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Death Rattle of an Empire – Birth Pangs of a Republic. Resonant Themes in Turkish History. Mixed Messages: Chania , Crete. Themes. Towards the Republic Founding the Republic The population exchange Political consequences Musical consequences Modernisation and westernisation
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Death Rattle of an Empire – Birth Pangs of a Republic Resonant Themes in Turkish History
Themes • Towards the Republic • Founding the Republic • The population exchange • Political consequences • Musical consequences • Modernisation and westernisation • Language reform, literacy and Education • Music and Dress • Securing and mythologising the Republic • The Republic today
Towards the Republic • Survival? • Balkan wars; lost territories, lost identities, new identities, population movements • Creating and conflicting identities: • Ottomanism, Islamism, Turkism, Westernism, Socialism • Since 19th century Tanzimat, new language of identity at centre of politics. • Changes in military, political life and social life, from dress codes to education to protect and sustain the Empire. • Impact of First World War • Armenian question and repercussions • Something genuinely new was necessary to construct a nation state. • What? How?
Towards the Republic • The rise of Ataturk in the First World War • Gallipoli • The fall of the Ottoman Empire, 1919 • The Greek invasion, 1919-1922 • the ‘Asia Minor catastrophe’ • Treaty of Sevres (1920) • Carved up Ottoman lands
Sevres Syndrome • Turkish war of independence • Repulsion of the Greek invasion and rejection of Sevres • Sevres Treaty signed by Ottoman delegation (but never by Sultan). • Duality of political leadership: who represents Turks/Turkey? • Ankara rejected it from the very beginning • Still born Treaty increased resistance to occupation • Never implemented but Sevres left a legacy in Turkey • Sevres left a notorious legacy in Turkishcollective memory as a symbol of defeat and capitulation. • ‘Sevres mentality’ is to see every demand from the outside as a threat to integrity of Turkey.
Treaty of Lausanne (1923) • Resolved boundaries of the Ottoman successor state in a territory bigger than that agreed for Turkey in never implemented Sevres. • Established Turkey as a sovereign geo-political entity. • Confirmed the triumph of ‘resistance’ and of war-torn (for decades)people.
Founding the Republic • Sultanate abolished in 1922 • Following Treaty of Lausanne, Republic of Turkey founded 1923 • Ankara chosen as capital • Republic as unitary state • Republic as Turkish state
The Population Exchange • Military defeats, lost territories. Events of late 19th century paved way for big waves of migration within and outside territory that later became Turkey. • Around two million Muslims migrated to Anatolia territories lost to Russia, Austria and Greece • Balkan Wars created another wave of migration, this time including a reverse direction of Christian refugees. • When Anatolian resistance drove the Greek army out of Anatolia most western Anatolian Greeks fled. • Fear of reprisal
The population exchange • Why? • Who? • Where? • How? • Treaty of Lausanne (1923) • Criterion = religion, not language • Consequences • Economic • Social • Political consequences • Precedent • Musical
Twice a stranger’ • Asia Minor’s Greek-Orthodox community, including the Karamanlıs of central Turkey and the Pontic Greeks of the Black Sea, left for Greece. • Turkish-Muslim community of Western Thrace stayed in Greece • Cretans to Cunda and elsewhere • Greek-Orthodox communities of Istanbul and the Aegean islands of Gökçeada (Imbros) and Bozcaada (Tenedos) exempted from the exchange.
The Population Exchange • Exchange affected Asia Minor Greeks and Turkish-Muslim communities differently since Turkey and Greece were at “at different stages of nation-state formation” (Ç. Keyder, in Hirschon, 2003). • Asymmetrical: added c25% to Greek population and c5% • Parts of Greece became overcrowded and parts of Turkey seriously underpopulated • Greek planning laws
Population exchange: Rebetika • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j_nOoZCGtd8&index=5&list=RDUaR1vKSV-dI • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9cPbCXWGJMo&list=RDUaR1vKSV-dI&index=8
A busy time • 1924: Abolition of caliphate • 1924: Muslim sabbath, Friday, dropped in favour of Sunday. • 1924: The Ministry for Islamic law (Shariat) and pious foundations (vakıfs) abolished = Islam stripped of state backing. • 1924: Religious seminaries (madrassa) shut down; religious high Schools placed under authority of Ministry of Education. • 1924: Presidency of Religious Affairs • 1925: Sufi dervish lodges closed. • 1925: Fez declared illegal. New law required men to wear western-style hats. • 1925: Lunar calendar and clock dropped; Gregorian calendar/solar clock adopted
Even busier • 1926: Turkish Grand National Assembly (TürkiyeBüyük • Millet Meclisi—TBMM) approved a secular civil code to regulate marriage, inheritance, divorce, and adoption. • 1926: the government annulled Shariat courts, declaring Islamic law null and void. • 1928: parliament removed from constitution declaration of Islam as Turkey’s state religion. • 1928: Arabic alphabet to be dropped and new, Latin-based alphabet effective from January 1, 1929. • Previous efforts from tanzimat onwards not very successful
Mythologisingthe Turkish Republic • Nutuk 1927 • Six day speech • Nutuk as a performative • Myth creation
Kemalism as a state doctrine • The six principles: the “six arrows,” representing republicanism, nationalism, secularism, populism, statism, and revolutionism. • Most important are republicanism, nationalism, secularism • CHP: Republican People’s Party established 1923 • Multi party system 1946
The Shape of the Republic • Turkish identity • Unitary state • Hobbesian conception of state sovereignty. • Rejection of regionalism and autonomy. • Minorities: e.g. Kurds and integration in Turkish Republic
Language Reform • A reform in alphabet: • Persian/Arabic script ill suited to Turkish, hard to read, fiendishly difficult to write • A reform in language – words, spelling and grammar • Purification of language – removal of Persian and Arabic words • Most people could not read or write • Mass literacy, education and language reform was a joint project • Declaration of cultural and political westernisation • Creating new Turkish identity • Origins of Turkish and Turkish past
A ‘catastrophic success’? • Cut Turks off from their own history. • Nobody could read their grand great parents letters, diaries • Only trained scholars can read official Ottoman documents and books • Alienation
Secularisation • Pushing Islam out of public domain. • Atatürk’s vision of Turkey: as a modern nation state of citizens. • “the regime targeted a new, national, and all-inclusive identity for the country’s inhabitantsand ... having turned its back on Islam, Ankara promoted a varied definition of the nation” • Atatürk declared: “the people of Turkey, who have established the Turkish state, are called the Turkish nation.” • Atatürk stressed shared past, interests and desire to live together as factors binding the nation together. • Article 5 of CHP’s new by-laws adopted at the Second Congress, 1927, stipulated that one of “the strongest links” among the citizens was “unity in feelings and unity in ideas.” • (Soner Çağaptay, 2006)
Equality between the sexes • On 17 February 1926, Turkey adopted a new civil code by which the rights of Turkish women and men were declared equal except in suffrage. • In 1930, women gained the right to participate in municipal and, in 1934, national elections.
Reform • Westernisation and modernisation was not new • Dated back to the Tanzimat reforms of the mid 19th century • However the way Ataturk exploited the opportunities provided by the formation of the Turkish Republic was new.
The Present Challenges to the republic • Neo-Ottomanism • Pan Turkism • Unitary state • Autonomy And unresolved issues with • CHP (Republican People’s Party) • Islam in Public Domain • Electoral System • 1915:Armenia and Armenians • Kurdish autonomy and integration
Suggested Reading • Alaranta, T. ‘Mustafa Kemal Atatürk's Six-Day Speech of 1927: Defining the Official Historical View of the Foundation of the Turkish Republic’ (Turkish Studies, 9: 1,115-129, 2008) • Çağaptay, S. Islam, Secularism and Nationalism in Modern Turkey: who is a Turk? (Routledge, 2006) • Clark, B. Twice a Stranger: How Mass Expulsion Forged Modern Greece and Turkey (Granta, 2006) • Hirschon, R.(ed) Crossing the Aegean: an appraisal of the 1923 compulsory population exchange between Greece and Turkey (Bergahn, 2003) • İnalcık, H. Turkey and Europe in History (Eren, 2006) • Kedourie, S. (ed) Turkey before and after Atatürk (Cass, 1999) • Kili, S. The Atatürk Revolution: a paradigm of modernization (TürkiyeBankası, 2008)
Suggested Reading • Lewis, G. The Turkish Language Reform: A Catastrophic Success (Oxford University Press, 1999) • Mango, A. Atatürk (2nded, Murray, 2004) • Mango, A. Turkey: From the Sultan to Atatürk (Haus, 2009) • Özkırımlı, U & Sofos, S.A. Tormented by History: Nationalism in Greece and Turkey (Hurst, 2008) • Zürcher, E.J.Turkey: A Modern History (3rded, Tauris, 2004) • Zürcher, E.J. The Young Turk Legacy and Nation Building from the Ottoman Empire to Atatürk’s Turkey (Tauris, 2010)