democratic model were never fully articulated, but in practice it came to be limited to a decision-making process within the Republican People’s Party, as it had been in the Young Turk Party during the Triumvirate, and to the glorification of leadership, an authoritarianism that persisted despite the challenge of the formation of the Progressive Republican Party (Terakkiperver Cumhuriyet Fırkası) in 1924, and the Free Republican Party (Serbest Cumhuriyet Fırkası) in 1930. The first transition to a multiparty system took place only in 1950. This form of radical republicanism with authoritarian measures was named “Kemalism” in 1928, and its principles were adopted in 1931 in the form of “six arrows” (republicanism, populism, laicism, reformism, nationalism, and statism), and later added to the Constitution of 1937. The Republic was articulated as the “new religion,” “a divine belief ” that must be followed by its true supporters and believers.39 The outcome divided and marginalized society, rather than unifying it. Kemalist republicanism alone was embraced and internalized by followers of the ideology, sidelining other republican alternatives. The roots of today’s political crisis of the Republic lie in the conflicting ideologies present from its foundation. 36. İsmail Hakkı Baltacıoğlu, “Bizim Cumhuriyetimiz,” Yeni Adam, 1944, 2. 37. Peyami Safa, “Demokrasi Kavramı,” Yeni Adam, 19 April 1945, 9. 38. “Dünyada İnsan Var Mı?,” Yeni Adam, 18 July 1941, 4; “Demokrasi Kavramı,” Yeni Adam, no. 538 (1945): 9; “Demokrasi Ne Tercüme Edilebilir Ne De İntihal,” Yeni Adam, no. 607 (1946): 10. 39. Ağaoğlu, “Vicdan Azabi Duymayanlara,” Son Posta, 12 January 1931.

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i n de x

Abalıoğlu, Yunus Nadi, 176, 208, 226, 242; call of for “bloody revolutionary action,” 228–29 Abdülhamid II, Sultan, 81, 92, 105, 107, 113, 116, 117, 118, 123, 143; control of newspapers by, 92; Western philosophical texts banned by, 92–93 Abdullah Cevdet, 92, 90, 91, 92, 93–94, 106, 136, 142n14, 153, 250; on feminism, 133, 134 Abdülmecid, Sultan, 51, 62 Abdülmecid Efendi (the last Ottoman caliph), 225 absolutism (hükümet-i mutlaka), 61, 62, 68, 75, 105, 156; bureaucratic absolutism, 45 Adnan Adıvar, Dr., 207–8 Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi (AKP, Justice and Development Party), 2–3 Afghanistan, 175, 180, 216, 230 Ağaoğlu, Ahmed, 150, 151, 155, 197, 206, 214, 232, 242, 243, 245, 249; constructivism of, 244; on the definition of republican liberty, 245–46, 245n14; on education, 158–59; on the founding of the Turkish Republic, 220; on solidarity, 245 Ahmad, Feroz, 8 Ahmed III, Sultan, 30 Ahmed Âsım Efendi, 35, 38 Ahmet Emin. See, Yalman, Ahmet Emin Ahmed Mithat Efendi, 146 Ahmed Paşa, Humbaracı (Comte de Bonneval), 32–33, 32–33n113 Ahmed Rıza, 94, 94–95n49, 99, 105, 109, 111, 120, 190, 191, 209, 239, 249, 250; on the debt owed by modern civilization to Muslim scholars, 106–7; on democracy, 99; formation of the Vahdet-i Milliye Heyeti (Committee of National Unity) by, 210; as president of the Ayan Meclisi (Senate), 210; on the principles of universal positivist ethics, (equal worth, mu-

tual recognition, anti-imperialism), 211–14; on the rights of women, 96; on the transition to modernity, 105, 105nn105–6 Ahmed Şuayb, 103–4, 113n152, 250 Ahmet Cevdet Pașa, 35n3, 37 Ahmet İzzet Pașa, 201 Ahmet Nuri Bey, 203 al-Farabi, 16; and the definition of an ideal state, 18 Algeria, 45, 79 al- Ghazali, 25 Ali Canip, 148 Ali Kemal, 150 Âli Pașa, 51–53, 55–57, 62, 63n73, 80 Ali Suavi, 58, 237; criticism of French foreign policy by, 77–78; on democracy, 76, 77, 79; on the enlargement of the High Council of Reform (Meclis-i Âli-i Tanzimat), 79; on a republic or a sultanate, 77, 79; revivalist Islamic republicanism of, 73–79; on various types of government, 77–79 All India Muslim Conference (1919), 217 Allied Powers, 166, 170, 195, 197, 201, 204, 210, 220 al-Manar (The Lighthouse) newspaper, 120 al-Miskawayh, 16 al-Sanussi, Ahmad, 217 Amasya Circular, 198 Anadolu’da Yeni Gün newspaper, 227, 232, 242 Anatolia, 24, 63, 118, 141, 179, 197–98, 200–201, 202, 207, 210–11, 217, 225, 227, 246; eastern Anatolia, 171, 199, 216, 232; western Anatolia, 197, 203 Anatolia and Rumelia Defense of Rights Committee (Anadolu ve Rumeli Müdafaa-ı Hukuk Cemiyeti), 204 Anatolian Agency (Anadolu Ajansı), 207, 227 Anglo-Turkish Commercial Convention of Baltalimanı (1838), 48

[ 283 ]

[ 284 ] index Ankara, revolutionary government in, 205–7 anti-imperialism, 114, 212, 213 anti-Slavism, 171 Appel aux Conservateurs (Comte), 91 Aristotle, 16 Armenian uprising (1894–96), 92 Armistice of Mudanya (1922), 220 askeri (ruling elite), 17, 26–27, 29 Așıkpașazâde, 14 Atatürk, Mustafa Kemal, 1, 3, 144, 198, 201, 204, 205, 207, 218, 222, 229, 232, 250; attack on clerics, 224; and the declaration of a Turkish republic, 231; on the definition of a nation, 246; as the first president of the Turkish Republic, 236, 239; as the founder and chairman of the People’s Party, 233; the Great Speech of, 219, 240–41; on language as a prerequisite for Turkishness, 247; and the Society for Defense and Rights, 224; on sovereignty, 210, 224–25; support of Pan-Islamic unity and patriotism by, 21 Atay, Falih Rıfkı, 237 Austria-Hungary, annexation of BosniaHerzegovina by, 139 authoritarianism, 10, 57, 241–42; bureaucratic authoritarianism, 51–53; Kemalist authoritarianism, 123, 252; shift toward authoritarianism during the Second Constitutional Period (1908– 18), 139–41 autocratic power (istibadad hükûmet), 64 Avrupa’nın Ahvâline Dair Risâle (Sadık Rıfat Pașa), 46 ayan, 23, 44, 76, Ayetullay Bey, 56, 56–57n39 Azerbaijan, 180, 216 Babanzade İsmail Hakkı Bey, 121, 130–31 Bab-ı Âli (Sublime Porte), 24, 40, 41, 140 Baha Tevfik, 133, 135, 146, 249 Bahaeddin Şakir, 97, 116 Balkan League, 144, 171 Balkan Wars (1912–13), 11, 136, 141, 163, 167, 184; Germany as a model for social and political renewal after the Ottoman defeat in, 144–47

Balkans, the, 40, 113; nationalism in, 55–56 Baltacıoğlu, İsmail Hakkı, 243; on democracies, 251–52 Battle of Sakarya, 218 Batum, 205 Bayur, Yusuf Hikmet, 166 Bekir Sami, 203 Bektași Sufi orders, 44, 44n68 Bergson, Henri, 148 Berkes, Niyazi, 9, 30 Beșir Fuad, 103–4, 145–46 Bleda, Mithat Şükrü, 197 Bourgeois, Léon, 182 Bulgaria, 79, 139, 144 Byzantine Empire, 12 caliphates, 229–30 Can Bey (Sadri Maksudi), 146, 147n40 capitulations, abolition of, 188–89 Carbonari, 56, 56–57n39 Catechism of Positive Religion (Comte), 89–90 Cebesoy, Ali Fuat (Paşa), 198, 224, 238, 242 Celal Nuri. See, İleri, Celal Nuri Celali Revolts, 24, 24–25n65 Cemal Pașa, 138, 160, 163. See also Triumvirate, the Christianity, 144, 177 Christians, 126; in Crete, 55; Orthodox Christians, 40, 247; in Switzerland, 79 Científicos movement, 91 Cihannüma (Kâtip Çelebi), 28–29, 31 Cilicia, 202, 209 civilization(s), 47, 110, 170, 212–13; Celal Nuri’s definition of, 251; debt owed by modern civilization to Muslim scholars, 106–7; as international, 153 Clemenceau, Georges, 102 colonialism, 177, 213 Comte, Auguste, 99, 104, 101, 102, 105, 109, 111, 159; emphasis of on ideas as the movers of history, 91; universalism/positivism of, 88–91, 90n27; view of the Ottoman Empire, 90 Conference of Lausanne (1923), 220 Considerations sur les causes de la Grandeur des Romains et de Leur Décadence (Montesquieu), 63

index [ 285 ] Constantinople, conquest of, 15 constitutional monarchy, 61, 65, 68, 98, 121, 127, 206, 221, 227 Constitutional Revolution (1876), 196 constitutionalism, 10, 11, 57, 59, 71, 111, 121; debates concerning, 231–35; and the foundations of a new polity, 121– 23; heritage of, 130; liberal constitutionalism, 115; parliamentary constitutionalism, 51; and the revolutionary government in Ankara, 205–7 Conte, Édouard, 102 Corra, Émile, 101 cosmopolitanism, 89, 169–70 Crete, 55, 139 Crimean War (1853–56), 53 cumhur (“mass of people,” “the public,” or the Republic), 19, 34, 61, 221; modification of to cumhuriyet (“collection of people in a specific place”), 19 Cumhuriyet newspaper, 242 Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi (CHP, Republican People’s Party, 1, 241–42, 247n21, 252 Çürüksulu Ahmed Bey, 95 Damad Ferid Pașa, 214 Darwinism, 11, 137 Das Volk in Waffen (Goltz), 143 De la division du travail social (Durkheim), 185, 244 De l’esprit des lois (Montesquieu), 182 Declaration of the Rights of Man, 36 Defense of National Rights and the Rejection of Annexation Societies, 198 Deed of Agreement (Sened-i İttifak), 44 Defense of National Rights Societies (Müdafaa-ı Hukuk Cemiyetleri), 197–98 democracy, 2, 3, 32, 74, 76–77, 99, 251–52; definition of, 76; direct democracy, 10 Denmark, 46 Descorches, Marie Louis, 36, 36n7 despotism (istibdad), 63n76, 79, 87, 94, 105, 109, 115, 119, 123, 126, 129, 172, 209, 227, 228, 242; “bureaucratic despotism,” 51; and centralization, 112; “Oriental despotism,” 13, 63; overcoming despotism, 111–12, 113; sultanic despotism, 117

dictatorship, 234, 239 Discours sur l’origine et les fondements de l’inégalité parmi les hommes (Rousseau), 60, 130 Diyanet İșleri Bașkanlığı (Ministry of Religious Affairs), 192, 249 djumhur. See cumhur (“mass of people,” “the public,” or the Republic) dragomans (Ottoman Christian translators of the Sublime Porte), 19 dualism, between the Ankara and Istanbul governments, 218, 249; attempts to resolve the problem of, 222–23 Duguit, Léon, 182 Dumont, Jean, 21–22 Dunn, John, 1, 7; definition of revolution, 119 Durkheim, Émile, 148, 169–70, 182, 192, 193; influence of on Turkish political thought, 244; on religious belief, 189, 189n134 Dustûr al-Amel li Islâh al-Halal (Kâtip Çelebi), 27 Eastern Question, the, 52, 56, 110, 170–71, 203 Ebubekir Katib Efendi, 38 economy, 151, 157–58, 188, 203, 248–49 education, 43, 47, 53, 55, 66, 80, 108, 150, 158–59, 161, 183, 202, 247, 249 Edirne, 140, 152, 215 egalitarianism, 71 Egypt, 39, 45, 52, 79 Enderun (Palace School), 20, 26 England. See Great Britain Entente Powers, 170, 176, 203, 204, 218 Enver Pașa, 138, 139, 160, 161, 163, 180, 246; involvement of in Turkey’s entry into World War I, 165–66, 174. See also Triumvirate, the equality (müsavat, eșitlik), concept of, 34, 96, 129–31; and the debates concerning feminism, 133–36 Erdoğan, Tayyip, 2 Erzurum Congress, 198–99, 204 Ethem Necdet, 142 European Concert, 46, 52 Felsefe Mecmuası (Journal of Philosophy), 146

[ 286 ] index feminism, 133–36; conservative reaction to, 134–36; equality between men and women viewed as a symbol of civilization, 135; practical reasons for equality between men and women, 134–35; and the reformist nature of Ottoman feminists, 133–34; women’s periodicals, 133; and women’s suffrage, 135 Ferry, Jules, 249 Fichte, Johann Gottlieb, 146, 247 Filibeli Ahmed Hilmi, 142–43 Fouillée, Alfred, 148 France, 7, 10, 15n18, 52n9, 53, 202, 209; diplomatic relations of with the Ottoman Empire, 30, 30n100, 31n101; feminist movement in, 133; invasion of Algeria by, 45; occupation of Egypt and Palestine by, 39 Franco-Turkish War (1920–21), 209 fraternity (uhuvvet), concept of, 96; as a remedy to social conflicts, 96–97 freedom (hürriyet) concept of, 38; freedom of expression, 61–62; republican freedom, 79–81 French Enlightenment, the, 37–38 French Revolution, the, 34; newspapers established during to inform Ottoman public opinion, 36; Ottoman neutrality during, 35–36, 37; Ottoman reactions to, 34–40; revolutionary societies of, 36 Fuad Şükrü, 222 Genç Kalemler (Young Pens), 148, 151 George, Lloyd, 200 Georgeon, François, 90 Germany: German support for the Ottoman declaration of jihad in World War I, 174–75; as a model for social and political renewal after the Ottoman defeat in the Balkan Wars, 144–47 Gibbons, Herbert A., 14 Goltz, Wilhelm Leopold Colmar, Freiherr von der, 143–44, 143n22, 162, 162n127 Goeben and Breslau, 166 Gökalp, Mehmet Ziya, 146, 148, 149, 152– 56, 168, 176, 178–79, 180, 197, 232, 238, 242, 243, 249; constructivism of, 244; on cosmopolitanism and internationalism, 170; and the definition of a na-

tional culture, 153; and the definition of sociology, 181–82; demand of for the abolition of the office of the Şeyhülislâm, 191–92; on the distinction between culture and civilization, 153–54; on the national economy, 188; on the political leaders of nation-states, 187– 88, 246; on religion and the sacred, 189–92; and revivalism, 154; on solidarism, 183; view of the common people/peasants, 155; view of tradition, 154 Grand National Assembly (Büyük Millet Meclisi), 205–6, 207, 220, 221, 226, 234; administration of the Turkish Republic by, 235–36; sovereignty of, 223 Great Britain, 42, 46, 49, 52, 52n9, 53, 72, 78, 202, 209; depiction of as a “greedy monster” by Tekinalp, 172; feminist movement in, 133; as a nation-state, 184 Greece, 46, 139, 144, 203, 209 Greek Rebellion (1821), 45 Greek uprising (1896), 92 Gülhane Hatt-ı Şerif (The Rescript of Gülhane), 51–52 Habsburg Empire, 15n18, 24, 30n100, 41 Hafız Hakkı, 142; on the need for an “Islamic Luther,” 159 hakimiyet-i milliye (national sovereignty), 2, 11, 124, 196–97, 210, 216; concept of, 206–7; debates concerning, 227–31; and national will (irade-i milliye), 197–99; as a source of law, 124–25 Hâkimiyet-i Milliye newspaper, 208, 240, 242 Halet Efendi, 37 Halide Edip, 155, 168, 207, 208, 208n47, 249; view of World War I, 171 Halil Ganem, 95–96, 95n50; on guidance of the grand masse, 99 Halil Hulki, 230 Halim Sabit, 155 Halk Fırkası, 233–34 Halka Doğru journal, 155 Hanioğlu, Mehmet Şükrü, 86, 119 Harb Mecmuası journal, 167 Harrington, James, 6, 6n23

index [ 287 ] Hasan Tahsin, 205 Havadisnâme-i İngiltere (Yusuf Agah Efendi), 42, 42n52 Herder, Johann Gottfried, 247 Hilmi Ziya, 243 Hoca Rasih Kaplan, 223, 230, 236 “Hürriyet Kasidesi” (Namık Kemal), 63–64 Hürriyet ve İtilaf Fırkası (Liberal Entente), 139, 139n3 Hüseyin Avni, 223 Hüseyin Cahit. See, Yalçın, Hüseyin Cahit Hüseyin Vasfı Pașa, 81, 83 Hüseyinzâde Ali, 150 Hüsrev Sami, 116 Ibn Khaldūn, 27, 29, 64, 176 Ibn Rushd, 16 Ibn Sina, 16 İbrahim I, Sultan, 26, 30 İbrahim Müteferrika, 31n104 İbrahim Şinasi, 90–91n30 İbrahim Temo, 88, 94, 136 İçtihad journal, 96, 153, 250 “İdare-i Cumhuriye ile Hükûmet-i Şahsiyenin Farkı,” 65–66 idealism, German, 145–46, 151 idealism, national, 146–47; and Gökalp’s Üç Cereyan (Three Currents of Thought), 152–56; and militarism, 157; and the shift from universalism to national idealism, 147; Thessaloniki and Istanbul as the centers of national idealism, 147–51. See also idealism, national, and conceptualizing the state idealism, national, and conceptualizing the state, 156–60; and the German “organic state theorists,” 156; and the national economy, 157–58; and national education, 158–59; and the new formation of the state as a war machine, 160–63; and the revised conception of sovereignty, 157 Idris Bitlisi, 23 İlân-ı Hürriyet, 127 İleri newspaper, 176, 229, 232; closing of, 242 İleri, Celal Nuri, 168, 176, 177, 197, 205, 229, 234, 238, 242, 243, 246, 247; on the definition of civilization, 251

imperialism, 177; Victorian imperialism, 112; Western imperialism, 150. See also anti-imperialism independence (serbessiyet), concept of, 34 India, 79, 177 individualism, 185; “moral individualism,” 191 İnkılâb journal, 81, 82; motto of, 83 internationalism (beynelmilliyetçilik), 169, 170 irade-i milliye (national will), 205–7, 208, 210, 212 İrade-i Milliye newspaper, 208 Iran, 24, 46, 175 Iraq, 216 irredentism, 179–80 İshak Sükûti, 92, 95 Islahat Fermanı, 53 Islam, 74, 76, 144, 177, 216; rise of political Islam in Turkish politics, 2; as the spiritual counterpart to Turkism, 155–56 İslâm Mecmuası (Islamic Review), 155 Islamism, 108, 139, 150, 152, 155, 178, 188. See also Pan-Islamism İsmail Gaspıralı (Gasprinski), 150–51 İsmail Müștak, 233, 238 İsmail Şükrü, 227–28 Istanbul, 211; as a center of national idealism, 147–51; as the “enemy within” in wartime political language, 214–15 Italy, attack of on Tripolitania, 139 İttifâk-ı Hamiyet (Patriotic Alliance), 56 İttihad-ı Muhammedi (Muhammedan Union), 123 İttihâd-ı Osmani (The Union of Ottomans), 92, 94 İttihat ve Terakki Cemiyeti (Committee of Union and Progress [CUP]), 94, 100, 116, 118, 118n13, 123, 125, 126, 136, 139, 140, 158, 189, 200, 233; establishment of the Karakol (Guidepost) by, 197; official newspaper of (Şura-yı Ümmet [Council of the People]), 118; organization of the “Defense of National Rights Societies” by, 197–98 İzmir Economic Congress (1924), 248 Jacobin, 83, 140, 240 Jadidism (Jadidist movement), 150

[ 288 ] index Janissaries, 20, 64–65; abolition of, 44, 49 Jena, Battle of, 145 Journal du voyage de Mahmoud Raif Efendi en Angleterre, écrit par lui meme (Raif ), 42–43 justice (adalet), concept of, 22–23, 34, 96, 131–33; and the daire-i adliyye (circle or equity/justice), 22, 28, 29, 131; distribution of, 75–76; and obligatory reciprocal rights of rulers and subjects, 23 Kabusnâme (bin İskender), 25 kadı (judge), 21 Kadızadeliler movement, 28 Kanun-i Esâsi (Ottoman Constitution [1876]), 50, 81, 123 Kant, Immanuel, 145, 149 Kara Vasıf, 205 Kars, 205 Kâtip Çelebi, 27–29; analogy of the human body and the exercise of government, 27–28; call of for the restoration of the circle of justice, 28 Kazım Karabekir (Pașa), 144, 198, 242 Kazım Nami, 155 Keçecizâde Mehmed Fuad Pașa, 51, 52, 53, 57n44, 62 Kemalism, 1–2, 164, 243, 252; fundamental principles of, 1; misconception of equating Kemalism with republicanism, 3; and a written constitution, 72–74 Khilafat movement, 217 Kılıçzade Hakkı, 250 Kınalızâde, 22, 29 King-Crane report, 200–201 Kızıl Elma (Gökalp), 178–79 Koçi Bey, 26, 26–27n79, 29 Köprülüzade Mehmed Fuad, 155 kul 20–22; separation of from tax-paying subjects, 21 Küçük Kaynarca Treaty (1774), 39–40 La faillite morale de la politique occidentale en Orient (Ahmed Rıza), 111, 211–12 Lafitte, Pierre, 100–101, 106, 212 Lagarrigue, Juan Enrique, 102 laicity, 1, 2, 191, 195, 243, 249; laicization

and secular ethics as the foundation of universal order, 107–9; as a source of lasting conflict between conservatives and the secular republican elite, 250, 251 laissez-faire and laissez-passer economics, 48, 182, 185 L’Allemagne audessus de tout (Durkheim), 169 language: centrality of in nation building, 148; as a prerequisite of Turkishness, 247. See also war propaganda, political language of law: Hüseyin Cahit’s definition of, 128– 29; kadim kanun (traditional law), 28, 39; Kânûn-i Esâsî (constitutional law), 109; kanunname (secular law), 40; national sovereignty as a source of law, 124–25; natural law (hukuk-ı tabii), 132; örf-î kanun (customary law), 21; rule of, 80–81; social or positive law (hukuk-ı muvzua), 132. See also Shari’a law (God-given laws) laws: Law against Treason (Hıyanet-i Vataniye Kanunu), 215, 227; Law of Citizenship (Osmanlı vatandașı [1869]), 54; Law for Encouragement of Industry (1927), 248; Law of Family Names (1934), 247; Law of Fundamental Organisation (Teșkilât-ı Esasiye Kanunu [1921]), 206; Law for Provincial Administration (1864), 55; Maintenance of Order Law (Takrir-i Sükün Kanunu [1925]), 242 La Noue, François de, 12–13 Latin America, 7 Le Bon, Gustave, 86, 99, 142, 142n14, 148 League of Nations, 202 Leçons de Sociologie Physique des moeurs et du Droit (Durkheim), 169, 185 L’éducation morale (Durkheim), 192–93 Lepanto, Battle of, 24 Les formes élémentaires de le vie religieuse (Durkheim), 189, 190, 244 Les Règles (Durkheim), 182 Lettre à M. Ahmed Rıza (Lagarrigue), 102 Lewis, Bernard, 8, 30, 70 Leygues, Georges, 211 liberal republicanism, 7–8, 10, 11, 59–73,

index [ 289 ] 115, 137, 242; liberal republican, 86, 220, 232–34, 237–38 liberalism, 48, 188 liberty (hürriyet), 64, 76, 96, 127–29; concept of, 34, 238–39; individual and civil liberties (kișisel ve toplumsal özgürlükler), 128; natural liberty (hürriyet-i tabbiiye), 128; political liberty, 80–81; as a principal value of the Ottoman state, 127; republican liberty, 244–46 List, Friedrich, 157 Littré, Emile, 90–91n30, 100 Locke, John, 68 Louis XIV, 35 Lütfi Fikri Bey, 221, 222 Luther, Martin, 159 Macedo, Miguel S., 91 Machiavelli, Niccolò, on political participation, 5–6, 6n20 Mahmud II, Sultan, 34, 49; reforms of, 43–44; abolition of the Janissaries (Vak’a-i Hayriye), 44; and the advancement of the sciences particularly through newspaper articles, 47–48; attempts to gain British support for economic and political changes, 48–49; breaking of the Sened-i İttifak (Deed of Agreement), 44; and changing Ottoman perceptions of the West, 45–49; and economic advancement through commerce, 47; ending of decentralization (ademi merkeziyetçilik), 44–45; establishment of a modern army (Muallem Asâkir-i Mansure-i Muhammediye (Trained Victorious Troops of Muhammad), 44; establishment of permanent consular representations (șehbenderlik) in foreign countries, 45–46; establishment of the School of Military Sciences (Harbiye) and the Medical School for army personnel, 44–45; and limiting the power of the ulema, 45; and the phrase “Avrupalılașmalıyız” (“We have to Europeanize!”), 47 Mahmud Raif, 42–43 Mahmud Şevket Pașa, 140 Mahmut Esat, 234

Malumat-ı Medeniye ve Ahlakiye, 127–28, 132 Mardin, Şerif, 8, 64, 86, 97 Marx, Karl, 104, 158, 185 Mechveret Supplément Français newspaper, 95 Meclis-i Âli-i Tanzimat, 52, 80 Meclis-i Vâlâ-yı Adliyye, 54 Mehmed II, Sultan, 15, 21 Mehmed IV, Sultan, 27 Mehmed V, Sultan, 123 Mehmed Bey (Young Ottoman), 56–57, 79–84, 225, 228 Mehmed Câvid, 135, 158 Mehmed Emin. See, Yurdakul, Mehmed Emin Mehmed Neșrî, 14 Mehmed Rașid Efendi, 35, 35n3 Mehmed Talat Bey (later Paşa), 116, 122, 138, 140, 165–66, 173, 187, 246–47. See also Triumvirate, the Mehmet Âkif, 156, 168 Mehmet Reșid, 92 Mekteb-i Harbiye (Royal Military Academy), 143 Mesopotamia, 202 Meșveret (propaganda newspaper of the Parisian Young Turks), 95, 95n54 meșveret (representative government, consultation), 41, 42, 51, 58, 64, 69, 94, 117 meșveret-i kebîr (Sublime Council of Consultation), 40 Metternich, Klemens von, 52 Midhat Pașa, 81 militarism, 94, 113, 139, 140, 157, 159–60, 196; German militarism, 11, 137 Mill, John Stuart, 89 Milton, John, 6 Mithat, Haydar, 116 Mithat Şükrü. See, Bleda, Mithat Şükrü Mizancı Murad Bey, 58, 95 Mîzânü’l-hakk f î İhtiyâri’l-ehakk (Kâtip Çelebi), 28 Mohammed the Prophet, 17, 18, 76 monarchy, 72; Christian monarchism, 5 Montenegro, 144 Montesquieu, Charles-Louis de Secondat, 61, 65, 182; typology/division of governments conceived by, 61, 98

[ 290 ] index Moralı El-Seyyid Ali Efendi, 39 morality, 66, 75, 77- 78, 107, 109, 111 , 121, 169, 181–85, 192–94; chief characteristics of, 193 Morocco, 175 Müfıde Ferid, 135 Muhbir periodical, 74 Mühendishane-i Bahr-i Hümayun (Naval Engineering School), 41 Mühendishane-i Berr-i Hümayun (Army Engineering School), 41 Muhittin Birgen, 158 Münif Pașa, 57, 145 Muqaddime (Ibn Khaldūn), 27 Murad IV, Sultan, 26 Muslims, 176, 216; Aligarh Muslims, 178; Indian Muslims, 217; Muslim Tatars, 150; Muslim Turks, 126 Mustafa Fazıl Pașa, 57, 57n44, 59 Mustafa Fevzi, 236–37 Mustafa Naima, 29, 29n94 Mustafa Reșid Pașa, 47, 51, 52, 90–91, 90n26 Mütercim Mehmed Rüșdi, 53 Nachrichtenstelle für den Orient Intelligence (Bureau for the East), 174 Namık Kemal, 56, 58, 74, 75–76, 81, 98, 117, 122–23, 126–27, 182, 215, 238, 246; and the idea of community, 60–61n62, 65, 66; on the importance of freedom of expression, 61; liberal conservative Islamic republicanism of, 59–73; and moderate governments, 65–72; on political liberty, 238–39; on sovereignty, 67, 68–69 Napoleon III, 92, 239 Narodniks, 155 Nasihat al-Muluk (al- Ghazali), 25 nasihatnâme (“treatise on the advice for kings”) literary genre, 25, 25–26n72, 31 nation-states: the nation-state and solidarity, 182–88; political leaders of, 187–88 National Assembly, 67, 71 National Pact (Misâk-ı Millî), 204–5 national sovereignty. See hakimiyet-i milliye (national sovereignty)

national will. See irade-i milliye (national will) nationalism, 137, 141, 169, 247; German nationalism, 10 Nazım, Dr., 95, 113n152, 116, 140n8 Necmeddin Sadık. See, Sadak, Necmeddin Sadık Nedham, Marchmont, 6 Netherlands, the, 46 New Genghizism (Yeni Cengizlik). See irredentism New Life, New Language (Yeni Hayat, Yeni Lisan) philosophical movement, 148 Nietzsche, Friedrich, 148, 149 Nigâr bint-i Osmân, 134 Nuri Bey (Young Ottoman), 56, 58–9, 79– 81, 84–5 Okandan, Recai Galip, 145n30, 157 Okyar, Ali Fethi, 235–36 Ömer Naci, 116 Ömer Seyfeddin, 146, 148; on the centrality of language in nation building, 148 Oppenheim, Max Freiherr von, 174–75 Orhan Midhat, 244 Orbay, Rauf, 235, 238, 242 order (nizam), concept of: as the basis for state power, society, and morality in the Ottoman Empire, 16–21; preservation of as the duty of the state, 16–17 Oruç Bey, 14 Osman Naci, 144 Osmanlı Demokrat Fırkası (Ottoman Democratic Party), 136 Osmanlı Hürriyetperverân Cemiyeti (Ottoman Freedom-Lovers’ Committee), 112 Osmanlı Tarihi (History of the Ottoman Empire [Namık Kemal]), 63 Osmanlı İnkılâb-ı Kebîri (Ottoman Great Revolution, 1908), 119 Ottoman Chamber of Deputies (Meclis-ı Mebusan), 204 Ottoman Empire, 3, 90; classical imperial period of, 12; diplomatic relations with European countries, 30–31, 30n100; early stages of Ottoman state formation, 14–15; and the Eurocentric view of Ottoman politics, 12; losses of dur-

index [ 291 ] ing the Balkan Wars, 139, 141; reactions of to the French Revolution, 34– 40; recognition of Tatars by, 39; as a “slave soldier” state, 13; transition/expansion of the Ottoman state to the Ottoman Empire, 15–16, 15n18; and the turn to the West, 30–32; as tyrannical, 12–14; under the Hamidian regime, 97; underground societies in, 57, 93. See also Ottoman Empire, and the international turn (1914–17); Ottoman Empire, perceptions of decline in during the seventeenth century; Ottoman Empire, and the social and national turn (1917–18); Tanzimat period Ottoman Empire, and the international turn (1914–17), 169–73; turning away from Russia and Great Britain, 171– 72; and the view of Germany as the Ottoman Empire’s closest friend, 172–73 Ottoman Empire, perceptions of decline in during the seventeenth century, 23– 29; ceding of naval superiority to the English and Dutch, 24; and the Celali Revolts in Anatolia, 24, 24–25n65; defeat of the Ottomans at the Battle of Lepanto, 24; dispersal of the sultan’s power to elite households, 23–24, 24n59; and the expansion/transformation of the government administration, 24; loss of territory to the Habsburg Empire, 24; new concepts of reform in response to, 25 Ottoman Empire, and the social and national turn (1917–18), 180–82; and the economy, 188–89; and morality, 192– 94; and the nation-state and solidarity, 182–88; and religion, 189–92 Ottoman Freedom Society, 115–16 Ottoman monarchy, abolition of, 220–27; specific proposals for, 223–24 Ottoman political thought in the classical era, 15–21, 30; and the concept of justice (adalet), 22–23; and the devșirme system, 20; and the division of society into four segments, 16–17, 27; duty of the sultan/monarch to uphold nizam (“order”), 17–18; and egalitarianism, 19–20; and Greek political philosophy,

18; and the idea of al-madīna alfādila (“a virtuous state”), 18–19; and Islamic polity subject to Shari’a law, 17–18, 21–22; nizam (“order”) as the basis for state power, society, and morality, 16–21; and Renaissance Italy, 18–19; and the transition from caliphate rule to rule by kingship, 18–19. See also Shari’a law (God-given laws), and the Ottoman legal system Ottoman Russian War (1828–29), 45 Ottoman Scout Committee (Keșșaflık Cemiyeti İzci Ocağı), 162n126 Ottoman Strength Clubs (Osmanlı Güç Dernekleri), 162, 162n126 Ottoman sultans: commands of (ferman), 21; the four virtues of a just ruler (benevolence, devotion, fidelity, beneficence), 23; government appointments made by, 20; the sultan as the head of all government (Divan-ı Hümayun), 20; the sultans’ appropriation of grandiose titles to enhance their image, 20; power of the sultan as exercised by the Vezir-i Âzam (grand vizier), 20 Ottoman Youth Clubs (Osmanlı Genç Dernekleri), 162 Ottomanism (Osmanlıcılık), 136, 141, 150; and citizenship rights, 54–56, 97 Palestine, 39 Pan-Islamic League, 175 Pan-Islamism, 108, 173, 175, 178, 195, 217; and the idea of an international Islamic union (İttihad-ı Islam), 173–74; success of Pan-Islamic propaganda, 174–75 Pan-Slavism, 150, 171 Pan-Turanism (Turancılık), 178–80 Pan-Turkism, 149–50, 151, 173 Paris Commune, 68 Parisian Young Turks, 91, 98; belief of in the benefits of centralization, 99; commitment to positivism, 100–103; formation of, 90; and laicity and morality as the foundation of a universal order, 107–9; newspapers of, 91; valuing of republicanism by for its ideas, 96. See also universal world history, and the law of three stages

[ 292 ] index Parvus, Alexander, 158 patriotism, 169, 215–17; “world patriotism,” 169 penal code (Ceza Kanunnamesi), 54 Peyami Safa, 243, 252 Plato, 16 Pocock, J.G.A., 8 Poland, 30 Politeia (Plato), 18 Portugal, 46 positivism, 87, 92–95; in Brazil, 91; and the Científicos movement in Mexico, 91; Ottoman positivism/positivists, 87–88, 90, 90–91n30, 100–103, 109– 12, 119; reactions to positivist universalism, 112–13; and science/knowledge among Ottoman positivists, 104–5; revival of, 210–11; universal moral principles of (equal worth, mutual recognition, anti-imperialism), 211–14 Prussia, 41, 45, 46, 65, 71, 72, 144, 145 Qur’an, the, 76 radical republicanism, 11; of Mehmed Bey, Reșad Bey, and Nuri Bey, 56, 58, 80– 85; the victory, of 219–42 Raif Bey, 203–4 Ratib Efendi, 39 Ravzat el-Hüseyin fi hulâsât el-hâfikayn (Naima), 29 reaya, 17, 26–9, 131 Refet Pașa, 198, 202, 221 Refik Bey, 56, 236 Reformation, the, 12, 159 Reis-ül Küttab Ahmed Atıf Efendi, on the French Enlightenment, 37 religion, 189–92; national religion, 189– 90; and Turkification, 249–50 Renaissance, European, 12, 99 Renan, Ernest, 90–91n30 republic: central features of, 78; and the concept of parliamentary representation, 77; discussion of the meaning of, 39–40, 236–41; liberal conception of, 237–38 republican theorists, English, 6 republicanism, 182, 243, 251–52; appeal of, 6–7; bourgeois liberal republican

model of, 7–8; classical republicanism, 7; common concerns of classical and modern republicanism, 4–5; complexity of Turkish republicanism, 10; disagreements concerning the core values of, 4; as a historical tradition, 4; Islamic republicanism, 11; lack of consensus on the definition of, 4; liberal republicanism, 7–8, 10, 11, 59–65, 137, 242; liberty as core value of, 5; misconception of equating republicanism with Kemalism, 3; origins of in Roman political thought, 5; as a political tradition, 4–11; revival of Turkish interest in, 3; Turkish political thought and the word cumhuriyet (“republic”), 3. See also radical republicanism; republicanism, impact of French republicanism on the Ottoman state; republicanism, Turkish/Kemalist republicanism, impact of French republicanism on the Ottoman state, 10–11, 126–27; and the concept of equality (eșitlik), 129–31; and the concept of fraternity (uhuvvet), 136–37; and the concept of justice (adalet), 131–33; and the concept of liberty (hürriyet), 127–29 republicanism, Turkish/Kemalist, 1–2, 252; inflexibility of, 2; mistake in understanding Turkish republicanism as Kemalist, 9–10; solidarism (tesanütçülük) as the central doctrine of Turkish republicanism, 244–45. See also Turkish Republic, and debates concerning republicanism Reşad Bey (Young Ottoman), 56, 58, 79, 84 revivalism, 151, 154 revolution, Dunn’s definition of, 119 Rıza Nur, 126, 139, 200, 223 Rıza Tevfik, 113 Rogan, Eugene, 167 Roman Empire, 12; collapse of, 63 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 37, 60, 60n55, 67, 69, 130–31, 224n28, 234 Rus-Japon Harbinden Alınan Maddi ve Manevi Dersler ve Japonların Esbab-ı Muzafferiyeti (Material and Spiritual Lessons from the Russo-Japanese War

index [ 293 ] and the Reasons for Japanese Victory [Pertev]), 160 Russia, 24, 30, 40, 46, 52n9, 53, 65, 78, 101, 118, 167, 173, 174; recognition of Tatars by, 39; support of nationalism in the Balkans by, 55, 171 Russo-Ottoman War (1768–74), 40 Rycaut, Paul, 13 Sadak, Necmeddin Sadık, 181–82, 225 Sadık Rıfat Pașa, 46, 47; and the conception of civilization, 47 Sadri Maksudi. See Can Bey (Sadri Maksudi) Safavid Empire, 16 Said Halim Pașa, 140, 165; on the source of national sovereignty, 160–61; support of for Pan-Islamism, 175; on Westernization, 175n53 Saint-Simon, Henri de, 88 Sami, İlyas, 230 San Marino, 78 Sanders, Liman von, 161 Şânîzâde, 41 Sardinia, 46 School of Military Sciences (Harbiye), 44–45 School of Naval Engineering (Bahriye), 33 Schopenhauer’in Hikmet-i Cedidesi (Schopenhauer’s New Philosophy [Ahmet Mithat Efendi]), 145–46 science: advancement of the sciences under Mahmud II, 47–48; republican belief that science was central for state and social progress, 250–51; science/ knowledge among Ottoman positivists, 104–5 Sebilü’r-Reșad, 156 Second Constitutional period (1908–18), 9, 115, 138, 206, 251; shift toward authoritarianism during, 139–41 Second Young Turk Congress (1907), 117–18 secret societies: Arab secret societies, 178; origins of the Young Turks as the secret society İttihâd-ı Osmani (The Union of Ottomans), 92–93 Sefaratname-i Fransa (Yirmisekiz Çelebi Mehmed Efendi), 30–31n101

Sekib Arslan, 175 Selim III, Sultan, 34, 35. See also Selim III, creation of the Nizâm-ı Cedid (“the New Order”) and other reforms of Selim III, creation of the Nizâm-ı Cedid (“the New Order”) and other reforms of, 40–41; and the centralization of the government, 41; diplomatic reforms, 42–43; establishment of the Nizâm-ı Cedid Ordusu (the New Troop Order), 41; and the meșveret (“consultation by the ruler of his advisers”), 41 serbest/serbessiyet (“exempt, unrestricted”), concept of, 38–39 Serbest Cumhuriyet Fırkası (Free Republican Party), 252 Serbia, 144 Şerafettin Mağmumi, 95 Şerif Bey, 95 Şeyhülislâm, office of, 191–92 Shari’a law (God-given laws), 32, 47, 51, 57, 76; and constitutional government, 122; and Islamic polity subject to Shari’a law, 17–18; and the örf-î kanun (customary law), 21; and the Ottoman legal system, 21–22; as the source of national sovereignty, 161 Sharif Ali Haydar, 175 Shaw, Stanford, 8 shura (consultation), 51 Sivas Congress (1919), 199–205, 199n14 Siyasatnâme (Nizamülmülk), 25 Skinner, Quentin, 8 slavery, 104, 245; and Westernization, 175n53. See also kul social welfare (maslaha), 23 Société Populaire Républicaine, 36 Société Républicaine des Amis de la Liberté et de l’Egalité, 36 Society for the Defense of Rights of Eastern Anatolia, 199, 199n12 sociology, definition of, 181 Sohrabi, Nader, 131 solidarism (tesanütçülük), 183; as the central doctrine of Turkish republicanism, 244–45 solidarity (solidarité), 182–88 Sorel, Albert, 159

[ 294 ] index sovereignty, 224–25; and the foundations of a new polity, 121–23; of the people, 69–70; popular sovereignty, 7, 11, 58, 74–75, 81, 121, 124, 234, 241; revised conception of, 157; Shari’a law as the source of, 161. See also hakimiyet-i milliye (national sovereignty) Spain, 15n18, 46 Spirit of the Laws, The (Montesquieu), 13, 68 Spring of Nations (1848), 7 statecraft, Sassanid-Persian views of, 16 Suleiman al-Bustani, 136 Süleyman the Magnificent, 16 Süleyman Nazif, 221–22 Sultan Abdülaziz, 82 “Sultan Aziz Han, Ziyâ Bey, Âlî Pașa” (Ziya Pașa), 71–72 Sultan Vahdettin, 3, 204, 222–23, 227 sultanate, 51, 73, 76, 77, 79, 98, 186, 223, 225; abolishing of, 219, 224, 226, 231 Suphi Nuri, 234–35 Supreme Council of Allied Leaders, 205 Sweden, 30 Switzerland, 78 Sykes-Picot Agreement (1916), 197 Syria, 202, 216 Système de politique positive (Comte), 91 Tanin newspaper, 118, 122, 168, 176, 226, 240; closing of, 242 Tanzimat Gülhane Hatt-ı Şerif (Tanzimat Edict of Gülhane), 50, 51–52, 71, 72– 73n135; and the principle of “equality before the law” as official state policy, 53. See also Islahat Fermanı (Imperial Reform Edict) Tanzimat period, 155; the birth of journalism and private newspapers during, 56; dissolution of the millet system and the rise of ethnic separatism during, 55–56; end of, 50, 50n1; goals of, 49; inauguration/origins of, 50; Ottomanism (osmanlıcılık) and citizenship rights during, 54–56, 97; the reform movement and the rise of bureaucratic authoritarianism, 51–53; reforms of (Tanzimat-ı Hayriyye [Beneficial Reforms]) 49, 50–51; and the Tanzimatçılar (Tanzimat-men), 51

Tarde, Gabriel, 86 Tatars, 39; Crimean Tatars, 149; Muslim Taters, 150 Tekinalp (Moise Cohen), 145, 145n29, 146, 151n65, 168; admiration of for the German state, 157; depiction of Russia and Great Britain by, 171–73; on irredentism, 179–80; on the national economy, 188; on nation-states, 185– 86; on solidarism, 183, 185 Terakkiperver Cumhuriyet Fırkası (Progressive Republican Party), 242, 252 Terkib-i Bend (Ziya Pașa), 58 “Tesanütçülük” (Tekinalp), 185 Teșkilât-ı Mahsusa (Special Organization), 162 Tevfik Pașa, 222 Tevhid-i Tedrisat (1924), 249–50 Thessaloniki, as a center of national idealism, 147–51 Thrace, 197; western Thrace, 205 Toprak, Zafer, 9 Tott, François de, 32–33, 33n114 Treaty of Campo Formio (1798), 37 Treaty of Karlowitz (1699), 29 Treaty of Küçük Kaynarca (1774), 39, 40 Treaty of Lausanne (1923), 222, 246 Treaty of Passarowitz (1718), 29–30 Treaty of Sèvres (1920), 214, 220 Trikon, Charles, 48 Triumvirate, the, 138, 140, 161, 166, 167, 195 Tüccarzade İbrahim Hilmi, 144, 147n40 Tunalı Hilmi Bey, 95, 223 Tunaya, Taik Zafer, 8, 9 Tunisi, Salih al-Sharif, 175 Tunisia, 79 “Turan” (Gökalp), 178–79 Turcology, 149–50n55 Türk, 150 Türk Derneği (Turkish Association), 151, 151n64 Türk İnkilâbı Tarihi (History of the Turkish Revolution [Bayur]), 166 Türk Ocağı (Turkish Hearth), 151, 151n65, 247, 247n21 Türk Tarih Kurumu (Turkish History Association), 247 Türk Yurdu (Turkish Homeland), 151, 152, 158, 247

index [ 295 ] Türk Yurdu Cemiyeti (Community of Turkish Homeland), 155 Türkçülüğün Esasları (The Principles of Turkism [Gökalp]), 247 Turkification, 178; and economic policy, 248–49; oppressive nature of, 247–48; and religion, 249–50 Turkish Republic, 1, 10; and authoritarianism, 241–42; and debates concerning constitutionalism, 231–35; and debates concerning republicanism, 236–41; and debates concerning sovereignty, 227–31; economic policy of, 248–49; military interventions in, 2; motto of (“Long Live the Republic!”), 236; proclamation of, 219–20, 235–36; and radicalism, 93, 93n42, 94, 95, 229; suppression of political opposition in, 2. See also Ottoman monarchy, abolition of; republicanism, Turkish/ Kemalist Turkish Revolutions: (1908), 7, 10, 115, 139, 225, 237, 239; (1922), 225, 229; (1923), 1, 7; and the new versus the old political order, 120–21 Turkish War of Independence (1919–22), 114, 196–97 Turkishness, 157, 226; language as a prerequisite of, 247; teaching/promotion of, 247–48 Turkism, 97, 149, 150–51n63, 152, 154–55, 179, 187, 248; Islam as the spiritual counterpart to, 155–56; as a new version of idealism, 246–47. See also Pan-Turkism “Türkler ve Fransızlar” (Turks and French [Cahit]), 122–23 Türkleșmek, İslamlașmak, Muasırlașmak (Turkism, Islamism, Modernism [Gökalp]), 152–56 Türkleștirme (Tekinalp), 248 Üç Cereyan (Three Currents of Thought [Gökalp]), 152–56, 247 “Üç Tarz-ı Siyaset” (Three Ways of Policy), 150, 150–51n63 ulema , 10, 17, 21, 27, 45, 64, 75 Ulûm newspaper, 74 ümmet (community), 61n62, 77, 78, 152, 156, 176, 177, 189

United States, 46, 201 universal world history, and the law of three stages, 103–7 universalism, 169; reactions to positivist universalism, 112–13; the shift from universalism to national idealism, 147. See also Comte, Auguste, universalism/positivism of; universal moral principles of, revival of; Young Turks, idealism, republicanism, and positivist universalism of Ürgüplü Mustafa Hayri, Şeyhülislam, 173–74, 186 “Usul-ü Meșveret’e Dair Mektuplar” (Namık Kemal), 69 Usûlü’l-Hikem f î Nizâmi’l-Ümem (Müteferrika), 31–32 Vahdet-i Milliye Heyeti (Committee of National Unity), 210 vatan, 97, 133, 195, 242, 244; concept of, 34 Vatan newspaper, 92, 227, 232, 233, 242 Vatandaș Türkçe Konuș! (“Citizen, Speak Turkish!”) campaign, 247 Velid Ebüzziya, 235, 236, 238, 242, 241, 242 Venice, Republic of, 18–19, 29, 37; envoys to from the Ottoman Empire, 19, 19n35 Voltaire, 37 Von Hoff, Colonel, 162, 162n127 war: Darwinian view of, 143; mass psychology of, 142; the new theory of, 141–44. See also Allied Powers; Entente Powers; war propaganda, political language of war propaganda, political language of, 207–8, 217–18; Great Britain and France as the enemy within, 209; Istanbul as the enemy within, 214–15 Westernization, 1, 9, 14, 30, 51, 103, 152, 155, 175, 188, 244, 250–51; changing perceptions of, 45–49; and slavery, 175n53 Wilson, Woodrow, 200 Wilsonian Principles Society, 200 Wittek, Paul, gaza thesis of concerning the Ottoman state, 14–15, 15n15

[ 296 ] index World War I, 11, 194–95; conceptualization of the war and public opinion, 166–68; and the control of public opinion through censorship and propaganda, 168–69; declaration of jihad against the enemies of Islam (France, Russia, and Great Britain), 174–75, 174n47; Ottoman victories during, 194; the political language of war propaganda, 207–8, 213, 214–15; reasons the Ottoman Empire joined the war, 165– 67; and the success of Pan-Islamic propaganda, 177–78; support for the war by national idealists, 167–68. See also Ottoman Empire, and the international turn (1914–17); Ottoman Empire, and the social and national turn (1917–18) Yalçın, Hüseyin Cahit, 118–19, 132, 197, 234, 242, 244, 249; on constitutional rule, 124–25; criticism of the Republic by, 237–38; on the definition of law, 128–29; on freedom of expression, 232–33; on liberty, 127, 238–39 Yalman, Ahmet Emin, 225, 238–39 Yirmisekiz Çelebi Mehmed Efendi, 30–31n101 Young Ottomans (Yeni Osmanlılar), 9, 10, 11, 85, 99, 115, 215, 238, 243, 246; mission of, 57; origins of, 56, 57; political thought of, 56–59 Young Turk Party, 140, 151, 181, 252; opening of new schools by, 159 Young Turk Revolution (1908), 10–11, 118– 19, 138, 147, 196; and constitutional modifications (separation of powers), 123–24; as a real revolution or not? 119–20 Young Turks, 9, 45, 113–14, 136, 192, 249; as advocates of gender equality, 96; association of with the Royal Military School (Mekteb-i Harbiye), 90; and the concept of injustice, 132; and the formation of the state as a war machine, 160–63; as the İttihat ve Terakki Cemiyeti (Committee of Union

and Progress [CUP]), 94, 100, 116, 118, 114n13, 123, 125, 126, 136, 139, 140, 158, 189, 197, 200, 233; origins of as the secret society İttihâd-ı Osmani (The Union of Ottomans) 92–93; political activism and reorganization of, 115–17; rejection of Turkism, nationalism, and religious fanaticism by, 97; view of Germany as the Ottoman Empire’s closest friend, 172–73. See also Parisian Young Turks; Second Young Turk Congress (1907); Young Turk Revolution (1908); Young Turks, idealism, republicanism, and positivist universalism of; Young Turks’ Committee Young Turks, idealism, republicanism, and positivist universalism of, 86–88; and the features of universal positivist ethics, 109–12; idealism and republicanism without a republic, 95–100; and laicity and morality as the foundation of a universal moral order, 107–9; reactions to positivist universalism, 112–13 Yunus Nadi. See, Abalıoğlu, Yunus Nadi Yurdakul, Mehmed Emin, 168, 171, 182, 193, 207 Yusuf Agah Efendi, 42 Yusuf Akçura, 150, 151, 159, 249; journals published under the supervision of, 151, 151n64; view of World War I, 170–71 Yusuf Ziya, 228 Yusuf Osman, 133 Zeynizade Mehmet Hazık, 127, 132–33, 137 Ziya Hurșit, 224 Ziya Pașa, 57, 58, 60n55, 74, 75, 78, 98, 122, 182; design of for a parliamentarian system, 71–72; hostility of toward Ali Pașa, 62n73; liberal Islamic republicanism of, 59–73; and moderate governments, 65–72 Zöhrap Bey, 120 Zürcher, Erik, 9, 86, 166–67

a noT e on T he T y pe

This book has been composed in Miller, a Scotch Roman typeface designed by Matthew Carter and first released by Font Bureau in 1997. It resembles Monticello, the typeface developed for The Papers of Thomas Jefferson in the 1940s by C. H. Griffith and P. J. Conkwright and reinterpreted in digital form by Carter in 2003. Pleasant Jefferson (“P. J.”) Conkwright (1905–1986) was Typographer at Princeton University Press from 1939 to 1970. He was an acclaimed book designer and aiga Medalist. The ornament used throughout this book was designed by Pierre Simon Fournier (1712–1768) and was a favorite of Conkwright’s, used in his design of the Princeton University Library Chronicle.