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ABSTRACT
This article examines how autobiography-writing evolved into a political space for Kazım Karabekir, Ali Fuat Cebesoy and Rauf Orbay, three major leaders of the Turkish War of Independence and the Progressive Republican Party. This article demonstrates that their autobiographies articulate a position of political opposition. This is a novel addition to academic literature that has so far presented these figures as early representatives of peripheral dissent against the Republic, or overstressed their Unionist legacy. The autobiographical politics of Karabekir, Cebesoy and Orbay extensively builds on moralizing discourses that contrast their own heroic accomplishments against the rise of a circle of military-bureaucratic elites – etraf – surrounding Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. Through textual analysis, this article maintains that the moralizing discourses they use pose a peculiar blend of nationalism and conservatism – an elitist conservative nationalism that homogenizes political differences and ideological splits. The analysis contributes to the study of Early Republican oppositional politics and conservative political imaginary in Turkey.
Acknowledgements
The author would like to thank the editor and anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments on the manuscript during the peer review process. The author would also like to thank Samil Can for carefully reading earlier versions of this article and providing useful feedback on Turkish political history and conservatism.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Note on contributor
Yasemin Ipek is a Doctoral Candidate at the Department of Political Science and Public Administration, Bilkent University, Ankara. She holds Master of Arts and Bachelor of Arts degrees in Political Science and International Relations, and a Bachelor of Arts degree in Sociology, from Boğaziçi University, İstanbul.
Notes
1 For the political history of the first opposition party of the Turkish Republic, see Zürcher, Political Opposition; Ahmad, “The Republican People's Party”; Ateş, Türkiye Cumhuriyeti’nin Kuruluşu; Yeşil, Türkiye Cumhuriyeti’nde İlk Teşkilatlı Muhalefet Hareketi. For the history of elite politics and political opposition parties in Turkey, see Frey, The Turkish Political Elite; Zürcher, The Young Turk Legacy; Rustow, Political parties in Turkey; Heper and Sayarı, Political Leaders; Landau and Heper, Political Parties.
2 Established in January 1923, the Republican People's Party was initially called the ‘People's Party’ (Halk Fırkası).
3 I will refer to Mustafa Kemal Atatürk as Mustafa Kemal, since he was granted the surname ‘Atatürk’ only after 1934, while the other three were already known by their surnames during the time.
4 Karabekir, Cebesoy and Orbay were accused of involvement with an assassination attempt against Mustafa Kemal and were put on ‘Independence tribunal’ trials for conspiracy and treason (1926). Karabekir and Cebesoy were acquitted, while Orbay's case couldn't be resolved since he was abroad. He remained in exile for 10 years and was eventually acquitted in 1940. For detailed historical analyses, see, Zürcher, “Were the Progressives Conservative?”; Zürcher, “Young Turk Memoirs”; Ahmad, “The Republican People's Party”; for accounts by early popular historians, see Erman, İzmir Suikastı; Kandemir, İzmir Suikastının İçyüzü; for accounts by contemporary popular historians and journalists, see Mumcu, Kazım Karabekir Anlatıyor; Armağan, Paşaların Hesaplaşması; Yıldız, Küskün Paşalar; Gürler, Paşaların Gözüyle Milli Mücadele.
5 This article focuses exclusively on the core cadre of the PRP leaders and examines how they produced a political narrative of ‘opposition’ through their recollections of Early Republican history. There are a few other military leaders (like Fevzi Çakmak or Refet Bele) who constituted the leading cadre of the National Struggle under the leadership of Mustafa Kemal, as well as İsmet İnönü (Mustafa Kemal's closest associate and successor to presidency). Refet Bele never published his autobiographic works, while Adnan Adıvar was not among the key military figures of the National Struggle, and finally Fevzi Çakmak was not part of the PRP and only left daily notes which did not form an autobiographical narrative.
6 I follow a recent line of works in autobiography studies that criticize clear-cut separations between memoirs and autobiographies, and introduce hybrid terms like ‘autobiographical writing’, ‘life-writing’ or ‘life-narratives,’ in order to bend the law of genre in favour of a broader horizon that acknowledges more diverse forms of self-narratives on life Hunsacker, Autobiography and National Identity; Moore-Gilbert, Postcolonial Life-Writing; Smith and Watson, Reading Autobiography.
7 The main proponent of this view is Erik Zürcher; for detailed analyses on this issue, see his “Were the Progressives Conservative?”
8 Following recent autobiographical and memoir studies, I bracket questions of intentionality and verifiability, and instead focus on autobiographic representations of oneself and others in the text – which correspond to articulations of respective political positions. Hence, I do not treat these texts as alternative historical sources to offer a new historical re-reading of the history of the Early Republic. Instead, I treat them as a political site to articulate an ideological position and to naturalize an elitist claim to political authority in moral terms. For the political dimensions of self-presentation in life-narratives, see Anderson, Autobiography; Smith and Watson, De-colonizing the Subject; Whitlock, Postcolonial Life Narrative.
9 Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France; for my interpretations of Burke, I follow Kirk, “Burke and the Principle of Order,” and the analysis provided by Feulner, “The Roots of Modern Conservative Thought.”
10 The word ‘etraf’ means ‘surrounding social circle’ and in the Early Republican Turkish context it is used to refer to the elite circle around Mustafa Kemal.
11 Unlike classical conservatism's scepticism for change from a past ancient regime to future degeneration, they think reforms are for the good of the society. However, unlike revolutionaries, they attribute a moral order and a sense of teleology to the Turkish revolution, seeing it as a process whereby the moral substance of a nation is gradually being realized. And they consider the revolutionary elite as corrupt individuals against which the process of the realization of this moral order should be protected.
12 These texts are generally retrospectively reworked notes and memoirs from the 1918–1926 period. They were written (or re-organized) during the often-chaotic period of the establishment of the Republic in the late 1920s and 1930s – i.e. after the authors had a dramatic fallout with Mustafa Kemal. Karabekir, Cebesoy and Orbay had been keeping daily notes as part of a common social custom of the educated elite in Istanbul since their early youth.
13 The ‘Speech’ (Nutuk) was read by Mustafa Kemal in the second congress of the governing People's Party in 1927 (Göçek, “Defining the Parameters”; Zürcher, Turkey: A Modern History, 175). Covering the series of events before, during and after the National Struggle, Nutuk has been widely regarded as the sole historical source of the period between 1919 and 1927. Mustafa Kemal delivered Nutuk in six consecutive days in the Turkish parliament in 1927, based on his recollections of the National Struggle, as well as on a plethora of historical documents. This made him the first to publicly construct a history of the emergence of the Turkish nation as an independent nation-state, and has remained part of the officially sanctioned history of modern Turkey. Although there is a wide range of military figures targeted by Mustafa Kemal in Nutuk, Karabekir, Orbay and (to a lesser extent) Cebesoy were the most visible due to their close association with Mustafa Kemal during the war. As a result, their memoirs and autobiographies are popularly viewed in Turkey as ‘controversial responses’ to Nutuk, and there is an ongoing politics of their publishing about what their accounts represent against the ‘official history thesis’ (Zürcher, “Young Turk Memoirs”; Adak “National Myths and Self-Na(rra)tions,” “Who is Afraid of Dr. Rıza Nur's Autobiography?”; Parla, Türkiye’de Siyasal Kültürün Resmî Kaynakları, 1-2-3; Ahmad, The Making of Modern Turkey, 51–71; Lewis, The Emergence of Modern Turkey, 242–3; Poulton, Top Hat, Grey Wolf and Crescent, 87–8, 200; Zürcher, Turkey: A Modern History, 183; Alaranta, “Mustafa Kemal Atatürk's Six-Day Speech”; Gürpınar, “The Politics of Memoirs and Memoir-Publishing”).
14 Memoir-writing as a practice started to become popular among educated cadres in the late Ottoman Empire. The rise of autobiographical writing by the educated political and intellectual elite reveals the emergence of new political actors cognizant of their own central position as ‘historical subjects.’ For an overview of this history of memoir-writing in modern Turkey, see Gürpınar, “The Politics of Memoirs and Memoir-Publishing.”
15 Ersanlı, İktidar ve Tarih; Kaplan, Türkiye’de Milli Eğitim İdeolojisi; Adak, “National Myths”; Alaranta, “Mustafa Kemal Atatürk's Six Day Speech.”
16 Adak, “National Myths and Self-Na(rra)tions”.
17 Erman, İzmir Suikastı ve İstiklâl Mahkemeleri; Kandemir, İzmir Suikastının İçyüzü; Gürpınar, “The Politics of Memoirs and Memoir-Publishing”; Gürler, Paşaların Gözüyle Millî Mücadele, 13–23. Newspapers and magazines were replete with memoir serials by prominent soldiers and politicians who had witnessed the transition from Empire to Republic. Cebesoy's and Orbay's memoirs were first published in these decades (between 1952 and 1965). Karabekir's İstiklal Harbimiz (‘Our National Struggle’) was released in 1960 (after its initial publication and almost immediate ban by the regime in 1933), and it shared a similar narrative genre with Nutuk for its copious use of historical documents.
18 For the popular historians and their interest in these texts, see, Özcan, Türkiye’de Popular Tarihçilik: 1908–1960.
19 Kandemir, Hâtıraları ve Söyleyemedikleri ile Rauf Orbay; İnam, Rauf Bey; Ertürk, İki Devrin Perde Arkası; Kutay, Osmanlı’dan Cumhuriyet’e; Üç Devirde Bir Adam.
20 The most major among these publishers are Emre, Temel, Dergah and Timaş.
21 Similar to the 1950s and 1960s, new editions of these memoirs easily still stir a heated public debate about their revelations: previously unarticulated disapprovals, disappointments, or critiques of past policies and prominent figures.
22 Derin Tarih and Popüler Tarih are the most popular among these journals.
23 The popular conservative researcher Mustafa Armağan's views are prominent examples of the Islamic-conservative imaginary of a binary of ‘truth vs. lie’ that frames popular conceptions about Nutuk and other autobiographies. In his books and newspaper columns, he frequently portrays Nutuk as an overrated book with mistakes and weaknesses. Instead, he suggests that opposition figures of the time, such as Karabekir and Orbay, are more ‘worth listening to,’ if one wants to understand the truths about that period. Armağan, Paşaların Hesaplaşması. For more conservative or Islamist appeals to these texts against Nutuk, see Bahadıroğlu, Osmanlı Demokrasisinden Türkiye Cumhuriyetine; Yıldız, Küskün Paşalar.
24 In popular culture, when these writings started to be publicized for the first time as serials in newspapers during the transition to the multi-party period, i.e. from 1946 to 1970, they were admired and referenced as icons of selfless Turkish nationalism. In particular, centre-right media organs, such as Tarih Dünyası (World of History) and Tercüman daily newspaper, among others, heavily supported their circulation, while popular historians of the time such as Feridun Kandemir and Cemal Kutay passionately celebrated these texts for their historical value as priceless sources. Although these memoirs started to be published several times after the 1940s, conservative public intellectuals and popular historians still celebrate the new editions of these memoirs as sensational scandalous unmasking of official Kemalist ideology.
25 Aktay, “İslamcılıktaki Muhafazakar Bakiye”; Akdoğan, Muhafazakar Demokrasi; Çaha, Dört Akım Dört Siyaset; Çiğdem, “Muhafazakârlık Üzerine”; Mardin, Din ve İdeoloji; Öğün, “Türk Muhafazakârlığının Kültürel ve Politik Kökleri”; Yavuz, Modernleşen Müslümanlar.
26 Berkes, The Development of Secularism in Turkey; Ahmad, The Making of Modern Turkey; Karpat, The Politicization of Islam; Ergil, “Muhafazakâr Düşüncenin Temelleri.”
27 Barış, “Muhafazakar Düşüncenin Temel Değerleri.”
28 Niyazi Berkes’ works, for instance, collate conservatism with a simplistic reactionary traditionalism, reducing the intellectual and political currents of Early Republican conservatism to reactionary cultural sensibilities coming from outside the political centre. Berkes, The Development of Secularism in Turkey, 51–62, 446–472, 500. Kemal Karpat has a relatively more complicated picture of conservatism as a sensibility that could be observed among Anatolian merchants, as well as emerging urban elites, and even the bureaucratic establishment. However, he also maintains a definition of conservatism as a centrifugal force, pushing the centre towards appeasing ‘reactionary’ sensibilities. Karpat, Social Change and Politics in Turkey, 315–20. Şerif Mardin's studies on Islamic movements underline the authoritarian and centralist nature of Turkish modernism and Kemalist ideology, which was countered by the centrifugal political rise of conservative and Islamic movements. Mardin, “Religion and Secularism in Turkey”; “Centre-Periphery Relations: A Key to Turkish Politics?”; “Religion and Politics in Modem Turkey”; Heper, “Centre and Periphery in the Ottoman Empire with Special Reference to the Nineteenth Century”; Parla, Türkiye’de Siyasal Kültürün Resmi Kaynakları 1-2-3; Arat, The Project of Modernity and Women; Toprak, Islam and Political Development. In the 1990s and 2000s, many critical academic studies on the hold of the Kemalist ‘official history thesis’ and ‘official ideology’ heavily relied on Mardin's centre-periphery argument, viewing Kemalist modernism as an authoritarian central force that exorcized and projected conservative ideology on ‘people,’ peripheral social actors.
29 Aktay, “İslamcılıktaki Muhafazakar Bakiye”; Akdoğan, Muhafazakar Demokrasi; Çaha, Dört Akım Dört Siyaset.
30 Çaha, Dört Akım Dört Siyaset, 126.
31 Birinci, Tarihin Hududunda. For a criticism of this approach to these writings as an ‘alternative,’ see Hanioğlu, “Kâzım Karabekir’i Nasıl Tarihselleştirelim?”
32 Akyol, Gayri Resmi Yakın Tarih.
33 Zürcher, Political Opposition; Turkey: A Modern History; Men of Order; Hanioğlu, Atatürk: An Intellectual Biography; The Young Turks in Opposition; Ahmad, “The Republican People's Party.”
34 Zürcher, “Were the Progressives Conservative?”
35 İrem, “Kemalist Modernizm”; “Muhafazakar Modernlik”; “Turkish Conservative Modernism”; “Cumhuriyetçi Muhafazakarlık”; Aytürk, “Nationalism and Islam”; Aytürk and Mignon, “Paradoxes of a Cold War Sufi Woman.”
36 İrem, “Turkish Conservative Modernism,” 92.
37 Philliou, “When the Clock Strikes Twelve.”
38 Balistreri, “Turkey's Forgotten Political Opposition.”
39 Kirk, “Burke and the Principle of Order.”
40 Ibid., 187–9.
41 Beyond moral corruption, the word ‘fesat’ also refers to illegitimate and disruptive political behaviour. Since nineteenth century, this word and its variations (like müfsid or fasid) are often invoked to describe opponents, insurgents and revolutionaries (from CUP to Hunchaks), especially during the Hamidian era. Furthermore, Orbay's own descriptions of ‘etraf’ (as müfsids who had hidden motives and resorted to ‘komitacılık’) also reiterates these larger meanings of the term.
42 Kirk, The Conservative Mind, 8.
43 Kirk writes the following about Burke's criticisms of the revolutionary elite and quotes him directly (“Burke and the Principle of Order,” 200–1):
Against an ‘elite’ recruited out of conformity to party fanaticism and enthusiastic adherence to a shallow and venomous intellectual credo, Burke wrote in the second letter of the Regicide Peace: ‘To them, the will, the wish, the want, the liberty, the toil, the blood of individuals is nothing. Individuality is left out of their scheme of government. The state is all in all (…) The state has dominion and conquest for its sole objects; dominion over minds by proselytism, over bodies by arms.’ These were, of course, the Jacobins; the description applies as well, or even better, to the Communist and the Nazi rule of an ‘elite’.
44 Canefe, “Turkish Nationalism and Ethno-Symbolic Analysis,” 134–8; Aytürk, “Nationalism and Islam”; Bora, “Nationalist discourses in Turkey.”
45 Heper, “The State Tradition in Turkey,” 50.
46 Cebesoy, Milli Mücadele Hatıraları, 562.
47 Zürcher, “Young Turk Memoirs as a Historical Source”; “Were the Progressives Conservative?”; Political Opposition in the Early Turkish Republic; Hanioğlu, The Young Turks in Opposition; Atatürk: An Intellectual Biography, “Garbcılar: Their Attitudes toward Religion.”
48 Karabekir, Günlükler II, 1010.
49 Cebesoy, Siyasi Hatıralar, 498.
50 Cebesoy, Siyasi Hatıralar, 511.
51 Cebesoy, Siyasi Hatıralar, 514.
52 Karabekir, Günlükler II, 976.
53 Zürcher, “Were the Progressives Conservative?” 244.
54 Ibid.
55 Mustafa Kemal's closest associate and successor as the president after his death.
56 Zürcher, “Were the Progressives Conservative?” 245.
57 Orbay, Siyasi Hatıralar, 322.
58 Cebesoy, Siyasi Hatıralar, 515.
59 The apparent contradiction that arises here is endemic to their conservatism: while Karabekir, Cebesoy and Orbay reiterate the repressive and elitist nature of etraf again and again, their emphasis is on the disconnect between the RPP and the will of the nation, since etraf and the RPP leaders lack the moral character to occupy the leadership positions they reserved for themselves. On the other hand, “those of strong personal convictions and moral character” are presented as a natural fit for leadership.
60 Zürcher, Turkey: A Modern History, 166–76; Ahmad, The Making of Modern Turkey, 52–71.
61 Komitacılık refers to the culture of rebel bands that developed in the Balkans during the nineteenth century, in particular. And as such it has been considered as part of the para-military political culture of the Committee for Union and Progress that relied on underground networks. Most Islamist political movements continued Orbay's perspective and occasionally argued that the Independence tribunals (İstiklal Mahkemeleri) that tried individuals associated with Islamic insurgencies in Anatolia were actually controlled by komitacı networks, executing individuals at will.
62 Orbay, Siyasi Hatıralar, 350.
63 Orbay, Siyasi Hatıralar, 121–8; 167; 182–9; 226–30; 245–50.
64 Cebesoy, Siyasi Hatıralar, 646.
65 Karabekir, Günlükler II, 927.
66 Karabekir, Günlükler II, 964; 1010; 1077.
67 Karabekir, İstiklal Harbimiz, 1.