Ottomanism vs. Kemalism: Collective memory and cultural pluralism in 1990s Turkey

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Acknowledgements

An earlier version of this article was presented at ‘Balkan Societies in Change: The Use of Historical Myths’ (November 2002, Sarajevo, Bosnia Herzegovina). I would like to thank the participants for their comments. I am grateful to the Eastern Mediterranean University (Gazimagusa, TRNC, Mersin-10, Turkey) Research Fund which made this study possible.

Notes

1. M. Bal, ‘Introduction’, in M. Bal et al. (eds.), Acts of Memory: Cultural Recall in the Present (Hanover and London: University Press of New England, 1999), p.vii.

2. Kemalism was formulated as a state ideology in the 1930s and was founded on a very selective forgetting of the ‘shameful’ Ottoman/Islamic past. It has remained a hegemonic cultural memory to the present, although there have been some structural changes. From the beginning, although it does not reflect a coherent structure or has been redefined according to changing contexts, it has come to the fore as a ‘political discourse’ used both for describing the boundaries of politics and also as the standard of judging attitudes in the public realm. For Kemalism and its different versions see E. Aydın, ‘The Peculiarities of Turkish Revolutionary Ideology in the 1930s: The Ülkü Version of Kemalism, 1933–1936’, Middle Eastern Studies, Vol.40, No.5 (2004), pp.55–82.

3. For both processes, see R. Robertson, Globalization: Social Theory and Global Culture (London: Sage, 1992).

4. M. Featherstone, ‘Postnational Flows, Identity Formation and Cultural Space’, in E. Ben-Rafael and Y. Sternberg (eds.), Identity, Culture and Globalization (Leiden: Brill, 2001), p.485.

5. See M.H. Yavuz, ‘Turkish Identity and Foreign Policy in Flux: The Rise of Neo-Ottomanism’, Critique (Spring 1998), p.40.

6. M. Sturken, ‘Narratives of Recovery: Repressed Memory as Cultural Memory’, in Bal et al. (eds.), Acts of Memory: Cultural Recall in the Present, p.243.

7. See S. Bozdoğan and R. Kasaba (eds.), Rethinking Modernity and National Identity in Turkey (Seattle: Washington University Press, 1997) for a detailed analysis of the official modernity project and its failure in different realms to realize its basic premises.

8. K.H. Karpat, ‘Historical Continuity and Identity Change or How to be Modern Muslim, Ottoman, and Turk’, in K.H. Karpat (ed.), Ottoman Past and Today's Turkey (Leiden, Boston and Köln: Brill, 2000), p.6. In terms of the issue of citizenship, Karpat, in one of his previous studies, writes: ‘Thus, by 1850 the millet members began to be treated already as Ottoman “citizens”, although the formal nationality law was not passed until 1869. This law, which is often cited as having created a new and modern legal status for Ottoman subjects, was a mere technicality that legalized and clarified further an already established concept’. K.H. Karpat, ‘Millets and Nationality: The Roots of the Incongruity of Nation and State in the Post-Ottoman Era’, in B. Braude and B. Lewis (eds.), Christians and Jews in the Ottoman Empire, Vol.I (New York: Holmes and Meier Publishers, 1982), p.162.

9. In the pre-modern era, the Ottoman millet system reflected a ruling mechanism in which various (religious) communities were incorporated into the Ottoman system as autonomous bodies. That incorporation occurred through being ‘hierarchically’ ordered under a system of legal pluralism. In this system religious differences were conceived of as ‘given’ and entitled to a legal status. For the Ottoman millet system see N. Berkes, The Development of Secularism in Turkey (Montreal: McGill University Press, 1964), p.10. For an analysis of relations between the millet system and religious pluralism see W. Kymlicka, ‘Two Models of Pluralism and Tolerance’, in D. Held (ed.), Toleration: An Elusive Virtue (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996), pp.81–105.

10. Ş. Hanioğlu, ‘Osmanlıcılık’ (Ottomanism), in Tanzimat'tan Cumhuriyete Türkiye Ansiklopedisi (Istanbul: İletişim, 1983), p.1390.

11. This led to the loss of the classical structure of non-Muslim groups as autonomous religious communities and they became ‘minority groups’. K.H. Karpat, ‘The Ottoman Ethnic and Confessional Legacy in the Middle East’, in M.J. Esman and I. Rabinovich (eds.), Ethnicity, Pluralism, and the Middle East (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1988).

12. For the state's formulation of history for the early Republican Turkey, see Y. Çolak, ‘History-Writing, State and Culture Production in Turkey in the 1930s’, in L. Pinnell (ed.), Interruptions: Essays in the Poetics/Politics of Space (Gazimagusa, North Cyprus: Eastern Mediterranean University Press, 2003), pp.117–45.

13. Y. Akçura, ‘Birinci Türk Tarih Kongresi’ (First Turkish History Congress), Ülkü, No.1 (Feb. 1933), p.26.

14. Mesut Yeğen argues that from then on, in the Kemalist historiography, ‘the palace, Sultans and Istanbul; the caliphate, Islam, tradition; Circassians, Laz, Kurd; the CUP, Freedom and Entente and Vahdettin; Cemal, Talat and Enver, all belonged to some other historical realm, not to the past’. M. Yeğen, Devlet Söyleminde Kürt Sorunu (Kurdish Question in the State Discourse) (Istanbul: İletişim, 1999), p.193.

15. On the front page of the first issue of the magazine after the DP came to power in 1950 there was a portrait of Sultan Mehmet the Conqueror's entrance into Istanbul after capturing the city.

16. The Turkish-Islamic synthesis was first formulated in the 1970s by a group of right-wing intellectuals called Aydınlar Ocağı (The Hearth of the Enlightened) which, in the 1980s under the guidance of the generals of the 1980 coup, achieved a semi-official status. It was an attempt to combine Turkish ethno-national identity with Turkey's Ottoman and Islamic past. Indeed, the Turkish-Islamic synthesis found clear expression in the 1982 constitution with reference to the significance of Turkish historical and moral values reflected most truly in the Ottoman-Turkish culture. The state elite hoped such reference would make it possible to avoid a ‘moral and historical void’ that might be filled by Marxist and Islamic fanaticism. For an extensive analysis of the Turkish-Islamic synthesis, see B. Güvenc et al., Türk-[idot]slam Sentezi (Turkish-Islamic Synthesis) (Istanbul: Sarmal Yay, 1991).

17. There is a lot of ‘Kemalist input’ in describing the Ottoman age, which is a sign of the end of the Kemalist taboo about the Ottomans, or about the continuity between the Ottomans and Kemalism. See E. Copeaux, Türk Tarih Tezinden Türk-[idot]slam Sentezine (From Turkish History Thesis to Turkish-Islamic Synthesis) (Istanbul: Tarih Vakfı Yurt Yay, 1998), p.194.

18. Ş.H. Çalış, Hayaletbilimi ve Hayali Kimlikler: Neo-Osmanlılık, Özal ve Balkanlar (Imaginary Science and Imagined Identity: Neo-Ottomanism, Özal and the Balkans) (Konya: Çizgi, 2001), p.102.

19. Ibid., p.111.

20. See Türkiye Günlüğü, No.19 (1992), pp.10–15.

21. Ibid., pp.16 and 20; for this perspective, also see C. Çandar, ‘21. Yüzyıla Doğru Türkiye: Tarih ve Jeopolitiğin İntikamı’ (Turkey towards the 21^st Century: Revenge of History and Geopolitics), Türkiye Günlüğü, No.19 (1992), p.33.

22. For this move, see G. Çetinsaya, ‘Cumhuriyet Türkiye'sinde “Osmanlıcılık”’ (‘Ottomanism’ in Republican Turkey), in A. Çiğdem (ed.), Modern Türkiye'de Siyasi Düşünce, Cilt. 4: Muhafazakarlık (Political Thought in Modern Turkey, Vol.5: Conservatism) (Istanbul: İletişim, 2003), pp.378–80.

23. Mustafa Çalık, Cengiz Çandar, Ahmet Turan Alkan, Nur Vergin and Deniz Gürsel were the main intellectuals voicing neo-Ottomanist views in Türkiye Günlüğü during the early 1990s. For a concise, editorial description of the discussion maintained in the journal, see M. Çalık, ‘Neo-Osmanlı Tartışmalarına Sade Bir Derkenar’ (A Marginal Note on Neo-Ottomanism Discussions), Türkiye Günlüğü, No.19 (1992), p.1.

24. Çandar, ‘21. Yüzyıla Doğru Türkiye’. Also for the emphasis on imperial vision see M. Çalık, ‘Miras Davasında Yol Ayrımı: Hangi Türkiye?’ (Forking in the Inheritance Case: Which Turkey?), Türkiye Günlüğü, No.19 (1993), pp.1–5.

25. Çandar, ‘21. Yüzyıla Doğru Türkiye’, p.33.

26. T. Özal, Turkey in Europe and Europe in Turkey (Northern Cyprus: K. Rustem & Brothers, 1991), p.290.

27. For Özal, Islam is the basic binding mechanism transcending ethnic and regional differences: ‘It is religion that blends Muslims of Anatolia and the Balkans. Therefore, Islam is a powerful cement of co-existence and cooperation among diverse Muslim groups … Being a Turk in the ex-Ottoman space means being a Muslim or vice versa’. Quoted in Yavuz, ‘Turkish Identity and Foreign Policy in Flux’, p.24.

28. For these similarities, see A. Davudoğlu, Stratejik Derinlik: Türkiye'nin Uluslararası Konumu (Strategic Depth: Turkey's International Position) (Istanbul: Küre Yay, 2001), p.85.

29. See Çalış, Hayaletbilimi ve Hayali Kimlikler, pp.136–7. This can be also observed in Turkey's new foreign policy based on ‘the Imperial Ottoman tradition' as ‘neo-Ottoman model’. See S. Constantinides, ‘Turkey: The Emergence of a New Foreign Policy: The Neo-Ottoman Model’, Journal of Political and Military Sociology, Vol.24, No.2 (1996), pp.323–4.

30. Yavuz, ‘Turkish Identity and Foreign Policy in Flux’, p.37.

31. Turkish citizens with Balkan, Crimean and Caucasus origins established their own associations that do not depend on ‘any conflict between their current Turkish identity and their ancestral and regional identities shaped during Ottoman rule’. Karpat, ‘Introduction’, in Karpat (ed.) Ottoman Past and Today's Turkey, p.xvi.

32. Yavuz, ‘Turkish Identity and Foreign Policy in Flux’, p.24.

33. Çalış, Hayaletbilimi ve Hayali Kimlikler, p.146.

34. For the Law and its analysis on the basis of formation of Turkish identity, see Y. Çolak, ‘Nationalism and State in Turkey: Drawing the Boundaries of “Turkish Culture” in the 1930s', Studies in Ethnicity and Nationalism, Vol.3, No.1 (2003), pp.2–20.

35. Although the migration of Muslim groups (Bosnians, Albanians, Macedonians) from both the Balkans and the Caucasus were accepted, the migrations of the Gagavuz Turks, a small Turkish group with Christian origins, were rejected. S.A. Somel, ‘Osmanlı' dan Cumhuriyet'e Türk Kimliği’ (Turkish Identity from the Ottoman to the Republic), in N. Bilgin (ed.), Cumhuriyet, Demokrasi ve Kimlik (Republic, Democracy and Identity) (Istanbul: Bağlam Yay, 1997), p.81.

36. Like the Kemalists, its leaders conceived the democratic mechanism to establish their ‘alternative' symbolic universe, setting some prescriptions for a new public identity. For the WP's view of democracy and society see E. Aydın and Y. Çolak, ‘Dilemmas of Turkish Democracy: The Encounter Between Kemalist Secularism and Political Islamism in the 1990s', in D.W. Odell-Scott (ed.), Democracy and Religion: Free Exercise and Diverse Visions (Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 2004), pp.349–80.

37. T. Bora, Türk Sağının Üç Hali: Milliyetçilik, Muhafazakarlık, Islamcılık (Three Dimensions of Turkish Right: Nationalism, Conservatism, Islamism) (Istanbul: Birikim, 1999), p.133.

38. See M. H. Yavoz, ‘Cleansing Islam from the Public Sphere’, Journal of International Affairs, Vol.54, No.1 (2000), pp.21–42.

39. A. Çınar, ‘National History as a Contested Site: The Conquest of Istanbul and Islamist Negotiations of the Nation’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, Vol.43, No.2 (2001), pp.364–91.

40. These activities for 1994 and later years are documented in detail in [idot]stanbul Bülteni (Istanbul Bulletin), monthly official journal of Istanbul Municipality. Istanbul Municipality gave special importance to the 700th anniversary of the Ottoman Empire, as mentioned above, celebrated in 1999 throughout the country. Among the activities there was a series of scientific conferences called ‘Ottoman Conferences’, exhibitions showing ‘Ottoman Arts’, ‘Ottoman Istanbul’, ‘Portraits of Sultans’, ‘Ottoman Cloths’, ‘Ottoman Tradesmen’, ‘Ottoman Calligraphy’, and so on, concerts of Ottoman-Turkish music, and movies about the Ottomans. [idot]stanbul Bülteni, No.120 (1999), pp.20–21.

41. T. Bora, ‘Dreams of the Turkish Right’, Mediterranean 10 (Winter 1997–98), pp.296–7.

42. Bora, Türk Sağının Üç Hali, p.137.

43. For the discussions on the Medina Document and its view of pluralism see A. Bulaç, ‘Medine Vesikası Hakkında Genel Bilgiler’ (General Information on Medina Document), Birikim, No.38–39 (1992), pp.102–11; ‘Medine Vesikası Üzerine Tartışmalar I' (Discussions on Medina Document), Birikim, No.47 (1993), pp.40–46; and Ali Bulaç, ‘Medine Vesikası Üzerine Tartışmalar II’ (Discussions on Medina Document II), Birikim, Vol.48 (1993), pp.48–58.

44. H. Gülalp, Kimlikler Siyaseti: Türkiye'de Siyasal [idot]slamın Temelleri (Politics of Identites: Roots of Political Islam in Turkey) (Istanbul: Metis, 2002), p.96.

45. For the relationship between Islamic view of pluralism and rule of the people, see A. Bulaç, [idot]slam ve Demokrasi (Islam and Democracy) (Istanbul: Beyan Yayınları, 1993).

46. See Gülalp, Kimlikler Siyaseti, pp.159, 160.

47. WP's leaders claimed that ‘they are the true representatives of “society”, and so when they came to power especially in influential municipalities, they began to revive the “symbols” and “values” of the society’. Aydın and Çolak, ‘Dilemmas of Turkish Democracy’, p.366.

48. Quoted in Gülalp, Kimlikler Siyaseti, p.97.

49. Ibid., p.168.

50. Y. Navaro-Yashin, ‘Uses and Abuses of “State and Civil Society” in Contemporary Turkey’, New Perspectives on Turkey, No.18 (Spring 1998), p.12.

51. Z. Aslan, ‘Conflicting Paradigms: Political Rights in the Turkish Constitutional Court’, Critique, Vol.11, No.1 (2002), p.17.

52. Ö. İnce, ‘Osmanlı Modeli’ (Ottoman Model), Hürriyet Pazar, 25 Aug. 2002.

53. A. Öztürkmen, ‘Celebrating National Holidays in Turkey: History and Memory’, New Perspectives on Turkey, No.25 (2001), p.71.

54. See B. Yazıcı, ‘“Discovering Our Past”: Are “We” Breaking Taboos? Reconstructing Ataturkism and the Past in Contemporary Turkey’, New Perspectives on Turkey, No.25 (2001), pp.1–30.

55. M. Walzer, On Toleration (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1997), p.25.