The Transformation of Turkey: Redefining State and Society from the Ottoman Empire to the Modern Era 9780755693030, 9781848856110

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This book came into being quite unexpectedly. It all started when I was asked to write a piece for what was going to be an edited volume on contemporary Turkey. At the time, I thought that the most sociologically significant phenomenon in Turkey was the rise of nationalism, accompanied by what many referred to as the Sèvres Syndrome. As a historical sociologist, I decided that this Syndrome originating in the Sèvres Treaty signed at the end of World War I, yet still impacting Turkey three-quarters of a century later needed further scrutiny. The further I investigated the Syndrome, the larger the project became: what was to be an article soon transformed into almost a small manuscript. This was yet another instance of how analyzing the current events of contemporary Republican Turkey inadvertently led one back into the Ottoman imperial past. Here was a pattern of continuity between the present Republican era and the imperial past. However, such continuity had often been overlooked by contemporary studies that tended, under the paradigm of the nationstate, to solely extend the origins of the Republican present to its birth in 1923 or to the preceding Independence Struggle in 1919. Yet almost all my work extended beyond the Republican era to the imperial one. The next logical step was therefore to depict the transformation of Turkey by combining all my pertinent studies around the Sèvres Syndrome analysis. And that is what I have done here. All the studies in this book have been written within the last decade. I reworked them all around the theme of the transformation of Turkey from an empire to a republic. Along the way, I have had many colleagues who were kind enough to read the various pieces and provide me with

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valuable feedback, colleagues too numerous to mention here, and I thank them all for their continuing support of my work. Yet I need to single out Ronald Grigor Suny and Hasan Bülent Kahraman who generously read the manuscript; I am grateful to them both. The shortcomings in all undoubtedly remain mine alone. I need to point out that what made the whole book flow seamlessly was the amazing copy-editing of Rachel Harrell-Bilici who very kindly and very patiently took out the glitches in the text; I thank her for her most remarkable work. Also very professional and attentive was my editor Maria Marsh at I.B.Tauris who kept on top of the whole project with great meticulousness. The fact that during the entire process she was in London and I in Ann Arbor did not at all seem to matter; the internet enabled us to communicate very effectively and productively. I therefore thank her for her terrific editing and hope to meet her one day to deliver my appreciation personally. For the great photograph on the book jacket, I am indebted to my friend and colleague Helin Anahit whose professional photographs never cease to amaze me; I am most grateful that she shared one of them with me. It has been a great privilege to work with these three great professional women who contributed so much to the book so constructively. I should also like to thank Andrew Ward, for designing the jacket for this book. This book is dedicated to the two wonderful people in my life, my children Alexander and Shira, who continue to bear the brunt of living with a professional single mother. Even though they did sometimes rightfully complain that I worked all the time, they were nevertheless always there for me with their great support, as they kept things in perspective, humored me with their delightful presence, and always provided me with much needed nurturance. In the process, they pointed out that they had not yet had any of my works dedicated to them: well, kids, here it is; this one is yours alone, with my boundless gratitude.

INTRODUCTION TURKISH TRANSFORMATION: FROM EMPIRE TO REPUBLIC – AND BACK?

The Turkish Republic has entered the first decade of the twenty-first century with not only a new government but also a new vision. The year 2002 witnessed the coming to power of the Justice and Development Party (hereafter JDP), a party that defined itself as conservative and democratic, yet was identified by its political opponents as religious and authoritarian. It has remained in power to this day, aiding a transformation in Turkish foreign policy. The national, secular vision set by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk a century ago is being replaced by a ‘neo-Ottoman’ one. The implementation of this vision has accelerated noticeably since the May 2009 appointment of Ahmet Davutoğlu as Foreign Minister. What does a neo-Ottoman vision for Turkey entail? According to Ömer Taşpınar, who has recently put the term back in circulation, ‘[i]nstead of imperial nostalgia, neo-Ottomanism is essentially about projecting Turkey’s “soft power” – a bridge between East and West, a Muslim nation, a secular state, a democratic political system, and a capitalistic economic force.’1 What stands out in this definition is that the East is brought in alongside the West, and the Muslim nation is separated from the secular state. Previously, nation and state were both regarded in the constitution as secular; at the same time, a focus on the West as the origin of secularization marginalized and often excluded the Eastern component. Indeed, as Taşpınar articulates, ‘Kemalism, which became the official ideology of the republic, ha[d] two main pillars, the first of which [was] a

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revolutionary and militant version of secularism ... [the second] ... assimilationist nationalism.’2 Even though the Turkish state was diligently shaped and maintained in accordance with these pillars, Turkish society never fully took to them, thereby necessitating the recent shift. Turkish state secularism was unable to publicly marginalize the significance of religion in Turkish society; its nationalism was likewise unable to fully assimilate the diversity of the populace. Yet it was the impact of the larger post–cold War global transformations on Turkey that finally broke the hold of the state on society. The ensuing shifts in the world order emphasized the significance of local identities and in the process destabilized the unifying, exclusionary hold of nationalism. As the nationalism that had for so long legitimated the state’s control over society waned, democratic participation escalated, in the process bringing formerly marginalized local identities to the center. Put another way, the Anglo-Saxon approach to democratic participation predicated on acknowledging particularities emerged triumphant over the continental one that instead prioritized the unifying forces of society. This shift has impacted different states and societies in disparate ways. In the Turkish case, it highlighted the inability of secularism and nationalism to contain social differences, thereby bringing about the interest in neo-Ottomanism as an alternative to Kemalism. Historical Origins of Kemalism and Neo-Ottomanism Unlike Kemalism, which has held sway over the Turkish state and society since the inception of the Republic neo-Ottomanism is still an untested vision. Even though Kemalism has been practiced for decades and there recently have been a number of scholarly analyses of what it actually entails, reflection on the role of the past in shaping Kemalism is still underdeveloped.3 This introduction argues that both Kemalism and neoOttomanism need to be analyzed in relation to their interpretations of the past. In the case of Kemalism, its fundamental principles of secularism and nationalism do not originate with the inception of the Republic but much earlier in the Ottoman Empire. It was the Ottoman reform efforts which began in the late eighteenth century that initially generated these principles. Likewise, neo-Ottomanism is predicated on principles of religion and multi-culturalism that originated in the structure of the Ottoman social order. Hence both Kemalism and neo-Ottomanism contain constitutive elements that necessitate a re-examination of the connection of Turkish

Introduction

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state and society to its past. Once again, Taşpınar recognizes the similarities of these two approaches when he states that ‘[b]oth share a strong sense of patriotism and attachment to the Turkish nation-state ... a state-centric view of the world and Turkish national interests.’4 But this statement is more an observation than an explanation. What such patriotism entails, how the attachment to the nation-state plays itself out, as well as how national interests are defined all remain unclear. It is only through the re-examination of Turkey’s connection to the past that these very significant elements defining Kemalism and neo-Ottomanism can be identified and properly explained. The roots of such an explanation go back to the conception of time inherent in the two visions. Kemalism was initially built on the protonationalist vision of the Committee of Union and Progress (hereafter CUP) of the Young Turks, who burst into the Ottoman public space with the 1908 Constitutional Revolution. As the name of the committee suggests, its defining force was progress. The idea of progress as such originated in the formulations of the French thinkers Auguste Comte and Emile Durkheim. Predicated on the Enlightenment vision that emphasized science over tradition, reason over religion, both Comte and Durkheim empowered citizens of the new states to determine their own destinies. They championed the prioritization of the present and the future over the heavy weight of the past. What they recommended was a revolutionary shift. Previously, the existing social order had legitimated itself by relying on the past. It re-created and sustained a social order set in place by a sacredness emanating from religious premises and beyond the reach of mere humans. For solutions to current problems, the old order looked to the idealized templates provided by religion. Empowered by the past, rulers set out to determine the present and the future. With the new, Enlightened vision, the citizens entered into a social contract with the state and essentially took over to create a new order, one that legitimated itself not by reliance on the past but instead on its promises for the present and future. For the first time, people started to believe that what had been achieved in the past was irrelevant to what they wanted to accomplish here and now. This revolutionary shift enabled Western Europe – where the movement originated – not only to establish control over its own societies and material resources but also to expand its control to the rest of the world through imperialist ventures. Later two World Wars and the collective violence inherent in these and other acts of expansion would reveal the flaws in this

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new social order. People set upon each other, destroying those who did not agree with the newly negotiated system. The destructive forces of secularism and nationalism became all too evident – and it also became evident that tradition and religion, although rooted in the past, could play a significant role in tamping down the violence of the present. The need for an alternate, more peaceful vision became especially salient in the post–Cold War era, once the collective violence had been somewhat contained. What is currently taking place in modern Turkey can be interpreted within the same framework. In the late eighteenth century, the Ottoman Empire commenced its reform efforts, hoping both to participate in and to counter the rising West. During the course of the nineteenth century, changes in education in particular produced a generation of Young Turks who were also endowed with a vision for their empire that drew strength not from its past but from the possibilities embedded in its present and future. They legitimated their rule through the promise of achieving a present and future predicated on the participation in the political system of all subjects as citizens. The ideological elements of secularism and nationalism played a role in articulating this vision. First, the rule of the Ottoman dynasty was delegitimated as the ancient order to be taken apart; in its stead, constitutional rule was instituted with the intention of establishing a strong Ottoman state, one that had already started to lose power against the rising West. The rebellions of various social groups within the empire eventually led the Muslim Turkish majority – whose dominance in Ottoman state and society had until then been naturalized – to take notice. The Young Turks, a constitutive element of this Muslim Turkish majority, started to draw attention to the ways various elements in the empire, especially the non-Muslim minorities (the Greek Rums, Armenians and Jews) benefited from imperial rule, supposedly at the expense of the majority. As the Young Turks started to define their nationalist Turkish identity in this manner, they set off down the road that would lead eventually to the elimination of those minorities through collective violence committed in the name of establishing a Turkish nation-state. The principles of this nation-state were defined by its founder Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. Mustafa Kemal was not only a former Ottoman general but also a Young Turk who reiterated and set out to actualize the vision first introduced to the empire by the CUP. The principles of secularism and nationalism defined the parameters of the young Republic,

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set explicitly not in the past, but in the present and the future. Such temporal emphasis also helped legitimize a Republican rule that consciously distanced itself from the immediate Ottoman past. In its stead, an imagined past based on the Turks’ distant Central Asian roots was promoted. Such a past explicitly underscored the ancient role the Turks played in civilizing the rest of the world. With this strategic move, the Republic reassured itself that the current Western European dominance had been made possible only through the imagined contributions of ancient Turkish civilization. It also delegitimated the claims over the Anatolian mainland made by the Greek Orthodox, Armenians, Kurds and Assyrians, all of whom considered Asia Minor their ancestral land. Yet the new national Turkish identity thus minted contained inherent contradictions. While it emphasized the racial and ethnic identity of the Turks throughout history, it initially attempted to define ‘Turkishness’ culturally and territorially. That is, the primary definition of a Turkish citizen initially comprised all those who lived within the Turkish Republic and culturally defined themselves as Turks, regardless of their ethnicity or religion. Over the course of the Republic, however, the ethnic and racial Turkish identity prevailed over the cultural and territorial one. The ethnic and religious minorities of the Republic were systematically excluded from positions of power. While such exclusion was firm in the case of the non-Muslim minorities – the now much-reduced populations of Greek Orthodox, Armenians and Jews – it was open to negotiation in the case of Muslim minorities like the Kurds and the Alawites. The latter could participate in the Republican power structure on the condition that they gave up their inherent identities for a Turkish one. It should be noted at this juncture that this was not what the Republic publicly stated but rather what emerged in actual practice. Sociologically defined, minorities comprise all those who do not share equally in what are considered to be sources of power in a particular state and society. Hence, even though Muslim groups like the Kurds and the Alawites were not formally considered minorities, they certainly emerged as such in practice: they were excluded from participating in the social structure on their own terms, alongside the dominant Sunni Muslim Turkish majority. Interestingly, this Turkish majority was the exact same dominant group that had ruled the Ottoman Empire. It emerged once again in the Turkish Republic but with a significant modification brought about by secularism. Initially, the secularist premises of the Turkish nation-state

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precluded the participation of those Turks within the dominant majority who publicly underscored their religious identity. Labeled conservative religious ‘Islamists’, this segment was initially marginalized and excluded from the Republican order. It was only with the gradual democratization of single-party rule and the changing world order that this segment joined the existing power structure. In the post–Cold War era, they started to participate in the world market and to become a veritable economic force; they then translated this power into a political one. With their support the JDP then managed to come to power in 2002. It was inevitable that JDP rule would bring with it a challenge to the Republican principles of secularism and nationalism that had initially relegated them to minority status. What gave them identity was defined by what had kept them apart: the emphasis on their public identity as Muslims. Public Muslim identity thus challenged the secularist boundaries of the Republic. The same conception also undermined the inherent assumption of Republican nationalism. The nation was an imagined community sharing a human-made cultural vision that gradually developed concomitant economic and political commonalities. Yet religion provided an alternate conception of an imagined community where participation was predicated on religious affiliation alone, implying a broader conception that theoretically included all Muslims comprising the umma’. The vision of such a community once again beckoned the vestiges of what had been the dominant religious majority in the Ottoman Empire, namely the Sunni Muslims. It is therefore structurally not at all surprising that visions of the Ottoman past once again made it to the forefront of current public discussions in Turkey. Yet such an alternate domestic vision was also fueled by international developments. Taking stock of what the Republic had initially promised and what it had managed to deliver, many Turks – especially after the retrospection occasioned by the Republic’s seventy-fifth anniversary celebrations in 1998 – were dissatisfied with the nation’s achievements. The Republican shortcomings sprang even more clearly into focus with the advent of Turkey’s membership process in the European Union (hereafter EU). The often vicious criticisms Turkey faced during the ensuing EU negotiations were compensated by a nostalgic turn to the past. Given the Republican failures in achieving the progress it had initially promised, the insecurities felt by the Turkish populace could be alleviated with a vision that emphasized the immediate Ottoman past that had for so long been silenced.

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Contemporary Components of Neo-Ottomanism The JDP interest in the Ottoman past as advocated by its current neoOttoman vision is, however, not limited to this political party alone. Turkish society at large is also becoming increasingly interested in its immediate past. Recently, journalists have noted how ‘Ottomania’ has gripped modern Turkey, ‘harking back to an era marked by conquest and cultural splendor during which sultans ruled an empire stretching from the Balkans to the Indian Ocean and claimed the spiritual leadership of the Muslim world.’5 The cultural expressions of this Ottomania cover a wide spectrum. For instance, during Ramadan, the international hamburger chain Burger King offered a special sultan menu featuring popular Ottoman dishes; the youth at dance clubs wore T-shirts emblazoned with slogans like ‘The Empire Strikes Back’. Also, Ottoman-themed films such as ‘The Last Ottoman,’ which featured the daredevil actions of heroes during World War I, and ‘Ottoman Republic,’ a comedy suggesting what daily life would look like in modern Turkey if the Ottoman sultans were still in charge, started to draw large crowds.6 Likewise, the gift shop of the municipal-run ‘Panorama 1453 History Museum,’ devoted to the Ottoman conquest of İstanbul, featured cuff links with the Ottoman imperial seal as well as a ‘1,000-piece puzzle showing Mehmed the Conqueror entering Constantinople on horseback’. Such an imagined past also traveled to the present when, at a recent government rally, one enthusiastic supporter unfurled a banner proclaiming the JDP prime minister Tayyip Erdoğan ‘the last sultan’. Yet these cultural expressions comprise just one facet of the recent emergence of the Ottoman past: the economic aspect has been just as significant.7 According to the official Turkstat agency, the Near and Middle East accounted for almost 20 per cent of Turkey’s total trade in 2009, up from 12.5 per cent in 2004. This was accompanied by escalating investment of Turkish conglomerates in the region. For instance, the mobile operator Turkcell currently has interests in Central Asia, Georgia and Moldova; the beer production and distribution company Anadolu Efes recently controls almost 10 per cent of Russia’s beer market, and is in negotiations to start the production of non-alcoholic beer in Iran. The construction group Limak is likewise involved in projects in the Persian Gulf, North Africa and Eastern Europe. Trade with Turkey’s eight nearest neighbors – including Syria, Iran and Iraq – has nearly doubled between 2005 and 2008, going from $7.3 billion to $14.3 billion.8 Also

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noteworthy is the export of cultural products into the Middle East, especially Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Saudi Arabia, in the form of soap operas and popular songs produced by various state and privately owned Turkish companies.9 The songs are then dubbed into local dialects to be marketed to an ever-growing Arab audience. Another significant facet of neo-Ottomanism is political. Turkey’s redefined political role is best summarized by Ömer Taşpınar:10 In a remarkable departure from its policy of non-involvement, Turkey is once again becoming an important player in the Middle East. In recent years, Ankara has shown a growing willingness to mediate in the Arab–Israeli conflict; attended Arab League conferences; contributed to UN forces in Lebanon and NATO forces in Afghanistan; assumed a leadership position in the Organization of Islamic Conference and established closer ties with Syria, Iran, and Iraq. This recent expansion in Turkey’s spatial vision to once again engage with the former lands and neighbors of the Ottoman Empire contains within it a new definition of Turkish identity, one that draws strength from its Ottoman past. This renegotiation is significant because of Turkey’s location within the world order:11 Home to more than 70 million Muslims, Turkey is the most advanced democracy in the Islamic world [and the Middle East, alongside Israel – FMG]. It has borders with Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bulgaria, Georgia, Greece, Iran, Iraq, and Syria. It is the corridor through which the vast energy reserves of the Caspian Sea and Central Asia pass to the West – the only alternative being Iran [and Russia]. A stable, Western-oriented, liberal Turkey on a clear path toward the EU would serve as a growing market for Western goods, a contributor to the labor force Europe will desperately need in the coming decades, a democratic example for the rest of the Muslim world, a stabilizing influence on Iraq, and a partner in Afghanistan. Hence the consequences of this renegotiation could ultimately impact not only the region but also the future course of negotiations among the EU, the Islamic world and the United States. The three elements

Introduction

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that are so far identified as constituting the foundations of this new neo-Ottoman political stand are ‘the willingness to come to terms with Turkey’s Ottoman and Islamic heritage at home and abroad ... a sense of grandeur and self-confidence in foreign policy ... [and] its goal of embracing the West as much as the Islamic world.’12 The most significant shift here entails the renegotiation of Turkey’s Ottoman and Islamic past. This is so because the other two, namely grandeur and self-confidence and the dual embrace of the West and the East are simply the end-results of such a renegotiation. The only clues as to how this renegotiation will politically play itself out lie in the recent public declarations of Turkish state officials. In explaining this recent complex rise of neo-Ottomanism, the director of the Topkapı Palace and noted historian İlber Ortaylı offers that the ‘Turks are attracted to the heroism and the glory of the Ottoman period because it belongs to them’.13 Even though this declaration further confirms the permanent arrival of the Ottoman past into the Turkish present, it presents an idealized version of that past, one that selectively emphasizes its heroism and glory. Indeed, such a selective stand is reiterated by the current declarations of various Turkish state officials. Trade Minister Zafer Çağlayan noted in the opening of a Turkish consulate in northern Iraq that ‘[t]oday we, children of the Ottomans, are here to show interest in the development of Mosul just as our ancestors showed centuries ago’. Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmed Davutoğlu likewise stated in Spain that ‘[y]ou cannot understand the history of at least 15 European capitals without exploring the Ottoman archives.’14 Probably the most significant declaration was made by the Turkish Minister in charge of EU affairs who stated that ‘[t]he Ottoman Empire conquered two-thirds of the world but did not force anyone to change their language or religion at a time when minorities elsewhere were being oppressed ... Turks can be proud of that legacy’.15 Such selective views of Turkish officials overlook the violent underbelly of the Ottoman past, which has been imported unquestioned into the present. Outline of the Book The essays in this volume critically examine the often dark legacy of the Ottoman past within the Republican present. In Part I, four essays articulate the various contexts within which the Ottoman legacy appears in contemporary Turkish state and society. The first essay surveys the tensions

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that develop in contemporary Turkey as the silenced historical legacy shapes current social, political and economic practices.16 The second essay focuses specifically on Turkey’s foreign policy obstacles; it argues that the problems emanating from the Cyprus, Armenian and Kurdish issues all initially originated during the Ottoman era, specifically as a consequence of the 1878 peace treaty signed with Russia at the end of the Ottoman war.17 The third essay concentrates on the centennial of the 1908 Young Turk constitutional revolution, analyzing its contemporary legacy.18 The normalization of nationalism within Turkish state and society in general and the accompanying collective violence in particular emerge as its stillunacknowledged heritage. The fourth essay takes note of the Sèvres syndrome still affecting contemporary Turkey, a syndrome that exhibits itself as the interpretation of all Republican interactions within a framework of fear and anxiety.19 It discusses how and why the syndrome emerged and suggests ways to alleviate it. In all, the essays in Part I point to the complexity of the Ottoman historical legacy, specifically its unaddressed dimensions of fear and violence. Part II focuses on developing an alternate Republican vision, one that takes into account not only the glory and heroism of the Ottoman past but also its silences with regard to the inherent collective violence practiced against minorities. All three essays in this part specifically focus on the 1915 Armenian deportations and ensuing massacres. The fifth essay studies the current emergence of Turkish Armenian literature in translation.20 Even though Armenians in Turkey have always had a vibrant literature, this literature has only within the last two decades been translated from Armenian into Turkish. The discussion of the reasons for the translation project occurring at this particular juncture is followed by an analysis of the way Turkish Armenian authors negotiate their past collective trauma. The issue of how Turkish state and society ought to negotiate the collective violence against the Armenians embedded in their past is tackled in the sixth essay.21 The main argument is that the deaths of Armenian intellectuals on 24 April 1915 comprised a tragic loss not only for the Ottoman Armenian community, but also for the ancestral land of Anatolia that Turks and Armenians shared. The essay suggests that the first step toward acknowledgment and reconciliation is the restatement of such tragic Armenian deaths within the framework of a common history uniting both Turks and Armenians. The seventh and final essay expands on the second step toward acknowledgment and reconciliation.22 It researches the just Turks who actually resisted the 1915

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Armenian deportations and ensuing massacres at the cost of their own lives. Turkish history is replete with such Turks who resisted the violent CUP vision that has persisted in Turkey to this day. The essay specifically calls for systematic research into the lives and circumstances of such just Turks because it would enable Turkish state and society finally to successfully negotiate the heretofore unacknowledged collective violence embedded in their past. Taken together, the essays in this book present a new reading of the transition from the Ottoman Empire to the Turkish Republic. Unlike the current neo-Ottoman shift in Turkish foreign policy, which is predicated selectively on an imagined past of heroism and glory, it provides a more nuanced understanding of the Ottoman past, one that particularly emphasizes the legacy of collective violence. It first articulates this legacy, then provides, in the case of the 1915 Armenian deportations and ensuing massacres, an alternate position for the Turkish Republic, one that acknowledges the legacy and builds a path to reconciliation. Only a nuanced negotiation of the Ottoman past – one that recognizes, alongside the heroism and glory, the violence and resistance that took place – will make it possible for Turkish state and society to chart a serene course through the twenty-first century.

CHAPTER 1 SURVEYING CONTEMPORARY TURKEY: A COUNTRY OF SOCIAL TENSIONS ROOTED IN THE PAST

The most significant characteristic that distinguishes Turkey today is the tense coexistence of the Ottoman past and the Republican present. This tension has diffused into its political structure (where a popularly elected Islamist government, in power over the only secular state in the world with a 99 per cent Muslim population, has recently been accused of developing an expansionist neo-Ottoman foreign policy), its personal rights (where even though the constitution guarantees the right to education to all its citizens, women wearing the Islamic headscarf on the grounds that it is their traditional attire have been banned from getting an education) and its spatial politics (where women dressed in miniskirts – a symbol of the modern Turk – are just as likely to be marginalized in Islamist coffeehouses as those in Islamic attire are in Western-style discotheques). Understanding the dynamics of this schizophrenic coexistence in contemporary Turkey – where one segment of society defines itself as the epitome of the present, in terms of modernization, civilization and Westernization, while the other segment legitimates its lifestyle and especially attire through a romanticized version of the Ottoman past – has become even more urgent in the post 9/11 world, especially in the context of the war we are currently fighting ‘to bring democracy to Islam.’ Since contemporary Turkey has spent a long time negotiating the uneasy relationship between a traditional past

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often portrayed in terms of religion and ‘authentic’ culture and a secular present predicated on Western modernity, its experience needs to be studied in more depth. Most of the scholars who specialize in the Middle East have studied this issue not diachronically – in terms of the past versus the present – but rather synchronically – as a question of the commensurability of Western democracy with ‘Islam’.1 In their approach, they highlight the structural and institutional conditions necessary to bring about a truly participatory political system. What such analyses frequently overlook is the cultural spectrum of meanings that emerge in these societies across time and space; thus Islam and democracy are often treated as a-temporal monolithic concepts that are not molded by particular societies.2 Arguing that it is specifically this cultural spectrum that determines a particular political outcome, this essay focuses on the formation and transformation of meanings in contemporary Turkey. Doing so not only allows us to assess Turkey’s major social actors and institutions from the moment of their arrival in the Middle East but also to explore the meanings these actors and institutions created around themselves as they lived through history. Hence it reveals how much of what is publicly discussed and contested in Turkey today is a consequence of negotiations that span across time and space, from the Ottoman principality and subsequent empire to the Republican present. Yet a disclaimer is necessary at this juncture: the main question of the essay is posed in terms of a tension between past and present for heuristic reasons. There are of course many instances when the two are intermixed – as, for instance, in the case of the economy, where such tension is reduced. In addition, what currently exists is not, as some scholars claim,3 ‘a clash of civilizations’, but rather their ‘coalescence.’ The analysis of contemporary Turkey demonstrates how different elements from past and present merge into a complex mosaic, one whose pattern urgently needs to be identified to allay the world conflict we are currently enmeshed in. The origins of the shape, style and content of that mosaic have been dominated, this essay argues, by the European Enlightenment and the modernity project it infused into the rest of the world.4 Turkey as one such country embarked on this negotiation in the eighteenth century while still an empire. After the Ottoman Empire, which grappled with the forces of modernity throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, slowly dissolved, the Turkish nation-state that was erected in its place continued the struggle into the twenty-first century.

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The Transformation of Turkey Historical Antecedents of the Turkish Republic: The Emergence and Rise of the Ottoman Empire

The history of the Turkish Republic in Anatolia – which the Turks, under the influence of nationalism, came to define as their national homeland in the nineteenth century – can be traced back to the tenth and eleventh centuries, when adverse climatic conditions in Central Asia led to the initial westward migration of Turcoman tribes into the Fertile Crescent. Seeking to contain this volatile population, the settled urban Islamic empires of the region employed some of the tribesmen as mercenaries and gradually directed the rest away from the urban centers toward their northern frontiers with the Byzantine Empire. During the process of migration, these nomadic tribes adopted Islam in place of their shamanistic religions. It should be noted that this somewhat late conversion of Turks to Islam was to become and remain a significant factor employed by Arab communities in the region whenever they wanted to delegitimate the Turkish rule that was eventually established over their lands. The organized raids carried out by these nomadic tribes into the Anatolian territories of the weakening Byzantine Empire eventually led to the formation of many Turkic principalities at the expense of the Byzantines. The principality closest to the Byzantine Empire, which was established circa 1299 in Nicea, would eventually transform into the dynasty of the house of Osman, later known as the Ottoman Empire. This particular principality came into being as the Turks gained a foothold in the region: first by serving the Byzantine emperor as mercenaries, and later by forming strategic alliances with the local Byzantine potentates against him. The fourteenth and fifteenth centuries witnessed their expansion at the expense of both the other Turkish principalities and the Byzantine Empire5. The Ottoman mode of expansion was always westward. Although initially driven by their preference for conducting raids against the infidel Byzantines instead of the other Turkish Muslim principalities, this choice eventually took on symbolic weight as the Ottomans continued to define their identity in relation to Europe. Their choice of imperial capitals demonstrates this orientation: the Ottoman capitals moved westward from Nicea to Bursa and later to Adrianople (Edirne) in the Balkans. After surrounding it from both the east and the west, the Ottomans eliminated the Byzantine Empire in 1453 with the conquest of Constantinople, which they immediately made their capital. It would

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remain so until their demise in 1922. Their westward orientation would later elicit the criticism – one that they themselves would at some times agree with and at others contest – that they were never truly ‘Islamic’ in character. It is interesting to note in this context that through the 600-year rule of the Ottoman dynasty, none of the Ottoman sultans ever undertook the Islamic obligation defined as one of the five pillars of Islam: not one Ottoman sultan conducted the pilgrimage to the Holy Lands of Mecca and Medina, even though they were a part of the Ottoman imperial territories for many centuries.6 Yet the structure of rule established in the Ottoman Empire naturalized the superiority of Muslims in society.7 Only the Muslims could bear arms, rise politically to the ranks of the ruling elite and pass these privileges on to their offspring. Still, the Ottoman Empire granted many social, economic and political privileges to the non-Muslims living amongst them based on the religious principles of the sharia, privileges that were particularly significant at a time when such religious minorities were being persecuted throughout Europe. The Ottoman administration was able to do so through the establishment of the millet system, whereby the imperially designated Ottoman minorities – Greek Orthodox (also termed the Rum), Armenians and Jews – were given the right of selfgovernance in return for the economic responsibility of paying a special poll tax (cizye) that was levied in return for military protection and the legal responsibility of the communal leaders to the Ottoman sultan for the actions of their particular communities.8 Fully integrated into the empire economically, the Ottoman minorities could also hold significant administrative posts, especially as they pertained to finance. Yet unlike the Muslims, the political privileges they had thus attained were restricted to their persons alone because their social contact with Muslim society at large was carefully regulated.9 Not only did the Ottoman minorities wear specific attire that visibly marked them as non-Muslim, but they could not pass the political privileges they had attained on to their children. The latter was due to the fact that marriage and therefore inheritance across the non-Muslim/Muslim divide was strictly forbidden. No one who converted from one side to the other could either carry or ever have access to resources from the other side. Converting away from Islam was a nonissue; until the end of the nineteenth century, such people were immediately executed by the state. However, the minorities were allowed to fully integrate into Ottoman Muslim society at large only by converting to Islam and thereby giving up all their communal ties. Still, the presence of

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The Transformation of Turkey

this Western element in their society endowed the Ottoman Empire with especially economic momentum that supported their rapid expansion in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The eastward expansion of the empire fully commenced in the sixteenth century, mostly at the expense of the Persian Empire, the Mamluks of Egypt, and other local Islamic states. The Ottoman defeat of the Mamluks in 1520 was particularly significant in that the Ottoman sultans captured and brought to Constantinople the symbolic post of the Islamic Caliphate, which had until then been held by the rulers of Egypt. In doing so, the Ottoman Empire attained the symbolic leadership of the Muslim world, a post held until 1924 when the newly formed Turkish Republic abolished the Caliphate. It is interesting to note at this juncture that in a televised message transmitted by Al-Jazeera, Osama bin Laden traced the start of the demise of the Muslim world at the hands of the West to the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire and the abolition of the Caliphate. The Onset of the Ottoman Retraction and Increased Interaction with the West The Ottoman state established an empire whose boundaries extended at its height from the gates of Vienna in the west to the Arabian Peninsula in the east to the shores of North Africa in the southwest. Scholars often trace the commencement of the period of imperial retraction to the unsuccessful siege of Vienna in 1699; indeed, the Ottoman Empire was able to expand until it encountered similar imperial powers: the emerging AustroHungarian and Russian Empires in the west and the Persian Empire in the east thus served to delimit the Ottoman borders. The eighteenth century, which saw the continuation of this retraction, was also the period when the Ottoman state, cognizant of the European Enlightenment and the subsequent political, economic and military transformations there, became interested in reforming the empire along Western lines.10 It was at this juncture that they sent the first Ottoman ambassador to the court of Louis XV ‘to observe Western civilization and report on what could be learned and applied from it.’ This encounter is analyzed in depth in my first book, East Encounters West: France and the Ottoman Empire in the 18th Century. While the impact of this encounter in France was limited to the appearance of a brief fashion of Turquerie in the French court, it led in the Ottoman Empire to the eventual transformation of

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the entire social structure. As military victories produced and sustained empires, the first institution the Ottoman state set out to modernize – a term which eventually became synonymous with being Westernized – was the military. In order to maintain a well-trained standing army in the European manner, it became necessary for the Ottoman administration not only to change military recruitment (connected in turn to the existing tax and land revenue systems, which also had to be reformed) but also to create military academies to educate the recruits, a special treasury to pay them and modern hospitals to heal them. These Western-style institutions adopted by the Ottoman state also came embedded with certain new ideas: the conceptions of liberty, equality and fraternity of the French Revolution being the most significant ones among these.11 The new social contract implied in these ideas was addressed not to imperial subjects but to potential citizens. These citizens had to have equal rights and responsibilities regardless of their religion and other communal identities as their loyalty was to be directed not to an omnipotent sultan, but instead to the abstract notion of a state that respected their rights. It was therefore not surprising that once the Ottoman state introduced these Western-style institutions, the Ottoman military students who received this education gradually started to aspire to the equality of all Ottoman subjects and to profess loyalty not to the person of the sultan, as they had formerly, but instead to the idea of an Ottoman constitutional state that would represent them all.12 As this new social contract required individuals to construct their political and social identity as citizens, the first step in the transition from imperial subjecthood to citizenship commenced with attempts to formulate an Ottoman constitution, initially during the period of reform referred to as the Tanzimat, which began in 1839. Efforts to formulate an Ottoman assembly followed soon after in 1856. Not surprisingly, it was the Ottoman military cadre now educated in Western-style military academies that spearheaded the reform movement and, in the process, became more and more involved in politics.13 Yet there was another significant social group that was affected by the European ideas of education and political representation, namely the Ottoman religious minorities – the Jews, the Rum and the Armenians. They likewise started to insist on political equality and full access to the Ottoman state bureaucracy and administration.14 Of these two social groups – the military cadres and the minorities – the military had a much more central location in Ottoman society and greater power within the Ottoman state; when the sultan was

18

The Transformation of Turkey

found lacking in promulgating the necessary reforms, it was therefore the young Westernized military cadres, named the ‘Young Turks,’ who intervened in 1908 to replace him. They also reopened the Ottoman parliament, which had been instituted in 1876, only to be disbanded by Sultan Abdülhamid II. From that point onward, the state and the sultan – who once had represented the state in his person – were obliged to share political power with the military, especially after the 1913 coup when a group of Young Turks led by Enver Pasha took over the seat of the government. It is this early participation of the military in politics and in democratic reform that explains the still pervasive and dominant role of the current Turkish military in the political system. The burgeoning political identities of the Westernized military cadres and the religious minorities developed in similar yet different directions. While both social groups attempted to sustain the concept of a multicultural Ottoman identity, the increasing European presence in the domestic affairs of the empire as well as both groups’ search for an identity from within their own past – identities that had developed in disparate dimensions because of the dynamics of the millet system – led to disparate visions and solutions. My edited volume Social Constructions of Nationalism in the Middle East focused on the emergence of these disparate solutions as it comparatively analyzed the Greek, Armenian, Turkish and Arab nationalisms from within the Ottoman Empire. Even though the dynamics of each nationalism was almost a carbon copy of every other, each nevertheless imagined its own to be totally unique and exclusive of the others. As the Turkish Muslims had been the dominant ruling element of the empire, it was eventually Turkish nationalism that triumphed in the early twentieth century at the expense of all the others. Even though the ruling Muslim Turkish elite attempted to hold on to a unifying Ottoman identity that would have sustained the empire, the 1911–12 war in Tripoli against the Italians, the 1912–13 Balkan wars and eventually World War I (1914–18) polarized national identities to the point of no return. The Balkan wars were especially significant in this polarization: when the Ottomans were defeated by the Balkan powers, hundreds of thousands of Muslim Turks who had been living in the Balkans since the fourteenth century had to flee to the Ottoman capital to avoid being massacred. They were gradually settled in the central lands of the empire, namely in Anatolia, also referred to as Asia Minor. Yet these Anatolian lands comprised the homelands of the emerging Greek and Armenian nationalisms as well. With the surge of incoming Muslim Turks, the

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Ottoman state – now under the sway of Turkish nationalism – gradually eliminated the local Greek, Armenian and Arab populations, replacing them with their ethnic co-religionists.15 Toward the Demise of the Ottoman Empire The issue of how and why the dynamics of Ottoman Westernization were not able to preserve the empire from the eighteenth century onward formed the main research question of my book, Rise of the Bourgeoisie, Demise of Empire: Ottoman Westernization and Europe. Throughout Europe, the European Enlightenment and the ideas it fostered had advantaged the newly emerging bourgeoisie in spearheading the ensuing transformations. What distinguished the burgeoning Ottoman bourgeoisie from the European one, however, was its multi-ethnic character. The original Ottoman bourgeoisie comprised the minorities, whose access to economic capital (due to their structural restriction to urban commercial activities within the empire) and connections with Europe enabled them to establish many joint companies, banks and industrial enterprises. Yet, unlike their Turkish Muslim counterparts who specialized in either the military or the state bureaucracy, the Ottoman minorities did not have the social and political capital that would have enabled them to sustain and reproduce their economic transformation of the empire. In addition, the millet divide predicated on the dominance of the Muslim Turks structurally prevented the Ottoman minority bourgeoisie from uniting forces with their Muslim Turkish counterparts to instigate a bourgeois revolution. Instead, the newly forming Ottoman Turkish bureaucratic bourgeoisie gradually eliminated the Greek, Armenian and Jewish minority bourgeoisie under the banner of nationalism and, by doing so, destroyed the only chance it had not only of preserving the empire but also of sustaining its commercial and economic development. What instead emerged at the end of the empire and over the life course of the republic was a state-dependent bourgeoisie robbed of its revolutionary potential.16 The process of elimination took place in the following manner: on the eve of World War I, the Ottoman Empire was governed by the Committee of Union and Progress (hereafter CUP), which consisted mainly of Westernized mid-level Turkish Muslim military and bureaucratic officials. The leaders of the Committee were without exception Muslim Turks of Balkan origin who no longer had a home to return to, as these lands

20

The Transformation of Turkey

had been lost during the Balkan wars. In addition to their fervent Turkish nationalism (adopted as a logical means of self-preservation), these ‘modern’ men had also received an Enlightenment education. They formed their organizations in accordance with Auguste Comte’s conception of ‘progress,’ thereby marginalizing the former Ottoman legitimating ideology of tradition, dynasty and religion in the name of secular science: nationalism and science emerged as the two guiding principles of their new conception of rule. It was at this juncture that the Ottoman Empire joined World War I on the side of the German and Austro-Hungarian Empires. During the war, nationalism took further root in the empire as the Turkish Muslim majority not only emphasized its dominance but marginalized the minorities as threats to the continuation of the status quo. From the late nineteenth century onward, the English, French and Russian states had started to exploit the allegedly deplorable condition of the Ottoman minorities to intervene in the affairs of the Ottoman Empire. Yet during World War I, all three had de facto become the enemy, thereby losing their ability to oversee and protect Ottoman minorities. In the meanwhile, the quickly shrinking empire led the dominant Muslim Turkish majority to fear for its own extinction and engage in unchecked ethnic cleansing of the Rum and Armenian minorities. The Ottoman Armenians were especially hard hit because, unlike the Rum who were ethnically, religiously and linguistically close to the Greeks (who had long since acquired their independence from the Ottoman Empire), they did not have a homeland where they could seek refuge. In addition, as Greece did not enter World War I until the summer of 1917, the Central Powers – including the Ottoman Empire – could not afford to alienate a potential ally by including the Rum in the deportations. The CUP did, however, engage in covert activities under the leadership of Celal Bayar (who later served as the president of the Turkish Republic) to drive them away by physically attacking them and burning down their residences and shops at night. It is no accident that the same Celal Bayar was president during the 6–7 September 1955 incidents, when the government indirectly instigated a pogrom against the minorities in major Turkish cities. The dominant Turkish Muslim majority justified their aggression against the minorities by stating that they did not serve in the military – a lucrative privilege the Muslims had initially set aside for themselves to keep the minorities from having access to resources; however, one that quickly became a liability when the empire started to shrink rapidly. When confronted with this reality, the dominant Muslim Turkish

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majority refused to study the historical origins of the problem and instead chose to believe and promote the rhetoric that the minorities survived wars and prospered at the expense of the Muslims, who became cannon fodder. The minority’s accumulation of wealth was looked upon unfavorably especially by Muslim refugees fleeing from either the Balkans or the Caucasus as a consequence of Russian expansion and wars. Such minority wealth, most visible in the urban centers, was first frowned upon and then sanctioned; the minorities were eventually deported or forced to flee. Their confiscated property and goods were distributed among the Muslim Turks who then proceeded to establish the national Turkish bourgeoisie. The initial informal deportation of the Greeks, the 1915 deportation and massacres committed against the Armenians, the deportation of the Rum through population exchange, and later the migration of the Jews to Palestine rapidly altered the composition of the Ottoman population. The Muslim Turks from the Balkans and the Caucasus were settled in the residences left behind by the Ottoman minorities. Gradually, the many-hued fabric of the Ottoman Empire turned into a monochromatic nation-state. The Formation of the Turkish Republic After the Ottoman Empire lost World War I with casualties in the millions, it was once again an Ottoman military official, originally from the now lost Ottoman Balkan city of Salonica, Mustafa Kemal (later given by the nation the last name Atatürk, ‘father of the Turks’) who was nominated by members of the now officially defunct Committee of Union and Progress to lead a War of Independence against the Allied Forces occupying the empire. Mustafa Kemal, a very able general with excellent strategic skills and vision, united the Turkish Muslim majority and successfully led them from 1919 to 1922 in ‘throwing the occupying forces’ out of what was considered to be the Turkish homeland. True to his Westernized military education, Mustafa Kemal first formulated a National Assembly in Ankara, away from the former imperial capital of Constantinople (also known as İstanbul). As the Allied Forces that occupied the capital forced the sultan and his government to bring the perpetrators of the massacres against the Ottoman minorities to justice and as they exiled many prominent Ottoman military and civilian officials responsible for these crimes to the island of Malta, those who were not arrested and apprehended escaped to Ankara to throw in their lot with

22

The Transformation of Turkey

the War of Independence led by Mustafa Kemal.17 The former members of the CUP thus fought yet another war, bringing their engagement in warfare since the conflict with Tripoli and the Balkans to a whole traumatic decade of incessant war from 1912 to 1922. The Turkish nationalist forces ultimately forced the Allied Powers to withdraw from the central lands of the empire. It was at this juncture that hostile action against Greece reached its pinnacle: the British had allowed the Greeks to invade Asia Minor to reclaim Western Anatolia as their own. The Turks thus fought the War of Independence mainly against these Greek forces; the islands of the Aegean quickly became points of contention between the two countries as each laid down their claims. Thus began the fractious relationship between Greece and Turkey that is still continuing today. The former lands of the empire left outside the boundaries of the new Turkish state were also beset with problems. In the Balkans the Serbs, Albanians, Greeks and Bulgarians further negotiated their territorial boundaries through conflicts that have continued until the present. In the East, the former provinces of the Ottoman Empire became the French and British protectorates of Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, the Emirates and Saudi Arabia. The Kurds who threw in their lot with the Turkish independence struggle in the central lands of the empire remained divided across three nation-states: while some remained in Turkey, others were within the lands of the new states of Iraq and Syria. It was the British division of these provinces – portioned out with more concern for natural boundaries than for ethnic and communal identities – that was to cause so much continued havoc in the Middle East. Syria has to this day not given up its claims on Lebanon; the Iraqi leader Saddam Hussain initially invaded Kuwait because he claimed those lands should have belonged to Iraq in the first place. Cyprus, which was occupied by the British, contained Greek and Turkish communities that have coexisted uneasily ever since. Hence all the current spots of conflict in the Middle East came into existence as a consequence of the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire. In Turkey, Turkish identity became the unifying force of the newly founded republic. The only institution that managed to survive the transition from the empire to the new nation-state almost entirely intact was the military which then formed, with the help of the state bureaucratic administration, the backbone of the new republic. What also distinguished the Turkish military was a sense of victory achieved

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as a consequence of the War of Independence; unlike the devastated European armies, the Turks emerged from World War I with an aura of triumph at having founded a brand new republic – even though the lands they now had were only about 10 per cent of what the Ottoman Empire had comprised half a decade earlier.18 As a consequence, the Turkish nation never had to reflect on its past and come to terms with the devastation the continuous wars had brought. Instead, what was emphasized by the official narrative of the new Republic was the triumphant establishment of a brand new nation-state against all odds. Furthermore, the governing ideology of this nation-state was to focus on the present and the future and to consciously forget the Ottoman past. Such a strategic move served a number of very significant functions: the legitimacy of the new republic was not challenged by the imperial past, which was quickly coupled in the foundation myth of the Turkish nation-state with moral decadence and retrograde tradition. Turkish citizens would also not dwell on the sheer size of the empire they had lost under the rule of the Committee of Union and Progress, particularly given that the former members of this committee were the ones who had both perpetrated collective violence against the minorities and also proceeded to establish the Turkish nation-state. The radical Republican break with the past thus obfuscated the collective violence embedded within the traumatic loss of lives and land, eliminating the responsibility of the leaders of the Republic in these endeavors. The person leading this progressive republic was the one who had united all the nationalist forces and succeeded in defeating the Allied Powers against all odds: Mustafa Kemal exchanged his military costume for the civilian suit of a statesman and set out to construct the new republic. His vision was very much formed by the reform attempts the CUP had formulated but never found the time to execute during their brief reign from 1908 to 1918. Mustafa Kemal’s fifteen-year rule – from 1923 when the Republic was formally established until his death in 1938 – was marked by a series of radical reforms.19 They were intended to transform Turkey into a secular, modern republic, its face turned unswervingly to Europe so as to join the ranks of the ‘civilized’ nations of the West. The legal system that theoretically constituted the basis of legitimacy of the new political rule was one of the first areas to be reformed. During the nineteenth century, a multiplicity of legal frameworks coexisted in the Ottoman Empire. Legal matters concerning the Westerners in the empire were settled in special courts by resorting to interpretations

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The Transformation of Turkey

of European law. Matters pertaining to Muslims were decided through Islamic laws based on the sharia, and laws promulgated by the sultan (kanun) when there was no legal precedent. In settling their legal issues, the Ottoman minorities had access to both their communal courts as well as the Ottoman courts. This multi-legal imperial structure was replaced by a new unified secular amalgam of laws borrowed from countries that seemed ‘most similar to Turkey in character’, namely commercial laws from Italy, civic laws from France and personal laws from Switzerland. Yet, since laws organically emanate from societal practices, adoption of the laws of other societies often creates a disjuncture as the populace cannot relate to the legal framework; this disjuncture is more of a problem in the rural countryside than in the urban centers, since urban dwellers who have been more thoroughly exposed to Western modernity are able to successfully cope with such adopted laws. The end result is the exclusion of the rural countryside from the grasp of law, with its inhabitants resorting to informal practices often based on earlier traditions. In addition, as these laws are adopted by the state, the impartiality of law is often compromised as the legal framework is interpreted by state officials. The second most important Turkish Republican reform entailed the unification of the educational system. The traditional Islamic education had coexisted with the new Western-style education and been complemented by minority and missionary education for the Ottoman minorities and foreigners: now all these systems were centralized into a single unit. Such centralization impacted the nature of knowledge production and diffusion in the country as the state once again controlled not only the educational institutions but also what was taught within them. The history of the Turkish Republic was narrated in all textbooks from elementary school to universities in accordance with the account Mustafa Kemal had delivered in a six-day long lecture.20 As with all accounts of the past, this one too interpreted the past from a particular vantage point, privileging the roles of some social actors in the Independence Struggle, such as the military and bureaucratic officials, while marginalizing and even dismissing the roles of others, such as the minorities, the Kurds and civilians. The narrative also advocated certain visions – like those of urban, secularly educated citizens – at the expense of others, such as those held by rural, traditionally religious and ethnically different citizens. This account also advocated secularism as the foundation stone of the modern present and the future; by doing so, it indirectly relegated religion and tradition to the past, as elements that obstructed modernity.

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Religion as a subject was initially removed from all schools except the university level, where it was taught as an academic subject offered solely to those specializing in religion. Even though it was certainly brought back after the 1950s, literally an entire generation grew up without access to any education on religion. This fact may partially account for the current social quandaries in Turkey on how to negotiate the boundaries of religion in the public sphere: many of those engaged in the debate have not had adequate education on religion. Instead, all the knowledge conveyed through the educational system was carefully crafted along secular nationalist lines. The immediate past was delegitimated and in its stead, a distant historical past was created for Turkey that went beyond the Ottoman Empire to the imagined lands of Central Asia. Likewise, the language was purified of ‘foreign’ influences and new words of Turkic origin were constructed. These significant structural reforms enabled the new Republican state to control the production and regulation of knowledge through education and of social behavior through law. They were complemented by a series of reforms that separated Turkey from those elements that had until then defined its cultural and political location in the world, namely its immediate past and its religion. The alphabet reform replaced the Arabic script with a Latin one, thereby effectively severing the epistemological ties of the Turks with their Ottoman past. This reform was accompanied by a calendar reform whereby the Muslim use of Friday as the day of rest was replaced by Sunday to be more like the ‘civilized’ countries of the West; the lunar calendar was replaced by the Roman, and traditional time keeping by the European system. The French Jacobin separation of church and state was adopted in toto, effectively removing religion from the public space into the private realm.21 Gone were the religious foundations, sects, orders; all religion in the public sphere was contained in the newly established Republican Office of Religious Affairs. Marriages, divorces, all legal arrangements concerning family life were no longer based on Islamic law but instead on the ‘civilized civic laws’ adopted from the West. Gone too were the religious attire of the sheikhs and other religious leaders; these could be worn only within the confines of the religious institutions. The attire of the new Republican citizen was likewise reformed: Mustafa Kemal gave a public speech in one of the most conservative Anatolian cities where he wore a hat and proclaimed, ‘This is called a hat, it is what the civilized Europeans wear, and what the Turks who are going to

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The Transformation of Turkey

join the ranks of civilized countries are to wear from now on.’22 Revolts against Western attire in general and the hat in particular – because its wide brim was deemed especially detrimental to performing the Islamic ablutions – were summarily put down with a number of public hangings. It is interesting to note that no such regulations of attire were introduced for women; instead, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk educated them by example: all the women he surrounded himself with in his retinue were dressed in accordance with the latest European fashion and wore no headscarves. Women were also immediately handed the right to vote and be elected without putting up a social struggle; they proceeded to join the workforce like their European counterparts in their desexualized business suits, their hair tightly bound in a chignon.23 My edited volume with Shiva Balaghi, entitled Reconstructing Gender in the Middle East: Tradition, Identity, Power, analyzed the dynamics of the Turkish feminist movement that developed in such a state-centered fashion. In all, the Republican state employed these reforms to create in place of a social structure based on the ‘traditional’ Ottoman Muslim past a totally secular social structure legitimated by the modernity of the civilized West, one that was manned by an urban secular citizenry that professed loyalty to the Turkish nation. Yet there was one significant flaw in this radical transformation: the reforms did not take hold throughout society and remained confined to urban centers and the newly burgeoning secular national middle class.24 The state also had to vigilantly guard the boundaries of secularism, since each and every political attempt to transition from the Republic’s initial single-party system to a multiparty one ended up mobilizing the masses around the issue of religion. The first two attempts to found an opposition party occurred during the reign of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk; in both cases, he handpicked some of his friends to form such parties against the Republican People’s Party (hereafter RPP), of which he had become the founder and the leader. Even though his friends argued25 that such opposition parties could take root in society only if they did not run against the party of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, and suggested that he consider stepping down from the leadership of the RPP to instead become the politically nonaligned president of the entire country, he chose to retain political control. Ultimately, as the opposition parties gained popular support and the populace started to turn

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increasingly against the RPP, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk had no choice but to shut down both parties. Transition to a Multiparty System and the Cold War A third, successful Turkish attempt to transition to a multiparty system occurred after the Second World War under the tutelage of İsmet İnönü, Mustafa Kemal’s trusted friend and fellow general, who had succeeded him after 1938 thanks primarily to support from the Turkish military. Even though official Turkish historiography narrates this transition as predicated on İnönü’s decision that the time had come for the RPP to educate the Turkish populace about acquiring a multiparty system, scholars26 point out that one other significant factor forced İnönü’s hand: Turkey would not have been permitted to join NATO had it not undertaken such a transition. Yet this process, which occurred after 1948, proved to be a rather difficult one. Once again, during the national elections, religion emerged as the main social issue around which the opposition mobilized. The newly established Democrat Party (hereafter DP) won the elections by a landslide and started to undertake a series of changes that aimed at decreasing the influence of the military. As there was not a strong leader like Mustafa Kemal Atatürk this time around to contain the increased popularity of the party and protect the privileges of the state bureaucracy, DP rule – marred also by increased violence against the populace and especially against those intellectuals who dared criticize the existing political system – ended in 1960 with the first military coup in the history of the Republic. The opposition party was once again harshly suppressed and a number of DP leaders were tried and hanged. It appeared that the lack of political tolerance that had plagued the CUP at the end of empire and had then carried over to the Republican era as former CUP members took their places in the new state27 as members of the RPP thus continued, with DP members who had originally split from the RPP practicing the same intolerance. This military intervention (on 27 May 1960) set a pattern that was to repeat itself approximately once every decade thereafter: 12 March 1971; 12 September 1980 and 28 February 199728 (some consider the 27 April 2007 military memorandum issued in the aftermath of the crisis over presidential elections yet another coup attempt). In all cases, the pattern was one and the same: the military ostensibly intervened to

28

The Transformation of Turkey

preserve the Republic, only to abolish the government; change the constitution; arrest, try and sentence dissidents; and punish party leaders, often by abolishing their parties. In all cases, however, their saving grace was that they then let elections be held, turned political power over to the elected government and left for their barracks. They left every time because of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk’s maxim that ‘the Turkish military should not get involved in politics and ultimately belongs in the barracks.’ Yet, ironically, it was another maxim of Atatürk’s that legitimated their intervention each and every time: ‘The military is the guardian of the Turkish republic.’ Each time, the grounds for intervention was a religious threat, as the military interpreted the political activities of opposition parties other than the RPP (those that were strong enough to challenge the RPP and not be shut down by the military through the legal system) as undermining the foundations of the Republic. The major issue in this context was of course the lack of accountability of the military; even though the military was allegedly under the control of the state, no one had the power to contest their interpretation and therefore their interventions. It should be noted at this juncture that Mustafa Kemal had initially identified another social group along with the military as the guardians of the republic – the Turkish youth. But since they had no arms, they could never accumulate enough power to exercise their historical right and responsibility. On the contrary, all attempts of the youth – especially in the late 1960s and early 1970s during the height of the student movement – were shut down by arrests and sometimes hangings.29 These acts of violence were justified by a legal system that did not support the freedom of thought and expression; thoughts considered detrimental to the well-being of the Turkish nation were deemed punishable by law. Hence most of the political activities of the Turkish youth were violently suppressed by the military and the governments they supported because of their leftist tendencies. Even though the major factor behind this sanction was the need to protect the existing political distribution of power, an equally significant one was the strategic alliance Turkey had chosen to form with the United States during the Cold War.30 Since Turkey had extensive borders with the Soviet Union, the United States government elected to form close political ties with Turkey to contain the Soviet Union and, in the process, advised Turkey, as it did many other governments throughout the world, to crack down on the domestic leftist movements under the assumption that all of these were formed

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with the intent of bringing about a revolution to establish communism. The flip side of this advice was the bolstering of rightist religious movements under the assumption that such movements were not revolutionary but conservative, and therefore geared to sustaining the status quo. The priority advised by the United States was stability rather than democratic participation that might challenge political stability. Hence the Turkish military suppressed and decimated the Turkish leftist movements – especially the leftist intellectuals – in the name of stamping out communism while fostering in its stead culturally conservative religious movements. Yet since the Turkish military was not willing to accept the presence in political life of religion as defined, interpreted and introduced by the populace, they instead formulated a nationalist civic version of Islam, which they termed ‘the Turkish–Islamic synthesis.’31 This version defined religion culturally in terms of the practices the Turks themselves had introduced to Islam; religion was to flourish only under the total control of the state and the Turkish nation it envisioned, rather than that of the community of believers. It is therefore not surprising that some retired generals were present among the founding members of the first predecessors of the Islamist parties that started to be established in the 1970s, leading eventually to the formation of the Justice and Development Party (hereafter JDP) that is now in power. With the decimation of the left and the nurturance instead of conservative elements, the military had so irretrievably tipped the balance of powers in Turkish society in favor of the conservative groups that soon it could not contain the increased political participation of what were now termed ‘the Islamists.’ So the military had to eventually abandon advocating ‘the Turkish–Islamic synthesis’ and once again started to actively oppose the Islamists, taking a very public political stand against them. They were aided in this endeavor by the RPP and all the other Turkish political parties that had formed and developed under state tutelage; all these parties supported the presence of the military in Turkish political life, as they had all started to lose significant segments of their voters to the upstarts. This veiled presence of the military in Turkish political life needs to be studied in further detail because the military is ironically still regarded as the major political force in Turkey today. It is a force that, according to some secular segments of the population, preserves democracy – while other segments, both the liberal and the more religiously oriented, contend that it very much hinders it. The military has always legitimated

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The Transformation of Turkey

its intervention in political life on the grounds of the historical role bequeathed to it by the great leader and founder of the republic, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. The generals have always claimed their interventions to be ‘above politics’ because they do not belong to any political party. The military has also put forward the argument that the officers’ eventual departure from the political sphere after each military intervention demonstrates that their actions were not based on their own interests but rather on the interests of the nation on whose behalf they claimed to have acted. Members of the military have further justified their frequent interventions on the grounds that it is the total lack of trustworthy, responsible politicians that forces them to take such action each and every time. All these arguments overlook, however, how such frequent military interventions infantilize the Turkish politicians by enabling them to assume political posts without bestowing upon them the power to take responsibility for the consequences of their actions. Hence, political accountability ends up never being transferred from the military to the politicians. In the meanwhile, the lack of accountability of the military enables them to sustain their expenditures at the expense of the taxpaying citizens; until very recently, the military decided its annual budget for the more than half-million strong army without any checks or balances. It has been estimated that the Turkish military gets about 65 per cent of the annual budget, with another 15 per cent going to the payment of International Monetary Fund loans, leaving the Turkish government with about 20 per cent on which to run the entire country. In addition, the Turkish military has led the world with their arms imports of $8 billion, 96 million during the 1990–95 period.32 Economic and Social Liberalization after the 1980s The last formal military intervention, which occurred in 1980, was different from the earlier ones on a number of levels. In an attempt to curb the ‘dangerous’ ideologies that seem to keep infesting Turkish society, the military decided instead to systematically spread the one ideology that kept legitimating their intervention, namely Kemalism. This official ideology penetrated every corner of the country as everything from roads to school buildings to parks became infused with the images of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, after whom the movement was named. Special institutions to study Kemalism were established at many universities; prizes were given for the best works on the great leader. Yet all these activities

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failed to engage in a critical dialogue with the essence of Kemalism and how it could meet the evolving needs of Turkish society; instead, the military promoted state ideology, upheld secularism and suppressed any critical analysis.33 Another major difference was that Turkey’s mixed economy had been dominated by state monopolies, and a state-protected domestic market and the national bourgeoisie faced serious crisis due to waning resources.34 The lack of market competition had bloated these monopolies and slowed down the economy, leading the revenues of the military to suffer. Strong economic measures were thus absolutely necessary to keep the country solvent. The military therefore permitted an economic liberalization policy, which was undertaken after the 1980 coup under the tutelage of a new conservative rightist political party, the Motherland Party (hereafter MP), led by a civilian, one-time state official and World Bank employee Turgut Özal.35 With this new policy, Turkey was to leave behind state protection over the economy and let its domestic industries face the challenges of the world markets. This liberalizing move was especially painful for the secular national bourgeoisie that had developed under the protective wings of the state and had supported the hegemony of the state and the military in the political sphere in return for profits in the economic sphere. Yet this bourgeoisie was particularly ill-suited for such a liberalizing move: having been brought into existence by the Turkish state through the confiscation of the wealth and businesses of the departing minorities, they initially lacked the skills to build and sustain commercial and industrial enterprises on their own. Moreover, their activities had been mainly confined to the domestic market where they faced no competition from international markets. Although this economic liberalization was, and still is, painful, it did nevertheless introduce two very significant new social forces into Turkish society: one was a newly empowered civil society, which came about with the abolition of state control over communications; the other was a new social group, the provincial Anatolian bourgeoisie, which arose in response to the opportunity to establish direct contact with global businesses without the mediation of the state. These forces worked in tandem in the following manner: as businesses needed to have direct access to information in order to compete in the world markets, the state monopoly over communications through radio, telephone and television had to be and was summarily abolished. In 1984, within months, hundreds of radio and television stations and later cellular phone companies mushroomed

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The Transformation of Turkey

throughout Turkey.36 Access to information brought along hours-long television chat shows on social issues, as the Turkish public for the first time saw and defined itself through the silver box. Radio stations transmitted messages of all sorts in all political colors, often ending up with hours-long discussions of the particular dynamics of Turkish society. As television cameras covered every corner of the country (particularly in the 1990s), it became ever harder to conceal both the complicit behavior of the bourgeoisie – often in the form of white collar crime – and the undercover intelligence activities of the military – often directed against its own populace and politicians. In this atmosphere of increasing scrutiny, the state apparatus and its codependent bourgeoisie now appeared more and more corrupt and compromised. The communications revolution and the opening up of world markets fueled the emergence of a new social group, a provincial bourgeoisie that had been marginalized by the state and big businesses for their relatively smaller size as well as their aspiration to define their identity through conservative values. This bourgeoisie was religious, but not traditional; it had been socialized in the secular educational system of the Republic with the ideals of Western modernity, and it ended up employing technology to the fullest. It therefore managed to develop what has since been called an ‘alternate modernity,’ one that combines a religiously conservative self-definition with technologically cutting-edge business acumen.37 The accumulation of economic resources by this new social group (aptly named the ‘Anatolian Tigers’ after the South East Asian economic tigers) ultimately enabled the political success of the JDP that is in power in Turkey today. Previous opposition parties in Republican history had always been formed with state approval and had drawn extensively on the resources and support of the state; in return, they had never been able to refuse state tutelage in their political actions. Yet the economic liberalization of the 1980s eventually produced a new bourgeoisie that could for the first time generate resources outside the control of the state. This bourgeoisie then invested these economic and social resources in a political party that developed in spite of fierce opposition both from the Turkish state and the military.38 Turkey’s Contested Location in the New World Order The JDP and its intellectual predecessor the Welfare Party (hereafter WP) advocated an economically liberal program that was targeted at both the

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religious and the secular segments of society.39 In addition, unlike the existing mainstream parties, these two developed new political tactics to form an extensive voter base. The WP and later the JDP studied cuttingedge US political campaign management skills; they generated computer data bases of voters, conducted opinion surveys every three months to pinpoint campaign issues and actively recruited party members.40 I personally remember how in 1990, when a Turkish colleague of mine and I conducted a survey of the Islamist movement in Turkey and wanted to compare our results with those we assumed had been collected by the political parties, we were surprised to find out that out of all of them, only the WP had conducted statistically rigorous surveys and could therefore provide comparative data for us. The rest had not engaged in such activities at all, as they were so comfortably supported until then by the state and the military. Yet, in spite of this political mobilization and technological sophistication, the leaders of the JDP seemed painfully aware that the party still remained at the mercy of the military in so far as the latter controlled both the state apparatus and the republican narrative that continued to portray the military as the ultimate guardian of Turkish democracy and secularism. In addition, the opening to the world markets had revealed more than ever the urgency for Turkey to join an economic consortium within which to weather the forces of the world market. Since Turkey had aspired from its inception to be a part of Europe, it had applied for European Union (hereafter EU) membership very early on, in 1963.41 The secular bourgeoisie wanted to join the EU because of the realization that its economic interests in the world market would be bolstered and protected within such a union. The Islamist bourgeoisie likewise saw the economic gain from such a merge; in addition, they regarded the EU as a political ally: since the EU promoted the exercise of democracy and human rights in all its member states, it would protect the right of JDP to remain in Turkish political life against the threats of the military. These threats had become especially significant after the post-1980 formation of the National Security Council (hereafter NSC) by the military to further exercise control over Turkish political life. This council dominated by the military functioned, and still functions, above the president, the National Assembly, and the confines of the legal system. It was no accident that one of the first stipulations of the EU from Turkey to qualify for membership was the abolition of the NSC; the military was naturally opposed to this on the grounds of national security.

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The Transformation of Turkey

Turkey’s potential EU membership has generated significant realignments within the Turkish political system. For the first time since the inception of their relationship, the state bureaucracy dominated by the military and the secular bourgeoisie they fostered ended up developing divergent interests: while the secular bourgeoisie realized that its interests lay with the EU, the state bureaucracy quickly became aware that any engagement with the EU would severely curb its power, both in terms of control over the economy (through the privatization of state monopolies) and over society at large (through the abolition of the NSC). Again for the first time, the economic and political interests of the secular and Islamist bourgeoisie became aligned: both wanted EU membership and aspired to bring democratic practices and political stability to Turkey in order to accomplish it. It is this political standstill, where the military finds itself on the wrong side of the global equation with respect to the secular bourgeoisie it fostered, that has enabled the current domestic political situation in Turkey to persist without the political intervention of the military. It is this political standstill that enabled the JDP to come to power and remain so to this day. Even though the portrayal above depicts EU membership as the panacea to all of Turkey’s problems, there are still significant obstacles to such a peaceful solution. The most significant obstacle lies within the structure of the EU: as member countries are politically represented in the European Assembly according to their population size, the very large Turkish population would automatically acquire significant political clout at the expense of the more experienced but smaller countries. Furthermore, the balance of powers between the southern and northern countries of the EU, which is now dominated by the northern powers (England, France, Germany, the Scandinavian countries) against the southern ones (Spain, Portugal, Italy) would shift to the advantage of the latter. In addition, Turkey has to fulfill a significant number of domestic reforms; it has to improve its human rights record, abolish trials for crimes of thought, enable the self-expression of ethnic and religious minorities such as the Kurds, Assyrians and the like, and also acknowledge the crimes committed against these and other minorities in history, especially those enacted against the Armenians and the Rum. The most significant obstacle to such a public acknowledgement of past and present crimes is the still-strong force of Turkish nationalism constantly fostered by the Turkish military and by the state bureaucracy they have trained and socialized after their

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own image. Any thought or action that might challenge or criticize the Republic is still punishable by law. Furthermore, Turks are constantly inundated with the nationalist rhetoric that the whole world is against them and they should therefore keep defending themselves and always expect the worst. It should be noted, however, that this nationalist instinct has recently begun to dissipate, as evidenced in the case of the devastating earthquake Turkey suffered in 2000 that led to more than 30,000 deaths. As rescue efforts were immediately brought under scrutiny, two facts became clear very quickly: the state bureaucracy was totally unprepared and ineffectual in mobilizing to help the victims42 and the military, instead of helping the populace, had employed its forces to first rescue and evacuate a military base. Emerging triumphant were civil society student organizations as well as non-profits that quickly set up social support networks. The Turkish nationalist rhetoric that Turks have no friends in the world was proven thoroughly wrong as help poured in from all over the world. Still, these developments are relatively recent and have not been there long enough to sustain the democratic forces in Turkish society. Conclusion Initially established in 2001 under the leadership of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who is still the prime minister of Turkey, the JDP, which defines itself as conservative democratic, received 34.6 per cent of the votes in 2002 and 46.7 per cent of the votes in 2007. Even though the party votes declined to 38.8 per cent in the 2009 local elections, JDP is still in government and is the strongest political party in Turkey. During its rule, it faced the threat of being shut down by the constitutional court in 2008 in the aftermath of the contentious presidential elections when a former JDP party member, Abdullah Gül, was elected president of the republic against staunch state and military opposition. The grounds for this threat of extinction were that the JDP had became the locus of all anti-secular activities, an interpretation based on JDP attempts the prior year to bring about a constitutional amendment in order to reinstate the rights of head-scarved women to receive an education. It was also complemented by the fact that most of the spouses of JDP members, including the wives of the present Prime Minister Erdoğan and President Gül are head-scarved and thereby contradict

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The Transformation of Turkey

the modern, secular image of Turkey the state and military bureaucracy aim to convey to the world. The continued success of the JDP is mostly predicated on its economic policies, which have enabled Turkey to be rather financially stable during the world economic downturn; its performance on social issues has been much more contested and problematic. The staunchly secular and Westernized military and their bourgeoisie still insist on defining Turkey solely as a modern, Westernized nation, one that has not, should and could not have the apparently religious identity espoused by the JDP – an identity they perceive as traditional, backward, and uncivilized. For them, since the West and its modernity has been defined in Enlightenment terms as the ultimate triumph of science over faith, of modernity over tradition, and of secularism over religion, being civilized means being European and certainly not religious. As they have been socialized in an educational system formulated after the radically secular Jacobin model of secularism, religion for them is the ‘other’ they do not know, an evil monster lurking within spidery cobwebs, one that could any moment emerge to drag and topple Turkey into nothingness. Even though they unwillingly acknowledge that the JDP government in Turkey has still not, to thi s day, brought about (as they constantly fear) a religious revolution like that one in Iran, they still believe all that to be a ‘clever disguise’ cloaking JDP’s true intentions of destroying the Turkish republic. It is still extremely challenging for the dominant secular state and its bourgeoisie to overcome this deep mistrust. In the meanwhile, the JDP has had to constantly profess its loyalty to Turkish secularism to allay this fear. Yet the JDP leaders have still not generated enough knowledge and accumulated adequate experience to define themselves in their own terms for what they are rather than what the secular bourgeoisie claim them to be. Their social policies have lacked vision: the conservative base within the party and the authoritarian environment within which they too were naturally socialized prevents them for acting upon the most fundamental problem in Turkey today, namely the lack of legal protection for the freedom of thought and expression. Overcoming this legal hurdle is necessary for Turkey to engage in a process of self-reflection in order to come to terms with its past and to recognize how that past has shaped and still continues to shape the present. The liabilities that emerge as a consequence of this shortcoming become increasingly evident in the manner in which the JDP conducts especially Turkey’s foreign policy: the 2009 appointment of Ahmet Davutoğlu as

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the Foreign Minister has brought about an increased engagement in nonWestern contexts, leading some to claim that Turkey has adopted a ‘neoOttoman’ 43 stand toward the world. Yet such a stand cannot be critically analyzed and evaluated without the ability of Turkey’s populace to learn and interpret that past. As it stands at the moment, the vision of neoOttomanism is predicated not on what actually occurred in the past and how that past has shaped the Turkish present but instead on what has been presented by the dominant official historiography as an imagined account, one that emphasizes former glories and virtues at the expense of the collective violence, prejudice and discrimination that was also part and parcel of that history.

CHAPTER 2 OTTOMAN ORIGINS OF THE ARMENIAN, GREEK AND KURDISH CHALLENGES TO TURKISH FOREIGN POLICY

In the contemporary era, where political legitimacy is predicated not upon the unreachable sacredness of divine law but rather the precarious profanity of its human-made version, the search of nation-states to both identify and control sites of legitimacy has become increasingly significant for their survival. The inherent political potential of alternate narratives of history to undermine the current status quo turns the past into one such site. It is therefore no accident that all nation-states systematically develop their own official narratives of history in an attempt to sustain their present rule through the control of the past. This chapter argues that in the case of contemporary Turkey, the nation-state has created an imperfect and faulty perception of historical reality. In so doing, it has impeded Turkey’s chances of becoming a truly participatory democracy, because failure to confront the past leads to the reproduction of the patterns of collective violence, prejudice and discrimination contained therein. A case in point is the foreign policy issues that the modern Turkish Republic currently faces; Turkey’s failure to confront and identify the historical origins of these issues continues to negatively impact the international standing of the country to this day. The three major foreign policy problems currently faced by the Turkish nation-state are the massacres of the Armenians in the past, the treatment of the Kurds at present and the contested partition of the island of

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Cyprus. The resolution of these problems has become increasingly urgent as they have started to impede Turkey’s chances of internationally joining the European Union (hereafter EU) and domestically becoming more democratic. The Turkish nation-state, acting within the temporal boundaries of its own official historical narrative that commences with either the Independence Struggle in 1919 or the subsequent establishment of the Republic of Turkey in 1923 currently presents and approaches these ‘Armenian, Kurdish and Cyprus issues’ as totally disparate problems that are independent of each other. In doing so, it fails to make any significant progress in resolving any of them and instead gets increasingly more entrenched and embroiled in the ensuing conflicts. The contention of this article is that challenging the temporal boundaries of this Turkish official narrative by delving into what is now officially considered ‘pre-history’, that is the period preceding 1919 or 1923 reveals not only the common origin of all of these issues but also a possible peaceful solution to them all as well as the emergence of a more democratic Turkey. The Turkish official nation-state narrative currently presents the three major historical Armenian, Kurdish and Cyprus issues as totally disparate problems. In addition, the Turkish nation-state severely curtails the search for possible peaceful solutions to these issues through public discussion by its quick, easy and successful deployment of the articles in the Turkish Penal Code that rebuke such discussion on the grounds of posing possible ‘insults to Turkishness.’ As a consequence, these problems become more deeply entrenched turning their successful resolution into a virtual impossibility. This narrative control of the Turkish nation-state over the past is challenged here by redrawing the temporal boundaries of its myth of origin. The alternate historiography that ensues from such a redrawing would demonstrate how these three major political issues were intimately connected to one another in the past: all emerged concurrently during the earlier struggles of the Ottoman Empire with political modernity. Specifically, it was the initial failure of the Ottoman state to provide equal rights to all its imperial subjects that generated both its demise and, with it, the subsequent ‘imperial legacy’ of these three Armenian, Kurdish and Cyprus problems. The successor Turkish nation-state has been unwilling to acknowledge this historical precedent, however. Its narrowly defined, ahistorical treatment has obfuscated and silenced the common factor responsible for producing all three problems; this common root factor is the state’s failure to provide equal political rights to all its constituents. In establishing

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The Transformation of Turkey

a homeland for its future citizens, the Turkish nation-state placed its own preservation before all else and legitimated its political rule by predicating it on the dominance of the ethnic Turkish, Sunni majority at the expense of the rest of the populace. These measures led to the effective curtailment of the political rights of all its citizens, a state of affairs that is empirically best documented through the persistent presence of Turkish penal articles like the current Article 301, which punishes those who ‘insult Turkishness.’ These penal articles limit the freedom of expression of individual citizens because – unlike similar legal articles that also exist in Western countries – they are deployed repeatedly to political ends.1 Their frequent use is necessary to help defend and sustain the fragile boundaries of Turkish nation-state legitimacy. In order to reach a peaceful resolution to the three major political problems that constitute its ‘imperial legacy,’ the Turkish nation-state must officially recognize its historical failure to respect the equal political rights of all its citizens. This chapter contends that this failure lies at the root of all these problems, and that only their historical identification can make peaceful resolutions possible in the long run. The Turkish nationstate needs, first and foremost, to undertake a reassessment of its official priorities: to acquire the political capacity to resolve its current domestic and international problems, it has to stop placing its own interests before those of its citizens and learn instead to respect their rights, regardless of their ethnic and religious origin. This, in turn, is the key to the emergence of a more democratic Turkey. The Current Nation-State Narrative of Turkey’s Major Political Problems Even though the Armenian, Kurdish and Cyprus problems have been present since the establishment of the Turkish Republic, the possibility of EU membership has made them appear more acute. As the EU has become influential in the restructuring of Turkish politics, the push for accession has recently begun to face increasing domestic resistance on the grounds that its actual intent is the disintegration of the Turkish nationstate. Indeed, one motif does connect the three historical problems in the current Turkish official narrative: the claim that all three were cooked up by the West in an attempt to fragment the Turkish nation-state, just as it had once attempted to break up the Ottoman Empire. This interpretation is referred to in the literature as the ‘Sèvres syndrome,’ named

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after the international treaty which provided for the partition of the territories of the Ottoman Empire among the European Powers after the First World War.2 Fear of loss of territory as well as the fear of abandonment by the rest of the world became prominent themes in the Ottoman Empire, persisted through the transformation into the Turkish nationstate, and remains an underlying premise to this day. As the Sèvres syndrome clouds the three major problems in the paralyzing emotion of fear, it renders their possible resolution even more difficult. This paralysis can only be eliminated by the successful confrontation of the past, a confrontation that must extend beyond the temporal boundaries of the Turkish Republic into the Ottoman Empire. Among the three problems, the Kurdish one overshadows the other two both in duration and significance: unlike the Armenians and the Greeks3, the Kurds still live in Turkey and comprise a significant portion of its total population.4 In addition, the engagement of the United States in Iraq, destabilizing the region and leading to the formation of a more independent Kurdistan in the north of the country, has made the problem even more challenging by raising the possibility of a Turkish incursion into Iraq. The Kurdish Problem Turkey’s Kurdish problem is currently defined in the international arena as the oppression and denial of rights by a majority group (the Turks) of an ethnic minority (the Kurds). This definition interprets the civil war in southeastern Turkey that raged between 1984 and 1999 as a ‘national liberation movement’.5 According to official Turkish discourse, however, there is neither a Kurdish problem nor a civil war, but rather a socioeconomic imbalance in the southeastern region of the country. The discourse claims that this imbalance has been exploited by foreign states that aim to weaken Turkey, transforming it in the process into a problem of terrorism and violence against Turkey. Hence the Turkish nation-state insists on identifying the region by its geographical parameters, interpreting the employment instead of the term ‘Kurdistan’ as an endorsement of secession to which they vehemently object. The Kurdish organization which spearheads the movement, namely the Kurdish Workers’ Party, better known as the Parti Karkaren Kurdistan (hereafter PKK), is referred to by the Turkish nation-state as a ‘terrorist organization’ and its members as ‘terrorists’. The employment of this terminology serves as a litmus test

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The Transformation of Turkey

for Turkish patriots and their supporters; the state has successfully campaigned for decades to have the PKK internationally declared a terrorist organization.6 Still, the international media is careful to refer to them as ‘Kurdish rebels’. These alternate attributions do not change the fact that what took place from 1984 to 1999 in southeastern Turkey between the Kurds and the Turkish state left in its wake a total of at least 70,000 casualties; Turkey has officially declared 37,000 people killed during this period and the PKK leader Abdullah Öcalan has attributed a loss to the Kurds of at least 25,000.7 The term ‘Kurdish’ applies to speakers of one of four closely related Indo-Iranian languages (Kurmanji, Sorani, Zaza and Gurani) or descendants of people so identified who speak other languages.8 Even though the exact number of people within Turkey who satisfy this criterion is unknown, scholars have argued that in the early 1990s roughly 13 per cent of the total population of Turkey was Kurdish.9 If the Turkish-speaking descendants of Kurds are also included, however, the total proportion of Kurds in Turkey would certainly be much higher, probably reaching approximately a quarter of Turkey’s present population. The Kurds are located mainly in contiguous territory within the borders of Turkey, Iraq and Iran with smaller indigenous populations in Syria and Armenia. Their stateless existence across many nation-states further complicates their condition. Data from the 1993 Turkish Demographic and Health Survey (TDHS) demonstrate that the Kurdish population in Turkey is relatively much worse off than the Turkish population.10 Over the last two decades, millions of Kurds within Turkey have been forced to settle as migrants in the cities of western Turkey, while large numbers have also left for Western Europe, primarily Germany. This forced internal Kurdish migration has also affected the nature of the political engagement between the Kurds and the Turkish state.11 The PKK was established in 1978 with the aim of creating an independent Marxist–Leninist Kurdish state in the region. It was originally an offshoot of the urban Turkish Marxist–Leninist youth groups that engaged in political violence in the mid-1970s and, as such, it largely crosscut the Turkish–Kurdish divide. Even though the Kurds were initially absorbed into the leftist movements predominant among the students in Turkish universities, they gradually started to form separate political movements. PKK was initially successful because of the suitability of the southeast to guerrilla warfare. Yet it eventually lost its efficacy for two fundamental reasons. First, in the late 1970s, it started to incur criticism from the

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Kurds by attacking landlords and rightists in the Siverek region. Second, the vast internal Kurdish migration induced by the Turkish state fundamentally altered Kurdish demography. In the new urban spaces it became impossible for the PKK to fully rekindle its insurgent warfare, which remained a rural phenomenon. Within the Kurdish populace, there ultimately emerged the PKK on the one hand and a more traditionally nationalistic wing identified closely with Barzani’s Kurdistan Democratic Party on the other. Over time, the right-wing Kurdish nationalists failed to prevail, as internal tribal divisions among them weakened their strength and appeal; their leaders who were forced into exile after the 1971 military intervention were eventually assassinated in northern Iraq.12 Historically, political unrest in Turkey’s Kurdish-dominated areas in the southeast was coeval with the establishment of the Turkish Republic. The Sheikh Said Rebellion in 1925, for instance, was provoked the increasingly secular and Turkish character of the emerging Turkish state and attempted to bring back the old imperial order. This rebellion, which combined nationalist and religious elements, was followed by others in Ağrı in 1930 and Dersim13 in 1937. Yet the harsh reaction of the Turkish state demonstrated its turn toward authoritarianism, especially as it proceeded to define the nation as ethnically homogeneous.14 This violent suppression was acco mpanied by the disappearance of the word Kurd from the lexicon, the ban of the Kurdish language, the replacement of the names of Kurdish villages and towns with Turkish ones, and the denial of the right of parents to give Kurdish names to their children.15 While some Kurds did assimilate and indeed did become Turkish by erasing their origins, many others refused or became silent. In the period of single-party rule that followed Atatürk’s death in 1938, the political regime further deteriorated in terms of sustaining democratic participation by all of the body politic. The Kurdish rebellions before World War II had a strong tribal and religious character, rather than a national one. This pattern underwent significant change, however, after Turkey held its first multiparty election in 1950. During the 1970s, continuing migration to the urban areas of western Turkey as well as increased enrollment in higher education raised general public awareness of the economic and political disparities between the southeast and the rest of Turkey. State-society relations grew further radicalized as the citizens’ demands upon the state increased. The PKK had initially described traditional Kurdistan as existing under colonial rule, with the Kurdish tribal leaders and the local

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The Transformation of Turkey

bourgeoisie colluding to help the Turkish state exploit the lower classes. As a consequence, it identified Kurdish tribal society as the main target of its revolutionary struggle. Yet the PKK could not stay out of tribal politics, as it had to negotiate with the tribal leaders. This inconsistency and the subsequent violence the PKK employed against those it aimed to liberate disillusioned many Kurds and sapped its support. For instance, in the PKK’s heyday in 1992, a poll conducted in the southeast showed that only 29 per cent of the population viewed the PKK as the best representative of the Kurdish people.16 The PKK subsequently attempted to bolster its membership by toning down its Marxist rhetoric and instead emphasizing Kurdish nationalism. The 1980 military coup inflicted heavy damage on the PKK by causing a small number of activists – including the leader Abdullah Öcalan and others – to flee Turkey for Syria and the Beka’a valley of northern Lebanon. Still, as the Turkish army violently repressed all other leftist and Kurdish movements within the country, the PKK – which had managed to survive by leaving Turkey – ended up emerging as the only credible Kurdish challenger to the state. The impact of the 1980 coup on Turkey has been so strong that some scholars argue that two separate regimes came into being: ‘autocratic militarism’ in the eastern provinces and ‘semiauthoritarian incorporation’ in the West of the country.17 Even though some others have argued18 that the 1980s also witnessed the transformation of the state’s ethnic policy from the early Republican one, which accepted every citizen of Turkey as a ‘Turk’ while denying the existence of all Muslim ethnic groups, to one that recognized the existence both of Muslim ethnic groups such as the Kurds and of non-Muslims, this transformation was not enduring. The ethnic Turkish, Sunni majority dominated the rest, as it had during the imperial period. The origins of the 1984–99 civil war between the Turkish nationstate and the Kurdish populace can also be traced to the expulsion of the PKK leadership from Turkey in the aftermath of this 1980 military coup. The civil war initially began as a series of cross-border raids staged from northern Iraq.19 After a few tactically disastrous attacks against the Turkish army, the PKK adopted a strategy of targeting civilians: mayors, schoolteachers and tribal chiefs, anyone perceived as an actual or potential collaborator with the state. In this way it managed to sustain its hold over rural areas but not over towns and urban centers.20 The strategy the PKK employed conformed closely to the classic Maoist principles of an ‘insurgency’ that targets not the state’s military forces but rather

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focuses on creating a general climate of insecurity by reducing contact and confidence between the population and its government. Also, the PKK is known to have engaged in kidnapping as a tool of recruitment, and Kurdish families have been subjected to revolutionary surcharges if their sons reported for military service.21 The Turkish state responded by adopting counter-insurgency tactics. One for rural defense entailed recruiting tribesmen into a local militia known as the ‘village guards’.22 The other tactic was forcing civilians to ‘evacuate’ their villages, thereby aiming to disrupt guerrilla logistics through the physical removal of the population. As of 1999, when the civil war finally ended, according to Turkish government estimates 3,236 settlements had been cleared in southeastern Turkey, forcibly displacing 362,915 persons.23 In the process, Kurdish villages were often destroyed by fire to deny their use by guerrillas and prevent the return of residents. The evacuations were also brutally executed, with beatings, rapes and selective instances of extra-judicial killing.24 In addition, in the early to mid-1990s, several members of Kurdish parties were gunned down in ‘mystery killings’ presumably committed by government-supported contra-guerrillas. With the commencement of the military operations in 1984, ordinary Kurds found themselves forced in essence to choose between the Turkish state and the PKK.25 From then on, the Turkish nation-state insisted on equating virtually all expressions of Kurdish identity with PKK terrorism and the Turkish military in particular was adamant about pursuing only an armed solution to the Kurdish problem. Within this polarized environment, the PKK generated resources from a couple of locations: the Kurds in exile, primarily in western Europe, the regional narcotics trade, and indirect or direct covert support from neighboring states like Syria, which were intent on sustaining instability in the region for their own political reasons. Turkey’s economic development program for southeastern Anatolia, inaugurated in the 1980s, planned to use water from the Euphrates and Tigris Rivers to irrigate large tracts of the arid region. Since the state had conjectured that socioeconomic imbalance was at the root of all the problems, such an endeavor should alleviate the grievances for good. Yet the Turkish nation-state failed to acknowledge and respect Kurdish identity and refused to consider any unarmed solutions, engaging instead in extralegal activities such as drug trafficking and terrorism to curb the reach of the PKK. It persistently failed to consider the extra-economic processes

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The Transformation of Turkey

that had generated the problems in the first place. Hence it became further alienated from the local populace through its indiscriminate use of repression and violence. The Gulf War initially proved beneficial to the Kurds of Turkey in that the coalition against Iraq and ‘Operation Provide Comfort’ removed northern Iraq from the control of the Iraqi state and created a US-backed Kurdish Federated State. In response, the Turkish state, in an attempt to keep the PKK out of the area, took an active role in working out the power-sharing agreement in this federated state between Barzani’s Kurdistan Democratic Party (hereafter KDP) and Talabani’s Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (hereafter PUK). Yet the conflicts between the KDP and PUK instead fostered the growth of the PKK, which based its operations in northern Iraq – so much so that it had by 1994 wrested large chunks of territory away from the control of the Turkish military. A subsequent change in the tactics of the Turkish state ensued in the mid1990s when it began to realize the significance of extra-economic factors. As the Turkish state introduced better health care and education for the local population, as it engaged in large population deportations of the Kurds from the region to urban centers elsewhere in the country, and as it engaged in guerrilla warfare, the strength of the PKK was sapped once again. The PKK lost so much political power that by 1998 Syria remained the PKK’s only supporter. The Turkish state then exploited its newly established alliance with Israel to threaten Syria with war unless it expelled Öcalan and the PKK bases in the Beka’a Valley. Damascus complied, expelling Öcalan in October 1998. He was later captured in Africa and delivered to the Turks; the PKK forces that were relocated from Syria to northern Iraq were likewise delivered a severe blow by the Turkish military in 1999, effectively ending the civil war. Even though scholars26 conjecture that the joint activities of the Turkish state and the PKK radicalized and polarized the local population, ethnic mobilization and assimilation of the Kurds into the Turkish body politic have often occurred simultaneously. The institutions of nationbuilding, principally conscription and universal education, are still in place; most Kurds state that if teaching the Kurdish language became a realistic option, they would teach their children ‘Turkish for opportunity, Kurdish for identity.’27 Since the capture of Abdullah Öcalan in February 1999, a new political movement has begun to emerge in Turkey favoring electoral competition and noninstitutional pressure tactics over violence. The recent July 2007 election to the Turkish Parliament of

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Kurdish deputies (initially as independents), and the presence among the ranks of the reigning Justice and Development Party of other deputies of Kurdish origin have further bolstered this movement. That most Kurds never favored secession, and most still do not favor it – opting instead for a stable multiethnic solution – renders any political solution based on autonomy or federalism obsolete and impractical. Instead, the year 2009 witnessed the start of a Kurdish ‘opening’28 that had the potential to get the two sides into a fruitful dialogue – until it was recently undermined by such destructive developments as the disqualification of the democratically elected Kurdish representatives from the Turkish Parliament. In envisioning the future of Kurdish–Turkish relations, two observations need to be taken into account, one concerning the increasingly divergent views of the Kurdish issue on the part of the Turkish state and of Turkish society at large, and the other the local impact of the recent political transformations in the region. Despite generating thousands of casualties, the almost two decades of armed conflict instigated by the Turkish nation-state has not produced much animosity among the populace. Contrary to the claims of the Turkish nation-state, the societal boundaries between Kurds and Turks have remained porous and crosscut by key religious cleavages. This is partially a consequence of the fact that religious divides cross ethnic lines: about 30 per cent of the Anatolian Muslims (both Kurds and Turks) have historical ties with Shi’ism, with Alevis comprising the largest group. This has prevented the Kurds from being marginalized purely along ethnic lines and has instead aided the incorporation of the Kurds into Turkish society at large. Also, a significant portion of Turkey’s current political and business elite is of Kurdish origin, which further accelerates their rate of incorporation. In addition, not only has the tendency to marry within one’s own ethnic group decreased significantly in Turkey between the early 1960s and the late 1990s, but the intermarriage rate between Kurds and Turks has increased significantly.29 As long as the two communities remain accommodating to one another and societal tensions stay at a manageable level, the Kurds in Turkey will probably remain bilingual and integrated into mainstream political life, with the majority voting for rightist and Islamist parties. This outlook is predicated in part on continued Kurdish participation in national and local politics, a political development that has provided the Kurds with a new institutional basis for public gathering, legal protection from prosecution, new access to domestic and international audiences, and new symbolic resources.30 There should thus be no political grounds

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for a future return to generalized violence between the Turks and the Kurds, unless purposely instigated by the Turkish military to maintain the status quo. Nonetheless, much has yet to be done to permanently improve relations. The Kurds in Turkey still face discrimination: there is no overt public acknowledgment, recognition or respect of their ethnicity. Even though compulsory education, mandatory military service and statecontrolled radio and press have enabled the Turkish Republic to create a unified monolithic national culture and establish economic opportunity structures that have in general increased the participation of all social groups in (and therefore their commitment to) the system, participants gain access to these state-generated resources only by foregoing their nonTurkish ethnic identity.31 The primary state institution that maintains and reproduces this public discrimination is the Turkish military. From its inception, there has been not a single high-level Kurdish officer among its ranks – or an Armenian one, or a member of any minority group. Indeed, it is reputed that the military strictly investigates the files of future officers with the intention of weeding out such ‘impure’ candidates. This uncompromising stand reproduces the previous Ottoman military practice, in which military posts were reserved almost exclusively for Muslims and, during the late Ottoman Empire, for ethnic Turks. The Turkish army has also long opposed any easing of its strict legislation governing terrorism, freedom of expression, and cultural rights, justifying its position with the argument that reform would imply concessions to terrorists. The Turkish military’s definition of a terrorist is an ever-expanding one since, as General Yaşar Büyükanıt, the former chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has declared, there is no difference between the ‘Kurdish terrorists’ and those who provide them with shelter. The Turkish state still resists recognizing the cultural identity of its Kurdish citizens: it prohibits the teaching of Kurdish in schools and limits the broadcast of Kurdish radio and television programs, especially in their ancestral homelands in the southeast.32 The Turkish nation-state’s single-minded focus on a military response to the PKK continues to polarize identity and opinion, turning peaceful civilians into militants. The impact of the Iraq war on Turkey points to the struggle between US and EU pressures to improve the rights of Kurds, on the one hand, and the Turkish state’s reluctance to implement such democratic reforms, on the other. Still, the recent positive attitude of the ruling Justice and Development Party (hereafter JDP) toward Iraq signals a more pragmatic

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approach that could lead to either the de-securitization of the Kurdish issue by civil authorities or its re-securitization by the military.33 One particular criticism of the JDP in this context is that it has prioritized the recruitment of new members at the expense of increasing overall political participation in the region: many independent politicians have complained about the JDP government’s unwillingness to provide them with services unless they join the party. Another crucial weakness is the reluctance to effectively implement existing legislation. Turkey has recently undertaken many legal reforms, but they are not readily translated into practice, due either to the inability or unwillingness of the state bureaucracy to implement them. Even though the overall growth of the Turkish public sphere and civil associations is indeed a positive indicator of democratization and economic development, the current engagement of the Turkish state and especially the military in northern Iraq very conveniently curbs such positive changes. In this way, concerns of ‘national security’ – the so-called Sèvres syndrome – modulate the pendulum swing between security and liberalization. Given that the Turkish state and military both have difficulties in designing post-terror policies, while the PKK appears unprepared to fully disarm, it would seem that political struggle remains the only option.34 The Cyprus Problem The historical event that turned Cyprus into a real political problem for the Turkish Republic was the 1974 invasion by the Turkish military of the northern tip of the island.35 Cyprus had become politically independent in 1960 when negotiations between the Greek-Cypriot and Turkish-Cypriot communities under the guarantee of Great Britain, Greece and Turkey produced a constitution. The ensuing single, ethnically mixed Republic of Cyprus granted equal representation to the minority Turkish-speaking Muslim community (20 per cent of the population) and the Greek-speaking Orthodox Christian one (80 per cent). Yet by the end of 1963, escalating inter-ethnic violence led to the collapse of this bi-communal political construct. The Turkish-Cypriot community subsequently withdrew from the government to set up its own political structure. Even though the United Nations Security Council intervened the following year to stop the continuing violence, eventually in 1974 the President of the Republic of Cyprus was removed by a coup executed by the Greek government. The subsequent invasion of the northern part of the island by the Turkish state

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was legitimated on the grounds that it was acting in its capacity as one of the guarantors of the 1960 arrangement. Since then, as the 1976 and 1987 crises over the Aegean continental shelf and the 1996 crisis over the Imia islets in the Aegean Sea attest, Turkey’s relations with Greece have remained tense. This tension has been exacerbated by what Turkey has perceived as the EU’s preferential treatment of Greece over Turkey. While Greece had originally signed the EU Association Agreement in 1961, with Turkey following two years later in 1963, Greece became a member of the European Union in 1981, whereas Turkey had to wait until 1999 to even be considered a candidate for membership. On Turkey’s part, the lack of progress toward candidacy was partly due to the disruptions in the functioning of the Turkish democracy by the military in 1960, 1971, 1980 and 1997. In addition, the Turkish state’s reliance during that period on importsubstitution strategies in the economy caused an overdependence on imports and foreign borrowing. Due to the oil crises of 1974 and 1979, as well as the 1974 US-led trade embargo that followed the Turkish invasion of Cyprus, Turkish governments of the period also faced severe foreign exchange shortages leading to the precautionary rationing of some essentials.36 Such economic pressure accompanied by the domestic impact of the student movements helped translate ideological radicalism into dayto-day violence. With the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War in the late 1980s, the EU once again put possible negotiations with Turkey for membership on the back burner. At that juncture, the prospects for Turkish membership were so weak that the 2000 EU summit held in Nice did not even hypothetically include Turkey in their discussions of the future. In the meanwhile, in 1990, the Greek-Cypriot-led Republic of Cyprus applied for EU membership. Even though Cyprus was located on divided and therefore potentially contentious territory, the European Council did not treat Cyprus any differently than other candidates, such as the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Poland or Slovenia. Instead, the EU created a new loophole by adopting in 1994 a ‘first solution, then membership’ approach; it announced that the subsequent phase of enlargement would include Cyprus and Malta, without specifying what would happen if the Cypriot problem was not resolved by the time the negotiations were concluded. In retaliation for the EU’s stand, the Turkish state-supported Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (hereafter TRNC) started the process of partial integration with Turkey. This political move

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led to clashes between Greek- and Turkish-Cypriots throughout the summer of 1996. When full accession negotiations with Cyprus and the other candidates commenced in 1998, the EU proved unable to deal with the island’s bifurcated political structure and totally avoided any discussion of the future participation of the Turkish-Cypriot community, despite the fact that they were located on the same island that had just been admitted to the EU. Right after the ensuing accession of Greek-Cypriot-led Cyprus in 2003, the United Nations intervened to draw up a peace plan referred to as the ‘Annan plan’; the proposed resolution was put to a referendum only to be accepted by the Turkish side and rejected by the Greek one. Currently, the EU has acknowledged the isolation of the TurkishCypriot community and proposed a comprehensive package of aid and trade to the TRNC as well as including it within the countries of its new Neighborhood Policy.37 Negative perceptions and representations of the ‘other’ play a significant role in the Greek–Turkish conflict in general and the Cyprus problem in particular. These negative images are reproduced and maintained in all four countries through education, media and literature and, as a consequence, become naturalized over time as fact. For instance, the perception in Turkey of a threat from Greece is sustained by immediate associations that delve into history.38 Any mention of Greeks becomes connected both to ancient Byzantine intrigue and to more recent memories of the Greek invasion of Turkish territories after the First World War. Such harmful associations reproduce animosity and inhibit peace. It should be noted that since the 1990s, there have been many collaborative efforts by Greek and Turkish historians to purge the schoolbooks of chauvinistic content and demonizing references. Still, the prevailing Turkish foreign policy toward Greece is one of deterrences predicated on the suspicion that, since its inception in 1821 through rebellion against the Ottoman Empire, Greece has been inspired by the ‘Megali Idea’ of a Greater Greece corresponding to the former lands of the Byzantine Empire (which would encompass almost all of modern Turkey). Hence the assumption of the Turkish nation-state is that Greece constantly pursues a policy of territorial expansion at its expense. It is no accident that the same fear in reverse can be observed in Greece: the Turkish state is assumed to be intent on capturing the former lands of the Ottoman Empire, which included Greece in its entirety. Because of Greece’s earlier entry into the EU, Turkey has also begun to perceive the EU as yet another venue for the revisionist and expansionist agenda of

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Greece against Turkey.39 Within this Turkish policy framework, any international attempt to legitimate policies by alluding to the EU is immediately interpreted by the Turks as a concession to Greece. The attitude of the Turkish nation-state toward the Cyprus problem likewise mimics its stand toward Greece. Turkish public opinion – still shaped by a military that harps on ‘not abandoning national causes’ – has severely hindered the possibility of conflict resolution.40 Yet, the course of Greek–Turkish relations started to shift in a positive direction as a consequence of the devastating earthquakes suffered by Turkey and Greece in August and September 1999, as each society rushed to the other’s aid. This example reveals once again how the perceptions of civil society are much more positive and constructive than the political stands of the states.41 The Armenian Problem Among the three foreign policy issues currently faced by Turkish state and society, only the Armenian problem was jumpstarted in the Republican period by forces outside the control of the Turkish nationstate.42 From 1975 to 1986, two secret Armenian organizations – the Justice Commandos of the Armenian Genocide (hereafter JCOAG) and the Armenian Secret Army for the Liberation of Armenia (hereafter ASALA) – decided to draw attention to and seek justice for the 1915 ethnic cleansing of the Armenians committed by the Ottoman state. They unfortunately chose violence as their method: the two organizations commenced to assassinate Turkish diplomats and bomb Turkish sites.43 The organizations argued that the Ottoman state and its Turkish successor had failed to acknowledge and account for the injustice committed against their ancestors. The unexamined past thus suddenly and unexpectedly came to haunt the present. When these attacks first started, the Turkish state and society looked for the hidden hand of either the United States or the Soviet Union, as they were certain these attacks were committed in retaliation for the 1974 Cyprus invasion. They could not believe that it could actually be Armenians executing these actions on their own without the instigation or at least the tacit approval of one of the Cold War super powers. Thanks to mass education, the official myth of the Turkish past – a version devoid of any account of the collective violence the state had committed (with the tacit if not active approval of society – had now been thoroughly ingrained into a couple of generations of Turkish public opinion. The

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Turkish nation-state also officially considered the Armenian issue to have been ‘closed’ at the 1922–23 Lausanne Peace negotiations, where minorities were all declared Turkish citizens and given certain special legal rights and privileges.44 This legal agreement symbolically reproduced the Ottoman structural divide that had separated the minorities from the rest of the population and helped silence their demands for equal treatment. In the meanwhile, some among the Diaspora Armenians displaced and traumatized by the past Ottoman45 and present Turkish46 collective violence resorted to violent action against Turkish foreign representatives in the West. As these unjust assassinations made their way to the Western courts and public prosecutors requested information on what had happened in 1915 for legal purposes, there was not at the Turkish Foreign Ministry a single thorough English-language text depicting the Turkish state’s version of 1915 that could be sent to these courts.47 The violent past had been officially forgotten, not to be remembered until forced by corresponding violence. These attacks by Armenian terror48 organizations led both the Turkish state and the military to foster, organize and institutionalize measures that increased society’s propensity for violence against Armenians. First, there emerged through the 1980s a state-instigated, nationalist historiography of the Armenian issue, with many of its official texts penned by retired diplomats turned amateur historians.49 These texts were written with the specific intent of justifying the official stand. As such, they did not seek to objectively research what had happened; their narrative reproduced the mythologized history taught in schools since the inception of the republic. Accordingly, it was argued that the Turks had never committed any violence against any group in their history and the recent Armenian violence committed against them was merely a continuation of the suffering Armenians had been inflicting on Turks from time immemorial. This simplified, stereotyped rhetoric not only failed to acknowledge Ottoman and Turkish collective violence, but further delegitimated the Armenians’ search for justice by developing the counter-argument that they had committed massacres against the Turks. This mythologized historiography read present-day intentions into the events of the past, producing an official history that made rational discussion of the issue with independent and international scholars a virtual impossibility. Second, the Turkish state established a series of ‘research’ organizations with the overt purpose of studying the Armenian issue. At the same time, in 1980, the Turkish military launched a covert paramilitary organization

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to track down and murder the Turkish diplomats’ Armenian assassins, whom Western powers had either failed to arrest or released after short prison sentences. Kenan Evren, the former general who had headed the coup and then become the president of the Republic played a leading role in establishing this paramilitary operation. While the research organizations further helped reproduce the nationalist rhetoric and sustain the animosity against minorities, the covert groups resorted to extralegal violence to counter the violence that had been directed against the Turks. By resorting to covert violence to eliminate violence, the Turkish military reproduced the ethically objectionable pattern established by the Armenian terrorists. As the assassinations continued, the tone of the speeches that the Turkish state officials and military officers gave at the funeral services of the murdered diplomats gradually transformed from mourning to seeking vengeance, to promising the Turkish populace that ‘the blood of the martyrs would not remain on the ground’.50 The activities of the paramilitary organization did not remain confined to the Armenian issue: they expanded to include drug trafficking, assassinations of prominent intellectuals and the elimination of those Kurds considered dangerous to the state.51 The Turkish military thus exploited the Armenian situation to legitimate the creation of a covert organization that it would later use to undermine the process of democratization. These attempts at extra-legal violence dovetailed the nationalist mythified historiography of the Turkish state that effectively eliminated any past collective violence attributed to the Turks. This potent cocktail of extra-legal violence and intentionally produced historical amnesia reveals the determination of the Turkish state to reproduce the existing domestic propensity for violence rather than alleviating it. Moreover, this propensity was supported by the mass media and public opinion. Turkish newspapers noted an emotional outpouring in reaction to the assassinations that immediately singled out the Armenians of Turkey, stating that ‘our Armenian citizens’ were living in peace – that is, without being murdered – and they were wealthy, to boot.52 ‘The nature of this depiction reveals in and of itself the prejudice inherent in Turkish society; the Armenians of Turkey – who had nothing to do with the international attacks – were nevertheless singled out and stereotyped along with the perpetrators of the violence. They were then patronized by being referred to as ‘our’ Armenians, a move that emphasized their separation from the rest of the ethnic Turkish, Sunni majority. Then attention was once again drawn to their wealth, which had incurred the wrath and

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violence of the majority so many times before, even though it had become insignificant in relation to the immense wealth of the new ‘Turkish’ bourgeoisie. After all, the Armenian community, which had comprised approximately 20 per cent of the total population of the empire in the late nineteenth century, had dwindled a century later to 0.02 per cent. The size of all minority groups (Armenians, Rum and Jews) had been collectively reduced to less than 100,000 in a country with a total population of 72 million. As the assassinations and attacks continued, however, the Armenian community of Turkey was addressed in its entirety by various newspaper editors who asked them ‘to write to their brethren in Western countries and tell them to stop the attacks.’ Implied in such a demand was the prejudiced assumption that all Armenians knew one another and the Armenians of Turkey were therefore ‘naturally’ aware of the identities of the assassins, or at least had influence over them to stop their destructive activities. The Armenian patriarch in Turkey likewise had to issue frequent press releases condemning the attacks; he also held mass in honor of the assassinated Turks. All these actions by the Patriarch were undertaken to prove to the ethnic Turkish, Sunni majority that the Armenians of Turkey were good citizens who recognized and shared in the collective pain and suffering. Only recently has it been publicly acknowledged that the Armenian community was brought under pressure by the state to constantly issue statements to the effect that they lived in peace in Turkey, that they condemned the attacks, and that they professed their undying allegiance to the Turkish Republic. During this period, the Turkish state also mobilized its Jewish community to exploit their potential connections with the Jewish lobby in the United States. This action was undertaken to counter and oppose the weight of the Armenian diaspora, which after the 1980s had begun to campaign actively to get the 1915 Armenian ethnic cleansing politically recognized in the United States and elsewhere as genocide. Such an action was especially difficult for the Jewish organizations of America, because their ancestors had suffered the other – of course significantly larger – case of twentieth-century collective violence, the Holocaust.53 Even though such organizations should have been the primary supporters of Armenian genocide recognition, two factors have until recently prevented them from doing so: one was the argument of those defending the uniqueness of the Holocaust, who did not want to recognize other instances of collective violence,54 and the other was the support the Turkish state promised and presumably delivered both to Israel and to the Jewish community in

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Turkey. The perceived precarious state of Jews in Turkey and of the state of Israel in the Middle East thus led the American Jewish lobby to act not in accordance with moral principles but instead with the interests of realpolitik. Only very recently has the Jewish lobby in the United States decided to reverse its policy in keeping with the argument that ethical principles ought to precede political concerns – a change that has followed the shift in Turkey’s once pro-Israeli Middle East policy. In summary, then, all three foreign policy issues contain deeply ingrained prejudice and discrimination that make any successful resolution almost impossible. The Greeks, the Kurds and the Armenians are all treated with emotionally charged apprehension and intense suspicion. Due to the mythologized version of their past that has been taught throughout the centralized educational system since the inception of the Republic, the Turkish state and society continually perceive themselves not as the perpetrators but rather as the victims of collective violence. This state of affairs cried out for rectification; it was the social and economic transformations of the 2000s that finally made such a change possible. Toward an Alternate Conceptualization Toward the end of the 1980s, with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War, Turkey underwent a series of social and economic transformations that started to diminish the hold over society of the Turkish state and military. The emerging provincial Anatolian bourgeoisie eventually brought the religiously and socially conservative Justice and Development Party to power in the early 2000s, despite the fervent opposition of the state establishment and the military. As the JDP was rooted in Anatolia, it had access to and awareness of local histories that were cognizant of all the collective violence that had once occurred on those lands. Also, many of the JDP members were devout Muslims whose ancestors had not only once opposed collective violence such as the Armenian deportations on religious principles alone but had been subjected to collective violence themselves.55 As a consequence, there emerged the possibility of their considering an alternative to the official authoritarian discourse of the Turkish state, one that could be formulated in cooperation with the liberal public intellectuals who, equipped with the forces of civil society and the tools of new critical scholarship, had also started to take a critical look at their own past.

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The location of minorities within the Turkish social structure initially continued unchanged into the 2000s, as official rhetoric declared them to be citizens with equal rights, even though they continued in practice to face legal, social and political prejudice and discrimination. Yet the increased significance of identity politics in the post–Cold War world order and the increased possibility of EU membership generated economic, social and political liberalization in Turkey. As a consequence, many minorities – including, in addition to the Rum, Armenians and the Jews, non-Muslim communities like the Assyrians and Muslim ones like the Kurds, Alevis and Laz – started to assert their rights. The more liberalized environment enabled all these groups, public intellectuals and the flourishing non-profit civil society organizations to voice their concerns about the authoritarian environment of the Turkish state and the military. Even though the location of such minority groups within the Turkish social structure and the prejudice and discrimination they faced started to be more publicly articulated, they still could not prevent official lawsuits from being brought against books and articles on these issues for ‘insulting Turkishness.’ Nor could they prevent a journalist like Hrant Dink from being assassinated on 19 January 2007 by an ultra-nationalist Turk. In summary, then, the Turkish nation-state rather than confronting its past and the collective violence contained therein chose instead to deny all by constructing an official counter-narrative. In the Armenian case, for instance, it took issue with the international employment of the term ‘genocide’ to refer to what had occurred in 1915 – even though what had transpired certainly fit the 1948 United Nations definition – and instead spent and continues to spend millions of dollars to prevent all countries of the world from recognizing what happened to the Armenians in 1915 as genocide. Likewise, in the cases of the Kurds and the Greeks, the perception of being wronged as victims rather than having once acted and continuing to act as perpetrators has persisted. Still, identity politics and the willingness of civil society organizations to confront the past have gradually begun to crack the hegemony of the exclusionary official narrative. An Alternate Conceptualization of Turkey’s Foreign Policy Issues The official narratives of the Kurdish, Cyprus and Armenian problems discussed above all reveal the staunch defensive stand of the Turkish nation-state, seeking behind every action ploys inspired by the West to

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dismember and destroy it. Given this initial position of distrust, it is no accident that the Turkish nation-state is incapable of reaching peaceful resolutions to any one, let alone all three of these problems. The contention of this chapter is that a peaceful solution to all three problems could become possible if and when the temporal boundaries of the official Turkish narrative are challenged. Such a challenge would reveal the common origins of all three problems and, in so doing, make possible peaceful solutions to all three. The temporal origins of the Kurdish, Cyprus and Greek problems can all be traced to one particular historical event, a treaty that was signed as a consequence of the first major loss of territory experienced by the Ottoman Empire toward the end of the nineteenth century. For the empire this treaty marked the beginning of the end. In March 1878 the Ottoman state signed a treaty with the Russians at San Stefano, very close to the imperial capital, at the end of the disastrous 1876–78 RussoOttoman war, which had seen the Russian army sweep through the Ottoman defenses in the Balkans, literally ending up on the outskirts of the capital of Constantinople. This treaty was regarded by the Ottoman state as the historical origin of the ‘Armenian issue’; they claimed the issue had been internationalized when the Ottoman Armenians sent a delegation to the Russian tsar, asking him to include among the 1878 peace articles a guarantee for the protection of the Armenian subjects of the Ottoman Empire. It was not acknowledged that this strategic move by the Ottoman Armenian community actually marked the culmination of a decades-long domestic wait for the actualization of promised reforms for minority equality and protection. In spite of reform efforts in 1839, 1856 and then again in 1876, the minorities of the empire still continued to be treated as second-class subjects in relation to the dominant Muslim majority. This unequal treatment was extremely difficult to alter, as it had been legitimated by the legal system and naturalized over the centuries of Ottoman rule. The state reforms were initially undertaken to overcome the continuous military losses the Ottoman Empire had started to encounter. Reforming the military, composed almost exclusively of Muslims, thus emerged as the first order of business. Technological advances in warfare made the policy change costly and far-reaching, expanding to include both administrative and economic reforms. The Ottoman land tenure system had to be transformed to meet the treasury’s increased need for cash. Hence the land-holding patterns were dramatically altered: from sending soldiers

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and produce in kind in return for land use, the empire moved to a cash economy. The resulting exploitation of the land and the peasants on them for better yields, as well as the 1858 declaration of private property laws, benefited the dominant Muslim majority at the expense of the minorities. The non-Muslim minorities lived in self-contained communities within a social structure based on the Islamic legal system of the sharia; in return for the protection offered them by the Ottoman state, they were obligated to pay a special tax and prevented by law from bearing arms themselves. With time and with the transformation of the land tenure system, this limitation became problematic, especially in the eastern and southeastern provinces of the empire. There the Muslim Kurds, as well as the Circassians who had sought refuge in the empire as a consequence of Russian expansion, started to aggress upon, plunder and even permanently seize the lands of Armenian and Rum peasants who could not protect themselves. It was in this context that the Armenians and the Kurds first became significant social actors in Ottoman and later Turkish history. Concerned with these events in the eastern provinces of the Ottoman Empire and wary of Russian expansion, the French and the British insisted upon convening in Berlin and signing another treaty, whose paragraph 61 guaranteed the life and property of the Armenians in the Anatolian provinces and also promised reforms. In addition, the Ottoman state, faced with the loss of vast territories in the Balkans to the Russians, requested the intervention of the British. The British refused, saying that they would intervene on behalf of the Ottomans only under one condition – the granting of the island of Cyprus, which they wanted to secure their route to India and also to reinforce their dominance in the region. It is thus after the Berlin Congress that the island of Cyprus, which had been under Ottoman rule since its conquest in the late sixteenth century, first passed into the hands of the British, later to become a much-contested territory between the Turkish and Greek states. The three contemporary foreign policy problems of the Turkish state thus all originate at this particular historical juncture, with the signing of the 1878 peace treaty. More significant is the reason why the Cyprus, Armenian and Kurdish issues became long-term problems: the Ottoman state failed to carry out the reforms that would have guaranteed equal rights to all its subjects. The emerging Turkish nation-state inherited this failure in its entirety. Just as the Ottoman Empire had always placed the preservation of the state and the dynasty before all else, including the well-being of its own

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subjects, the burgeoning Turkish nation-state likewise made this state primacy its founding principle.56 As a consequence, it too frequently infringed upon the rights of its citizens and failed to address the normalized dominance of ethnic Turkish, Sunni majority. The inability and unwillingness of the Turkish state to confront, acknowledge and transform this priority and the powerful and unequal relations it engendered led it to seek the blame for its shortcomings elsewhere. Instead of confronting this failure to share power with its citizens, it focused public attention on the imagined designs of the West toward its destruction. Yet such a stance fundamentally contradicted the desire of first the Ottoman and later the Turkish states to be integrated into the rising West. Turkey’s desire to become a part of Europe can be traced back to the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and the negotiation of the Ottoman Empire with Western modernity, which led to a series of reforms during the course of the nineteenth century endorsed by such legal declarations as the initial 1839 declaration to ‘reorder’ the empire.57 The Turkish state thus has a long historical tradition of self-consciously converging on European practices and preferences. Still, its inability to face the challenges brought by this transformation to a participatory democracy leads the Turkish state to instead promulgate, carefully maintain and practice a legal system that contains articles making the freedom of thought in the country a crime. Even though in all their interactions with the West, the Turkish state and the military constantly draw attention to the expansionist and exploitative tendencies of Europe and the United States, the West also continues to occupy a privileged place in the mind’s eye of Turkish state and society. Two significant developments in this regard have been Turkey’s transition to a multiparty regime in 1950 in tandem with its political alignment with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in 1952, and its post–Cold War economic and political liberalization. Although such moves have undermined its state-controlled, protectionist economic and political structure, the Turkish military still continues to consider itself the guardian of the state. It continually vows to protect Republican and secularist principles not only against external threats, but also against internal enemies. Needless to say, it is the military alone that determines what these threats are. To sum up: the possibility of confronting the past that emerged as a consequence of Turkey’s economic, social and political liberalization in the 2000s ultimately revealed the common roots of Turkey’s Kurdish, Cyprus

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and Armenian problems. This chapter has argued that the first step the Turkish state and society need to undertake in order to resolve these issues is to confront their history in its entirety rather than viewing it through fragments of nationalist myth. Once this is done, it should become evident that all three cases reflect the often unintended consequences of the dissolution of an empire which directed violence against minority subjects too weak to defend themselves. Confronting Ottoman modernity and the collective violence it contained would make clear how these imperial traits and priorities have been translated into Turkish state practice. The manner in which all three foreign policy issues are being dealt with today also discloses something fundamental about the Turkish Republic, namely that it prioritizes state preservation at all costs, even to the detriment of its citizens. It is this prioritization that has led the Turkish nation-state to mythologize its past. Once this perception is altered and a critical historiography developed to study the past with all its blemishes – once all the historical elements that combined to produce the contemporary problems have been fully identified – then Turkish state and society will be able to achieve domestic and international peace.

CHAPTER 3 THE LEGACY OF THE YOUNG TURK REVOLUTION IN CONTEMPORARY TURKISH POLITICS

More than a century has passed since 24 July 1908,1 when the Ottoman sultan Abdülhamid II was forced by the Young Turks to permit the Ottoman Chamber of Deputies to reconvene and reestablish the Constitution. The Chamber had last assembled thirty-two years before, in 1876, when the reformist administrators brought the then young prince Abdülhamid to the throne in exchange for his promise to modernize the empire. Yet they then watched as he removed them from government (exiling some and beheading others), shut down the Chamber, and rescinded the Constitution.2 Sultan Abdülhamid II thus fully regained his divinely ordained power and started to reorganize the empire in accordance with his own wishes, refusing to reconvene the Chamber and reinstate the Constitution for thirty-two years. During this period, however, although he tightly controlled the reformists, the sultan could not prevent the new Western-style educational institutions (which he had established with the intention of producing loyal administrators) from generating new cohorts of modernizers. This time, they opposed and challenged his rule through secret organizations they founded within the empire or while in exile abroad. When they aided a rebellion in the Balkans that the sultan thought he could not contain, he was obliged to give in to their demands to reconvene the Chamber and reinstate the Constitution. As a consequence, in 1908, an Ottoman sultan was finally forced to share power

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with his subjects; the Ottoman dynasty was never again to fully regain its political power. In retrospect, 24 July 1908 was indeed a politically significant turning point in Ottoman history, marking the end of one political era – autocratic rule – and the beginning of another – the rule of the Second Constitution.3 The Second Constitutional Period (24 July 1908–5 April 1920) officially commenced with the Young Turk revolution and lasted for twelve years. Marked by a string of inauspicious events, the period ended with the demise of the Ottoman Empire. When the Ottoman Chamber of Deputies met on 15 March 1920, the capital was under the occupation of British troops as a consequence of the Ottoman defeat in World War I; the troops marched right into the Chamber to arrest five members of the parliament.4 Sultan Mehmed Vahideddin V officially declared the Chamber closed on 5 April 1920. Many members arrested by the British were exiled to the island of Malta. Those who escaped arrest joined the National Independence Struggle led by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk in Ankara, a movement that was to lead to the establishment of the Turkish Republic on 29 October 1923. Although the 1908 Young Turk Revolution does indeed clearly mark the beginning of an era, its meaning and legacy are historically ambiguous. The Young Turks gained their legitimacy and fame through their opposition to the sultan; they had been successful mainly through their secret organization, the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP). This organization was initially established at a military medical school in the capital in 1889, on the centennial of the French Revolution. The aim was to bring together all the elements of the empire and liberate them from the sultan’s yoke through the reinstatement of the constitution. The Young Turks were initially active outside the imperial boundaries, mainly in Paris, Geneva and Cairo.5 They were domestically successful only after 19056 when they decided to engage in violence and undertake a revolution from above,7 starting to recruit military officers in the Balkans. After the successful 24 July 1908 revolution, many exiled Young Turks returned to the capital to rejoice. The CUP did not immediately form a party but instead established a committee headquarters and invited all interested parties to join. Yet they actively engaged in politics – dictating government appointments, trying to swear in all military students as CUP members and establishing a strong network of local CUP clubs throughout the empire. When the counterrevolution of 14 April 1909 – known as the ‘March 31 Incident’8 – occurred, the CUP had to quell the

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rebellion with the aid of the Third Army in Salonica, which arrived at the capital along with volunteers. Sultan Abdülhamid II was also removed from power for his possible but still unconfirmed role in the rebellion. This shift in political rule corresponded to an escalation in violence throughout the empire. Within the CUP, the influence of military officers expanded at the expense of members of civilian origin. As the CUP became politically more established, it dictated the actions of its members, oversaw the politicization of the military corps and also maintained a secret organization that frequently engaged in the intimidation, repression and assassination of opposition members. These negative actions led to a waning of public support, and the CUP was eventually ousted from power by an opposition party that had initially splintered from it. At that juncture, the CUP engaged in collective political violence, organizing a government coup on 23 January 1913 with the help of the organization’s special secret fighters (silahşör).9 The CUP reign then became fully dictatorial, assassinating its opponents and exploiting war conditions to create, at the expense of the Greek and Armenian minorities of the waning empire, a Turkish national bourgeoisie and a Turkish homeland in Anatolia.10 The Young Turk Revolution that commenced in 1908 is officially considered to have ended a decade later, in November 1918, when the major Young Turk leaders of the CUP, fearing reprisals from the Allied Forces for the violence they had committed during the war, escaped to Germany at the end of World War I. Yet it was only the top CUP leaders who escaped then, while the rest of the Unionists – in both the capital and the provinces – actively participated in organizing a resistance movement that eventually led to the foundation of the Turkish Republic.11 Indeed, the plans for this resistance were laid much earlier while the Dardanelles was under Allied siege in 1915, and the Young Turks had to consider the possibility that the Allies might be able to break through.12 In addition, once the Turkish Republic was established, not only were many of the members of its First National Assembly former members of the CUP, but so were many members of the Turkish military and of the central and provincial administrative bureaucracy. Even though the top-level leaders had escaped and the CUP had been formally abolished, the influence of the Young Turks thus persisted into the Turkish Republic through middleand low-ranking members. Likewise, although the political purge of some former Unionists in 1926 after the assassination attempt on Mustafa Kemal Atatürk eliminated the possibility of a CUP political comeback

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during the Republican period and turned their discussion thereafter into a taboo topic, their influence within the Turkish military persisted. What exactly was the nature of this continuing influence? This chapter argues that the most significant meaning and legacy of the Young Turk Revolution can be captured by tracing the evolution of the two issues that the Young Turks, like all the revolutionaries before them, struggled with: Western European modernity and political rights. While still in opposition to the Ottoman sultan and later, after assuming political power, the Young Turks attempted to instill in their empire the Western European modernity they had either learned about in school or observed in exile. They sought to introduce into the Ottoman political system a constitution guaranteeing equal rights to all the disparate ethnic and religious elements of the empire. As all groups rallied to defend and guard these rights, they surmised, peace would undoubtedly ensue. Yet the Young Turk Revolution instead led to violence and war, and among the cadres of Young Turks (consisting of civilians, administrative bureaucrats and military officers) it was the military officers who gradually monopolized the negotiation of the relationship between modernity and political rights. Thus, thanks to the Young Turk legacy, the military became the vanguard of modernity and democracy in Turkey. This historical turn explains the current paradox whereby the army intervenes time and again in the Turkish democratic process with the intention of preserving it. In short, the meaning of the Young Turk Revolution entails the negotiation of modernity and political rights by the military, and the legacy comprises the continuing monopolization of that negotiation to the present day. The rest of this chapter documents this argument in the context of the French and Young Turk Revolutions. Negotiation of Political Rights in the French Revolution The 1789 French Revolution was an attempt to put into practice the vision of the Enlightenment, namely the emancipation of humans from fear and nature through reason, enabling them to establish control over the earth and its resources. Indeed, even the definition of the term revolution transformed with the Enlightenment; where it previously had meant ‘a return to a previous condition,’ the term then started to ‘signify a process of development or acceleration toward a new and therefore unpredictable state of affairs.’13 In this new state of affairs, the French Revolution highlighted the significance of Man and his natural rights. It did so in

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two fundamental ways, through declarations proclaiming the primacy of the rights14 of all humans, and through a social contract whereby political rule had to be legitimated by the will and consent of the governed.15 Hence the French Declarations of 1789 and 1793 affirmed that the failure to acknowledge and ensure human rights had led to the fall of the ancien régime, and the 1789 and 1793 Constituent Assemblies pointed out that it was ‘ignorance, forgetfulness and disrespect for the rights of man’ that had been ‘the sole causes of public misfortunes and the corruption of governments’.16 Establishing the rule of law and respect for human rights as the cornerstones of the new social order was the starting point for a new era of freedom, equality and fraternity. To oversee this process, sovereignty was entrusted not to the ruler but to the people. Eric Hobsbawm argues17 that the French Revolution created a new, self-conscious group of people, distinguished not by birth or privilege, but by their individual intelligence and ambition to shape society. These people of the middle rank comprised the Third Estate. Their essential mode of action was the association of individuals freely joining together. It was within the context of the town that such institutions of publicity and sociability as cafes, salons, academies, clubs and Masonic lodges developed and that the ‘public’ emerged.18 In these new social public spaces, people learned to associate with one another as equals regardless of their status. In 1824, Mignet summarized the achievements of the French Revolution as having replaced arbitrary power by law, privilege by equality; it freed men from class distinctions, the land from provincial barriers, industry from the handicaps of corporations and guilds, agriculture from feudal servitude and the oppression of tithes, property from the constraints of entail; and it brought everything together under a single state, a single law, a single people.19 It is interesting that Hegel noted the necessity of certain historical conditions to achieve freedom and democracy at the end of a revolution. He argued, for instance, that ‘freedom [would] always [be] realized within a particular institutional framework which at a minimum must contain such things as the rule of law, a market economy and an impartial bureaucracy’.20 Rights also did not appear naturally but were often embedded in historical circumstances.21 For Hegel, the French Revolution was an attempt of the postclassical era to create the conditions for social

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and political harmony by reconciling the rational with the real – an ideal that had once existed in the ancient polis.22 It is noteworthy, however, that even though many scholars thought the French Revolution could be easily replicated throughout the world, Hegel seems to underscore the significance of historical conditions in attaining its ideals, a precondition that has been overlooked by many revolutionaries. Negotiation of Violence in the French Revolution The French Revolution produced such mutually incompatible consequences as the representative ideals of the Constituent Assembly on the one side and the violence and terror of the Jacobin Republic on the other.23 The Terror of 1793–94 in particular and the violence of the French Revolution in general have often been either avoided or overemphasized in historical analysis because they went against the ideal of rationality and the triumph of reason that the Revolution aspired to. Indeed, even contemporaneous eyewitness accounts like that of Edmund Burke often dismissed the revolutionary crowds as ‘bands of cruel ruffians and assassins reeking with ... blood’.24 George Rudé,25 who systematically analyzed the perpetrators of violence during the French Revolution, revealed that the revolutionary crowds were largely composed of the sans-culottes, that is, of people like workshop masters, craftsmen, shopkeepers and petty traders. They engaged in such violence not because of bribery or corruption, the quest for loot or irrational instincts as Gustave Le Bon26 argued, but rather ‘to reclaim traditional rights and to uphold standards which they believed to be imperiled by the innovations of ministers, capitalists, speculators, agricultural “improvers”, or city authorities’.27 It was indeed a defensive reaction of what could be termed the petit-bourgeoisie, whose ability to act was severely curtailed by the Jacobin state. Brian Singer analyzed28 the 1792 September massacres in Paris (which were not studied by George Rudé), when a total of 1,400 people were executed while the capital was under threat of foreign invasion. The massacres were premeditated and executed in relative calm. Rumors of a conspiracy against the revolution being plotted by the prisoners led to the invasion of the prisons by revolutionary crowds. Not only were the largest numbers of the victims not counterrevolutionaries (at least 70 per cent were common-law prisoners), but there was also no evidence at all of a conspiracy or a threat to the revolution. The September massacres were seen as the last significant outbreak of what was termed the ‘Popular

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Terror’ – soon to be replaced by the ‘Official Terror’ of the revolutionary government, when established tribunals took over the delivery of justice from the hands of the people who had until then enacted popular justice.29 Singer argues that, whereas popular violence prior to the September massacres had made a public spectacle of the victim and his mutilation, with all parts of his body separated and exhibited throughout the city, popular tribunals were established during the September massacres so that justice was improvised, juries formed, judges named, a prosecutor established, prison records obtained and sentences delivered after a short interrogation at the end of which, if declared guilty, one would be ‘bludgeoned or hacked to death with whatever instruments were available’.30 This constituted a transformation of ‘popular violence’ into ‘popular justice’ as people were executed under the authority of a law they took it upon themselves to execute, ‘leading those radicals who sought to justify or at least excuse the events of September [to argue] that because the people had organized themselves into tribunals ... these events were not to be represented as “massacres,” but as acts of justice, of people’s justice, the just punishment for the revolution’s opponents’.31 Hegel also looked into the Reign of Terror and located the causes of violence in the French Revolution’s particular conceptions of common good and virtue. Not only were these hollow, but ‘the only standard that the man of virtue can provide of his virtue turned out ultimately to be his own self-certainty and sincerity’.32 When people started to be evaluated by such subjective standards, a relentless search was unleashed for those who lacked true public spirit but pretended to have it. Hence Hegel argued that during the Reign of Terror ‘suspicion is in the ascendant; but virtue, as soon as it becomes liable to suspicion, is already condemned ... Virtue and Terror are the order of the day; for subjective virtue, whose sway is based on disposition only, brings with it the most fearful tyranny. It exercises its power without legal formalities, and the punishment it inflicts is equally simple – death.’33 Indeed the desire to root out hypocrisy, decadence and corruption intensified through a combination of violence and fanaticism. Hannah Arendt located the origin of violence in the search for authenticity that revolutions engaged in; such a search, she conjectured, was bound to be destructive because of ‘the fallacy of misplaced compassion’.34 Even though Rousseau’s original interpretation of compassion as the basis of all morality had been sound, Robespierre had started to regard virtue as the ability to identify with the suffering of the French populace.

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Compassion and virtue thus came to be translated into a more diffused and abstract sense of pity and subjective capacity to sympathize: they became alienated from their root feelings. In the end, the leaders of the Revolution ‘could be sorry without being touched in the flesh ... what had perhaps been genuine passion turned into the boundlessness of an emotion that seemed to respond only too well to the boundless suffering of the multitude in their sheer overwhelming numbers.’35 Hence Robespierre’s ‘republic of virtue’ turned into a republic of ‘pious cruelty’. Indeed, in the end, the ones that caused most havoc to humans were the most passionate and devoted; ‘the greatest cruelties in history have been committed out of an excessive idealism and devotion to causes ... [whereby during the French Revolution] a Reign of Terror was established to purge the nation of all those ‘enemies of the people’ suspected of harboring impure thoughts.’36 Revolution began to reclaim its own when even those entrusted with the common good started to suspect their own motives. The transformation of the law during the Revolution reveals that law applied no longer vertically but rather horizontally to everyone equally with equal force. This was a significant change: one could no longer invert the societal order that the law had established, but instead had to overthrow it entirely, because the law now in effect defined and thereby encompassed the entire societal order. Only when the law is supposed to be an expression of the general will the frequency of recourse to legalized violence serve to indicate that there is no correspondence between the law and the people. One could argue that ever since the French Revolution states have attempted to obfuscate the extent of the violence they practice in order to cover up the discrepancy between their legal system and their populace.37 The Jacobin clubs in the provinces were breeding grounds for public discussion of the interests of the nation and the revolution – discussions that sometimes contradicted those of the representative assemblies in Paris. After 1792, when France went to war, these clubs transformed into socially heterogeneous political action groups and went on to threaten the nation’s enemies at home and abroad.38 It was only through such mass mobilization that France was able to defeat the united continental armies raised against it. Counterrevolutionary activity started in France’s south and west; in the spring of 1793 federalist movements arose when the Jacobin expansion of the foreign war (including the declaration of war on Spain) led to resistance to taxation and conscription, which in turn prompted increased revolutionary surveillance and discipline.39

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On a larger scale, the imperialism of the French Revolutionaries and Napoleon also generated nationalism, with the rights of men quickly giving way to the rights of nations: methods of plebiscite and selfdetermination as well as concepts of territorial integrity and majority rule became significant. Hence, even though the French Revolution proclaimed the nation as the fundamental source of political sovereignty and legitimacy, its darker side was revealed through internal oppression and external domination.40 In assessing the legacy of the French Revolution it is necessary to consider not only the ideal of equal rights for all citizens but also its actualization. In this context, the experiences of minorities in France during the French Revolution, and of the French Jews in particular, become pertinent. Leading Jews at the time were determined to acquire full political rights, thereby ending their separate existence from the gentiles, and equally determined to maintain their religious identity in spite of the attempts to secularize or Christianize them. Moreover, French revolutionary leaders also insisted upon the principles of equality before the law and religious freedom, even at the risk of offending local constituencies.41 Yet when one evaluates this positive start with a view to its aftermath – namely the trajectory of events from the Dreyfus Affair to the Holocaust – one is forced to admit that the theme has not been liberation, as promised by the Enlightenment, but rather destruction. In the case of the French Revolution, even though the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen was passed in August 1789, French Jews had to wait for another two years – and still they were expected to dissolve their communal institutions.42 Even so, the bill nearly failed to secure them the rights of active citizenship because of a fear of Jewish financial power and usury.43 The bill did pass, but these undercurrents of violence and suspicion remained. An analysis of these lingering reservations provides insight into the subsequent Young Turk Revolution of 1908. On the Origins of 1908 A closer examination of the days just before 23 July 1908 reveal that the rebellion against the Ottoman sultan was not an empire-wide movement but took place only in the western part of the empire, in Macedonia – specifically in the cities of Salonica, Monastir and Skopje. Probably the most significant factor leading sultan Abdülhamid II to accede to the pressure

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of the Young Turks was the report his commander of the Third Army, İbrahim Pasha,44 submitted stating that in Macedonia the two types of political solutions Ottoman rulers often resorted to – either advice and admonition or force and compulsion – were no longer viable options. The sultan also had to take into account that the Ottoman military units stationed there had the organizational network and therefore the potential loyalty of many officers and their units beyond Macedonia. Even though the military rebels appeared to have some ‘public’ support, it was hard to determine what this actually amounted to, beyond noting that ‘some villagers, Muslim and non-Muslim [were] moving to city centers.’45 Their level of involvement was difficult to assess, since not only were the reports sent to the imperial capital mostly penned by the political actors themselves, namely the Young Turk officers, but more importantly, in the Ottoman Empire there had not yet been any articulation of a politicized ‘public’ – the populace was viewed simply as the socially undifferentiated totality of the sultan’s subjects. The political act of convening the Ottoman Chamber initially rested not with the Young Turks, but with the Ottoman sultan who still held onto his throne and thus received accolades from his subjects for the declaration. The official news that Abdülhamid II had permitted the Chamber to reconvene and reinstated the Constitution was initially buried inside the official newspaper Tanin as if it were an insignificant item. As there had been general clandestine opposition to the sultan’s rule and there was not yet a single, publicly recognized Young Turk leadership, it took a while for political actors to emerge at the capital celebration to claim victory and lead the celebration of the newly acquired ‘liberty and freedom’. Modernity and Political Rights in the 1908 Young Turk Revolution A review of the contemporaneous memoirs reveals that very few if any were cognizant of the significance of this acquisition of rights. The impressions of the day reveal that people celebrated without an awareness of what it was they were celebrating. Galip Söylemezoğlu, who was at the capital on the day the 1908 Constitution was declared, probably provides46 the most dramatic description: I could not believe my eyes! Everyone had a newspaper! No one moves their head! I would not be exaggerating if I say they almost

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The Transformation of Turkey do not breathe! ... Oh my God! Is this a dream or reality? Or a new trick to hurt the populace? Was there a trap set for those who would trust this news item and go public? ... The truth was that until the streetcar came to the bridge, no one had the courage to even steal a look, let alone chat with the person sitting next to them ... I got off the streetcar in Galata and crossed the bridge ... I ran into [a friend] in Eminönü ... ‘You see we finally tore down despotism! Down with despotism! Long live Freedom!’ he started to shout. The people around us stared at us in horror and amazement. I grabbed him by the arm saying, ‘Come on, do not act so hastily, let us walk!’ ... and we started to go up the Babıali hill. Flags were starting to be mounted on the banks and the libraries ... That day İstanbul shook with excitement from one end to the other. The crowds on the streets were impenetrable ... For about a week to ten days the country went through a huge nervous breakdown. The populace blindly followed this or that person, went to the houses of the ministers, high officials, beys and pashas whose evil affairs were known to everyone, insulted them in many ways, and took them to the prisons of either the gendarmerie or the War Ministry.

Fazıl Ahmet (Aykaç), who at the time was a clerk at the Mint, recounts47 how no one had any idea what had happened except to observe everyone around them wearing red and white freedom ties: Someone got up and said ‘We are saved, Long Live the Constitution!’... As citizens belonging to various groups had hugged one another on the streets and become brothers, we thought that all states were going to hug Turkey and kiss the cheeks of the Babıali government! Yes, I assure you we were that naïve, ignorant, and in one word, pitiful! Likewise Yusuf Kemal (Tengirşenk), who had left for İskeçe for business and upon his return found the Sirkeci station in İstanbul all decorated, relays48 the following conversation: I asked the reason for this from my friends; ‘Freedom was established,’ they replied. ‘What does that mean?’ I asked; ‘We don’t

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know,’ they answered. Then I went elsewhere and found out that Abdülhamid had invited the Ottoman Parliament to convene. A slightly different version is narrated by Çerkes Hasan (Amça), who notes that49 on the day the notice of the proclamation of the constitution appeared in the newspapers: [I]n front of the Ministry of Education, one policeman decided to take us to the Police Headquarters for disorderly conduct. Our group consisted of two Turks and three or four Greek and Armenian citizens. ‘You never know,’ we said and got rid of the Christian subjects [as we could not predict what would happen to them in custody]. [Only] my friend Ahmet and I went [to the headquarters]. This recollection is interesting in that not only do they get taken into custody for a while, but they make sure the non-Muslims among them are not subjected to the same treatment – which demonstrates that all are aware of the differential treatment Muslim subjects can expect to receive. One last remembrance, by Falih Rıfkı Atay, captures50 how as young boys those days they could not stop thinking about the streets and demonstrations, the names of the Freedom Heroes Enver, Niyazi and Fethi, the sacred society (cemiyet-i mukaddese), and the thought that the heroes went up to the mountains to save us ... [The first year of the Constitution went by as] we kept shouting whatever slogan we had picked up on a particular day either from the newspaper or a public speech ... [Then we looked around and realized that] the revolution had neither a leader nor a direction nor a program; [but we all believed that] once the Constitution was promulgated, all problems would [naturally] be resolved. It was this belief that everything would naturally take care of itself that was to prove the greatest disappointment: the Young Turks who had been in opposition to the sultan lacked the administrative experience to know how to work things out. Another demonstration of the Young Turks’ naive belief that things would just work themselves out naturally after the Constitution was

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declared is given by Çerkes Hasan (Amça), who refers51 to an interview prominent CUP leader Rahmi Bey gave on 8 August 1909 to Le Temps, where he stated: You ask about our political program! We do not have such a thing. Until today we struggled to tear down [the autocracy]. Now we try to protect the Constitution to the letter. Hereafter we will work for the future and progress of the country. The Committee [of Union and Progress] will not disappear. It will continue to operate alongside the government, and if the government does not perform things correctly, it will guide it in that direction. This naivete – combined with the catastrophic events of the time and the insurmountable problems the Young Turks inherited – made it extremely difficult for them to actualize their vision of political rights for all the subjects of the empire within the framework of constitutional law. Fazıl Ahmet (Aykaç) describes52 how the populace also expected the impossible from the Young Turks of the Constitutional period – expectations that were bound to fail: We truly ran to the ground and overturned the leaders of the Abdülhamid era with the axes and greased nooses of the revolution. And expected that everything would change once the new idols we had kept like trinkets in the shelves of our hearts and imaginations were placed on the empty pedestals of the statues! Yet the inexperienced trust we bestowed upon these men and the importance we advanced them without any security was too much and unnecessary; it was also absurd to appear in front of them and shout about why they had not done, what they of course did not have the power to do. We started to be like those people who turn against their idols for not actualizing their desires and [who then] give up their beliefs. We forgot that those we idolized were pieces of wood and what they could do was very limited. Yet when they saw that the places they once could not even reach suddenly come up under their feet, they [too] lost their commonsense. And the disaster broadened ... The Union and Progress assumed the guise of a repressive, ignorant, arrogant and aggressive clique. When the CUP had first assumed power right after the Constitutional Revolution in 1908, they had wanted to accomplish ‘the union of all

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elements,’ namely ‘ittihad-ı anasır’ for they believed the strength of the different peoples of the empire in their political rights would lead them to invest in the empire and therefore in the Constitution, uniting into one totality. While this appeared to have worked in theory, the practice was to prove different. Cemal Kutay recounts53 how the prominent CUP members Cavid Bey and Dr. Bahaeddin Şakir visited the then Prime Minister Kamil Pasha and described their vision, and Cavid Bey explained how they were going to accomplish this difficult task: Kamil Pasha listened, listened and then asked his famous question: ‘Are you done, effendis?’ When answered in the affirmative, he ... said: ‘It is not possible, effendis, it cannot be done. Because this country has its own particular dynamics.54 So do the people who live in it. You groundlessly imagine these conditions in your mind’s eye by likening us to others or others to us, then you get yourselves to believe in what you have created, and then you reject the real truth. Indeed, even though constitutionalism was supposed to unite people under the French Revolution’s famous banners of freedom, equality and brotherhood, the meanings of these banners soon became subverted in the Ottoman context. Halid Ziya Uşaklıgil recounts:55 It was soon observed that freedom was for each race to freely embrace its own desires, equality meant the struggle to achieve the same rights with the same forces, and as for brotherhood, it meant that brothers born of step-parents could openly express their vengeance against one another. Hence, the ideals of the French Revolution were becoming increasingly polarized and swerving away from the imagined ideal of unity. Ahmed Rıza Bey, who had been the CUP leader in Paris and was certainly one of the most introspective of the Young Turks, highlights the difficulties the Young Turks faced at the onset of the Constitutional Period in undertaking reforms. He notes56 as follows: When the CUP was established, the populace expected everything from them. The CUP was going to set everything straight, make rain fall and turn the country prosperous. When all these did not happen, the populace started to grow cool toward the CUP. The

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The Transformation of Turkey CUP had brought freedom to the people; this was a great difference between the old and new eras. It was cruel not to see this difference, but the populace had forgotten the old era because it was not seriously in love with freedom: it could not appreciate the value of freedom and did not know how to make use of it. In order to improve the conditions of the people, to educate them politically, it was necessary not to forget the old era. Yet after the proclamation of the constitution, vast and serious reforms could not be undertaken for there was no money and security had not been achieved ... Reform meant innovation; the public opinion seemed against it ... As I had been living abroad for twenty years, I did not know the mental state of the populace. It turns out my friends did not either; we thought the populace was delicate like a respectable woman and tried not to hurt and sadden her. We decided to execute the reforms slowly [since] we were afraid to offend her. Yet this caused the reforms to be delayed.

Hence, not only was the populace unable to appreciate what had been procured for them, but the Young Turks themselves had neither the means nor the experience to communicate and deliver what was necessary. Yet, the sheik-ul-islam Cemaleddin Efendi, who had been an experienced Ottoman administrator and therefore grasped the procedures that the Young Turks would have needed to follow, criticized their performance in ways that were quite different from that of Ahmet Rıza Bey. He stated57 that one had to first blame the CUP because [g]uaranteeing the continuance of the exalted [Ottoman] state, of the various ethnic communities comprising the universe of Ottomanism would have only been possible if all had benefited from the freedom and justice offered by the constitutional law, turning them into one [solid] mass ... And the state [could have done so] by spreading education ... by building medreses and schools for the populace ... providing public works, roads, shelter and sustenance for them. This was the most important political duty that the leaders of the constitutional government had to undertake. Yet the influential people of the CUP neglected and abandoned this fundamental duty. [Instead] they turned toward completing the organization of the CUP by establishing clubs in the provinces. They adopted a violent centralization policy in order to increase

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their influence. They also accepted a broad administrative style like parliamentarism that was rather difficult to implement given the [existing] societal organization and civilizational ability. The lack of knowledge and experience by the populace was coupled with the inability of most of the Young Turks as to what it was that they had actually accomplished. In addition, the amorphous, ever-growing and ever-changing composition of the Young Turks themselves made articulating the ideals of the Revolution increasingly difficult. Since the Young Turks had been a secret organization, with most of the members organized into cells and often unknown to one another, everyone now claimed to be a Young Turk. Upon its triumphant return to the capital, the Committee of Union and Progress did not attempt to prevent this mass mobilization. Even though this move did indeed enable the CUP to penetrate into most of Ottoman society, it also reduced the group’s ability to control its own constituency. Many contemporaneous accounts reveal how everyone indiscriminately flooded into the ranks of the CUP. Abidin Nesimi states,58 for instance: During the Abdülhamid period, whoever opposed his regime was assumed to be a Unionist and exiled. So when the Constitutional Revolution was declared, all who had been exiled or were in prison, be they political or common criminals, claimed to be CUP members. This was also to be the experience of Ahmed Rıza Bey upon his arrival at the capital some months after the declaration of the Constitution. He recounted59 his first visit and reception at the CUP headquarters as follows: I encountered some strange men I did not know and whose names I had not even heard. Each and every one of them swaggered with pride and dictated matters as if they had all worked and sacrificed for the Constitution more than I had. My stay in Paris for an additional two months had led these upstarts to emerge and take charge ... The main crime of the CUP was to open its doors and admit to the organization second-rate and tyrannical people. Not to realize how morally corrupt the people were in İstanbul, to think

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Still, people kept descending all the time; all those who had opposed the sultan felt entitled to belong to the Young Turks and hold membership in the CUP. And though Ahmed Rıza Bey was against admitting all who wanted to join, the political community of the Young Turks seemed to be growing continuously. Yet joining the CUP did not necessarily translate into acquiring a political consciousness, for Mevlanzade Rıfat noted60 how many of these recruits were much more interested in the material benefits that would accrue than the ideological vision: as for those who joined these associations and organizations in droves, a large segment had neither studied nor felt the need to think through the administrative system to which they now belonged. And this condition emanated from the old sickness of the East known as the habit of ‘joining a household.’ Actually the reason in our case for joining such households of the great ones, the pasha effendis, is more the abundance of favors rather than the need for wisdom and insight. Indeed, drawing upon the former household model, the CUP politically mobilized and spread to establish CUP clubs that would penetrate the entire empire. This depth and breadth enabled the CUP to establish the first political organizational network in the empire outside of the religious orders. While this provincial networking worked because it was predicated on an earlier model, the introduction of new practices of modernity that required adjustments in time and space did not meet with similar success. Ahmed Rıza, who had lived most of his life abroad, summed up61 his irritation at practices he deemed inadequate as follows: There is no order in the social life of our country. Boats, streetcars do not arrive on time; no one comes to a meeting in a timely manner. To achieve a quorum in the parliament had become a problem, a scandal. The deputies would sit around downstairs in the recess room, reading newspapers and chatting away. They would not budge

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regardless of how many times the personnel invite them upstairs or ring bells. There is no sense of duty; it is impossible for us to conduct business in accordance with a program. We make good programs but demonstrate weakness when it comes to execution ... It is torment for an irritable man to live in such an environment. Centralization of Power at the CUP Not only was there not an equitable distribution of political rights in the Ottoman Empire, but the CUP, which had come to power with just such an agenda, quickly abandoned it in favor of Turkish nationalism. During the French Revolution, it had been the bourgeoisie who countered reactionary forces and sustained the power of the new Constitution. Yet in the Ottoman case, the bourgeoisie comprised minorities who were structurally separated from the Muslims who filled the state administrative and bureaucratic elites.62 As the CUP started to pursue a proto-nationalist agenda, it began to concentrate almost exclusively on the concerns of the Turks at the expense of all other groups. The crucial decade of CUP political presence (1908–18) was marked by three significant political developments: deputies elected to the Chamber with CUP backing became entirely dependent on the party’s central committee in all their actions; all levels of the Ottoman bureaucratic administration were penetrated by the CUP through the appointment of loyal officials and purges of opponents; and the ranks of the military were also politicized, as most joined the CUP and remained members in spite of warnings to stay out of politics. A crucial CUP leader overseeing this centralization of power was Talat Pasha, a member of the Salonica branch of the CUP who had quickly become a deputy from Edirne and then in July 1909 rose to the post of interior minister – at the age of 35 and after only one year of bureaucratic experience. He oversaw the systematic reorganization of the Ottoman bureaucratic administration: one of the first items on the Ottoman Chamber’s agenda was a law purging all those in the military and civil administration who had been loyal to the sultan and replacing them with CUP loyalists. It was this legal move that enabled the CUP to penetrate into the Ottoman bureaucratic administration; coupled with the establishment of CUP clubs throughout the empire, it gave the CUP effective political control. When the Chamber of Deputies began its operations on 17 December 1908, the CUP made sure that not only were most of the deputies from

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among its members but that they voted strictly along party lines. Indeed, the inability of the deputies to act independently of the CUP was noted by many contemporaneous observers. Çerkes Hasan (Amça) stated:63 Assembly of Deputies! It served as the small coffee kitchen for this group [of CUP members within the central committee] ... They were only rubber stamps to complete the formalities! ... [and] the CUP’s degree of tolerance for consultation and accountability was only as much as Abdülhamid II’s. Likewise Ahmed Refik (Altınay) observed64 that the Ottoman Chamber – which could have prevented abuses and corruption from taking place and thereby restored the faith of the populace – was so corrupt and vile itself that it was referred to not as the ‘Meclis-i Mebusan’ (‘the Assembly of Deputies’) but rather, employing a play on words, as ‘Meclis-i Mensuban,’ (‘the Assembly of the Connected Ones’ – connected to power, influence and corruption), or as ‘Meclis-i Menhusan,’ (‘the Assembly of the Inauspicious’). Despite the existence of the Ottoman Chamber and a government that was supposed to represent the people and a Constitution that provided the framework for their political rights, many observed that the CUP proceeded to gain so much influence that the government’s authority was almost nonexistent. Damar Arıkoğlu, a member of the CUP in the provinces, specifically in Adana, remarked65 that ‘[e]ven petitions were submitted not to the government but to the committee’. Burhan Felek noted66 in his memoirs that ‘even though the Ottoman Parliament had gathered in its bosom the select politicians of the country, it was not the political center of the country. This center was rather the headquarters of the CUP’. The inordinate power of the CUP was most noticeable in the provinces, where the members of the CUP clubs often took it upon themselves to visit the local Ottoman administrators and notify them that the club would now oversee and control all affairs. Such an incident is narrated67 by Hüseyin Kazım Kadri, who himself was, unbeknownst to the local CUP members, a prominent CUP member appointed the subdistrict governor of the Siros island personally by Talat Pasha to fight the bandits in the area and who observed this exercise of local political control with deep

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anxiety. Not only did Kadri find total anarchy upon his arrival, but two delegates from the CUP visited his office to tell him: On all matters, I had to work jointly with the CUP center there ... It seems I was to work there not as a government official, as a subdistrict governor, but as a functionary of the CUP headquarters ... Of course any man who was a government official and therefore knew his duties and had control of his carnal inclinations, could not have accepted such a proposition. I strongly rejected the offer and explained that I was there not as an official of the CUP, but of the government and told them bitterly that I intended to always act in this capacity. Then I thought: if these men find the courage to make such a proposition to someone like me who had a prominent position in the CUP, what sorts of pressures did they bring upon government officials who did not have such connections and how could those poor officials respond to them? In such a situation, where would the government, its integrity, the responsibility of one’s duty, the laws ... end up? I thought about all these and was scared of what the future holds. The government had been transferred to hidden hands ... The ones who directed matters were men without any [official] responsibility. Distressed by this state of affairs, Kadri of course did not give in and pursued an independent course of action, but he noted that these two delegates tried very hard to make life difficult for him, though to no avail, thanks to the strength of his own connections within the CUP. It was nevertheless very telling that Ottoman administration had become politicized at a level that had never been previously experienced and the person responsible for this organization was mainly Talat Pasha. Talat Pasha was credited by many contemporaneous accounts with keeping both the CUP and the government together. In his persona, the Pasha seems to capture all the contradictions of the CUP members: their fervent patriotism as well as the lack of education, experience and short-sightedness that wreaked havoc and eventually brought down the empire. It is extremely telling that even though he is a prominent CUP leader, Talat Pasha – just like the other two leaders of the CUP triumvirate, Enver Pasha and Cemal Pasha – does not seem at all concerned with the concept of political rights and representation; he does not discuss them in depth or agonize about their lack during his political reign. On the contrary, unlike Ahmed Rıza, all three men are peculiarly devoid of such

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concerns. This is especially noteworthy in the case of Talat Pasha because, unlike Enver and Cemal Pashas who were soldiers, he was a civilian in origin. Rauf Orbay, another CUP member, claims68 in his memoirs that he heard with his own ears how Talat Pasha ‘who had once been on the forefront of the struggle for freedom’ said upon becoming grand vizier, ‘the nation is not yet ready for constitutional rule. It is imperative for the safety of the country and the security of the nation [to instead have] an enlightened despotic rule.’ Galip Söylemezoğlu’s recollection of a meeting he and the Ottoman ambassador to France, Salih Münir Pasha, had in 1913 with the then Minister of the Interior Talat Pasha dates from approximately the same time. Söylemezoğlu recalls how Talat Pasha hit the two sides of the armchair he was sitting on with his hands and said: ‘I swear to God, Pasha! No one can get us out of here from now on! And we have no interest whatsoever in budging anywhere ever again!’ Even though Talat Pasha could have been joking, it is nevertheless interesting to note the sense of possession, of taking permanent control, that seems to have been observed by many. Also significant here is the use of the pronoun ‘we’, for the act of assuming the position is being done on behalf of the CUP in particular – and of course the populace in general. It remains to be seen whether the Pasha does truly represent the populace at this point and how he reaches and justifies this contention. It is in this context that the power the CUP members derive from Turkish nationalism becomes significant. Indeed, two astute, experienced Ottoman administrators, Mehmet Tevfik Biren and Lütfi Simavi, provide descriptions of Talat Pasha that capture this nationalistic dimension and the liberties it gave him. Mehmet Tevfik Biren dryly notes:69 Most of these men and all of their leaders were in principle patriotic and self-sacrificing people. All the mistakes they committed were partially due to their having acquired this conceit that ‘it was we who brought the constitution.’ There were also those among them who could not understand the drawbacks of governing a state with the methods of a komitadji [member of a secret revolutionary committee]. Indeed, CUP’s resorting to guerilla tactics in conducting government business – that is, acting without accountability or transparency – seems

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to have wrought havoc and brought the empire to a standstill. The complaint is echoed almost verbatim by Simavi, who also states:70 Talat Pasha lacked knowledge and culture. He had risen to the position of grand vezir – via being a deputy and then a minister – from that of a postal clerk solely due to his patriotism, courage and audacity. He was a komitadji and a Unionist who was a true believer. It was not possible to criticize the fierce love he had toward his honor, homeland and nation. Yet he had blindly included in his cabinet totally ignorant people who had no single merit other than their loyalty to the CUP. However well-intentioned they may have been, it would not have been possible for these people to be useful to the country. Then there were some upstarts among them who were truly party members or who pretended to be so and they either committed countless mistakes or wreaked havoc with the country through engaging in blackmarketeering or influence peddling. Talat Pasha, who alone was a symbol of honor, did not impede them. Once again, it is through fierce patriotism that Talat Pasha not only rises to a series of ever-higher posts, but also justifies his actions – however ignorant and ill-informed – to himself and, more important, to those around him. In this latter portrayal, the Pasha thus appears to be an idealist surrounded by opportunists. The last depiction of Talat Pasha by Rıza Nur, a deputy of the Ottoman Chamber, who had once been a CUP sympathizer but then became an opponent, points out how the Pasha’s patriotism and fierce belief in the correctness and righteousness of his position could very easily lead to violence. Indeed, Nur described71 the situation at the Ottoman Chamber as follows: [N]o one had any votes or power. A few people like Cavit, Talat, Karaso, Cahit give orders and hands are raised ... I wrote an article criticizing them and ... all hell broke loose because they had never been so openly criticized before. Everyone had been led to believe the committee to be a sacred body and organization. ... Talat saw me in the corridor; his face was like mud. This is what [his face] turned into when he was angry ... He changed his course to pass by me and bent into my ear and said ‘get your funeral shroud ready!’ This was an amazing threat; they might do it, too. The sacred

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The Transformation of Turkey committee keeps murdering men. It was not that I was not frightened, I was ... but I [nevertheless] kept on criticizing them.

Their inability to handle criticism due to lack of participation in a public sphere – an institution crucial to the emergence and sustenance of democracies – became increasingly problematic as the CUP, unable to tolerate opposition, took to suppressing it with violence. The Emergence of the Military as Political Actors in the Late Ottoman Period Discussion of the CUP in general and its use of violence in particular (especially by the secret paramilitary Special Organization (Teşkilat-ı Mahsusa)) brings us to the larger issue of the role of the military and their legacy. Military officers or related professions such as army physicians and veterinarians had not only been associated with modernity but often advocated it because they had generally attended Western-style educational institutions within the empire or been educated abroad in the West. Yet, like their civilian bureaucratic counterparts educated in similar Western-style educational institutions, some were loyal to the sultan and therefore did not engage in such action. Even though the Turkish military has currently institutionalized its claim to upholding modernity and democracy in Turkey and grounded this claim in history, a closer analysis72 reveals that the Ottoman military officers were initially more skillful not in generating and sustaining political power, but rather in monopolizing it once it had been established by others. Nader Sohrabi has analyzed the main political journal of the CUP, Şuray-ı Ümmet, published in Cairo and Paris between 1902 and 1908, to map out the Young Turk search ‘for the best political system and a viable strategy for revolution’.73 In drawing up their plan of action, it appears that in 1902 the Young Turks ‘held a highly conservative view toward political action [that was] elitist and evolutionist rather than revolutionary’.74 They did not initially aspire to the model of the French Revolution75 since they were convinced that ‘a mass uprising against the state would invite foreign intervention in support of autonomy-seeking ethnic groups, leading to the collapse of the Empire’. What of course went unsaid here was that the non-Muslim minorities comprised the bourgeoisie of the Ottoman Empire and were therefore best situated to both participate in and aid this political transformation. By refusing to consider this option, the Young Turks not only

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signaled that they did not envision the minorities as a part of the future composition of the Ottoman state but also excluded their revolutionary potential from the outstart. The Young Turks also condemned76 the Reign of Terror of the French Revolution and wanted to avoid such violence by excluding the masses from participation, employing instead a constitutionalist military takeover from the top. They found precedents not only in the initial success of the Young Ottoman movement in 1876 but also in the Meiji Restoration in Japan in 1868,77 which had demonstrated what an enlightened nationalist leader could achieve. In addition, the Russian Revolution of 1905 demonstrated78 the significance of sustaining a dedicated cadre of extralegal organizations (‘a skilled martyr-assassin (fedai) was more effective than 10,000 revolutionaries’); an intelligentsia for inciting the masses; and protest strategies such as withholding taxes. Sohrabi conjectures79 that the Young Turks might have thought about recruiting and organizing a cadre of secret military revolutionaries from the Russians; they stated that ‘if we strive like Russians, it won’t be long before we see even the Sultan’s aides-de-camp among our supporters’. The Young Turks were also heartened by the tax rebellions that occurred among the Turkish population in Anatolia between 1906 and 1907.80 As a consequence of this trajectory, the Young Turk leadership in general and that of Ahmed Rıza’s in particular finally issued81 an uncharacteristic appeal to the military officers on 15 October 1907 concerning the need to organize villagers into militia units of ten to fifteen members. This model had been suggested by the Greek and Albanian bands that had been so successful against the Ottomans: if every province had eight to ten such bands under a commanding officer, then they could mobilize and resist the government. Hence for the first time the Young Turks advocated mass mobilization and military action. This method was then officially sanctioned at the second congress of the Ottoman opposition parties in December of 1907, where ‘a variety of violent and passive methods were recommended: armed resistance, inviting the public to a general uprising, propagandizing within the army, strikes and refusing to pay taxes.’82 The CUP had, in effect, provided an organizational umbrella for the military officers. What they had not counted on, however, was the consequence: the military assumed both leadership and eventually ownership of the entire movement. When the CUP was dissolved, the only institution that was to be transferred intact into the Turkish nation-state was the military. What was lost in this political transformation was any

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transparency or accountability over the actions of the military, as the latter not only defined Turkish modernity and political rights, but claimed ownership over them. From the outset there was tension between the military and civilian wings of the CUP. Even though the account above highlights the ideological significance of the CUP branch headed by Ahmed Rıza, the Salonica branch, which consisted mostly of military officers from the Third Army – including Enver and Cemal Pashas, as well as the civilians Talat Pasha and Cavid Bey, was to become much more prominent in the ensuing CUP reign. There was also a lot of tension among the CUP members about the creation of paramilitary organizations and the use of violence in conducting governmental affairs. Ahmed Rıza was totally opposed to such practices, whereas others had much more flexible stands on the issue. Upon the declaration of the Constitution, one of the rituals the Young Turk officers engaged in was to have all the military school students take collective oaths of loyalty to the CUP.83 Likewise, when CUP member Kazım Nami Duru traveled to Edirne he noted84 that ‘the officials, teachers and most of the soldiers were members of the CUP. Even though orders were given for soldiers to sever their ties with political organizations, to not engage in politics, the officers still did not stop from being active in such organizations.’ Duru points out at another point in his memoir85 that the CUP realized the problem with the engagement of soldiers in politics and tried to legally prevent it, but all to no avail: [A]s soon as the Chamber of Deputies convened, we wanted them to promulgate a law about soldiers resigning from the army. In reality [however], some of our friends retained their ranks and were being appointed as governors, mutasarrıfs and kaymakams. And as if that was not sufficient, there were some who acted as if it were a privilege to be a member of the CUP [and therefore] tried to receive posts by becoming affiliated with it. Two other contemporaneous accounts confirm this observation. Çerkes Hasan (Amça) relates86 the utter chaos that set in among the ranks of the military upon the declaration of the constitution, which he observed firsthand as a cadet: [D]iscipline was totally bankrupt in the army. Committees consisting of young officers were making pashas they could not have

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reached ... swear oaths of allegiance ... oaths of loyalty to the constitution and honorable service to the state ... it was certain that we had lost the axis of our movement ... Neither the judiciary nor the administrative apparatus worked decently ... and the notices of the CUP had not yet acquired the necessary authority ... these notices were more like requests ... on low-ranked officers who had played the most significant role of the revolution. Indeed, it was quite common for conflicts to erupt between military and civilian authorities. In one such instance87 a first lieutenant who became a member of the CUP in the small town of Langaza near Salonica ordered the public prosecutor to leave the town. When the latter, falsely thinking that he represented the law in that region, refused to do so, he was physically thrown out by the soldier. As with the case noted above, the sheik-ul-islam Cemaleddin Efendi also complained in his memoir88 that not only was the entire Ottoman army ‘all the way to the general staff’ under the political influence of the CUP, but the CUP would not even permit an investigation into who was responsible for the Balkan defeats. In addition, the CUP retired all middle- and lower-level military officials and replaced them with officers who swore total allegiance to the CUP. Most significant here is the precedent that was set: by preventing an investigation into the failures of the Ottoman military, the CUP established a pattern of obfuscation and lack of accountability on the part of the military. The expansive scope of political action that the Ottoman military thus undertook, setting a course both for itself and for the Ottoman state as a whole, becomes most evident in the Bab-ı Ali Raid of 10 January 1913 carried out under the command of Enver Pasha and his group of paramilitary fighters. A close reading of this incident reveals how the military symbolically monopolized the right to speak on behalf of the populace – and has done so ever since. Rauf Orbay recounts89 how Enver Pasha stormed the Chamber of Deputies right after the Balkan wars and had the CUP assume full dictatorial power through a government coup, setting a precedent by pointing out that the Minister of War Nazım Pasha [who was ultimately shot and killed by the paramilitary fighter and Special Organization member Yakup Cemil] was extremely upset: [B]ecause Enver and Talat Beys had promised [Nazım Pasha] that they would not actively interfere in politics during the [Balkan] war

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The Transformation of Turkey and he in turn had opposed the Interior Minister Reşit Bey [when the latter] had decided to pursue a tough policy against the Unionists, stating he had gotten their personal guarantee and there should be no worries. [Thus] when the Pasha yelled at them and Yakup Cemil shot him in his temple, Enver shouted at him: ‘We did not come here to kill anyone, how could you do such a thing!’ ... Enver then went to the Grand Vezir Kamil Pasha and stated: ‘The nation does not want you, resign.’90 Kamil Pasha wrote a note stating that he was resigning upon the request of ‘some members of the military’ to which Enver had the word ‘populace’ added on.91

What is very significant here is that Enver Pasha so readily took it upon himself to speak and act on behalf of the nation: even though he was acting together with a group of military officers, he nevertheless legitimated his actions by claiming that they were on behalf of the ‘populace.’ Rauf Orbay, too, noted that92 ‘the era of the direct control of the CUP over the administration of the country started [then]. It was preferred that the country be administered not through the laws issued by the Chamber Assembly of Deputies, but through governmental decrees issued by the authority of the Committee of Ministers.’ What the military sacrificed then, on the eve of World War I, was transparency of action and accountability. This is the hidden meaning and unstated historical legacy of the 1908 Young Turk Revolution. Violence in the 1908 Young Turk Revolution Even though Young Turk publications had initially stated that they opposed the mob violence of the French Revolution – and the mass participation that had led to it – the 1908 Young Turks eventually encouraged mass participation and certainly ended up not only condoning but also administering violence. A very significant difference between the violence employed by Sultan Abdülhamid II and that of the Young Turks, however, is that the Young Turks never performed their violence in public. During the era of the sultans, violence – for instance, violence against minorities – was publicly visible to all and engaged the whole social body, as people took to the streets and victims were punished either by the sultan’s security forces or by people taking justice into their own hands. Nevertheless, these acts of violence

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still occurred within the body politic of the empire: the Ottoman state still owned and contained them. When one turns to the Young Turk era, however, the same violence becomes hidden, performed in secret by paramilitary organizations or outside of the towns and cities. It thus becomes extremely difficult for critics of the Young Turks to pinpoint and challenge them on what they are doing, for all their violence is conducted in secret. No longer publicly owned and recognized, such violence cannot be challenged or countered. People have argued that this pattern was predicated on the secret nature of the CUP, which had been used to acting clandestinely and therefore kept on conducting government affairs in the same pattern. Such behavior destroys the moral and ethical fabric of society: soon there are no standards left that the state can claim to uphold. It is no accident that the Turkish secular state project is currently in crisis. CUP members either justified these acts of violence on nationalist grounds or dismissed them as the acts of individuals. A case in point is Kazım Nami Duru, who has no qualms93 about pointing out that right after the proclamation of the Constitution, ‘there were indeed many assassinations that did take place.’ Yet Duru justifies and thus normalizes such violence by pointing out, in a very matter-of-fact manner, that these murders ‘had not been ordered by [CUP], but were undertaken by the members upon their own initiative [and therefore, it seems, there ought to be no guilt to be attached to anyone.]’ Duru cannot resist commenting on the dispensability of the victims by stating ‘but I would lie if I said anyone was saddened by any of these deaths’.94 Duru does not seem to realize that by permitting its members to take justice into their hands, the CUP had actually enabled, legitimized and normalized murder. In addition, his comment demeaning and dismissing the value of the victim further condones the individual acts of murder and destruction committed by the CUP members. This style of reasoning is a Unionist legacy that still persists today. The memoirs of Unionists are filled with such accounts, which they narrate with great glee as the murders all somehow seem justified by ‘the cause’. Here, for instance, is the narration95 of Başkatipzade Ragıp Bey, a member of the Special Organization, who proudly announces that there was within the CUP a tradition established of holding secret meetings where the prominent members of the central committee decided many issues concerning both the government and the state; these issues

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including such matters as bringing down the current government. He continues96 to describe the role of such groups within the CUP: [A]s these youth had been among the first to enroll in CUP before Constitutional rule, they had played a great role in the declaration of the 1908 Constitutional Revolution and [therefore] carried out very difficult duties that required a lot of responsibility. Even though many were very young, they put their lives in danger to partake in adventures for the CUP, for the revolution and, after the revolution, even though they did not become very visible and did not have their names much uttered in public, they had made many sacrifices on behalf of the CUP. Some of these youth had assumed various duties in Arabia, Yemen, Albania, and established party organizations in the toughest places where the populace had been most alienated from such ideas. They had succeeded in getting the influence and strength of CUP recognized; some had become martyr-assassins of the CUP, entered into fire and revolution at the most dangerous moments, formed armed bands, and did not shy from sacrificing their lives, themselves! Indeed, it is the oath of loyalty that the CUP members take exclusively to the organization itself before all else that ultimately destroys the moral and ethical fabric of society and the state. This oath of loyalty is predicated on the belief that the CUP can determine and act upon the interests of the nation better than anyone else. Yet, as Hegel and Arendt have demonstrated, as there is no way to prove who is more patriotic and virtuous, this hollow ideology can identify enemies, organize and turn violent in the name of patriotism extremely quickly. The CUP leader Ahmed Rıza was able to observe how the CUP began to turn violent; he noted97 that ‘the CUP lost its rudder and began to change colors [like a chameleon]. I started to reproach the leaders of the CUP and advised them, but it did not produce an effect. Autocracy and weakness for self-interest were too sweet. They started to threaten me instead.’ The second series of incidents after the random murders undertaken by CUP members ‘upon their own private initiative’ that Duru discussed above – for which they were not caught and tried – were killings of political opponents, especially journalists who criticized them. Unable to tolerate criticism, they decided to quell it through assassinations conducted

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by members of their paramilitary organization. Journalist Burhan Felek, remembering those days, notes:98 [My one memory] is that of ‘the assassination of the owner of the Serbesti newspaper Hasan Fehmi Bey on top of the same bridge ... there was no doubt that the murder was political and the murderers were Unionists ... [i]n those days demonstrations were called meetings; they rarely involved walking. Mostly people gathered somewhere and shouted ... we called marches demonstrations as well ... A meeting occurred every day at every place. The CUP at first was liked for bringing freedom to the country and also feared, mixed with respect, as its members [being secret] were not public knowledge; yet when it started killing its opponents, matters turned upside down and there arose almost a general hatred toward the CUP ... Whoever wanted wrote and spoke against the Unionists. They too had strong pens like Hüseyin Cahid Bey (Yalçın), but found it more practical to kill their opponents. Refik Halid Karay also confirms99 that three journalists, Hasan Fehmi, Ahmet Samim and Zeki Bey were assassinated by the CUP. Ahmet Emin Yalman describes100 in his memoirs how the assassination of the journalist Hasan Fehmi on 5 April 1909 caused an uproar at the capital; a hundred thousand people attended his funeral and condemned the CUP, which was behind the assassination. Likewise, the journalist Ahmet Samim Bey was assassinated by the CUP on 9 or 10 June 1910, and the third journalist to be shot was Zeki Bey, murdered on 11 July 1911. Not only were none of the murderers caught, but there was ample evidence that the police and guards in the vicinity were sent elsewhere right before the attacks. Also significant, in addition to the murder of the War Minister Nazım Pasha during the Bab-ı Ali Raid, was the assassination of Mahmud Shevket Pasha. Even though this murder was not conducted directly by the CUP, they had nevertheless known about the plot and had intentionally not taken the necessary precautions to prevent it. Mahmud Shevket Pasha’s diary contains many entries revealing101 his extremely low esteem of the CUP leaders and his impatience with their corrupt ways. On 4 June 1913, for instance, Cafer Pasha and Talat Bey come to visit him and ask him to dismiss someone they are having followed merely for being a brother of one of sultan Abdülhamid’s grand vezirs. Shevket Pasha says to

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Talat Pasha: ‘You cannot have people illegally followed in such a manner’ and refuses the request. In relation to the assassination of Mahmud Shevket Pasha, Burhan Felek notes102 that he had then been in prison and even though ‘who had killed the Pasha emerged very quickly, I learned during the few days I was at the Bekirağa prison that the Unionists had knowingly turned a blind eye to the Pasha’s assassination’. With the advent of World War I the violence the CUP and the Special Organization practiced became more systematic and the massacres – now committed on behalf of radical ideals – were proudly narrated in memoir after memoir. All these murders, all these arbitrary acts of ‘justice’ were justified in the name of nationalism. One memoir of this type belongs to Fuat Balkan, who states:103 Being a komitadji is not, as some think, committing acts of robbery and plunder. Just the opposite, [it] is the most extreme form of patriotism! And the komitadji is a person who sacrifices everything, even his life, for the cause of the fatherland, who does not forsake anything, and who has renounced his whole being from head to toe. When it is necessary for the interests of his country and nation, he abandons compassion, if it is necessary to burn something, he burns, if there is a need to destroy, he destroys it all! He does not leave a stone on top of a stone or a head on top of a torso!! It is first the justification and legitimation, then the pride derived from murder that enables Balkan not only to normalize and condone violence but to valorize it. This has become the other clandestine Young Turk legacy to the Turkish Republic, where such acts of destruction in the name of self-proclaimed patriotism still persist. As the CUP starts to undertake assassinations to establish control, Çerkes Hasan Amça, who was once a CUP assassin, recounts104 how he chances upon one assassination where he observes a young child screaming for his dead father and then reflects on the mentality of assassins: Those days, we carried the groundless fear that we could stop or change the course of history with a single bullet; the assassin executed this murder thinking that with this action of his, he hoped he could save his fatherland from a grave danger and his country from a suffocating oppression ... [When I wanted to debate if this indeed was the case] none of my friends from the CUP wanted to do

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so, they literally treated such a request as insolence and effrontery, as an attack on the rights of the central committee of the CUP that was incapable of making mistakes, literally as insolence and effrontery ... Only one friend ... Hasan Ali Çerkes ... agreed with the debates and objections I raised for days ... only to lose his life in the end with a single shot to his head. The majority ... like Yakup Cemil for instance ... thought the moral responsibility of such a job belonged [not to those who executed the decision] but to those who made it. [If] the sin went to the decision makers, what was it to them? ... They did nothing [other than] eliminate someone who presented a danger to the country and the fatherland. This description captures the frame of mind of the CUP assassins who had no compunctions about executing orders, even when it meant slaughtering innocent people. They did so because they decided the moral responsibility lay with the decision makers and not with them, the executors, and they also fundamentally believed that what they did was for the good of the country. This description captures at the most fundamental level the banality of evil as it came to be practiced in the Ottoman Empire by CUP members. When such violence was applied by the Young Turks against the Ottoman Armenians, for instance, the rhetoric of some of the Young Turk leaders who were physicians employed medical metaphors based on a language of exclusion, of purge, specifically of getting rid of tumors and scorpions. As a consequence of this focus on excision, the ensuing violence was also covered, veiled and hidden as it occurred not within the cities but outside by members of bands whose activities were purposely left unacknowledged by the state. Celal Bayar, a former Turkish President, as well as a CUP and Special Organization member, recounts105 in his memoirs, for instance, how the head of the Special Organization, Eşref Kuşçubaşı, did indeed refer to elements to be removed as ‘tumors’: From the moment our entry into the war became unavoidable, the first business was the cause of cleaning the internal tumors. The precautions concentrated in three areas, military, political, and administrative-economic. In addition to the standard military precautions, political ones were predicated on appointing the right responsible [CUP] officials to achieve unity and harmony in the politics of administration, prevent provocation, achieve the destruction of the

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The Transformation of Turkey negative and harmful elements on the administrative mechanism, and accomplish political stability [emphases mine].

Hence humans are quickly dehumanized and transformed into elements to be controlled, pacified and eliminated. A similar portrayal is presented by Ahmet Refik106 in relation to a CUP İstanbul deputy who depicts minorities as ‘snakes and scorpions’: [At the advent of 1915] ... the İstanbul deputy [of the CUP] who was in Eskişehir even though the Dardanelles threat had now passed, delivered a conference where he likened the Christian elements among the Turks [of the empire] to snakes and scorpions. The Christians who had paid money to attend the conference that night left cursing him. The following morning everyone pronounced his politics shameful. It is no accident that so many of the Young Turk leaders involved in the Armenian massacres were physicians: their sanitized, hygienic vocabulary derived from the Enlightenment, whereby ‘all that was dark was to be brought under scrutiny,’ ‘all deviances removed’ and, in a Foucauldian move, all society would ‘form a single, smooth surface with everyone visible and all in conformity to law under constant surveillance’.107 In discussing who participated in the massacres from among the populace, Ahmet Refik noted108 that in Eskişehir [t]he populace did not participate in the atrocities of the deportation; it was ‘some officials, the gendarmerie and the police’ that exercised the most cruelty to Armenians. In many places, the officers of the regular army had not gotten their hands stained by this bloody execution. The populace was very saddened. Especially the massacres in the villages of the Anatolian provinces varied depending on the abilities and murderous inclinations of the governors at particular locations. The ones who died in Eskişehir were victims of the cruelty Talat inflicted through the deportations; no one here from among the populace, gendarmerie or even the police had killed anyone. It was said that the gravest calamities had occurred in Bursa and Ankara. The ones who had arrived from Ankara narrate sorrowfully how the houses had been blockaded and hundreds

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of Armenian families were loaded onto carriages and dumped in streams. Many women witnessing these atrocities had lost their minds. The houses of the wealthy Armenians were purchased and, as soon as the official document for the transference of property was issued, the monies were forcefully and cruelly taken back. Popular violence also inverted the law. It did so by turning the hierarchical order upside down whereby equality before the law turned into equality behind the law: everyone started to participate equally in the formulation and execution of the law. Of course, this equal participation in violence also spread the guilt so that many then had to share the silence of their crimes. Another similar description, again by Ahmet Refik (Altınay), captures109 the bravado by which one such CUP martyr-assassin, Çerkes Ahmet, narrates how he unlawfully committed massacres and murdered two members of the Ottoman Chamber of Deputies: Çerkes Ahmet appeared together with lieutenant Halil, both [were] leaders of armed bands within the Special Organization; the latter’s infamy was better known for he had routed the Armenians in Artvin when the armed band of the deputy Sudi Bey had entered Ardahan. I had heard this tragedy when I was still in Ulukışla ... [I wanted him to recount these bloody events personally and asked him what he did in the Eastern provinces] He crossed his high-topped boots and, blowing his cigarette smoke yonder, said: ‘Hey brother, this situation hurts my honor. I served this fatherland. Go see for yourself, I turned Van and its vicinity into soil [as pure as that] of Kabah [in Mecca which is considered Muslim holy land].110 Today, you will not come across a single Armenian there ... [When asked about the Ottoman deputies Zohrap and others that he murdered, he replies] Come on, haven’t you heard? I bumped all of them off.111 He blew away the smoke of his cigarette and continued while straightening out his moustache with his left hand: “They had left Aleppo; we came across them on the road. I immediately surrounded their carriage. They realized they were about to be bumped off.” Varteks said: “All right, Ahmet Bey, you are doing this to us, but what will you do to the Arabs? They are not content with you either.” “That is none of your

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The Transformation of Turkey business, you son of a gun,”112 I replied, and blew his brains out with a Mauser bullet. Then I caught Zohrap, took him under my feet and crushed his head.’

This account not only captures the patronizing and demeaning manner of the CUP assassin brigand toward the Ottoman deputies he murders but also his total lack of feeling and compassion for the hundreds he has previously massacred. Furthermore, he has the effrontery to proudly announce that he did all this in the service of the fatherland even though there was no such explicit public order ever issued. This section has indicated how analysis of the violence of the French Revolution provides additional insights into the violence ensuing from the 1908 Young Turk Revolution. The most significant legacy of Young Turk violence has been its normalization and even valorization in Turkish society, a translation that has continued to corrode the society’s moral and ethical fabric. From the Young Turks and the CUP toward the Present Although there is a clear starting point for the 1908 Young Turk Revolution, the historical ambiguity of its endpoint still persists. The CUP leaders themselves – or at least their descendants who are still with us – certainly wanted the meaning and the legacy of their Revolution to persist until today. After all, Arif Cemil Denker notes113 that at the end of World War I, CUP in general and the CUP leader Enver Pasha in particular believed that there was no need to sign an armistice and that ‘we would be forced to continue the war ... where it would be possible to set up defenses by going to Anatolia, and especially to the eastern provinces.’ And this is exactly what happened. Likewise, the interview Denker conducted114 with Talat Pasha’s wife in Germany after the Pasha’s assassination reveals that his happiest day was the day he learned of the Dardanelles victory. He then told her: Hayriye, we have such plans ... If you only knew what is going to happen on the day we win this war ... We will see the establishment of a vast, world-conquering Turkish state and the Turkish nation will reach the full freedom it so deserves. ... The reforms will continue all the way to the Republic.

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Talat Pasha’s wishes did indeed turn into reality after the Turkish struggle for independence as the Turkish Republic was established. Indeed, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk confirmed Talat Pasha’s contributions to the foundation of the Republic upon meeting his wife. Atatürk specifically noted that ‘had it not been for the laudable services of Talat Pasha, we could not have actualized this revolution’.115 The legacy of the 1908 Young Turk Revolution today should perhaps be pondered in the context of this final quotation from Kazım Nami Duru:116 If the Unionists had been bad people and traitors, would Great Atatürk have [later] befriended [them]?

CHAPTER 4 WHY IS THERE STILL A ‘SÈVRES SYNDROME’? AN ANALYSIS OF TURKEY’S UNEASY ASSOCIATION WITH THE WEST

According to the 2006 National Public Opinion Survey conducted in Turkey to gauge the attitudes of the Turkish populace toward the European Union (hereafter EU), the majority (57 per cent) of those polled stated that the EU requirements necessary to become a member ‘were similar to those required by the Sèvres Treaty’.1 This response was reaffirmed when an even larger proportion (78 per cent) agreed that ‘the West wants to divide and break up Turkey like they broke up the Ottoman Empire’. These results raise two sociologically significant issues. The first concerns the dimension of time: the Sèvres Treaty was signed by the Ottoman Empire at the end of World War I in August 1920, whereass the survey was conducted in the Turkish Republic almost exactly eighty-five years later, in July 2005. It is puzzling that even though the political and social contexts have been completely transformed, the memory of a historical event in the distant past is so alive and meaningful in interpreting a contemporary experience in Turkey today. Second, while it is often common for a small, nationalist segment of the population to view the present through the lenses of the past, it is curious that in this case a significant majority of the populace holds this view. What makes the situation even more bewildering is that the Sèvres Treaty – which was to effectively end the Ottoman Empire by dividing

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it among the Western powers – was ironically never put into effect. Its harsh terms instead instigated the Turkish Independence Struggle, which in turn led to the treaty’s being superseded by the Lausanne Treaty of July 1923, recognizing the newly born Turkish state. So the Sèvres Treaty not only refers to a series of hypothetical events, scenarios and conditions that never materialized, but it was also replaced by the much more favorable Lausanne Treaty as a result of the successful Independence Struggle the Turks courageously fought in the interim. The puzzle that still remains unresolved is why the memory of a defunct treaty signed by an empire that no longer exists should endure at the expense of one that founded the republic at the end of a very successful struggle for independence. The particular historical context of the Sèvres Treaty makes the analysis of the process through which the treaty was transformed into the ‘Sèvres syndrome’ in the Turkish Republic all the more significant. The Sèvres syndrome refers to those individuals, groups or institutions in Turkey who interpret all public interactions – domestic and foreign – through a framework of fear and anxiety over the possible annihilation, abandonment or betrayal of the Turkish state by the West. Hence the most important element the syndrome has inherited from the treaty is that of compounded fear and anxiety about the imputed intentions of the West toward Turkey. This chapter explores the reasons behind the selective survival of the memory of this particular treaty through time, its transformation into a syndrome and the reasons for its persistence until today. My main argument is that the Turkish Republican elite in general and the Turkish military in particular initially generated the elements of the Sèvres syndrome for purposes of nation-state formation and then reproduced it as a paradigm to sustain their political power and control over the social and economic resources of the state. The syndrome started to falter, however, in the post–Cold War era when its premises were destabilized and challenged by concurrent developments inside and outside Turkey. The possibility of Turkey’s EU membership intersected with the emergence of the Justice and Development Party (hereafter JDP), relative economic stability and the capture of the Kurdish PKK (Parti Kerkeren Kurdistan) leader Abdullah Öcalan, which led to a period of political tranquility. It was then – that is, with the emergence in Turkey of the possibility of an alternate model based not on national security and the preservation of the state, but on the rights, well-being and prosperity of the citizens – that the Sèvres syndrome fully articulated itself. It did so not as an anxiety disorder but rather a

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pathology whose symptoms worsened as the alternate vision emerged and gained strength within Turkish state and society. The struggle of those afflicted with the syndrome continues to this day. The chapter concludes with the suggestion that the only cure for the syndrome must be a collective one, as Turkish state and society unite to return to the root of the problem – that is, to the past – to de-nationalize, de-mythologize and thereby de-mystify Ottoman and Republican history. Only when all the historical actors are recognized for their actions, and not elevated as sacred icons at the expense of the rest; when selective silences about individuals, groups and emotionally traumatic events are courageously confronted; and when the past thus retold with its faults, bruises and injuries is grounded and contextualized in real historical events instead of nationalist fairytales – only then will Turkish state and society establish the firm ground of sound knowledge upon which they can stand, calm and filled with confidence. Only then will Turkish fear and anxiety finally be eliminated. Existing Literature on the Sèvres Syndrome Most of the literature on the syndrome has been produced since the beginning of the twenty-first century by scholars specializing in international relations within the context of Turkey’s EU policy. Even though it is difficult to pinpoint the earliest occurrence of the term, scholars nevertheless concur that the ‘Sèvres syndrome’ as a concept is most useful in describing the ‘national security’2 culture of the Turkish state that has been dominant from its inception.3 This rather unique conception of national security is at once too narrow – with its exclusive focus on the survival and integrity of the Turkish state, and too wide – in its immediate categorization of all internal and external conflicts as matters of national security.4 Scholars also agree that the combination of these two extremes produces the kind of state–society relations in Turkey where the state literally focuses on, interprets and takes action over each and every domestic and international occurrence only in so far as it pertains to its own defense. It does so at the expense of all other concerns, including providing for the well-being and protecting the rights of its very own citizens. The scholars who have worked on the Sèvres syndrome fall into three groups according to the individuals, groups and/or institutions they identify as afflicted with the syndrome. According to the first group of scholars, all those who have both participated in and advocated the

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Westernizing reforms of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, namely the Kemalists, are affected by the syndrome. In this case, it is in particular the institution of the Turkish military that enables the syndrome to produce and reproduce itself. The second group of scholars argues that those infected by the syndrome are a small subset of extreme elements among those who advocate nationalism in line with the founder of the Republic. Even though they still view the military as a significant breeding ground for the syndrome, this group nuances its analysis by focusing on certain radical elements within the military. The third new group of emerging scholars shifts the focus from the Kemalists to the Europeans and proposes an alternate critical conceptualization. The direct identification of the Kemalists in Turkey with the Sèvres syndrome is most prominent among those scholars who approach the topic through the perspective of history. Dietrich Jung and Wolfgango Piccoli argue, for instance, that one can understand the contemporary actions of the Turkish state only if one studies its Ottoman legacy. Given that the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire left behind ‘a legacy of territorial grievances, historical resentments, political tensions and mutual suspicions,’ the Kemalists explain why all their actions are predicated on national security concerns by ‘bemoan[ing] Turkey’s location in a “bad neighborhood” and depict[ing] the country as “besieged by a veritable ring of evil” ’.5 In doing so, they locate the origins of their problems not within the country but outside, caused by others. Jung and Piccoli engage Pierre Bourdieu’s conception of the habitus to explain how the Kemalists created an entire worldview, a way of life based on a very particular interpretation of the past. The Sèvres syndrome results from the constant fear of the dangers threatening the Turkish state; the symptoms sought – and of course very conveniently found – comprise the imagined conspiracies of external enemies and/or the consequent betrayals by internal enemies. Dietrich Jung depicts the Sèvres syndrome as ‘the feeling of being encircled by enemies attempting the destruction of the Turkish state’.6 The two scholars then note that since the Kemalists construct an entire habitus for themselves, the syndrome diffuses throughout to become an integral part of their reality and way of life:7 [O]ne essential aspect of the Kemalist habitus is its perpetuation of the Kemalist experience of external conspiracy and internal betrayal. The historical culmination of this experience as well as its social transmission to the National Movement was the Treaty

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of Sèvres. Although never implemented, the clauses of Sèvres, calling for a territorial division of Turkey, became the incarnation of both the Ottoman defeat and the Turkish national resistance ... [T]he Sèvres syndrome developed into a cornerstone of the Kemalist world-view, making it essential for an understanding of Kemalist perceptions of threat. Not only do the Kemalists fully normalize the Sèvres syndrome into their everyday life, but they also create organizations and narratives around it. Jung and Piccoli note in particular that the Turkish ‘National Security Council’8 institutionalized the syndrome, causing the rhetoric of Sèvres to become ‘the cognitive expression of this process of securitization that gripped Turkish politics’.9 Even though Turkish foreign policy is affected by the syndrome, however, it is not fully determined, but rather constrained by it.10 The scholars cannot tell whether the Kemalists still insist on employing ‘this anachronistic world view’ out of conviction or simply for instrumental reasons to hold onto their privileged position in society. They suspect that it is probably a combination of both.11 Even though this account provides a good diagnosis of the syndrome, it falls short in explaining its origin and evolution. Jung and Piccoli also rightfully criticize the Kemalists for discouraging historical reflection, but do not fully articulate the reasons behind the fervent denial of the Turkish past.12 Walter Posch likewise equates Kemalism with the Sèvres syndrome.13 He specially focuses on the anti-imperialism inherent in the Kemalist message, one that enables individuals and groups of all political persuasions to rally against the West. According to Posch, this anti-imperialist message is a natural consequence of the two core messages of Kemalism, state-enforced secularism and a unitary state structure. The syndrome is thus coined ‘to denote this [anti-imperialist] attitude prevalent among most of the [Turkish] political, bureaucratic and military elite.’ Even though the entire Turkish state elite is afflicted, Posch points out that it is especially the Turkish military that single-handedly sustains not only the Sèvres syndrome, but also the entire structure and system that reproduces it. The military assumes such a pivotal role since ‘as [former Prime Minister and then President Süleyman] Demirel said in 1981: “God first created the Turkish military and then He realized He had forgotten something and added the people as an afterthought” ’. Yet what remains unnoted here is the significance of another civilian political institution, namely Turkish political parties in general and the Republican People’s

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Party (hereafter RPP) in particular. During the last decades, the RPP has become the most vocal promoter of the Sèvres syndrome, especially since it has started to lose the political support of the populace. The second group of scholars argues that the syndrome is only displayed by more radically nationalist Kemalists, like members of the National Action Party (hereafter NAP). Murat Necip Arman presents the Sèvres syndrome as ‘[t]he frequently used occidentalist slogan of Turkish nationalists’ who employ the Sèvres Treaty to define the Turkish people as a nation, that is, as ‘the heroic nation who dashed the Sèvres, the treaty dictated by the imperialist Europe to the nation at the end of the First World War’.14 The ultra-nationalists emotionally embellish their rhetoric by strategically collapsing time and place. Their slogan retroactively defines all Ottoman imperial subjects as if they were members of the Turkish nation. They indirectly silence all those subjects within the empire – the majority – who were not Turks and also exaggerate the narrative by adding value-laden terminology like ‘heroic’, ‘dictate’ and ‘imperialist’. Such terminology not only signifies power, it at the same time renders the critique of that power impossible by historically decontextualizing it. The asserted negative association between Europe and the origins of the Turkish nation goes unchallenged for the same reason. For the ultra-nationalists, Arman argues, the ideal Turkish nation existed during the Independence Struggle.15 It was then that the nation mobilized to its highest state of alert and united against all threats – and it is to that time, place and condition that they constantly attempt to return it. In the media, the ultra-nationalists express the syndrome in the form of16 ‘banal nationalism,’ ... [employing] ... a shallow patriotic narration ... with a racist, anti-Semitic and anti-non-Muslim overtone ... to specifically target the Greek Patriarchate in İstanbul, the Turkish Armenians, the liberal intellectuals, the Christian missionaries and the pro-EU groups ... [and in particular to] ... claim that the minorities are in betrayal, liberals try to damage Turkish economy, and the pro-EU groups open the door to a looming threat of European occupation. The Sèvres syndrome is thus employed to define the ‘noble’ Turkish nation. Such a definition is done through exclusion, by stating who does not belong and then singling out and targeting each and every one of

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those individuals, groups and institutions. This exclusionary stance leads scholars to identify the NAP as the main political party that embodies the Sèvres syndrome, especially since it considers ‘the Turkish Republic the only independent Turkish state in the world ... [and also] the foundation stone of Turkishness. Therefore, this nation’s main ideal must be glorified and protected ... “idealism”... means “the love and ideal of serving and sacrificing everything for the state”.’17 This depiction of the NAP goals captures how the syndrome both prioritizes the interests of the state and mythologizes the origins of the Turkish Republic. These NAP tendencies become especially visible when Turkey’s relations with the EU come to the forefront. Tanıl Bora notes that ‘the NAP spokesmen keep interpreting the EU’s supranational legal arrangements toward integration as undermining the foundations of the nation-state, and beyond this, as a natural continuation of Europe’s ancient plans specifically aimed at partitioning Turkey’.18 Also, the NAP members often employ the imagery of Sèvres in their talks. NAP minister Abdülkadir Akcan argues, for instance, that in demanding these (EU) reforms from Turkey, the EU was actually trying to replace the Lausanne Treaty by the Sèvres.19 Baskın Oran likewise identifies ‘the Sèvres Paranoia’ as a contemporary phenomenon that emerges when ‘individuals and groups capitalize on the effects of the Sèvres Treaty by selecting it as “a sacred trauma” ’. It originates in ‘fear over the pace and radicalism of the change introduced by the implementation of the EU reform package as well as anxiety over the group introducing the package to Turkey’.20 Interestingly enough, Oran contextualizes his discussion of the Paranoia in history by stating that it has been the end result of two ‘waves’ of Turkish modernity, waves that ought to be called ‘tsunamis’, given the intensity of their impact:21 [T]he first tsunami of modernity generated a reaction from below of religious backwardness (irtica). Now Turkey is undergoing its second tsunami of modernity: the EU adaptation package. What is most interesting is that those who stubbornly struggle to bring this package [to Turkey] are the grandchildren of those who had reacted to the first tsunami: the Justice and Development Party (hereafter JDP). And the second tsunami naturally faces a reaction from below: the Sèvres Paranoia. For Oran, then, the Paranoia emerges as a ‘natural’ rational reaction to Western modernity, appearing when the first Republican model of

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Westernization is reproduced – the only difference is in the social actors, now that religious reactionaries have been replaced by nationalists. Yet in his analogy, Oran overlooks the power difference between the two groups; the nationalists have much more economic, legal and social power in the political system than did their religious reactionary predecessors. Also, the EU adaptation package and the modernity it represents produce a political and legal impact that is fundamentally different than the initial Republican modernity project. Even though the Paranoia may indeed be emerging in the form of a reaction from below, its impact on the system is much stronger because of the differential control of the nationalists over state and society. Unlike other scholars in the group (except Oran), in his discussion of the syndrome, Kemal Kirişçi radicalizes not the social actors, but rather the term itself.22 He refers to the syndrome as ‘Turkey’s infamous Sèvres paranoia/phobia/complex’. In his definition it comprises the belief ‘that the external world is conspiring to weaken and carve up Turkey’ and as such is ‘closely linked with a long tradition of viewing the world from a real politik perspective’. The Turkish elite, having turned the ‘paranoia’ into a filter through which to perceive the world, consciously manipulate it ‘to influence public attitudes toward the external world’. After drawing attention to how the syndrome is thus employed as a political tool, Kirişçi notes the critical role of the Turkish military in perpetuating it. The military adopts the syndrome as the ideological lynchpin of Turkish national security culture and also disseminates it to society through education and socialization. The second group of scholars thus further fine-tunes the syndrome by discussing the particular role of the political parties. Yet their major shortcoming lies in their lack of emphasis on the historicity of the syndrome. It is no accident that the ultra-nationalists purposely destabilize the past by severing its connection to history. Such a strategy enables them to then exploit the syndrome in accordance with their own interests. Yet scholars studying ultra-nationalists sometimes take such epistemologically destabilizing practices at face value; this move leads them to overlook how broadly the parameters of the syndrome have spread beyond this radical segment to Turkish state and society at large. Also, when the impact of the Sèvres syndrome within the Turkish Republic is analyzed as a historical process, it becomes much easier to discern that the boundaries of those affected by the syndrome vary across time. In their discussion of Kemalism, scholars often do not take into account that its ideology has changed over time. Three different Kemalisms emerge

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in three disparate temporal contexts: (i) ‘Orthodox Kemalism’ is the Turkish nation-state ideology and practice dominant during the first couple of decades of the Republic; it mainly entails the radical defensive Westernization project. Especially in the 1930s, even though the solidifying parameters of Turkish nation-state formation reflect the symptoms of the Sèvres syndrome, the syndrome itself does not yet appear anachronistic. The larger world historical context still operates along similar parameters. The multiple social actors then consist of members of the Turkish military, the RPP and the bureaucracy. (ii) ‘Guardian Kemalism’ is the Turkish nationstate ideology and practice that becomes hegemonic after the military makes its initial public entrance into the Turkish political sphere with the 1960 coup, and then subsequently with the 1971, 1980, 1997 and 2007 interventions. The anachronism of the military as the first institution diagnosed with the permanent affliction of the Sèvres syndrome becomes increasingly evident during this period, especially after EU membership emerges as a possibility. Multiple actors within society who yearn to be associated with the state claim potential EU membership. Yet among these only the military defines what that membership ought to entail, thus determining its conditions and legitimacy. Hence the military defines itself as the main political actor identifying the ‘authentic’ Kemalists. (iii) ‘Heterodox Kemalism’ refers to the Turkish nation-state ideology espoused within the last couple of decades by ultra-nationalist groups, which has emerged alongside the ‘Guardian Kemalism’ of the military. These political groups tend to decontextualize and then anachronistically redefine Mustafa Kemal’s vision and the Republican heritage in accordance with their own political interests. Even though their blatant opportunism separates them from the stand of the Turkish military, many ultra-nationalist groups nevertheless contain retired military officers among their ranks. The presence of these retired military officers highlights a fracture in the military’s dominant vision: the active military and its retired members are starting to hold disparate interpretations of Kemalism. These new groups are also anachronistic in that they hold onto this framework at a time when the international world is shifting away from it. When interpreted as such, the differences in the standpoints of the first and second group of scholars become more evident. The first group highlights how the Turkish Westernization project contributed to the symptoms of the Sèvres syndrome, whereas the second group demonstrates how, much later in Republican history, nationalism generates new

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social groups with the symptoms of the syndrome. A third and final, newly emerging group of scholars working on the topic takes a novel stand by shifting the ground rules of the discourse on the syndrome. Even though they too start off by historically contextualizing the treaty itself to decipher the dynamics of the syndrome, they then take a further step. The third group does not employ the insights they garner to cure those afflicted by the Syndrome. Instead, they attempt to develop a totally alternate outlook and vision. The main proponent of the third group is Ahmet Davutoğlu, a former academic and current Turkish Foreign Minister, who identifies ‘the Insecurity Syndrome,’ or what he terms the ‘historical reflex,’ as one of the ‘two’ contradictory legacies of the Ottoman Empire. The other legacy, according to Davutoğlu, is Westernization. He does not further analyze this second legacy, but merely sets it aside. Davutoğlu specifically connects the emergence of the Insecurity (cum Sèvres) Syndrome to Turkey’s EU membership process, and argues:23 The main reason Turkish policy-makers distrust the Copenhagen criteria that appear quite objective to other [EU] candidates is due to the historical reflex that formed as a consequence of the European powers’ division of the Ottoman Empire according to criteria based first on religion and then on ethnicity. Since it was through the Treaty of Lausanne [in 1923] that the Turkish Republic, born on the ashes of the Ottoman Empire, had guaranteed its security and sovereignty, Turkish policy-makers think that any changes to this treaty would produce security risks [to the Republic]. Among the Turkish Republican elite, European integration arouses anxiety not only because it fuses sovereign states into one supranational unit, but because it is perceived as underlining the ethnic and cultural identities within states. The initial nation-state construction in Turkey was based on assumptions of secularism and ethnic homogeneity which are in direct contradiction with the perceived consequences of European integration.24 Hence the EU process both challenges conventional sovereignty through the non-intervention principle and further destabilizes state unity through the ensuing localization. The Republican elite regard the survival of both the citizens and the nation as predicated on the survival of the Turkish state. As a consequence, they become nervous that the EU integration process will inevitably lead the two perceived threats to the

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Republic – namely Kurdish separatism and Islamic fundamentalism – to usurp ‘their’ state.25 Ali Tekin rightfully identifies these Kurdish and Islamist security threats as the main factors behind the opposition to Turkey’s EU membership on the part of the Republican elites who call themselves Kemalists. He points out that ‘[i]n the post-Helsinki process, [the Kemalists] continued to express their concerns about the “intrinsic” reasons behind European interest in the Kurdish and human rights issues. This is a total continuation of the Sèvres Syndrome.’ For Tekin, Turkey can be healed from the syndrome and integrated into Europe if and only if the Republican elites historically contextualize their Kemalist principles. Such contextualization would enable them to realize the syndrome was formulated as a particular response to a particular issue at a particular time, one that is no longer valid.26 Yet Davutoğlu does not seem to be much interested in such a solution. Rather than healing the Republican elites of the syndrome, he instead intends to replace them by helping the Turkish state develop an alternate paradigm, a foreign policy with ‘strategic depth’. This new policy would nurture and build its own relationships with neighboring countries, especially Islamic ones, that have been overlooked as a consequence of the secularist stance of the Republican elites. Davutoğlu tends to neglect that the particular historical experience of the Turkish state upon which he intends to build an alternate foreign policy is just as enmeshed in the West European region with its European culture as it has been in the certainly underdeveloped Middle Eastern and Asian regions with their Islamic culture. The traditional Turkish state emphasis on the West – rather than the East – is due more to the historically greater influence of the Western European imperialist presence than to a conscious decision on the part first of the Ottoman Empire and later of the Turkish Republican state. Finally, even though Davutoğlu does indeed recognize this Western European imperialist presence while discussing the Ottoman legacy upon the Republic, he chooses to separate the Insecurity Syndrome from the ‘other’ legacy of Westernization. Hence, even though Davutoğlu argues for the historical contextualization of the syndrome, he nevertheless chooses to locate it in a very particular manner, one that unfortunately mixes his own political interest in creating an alternate Turkish foreign policy together with a social group other than the Republican elite. In confronting the Turkish past, the separation of the two Ottoman legacies of Westernization and the Insecurity Syndrome leads Davutoğlu

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to effectively disconnect the two segments of Turkish history that ought to be analyzed in one continuum. He severs the (imperial) segment which has produced the Insecurity Syndrome from the (Republican) segment that subsequently generated the radical Westernizing reforms. Davutoğlu then selectively highlights the imperial segment that produced the Insecurity Syndrome; he discusses how the European states employed the Sèvres Treaty to divide the Ottoman Empire as they purposely emphasized first religion (hence the state of Armenia implied in the treaty) and then ethnicity (the state of Kurdistan). According to Davutoğlu, the fear and anxiety produced by these actions upon the Republican elites form the origins of the Insecurity Syndrome. The particular historical contextualization Davutoğlu proposes thus contains a strategic silence (and therefore a shortcoming) that effectively externalizes and exports not only the origins of the Sèvres Treaty back to Europe, but in the process also uproots the Sèvres syndrome and plants it back there as well. Davutoğlu exports the roots of the syndrome back to Europe by two strategic moves, through his separation of the Ottoman legacy of Westernization from the legacy of the Insecurity Syndrome, and then through his treatment of the description of the Insecurity Syndrome as if it were an explanation. When the two Ottoman legacies of Westernization and the Insecurity Syndrome are separated in such a manner, the implication is that the syndrome is not in any way connected to or a consequence of the radical Westernization project the Republican elites undertook. It instead becomes the sole end result of how the elites interpreted what the European states did to the Ottoman Empire. The origins and cause of the illness therefore lies with Europe, not with the Republican elites; the latter merely act out their fears and anxieties as they are confronted by conditions that are consciously determined first by the European states (and then later by the United States) in accordance with the visions not of their own but that of the West. Davutoğlu therefore suggests instead an alternate cure to the syndrome: not to heal the Republican elites and thereby develop healthy ties with the West but instead to foster new ties elsewhere in the world, preferably with the Muslim countries in the Middle East and Asia. Such new ties would counterbalance the existing ties with the West inflicted with the illness of dependency. In describing how the European states employed the Sèvres Treaty to divide the empire along the lines of religion and ethnicity, Davutoğlu fails to problematize, or rather strategically silences how and why the European states created divisions specifically around these two identity markers.

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Such a description effectively dismisses the contemporaneous ideological significance of nationalism. After all, it was nationalism that underscored, with or without European help, the ethnic and religious identities throughout the region. Also silenced in this depiction is the multitude of religions and ethnicities that existed in Anatolia. Additionally, it was once again Turkish nationalism that impacted the country’s reaction to the Sèvres Treaty. The categories of religion and ethnicity are instead merely discussed as European tools intended to divide the Empire. Hence they are set up only as the inherent symptoms of an ‘Insecurity’ – one to be eventually dismissed on behalf of an idealized Islamic culture and civilization. In all, this third group of scholars led by Davutoğlu advances the discussion of the Sèvres syndrome by contextualizing it in history. Yet the history thus engaged is selective, restricted to the historical reflex of the ‘Insecurity Syndrome.’ Such an engagement ultimately tends to serve a particular political vision rather than shedding light on the dynamics of and thereby suggesting a cure for the syndrome. In summary then, the existing literature on the Sèvres syndrome highlights three significant stages in its evolution across time and place: The first stage comprises the initial contemporaneous impact of the Sèvres Treaty on state and society in the form of fear and anxiety. The second stage entails its negotiation during the radical Westernization of the Turkish Republic which is spearheaded by the military and the RPP; internal and external enemies are defined during this stage. Finally during the third stage, the now institutionalized syndrome becomes radicalized as ultra-nationalist parties try to systematically exclude such perceived enemies from the Turkish body politic. The scholars concurred that the establishment of the Sèvres syndrome as the foundation of Turkish foreign policy was its most significant drawback; its negative impact in turn became most visible with Turkey’s candidacy to the EU. Specifically, as both the Turkish state and society remain on constant alert against impending danger from all sides, they fail to discuss and develop any long-term vision. The obsessive focus on and fear about Turkish state security takes precedence over protecting citizens’ rights. Not only are such rights then disrespected and disregarded, but the attempts to develop a societal infrastructure for civil liberties appear insignificant. As both the state and society remain cocooned in their insecurities, they fall short of engaging in systematic, long-term and positive interaction with the rest of the world. As social reality thus remains limited to the confines of the country, the knowledge produced

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within reflects the interests of the state and cannot connect to larger humanitarian concerns. The moral fabric of society suffers as a consequence, as life priorities are determined by domestic, state-driven perceived fears and anxieties. An Alternate Framework Existing works on the Sèvres syndrome do not sufficiently analyze the entire historical process from its emergence after the signing of the Sèvres Treaty to the present. This chapter contextualizes both the treaty and the syndrome within the continuum of the Ottoman and Republican past. It first maps out the emotional traumas of the last Ottoman century, then continues on to the foundation of the Turkish Republic. In the process, it traces the specific transformation of the Sèvres Treaty into a syndrome, as state elites sever their connections with the Ottoman past and engage in nation building through a project of radical defensive Westernization. The Sèvres syndrome reproduces itself throughout Republican history with the aid of the Turkish military. During the reproduction process, the syndrome also transforms, changing both in meaning and in the groups associated with it. A dynamic process plays itself out as the patients, their symptoms and the diagnoses of the syndrome all alter over time. The meaning framework provided by the syndrome starts to fall apart at the end of the Cold War, when the international order begins to prioritize human rights over national security. As a consequence, the syndrome comes to appear increasingly anachronistic and begins to lose its political and social legitimacy. The emergence of Turkey’s possible EU membership becomes the last test of – and a possible cure for – the syndrome. The main arguments here are that (i) the historical analysis of the Sèvres Treaty transforms into a syndrome as the Republican elites intentionally disconnect from the past for the manifest purpose of nationstate formation; (ii) reproduction of the Sèvres syndrome throughout Republican history is aided in particular by the Turkish military, which generates a list of internal and external enemies allegedly threatening the state; (iii) at the end of the Cold War, as the political priorities of the international order start to shift from national security to human rights, the Syndrome also starts to lose its hegemony over Turkish state and society; and (iv) the cure for the Sèvres syndrome lies in the historical contextualization of the patients, their symptoms, and their diagnoses over time and space.

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The chief concern of the social actors afflicted with the Sèvres syndrome is to maintain and reproduce the existing distribution of power. Throughout Republican history they comprise either a part of the establishment, like the Turkish military, large segments of the RPP, or those who aspire to a place in the establishment, like members of the ultranationalist NAP. On the other hand, those who challenge the status quo to transform Turkish state and society have natural immunity from the Sèvres syndrome. This group includes liberal intellectuals, members of non-governmental organizations, civil society and segments of the bourgeoisie not dependent on the state. The widespread diffusion of the elements of the Sèvres syndrome throughout Turkish state and society necessitates an analysis of its history throughout both the Ottoman and Turkish periods. On the Historical Origins of the Syndrome: The Sèvres Treaty As fear and anxiety toward the West is the most prevalent attribute of the Sèvres syndrome, for a historical contextualization of the syndrome we must return to the past, specifically to that historical juncture when the relations between the Turks with the West started to generate such emotions. Scholars agree that the detrimental military and economic impact of Western modernity on the Ottoman Empire became visible in the nineteenth century.27 During the course of the century, the empire undertook a series of reforms that altered Ottoman state and society in accordance with Western European models. Technological and industrial renovations necessitated fundamental changes in both the Ottoman land system and the military; ideological and economic renewal predicated on liberty, equality and fraternity introduced the concept of equal rights and opportunities for all Ottoman subjects, including minorities. The reform edicts of 1839, 1856 and 1876 sought to transform the Ottoman social and political structure along these lines. Still, whether these lofty aims could be put into practice remained highly contested both within and outside the empire.28 The stark nineteenth-century Ottoman reality was massive land loss despite the reforms: up until the Balkan Wars of 1912, the empire could not prevent the loss of 60 per cent of its lands to either the West or Russia.29 Half of the Ottoman Empire that had been painstakingly built over six centuries was lost literally within less than a century. The first emotional trauma occurred in the aftermath of the 1876–78 Russo-Turkish war,

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locally referred to as ‘The War of 93’ because it fell in the year 1293 of the Muslim (hijri) calendar. The pattern of rapid land loss was triggered then as the Russian armies advanced very unexpectedly and rapidly through the Balkans, all the way to the gates of the imperial capital. As they did so, they uprooted and swept before them settled Muslim populations running into the millions, from both the Balkans and the Caucasus. All these Muslim refugees who had once been powerful, well-off and healthy now flooded into the capital and Anatolia, downtrodden, poor, diseased and very angry. Sultan Abdülhamid II, who had just succeeded to the throne, tried to preserve the empire to the best of his ability. He attempted – and largely succeeded in – pitting the Great Powers against each other, all the while repressing the freedom and liberties of his subjects. Yet he could not prevent either the economic downturn or the rising political expectations of his subjects, which sparked rebellions that later turned into a revolution. In 1908, Sultan Abdülhamid II was forced to reinstate the 1876 constitution and was eventually removed by the Young Turks, the first generation educated at the Western-style institutions established by the sultan. The Young Turk agenda was simple: they wanted to establish constitutional rule, restore Ottoman honor and dignity and, most important, recover all the vast Ottoman imperial land that had been lost. Yet the Committee of Union and Progress [hereafter CUP] through which they ruled was protonationalist and the Young Turks were very inexperienced in state affairs. Their attempts to recapture past Ottoman glory while extending a hand toward Western modernity backfired. Emotional traumas rapidly multiplied as they set the empire on a course of self-destruction through warfare. Almost the entirety of their brief ten-year rule (1908–18) was marked by wars, the first in 1911 in Tripoli against Italy, then the 1912–13 Balkan Wars, and finally World War I from 1914 to 1918. What is more grave and often goes unnoted is that during this time period, the Young Turks not only failed to regain the previous 60 per cent land loss but actually managed to lose another 35 per cent of the imperial lands they had been entrusted to govern.30 During their rule, many more imperial subjects were displaced and destroyed, and this time not solely by war but through massacres committed by the CUP in line with their proto-nationalist agenda. More than a million soldiers lost their lives during this era of continuous war, literally destroying an entire generation of Turkish Muslim males. It was at this particular historical juncture that the Sèvres Treaty was signed, marking the Ottoman Empire’s grievous loss in World War I. The

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overwhelming emotions of both the state and the populace pointed to defeat, destruction and desperation. The top CUP leaders had escaped to the West and the Ottoman negotiation of Western modernity had brought nothing but a continuous cycle of European and Russian aggression, war, defeat and subsequent devastating shrinkage of the imperial lands. Upon the signing of the Sèvres Treaty, two generations of Ottomans who had experienced two significant emotional traumas – first in 1877–78 and then in 1912–18 – barely escaped the imperial demise they had started to gravely fear. Now suffering permanent emotional scars, they were forced to retreat to the tiny sliver of Anatolia that was all that remained of the empire – a mere 5 per cent31 of the imperial lands at the height of Ottoman power. The 1912–13 Balkan Wars marked the second major Turkish emotional trauma for two reasons. For the first time in Ottoman history, the CUP actively employed the tool of political propaganda – especially through the print press – to promote a belief in the certainty of victory among the Ottoman populace. As theirs was a revolution, the Young Turks constantly needed the support of the masses to legitimate their rule. The Balkan forces that waged war against the empire were all former Ottoman subjects who had only recently gained their independence. This state of affairs led everyone, including the European powers, to believe that Ottoman military success would be swift and decisive. The rapid and utter Ottoman defeat – over in literally three weeks – therefore came as a total shock. The Ottoman army had to rapidly withdraw in total disarray and the Muslim Turks who had been living in the Balkans since the twelfth century had to escape – those who were lucky enough not to have been massacred – with nothing except the shirts on their backs. Especially during the nineteenth century, the Western European powers and Russia had furiously protested when a single Christian subject was murdered in the Ottoman Empire, often threatening intervention. The same powers, certain of an Ottoman victory, had argued before the advent of the Balkan Wars that they would preserve the pre-war status quo regardless of land gains by either side during the war. Yet now they did nothing except to watch from the sidelines in total silence as hundreds of thousands of Balkan Muslim Turks were displaced and massacred. They also did nothing to honor the proviso on preserving the status quo. Once the Ottomans were defeated, they let the Balkan states hold onto their land gains. This European hypocrisy and double-standard in

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the face of Christian victory was of course quickly noted by the newly burgeoning Ottoman press. Such a hypocritical stand compounded the Ottomans’ emotional hatred toward the West in general. Especially hard hit were the Balkan refugees forever marked by this trauma of sudden homelessness. Almost the entire ruling cadre of the CUP that had actualized the 1908 revolution had been of Balkan origin. For instance, the CUP leader Talat Pasha was born in Adrianople, and the leader of the Independence Struggle, the founder of the Turkish Republic, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, was initially from Salonica. Not only had they all lost the places they called home, but it was unclear whether there would be any place left on earth for the Turks to survive. Forever marked by this trauma of dispossession, they tried hard to secure a permanent new homeland in Anatolia. The earlier emotional trauma of the 1877–78 War was thus compounded by the subsequent trauma of the 1912–13 Balkan Wars. These two scathing events overshadowed the lives of two successive generations of Ottoman Turks, inuring them to desperation and despair in the face of constant defeat. The compounded emotional trauma of ‘the fear of destruction and the anxiety of annihilation’ mapped itself onto the Sèvres Treaty.32 Even though the very top CUP leaders had escaped from the Empire, the Young Turks left behind nevertheless organized in Anatolia first a resistance to the Allied occupation, and then the Turkish Independence Struggle. The struggle was eventually spearheaded with great success and against all odds by the former Ottoman general and former CUP member Mustafa Kemal (Atatürk). Yet the soldiers and officers had fought literally uninterrupted for an entire decade from the 1912 Balkan Wars to 1913–14 World War I to the Independence Struggle from 1919 to 1922. This long decade was not only emotionally and physically debilitating: over the course of the struggle, it did not escape the attention of either the soldiers or the officers that Western powers were the ultimate culprits behind the scenes. Yet the West was outside the Turks’ immediate reach. Their pent-up frustration and anger could instead be vented against those living in their midst, the non-Muslim minorities. The dominant Muslim Turkish majority thus started to regard these minorities as either the direct representatives or the unwitting pawns of the West. Some but not all of the minorities went along with such Western designs with the hope of eventually gaining sovereignty, thus further polarizing relations. The end result was the atrocities the Muslim Turks committed before and

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during World War I, especially against the Greek and Armenian subjects of the Ottoman Empire. Such collective violence also persisted during the Independence Struggle and the Republican period. The Transformation of the Sèvres Treaty into a Syndrome At the end of World War I, the Great Powers – Great Britain, France and Italy – prepared the Sèvres Treaty, dividing the Ottoman Empire into their spheres of influence. In the process, autonomous regions were created for the future states of Armenia and Kurdistan. The final blow fell with the British occupation of the imperial capital followed by the British-approved Greek occupation of Smyrna. By the beginning of 1919, the Ottoman Empire was left with only a small pocket of land in Anatolia, one that was ironically similar in both size and location to what the founders of the Ottoman dynasty had at the start of their rule, almost seven centuries earlier. For the defeated Ottoman state, the Sèvres Treaty that was soon to be signed represented the final – and this time successful – attempt of the West to divide and destroy the empire. The harsh terms of the Sèvres Treaty, intended to punish and subdue the Ottoman state, instead produced exactly the opposite reaction. The treaty literally provoked the Turkish Independence Struggle. Against all odds, the former Ottoman officers – who were also mostly former members of the proto-nationalist CUP – organized and successfully fought against both the European powers and Greece, which had occupied Western Anatolia on their behalf. Hence the Sèvres Treaty, although signed in August 1920, was never put into effect, but instead was superseded by the Lausanne Treaty, ratified in July 1923. With the Independence Struggle, the Turks practically doubled the territory that had been left to them by the Sèvres Treaty; they recovered another 5 per cent of the former Ottoman imperial lands in addition to the existing 5 per cent. This was of course an impressive victory, one that ultimately prevented the feared extinction of the Turkish race. Yet, there was never any reflection on or accounting for the 90 per cent that had been lost in the forty years from 1878 to 1918. The past was left behind without any questions being asked; instead, the leaders of the Independence Struggle focused on the newly signed Lausanne Treaty, one that internationally recognized both their struggle and the new Turkish state they had created in Anatolia.33 What is most striking about the comparison of the 1920 Sèvres and 1923 Lausanne Treaties is not only the survival of the memory of the

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former at the expense of the latter but its subsequent transformation into a ‘syndrome’ – that is, into ‘a series of symptoms of a disorder, a disease’ which indicates an ‘unhealthy’ condition.34 When analyzed in their historical contexts, the power of the Turks during the signing emerges as the major difference between the two treaties. At the Sèvres Treaty, the Ottoman Turks – with whom the modern Turks fully identify – had just been defeated and were therefore in no position to negotiate whatsoever; they thus perceived themselves as extremely weak. Yet at the Lausanne Treaty, having just won the Independence Struggle, the Turks negotiated from a position of power. With the benefit of hindsight, this power difference makes the selective survival into the present of the depressing Sèvres Treaty at the expense of the victorious Lausanne all the more puzzling. Given the choice between an earlier depressing (1920 Sèvres) memory and a later celebratory (1923 Lausanne) one, why would the popular memory retain the negative over the positive one? This chapter contends that two concomitant factors affected this selective survival and, in the process, transformed the impact of the Sèvres Treaty into a syndrome. The first factor emerged from the particular historical conjuncture that rendered the initial public discussion of trauma and despair impossible. This set the stage for the second Republican factor, which built upon this emotionally truncated heritage. In so doing, it chose to engage in building a new nation from the ground up, without acknowledging the past trauma. It thus severed the historical connection with the Sèvres Treaty, mythifying it in the process. Particular Historical Conjuncture As the Ottoman public sphere formed only at the end of the empire, it was not possible for an extensive public discussion to take place on the century-long emotional trauma and despair the populace suffered as the empire shrank. The imperial subjects also could not adequately give vent to the immense humiliation they felt toward the West. Instead, at the end of empire, ‘Turkish national identity remained ... secondary ... and ... humiliated instead of ... [the former feeling of] superiority to the west ... [The Turks were] obliged to follow the created Western civilization, instead of creating civilizations; had to abolish a six-century old empire, instead of establishing new states; [and felt] ... crushed under the greatness of [their] past.’35 As a consequence, all the pent-up emotion, frustration and agitation remained unvoiced.

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What emerged instead was the darkest, deepest silence on the part of the Muslim Turks – the dominant ethnic element of the empire – a silence that contained all their frustrations at having lost an empire and been wronged by the West. Also silenced was the immense violence that the Ottoman Muslim Turks had suffered at the hands of the West as well as the violence they themselves had inflicted upon their minorities. This layered silence was then inherited by the new Turkish Republic: not only did the gloomiest, most menacing silence survive, but it was reproduced within the Republican era to persist up to this day. It must be underscored that the violence the Ottoman Muslim Turks suffered and the violence they inflicted on others were both contained within the same silence. So any attempt to address the one violence inevitably brought up discussions of the other, making facing the past ever more difficult. The silence was periodically punctured as Turkish state and society vented its emotions. The Sèvres Treaty provided one such venue for the release of emotions. The continued inability of Turkish state and society to voice, discuss and come to terms with such a violent and unacknowledged loss of empire comprises the most fundamental factor keeping the Sèvres syndrome alive to this day. This unwillingness to acknowledge the loss of empire is akin to living, as one scholar put it, with ‘an elephant in the room’.36 It prevents Turkish state and society not only from diagnosing the condition but also from coming up with a cure. In the meanwhile, it also erodes the nation’s moral fabric, as the trauma and violence contained within remain unaddressed, and therefore unaccounted for. Why was this silence not addressed during the Republican period? Historically, three processes intersected to produce a particular historical conjuncture that made it impossible for such a discussion to occur within the burgeoning public sphere. First, the Ottoman state and society were engaged in wars for an entire decade between 1912 and 1922, which entailed a continuous mood of crisis and uncertainty. Nor was the precedent set during Young Turk rule favorable to public debate. The total freedom that flourished in the immediate aftermath of the revolution was quickly suppressed, as the secret CUP Special Organization began to assassinate opposition journalists, a practice which did not encourage further debate.37 Then, citing war conditions, the state severely censored the mass media and communication. Second, during this decade of conflict, the populace was forced to focus on physical survival. As it did so, it witnessed the transformation of the

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entire political structure from an empire to a republic, a process that also entailed the reconstitution of the boundaries of the public sphere. The population composition of the country also shifted, as many people were forcibly moved, others moved them (and committed atrocities in the process), and still others consciously decided to keep silent about what they had witnessed.38 From 1919 on, as the Independence Struggle commenced, the public spheres split, with the imperial center at the capital, İstanbul, now competing with the opposition national center in Ankara. The new provincial center of the national movement attempted to vanquish the significance of the imperial capital. In doing so, they followed the CUP practice of creating a public sphere but at the same time severely controlling the ideas generated there. Freedom of thought and expression evaporated. Thus not only was there no public discussion permitted in Ankara, but eventually even those dissident voices at the imperial capital – like Ali Kemal, who had criticized the Independence Struggle – were silenced by lynching.39 Third, the emergent Ottoman bourgeoisie had been significant in the initial creation of the Ottoman public sphere. During the course of the nineteenth century, the structural divide inherent in Ottoman society between the dominant Muslim Turkish majority and the non-Muslim minorities split the emergent Ottoman bourgeoisie into its Muslim bureaucratic and non-Muslim commercial components.40 During both the imperial and Republican eras, the Muslim Turkish bourgeoisie employed massacres, deportations and population exchanges to eventually eliminate the minority bourgeoisie of Greek, Armenian and Jewish businessmen, entrepreneurs and professionals. It did so to monopolize the increasingly lucrative fields of trade and commerce that had for centuries been under the control of the minority bourgeoisie. The latter had also played a crucial role in the intellectual and social life of the empire, especially in the production and translation of Western-style knowledge. As the Muslim Turkish bourgeoisie employed elimination instead of collaboration, the Ottoman bourgeoisie could never develop into a political force. The minority bourgeoisie had the skills and wealth, but lacked political and social power; the Muslim Turkish bourgeoisie had such power in both the state and society but was short on wealth and skills. As they replaced the minority bourgeoisie without the accompanying skill, knowledge and resources, economic problems escalated and invited increased state intervention. The Ottoman justification for the elimination of the minority bourgeoisie had been their imputed connections to the West. The Republican

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elites sustained the same policy, arguing that such elimination would ultimately reduce the hold of the West over Turkish state and society. They also assumed that they could miraculously acquire the skills and knowledge it had taken the minorities centuries to accumulate. They failed on both counts. The end result was richly ironic: the elimination of the minorities who had been the Ottoman and later Turkish intermediaries with the West escalated the fear and anxiety about the West even more. The West grew more distant from Turkish state and society and, as a consequence, more than ever the object of myth-making. With international connections thus further attenuated the Turkish state could disregard the world at large and retire into its domestic cocoon, nursing its continuing fear and anxiety. Even though the contents of the Sèvres and Lausanne Treaties were fundamentally different from one another, the fear and anxiety of the dominant Turkish Muslim majority remained the same. It remained traumatized by a decade of wars capping a century of pain, suffering and humiliation. It had been reduced from a vast empire into miniscule space; in the process, it had been ravaged not only economically – by the demands of war – but also social and morally, through deaths and massacres. Against all odds, the CUP managed to create a new state to replace the one almost obliterated by the West. Leading this transformation was the military, the one institution that survived the transformation from empire to nation-state intact. The project of creating a nation out of this tired, humiliated, exhausted and distraught populace commenced. The Republican Factor This factor explains how the Turkish nation-building process refashioned the Sèvres Treaty, transforming it from history into syndrome, through three interconnected strategies: the transformation of history into national myth, the creation of a Turkish body politic and the initiation of a rapid Westernization project. History claims authority and credibility by grounding all narrated events in time and space. When nation-states construct their official histories, however, they tend to take liberties with the past. Intent on securing the loyalty of their citizens, they selectively narrate historical events and reinterpret individual experiences. In doing so, they sever the temporal and spatial connections with actual historical events. Once the ties of an event with the past are damaged, the historical event moves from the realm of history to that of national myth. These

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myths in turn help foster a particular kind of body politic, one, in this case, that privileges ethnically Turkish Sunni Muslims while excluding all the rest. In addition, in spite of the negative emotions toward the West, this new Turkish state engages in a rapid Westernization project that endeavors to reconstruct the state and society after the image of the West. The intersection of these three strategies led Turkish state and society to fixate on the depressing Sèvres Treaty over the celebratory Lausanne one. Sèvres reified the constructed image of the West that had been silenced in Turkish memory; it contained references to all those minorities who were eventually excluded from the body politic of the Turkish nation. Sèvres also possessed the necessary emotional elements around which the state could unite the new nation. The celebratory Lausanne Treaty did not contain such arousing features. Once the Sèvres Treaty was thus selected, it gradually transformed into a syndrome as the constructed image of the West, the excluded groups from the nation, and the emotions it aroused assumed a social reality of their own. Its permanence in the Turkish body politic was no longer challenged, revised and updated in accordance with the continuously changing world historical context. This conceptualization reduced all elements to their essential, stereotyped essence: the West merely became a monolithic, aggressive force to be defended against. The various social groups excluded from the Turkish body politic transformed into internal enemies who were in constant cooperation with the aggressive West. The Sèvres Treaty, now totally devoid of its historical context, became a timeless repository of emotion. It could be quickly activated if and when the state needed to rally the populace against any perceived enemy; all it needed to do was to establish a connection with the Sèvres Treaty. Transformation of History into National Myth Empires draw their legitimacy from the sacredness that cloaks their rulers. Ottoman sultans had legitimated their rule through their dynasty and through religion. It was no accident that the sultans considered their subjects their ‘flocks’ (reaya) and made different arrangements with each particular flock. Under the same imperial rule were found both locally self-governing millet communities of non-Muslim subjects and the tribal organizations of the Kurdish and Arab communities. This imperial diversity was possible because of the nature of the relationship between the ruler and his subjects, which was communal in nature.

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With the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Western European political transformations, however, imperial rule became secularized. Sacred rulers were displaced by constitutions penned by those who claimed to democratically represent the citizenry. Political legitimacy was now predicated on direct political representation of the individual citizen by the state. The sacredness of the rulers that had guaranteed the subjects’ loyalty was now replaced by the ideology of nationalism. All citizens felt they belonged to the body politic; they participated equally in state and society as members of the same nation. It was through the creation of national narratives that the citizens united and started to view themselves as members of the same imagined community. The Turkish national narrative was created also with the intent to generate and legitimate the imagined Turkish nation. Even though the narratives of myth and history both make truth claims and both have credibility, Hülya Adak points out that myth is much more powerful than history because it contains emotions and authority: it is ‘not only a “model of” but also a “model for” reality’.41 Hence it not only describes reality but at the same time prescribes what it ought to be. State elites seek to create myths out of history exactly because of their multilayered content of authority, emotions and imagined reality. This potent combination enables the elites to secure and sustain state legitimacy. As such, for state-building purposes, myths are much more useful than historical facts. These myths can then be further embellished with many emotional details with no regard to historical accuracy, thus transforming them from an initial ‘healthy’ historical event into a ‘diseased’ imagined myth. Because of these multiple layers of exaggeration and embellishment contained in myths, scholars often do not seek any truth value in them. Such myths have after all been de-historicized, thereby losing their connection to social reality. Myths are thus treated as totally separate from historical fact and historiography, as the depositories of the ideologies inherent in states and societies. Yet those who have created the myths fervently believe in their imagined realities. They not only defend their myths but sometimes even set out to destroy all those who dare to question them. The most significant Turkish myth of the nation is that of its creation. This creation myth is built upon the Independence Struggle and is narrated in opposition to the past and, with it, to the Sèvres Treaty. The person undertaking the exclusive narration is Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. The Turkish foundational narrative is based on his personal account delivered

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in Ankara in October 1927 as a six-day, thirty-six hour and thirty-oneminute speech (Nutuk). In a recent article, Hülya Adak ably demonstrates the myth-making qualities of the Speech.42 Mustafa Kemal employs the Speech to assert that the rebirth of the Turkish nation was coeval with the start of his involvement in the Independence Struggle. In doing so, he also destabilizes the discipline of history in Turkey. According to Mustafa Kemal, his writing should be hailed as the first instance of Turkish history.43 Adak notes how this national narrative dismisses the past so people cannot return to it. The Turkish Republic is carefully distanced from the Ottoman Empire through the narrative as follows:44 [T]his myth of rebirth is linked with the narrative of discontinuity, a narrative of distinct separation from the Ottoman Empire ... on several different levels. First and foremost, the Sultanate and the Caliphate are presented as useless and backward institutions that cannot be reconciled with modernization ... [also] individual acts of treachery of the sultans [are recounted] and [they are insultingly] degraded. With a single stroke, the birth of the Turkish nation is separated from the Ottoman past and that past is de-historicized: its social actors and institutions are embellished with value-laden attributes. Once rulers acquire traits such as ‘treacherous’ and once institutions are described as ‘useless’ and ‘backward,’ all lose their truth value. Also lost is their connection to history. They are thus removed to the realm of myth. Mustafa Kemal justifies his judgment of the past on two grounds. He first argues that these actors and institutions could not have been reconciled with modern times; they would have stayed backward and useless at a time when progress was the only mode of survival, and anything impeding progress was regarded as an obstacle to be removed. He then further contends that these actors and institutions betrayed him/the nation by not appreciating or legitimating his/the nation’s true worth. The Ottoman rulers and institutions along with the Ottoman past are thus removed to the realm of myth. Mustafa Kemal’s strategy may indeed have been necessary for the first Republican generation, given the collective traumas they had suffered. For them, remembering the past meant recalling a century-and-a-half of dramatic loss of land, displacement through mayhem and massacres, a decade of interminable wars and of course the loss of a great empire. It might have been truly challenging

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to build a nation on 10 per cent of the former imperial lands with citizens traumatized by past memories. Yet as the Republic successfully sustained itself through the passage of time, the succeeding Republican elites should have started to reflect on the Turkish foundation myth. They should have questioned, updated or abandoned it in accordance with the findings of historical research. Instead, they continually kept reproducing this myth and even built upon it with additional embellishments. They also sacralized the myth, making any criticisms against it legally actionable. In all, the most significant end result of the persistence of this foundation myth up to the present has been the permanent disconnection of the Turkish people from the origin of their traumas. Separated from the actual historical events by national myths, the memory the Turkish populace instead retains – and which neither the Turkish state nor its elites can bear to see undone – is laden with emotions of incessant dread, anxiety and fear of annihilation by the West. The other justification Mustafa Kemal presents in his narrative for severing connections with the immediate past is that the Ottoman rulers betrayed him/the nation by not appreciating his/the nation’s true worth. This assessment raises the issue of the transfer of political legitimacy from the Ottoman sultans to the Turkish nation. Here, Mustafa Kemal identifies and speaks not only as the commander who has led the Independence Struggle and now heads the Turkish Republic but also as the voice of the Turkish nation. In order for the new Turkish nation-state to be politically viable, the Republic of course had to sever all ties with the past. It had to make sure that the newly minted Turkish citizens would not be tempted to revert to their allegiance to the Ottoman sultan. Mustafa Kemal’s rhetoric eliminates this option by not only dismissing the past rulers but denigrating them. Another reason for this strategic elimination concerns the nature of the connection between the newly minted leaders of the Republic, including Mustafa Kemal, and the Ottoman rulers and institutions. The entire Republican elite were the products of Ottoman institutions: they had once sworn allegiance to the Ottoman rulers, only to form or join secret organizations and foment rebellion. Most were former members of the CUP, the Committee that had plunged the empire into a series of unsuccessful wars, lost 35 per cent of the imperial lands, assassinated and massacred its own subjects and literally destroyed the empire. Hence the interests of the Republican leaders – including Mustafa Kemal – necessitated that they employ a narrative distancing them as much as possible from this immediate past.

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In dismissing the past, the manner in which Mustafa Kemal identifies his persona with the Turkish nation points to another significant element of the Turkish nation-building process. Unlike most cases of nation-state formation, where a nation forms first and later seeks to establish a state, the reverse occurred in the political transition from the Ottoman Empire to the Republican Turkish state. At the end of empire, especially during the crucial last years of World War I, the Ottoman officials and in particular the CUP members in government identified as their ultimate goal the preservation of the state at all costs. They then set out to create a space that would be a homeland for this state, justifying all the violence they subsequently engaged in through this goal of state preservation. Only after they preserved the state, created a homeland and fought an Independence Struggle to defend their homeland from the West – only then did the Republican leader set about constructing a nation. Since the state thus preceded the nation, it was not the narrative of the nation that created the state. Rather, the narrative of the state, formulated in this case by Mustafa Kemal, symbolically and literally produced the Turkish nation. This reversed process also explains the eternal worship of Mustafa Kemal by the Turkish nation; he symbolically is indeed their creator. Another consequence of this reversed process was that the Turkish state singlehandedly constructed the entire narrative of Turkish nationalism. The state imagined, constructed and then treated the nation as if it were one indivisible, sacred whole, continuous with the state. The Turkish state thus not only merged with the society/populace/nation, but it also ‘naturally’ assumed the right to speak on its behalf. Hence, the interests of the state first necessitated a foundation myth that severed connections with the Ottoman past, then the state created its nation and assumed that its own state interests were exactly the same as those of the society/populace/ nation. The new foundation myth also had to find itself a point of origin. Following the tradition of nation-building projects it generated for the Turks an eternal history unbound by time and space. The origins of this history stretched back in time to the Hittites in Anatolia and spatially across the Ural Mountains to Central Asia.45 Moving the temporal origins of the Anatolian Turks back in time to the Hittites served to delegitimate the claims of all other civilizations that had existed in the same space since then. This strategic nationalist move caused the Anatolian civilizations established by the Greeks, Armenians, Assyrians and Kurds to all lose their claims on these lands. After all the Turks had arrived there first

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and their right to claim these lands as their ‘homeland’ preceded all the others. It is telling that at the 1936 Third Turkish Language Assembly, İbrahim Necmi Dilmen, who was the general secretary of the Turkish Language Association, delivered a talk entitled ‘The Main Outline of the Sun-Language Theory’. In the talk, he stated that ‘[h]istory has proven that the nobility of the human race was born with the brachycephalic Turks in Central Asia to then spread through their migration to Europe, Asia, America and Oceania. As the Central Asian Turks who were culturally superior spread onto the earth and took their superior culture to the dolichocephalic peoples living there, it would not have been possible to not yield new words born of this culture ... Hence ... the Turkish [language] is the basis of all languages’. Likewise at the 1937 Second Turkish Historical Congress, the Turkish academic İsmail Hakkı İzmirli argued that ‘the Prophet Muhammed, his wife the Gypsy Maria, his son İbrahim begotten from her, as well as the famous Eves and Hazrec tribes were Turkish; Jews and Persians also descended from the pure Turkish race.’ 46 The imagined spatial boundaries of the Turks thus expanded to Central Asia, to an imagined ancient civilized East where the entire world civilization originated, including the barbarian West. In the short term, such a hegemonic myth probably reduced the fear and anxiety of the Republican elite toward the West. Its long-term impact was very destructive, however. The Turkish state that had so actively participated in the production of such ‘imagined constructs’ then presented them to the nation as ‘historical facts’. They were then reproduced in history textbooks as ‘scientific knowledge’. As a consequence, in Turkey the boundaries between historical reality and national myth remained unstable for decades. The Turkish populace regarded the national myths as scientifically produced knowledge based on historical facts. These imagined constructs also helped preserve and sustain national emotions. The state could very easily rally the nation around these constructs, presenting their international criticism as yet another instance of vicious Western designs on Turkey. As the constructs were not predicated on scientific research and knowledge, critical reason based on academic research could not adequately develop within Turkish state and society. This lack of critical reason in turn impaired the democratization process. The main characteristics of the Turkish foundation myth were as follows: the myth was self-referential and all-encompassing; it identified

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Turkish civilization as the origin of all civilizations. By doing so, it effectively removed the need of Turks to learn about the rest of the world. Any event or action that occurred in the world outside was therefore judged solely in accordance with its impact on Turkish state interests and survival. The myth was also combative in that it did not define itself constructively in terms of what it was, but rather what it was not: it identified, justified and legitimated its existence in opposition to imminent dangers. The threats to Turkey that originated in the West could, it was believed, be contained through rapid defensive Westernization – essentially beating the West at its own game. A significant component of this Westernization process was the foundation of a secular and unitary state based on a civic nationalism, that eliminated the threat of religion. Religion was assumed to be threatening because the legitimacy of the former Ottoman Empire that the Republic was replacing was predicated on it. Once complete, this self-referential, all-encompassing and oppositional Turkish foundation myth was disseminated by the newly centralized mass educational system to generations of young Turkish citizens through history textbooks. In summary, in the process of nation-building, the Turkish state first established popular sovereignty in the name of an imagined nation that did not exist. It then created a foundation myth which generated over time its own imagined realities. Nationalist sentiments were cultivated as the myth was disseminated into society through mass education. During this entire process, the deeply embedded fears and anxieties pertaining to possible annihilation by the West remained unaddressed and unabated. Such emotions were, on the contrary, fostered and heightened.47 Creation of a Turkish Body Politic The international legal foundation of the Turkish state was predicated on the 1923 Lausanne Treaty. The cultural and religious rights of nonMuslim citizens of Turkey were recognized here with much reluctance so as not to further aggravate the Europeans into intervening in the affairs of the Republic on their behalf.48 This tension highlights the larger issue of who would comprise the body politic of the Turkish nation, more specifically who should be included and naturalized at whose expense. After all the Lausanne Treaty had helped define the boundaries of the non-Muslim minorities but did not comment on the remaining diversity

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within the Turkish population. In formulating their vision of the Turkish body politic, the Republican elites initially aspired to a Turkish civic nationalism built on an imagined supranational Turkish identity, eliminating from public life all expressions of religion (hence the principle of secularization) and ethnicity (hence the principle of a unitary state). This was so because the society contained significant non-Turkish (read Kurdish) and non-Sunni (read Alevi) populations; the thinking was that if these identities were acknowledged, they could potentially fragment state and society. Hence, rather than acknowledging difference, Turkish civic nationalism instead imagined a homogeneity based on the initial assumption that everyone who lived within the geographical boundaries of Turkey equally belonged to the nation. Throughout Republican history, however, this conception could not prevail. The ideal secular Turkish citizen turned out to possess very particular characteristics that did not fully reflect those of the populace living within the territorial boundaries. This became clear as civic nationalism gradually transformed into an ethnic nationalism that naturalized the superiority of ethnically Turkish Sunni Muslims. Soner Çağaptay’s work demonstrates how this new nationalism – that became Turkey’s official ideology in the 1930s – started to regard as ‘real Turks’ only those who were ethnically Turkish.49 Also, the non-Turks were hierarchically ranked in accordance with religion into Muslims and non-Muslims. The Muslim non-Turks (mostly Kurds) were included in the ethnically defined inner core in so far as they were willing to silence and/or give up their ethnic identity; the Kurds thus gained entry into the system if and only if they Turkified. Çağaptay conjectures that it was mainly the migration throughout the 1920s and the 1930s of hundreds of thousands of Turkish Muslim immigrants into the country that generated this newly created ethnic nationalism. The fundamental parameters of nationalism during this period Çağaptay defines as ‘High Kemalism’ were the following:50 High Kemalism produced three concentric zones of Turkishness: an outer territorial one, a middle religious one, and an inner ethnic one. In this scheme, only when a group was located in the innermost ethnic zone did it enjoy close proximity to the Turkish state. Alternatively, the further away a group was from the centre, the more unaccommodating was the Turkish state toward it.

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As the more broadly conceptualized civic nationalism gave way to a much narrower ethnic nationalism, many more were excluded from the inner core. These marginalized groups were gradually transformed into enemies of the state. Another cause of this ethnic and social polarization was the move in the 1930s on the part of the newly centralized state to inculcate the concept of a military nation. Gareth Jenkins traces the development of this connection between the Turkish military and the nation back to Mustafa Kemal Atatürk.51 When Mustafa Kemal was a military cadet, he was greatly influenced by the ideas of General Colmar Freiherr von der Goltz (1843–1916), the German general appointed to restructure and revitalize the Ottoman officer corps. Goltz’s classic work Das Volk in Waffen [The Nation in Arms]52 had been a recommended reading for all Ottoman military cadets. The work presented the military as containing within it the distilled essence of the nation. Equipped with these elite qualities, it was expected to take an active role in reshaping society. This connection between the military and the nation was put into practice in the Turkish case. The military acquired mythical qualities as it traced its origins back to 209 BC to the Hun leader Mete Han. The military also expanded its ranks as military service was made compulsory in 1927: now the entire Turkish male population became potential members of the military, obliged to prove that they truly belonged to the nation. Under this overarching military tutelage hierarchical, authoritarian and patriarchal values were transmitted to society at large.53 National pedagogy also reproduced this military practice. It focused, above all else, on the primacy of service to the nation. Such a focus eventually narrowed the vision of the entire Turkish society, making them index their whole world view to the interests of the state. The primacy of national conscience over universal reason, constantly instructing Turkish citizens to sacrifice their needs, interests and rights to the state instilled in them a deep sense of duty. The Turkish state evolved into the sole reference point for all the citizens. As the Turkish populace viewed everyone and everything around them through the eyes of the state, it became much less tolerant of individuals, social groups, options or visions that did not comply with the state.54 The Turkish state had severed its relations with the past and instructed the nation to do likewise, and the people did as they were told. Turkish society also ended up severing the connection of the Sèvres Treaty with its past, reducing it to its emotional component.

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Another component of Turkish nation-building was the construction of a trajectory and vision for the new nation. The origins of Turkey’s ambivalent relations with the West can be traced to this particular conjuncture. For many countries, the negotiation of Western modernity from the eighteenth century up to the present has been most unsettling. Even though undertaking such a project has enabled non-Western countries to survive within the larger international context, Western modernity has also wreaked havoc on their social structures and value systems. The end result has been the upheaval of order and security and the emergence of excessive violence. The Ottoman Empire first engaged in the modernity project in the late eighteenth century. The ensuing transformation eventually led to its demise. The empire’s imperial subjects experienced violence and trauma. The impact was worsened by the imperialist policies pursued by the Great Powers during the course of the nineteenth century. The Turkish Independence Struggle successfully challenged and somewhat contained these imperialist Powers. Interestingly enough, the Republican ruling cadres, including Mustafa Kemal, originated in the social group that had been most strongly and systematically impacted by Western modernity. The majority of the Republican leaders formerly belonged to the Ottoman military that, along with the diplomatic corps, had been the initial institutions modernized after the Western model.55 The subsequent negotiation of Western political ideas led to the establishment of secret organizations at military academies that eventually actualized the 1908 Constitutional Revolution against the sultan.56 This Westernized military institution dominated the CUP, and organized and directed the Independence Struggle.57 Yet the stand of the Turkish military in relation to Western modernity has been ambivalent, an ambivalence that originates in Mustafa Kemal’s Speech [Nutuk]. On the one hand, while discussing the military might and ‘civilization’ of the ‘Great Powers’, Mustafa Kemal overtly acknowledges the power of Western modernity. It could be argued that he also covertly approved of Western modernity. He was after all a product of the most Westernized institution of the empire, and he succeeded in defeating the Great Powers by employing, in addition to personal traits like immense intelligence and mental acuity, Western military skills he had acquired as a member of this institution. Mustafa Kemal also employed Western

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modernity to criticize and delegitimate Ottoman rulers and institutions; he pointed out how they had not kept up with Western modernity, instead becoming ‘outdated’ and ‘backward’. On the other hand, Mustafa Kemal was also forced to experience and negotiate the violence and trauma Western modernity inflicted on the Ottoman Empire. He poignantly narrated the incessant wars generated by the imperialist ambitions of the Great Powers that he had to fight in, personally defending a disintegrating empire. Mustafa Kemal continually tried to unite the empire against the Great Powers: he held many talks with various Ottoman deputies in the Parliament, wrote many letters to the CUP leaders and engaged in countless debates and discussions with his friends. Most important, he led the Independence Struggle, a war literally fought against the representatives of Western modernity. The end result of this ambivalence was the formulation of a Turkish modernity project that was both defensive and radical. The historical experiences and traumas of the last century made it defensive in nature. Those countries that failed to keep up with Western modernity were forced, like the Ottoman Empire, to disintegrate and disappear from history. Mustafa Kemal continuously addressed this possibility; he noted, for instance, ‘It is futile to try to resist the thunderous advance of civilization, for it has no pity on those who are ignorant or rebellious ... We cannot afford to hesitate any more. We have to move forward ... Civilization is such a fire that it burns and destroys those who ignore it.’ 58 This inevitability made the Turkish modernity project radical in nature. Turkish leaders did not choose to engage in it by their own will but were forced into it for the sake of survival. This attitude set the tone and pace of the Westernizing reforms, punishing in the process all those who criticized, opposed or resisted them. The reforms were executed with great speed against the fear of impending annihilation. In its new mythified form, the Sèvres Treaty once again served the Republican leaders well. It spelled out the imminent doom awaiting the Turks if the reforms failed: the Turkish nation-state would get carved up by the Western powers to the point of annihilation, with large chunks shamefully handed out to different indigenous ethnic and religious segments. At this point, the Sèvres Treaty acquired the additional emotional baggage that turned it into a syndrome, as the societal trauma resulting from the radical Westernizing reforms was also mapped onto it. The execution of this radical defensive project also redefined state– society relations. As the project was literally a race against time, with an ever-escalating chance of annihilation upon delay, the learning curve had

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to be boosted. The whole country was transformed into one large classroom. Turkish state officials took on the role of instructors teaching lessons on Western modernity to their students – that is, the entire society. The Sèvres syndrome came into play as it informed the content of the lessons, impacted the atmosphere in the classroom and also influenced the evaluation of the students’ performance. Given the impending doom, the lessons had to be taught very strictly and efficiently, in a constant state of vigilance. In such vigilance rested the only chance of success against the West. For instance, the textbooks underlined that in the past wars against the West, ‘even though enemy forces had been superior to the Turkish armies in terms of their number and weaponry, the Turks were nevertheless victorious ... Against the numerical superiority and power of the enemy, [we have to] constantly stay vigilant and, consequently, distrust every kind of foreigner.’59 The constant state of alertness brought along with it a gravity that of course precluded any levity or reflection on the course contents. Also disregarded was any discussion of the priorities, interests, requests or rights of the students. The survival of the country was at stake and that ‘naturally’ came before all else. Courses transformed into lessons that had to be learned by rote. Given the possible scenario of disintegration, all the students also had to be exactly the same. There could be no overt acknowledgement of the differences among them as that would invariably lead one down the path of division and disintegration. Since religion and ethnicity comprised the two axes of difference in Turkey, the recognition of identities formed around these axes had to be especially avoided. Principles of Western modernity also disregarded the contemporary validity of the concepts of religion and ethnicity. Turkish state officials could therefore clearly associate these concepts with tradition and backwardness. The dominant Republican reform narrative thus identified religion and ethnicity as massive obstacles to development, as barriers that potentially imperiled the country’s survival. The nature of these reforms reveals yet another reason for the Turkish ambivalence toward the West. The state employed Western modernity as a catch-all term to legitimate all its activities, both constructive and destructive state practices. Western modernity became positively connected to science, progress, civilization and rationality. Yet there was no extensive public discussion on what these concepts actually meant, leaving the nature of the connection unclear. The Turkish state also glorified and rewarded those among the students who started to live their lives

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in accordance with the principles of Western modernity; it distributed resources to them, turning them into the next generation of Republican elites. Western modernity was also employed negatively to denigrate certain concepts: religion, ethnicity, tradition and belief were defined as inimical to it. Those among the students who resisted learning their lessons or who questioned them were duly punished: the Turkish state withheld resources and marginalized them. Scholars Senem Aydın and Fuat Keyman discuss in detail the significant, atypical and ambiguous role Western modernity played in Turkish Republican history, pointing out that60 [Turkey was constructed] ... as a project of modernity ... a social engineering project ... a will to civilization ... premised on the equation of modernity with progress ... [attempting] to reach the level of civilization through rational thinking and rational morality ... producing ... a boundary between what was civilized, and what was uncivilized ... traditional ... [and] backward. In this modernity project, the Turkish state ‘initiated and imposed a set of reforms from above to enlighten the people and help them make progress’.61 The exact nature of the connection between Western modernity and radical Republican reforms was never made clear or discussed. What constantly took center stage were the dire scenarios that could descend upon Turkey if the reforms failed. The reform process also gradually separated the initial imagined unity of the Republican state with society/nation/populace. It did so, however, not in a democratic manner: the Turkish state instead elevated itself above society/nation/populace, assuming the right not only to interpret Western modernity but also to teach it. The Turkish state emerged as the ultimate arbiter of whether and how well society had learned its lessons. This inordinate decision-making power the state acquired at society’s expense enabled it to define the parameters of the entire social system. According to İlter Turan, this tutelage of society by the Turkish state elites and society gave the former the upper hand in determining the course of events.62 The Turkish state could easily identify, judge and dismiss any societal criticism of reforms as reactionary movements; it could then employ its own interpretation as legitimate cause to directly intervene in society. Thus arose the Turkish state tradition of constant intervention in society. It should also be noted that this Turkish state–society relationship resonates

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very closely with the preceding Ottoman conceptualization. The sultan’s political rule – which was synonymous with the state – was structured within the framework of a ‘household’. The Ottoman sultan headed the household and embodied all the power and authority in the system in his person. He then delegated this power and authority to his officials, who mediated his relationship with the populace at large.63 The legacy of this Ottoman patrimonial rule thus emerged in the Turkish Republic as the state once again assumed a supervisory role over society at large. In summary, then, the transformation of the Sèvres Treaty into a syndrome is coeval with the foundation of the Turkish Republic. Two concomitant factors were significant in producing this transformation. The first was predicated on the particular historical conjuncture before and after the penning of the Treaty in 1920. During the nineteenth century, the Ottoman Empire suffered military defeats, vast land losses and subsequent mass migrations and massacres. These were followed at the start of the twentieth century by a decade (1912–22) of continuous war, including the demise of the empire itself, with all the concomitant violence. Due to the severity of the transformations, it was publicly impossible to discuss and come to terms with this enormous trauma of defeat, loss, death and annihilation. All was repressed and silenced. The second Republican factor has to do with the nature of the Turkish nation-building process. The newly emerging state established its legitimacy at the expense of the empire that preceded it; to do so, it had to sever its connections with the immediate past. It did so through employing three strategies, namely the transformation of history into national myth, the creation of a Turkish body politic and the initiation of a rapid defensive Westernization project. In short order, the past was dehistoricized into myth, the newly created nation rallied around these myths and radical Westernizing reforms were legitimated by being connected to national survival. Once the Sèvres Treaty was dehistoricized, it became impossible to trace, rationally understand and gradually come to terms with the traumas of the past. All that was left was the emotions past events had generated: the fear and anxiety of annihilation by the West, that is, the Sèvres syndrome. Reproduction of the Sèvres Syndrome throughout Republican History The life histories of nation-states often contain a reassessment of the past in line with new historical research and a subsequent renegotiation of

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official myths. Indeed, an analysis of the official histories of states such as Great Britain,64 France,65 Japan,66 Germany,67 the United States68 and Israel69 reveals many instances of such rethinking of history and reconsideration of dominant narratives. During this process, these states have come to terms with past events that point to differential treatment of their populace and to demonstrations of violence they had silenced during the nation-building process. The colonial heritage and collective violence committed during wars have proved difficult to renegotiate for states like Great Britain and France. Likewise, Japan has had to renegotiate the cruelties it committed during its colonial rule and subsequent wars on the Asian continent. Violence committed during World War II – especially during the Holocaust – has haunted Germany. Coming to terms with its exploitation and abuse of the indigenous Native Americans, the enslaved African Americans and the violence committed during numerous wars has been very challenging for the United States. The mistreatment of indigenous Palestinians has been and continues to be a difficult subject for Israel. States like Greece,70 Romania71 and Bulgaria72 have recently undertaken a similar endeavor as part of the democratization accompanying their EU membership process. They have focused especially on coming to terms with the violence they committed in the past against minorities like the Jews and the Roma. Given this trajectory, the Turkish case appears all the more striking: not only was there a Sèvres syndrome during the early formative stages of the Turkish Republic, but this syndrome has successfully reproduced itself through the decades up to the present. Two factors are pivotal in explaining why the Sèvres syndrome has sustained itself to this day. One entails historical contingency; the other involves the ‘generational factor’. Historical Contingency After the 1923 establishment of the Turkish Republic, two worldwide wars soon followed: World War II, lasting from 1939 to 1945, and the Cold War from 1945 to 1991, a new form of covertly violent war comprising political conflict, military tension and economic competition between the United States and the Soviet Union and their satellite states throughout the world. The Cold War finally ended with the collapse of the Soviet Union. For Turkey, this international context of overt and covert conflict provided justification and legitimacy for the Sèvres syndrome for another five decades, from 1940 to 1991.

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Mustafa Kemal was prescient in readying the newly established Turkish Republic for another possible encounter with the West. World War I had not been fully able to settle the imperialist struggle among the Great Powers. Slightly more than a decade later, Western Europe thrust the continent and the rest of the world colonized by the West into another war. Unfortunately, Turkey had lost the able leadership of Mustafa Kemal – he died right before the onset of World War II, in November 1938. Even though the Turkish state showed enough acuity not to enter this war and remained neutral, the sentiments of the ruling RPP that İnönü headed were unwaveringly for the Germans. Still, the condition of threat and the defensive vigilance it necessitated continued in Turkey for another decade, sustaining with it the premises of the Sèvres syndrome. During this period, Turkey did not have the opportunity to come to terms with and reflect on its past. On the contrary, it spent an inordinate amount of time and resources defending itself against a possible attack by the warring sides. The end of World War II witnessed the emergence of another form of polarization, one that ultimately divided the world around two disparate visions of socialism and capitalism. The two powers that emerged after the war to spearhead these visions were the United States and the Soviet Union, the two states that controlled the largest resources relatively unaffected by the war. What was termed the ‘Cold War’ divided, aligned and therefore polarized almost all the countries of the world among these two camps. Security and vigilance against the other camp became the defining parameter for all parties, structuring their relationships with each other. Turkey eventually joined – once again out of necessity rather than by choice – what was referred to as the ‘Western’ camp led by the United States. It also joined the defensive pact of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (hereafter NATO). Europe and the United States included Turkey as a NATO member because it counterbalanced the Soviet threat and became an important regional player for Western defense schemes. Ankara ‘tied down some 24 Soviet divisions’ and ‘supplied important bases and facilities for the forward deployment of nuclear weapons and the monitoring of Soviet compliance with arms control agreements.’73 With this development, the Turkish interpretation of Western modernity also expanded, including once again both constructive and destructive experiences attained through Turkey’s interaction with the state that now represented the West, namely the United States. The Turkish experience was constructive in that, as an ally bordering the Soviet Union, Turkey

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received a lot of material aid from the United States. It flourished economically along the capitalist lines envisioned and dictated by the United States. The explicitly destructive element of this arrangement was the prioritization of security and political stability over democratization. Any attempts by the Turkish populace to assert their rights through political participation were controlled, contained and often violently suppressed by the Turkish state. Turkey also renegotiated its national sovereignty with the United States, as bases for monitoring the Soviet Union were established throughout Turkey. The social actor carrying out the negotiation was, of course, the Turkish military rather than the National Assembly.74 World War II and the Cold War years enabled Turkey to sustain its national security culture for two reasons. First, the West too had placed security interests before freedoms and rights and therefore did not object to human rights infringements, especially in countries other than their own. Turkey was no exception; its infringements were unjustly and hypocritically overlooked. The West actually benefited from that fact that Turkey sustained a foreign policy predicated on state security with no other long-term vision. Western Europe and the United States could then negotiate with Turkey on every issue on a piece-meal, short-term basis. Second, the devastation the transition from empire to nation-state had produced in mainland Turkey was enormous. The destructive decade of wars was accompanied by ruptures in the social, economic and moral fabric of the country with the ethnic cleansing of the Armenians in 1915 and the massacre, deportation and population exchange of the Greek orthodox of Anatolia (hereafter the Rum) with Greece. The impact of this devastation was and still has not been properly acknowledged. The Ottoman bourgeoisie – mainly consisting of minorities – was literally eliminated, setting back economic development, especially in Anatolia, by decades if not a century. The populace could not accumulate economic, social and cultural resources for a very long time to come. A visual assessment of this devastation has only recently been made available by Osman Köker,75 whose postcard collection of Anatolian cities at the advent of the nineteenth century reveals a level of development that in some cases was barely regained only a century later. In summary, the international context of wars produced a historical contingency that ultimately enabled the Sèvres syndrome to persist. Generational Factor During the years of World War II and the Cold War, the Turkish Republic was politically led by the generation that had overseen its transition from

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an empire to the republic. The age structure of this leadership was unique in that the 1908 Constitutional Revolution had brought to power a cohort of political leaders who were very young. They were thus able to actively participate in shaping the country for decades to come; in the process, they also socialized the next generation of political leaders along their own worldview. Relative to his peers who mostly lived well into the twentieth century, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk unfortunately died young, at the age of fifty-seven. Yet his generation – born around the 1880s – played a crucial role in shaping not only the Turkish state but also its national identity and thereby its collective memory. This generation had come of age during the last decades of the Ottoman Empire and personally negotiated the dual impacts of Western modernity. On the negative side, they witnessed the displacement, death and trauma their families suffered as a consequence of the wars the West ultimately won due to its command over modernity. Their parents had been impacted by the 1877–78 RussoTurkish war that destabilized the hold of the Ottoman Empire over its Balkan provinces – those closest to the West and its modernity. They then personally witnessed the traumatic Balkan Wars of 1912–13 as well as World War I and the Independence Struggle. On the positive side, most of them had the opportunity to negotiate Western modernity, as they lived and were educated in the Westernized urban centers of the empire. They also traveled to or lived as students in Western Europe. In both contexts, the education they received was shaped by the premises of Western modernity. Indeed, in tracing the origins of Turkey’s Republican leadership, Erik-Jan Zürcher notes that the large majority were ‘graduates of the Ottoman Empire’s military academy (mekteb-i harbiye), military medical school (mekteb-i tıbbiye-i askeriye) and civil service academy (mekteb-i mülkiye) ... [all] modeled on the French grandes écoles’.76 The premises of Western modernity disseminated through these schools valued rational scientific knowledge over wisdom acquired through experience. They instilled in the students the idea of progress against which the entire world was to be measured and rank ordered. They also introduced an element of urgency, assuming that those states and societies that did not live up to the new standards of Western modernity would be doomed to extinction. The generation of Turks educated according to these premises learned their lesson well. They aspired to transform and ‘save’ the empire. They were certain that the professional scientific knowledge they had learned better equipped them to

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undertake this task than those older Ottoman officials whose wisdom was acquired through years of experience. The CUP members who conceptualized and executed the 1908 Constitutional Revolution were mostly in their late twenties. For instance, of the CUP triumvirate, Enver Pasha, born the same year as Mustafa Kemal, was twenty-six at the time of the Revolution and only thirty-one when he became the War Minister and led the Otoman army so disastrously during World War I. Talat Pasha was Enver’s senior by seven years and Cemal Pasha by nine. Hence, in 1913, when the CUP assumed full power with the Bab-ı Ali coup, the fate of the Ottoman Empire was placed in the hands of three men aged 31, 38 and 40. What they lacked in experience, however, they were certain they could make up through scientific knowledge and idealism predicated on that knowledge. Indeed, even before the coup of 1913, one of the first actions the CUP leaders had undertaken was the modernization of the Ottoman military, as they retired all the ‘old experienced (alaylı)’ officers, replacing them with ‘young educated (mektepli)’ ones who advocated CUP ideals. Such a move not only drastically altered the age structure of the Ottoman officers but also politicized the army. The swift and disastrous defeat of the Ottoman army during the Balkan Wars of 1912–13 has often been blamed on the havoc this change wrought on the Ottoman military command structure. The 1880s generation that assumed power was in their early thirties at the onset of the decade of wars (1912–22) and thus in their early forties at the 1923 foundation of the Turkish Republic. Once again, Erik Jan Zürcher analyzes the group that comprised the ‘core leadership’ of the Republic, a group he defines as the combination of ‘cabinet ministers and President Mustafa Kemal’s inner circle.’ He concludes that:77 [t]he average age of the group of cabinet ministers and that of the president’s circle is almost identical: Members of both groups were forty years old on average when the republic was proclaimed and around fifty-five when Atatürk died. The uniformity of the age group is striking. Twenty-six of the 37 persons were born between 1878 and 1888, eighteen of them between 1879 and 1884. We are definitely dealing with members of a recognizable generation here. Hence, the generation that led the Ottoman Empire to its demise and then established the Turkish Republic did so at a relatively young age. As a consequence, their particular experiences, anxieties and visions continued

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to shape the Republic for at least four more decades. Interestingly enough, unlike what they themselves had experienced, this generation – with the possible exception of Mustafa Kemal – was not at all willing to make space in the political sphere for the next Republican generation. A case in point is the three Presidents of the Republic who succeeded Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. After Mustafa Kemal’s fifteen-year long presidency (from the Republic’s inception in 1923 until his death in 1938), the immediate successor was his former brother-in-arms İsmet İnönü, who also happened to be three years his junior. Not only did İnönü remain the president for twelve years (until 1950), but he also stayed politically active almost until his death in 1973 at the age of 88. İnönü’s family bore the trauma of the Ottoman past. Even though İnönü was born in İzmir (Smyrna), with an examining magistrate father probably of Kurdish origin from Malatya (Melitene) in Anatolia, his mother had been the daughter of a refugee family from Bulgaria displaced to Western Anatolia by the 1877–78 Russo-Turkish War.78 His wife Mevhibe likewise descended from a family of war refugees who had settled in the same city.79 The Turkish presidency then passed to another member of the same generation, Mahmut Celal Bayar. He was only two years younger than Mustafa Kemal and a year younger than İnönü. Bayar was an exception in this generation: he had not received a formal education in Western-style schools and was of civilian origin. Hailing from the city of Bursa near the capital in Anatolia, Bayar’s father, too, was nevertheless a refugee from Bulgaria as a consequence of the 1877–78 Russo-Turkish War.80 Bayar stayed in office for ten years (until 1960), when both he and his party were forced out of office by the first Republican military coup. Still, the next president Cemal Gürsel – who only remained in office for five years (until his death in 1966) – was only 14 years Mustafa Kemal’s junior. A career military officer, Gürsel had been in his senior year at the military academy when World War I broke out. He was mobilized to fight only to be captured by the British, becoming a prisoner of war in Egypt until 1920. He then returned to join the Independence Struggle. Before Gürsel’s ascent to the presidency, international law professor Ali Fuat Başgil, who wanted to put forward his candidacy for the same post, was threatened by the Turkish military and forced to withdraw and leave the country. During Gürsel’s presidency, the Prime Minister and some leaders of the Democrat Party (hereafter DP) – a party formed in opposition to the reigning [Republican] People’s Party – were tried and hanged. It was also Gürsel who declared to the Dagens Nyheter newspaper of Stockholm

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that ‘if the mountain Turks (that is, Kurds) do not behave themselves, the military will not hesitate to bomb and tear down their cities and villages. Both they and their country will disappear in the ensuing bloodbath.’ He thus helped sustain the Sèvres syndrome by declaring the Kurds the internal enemies of the Turkish nation. Another military officer of the same generation, Cevdet Sunay, succeeded Gürsel. Sunay was Mustafa Kemal’s junior by 18 years; he became the next Republican president (in 1966) at the mature age of 66. He was only four years younger than his predecessor Gürsel and their career patterns were very similar: Sunay, born in the Black Sea city of Trabzon (Trebizond), had also been a military cadet at the capital at the onset of World War I. He too joined the army in 1917, only to be likewise captured and imprisoned by the British, remaining a prisoner of war in Egypt until 1920. His wife also came from a family of Balkan refugees. Hence the last two presidents, like their predecessors before them, all actively participated in World War I as well as the Independence Struggle. As a consequence they all firmly believed, in line with the syndrome, that both the Turkish state and nation needed to be constantly alert, ready and vigilant. It was during Sunay’s seven-year presidency that prominent Turkish youth leaders of the 1968 student movement such as Deniz Gezmiş – who attempted to transform Turkish politics – were hanged. The Sèvres syndrome persisted as leftist youth were now declared internal enemies of the Turkish nation. The pattern continued with the next, sixth President of the Republic, retired admiral and commander of the Navy Fahri Korutürk, who ruled for seven years (until 1980). Korutürk was born in 1903 and was thus Mustafa Kemal’s junior by twenty-two years and Sunay’s junior by only four years. He had been given the surname Korutürk by Mustafa Kemal himself. Attending the Ottoman navy cadet school during World War I (he graduated in 1923 and finished the Naval Academy in 1933), Korutürk literally started his education in an empire and graduated in a republic. His wife Emel Korutürk was one of the daughters of Salah Cimcoz, a very prominent member of the CUP. During Korutürk’s candidacy for president, the military actually split over who they wanted to succeed Sunay. While the commanders of the land forces and the gendarmerie laid siege to the National Assembly to enforce their candidate, the commanders of the air and naval forces opposed the move by carrying out maneuvers independently of the latter two. Eventually the latter succeeded in getting their candidate elected. Yet this show of force demonstrated who actually

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elected presidents in Turkey – not the deputies of the National Assembly, but the military. Next to succeed Korutürk in the presidency was another general, Kenan Evren, who also happened to be the leader of the 1980 military coup. Born once again in the Ottoman Empire during the last year of World War I, Evren attended military school to become an officer. He then participated in the Korean War as well as in Cold War operations against the Soviet Union. Hence Evren too was fully immersed in the security culture of both conventional war and Cold War. The 1980 coup he headed totally altered the Turkish social fabric. It redesigned the constitution to further limit rights and liberties and also abolished all political parties, intentionally depoliticizing Turkish society and bringing it under military control. Evren served as president from 1982 to 1989. He was elected through a referendum, receiving an impressive 91.3 per cent of the popular vote. During the elections, the ballots were placed in transparent envelopes with soldiers closely manning every voting booth in the country. The year his presidency ended also saw the tearing down of the Berlin Wall that eventually led to the end of the Cold War and, in 1991, the collapse of the Soviet Union. In all, this generation of Republican leadership was represented predominantly by members of the military and therefore helped sustain the dominance of the army in Turkish politics. This generation was also symbolically marked with another characteristic, an active interest in national security not only in ideology but also in practice. All were, with the exception of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, members of the CUP Special Organization (Teşkilat-ı Mahsusa) which later formed the infrastructure of the Turkish National Intelligence Agency (Milli İstihbarat Teşkilatı).81 Even though the Special Organization had been established with the ostensible aim of preserving the state, the secret agenda was set by a select group of officers who were not accountable to anyone including the rule of law. This paramilitary unit engaged in many clandestine activities including political assassinations and intimidation of opponents. The Turkish national security culture that has dominated Turkey’s foreign relations until very recently was initially put in place during the reign of Mustafa Kemal’s successor İsmet İnönü. İnönü was not only a former CUP member like his predecessor but had also been, unlike him, a member of its secret Special Organization (Teşkilat-ı Mahsusa).82 It was also during the İnönü era that Turkey’s defensive Westernization project prioritized the interests of the Turkish state at the expense of the rights of its citizens. It is interesting to note that Celal

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Bayar, who succeeded İnönü as president, was also a former CUP member as well as a member of the Special Organization. He thus knew İnönü very well from the past, yet this knowledge was not readily accessible to Turkish society at large: it remained embedded in that pre-Republican prehistory to which connections had now been severed through the Sèvres syndrome. Probably because of this past connection, Bayar, unlike some of his fellow party members, was not hanged when the military took over with a coup in 1960.83 Hence, it can be argued that the ‘Ottoman’ generation of leaders literally led Republican Turkey all the way up to the end of the Cold War. It was only with Turgut Özal that the Turkish state had its first president who was actually born during the Republican era. Özal was also the first Turkish president of truly civilian origin, since the only other predecessor of civilian origin, Celal Bayar, had actually been a member of the CUP’s paramilitary Special Organization. Of the recent Turkish presidents, Turgut Özal (1989–93) as well as his successors Süleyman Demirel (1993–2000) and Ahmet Necdet Sezer (2000–07) were civilians. Yet they were nevertheless elected to office only upon the approval and consent of the Turkish military. Hence, they all owed their appointment to that institution. Only the 2007 election of the eleventh president of the Turkish Republic, Abdullah Gül, was not been decided by the Turkish military – and that is why it became so contested, almost destabilizing the entire country.84 For the first time in Turkish history, it was the National Assembly that truly elected the president of the country.85 Only with the presidency of Gül was a candidate elected and appointed by the National Assembly against the wishes of the Turkish military. Only with him was the hegemony of the first generation of Republican leaders broken. Until then, the national security framework institutionalized by İsmet İnönü had reproduced itself within Turkish state and society mainly through the institution of the military and their control of the office of the Presidency. Furthermore, with it, the Sèvres syndrome had continued unchecked. Resource accumulation and distribution in Turkey was thus initially controlled by the military through the legislative, administrative and executive branches of the Turkish state. Even though the main Turkish political actors appeared to be the National Assembly, real power ultimately rested with the president. The Turkish military effectively controlled and shaped all branches of government through the presidency. The Turkish president commanded the military, approved all top-level

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administrative and judicial appointments, and also had veto power over the laws passed by the National Assembly. Thus by controlling the office of the president and electing to that office a person who mirrored their principles and premises, the Turkish military reproduced their priorities and their power within both Turkish state and society. When Mustafa Kemal had become the president of the Turkish Republic, his military identity and his focus on national security were a consequence of the historical conditions within which he had emerged; these two characteristics indeed marked the 1880s generation. The interpretation of the Sèvres Treaty transformed into a syndrome as the young Turkish Republic engaged in the process of nation-building. During this process Turkey, like other nation-states, mythologized its past to legitimate its rule, silenced the collective violence embedded within that past and altered the temporal and spatial boundaries of the nation, including some and excluding others. This syndrome would naturally have abated over time, had what occurred in other nation-states also taken place in Turkey. While other nation-states critically faced their histories and came to terms with nationally imagined pasts that did not reflect their historical realities, Turkey failed to do so, due both to historical contingency and the generational factor. As a consequence, the Sèvres syndrome rolled on. At this juncture, special attention needs to be drawn to the connection between the prominence of the Turkish military and the subsequent sustenance of the syndrome. Even though the formal Turkish transition to a multiparty system in the aftermath of World War II could potentially have altered the dominant Turkish state culture predicated on the Sèvres syndrome, the series of military interventions that started to occur with distressing regularity in 1960, 1971, 1980 and 1997 made certain that the Turkish political system would not under any circumstance dare to deviate from the principles set by the syndrome. As the Turkish military assumed leadership of the state and the nation, even though it sugarcoated and civilized its hegemony within the parliamentary and presidential vestiges of Western modernity, it gradually institutionalized its political power through an intricate system of checks and balances. The military, as the only institution to survive intact the transition from the empire to the nation-state, also attended to issues of economic and social power to sustain its political position. Given that its personnel manned most of the state, the military was able to annually monopolize a large portion of the Turkish national budget for purposes of defense, due to the actual and potential threats it identified

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within and outside the country.86 For instance, Gülay Günlük Şenesen observed that in the post–Cold War period, when military spending in the rest of the world decreased, the opposite was true for the Turkish military: ‘the defense budget of the 1989–2001 period was twice that of 1979–88.’87 Also significant was the nature of the military spending. Even though Turkey’s interest payments on its external and internal debts increased annually to subsume a larger portion of the budget, the defense budget continued to command the same proportion of the budget, thereby indirectly increasing its share. Debates between the Turkish military and the civilian government concerned the military’s lack of accountability for their spending. The civilian government had no role in the preparation of the defense budget. Instead, it was rubber-stamped in 2003, for instance, in a record two hours. The ‘National Security Policy Document’ comprising internal and external threats to Turkey prepared by the military excluded both the civilian government as well as the National Assembly. When queried, a high-ranking Turkish general replied that ‘we soldiers prepare the National Security Policy Document and send it to the Prime Ministry only to get it printed there’.88 As the military controlled the economic resources of the country, it was able to competitively recruit the best and brightest from among the ethnic Turks of Sunni origin, thus forming a very select group of officers. The Turkish military then acted as a total institution, controlling every aspect of the officer’s life including his family. Ali Karaosmanoğlu notes that ‘the high degree of group consciousness of a Turkish officer began to develop quite early, when he was a cadet in the military high school. He lived and worked apart from the rest of society. He became distinguished from his civilian friends and from other members of his own family by his uniform, insignia of rank and behavior within the system.’89 While in office, each and every officer swore to protect and preserve at all costs the Turkish state and society that they believed Mustafa Kemal had personally entrusted them. These officers continued their mission after their retirement as well. Some then built ‘civil defense’ as they established and participated in ‘civil society’ organizations. Hence, what should have been truly civil, that is outside of the purview of the state, were actually organized and manned by the state. Through the activities of its officers, the Turkish military expanded, diffused into and reshaped Turkish society. The elements of the Sèvres syndrome, especially the potential for and therefore the creation of internal and external enemies, provided the justification for this expansion. Of

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course, what was missing in all this process was the ‘rest’ – all those who, as in Ottoman times, were not affiliated with the state. The populace was once again excluded from sharing in political power and authority. Even though democracies are predicated on the participation of their citizens, the Turkish military took it upon itself to define the nature of that participation. It then decided in accordance with its own distinct priorities, ones that preferred state security over the needs, rights and demands of the citizens. Symptoms of the Sèvres Syndrome: Generating Enemies through the Decades The Turkish state created its nation on fear of annihilation, abandonment and betrayal. This formulation naturally led it to perceive and interpret every action directed at it very narrowly, in relation to its own interests. Yet more important, the Turkish state then projected its interests onto the initiators of such actions. It was through such projection that the ‘enemies’ of the Turkish state emerged. As all official interactions actively promoted self-interest in preserving the Turkish state, any action interpreted as deviating from that interest was immediately imbued with distrust. The inevitable consequence of this process was the next ‘symptom’ of the Sèvres syndrome, namely the creation of ‘others’ with imagined attributes who challenged Turkish state interests. During this process, only ethnic secular Turks potentially passed ‘the acid test of Turkishness’ by also prioritizing state interests. All others were eventually defined as categorically different, as ‘others’ and, because of their potential threat to the state, as ‘enemies’. Murat Necip Arman, who studies the emergence of such ‘others’ in Turkish history, notes that ‘the legacies of the liberation struggle left deep scratches on Turkish nationalists. Cooperation of non-Muslim minorities with occupiers, Islamist rebels in Bolu, Düzce and Hendek, and the Kurdish rebellion led by Sheikh Said and the [Kurds’] resistance to the revolution after the war were all the traumas providing effective arsenal to the ardent nationalist groups’.90 The non-Muslims, Islamists and Kurds that Arman identifies are the ‘internal enemies’ most frequently cited in nationalist accounts. Yet he does not take the next critical step of questioning this selection and building an alternative narrative. Recent Turkish history is also replete with instances where non-Muslim minorities helped fight against the occupiers,91 and where both the Islamists and

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the Kurds did not rebel against the Republic but instead supported it against the forces of the Ottoman sultan.92 Such an approach would reveal how such nationalist groups dehistoricized and destabilized the past, and thus challenge their dominance and hegemony within the system. Likewise Hakan Yavuz and Nihat Ali Özcan argue that the Islamists and the Kurds emerge as the ‘internal enemies’ in Turkey because ‘secularism and a homogeneous ethno-nationalism’ were initially defined as the cardinal principles of Turkish identity and modernization.93 As a consequence, those who criticized the secular and national interpretations were immediately ‘treated as “hostile voices” of religious fanaticism (irtica) or Kurdish separatism’. Religion and ethnicity once again emerge, like in the Ottoman Empire, as the fault lines around which the Turkish nation fails to coalesce. Yavuz and Özcan, like Arman, correctly identify the problem but do not then explain why this was the case. They do not confront the polarization of Turkey through the continuous creation of new domestic and international enemies; they let the reproduction of the process go undisputed. This historical process of Turkish nationalism generating religion and ethnicity as its ‘others’ has to be challenged. The Turkish model of civic nationalism was built upon its French conception that emerged in opposition to German ‘ethnic’ nationalism. It was Hans Kohn who first compared, in the aftermath of World War II, the French and German nationalisms.94 At the time, the ethnic and civic dimensions of each were exaggerated because of the particular historical circumstances. The German case highlighted the ethnic dimensions and normalized the civic one; the opposite occurred in the case of the French. The multiculturalism that the European Union aspires to has led many contemporary scholars to problematize the civic–ethnic divide in the conception of nationalism. Will Kymlicka, Kai Nielsen, Bernard Yack and Neil McCormick recently argue, for instance, that there certainly were some visible differences between the two nationalisms.95 These included cultural components, such as the provision of social bonds that tie members of the nation to each other, the inspiration of a basic sense of patriotism and the provision of a language for laws, business and education. Yet any insistence on the degree of intensity of these components quickly erodes the distinction. In the case of Catalan and Basque nationalisms, for instance, Julen Zabalo contends that even though the Catalan case is presented as civic and inclusive, and the Basque as ethnic and exclusive, their conception of the nation is quite similar.96 What really separate the two are the

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subsequent policies that are formulated. Hence, ‘the characterization of nationalism as inclusive or exclusive is related not to its construction as a nation but rather to its political radicalism’. If this is indeed the case, then one can surmise how the radical Westernization project of the Turkish state dangerously destabilized its civic nationalism. It was especially the assimilationist, exclusionary Turkification project the Turkish state undertook in the name of civic nationalism that eventually transformed it into an ethnic one. The Turkish state identified those who inhibited progress toward Western modernity, singling out the non-secular Islamists in terms of their religious identity and the non-Turkish Kurds through their ethnic identity. In the end, the civic nationalism Turkey aspired to became ethnic in character. Hence this initial ‘civic’ identity of the Turkish state needs first to be taken into account to understand how it subsequently became destabilized. The transformation of Turkish civic nationalism to an ethnic one enabled the major symptom of the Sèvres syndrome, namely the generation of a continuous series of enemies, to reproduce itself across Republican history. Gülnur Aybet focuses on the Cold War to demonstrate how Turkey’s foreign policy was literally compartmentalized into particular ‘issues’.97 The Armenian ‘issues’ or the Cyprus ‘issues’ were each analyzed and implemented separately without an overall strategy linking them altogether. Such ‘compartmentalized’ foreign policy resulted from Turkey’s dual stand between the West and the Middle East. NATO politics and collective defense against the Soviet Union had to be kept separate from the delicate and unstable regional politics. Yet one can argue that this unique policy was also caused by the national security culture that the Turkish state had developed. Each and every potential enemy had to be identified, classified and studied separately. All of these accounts thus tend to overlook the historical dimension and the significance of the cognitive framework that the Turkish Republic inherited from the Ottoman Empire in structuring and organizing its Foreign Ministry. After all, during the last hundred years, the Ottoman Empire had also organized its foreign policy defensively around ‘issues’. The Turkish Republic inherited this bureaucratic tradition. As Turkish national-security culture classified literally everything as a potential threat to the state, it rendered the construction of a grand strategy impossible. As a consequence, these areas could not but remain separate. At different historical junctures, the Republican state also identified four different ‘external enemies’. These external enemies were Europe

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(until the end of World War II), the Soviet Union and the United States (during the Cold War), and the European Union (in the post–Cold War era). In addition, it was conjectured that these external enemies had local accomplices. All the neighboring countries were classified accordingly. Greece and Bulgaria in the West; Syria, Iran and Israel in the East; and Armenia in the North all emerged as states that acted in conjunction with the external enemies to undermine Turkey. This conceptualization helped the Turkish state to identify domestic co-conspirators. The Greek, Armenian and Jewish minorities emerged as the initial culprits. They were then joined, over time, by the Kurds – especially the PKK – and the Islamists, through the Gülen movement. The Turkish military and the political parties were the two Turkish institutions that colluded in this fabrication of enemies. The military and the Republican People’s Party were active since the initial establishment of the Republic. They were then joined by other parties, like the ultra-nationalist National Action Party. What follows is a detailed discussion of the ‘enemies’ of the Turkish state, within the context of what has been termed the real politik of the country. The intent is to articulate the process through which such enemies were manufactured. Greeks and the Cyprus Issue Greece has been identified as the immediate enemy of the Turkish state, one hated more than the rest, for two historical reasons. It was the first state to gain its independence from the Ottoman Empire and the one that literally triggered the dissolution of the empire. For the Turks, it thus symbolizes the beginning of the end. Through the course of history, Greece then became affiliated with additional waves of human suffering. The various rebellions in the Balkans – as more and more Greek orthodox communities attempted to join Greece – culminated in the Balkan Wars that proved disastrous for the empire. In the aftermath of World War I, it was Greece that (with the backing of the Great Britain) invaded western Anatolia in an attempt to recover what it considered part of its ancestral lands. Collective violence against the Greek orthodox then ensued, with the massacres of the Rum during the Independence Struggle, the population exchange during the early years of the Republic, and the systematic persecution of the Rum thereafter. This violence reached such a level that only about 3,000 Rum reside in Turkey today. Historically, their demise can be traced back to the early twentieth century. In 1914, the CUP wanted to increase the Turkish Muslim population

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at strategic locations within the Ottoman Empire and therefore ‘115,000 [Rum] Greeks were driven out of Eastern Thrace and sought refuge in Greece; 85,000 [Rum] Greeks from the same region were deported to the interior of Anatolia; and 150,000 of them were ejected from the coastal region of Western Anatolia and fled to the shores of Greece’.98 Heading the effort in İzmir (Smyrna) was the CUP responsible secretary Celal Bayar, the same person who, later serving as the President of the Turkish Republic, covertly supported pogroms against the non-Muslim minorities residing in major urban centers during 6–7 September 1955. Other similar discriminatory Republican activities against the Rum included their recruitment into labor battalions at the end of the Independence Struggle and during World War II. Those holding Greek passports were also forcefully expelled in 1964. The ‘Cyprus issue’ emerged through the 1964 and 1967 crises as a constitutional breakdown polarized the Turks and the Greeks residing on the island. Both the Turkish and Greek states regarded this populace as their natural extensions and so they too became involved in this contestation. It was in this context that the Turkish state went a step further in 1964 retaliating against the Rum holding Greek passports who resided on the mainland. The Rum community of Turkey, quickly and successfully became defined by the Turkish state as an internal enemy. In the mid-1960s, 6,000 Greeks were expelled from Turkey, and the property of 8,000 Greeks in Anatolia and İstanbul was confiscated. Those who were expelled could take only a very small amount of cash with them. They were forced by the Turkish state to leave behind almost all of their property and wealth.99 The contested national boundaries along the Aegean Sea still constitute a major point of contention between the two countries. In the Aegean Sea, the disputes between Greece and Turkey ‘can be categorized under five headings: extension of territorial waters; delimitation of the continental shelf; demilitarization of the islands; disputed islets; and the Flight Information Region’.100 While Greece is only willing to discuss the delimitation of the continental shelf, and that only at the International Court of Justice, Turkey has argued that all five issues are interlinked and should therefore be discussed as a package in a bilateral forum. Neither side is willing to move from their stand. Even though Greece used to follow a confrontational policy toward Turkey, this has recently changed in keeping with EU norms. Greece now supports Turkey’s EU membership on the premise that such a move would further democratize Turkey.

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Even though Greece has been able to make such a policy shift, however, the Turkish state still struggles to transform its own policy. In making such a shift, it is hindered by the firm oppositional stand of the Turkish military. Armenians and the Armenian Genocide Issue In the mid-1970s, Turkish diplomats abroad began to be assassinated by the Justice Commandos of the Armenian Genocide (JCOAG) and the Armenian Secret Army for the Liberation of Armenia (ASALA). These terrorist organizations claimed to engage in such violence to draw international attention to the injustice that had been committed against their community by the Ottoman and later the Turkish states. Their argument was that while the Ottoman state engaged in collective violence that decimated their community once residing on their ancestral lands, the Turkish state furthered this violence by failing to acknowledge it. Their subsequent violence against Turkish officials lasted a decade, until 1986. The Turkish state once again interpreted these acts within the framework of the Sèvres syndrome, contending that the Western powers were the real instigators.101 The dehistoricization and subsequent mythologization of the past during the Turkish nation-building process, accompanied by the Republican whitewashing of CUP violence committed against the Armenians during the last decade of the Ottoman Empire and the mass inculcation of these premises into Turkish society prevented the Turkish state from identifying the real origins of this violence. Initially, the Armenian subjects of the Ottoman Empire were ethnically cleansed in 1915 and replaced by Muslim immigrants from the Balkans and the Caucasus. The Armenians as a people had thus not only been violently eradicated from their ancestral lands, but the perpetrators of this violence had not been adequately held accountable and punished. This was so because many of the perpetrators then became part of the new Republican leadership. The Armenian community in the Turkish Republic was drastically reduced as a consequence. Initially, the Armenians had comprised about 20 per cent of the total population of the Ottoman Empire. They were reduced to about 5 per cent of the population at the advent of the Turkish Republic. Currently, they comprise 0.02 per cent of the total population of Turkey. The small Republic of Armenia that survived in the east was initially absorbed by the Soviet Union and has only recently established its independence.

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It was this traumatic course of events that had led radical Armenian organizations to undertake such brutal assassinations in order to draw world attention to past injustice. Even though the world did indeed take notice of 1915, these unjustified murders of Turkish diplomats only helped reaffirm and further legitimate the national security culture in Turkey. In addition, as these diplomats belonged to the Foreign Ministry that negotiated Turkey’s international ties, their entire generation of peers were so traumatized that they refused to develop any peaceful relations with the Armenians for decades to come. Diplomats like Şükrü Elekdağ, Gündüz Aktan and Ömer Lütem – who were among the staunchest proponents of the Turkish official narrative and the Sèvres syndrome it was predicated upon, who actively resisted diplomatic relations with Armenia – all belonged to this cohort. Turkish society, which at this point that had no knowledge of the past injustices committed against the Armenians, was suddenly introduced to a stereotypical image of the Armenians as ‘terrorists who murdered innocent diplomats’. The Turkish populace therefore quickly believed and internalized the Turkish state’s newly constructed justification that these recent Armenian actions were merely a continuation of the rebellious violence the Armenians had committed in the past against the Ottoman state. As a consequence, resistance and denial in Turkish society became more deeply entrenched. The small Armenian community in Turkey also came under immense pressure, as it was regarded by the Turkish state as a natural extension of the radical Armenian organizations and of the Armenian diaspora that was ‘out to get Turkey’. With each assassination of a Turkish diplomat, the Armenian community within Turkey had to issue yet another press release declaring its undying loyalty to the Republic. In an attempt to place the blame for the past as well as present violence squarely on all the Armenians, the Turkish state then drew upon its retired diplomats and ‘official scholars’ to reconstruct a mythic version of 1915. Through the selective use of archival documentation, the official Turkish Historical Society in particular started to build a large body of literature around the imagined narrative of past events. Failing to meet the international standards of social scientific research, this partisan scholarship was not recognized by international experts. In accounting for this failure, the Turkish state was all too ready to blame the racism and colonial intentions of the West, along with the strength of the Armenian diaspora lobby that had supposedly prevailed upon them. It never occurred to either the state or the ‘official scholars’ that the fault lay not with the

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power of these ‘other’s they had created but rather with their own weakness. The perceived unwillingness of the Western courts to deliver harsh sentences on the rarely caught Armenian assassins also led the infuriated Turkish military to take an unprecedented step after the 1980 coup. A paramilitary unit was secretly organized and sent abroad by the state to assassinate the Armenian culprits. Such extralegal action undertaken by the Turkish state formulated the first serious instance of what is referred to as the ‘deep state.’ The emergence of such clandestine activities initiated and supported by the state undermined legal accountability, destroying the regard, respect and enforcement of the rule of law in Turkey. These activities undermined the moral fabric of Turkish state and society. Even though the Turkish state has recently attempted to establish diplomatic relations with Armenia, the attempt is still plagued and hindered by misperceptions and mistrust. Kurds and the PKK The conflict with the Kurds can be traced back to the end of the Ottoman Empire, specifically to the CUP’s Turkification policies. These were then merely translated into the Republican era to formulate the official state policy. Erol Ülker provides insight into how this policy was established.102 Initially, the CUP treated the Kurdish refugees fleeing from Iraq and Syria into Anatolia differently from those already living there. The Kurds from the Arab regions were left at the periphery; their assimilation was undesirable. The CUP strictly forbade the settlement of Kurds in the vicinity of southern regions, such as Urfa and Zor. Meanwhile the Kurds from Anatolia were deported and dispersed among the Turkish population of inner Anatolia. This CUP Turkification strategy became a Republican state principle as ethnic homogeneity was accepted as one of the foundation stones of the republic. The Turkish state was willing to accept the Kurds as citizens only if they were willing to Turkify themselves, that is, give up their Kurdish ethnic identity. Some indeed did and became successful in the newly established Turkish state. Yet the Kurds who wanted to retain their identity were marginalized into second-class citizenship. The Turkish state strategy set a pattern of resistance, violence and repression.103 The Turkish state also claimed that the major political organization of the Kurds, the PKK, was backed by various Middle Eastern powers. While this is probably correct, the origins of the Kurdish issue discussed

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above are nonetheless domestic. Yet defining this issue as externally induced enables the Turkish state to keep seeking military action against the Kurds. As such, the status quo in Turkey based on military dominance remains unchanged. Whenever Europe recommends a peaceful settlement of the Kurdish question, the response of all major Turkish political parties is always similar to the one given by the former Turkish President Demirel.104 Demirel stated that ‘there is no other political solution than to render these people ineffective by force’. He further accused the West of ‘trying to involve the Sèvres Treaty to set up a Kurdish state in the region ... and that was what they [the Western states] meant by political solutions.’ Demirel’s statements were supported by the leader of the RPP, Bülent Ecevit, who also confirmed that ‘there was no Kurdish problem in the country, but only PKK terrorism supported from the outside in order to divide Turkey’.105 The NAP likewise exploited the Kurdish insurgency, claiming there was a Western conspiracy to use the PKK with the intent to destroy the unity of the Turkish state. The concerns of these political parties directly mimicked the concern raised by the Turkish military. Military officials have declared time and again that the emergence of an independent Kurdish state encompassing the oil-rich region of Kirkuk in Iraq would undermine the national unity and territorial integrity of Turkey.106 Before the 2002 advent of the Justice and Development Party to government, the Turkish military and these ‘conventional’ political parties thus collaborated; they employed the Sèvres syndrome in general and the identification and resolution of any action by the Kurds in particular solely within the framework of national security. The solution they unanimously supported was the use of force. This confrontational approach was bound to create an enemy. And indeed in 1998, under mounting pressure from Turkey, the PKK leader Abdullah Öcalan was forced to leave Syria. Turkey’s nationalist mainstream newspaper Cumhuriyet regarded Italy’s subsequent protection of Öcalan ‘as yet another paving stone on the road from Sèvres’. In the same newspaper, one of the most vocal critics of EU membership, Erol Manisalı, wrote that the Öcalan affair revealed the real intentions of Europeans. The Europeans, he continued, would never accept Turkey as a member of their own group. They would instead continue to view Turkey as one of the Islamic nations like Egypt, Iran, Pakistan and Jordan, with the ultimate aim of subjugating it. Another leading nationalist journalist, Hasan Pulur, further argued that the Western interest in the Kurdish question was not at all sincere. It was intended only to rekindle the dreams of

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Sèvres. ‘The West and their internal collaborators ... have not forgotten the Sèvres in history’s dust bin,’ he noted, ‘[and they] associate human rights with the Kurdish question, as if human rights abuses were only directed against the citizens of Kurdish origin’.107 This close association of the West with Sèvres as their hidden agenda and the Kurds as their internal collaborators perfectly encapsulates the workings of the Sèvres syndrome in Turkey. As a consequence of the syndrome, there is very strong resistance to democratic reforms on the Kurdish issue. Hasan Kösebalaban argues that the Turkish military interprets ‘the reform that would allow Kurdish-language TV broadcasting ... as a security problem because ... a TV channel in the Kurdish language would reveal the diversity of Turkish society, indicating Kemalism’s failure to create a homogeneous nation.’108 Hakan Yavuz and Nihat Ali Özcan argue that the military coups of 1960, 1971, 1980 and 1997 were all executed by the Turkish military with the intent to either eliminate or at least contain two internal enemies.109 These enemies, regarded as the two major challenges to the Turkish secular nation-building process, were Islamic and Kurdish activism. The scholars go on to state that the military ‘has been largely successful in containing them, though its often-brutal methods (especially as regards the Kurdish minority) have led to a self-fulfilling prophecy, strengthening Kurdish nationalist demands and even separatism’. Still, Yavuz and Özcan choose to remain curiously silent on what the impact of such ‘often-brutal methods’ was on the ‘other enemy’, Islamic activism. The expression of religious identity was just as forcefully suppressed as ethnic identity. This silence covers up the significant political role the Turkish military played in generating not only the Kurdish issue but the Islamist one as well. Islamists and the Gülen Movement Instances within Republican history that document the emergence of the Islamists as the internal enemy are much harder to come by. This is the case because, unlike the Kurds who are proportionally smaller and geographically concentrated, the Islamists are much more diffused within the population at large. They nominally form close to 100 per cent of the population. Also, it is extremely difficult to draw the boundary between those Turkish citizens who practice Islam and those who are Islamist activists. The Turkish state policy of secularism also relegated religion to

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the private sphere, making the identification of religious activities additionally challenging. The Turkish state in general and the military in particular can only monitor religious identity when religious practices enter the public sphere. Initially, the Turkish state claimed that some of the violently suppressed early Kurdish unrest of 1925–26 and 1937–38 was religious in nature. Then, many Turkish political parties established during the Atatürk era were abruptly shut down by the state on the claim that they had acquired ‘religious inclinations.’ Starting in the mid-1970s, and especially after the establishment of the Welfare Party (hereafter WP) by Necmettin Erbakan, the Turkish state and military focused on identifying religious elements in political parties. This became such a political liability that the Turkish democratization process was severely hindered. Only recently, in 2008, the currently governing JDP faced closure for advocating the rights of head-scarved females to receive an education in Turkey. Interestingly enough, during the Cold War the Turkish state and the military had initially supported the ‘Turkish–Islamic’ synthesis.110 It did so in an attempt to counter the rising leftist movement that was of course interpreted as a potential threat because of its possible affinity with the communist Soviet Union. Even some retired Turkish military officers joined the ranks of the WP. But the great enthusiasm the party then received from the electorate led to a reversal of this initial support. In 1997, for instance, General Fevzi Türkeri, the former chief of intelligence, stated that ‘political Islam is working closely with Iran and some other Islamic countries to pull Turkey into an endless darkness’.111 Likewise, after the 1999 elections, a controversy erupted when an elected deputy entered the National Assembly during its swearing-in ceremony wearing a headscarf, a practice that was interpreted as challenging the practice of secular principles in the public sphere controlled by the state. The ensuing uproar caused the head-scarfed deputy to be booed out of the Assembly; she was then stripped of her post on a technicality.112 Turkey’s then president Süleyman Demirel declared the veiled Turkish deputy an ‘agent provocateur’ working for foreign powers, thereby revealing once again the hold of the Sèvres syndrome through whose prism he had interpreted the action.113 Yet this adversarial stand once again overlooked the fact, as Binnaz Toprak has argued, that all the Islamist intellectuals came from a background of secular discourse.114 The secular education they received

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equipped them with the knowledge of foreign languages and Western social and political thought as well as with the contemporary critical thinking of the West. They had, after all, been socialized in a secular Republic. They knew the West quite well, if not from first-hand knowledge and experience, at least by receiving an education on its philosophical heritage. This was evident in their writings and criticisms of the West. They also communicated not through the literary forms of Islamist writing based on theology but rather its modern Turkish interpretation. The structure of their discourse reflected the logic of secular thought based on reason and the systematic presentation of ideas. It was indeed as a consequence of these assets that they would soon attain political governance in spite of the opposition of the military and ‘conventional’ political parties. After its initial establishment in 2001, the currently reigning JDP initially won 34 per cent of the vote in the 2002 elections. This was followed by 42 per cent of the votes in the 2004 local elections and 46.6 per cent of the vote in the 2007 general election. In addition to vetting Islamist identity in political parties, the Turkish state and military also identified another religious element in Turkey as an ‘internal enemy’. This was the movement founded by Fethullah Gülen. He was viewed in the West as a modernist Muslim scholar aiming to create a devout Muslim community opposed to political Islam – an especially welcome antidote to extremism. Yet the Turkish state and military identified him and his movement as a subversive force attempting to undermine the secular Republic.115 Initially a follower of Said Nursi, Gülen then separated from the Nur movement in the 1970s to establish his own organization. Active in Turkey during the 1980s and 1990s, he, like Nursi, advocated a synthesis between Islam and Western modernity. The movement was predicated on the premise that devout Muslims would accept and adopt Western scientific knowledge, interfaith dialogue and multiparty democracy. One of the main characteristics of the movement is that even though it is faith-based, it is not faith-limited. Many nonMuslims could and did participate in the movement. The main activity of the movement was to establish volunteer organizations that established and run more than a thousand schools all over the world. It has been argued that the movement has several hundred thousand of members in Turkey alone, making it the largest Islamic movement in Turkey. In 1986, a military court stated that Gülen’s supporters had infiltrated the military academy, leading to expulsion of all alleged members of the group. Since then, the Turkish military has claimed that Gülen has

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kept trying to infiltrate its ranks and pressured politicians to take action against him and his movement. The tension between the Turkish state and military on the one hand and the movement on the other still continues. Gülen departed for the United States in 1998 and has been living in exile there ever since. The reason for his departure from Turkey was a public scandal alleging that he brainwashed schoolchildren at his schools and aimed to infiltrate all state organization and ultimately to take over the Turkish state. Gülen was specifically accused by the state of urging his followers to enter the ranks of the judiciary and public service to ‘work patiently to take control of the state’.116 Likewise in 2000, he was prosecuted for inciting his followers to plot the overthrow of Turkey’s secular government, only to be acquitted in 2006.117 What is remarkable about the Gülen movement is its openness to the rest of the world in general and to the West in particular at a time when the Turkish state and military have been so adversarial as a consequence of the Sèvres syndrome. At the same time, however, the extreme devoutness of some members has caused concerns in the Turkish media. The fabrication of these internal enemies – the Rum, Armenians, Kurds and Islamists – has emerged as a symptom of the Sèvres syndrome predicated on the treaty. Just like the Sèvres Treaty, which had attempted to determine the future of the Ottoman Empire along the dimensions of religion and ethnicity, the Sèvres syndrome it generated led the Turkish state and military to identify and exclude social groups along the same lines. Turkey’s relations with Greece and the Armenian state were thus colored by the religious identity of non-Muslim minorities. The two major perceived threats in the treaty, namely those of religion and ethnicity, then generated two additional enemies to accompany the supposed internal threat posed by the non-Muslim minorities of Turkey. The Kurds and the Islamists emerged as the new internal enemies identified by Turkish state and the military. Yet the Sèvres syndrome also colored Turkey’s relations with the rest of the world. This time external enemies posing security risks to the Republic had to be identified and contained. It should be noted at this juncture that the predictions of the Sèvres syndrome naturally transformed into reality as self-fulfilling prophecies. As the Turkish state and the military sought out these perceived external dangers, their combative stance as well as the military might they intended to employ of course adversely impacted the reactions of foreign powers toward Turkey. As Turkey treated the two major representatives of the West, namely the

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European Union and the United States, as two potential external enemies, it was also adversely treated by them. The European Union The two World Wars had wreaked such havoc and destruction in Europe that it took a long time to recover from them. Most of the recovery occurred during the Cold War, when Europe was partitioned between the two superpowers of the United States and the Soviet Union. The Western European countries joined NATO for protection from potential attack by the Soviet Union. During this time period, Western European countries also joined forces to establish the European Union. Yet the EU aimed to establish peaceful relations with its neighbors and promoted democracy and citizens’ rights. As such, the EU priorities strongly diverged from those of Turkish state and society; the latter placed state security and defense before all else, including freedom of expression and human rights. As a consequence, even though Turkey applied for EU membership almost from the start, it has barely reached the candidacy stage. Turkey’s relations with the EU turned more tense at the end of the Cold War as more and more eastern European countries, now freed from the control of the Soviet Union, joined the EU ahead of Turkey. The Turkey–EU relationship was renegotiated in two instances in particular. The first instance took place during the First Gulf War of 1990–91, when Turkey requested that NATO deploy an Allied Mobile Force (AMF) in the southeast region against a possible Iraqi missile attack on Turkey. Such a request was, once again, predicated on the framework of the Sèvres syndrome within which the Turkish military operated, constantly instigating a state of alertness and vigilance against potential enemies. The problem with such a stand, however, is that often the mere taking of such action escalates tensions and turns into a self-fulfilling prophecy as one ends up creating the very enemy one envisions. Turkey already had very strong armed forces in the region, populated as it was almost exclusively by Kurds whose rights were frequently violated by the Turkish state. Germany at first objected to viewing an Iraqi missile attack on Turkey as an attack on NATO and therefore did not want the force deployed there. Even though the AMF was eventually deployed in 1991, the Turkish state and military interpreted this initial unwillingness in a negative light. They

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perceived the European stand as an indication of the low strategic interest of EU countries in the regions surrounding Turkey; they were certain that Turkey was being perceived more as a burden than an asset.118 Once again, Turkish state and military had interpreted the actions of Europe within the framework of the Sèvres syndrome. Their perception was based on what would be the best solution for the interests of the Turkish state; they therefore disregarded the European hesitancy that the deployment of forces in the region would actually escalate the tension, preferring to see it as yet another ruse to put Turkey down. The second instance occurred in 2003 with the advent of the Second Gulf War. When the United States asked to employ its bases in Turkey to raid Iraq from the north, it was flatly turned down by the Turkish Parliament where the JDP now formed the majority. For the first time, the National Assembly rather than the Turkish military had made the decision and along lines that the EU would have approved, but it did so for reasons of its own. The Assembly voted in accordance with the sentiments of the general electorate rather than the dictates of the military. Since then, raids into Iraq ‘to maintain the security of Turkey’ have been a point of contention between the JDP and the Turkish military. The two seem to continually delegitimate one another, as each forces the other to take the initiative in the southeast and hence the risk. The EU appears to have allied itself with the JDP in hopes that it will further democratize Turkey and free the country from the control of the military. The JDP’s attempts at democratization are of course regarded by the Turkish military with great anxiety. This is so because the military still defines itself as the guardian of a unitary and secular Turkish state. As the Turkish democratization process gives voice to religious and ethnic identities in the country, the Turkish military perceives such expressions simply as provocations undertaken to divide the country. The Kurds comprise the most significant challenge in this respect because they are the largest ethnic group in Turkey and are also concentrated along Turkey’s destabilized border with Iraq. The intentions and demands of the EU continue to be debated in the Turkish public sphere. Civil society organizations, business interests and the JDP emerge on one side as advocates of potential EU membership. Yet they are often fiercely contested by the Turkish state and the military, still acting within the framework of the Sèvres syndrome. The military still regard the EU as an external enemy, one that aims ultimately to decimate Turkey just as they intended to do with the Sèvres Treaty.

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The United States At the end of World War II, the Turkish state initially had a more positive stand toward the United States. The US Marshall plan aided Turkish economic development and Turkey’s NATO membership increased its security in the world political order. The first disappointment and subsequent suspicion of the intentions of the Unites States emerged with the Jupiter missile crisis of 1962–63. During the Cold War, the United States withdrew its Jupiter nuclear armed missiles from Turkish soil in the aftermath of the Cuban missile crisis. This withdrawal came as a US trade-off with the Soviet Union; it was thus dictated by US foreign policy priorities. Yet the Turkish state and the military interpreted this act in accordance with their own state interests. They decided that the withdrawal had been conducted at the expense of Turkey and therefore delivered a strong protest note to the United States. This reaction reveals the narrow framework within which the Turkish state and military interpreted the withdrawal. It also suggests the inability of the Turkish state and military to come to terms with the loss of their empire. They were not able to confront the fact that they were no longer a major world power; they were also unable to accept that the security of the country they so diligently guarded relied so precariously on the bilateral negotiation of other world powers. They instead attempted to join in the negotiation by delivering a protest note. The suspicions about the intentions of the United States toward Turkey continued with the 1964 and 1967 Cyprus crises when the Greek Cypriots attempted self-rule. They escalated to a new height with the subsequent 1974 Turkish military invasion of northern Cyprus in order to protect the Turkish Cypriot minority on the island. This invasion was carried out by the Turkish state and military against the advice of the United States. As a consequence, in 1975, in an attempt to contain Turkey, the US Congress imposed an arms embargo on Turkey. This disagreement with the United States over Cyprus stirred strong sentiments of betrayal among the Turkish state, military and society. The sentiment expressed in the Turkish media was that the United States had exploited Turkey’s political loyalty.119 The embargo escalated the Sèvres syndrome as the Turkish newspapers interpreted the US reaction as a Western intervention on behalf of Greece and against Turkey. The relationship with the United States was thus patterned after the historically uneasy connection with the West, one filled with fear, anxiety and suspicion coupled with the innate belittling

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knowledge of its inescapability. Turkey had become dependent on the arms supplied by the United States so it could not help but continue its association with the United States. The inability of the Turkish state and society to come to terms with its dependence on other, greater Western powers made the symptoms of the syndrome increasingly painful. The Turkish state eventually normalized its relations with the United States even though it continued to constantly compare and complain about how much more attention the United States bestowed upon Greece. The latter was, the argument went, much smaller and not at all as strategically significant in relation to the Soviet Union, therefore undeserving of the inordinate attention it received. During the 1990–91 Gulf War the Turkish state and the military became involved in regional politics by deciding to stand by the United States. Yet they were once again disappointed and betrayed. Turkey had to play host to thousands of Kurdish refugees during and after the Gulf War. It also had to comply with the United Nations embargo on Iraq, its largest regional trading partner. Both of these measures wreaked havoc with the Turkish economy. The United States had initially promised Turkey a $6 billion economic aid package to cover its losses. With George Bush Sr.’s loss of the US elections to Bill Clinton, however, this promise was never kept. Here was another US betrayal that helped sustain the Sèvres syndrome. Turkish newspapers were once again replete with editorials on how the West continually exploited Turkey; it led Turkey to expend resources by promising compensation that never arrived. It was therefore no accident that during the 2001 Second Gulf War, when George Bush Jr. asked the Turkish state and military for the use of the American military bases in its attack, he was turned down. In retaliation, the United States excluded Turkey from all regional negotiations. During the course of the Second Gulf War, in 2003, anti-Americanism in Turkey reached an all time high. The incident that aggravated Turkish sentiments was the US arrest in northern Iraq of eleven Turkish military Special Force members. These soldiers were captured, handcuffed and taken away with bags over their heads. The invincible façade of the Turkish military that was so necessary to sustaining the Sèvres syndrome was shattered. In their coverage of the incident, the Turkish newspapers did not question why there were Turkish Special Forces in a northern Iraq controlled by the Americans. Instead, they took offense at the way the soldiers were treated. Evident in this selective coverage was the control of the Turkish military not only over the flow of information into the Turkish media but also its interpretation. Since then, the Sèvres syndrome

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has escalated to such a degree in Turkey that the US presence is eagerly sought and located behind each and every publicly significant event. This Turkish self-centeredness and self-importance is also an indirect way to cover and repress – and therefore not to acknowledge – the relative insignificance of Republican Turkey within the world order. What is instead acknowledged is fear and anxiety, the fundamental components of the Sèvres syndrome. Emergence of a Setback to the Sèvres Syndrome: The End of the Cold War The end of the Cold War has brought about a major political and economic restructuring of the world order that has still not yet been fully settled. The most significant political consequence has been the realignment of the countries that were formerly under either direct or indirect Soviet influence. The emergence in the 1990s of new Central Asian Republics with ethnically Turkish populations and rich oil resources suddenly enabled Turkey to play a more active role in Asia. Turkey also participated in the conflict in the former Yugoslavia by sending a peace-keeping force, a move that enabled it to become active in Europe as well. The most significant restructuring of the world order is still taking place in the Middle East where the control of the energy sources of the industrialized world is being renegotiated. The first instance of this restructuring occurred with the 1990–91 First Gulf War. The Turkish state and the military decided to stand by the United States and by doing so became involved in the regional Middle East politics that it had shunned until then. The failure of the United States to deliver on its promise of aid as well as Turkey’s earlier disappointments over the painful isolation over Cyprus played a role in this Turkish policy shift. One should also note the impact on oil-poor Turkey of the 1973–74 oil crisis. As a consequence, Turkey started to actively seek normalization of its relations with Middle Eastern states and redefinition of its foreign policy priorities.120 The Turkish military removed Russia and Greece from the top of the list of external threats, only to replace them by two internal security threats, the [Kurdish] political insurgency in 1992 and Islamic fundamentalism in 1997.121 During this period, while many countries including the EU started to decrease their military investments in the aftermath of the Cold War, Turkey took the opposite course. The Turkish military claimed that it

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needed more such investments. Obviously, a decrease would have reduced the dominance of the military over Turkish state and society. This was not at all in line with the interests of the Turkish military, and the military of course presented its own interests to the Turkish public as the interests of the state and society. As a consequence, it was reported in 1996 that the Turkish armed forces would need $150 billion in the next 25 years for its weapons requirements.122 A former foreign minister and speaker of parliament Hikmet Çetin legitimated such escalated defense spending by arguing that Turkey was ‘[i]n the neighborhood of the most unstable, uncertain and unpredictable region of the world ... a frontline state faced with multiple fronts.’123 Likewise Turkey’s former Minister of Defense, Hikmet Sami Türk stated that ‘[g]eographic destiny placed Turkey in the virtual epicenter of a ‘Bermuda Triangle’ of post–Cold War volatility and uncertainty, with the Balkans, the Caucasus, and the Middle East encircling us’.124 The details of possible potential dangers became much more embellished by others of lesser rank. According, for instance, to one of the most fervent advocates of the Sèvres syndrome, the former ambassador Şükrü Elekdağ, Greece and Syria still constituted the immediate external enemies of Turkey. This was the case with Greece because of its claims to extend its territorial waters from six to twelve miles, its designs to change the balance of power in the Aegean, and its air power supremacy in Cyprus. In the case of Syria, the state still fostered territorial claims over the southern Turkish city of Hatay (Antioch), still contested the apportioning of the waters of the Euphrates River that originated in Turkey, and still supported of the PKK.125 Another such advocate was Deputy Chief of the General Staff Çevik Bir. In 1997, he claimed that in addition to Syria and Greece, there were four more immediate external enemies Turkey had to contend with. These were the Armenian Republic because it continued to claim Turkish territory and Iran since it tried to export regimes contrary to Turkey’s secular constitution. The other two external enemies were Iraq and Russia because they supported terrorism against Turkey.126 The late 1990s had marked a critical juncture in the Republic. The world generally moved into the post–Cold War era with a change in priorities. The primacy of national security at the expense of all else was replaced by attention to human rights and economic prosperity. There was a concomitant overall decrease in military spending throughout the world. The Turkish state and the military instead continued to insist on

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sustaining the Sèvres syndrome. They argued that the country was still encircled by external and internal enemies and therefore military spending should not be reduced but, on the contrary, increased. When the Turkish government attempted to engage in reforms to meet EU membership standards, it was immediately confronted with opposition from within the Turkish state and the military. A good case in point is the 1996 negotiations to resolve disputes with Greece over the Aegean Sea. The Turkish foreign minister attending the negotiations witnessed the Turkish military also present taking a defensive stand, thereby leading to a standstill in the negotiations.127 Ümit Cizre notes that in the post–Cold War era, the Turkish military consciously fused military and civilian activities. It operated through ‘its own expanded intelligence networks, political espionage and counterintelligence activities’ and also affected public policy through ‘the codification of laws pertaining to internal security, anti-terrorism, and maintenance of public order, criminalizing certain political activities, constraining public debate and expanding military jurisdiction over civilians’.128 Hence during the post–Cold War period, contrary to the trend in the rest of the world, the Turkish military’s power greatly expanded in the country. The military restricted rights and freedoms in the name of acting as the guardian of Turkish national interests, interests which of course the military also took upon itself to define. Yet Cizre argues that the Turkish military also took care to disguise this expansion.129 Cizre operationalizes the political power of the Turkish military within the state.130 She does so by identifying the particular state institutions and organizations where the military not only enforces its own decision, but then monitors their activities to ensure it is executed. These state institutions and organizations comprise the National Security Council, the Presidency,131 the organization of defense, military budgets, arms production, procurement and military modernization, internal security and intelligence gathering, and finally senior promotions within the military. Cizre’s analysis reveals how in the 1990s the excessive influence of the military still sustained itself in Turkish politics. İlter Turan132 cites additional indications of a strong military presence in the Turkish public sphere that is uncommon in other democratic countries. First, according to the state protocol list developed in 1961 (after the 1960 military coup), the rank of the general chief of staff was moved to a position that was immediately below the Prime Minister yet above all other ministers, including the minister of defense. This

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protocol became diplomatically awkward and precluded the general chief of staff and the defense minister from ever attending any NATO meeting together. At such meetings, it was only the Turkish state that placed its minister of defense subordinate to the general chief of staff. Such a protocol may have been consciously developed by the Turkish military to ensure that only the general chief of staff attended NATO meetings to the exclusion of the minister of defense. In doing so, the military secured its dominance over the government in setting Turkish foreign policy. It should be noted that until recently, all Turkish ministers of defense were chosen from among deputies of military origin who would have naturally concurred with the stance of the military. This fact further demonstrates the overzealousness of the Turkish military in controlling the state decision-making process. Second, the influence of the military in the state decision-making process increased due to the constitutional and legal changes mentioned above. As a consequence, the military became much more visible in the Turkish public sphere. High-ranking military commanders kept making public remarks about government policies. These remarks were very widely covered in the media as they often had much more influence than those made by civilian members of the government.133 Even as late as 2005, general chief of staff Hilmi Özkök, not the Prime Minister or the foreign minister, delivered a speech setting the parameters of strategic and political priorities for Turkish foreign policy.134 Such practice is often regarded as inappropriate in modern Western democracies because of the concept of professionalism, whereby the military comments only on issues that concern them, namely on national security but nothing else. As the Turkish populace was constantly given such a narration by the military on how the country was surrounded by enemies, how the geopolitical situation necessitated a state of constant emergency for survival, no one could question, oppose or challenge the precedence of state interests over human rights. Likewise, the National Assembly could not criticize the immense defense budget. Those who dared to raise objections were immediately labeled ‘traitors’ to the nation and punished by the legal system that also gave precedence to state interests above all else. Despite the Turkish state and military’s protests to the contrary, the end of the Cold War made their role appear comparatively less crucial. After the end of the Cold War, the United States no longer supported its allies against the Soviet Union. It instead advocated neo-liberalism, whereby countries were encouraged to privatize their resources so as to boost

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individual initiative. Yet there was also a down side to such a move: those who did not have the resources to compete in a free market environment no longer had the protection of the state and therefore suffered more. Still, this change in US policy made it necessary for Turkey to open to world markets. Due to increased mass communication and transportation at the end of the Cold War, Turkey became much closer to Europe. The Turkish populace, especially urban residents in the Western regions, no longer had to rely on the Turkish state and military for access to knowledge. Probably the most significant development in this respect was the expansion of the EU borders to neighboring Greece and Bulgaria. The EU also started to pressure Turkey to make the transition from a security culture to a human rights one in order to consider it for full membership. All these developments started to make the ‘constant state of emergency’ narrative of the Turkish state and military predicated on the Sèvres syndrome appear more and more forced. At the 1999 Helsinki Summit, the EU requested Turkey to conform to European democratic norms by increasing civilian control over the military. The Turkish military had initially supported the move for Turkey to join the EU, for it had trusted the coalition government then in power. Also, since Turkish public opinion was overwhelmingly in favor of EU membership, the military did not want to take a position against public opinion.135 The first civilian challenge to the military came from an establishment party headed by Mesut Yılmaz.136 In 2001, Yılmaz attempted to get the Turkish populace to challenge the concept of national security. He argued that the Turkish military exploited the concept of national security to legitimize its dominance in civilian affairs. It prioritized the defense of the indivisible and secular character of the regime against Kurdish separatism and Islamist extremism over the need for reforms to become an EU member. Yet Yılmaz not only failed to mobilize the Turkish populace, he was then ousted from political power. He failed to successfully challenge the Sèvres syndrome because he had also risen to power from within the existing political system, with the support of the Turkish state and military. Yılmaz was not powerful enough within the establishment to transform it from within; he also did not have enough popular support to challenge it from the outside. It is at this particular political juncture that the emergence of the JDP to politically challenge the Turkish state and military becomes significant. Unlike Yılmaz, the JDP not only emerged in opposition to the establishment but did so through mobilizing enough popular support to challenge it. JDP was fortunate to initially challenge the state and

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military at a time when those institutions lacked the political power to oppose and eliminate the JDP. The conditions of JDP’s successful political opposition need to be analyzed more closely. The JDP was the endproduct of the domestic transformation triggered by the end of the Cold War. The Republican era (from the establishment of the Republic in 1923 until the 1980s) clearly demonstrated that Turkish modernization had been successful as a project of political modernity. It however failed as a project of social modernity in that such modernity never became a fully accepted way of life, instead remaining confined to major urban centers in the West. Islam continued to remain a powerful force in the everyday life of Turkish people and in the way in which they defined themselves as Muslims.137 The 1980 coup brought about a radical rupture as the Turkish state and military attempted to secure the grounds for liberal restructuring, particularly of the economy. This liberal restructuring also produced an unintended consequence. It opened up the domestic market to the religiously conservative provincial capital that had traditionally been marginalized by Turkish state and military. This conservative provincial capital prospered through the last decades of the twentieth century, in the process creating its own economic, cultural and eventually political resources. It was this capital that eventually supported and financed the JDP, the first party founded out of the control and in spite of the wishes of the Turkish state and military. In 1999, right before the JDP’s appearance on the political stage, conditions in the country were most auspicious. In 1997 the WP that had been less liberal than the JDP was ousted; in 1999 the PKK leader Abdullah Öcalan was captured and at the end of the same year at the Helsinki Summit the EU announced Turkey’s candidacy for membership.138 The JDP also developed as a party by establishing very close, systematic ties with the electorate. Its approach was unlike the conventional political parties that had grown accustomed to the support of the Turkish state and military almost at the expense of the electorate. The JDP first carefully surveyed the Turkish populace to determine their political expectations and set their goals accordingly. Given the 2001 financial crisis in the aftermath of the Gulf War, economic stabilization emerged as the main popular concern. The populace was also in favor of EU membership primarily because of the economic stability it would provide. The JDP therefore defined two primary goals: securing a date for EU accession negotiations, and subsequently establishing economic stability in the country.139

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These JDP goals enabled it to mobilize the support of a large spectrum of the Turkish populace, including big business, liberals, Kurds and the middle class. The JDP was thus able to successfully challenge the system and the syndrome due to a confluence of factors. Öniş describes this particular conjuncture as follows:140 [T]he major economic crisis Turkey experienced in November 2000 and February 2001 ... created a massive wave of unemployment and bankruptcies, hitting all sections of society, rendered the potential material benefits of EU membership all the more attractive ... [K]ey domestic economic actors, especially big business ... placed even greater emphasis than before on the need for a permanent EU anchor ... for establishing durable economic growth and avoiding future financial crises ... The next key turning point ... was the War on Iraq. Previously the military-security establishment in Turkey, a key segment of the anti-EU coalition, had often perceived the US-Israel-Turkey triangle as an alternative line of axis to the EU ... [T]he deterioration of relations with the United States [over Iraq] ... weaken[ed] significantly [this] long-standing strategic alliance ... [T]he military was no longer in a position to intervene in Northern Iraq on the grounds of a major security threat. This chain of events [changed] the balance of power ... in favor of civilian elements. Ironically, the Turkish conservative provincial groups rose to power through their direct access to the newly available international markets and did so through the employment of high-level Western technology and expertise. It also became a staunch supporter of modernity and EU membership in order to sustain its newfound power. This ironic development also contradicted one of the main premises of the Sèvres syndrome, that religion was an obstacle to modernity. The end result was a role reversal. When the JDP came to power in 2002, it started to push for EU membership. The EU in turn employed its negotiations to promote democratization in Turkey, demanding a reduction in the influence of the military. As a consequence, the Turkish state and military that had been the traditional leaders of Western modernity assumed a defensive stand. They started to oppose EU membership and the Westernization it promised even though these had once been the founding principles of Mustafa Kemal and the Republic.141 The Turkish state and military that had advocated radical Westernization for decades to make Turkey more

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like the West consciously started to escalate the Sèvres syndrome in order to prevent Turkey from joining the West. It is also at this juncture that the Turkish political discourse witnessed a significant shift. The Turkish state and military had employed the secular–religious divide to favor the secular at the expense of the religiously conservative segments of the populace. The religiously conservative segments then started to acquire power in spite of the opposition of the Turkish state and military. In their approach to Turkey’s relations with the West, the religiously conservative appeared more politically progressive; the once progressive secular establishment suddenly became politically conservative. This destabilization of the traditional–religious divide was predicated on a major political realignment. Out of necessity for survival, Turkish big business had been traditionally allied with the Turkish state and military. Yet it now realized that its future rested with the EU and therefore shifted its allegiance to the JDP. Turkey started to be polarized along a new divide, between two new segments referred to in the political discourse as ‘Europhiles’ and ‘Europskeptics’.142 It was as a consequence of this shift that the Sèvres syndrome started to be identified by the Turkish media not as a necessity but rather a ‘disease’. The Euroskeptics continued to frame Turkey’s national security within a traditionalist military-dominant perspective. The group consisted of the civilian–military elite of the Turkish state that continued to perceive the world through Sèvres-tinted glasses. For them, state security prevailed over all else, including human rights and the prosperity of the citizens. The Europhiles consisted of a coalition of groups mainly located within Turkish civil society. Among them were the newly emergent religiously conservative provincial bourgeoisie, big business that aspired to economic stability and prosperity, Kurds and religious minorities who wanted to publicly claim their identity and liberals who sought to protect human rights. They all prioritized economic stability, prosperity and human rights over state security, advocating a reduction in Turkish military expenditure and increased investments in human resources and education.143 The Sèvres syndrome had successfully sustained itself in Turkey until the political arrival of the JDP. Until then, the fear of Turkey’s possible destruction was never brought to public discussion. Its causes had been fully repressed through both the Ottoman Empire and the Turkish Republic, and its historical origins obfuscated, mythologized and thereby

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rendered inexplicable. The Turkish state and military had advocated the radical and total adoption of Western modernity as the ultimate panacea for eliminating this fear. Yet such an adoption turned out to be impossible to achieve. Turkish state and military blamed the populace for this failure. They claimed that the Turkish citizen was never modern enough. He developed alternate modernities, emphasizing traditional Islamic elements instead of the secularized Western ones they advocated.144 They never wanted to acknowledge that their de-historicization of the roots of this fear might have produced this failure. With the end of the Cold War, as the West switched from a national security to a human rights framework and started to prioritize the freedom and prosperity of citizens, the JDP emerged to promote the same principles. The Turkish citizens, frustrated with the existing pace of development, supported the JDP without, once again, questioning the syndrome. In the case of the JDP, the ultimate issue was whether it would be able to keep challenging the Turkish state and military. This continues to be the major challenge to JDP rule. No political party in Republican history has managed to successfully challenge the establishment from the outside. The Turkish state and military were not willing to give up their dominance, certainly not without a fight. They started to engage in various attempts to cause the downfall of the JDP. As the two sides engaged in continued political struggle, the phenomenon of the Sèvres syndrome became a popular topic of discussion in the Turkish media. Re-emergence of the Sèvres Syndrome: Crises in the EU Membership Process The dominant discourse in Turkey blames the glacial speed of the EU membership process for the re-emergence of the Sèvres syndrome. Even though this sluggishness has certainly been noted as a characteristic of all EU membership processes, it has not generated nearly as adversarial reaction as in Turkey. This necessitates a closer analysis of the factors that have once again instigated the re-emergence of the Sèvres syndrome in Turkey. This chapter contends that three factors intersected to produce this result: the staunch anti-EU stand adopted by the Turkish military, the inability of the Turkish political parties to generate social visions for the future and the lack of public discussion of Turkey’s history in general and its historical ambivalence toward the West in particular.

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The euphoria of the December 2004 EU decision to commence accession negotiations with Turkey subsided within a year. Nationalist tendencies, not to mention anti-EU sentiments, were fuelled during the public discussion of sensitive foreign policy issues. These specifically entailed the status of Cyprus, the bestowal of Kurdish minority rights, the political rule in northern Iraq and the possible acknowledgment of the Armenian genocide. This public discussion provided the Turkish military with a pretext for criticizing the JDP government. The JDP government’s diplomatic initiatives in the Middle East, including developing relations with Palestinian Hamas, provided a significant point of contention. The military also took issue with the silence of the government over the 2003 arrest and humiliation of eleven members of the Turkish Special Forces in northern Iraq. The 2005 European Council decision to postpone Turkey’s candidacy once again raised doubts in Turkey about their sincerity concerning full membership. Tension further escalated increased over the 2005–06 proclamation of an anti-terror law. After repeated demands by the military, the JDP government only reluctantly agreed to a softer version.145 Also significant were worsening economic factors. Unemployment in Turkey rose. The apparent economic progress in official statistics did not fully translate to a perceived rise in the quality of life of ordinary citizens. In an April 2005 poll, 61 per cent of those interviewed stated that the economy had worsened, and 68 per cent could not foresee a positive improvement in their lifestyles within the next two years. Murat Necip Arman succinctly summarizes these developments, noting that146 [t]he second Gulf War, [the] adoption of decisions regarding so-called Armenian genocide in the European parliaments, [the] rise of objections in Europe to Turkey’s membership to European Union, [the] looming prospect of a Kurdish state in the northern Iraq, [and] the mini crisis on the sacks over the heads of the Turkish soldiers in northern Iraq all ... [led] ... formerly marginal groups, such as the old Maoist now Kemalist Turkish Labor Party, [to become] more vocal in political arena. Media also followed ... suit thereby helping the escalation of this ‘saving regime’ crisis ... overshadowing the policies of economic and political liberalization in Turkey.

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The JDP had initially come to power with a well-defined political program, willing to make the necessary political and legal changes for Turkey’s EU membership. It also boasted a strong economic program that curbed inflation and brought much yearned-for economic stability to the country. Yet these hopeful steps began to falter around 2005 and the Turkish military immediately seized upon this oppportunity to regain the power it had lost. It did so by once again bringing to the public agenda significant security threats – the war in Iraq on the outside and the Kurds and the Islamists within. İlhan Uzgel argues that the Sèvres syndrome has always been a very useful tool for the Turkish military within the securitization framework that it has constructed for itself. He describes how the military has always portrayed Turkey as being under threat from every direction:147 All of Turkey’s neighbors except Bulgaria and Georgia; various lobbies such as Armenians and Greeks in Europe and/or US; many of its allies including Germany, France, Italy, Holland; different ideologies, radical Islam, left and some liberals; separatist and terrorist groups like the ASALA in the late 1970s, the PKK in the 1980s and 1990s have been engaged in weakening and destabilizing efforts and activities against Turkey, sometimes alone and separately, but occasionally in a concerted manner ... the EU has its own share in these efforts and is usually behind this destabilizing project directed against Turkey. The Turkish military had historically and institutionally been the leading institution of Westernization. Following Mustafa Kemal Atatürk’s vision, the military had also once supported integration with the EU as the ultimate target of Turkey’s modernity project. Yet the Turkish military became increasingly conservative over time. It did so because it could only legitimate itself within the Turkish power structure through a framework of national security predicated on domestic and foreign threats. Turkey’s fear and anxiety toward Europe figured prominently in the military’s legitimation of its hold on power. İlhan Uzgel argues that the Turkish military did indeed exploit this historical connection to accuse the EU of ‘reviving and imposing the Sèvres Treaty by using proxies against Turkey starting from the late 1970s with the Armenian ASALA assassinations of Turkish diplomats, carried into the 1980s with the beginning of the PKK activities in the Southeast when Germany, France and Holland were

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especially accused for allowing the PKK’s political organizations to operate, and continuing in the 1990s with the rise of the radical Islam when the EU countries were once again accused for harboring militants.’148 The military’s opposition to Turkey’s EU membership on the grounds that the reform conditions encouraged the PKK was most explicitly revealed much earlier, in 1999. The office of the General Chief of Staff issued a declaration accusing those who advocate extending cultural rights to Kurds as those ‘who speak the same tongue as the PKK’. The military also made sure that this declaration was made public on the day when the Turkish Prime Minister Ecevit was in France attending the EU summit.149 The Turkish military continued to staunchly defend its security paradigm as its political power in Turkey rested upon it. The European Parliament’s decisions concerning the human rights practices and Armenian genocide allegations deeply irked the military as well. In 2002, the general chief of staff Hüseyin Kıvrıkoğlu declared that ‘the integrity of Turkey and its secular regime cannot be ignored for the sake of individual liberties. And these cannot be used as a pretext even on the way for membership in the EU.’150 Hence, the military has made it clear time and again that it values state security over human rights and the well-being of its citizens. As such, it is willing to and does indeed impede Turkey’s progress toward EU membership. Kemal Kirişçi concurs that even though the rhetoric of the military is pro-EU, their praxis points in the opposite direction. He notes in particular that:151 [t]he education and socialization in the military is centered on a deeply embedded distrust of the West and, by extension, the EU. Generations of officers have been formed with the belief that the West, in this case the Europeans and the United States, are imperialist and are driven with the desire to weaken and divide up Turkey. The reforms demanded from Turkey for pre-accession are evaluated from this perspective. Many in the military genuinely believe that the EU would never admit Turkey as a member. Hence, they consider at least some of the reforms as tools to weaken Turkey’s national cohesion and sovereignty as well as its ability to defend secularism ... [T]he military’s view of international relations is very much steeped in realpolitik. International politics is viewed as an arena of power struggle in which the states that are militarily strong and cohesive stand a better chance of surviving. The

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notion that states can enter into win–win cooperative relationships is utterly foreign. Hasan Kösebalaban likewise analyzes how the retired General Suat İlhan, who is an outspoken critic of Turkey’s EU membership, expressed his concerns in a book entitled Why ‘No’ to the European Union?152 The general expresses his anxiety over how such membership would pose threats to Turkey’s political sovereignty. Interestingly enough, the evidence he presents to justify his stand is as follows:153 [Look at those] who were delighted by Turkey’s EU candidacy: Greece, the Patriarch of the Fener Rum Orthodox Church Bartholomeos, the Greek Cypriots, the PKK supporters who in fact demonstrated against our candidacy in Europe, HADEP and Apo (Abdullah Öcalan). Please tell me candidly, don’t you at least suspect that there is something wrong with this? Hence the Turkish military emerges as the main fountainhead of the Sèvres syndrome, containing within it the very principles that keep reproducing the syndrome anew. Given the very significant and powerful location of the military in Turkey, it would be extremely difficult to proceed with Turkey’s EU membership without the transformation of the Turkish military. Ali Karaosmanoğlu thinks that the Turkish military’s perception of the West goes beyond the confines of real politik.154 It even reaches the extreme outdated position of ‘a divide of civilizations’. He notes that the military displays ‘a tendency to approach the world from the perspective of Christian versus Turkish (Muslim) confrontation. They thought there was a lingering European prejudice against the Turk and, at times, the Turkish War of Independence was perceived as a modern episode of the long standing struggle against the crusaders ... the West itself was for a long time the mightiest external enemy of all.’ This view, of course, appears extremely contradictory when one considers the fact that it is the same military that then declares Islam an internal threat. Given these conflicting positions, it becomes apparent that the Turkish military is not set on defending a well-articulated ideological position or premise. It is more interested in sustaining its hold on power within Turkey at all costs. This premise is further supported by the claim of Tuncer Kılınç, the general secretary of the National Security Council. Kılınç contended that

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Europe did not take Turkish national interests into account as seriously as the military. He then went on to present an alternate scenario that perhaps the Turkish state ought to explore the possibility of strengthening ties with Russia and Iran. The Turkish military officially noted that this remark reflected the general’s personal views. This notation was noteworthy in and of itself as this was the first time in Turkish history that the military elected to make such a distinction between the personal and professional interpretations of a high-ranking military officer. The general’s statement nevertheless signaled the Turkish military’s unease with the EU.155 That the Turkish military would even consider turning away from the West – the focal point that their sacred founder Mustafa Kemal Atatürk had so clearly set for them – again demonstrates how much their political goals reflect their own interests at the expense of Turkey. More recently, the published diaries of the former commander of the Turkish Navy Özden Örnek explicitly reveal the continued attempts of the military to dominate the country. In the diaries, Örnek emerges as a co-plotter in two 2003 and 2004 coup attempts initiated after the 2002 electoral victory of JDP. Especially noteworthy are the details on how the Turkish military actively penetrates the public sphere to control the populace. In this endeavor, military generals regard the presidents of universities and workers’ unions as their natural allies. They also establish or infiltrate NGO’s that are supposed to operate independently of the state. In another instance, the commander of the gendarmerie Şener Eruygur states that when he retired, he ‘reported for duty at an NGO named “Society for Kemalist Thought” ’.156 The Turkish military legitimated all these actions in the name of ‘civil defense’. It thus had no qualms about infiltrating the economy, state institutions as well as civil society with the intent to control and orchestrate all social movements in accordance with their vision of what ought to occur in Turkey. The Turkish military needs to become professionalized, retiring into its barracks to concern itself solely with matters of national security. And the parameters of this national security need to be defined not by them but rather, as is the practice in modern democracies, by the Turkish national assembly. Otherwise, Turkey will neither rid itself of the Sèvres syndrome nor become a true democracy. Political Parties with No Vision The large vote the JDP attained in the 2002 general election translated to an even more dominant majority in the Turkish national assembly. For

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years, the establishment parties – that now found themselves in opposition – had not been able to generate any effective policies for the electorate. They had counted on the full support of the state and the military, in return rubberstamping all their demands into law. The JDP had come to power with the full support of the electorate and a well-defined program. As none of the other parties had such qualifications, the only thing they could rely on was the nationalist, state-centered rhetoric they always employed to sustain themselves. They did indeed use this rhetoric to slow the JDP down. The lack of a well-articulated, visionary political opposition hindered the JDP even further. Such an opposition would have been able to point out the shortcomings of the JDP, thereby enabling the latter to fix and better their agenda and vision. Lacking such an opposition and mired in petty politics, the JDP soon started to get socialized into the state establishment. It began to walk a very fine line between challenging the Turkish state and society and being co-opted by them. This political vacuum became even more dramatic after the 2007 elections. Just like the establishment parties, the JDP also stopped generating public policies. It instead began to undermine its own coalitions while getting increasingly stuck in ideological debates. As the major opposition party, the RPP had no plan or program, focusing all its energies on debating and defending secularism, the agenda so consistently advocated by the military. The JDP had a relatively well-articulated stand on the public expression of religious identity. Yet it was not fully prepared to absorb and eliminate the challenge of militant secularism. This was the case for two reasons. First, the JDP members had been just as much socialized by the dominant secular framework in the country as had the rest of the population. They focused almost exclusively on the religious identity that made them different and special and did not at all reflect upon the degree of Turkish secularism each member had absorbed and normalized. Hence they were unaware of how much of what they attempted to challenge and eliminate was actually a part of themselves. Second, the JDP members only challenged the publicly visible state secularism that directly undermined their own stand on issues. They did not expand their confrontation to carefully analyze and problematize state secularism on its own terms, with the possible intent of eliminating it. The JDP members had such an aversion to state secularism – and they had been so rigorously socialized into publicly suppressing that aversion – that unlike what they had done in the case of the economy, they could not develop a systematic, rational course of action in this area. They could

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not, for instance, approach the extremes of state secularism through its impact on the non-Muslim minorities, rather than on their own particular communities. Such a strategic stand could have stumped the Turkish state and military by taking Islam out of the discussion of secularism. Another possibility would have been to collaborate with their critical liberal allies who could approach secularism on its own terms. Yet the JDP proved unable to trust any of its coalition partners. It instead became increasingly mired in the traps set by the opposition parties. On the instigation of the NAP, it attempted to modify the constitution to gain educational access for head-scarved women, only to find itself on the brink of extinction. The Turkish constitutional court challenged the JDP for not upholding the principles of state secularism. If this political vacuum – marked both by the lack of visionary public policies and by the military’s sustenance of a nationalist state-centered rhetoric – persists, the result is bound to be an authoritarian regime in Turkey, one the country certainly does not deserve in the twenty-first century. Lack of Public Discussion The one political space in Turkey outside those occupied by the military and political parties is the newly emerging public sphere. Turkey needs such a public sphere to openly debate the threats it allegedly faces within the country and outside as well as the radical Westernizing reforms it underwent to contain such threats. Only then will the country be able to discern the full impact of the Sèvres syndrome and democratize. Until recently, it was the official state policy to reject the Ottoman past and to contain the fear of any future annihilation by the West by engaging in a fierce pace of reforms to become like the West. This untenable agenda promoted by the Turkish state and military came under close scrutiny in the post–Cold War era when Turkey’s EU membership emerged as a distinct possibility. They had a higher stake in such membership because it was the ultimate test of how successful their reforms of Western modernity in Turkey had been. Each and every EU criticism reflected poorly on their past performance. Furthermore, the Turkish populace also had its doubts as to how successful the past reforms had really been. According to the 2006 Public Opinion Survey, the responses to the comment ‘Turkey’s Westernization efforts have been superficial,’ revealed only a small proportion (17 per cent) of disagreement. The majority (64 per cent) concurred that Westernization in Turkey had not really taken hold.

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The Turkish state and military were particularly enthusiastic about engaging in the rhetoric of the Sèvres syndrome because it diverted attention away from the past, from their failure to Westernize. In addition, it was ironic and offensive for the Turkish state and military to have the EU specifically champion as social leaders and tomorrow’s visionaries those conservative religious elements in Turkish society whom they themselves had once marginalized as backward and regressive. The Islamists who, according to the conception of the Turkish state and military, were set to thwart Turkey’s progress, were now in positions of leadership and intent on taking the country forward. The once radical and reformist Turkish state and military appeared increasingly conservative and retrograde. Turkey has still managed to make progress in the EU accession process. It has undertaken political and judicial reforms including the lifting of the state of emergency in the Kurdish southeast, the abolition of State Security Courts that restricted rights, the elimination of the death penalty and the adoption of a new civil and penal code. As a consequence of these reforms, the Turkish judicial system allowed for a retrial of legal cases previously challenged by the European Court of Human Rights. This resulted in a retrial and the subsequent release in June 2004 of four Kurdish members of Parliament, including Leyla Zana. The same European Court called in May 2005 for a retrial of Abdullah Öcalan.157 Such actions are small steps to address, account for and alleviate past injustices. Yet there are still limitations. For instance, even though the new Turkish civil code is less restrictive than its former version, it still limits freedom of expression and still does not fully protect the rights of citizens. It is in this context that the role of the media in Turkey becomes significant. Şahin Alpay argues that the Turkish media reflects the ambivalence toward the West, as the journalists vacillate between ‘a feeling of admiration for the Western world for its achievements’ and ‘a feeling of resentment toward Western superiority’. The media cannot move beyond the confines of such a contradictory stance and its constriction in turn limits public discussion. Alpay specifically notes as follows:158 The Turkish press often welcomes political pressure from the West as support for the enhancement of democratic rights and freedoms. [However] Western pressure concerning the rights of cultural and ethnic minorities is often viewed as a violation of Turkey’s independence and sovereignty and is sometimes interpreted as part of

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a conspiracy by the Western powers to divide and weaken Turkey. Conspiratorial thinking and explanation are widespread among both the journalistic elite ... and Turkish intellectuals ... There also exists an inclination among Turkish journalists to make sweeping generalizations about the West and Westerners. Hence the Turkish media can only handle specific Western criticism. Even though it can handle attempts to engage the rights of all citizens, it becomes defensive at the discussion of minority rights. Such a stand inherently reveals the continued dominance of the Turkish Muslim majority in Turkey. The lynchpin of any democracy is its treatment of minorities. Any analysis of that treatment provides a litmus test for the strength of majority dominance. The Turkish media, rather than confronting the power structure within which it was socialized, ends up reproducing it. Other reasons for the inability of the Turkish media to hold significant public debates emanate from economic and legal restrictions on the one side and self-censorship on the other. Discussions of particular topics deemed a threat to the unity and sovereignty of the Turkish state are still legally criminalized. Therefore, such discussions would land the journalists in jail – and indeed many have served sentences over the course of Republican history. Economically, not only does paper production in Turkey currently fail to meet even half the demand, but its production as well as import and distribution are closely monitored by the state; perceived loyalty to the regime and the government emerges as a major asset. The Turkish state fixes the price of newsprint. Newspaper publishers also take on loans for the purchase of paper from state banks. In addition, advertisements by public enterprises account for 40 per cent of the total newspaper advertising revenue that the print media relies on for economic survival. All these conditions make it very challenging for mainstream newspapers to take a stand against the state.159 Meltem Ahıska critically analyzes the nature of the public discussion in Turkey today. She reveals that the predominant Turkish concern in relation to the domestic reforms enacted to meet EU membership criteria is not, as it should be, the impact of such reforms. It is instead an obsession with Turkey’s image in the West. Ahıska specifically notes:160 More concerned with the question ‘How does Europe see us?’ the public discussions defer the practical-political meaning of the reforms ... the reforms were not meant for addressing the present

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problems in Turkish society, but they were part of a performance geared for the gaze of the West. Likewise, Natalie Tocci remarks that preparing for EU membership would ‘effectively shake the [Turkish] Republic at its foundations’.161 Rather than debating the essence and compatibility of Turkey’s EU membership, the Turkish political circles and mass media ‘have skimmed over the details ... rarely debated ... [or] ... discussed anything’. Such a curious stand becomes more decipherable when viewed within the context of Republican history, especially in relation to the fear and anxiety of Turkish state and military with respect to Western modernity. Avoidance of issues emerges as the more palatable alternative to confronting the past because such a move could potentially endanger the status quo. The Turkish public sphere thus continues to be controlled by the state and the military. Even though the JDP has recently challenged this control by garnering the support of the electorate, it too eventually got bogged down in nationalist state rhetoric. Such rhetoric is always selected over social facts; citizens’ democratic rights are continually trumped by state interests. This dismal state of affairs worried some European scholars so much that they recommended the EU and Turkey look for alternatives to full Turkish–EU membership.162 Their specific concern was that EU membership would actually provide the Turkish state and military with enough additional resources to sustain their hegemony forever. In their words, ‘the linkage between the Europeanization and the westernization agenda would serve to reinforce, rather than transform the exclusionary practices of the Kemalist state elite in Turkey’. Such concern and the reasoning underlying it squarely prioritize and legitimate the politics of the Kemalist elite at the expense of the domestic transformation of the Turkish state. Yet this is not the first instance of such a negative European stand against Turkey. Ayla Göl analyzes how the Ottoman and then the Turkish commitment to Europe for the last two centuries have often been met in Europe with criticism, deeply rooted hostility and exclusion.163 John Redmond succinctly summarizes the current EU stand in relation to Turkey’s membership as follows:164 On balance, the views within individual EU member states seem to be coming together and hardening into an essentially negative position. Only Britain has consistently supported Turkey’s membership bid ... the lack of any strong supporter (other than Britain) and the

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opposition of France and Germany make full Turkish membership an unlikely prospect in the immediate future. Nor can the Turks take much encouragement from the stances of the EU institutions. To the hostility of the EU’s Council of Ministers ... should be added that of the European Parliament, which has repeatedly condemned Turkey for human rights violations and related issues, and the longstanding skepticism felt in the Commission about the feasibility of Turkish accession. As for popular opinion in the EU, if referendums on Turkish accession were held in all 27 member states, a vote in favor of Turkey joining could not be anticipated with any confidence anywhere: not even in Britain, its most consistent supporter at government level. The most likely outcome would be a very clear majority of member states not in favor of Turkish membership. Much of the general public simply sees Turkey as too big, too poor, too far away, and too Islamic. This negative assessment is indeed confirmed by the Special Eurobarometer of July 2006 conducted on the attitudes towards European Union enlargement. According to the results, among all the candidate countries, EU public opinion regards Turkey’s accession with the most disapproval. 48 per cent of EU citizens oppose Turkey’s membership, and only 39 per cent favor it even if Turkey complies with all conditions set by the EU.165 Hence, in addition to the domestic obstacles in Turkey toward EU membership, the European public opinion has also become increasingly negative toward Turkey. Toward a Conclusion Perhaps it is apt to conclude with the current state of Turkish anxiety described so well by Meltem Ahıska:166 Turkey, which has been labeled by both outsiders and insiders as a bridge between the East and the West, has an ambivalent relation not only to the geographical sites of the East and the West, but also to their temporal signification: namely, backwardness and progress. Turkey has been trying to cross the bridge between the East and the West for more than a hundred years now, with a self-conscious anxiety that it is arrested in time and space by the bridge itself. In other words, the meaning of the present has a mythical core that

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has persisted over years and which remains as a source of frustration and threat, and as a symptom of internalized inferiority. Indeed, Turkey faces two major problems in relation to the West: first, Turkey’s conception of the West has been historically embedded in the Sèvres syndrome, a major handicap Turkey needs to overcome in order to move forward. Second, Turkey has overburdened its conceptualization of the West with value judgments and emotions. That it has not yet been able to confront and resolve these comprises the other major handicap. The Sèvres syndrome will persist and Turkey’s relations with the West cannot be normalized as long as the West remains a source of frustration and threat, stays associated with fear, evokes internalized inferiority and, most importantly, as long as Turkey’s relations with the West are not properly contextualized in history. Only with the elimination of the Sèvres syndrome will Turkey be able to decide where it wants to be, why, and how. As Dietrich Jung notes, ‘[t]o assume an appropriate regional role, Turkey has to overcome the Sèvres syndrome so that feelings of suspicion and encirclement give way to a new self-confidence based on the material capabilities the country has achieved.’167 The 2006 National Survey conducted on Turkish conservatism has revealed that in spite of all their fear and anxiety, the majority (65 per cent) of the citizens still want Turkey to join the EU.168 In citing the two most important benefits of EU membership, all agreed ‘economic development and decreased unemployment’ were leading factors (25 per cent each). The most significant EU concerns, namely ‘equal rights and increased social peace’ mattered the least to Turks, each getting the lowest score (5 per cent each). This finding can be interpreted as the Turks’ low regard for human rights and peace, or, in a Marxian fashion, as their need to first have the economic benefits before thinking of rights. Another interpretation is also possible. The second most chosen response category was ‘don’t know’ (15 per cent) which indicates lack of knowledge due to a lack of public discussion on these issues. If there is adequate public discussion, Turks may also choose to opt for rights. In other responses, most wanted to selectively choose the technology of the West for economic benefits, leaving its culture behind as it would be detrimental to Turkish identity. A significant proportion considered such membership a threat to national (ethnic) identity (34 per cent), while an important segment was concerned that it would weaken religious identity (21 per cent). Interestingly, however, in another national survey, slightly

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more than half (53 per cent) portray the ideal Turkish citizens as those who have synthesized both local and Western values in their lives.169 Murat Paker notes that the Republican secular elites basically tolerate the EU reforms in Turkey because of two pragmatic realities. One, that EU membership is necessary on the way to contemporary civilization and two, that such membership would yield high economic returns. The JDP, Paker continues to argue, promotes the same cause solely on grounds of existential pragmatism. The governing political party wants to survive against the secular position of the state and counts on EU support in the practice of freedom of belief. Both sides endure the reforms on pragmatic grounds of self-interest. They do not perceive a wider, long-term vision for the country at large. As a consequence, Paker conjectures there will be no true transformation in Turkey.170 Hasan Kösebalaban likewise thinks it is the history of the Turkish Westernization process that will produce the same negative outcome. The Republican elites initially experienced Westernization against and in spite of the West rather than in partnership with it. It is their lack of common identification with the West that leads them now to take a position against Turkey’s EU membership.171 Meltem Ahıska argues that the West has exported its models of modernity to the rest of the world with the promise of progress. Such progress, however, has proved undeliverable because the paradoxes of time and space produce lags and shortfalls in the non-Western context, and these lags are always interpreted as failures. What should be added to this astute observation is that regardless of the West/non-West divide, modernity itself has proved unreachable. This is so because the progress modernity advocates ultimately has no endpoint – it is infinite.172 Ironically, with its modern ideal of progress, the West set up an unreachable target for the rest of the world. Yet the West itself has, if only partially, managed to resolve the paradox. How does it succeed where others continue to struggle? In setting its long-term vision, the West ultimately relied on its accumulation of knowledge to confront its own past. It took stock with the intention of moving forward. But Turkey, with its white-washed past, its fitful course toward Western modernity and its mythified Republican knowledge base, still remains frozen on the bridge between East and West. To finally move across, it must confront its own past. The knowledge thus revealed will shape Turkey and restore the ethical framework that has become so eroded. Only then will Turkey acquire a priceless compass for the uncharted waters of globalism.

CHAPTER 5 SILENCES IN THE TURKISH REPUBLICAN PAST: AN ANALYSIS OF CONTEMPORARY TURKISH–ARMENIAN LITERATURE

Anatolia has for many millennia been the ancestral land of the Armenians. Initially the possessors of independent kingdoms, the Armenians later lived on these lands as subjects of the Byzantine, Seljukid and finally the Ottoman empires. In contemporary Turkey, there is still an Armenian community of about 60,000, most of whom reside in İstanbul. The literature produced by these Armenians has also been vast. Yet until the end of the twentieth century almost none of this Armenian literature had been translated into Turkish. During the last decade of the twentieth century, there was a boom in such translations. These mostly included the works of the pre-1915 generation of Ottoman Armenians like Krikor Zohrab, Yervant Sırmakeşhanlıyan, Hagop Demirciyan (Mıntzuri), Vahan Totovens and Hampartsum Gelenyan (Hamasdeğ). All these authors lived during the late nineteenth century and witnessed firsthand the 1915 collective violence committed against the Armenians.1 The translated works also comprised literature by the first post-1915 generation of Turkish Armenians, such as Aram Pehlivanyan, Zaven Biberyan, Yervant Gobelyan, Kirkor Ceyhan, Antan Özer, Agop Arslanyan, Mıgırdiç Margosyan, Raffi Kebabcıyan Kantyan and Oşin Çilingir.2 The body of Turkish-Armenian literature that came into being continued with the publication of the works of the second post-1915 generation of Turkish Armenians, currently represented by two women, Jaklin Çelik and Karin

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Karakaşlı.3 The issue of translation disappears with this second generation, as these women started to write not in Armenian, but in Turkish. It should be noted that the works of significant Diaspora Armenians like William Saroyan from the United States, Jean Kahayan from France and Zoya Pirzad from Iran have also been recently translated into Turkish.4 This chapter focuses on the works of the pre-1915 and the first post-1915 generation of Armenians, specifically on those of Hagop Demirciyan (Mıntzuri) and Mıgırdiç Margosyan, the two most prolific authors of each generation.5 The question addressed by the chapter is as follows: what accounts for this surge in translations since the 1990s? The politically charged Turkish and Armenian scholarships could explain this escalation in one of two ways. The official stand of the Turkish state would laud it as incontrovertible proof of increasing Turkish tolerance. The more critical Armenian position would take the opposite stand, dismissing it as a feeble attempt at tokenism to divert attention from more serious denials by the Turkish state, specifically of the 1915 collective violence committed against the Armenians. However, these well-trodden and politically charged territories of Turkish and Armenian nationalism are both intellectually sterile. They effectively prevent scholarly analysis. This chapter attempts to avoid such polarized pitfalls by focusing instead on how these translated works can be understood within the developments of Turkish society at large. It critically identifies and studies the meanings these translated works acquire within three contexts: first, the larger historical context of nationalism which influences how knowledge is interpreted; second, the specific cultural context of contemporary Turkish studies; and third, the experiential context of the Turkish-Armenian works themselves. The Historical Context of Nationalism: Ways of Remembering the Past Understanding how and why contemporary societies remember or forget historical events continuously challenges scholars. Some question the origin of historical knowledge and, following Benedetto Croce’s famous phrase ‘all history is contemporary history,’ argue that it is not possible to know the past other than through its interpretation in the present.6 Still, the divide between past and present expands beyond the bifurcated origin of historical knowledge. It reaches the ambiguities embedded in the nature of knowledge. Such knowledge does not solely reflect the views

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of the actor but also contains many fragments from the societal context within which the actor’s experience takes place. Lucien Febvre succinctly expresses this viewpoint when he states, ‘Not man, I repeat, not man, never man. Human societies, organized groups.’7 The method through which historical knowledge is acquired further complicates the problem. As George Lukacs states, the ‘antiquated ideal of complete “objectivity” is not only impossible but, in many ways, deceiving’.8 The scholar located in the present analyzing historical knowledge thus unwittingly brings into her interpretation of the past the epistemological framework of the present.9 Current research increasingly stresses the epistemological fluidity across time and space whereby the past is constantly rewritten to meet the needs of the present. For instance, Rubie Watson argues that under state socialism, ‘The past was read from the present, but because the present changed, the past also had to change.’10 This remapping of the past expands beyond state socialism to encompass other political contexts as well. Barry Schwartz studies the United States within a similar framework to reveal how, at specific periods and contexts, the Gettysburg address acquires a sequence of meanings that either heightens its popularity or leads to its virtual exclusion from the national memory. Likewise, a historical leader like George Washington is remembered differently in different historical periods – originally as a man of flawless virtue, then as an ordinary, imperfect human being.11 As the remembrance changes, so does the commemoration: Independence Day comes to be celebrated much more extensively after the Civil War to emphasize the stability of institutional structures. Given the malleability and permeability of temporal and spatial boundaries, the point of departure for historical analysis can no longer be totally monolithic and consistent. It instead needs to provide space, in both the past and the present, for the incomplete, disparate and inappropriate fragments of the historical event. These fragments often provide insights into the silences embedded within the social context. For instance, historical fragments such as ‘rumors, gossip, folktales, songs, gestures, jokes, and the theater of the powerless’ contain information on the power relations in society, information which is crucial to deciphering the meanings of the historical event.12 Indeed, as Roger Chartier reiterates, historical knowledge needs to be viewed not as intrinsic, absolute and unique, but instead ‘as practices that give meaning to the world in plural and even contradictory ways’.13 Building on this insight,

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others propose a ‘bifurcated’ conception of history, whereby ‘the past is not only transmitted forward in a linear fashion, but its meanings are also dispersed in space and time.’14 If there are indeed multiple locations of historical knowledge, why are they often not readily apparent in the contemporary narratives of historical events? The answer lies in the major societal force that dominates the epistemological framework of our contemporary world: nationalism. Nation-states produce and reproduce themselves through an imagined unity and coherence, one that necessarily has to downplay the complexity of historical memory and causality. Within the framework of nationalism, events are narrated as following one another in linear progression. As the historical gets conflated with the national, the conception of time turns hegemonic, therefore remaining unnoticed and unquestioned. What is imagined for the nation becomes naturalized and normalized, portraying historical events as if that is how they occurred from time immemorial. This temporal hegemony then extends to establishing control over historical actors. The dominant ideology attempts to ‘rhetorically fix national identities to legitimate its monopoly,’ making claims on territories, peoples, and cultures for all of ‘its’ history.15 David McCrone has aptly articulated how nationalism creatively remaps the past to make it appear as a constant march of progress toward the present form of the nation-state:16 The ‘past’ is a wonderful source of legitimacy for those who would change the present for a new future. ... The ‘narrative’ of the nation is told and retold through national histories, literatures, the media and popular culture, which together provide a set of stories, images, landscapes, scenarios, historical events, national symbols and rituals. Through these stories national identity is presented as primordial, essential, unified and continuous. This legitimacy acquired through the possession of the past not only strengthens nationalism but also exposes it to attack. Each social group within the nation attempts to locate and therefore legitimate their place within the official historiography by remembering and reinterpreting the past. As history and historical documentation become so crucial to a social group’s sense of identity, the evidence itself becomes the focus of struggle, enhancing the national presence of some groups and obscuring that of others. Prasenjit Duara notes that ‘the same processes through

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which national identities are formed and evolve repress and obscure other identifications and alternative, often incipient, narratives’.17 In addition to this indirect silencing, some social groups attempt to dismiss the claims of others by misrepresenting historical events and actors. The nation-state also keeps controlling the historical documentation of the nation’s past to secure and reproduce the legitimacy of its own official narrative. Hence, in the era of nationalism, the politics of history and memory becomes extremely grave and contentious. Scholars have only recently become aware of the pervasiveness of the nationalist narrative in structuring knowledge. David Shumway argues that at the end of the eighteenth century, with the concomitant emergence of nationalism and disciplinarity, nationalism played a significant role in shaping knowledge within the social sciences.18 Emerging nationstates constructed their national identity by building on the humanities in general and a national literature in particular. They employed these fields with the intent to reflect their fundamental traits to the rest of the world.19 In the case of Turkey, such a strategy led to the definition of Turkish as the national language, thereby indirectly marginalizing both the non-Muslim minority languages of Greek, Armenian and Ladino and the widely spoken dialects of Kurdish. The Turkish-Armenian works discussed here are a good example of the linguistic silences that have been created. It is sad that the Turkish-Armenian narratives drawing on life experiences taking place in the Anatolian heartland of the Turkish nation and in its intellectual capital of İstanbul have to be ‘translated’ to be accessible to the imagined community it is supposed to encompass. This translation act reveals how these narratives were never a part of the imagined community that was supposed to include all social groups living in Turkey but instead favored the experiences of the dominant Sunni Muslim Turkish majority at the expense of all else. Even more telling is the event that instigated/permitted the publication of Mıgırdiç Margosyan’s Infidel’s Quarter: the work received the ‘1988 Eliz Kavukcuyan award for best work in Armenian,’ an award that originated in Paris. Hence the significance of the work was first acknowledged and appreciated not in Turkey but outside the country. The issue of selectivity, that is, what works are recognized, printed and awarded at the expense of others highlights the intersection of history with power. Michel-Rolph Truillot notes in particular how ‘the production of historical narratives has involved the uneven distribution of competing groups and individuals who have unequal access to the means for such production’.20 Hence, what is acknowledged and

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printed in a society favors the activities of some social groups at the expense of others, and in doing so, reproduces the power structure. Yet the process through which this occurs is not readily visible. Truillot further states that ‘the ultimate mark of power may be its invisibility; the ultimate challenge, the exposition of its roots’. In the case of Turkey, the nation-state acquires and accumulates power through exercising such boundaries. The works of secularized Turks are recognized and given voice in the public sphere while those of ‘other’ Muslims such as the Alawites, of non-Muslims, and of other ethnicities, particularly the Kurds, are excluded and silenced. The Turkish nationalist rhetoric, with its hypothesized equality within the imagined community of the nation, does not recognize this inherent stratification. It instead normalizes the dominance of secularized Turks. How has nationalism been able to sustain its hold over the narrative of the past so successfully? Michael Herzfeld seeks answers to this question by analyzing the emotional attachment people develop toward the formal ideology of a nation. He argues that attachment to the nation develops in the same way as attachment to a family member because of the cultural intimacy people feel toward it. He articulates a fundamental paradox in nation-states by stating that:21 [t]he degree to which the idea of the nation-state succeeds [is] in large measure because its formal ideology encapsulates, or, perhaps, incorporates, all the inward flows and imperfections to which it is officially and ostensibly opposed. If the nation is credibly represented as a family, people are loyal to it because they know their families are flawed – that is part of love – and so they rally to the defense of its compromising but warmly familiar intimacy. People become accomplices to the flawed projects of the nation-state, overlooking the fact that such practices include some social groups and actions yet exclude others. Even though these projects may indeed be sources of external embarrassment, people nevertheless take comfort in the ‘familiarity with the bases of power that may at one moment assure the disenfranchised a degree of creative irreverence and at the next moment reinforce the effectiveness of intimidation.’22 This intimacy people develop in relation to the nation’s secret spaces may also explain the roots of self-censorship they employ upon presenting personal experiences and opinions that are not to the liking of the

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official national ideology. Rather than openly challenging the inherent framework, they instead normalize and try to work within it. Thus the degree of self-censorship they exercise is directly correlated with where they perceive themselves within the power structure of the nation. In the case of the Turkish nation-state, it is therefore no accident that the post-1915 generation of Turkish-Armenians applies most self-censorship because of the precariousness of their social location. In the narrative that took them decades to present to the Turkish national audience, the post-1915 generation of Turkish-Armenians mentions the Armenian massacres that formed an indelible component of their ancestral memory in a most obscure and fleeting manner, almost as if they were embarrassed by the experience.23 Rather than mourning their brutally fragmented memories and sharing the pain with their audience the way Diaspora Armenians have done through many oral history projects, the Turkish-Armenians self-censor their narratives. They probably dare to share their true feelings only with a few trustworthy friends.24 The meanings around these texts are also shaped by generational dynamics. In the case of the Turkish-Armenians who choose to publicly narrate their stories, it helps that most are members of the second generation, therefore not personally affected by the massacres. Such temporal distance from the source of trauma impacts and shapes their narrative as well. Marianne Hirsch develops the concept of postmemory to ‘describe the relationship of children of survivors of cultural or collective trauma to the experiences of their parents, experiences that they “remember” only as the stories and images with which they grew up, but that are so powerful, monumental, as to constitute memories in their own right’.25 Indeed, there are qualitative and temporal differences in these memories – especially in terms of their belated, displaced, projected nature – that set them apart from those belonging to the survivors. This particular standpoint may also impact the hesitant nature of the narrative, especially when it tackles the issue of the 1915 collective violence. A case in point is the prolific literary output of the first post-1915 generation Turkish-Armenian writer Mıgırdiç Margosyan, who never directly tackles this traumatic violence. Margosyan originally wrote his recollections in fragments, as short stories for the Armenian newspaper Marmara. This fact itself encapsulates how the need to somehow preserve Turkish-Armenian collective memory emerges in disconnected segments. They emerge, as Carol Bardenstein articulates, as ‘both a response and a symptom of a rupture, a lack, an absence, and a substitute, surrogate, or

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consolidation for something that is missing’.26 The nostalgia Margosyan feels for the past stems from a need to reaffirm the Armenians’ belonging to the Turkish nation, a belonging that has been systematically cut off. In remembering, Margosyan lovingly creates the warm space captured by the minute details of everyday life, in the clothes worn, the tools used and the fragments of conversations carried out, all enriching their lives. The yearning and the remembering demonstrate the double displacement of Turkish-Armenians: once as they are physically deported, displaced and destroyed within the empire and the second time as they are then symbolically marginalized within the Turkish nation-state. This occurs because, as Kevin Robins argues, the Turkish nation-building project was ‘resolved to build a nation without minorities ... first through exclusion – the Armenian massacres (1915), the exchange of populations with Greece (1923) – and subsequently through cultural assimilation and integration’.27 As a consequence, ‘a monochrome vision of a Turkish culture in common was laid over the heterogeneity of lived identifications’. Given this monochromatic background of Turkish nationalism, the emergence of these recently translated Turkish-Armenian texts could be interpreted as the surfacing of the multiple voices and identities once deeply embedded in Turkish society, of its cultural diversity. Yet one must also note that such a narrative has made its appearance at a time when the challenge the Turkish-Armenians could provide the Turkish nation-state has decreased to an all-time low. Even though the Armenian population of the Ottoman Empire was once about 20 per cent of the imperial population in late nineteenth century, within the Turkish Republic at present, their population proportion has declined to 0.02 per cent. True diversity can only be said to have become possible in contemporary Turkish society when similar texts and narratives can emerge out of a still vibrant and numerically viable minority, such as the Kurds who may comprise up to 20 per cent of the total population in Turkey.28 It is in this context that memoirs and biographies become significant as they present unauthorized remembrances of the past. They often allude to discrepancies in official narratives, to the messy, Janus-faced quality of historical knowledge. The instability of memory also allows a variety of interpretations, one that often destabilizes the official narrative. As James Scott points out:29 [e]very subordinate group creates, out of its ordeal, a ‘hidden transcript’ that represents a critique of power spoken behind the back

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of the dominant. The powerful, for their part, also develop a hidden transcript representing the practices and claims of their rule that cannot be openly avowed. A comparison of the hidden transcript of the weak with that of the powerful as well as of both hidden transcripts to the public transcript of power relations offer a substantially new way of understanding resistance to domination. Memoirs have long been the depositories of such hidden transcripts, weaving the experiences of the narrator into the fabric of history. Their personal, fluid forms take away the political threat of alternative narratives that nation-states keep under surveillance. They have therefore survived political scrutiny and provide the basic meaning structures through which individuals define history.30 Given that the notion of memory, as Alon Confino argues, is ‘more practiced than theorized’, how can one systematically approach one’s subject without falling into the traps of the normalized nationalist narrative infused into most accounts, either explicitly or through selfcensorship and omission?31 The literature suggests two interconnected strategies: first, focusing on personal narratives that often appear in the form of memoirs, and then engaging in a critical reading of the text for silences or omissions. A third strategy should also be added to these two, namely locating the personal narrative within the societal context at large. In the case of Turkish-Armenian texts, a thorough and critical reading needs to be accompanied by an attempt to locate the texts within the cultural context of the dominant Turkish-Muslim society. This would entail a frank discussion of current cultural developments as they pertain to personal narratives in general and to Turkish-Armenian ones in particular. To study the texts in isolation would be to obfuscate their cultural significance in Turkish society, opening the reader to claims that these texts demonstrate Turkish ‘inclusivity’ or ‘exceptionalism’. Such a strategy also destabilizes the nation-state domination over cultural production. The Cultural Context of Contemporary Turkish Studies: Remembering the Republican Past When does a nation-state start to come to terms with its past? For the Turks, two events in the last decade have been very significant in this societal remembering. One is the 1991 end of the Cold War, which decreased

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the immediacy of perceived threats against the Turkish nation-state, thereby creating enough public space within Turkish society to discuss its identity. The other event was the 1998 celebration of the seventy-fifth anniversary of the foundation of the Turkish nation-state, which offered Turkish society an occasion to reflect upon its immediate Republican past. As a consequence, the temporal and spatial parameters are finally in place to remember and come to terms with the silences of the past. Silences, Michel-Rolph Truillot argues, enter the process of historical production at four crucial moments: ‘the moment of fact creation (the making of sources); the moment of fact assembly (the making of archives); the moment of fact retrieval (the making of narratives); and the moment of retrospective significance (the making of history in the final instance).’32 The close connection of the nation-state to its citizens in terms of articulating their rights and responsibilities also enables it to monitor, organize and institutionalize fact production and the transformation process. It is therefore no accident that contemporary criticisms of the Turkish nationalist narrative all problematize this process. The facts that were left out ‘in the shadows’ – not included in the state archives or discussed by the media and popular accounts of the period, and thus prevented from playing a role in the formation and transformation of the Turkish republic – now come to the forefront. Yet not all groups produce or are allocated the same silence; the size and shape of the silence is closely connected to the power location of the social group in question. The silence of the leftist, mostly Turkish-Muslim, intellectuals has been the best-documented one in Turkish republican history. This has been the case because these intellectuals form an integral part of the dominant national group of secularized Turks. The silence of the Kurdish ethnic minorities and the Alawite religious minorities, however, is less articulated. Even less developed is the public discussion of the silence of the Turkish-Armenian and other non-Muslim minorities. A review of the current state of Turkish cultural studies reveals that these multiple silences are indeed being hierarchically addressed. It is no accident that the majority of recently published memoirs belong to leftist Turkish-Muslim intellectuals who share the most power with the dominant group. The first two such memories belong to the daughters of two leftist intellectuals who were persecuted by the Turkish state. In 1993, Yıldız Sertel, the daughter of Sabiha Sertel, one of the first women intellectuals of the Republic, published a long book titled My Mother where she remembered her mother through all the trials and tribulations

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she suffered.33 Two years later, in 1995, Filiz Ali, daughter of another prominent leftist Turkish intellectual of the republican era, Sabahattin Ali, came out with a book filled with the photographs her father had taken in prison. She narrated her account of his life, dramatically concluding with a photograph of all his material possessions, including two books by Balzac and Pushkin that were recovered after her father was brutally murdered while trying to escape from Turkey to the West through Bulgaria.34 Even though Sabahattin Ali’s murderer was caught, he was released a few months later in a general amnesty. A few years after these works, two leftist intellectuals came out with memoirs of their own. In 1997, Memet Fuat told his life story as a much harassed leftist intellectual in a book aptly titled Years Left in the Shadows and in 1998 Mina Urgan, another leading woman intellectual, published her memoirs in a book titled Memoirs of a Dinosaur.35 All of these life stories alerted people to the silencing of thoughts that deviated from the national project.36 Two other publications need to be mentioned because of their focus on other silences. One is a book by Can Dündar published in 1995, also deriving its title from the imagery of shadows, in this case titled Those in the Shadows.37 It highlights historical characters who played a significant role in the formative years of the republic, like the niece of Mustafa Kemal who committed suicide as well as historical events, like the establishment of the Turkish communist party, which was quickly closed down. The other work, published by Kemal Yalçın in 1998 in the form of a novel, pertains to the life stories of another Turkish non-Muslim minority, the Rum, whose numbers in Republican Turkey were decimated due to the 1923 population exchange with Greece. In this book titled the Entrusted Dowry, Yalçın tracks down and interviews ethnic Turks in Greece sent to Turkey and ethnic Greeks in Turkey deported to Greece and weaves their life stories into novel form, a strategy he employs, Yalçın explains, to make his book more accessible for a Turkish audience.38 All the books mentioned above went through multiple printings in Turkey. Another group of publications that needs to be mentioned is printed by the Turkish Historical Foundation in İstanbul, a private organization that has explicitly separated itself from the official Turkish Historical Association in Ankara. This foundation, with substantial support from various private businesses as well as some funding from the office of the prime minister, published a series of books that reflected critically on the Turkish republican experience. The publications focus on diverse viewpoints, with titles like Three Generations of the Republic (1998), From

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Wheels to Microchips in 75 Years (1999) and From Subject to Citizen in 75 years (1999).39 This last book is significant in its contextualization of the Armenian experience of deportation among many others in Turkish republican history. It does not objectify or essentialize the TurkishArmenian experience but instead includes it within the larger Turkish historical narrative of migrations. Akile Gürsoy, who wrote the article on the republican experience of migrations, categorizes the migrations as those before or after the foundation of the Republic.40 She states specifically that:41 [d]uring the historical period that led to the foundation of the Turkish republic, forced migrations have caused real transformations in the lives of hundreds of thousands of people. Those escaping enemy armies, those trying to free themselves from separationists and from feelings of hatred, or those forced to migrate left their belongings and found themselves on the road. Most were murdered on the way or died due to disease, hunger, or adverse weather conditions. Many got separated from their loved ones and lost their relatives. Those making it to the end of their migration formed new lives, new residences under different conditions, with new hopes. Although the reference is oblique, the pain and suffering of those forcibly deported, who were almost exclusively Armenians, is nevertheless recognized. This general introduction to migrations in the Republican era is followed by a more specific description of the Armenians’ plight:42 Armenians: In the middle of the War [World War I], during the Spring of 1915, the Union and Progress took a decision to force the Armenians to migrate. Armenians in first the Eastern, and then the Western provinces were deported from within the borders of the empire toward Syria. Some of the Armenian citizens also left Turkey after the foundation of the Republic. A large number migrated to France and the United States, and a very insignificant number settled in Armenia. The account thus recognizes, in a straightforward manner, the scope of the Armenian experience and includes it in its larger narrative of republican migration. In doing so, it reverses the nationalist exclusion. Unlike the

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official narratives that systematically marginalize and thus silence the experiences of diverse groups, this presentation, like others in the series, is based on inclusion of all experiences without prejudging them. Two other publications also aid in this contextualization. One is the work by Leyla Neyzi published in 1999, titled Remembering and Forgetting in İstanbul, that for the first time brings to the forefront the element of forgetting and, with it, Republican silences.43 Neyzi defines her project as recovering the life stories of everyday people that have been eroded by the mixed reform messages of Turkish nationalism, which demanded that everyone follow a new guide for modern life.44 The discrepancies between the ‘national’ way of life aspired to in the public sphere and the realities of everyday life created insurmountable divides in people’s lives. This was compounded by the inability to pass on cultural values across republican generations. Neyzi argues that people can face and surmount their identity crises by focusing on and privileging the experiences of the everyday. Only then can the people who make up Turkish society restore meaning to their existence. In capturing the lives of the silenced, Neyzi ‘threw a net into the rainbow-colored cultural sea and waited for fish to emerge’ – the fish of the rich multicultural heritage which resisted being stuffed into the onedimensional identity of nationalism.45 The numerous interviews she conducted across generations as part of a larger project commemorating the republic’s seventy-fifth anniversary produced many insights – and also much ‘self-censorship and silence’ as people, upon seeing the texts, asked her to remove information they deemed dangerous for their well-being.46 Even though Neyzi does not refer to the inequalities within the cultural mosaic she captures and gives equal billing to all ethnic groups, she does present an interview with the Turkish-Armenian owner of her neighborhood grocery store, Asadur Zovikoğlu (originally Zovikyan). Neyzi narrates Zovikoğlu’s account as he tells of his parents’ suffering during the massacres:47 During the turbulent years at the beginning of the (twentieth) century, Mister Asadur’s father Apraham and his grandfather Asadur migrate from the Pekerici village in Kemah through Antalya and İzmir to İstanbul. The fates of his grandmother and his father’s first wife are unknown. Asadur Zovikoğlu states that he did not know his grandfather, and he does not know much about this migration story because his father did not tell him anything. He knows the

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names neither of his grandmother nor of his father’s first wife ... My father never talked about his mother. Do they leave altogether during the migration and lose them? My father told (nothing) about his life back then. Even this brief account reveals the fragmentation that beset the Armenians, ranging from the physical destruction of actual families to the psychological trauma experienced across generations as lives are violently interrupted. Generational fragmentation also takes place, as the earlier generation that suffered the trauma refuses to transmit it to their children. The Experiential Context of Turkish-Armenian Works The Turkish-Armenian works provide structures of meaning at the individual level, thereby complementing the larger historical and cultural levels. At this level, they remain somewhat unshaped – or at least not fully controlled – by the official state ideology. Here I will discuss the works of two Armenian authors in particular: Hagop Demirciyan Mıntzuri, born in 1886 in Erzincan and belonging to the pre-1915 generation, and Mıgırdiç Margosyan, born in 1938 in Diyarbekir and thus belonging to the post-1915 generation. These two authors were selected because of their prolific output; each one dominated the literature of his generation. As they relate their lived experiences, the authors reveal the continuities among the experiences of various social groups as well as the differences. The Pre-1915 Generation: Hagop Mıntzuri’s İstanbul Memories Born in Armudan, in the Gürüçay region of Erzincan in 1886, Hagop Mıntzuri migrated to İstanbul in 1897 to work as a baker, continuing his father’s profession. He later worked as a hotel scribe and church attendant. Literate in Armenian, Ottoman and French, he published stories under the name Hagop Demirciyan before World War I. In 1907, he went back to his village for seven years until 1914, when he traveled to İstanbul for a health problem – to have his tonsils removed. With the declaration of war, however, Mıntzuri was recruited into the Ottoman army and had to stay in İstanbul while all his immediate and extended family perished during the 1915 Armenian deportation and ensuing massacres. He thus had no village left to go back to but gave life to them through his short stories until his death in 1978. His short stories were first published in the

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Armenian newspaper Marmara; some were then collected in an Armenian book printed under the title Places Where I Had Lived, later translated and posthumously printed in Turkish as İstanbul Memories. Even though most of Mintzuri’s work focuses on his village, the stories covered in the book also relate to his observations and experiences of İstanbul. Mıntzuri’s work needs to be contextualized in two separate historical junctures, when he initially penned it and when it was translated into Turkish in 1993. The introductions to both the original Armenian edition and the Turkish translation are significant in this context for the messages they send to the work’s imagined audience. The original 1984 introduction, by the Turkish-Armenian intellectual Artin Cümbüşyan, is pessimistic in tone. Citing three books by the author that preceded this work, Cümbüşyan notes that the Armenian reader of the future would only be able to enter Mıntzuri’s work ‘if he can access these out-of-print books, and, before everything else, if he himself can manage to survive in these regions until then. The world described (by Mıntzuri) is a totally lost world. That world is also becoming lost from our memories with the demise of those who can even remember it.’48 This desperate attempt to hold on to the past in the face of uncertainties both present and future is reiterated at the end of the short introduction when Cümbüşyan reflects:49 Will there be another book by Mintzuri published in the future under the difficult conditions of the İstanbul minority press? We do not know. But his works have now drawn the interests of literary scholars and researchers. The book therefore had to be published without delay. And it is good that the book that paints with its every line another real and impressive picture of İstanbul is published in the same city. The pessimism of an Armenian intellectual addressing the TurkishArmenian audience in 1984 in the intimacy of his native tongue gives way to a much more neutrally pitched introduction written later in 1993 by Silva Kuyumcuyan and Necdet Sakaoğlu. In the introduction to the Turkish edition, Kuyumcuyan and Sakaoğlu are anxious to situate Mıntzuri within Turkish society at large. They start off by addressing the imagined audience, stating that:50 [t]he author of the memories you will be reading was an Anatolian and a migrant worker in İstanbul. He found solace in the loneliness

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of İstanbul as he longingly remembered the first quarter of his almost century-long life. He constantly wrote his observations, feelings, memories. But he was reluctant to assume the identity of an author. He found it sufficient to have his works read within a minority community. In a way, the publication of Mıntzuri’s memories in Turkish fifteen years after his death marks his first emergence in Turkey. This address itself reveals the dramatic divide between the non-Muslim minority audience and the larger, dominant Turkish Muslim one. It attempts to legitimate the identity of Mıntzuri as a Turkish author by publishing in Turkish a small select sample from his voluminous works in Armenian. Kuyumcuyan and Sakaoğlu continue to situate Mıntzuri for the Turkish audience as they compare him to Alphonse Daudet and to the Turkish author Sait Faik Abasıyanık. They conclude by sending a message to the reader, telling him or her that ‘it is not possible to think of Mıntzuri within either the Muslim/non-Muslim or Turkish/Armenian divides. This is undoubtedly the result of his fair-mindedness as well as a proof of the mutual peaceful coexistence of the two in the past.’ There is thus a yearning for the times when the divide between the Armenian and Turkish-Muslim communities was not as pronounced, signaling an imagined peaceful past within which they attempt to contextualize and legitimate the present. Moving on to the main text, Mıntzuri does indeed emerge as an extremely observant participant in the multi-ethnic mix surrounding him as he vibrantly describes his Greek and Muslim artisan neighbors, his customers of all ethnic groups from all walks of life as well as his classmates who are also drawn from diverse groups. In addition to the ethnic mosaic of İstanbul during Ottoman times that travelers often commented on, however, Mıntzuri provides additional insight based on his personal experiences. Unlike the travelers – who cannot comment on the dynamics of interaction among these groups – Mıntzuri vividly describes the everyday interactions among the various ethnic and religious groups as he experiences them from his vantage point of a baker living in İstanbul. The book commences with an account of the broom maker Mustafa Ağa who during the 1896 Ottoman Bank raid by a group of Armenians that led to massive anti-Armenian demonstrations in the city, stood alone in front of the author’s bakery and deterred the aggressors who had come to destroy all Armenian shops.51 Throughout the book, there are many

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instances of the Ottoman Rum, Muslims, Armenians – who refer to one another mostly by their geographical place of origin – helping one another out, giving each other food or goods, or looking after one another’s shops. Mıntzuri also notes the class differences among each group, including his own, as some live in large houses by the seaside while others work for a living as porters at the marketplace.52 There is also mention of discrimination among these social groups. Mıntzuri either observes or personally experiences such discrimination, especially when he comes into contact with the dominant social group of Muslim Turks. For instance, when describing how people gathered to protect a dog if someone was unfairly beating it up, Mıntzuri notes that passers-by would join the people of the neighborhood to shame the aggressor and even beat him up, especially if he was not a Muslim.53 Other instances involve Mıntzuri’s personal experiences. Once, when asked who he was,54 I responded, ‘I am an Armenian. My name is Agop.’ This has been my habit up to this day. I first tell people that I am an Armenian. I know that they want to know my nationality. ‘Where are you from?” they then asked. “From the (region of the) Fourth Army.’ This was the name given to the places Armenians lived then. The Muslim Turks he converses with criticize Mıntzuri for employing ‘different’ terminology and expressions, concluding that he cannot become a successful man with such a vocabulary. He then has to demonstrate to them, successfully, his command over Ottoman as well. This constant struggle to prove himself reveals the unspoken norms of the dominant majority that govern the Ottoman public sphere. Upon demonstrating his literacy in Ottoman, Mıntzuri is then told by the Muslims, ‘it is a shame you are not a Muslim. We could have found you a position as a scribe at the palace.’ Hence the unspoken norms also dictate, govern and limit Mıntzuri’s life chances. These missed job opportunities and obstacles that work against the upward mobility befitting a literate person with Mıntzuri’s qualifications should have ceased with the advent of the Republican period that constitutionally promises all its citizens equal rights and opportunities. Yet in practice, the prejudice and discrimination persist. As Mıntzuri meets his old Turkish Muslim classmates, they inadvertently promise him jobs. For instance, when he runs into his old classmate Selahattin from the Ecole

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Française forty years later, Selahattin asks if Mıntzuri has been doing the same thing all these years.55 ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘what else could I have done?’ We are six people; my wife, children and my parents have to live. One needs a house, bread, rent. I did not tell him about my life in the village (which was then destroyed by the massacres), the village, my tragedy. I did not want to tell him. What good would it have done? All he was going to do would be to give his condolences with a look of astonishment ... I tried to change the topic and asked about his life. Here is an instance of self-censorship; Mıntzuri knowingly avoids mention of the trauma of 1915 that wreaked havoc with his life. He then finds out that his Muslim friend, like many other educated young men during the Republic, has been upwardly mobile, now working for the Municipal Electric Company. Selahattin asks if he would like a job at the company as well. ‘I would like to come,’ Mıntzuri responds, ‘but would they accept me?’ Even though Selahattin promises that he would work things out and return to him within a week, two weeks pass without any word of his friend. Mıntzuri goes to his friend’s office but not only is he unable to find out where Selahattin is, but he is not even told when he will be coming in next. ‘I understood that he was not going to be successful in getting me the job,’ Mıntzuri dryly notes. Mıntzuri then relates another instance of a missed opportunity when another Muslim Turkish friend, Asaf the Physician, declares that the current Prime Minister Refik Saydam is a good friend of his and he would find Mıntzuri a good job. ‘Thank you, but don’t do it, Asaf Bey,’ I said, ‘you cannot do it, it cannot be done.’ ‘You just leave it to me!’ ‘The prime minister came, and Asaf Bey visited him. I did not stop by his house on my way back from work; he would have beckoned me if his efforts had been successful. From then on, whenever I stopped by, we talked about other matters.’ This economic marginalization of non-Muslim minorities in the newly emerging Republican structure is paralleled by significant spatial exclusion. Armenians’ cognitive maps are literally erased as the Turkish state and military systematically replace Armenian place names with Turkish ones. Mintzuri discusses how ‘my Eğin was the old Eğin, not the one that exists today. That is not its name anyhow; they changed it [to Kemaliye]

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[...] we had a Mihran Horasancıyan from the Hocasar town in Sivas. They made [Hocasar] Hafik, just as they changed the name of our village Armudan to Armutlu. There is no actual relationship between Armut (“pear” in Turkish) and Armudan ... [the latter] derives from “Armidana” the places where the Hay, the ancestors of the Hayasa [Armenians], lived thousands of years ago [...] the yukarı Azbider village is now called “Akıncılar,” the village of Zimara is now “Altıntaş,” and the village of Gasma is renamed “Kesme.” ’56 The most significant marginalization through obliteration of memory is of course the trauma of the 1915 Armenian massacres. Even though Mıntzuri personally escapes such possible violent death by chance, he nevertheless loses his entire family to it. Even Mıntzuri cannot adequately contain and self-censor the painful rupture that ensues when he finds out that his family back at the village has been wiped out. From then on, Mıntzuri defines himself as a ‘hostage’ in İstanbul, never specifying as to whether he considers himself a hostage of time, fate, history, the massacred dead or the marginalized living.57 Most probably Mıntzuri becomes a hostage of the past, finding solace only in the memories of his obliterated village. Contrary to what the translators claim in the introduction, Mıntzuri does not remember his village life solely to cope with the loneliness of İstanbul. It is rather the loneliness of survival that he needs to face. After all, everyone who has given meaning to his life, his family and village folk, has perished. The silence of the dead combined with his helplessness and guilt for not being there to somehow magically save them mark Mıntzuri’s life.58 Mıntzuri discusses the massacres throughout the text like an everrecurring nightmare. The first instance describes how he left the village for İstanbul for his tonsillectomy, thereby surviving the massacre.59 (I told everyone) the same thing, ‘I will not stay; I will just go (to İstanbul) for two days and return.’ They did not want me to go. Whoever heard my reason said the same thing: ‘Your tonsils will improve and stop being a problem.’ To all I said ‘no, I will go and be back in twenty, twenty-five days. I will not even say goodbye to my house.’ Could I have predicted the things that were going to happen? I will not be able to go back and we will never be able to see one another ever again. (My wife) Vogida was pregnant, she gave birth to a son during the month of Epiphany and we named him Haço.

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By the time Mıntzuri is able to arrange transportation back to his village, the World War breaks out and he is taken under arms to serve in the army as a baker. Unable to go back to his village, he continues his narrative:60 The deportation (the Turkish word used is tehcir) of the Anatolian Armenians in İstanbul started in April of 1915. I was a soldier anyhow [so did not have to leave]. [In the meanwhile], I did not receive any letters from home in May. I had telegrams sent twice, but they remained unanswered. The third one got a response, stating ‘they are not here, they have been sent to an unknown place.’ My grandfather Melkon was eighty-eight years old. My mother Nanik fiftyfive, my children, Nurhan six, Maranik four, Anahit two, Haço nine months, my wife Vogida twenty-nine years old. How did these people walk? ... (According to the report of ... Kurdish Temer) they deported the Armenians from the village on June 4th. He said that they kissed the doors of their houses as if they were kissing the church door and left. If someone in your house dies, don’t you die with them? Could you still work? Could you take care of business inside and out? I was a soldier under orders. Did they leave me any time? I had to be there until night ... I went back and forth. Do not think about those belonging to you; banish them from your mind! ... What did they eat, where did they sleep? Do not think! The Armenians in İstanbul who were of Anatolian origin, who had mostly arrived at the capital as seasonal laborers, were rounded up and deported in April 1915 never to be heard from again. The only exceptions were those who worked in occupations crucial to the war like bakers; these were given the status of soldiers and permitted to stay. While Mıntzuri thus managed to stay at the capital, his entire family back home was deported and massacred. His parents, wife and four children perished all at once. They did not die by their own volition or through a natural disaster; they died because of a decision taken by the government of the Committee of Union and Progress. Even though the formal decision was for the deportation of only those Armenians that threatened the state, it was applied in reality to all Armenians living in Anatolia in a manner so that they did not anywhere comprise more than 5 per cent of the populace in any particular region.61 Once all the Armenians were organized into such caravans – with no preparation and with inadequate protection by the state – they were

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preyed upon by the militia and the rest of the populace to the point of extinction. Mıntzuri was able to capture their last moments through the Kurd Temer who was probably one of their village neighbors. He learned that they kissed the door of their house and departed, leaving Mıntzuri in total anguish. He is unable to think what they went through but cannot resist thinking about it. His dramatic narrative of sorrow and helplessness reveals how his only means of survival was to try not to think about the enormity of what had happened. He eventually tried to rescue his family in his imagination alone, bringing them alive in the stories of his village. Mıntzuri’s text is therefore haunted by reminisces that forever mark his consciousness, he cannot help but narrate for instance that:62 I was in İstanbul during the difficult years. I did not like İstanbul, but it saved me. Where could I have gone then? There is no home, no person ... I became a ‘hostage’ here and lived until now. I had not written when I was home (in the country). Just two or three pieces, that’s all. I am glad that was the case. I had not yet found myself. That came later. Indeed, writing about his massacred family was the only way Mıntzuri could go on living. How the next generation of Armenians who had managed to survive were likewise forever marked by this trauma of destruction becomes clear in the works of Mıgırdiç Margosyan. The Post-1915 Generation: Mıgırdiç Margosyan’s The Infidels’ Quarter and Say Margos Where Are You From? Born in 1938 in Diyarbekir’s Hançepek quarter, Mıgırdiç Margosyan migrated to İstanbul upon completing high school. After receiving a philosophy degree from İstanbul University, Margosyan initially worked as a teacher and school principal at an Armenian school, then became a businessman. His career path demonstrates how during the Republican period non-Muslim minorities could not break the confines set by their social location. Most could work only in education, provided it was at communal institutions – the state-run educational institutions employed only Muslim Turks. The other only sphere where they could participate was the one they had mostly been confined to during the Ottoman era: the economic sphere, where they became businessmen as Margosyan did. And

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they did so with the memory of the 1915 trauma that nearly destroyed their community. Unlike Mintzuri, Margosyan was not brought up in a village and did not experience the Armenian massacres firsthand. Yet like Mintzuri, he too chose to negotiate trauma through literature. The contents of Margosyan’s two books of short stories were also published in Marmara over the years. The introductions to both of Margosyan’s works are anonymous, written by the presses without specifying their author. However, the one to the first collection includes as an appendix five book reviews, which helps contextualize the book’s reception by Turkish literary critics. Thanking Mıgırdıç ‘usta’ (the master artisan, a term often used for Armenians who dominated artisanal fields), Ragıp Duran’s review identifies Margosyan as a new voice, a new color, and enthuses that ‘every reader will undoubtedly remember a friend at the Infidels’ Quarter.’63 Even though Duran initially locates Margosyan within the narrow niche of minority literature, he then goes on to compare him to prominent writers of Turkish literature like Yaşar Kemal and Sait Faik Abasıyanık. Muhsin Kızılkaya similarly calls Margosyan ‘usta’ and asks rhetorically what Margosyan’s characters would have taken with them as they left Diyarbekir.64 The anonymous review in the journal İkibine Doğru stresses that the book is, ‘like the minorities in Turkey, very quiet but rich,’ then arguing that ‘like every tribe, “our Armenians” [quotations mine – FMG] have also bestowed many beauties on Anatolia’.65 Hence only after containing the Armenians with the possessive ‘our’ and identifying their location as minorities does the review acknowledge Margosyan’s literary worth. Once again, the differences of the Armenians from the Turks are indirectly stressed. The anonymous review at the journal Nokta is more inclusive in tone. It interprets the book as ‘providing the much needed breath of fresh air to Turkish story writing’ and suggests that it be made into a movie as soon as possible.66 The final anonymous review in Varlık argues that the undue emphasis on the minority literature dimension of the book takes attention away from its full impact. The introduction to the second book contextualizes Margosyan’s work within Armenian ‘village’ literature, adding that his provides the only example to date.67 This brief critical analysis of the Turkish mainstream reviews of Margosyan’s work reveals how the prejudices embedded in society against minorities diffuse into the language. In the Infidels’ Quarter, Margosyan starts to describe the rich cultural mosaic of Anatolia through the multiplicity of languages people employ.

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In Diyarbekir, Arabic, Kurdish and Turkish are used almost interchangeably. Unlike the official state ideology that considers the use of any language other than Turkish unacceptable, Margosyan relishes the richness of meaning such use offers. He writes sentences, poems, songs in these languages, then translates them into Turkish. His stories reflect the cultural wealth of both Diyarbekir and Margosyan’s inner life. After this more descriptive first volume that receives positive reviews, the press decides to issue a second volume, taking on more controversial topics. Margosyan observes, for instance, intercommunal relations within the economic sphere: the way the professions are parceled out reflects the traditional Ottoman division of labor. The Armenians are mostly ironmongers or cobblers; Jews, itinerant merchants or store owners; and the Muslim Turks, state officials.68 Such structured interaction rarely translated to the social sphere, where each group married and socialized with its own kind. Failure to observe this religious divide in society led to large scandals that often became immortalized in poems and songs. Margosyan chronicles one such case – the love affair between an Armenian girl and a Kurdish boy. The girl’s family disowned her and lived ever after in total embarrassment. Her husband’s family forced her to wear the veil, and since then ‘she has been trying to cover the black mark on her forehead’.69 Some everyday hostilities were observed among the various groups as the children, for instance, played and fought along communal lines.70 During watermelon fights, the Armenian and Turkish Muslim children joined forces against the Jewish children. This pelting of the Jews with watermelon scraps found lying around the streets did not stop with the children – often the fathers engaged in it as well. Those who had to pass through the Armenian quarter to get to their own were often targeted by the children. They often took a longer circuitous route to avoid the Armenian quarter.71 In this context of intercommunal fighting, Margosyan also introduces Haço the Jeweler who had been renamed Haço the Lame ‘after he was kicked during a fight, the reasons of which were guarded by the Kurdish porters at the Wheat Market like a state secret’.72 Even though Margosyan approaches the multiplicity of religious practices in the city constructively, stating that they ‘enabled them to reach God much more’, the heavy hegemony of Islam over the others becomes evident in another remark.73 During a debate over the naming of an Armenian newborn, a Chaldean priest suggests in vain to name the baby ‘Burhan, [as] he will then have no problem

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when he attends school, where people can properly pronounce his name. And it also will hide his Armenian identity, so he can be more comfortable in society.’ The inherent discomfort one feels in Turkish society for being a minority, for standing out as different, seeps through this innocuous remark. The trauma of the post-1915 generation reveals itself in full through the use of names. In the context of a Turkish nation-state that advocates unitary identity and condemns difference, many Armenian citizens of Turkey rename themselves so as not to stand out. Margosyan recounts:74 Where I came from, in those lands, in Diyarbekir, the dark days of the First World War as my father referred to them, erased and took away Uncle Dikran’s real name, (instead) sticking on his forehead the second name Hasan. My father’s name which was Sarkis had turned into Ali, my uncle’s name Haçadur into İsmail, my aunt’s husband’s name Ohannes into Ramazan and my mother’s name Aznif into Hanım. Having suffered the collective violence of 1915, the surviving Armenians must give up their identities in an effort to survive in a state and society that punishes difference. The trauma of 1915 remains unacknowledged, making any emotional healing impossible. The minorities who have to continue living in the midst of their former victimizers are forced to bury their pain and suffering even deeper. In addition, to escape the continuing Turkish prejudice and discrimination, the minorities including the Armenians have to resort to changing their names.75 They can then ‘blend in’ with the dominant Turkish Muslim majority and hopefully escape its wrath. The discussion of names and the inherent symbolic violence embedded within lead Margosyan to other venues. In discussing how he himself was named, Margosyan notes:76 What could the name of the child be? My father was of course going to give me his father’s name. How can one think of anything else? How can he give a different name to his first new-born male child when he himself has lived constantly with dreams and yearnings for a father, a father whom he lost during the First World War when he was three-four years old, a father whose face he cannot

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even vaguely recall, a father he did not even know why he lost, where, in which deportation caravan, under what conditions? Hence the trauma of loss and suffering descends on the post-1915 Turkish Armenian generation. When anyone is under such unacknowledged pain, the wounds never heal, the pain rises to the surface even at the most innocent mention of baby-naming. Margosyan never knew his grandfather because he was massacred when Margosyan’s own father was a young child. What makes this inter-generation loss and trauma even more dramatic is the lack of information about the violent death. There is no site, no grave, no particular culprit. What exists instead is an ever-recurring nightmare of fear and imminent death. It is a nightmare that transmogrifies everything it touches. Margosyan describes the aftershock of the massacres as those few family members who escape the collective violence undergo social death, only to be reborn as Muslim converts. When describing the relatives of Lüsyen Baco, one of their neighbors, Margosyan recounts:77 [H]er closest relative was Zeyno Bibi. She had joined the ‘kafle78 (the deportation caravan)’ as a young girl from the Ergani district of Diyarbekir with the name of Saro. Years later, by chance, she appeared in front of her again-found relatives as the long-bearded Sheikh Seyhmus’s wife Zeyno. Not having children of her own, Zeyno brought up as her own Şeyhmus’s three sons from his deceased first wife, who also treat her like their own mother. Zeyno Bibi used to come a couple of times a year during Christmas and Easter to celebrate the holidays of her relatives. The children of the house approached, with wonderment, this woman who quietly moved to the antechamber to pray during the day whenever she heard the call to prayer. While some Armenian women who survived the collective violence of 1915 were forced to assume new identities as Muslims, others struggled to survive on their own as widows. Margosyan mentions a widowed neighbor Yegisapet who lives alone. Yegisapet too, ‘like the old widows remaining from the “Kafle” who work as laborers, plasterers, and painters at construction sites, worked in construction. She had not remarried after losing her husband at the “kafle.” Actually, she had married loneliness.’79

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Mıgırdiç Margosyan ends the collection with a short story that gives the book its title. Struggling to come to terms with his identity fractured through the 1915 massacres, he intensely yearns for his place of origin, the one his father taught him. Margosyan recounts how, when he was still a child, his father would drill him, asking him over and over where he was from. His father would beam when Margosyan learned to say ‘from Heredan’. Then, his father would constantly ask everyone about the Heredan he had so violently lost, comparing everything unfavorably to how things had once been in Heredan. Heredan thus starts to symbolize everything the family yearned for, everything they had lost. Margosyan notes that Heredan ‘started to circulate in our veins like a drop of our blood ... Everything that was sweet, good, tasty became a bit of Heradan and carried the yearning for Heredan ...’ 80 It is no accident that Margosyan ends his book with a symbolic yearning for this inaccessible source of identity that was so violently taken away from them: Heredan, Heradan, Heredan, the father’s hearth, the mother’s lap ... A whole generation, children and all, were separated from you, torn away, piece by piece, ‘berdan, berdan (as the Kurds would say)’. But they never could or would forget you. You became a yearning in the hearts, grief on the smiles, and a kiss on the lips. You became a decoration, an adornment on the tombstones over the graves. Hence the lived experiences of Armenians shape and reshape their fractured identities. Both the pre-1915 generation represented by Hagop Mıntzuri and the post-1915 generation personified by Mıgırdiç Margosyan struggle to locate themselves in a society that shifts its boundaries of exclusion around them. In conclusion, the new Turkish-Armenian literature, when contextualized within the larger social framework and not defined as an ‘other’ in Turkish society, provide insights not only into the events and everyday practices that give or take away meaning from the characters themselves, but also to others who lived then and those who live now, both at the center and the margins.

CHAPTER 6 REMEMBERING THE PAST: HOW TO COMMEMORATE 24 APRIL 1915

On 24 April 1915, at the capital of the Ottoman Empire, about 270 Armenian intellectuals were initially arrested and eventually massacred. Not only would this number soon double, but these Armenian intellectuals of the imperial capital were then joined in death by others arrested throughout the empire, bringing the total number of Armenian intellectuals killed up to the thousands.1 The date 24 April 1915 has been commemorated by the worldwide Armenian community as the beginning of the end, the symbolic trigger point of the Ottoman collective violence committed against their brethren. Within a year-and-a-half, the majority of the Ottoman Armenians were forever removed from their ancestral lands. Before 1915, during the last decades of the Ottoman Empire, there were about 1.5 to 2 million Armenian imperial subjects, making up approximately 10 per cent of the total population. By the first Republican population census in 1927, their total had been reduced to 123,602 – about 0.9 per cent of the total population of Turkey. Since then, unlike the rest of Turkey’s population, which has increased more than fivefold, the size of the Armenian community has been reduced to approximately 60,000.2 The Armenians of Turkey currently comprise about 0.09 per cent of the total population and are concentrated almost exclusively in İstanbul. Few if any reside on their ancestral lands in Anatolia. The numbers alone reveal a dramatic, hundred-fold decrease: from 10 per cent to 0.09 per cent.

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The contemporary refusal by Turkish state and society to recognize the gravity and severity of Armenian losses makes this collective violence additionally traumatic. The official Turkish argument states that contemporaneous Armenian revolutionary activities led to a substantial loss of Turkish lives, making the destruction and suffering mutual. The Armenian diaspora also insists that the Ottoman destruction of the Armenians was intentional, constituting genocide. This contested, disparate remembrance of the past inhibits the acknowledgment of grief and suffering. As the wounds of the past fester, no healing can occur. As both sides insist on their own versions of past violence, no one can afford to let go of the past to start living in the present. Everyone remains trapped in their grief, constantly carrying the unbearable weight of the past on their shoulders. When the events whose meaning is symbolically associated with 24 April 1915 are studied more closely, it becomes evident that the losses on both sides were substantial. From 1878 onward, the dominant Turkish Muslim majority started to witness the painful dissolution of their empire. The series of setbacks they suffered from 1878 to 1912 as they speedily lost almost 80 per cent of their lands was then followed by a ruthless decade (1912–22) of continuous warfare during which hundreds of thousands of soldiers and civilians perished. The Turkish Republic founded in 1923 on the remains of the Ottoman Empire did not have a chance to come to terms with the trauma of this loss until recently. It could not, because of the security-driven international context of World War II (1938–45) and later the Cold War (1948–91). Turkish state and society have thus not had a chance until the last two decades to reflect on the trauma embedded in their past. This passage of time has also made it more difficult to confront the continued collective violence embedded within the past. Any attempts to engage with such cases of violence, such as the one committed against the Armenians in 1915, immediately conjures for Turkish state and society memories of their own suffering. They therefore immediately compare any suffering with what they have experienced, only to conclude that what they went through had to be infinitely worse than what others – like the Armenians – suffered. Their inability to come to terms with their own pain has prevented them from acknowledging the suffering of ‘others’. Yet what the Armenians lost was monumental. The Armenian population that had lived on its ancestral lands for many millennia was decimated. Hundreds of thousands died during the deportations that

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commenced in 1915. The Armenians who somehow survived the trauma of 1915 had to start their lives anew elsewhere in the world. What made this collective violence especially tragic was that, unlike the case with the dominant Muslim Turkish majority, the Armenians did not for the most part perish in wars or as a consequence of a disintegrating empire. Instead, the predominantly innocent Armenian subjects of the Ottoman Empire were uprooted and destroyed by their own government, the government that should have been there to protect them in the first place. They were annihilated during a process that succeeded in creating a fatherland for the Turks at their expense. This traumatic loss was made worse as the newly founded Turkish Republic failed to fully integrate its remaining Armenian minority as Turkish citizens with equal rights. The Republic staunchly refused to acknowledge the death and destruction that had been brought upon the Armenians during its nation-building process. How can reconciliation and eventual peace ever be possible, given the polarized stand of the Turkish state and society on the one side and the diasporic Armenian community on the other? Grief is a basic reaction to loss. Humans can assimilate traumatic loss only through commemorations, as these facilitate the open expression of grief. Sigmund Freud states that the work of mourning is a process that enables humans to reorganize their internal world after bereavement.3 Emotional healing can take place only after such reorganization. Bronislaw Malinowski likewise identifies funeral rites and ceremonies as functions that ultimately reduce the tensions created in humans by death.4 More recent studies confirm the positive effects of commemorations in reducing grief.5 Mourning rituals and collective commemorations help reconnect humans to society and humanity at large, thus reaffirming their existence as well as their value and worth.6 As Maurice Halbwachs aptly notes, remembering the past in such a manner ethically enables humans to learn a moral lesson, to undertake a moral redefinition which makes it possible for them to go on living.7 Only as a consequence of such a grieving process can humans regain their emotional health, allowing space for all to live equitably in a democratic environment.8 Yet when collective memories of past suffering are contested or remain unacknowledged, they turn into collective traumas that destroy the moral fabric of humanity. Neil Smelser analyzes such traumas, noting that they are not solely defined by the gravity of what was experienced but also by the intensity of the remembrance and the reworking of the memory.9 In this conceptualization, the memory is transformed into a negative

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indelible event that starts to be perceived as threatening to the very existence of the social group in question. In the Turkish and Armenian cases, 24 April 1915 now signifies a collective trauma for both sides. It is primarily a collective trauma for the Armenian community because it represents the beginning of an act of destruction that has not yet reached closure. This closure has not been attained because the Turkish state and society resist acknowledging the inherent collective violence of 1915 – for which they are not guilty but certainly responsible. They are responsible because, by not acknowledging the trauma, they help sustain and enhance it. The date 24 April 1915 has likewise transformed into collective trauma for the Turkish state and society because of their increasing fear and anxiety that recognizing the inherent violence embedded in 24 April 1915 would ultimately destroy the Turkish nation-state. Every mention of that date brings up strong emotions where unaddressed memories of what was done to them in the past mix uncomfortably with what they might have done to others. This standoff only aggravates the collective traumas of both sides. Scholarly literature has recently started to analyze states and societies with such contested ‘difficult pasts’.10 Vinitzky-Seroussi notes that past collective traumas produce different commemorative outcomes through three processes: the particular influence of what she terms ‘agents of memory’, the specific salience of the past in the present, and the prevailing political climate.11 In the case of the Turks and the Armenians, these processes get played out in disparate ways. The Turkish state has attempted to contain commemorations by assigning ‘official scholars’ as the agents of this particular traumatic memory. These official scholars conjure interpretations of the past that ironically portray the dominant Muslim Turkish majority as the innocent victims and the victimized Armenian minority as the ultimate perpetrators. Yet this state assignment has recently begun to be challenged by some Turkish public intellectuals. In 2008, these intellectuals took an ethical stand by instigating an apology campaign. They started a signature campaign in Turkey recognizing the pain and suffering of the Armenians in their past and apologizing for it.12 Yet in their endeavor, they were met with resistance by large segments of both Turkish state and society. Underscoring the salience of the past in present-day Turkey has been and still is extremely challenging because of the founding principles of the Republic. Its founder Mustafa Kemal Atatürk commanded the Turkish nation not to focus on the past, but rather to concentrate on the present with the intention of securing its

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future. Such a founding principle was undoubtedly necessary in forging a new nation-state in 1923, but it has becomes increasingly difficult to sustain as the Republic approaches its centennial. The end of the Cold War and the possibility of Turkey’s EU membership necessitate self-reflection and a redefinition of its principles. This is an obligatory step that must be taken for further democratization. While there are now social actors like the public intellectuals mentioned above who are willing to undertake such an endeavor, the official Turkish state ideology as well as some national elements are still resistant. Within the Armenian community, the fragmentation and subsequent dispersion throughout the world in the aftermath of the 1915 collective violence have produced multiple agents of memory. Initially, various Armenian diaspora organizations assumed disparate leadership roles in remembering their painful past. Many international human rights organizations and nation-states also supported them in their endeavor. During the last few decades, the Republic of Armenia (established in 1991) has emerged as a new political actor intent on assuming a central role. Hence the Armenian collective trauma suffers from having multiple agents of memory that often do not act in concert with each other. Still, unlike the Turkish case, the salience of the past on the Armenians’ present is overwhelming. It is as if the past dictates both the present and the future of the Armenian community. Different Armenian groups and organizations continue to negotiate this intense past in different ways. In most Diaspora Armenian communities, the trauma of 1915 has turned into a significant mark of collective identity. The Armenian Republic charts a more nuanced approach to 1915 as it attempts to negotiate it alongside other national interests and priorities. The prevailing political climate reveals the inherent tension between the various Armenian diasporas and the Armenian Republic. While the Armenian Republic has recently attempted to reestablish diplomatic relations with the Turkish Republic, many Armenian diasporas have taken a stand resisting any such attempt. How can the two sides overcome such a difficult contested past to establish peace one day? This chapter proposes that scholars be assigned as the agents of memory, for only scholars can construct a common past for the two sides. They can acknowledge the past in a manner that gives voice to both the Turks and the Armenians, that threads historical events in such a way as to enable the two sides to recognize their embedded traumas as mutual. The first step in such an endeavor would be the

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recognition and redefinition of 24 April 1915 as a day of remembrance for Turks and Armenians. It is a truism that the Turks and Armenians have arrived at the present as a consequence of very different historical conditions. The life stories of the Armenian ancestors have been filled with exile and death. They had to survive, persevere and continue living against all odds; in the process they were forced to build new lives for themselves from scratch in environments entirely foreign to them. The Turkish ancestors had to build a Republic out of the disintegrating empire at great cost to themselves and those around them. In doing so, they did not fully acknowledge the past they shared with others. They did not fully realize that a peaceful and democratic present and future would become possible only if Turkish state and society recognized, understood and included the voices of all those who gave – and still give – meaning to it. The voices of those who perished in 1915 are among the voices that need to be heard. What unites them both is that they come from the same land. That land has indelibly shaped them, imbuing them with common experiences, memories, lifestyles and everyday practices. Once they recognize and start building upon their commonalities, they will be able to move on to engaging in a joint act of mourning for the loss of the many so senselessly torn from their common homeland. Both sides seek and respect knowledge. Sharing such knowledge with the guidance of scholars could enable them to overcome their differences, creating a common body of knowledge for the eventual betterment of all. This time around, unlike 1915, such betterment would not come for one community at the expense of the other. This time, it will occur for the benefit of all. In line with such a vision, this chapter proposes to unite all in mourning the loss of the Armenian intellectuals destroyed on 24 April 1915. It assumes that narrating the life stories of these intellectuals would make it possible for both the Turks and the Armenians to realize that what was lost then was mutual. These intellectuals would have contributed to making their lands a better place. Their loss translates into vanished knowledge that would have nurtured and improved both the Turkish and the Armenian communities. It is the loss of that knowledge that both could unite to mourn on 24 April. What follows are the life stories of twelve of those hundreds of Armenian intellectuals who lost their lives on 24 April 1915.13 Let it be remembered that both communities unite to mourn the loss of professor, author and journalist Yervant Çavuşyan (1866–1915).14 Born in İstanbul, Çavuşyan taught at the Imperial School of Industry

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(Mekteb-i Sanayi) and the Imperial School of Fine Arts (Sanayi-i Nefise Mektebi). He was also the publisher of the Armenian newspaper Sound of the Motherland [Tzayn Hayrenyats]. Çavuşyan wrote a scientific book in Ottoman Turkish on the mechanical sciences that was titled Nautical Engineering [Çarkçılık]. During the Armenian deportations, he died of disease around 1915 in Hamman between Meskene and Deyr-i Zor at the age of 49. Let it therefore be remembered that both communities unite to mourn the loss of professor, author and journalist Diran Kelekyan (1862–1915).15 In 1880, at the age of 18, Kelekyan went to Europe to attend the School of Commerce in Marseilles, France. While still a student there, he started to contribute articles to the Ottoman newspaper Manzume-i Efkar. Upon his return to the imperial capital, he worked at the same newspaper, eventually becoming its director of publications. In the meanwhile, Kelekyan also published a weekly Ottoman journal titled Cihan. He was very active in the publishing world, contributing articles to the Ottoman newspapers Ceride-i Şarkiye and Tarik. During 1884–86, Kelekyan served as the first translator of the Armenian Patriarchate as well as the translator, head columnist and editor-in-chief of the Ottoman newspaper Saadet owned by Hamid Vehbi. After the first Armenian massacres of 1894–96, Kelekyan again left for Europe and while there contributed articles to the journals Contemporary Review and Nineteenth Century as well as the newspapers Daily Mail and Daily Graphic. While in political exile, Kelekyan also went to Egypt where he took over the publication of the Journal du Caire and became the publishing director of the newspaper Bourse Egyptienne. In Cairo, Kelekyan published the newspaper Egyptienne Graphic for a year and then the biweekly Ottoman journal New Thought for two years. He wrote articles under the pseudonyms ‘Dal-Kef’, ‘Bedri Kamil’ and ‘İ. Nadir.’ Having remained in political exile in Paris and Egypt during the reign of sultan Abdülhamid II, Kelekyan returned after the Young Turk Revolution of 1908 with great hopes of finally establishing the constitutional rule all the intellectuals had so long yearned for. One of his first endeavors was to become the editor-in-chief of the Sabah newspaper. Kelekyan was also appointed secretary to the Imperial Treasury (Hazine-i Hassa). In 1909, he started to teach political history to the upper classes of the Imperial School of Public Administration (Mekteb-i Mülkiye) thus becoming involved in higher education. It was around the same time that he also founded, along with others, the Armenian Constitutional Populist Party (Ermeni Meşrutiyet Halkçı Partisi). This political interest

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led in 1911 to his election to represent Konya in the General Assembly of the Armenian Patriarchate. Among Kelekyan’s publications are Hayat [Life] (1913) comprising translated short stories and the textbook Tarih-i Siyasi-i Umumi [Political History] (1913). Also significant is the illustrated Turkish–French dictionary Kamus-ı Fransevi [French Dictionary] that was eventually printed in 1928. During the 1915 deportations, Diran Kelekyan was killed in Sivas at the age of 50. Let it again be remembered that both communities unite to mourn Hagop and Toros Nazlıyan.16 The father, Toros Nazlıyan, was from Everek. He served as an Ottoman military doctor during the Balkan and First World Wars. During the 1915 deportations, he was arrested in Kayseri and died while still in prison. His son Hagop Nazlıyan was only a year-and-a-half old when he too perished from dysentery during the 1915 deportations near the city of Aleppo. Let it therefore be once again remembered that both communities unite to mourn lawyer, politician and author Krikor Zohrab (1861–1915).17 He was born and raised at the imperial capital, attending the Beşiktaş and Ortaköy Armenian community schools. Krikor Zohrab then went to the Imperial School of Galatasaray (Mekteb-i Sultani) and the Imperial School of Law (Darülfünun Hukuk Mektebi), graduating from the latter with the highest honors. Once he started to practice as a lawyer, he was arrested a few times for protesting against the autocratic regime of Sultan Abdülhamid II. In 1906, Zohrab too had to leave for Europe. He stayed abroad for two years until the Young Turk revolution when he joyously returned to the imperial capital. Upon his return, Zohrab became a professor of criminal law at his alma mater, the Imperial School. During the same period, Zohrab was elected İstanbul deputy to the Ottoman parliament for three terms. At the parliament, he became the first Ottoman socialist deputy to defend women’s rights. Zohrab’s prolific output included Ottoman academic titles such as Hukuk-u Ceza Mürur-ı Zamanları [Issue of Limitations in Criminal Law] (1866), and political titles such as Siyasi Nutuklar [Political Speeches] (1908). He also wrote novels and short stories in Armenian. His 22-volume literary output has been translated into 26 languages. A follower of the realist literary style, Zohrab’s themes ranged from love adventures to human poverty to the drama of life. In all, Zohrab was a keen observer of life’s frailties. Zohrab was arrested in 1915 while still serving as a deputy at the parliament. He was forcefully deported to the east, tried there on trumped-up charges, and murdered near Urfa on the way to trial at the age of 54.

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Let it therefore be remembered that both communities unite to mourn Nazaret Dağarvaryan (1862–1915)18 who was a physician and a politician. He had received an education in agriculture and medicine to become the director of the Armenian Surp Pırgiç Hospital. Dağarvaryan was then elected to the Ottoman Parliament as the deputy from Sivas, only to be murdered during the 1915 deportations at the age of 53. Let it be remembered once again that both communities unite to mourn Rupen Sevag Çilingiryan (1885–1915),19 physician, author and poet. Çilingiryan first attended the Azkanazyan School at Silivri and then the American and Berberyan Schools, all at the capital. His first poem ‘Words of Separation’ was published in 1905 in the Masis journal. Many of his poems in Armenian were scattered through the Armenian publications of the time such as Masis, Püzantion, Vosdan, Aravelyan Mamul, Luys, Surhantag, Keğuni, Pazmaveb, Arakadz, Veradzinunt, Amenuyn Daretsuytsı, and Amenun Darekirkı. Although Çilingiryan followed the Armenian neoromantic literary movement, he also wrote on realistic themes such as social inequality, nature, love and rebellion. He then went to Switzerland for his higher education, graduating in 1911 from the Lausanne University Medical School. Çilingiryan worked at the Swiss hospitals until 1915. It was unfortunate that he decided to return to İstanbul in 1915 as he became yet another Armenian intellectual to lose his life during the deportations at the age of 30. Let it be remembered that both communities unite to mourn Yervant Sırmakeşhanlıyan [Yeruhan] (1870–1915),20 an educator, writer, translator and journalist. After attending the Nercessian and Getronagan schools in İstanbul, Yeruhan worked during 1891–96 at the Armenian Aravelk and Masis newspapers. The novels he published in these newspapers were fine examples of the Western Armenian realist literary style. The violent repercussions of the 1896 Ottoman Bank raid by Armenian revolutionaries, when thousands of Armenian subjects were murdered in the streets of the imperial capital, led Yeruhan to move first to Bulgaria and then eight years later to Egypt. While in exile, Yeruhan continued to write and practice journalism. His articles describing the lives of the Armenian refugees were also published in the Püzantion newspaper in İstanbul. Likewise in 1900, his novel Refugees and his short stories were published in the Şavig journal. Particularly in his novel Amira’s Daughter, Yeruhan criticized the decadent customs of the İstanbul Armenian bourgeoisie and instead identified with the working class. Eventually five of his novels were published. Yeruhan also taught at various Armenian

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schools in Varna, Alexandria and Cairo before returning to the imperial capital full of hope at the proclamation of the constitution in 1908. At the capital, he first joined the Aravelk newspaper and taught at the Getronagan High School. After 1913, he moved to teach at the Kharpert Armenian School to be closer to the working classes with whom he closely identified. In 1915, Yeruhan was at the capital when he was arrested along with many other Armenians intellectuals and, like them, he lost his life during the ensuing deportation at the age of 45. Let us remember that both communities unite to mourn the loss of poet Armen Dorian (1892–1915).21 Dorian’s real name was Hraçya Sürenyan. Born in Sivas, he finished the Pangaltı Mıkhitarist School in İstanbul in 1911 to then traveled to Paris to attend and graduate from the Sorbonne University. While there in 1913, along with French poets, Dorian founded the pantheism school. He wrote all his poems in French, arriving in İstanbul in 1914 only to lose his life in Anatolia during the deportations at the age of 23. Let it be remembered that both communities unite to mourn the loss of journalist, poet and writer Rupen Zartanyan (1874–1915).22 Born in Siverek, Zartaryan was initially educated in Harput/Kherpert. He later taught at the Meğri Getronagan School, only to be arrested in 1904 due to his political activities. The stories that Zartanyan had sent about village life were published at various Armenian newspapers. Upon his release in 1905, he went and settled in Plovdiv in Bulgaria and published the Razmig newspaper. Returning to İstanbul after the promulgation of the constitution in 1908, Zartanyan then started to bring out the Azadamard newspaper in 1909. He also began to have his stories and novels printed, first at the imperial capital İstanbul in 1910 and later in Paris in French in 1912. Many of his stories were also translated into Russian and Turkish. Zartanyan himself translated the works of Victor Hugo, Maxim Gorki, Anatole France, Oscar Wilde and many other prominent contemporaneous writers. He prepared Armenian textbooks for third through sixth grades. During the execution of the 1915 deportation decree, Zartanyan perished en route along with other Armenian intellectuals at the age of 41. Let us remember once again that both communities unite to mourn Mihran Ağasyan (1854–1916),23 a poet and musician. He was born in Edirne but spent most of his life at the capital. All his work including his many poems, songs and tombstone inscriptions disappeared during his arrest and subsequent deportation. The only exceptions are the

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elegant elegy he wrote for the Ottoman palace physician Dr. Hovhannes Katipyan that was printed in a newspaper, and his eighty-quatrain-long epic poem on the 1877–78 Ottoman Russian war, of which a friend had kept a copy. In 1916, Mihran Ağasyan perished at Haman near Deyr-i Zor in Syria at the age of 62. Let it therefore be remembered that both communities unite to mourn poet and educator Hovhannes Kımpetyan (1894–1915).24 Born in Sivas, Kımpetyan was the son of the Armenian folk poet (Ashuk) Pesendi. He was educated at the Nercessian College in Tbilisi, and attended the German College in Constanta, Romania to eventually graduate in 1913 from the Getronagan School in İstanbul. In 1910, he had published at the capital a book of Armenian poetry titled Sparks [Gaydzgılduk]. Even though he entered the Imperial School of Law (Darülfünun Hukuk Mektebi), his education was interrupted. Kımpetyan instead became a teacher at the Bezciyan School in Kumkapı. It was then that he was arrested in 1915 only to perish during the deportations in Resülayn at the age of 21. Let it therefore be remembered once again that both communities unite to mourn Levon Larents Kirişçiyan (1882–1915),25 a poet, translator, author and professor. Born in Samatya, Kirişçiyan completed his education at the American Robert College. While still a student there, he published the Armenian newspaper Zepur [Meltem/Offshore Breeze] with Hrand Esayan for three years. During the same time, Kirişçiyan also directed the publication of the Armenian Miutyun [Birlik/Unity] newspaper. After graduating from Robert College in 1902, Kirişçiyan worked at the Püzantion [Bizans/Byzantine] newspaper. When appointed the director of the Getronagan High School in Adapazarı, he taught courses on the ‘History of Civilization’. During his residence at Adapazarı, Kirişçiyan also served as the correspondent for the Armenian newspaper Azad Pem [Serbest Kürsü/Free Speech] in Alexandria. It was the combination of the pressures of the autocratic regime of Sultan Abdülhamid II and the 1905 Armenian massacres that forced Kirişçiyan into exile. He traveled to Boston, United States the same year and published, while there, the newspaper Tsayn Hayrenyats [Yurt Sesi/Voice of the Homeland]. The 1908 proclamation of the Constitution led Kirişçiyan to return to İstanbul where he was the lead columnist of the same Tsayn Hayrenyats newspaper that had now started to be published at the capital as a weekly. While at the capital, Kirişçiyan also directed the Murc [Çekiç/Hammer] newspaper. While his Armenian poems were published in Tblisi under the title Trakhdi Yerker [Cennet Şarkıları/Songs from Heaven], Kirişçiyan also

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wrote a novel titled Anedzk [Beddua/Curse]. Probably one of his most significant accomplishments was his 1911 translation of the Qur’an from French into Armenian. It was only a few years before he too was deported in 1915 along with many other prominent Armenian intellectuals to lose his life at the age of 33. The lives recounted here are among the many thousands of Armenian intellectuals who perished. Remembering them individually reveals the enormity of the loss both the Armenians and the Turks suffered as these people ceased to contribute to the world around them. It is especially traumatic when one considers how much they had managed to accomplish in their abbreviated lives. Their life stories also reveal the absurdity of the 1915 deportation order: it literally destroyed the best and the brightest of an empire. The senseless nationalist policies of the Committee of Union and Progress not only ruined the Ottoman Empire but also set back the progress of the peoples of Anatolia for at least a century. The Turkish Republic also severely suffered from the loss of such productive, skilled and highly educated subjects. It took the Anatolian cities and towns at least a century to once again reach the level of progress they had attained before 1915.26 It is time that Turkish state and society and the Armenian communities unite to remember and mourn the enormity of this loss. Let it therefore be remembered that both communities mourn all these Armenian intellectuals because through their loss the lives of both communities have become much poorer today. As both communities remember them together, as they both recall the lives of these intellectuals, as they remember and celebrate their achievements, their memories and the memories of many other intellectuals who perished 24 April 1915 will continue to live within us all. Furthermore, as their memories are kept alive by both communities, they will grow as one, finally healing toward peace.

CHAPTER 7 IN SEARCH OF JUST TURKS IN THE COLLECTIVE VIOLENCE COMMITTED AGAINST THE ARMENIANS

‘Righteous people’ are those who value the principles of humanity above all else, risking their own lives to save the victims of systematic and intentional aggression. In the twentieth century, when imperialist and nationalist violence reached an all-time high, such selfless acts have been studied in depth because they offer a ray of hope for mankind. The scholarly discussion and the concept of the righteous have been shaped by the Judeo-Christian experience in Europe in general and the experience of the Holocaust in particular. For such a concept to have international relevance, however, it needs to include the experiences of those in other parts of the world and the context of other religions. This chapter undertakes such an attempt. It critically locates the concept of the righteous in the case of the 1915 systematic deportations and massacres of the Armenians in the Ottoman Empire. It focuses in particular on the deeds of one such righteous Muslim Turk, Hüseyin Nesimi, who attempted to help the deported and massacred Armenians at the expense of his life. The analysis thus brings in the Muslim experience and proposes that the concept of the righteous be expanded to include that of the ‘just people’ based on the Islamic notion of adalah (justice). It argues that through this slight conceptual enlargement the Muslim experience can enter this ethical discussion about moral behavior undertaken for the sake of humanity. In addition, it emphasizes that the determination of who such just people

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are should not be made, as they traditionally have been, by states, but rather by an independent international body of scholars. Historical Emergence of the ‘Righteous People’ The seventeenth- and eighteenth-century European Enlightenment has been identified by most scholars as the era during which all the social sciences practiced today were initially established.1 Indeed, it was first with the European Renaissance and then with the Enlightenment that the world lost its sacred roots for the first time. It was then that humans decided that it was the individual rather than God who gave shape to the way one lived. The subsequent systematic study of the social, political, economic and psychological rules and principles of human organization formed the bases of the various social science disciplines. Social scientific endeavor based on rationality thus replaced the sacred, God-given order human existence had been predicated upon until then. The subsequent human mastery over the environment through technology and the subsequent accumulation of material resources created the industrial revolution. The search for new markets brought about wars among the European powers and their imperialist expansion throughout the globe. The concomitant debates on the distribution of these newly accumulated resources were shaped by the ideological revolution of democratization. The French Revolution of liberty, equality and fraternity redefined the relationship between the ruler and his subjects. It produced the social contract between the state and its citizens. The concepts of liberty and equality initially helped minimize the divides that existed among the subjects along religious, ethnic and racial lines. Predicated on the concept of universal human rights, all newly emerging citizens acquired equal rights and responsibilities in relation to the state. Yet it was then that the concept of fraternity – which was supposed to signify the common humanity uniting all peoples – began to wreak havoc. Not only did brotherhood remain confined to men, but the imagined community of citizens it generated helped foster the ideology of nationalism.2 The vision of fraternity quickly became exclusionary, including in the new political community certain social groups at the expense of others. Hence religious, ethnic and racial divides were renegotiated to often violently exclude those judged as not belonging to the new imagined community. The state that had signed the social contract with its new citizens assumed a crucial role in this endeavor. The interests of the state started to become sacralized at

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the expense of humanity.3 A case in point is the violence in the French Revolution in general and the terror of the Jacobin Republic 1793–94 in particular. This dark side of freedom, liberty and reason revealed all that could not be successfully negotiated as ethnos replaced demos.4 A social order based on sacred principles was thus replaced by one negotiated by the state and predicated instead on rational principles. Even though the execution of these principles should have been universal, it instead favored an imagined national community at the expense of others. The ensuing human destruction by nationalism eventually reached such a pitch that the wars of the twentieth century ended up being the bloodiest in human history. In Europe, during World War II, the Jewish community suffered the most from these new social forces as the Nazis destroyed six and a half million Jews. The minority communities of Jews that had been mostly confined to urban centers throughout Europe initially benefited from the European Enlightenment and the ideas of liberty and equality. They became full citizens in the newly forming republics. However, as signaled by the Dreyfus affair in France before World War I and, of course, as indicated by the tragedy of the Holocaust in Germany during World War II, whether the Jews ever were a part of the fraternity remained highly questionable. With the Holocaust, the idea of progress that had been the crowning glory of the Enlightenment and that had motivated the Europeans to civilize the entire world after their own image suddenly became very problematic. The West lost its innocence and its unconditional belief and trust in science, technology, and in its ability to better itself and others.5 The lesson of the twentieth century in general and the Holocaust in particular was that even though humans had established control over nature, they had failed to contain their capacity for destroying one another. Why had it not been possible for the Western world that claimed to be the center of civilization to overcome this self-destructive streak? This ethical problem occupied a prominent place in the ensuing scholarly discourse. Even though humans had taken control of their own destinies, they morally failed in creating a social order that benefited all of humanity. It was therefore no accident that with the advent of the twenty-first century, especially in the West, the search for peace for all humanity became an all-consuming task. Leaders sought for a new world order that could somehow leave behind the twentieth-century heritage of nationstates, two World Wars, and the bloodiest era in human history.6 As the end of the Cold War reduced international tensions, world peace became the primary twenty-first century aspiration.

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The theoretical framework of the narrative outlined above was developed by the Frankfurt School, which focused exclusively in identifying the societal elements and processes that produced the destruction embodied in the Holocaust. In so doing, the School identified the elements of the authoritarian personality and the dynamics of fascism, and generated from these the methodology of aggressive criticism.7 It was through this methodology that Jürgen Habermas was able to challenge the valueneutrality of science and technology as well as highlight the connection between knowledge and human interests.8 Habermas contended that the knowledge generated by the scientific method did not naturally result in human salvation but, unless guided by moral and ethical considerations, could just as easily be manipulated to lead to human destruction. Ironically, it seemed that when Enlightenment science and rationality replaced the sacred, it underestimated the significance of religious ethics and morality in bringing order to society. It was the moral void created by the inability of Enlightened science/reason/rule of law to fulfill the ethical functions of religion/belief/divine rule that led individuals to abuse science and the rule of law to destroy one another. The possibility of the recurrence of other holocausts led the Frankfurt school to raise the question of how to formulate the elements of a new secular ethical order. The Frankfurt School and the critical theory it generated had already revealed how powerful interests, especially those of the state, shaped knowledge. Thinkers like Michel de Certeau, James C. Scott and others proceeded further to identify how the people had managed against all odds to resist such hegemonic forces and how they had held been able to do so by holding on to certain ethical beliefs.9 It is within this context that the idea of ethics in general and that of righteous people – those who practice moral behavior extending beyond the narrow confines of state-defined interests – became significant. Empirically, the most pertinent context was the case of the Holocaust. The code of ethics of the righteous people had enabled them to resist the German state forces of fascism by aiding the Jews during the Holocaust. As such, this code of ethics had to be studied in depth because it promised salvation for all of humankind. It was ironic, however, that the secular inheritors of the Enlightenment could not find a term other than ‘the righteous’ to refer to such people. After all, the term originated in the Judeo-Christian religious tradition, identifying those who abided by a set of presumably correct religious principles, principles that the Enlightenment project had tried so hard to replace with secular, rational

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ones. This ironic use of a religious concept to comprehend and resist the acts of violence produced by Western modernity predicated on secularism needs to be further problematized. The concept at least has to shed its religious roots and expand to provide a new vision that includes all of humanity. In undertaking such an endeavor, the theoretical insights provided by Subaltern studies are crucial. Subaltern studies emerged in the Indian subcontinent at the end of the twentieth century with the intent to problematize and ultimately lift the ideological hegemony of the British over Indian history.10 Its main argument was predicated on the observation that even though India had been decolonized, knowledge about India was still epistemologically colonized. A group of scholars started to argue that uncovering the power relations embedded within contemporaneous historical texts would eventually unravel this British hegemony. These insights were then applied to European history. In particular, Dipesh Chakrabarty argued that the history of Europe in general and the Enlightenment in particular had always narrated events by giving primacy to the role of Europe at the expense of the rest of the world. This skewed narrative could only be corrected by ‘provincializing’ the role of Europe as a social actor in world events.11 When this Subaltern analysis is applied to the concept of the righteous people, it draws attention to how the term as it is currently defined privileges the European Judeo-Christian experience to the detriment of the experiences of the rest of the world. It reveals how the Judeo-Christian dominance over the world during the last few centuries has framed all scholarly discussion. This observation becomes especially significant in analyzing instances of collective violence like the 1915 deportation and massacres of Armenians. The Armenian case is especially pertinent because it involves, in addition to Christianity, another major monotheistic religion: Islam. The ‘Righteous People’ and the Armenian Case It is noteworthy that the massacres of the Armenians in 1915 were neither a part of the historical narrative of the European Enlightenment nor a part of its subsequent discontents as witnessed by the Holocaust. The reasons for this exclusion of the Armenian case from European history were temporal and epistemological as well as ontological. Temporally, what happened to the Armenians in 1915 obviously preceded the Holocaust by

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more than two decades. It pointed to an earlier period when the collective violence embedded in the new secular world order had not yet been fully identified and articulated. Epistemologically, as Edward Said has so vividly demonstrated, the European boundaries of the civilized world excluded the Middle East.12 The Ottoman Empire in general and the governing elite of Young Turks in particular were considered by Western Europe a part of the ‘uncivilized’ East. As such, they were not thought capable of abiding by the ‘civilized’ rules and principles of European modernity. This was assumed to be the case even though all the Western European leaders of the time should at least have been factually aware that not only were the Young Turkish perpetrators of the crimes against the Armenians among the most educated people of the Ottoman Empire, but they all had received a Western-style education. Almost all of them had had instruction in at least one Western language. Prior to assuming power in 1908, many had spent years in exile in Paris, Berlin or London. In addition, of these leaders, the most notorious perpetrators – among them Dr. Nazım, Dr. Bahaeddin Şakir and Dr. Mehmet Şahingiray – were, as their titles indicate, trained as physicians. That these leaders executed such violence based on the secular knowledge they had acquired in the West was overlooked. The violent actions of the Young Turk members of the Committee of the Union and Progress (hereafter CUP) against the Armenian subjects of their own empire were actually the first public display in human (and European) history of the dark underbelly of the Enlightenment. As such, they demonstrated what happened when the new secular Enlightenment principle of the sacredness of the state gained priority over the primacy of human life. In legitimating their acts of collective violence, the CUP members resorted to proto-nationalist principles of exclusion they had learned as a consequence of their Western-inspired education. Yet Western Europe was not ready to include this first massacre of modernity in its historical narrative. It did not because it had epistemologically excluded the Ottoman Empire from the boundaries of its civilized world. This epistemological exclusion also transformed into an ontological one, as what occurred in the Ottoman Empire was interpreted as a ‘barbarous’ act, one that was totally inexplicable according to the premises and principles of the civilized and enlightened Western world. It was this reluctance on the part of Western Europe to see, recognize and identify what happened to the Armenians in the Ottoman Empire as the first instance of the dark side of the Enlightenment that ultimately led to their failure to prevent the occurrence of the Holocaust two decades later.

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This narrative exclusion of the Armenian case from the European Enlightenment is further complicated when one attempts to analyze the concept of the righteous people within this particular context. What has enabled the concept of the righteous people to acquire such empirical and ethical relevance is the fact that the world community is in agreement over its parameters. That is, all parties acknowledge that the Nazi collective violence was wrong and the acts of resistance undertaken by the righteous justified. All parties also unite in agreement that such acts should be supported in the future. Yet the current political stand of the Turkish state in relation to the Armenian massacres directly contradicts the current stands of both the German state and the scholarly community in relation to the Holocaust. Not only does the Turkish state deny that what happened to the Armenians in 1915 was genocide, it does not even agree that the massacres were unjustified. The official Turkish stand constantly highlights that massacres were mutual, that Turks were also massacred by the Armenians. Such a stand attempts to contain and marginalize what happened to the Armenians; it employs every possible tool to advocate and sustain its particular standpoint. The Turkish state has promulgated laws to support this position. According to the current Turkish penal code, it is actually legally actionable to promote the view that what occurred in 1915 was genocide. The Turkish state assumes that such a view insults Turkishness, thus posing a threat to its existence and integrity. Within such a context, it becomes very difficult and dangerous to collect documents and oral histories about such righteous people who helped the Armenians and to thus identify the families of such individuals still living in Turkey today. Hence the concept of the righteous people assumes an underlying consensus that does not exist in contemporary Turkey. Still, if one proceeds to actually identify such righteous people, one finds that there has been very little systematic research on the topic.13 The only exceptions are the occasional mention of such names in the accounts of the Armenian survivors or in some Turkish memoirs.14 The analysis of the life stories of those who protected the Armenians reveal that almost all took a stand against the CUP members who perpetrated the crimes against the Armenians in 1915. Yet the CUP ideology that legitimated such crimes has been dominant not only during the Ottoman period but also throughout the ensuing Republican era. Even though the CUP was briefly out of power during the period 1918–22, the proto-nationalist ideology it advocated was ultimately sustained by both the leaders of the Turkish Independence Struggle (who were mostly former members of the CUP) and by the Turkish

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Republic that these leaders subsequently founded.15 Hence the CUP ideology that perpetrated the crimes against the Armenians– and that therefore silenced and often punished those who helped the Armenians– has reproduced itself in Turkey to this day. As a consequence, not only have the actions of ‘the righteous people’ who opposed the CUP and protected the Armenians in 1915 remained unacknowledged and unrewarded in Turkey, but such people have actually been silenced either by death, imprisonment, exile or withdrawal from public life. Actually, the official Turkish state devised its own definition of the ‘righteous people’. It instead rewarded the perpetrators of the massacres, on the nationalist grounds that such people had placed the interests of the state above the preservation of the lives of the Armenians. Such people were granted significant positions within the elite cadres of the state or, if they had died, the state provided financial support for their family members. For instance, in 1927, the Turkish National Assembly decided to allocate income to the families of prominent perpetrators, including doctors Bahaeddin Şakir and Mehmet Şahingiray mentioned above.16 They were pointedly assigned incomes accruing from properties unwillingly abandoned by deported and massacred Armenians. This decision by the Turkish state underscores the significance of the composition of the reference group actually determining the righteous ones. When it is the state that prioritizes its own political interests above all else in making that choice, the ones who are identified as righteous certainly do not correspond to those defined as such in accordance with the humanitarian interests implied by the concept. In fact, the Turkish state currently interprets as righteous those who took a stand against and punished the righteous people. This Turkish official position makes it all the more crucial to study how and why certain people took a stand against the CUP and what fate awaited them as a consequence. This chapter analyzes contemporaneous Turkish memoirs to study the particular case of one such person, Hüseyin Nesimi. Even though it is only one case, it aims to pave the way for similar research that will reveal many more truly righteous people who challenged the commands of the state. The Case of Hüseyin Nesimi First a brief sketch of the historical events of 1915 is in order. The nineteenth century witnessed the imperialist expansion of Europe at the

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expense of an Ottoman Empire structurally unable to meet the challenges presented by the rising West. The most significant internal indication of this inability was the Ottoman failure to bring equality to all its subjects regardless of their religion. The Ottoman social structure was initially based on Islamic legal principles that favored Muslims over non-Muslims, who had minority status as self-governing communities known as millets. Until the seventeenth century, such an arrangement had generally been satisfactory for both the Muslims and the minorities. After the advent of Enlightenment ideas and the emergence of the concept of citizenship, however, all the subjects of empires started to aspire to equality regardless of their religion. Of the three non-Muslim minorities – the Greek Rums, Armenians and Jews – those residing in the Balkans were eventually able to acquire their political rights with the establishment of first the Greek state and later the Serbian, Romanian and Bulgarian states. The Jews started to define Palestine as their homeland and purchase settlements there. As for the Armenians, their homeland was much closer to the capital of the Ottoman Empire in Constantinople, and they were more scattered throughout Anatolia in the eastern regions around Van and the southeastern regions around Cilicia. Their transformation from subjecthood to citizenship therefore followed a more checkered path. Most Armenians diligently worked with the Ottoman state to actualize social, political and economic reforms that would benefit all Ottomans. Some, however, eventually joined Armenian revolutionary parties that advocated more violent means of armed rebellion. Even though different parties had disparate agendas, the Ottoman state took notice of those groups that aspired to achieve independence through forcing Western intervention in the affairs of the Ottoman Empire. Even though the Ottoman Empire did indeed undertake a series of reforms and the Armenians participated in Ottoman government until the very end, ultimately the attempts to improve the conditions of rural and small-town Armenian subjects or to erase their unequal status within the Ottoman state failed. The eve of World War I witnessed the polarization of communal relations due to the advent of the ideology of nationalism. The reformminded Committee of Union and Progress intervened in 1908 to replace the autocratic rule of the Sultan predicated on religion with constitutional rule based on law and reason. Yet it proved extremely difficult to get either the subjects or the officials themselves to abide by the newly established laws. As country after country declared war against the Ottoman

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Empire, the CUP officials had to resort more and more to violence to sustain order in society. This polarization through war and violence led in 1913 to a coup as a radical faction of military-minded officials within the CUP assumed direct power, thereby creating a very dangerous political context in the empire. It was this proto-nationalist group in power that first defined as their top priority and sacred duty the preservation at all costs of their own power in general and the Ottoman state in particular. Such a definition led them to view all activities relating to imperial reforms and especially the seeking of assistance from the Great Powers in executing those reforms as major threats and treasonous acts. The Armenian political parties and communal leadership that had asked for the intervention of the Great Powers to actualize these reforms were viewed as threatening the wellbeing of the Ottoman Empire. The CUP government gradually came to consider as part of this threat all Armenian civilians living peacefully throughout Anatolia regardless of their age or sex. All were now perceived as ‘potential threats’ that had to be removed and replaced by ‘safe’ populations of Turkish Muslims. The number of Turkish Muslim refugees surged during the gradual demise of the empire that commenced in 1878 with the major defeat the Ottoman army suffered at the hands of the Russians. It reached a peak after the 1912–13 Balkan wars, as hundreds of thousands fled in disarray into the mainland of the empire, fleeing massacres often with nothing other than the clothes on their backs. Of course, these refugees were favored because they belonged to the dominant Muslim Turkish majority and they would not seek Western intervention. On the contrary, the West did not at all intervene in their suffering as they were forcibly removed from the Balkans. The parameters of the conflict between the Armenians and the Turks were delineated during World War I, specifically in the years 1915–17. It was then that the CUP government took advantage of having France, Great Britain and Russia – traditional protectors of the non-Muslim minorities of the empire – as adversaries. Allied against these powers with the Germans, the CUP government decided to once and for all remove the minorities that had enabled these European powers to intervene in the empire. The presence of Turkish Muslim refugees from the Balkans who could replace the minorities provided added incentive in this endeavor. As a consequence, the Ottoman Turkish government orchestrated the deportation and eventual massacre of an estimated one million Armenians throughout Anatolia from what had been their

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ancestral lands. The government justified its actions as the removal of a perceived threat against the Ottoman state. Based on the testimonies of the victims, the eyewitness accounts of the foreigners, Western consular reports and other documentation, the world community of scholars has eventually identified and termed what happened to the Armenians as genocide. It is within this larger historical framework that the case of a righteous person who resisted the Armenian deportations and massacres will next be examined. Information about Hüseyin Nesimi emerges through the memoir of his son Abidin Nesimi, a critic of the CUP.17 The memoir first carefully traces the trail of violence that the CUP engaged in prior to the Armenian massacres, thus establishing the culture of collective violence within which they were immersed. Nesimi particularly notes that the Salonica faction within the Committee eliminated with brute force not only the spies of sultan Abdülhamid II, but also its own political opponents such as the journalists Hasan Fehmi, Ahmet Samim and Zeki Bey through assasinations planned and executed by a special secret organization within the CUP called the Teşkilat-ı Mahsusa.18 Indeed, this special organization was instrumental in executing the murders of prominent Armenian intellectuals and political leaders. For instance, Circassian Ahmed Bey, who was a significant member of the Salonica faction, was responsible ‘for the murders of the Ottoman Armenian deputies Vartkes, Zohrab and Dikran Kelekyan.’19 Later, with the onset of World War I, this Special Organization was divided into internal and external branches. While the external branch continued its activities outside the empire, the internal one secured safety and public order, directed local resistance movements on those Ottoman lands brought under enemy occupation, and conducted guerilla warfare. Nesimi specifically discusses one commander of this internal branch, Dr. Mehmet Reşit Şahingiray who becomes pertinent to this case.20 He notes that:21 Şahingiray had taken on the responsibility of organizing Eastern Anatolia and Iraq ... arranging as his strike force an itinerant Circassian gendarmerie. This trustworthy gendarmerie did not surpass twenty in number. The Circassians Harun, Davut (who worked during the advent of the Turkish Independence Struggle with Orbay who in turn was to later become the commander-in-chief of the Turkish military), and Ethem comprised Şahingiray’s cadre ... Şahingiray

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had also formulated a Kurdish militia organization and placed this militia under the command of the gendarmerie. This militia served in the 1915 deportation of the Armenians ... [Şahingiray] ... initially worked for the Special Organization in Iraq without a title to then became [sic] the governor of Diyarbekir, carrying out the Armenian deportation business. Many unsolved murders occurred when Şahingiray occupied these posts. Among those murdered were, in addition to the Basra governor Ferit, the Müntefek district governor Bedii Nuri, the deputy sub-district governor of Besiri, the journalist İsmail Mestan, also the sub-district governor of Lice, and Hüseyin Nesimi [who was the author’s father – FMG]. Hence Şahingiray who was both a CUP member and a member of the Special Organization first carried out covert operations in Iraq. He was then officially appointed the governor of Diyarbekir by Talat Pasha who was then the Interior Minister.22 Upon becoming governor, Şahingiray employed two militia forces consisting of Kurds and Circassians to engage in illegal activities. It was through these forces that he perpetrated the massacres against the Armenians. He also employed these forces to assassinate Ottoman state officials, including Hüseyin Nesimi who opposed his illegal actions against the Armenians. Nesimi then recounts in more detail how his father was murdered:23 My father’s murder is closely associated with the Armenian deportations. ... The Armenians had connections with the Western imperialist countries in accordance with their denominations. ... [Yet] Armenian interests did not aim to break down of the empire with the intent to establish an Armenian state ... [they rather focused on achieving] the transformation of the empire into a social federal state or, to put more clearly, into an Ottoman social state predicated on human rights and freedom. Hence, unlike the narrative of the radical CUP fragment that polarized and demonized all the Armenians as traitors intent on destroying the empire, Nesimi presents a more nuanced description of the spectrum of ideas and opinions within the Armenian community. He explicitly states that their intent was to work within the existing system, improving it to establish equal rights for all, including the Armenians.

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Nesimi continues to note the destructive role the Great Powers played in both the Armenian rebellions and the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire. Yet the two domestic political actors representing the dominant Muslim Turkish majority as well as the Armenian minority were unaware of this reality and instead literally helped to further this destructive agenda. The political actors Nesimi singles out are the CUP on the one hand and the Armenian Dashnaksutiun party on the other. Nesimi further articulates:24 The Unionists [who comprise the followers of the CUP ideology] have caused the destruction of the Ottoman Empire and the Dashnaks the annihilation of the Armenian nation ... the entire Ottoman populace was certainly not on the side of the Unionists, and the entire Armenian nation did not support the Dashnaks either. Actually, the majority of the Ottoman populace was against the Unionists and the Armenian nation against the Dashnaks. Yet it was impossible to perceive this reality and do something about it. [As a consequence] most of the Ottoman populace ended up becoming the victims of the Unionists and the Armenian nation of the Dashnaks. Nesimi points out how the polarized environment of the Great War enabled two radical factions, namely the CUP and the Dashnaks, to assume power over their constituencies. Even though it is significant to note the destructive intent of the Dashnaks, such a CUP–Dashnak comparison is not entirely appropriate because the two were not equal as political actors. The CUP government effectively controlled the entire Ottoman state apparatus, including its military. It therefore had much more power to inflict violence. The Dashnaks were more restricted in power; they merely acted as a party on behalf of a minority community with very limited means of organization and violence. After thus presenting the actors involved, Nesimi discusses the premise under which the CUP actually executed the Armenian deportations. What is significant in this context is the argument Nesimi makes against such an execution based on the premises of Islam. He notes:25 It would have been meaningless for the central committee of the Union and Progress to attempt massacres under the pretense of deportations. This was also not in accordance with the sharia.

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According to the sharia, only the murder of those who have erred in their loyalty to a legal state (that is, under the condition of nakz-ı ahd and nakz-ı vefa) is religiously permissible. The Prophet Muhammed had put the Jewish Ben-i Kureysh tribe to sword, but not touched the children and the innocent. As the Ottoman state had been established in accordance with the principles of the sharia and therefore had to act within these principles, only those who had erred in their loyalty should have been murdered and others should not have been killed, but deported instead. This view was defended by those mentioned above [including his father] who were murdered. The central committee of the Union and Progress initially shared the same view ... and had considered as a precaution the murder of only those who had erred in their loyalty ... Yet the Kurdish militia organization established by Şahingiray and others who carried out the deportation ... turned it into a massacre. And the central committee of the Union and Progress partially turned a blind eye to this. There were times when they did not do so as well ... such as the case of Vartkes, Kelekyan and others. ... In short, while the decision of the central committee was deportation, what the Kurdish militia and members of the Teşkilat-ı Mahsusa have done is mass slaughter. Nesimi’s argument is novel in that it for the first time reveals the reasons for the dissent within the dominant Muslim Turkish majority to what transpired in 1915. The official Turkish stand does not at all discuss this significant dissent within its ranks, dismissing such acts merely as instances of those few misguided people who unconsciously acted as pawns of the Great Powers. This dismissal is significant because it effectively invalidates the resistance of the righteous who did so in accordance to the religious premises of Islam. Also, the CUP was very secular in orientation and did not adhere to any religious principles in any of its actions. It had actually substituted belief in the divine with belief in the sacredness of the Ottoman state and did not heed what Islam dictated. The Turkish Republic that was also founded on secular principles likewise dismissed such religious resistance because it contradicted the secular framework promoted by the state. It is imperative to discuss the particularities of this religious dissent against the CUP practice of collective violence in detail because of its potential to open up an entirely new approach to this challenging

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problem. Nesimi’s argument is predicated on the Qur’anic example of the hadith regarding the Jewish Banu Qurayzah tribe that had rebelled against the Prophet. According to scholarly accounts, the Jewish tribes that lived in Madina at the time were the Banu Qaynuqa’, the Banu Nadir and Banu Qurayzah.26 According to the common law pronounced in the ’ahd (agreement) also known as the Madinah accord, all members of the community, Muslims and non-Muslims alike, had similar duties and rights.27 All had to participate in defending the city in the case of hostile attack but did not have to join military campaigns outside the boundaries of Madina. The first and initial conflict with the Banu Qaynuqa’ erupted over a fight at the market between a Muslim woman of rural origins and a Jewish moneychanger who teased her. The fight led to the Jews and Muslims killing each other and eventually resulted in the expulsion of the Banu Qaynuqa’ for not obeying the agreement’s stipulations. This move also enabled the prophet Muhammad to gain control over the market that had until then been controlled by the Banu Qaynuqa’. Problems created around two murders led the prophet to ask the Banu Nadir tribe to either leave or accept Islam; they chose the former option and left. Conflict with the last Jewish tribe, the Banu Qurayzah originated in the alliance they formed with Mecca against the prophet; the ensuing battle was won by the prophet’s forces. Tribal leader Sa’d b. Mu’adh was asked to conduct the arbitration. He demanded that all the male members of the Qurayzah who had reached maturity and were thus among the warriors be executed. The women, children and property of the tribe were to be captured and sold. Hence, even though non-Muslims initially lived in Medina on equal terms with the Muslims, this arrangement lasted only five years and ended with the subjugation of all three Jewish tribes. What sets the religiouos precedence here is the treatment of the Banu Qurayza members. Even though there was no doubt that they had betrayed the agreement by joining forces with the enemy, only the male members were punished by death. Others, including the women and children were not. Hence, in the Armenian case, the Ottoman state could justify death on two conditions: first, it had to be proven that the victims had committed treason second, even then only guilty males above a certain age could be executed. Even though the central committee of the CUP initially condemned to death only those ‘who had erred in their loyalty’, in practice all Armenians regardless of such proof were deported and massacred. To make matters worse, Nesimi argues that the militia also murdered Armenian women, children and the elderly who should

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not have been touched in the first place. It was because of this disregard of Islamic law that Nesimi’s father and other officials opposed the CUP practices. The issue of religion in the context of the Armenian deportations becomes relevant in two other instances.28 In one instant, Vahakn Dadrian focuses on the destructive use of Islam, analyzing how the ignorant Muslim populace was often incited against the Armenians. The local religious leaders defined the Armenians as ‘infidels’ and promised that by murdering them Muslims would get into heaven.29 Even though this certainly was the case at times, the discussion of Hüseyin Nesimi reveals how the use of Islam was more complex. There were also Muslims who refused to engage in such violent behavior because they either did not think there was religious legitimation for it or found the killing of another human being, regardless of who they were, unjust. Hence it becomes evident that the larger issue here is not the inherent destructiveness of Islam but rather the way Islam is interpreted differently by disparate people to justify distinct courses of action. This also necessitates a discussion of the Ottoman conception of Islamic justice, namely ‘adala in Arabic or adalet in Turkish. The term ‘righteous’ derives etymologically from the Hebrew root ‫( םיקדצ‬tseh’-dek), and the Greek word δικαιος (dikaios), that appear in the Old and New Testaments. As an attribute of God, it alludes to ethical conduct and its legal interpretation; acts of humans who aspire to the same attributes are then judged accordingly. Hence, not only is the origin of the concept located within the Judeo-Christian religious tradition, but it has acquired meaning throughout history in reference to the experiences of particular societies. As a consequence, when employed in the context of societies that are predominantly Muslim, the term ‘righteous’ does not have as much cultural and religious resonance as the corresponding term adalah meaning ‘justice’ and referring to the justice of God. The Sunni school argues that nothing is inherently good or evil, but God’s commandments define that which is good, with what is forbidden thus becoming evil. Those humans who follow God’s commandments are just. Once again, the term adalah acquires meaning through the experiences of Muslim societies. For the term ‘righteous’ to have international moral purchase, it needs to also include the Islamic conception of the ‘just’. Dr. Mehmed Şahingiray delegitimated his actions – and caused Hüseyin Nesimi to oppose him – by not acting justly, but instead practicing zulm (i.e., injustice, oppression).30 It is evident that in 1915,

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the interpretation of Islamic justice pitted Ottoman officials against each other. While Nesimi still abided by the traditional conception of justice as advocated by the sharia and advertised by the CUP, what the CUP covertly practiced and the Special Organization executed was another conception that defined not religion but instead state interests as just. In this instance, Ottoman state interests defined in nationalistic terms advocated the destruction of the Armenians. Indeed, this subversion of the Islamic concept of justice becomes more evident when one analyzes the subsequent treatment of Dr. Şahingiray in Turkish history. Dr. Şahingiray too wrote his own memoir later during the Armistice period while hiding from the Allied forces in İstanbul, who pursued him for the crimes he perpetrated against the Armenians.31 His memoir ends abruptly: he committed suicide when he realized he was about to be captured. For his actions, Dr. Şahingiray was lauded by the discourse of the Turkish state as a true nationalist. For instance, Hüsamettin Ertürk, another member of the Special Organization, who also wrote a memoir referred to Dr. Şahingiray as having achieved martyrdom by his act of suicide.32 Ertürk probably best captures the nationalist sentiment that still persists in Turkey today when he refers to all those perpetrators of crimes against the Armenians: ‘many [state-executed] hangings followed one another and the nation’s children died at the gallows. All these were the doings of the enemies of the Turk.’33 The sentiments of these alleged martyrs are captured by one such person who Ertürk recounts as shouting, ‘The Turkish nation will live forever and Islam will never decline. May God not harm the nation and the country; individuals die, the nation lives on. God willing, the Turkish nation will live into eternity.’ Hence, in both the Ottoman and later the Turkish contexts, the sacredness of the nation and the state overwhelms the conception of justice. Yet recent scholarship in Turkey conducted by those who work in accordance with standards set by the world scholarly community critically analyzes these ideological stands. In so doing, the scholars decipher and deconstruct the multiplicity of layers and sites of both the just and the unjust in Turkish society at large. And their work brings forth the other instance of the use of religion in the case of Armenian deportations. Recently, there has been a burgeoning literature on the fates of those Armenians who were not murdered but instead converted to Islam.34 The research indicates that mostly women and children were adopted by Muslim Turkish and Kurdish families. Interestingly enough, such

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behavior is more in line with the original Islamic example of the Banu Qurayza, where the women, children and property of the Jewish tribe were distributed among the Muslim populace. Even though what then ensued in that ancient case is not well known, the Armenian case provides some significant insights. As their identities were redefined through religious conversion, these Armenians underwent not a physical death but instead a social one.35 Even though such converted Armenians initially hid their identities, this concealment occurred only in the public sphere that censored them. Privately, many Armenians – as well as the Muslim families that took them in – remained conscious of their difference. Recently, as this converted generation started to die off, they passed information about their Armenian origins to their grandchildren. These grandchildren are now faced with the difficult task of integrating their Armenian origins with their Muslim Turkish identities. A Brief Conclusion The Armenian case presents additional complications to the JudeoChristian concept of the righteous people predominantly predicated on the historical experience of the Holocaust. If the moral parameters of such righteous behavior are to be expanded to apply to the whole of humanity, it is necessary to include other concepts deriving from different religions and experiences. The case of those who resisted the 1915 deportations and massacres of the Armenians points to the significance of the Islamic concept of just people. Yet who such just people are is predicated on who undertakes the definition. Currently in contemporary Turkey, the state also employs the concept to legitimate the destructive acts some people undertook for the preservation of the state at all costs. In the case of those involved in the 1915 deportations and massacres of the Armenians, the state actually employs nationalist ideology to define as ‘just’ not the opponents, but the perpetrators. Indeed, the just Hüseyin Nesimi who tried to protect the Armenians and paid with his life is sacrificed to Dr. Şahingiray, whom the Turkish state instead considers just. This convoluted state conception of justice reveals the significance of who actually determines just behavior in a society. In the Armenian case, it is evident that the Turkish state’s conception of just people needs to be challenged by the community of independent scholars. And that challenge is under way.

NOTES

Introduction 1. Ömer Taşpınar, ‘Turkey’s Middle East Policies: Between Neo-Ottomanism and Kemalism’, Carnegie Paper No. 10 (2008), p.1. It should be noted, however, that the term neo-Ottoman was previously employed in other settings. For instance, Stephanos Constantinides describes the current state of Turkish– Greek relations as entailing a practice of Turkish foreign policy predicated on the imperial Ottoman tradition. In tracing the origins of the term, he notes that the term neo-Ottomanism was first used in 1985 by David Barchard of the Royal Institute of International Affairs in a paper entitled ‘Turkey and the West’. Constantinides is unclear as to how far back such a neo-Ottomanist approach can be taken, noting that it probably arose during the 1970s and the 1980s. For a more detailed discussion, see Stephanos Constantinides, ‘Turkey: The Emergence of a New Foreign Policy, the Neo-Ottoman Imperial Model’, Journal of Political and Military Sociology 24 (1996), pp.323–34, especially p.331, footnote 14. 2. Taşpınar: ‘Turkey’s Middle East’, pp.4–5. 3. For analyses of Kemalism, see Baskın Oran, Atatürk Milliyetçiliği: Resmi Ideoloji Dışı Bir Inceleme [Atatürk Nationalism: An Analysis Outside the Official Ideology] (Ankara: Dost, 1988); Levent Köker Modernleşme, Kemalizm ve Demokrasi [Modernization, Kemalism and Democracy] (İstanbul: İletişim, 1990); Taha Parla, Türkiye’de Siyasal Kültürün Resmi Kaynakları [The Official Sources of Political Culture in Turkey] (İstanbul: İletişim, 1991); Andrew Davison, Secularism and Revivalism in Turkey: A Hermeneutic Consideration (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998); Taha Parla and Andrew Davison, Corporatist Ideology in Kemalist Turkey: Progress or Order? (New York: Syracuse University Press, 2004); Ahmet İnsel (ed), Kemalizm [Kemalism] (İstanbul: İletişim,

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4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16.

17.

18.

19.

20.

21.

The Transformation of Turkey 2001); Sinan Ciddi, Kemalism in Turkish Politics: The Republican People’s Party, Secularism and Nationalism (London: Routledge, 2009); Sena Karasipahi, Muslims in Modern Turkey: Kemalism, Modernism and the Revolt of the Islamic Intellectuals (London: I.B.Tauris, 2009). Taşpınar: ‘Turkey’s Middle East’, p.17. Dan Bilefsky, ‘Weary of Modern Frictions, Turks Glory in Splendor of Ottoman Past’, The New York Times 159 (2009), p.A9. Yigal Schleifer,’The Ottoman Revival Turkish Nationalism Goes Back to the Future’, Foreign Policy 172 (2009), p.32. Joshua Chaffin and Delphine Strauss, ‘Ottoman Mission’, The Financial Times Nov 24, 2009, p.9. Schleifer: ‘The Ottoman Revival’, p.32. İbrahim Kalın, ‘Debating Turkey in the Middle East: The Dawn of a New Geo-Political Imagination?’ Insight Turkey 11/1 (2009), p.83. Taşpınar: ‘Turkey’s Middle East’, p.1. Ibid., p.28. Ibid., pp.14–16. Bilefsky: ‘Weary’, p.A9. Chafin and Strauss: ‘Ottoman Mission’, p.9. Bilefsky: ‘Weary’, p.A9. An earlier version of this essay initially appeared as ‘Contemporary Turkey: A Country of Tense Coexistence’, Macalester International Journal XV (Winter 2005), pp.3–26. An earlier version of this essay initially appeared as ‘Through a Glass Darkly: Consequences of a Politicized Past in Contemporary Turkey’, The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 617 (May 2008), pp.88–106. An earlier version of this essay initially appeared as ‘What Is the Meaning of the Young Turk Revolution? A Critical Historical Assessment in 2008’, İstanbul University Political Science Faculty Journal XXXVIII (March 2008), pp.179–214. This is an original essay which literally initiated the publication of this volume. It was originally commissioned for an edited volume that Bilgi University in İstanbul was putting together. In the end, the essay’s length as well as the lack of fit with the other contributions prevented its appearance in that volume. This is an original essay based on a paper presented at the first Turkish– Armenian workshop, which I organized in 2000 at the University of Chicago with my colleague Ronald Grigor Suny. This too is an original essay based on a talk I delivered as the keynote speaker at the 24 April 1915 Commemorations at the University of Michigan, an

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event organized by the Armenian Students Association. Many Turkish students also attended the commemoration for the first time. 22. An earlier version of this essay appeared in French as ‘A la Recherche des Justes: Le Cas Armenien [In Search of the Just People: The Armenian Case]’, pp.53–70 in Jacques Semelin, Claire Andrieu and Sarah Gensburger (eds), La Resistance aux Genocides: de la Pluralite des Actes de Sauvetage [Resistance to Genocides: On the Plurality of Acts of Rescue] (Paris: Sciences Politiques Les Presses, 2008).

Chapter 1 Surveying Contemporary Turkey: A Country of Social Tensions Rooted in the Past 1. See, for instance, Nader Hashemi, Islam, Secularism and Liberal Democracy: Toward a Democratic Theory for Muslim Societies (London: Oxford University Press, 2009); Khaled Abou El Fadl, Islam and the Challenge of Democracy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004); Noah Feldman, After Jihad: America and the Struggle for Islamic Democracy (New York: Farrar, Strauss, Giroux, 2003); Larry Diamond, Marc F. Plattner and Daniel Brumberg, eds., Islam and Democracy in the Middle East (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003); Daniel Price, Islamic Political Culture, Democracy and Human Rights (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1999); and John L. Esposito and John O. Voll, Islam and Democracy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996). 2. One could argue that exceptions to this approach are William Hale and Ergun Özbudun, Islamism, Democracy and Liberalism in Turkey: The Case of the AKP (London: Routledge, 2010); Hakan M. Yavuz, Secularism and Muslim Democracy in Turkey (London: Cambridge University Press, 2009); Sultan Tepe, Beyond Sacred and Secular: Politics of Religion in Israel and Turkey (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2008); Berna Turam, Between Islam and the State: Politics of Engagement (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2007); Ali Bardakoğlu, Religion and Society: New Perspectives from Turkey (Ankara: Presidency of Religious Affairs, 2006); and Yıldız Atasoy, Turkey, Islamists and Democracy: Transition and Globalization in a Muslim State (London: I.B.Tauris, 2005). Even in these analyses, however, Western conceptions of democracy and liberalism are analyzed uncritically within the context of Turkey. 3. See, for instance, Samuel Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1996). 4. See, for instance, Isaiah Berlin, ed., The Age of Enlightenment (New York: New American Library, 1956) and Anthony J. Cascardi, Consequences of Enlightenment (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1999).

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5. For a masterful account of this formative process, see Cemal Kafadar, Between Two Worlds: The Construction of the Ottoman State (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1985). 6. See Bernard Lewis, The Emergence of Modern Turkey (London: Oxford University Press, 1969) for a more detailed discussion of this point. 7. See Halil İnalcık, Ottoman Empire: The Classical Age, 1300–1600 (New York: Orpheus, 1973) for an in-depth discussion of the ideal Ottoman social structure. 8. See Benjamin Braude and Bernard Lewis, eds., Christians and Jews in the Ottoman Empire (New York: Holmes and Meier, 1982) for a detailed discussion of the conditions under which the minorities lived in the Ottoman Empire. 9. See Karen Barkey, Empire of Difference: The Ottomans in Comparative Perspective (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008) for a detailed discussion of how the Ottoman minorities were situated within the empire. 10. See, for instance, Roderic Davison, Essays in Ottoman Turkish History: The Impact of the West (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 1990) for a detailed discussion of the eighteenth and nineteenth century transformations. 11. See three works by Şerif Mardin: The Genesis of Young Ottoman Thought: A Study in the Modernization of Turkish Political Ideas (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1962); Jön Türklerin Siyasi Fikirleri, 1895–1908 [The Political Thoughts of the Young Turks, 1895–1908] (İstanbul: İletişim, 1983); and Religion, Society and Modernity in Turkey (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2006) for a detailed discussion of the diffusion of Western ideas into the Ottoman Empire and then the Turkish Republic. 12. See Erik Jan Zürcher, Turkey: A Modern History (London: I.B.Tauris, 1998) and Feroz Ahmad, The Making of Modern Turkey (London: Routledge, 1993) for a discussion of the transformation from Ottoman subjects to Turkish citizens. 13. See two works by Şükrü Hanioğlu: Preparation for a Revolution: Young Turks, 1902–1908 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001) and Young Turks in Opposition (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995) for a very astute and detailed analysis of the intellectual movements during this period. 14. For a discussion of the problems minorities encountered in accessing the Ottoman state bureaucracy, see Carter Findley, Ottoman Civil Officialdom (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1989). 15. For a detailed discussion of the impact on the populace of this nationalist transformation, see Fuat Dündar, İttihat ve Terakki’nin Müslümanları İskan Politikası [The Muslim Settlement Policy of the Union and Progress] (İstanbul: İletişim, 2001) and by the same author, Modern Türkiye’nin Şifresi: İttihat

Notes

16.

17.

18.

19.

20.

21.

22. 23.

24.

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ve Terakki’nin Etnisite Mühendisliği, 1913–1918 [The Cipher of Modern Turkey: Ethnic Engineering of the Union and Progress, 1913–191] (İstanbul: İletişim, 2008). See also Taner Akçam, From Empire to Republic: Turkish Nationalism and the Armenian Genocide (London: Zed, 2004) and by the same author, A Shameful Act: The Armenian Genocide and the Question of Turkish Responsibility (New York: Metropolitan, 2006). For detailed descriptions of the formation of the Turkish bourgeoisie, see Çağlar Keyder, The Definition of a Peripheral Economy: Turkey, 1923–1929 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1981) and Zafer Toprak, Türkiye’de “millı İktisat”, 1908–1918 [‘National Economy’ in Turkey, 1980–1918] (Ankara: Yurt, 1982) and by the same author, İttihad-Terakki ve Cihan Harbi: Savaş Ekonomisi ve Türkiye’de Devletçilik, 1914–1918 [The Union and Progress and the Great War: War Economy and Etatism in Turkey, 1914–1918] (İstanbul: Homer, 2003). See Akçam: From Empire to Republic and Akçam: A Shameful Act for a detailed description of how the perpetrators of the crimes eventually became, after the success of the War of Independence, heroes of the new Republic. The trauma of the amount of land lost by the Ottoman Empire during the nineteenth century is analyzed by Murat Paker, Psiko-Politik Yüzleşmeler [Psycho-Political Encounters](İstanbul: İletişim, 2007). For a detailed discussion of these reforms, see Niyazi Berkes, Batıcılık, Ulusçuluk ve Toplumsal Devrimler [Westernization, Nationalism and Societal Reforms] (İstanbul: Yön, 1965). For this very significant historical narration, see Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, A Speech Delivered by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, 1927 (İstanbul: Ministry of Education, 1963). A very astute critical analysis of this narration has recently been undertaken by Hülya Adak, ‘National Myths and Self-Na:(rra)tions: Mustafa Kemal’s Nutuk and Halide Edip’s Memories and Turkish Ordeal’, The South Atlantic Quarterly 102 (2003), pp.509–528. For a discussion of the enactment of secularism in Turkey, see Niyazi Berkes, The Development of Secularism in Turkey (Montreal: McGill University Press, 1964.) See Jacob Landau, ed., Atatürk and the Modernization of Turkey (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1984) for a detailed discussion of these reforms. See Nilüfer Göle, The Forbidden Modern: Civilization and Veiling (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 1998) and Zehra Arat, ed., Deconstructing Images of ‘the Turkish Woman’ (New York: St. Martin’s, 1998) for a discussion of the impact of reforms on women. See Şerif Mardin, Religion and Social Change in Modern Turkey (Albany: SUNY Press, 1989) for a discussion of the boundaries of the reforms in Turkey.

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25. For a discussion of the problems faced in establishing such opposition parties, see the memoirs of Ahmet Ağaoğlu, Serbest Fırka Hatıraları [Memories of the Free Party] (İstanbul: İletişim, 1995). 26. See Lewis: The Emergence of Modern Turkey, Zürcher: Turkey: A Modern History and Ahmad: The Making of Modern Turkey for a discussion of the transition to the multiparty system. 27. See Erik Jan Zürcher, The Unionist Factor: The Role of the Committee of Union and Progress in the Turkish National Movement 1905–1926 (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1984) for a discussion of how this transition of political actors from the empire to the republic occurred. 28. See William Hale, Turkish Politics and the Military (New York: Routledge, 1974) and Ben Lombardi, ‘Turkey – The Return of the Reluctant Generals?’, Political Science Quarterly 112/2 (1997), pp.191–217 for a discussion of these military interventions. 29. Student leaders Deniz Gezmiş, Yusuf Aslan and Hüseyin İnan were hanged on 6 May 1972 with the decision of the military court. 30. See Mustafa Aydın, ‘Determinants of Turkish Foreign Policy: Changing Patterns and Conjunctures during the Cold War’, Middle Eastern Studies 36/1(2000), pp.103–140 and Hakkı Tarık Oğuzlu, ‘Changing Dynamics of Turkey’s US and EU Relations,’ Middle East Policy 11/1(2004), pp.98–106 for a discussion of how Turkey’s political rule was impacted by its foreign alliances. 31. See Gökhan Çetinsaya, ‘Rethinking Nationalism and Islam: Some Preliminary Notes on the Roots of “Turkish–Islamic Synthesis” in Modern Turkish Political Thought’, Muslim World 89/3–4 (1999), pp.350–77 for a detailed discussion of the ‘Turkish-Islamic synthesis’. 32. See the website www.habergazete.com for news on the extent of Turkish military spending. 33. See Ümit Cizre-Sakallıoğlu, ‘Kemalism, Hyper-Nationalism, and Islam in Turkey’, History of European Ideas 18/2 (1994), pp.255–70 and Stefanos Yerasimos, Gunter Seufert and Karin Vorhoff, eds., Civil Society in the Grip of Nationalism: Studies on Political Culture in Contemporary Turkey (İstanbul: Ergon, 2000) for a detailed discussion of Kemalism. 34. See Ayşe Buğra, State and Business in Modern Turkey (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1994) for a discussion of the contemporary state of the Turkish economy. 35. See Berdal Aral, ‘Dispensing with Tradition? Turkish Politics and International Society during the Özal Decade, 1983–1993’, Middle Eastern Studies 37/1(2001), pp.72–89 for a discussion of the main characteristics of the Özal era. 36. See Ayşe Öncü, ‘Packaging Islam: Cultural Politics on the Landscape of Turkish Commercial Television’, Public Culture 8/1(1995), pp.51–73 for a discussion of the nature of this transformation.

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37. See Richard and Nancy Tapper, eds., Islam in Modern Turkey: Religion, Politics, and Literature in a Secular State (London: I.B.Tauris, 1991); Ayşe Kadıoğlu, ‘Republican epistemology and Islamic discourses in Turkey in the 1990s’, Muslim World 88/1(1999), pp.1–22; and Yael Navaro-Yashin, Faces of the State: Secularism and Public Life in Turkey (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002) for a discussion of the role of religion in contemporary Turkey. 38. See Michael Skafidas, ‘Soft Islam takes over in Turkey’, New Perspectives Quarterly 20/1(2003), pp.27–33 for a discussion of this new political mobilization in Turkey. 39. See Jenny White, Islamist Mobilization in Turkey: A Study in Vernacular Politics (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2002) for a discussion of how this new movement mobilized both the secular and the religious segments of the population. 40. See Haldun Gülalp, Kimlikler Siyaseti: Türkiye’de Siyasal İslamın Temelleri [Identity Politics: The Foundations of Political Islam in Turkey] (İstanbul: Metis, 2003) for a discussion of the activities of the Islamist parties in Turkey. 41. See Paul Kubichek, ‘Turkish-European Relations: At a New Crossroads?’, Middle East Policy 6/4(1999), pp.157–74; Jeffrey Dixon, ‘A Clash of Civilizations? Examining Liberal-Democratic Values in Turkey and the European Union’, British Journal of Sociology 59/4(2008), pp.681–708 and Esra La Gro and Knud Erik Jorgensen, eds., Turkey and the European Union: Prospects for a Difficult Encounter (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007) for discussions of Turkey-EU relations. 42. See William Mitchell, The Republic of Turkey and Earthquake Disaster Management (New York: Global, 2004) for an account of how Turkey negotiates natural disasters. 43. See Ömer Taşpınar, ‘Between Neo-Ottomanism and Kemalism’, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace #10 (2008).

Chapter 2 Ottoman Origins of the Armenian, Greek and Kurdish Challenges to Turkish Foreign Policy 1. This point effectively renders void the official state argument that full freedom of expression and thought does not exist in Western contexts either. There may indeed be such legal limitations in the West, but what separates Turkey from these cases is the frequency with which this law is employed. Many international and domestic human rights organizations that monitor the deployment of these penal articles have demonstrated their excessive use. 2. See Kemal Kirişçi and Ali Çarkoğlu, ‘Perceptions of Greeks and Greek– Turkish Rapprochement by the Turkish Public’, in Barry Rubin and Ali

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3. 4.

5.

6.

7. 8. 9.

10.

11. 12. 13. 14.

The Transformation of Turkey Çarkoğlu (eds), Greek-Turkish Relations in an Era of Détente (London: Frank Cass 2003) for a more detailed discussion of the domestic perception of these issues in Turkey as well as a discussion of the Sèvres syndrome. Also included in this context are the Rum in Turkey who are ethnically and religiously akin to the Greeks. There are no publicly available population figures on the proportion of the Kurdish population in Turkey because such information has officially not been collected since the 1927 population census. Scholars agree, however, that the proportion is approximately 20 per cent of the total population. See Svante Cornell, ‘The Kurdish Question in Turkish Politics’, Orbis 45(1) (2001), pp.31–47 for a discussion of how this problem is perceived in the international arena. It is a truism to state that the PKK has indeed engaged in collective violence; what is overlooked by the Turkish nation-state in this assessment, however, is the persistent collective violence – since the inception of the republic – committed by the Turkish nation-state against the Kurds. A peaceful resolution will only become possible through the consideration of both sides’ violent acts, namely the Turkish nation-state’s consistent failure to grant its Kurdish citizens the same rights it affords the Sunni Turkish majority as well as the PKK’s aggression against both the Sunni Turkish majority and its own people. See Tülin Daloğlu, ‘Kurdish Terror and the West’, Washington Times, 30 October 2007 as one source on the casualties to both sides. See pp.9–10 in David McDowall, A Modern History of the Kurds, 3rd ed (New York: I.B.Tauris, 2000) for a discussion of the Kurds as a people. See Kemal Kirişçi and Gareth M. Winrow, The Kurdish Question and Turkey: An Example of a Trans-State Ethnic Conflict (Portland, OR: Frank Cass, 1997) for a discussion of the Kurdish population proportion in contemporary Turkey. See Ahmet İçduygu A., D. Romano, İ. Sirkeci, ‘The Ethnic Question in an Environment of Insecurity: The Kurds in Turkey’, Ethnic and Racial Studies 22/6 (1999), pp.991–1010 for a comparative assessment of Turkish and Kurdish living conditions. See Matthew Kocher, ‘The Decline of PKK and the Viability of a One-State Solution in Turkey’, Journal on Multicultural Societies 4/1 (2002), pp.1–20. See Cornell: ‘The Kurdish Question’, p.38. The city was named Tunceli by the Turkish nation-state. It should be noted that this homogeneity was initially predicated on Mustafa Kemal Atatürk’s definition of Turkish citizenship. He had initially stated that everyone living within the Republic should have the over-arching identity of Turks, regardless of their ethnic and religious origin. With time and through practice, however, the structural divides between the ethnic

Notes

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18. 19. 20.

21. 22. 23.

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

30.

31. 32. 33.

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Turkish, Sunni majority and the rest of the populace reasserted itself, making Turkish citizenship ethnically and religiously specific to the ethnic Turkish, Sunni majority and thereby marginalizing the rest. See Henri Barkey, ‘The Struggles of a “Strong” State’, Journal of International Affairs 54/1 (2000), pp.87–105 for a discussion of this process. For information on the poll, see the Milliyet newspaper of 6 September 1992. See, for instance, Tim Jacoby, ‘Semi-Authoritarian Incorporation and Autocratic Militarism in Turkey’, Development and Change 36/4 (2005), pp.641–65. See M. Ataman, ‘Özal Leadership and Restructuring of Turkish Ethnic Policy in the 1980s’, Middle Eastern Studies 38/4 (2002), pp.123–42. See İsmet G. İmset, The PKK: A Report on Separatist Violence in Turkey (Ankara: Turkish Daily News Publications, 1992), especially pp.38–41. See Henri Barkey and Graham E. Fuller, Turkey’s Kurdish Question (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 1998), especially pp.28–9 and İmset: The PKK., especially pp.34–5, 44 and 100. See İmset: The PKK, especially p.86. See. İmset: The PKK, especially p.100. The Turkish name for village guards is ‘korucu.’ See the records of the US Department of State (DOS), Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor, Country Reports on Human Rights (Washington, D.C.: US Department of State, 2000), p.18. See James Ron, K. Bleakley and S. Goose, Weapons Transfers and Violations of the Laws of War in Turkey (New York: Human Rights Watch, 1995). See Cornell: ‘The Kurdish Question’, p.39. See McDowall: A Modern History of the Kurds. See Kocher: ‘The Decline of PKK’, p.11. The popular Turkish term for this Kurdish expansion is ‘Kürt Açılımı.’ See A. Gündüz-Hoşgör and J. Smits, ‘Intermarriage between Turks and Kurds in Contemporary Turkey: Inter-Ethnic Relations in an Urbanizing Environment’, European Sociological Review 18/4 (2002), pp.417–32. See Nicole F. Watts, ‘Activists in Office: Pro-Kurdish Contentious Politics in Turkey’, Ethnopolitics 5/2 (2006), pp.125–44 for further discussion of this point. See Cornell: ‘The Kurdish Question’, pp.31–47 for an extensive discussion of this point. See Doğu Ergil, ‘The Kurdish Question in Turkey’, Journal of Democracy 11/3 (2000), pp.122–35. See Pınar Tarık, ‘The Effects of the Iraq War on the Kurdish Issue in Turkey’, Conflict, Security and Development 5/1 (2005), pp.69–86.

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34. See Ersel Aydınlı, ‘Between Security and Liberalization: Decoding Turkey’s Struggle with the PKK’, Security Dialogue 33/2 (2002), pp.209–25. 35. See Meltem Müftüler-Bac and Aylin Güney, ‘The European Union and the Cyprus Problem 1961–2003’, Middle Eastern Studies 41/2 (2005), pp.275–87 for a discussion of this issue. 36. See Ziya Öniş, ‘Greek–Turkish Bilateral Relations and the European Union: The View from Ankara’, pp.165–78 in Christos Kollias and Gülay GünlükŞenesen (eds) Greece and Turkey in the 21st Century: Conflict or Cooperation? (New York: Nova Science, 2003). 37. The EU Neighborhood Policy focuses primarily on developing countries in the region that aim either to join the European Union or to become more closely integrated with its economy. It seeks commitments to political, economic, trade and human rights reform. The countries covered include those along the Mediterranean shores of Africa and Asia as well as the European CIS states (with the exception of Russia and Kazakhstan). 38. See, for instance, Herkül Milas, Türk Romanı ve “Öteki”: Ulusal Kimlikte Yunan İmaji [The Turkish Novel and the Other: The Greek Image in National Identity] (İstanbul: Sabancı Üniversitesi Yayınları, 2000) for an analysis of such stereotyping. 39. See Bahar Rumelili, ‘Constructing Identity and Relating to Difference: Understanding the EU’s Mode of Differentiation’, Review of International Studies, 30 (2004), pp.27–47 for an academic depiction of the nature of EU intervention in Turkey. 40. See, for instance, Fiona B. Adamson, ‘Democratization and the Domestic Sources of Foreign Policy: Turkey in the 1974 Cyprus Crisis’, Political Science Quarterly 116/2 (2001), pp.277–303 and Kirişçi and Çarkoğlu: ‘Perceptions of Greeks’. 41. See Paul Kubichek, ‘The Earthquake, Civil Society, and Political Change in Turkey: Assessment and Comparison with Eastern Europe’, Political Studies 50 (2002), pp.761–78. 42. The information contained in this segment is based almost entirely on my current book manuscript, tentatively titled Deciphering Denial: Modernity and the 1915 Collective Violence against the Armenians. 43. The actual attacks against Turkish diplomats started on 27 January 1973 when Gurgen (Karekin) Yanikian shot and killed Turkey’s Los Angeles Consul General Mehmet Baydar and Consul Bahadır Demir. Yet this was an individual act; organized violence against the Turks started two years later in 1975, when Turkey’s ambassador to Austria, Daniş Tunalıgil, and its ambassador to France, İsmail Erez and his driver Talip Yener were assassinated on 22 and 24 October.

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44. The Lausanne Treaty is constantly on the Turkish public agenda because even though these rights and privileges were legally granted to minorities, they were very poorly executed. They did not translate into practice and were not legally enforced, causing Turkey’s minorities to face prejudice and discrimination to this day. 45. Here, Ottoman collective violence refers to the massacres of Armenians during the 1894–96, 1909 and 1915–17 periods; even though these continued during the 1919–22 independence struggle, the massacres that occurred then were much smaller in number and have not yet been adequately studied. 46. Here, Turkish collective violence refers to the destructive action taken against the legally defined minorities, that is, the Armenians, Jews and the Rum of Turkey, in the following contexts: (i) the 1934 incidents in Thrace when the Jews living in the Dardanelles and Gallipoli first started to receive death threats and then had their businesses boycotted, with the state authorities not only approving these actions but ordering the Jews to leave within 1 to 3 days. This pattern was very similar to what the Committee of Union and Progress had done in 1913–14 against the Rum living along the western Anatolian coast. (ii) The 1940 military recruitment of twenty classifications of minorities as reserves, in which they were kept in labor battalions under adverse conditions – an act that replicated a similar practice by the Committee of Union and Progress during World War I. (iii) The 1942–43 wealth tax enforcement, whereby minorities were targeted to pay within thirty days without appeal a vast amount based on their alleged financial worth. Those who failed to do so were arrested and sent to forced labor camps. This state-enforced plunder was very similar to the abuses that had traditionally taken place during the Ottoman imperial era. (iv) The 6–7 September 1955 pogroms, in which minority businesses, residences and communal buildings were tacitly targeted by the state and then attacked and plundered by mobs of ordinary Turks, with thirty seven deaths and material damages estimated in the hundreds of millions. (v) The 1964 incidents, when the Rum living in Turkey with Greek citizenship were forcibly deported after their bank accounts were seized and their properties confiscated. They were allowed to only take one suitcase and 200 liras, with the rest reverting to the state. 47. See Bilal Şimşir, Şehit Diplomatlarımız [Our Martyred Diplomats] (Ankara: Bilgi, 2000) for a very thorough account of these assassinations as well as the reactions of the Turkish state. The information referred to in the text is located in volume one, p.108. 48. Even though the intentions of these organizations – seeking acknowledgement, accountability and justice for past collective violence – were righteous,

252

49.

50. 51.

52. 53.

54.

55.

56.

57.

The Transformation of Turkey the means they resorted to were not, for they willfully murdered innocent people. They committed violence to draw attention to past violence. For a more detailed analysis of this historiography, see my article: Fatma Müge Göçek, ‘Reading Genocide: Turkish Historiography on the Armenian Deportations and Massacres of 1915’, pp.101–27 in Israel Gerhsoni, Amy Singer and Hakan Erdem (eds), Middle East Historiographies: Narrating the Twentieth Century (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2006). See Şimşir: Şehit Diplomatlarımız, vol. 1, p.449. See Veli Özdemir, ed, Susurluk Belgeleri [Susurluk Documents] (İstanbul: Scala Yayıncılık) for a detailed description of the clandestine activities of such organizations. See Şimşir: Şehit Diplomatlarımız, vol. 1, pp.358–9. Indeed, in response to the Holocaust, social scientists and ethicists have produced an entirely new critical historical scholarship that enables philosophers, social scientists and humanists to analyze the social acts of racism, violence and discrimination. For a more extensive comparison of the Armenian case with the Holocaust, see Fatma Müge Göçek, ‘Turkish Historiography and the Unbearable Weight of 1915’, pp.337–68 in Richard Hovannisian (ed), Cultural and Ethical Legacies of the Armenian Genocide (New Jersey: Transaction Publishers, 2007). One should note here, however, that some local notables had also participated in the violence and the subsequent plunder of minority goods and properties and would therefore not be willing to acknowledge the past violence. The primacy of state interests above all else is referred to in both the Ottoman and Turkish state tradition as ‘hikmet-i devlet,’ namely ‘the wisdom of the state.’ This declaration is known in Ottoman history as the ‘Tanzimat,’ that is, the ‘reordering.’

Chapter 3 The Legacy of the Young Turk Revolution in Contemporary Turkish Politics 1. According to the lunar calendar, the date is 10 July 1324. 2. The preceding First Constitutional rule (23 December 1876–14 February 1878) had been very brief, commencing with the pressures of the reformist grand vizier Mithat Pasha and his cadre of administrators only to terminate after approximately a year at the end of a disastrous war with the Russians. 3. For additional information on this constitutional revolution, see for instance, Nader Sohrabi. ‘Historicizing Revolutions: Constitutional Revolutions in

Notes

4.

5.

6. 7.

8. 9. 10. 11. 12.

13. 14.

15.

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the Ottoman Empire, Iran and Russia, 1905–1908’, American Journal of Sociology 100/6 (1995), pp.1383–1447; Said Amir Arjomand, ‘Constitutions and the Struggle for Political Order: A Study in the Modernization of Political Traditions’, Archives Europeennes de Sociologie 33/1(1992), pp.39–82; and Robert Devereux, The First Ottoman Constitutional Period: A Study of the Midhat Constitution and Parliament (Baltimore, 1963). The Ottoman Chamber officially met only once again on 18 March 1920 as a black cloth covered the podium of the Parliament, reminding them of their absent members. See M. Şükrü Hanioğlu, The Young Turks in Opposition (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995) and by the same author Preparing for a Revolution. The Young Turks, 1902–1908 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001) for a detailed discussion of the composition and activities of the Young Turks in exile. Erik Jan Zürcher, ‘The Young Turks – Children of the Borderlands?’ International Journal of Turkish Studies 9/1–2 (2003), p.277. Nader Sohrabi, ‘Global Wars, Local Actors: What the Young Turks Knew about Other Revolutions and Why It Mattered’, Comparative Studies in Society and History 44/1 (2002), p.72. The date corresponded to 31 March 1325 according to the lunar calendar. This is referred to in the literature as the Bab-ı Ali Raid, with Bab-ı Ali indicating the seat of government. Fatma Müge Göçek, Rise of the Bourgeoisie Demise of Empire: Ottoman Westernization and Social Change (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996). Erik Jan Zürcher, ‘How Europeans Adopted Anatolia and Created Turkey’, European Review 13/3 (2005), p.385. Erik Jan Zürcher, The Unionist Factor: The Role of the Committee of Union and Progress in the Turkish National Movement 1905–1926 (Leiden: Brill, 1984), pp.104–5. See Steven Smith, ‘Hegel and the French Revolution: An Epitaph for Republicanism’, Social Research 56/1 (1989), pp.236–7. It is with the French Revolution that the modern conception of ‘human rights’ – ‘Rights of Man’ – is generally held to begin. For a more detailed discussion, see Anthony Pagden, ‘Human Rights, Natural Rights, and Europe’s Imperial Legacy’, Political Theory 31/2 (2003), p.189. Until the French Revolution, the rule of international legitimacy was dynastic, ‘connected to the status and claims of the rulers’; from then on, a popular principle ‘based on the claims and consent of the governed’ superseded. For a more detailed discussion, see Martin Wright, ‘International Legitimacy’, International Relations 4/1 (1972), p.2.

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16. Stephen P. Marks, ‘From the “Single Confused Page” to the “Decalogue for Six Billion Persons”: The Roots of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in the French Revolution’, Human Rights Quarterly 20/3 (1998), p.467. 17. E.J. Hobsbawm, ‘The Making of a “Bourgeois” Revolution’, Social Research 56/1 (1989), p.24. 18. Dena Goodman, ‘Public Sphere and Private Life: Toward a Synthesis of Current Historiographical Approaches to the Old Regime’, History and Theory 31/1 (1992), p.6. 19. F.A. Mignet, Histoire de la Revolution Française 18th edition (Paris, 1898), p.2; in Hobsbawm: ‘The Making’, p.21. 20. Smith: ‘Hegel and the French Revolution’, p.246. 21. G.W.F. Hegel, Philosophy of Right (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1967), p.233. 22. Smith: ‘Hegel and the French Revolution’, p.247. 23. Hobsbawm: ‘The Making’, p.8. 24. Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France (London, 1791), p.2. 25. George Rudé, The Crowd and the French Revolution (London: Oxford University Press, 1967). 26. Gustave Le Bon, The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind (New York: Viking, 1960). 27. See Rudé: The Crowd, pp.191–6, 199, 219–21 and 225. 28. Brian Singer, ‘Violence in the French Revolution: Forms of Ingestion/Forms of Expulsion’, Social Research 56/1(1989), pp.274–5. 29. Singer: ‘Violence’, p.277. 30. Ibid., pp.279–80. 31. Ibid., p.281 and fn.28. 32. Smith: ‘Hegel and the French Revolution’ pp.250–1. It is interesting to note that in spite of all this violence, Hegel still regarded the French Revolution as a progressive force in history. 33. G.W.F. Hegel, Lectures on the Philosophy of History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975), pp.450–1. 34. Hannah Arendt, On Revolution (New York: Viking, 1965), pp.80, 85 and 99–104. 35. Ibid., pp.80, 85. 36. Smith: ‘Hegel and the French Revolution’, pp.252–3. 37. Singer: ‘Violence’ p.292. 38. Theda Skocpol, ‘Reconsidering the French Revolution in World-Historical Perspective’, Social Research 56/1 (1989), p.62. 39. Charles Tilly, ‘State and Counterrevolution in France’, Social Research 56/1 (1989), pp.86–7.

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40. Chimene Keitner, ‘National Self-Determination in Historical Perspective: The Legacy of the French Revolution for Today’s Debates’, International Studies Review 2/3 (2000), p.7. 41. Gary Kates, ‘Jews into Frenchmen: Nationality and Representation in Revolutionary France’, Social Research 56/1 (1989), pp.213–32. 42. Ibid., p.220. 43. Ibid., p.226. 44. Başbakanlık Arşivi Yıldız Esas Evrakı 71–69, 23 July 1908/10 July 1324 in Nader Sohrabi, ‘Global Wars, Local Actors: What the Young Turks Knew About Other Revolutions and Why It Mattered’, Comparative Studies in Society and History (2002), pp.45–79, fn. 79. 45. See Sohrabi: ‘Global Wars’, pp.68–9. 46. Galip Kemali Söylemezoğlu, Hariciye Hizmetinde Otuz Sene, 1892–1922 [Thirty Years in the Service of the Foreign Ministry, 1892–1922] (İstanbul: Maarif, 1949), pp.170–1. 47. Fazıl Ahmet (Aykaç), Kırpıntı [Clippings] (İstanbul: Arba, 1991), p.12. 48. Yusuf Kemal (Tengirşenk), Vatan Hizmetinde [In the Service of the Homeland] (İstanbul: Bahar, 1967), p.106. 49. Çerkes Hasan (Amça), Doğmayan Hürriyet: Bir Devrin İçyüzü 1908–1918 [The Unborn Freedom: Inside Story of an Era 1908–1918] (İstanbul: Arba, 1989), pp.19–20. 50. Falih Rıfkı (Atay), Batış Yılları [The Years of Decline] (İstanbul: Bateş, 1963), p.32. 51. Amça: Doğmayan, pp.49–50. 52. Aykaç: Kırpıntı, p.32. 53. Cemal Kutay, Tarih Sohbetleri [Conversations on History], Volume II (İstanbul: Halk, 1966), pp.143–4. 54. The exact words in Turkish are ‘nev’i şahsına münhasır bir diyardır.’ 55. Halid Ziya (Uşaklıgil), Kırk Yıl: Anılar [Forty Years: Memories] (İstanbul: İnkılap, 1987), p.685. 56. Ahmed Rıza Bey, Meclis-i Mebusan ve Ayan Reisi Ahmed Rıza Bey’in Anıları [Memoirs of Ahmed Rıza Bey, the Head of the Ottoman Parliament and Senate] (İstanbul: Arba, 1988), pp.41–3. 57. Şeyhülislam Cemaleddin Efendi, Siyasi Hatıralarım [My Political Memoirs] (İstanbul: Nehir, 1990), pp.37, 41. 58. Abidin Nesimi, Yılların İçinden [From Within the Years] (İstanbul: Gözlem, 1977), pp.245–7. 59. Ahmed Rıza: Meclis-i Mebusan, pp.26, 43. 60. Mevlanzade Rıfat, Mevlanzade Rıfat’ın Anıları [Memoirs of Mevlanzade Rıfat] (İstanbul: Arma, 1992), p.25.

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61. Ahmed Rıza: Meclis-i Mebusan, pp.61–2. 62. For a discussion of this process, see Fatma Müge Göçek, Rise of the Bourgeoisie, Demise of Empire: Ottoman Westernization and Social Change (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996). 63. Amça: Doğmayan, pp.171, 176. 64. Ahmed Refik (Altınay), İki Komite İki Kıtal [Two Committees, Two Massacres]. (İstanbul: Temel, 1998), p.197. 65. Damar Arıkoğlu, Hatıralarım [My Memories] (İstanbul: Korkut Arıkoğlu yayını, 1961), pp.42–3. 66. Burhan Felek, Yaşadığımız Günler [The Days We Lived Through] (İstanbul: Milliyet, 1974), p.57. 67. Hüseyin Kazım Kadri, Meşrutiyet’ten Cumhuriyete Hatıralarım [My Memoirs from the Constitutional Period to the Republic] (İstanbul: İletişim, 1991), pp.69, 71–2. 68. Hüseyin Rauf (Orbay), Yüzyılımızda bir İnsanımız: Hüseyin Rauf Orbay [One of Our People in Our Century: Rauf Orbay] (İstanbul: Kazancı, 1992), p.184. The actual Turkish wording is ‘münevver bir istibdat idaresi.’ 69. Biren, Mehmet Tevfik, II. Abdülhamid, Meşrutiyet ve Mütareke Devri Hatıraları [Memoirs of the Abdülhamid II, Constitutional and Armistice Periods] (İstanbul: Arma, 1993), pp.63–4. 70. Başmabeynci Lütfi Simavi, Osmanlı Sarayının Son Günleri [The Last Days of the Ottoman Palace] (İstanbul: Hürriyet, 1970), pp.428–9. The Turkish words are ‘namusuna, yurduna ve ulusuna olan içten sevgisi.’ 71. Rıza Nur, Hayat ve Hatıratım [My Life and Memories], volume 1 (İstanbul: İşaret, 1992) pp.285–6. 72. See Sohrabi: ‘Global Wars’, pp.45–79. 73. Ibid., p.46. 74. Ibid., p.49. 75. Ibid., p.51. 76. Ibid., p.52. 77. Ibid., p.53. 78. Ibid., p.56. 79. Ibid., p.59. 80. Ibid., p.62. 81. Ibid., p.65. 82. Ibid., pp.65–6. 83. See for instance, the complaints in Ahmet Bedevi Kuran, Harbiye Mektebinde Hürriyet Mücadelesi [Freedom Fight at the War Academy] (İstanbul: Çeltüt, 1976) and Amça: Doğmayan. 84. Kazım Nami Duru, İttihat ve Terakki Hatıralarım [My Memoirs of the Union and Progres] (İstanbul: Sucuoğlu, 1957), p.50. 85. Ibid., p.36.

Notes 86. 87. 88. 89. 90. 91. 92. 93. 94. 95.

96. 97. 98. 99. 100.

101.

102. 103.

104. 105. 106. 107. 108. 109. 110. 111. 112. 113.

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Amça: Doğmayan, pp.42–3. Amça: yr, p.43. Cemaleddin Efendi: Siyasi Hatıralarım, pp.117, 120, 129. Orbay: Yüzyılımızda, pp.292–3. The actual Turkish words are ‘Millet sizi istemiyor, istifa ediniz.’ The actual Turkish words here are ‘bir kısım ordu mensupları’ and ‘ahali’. Orbay: Yüzyılımızda, p.297. Duru: İttihat, p.33. The actual Turkish words are ‘Fakat bunlara acıyan bulundu desem yalan söylemiş olurum.’ Başkatipzade Ragıp Bey, Tarih-i Hayatım: Kayserili Başkatipzade Mülazım Ragıp Bey’in Tahsil, Harp, Esaret, Kurtuluş Anıları [The History of My Life: The Memoirs of Lieutenant Başkatipzade Ragıp Bey of Kayseri Comprising Education, War, Captivity and Liberation] (Ankara: Kebikeç, 1996), pp.315, 317. Ibid., pp.168–9. Rıza: Meclis-i Mebusan, p.43. Felek: Yaşadığımız., pp.46, 55. Refik Halid (Karay), Bir Ömür Boyunca [During a Lifetime] (İstanbul: İletişim, 1996), p.58. Ahmet Emin Yalman, Yakın Tarihte Gördüklerim ve Geçirdiklerim [What I Saw and Experienced in Recent History], ),volume I (İstanbul: Pera, 1997), pp.100, 124 and 197. Mahmud Shevket Pasha, Sadrazam ve Harbiye Nazırı Mahmud Şevket Paşa’nın Günlüğü [The Diary of the Grand Vezier and Minister of War Mahmud Shevket Pasha] (İstanbul: Arba, 1987), pp.184–5. Felek: Yaşadığımız,pp.234–5. Fuat Balkan, İlk Türk Komitacısı Fuat Balkan’ın Hatıraları [The Memoirs of the First Turkish Komitadji [Underground Revolutionary Activist] Fuat Balkan] (İstanbul: Arma,1998), p.10. Amça: Doğmayan., pp.66–7. Mahmut Celal Bayar, Ben de Yazdım [I too Wrote], Volume 5 (İstanbul: Baha, 1967), p.1578. Ahmet Refik: İki Komite, pp.157–8. Singer: ‘Violence’, p.285. Ahmet Refik: İki Komite, pp.178–9. Ibid., pp.174–6. The Turkish term is ‘Kabe toprağına çevirdim.’ The Turkish term he uses is ‘gebertmek.’ The Turkish term employed is ‘kerata.’ Arif Cemil (Denker), Sürgün Hayatlar: Arif Cemil Bey’in Hatıraları [Exiled Lives: Memoirs of Arif Cemil Bey] (İstanbul: Emre, 2005), pp.27–8.

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114. Ibid., p.201. 115. Ibid., pp.203–4. 116. Duru: İttihat, pp.3–4. Duru specifically notes that the people Atatürk befriended were ‘our teacher Naki who was among the founders of the Ottoman Freedom Society that joined the Union and Progress in Salonica, Mithat Şükrü Bleda, Edip Servet Tör, the İzmir responsible clerk Celal Bayar, Eyüp Sabri of Ohri and finally myself’.

Chapter 4 Why Is There Still a ‘Sèvres Syndrome’? An Analysis of Turkey’s Uneasy Association with the West 1. ‘2006 Survey of Turkish Public Opinion’ conducted by Williams and Associates of Salem, Massachusetts. The 2006 General Opinion Survey affirms through two questions, one concerning Turkey’s Westernization experience and the other its Kurdish ‘problem’, that the two symptoms of this syndrome are still strong in Turkey today as well. Given the comment ‘Turkey’s Westernization efforts have been superficial,’ only a small proportion (17 per cent) disagree while the majority (64 per cent) once again agrees that Westernization in Turkey has not fully taken hold. And it is often in this context that Republican elites have advocated secularism against religion, pointing out that the latter has been an obstacle to Westernization. That once again a very high majority (83 per cent) agree that ‘the West has helped separatist groups like the PKK (Parti Kerkeren Kürdistan) gain strength’ demonstrates not only the deep mistrust the populace holds toward the West, but also a misperception and misinterpretation of the West’s desire for the Kurds’ peaceful participation in Turkish society. 2. Actually, in 2001 former Prime Minister Mesut Yılmaz even directly referred to the existence of a ‘National Security Syndrome.’ For a more detailed discussion, see Ümit Cizre, ‘Demythologizing the National Security Concept: The Case of Turkey’, The Middle East Journal 57/2 (2003), p.213. 3. See, for instance, Ali L. Karaosmanoğlu, ‘The Evolution of the National Security Culture and the Military in Turkey’, Journal of Foreign Affairs 54/1 (2000), p.201; Hasan Kösebalaban, ‘Turkey’s EU Membership, A Clash of Security Cultures’, Middle East Policy 9/2 (2002), p.131; Gözde Aladağ, ‘How Does Geostrategic Importance Affect Turkey’s Prospects for EU Membership? An Analysis of EU–Turkey Relations from a Security Perspective’, Dissertation submitted to the University of Kent, 2004, pp.27–29; Dietrich Jung and Wolfango Piccoli, Turkey at the Crossroads: Ottoman Legacies and a Greater Middle East (London: Zed Books, 2001), p.150.

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4. Jung and Piccoli: Turkey at the Crossroads, p.150. 5. Ibid., pp.116–17. 6. Dietrich Jung, ‘The Sevres Syndrome: Turkish Foreign Policy and Its Historical Legacy’, pp.131–59 in Bjorn Muller (ed), Oil and Water: Cooperative Security in the Persian Gulf (London: I.B.Tauris, 2001). 7. Jung and Piccoli: Turkey at the Crossroads, pp.149–50. 8. The National Security Council was first established after the 1960 coup as an advisory board to the Council of Ministers on matters of national security. Consisting of five civilian and five military members, it had unlimited access to all civil institutions. After the 1980 coup, the definition of national security was much broadened. Yet owing to EU reforms, in 2001 the number of civilians was increased to outnumber the military, and in 2003 a civilian – albeit a retired ambassador – was appointed as secretary general to the council; the frequency of the meetings was also reduced, effectively decreasing its power. 9. Jung and Piccoli: Turkey at the Crossroads, pp.149–50. 10. Jung: ‘The Sevres Syndrome’, pp.138–40. 11. They note specifically that ‘[r]egarding the Turkish application of this discourse of conspiracy and betrayal, it is hard to tell conviction and instrumentalization apart. Most likely it is both: on the one hand, the instrumental usage of historically grounded perceptions of threats to defend the endangered position of the privileged Kemalist elite; on the other hand, the expression of a relatively stable social habitus that had meanwhile become utterly anachronistic to the changing social and political environment’. Jung and Piccoli: Turkey at the Crossroads, pp.149–50. 12. Ibid., p.127. 13. Walter Posch, ‘Crisis in Turkey: Just Another Bump on the Road to Europe?’, EU Institute for Security Studies (2007), pp.10–11. Şahin Alpay also thinks that the Turkish journalists interpret the demise of the Ottoman Empire as a consequence of the effects of Western imperialism. Şahin Alpay, ‘Journalists: Cautious Democrats’, pp. 69–91 in Metin Heper et al. (eds), Turkey and the West: Changing Political and Cultural Identities (I.B.Tauris: London, 1993), p.70. 14. Murat Necip Arman, ‘The Sources of Banality in Transforming Turkish Nationalism’, CEU Political Science Journal 2/2(2006), p.142. 15. Ibid., p.147. 16. Ibid., p. 146. Also see Michael Billig, Banal Nationalism (London: Sage Publications, 1995); Arus Yumul and Umut Özkırımlı, ‘Reproducing the Nation: “Banal Nationalism” in the Turkish Press’, Media, Culture & Society 22 (2000), pp.787–804. 17. Filiz Başkan, ‘Globalization and Nationalism: The Nationalist Action Party of Turkey,’ Nationalism and Ethnic Politics 12/1 (2006), pp.91–2.

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18. Tanıl Bora, ‘Nationalist Discourses in Turkey’, South Atlantic Quarterly 102 (2003), p.436. 19. Kemal Kirişçi, ‘Turkey’s Foreign Policy in Turbulent Times’, Chaillot Paper 92 (2006), pp.34–5. 20. Since the ideology that this fear and anxiety are embedded in is ‘incapable of renewing itself, it tries to compensate for this shortcoming by stating “the conditions of 1920 have not changed and the West once again wants to destroy us” ’.Baskın Oran, Türkiye’de Azınlıklar: Kavramlar, Lozan, İç Mevzuat, İçtihat, Uygulama [Minorities in Turkey: Concepts, Lausanne, Internal Procedures, Interpretation, and Execution] (İstanbul: TESEV, 2004), pp.116–18, 125–6. 21. Ibid., p.124. 22. Kirişçi: ‘Turkey’s Foreign Policy’, pp.32–3. 23. Ahmet Davutoğlu, Stratejik Derinlik: Türkiyenin Uluslararası Konumu (İstanbul: Küre, 2001), p.515. 24. Kösebalaban: ‘Turkey’s EU Membership’, p.139. 25. Ali Tekin, ‘Sharing Sovereignty: Turkey’s Sovereignty Culture and the EU Accession’, Paper presented at the ECPR Group on International Relations in Turin, 2007, pp.3–4. 26. Gülnur Aybet contextualizes not the Treaty, but instead the syndrome as she argues that ‘the national sentiment termed the “Sèvres Syndrome”‘ emerged as a reaction to ‘Turkey’s lack of an overall strategic vision after securing the date for the start of negotiations from the EU in December 2004’. Gülnur Aybet, ‘Turkey and the EU after the First Year of Negotiations: Reconciling Internal and External Policy Challenges’, Security Dialogue 37 (2006), pp.536–8. 27. For further discussion of the transformations in Western Europe, see Fatma Müge Göçek, Rise of the Bourgeoisie, Demise of Empire: Ottoman Westernization and Social Change (Oxford University Press: New York, 1996). 28. Some scholars have argued that the Ottoman attempt was much more to avert European interference than to truly effect change. See, for instance, Aladağ: ‘How Does Geostrategic’, p.30. 29. Murat Paker, ‘Egemen Politik Kültürün Dayanılmaz Ağırlığı [The Unbearable Weight of Dominant Political Culture]’, pp.131–52 in Murat Paker, Psiko-Politik Yüzleşmeler [Psycho-Political Encounters] (İstanbul: Birikim, 2007), pp.137–40. 30. Ibid., pp.141–2, fn.5. 31. Ibid., pp.141–2, fn.5. 32. For a discussion of the concept of ‘annihilation anxiety,’ see Ibid., p.140. 33. Ibid., pp.141–2, fn.5. 34. Some have also referred to the Sèvres syndrome as a ‘paranoia’ or ‘phobia,’ but at the moment ‘syndrome’ is the most frequent usage among both the scholars and the media.

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35. İsmet Parlak and Özlem Kılıçarslan, ‘The West or the EU as “the Other” from the Perspective of National Pride’, South-East Europe Review 3 (2006), p.140. 36. For a more detailed discussion of the concept, see Eviatar Zerubavel, The Elephant in the Room: Silence and Denial in Everyday Life (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006). 37. For a more detailed discussion, see Fatma Müge Göçek, ‘What Is the Meaning of the 1908 Young Turk Revolution? A Critical Historical Assessment in 2008’, İÜ Siyasal Bilgiler Fakültesi Dergisi Özel Sayısı (2008). 38. Erol Ülker notes that after the Balkan Wars and during World War I, approximately 435,000 Muslim immigrants entered the Ottoman domains. See Erol Ülker, ‘Contextualising “Turkification”: Nation-Building in the Late Ottoman Empire, 1908–18’, Nations and Nationalism 11/4 (2005), pp.624–6. 39. For a more detailed discussion, see Fatma Müge Göçek, Deciphering Denial: Modernity, Turkish State and the Collective Violence against the Armenians,1789– 2009, work in progress. 40. For a more detailed discussion, see Göçek: Rise. The Muslim component further divided into the imperial İstanbul and national Ankara camps before reuniting in a symbiotic relationship. 41. Hülya Adak, ‘National Myths and Self-Na(rra)tions: Mustafa Kemal’s Nutuk and Halide Edib’s Memoirs and The Turkish Ordeal’, South Atlantic Quarterly 102(2003), pp.509–27. 42. Ibid., pp.513–4. 43. It is this claim to history writing and its interpretation and dehistoricization of the past that may also explain the inability of the Turkish state to appreciate and practice historiography in accordance with international standards. 44. Adak: ‘National Myths’, p.516. 45. This eternal history has been referred to in the literature as the ‘Turkish History Thesis’ and the ‘Sun-Language Thesis.’ For a more detailed discussion, see Suavi Aydın, ‘30’ların Tezlerine Geri Dönüş: Anadolu’da Proto-Türkler’in Yeniden Keşfi [Returning to [the History and Language] Theses of the 1930s: Rediscovery of the ‘Proto-Turks’]’ Toplum ve Bilim 96 (2003), pp.8–34. 46. See pp.1013–14 of ‘The Prophet and the Turks’ section of the report he submitted to the Congress on ‘The Traces of Turkish Culture in the Pre-Muslim Era According to Eastern Sources.’ 47. Parlak and Kılıçarslan: ‘The West or the EU’, pp.128–32. 48. For a fuller behind-the-scenes account of the Lausanne Treaty negotiations, see the memoirs of Rıza Nur (1879–1943) who was one of the two chief negotiators for the Turkish state, along with İsmet İnönü: Rıza Nur, Hayat ve Hatıratım [My Life and Memories] (İstanbul: İşaret, 1992).

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49. Soner Çağaptay, ‘Reconfiguring the Turkish Nation in the 1930s’, Nationalism and Ethnic Politics 8/2 (2002), p.68. 50. Ibid., p.77. 51. Gareth Jenkins, ‘Continuity and Change: Prospects for Civil–Military Relations in Turkey’, International Affairs 83/2 (2007), pp.340–1. 52. The work was translated into Turkish in 1884. 53. It should come as no surprise – since the Turkish culture has been so militarized for so long – that in the 2004 Transatlantic Trends survey public support for the use of military force is much higher in Turkey than in other European countries. The survey also indicated that 71 per cent of Turkey’s population thought that bypassing the United Nations would be justified if it were in the country’s vital interests, in contrast to 44 per cent in Europe. Aybet: ‘Turkey and the EU’, pp.542–3. 54. Parlak and Kılıçarslan: ‘The West or the EU’, pp.127–8. 55. For further discussion of the initial Ottoman contact with the West, see Fatma Müge Göçek, East Encounters West: France and the Ottoman Empire in the 18th Century (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987). 56. For further discussion of the negotiation of Western ideas by the Ottoman military, see Göçek: Rise. 57. For further discussion of the continuity between the Ottoman and Turkish political caders, refer to Erik Jan Zürcher, The Unionist Factor: The Role of the Committee of Union and Progress in the Turkish National Movement 1905–1926 (Leiden: Brill, 1984). 58. Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, Atatürk’ün Söylev ve Demeçleri II (Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu, 1957), pp. 207–12, 277. Quoted in Meltem Ahıska, ‘Occidentalism: The Historical Fantasy of the Modern’, South Atlantic Quarterly 102 (2003), p.366–7. 59. Parlak and Kılıçarslan: ‘The West or the EU’, p.136. 60. Senem Aydın and E. Fuat Keyman, ‘European Integration and the Transformation of Turkish Democracy’, Centre for European Policy Studies EU–Turkey Working Papers 2 (2004), p.3. 61. Ibid., p.4. 62. İlter Turan, ‘Unstable Stability: Turkish Politics at the Crossroads?’ International Affairs 83/2 (2007), pp.324–5. 63. For a discussion of the conceptualization of ideal Ottoman rule, see Halil İnalcık, The Ottoman Empire: The Classical Age, 1300–1600 (New York: Praeger, 1989). 64. See, for instance, Linda Colley, Britons: Forging the Nation (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992), and Theodore Koditschek, ‘The Making of British Nationality’, Victorian Studies 44/3 (2002), pp.389–98.

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65. See, for instance, Leah Hewitt, ‘From War Films to Films on War: Gendered Scenarios of [French] National Identity’, Studies in 20th Century Literature 26/1 (2002), pp.74–85. 66. See, for instance, Rikki Kersten, ‘Neo Nationalism and the [Japanese] “Liberal School of History” ’, Japan Forum 11/2 (1999), pp.191–203. 67. For a review of the recent studies, see Nancy Reagin, ‘Recent Work on German National Identity’, Central European History 37/2 (2004), pp.273–89. 68. See, for instance, Lawrence Wittner, ‘The Enola Gay Exhibits, The Hiroshima Bombing and American Nationalism’, Social Alternatives 24/1 (2005), pp.38–42, and Albert Auster, ‘ “Saving Private Ryan” and American Triumphalism’, Journal of Popular Film and Television 30/2 (2002), pp.98–104. 69. See, for instance, Derek Jonathan Penslar, ‘Innovation and Revision in Israeli Historiography’, History and Memory 7/1 (1995), pp.125–46. 70. See, for instance, Gerasimos Augustinos, ‘Culture and Authenticity in a Small State: Historiography and National Development in Greece’, East European Quarterly 23 (1989), pp.17–31. 71. See, for instance, Ionel Buse, ‘Mythes Roumains des Origines’, pp. 81–94 in Chantal Delsol, Michel Maslowski and Joanna Nowicki (eds), Mythes et Symboles Politiques en Europe Centrale (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 2002). 72. See, for instance, Maria Todorova, ‘The Course and Discourses of Bulgarian Nationalism’, pp.70–102 in Peter F Sugar (ed), Eastern European Nationalism in the Twentieth Century (Washington: American University Press, 1995). 73. Aladağ: ‘How Does Geostrategic’, pp.12–13. 74. Therein lies the problem with the current interaction with the European Union that attempts to execute a similar negotiation; in this case, the negotiation of national sovereignty is not for security, but for the freedom of expression and human rights. It also naturally identifies as the social actor that ought to be carrying out the negotiations those who represent the people, rather than the military that has traditionally assumed and carried out that role and, as a consequence, has gained not only experience but also a certain legitimacy, authority and power. The recent contestation in Turkey is over the people’s representatives’ attempting to gain the legitimacy and authority needed to negotiate with the European Union. 75. Osman Köker, Armenians in Turkey 100 Years Ago: With the Postcards from the Collection of Orlando Carlo Calumeno (İstanbul: Birzamanlar Yayıncılık, 2005). 76. Erik Jan Zürcher, ‘How Europeans Adopted Anatolia and Created Turkey’, Leiden Project Working Papers Archive, Department of Turkish Studies, Leiden University, 2005, p.4.

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77. Ibid., p.3. 78. For an uncritical biography of İnönü, see Metin Heper, İsmet İnönü: The Making of a Turkish Statesman (Leiden: Brill, 1998). 79. See the biographical account of Mevhibe İnönü penned by her granddaughter Gülsün Bilgehan, Mevhibe. (Ankara: Bilgi, 1994). 80. For further details, see Celal Bayar, Ben de Yazdım [I too Wrote] (İstanbul: Bahar, 1965). 81. After World War I, the Special Organization transformed first into the Karakol Organization founded in 1919 and later into the National Defense Group (Müdafaa-ı Milliye or Mim Mim) to greatly aid the Independence Struggle, so much so that their activities were approved by the National Assembly in 1921. The first intelligence agency of the Ankara government, the Ankara Police Organization established in 1921 then turned over its activities to the General Chief of Staff Intelligence Gathering Department. In 1926, Mustafa Kemal ordered the foundation of an intelligence organization and in 1927 the ‘National Security Service’ (Milli Emniyet Hizmeti or MAH) was established to continue until the foundation in 1965 of the National Intelligence Agency (MIT) that is still in existence today. 82. See Emel Akal, Milli Mücadelenin Başında Mustafa Kemal, İttihat Terakki ve Bolşevizm [Mustafa Kemal, Union and Progress, and Bolshevism at the Onset of the Nationalist Struggle] (İstanbul: Tüstav, 2002), p.153. 83. Ibid., p.231. 84. Given this pattern, it is not difficult to guess why the presidency of Abdullah Gül has been under constant challenge from its inception. First the election in the National Assembly was declared procedurally problematic by the Republican People’s Party and taken to the Constitutional Court which, a report in Taraf newspaper by Yasemin Çongar in April 2008 argues, was then pressured to rule against Gül ‘to prevent a coup’. Then, the public prosecutor brought a case to the Constitutional Court against the JDP Gül had once belonged to, arguing that it violated the state principles of secularism and therefore its most prominent politicians, including the current Prime Minister and President of Turkey, needed to be barred from politics for life. 85. One of the fundamental reasons that made such an election possible was the changed composition of the Turkish National Assembly. Once again against the wishes of the Turkish military, the newly formed Justice and Development Party actively participated in soliciting the votes of the electorate. Until then, the existing parties had contined the tradition of working with and therefore counting on the support of the military, deciding who to name as their deputies from the party headquarters. These deputies often had little local electoral support.

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86. See, for instance, the discussions by Gülay Günlük Şenesen, ‘Türkiyenin Savunma Bütçesi: Veri ve Gözlemler [Turkey’s Defense Budget: Data and Observations]’, Birikim 29 (2002), and Faruk Mercan ‘Asker-TESEV Tartışmasının Kodları [The [Symbolic] Codes of the Debate between the Military and the [Civilian] Turkish Economic Social Research Foundation]’, Aksiyon 9 (2006). 87. See Şenesen: ‘Türkiyenin Savunma’ for a more detailed discussion. 88. See in particular Faruk Mercan Apolet, Kılıç ve İktidar [Epaulets, Sword and Sovereignty] (İstanbul: Doğan, 2004). 89. Ali Karaosmanoğlu, ‘Officers: Westernization and Democracy’, pp.19–34 in Metin Heper et al. (eds), Turkey and the West: Changing Political and Cultural Identities (I.B.Tauris: London, 1993), p.27. 90. Arman: ‘The Sources of Banality’, p.142. 91. See, for instance, the recent works on the Jews by Rıfat Bali, Cumhuriyet yıllarında Türkiye Yahudileri. Bir Türkleştirme serüveni [Turkish Jews during the Republican Years: A Saga of Turkification] (İstanbul: İletişim, 2000), and on the Armenians by Nazan Maksudyan, ‘Modernization of Welfare or Further Deprivation? State Provisions for Foundlings in the Late Ottoman Empire’, The Journal of the History of Childhood and Youth 2/3 (2009), pp.361–39. 92. Consider, for instance, those sheikhs of religious orders who helped officers escape from the capital to Ankara to join the Independence Struggle and those Kurdish tribes who likewise sided with Mustafa Kemal. 93. Hakan Yavuz and Nihat Ali Özcan, ‘Crisis in Turkey: The Conflict of Political Languages’, Middle East Policy 15/3 (2007), pp.118–19. 94. See the discussion in Hans Kohn, The Idea of Nationalism (New York: Collier Books, 1944); the distinction is further articulated in Rogers Brubaker, Citizenship and Nationhood in France and Germany (Boston: Harvard University Press, 1992). 95. For the recent arguments of these scholars on this topic, refer to Ronald Beiner (ed), Theorizing Nationalism (Albany: SUNY Press, 1999). 96. Julen Zabalo, ‘Is Catalan Nationalism Really Civic and Basque Nationalism Ethnic?‘ Revista de sociologia 72 (2004), pp.67–85. 97. Aybet: ‘Turkey and the EU’, pp.540–1. 98. Ülker: ‘Contextualising “Turkification” ’, pp.624–6. 99. Natalie Tocci, ‘21st Century Kemalism: Redefining Turkey–EU Relations in the Post-Helsinki Era’, Center for European Policy Studies Working Document 170 (2001), p.7. 100. Aybet: ‘Turkey and the EU’, p.534, fn. 4. 101. For a more extensive discussion of this process, see Bilal Şimşir, Şehit Diplomatlarımız [Our Martyred Diplomats] (Ankara: Bilgi, 2000).

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102. Ülker: ‘Contextualising “Turkification”‘, pp.627–8. 103. In spite of all this adversity, recent surveys reveal that the majority of the Kurds want to live inside Turkey and fight not for independence but basic rights. According to a 1995 study that was executed at the height of the Kurdish conflict with the Turkish military, only 13 per cent of the Kurdish population wanted to secede from Turkey. For a more detailed discussion, see Kemal Kirisçi and Gareth Winrow, The Kurdish Question and Turkey: An Example of a Trans-State Ethnic Conflict (London: Frank Cass, 1997), p.197. Even though this percentage might have since changed, the recent July 2007 election to the Turkish Assembly of Kurdish deputies may have balanced the change. 104. Jung and Piccoli: Turkey at the Crossroads, pp.116–17. 105. Jung: ‘The Sevres Syndrome’, p.136. 106. Yavuz and Özcan: ‘Crisis in Turkey’, pp.118–19. 107. Kösebalaban: ‘Turkey’s EU Membership’, p.135. 108. It is interesting to note in this context that the reference to Turkish as the only language of instruction in schools does not correspond with the reality: English, French and German are widely used in Turkey as languages of instruction and broadcasting. Yet education and broadcasting in these languages do not provoke similar fears of territorial disintegration or challenge the Kemalist myth of ethnic homogeneity and perceptions of national security as Kurdish does. This is so because only Kurdish is spoken by a substantial ethnic group that undermines the imagined ethnic unity of the nation. Ibid., pp.138, 141. 109. Yavuz and Özcan: ‘Crisis in Turkey’, p.124. 110. This synthesis asserted that the practice of Islam in Turkey was distinct from its practice elsewhere. Islam was negotiated within the Turkish cultural context in a manner that liberalized it. 111. Jung and Piccoli: Turkey at the Crossroads, pp.116–17. 112. For a more detailed discussion, see Fatma Müge Göçek, ‘To Veil or Not to Veil: The Contested Location of Gender in Contemporary Turkey’, Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies I/4 (1999), pp.521–35 113. Jung and Piccoli: Turkey at the Crossroads, p.115. 114. Binnaz Toprak, ‘Islamist Intellectuals: Revolt against Industry and Technology’, pp.237–57 in Metin Heper et al. (eds), Turkey and the West: Changing Political and Cultural Identities (I.B.Tauris: London, 1993), p. 245. 115. For a more extensive discussion of the movement, see for instance, Bülent Aras and Ömer Çaha, ‘Fethullah Gülen and His Liberal Turkish Islam Movement’, Middle East Review of International Affairs IV/4 (2000), pp.30–42, Elisabeth Özdalga, ‘Secularizing Trends in Fethullah Gülen’s

Notes

116. 117. 118. 119. 120. 121.

122.

123. 124. 125. 126. 127. 128. 129.

130. 131.

267

Movement: Impasse or Opportunity for Further Renewal?’ Critique12/1 (2003), pp.61–73, Mücahit Bilici, ‘The Fethullah Gülen Movement and Its Politics of Representation in Turkey’, Muslim World 96/1 (2006), pp.1–20, and Erol Gülay, ‘The Gülen Phenomenon: A Neo-Sufi Challenge to Turkey’s Rival Elite?’ Critique 16/1 (2007), pp.37–61. See BBC News Service, Monday November 22, 1999. See BBC News Service, Thursday August 31, 2000 and Worldwide Religious News May 6, 2006. Aladağ: ‘How Does Geostrategic’, p.14. Jung and Piccoli: Turkey at the Crossroads, p.139. Ibid., p. 140. Aybet: ‘Turkey and the EU’, pp.540–1. Indeed some scholars argue that the ‘ascent of military into politics’ was ‘very much a function of Kurdish secessionism,’ failing to explain, however, once the secessionism was over in 1999 with the capture of Öcalan, why they then withdrew to their barracks, but did not withdraw from politics. Yavuz and Özcan: ‘Crisis in Turkey’, pp.124–5. In 1994, Turkey had the largest defense budget in NATO in proportion to its GDP after Greece, Britain and the United States. See Kirişçi: ‘Turkey’s Foreign Policy’, p.31. Malik Mufti, ‘Daring and Caution in Turkish Foreign Policy’, Middle East Journal 52/1 (1998), p.33. Jung and Piccoli: Turkey at the Crossroads, p.8. Aladağ: ‘How Does Geostrategic’, pp.31–2. Ibid., p.33. Kirişçi: ‘Turkey’s Foreign Policy’, p.17. Cizre: ‘Demythologizing’, pp.218–19. Cizre also rightfully points out that it is hard to expect the military to respect or promote democracy when they conceive of it as a means of preserving and promoting the state. See Ümit Cizre Sakallıoğlu, ‘The Anatomy of the Turkish Military’s Political Autonomy’, Comparative Politics 29/2 (1997), p.151. Ibid., pp.156–62. Hakan Yavuz and Nihat Ali Özcan dıscuss the offıce of the presıdent as follows: ‘The president in the Turkish system has considerable power in blocking laws and appointing high officials. S/he has the authority to appoint judges of the Constitutional Court and members of the Council of Higher Education as well as university rectors, high judges and the general directorate of Turkish Radio and Television (TRT). The president is also commander-in-chief of the armed forces, presides over the national security

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132. 133. 134. 135. 136. 137. 138.

139. 140.

141.

142.

143. 144.

145. 146. 147.

The Transformation of Turkey council and has authority to impose a state of emergency and even declare war if Parliament is not in session. As the commander-in-chief, the president plays an important role in the promotion of generals and can drive out officers who challenge the ideological unity (Kemalism) and homogeneity of the military.’ Yavuz and Özcan: ‘Crisis in Turkey’, p.128. İlter Turan notes, however, that this has recently started to slightly change under the influence of the EU; Turan: ‘Unstable Stability’, p.331. Ibid., p.331. Aybet: ‘Turkey and the EU’, pp.542. Yavuz and Özcan: ‘Crisis in Turkey’, pp.124–5. Cizre: ‘Demythologizing’, pp.213–4. Aydın and Keyman: ‘European Integration’, pp.6–7. Turkey had not been included in the list of future EU candidates in the 1997 Luxembourg Summit for failing the Copenhagen political criterion which consisted of human and minority rights. Aybet: ‘Turkey and the EU’, pp.540–1. Ziya Öniş, ‘Turkey’s Encounters with the New Europe: Multiple Transformations, Inherent Dilemmas and the Challenges Ahead’, Journal of Balkan and Near Eastern Studies (2006), pp.285–6. There is, however, one positive development within the Turkish military that needs to be noted, as it might eventually promote democratization. Liberalization of the economy in the 1990s has also had an impact on the defense industry in that as the military started to interact with the business sector, their state-centric conception of politics started to become moderated. Aladağ: ‘How Does Geostrategic’, p.31. See Aybet: ‘Turkey and the EU’ and Kemal Kirişçi, ‘Turkey and the European Union: The Domestic Politics of Negotiating Pre-Accession’, Working Paper (2004), pp.11–12 as examples of recent usage of this terminology. Aybet: ‘Turkey and the EU’, p.544. One should note in this context the anxiety mentioned by Meltem Ahıska, who states that Turkey would never have been able to catch up because it had started late; she therefore refers to how during the 2002 legislative reforms, there was anxious talk in Turkey of ‘finally “catching the train” of modern civilization, a metaphor widely used in the Turkish media to point at Turkey’s belated relationship to ‘Western civilization.’’’ Ahıska: ‘Occidentalism’, p.352, fns. 4, 5. Yavuz and Özcan: ‘Crisis in Turkey’, pp.125–6. Arman: ‘The Sources of Banality’, p.148. İlhan Uzgel, ‘The Paradox of Modernization and Securitization: The Turkish Military versus the European Union’, EU–Turkish Relations Dossier 9 (2003), pp.2–3.

Notes 148. 149. 150. 151. 152. 153. 154. 155. 156. 157. 158. 159. 160. 161. 162. 163. 164. 165.

166. 167. 168. 169. 170. 171. 172.

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Ibid., p.5. Kösebalaban: ‘Turkey’s EU Membership’, p.140. Uzgel: ‘The Paradox’, p.3. Kirişçi: ‘Turkey and the European Union’, pp.11–12. The book was published in İstanbul in 2000 by Ötüken press. Cited in Kösebalaban: ‘Turkey’s EU Membership’, p.138. Karaosmanoğlu: ‘Officers’, pp.31, 32. Kösebalaban: ‘Turkey’s EU Membership’, p.141. Posch: ‘Crisis in Turkey’, pp.18–20. Aybet: ‘Turkey and the EU’, p.537. Alpay: ‘Journalists’, pp.70–2. Ibid., pp. 83–5. Ahıska: ‘Occidentalism’, p.354–5. Tocci: ‘21st Century Kemalism’, p.20. Barry Buzan and Thomas Diez, ‘The European Union and Turkey’, Survival 41/1 (1999), pp.41–57. Ayla Göl, ‘Turkey’s Euro-Vision’, National Europe Centre Paper 107 (2003), p.11. John Redmond, ‘Turkey and the European Union: Troubled European or European Trouble?’ International Affairs 83/2 (2007), pp.309–10. Martina Warning, ‘Reflecting the Negotiation Deadlock: EU–Turkey Relations Now, Then and Tomorrow’, Center for European Integration Studies 3/1 (2007), pp.1–3. Ahıska: ‘Occidentalism’, p.353. Jung: ‘The Sevres Syndrome’, pp.152–3. For a more extensive discussion, see Ali Çarkoğlu and Ersin Kalaycıoğlu, Rising Tide of Conservatism in Turkey (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009). Hakan Yılmaz, ‘Türkiye’de Muhafazakarlık: Aile, Din, Batı [Conservatism in Turkey: Family, Religion and the West]’, Working Paper (2006). Paker: ‘Egemen’, pp.133–4. Kösebalaban: ‘Turkey’s EU Membership’, p.130. Ibid., pp.356–7.

Chapter 5 Silences in the Turkish Republican Past: An Analysis of Contemporary Turkish–Armenian Literature 1. Hagop Demirciyan Mıntzuri, İstanbul Anıları 1897–1940 [İstanbul Memories] (İstanbul: Tarih Vakfı, 1993) was the first one to be printed in Turkish. This was later followed by others such as his Atina Tuzun Var mı?[Athena, Have You Got Any Salt?] (İstanbul: Aras, 2000), Kapandı Kirve Kapıları [Closed Are the Gates of a Godfather] (İstanbul: Aras, 2002), and Armıdan Fırat’ın Öte

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Yanı [Armıdan (Village) Is on the Other Side of the Euphrates] (İstanbul: Aras, 2003). Also significant are: Krikor Zohrab, Öyküler [Stories] (İstanbul: Aras, 2001); Vahan Totovens Yitik Evin Varisleri [The Inheritors of the Vanished House] (İstanbul: Aras, 2002); Mıgırdiç Armen, Hegnar Çeşmesi [Hegnar Fountain] (İstanbul: Belge, 1992); Hampartzum Gelenyan (Hamasdeğ), Güvercinim Harput!ta Kaldı [My Pigeon Remained Behind at Kharpert] (İstanbul: Aras, 1998); and Yervant Sırmakeşhanlıyan (Yeruğan), Balıkçı Sevdası [Fisherman’s Yearning] (İstanbul: Aras, 2000). 2. The post-1915 generation is dominated by Mıgırdiç Margosyan, whose prolific output includes Gavur Mahallesi [The Infidels’ Quarter] (İstanbul: Aras, 1992), Söyle Margos Nerelisen? [Say, Margos, Where Are You from?] (İstanbul: Aras, 1995), Biletimiz İstanbul’a Kesildi [Our Ticket Was Cut for İstanbul] (İstanbul: Aras, 2007), and Tespih Taneleri [Beads of a Prayer Bead] (İstanbul: Aras, 2009). Other works of this generation include Zurna (Blotto). Kirkor Ceyhan, Kapıyı Kimler Çalıyor [Who Are Knocking at the Door] (İstanbul: Belge, 1999), and by the same author Atını Nalladı Felek Düştü Peşimize [Fate Got on a Horse in Hot Pursuit] (İstanbul: Aras, 2000), and Seferberlik Türküleriyle Büyüdüm [I Grew Up with War Songs] (İstanbul: Aras, (2008); Agop Arslanyan, Adım Agop Memleketim Tokat [I Am Agop from Tokat] (İstanbul: Aras, 2008); Zaven Biberyan, Babam Aşkale’ye Gitmedi [My Father Did Not Go to the Aşkale] (İstanbul: Aras, 2000), and by the same author Yalnızlar [The Lonely Ones] (İstanbul: Aras, 2000); Antan Özer, Yaşamı Beklerken [While Awaiting Life] (İstanbul: Aras, 1997); Aram Pehlivanyan, Özgürlük İki Adım Ötede Değil [Freedom Is Not Two Steps Away] (İstanbul: Aras, 1999); Yervant Gobelyan, Memleketini Özleyen Yengeç [The Crab That Missed Its Country] (İstanbul: Aras, 2000); Raffi Kebabcıyan Kantyan, Konuş Halil Bey Konuş [Talk Halil Bey Talk] (İstanbul: Aras, 2000); and Oşin Çilingir, İçimizdeki Kara Delik [The Black Hole within Us] (İstanbul: Aras, 2000). 3. See Jaklin Çelik, Yılanın Yolu [The Path of the Snake] (İstanbul: Aras, 2003), and by the same author Kum Saatinde Kumkapı [Kumkapı in an Hourglass] (İstanbul: Aras, 2008); Karin Karakaşlı, Başka Dillerin Şarkısı [The Song of Other Tongues] (İstanbul: Varlık, 1999), and by the same author Can Kırıkları [Broken Pieces of the Soul] (İstanbul: Doğan, 2002), Müsait Bir Yerde İnebilir miyim? [Can I Get off at an Appropriate Place?] (İstanbul: Doğan, 2005), Benim Gönlüm Gümüş [My Heart is Silver] (İstanbul: Aras, 2009), and Cumba [Bay Window] (İstanbul: Doğan, 2009). 4. These include Gelenyan: Güvercinim; William Saroyan, Ödlekler Cesurdur [The Cowardly Are Brave] (İstanbul: Aras, 2000), and by the same author Paris Fresno Güncesi, 1967–1968 [Paris Fresno Diary] (İstanbul: Aras, 2001), İnsanlık Komedisi [The Human Comedy] (İstanbul: Aras, 2002), Yüreğim Dağlardadır,

Notes

5.

6. 7.

8.

9.

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Yaşamak Vakti [My Heart Is at the Mountains, Time to Live] (İstanbul: Aras, 2003), and Yetmişbin Süryani [Seventy Thousand Assyrians] (İstanbul: Aras, 2004); Jean Kehayan, Vatansız [Without a Country] (İstanbul: Aras, 2005); Peter Najarian, Son Ermeni [The Last Armenian] (İstanbul: Aras, 2006); Vahram Mavyan, Her Yerde Ermeni Var [Armenians Are Everywhere] (İstanbul: Aras, 2007); Vahe Berberian, Baba ve Oğul Adına [In the Name of the Father and the Son] (İstanbul: Aras, 2007); Zoya Pirzad, Işıkları Ben Söndürürüm [I Turn off the Lights] (İstanbul: Aras, 2008); and Mélinée Manouchian, Misak Manuşyan: Bir Özgürlük Tutsağı [Misak Manuşyan: A Captive of Freedom] (İstanbul: Aras, 2009). The works of the second post-1915 generation, although very significant, are left out because they have initially been written in Turkish. Likewise, the translated works of Diaspora Armenians are also excluded for the time being because they bring in the issue of the language of the diaspora which is not always Armenian. See, for instance, E.H. Carr, What Is History? (London: Macmillan, 1961) and R.G. Collingwood, The Idea of History (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1946). For the quotation, see Jacques Le Goff, History and Memory (New York: Columbia University Press, 1992), pp. 106–7. For a more detailed discussion of how historical facts contain information not only on the actors and the contemporaneous context but also about the present, see Peter Burke, ‘History of Events and the Revival of Narrative’, pp. 233–48 in Peter Burke (ed), New Perspectives on Historical Writing (Cambridge, England: Polity Press, 1991); Steven Englund, ‘The Ghost of Nation Past’, Journal of Modern History 64 (1992), pp.299–320; Robert Berkhofer, Jr., Beyond the Great Story: History as Text and Discourse (Cambridge: Belknap Press, 1995); and Jerome Bruner, ‘What Is a Narrative Fact?’ Annals, AAPSS 560 (1998), pp.17–27. See Georg Lukacs, Historical Consciousness: The Remembered Past (New Brunswick: Transaction, 1994), p.324. For more discussion of the ways of remembering the past, see Ana Maria Alonso, ‘The Effects of Truth: Re-Presentations of the Past and Imagining of Community’, Journal of Historical Sociology I (1988), pp.33–57; J. Appleby, L. Hunt, L. M. Jacob, ‘Introduction’, pp. 1–12 in J. Appleby et al. (eds), Telling the Truth about History (New York: W.W. Norton, 1994); and Eviatar Zerubavel, ‘Social Memories: Steps to a Sociology of the Past’, Qualitative Sociology 19 (1996), pp.283–99. For the amorphousness of the boundaries between the past and the present, see Lucien Febvre, A New Kind of History and Other Chapters (New York: Torchbooks, 1973); Frederick Jameson, The Political Unconscious: Narrative as a Socially Symbolic Act (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1981); David Lowenthal, The Past Is a Foreign Country (Cambridge: Cambridge University

272

10.

11.

12. 13.

14. 15.

16.

17.

The Transformation of Turkey Press, 1985); Carol Gluck, ‘The Past in the Present’, pp.64–95 in A. Gordon (ed) Postwar Japan in History (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993). See Rubie Watson, ‘Memory, History and Opposition under State Socialism’. pp.1–20 in R. Watson (ed) Memory, History, and Opposition under State Socialism (Santa Fe: School of American Research Press, 1994), p.1. For other studies on collective memory, see Jeffrey Olick and D. Levy, ‘Collective Memory and Cultural Constraint: Holocaust Myth and Rationality in German Politics’, American Sociological Review 62 (1997), pp.921–36; Jeffrey Olick and J. Robbins, ‘Social Memory Studies: From “Collective Memory” to the Historical Sociology of Mnemonic Practices’, Annual Review of Sociology 24 (1998), pp.105–40; D. Ben-Amos and L. Weissberg (eds), Cultural Memory and the Construction of Identity (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1999). See Barry Schwartz, ‘Rereading the Gettysburg Address: Social Change and Collective Memory’, Qualitative Sociology 19 (1996), pp.395–422; and by the same author, ‘Introduction: The Expanding Past’, Qualitative Sociology 19/3 (1996), pp.275–82; ‘Social Change and Collective Memory: The Democratization of George Washington’, American Sociological Review 56 (1991), p.221, and ‘The Social Context of Commemoration: A Study in Collective Memory’, Social Forces 61/2 (1982), pp.374, 395. See James C. Scott, Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990), p.xiii. See Roger Chartier, Cultural History: Between Practices and Representations (Cambridge, England: Polity Press, 1988), p.14. See also Raphael Samuel and P. Thompson, ‘Introduction’, pp.1–22 in R. Samuel and P. Thompson (eds), The Myths We Live By (London: Routledge, 1990); Paul Thompson, ‘Life Histories and the Analysis of Social Change’, pp.289–306 in D. Bertaux (ed), Biography and Society: The Life History Approach in the Social Sciences (Sage: Beverly Hills, 1981). See Prasenjit Duara, Rescuing History from the Nation: Questioning Narratives of Modern China (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995), p.5. See Jonathan Boyarin, ‘Space, Time and the Politics of Memory’, in J. Boyarin (ed), Remapping Memory: Politics of Time and Space (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1994), p.14. Also see Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space (Oxford: Blackwell, 1991). See David Mc Crone, ‘Inventing the Past: History and Nationalism’, in D. McCrone (ed), The Sociology of Nationalism: Tomorrow’s Ancestors (London: Routledge, 1998), p.52. Duara: Rescuing History, p.16.

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18. See David Shumway, ‘Nationalist Knowledges: The Humanities and Nationality’, Poetics Today 19/3 (1998), pp.357–73. 19. For a fuller discussion, see Sarah Corse, Nationalism and Literature: The Politics of Culture in Canada and the United States (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997). 20. See Michel-Rolph Truillot, Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History (Boston: Beacon Press, 1995), p.xix. 21. Michael Herzfeld, Cultural Intimacy: Social Poetics in the Nation-State (New York: Routledge, 1997), p.172. 22. Ibid., p.3. 23. One should note, however, that studies of Holocaust memory and trauma also indicate a large degree of repression and disassociation that victims and their descendants need to engage in merely to be able to sustain their participation in society. For a more extensive discussion, see Mieke Bal, ‘Introduction’, in M. Bal, J. Crewe and L. Spitzer (eds), Acts of Memory: Cultural Recall in the Present (Hanover, New Hampshire: University Press of New England, 1999), p.xi. 24. This has nevertheless recently started to change with the second post-1915 generation of Turkish-Armenians. A case in point is the recent publication by Hraç Norşen, Çileli Agavni [Anguished Agavni] (İstanbul: Aras, 2009). This work comprises the memoirs of Agavni Norşen as narrated to her grandchild Hraç. Agavni, we are told, was originally from the village of Pürk near Sivas Suşehri. Agavni witnessed the deaths of her husband, mother and daughter during the 1915 deportations. Escaping with the aid of a Turkish gendarme she once knew, Agavni then had to burn the diaries she had kept in the aftermath of the 6–7 September 1955 pogroms. The press (which specializes in publishing Turkish-Armenian literature) introduces the book as follows: ‘The story of Agavni – who had to go through blood, tears, rapes, massacres and suffering to always hang onto life – demonstrates that the victims too have willpower and many ways of resistance. Even though it is the unjust who write history, the insignificant ones can persevere with the hope to leave something significant to the future. In spite of all the painful incidents she lived through, Agavni too found the way out of her entrapment by narrating what she experienced to others.’ 25. See Marianne Hirsch, ‘Projected Memory: Holocaust Photographs in Personal and Public Fantasy’, in M. Bal et al. (eds), Acts of Memory: Cultural Recall in the Present (Hanover, New Hampshire: University Press of New England, 1999), p.8. 26. Carol Bardenstein, ‘Trees, Forests, and the Shaping of Palestinian and Israeli Collective Memory’, in M. Bal et al. (eds), Acts of Memory: Cultural Recall in

274

27. 28.

29. 30.

31. 32. 33. 34.

35.

36.

37.

38.

The Transformation of Turkey the Present (Hanover, New Hampshire: University Press of New England, 1999), p.148. Kevin Robins, ‘Interrupting Identities: Turkey/Europe’, in S. Hall and P. du Gay (eds), Questions of Cultural Identity (London: Sage, 1996), p.69. It is difficult to assess the true population of the Kurds residing in Turkey today because the statistical data gathered do not include ethnicity as a parameter. Scott: Domination, p.xii. It is no accident that current surveys on what people consider history show that it connects much less to national narratives than personal ones. For a more detailed discussion, see Casey Nelson Blake, ‘The Usable Past, the Comfortable Past, and the Civic Past: Memory in Contemporary America’, Cultural Anthropology 14/3 (1999), pp.423–35, and David Thelen, ‘Making History and Making the United States’, Journal of American Studies 32/3 (1998), pp.373–97. Alon Confino, ‘Collective Memory and Cultural History: Problems of Method’, American Historical Review 102/5 (1997), pp.1386–1403. Truillot: Silencing, p.26. Yıldız Sertel, Annem: Sabiha Sertel Kimdi, Neler Yazdı [My Mother: Who Sabiha Sertel Was and What She Wrote] (İstanbul: Yapı Kredi Yayınları, 1993). Filiz Ali, ‘Filiz Hiç üzülmesin ...’: Sabahattin Ali’nin Objektifinden, Kızı Filiz’in Gözünden Bir Yaşam öyküsü [‘May Filiz Never Feel Sorry ...’ : A Life Story from the Standpoint of Sabahattin Ali and Perspective of Filiz Ali] (İstanbul: Sel, 1995). Memet Fuat, Gölgede Kalan Yıllar [Years Left in the Shadows] (İstanbul: Adam, 1997), and Mina Urgan, Bir Dinazorun Anıları [Memoirs of a Dinosaur] (İstanbul: Yapı Kredi, 1998). Another memoir of a woman intellectual which interests social scientists is that of the republican social scientist Nermin Abadan-Unat, Kum Saatini İzlerken [While Watching the Hourglass] (İstanbul: İletişim, 1996). It is interesting to note that, as with the definitions of Turkish national identity and Turkish nationalism, less is known about what this national project is not, than about what it is: nationalist definitions are based on the identification of those elements that are systematically excluded and the normalization and obfuscation of those elements that are included in the core. Can Dündar, Gölgedekiler [Those in the Shadows] (Ankara: İmge, 1995). The book was also the first to have accompanying CD-ROMs on each of the historical characters/events discussed, thereby using a new visual documentation technique. Kemal Yalçın, Emanet Çeyiz: Mübadele İnsanları [The Entrusted Dowry: People of the Population Exchange] (İstanbul: Belge, 1998).

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39. Üç Kuşak Cumhuriyet [Three Generations of the Republic] (İstanbul: Türk Tarih Vakfı, 1998), 75 Yılda Çarklardan Chiplere [From Wheels to Microchips in 75 Years] (İstanbul: Türk Tarih Vakfı, 1999), and 75 Yılda Tebaa’dan Vatandaşa [From Subject to Citizen in 75 Years] (İstanbul: Türk Tarih Vakfı, 1999). 40. Akile Gürsoy in 75 Yılda Tebaa’dan. pp.61–7. 41. Ibid., p.61. 42. Ibid., p.63. 43. Leyla Neyzi, İstanbul’da Hatırlamak ve Unutmak [Remembering and Forgetting in İstanbul] (İstanbul: Türk Tarih Vakfı, 1999). 44. Ibid., p.3. 45. Ibid., p.7. 46. Ibid., p.9. 47. Ibid., p.167. 48. Mıntzuri: İstanbul Anıları, p.1. 49. Ibid., p.3. 50. Ibid., p.i. 51. Ibid., p.7. 52. Ibid., pp.88, 147–8. 53. Ibid., p.45. 54. Ibid., pp.55–57. 55. Ibid., pp.75–78. 56. Ibid., pp.8, 74, 89, and footnotes 24, 25. 57. Ibid., p.143. 58. Ibid., p.139. 59. Ibid., p.128. 60. Ibid., p.133. 61. See Fuat Dündar, Modern Türkiye’nin Şifresi: İttihat ve Terakki’nin Etnisite Mühendisliği, 1913–1918 [The Cipher of Modern Turkey: The Ethnic Engineering of the Union and Progress, 1913–1918] (İstanbul: İletişim, 2008). 62. Mıntzuri: İstanbul Anıları, p.139. 63. Margosyan: Gavur Mahallesi, p.95. 64. Ibid., p.99. 65. Ibid., p.96. 66. Ibid., p.97. 67. Margosyan: Söyle Margos, p.8. 68. Ibid., pp.57–58. 69. Ibid., pp.59–60. 70. Ibid., p. 93. 71. Ibid., p.55. 72. Ibid., pp.42–43.

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73. Ibid., pp.51–52, 57. See p.28 for the remark. 74. Ibid., p.90. 75. For a much more detailed discussion on how the Turkish unitary state framework systematically punished minorities, see Soner Çağaptay, Islam, Secularism and Nationalism in Modern Turkey: Who Is a Turk? (New York: Routledge, 2006). 76. Margosyan: Söyle Margos, p.24. 77. Ibid., p.35. 78. The term kafle is a variant of kafile, a word of Arabic origin shared by Armenian, Kurdish and Turkish. I thank Ernest McCarus who looked up the word in Kurdish and Kevork Bardakjian who looked it up in Armenian. 79. Margosyan: Söyle Margos, p.46. 80. Ibid., p.104.

Chapter 6 Remembering the Past: How to Commemorate 24 April 1915 1. Probably the account of Teotoros Lapçinciyan titled The Golgotha of the Armenian Clergy published in Constantinople soon thereafter in 1921 is the most trustworthy. It was written relatively soon after 1915 by an Armenian priest. The account lists over 1,500 Armenian clergy deported throughout the empire as well as 100 of the 270 who were arrested on that first night. Others followed. Of these, only about a dozen survived and the rest were massacred. 2. Had the Armenians remained in Turkey and naturally multiplied over the last century, their population would have recently been around 20 million. I thank Greg Sarkissian for this estimate. 3. Sigmund Freud, Mourning and Melancholia. Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud (London: Hogarth Press, 1917), p.14. 4. See the discussion in M.C. Howard, Contemporary Cultural Anthropology (Glenview, Illinois: Scott, Foresman and Co., 1989). 5. See, for instance, I. Levav, Y. Friedlander et al., ‘An Epidemiologic Study of Mortality among Bereaved Parents’, New England Journal of Medicine, 319 (1988), p.457. 6. See J.R. Averill, ‘The Functions of Grief’, in C. Izard (ed), Emotions in Personality and Psychopathology (New York: Plenum, 1979), and P.E. Hodgkinson and M. Stewart, Coping with Catastrophe. A Handbook of Disaster Management (London: Routledge, 1991). 7. M. Halbwachs, La Mémoire Collective [Collective Memory] (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1968).

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8. See J. W. Pennebaker, Opening Up (New York: W. Morrow and Co., 1990) and B. Rimé et al., ‘Social Sharing of Emotion: New Evidence and New Questions’, in W. Stroebe and M. Hewstone (eds), European Review of Social Psychology (1998), p.8. 9. Neil Smelser, ‘Pychological Trauma and Cultural Trauma’, pp.31–59 in Alexander, Jeffrey, Eyerman, Ron, Giesen, Bernhard, Smelser, Neil and Sztompka, Piotr (eds), Cultural Trauma Theory and Applications (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001). Smelser defines cultural trauma as a memory accepted and publicly given credence by a relevant membership group and evoking an event or situation which is laden with negative affect, presented as indelible, and regarded as threatening a society’s existence or violating one of its fundamental presuppositions. 10. See for instance, B. Conway, ‘Active Remembering, Selective Forgetting, and Collective Identity: The Case of Bloody Sunday’, Identity: An International Journal of Theory and Research 3(4) (2003), pp.305–23; S.W. Gregory and J.M. Lewis, ‘Symbols of Collective Memory: The Social Process of Memorializing May 4, 1970, at Kent State University’, Symbolic Interaction 11(2) (1988), pp.213–33; J. Jordan, Structures of Memory: Understanding Urban Change in Berlin and Beyond (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2006); C. Moriarty, ‘Private Grief and Public Remembrance: British First World War Memorials’, pp. 125–42 in M. Evans and K. Lunn (eds), War and Memory in the Twentieth Century (Oxford: Berg, 1997); H. Saito, ‘Reiterated Commemoration: Hiroshima as National Trauma’, Sociological Theory 24/4 (2006), pp.353–76; S. Simon, ‘Contesting Formosa: Tragic Remembrance, Urban Space, and National Identity in Taipak’, Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power 10/1 (2003), pp.109–31; C. Teeger and V. VinitzkySeroussi, ‘Controlling for Consensus: Commemorating Apartheid in South Africa’, Symbolic Interaction 30(1) (2007), pp.57–78; V. Vinitzky-Seroussi, ‘Commemorating a Difficult Past: Yitzhak Rabin’s Memorials’, American Sociological Review 67(1) (2002), pp.30–51; R. Wagner-Pacifici and B. Schwartz, ‘The Vietnam Veterans Memorial: Commemorating a Difficult Past’, American Journal of Sociology 97(2) (1991), pp.376–420; and V. Zolberg, ‘Contested Remembrance: The Hiroshima Exhibit Controversy’, Theory and Society 27/4 (1998), pp.565–90. 11. Vinitzky-Seroussi: ‘Commemorating’, pp.30–51. 12. The ‘apology’ campaign commenced in December 2008 on the website www.ozurdiliyoruz.com as four prominent liberal Turkish intellectuals – Cengiz Aktar, Ali Bayramoğlu, Ahmet İnsel, and Baskın Oran – took a stand and asked for Turkish society to sign onto the following apology: ‘My conscience cannot accept the ignorance and denial of the Great Catastrophe

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14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26.

The Transformation of Turkey the Ottoman Armenians were subjected to in 1915. I reject this injustice and I personally share the feelings and pain of my Armenian brothers and sisters and apologize to them.’ Up to date, more than 30,000 have signed on. There was a fierce counter-campaign but it did not have as much traction as it was merely defensive in nature. The information provided here is compiled from two sources published in Turkish by two Turkish-Armenians, Pars Tuğlacı and Kevork Pamukciyan. See Pars Tuğlacı, Ermeni Edebiyatından Seçkiler [Selections from Armenian Literature] (İstanbul: Cem Publishing House, 1992); Kevork Pamukciyan, Biyografileriyle Ermeniler [Armenians with Their Biographies], Osman Köker (ed) (İstanbul: Aras Publications, 2003) and Kevork Pamukciyan, Ermeni Harfli Türkçe Metinler [Turkish Texts with Armenian Letters], Osman Köker (ed) (İstanbul: Aras Publications, 2002). See Pamukciyan: Biyografileriyle Ermeniler, p.160. Ibid., p.269. Ibid., p.319. Ibid., p.387, and Tuğlacı: Ermeni Edebiyatından, p.410. See Pamukciyan: Biyografileriyle Ermeniler, p.203. See Tuğlacı: Ermeni Edebiyatından, p.348. Ibid., p.361. Ibid., p.164. Ibid., p.402. See Pamukciyan: Ermeni Harfli, p.10. Ibid., p.209. See Tuğlacı: Ermeni Edebiyatından, p.257. See especially the recent photography exhibit and book by Osman Köker entitled 100 Yıl once Türkiye’de Ermeniler [Armenians in Turkey a Century Ago] (İstanbul: Birzamanlar Yayıncılık, 2005). Köker documents through photographs the contributions that the Armenians made to many cities and towns throughout the empire.

Chapter 7 In Search of Just Turks in the Collective Violence Committed against the Armenians 1. See in particular Ira Katznelson, Desolation and Enlightenment: Political Knowledge after Total War, Totalitarianism and the Holocaust (New York: Columbia University Press, 2003) and Jeffrey Alexander, ‘Modern, Anti, Post, and Neo: How Intellectuals Explain “Our Time”‘, pp. 193–228 in The Meanings of Social Life: A Cultural Sociology (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003).

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2. See Julia Adams,’The Rule of the Father: Patriarchy and Patrimonialism in Early Modern Europe’, in Charles Camic et al. (eds), Max Weber’s Economy and Society (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2005), especially pp.245–6. 3. See John Dryzek, ‘Political Inclusion and the Dynamics of Democratization’, The American Political Science Review 90/3 (1996), pp.475–88. 4. E.J. Hobsbawm, ‘The Making of a “Bourgeois” Revolution’, Social Research 56/1 (1989), p.8; Michael Mann, The Dark Side of Democracy: Explaining Ethnic Cleansing (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005). 5. For a fuller discussion, see Bill Tammeus and Jacques Cukierkorn, They Were Just People: Stories of Rescue in Poland during the Holocaust (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2009); David Scrase, Wolfgang Mieder and Katherine Quimby Johnson (eds), Making a Difference: Rescue and Assistance during the Holocaust (Burlington, Vt.: Center for Holocaust Studies at the University of Vermont, 2004); Alexander Fortescue (ed), Whoever Saves One Life: The Efforts to Save Jews in Lithuania between 1941 and 1944 (Vilnius Genocide and Resistance Research Centre of Lithuania: Garnelis, 2002). A more detailed disucssion of the concept of altruism is provided by Pearl M. Oliner et al. (eds), Embracing the Other: Philosophical, Psychological, and Historical Perspectives on Altruism (New York: New York University Press, 1992). 6. The vision of the European Union is particularly significant in this context, for it aspires to define and relate to human beings in a way that surpasses the narrow confines of identity instilled in them by their nation-states and its naturalized nationalism. The European vision aims to highlight past and present human experience with the belief that humankind will ultimately persevere as it first uncovers the good, the righteous and the just in its own past and present and then reproduces these elements for its future. 7. See Bert Adams and R.A. Sydie, ‘Critical Theory: The Frankfurt School and Habermas’, pp.59–88 in Contemporary Sociological Theory (Thousand Oaks, CA: Pine Forge, 2002). 8. See Jürgen Habermas, Knowledge and Human Interests (Boston: Beacon Press, 1971). 9. See Michel de Certau, ‘On the Oppositional Practices of Everyday Life’, Social Text III (1980), pp.3–43, and by the same author, The Practice of Everyday Life (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1988); James C. Scott, Domination and the Hidden Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1990). 10. See in particular Ranajit Guha History at the Limit of World-History (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002); and Heikki Patomaki, ‘From East

280

11. 12. 13.

14.

15.

16.

17. 18. 19.

20.

21. 22.

The Transformation of Turkey

to West: Emergent Global Philosophies – Beginnings of the End of Western Dominance?’ Theory, Culture &Society 19/3 (2002), pp.89–111. Dipesh Chakrabarty, Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998). See Edward Said, Orientalism (New York: Pantheon, 1978). To date, there have only been two conference papers on ‘altruistic’ Turks, the most recent one presented by Sarkis Seropyan at the 2005 İstanbul conference on the Armenians of the Ottoman Empire, which was held at Bilgi University in September 2005, and the earlier one delivered by Richard Hovannisian at the 2003 Workshop on Armenian Turkish Scholarship at the University of Michigan, titled ‘Intervention and Altruism during the Armenian Genocide.’ An example is the article by Hasan the Circassian (also known as ‘Hasan Amça’) that appeared in the Alemdar newspaper (1919) where he mentions those Armenians he saved from the Syrian desert upon the orders of Cemal Pasha and against the machinations of Talat Pasha. See Eric Jan Zürcher, The Unionist Factor: The Role of the Committee of Union and Progress in the Turkish National Movement 1905–1926 (Leiden: Brill, 1984). See Şenol Kantarcı, ‘Ermenilerin Katlettiği İttihat ve Terakki Mensuplarına Atatürk Sahip Çıkmştır [Atatürk Owned up to Those CUP Members Killed by Armenians)’, Working Paper (TURKSAM, Center for Turkish Strategic Analyses, 2005). See Abidin Nesimi, Yılların İçinden [From Within the Years] (İstanbul: Gözlem, 1977). Ibid., p.34. Nesimi also recounts how the CUP Special Organization (Teşkilat-ı Mahsusa) was eventually prevented from committing unsolved murders within the country and charged instead with collecting information and instigating rebellions in North Africa, Iran, India and Russia. Their name was converted into the Directorate of Eastern Affairs (Umur-u Şarkiye Müdürlüğü) and thus into an apparatus of the state connected to the General Chief of Staff (Genelkurmay). Ibid. ,p.36. After World War I, Dr. Şahingiray was eventually arrested by the Allied Powers and was to be tried for the crimes he had perpetrated against the Armenians. He escaped from prison with the aid of the Special Organization, but then committed suicide when he realized that he was about to be caught. See Nesimi: Yılların, pp.37, 39. Talat Pasha has been identified as one of the masterminds of the Armenian deportations and massacres.

Notes 23. 24. 25. 26.

27. 28.

29.

30.

31.

32.

33. 34.

281

See Nesimi: Yılların, pp.40–46. Ibid., pp.42–44. Ibid., p.43. For a more detailed account of the Banu Qurayzah incident, see Hannah Rahman, ‘The Conflict between the Prophet and the Opposition in Madina’, Der Islam 62/2 (1985), pp.260–97, M. Kister, ‘The Massacre of the Banu Qurayza’, Jerusalem Studies of Arabic and Islam 8 (1986), pp.61–96, and Michael Lecker, ‘Waqidi’s Account on the Status of the Jews of Medina: A Study of a Combined Report’, Journal of Near Eastern Studies 54/1 (1995), pp.15–32. The following account is based on Rahman: ‘The Conflict’, pp.277–8, 283–5, 288. For a more detailed analysis of the relationship between religion and genocide, see Omer Bartov and Phyllis Mack (eds), In God’s Name: Genocide and Religion in the Twentieth Century (New York: Berghahn, 2001). For a more extensive discussion, see Vahakn Dadrian, The History of the Armenian Genocide: Ethnic Conflict from the Balkans to Anatolia and the Caucasus (New York: Berghahn, 1995). Indeed, as scholars have often noted, the only legitimate removal of Muslim rulers from power could occur if they were proven to have acted ‘unjustly’ toward their subjects. For an extensive discussion, see Halil Halil İnalcık, The Ottoman Empire: The Classical Age, 1300–1600 (New York: Praeger, 1973). See Dr. Mehmed Reşid Şahingiray, Sürgünden İntihara Dr. Reşid Bey’in Hatıraları [The Memoirs of Dr. Reshid Bey from Exile to Suicide] (İzmir: n.a., 1992). See Hüsamettin Ertürk, İki Devrin Perde Arkası [Two Eras behind the Scenes] (İstanbul: Hilmi, 1957). The reference to Dr. Mehmed Reşid Şahingiray is on page 327. Ibid., p.306. For this burgeoning literature, see Serdar Can, Nenemin Masalları [My Grandmother’s Fairy Tales] (İstanbul: Umut, 1991); Yavuz Selim Karakışla, ‘Savaş Yetimleri ve Kimsesiz Çocuklar: “Ermeni” mi, “Türk” mü? [War Orphans and Homeless Children: “Turkish” or “Armenian”?]’, Toplumsal Tarih 12(69) (1999), pp.46–55; Ara Sarafian, ‘The Absorption of Armenian Women and Children into Muslim Households as a Structural Component of the Armenian Genocide’, pp.209–21 in Omer Bartov and Phyllis Mack (eds), In God’s Name: Genocide and Religion in the Twentieth Century (New York: Berghahn, 2001); Vahakn Dadrian, ‘Children as Victims of Genocide: The Armenian Case’, Journal of Genocide Research 5/3 (2003), pp.421–37; Ferhunde

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Özbay, ‘Milli Mücadele Döneminde Öksüz ve Yetimler: 1911–22 Yıllarında Anadolu’nun Kimsesiz Kız Çocukları [Orphans and Half Orphans during the Independence Struggle: Homeless Female Children of Anatolia in 1911–22]’, pp. 105–15 in Emine Gürsoy Naskali and Aylin Koç (eds), Savaş Çocukları, Öksüzler, Yetimler [Children of War, Orphans, Half Orphans] (İstanbul: Kırmızı, 2003); Fethiye Çetin, Anneannem [My Grandmother] (İstanbul: Metis, 2004); İrfan Palalı, Tehcir Çocukları: Nenem bir Ermeniymiş [Children of Deportation: My Grandmother Was an Armenian] (İstanbul: Su, 2005); Kemal Yalçın, Sarı Gelin – Sari Gyalin (İstanbul: Birzamanlar, (2005)); Ayşe Gül Altınay, ‘In Search of Silenced Grandparents: Ottoman Armenian Survivors and Their (Muslim) Grandchildren’, pp. 117–32 in Hans-Lukas Keiser and Elmer Plozza (eds), Der Völkermord an der Armeniern, die Türkei und Europa/The Armenian Genocide, Turkey and Europe (Zurich: Chronos Verlag, 2006); Erhan Başyurt, Ermeni Evlatlıklar: Saklı Kalmış Hayatlar [Armenian Foster Children: Hidden Lives] (İstanbul: Karakulu, 2006); Filiz Özdem, Korku Benim Sahibim [Fear is My Owner] (İstanbul: Yapı Kredi, 2007); Gülçiçek Günel Tekin, Kara Kefen: Müslümanlaştırılmış Ermeni Kadınların Dramı [The Black Shroud: The Tragedy of Muslimized Armenian Women] (İstanbul: Belge, 2008); Nazan Maksudyan ‘Foster-Daughter or Servant, Charity or Abuse: Beslemes in the Late Ottoman Empire’, Journal of Historical Sociology 21/4 (2008), pp.488– 512; Ayşe Gül Altınay and Fethiye Çetin, Torunlar [The Grandchildren] (İstanbul: Metis, 2009); Vahe Tachjian, ‘Gender, Nationalism, Exclusion: The Reintegration Process of Female Survivors of the Armenian Genocide’, Nations and Nationalism 15/1 (2009), pp.60–80. 35. For a more detailed discussion of the concept of social death, see Orlando Patterson, Slavery and Social Death: A Comparative Study (Boston: Harvard University Press, 1982).

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INDEX

Abasıyanık, Sait Faik 200, 206 Abidin Nesimi 77, 233, 255 fn. 58, 280 fn. 17 Aegean Sea 22, 50, 150, 164–5 Afghanistan 8 Ağasyan, Mihran 220–1 Ahıska, Meltem 180, 182, 184, 262 fn. 58, 268 fn. 144, 269 fn.160, 166 Ahmed Refik (Altınay) 80, 94–5, 256 fn. 64, 257 fn. 106, 108–9 Ahmed Rıza Bey 75–8, 81, 86, 90, 255 fn. 56, 59, 61 Ahmet Samim 91, 233 Akcan, Abdülkadir 104 Aktan, Gündüz 152 Ali Kemal 119 Ali, Filiz 195, 274 fn. 34 Ali, Sabahattin 195 Alpay, Şahin 179, 259 fn. 13, 269 fn. 158 Anatolia 5, 10, 14, 18, 22, 25, 31–2, 45, 47, 56, 59, 64, 85, 94, 96, 110, 113–6, 125, 137, 140, 149–50, 153, 185, 189, 199, 204, 206, 211, 220, 222, 231–3, 251 fn. 46, 253 fn. 11, 263 fn. 76, 281 fn. 29, 282 fn. 34 Arendt, Hannah 68, 90, 254 fn. 34 Arıkoğlu, Damar 80, 256 fn. 65 Arif Cemil (Denker) 96, 257 fn. 113 Arman, Murat Necip 103, 146–7, 172, 259 fn. 14, 265 fn. 90, 268 fn. 146 Arslanyan, Agop 185, 270 fn. 2 Asia Minor 5, 18, 22

Atatürk, Mustafa Kemal 1, 4, 21–8, 30, 63–4, 97, 101, 115, 122–5, 129–31, 136, 138–42, 144–5, 156, 169, 173, 176, 195, 214, 241 fn. 3, 245 fn. 20, 22, 248 fn. 14, 258 fn. 116, 262 fn. 58, 264 fn. 81, 82, 265 fn. 92, 280 fn. 16 Nutuk (Speech) 123, 130, 245 fn. 20, 261 fn. 41 Atay, Falih Rıfkı 73, 255 fn. 50 Aybet, Gülnur 148, 260 fn. 26, 262 fn. 53, 265 fn. 97, 100, 267 fn. 121, 268 fn. 134, 139, 142–3, 269 fn. 157 Aydın, Senem 133, 262 fn. 60, 268 fn. 137 Azerbaijan 8 Bahaeddin Şakir, Dr. 75, 228, 230 Balaghi, Shiva 26 Balkan, Fuat 92, 257 fn. 103 Balkans, the 18–19, 21, 114–15, 138 Banu Qurayza tribe 237, 240, 281 fn. 26 Bardenstein, Carol 191, 273 fn. 26 Başgil, Ali Fuat 140 Bayar, Mahmut Celal 20, 93, 140, 143, 150, 257 fn. 105, 258 fn. 116, 264 fn. 80 Biberyan, Zaven 186, 270 fn. 2 Bir, Çevik 164 Biren, Mehmet Tevfik 82, 256 fn. 69 Bora, Tanıl 104, 260 fn. 18 Bourdieu, Pierre 101

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Bourgeoisie 19, 21, 32–4, 67, 79, 112, 253 fn. 10 Ottoman 19, 84, 119, 137, 219 Turkish 21, 31–4, 36, 44, 55, 64, 112, 119, 245 fn. 16, 253 fn.. 13, 256 fn. 62, 260 fn. 27 Islamist 31–4, 56, 170 Bulgaria 8, 140, 149, 167, 173, 195, 219–20 Burke, Edmund 67, 254 fn. 24 Bush, George, Sr. and Jr. 162 Büyükanıt, Yaşar 48 Caliphate 16, 123 Caspian Sea 8 Caucasus 21, 113, 151, 164, 281 fn. 29 Cavid Bey 75, 86 Cemal Pasha 81–2, 86, 139, 280 fn. 14 Cemaleddin Efendi 76, 87, 255 fn. 57, 257 fn. 88 Central Asia 7–8, 14, 25, 125–6 Ceyhan, Kirkor 185, 270 fn. 2 Chakrabarty, Dipesh 227, 280 fn. 11 Chartier, Roger 187, 272 fn. 13 Cimcoz, Salah 141 Circassian Ahmed Bey 233 Cizre, Ümit 165, 246 fn. 33, 258 fn. 2, 267 fn. 128–30, 268 fn. 136 Clinton, Bill 162 Comte, August 3 Confino, Alon 193, 274 fn. 31 Croce, Benedetto 186 Cümbüşyan, Artin 199 Cyprus 10, 22, 39, 49–52, 59, 149–51, 161, 163–4, 172, 250 fn. 35, 40 Cypriots 49–51, 161 Cyprus problem 39–40, 49–52, 57–60, 148–50, 161, 163–4, 172, 250 fn. 35, 40 Republic of Cyprus 50 Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus 50 Çağaptay, Soner 128, 262 fn. 49, 276 fn. 75 Çağlayan, Zafer 9 Çavuşyan, Yervant 216–7 Çelik, Jaklin 185, 270 fn. 3 Çerkes Hasan (Amça) 73–4, 80, 86, 92, 255 fn. 49 Çetin, Hikmet 164

Çilingir, Oşin 185, 270 fn. 2 Çilingiryan, Rupen Sevag 219 Dadrian, Vahakn 238, 281 fn. 29, 34 Dağarvaryan, Nazaret 219 Daudet, Alphonse 200 Davutoğlu, Ahmet 1, 9, 36, 107–10, 260 fn. 23 De Certau, Michel 226, 279 fn. 9 Demirciyan, Hagop (Mıntzuri) 185–6, 198–206, 210, 269 fn. 1, 275 fn. 48–60, 62 Demirel, Süleyman 102, 143, 154, 156 Dilmen, İbrahim Necmi 126 Dink, Hrant 57 Dorian, Armen 220 Duara, Prasenjit 188, 272 fn. 14, 17 Duran, Ragıp 206 Durkheim, Emile 3 Duru, Kazım Nami 86, 89–90, 97, 256 fn. 84–5, 257 fn. 93, 258 fn. 116 Dündar, Can 195, 274 fn. 37 Ecevit, Bülent 154, 174 Elekdağ, Şükrü 152, 164 Empires 4, 7, 13–14, 16–23, 51, 55, 58–9, 61, 63–5, 70, 74–5, 81–2, 89, 99, 103, 112–14, 117–21, 137–8, 161, 185, 192, 212–13, 222, 231–4 Byzantine 14, 51, 185 Russian 16, 20–1, 58–9, 85, 113–14, 220–1 Austro-Hungarian 16, 20 German 20, 129, 147 England or Great Britain 20, 22, 34, 49, 59, 63, 116, 135, 140–1, 149, 227, 232, 262 fn. 64, 277 fn. 10 Enver Pasha 18, 73, 81–2, 86–8, 96, 139 Erbakan, Necmettin 156 Erdoğan, Recep Tayyip 7, 35 Ertürk, Hüsamettin 239, 281 fn. 32 Europe 3, 5, 8–9, 13–15, 17–19, 23–5, 33, 36, 41–2, 45, 50, 60, 65, 101, 103–4, 107–10, 112, 114, 116, 122, 126–7, 136–8, 148, 154, 159–60, 163, 167, 172–6, 180–2, 217–18, 223–5, 227–8, 230, 232 Renaissance 224

Index Europe – continued Enlightenment 3, 13, 16, 19–20, 36, 65, 70, 94, 224–9, 231, 243 fn. 4, 278 fn. 1 European Court of Human Rights 179 European Union (EU) 6, 8–9, 33–4, 39–40, 48, 50–2, 57, 98, 134–5, 147, 149–50, 154, 159–60, 163, 168–76, 178- 84, 215, 246 fn. 30, 247 fn. 41, 250 fn. 35–9, 258 fn. 3, 259 fn. 8, 260 fn. 25–6, 261 fn. 47, 262 fn. 53, 263 fn. 74, 268 fn. 142, 147, 269 fn. 151, 162, 164, 279 fn. 6 Evren, Kenan 54, 142 Fazıl Ahmet (Aykaç) 72, 74, 255 fn. 47 Febvre, Lucien 187, 271 fn. 9 Felek, Burhan 80, 90, 92, 256 fn. 66, 257 fn. 98, 102 Fethi (Okyar) 73 France 3, 16, 20, 22, 24–5, 34, 59, 66, 68–70, 82, 116, 135, 138, 147, 173–4, 182, 186, 196, 217, 220, 225, 232, 250 fn. 43, 254 fn. 24, 39, 255 fn. 41, 262 fn. 55, 265 fn. 94 Ancien regime 66 Sans-culottes 67 French Revolution 17, 63, 65–70, 75, 79, 84–5, 88, 96, 224–5, 253 fn. 13–6, 254 fn. 20, 22, 25, 28, 32, 36, 38, 255 fn. 40 Jacobins 25, 36, 67, 69, 225 1793–4 Reign of Terror 67–9, 85, 225 Dreyfus Affair 70, 225 Fuat, Memet 195, 274 fn. 35 Germany 34, 42, 64, 96, 129, 135–6, 147, 159, 173, 182, 221, 225–6, 229, 232, 263 fn. 67, 265 fn. 94, 272 fn. 10 Frankfurt School 226, 279 fn. 7 Nazis 225, 229 Holocaust, the 55, 70, 135, 223, 225–9, 240, 252 fn. 53–4, 272 fn. 10, 273 fn. 23, 25, 278 fn. 1, 279 fn. 5 Gelenyan, Hampartsum (Hamasdeğ) 185, 270 fn. 1, 4 Georgia 7–8, 173 Gezmiş, Deniz 141, 246 fn. 29

305

Gobelyan, Yervant 185, 270 fn. 2 Göl, Ayla 181, 269 fn. 163 Great Powers 113, 116, 130–1, 136, 232, 235–6 Greece 8, 20, 22, 49–52, 116, 135, 137, 149–51, 158, 161–7, 175, 192, 195, 250 fn. 36, 263 fn. 70, 267 fn. 122 Gül, Abdullah 35, 143 Gülen, Fethullah 157, 266 fn. 115 Gürsel, Cemal 140–1 Gürsoy, Akile 196, 275 fn. 40–2 Habermas, Jürgen 226, 279 fn. 7–8 Halbwachs, Maurice 213, 276 fn. 7 Hasan Fehmi 91, 233 Hegel 66–8, 90, 253 fn. 13, 254 fn. 20–2, 32–3, 36 Herzfeld, Michael 190, 273 fn. 21–2 Hirsch, Marianne 191, 273 fn. 25 Hobsbawm, Eric 66, 254 fn. 17, 19, 23, 279 fn. 4 Hüseyin Cahid (Yalçın) 91 Hüseyin Kazım Kadri 80, 213 fn. 67 International Monetary Fund (IMF) 30 Iran 7–8, 36, 42, 149, 154, 156, 164, 176, 186, 252 fn. 3, 280 fn. 19 Iraq 7–9, 22, 41–4, 46, 48–9, 153–4, 159–60, 162, 164, 169, 172–3, 233–4, 249 fn. 33 Israel 8, 46, 55–6, 135, 149, 169, 243 fn. 2, 263 fn. 69, 273 fn. 26 Italy 18, 24, 34, 113, 116, 151, 173 İbrahim Pasha 71 İlhan, Suat 175 İnönü, İsmet 27, 136, 140, 142–3, 261 fn. 48, 264 fn. 78–9 İzmirli, İsmail Hakkı 126 Japan 85, 135, 263 fn. 66, 271 fn. 9 Jenkins, Gareth 129, 262 fn. 51 Jordan 8, 154 Jung, Dietrich 101–2, 183, 258 fn. 3, 259 fn. 4–7, 9–12, 266 fn. 104–5, 111, 113, 267 fn 119, 124, 269 fn. 167 Kahayan, Jean 186 Kamil Pasha 75, 88

306

The Transformation of Turkey

Kantyan, Raffi Kebabcıyan 185, 270 fn. 2 Karakaşlı, Karin 186, 270 fn. 3 Karaosmanoğlu, Ali 145, 175, 258 fn. 3, 265 fn. 89, 269 fn. 154 Karay, Refik Halid 91, 257 fn. 99 Kelekyan, Dikran/Diran 217–18, 233, 236 Keyman, Fuat 133, 266 fn. 60, 268 fn. 137 Kılınç, Tuncer 175 Kımpetyan, Hovhannes 221 Kıvrıkoğlu, Hüseyin 174 Kızılkaya, Muhsin 206 Kirişçi, Kemal 105, 174, 247 fn. 2, 248 fn. 9, 250 fn. 40, 260 fn. 19, 22, 266 fn. 103, 267 fn. 122, 127, 268 fn. 142, 269 fn. 151 Kirişçiyan, Levon Larents 221 Kohn, Hans 147, 265 fn. 94 Korutürk, Fahri 141–2 Köker, Osman 137, 263 fn. 75 Kösebalaban, Hasan 155, 175, 184, 258 fn. 3, 260 fn. 24, 266 fn. 107, 269 fn. 149, 153, 155, 171 Kuşçubaşı, Eşref 93 Kutay, Cemal 75, 255 fn. 53 Kuyumcuyan, Silva 199–200 Kymlicka, Will 147 Le Bon, Gustave 67, 254 fn. 26 Lebanon 8, 22, 44 Lukacs, Georg 187, 271 fn. 8 Lütem, Ömer 152 Macedonia 70–1 Madinah Accord 237, 281 fn. 26 Mahmut Shevket Pasha 91–2, 257 fn. 101 Malta 21, 50, 63 Manisalı, Erol 154 Margosyan, Mıgırdiç 185–6, 189, 191–2, 198, 205–10, 270 fn. 2, 275 fn. 63–80 McCormick, Neil 147 McCrone, David 188, 272 fn. 16 Mevlanzade Rıfat 78, 255 fn. 60 Mignet 66, 254 fn. 19 Minorities, Turkish, Muslim 5, 10, 34, 57, 170, 179, 194, 260 fn. 20 Alawites/Alevis 5, 47, 57, 128, 190

Kurds 5, 10, 22, 24, 34, 38–49, 54, 56–61, 99, 108–9, 116, 121, 125, 128, 140–1, 146–9, 153–6, 158–60, 162–3, 167–70, 172–4, 179, 189–90, 192, 194, 204–5, 207, 210, 234, 236, 239, 248 fn. 4–12, 249 fn. 20, 25–33, 258 fn. 1, 265 fn. 92, 266 fn. 103, 108, 267 fn. 121, 274 fn. 28, 276 fn. 78 Parti Karkaren Kurdistan (PKK) 41–6, 48–9, 99, 149, 153–4, 164, 168, 173–5, 248 fn. 6, 11, 249 fn. 19–22, 27, 250 fn. 34, 258 fn. 1 Village guards 45, 249 fn. 22 Kurdistan 41, 43, 109, 116 Laz 57 Minorities, Turkish, non-Muslim 4–5, 9–10, 15, 17–21, 23–4, 31, 34, 53–4, 57–9, 64, 79, 84–6, 88, 94, 103, 112, 115, 118–21, 127, 137, 146, 149–50, 158, 170, 178–9, 192, 194, 202, 205–6, 208, 231–2, 244 fn. 8–9, 14, 251 fn. 44, 46, 260 fn. 20, 276 fn. 75 Assyrians 5, 34, 57, 125, 270 fn. 4 Armenians 4–5, 10, 15, 17, 18–20, 34, 48, 56–9, 64, 73, 93, 116, 119, 125, 149, 158, 185, 196, 201, 203, 231, 251 fn. 46 1915 Armenian deportations and massacres 10–11, 21, 52–3, 55, 57, 94, 137, 151–2, 185–6, 191–2, 196, 198, 202–6, 208–10, 211–23, 227, 229–30, 232, 234, 236, 238, 240, 242 fn. 21, 250 fn. 42, 251 fn. 45, 252 fn. 49, 54, 270 fn. 2, 271 fn. 5, 273 fn. 24, 276 fn. 1, 277 fn. 12 Armenian Genocide 52, 55, 57, 151–3, 172, 174, 212, 229, 233, 243 fn. 22, 244 fn. 15, 252 fn. 49, 54, 280 fn. 13, 281 fn. 28–9, 34 Armenian issue 10, 39–41, 52–61, 148, 151–3 Armenian patriarchate 217–18 Armenian Republic 158, 164, 215 Armenian Secret Army for the Liberation of Armenia (ASALA) 52, 151–3, 173, 212, 219, 231

Index Minorities, Turkish, non-Muslim – continued Dashnaksutiun party 235 Diaspora Armenians 152, 173, 212–13, 215, 232 Justice Commandoes of the Armenian Genocide (JCOAG) 52, 151–3, 173, 212, 219, 231 Turkish-Armenians 10, 48, 103, 151–2, 158, 185–7, 189, 191–4, 196–222, 226–40 Greek Rums, Orthodox 4–5, 15, 18–19, 21, 41, 49–52, 56–8, 64, 73, 103, 116, 119, 125, 137, 149–50, 173, 189, 195, 200, 231, 241 fn. 1, 247 fn. 2, 248 fn. 3, 251 fn. 46 1923 Greek Population Exchange 21, 119, 137, 149, 195, 274 fn. 38 Jews 4–5, 15, 17, 21, 55–7, 126, 207, 231, 244 fn. 8, 251 fn. 46, 265 fn. 91 Jewish lobby 55–6 Modernity 13, 24, 26, 32, 36, 39, 60–1, 65, 71, 78, 84, 86, 104–5, 112–4, 130–3, 136, 138, 144, 148, 157, 168- 9, 171, 173, 178, 181, 184, 227–8, 244 fn. 11, 250 fn. 42, 261 fn. 39 Ottoman 39, 60–1, 65, 71–9, 84, 112–13, 130, 138 Turkish 32, 86, 104–5, 130–3, 136, 144, 148, 157, 168–9, 171, 173, 184 Napoleon Bonaparte 70 North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) 8, 27, 60, 136, 148, 159, 161, 166, 267 fn. 122 Nazım Pasha, Minister of War 87, 91 Nazım, Dr. 228 Nazlıyan, Hagop and Toros 218 Nesimi, Abidin 77, 255 fn. 58, 280 fn. 17, 19, 21, 281 fn. 23–5 Nesimi, Hüseyin 223, 230–40 Neyzi, Leyla 197, 275 fn. 43 Nielsen, Kai 147 Niyazi Bey 73 Oran, Baskın 104–5, 241 fn. 3, 260, fn. 20, 277 fn. 12

307

Orbay, Kazım 233 Orbay, Rauf 82, 87–8, 256 fn. 68, 257 fn. 89, 92 Ortaylı, İlber 9 Ottoman Empire Events 1839 Ottoman Reform Declaration (Tanzimat) 17, 58, 60, 112 1876 Russo-Ottoman War and 1878 San Stefano Peace Treaty 10, 58–9, 116, 212, 232, 252 fn. 2 1908 Constitutional Revolution 3, 10, 18, 62–4, 70–9, 84, 88–97, 113, 115, 130, 138–9, 217, 220–1, 231, 244 fn. 11, 13, 245 fn. 16, 253 fn. 5, 255 fn. 49, 261 fn. 37 1909 March 31 incident 63 1912–13 Balkan wars 18, 20, 87, 112–15, 138–9, 141, 149, 218, 232, 261 fn. 38 1913 Young Turk coup (Bab-ı Ali Raid) 18, 64, 87, 139, 232 Politics Western-style institutions 12, 17, 24, 62, 84, 113, 119, 140, 228 Chamber of Deputies 62–3, 71, 79–80, 83, 86–8, 95, 253 fn. 4 Committee of Union and Progress (CUP) 3, 4, 11, 19–23, 27, 63–4, 74–96, 113–15, 118–20, 124–5, 130–1, 139, 141–3, 149–51, 153, 204, 222, 228–39, 246 fn. 27, 251 fn. 46, 253 fn. 12, 256 fn. 64, 262 fn. 57, 280 fn. 15, 16, 19 Special Organization (Teşkilat-ı Mahsusa) 64, 84, 87, 89, 92–3, 95, 118, 142–3, 233–4, 239, 264 fn. 81, 280 fn. 19–20 Young Turks, Unionists 3–4, 18, 62–5, 71, 73–8, 84–5, 88–9, 91–3, 96–7, 113–15, 228, 235, 244 fn. 11, 13, 253 fn. 5–7, 255 fn. 44 Öcalan, Abdullah 42, 44, 46, 99, 154, 168, 175, 179, 267 fn. 121 Öniş, Ziya 169, 250 fn. 36, 268 fn. 140 Örnek, Özden 176 Özal, Turgut 31, 143, 246 fn. 35, 249 fn. 18

308

The Transformation of Turkey

Özcan, Nihat Ali 147, 155, 265 fn. 93, 266 fn. 106, 109, 267 fn. 121, 131, 268 fn. 135, 145 Özer, Antan 185, 270 fn. 2 Özkök, Hilmi 166 Paker, Murat 184, 245 fn. 18, 260 fn. 29, 269 fn. 170 Palestine 21–2, 135, 172, 231, 273 fn. 26 Pehlivanlıyan, Aram 185, 270 fn. 2 Piccoli, Wolfgango 101–2, 258 fn. 3, 259 fn. 4–5, 7, 9, 11, 266 fn. 104, 111, 113, 267 fn. 119–20, 124 Pirzad, Zoya 186, 270 fn. 4 Posch, Walter 102, 259 fn. 13, 269 fn. 156 Pulur, Hasan 154 Ragıp Bey, Başkatipzade 89, 257 fn. 95 Rahmi Bey 74 Redmond, John 181, 269 fn. 164 Reşit Bey 88 Rıza Nur 83, 256 fn. 71, 261 fn. 48 Robespierre 68–9 Robins, Kevin 192, 274 fn. 27 Romania 135, 221, 231 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques 68 Rude, George 67, 254 fn. 25, 27 Russia 7–8, 10, 16, 20–1, 58–9, 85, 112–14, 163–4, 176, 221, 232, 250 fn. 37, 252 fn. 2–3, 280 fn. 19 Saddam Hussain 22 Said, Edward 228, 280 fn. 12 Said Nursi 157 Sakaoğlu, Necdet 199–200 Salih Münir Pasha 82 Saroyan, William 186, 270 fn. 4 Saudi Arabia 8, 22 Schwartz, Barry 187, 272 fn. 11, 277 fn. 10 Scott, James C. 192, 226, 272 fn. 12, 274 fn. 29, 279 fn. 9 Serbia 22, 231 Sertel, Sabiha and Yıldız 194, 274 fn. 33 Sezer, Ahmet Necdet 143 Sheikh Said 43, 146 Shi’ism 47 Shumway, David 189, 273 fn. 18

Sırmakeşhanlıyan, Yervant (Yeruhan) 185, 219, 269 fn. 1 Simavi, Lütfi Başmabeynci 82–3, 256 fn. 70 Singer, Brian 67–8, 254 fn. 28–9, 37, 257 fn. 107 Smelser, Neil 213, 277 fn. 9 Sohrabi, Nader 84–5, 252 fn. 3, 253 fn. 7, 255 fn. 44–5, 256 fn. 72–81 Soviet Union 28, 50, 52, 56, 135–7, 142, 148–9, 151, 156, 159, 161–3, 166 Söylemezoğlu, Galip 71, 82, 255 fn. 46 Spain 9, 34, 69 Sultans, Ottoman 7, 15–17, 24, 63, 78–9, 84–5, 88, 121, 123–4, 130, 134, 147, 231 Abdülhamid II 18, 62, 64–5, 70–3, 78, 88, 91, 113, 217–18, 221, 233 Mehmed Vahideddin V 21, 63 Sunay, Cevdet 141 Switzerland 24, 219 Syria 7–8, 22, 42, 44–6, 149, 153–4, 164, 196, 221, 280 fn. 14 Şahingiray, Mehmet, Dr. 228, 230, 233–4, 236, 238–40, 280 fn. 20, 281 fn. 31 Şenesen, Gülay Günlük 145, 250 fn. 36, 265 fn. 86–7 Talabani 46 Talat Pasha 79–83, 86–7, 91, 94, 96–7, 115, 139, 234, 280 fn. 14, 22 Taşpınar, Ömer 1, 3 Tekin, Ali 108, 260 fn. 25 Terms, special Adalah 223, 238 ‘Ahd 236–7 Alaylı 139 Cemiyet-i mukaddese 73 Cizye 15 Fedai 85 Habitus 101, 259 fn. 11 Hadith 237 İttihad-ı anasır 75 Kafle 209, 276 fn. 78 Kanun 24 Komitadjı 82–3, 92, 257 fn. 103 Meclis-i Mebusan 80, 255 fn. 56 Mektepli 139 Millet 15, 18–19, 121, 231, 257 fn. 90

Index Terms, special – continued Real Politik 105, 149, 175 Sharia 15, 24, 59, 235–6, 239 Silahşör 64 Şuray-ı Ümmet 84 Tanzimat 17, 252 fn. 57 Tehcir 204, 281 fn. 34 Umma’ 6 Zulm 238 Terrorism 41–2, 45, 48–9, 53–4, 67–9, 85, 151–2, 154, 164–5, 172–3, 225, 248 fn. 7 Tocci, Natalie 181, 265 fn. 99, 269 fn. 161 Toprak, Binnaz 156, 266 fn. 114 Totovens, Vahan 185, 269 fn. 1 Truillot, Michel-Rolph 189–90, 194, 273 fn. 20, 274 fn. 32 Turan, İlter 133, 165, 262 fn. 62, 268 fn. 132 Turkey, Republic of History Central Asian roots 125–6 Independence Struggle 21–4, 39, 63, 97, 99, 101, 103, 115–17, 119, 122–5, 130–1, 138, 140–1, 149–50, 175, 229, 233, 245 fn. 17, 246 fn. 27, 251 fn. 45, 253 fn. 12, 262 fn. 57, 264 fn. 81, 265 fn. 92, 280 fn. 15, 281 fn. 34 1920 Sevres Treaty 98–9, 103–4, 190–11, 112–3, 120–2, 129, 131, 134, 144, 154, 158, 160, 173 1923 Lausanne Treaty 53, 99, 104, 107, 116–17, 120–1, 127, 251 fn. 44, 260 fn. 20, 261 fn. 48 1925 Sheikh Said Rebellion 43, 146 1950–53 Korean War 142 6–7 September 1955 Events 20, 150, 251 fn. 46, 273 fn. 24 1968–71 Student Movement 28, 50, 141 1974 Cyprus invasion 50, 52, 161 1960, 1971, 1980, 1997 Military coups 27, 31, 44, 54, 106, 140, 142–3, 153, 155, 165, 168, 259 fn. 8 Coup attempts 176, 264 fn. 84 Institutions, organizations Educational 12, 21, 24–5, 32, 35–6, 43, 46, 48, 51–2, 56, 105, 127, 141, 147, 156–7, 170, 174, 178, 205, 266 fn. 108, 267 fn.131

309 Foreign Ministry 53, 148, 152, 255 fn. 46 Historical Association 195 Historical Foundation 195 Military 21–4, 27–36, 43–6, 48–50, 52–4, 56–8, 60, 64–5, 99, 101–2, 105–6, 110–12, 129, 137, 140–6, 149, 151, 153–79, 181, 202, 233, 246 fn. 28, 29, 32, 251 fn. 46, 258 fn. 3, 259 fn. 8, 262 fn. 51, 53, 263 fn. 74, 264 fn. 85, 265 fn. 86, 266 fn. 103, 267 fn. 121, 129, 131, 268 fn. 141, 147 National Assembly 21, 33, 64, 137, 141–5, 156, 160, 166, 176, 230, 264 fn. 81, 84–5 National Intelligence Agency 32, 142, 156, 165, 264 fn. 81 National Security Council (NSC) 33, 102, 165, 175, 259 fn. 8 Office of Religious Affairs 25 Penal code 39, 179, 229 Presidency 140–3, 165, 264 fn. 84 Parties Democrat Party (DP) 27, 140 Justice and Development Party (JDP) 1, 6–7, 29, 32–6, 48–9, 56, 99, 104, 156–7, 160, 167–73, 176–8, 181, 184, 264 fn. 84 Motherland Party (MP) 31 National Action Party (NAP) 103–4, 112, 149, 154, 178 Republican People’s Party (RPP) 26–9, 102–3, 106, 110, 113, 136, 140, 149, 154, 177, 241 fn. 3, 264 fn. 84 Welfare Party (WP) 32–3, 156, 168 Politics Anatolian Tigers 32 Dominant Muslim-Turkish majority 5–6, 18, 20, 58–9, 115, 118–20, 189, 193–4, 200–1, 208, 212, 213–14, 232, 235–6 Gülen movement, the 149, 155–9, 266 fn. 115 Headscarf issue 12, 26, 156 Islamism 6, 12, 29, 33–4, 47, 108, 146–9, 155–9, 167, 173, 179, 243 fn. 2, 247 fn. 39–40, 266 fn. 114

310

The Transformation of Turkey

Turkey, Republic of – continued Kemalism 1–6, 30–1, 101–3, 105–6, 108, 128, 155, 172, 176, 181, 241 fn. 1, 3, 246 fn. 33, 247 fn. 43, 259 fn. 11, 265 fn. 99, 266 fn. 108, 267 fn. 131, 269 fn. 161 Nationalism 2, 4, 6, 10, 14, 18–20, 34, 44, 79, 82, 101, 103, 110, 122, 125, 128–9, 147–8, 186, 192, 197, 241 fn. 3, 242 fn. 6, 244 fn. 15, 245 fn. 19, 246 fn. 31, 33, 259 fn. 14–17, 261 fn. 38, 262 fn. 49, 274 fn. 36, 276 fn. 75, 281 fn. 34 Neo-Ottomanism 1–9, 11–13, 37, 241 fn. 1, 247 fn. 43 Reforms 23, 25–6, 34, 48–9, 58–60, 96, 101, 104, 109, 131–4, 155, 165, 167, 174, 178–80, 184, 245 fn. 19, 22–5, 259 fn. 8, 268 fn. 144 Secularism 2, 4–6, 24, 26, 31, 33, 36, 102, 107, 148, 155, 174, 177–8, 241 fn. 3, 243 fn. 2, 245 fn. 21, 247 fn. 37, 258 fn. 1, 264 fn. 84, 276 fn. 75 Seventy-fifth anniversary celebrations 6, 194, 197 Turkish-Islamic synthesis 29, 156, 246 fn. 31 Turkishness 5, 39–40, 57, 104, 128, 146, 229 Türk, Hikmet Sami 164 Türkeri, Fevzi 156 United Nations (UN) 8, 49, 51, 57, 162, 262 fn. 53 United States 8, 28–9, 41, 52, 55–6, 60, 109, 135–7, 149, 158–60, 161–3, 166, 169, 174, 186–7, 196, 221, 267 fn. 122, 273 fn. 19, 274 fn. 30 1990–91 First Gulf War 46, 159, 162–3, 168 2003 Second Gulf War 160, 162, 172 Urgan, Mina 195, 274 fn. 35 Uşaklıgil, Halid Ziya 75, 255 fn. 55

Uzgel, İlhan 173, 268 fn. 147, 269 fn. 150 Ülker, Erol 153, 261 fn. 38, 265 fn. 98, 266 fn. 102 Vinitzky-Seroussi, V. 214, 277 fn. 10–1 Von der Goltz, Colmar Freiherr 129 Watson, Rubie 187, 272 fn. 10 World Wars 3, 159, 225 World War I 7, 18–21, 23, 41, 51, 63–4, 88, 92, 96, 98, 103, 113, 115–16, 125, 136, 138–42, 149, 196, 198, 204, 208, 218, 225, 231–3, 251 fn. 46, 261 fn. 38, 264 fn. 81, 277 fn.10, 280 fn. 20 Allied Powers 21–3, 64, 115, 239, 280 fn. 20 Central Powers 20 World War II 27, 43, 135–7, 144, 147, 149–50, 161, 212, 225 Cold War 27–30, 50, 52, 56, 111, 135–7, 142–3, 148–9, 156, 159, 161, 163, 166–8, 171, 212, 215, 225, 246 fn. 30 Post-Cold War 2, 4, 6, 57, 60, 99, 145, 149, 164–6, 178 Yack, Bernard 147 Yakup Cemil 87–8, 93 Yalçın, Kemal 195, 274 fn. 38, 281 fn. 34 Yalman, Ahmet Emin 91, 257 fn. 100 Yavuz, Hakan 147, 155, 265 fn. 93, 266 fn. 106, 109, 267 fn. 121, 131, 268 fn. 135, 145 Yılmaz, Mesut 167, 258 fn. 2 Yusuf Kemal (Tengirşenk) 72, 255 fn. 48 Zabalo, Julen 147, 265 fn. 96 Zana, Leyla 179 Zartanyan, Rupen 220 Zohrab, Krikor 95–6, 185, 218, 233, 269 fn. 1 Zovikoğlu, Asadur (Zovikyan) 197 Zürcher, Erik Jan 138–9, 244 fn. 12, 246 fn. 26–7, 253 fn. 6, 11–2, 262 fn. 57, 263 fn. 76, 280 fn. 15