Other leading nationalist intellectuals rejected Ziya Gokalp's distinction between civilization and cultures Yakup Kadri Karaosmanoglu outlined a new, unified concept of "contemporary civilization" gounded in scientific and technological progress that was the prerequisite for the desired artistic and cultural regeneration of the nation. This progressive model of history, which subsumed culture under the singular notion of "civilization." Similarly, Yusuf Ak~ura regarded civilization as a whole and argued that it was supposed to be adopted in totality. Akyura declared that it would be meaningless to try to separate ideas ftom material aspects of civilization.68 This criticism was most eloquently expressed by Agaoglu as follows: First of all, we need to be sincere; do we accept and admit the superiority of the Western civilization? If yes, then we cannot explain that superiority only by referring to its science and knowledge or even its politics and social foundations. The superiority of the Western life over our life is comprehensive. If we want to escape from this and maintain our existence we have to accord our entire life not only through our dress and some institutions but also with our minds, hearts, views, and mentalities. There is no other way for salvation.69

While Gokalp did not advocate such a wholesale idea of civilization, he also clearly separated himself ftom an Islamic discourse of civilizational authenticity. While emphasizing the need to bon-ow ftom the West science and technology, Islamists did not believe in the universally singular notion of civilization and asserted that the two civilizations were different. This view could be summed up by Mehmet Akif Ersoy, in his description of Western civilization as "single-toothed monster" in the Turkish national anthem that he authored: The lands of the West maybe armored with walls of steel! But I have borders guarded by the mighty chest of a believer I let it bark, don't be scared; how can this [powerful] faith ever be killed,1 by the single-toothed monster that you call civilization?70 The culture-based nationalist views of Ziya Gokalp were probably influenced by his upbringing in a predominantly Kurdish city of Diyarbaktr. It was also noteworthy that the Young Turk movement included many ethnically non-Turkish Muslims: Ibrahim Temo, an Albanian; Mehmed Reid, a Circassian; and Abdullah Cevdet and Ishak Siikuti, Kurds.71 Although it is contested whether Gokalp himself was ethnically a Kurd, he initially flirted with the idea of Kurdish nationalism that would unite Kurds against  Armenian nationalism before he finally settled with Turkish nationalism. The background of these early Turkish nationalists suggested that their nationalism was more a Muslim nationalism in sociological sense. They were trying to carve out an ideology that could serve as a bond among Muslim millet, without direct reference to Islam. In Gokalp's formulation, the idea of Turkish nationalism was to be based on the common bond of Islam, rather than the common bond of blood or even citizenship. While Gokalp's moderate stance on religion was discarded at the implementation stage of Turkish nationalism by the Republican regime, Islam nevertheless remained a powerful informant in the subconscious of Kemalist identity.The proclamation of the second constitutional period started the final phase of the Ottoman history. A number of critical events with lasting impact on Turkish history and politics took place in this period. These include the Balkan Wars, the First World War, as well as the relocation (tehcir) of Armenians from Anatolia.72 The elections of 1908 brought the CUP to power where it remained until the end of the Empire. The CUP began an aggressive process of consolidating its power by placing their own men in important positions within the bureaucracy and military. The conservative opposition reacted to these attempts through a coup, known as the 31 March Incident in 13 April 1909 , which led to a counteroffensive by the CUP. After the CUP quelled the coup within two weeks, it used it as a pretext to de-throne Abdulhamid. In June and July 1912, the opposition initiated another military coup which coincided with the Albanian Revolt and forced the CUP-backed government to resign. The response of the CUP to this development was the Sublime Porte raid (Bab-l Ali BaskIm) of January 23, 1913, which restored power to the CUP. The opposition attempted to counter this with a futile coup that began with the assassination of the Grand Vizier of the CUP-backed government, Mahmud $evket  on June 11, 1913. The result was the establishment of a CUP dictatorship that was to bring the Empire to the First World War and cause its eventual collapse.73 Yet the CUP era's legacy in Turkish politics survived the end of the Otto~an period and left a longlasting legacy in the traditions of interventionism in politics as the self-defined duty of the military of government through secrecy, intelligence and gangs of Jacobinism, and of a long tradition of politics by assassination. This was the incubation period for the tradition of military coups in modem Turkish history.

 

The First World War and its Consequences

The CUP leaders were zealous nationalists with a strong sense of Muslim communalism. They had a very strong image of the non-Muslim subjects of the empire and for this reason detested the ideology of Ottomanism. In this regard, the Balkan Wars had a lasting impression in their minds. Benefitting from the advance of Italy on its invasion of Libya in 1911 and the resulting Ottoman-Italian War, Serbian-Montenegrin, Greek and Bulgarian forces staged a joint attack on the Ottoman territories in the Balkans(reverberations of this are still felt today with the recent rise to independece of Bosnia and now probably alos Kosovo a s coverred on the World Journal website this week) . Out of this war, Albania-Macedonia, and Thrace had been lost, while Edime was regained in 1913 as a result of the Second Balkan War among Balkan states themselves. Hence with the loss of Balkans and North Africa the Ottoman territories were reduced to Anatolia and the Middle East. The eventual survival of the Ottoman empire was based on the question of a.common identity to keep these remaining parts together. In this regard, the Young Turk political and intellectual leadership embarked upon a project of creating a secular nation out of Muslims. Following G6kalp's notion, this nation of Muslims was to be called Turks in order to highlight its secular essence as opposed to a universal nation of Muslims (Turk milleti as opposed to jslam ummeti).

There was also an ethnic Turkish nationalist tendency in the CUP, which was closer to ideas of Yusuf Akyura and Ahmet Agaoglu, both of whom were migrants from Russian controlled Turkish territories. The CUP began to encourage the growth of a recently founded pan- Turkist organization, Turk Ocagt (Turkish Hearth), which, under the leadership of Akura and Agaoglu, established branches in many parts of the country to propagate the growth of pan Turkish identity.74 Despite this growing interest in Panturkism, however, the CUP's nationalism was primarily Islamic in nature. The CUP implemented centralization of the Ottoman administrative system, and this has been interpreted by many as Turkification. As suggested by Kayali in his study, Arabs and Young Turks, the Turkification policy of the CUP has been exaggerated and the Arab revolt was primarily a response to centralization policies.75 Kayali further asserts that Arabs thought in terms of regional identities such as Syria rather than an all-inclusive Arab identity: it would be more appropriate to refer to "Syrianism" rather than Arab nationalism in the period before the world war. Both the decentralists in the major towns of Syria and the Arab voices calling for a political existence independent of Istanbul thought in terms of Syria when espousing Arab group consciousness as a.political idiom.76.

The CUP's primary interest then was to promote Muslim nationalism, even though Turks were the core of this project. ill this sense, they differed from Abdulhamid only in regard to degree of emphasis on Islam. Being positivists and secularists in mentality, the CUP leaders did not stress Islam. Yet Islam remained the core of their social identity and shaped their perception of the external and internal enemy Italian and Balkan wars were important military experiences for CUP cadres.Turkish officers, under the commandership of Enver Pasha, learned guerilla operations  against Italians in Libya through voluntary militias ifedailer). The success of these operations convinced them to use similar tactics in the Balkans, Caucasia, Iran,Afghanistan, and India. 77 They brought some of these experiences back to Istanbul in the form of military coups. The Ottoman.Empire under the CUP government entered the First World War as an ally of Germany and subsequently lost the war. Under allied occupation of Istanbul, the Ottoman government was forced to sign the Treaty of Sevres in August 10, 1920, with Britain, France, Italy, and Japan. It renounced its control over non-Turkish territories, as Hijaz was given independence. Under Article 22 of the Covenant of the League of Nations, Syria and Lebanon became a French mandate, Palestine and Iraq became British mandates, and most significantly the Thrace, the Agean islands, and Izmir and its environs were given to Greece. According to the treaty, the Greeks were to stay in Izmir for five years until a plebiscite would decide its fate. Meanwhile, the Ottoman government lost territorial control of its seas, as the Dodecanese and Rhodes went to Italy and the Straits were to be under the control of an international commission. Furthermore, an Armenian and a Kurdish state was to be established on Southern and Southeast Anatolia respectively.78

The Treaty of Sevres and its subsequent implementation in the form of Greek, British and French occupation of Turkey faced fierce reaction of the Turkish people, particularly among the nationalist military officers. Finally under the leadership of Mustafa Kemal Pasha, Turkish forces forced the occupying powers to agree on the Treaty of Lausanne in 1923, a treaty that drew the boundaries of modem Turkey, recognizing Turkish territorial claims over Anatolia and Eastern Thrace. However, Turkey could not regain Mosul, which was within the boundaries of Misak-l Milli or the NationalPact, which was decided by the last Ottoman parliament on January 28, 1920 as the minimum acceptable territorial boundaries to be sought by the Turkish independence struggle. In essence, Misak-l Milli rejected separation of Muslim majority territories in Anatolia from Turkey. While the pact included Mosul, in Lausanne the boundaries of Turkey were drawn to exclude it, causing many heated discussions in the Turkish parliament. 79 In subsequent negotiations, Turkey ceded Mosul to Britain in exchange for some monetary compensation. An important part in the Treaty of Lausanne concerned the population exchange between Turkey and Greece. On January 30, 1923, Turkey and Greece signed the agreement of exchange of Greek and Muslim communities in Turkey and Greece respectively. The agreement, endorsed by the Turkish Parliament in Ankara on August 23, stated the following: Article I: As from the 1st May, 1923, there shall take place a compulsory exchange of Turkish nationals of the Greek Orthodox religion established in Turkish territory, and of Greek nationals of the Moslem religion established in Greek territory.These persons shall not return to live in Turkey or Greece respectively without the authorization of the Turkish Government or of the Greek Government respectively. Article II: The following persons shall not be included in the exchange provided for in Article I: (a) The Greek inhabitants of Constantinople; (b) the Moslem inhabitants of Western Thrace.80

The text of the agreement was interesting in regard to the reference to Muslims rather than Turks living in Greece to suggest the boundaries of nationality in Turkey. Taken together with the Turkish insistence on rejection of minority status to Muslim communities in Turkey in Lausanne, it was very clear that the boundaries of nationality was drawn not on ethnic lines but on religious lines. Hence, Turkey was to be the homeland for Muslim Ottomans who are now called "Turks," an identity that was to be enforced on them, if necessary, by force. The dilemma was that a secular republic was established on the basis of a religiously rooted definition of national majority (Muslims) and minorities (non-Muslims).With the establishment of the Turkish Republic in 1923 after the Turkish War of Independence, the founders of the Turkish Republic slowly set out to implement a comprehensive nation-building process. The project was based on six principles which most significantly included secularism and  nationalism. In implementing this project, the new regime faced the challenge of defining a national identity for an ethnically-diverse people who lived within the existing boundaries of Turkey as a result of the legacy of the Ottoman Empire. The problem of religious diversity was significantly reduced with the population exchange in addition to the deportation of the Armenian population during the First World War and population exchange with Greece after it. As discussed, at the Treaty of Lausanne, Turkey rejected the notion of a Muslim minority, declaring itself a homeland for Turks who were composed of all Muslims within its territories. The new regime defined this Muslim population as "Turk" and set out to create a homogenous Turkish nation on the basis of secularism and nationalism. Kemalism followed Ziya Gokalp' s notion of nationality based on commo religion and culture, conceiving it as including all the Muslim subjects of the Ottoman Empire, including Turks, Kurds, Albanians, Bosnians, Arabs, and others, while extra territorial ideas of nationalism such as Turanism did not appeal to the founders of the Republic. Hence the Turkish nationalism on which the Republic was established was nonethnic and culturally-based Islamic nationalism with a secularist ideology. Those who were Muslims and lived in Turkey were accepted as Turks and any idea of Muslim minorities was strictly considered as taboo. In this sense, the Kemalist project of nation building had its internal contradictions from the very beginning. The basis of this secular nationalist project was Islam as a social identity and as both philosophers and implementers of the project included many nonethnic Turks. Yet the Kemalist project was about secularization against its internal Other, which is the Islamic social and political culture.

The new regime set out to implement a number of reforms in order to create a cultural rupture both with the Ottoman past and with Islamic civilization. Mustafa Kemal stated in an oft-quoted statement that "the Turkish Republic cannot be a country of sheikhs, dervishes and disciples. The truest and surest path is the path to civilization." Civilization meant the West, and it was necessary for Turkey to become like the West in order to preserve its independence against the West. Mustafa Kemal stated that "the war is over with ourselves victorious, but our real struggle for independence is to begin only now-this is the struggle to achieve Western civilization."Sl Hence the urge of becoming Western in order to avoid becoming part of the West lay at the root of this contradiction.In the minds of the founding elite of the Turkish Republic, this struggle could be won through implementation of a radical process of Westernization and dismantling of the Ottoman and Islamic cultural legacy. They took on the power of institutional Islam through a number of crucial reforms: the most radical one being the overnight change of the written script from Arabic to Latin. This provided a clean slate on which the new regime could embark upon its mission of nation-building. The other reforms included the abolition of the Caliphate (1924), the introduction of the secular legal system basedon the Swiss, Italian and German models (1926), the replacement of Arabic script by Latin alphabet (1928), the removal of the status ofIslam as state religion (1929), the unification of educational system and ending of religious instructions in the primary schools, and the ban on the performance of Haij (1934). The new nation was to be secularized to the extent that the role of religion would be reduced to symbols and rituals compared to its central place in the daily lives of the Ottomans. Kemalists saw modernization as an escape from backwardness with a "total dislike and distrust of all things associated with the old regime and the old way oflife.,,82 Religion constituted the center of the old way of life, blamed as antithetical to "civilization." In order for Turks to change their sense of civilizational belonging, it was necessary to detach it from any sense of belonging to an Islamic civilization. Hence through secularization reforms Kemalists severed Turkey's social, intellectual, and political links with the Islamic civilizatiorial identity in order to bring it on a par with the "contemporary civilization". As Sayyid points out, this task logically necessitated an orientalizationof the East:To modernize, the Kemalists had to westernize, but the very nature of westernization implied the necessity of orientalization since you can only westernize what is not western, that is what is oriental. Thus, to westernize you had first to orientalize: one had to represent the oriental, before one could postulate westernization as an antidote. To reject the Orient in the name of the West meant the articulation of the Orient as 'the Orient'. 83

After this project of decoupling Turkey from its Islamic social base was achieved, it was necessary to give the new TUrkish society an identity that would solidify the nation-building process. Mustafa Kemal, as the political leader of westernization, was aware of the fact that he needed to replace Islam with an alternative ideology to bind the new nation together. The answer was Turkish nationalism. In order to glue a largely multicultural and multiethnic society in lieu oflslam, an imagined ethnic homogeneity was imposed. In line with the Ottoman millet system that categorized Ottoman citizens according to their religions, the ethnic homogeneity was imposed on Muslims who were now accepted as "Turks," while onlynon-Muslim citizens were recognized as minorities and often described even in official records as "foreigners.“84 Religion served as the primary criterion to define who were minority and who was the majority in the Republican era. In this sense, the Kemalist project of nation-building was a secular Muslim communalism that sought to build a secular state where the core identity would be Muslim. The homogenous and secular Turkish nation-state was to be constituted by members of the Ottoman Muslim millet, while remaining members of the non-Muslim millets were given the recognition as minorities. In other words, despite its rejection of the institutional power oflslam, Kemalism was not in itself an anti-Muslim ideology. In sociological terms, Islam continued to be the grammar of Turkish society, including the secularists. The founders of the Turkish republic behaved as secularist but essentially Muslim nationalists. As Dogu Ergil notes, this was a contradiction with the secular character of the new regime and opened room for the later reemergence oflslamism: Paradoxically, by forcing all Muslims into a Turkish identity, the new regime was also associating Turkish identity with Islam, which was contrary to its secularization project. This built-in contradiction would later make it easier for non-state actors to politicize religion. "Aren't we all Muslims, so why do we argue whether we agree on the principles of religion (Islam) to guide social life or not?" became the most commonly asked question in the political debate of the 1990s.85

The second contradiction of Kemalism, related to the fist one, was its perception of the West. Kemalism was the triumphant ideology of the Independence War that was fought against European powers and the domestic elements believed to have been provoked by them. Therefore, ''the sprit of independence" from the Western colonization was at Kemalism's foundation. Kemalism after all was a project of nationalism. It was based on is duality of aims, nationalism against the West and modernization against Islamic social establishment. 86 As Hasan B. Kahraman discusses: One dimension of Kemalism is that it is an ideology that rejects and even condemns the West. It owes its legitimacy and existence to this dimension. On the other hand, Kemalism not only points to the West as an abstract objective, but also aims to fulfill this objective through institutionalization.This institutionalization takes place on both abstract and concrete bases........... Kemalism suffers from a dualism as regards the West. While it rejects the East totally and does not compromise on this position, it holds contradictory ideas about the West. 87 While Kemalism highlighted its anti-Western dimension in its conftontation with the West, it became a modernizing force in its confrontation with the domestic Islamic elements. Although they strived to create a Western political culture in order to be strong and preserve independence and sovereignty, they resisted a mental internalization of the West in their identity perceptions. As Hakan Yavuz observes, ''the Kemalists imagine themselves as secular, rational and Western in their encounters with Islamic forces, though they have very little knowledge of the West or of what it means to be truly secular. ..88 Thus, Kemalist identity as well as its project otnation-building was built on two layers constituted by its twin Others, the West as perpetuated in the Turkish mindset by the Sevres memory, and Islamic social identity and by extension the Arab and the Muslim world as perpetuated by the Arab revolt. In the implementation of Kemalist foreign policy in a larger historical context, one can observe the continuous interplay between these two layers.

As we have seen before alreayd on the World Journal website, the republican Turkish foreign policy has always faced the problem of dealing with a historical legacy of a collapsed empire. The memory of the Sevres, the occupation,the war of independence, the Arab and then Kurdish rebellions worked as informants of the mindset of the first generation of the Republic. This meant essentially that the foreign policy of Turkey was to be conducted in an atmosphere of mutual dislike against both the West and the Islamic Middle East. The new regime required breathing room from outside events to better concentrate on domestic politics in order to implement an ambitious project of nation-building on the ashes of the empire. Mustafa Kemal, who assumed the last name of Ataturk (father of Turks), desired to make Turkey a part of what he considered as contemporary civilization through Westernization and modernization. This meant close relations with the West, but with a desire to maintain territorial integrity and independence. The basic strategy ofKemalist foreign policy is summarized by oft-quoted dictum of "peace at home and peace in the world." It is important to note that this was taken from a speech he delivered in November 1, 1928, in which he stated that "it is quite natural and therefore simple to explain the fact that a country which is in the midst of fundamental reforms and development should sincerely desire peace and tranquility both at home and in the world."89 The statement was also a declaration to the Western world that the new regime denounced any revisionist or irredentist goals. The regime accepted its reduced power status as a nation-state in order to consolidate its power domestically, which required close relations with Western powers. Close relations with the West was also in line with the Ottoman strategy of balancing against Russia or the Soviet Union after 1917 Revolution. In seeking not to provoke Russia, AtatOrk abandoned the Panturkist version of Turkish nationalism that extended the national boundries. He carefully distanced himself from any claim of representing the Turkic people of Russia.Turkish nationalism exclusively meant the people of Turkey.The principal goal during this period was to solidify national integration in the new regime established with a new identity on the legacy of the long years of wars. Hence it was necessary to seek isolation from regional problems. The Sadabad Pact of 1937, signed between Turkey, Iran, Iraq, and Afghanistan, was a nonaggression pact, essentially designed with the purpose of securing noninterference of regional actors in each other's internal affairs rather than being a regional cooperation agreement. The only exception to this strategy of isolationism was the case of Hatay. Ataturk sought to make the Sanjak of Is ken de run, which he called Hatay, an integral part of Turkey. Hatayand " Mosul were two places which were within the boundaries of Misak-i Miili but could not be made a part of what emerged as Turkey. Ankara had clearly abandoned its claims on Mosul but took a difference stance on Hatay, which was part of the French Syrian mandate. This difference was partly due to concerns over the Kurdish population whose percentage in overall Turkish population would increase if Mosul was part of Turkey. Hatay on "the other hand was largely populated by Turks. It was also due to realpolitik calculations in which Ankara did not want to challenge the British. The integration of Hatay was actively pursued by Turkey; it was not until 1930s that the conditions were appropriate. Because of concerns that Turkey might tilt toward Germany again, France allowed Hatay to be included within the Turkish sphere of interests. In 1938 a formal French-Turkish treaty paved the way for the establishment during the same year of an independent state ofHatay. One year later, a refendum conducted in the Republic of Hatay decided annexation by Turkey in February-of 1939. Syria, however, placed claims on Hatay, resulting in decades-long confrontation between the two countries.

Ataturk's foreign policy orientation characterized by isolationism and dislike of alliances has become an integral part of the Kemalist thinking In this sense, the later attempts to integrate Turkey into Western institutions, most specifically NATO and the European integration, were aberrations from the traditional Kemalist foreign policy orientation, rather than its implementation. Such integrationist policy decisions were taken by center-right parties and were always opposed by doctrinaire Kemalists in the name of protecting national sovereignty and independence. Thus, as it appeared throughout the Republican era that while Kemalists were the most Western oriented in their principal identity, they were always in opposition to the ambition of the center-right, conservative parties and politicians to integrate with the Western institutions. Their Western orientation was always subdued by their preoccupation with national independence, a preoccupation which reflected strong feelings of insecurity in the Kemalist subconscious. What should be noted here, however, is that although Ataturk might be regarded as having acted in response to limitations and possibilities offered by his time, the later generation Kemalists fell apart in their own time from their strict reading of AtatUrk's principles of foreign policy. This has caused a tension between such doctrinaire Kemalists and pro-Western liberal secularists who desired a more reformist- and up-to-date interpretation of the legacy of the Turkish modernization.

 

Kurdish Nationalist Uprising

One of the most serious challenges for Turkish national integrity and the regime’s nation-building efforts was the Kurdish question. From the beginning of the Republic until 1938, there were a number of Kurdish rebellions, among which the first and the most significant was the Sheikh Said rebellion of 1925. It lasted from February to April 1925, and it spread to 14 Turkish provinces, but its effects lasted until 1937.90 As discussed by Baskm Oran, there are three contradictory claims about the origins of this incident. First, it was a religious-motivated rebellion under the leadership of the sheikh of Nakshibendi order, who was angry to the abolishment of the caliphate in 1924. While Kurds participated in the War of Independence, they did not anticipate that the identity of the new regime would be Turkish nationalism, however inclusive of Kurds this would be. The Turkish official explanation of the Said rebellion was that it was a reactionary (irtica) uprising. Second, it was a feudal rebellion against the Kemalist modernizing bourgeoisie revolution. Finally, it was a Kurdish nationalist uprising organized by nationalist Kurdish military officers on active duty. They only used Sheikh Said in order to galvanize larger support from among the conservative Kurdish population. The Kurdish nationalist movement in modern Turkey propagates that nationalism was indeed the motivation of the uprising. Furthermore, the Turkish regime claimed that it was the British that fomented and supported the rebellion. According to Oran, this claim is historically unsubstantiated;91 it is nevertheless significant in suggesting how the image of the West is framed in the Kemalist mindset as connected to domestic threats to national integrity. The rebellion was suppressed only with difficulty, causing long-lasting psychological effects for both the Turkish political elite and the Kurdish nationalists.The foreign policy implications of the Kurdish problem were quite significant. The rebellion convinced Turkey that it would be difficult to pursue its claim over the’oilrich Mosul area, which according to the British designs would be part of Iraq, as it would make the Kurdish problem even more unmanageable with the additional Kurdish population in the Mosul area. 92 In this sense, the British benefited most from the rebellion in forcing Turkey to give up its claims. Consequently, in an early period, the domestic Kurdish problem became one of the most significant foreign policy issues for Turkey.Since then, the problem has never been dropped from neither domestic nor foreign policy agenda.

 

Conclusion

The Ottoman intellectuals developed three consecutive reactions to the decline of the empire: Ottomanism, Islamism, and Turkism. Ottomanism was a liberal reaction aimed to save the still-existing ethnic and religious plurality of Ottoman society through a notion of common Ottoman citizenship. According to. this notion, all Ottoman citizens were equal and shared the same fatherland. An Ottoman nation could be erected on the love of a common fatherland. Tanzimat and Islahat movements were designed to reform the Ottoman system for this aim. However, Ottomanists could neither convince Muslim citizens that such Western notions as representative democracy were not contradictory to Islam nor increasingly restive non-Muslim communities that they had a future under the Ottoman empire against the background of the rapid collapse of the Ottoman empire. The Ottoman defeats in front of rapidly expanding Russia further encouraged the mostly Orthodox non-Muslim communities to seek secession one after the other following the 1837 Greek independence. The Tanzimat era foreign policy strategy aimed to balance against Russia through close alliance with England ijIld other Western European powers. While this strategy succeeded in obtainingWestem support in the CrimeanWar in 1854 1856, it increasingly created a situation where the fate of the empire was totally dependent on the goodwill of the West, which only sought to delay its total collapse in order to deny spoils to Russia.With the independence of the non-Muslim communities in the Balkans, the rate of the Muslim population in the rest of the Ottoman territories surged. This provided a suitable ground for the rise of Muslim communalist feelings. The second reaction of the Ottoman elites was to seek territorial integrity through a common identity among Muslims. The enthroning of Islamist Abdulhamid II was a timely occasion in this sense,but even his rivals such as the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP) were Muslim communalist without being pious at the same time. They all sought to seek a solution to the imperial decline through a sense of a common nation among Muslims. While following a policy of Panislamism, Abdulhamid II quickly recognized that two emerging powers would playa pivotal role in the twentieth-century world politics:Germany and Japan. He extended diplomatic contacts with Japan, which was then in alliance with Britain to counter Russia. Germany, however, was more proactive in expressing its interests in the Near East. This put Germany in direct competition with Britain and France which increasingly began to reverse their policy of supporting the Ottoman territorial integrity against Russia and instead sought its fragmentation to their advantage. In this context, Abdulhamid II forged an alliance with Germany, which, later at the hands of the Young Turks, proved to be fatal.The third reaction, associated with the CUP, was nationalism. This was a secular Muslim communalism more than an ethnic nationalism, as articulated ideologically through the writings of intellectuals such as Ziya Gokalp at a context when ethnicity was marked more by religion than by language. The influence of Islam as a religion was to be kept to a minimal, and very frequently Young Turks expressed antireligious sentiments.Yet Islam served as the common social identity for them. Young Turk nationalism was secularist, but Muslim nationalism emerged as a reaction to the decline of the Ottoman empire and the inability of Ottomanist and Islamist solution to prevent it. Young Turks sought answers to this problem in modernization and more importantly the homogenization of the Ottoman population. They left a direct and long-lasting legacy on the present-day Turkish politics and foreign policy primarily through forced deportation of the Anatolian Armenian population. The Kemalist ideology of the Republic of Turkey directly borrowed from Young Turk nationalism in its search for a homogenous Turkish nation in which "Turkish" sociologically equaled "Muslim."

When Atatiirk died in 1938, the process of Turkish Westernization in both cultural and institutional forms was complete. This process left a strong legacy on Turkish foreign policy. First of all, it left a strong military in place as self-appointed guardians of the Kemalist revolution. The military's privileged place in Turkish politics would directly shape foreign policy choices in later decades. In the Kemalist mindset, two domestic enemies to national integration, namely, political Islam and the Kurdish question, were bent on destroying the essential characteristics of the regime. A confrontation between the Kemalist elites and conservative masses, on the one hand, and a confrontation between secular elites and the Kurdish nationalists, on the other, were set in motion. These confrontations have had direct influence over foreign policy choices as it will be examined in the rest next on Turkey here then drawing a compairance (next on World Journal) with Japan. They have haunted Turkish foreign policy decision-makers in almost all foreign policy areas, including the relations with Europe, the United States, Russia, and the Middle East. In these key policy issues, Kemalist political establishment in Ankara had to comont the consequences of its inability to effectively integrate legitimate demands of cultural and political representation by Kurds and the Islamic conservatives.

 

Notes

1 Ilber Ortayli, Imparatorlugun En Uzun Yiizylll (Istanbul: netijim, 1999).

2 James L. Gelvin, The Modem Middle East: A History (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005).

3 David B. Ralston, Importing the European Army: The Introduction of European Military Techniques and Institutions into the Extra-European World, 1600-1914 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990),65.

4 M.Ukru Hanioglu, The .Young Turks in Opposition (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995)p.8.

5 Quoted in Uriel Heyd, Foundations of Turkish Nationalism; the Life and Teachings of Ziya Goka/p (London: Luzac, 1950),79.

6 Ralston, Importing the European Army, 65.

7 For Selim Ill's military reforms and his Nizam-l Cedid (new era} army, see Stanford J. Shaw, "The Origins of Ottoman Military Reform: The Nizam-I Cedid Army of Sultan Selim m," The Journal of Modem History 37, no. 3 (1965).

8 See Avigdor Levy, "The Officer Corps in Sult!n Mahmud II's New Ottoman Army, 1826-39," International Journal of Mid die East Studies 2, no. 1 (1971).

9 Shaw,. "The Origins of Ottoman Military Reform: The Nizam-I Cedid Army of Sultan Selim."

10 Stanford J. Shaw and Ezel Kural Shaw, History of the Ottoman Empire and Modem Turkey, 2 vols. (Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1976), 21.

11 Serif Mardin, The Genesis of Young Ottoman Thought; a Study in the Modernization of Turkish Political Ideas (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1962),14.

12 George G. Arnakis, "The Role of Religion inthe Development of Balkan Nationalism," in The Balkans.in Transition: Essays on the Development of Balkan Life and Politics since the Eighteenth Century, ed. Charles Jelavich and Barbara Jelavich (Berkeley: University .of California Press, 1963).

13 Kemal H. Karpat, "The Transformation of the Ottoman State, 1789-1908," International Journal of Middle East Studies 3, no. 3 (1972): 259.

14 Ibid., 258.

15 Hugh McKinnon Wood, "The Treaty of Paris and Turkey's Status in International Law," American Journal of International Law 37, no. 2 (1943).

16 Guchanetinsaya. "Kalemiye'den Mtllkiye'ye Tanzimat ~iincesi," in Modern Turkiye'de Siyasi Diunce 1: Cumhuriyet'e Devreden Duunce Mirasl Tanzimat ve Mrutiyet'in Birikimi,ed. Mehmet O. Alkan, Modern Turkiye'de Siyasi,Istanbul, 2001,54.

 

17 Quoted in Ibid., 57.

18 On Ottoman education reforms during the Tanzimat era, see Andreas M. Kazamias, Education and the Quest for Modernity in Turkey (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1966); and, Seleuk Aqin Somel, The Modernization of Public Education in the Ottoman Empire, 1839-1908: Islamization, Autocracy, and Discipline (Leiden: Brill, 2001).

19 See Ali ankaya. Yeni Mulkiye Tarihive Mulkiyeliler, vol. 8 (Ankara: Siyasal BilgHer FakUltesi, 1968)

20 Somel, The Modernization of Public Education in the Ottoman Empire, 1839-1908: Islamization, Autocracy, and Discipline, 52.

21 Bernard Lewis, The Emergence of Modern Turkey, 3rd ed. (New York: OXford University Press, 2001), 122; for a critical view on the weight of Galatarasaray graduates in the Ottoman administrative structure, see Kazamias, Education and the Quest for Modernity in Turkey .

22 Karpat, "The Transformation of the Ottoman State, 1789-1908," 259.

23 Majid Tehranian, "Disenchanted Wodds : Secularization and Democratization in the Middle East," in Democratization in the Middle East: Experiences, Struggles, Challenges, ed. Amin Saikal and Albrecht Schnabel (Tokyo: United Nations University Press, 2003),87.

24 Cited in Benjamin C. Fortna, "The Kindergarten in the Ottoman Empire and the Turkish Republic," in Kindergartens and Cultures: The Global Dif.JUsion of an Idea, ed. Roberta Lyn Wollons (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000), 260.

25 "Kalemiye'den M'dlkiye'ye Tanzimatiincesi," 56.

26 Akarli 1978,2, Quoted in Ibid., 57.

27 SerifMardin, "Yeni Osmanli Dusuncesi," in Modern Turkiye'de Siyasi DfJ§iince 1:
Cumhuriyet'e Devreden DiJ§unce Mirasl: Tanzimat ve M~rutiyet'in Birikiml, ed. Mehmet O. Atkan (Istanbul: Iletisim, 2001),51 Also Mardin, The Genesis of Young Ottoman Thought; a Study in the Modernization of Turkish Political Ideas.

28 Karpat, "The Transformation of the Ottoman State, 1789-1908," 262.

29 Ibid.

30 Ibid., 263.

31 Namtk Kemal and Fevziye Abdullah Tansel, Namlk Kemal'in Hususi Mektuplarl II
(Ankara: Turk Tarih Kurumu Basnnevi, 1969),235-36.

 

32 "Frenklerde Bir Tel Ibret, July 1, 1872; quoted in Hanioglu, The Young Turks in Opposition, 14.

33 Karpat, i'The Transformation of the Ottoman State, 1789-1908," 266. .

34 Mardin, The Genesis of Young Ottoman Thought; a Study in the Modernization of Turkish Political Ideas. .

35 Ibid.

36 Ibid.

37 Kemal H. Karpat, Studies on Ottoman Social and Political History: Selected Articles and Essays, Social, Economic, and Political Studies of the Middle East and Asia; V. 81 (Leiden: Brill, 2002), 267.

38 Gokhanetinsaya, "islami Vatanseverlikten Islam Siyasetine," in Modern Turkiye'de Siyasi Du~unce 6: Cumhuriyet'e Devreden Du-unce Mirasl: Tanzimat ve Me§ru!iyet'in Birikimi, ed. Mehmet O. Atkan (Istanbul: Ileti§im, 2001), 265.

39 Nikki R. Keddie, An Islamic Response to Imperialism: Political and Religious Writings ofSayyid Jamal Ad-Din ''AI-Afghani'' (Berkeley: University of Cali fomi a Press, 1983). For an antology of Islamist thought in Turkey, see Ismail Kara, Turkiye'de lslamclhk Du~uncesi (Istanbul: Kitilbevi, 1997). For a comprehensive source on Turkish Islamism see Yasin Aktay, ed., Modern Turkiye'de Siyasi Duijnce Cilt 6: lslamclilk,Istanbul, 2004.

40 Ali Bula, "Islam'm U~ Siyaset Tarzt Veya Islamcllann U~ Nesli," in Modern Turkiye'de Siyasi Duunce Cilt  Isltimclhk, ed. Yasin Aktay,Istanbul, 2004, . 59.

41 Ibid.

42 Ismail Kara, "isldmcl S6ylemin Kaynaklan ve Ger~k1ik Degeri," in Modern
Turkiye'de Siyasi Du§iJnce Cilt 6: jsltimclhk, ed. Yasin Aktay (Istanbul: ileti§im, 2004), 41.

43 See Selim Deringil, "Legitimacy Structures in the Ottoman State: The Reign of
Abdulhamid II (1876-1909)," International Journal of Middle East Studies 23, no. 3 (1991). .

44 Cezmi Eraslan, II Abdiilhamid ve islam Birligi: Osmanlz Devleti'nin isJam Siyaseti, 1856-1908 (Istanbul: 6tuken, 1995).

45 Mtlcahit Bilici, "Ummah and Empire: Global Formations after Nation," in Contemporary Islamic Thought, ed. Ibrahim Abu-Rabi (Oxford: Blackwell, 2006), 322.

46 Sultan Abdulhamid, Siyasf Hatlratlm, quoted in Azmi Ozcan, Pan-Islamism: Indian Muslims, the Ottomans and Britain, 1877-1924 (Leiden: Brill, 1997),51.

47 L. Carl Brown, Religion and State: The Muslim Approach to Politics (New York: Columbia University Press,.2000), 110.

48 On the secterian politics of European powerS in Lebanon in the nineteenth century, see Ussama Samir Makdisi, The Culture of Sectarianism: Community, History, and Violence in Nineteenth-Century Ottoman Lebanon (Berkeley: University of California Press,2000).

49 Jonathan S. McMurray, Distant Ties: Germany, the Ottoman Empire, and the Construction of the Baghdad Railway (Westport: Praeger, 2001).

50 Sultan Abdulhamid, SiyaS; Hanratlm, quoted in Denizo Anbogan, "Opening the Closed Window to the East; Turkey's Relations with East Asian Countries," in Turkish Foreign Policy in Post Cold War Era, ed. Idris Ba1 (Boca Raton:. BrownWalker Press,2004), 408

51 Ozcan, Pan-Islamism: Indian Muslims, the Ottomans and Britain, 1877-1924.

52 For the story of Ertugrul, see Kaori Komatsu, Ertugrul Faciasl: Bir Dostlugun Dogrqu (Ankara: Than Kitabevi, 1992). .

53 Selcuk Esenbel, "A 'Fin De Siecle' Japanese Romantic in Istanbul: The Life of Yamada Torajiro and His 'Toruko Gakan'," Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies,
University of London 59, no. 2 (1996).                                         .

54 Martin van Bruinessen, "Muslims of the Dutch East Indies and the Caliphate Question," Studia Islamika 2, no. 3 (1995).

55 Halide Edib Adivar, Conflict of East and West in Turkey, Jamia Millia Extension Lectures, ,1935 (Lahore: S.M. Ashraf: 1935), 79.

56 Justin McCarthy, Death and Exile: The Ethnic Cleansing of Ottoman Muslims, 1821-1922 (princeton: Darwin Press, 1995).

57 Deringil, "Legitimacy Structures in the ottoman State: The Reign of Abdulhamid II (1876-1909)," 347.

58 During Abdulhamid's rule, 10000 new slbyan (religious elementary) schools were opened and the numbers of ibtidai schools increased from 200 to 4000, rii~tiye (medievel high schools) ftom 250 to 600, idadi (middle schools) from 5 to 104, and teachers colleges ftom 4 to 32. Figures cited in M. Hakan Yavuz, Islamic Political Identity in Turkey (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 44-45.

59 Yusuf Akyura, "Dy Tarz-l Siyaset," Turk (Cairo), 14 April 1904.

60 David S. Thomas, "Yusuf Akcura's"Oy Tarz-l Siyaset," in Central Asian Monuments,
ed. Hasan B. Paksoy (Istanbul: Isis Press, 1992).                                                .

61 Niyazi Berkes, "Ziya G<skalp: His Contribution to Turkish Nationalism," Middle East Journal 8 (1954), quoted in A. aonnett, "Makers of the West: National Identity and Occidentalism in the Work ofFukuzawa Yukichi and Ziya Gokalp," Scottish. Geographical Journal 118, no. 3 (2002): 173

62 Heyd, Foundations of Turkish Nationalism; the Life and Teachings of Ziya Gakalp, 126.

63 For a comparison of Gokalp and Fukuzawa, see Bonnett, "Makers ot-the West: National Identity and Occidentalism in the Work ofFukuzawa Yukichi and Ziya Gokalp.                       .

64 Quoted in Ibid., 174.

65 Sibel Bozdogan, Modernism and Nation Building: Turkish Architectural Culture in the Early Republic (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2001), 107.

66 David McDowall, A Modern History of the Kurds (London: LB. Tauris & Co Ltd., 1996).

67 Ziya Gokalp, Turkish Nationalism and Western Civilization; Selected Essays (London: Allen and Unwin, 1959), 75-76.

68 Ozay Mehmet, Islamic Identity and Development: Studies of the Islamic Periphery (London: Routledge, 1990),68.

69 Ahmet Agaog1u, O~ Medeniyet (Istanbul: Milli Egitim Bastmevi, 1972), 13.

70 Mehmet Akif, istiklal Mall1 (the Independence March). The first two quatrains were adopted as the National Anthem of Turkey.

 

71 Lewis, The Emergence of Modern Turkey, 197.

72 The debate over what happened to Armenians in the Ottoman Empire during W orId War I remains contested some ninety years after it began. Armenians claim that they were the victims of genocide. The official Turkish view is that Armenians died during intercommunal fighting and a wartime relocation (tehcir) necessitated by security concerns in the context of intercommunal violence erupted with the provocation of . external forces, chiefly Russia, whose advancement into Eastern Turkey had caused massive concern throughout the past century of the Ottoman Empire. According to these claims, the Russian-supported Armenian militia carried out genocide of Turkish people in the territories they lived in large numbers. See Guenter Lewy, The Armenian Massacres in Ottompn Turkey: A Disputed Genocide (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2005). For a contrary perspective, see Donald Bloxham, The Great Game ofGenocide: Imperialism, Nationalism, and the Destruction 0/ the Ottoman Armenians (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005).

73 On the formation and consolidation of CUP power, see M. $UkrU HaniogIu, Preparation/or a Revolution: The Young Turks, 1902-1908 (OXford: Oxford University ~ress, 2001).

74 Aviel Roshwald, Ethnic Nationalism and the Fall o/Empires: Central Europe, Russia, and the Middle East, 1914-1923 (London: Routledge, 2001), 107.

75 Hasan Kayali, Arabs and Young Turks: Oitomanism, Arabism, and Islamism in the Ottoman Empire, 1908-1918 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997),207-12. Also see articles by Dawn, Hanioglu, Khalidi, and Haddad in Rashid Khalidi, ed., The Origins of Arab Nationalism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1991).

76 Kayali, Arabs and Young Turks: Ottomanism, Arabism, and Islamism in the Ottoman Empire, 1908-1918,212.

77 Roshwald, Ethnic Nationalism and the Fall o/Empires: Central Europe, Russia, and the Middle East, 1914-1923,107.

78 For the full text of the treaty, see "Treaty of Peace between the Allied Powers and Turkey," American Journal of International Law 15, no. 3, Supplement: Official Documents (1921).

79 See Tiirkiye Biiyiik Millet Medisi (Tbmm) GizZi Geise Zabltla71 (Transcripts 0/ the Secret Sessions of the Grand National Assembly of Turkey), vol. 3 (Ankara: Turkiye Is Bankasi Kultur Yayinlari, 1985).

80 "Convention Concerning the Exchange of Greek and Turkish Populations," American Journal of International Law 18, no. 2,.Supplement: Official Documents (1924).

81 quoted in Niyazi Berkes, The Development of Secularism in Turkey (Montreal: McGill University Press, 1964),463-64.

82 Henry J. Barkey, "The Struggles of A "Strong" State," Journal o/International Affairs 54, no. 1 (2000).

83 Bobby S. Sayyid, A Fundamental Fear Eurocentrism and the Emergence of Islamism (London: Zed Books, 1997).

91 Ibid.

92 Henri Barkey, "Under the Gun: Turkish Foreign Policy and the Kurdish Question," in The Kurdish Nationalist'Movement in the 1990s.: Its Impact on Turkey and the Middle East, ed. Robert W..Olson (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1996),67.

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