The writing of modern Turkey

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Notes

1. It should be noted from the outset that this revolution is ongoing, and there are still many nationalist scholars, particularly within Turkey, who have vigorously criticized the works under discussion.

2. Hanioğlu (2011) draws an interesting parallel between Ataturk's ability as leader of the nationalist forces to secure political and even monetary support from Indian and Central Asian Muslims with his pan-Islamic rhetoric and his ability to secure Bolshevik Russian support through his communist-flavored anti-Imperialist rhetoric.

3. Like some nineteenth-century critics of hyper-Europeanization, Hanioğlu (2011) also points out that in many cases the Young Turks were content to take their ideas from second-rate European thinkers. He writes of the “maverick Viennese scholar” Hermann Feodor Kvergic, for example, “once again we see how a scholar who was marginal to the history of Europe could play a central role in that of the late Ottoman Empire and modern Turkey” (176–177). Without doubting Kvergic's marginality, it seems fair to ask how many European politicians actually took their ideas from the intellectual source rather than marginal or derivative authors. Hanioğlu also argues that many of Mustafa Kemal's own ideas, about Turkish history, say, were never taken seriously in the West, and served only to convince the Turkish elite of its own western identity. This argument, which also has echoes of the late Ottoman charge that aping the West was pointless because the West would never buy it, does not necessarily acknowledge the extent to which many Europeans and Americans, though not always convinced by Atatürk's ideas, were nonetheless completely won over by his zeal for promoting them. There is perhaps no better authority than Anthony St. Exupéry, whose Le Petit Prince is often remember as mocking Turks for thinking they would be taken seriously when they took off their fezzes, but in fact mocks Europeans for only taking Turks seriously after they put on hats.

4. Or, alternatively, will anyone use the evidence Hanioğlu (2011) presents to make the more nuanced argument that by the late nineteenth century some form of experimentation with radical secularism was increasingly inevitable for Turkey, as was an eventual retreat from this revolutionary approach some time during the next century?

5. Interestingly, though Üngör (2011) uses Erik Jan Zürcher's periodization and ends the “Young Turk” era in 1950, he makes it clear that many of the most drastic policies he associates with this era came to an end with the rise of multi-party politics after 1945.This again suggests the virtues of the older designation, “One Party Era”. More than anything else, it would have been fascinating to see Üngör tackle the question of why exactly Inonu changed the state's long-standing policy on deportations, particularly when he writes that in 1960 the military government considered reinstating it (see Zürcher 1992).

6. Üngör (2011) also suggests they had faith in the ability of economic development to eventually bring civilization to the region.

7. Confirming that state control, not just ethnic purity was the CUP's goal, Üngör (2011) also notes that after the Armenians were gone, the government ordered the assassination of many of the Circassian thugs and Kurdish chieftains it had relied on to do its killing.

8. Üngör cites the Başbakanlık Osmanlı Arşivi, “DH.SFR 54/406, Talaat to Reshid, 12 July 1915”.

9. From the perspective of today's debates over neo-Ottomanism, it is interesting to note that at the time many French officials accused Atatürk of trying to “return to the policy of the sultans” and “begin a neo-Ottoman re-conquest of the near East” (Shields 2011, 67).

10. While there are no firm numbers, even the most optimistic Turkish officials only expected to get one third of Alawite votes (Shields 2011, 176).

11. After decades of silence, the historiographical focus has justifiably been on the role of violence in making modern Turkey. Yet it is important to recognize that looking at the other aspects of the process is not an effort to ignore the violence, but a crucial part of the effort to understand it.

12. Just as Gingeras (2009) has argued that the geographically central region around Bursa should be treated as a periphery in the early twentieth century, it seems possible to argue that the geographically peripheral Hatay was considerably more “central” than other regions to its immediate North and East.