Introduction
The Republic of Turkey emerged from the ruins of World War I after an embittered struggle through the War of Independence. Concepts of Turkishness and Turkish identity began long before that, even before the Ottoman Empire. But like any nationalist movement, a building of momentum, public support, and a charismatic and well-spoken leader were necessary to galvanize this brewing undercurrent and build the Turkish national identity as we know it today. As with many other nationalist movements, the slightly nebulous ethnic component of Turkish nationalist ideology has proven dangerous for the many ethnic minorities living within its bounds.
To understand the rhetorical construction of ‘the Turk,’ one must dive into the texts of the time, from the philosophical writings of the urban intellectual elite to the famous speeches of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the first president of the Republic, himself. Atatürk’s widespread reforms were instrumental in shaping early Turkey, and Kemalism, the ideology based on his beliefs, is still broadly popular to this day. This paper will dissect how and why this particular image of the Turk was chosen to unite the burgeoning nationalist movement, and illustrate the utility of these choices. In that undertaking, it becomes clear that early Turkish nationalism invokes anti-colonialist framings from multiple angles in order to achieve the goal of a united and militaristic cultural identity.
The Philosophical/Political Lineage of Pan-Turanism
The Turkish nationalist identity emerged from the many streams of political thought that were flowing through the Ottoman Empire in the early 20th century. But preceding this innovation, thinkers were grappling with reconciling their Ottoman identity with the impending changes that westernization brought to their homeland. In the second half of the 19th century, author and thinker Namik Kemal attempted to make sense of these elements under a framework that would continue to guide Ottoman, and later Turkish thought. His contention was that the three key elements of Islam, the Ottoman state, and westernization were not actually in conflict with each other; they simply needed to be applied in the correct areas. Islam could “provide the moral and legal bases of society,” the Ottoman state would serve as “the political framework,” and finally westernization would bring “the material and practical methods and techniques to enable this system to survive in the contemporary world of power and economic progress” (Berkes, 1954, p. 380). By limiting each element to its area, they would each fulfill their roles without interfering with the mechanics of the other two elements. This analysis came on the heels of the largely failed Tanzimat reforms which haphazardly adopted some western institutions but, due to a lack of a comprehensive plan, led to more confusion and exploitation than progress (Berkes, 1954). Namik Kemal’s synthesis of the three elements brings to the forefront the fundamental turmoil in the political life of the late Ottoman Empire. These three elements, the religious, state, and western, continued to battle for supremacy in the court of public (and more importantly, political elite) opinion throughout the following decades.
With the turn of the century came a new era of political thought. The general deterioration of the Ottoman state, along with the Young Turk Revolution of 1908 galvanized the political discussions of the time, as one revolutionary change signaled that there could be a possibility for more. Authors and political thinkers flocked to Istanbul to propone for whichever of the three elements, or some mix of them, would create the ideal state for the future of the empire. But the Ottoman state and identity as a fundamental part of this discussion was soon challenged. In the wake of the revolution, many minority groups in university circles formed national or political clubs, challenging the united image of the, by default Turkish, Ottoman citizen. Prominent writer and feminist political leader Halide Edib wrote about the initial emergence of the Turkish identity:
“The Ottoman Turk so far had been a composite being, an Ottoman citizen like any other, his greatest writers writing for all the educated men of the empire, his folk-lore and popular literature passing from one generation to another, unwritten by the educated, but powerful in the minds and memories of all the simple Turkish-speaking Ottomans. For the first time reduced to his elements and torn from the ensemble of races in Turkey, he vaguely faced the possibility of searching, analyzing, and discovering himself as something different from the rest. How was he different from the others? Where was he being led in the accumulation of other desires and interest? Cast out or isolated in his own country, he not only saw himself different, but he had also the desire to find out wherein lay the difference.” (2017, p. 266)
The resulting focus on discovering a specifically Turkish identity gradually displaced the Ottoman sensibilities previously found in political discourse. With other national and ethnic groups claiming their identities freely and openly, the Ottoman Turk was suddenly confronted with the fact that being an Ottoman citizen was their current limit of identity exploration. Being the default for such a vast empire meant that Ottomanism had come to absorb the attributes of many other factions besides the Turks, leaving the Ottoman Turk without a specifically Turkish identity.
This need to define Turkishness led to the rise of Pan-Turanism, first as a sociocultural, and then a political movement. The Turkish translation of Leon Cahun’s Introduction to History of Asia: Turks and Mongols in 1896 spurred on the movement. The book pioneered the controversial claim that ancient archaeological inscriptions found in the Orkhon Valley, modern day Mongolia, had significant similarities to Turkish, thereby ethnically linking the Ottoman Turk to this central Asian society (Morin & Lee, 2010). This awakened the study of the Turks as a people separate from the Ottoman Empire, perhaps descended from previous Turkish people that could inform what the ‘true’ Turkish identity could be. Pan-Turanism was quickly adopted by many influential thinkers, including the already discussed Namik Kemal and Halide Edib, but also Ziya Gökalp, Keuk-Alp Zia, and Mustafa Kemal Atatürk himself.
Ziya Gökalp was one of the most influential Ottoman political thinkers of his time, defining Turkish nationalism under a new framework, now pared down into two sections: civilization and culture. Civilization, he believed to be “the modes of action composed of the…rational forms of behavior imposed upon individuals by their common civilization,” and culture, “the specific value judgments, or ethos, of a particular nation” (Berkes, 1954, p. 384). Civilization, the functional mechanism of society, is meaningless without a national culture, and this national culture is what Gökalp believed could be discovered in the Turkish identity through Pan-Turanist thought. He claimed that Turkish-associated traits that were regarded as negative or opposed to modern civilization like polygamy, subjugation of women, or even some conceptions of the Islamic God, were not Turkish at all. Instead, they were “imposed on the Islamized Turks chiefly through the infiltration of the civilizational teachings of the Near East,” and “had a place only among the de-Turkified” (Berkes, 1954, p. 389). He applied the same logic to Islam, blaming the teachings he did not approve of on Persian and Arab impositions. Here, the seeds for the anti-colonialist narrative of Kemalism were planted. The search for an ancient and ‘true’ Turkish identity to fill modern needs and values created the idea that westernization-friendly Turkism had been suppressed by outsiders that covertly distorted and perverted righteous Turkish culture.
Moving another step closer to Kemalism, Keuk-Alp Zia was a major part of shaping the philosophy of the Unionist party and was, for a time, a close friend of Halide Edib. He believed in Pan-Turanism as a cultural ideal, writing children’s books in an attempt to cement a new Turanian mythology in the popular culture and supporting intensive westernization for its reported economic and political gain. But Keuk-Alp Zia’s major innovation in Turanist thought is that he discarded Islam entirely. From Zia’s perspective, Islam was yet another social imposition from colonizers, overshadowing the true Turk’s religious beliefs. Edib describes his philosophy, “He believed that Islamism, as founded by the Arabs, could not suit us,” and that Turks should, “go back to our pagan state” (Edib, 2017, p. 262). This view brought secularism to the forefront but argued for it in a different way than was generally seen in political debates regarding Islam and government. Keuk-Alp Zia managed to oppose Islam while still maintaining allegiance to Turkishness, effectively separating the Islamic identity from the Turkish one. This view also distanced the Turkish identity even further from the Ottoman identity, since Islamic principles were inextricably tied into the Ottoman ruling class’s claim to power.
Nutuk
After the Ottoman defeat at the end of World War I, the War of Independence began. The Allied Powers continued to partition and occupy parts of the newly fallen empire, and as such, Ottoman military leaders disobeyed orders from both the Allies and the Ottoman government to stand down and disband. From these campaigns, prominent general Mustafa Kemal Atatürk came to lead the movement politically as well as militarily (Howard, 2001). But while military victory could offer the basis for a new nation, it was also necessary to create a central identity and narrative around which the revolutionary movement revolved. Atatürk needed to reach those outside his ranks and required public support to legitimize his new government. So, he delivered a massive 36-hour speech, spread over the course of five days, called Nutuk.
It cannot be understated how impactful Nutuk is, even to this day. By retelling the events of the War of Independence, it mythologized the origin of the Turkish Republic. It crafted new myths and values that were introduced to the vernacular and soon instilled into the population’s understandings of themselves. Scholars even argue that the ideals within Nutuk “constitute the centerpiece of the Turkish narrative of nationalism today” (Morin & Lee, 2010, p. 486). Its tenets of democracy, sovereignty, and secularism mirror many other historically revolutionary documents, and cement it as a cornerstone of Turkish identity. But the construction of such a document is a very delicate matter. It bears a heavy load of responsibility, since its purpose is both to mobilize Turkish nationalist sentiment within the people, and also to set a course for the future of the new nation. As discussed earlier, Ottoman and Turkish nationalist thinkers had been working through their ideal frameworks for decades, and their influence was clearly felt within the pages of Nutuk.
In their study of Nutuk, Aysel Morin and Ronald Lee identify five key myths that Atatürk erects to construct the new Turkish identity. They call these myths First Duty, Encirclement, Internal Enemy, Ancestor, and Modernity. They are not stand-alone in their effects, and in fact interact and overlap in their efforts to create a cohesive identity. Morin and Lee claim: “All five myths radiate out like concentric circles from a central premise: Turks have always been free and independent and they prefer death to subjugation” (2010, p. 492). From this central premise one can read the key components of the anti-colonialist argument that Atatürk invokes. The myths all work together to paint the post-WWI Ottoman Turk as fighting against colonialism on two fronts, yearning for both a return to ancient traditions and the modernity of the future.
First Duty refers to the fighting Turkish spirit and an imperative for freedom. It casts defending the freedom and independence of the Turkish people as top priority, characterizing Turks as historically militaristic people that are “both dignified and proud,” that “would prefer to perish rather than subject [themselves] to the life of a slave,” finally calling for “Independence or Death!” (Atatürk, 2020, p. 69). The main rhetorical functions of the First Duty, according to Morin and Lee, are first to “legitimize the movement” by casting it as a “struggle for independence,” but also to invoke a “collective character” within the uprising and legitimize Atatürk’s claim to power as a military leader (2010, p. 493). This myth also shows the starting point for the anti-colonialist narrative that echoes throughout Nutuk. It sets as a baseline that the Turkish people are deserving of self-determination and dignity, a sentiment that most people belonging to the group doubtless agree with. It also follows in the footsteps of early 20th-century Ottoman political theorists by separating out and focusing solely on the ethnic and cultural entity of Turkishness, as opposed to the more general Ottoman citizen.
The second rhetorical tool used in Nutuk, Encirclement, defines a clear external enemy, others the occupying outsiders, and establishes a claim to the territory of the Turkish Republic. It creates a clear ‘us’ vs. ‘them’ dichotomy, homogenizing various foreign powers into one comprehensive antagonistic force. Morin and Lee read Nutuk as “depicting a nation surrounded on all sides by multiple enemies, the French, English, Italians, and Greeks” (2010, p. 497). Atatürk conveys this by talking around the nebulously “foreign officers and officials and their special agents” that were “very active everywhere,” playing into the conspiratorial mindset often associated with covert intelligence operations, especially those originating in the west (2020, p. 48). This argument is the most clearly related to anti-colonialism, since the Allied forces were, in fact, attempting to occupy and partition the Ottoman Empire. Serious discussions about entering different formats of protectorates or mandates took place, to the degree that Atatürk included his evaluations of those options in Nutuk. Encirclement holds water as a call to action against western colonization, though at its peak, the status of western forces was much closer to simple occupation than full-scale colonialism.
Next, Internal Enemy defines the in- and out-groups within the Ottoman Empire itself. This rhetorical technique introduces an additional layer of ‘us’ vs. ‘them,’ carving away those who do not align with Atatürk politically. The internal enemy includes those who argue for a mandate or protectorate solution, as well as the Sultanate and its supporters. Atatürk says those looking to accept the protectorate “admit lack of all human qualities, weakness and incapacity” (2020, p. 69). His exiling of these people from the in-group follows the standards set out in First Duty. A true Turk would fight for independence and sovereignty, as is their culture. If someone chooses to instead offer their support towards the colonial occupiers, they have relinquished their status as a member of the in-group.
Internal Enemy also targets those who stand in the way of Atatürk’s planned political reforms, which include secularism and democracy. The key figures he rails against, therefore, are the Sultan and his cabinet. He calls the Sultan a “degenerate,” and a “traitor who polluted the highest office in the State,” while the cabinet was composed of “cowards and criminals” that, together with the Sultan, took on “the part of the traitors to and executioners of the nation and country” by collaborating with foreign powers (Atatürk, 2020, pp. 47, 292, 502). He goes on to claim, “It was by violence that the sons of Osman acquired the power to rule over the Turkish nation and to maintain their rule,” and that “it is now the nation that revolts against these usurpers, puts them in their place and actually carries on their sovereignty” (Atatürk, 2020, pp. 1373–1374). The main function of these diatribes is to “separate rhetorically ‘the Ottomans’ from the ‘Turks,’ the rulers from the ruled,” along with separating ‘the empire’ from ‘the nation’ (Morin & Lee, 2010, p. 496). Atatürk bolsters his claim to power, made legitimate by his military campaign for freedom which signifies him as a true Turk who has the popular support of the people; this stands in contrast to the illegitimate Sultanate whose claim to power originates from ‘violence’ and who sold out the Turkish people by collaborating with foreign powers.
These two rhetorically constructed enemies, the external and the internal, overlap just enough that they can be conflated into one Colonial Enemy. The External Enemy, the occupying Allied Forces, is a clear colonialist power attempting to gain political authority over the remnants of the Ottoman Empire. The Internal Enemy is also tied into Atatürk’s anti-colonialist narrative through their perceived or real alliance with these same colonial forces. The supporters of the protectorate solution are those advocating for colonialism, and the Sultanate are accused of having aligned themselves with these same foreign (colonial) powers, betraying the people. But here, Atatürk’s anti-colonialist narrative expands to include the Sultanate itself as not just collaborators, but as colonizers of the Turkish people. His accusation that the Sultanate used ‘violence’ to seize and maintain their power, and the identification of them as the ‘Sons of Osman’ in comparison to the ‘Turkish nation’ they control, rhetorically casts the Sultanate as illegitimate tyrants that, rather than being an elite sub-section of the Turkish people, are instead outsiders that have imposed their will upon the nation.
The next rhetorical tool Morin and Lee identified in Nutuk is the Ancestor, in which Atatürk directly invokes the Pan-Turanist philosophy first proposed by thinkers like Ziya Gökalp and Namik Kemal. The Ancestor rejects the religiously meaningful roots that the Ottomans traced back to the sons of Noah, and instead validates the previously described theory linking modern-day Turks to various empires as far away as Central Asia (Morin & Lee, 2010). In recounting Turkish history, Atatürk describes the breadth of “The Empire of Attila,” then claims that the Ottoman Empire was “founded on the ruins of the Seljuk State,” and even makes sure to clarify that “the Ottomans” were “the Turks under the regime of former times” (2020, p. 612). Following this framing, the Ottoman Empire (explicitly not glorified, in contrast to other past Turkish Empires) is “just a single ring in this long chain of history” (Morin & Lee, 2010, p. 499). This means that the Turks have carried this legacy for thousands of years, and over multiple different civilizations. This rhetorical device interlinks with the others, becoming more effective as it overlaps. Recalling the legacy of the Huns and Seljuks as war-like and strong additionally bolsters the First Duty argument, as the ethnic argument attached to the Ancestor implies this fierce independence and strength to be an inherited trait.
The ethnic angle of the Ancestor also brings up some contradictions and points of conflict where Atatürk does not accept all the tenets of the Pan-Turanist movement. For one, the Pan- Turanist narrative of history simultaneously claimed a legacy full of thriving multicultural empires and also ethnic purity. This infeasibility can be rationalized through the mythic nature of foundational nationalism. This claim of ethnic purity may not be biologically accurate, but that does not matter because the Turkish people can still identify themselves with their legacy. Atatürk’s narrative of the past is more of a philosophy than a history, a collection of traits and attributes that he considers desirable to amalgamate into ‘Turkishness.’ Atatürk also sidesteps the troubling implications of desired ethnic purity by invoking the First Duty as the main signifier of true Turkishness. As Morin and Lee put it, “Nobility of the blood and the membership in the nation are earned” as “blood only becomes sacred only when spilled in defense of the country” (2010, p. 500). The claimed moral righteousness of this argument also supports Atatürk’s anti- colonial argument. If what makes someone a Turk is to fight for the freedom of their country, it is a compelling motivator to tell them they are the heirs to a long legacy of powerful warriors, but have been suppressed by the ‘traitors,’ ‘cowards,’ and ‘criminals’ that run the government. This issue of ethnic purity is still very divisive and arguable, however, considering past and present race relations within the country.
Atatürk draws a similar line in regards to the expansionist component of Pan-Turanist ideology, which sought to unite all Turks under a cohesive empire. He calls it, while being “a brilliant and attractive political ideal,” still “an unrealizable aim” (Atatürk, 2020, p. 896). Pan- Turanism had been growing in popularity for decades by this point, and its discursive potential was clearly valuable to Atatürk when establishing a Turkish nation with a corresponding national identity. But Atatürk’s own political aims superseded those more popular within Pan-Turanism. Atatürk’s disdain for the new Turkish Republic becoming an empire also aligns itself with an anti-colonialist framing. While he mythically points back to powerful multicultural and expansionist dynasties, the new Turkish Republic is meant to be a self-contained nation, as modernity demands. Reaching only for this lesser level of power is consistent with anti- colonialist movements which, rather than wanting to expand their influence and take in foreign territory, are seeking only self-determination in their historical lands.
As a whole, the Ancestor also continues to bolster Atatürk’s anti-colonialist argument. After previously discursively separating the Turks from the Ottomans and emphasizing their duty to fight for independence, Atatürk now offers his dubious cultural history as evidence. This kind of backwards-looking identification with an inherited cultural legacy is reminiscent of the concept of indigeneity, frequently used in anti-colonialist discourse. George J. Sefa Dei and Alireza Asgharzadeh define indigeneity as “knowledge consciousness arising locally and in association with long-term occupancy of a place” (Dei & Asgharzadeh, 2001, p. 302). While Atatürk’s historical Turks do not live in only one place, the claim to their direct lineage is still present through the ethnic component. And his definition of the First Duty makes clear that this inherited knowledge, this drive to freedom and independence, is the intellectual legacy of all those great Turkish civilizations that came before.
While some may argue that a desire for independence is an inherent part of all humans, and therefore is not a cultural legacy, this is immaterial in the discussion of discursive nation- building. If this claim of a shared lineage and shared traits can lead the people to form a shared identity that supports the nationalist movement, then it has discursively fulfilled its goals, no matter its factual veracity. Even Frantz Fanon in On National Culture states, “Sooner or later, however, the colonized individual realizes that the existence of a nation is not proved by culture, but in the people’s struggle against the forces of occupation” (Fanon, 2004, p. 86). Atatürk puts this into practice by placing ‘the people’s struggle’ at the center of the Turkish national identity. Though their struggle may not be unique, it still becomes their unifying factor through the historical legacy tied to it. If one can mobilize the population for a shared cause, then this mobilization itself becomes the proof and legitimacy of said shared cause.
The final rhetorical concept introduced in Nutuk is Modernity. Just as the Ancestor offers a comprehensive narrative of the past, Modernity fulfills that same purpose towards the future. Both myths are a forceful departure from Ottoman tradition, chiefly through their focus on empiricism and secularism. The Ancestor does this by supplanting the Islamic heritage myth with a new ethnic argument, given legitimacy through the veneer of science. Modernity, on the other hand, does this by fully embracing westernization. Morin and Lee write, “The ‘West,’ for Atatürk, is an imaginary destination, symbolized and defined as constant progress. Turkey adopts the progressive ideals of Europe, imports its science and technology, catches up with the West and rises above and beyond it” (2010, p. 501). This drive to modernity is clearly reflected in the expansive reforms Atatürk undertook both before and after Nutuk. Many of these were vast structural changes, such as secularizing the judicial, educational, and legal systems, implementing women’s suffrage, and adopting the Latin alphabet in place of the Arabic, accompanied with expansive literacy programs (Hourani, 1991; Howard, 2001). By moving away from Ottoman traditions, these reforms were meant to “prove that our nation as a whole was no primitive nation, filled with superstitions and prejudice” (Atatürk, 2020, p. 1718). Atatürk’s strong belief in science and empiricism as the way forward for Turkey went hand-in-
hand with his disparagement against anything signaling Ottomanism.
But Atatürk’s westernizing reforms were not only structural changes. Many items on the Kemalist agenda seemed much more cosmetic, like his ban of the fez. In Nutuk, he calls the fez “a sign of ignorance, of fanaticism, of hatred to progress and civilization,” advocating instead for western styles of hats, the “customary headdress of the whole civilized world” (Atatürk, 2020, p. 1715). This was meant to illustrate that “no difference existed in the manner of thought between the Turkish nation and the whole family of civilised mankind” (Atatürk, 2020, p. 1715). These types of reforms served to erase certain cultural elements of Turkish society that differentiated it from Europe. Atatürk’s frequent usage of the descriptor ‘civilised’ when referring to western countries and Turkey’s future implies a stark contrast to previous Ottoman ways of life.
On the surface, Atatürk’s disavowal of traditional symbols, religion, and dress seems entirely antithetical to Nutuk’s anti-colonialist argument. Atatürk had only just finished fighting a War of Independence against the European Allied Forces taking advantage of the Ottoman defeat in World War I; why would he now discard established Turkish culture in favor of assimilating to European norms? As M. Şükrü Hanioğlu explains in his biography of Atatürk, Ottoman elites had long desired the Empire to be considered a proper part of Europe, an argument that had become increasingly difficult with the loss of most of its European territory after the end of World War I. However, “for Mustafa Kemal, Turkey’s essential European-ness remained unchanged; it simply had to be expressed in cultural rather than geographical terms” (Hanioğlu, 2011, p. 201). Atatürk, raised entirely in European Turkey, fundamentally saw Turkey as a European country, and believed that western-style civilization was the only path to modernity. He did not see the adoption of European systems and symbols as a loss of culture, but rather as a way to demonstrate to the rest of the world that Turkey was just as capable of modernity and progress as any other European nation.
Additionally, Atatürk’s insistence on using the state to enforce even seemingly petty issues like banning the fez could be a tool to demonstrate the strength of the new state. Joel S. Migdal’s book Strong Societies and Weak States looks at the capacities of states, mainly in the Third World, to shape and change their societies. Many of these new states tried to emulate the strong policies of western imperial states for their potential gains. These included the ability to “penetrate society, regulate social relationships, extract resources, and appropriate or use resources in determined ways” (Migdal, 1988, p. 4). Atatürk’s policies throughout his modernization effort affected language, dress, and social roles, directly regulating the social relationships of his people. The widespread adoption of these policies affirmed the new Republic as a strong state, built in the image of the West. Atatürk’s clear influence over the culture and behavior of his society demonstrated his government’s strength, discouraging any potential return to Ottomanism by shifting the cultural milieu.
The cultural reforms towards westernism are also another area where the depiction of the Ottoman government as a colonial force becomes useful. Of the two parts of the Colonial Enemy, the Ottomans were the only ones who successfully occupied and ruled over the Turkish people. The Europeans, though they posed a credible threat after World War I, never formally colonized Turkey or were able to forcibly introduce any cultural elements. Once the physical threat of their occupation had been quelled, the European forces were no longer necessary as part of the rhetorical colonial enemy and their cultural symbols could freely be adopted. And since the Ottomans were cast as violent traitors that subjugated and betrayed the people of Turkey, the disavowal of their cultural legacy was no longer a disavowal of Turkish culture, only one of the symbols of the colonizer.
Throwing out the Ottoman legacy was only possible, however, because of the Pan- Turanist historical theory invoked through the Ancestor and the single-issue cultural identity crafted through First Duty. Atatürk rhetorically constructed an ancient legacy that was just substantial enough for the people to grasp on to, one based on militarism and a fierce drive for independence, but vague enough to still plausibly fit into Atatürk’s westernized view of the modern future. Detaching Turkish identity from the common touchstones of religion, dress, and all other manner of systems and symbols allowed Atatürk to craft a new Turkish identity, tied solely to the great empires of the past and the promise of a technologically and scientifically advanced future, and managing to skip entirely over the intervening centuries of Ottoman rule. And with the Ottomans viewed as colonizers, the cultural elements associated with Ottomanism became not only outdated, but could be actively harmful as they suppressed ‘true’ Turkish identity.
The Turkish History Thesis
After the initial establishment of the Republic of Turkey, Atatürk embarked on a journey to scientifically prove his conviction of Turkish importance and global historical influence. As he commissioned scientific works and held multiple Turkish Historical Congresses to encourage study and discussion, what became known as the Turkish History Thesis began to take shape. This theory designated the Turk as not only racially equal to the European man, but superior. The Turk was credited not only with founding civilization, but spreading it around the world by “establishing major states, such as the Sumerian and Hittite empires, and helping ‘backward’ human groups such as the Chinese and Indians to produce impressive civilizations,” along with “Greco-Roman civilization, which was the product of Turkic peoples who had migrated to Crete and Italy” (Hanioğlu, 2011, p. 164). This explicitly racialized scientist narrative was common in its time, when nationalist movements all across the world pointed to various skull measurements to assert their superiority. It cemented that Turkishness was truly racial as well as cultural, while also allowing Atatürk to pick and choose desirable civilizational aspects to adopt into the new portrait of Turkish identity.
The Turkish language also received a Turkish History Theory treatment. Atatürk “read with great interest” an essay by Mustafa Celâleddin Pasha that “claimed to find similarities between Turkish and Latin, and hinted at the Turkic origins of the Romance languages” (Hanioğlu, 2011, p. 172). And extending the reach of Turkish influence even further, a study by Brasseur de Bourboug “convinced” Atatürk that “Mayan languages…originated from proto- Turkish,” though this component of the Turkish History Thesis was controversial and not broadly accepted (Hanioğlu, 2011, p. 179). These and other studies amounted to a central claim that modern Turkish was the common link between all languages, which had descended from early Turkic people. Similarly to the rest of the Turkish History Thesis, these studies were assertions of international and global significance, a sense of inclusion within, and even the credit for, that echelon of modern civilization that Atatürk desperately wanted Turkey to belong to.
Despite this apparent pride in the history of the Turkish language, Atatürk’s language reforms were extensive and completionist, altering Turkish so much that even Nutuk had to be translated only a few decades after he composed it (Hanioğlu, 2011). But again, the drive to reform can be traced back to a desire to erase Ottoman influence. Atatürk adopted the Latin alphabet in place of Arabic, and sought to specifically eradicate foreign words, especially ones originating from Persian or Arabic. He replaced around 7,000 such terms with terms derived from Turkish roots, all in the service of, as Atatürk said in an endorsement to a language reform study, “liberating Turkish from the yoke of foreign tongues” (Hanioğlu, 2011, p. 175). Viewed through the colonialist lens of Ottoman occupation, Atatürk’s work was returning the Turkish language to its ancient glory, a form great enough to be the basis of every other language across the globe. His choice of the terms ‘liberating’ and ‘yoke’ also imply a righteous overturning of previous suppression or bondage. Through slanted scientific study and state-sponsored cultural reform, Atatürk built a novel image of a modern Turkey almost entirely alien to the centuries of Ottoman customs that preceded it, yet still deeply rooted in a new, mythologized national history.
The Post-Atatürk Republic
Mustafa Kemal Atatürk died in 1938, but his influence still permeates Turkey to this day. Though some tenets of Kemalism have been altered, like the loss of its original secularism, it is still wildly popular. As a founding father of the Republic, Atatürk consciously and deliberately labored to construct his vision for the nation, successfully forging a new identity for the Turkish people. But, as previously mentioned, not all aspects of Kemalism are still intact. One major change is the embracing of Ottoman history as another glorious chapter in the legacy of the Turks, something that seems entirely antithetical to Atatürk’s rhetoric. But as Nicholas Danforth points out in his paper discussing Turkish framings of Ottoman history, the majority of Atatürk’s disparaging statements about the Sultanate, including some of those in Nutuk, were specifically made in 1922 and 1923, while the Sultan still held enough political power to threaten the burgeoning Republic. Danforth argues that “once it was no longer necessary to condemn the Ottoman dynasty for short-term political reasons, Atatürk and his successors could re-work their relationship with Ottoman history in a way that provided voluminous new evidence of past national glories” (2014, p. 656). Through the following decades, many historians took up the subject of Ottoman history and reshaped its public image into the version popularly conceived of today. After all, projects of nationalism only benefit from associating the nation of the present with heroic legends of the past.
The colonial framing of the Ottoman Sultanate during the establishment of the Republic of Turkey is only underscored by its swift reversal thereafter. The utilitarian way in which rhetoric disparaging and denouncing the Ottomans could be quickly and quietly swapped for the alternate mythos of past Ottoman glory illustrates the shaky, if not completely manufactured, factual basis upon which much of ethnonationalism rests. The Sultanate served the role of colonizer, suppressing the righteous Turk under centuries of unjust Arabic, Persian, and Islamic influence, only until it had been destroyed; at that point, new myths could be created from the remnants, limited only by the bounds of pseudo-science and the popular imagination.
While the anti-Ottoman aspect of Atatürk’s nationalism did not last beyond its initial utility, his intense and far-reaching westernization and modernization projects left deep impacts on both Turkey’s economic development, but also on the self-image of the Turkish people. Hanioğlu writes, “A large section of the elite internalized the new modernism and indeed considered it the only possible form of modernity” (2011, p. 223). And this modernity went hand in hand with western ideals. In fact, Hanioğlu characterizes instilling “a sense of belonging to Europe” as Atatürk’s “prime objective” in his modernization project, which he believes to be a success, given the “great majority of Turks” who believe that “any challenge to the European character of Turkey stems from ignorance and deep-seated prejudice” (2011, p. 225). This sentiment, fueled originally by European Ottoman territory holdings, is geographically contentious at best, but retains enormous significance in terms of culture and nationalist prestige. Atatürk’s belief in western-style modernism as ‘the only possible form of modernity’ created a necessarily meaningful and viciously guarded attachment to the nebulous amalgam of the ‘west,’ exemplified largely by European ideals and associations.
The reversal of the forces of Europe from colonizer to ideal was even faster than the one concerning the Ottomans and helped lay the groundwork for that eventual second reversal. As soon as the immediate physical and political threat was quelled, the bits of western institutions, cultural traits, and social attitudes that were conducive to Atatürk’s vision were adopted in Turkishness. The funding and propagation of the Turkish History Thesis allowed Atatürk to claim that these elements were somehow still Turkish in origin, rhetorically sidestepping the problem of potentially looking like a colonizer himself. With plenty of practice in reclaiming carefully selected pieces of history and weaving them into the nationalism mythos, mining Ottoman history for additional glories was simple once Atatürk’s modernization projects had moved society far enough away from its milieu to risk any backsliding.
Ethnonationalism broadly, and Kemalism specifically, remain prevalent, and have risen in profile over the previous decades. With escalating institutional violence against ethnic minorities and political dissidents, Turkey’s political culture has become increasingly exclusionary, and poses an imminent threat to many that live within its borders. Tracing back the ideological lineage of Kemalism to its root is helpful in understanding how these national identities form, why they are constructed in the ways they are, and what purposes they serve. Though Atatürk maintained that he was not involved with any of the genocides that took place during the fall of the Ottoman Empire, and his language in Nutuk generally remains vague enough to allow for non-ethnonationalist interpretations, this ambiguity gives excuses and justifications for racism and extremist violence. Atatürk’s financial backing of inaccurate and unethical race-science also does not help this narrative. His cultural construction of the Turk was of an unmistakably western modernist character, wrapped in layers of mythology and past glories, a wall-papering of indigeneity and ethnic heritage. Atatürk used both anti-colonialist rhetoric invoking a right to freedom and self-determination, and colonialist techniques of race- science and the erasure of cultural knowledge through language and symbols, in concert, to create his modern Turk, who would lead the Republic of Turkey into the future.
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