書單: 3「野蠻人」：土耳其（1918-1938）

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以下為章節 〈3 “The Barbarians”: Turkey (1918–1938)〉 的重點條列整理（概念筆記＋延伸問題）——這章從「帝國訊息」（Kafka）與《小王子》中「土耳其天文學家」的寓言開場，探討了土耳其在戰後如何從被視為“野蠻的東方”走向“文明的歐洲”，其核心是**「污名化（stigmatization）」與「歐化（Europeanization）」的張力**。

🧩 一、章節概念框架

主題：

從奧斯曼帝國的「被污名化」到凱末爾共和國的「文明追趕」——土耳其如何面對「東方／野蠻」標籤，並嘗試以歐化改革重新定義自我。

關鍵理論：

Stigmatization 理論（見第2章）：國家在國際體系中被標記為“落後、野蠻、非文明”，導致其行動受限並形成「內化羞辱 → 模仿文明」的動力。
Established–Outsider 動態（Norbert Elias）：歐洲作為“文明共同體”自我界定的同時，將外部世界定義為“他者（barbarians）”。
現代化與自我西化的兩難：為了「被接受」，土耳其必須拋棄自身的伊斯蘭與奧斯曼傳統。

🏛 二、歷史背景：奧斯曼帝國的污名化與崩壞

1️⃣ 國際地位的反轉

16世紀蘇萊曼大帝信件：「我，眾王之王，地上真主之影。」→ 主權自信。
18–19世紀《庫楚克開納吉條約》（1774）：俄羅斯獲得代表東正教徒之權，成為干涉奧斯曼內政的藉口。
西方將奧斯曼納入“文明秩序”後，要求其遵守“文明國家行為準則” → 不對等的規範性支配。

2️⃣ 污名化的具體機制

「文明國家」資格門檻：
- 人權保護（特別是宗教少數）
- 宪政與法治
- 世俗化
奧斯曼為解除「東方專制」污名，發佈：
- 1839《坦志麥特宣言》：限制蘇丹權力，保障人身與財產。
- 1856《改革詔書》（Islahat Fermanı）：承認宗教平等、允許基督徒服兵役、廢除改宗處罰。
結果：反而加深外部干涉 → “文明化監督”。

✳ 核心概念：

「奧斯曼不是因軍事失敗而亡，而是被文明話語體系壓垮。」

⚔️ 三、共和國的誕生與外交選擇（1918–1938）

1️⃣ 1920年代：動盪與方向選擇

奧斯曼戰敗、帝國分割、英法佔領。
凱末爾領導安卡拉勢力打贏獨立戰爭。
1922–1923：洛桑條約，土耳其重新獲得主權。

2️⃣ 外界的兩大憂慮

（1）伊斯蘭武器：利用哈里發號召穆斯林反殖民。
（2）布爾什維克聯盟：與蘇俄結盟反帝。 → 西方視凱末爾為「不確定變數」。

3️⃣ 內部分歧的三大陣營

陣營	理想	代表思潮
西化派	全面歐化、世俗民族國家	凱末爾、伊諾努
伊斯蘭派	恢復哈里發統一伊斯蘭	傳統教士、保守派
社會主義派	聯蘇反帝，建立工農國	左翼知識分子

🇹🇷 四、凱末爾改革：以歐化洗刷污名

1️⃣ 政治與制度改革

1922 廢蘇丹制
1924 廢哈里發制 → 切斷宗教政治權威
1934 給女性投票權
1937 將「世俗主義」入憲

2️⃣ 文化與象徵改革

改用拉丁字母
西式服裝法（連《小王子》土耳其天文學家段落即諷刺此）
改曆、改度量衡、推行國語（突厥語純化）

3️⃣ 外交：歐化與和平取向

1932 加入國際聯盟（以“文明國家”資格）
1934 巴爾幹公約；1937 薩達巴德條約 → 區域和平倡議
英法皆視為“歐洲友邦”

🪞 五、概念分析：污名、認同與模仿

1️⃣ 「文明化」作為解污過程

從被指為“野蠻的東方” → “歐洲秩序的成員”。
然而代價是「自我否定」：伊斯蘭、奧斯曼傳統被壓抑。
凱末爾主義成為一種國家層級的去東方化工程。

2️⃣ 「內化的他者」問題

土耳其的現代性是一種防衛性現代性（defensive modernity）。
西方是鏡像對象，同時也是創傷來源。

3️⃣ 文學引用意義

Kafka〈帝國訊息〉：帝國（奧斯曼）死亡後的遙遠遺民，永遠等不到中心的訊息 → 象徵“失落的權威與文明邊緣化”。
《小王子》土耳其天文學家段落：只有換上歐洲服裝才能被承認 → 歐化的荒謬與強制性。

❓ 六、延伸問題（討論與研究方向）

污名化的延續性：
- 當代歐盟拒絕土耳其入盟，是否仍反映同樣的「文明邊界」？
自我西化與文化認同：
- 凱末爾改革是否創造了新的「自我殖民」？
現代性與宗教：
- 廢哈里發是否為去宗教化，或是建立新型民族宗教（Kemalist civil religion）？
比較視角：
- 與日本明治維新相比，土耳其的歐化為何更強烈、更徹底？
理論延伸：
- “污名化”能否作為解釋其他後帝國國家的現代化策略（如伊朗、埃及）？

是否需要我幫你把這份筆記整理成一頁式「章節重點表」PDF（含關鍵詞對照與問題欄）？可用於課堂或研究筆記。

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An imperial message

The Emperor – so they say – has sent a message, directly from his death bed, to you alone, his pathetic subject, a tiny shadow which has taken refuge at the furthest distance from the imperial sun … The messen- ger started off at once, a powerful, tireless man. Sticking one arm out and then another, he makes his way through the crowd. If he runs into resistance, he points to his breast where there is a sign of the sun. So he moves forwards easily, unlike anyone else. But the crowd is so huge; its dwelling places are infinite. If there were an open field, how he would fly along, and soon you would hear the marvellous pounding of his fist on your door. But instead of that, how futile are all his efforts. He is still forcing his way through the private rooms of the innermost palace. Never will he win his way through. And if he did manage that, nothing would have been achieved. He would have to fight his way down the steps, and, if he managed to do that, nothing would have been achieved. He would have to stride through the courtyards, and after the court- yards through the second palace encircling the first, and, then again, through stairs and courtyards, and then, once again, a palace, and so on for thousands of years. And if he finally burst through the outermost door – but that can never, never happen – the royal capital city, the centre of the world, is still there in front of him, piled high and full of sediment. No one pushes his way through here, certainly not someone with a message from a dead man. But you sit at your window and dream of that message when evening comes.

Franz Kafka From An Imperial Message (1919)

3 “The barbarians”: Turkey (1918–1938)

I had thus learned a second fact of great importance: this was that the planet the little prince came from was scarcely any larger than a house! But that did not really surprise me much. I knew very well that in add- ition to the great planets – such as the Earth, Jupiter, Mars, Venus – to which we have given names, there are also hundreds of others, some of which are so small that one has a hard time seeing them through the telescope. When an astronomer discovers one of these he does not give it a name, but only a number. He might call it, for example, “Asteroid 325.” I have serious reason to believe that the planet from which the little prince came is the asteroid known as B-612. This asteroid has only once been seen through the telescope. That was by a Turkish astron- omer, in 1909.

On making his discovery, the astronomer had presented it to the International Astronomical Congress, in a great demonstration. But he was in Turkish costume, and so nobody would believe what he said. Grown-ups are like that …

Fortunately, however, for the reputation of Asteroid B-612, a Turkish dictator made a law that his subjects, under pain of death, should change to European costume. So in 1920 the astronomer gave his demonstration all over again, dressed with impressive style and elegance. And this time everybody accepted his report.

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince, Chapter 4

Introduction

In 1909, the same year a Turkish astronomer discovered the home planet of one of the most charming characters in literature, Lord Robert Cecil wrote in his notes: “A fanatically ignorant people, a bar- barous nation; they want the capitulations lifted … Turks will always be Turks. They will never become Europeans. Their only redeeming

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quality is their military skill.”1 The question of whether Turkey will ever become European is still up for debate, but his assessment of Turks’ military skill was verified in the next decade. The Ottoman Empire was defeated in World War I and most of its territories occu- pied soon after; yet the Turkish forces under Mustafa Kemal’s leader- ship were able to force out occupying armies in three years – foiling best laid plans – and sit down to negotiate a treaty with the great powers in 1922 on their own terms. By 1938, Lord Robert Cecil must have been surprised by how European-friendly the state forged by this treaty would turn out to be. In 1922, it would have been almost impossible to predict such an outcome.

Coming off such an unexpected victory against the West, it was anybody’s guess what the Turks would do. In 1922, Greek Prime Minister Venizelos warned the British “there was nothing that could stop Mustafa Kemal … from turning against the Allies. He would by that time have his head swelled more than ever. In such circumstances he would probably be a match for the French in Syria, and throw them into the sea. He would undoubtedly then go for Constantinople, and close the Dardanelles.”2 He asked whether the British believed that “having so reconstituted the Turkish Empire, MK [sic] would hesitate to pursue actively the problem of the reconquest of the Arab coun- tries, and engage in every kind of hostile action against [the British Empire] in the East?”3 He was not wrong: the British Empire had two causes for real concern about the direction the new leadership in Turkey would take.

First was the possibility that Turks would use their hold on the seat of the Caliph, the leader of the Muslim World, to foment revolt in the Eastern colonies of the British Empire. This worry was con- stantly expressed in British reports during the Independence War. For instance, in 1922, a British officer reported:

I have been convinced during this visit that there is a great Mohammedan movement on foot now directed against the British in India and

1 Uğurlu, Türkiye’nin Parçalanması, p. 128.

2 Record by Sir E. Crowe of a conversation with M. Venizelos, May 25, 1922,

p. 270 in Şimşir, İngiliz belgelerinde.

3 Record by Sir E. Crowe of a conversation with M. Venizelos, May 25, 1922.

Ibid.

Mesopotamia, up until now the Nationalist Turks … Kemal up until now has refrained from attacking England by means of the great weapon of Islam but … Kemal at dinner informs me that if now this time he does not get peace, he will use this weapon and it will have far and wide reaching results, great wars and bloodshed.4

This worry, which was also shared by France, is reflected in numerous discussions5 and it was corroborated to some degree by the pressure Britain was getting from its Asian colonies to reach a settlement with Ankara.6

The other worry stemmed from the close relationship the Turks had established with the Bolshevik regime in Moscow. Throughout the Independence War, British intelligence reported the financial assist- ance Ankara was getting from the Bolsheviks, and Mustafa Kemal’s impassioned speeches did nothing to quell the worry that Ankara was on its way to becoming a satellite of Moscow:

Mustafa Kemal’s response [to Aralov] was chiefly remarkable for his emphatic affirmation of the unity of the Turkish army with the Russian army which he stated formed one line of defence on the East from North to South; Turkey had come to realize that the forces at work against her were identical with those which were seeking to destroy Russia, and all Eastern nations were in the same position as Turkey, i.e. menaced by the same enemy; Turkish relations with the East were not designed to deceive the West, for the world could be divided to-day into two distinct parts, East and West, and the long line of defence on the East could only be main- tained by complete solidarity of Eastern peoples.7

4 Memorandum by Major General Sir Charles Townsend, July 27, 1922. Ibid.,

p. 384.

5 A few examples: Debates in the House of Commons and Speech of the PM Mr. Lloyd George in British Near Eastern Policy (August 4, 1922); British Secretary’s Notes of Conference between the French President of the Council and the British Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs at the Quai d’Orsay (September 20, 1922); Letter of Sir H. Rumbold to the Marquess Curzon of Kedleston (May 22, 1922). Ibid.

6 For example, President of the Central Khilafet Committee in India: “By their support of Greek military adventures British government had broken faith with India and the Muslim world … If England goes to war with Turkey now

… she never will be able to regain prestige in Asia” (September 19, 1922), in

Şimşir, Homage, p. 21.

7 A report by the British Secret Intelligence Service, Constantinople Branch (April 21, 1922). Şimşir, İngiliz Belgelerinde.

For almost a decade, even after the war was over, the Turkish leader- ship in Ankara seemed poised to go over to the Bolshevik camp any day.8

The Turks themselves were divided on which course was the best one to follow. They had been debating the road to salvation for more than

100 years: Neo-Ottomanism, Pan-Turanism, Pan-Islamism, British assistance, Westernization, American mandate, theocracy, communism, and other ideologies had been proposed at one time or another. After the Independence War, three main camps had emerged: those who pro- posed complete Westernization, those who proposed Bolshevism, and those who proposed Islamism. The fears of the Western powers were not unfounded. The fate of new Turkey hung in the balance.

The rest, as they say, is history. By the time of Atatürk’s death in 1938, Turkey had become an ally of Britain and had moved away from Moscow. Both the Sultanate and the Caliphate had been abol- ished. Turkey never tried to stir trouble in the East but, on the con- trary, pushed a strong peace agenda through the Sadabad and the Balkan Pacts she spearheaded into existence. As the former French Prime Minister M. E. Herriot noted in 1933: “Seemingly relegated to Asia, Turkey, with her desire for order, peace and progress, moves into Europe now.”9 In the 1930s, Turkey was so active in regional order pacts, and so thoroughly committed to a process of Europeanization domestically, that it seemed impossible to believe that the country was still ruled by the same people who had been a thorn in Europe’s side slightly more than a decade before.

From the unexpected foreign policy choices such as Turkey’s insist- ence on being formally invited to the League of Nations in 1932 to the wide-sweeping scale of domestic reforms such as the decision to abolish the Caliphate in 1924, Turkey’s actions in the interwar period cannot be understood without an understanding of the established- outsider dynamic in the international system. Turkey’s actions in this period were driven by the overwhelming aim of joining the com- munity of “civilized nations” – a community that she had not been

8 Extracts from a speech by Sir Charles Townsend, MP, in the House of Commons (May 30, 1922): “If Turkey should be driven into an alliance with Russia and Germany, there is no one here who will doubt what that means to our Indian Empire, to Iraq, and every where else.” Ibid.

9 Uğurlu, Yabancı Gözüyle, p. 158.

able to penetrate when the country was an empire – and of escap- ing the stigmatization of backwardness, barbarity, and Easternness. As Mustafa Kemal asked rhetorically of a French reporter: “Which nation with a desire to enter civilization has not turned towards the West?”10 Modern Turkey had won its independence in the battle, but independence would not guarantee autonomy if Turkey remained an outsider. This lesson was very much in the Turkish leaders’ minds as they navigated the international system in the interwar period and as they clashed with other groups in Turkey who favored alternative courses of action.

Chapter 3 explores these choices and their consequences in three main sections. The first section gives a brief account of the histor- ical background of the Turkish case: the late Ottoman period and the burdens the nineteenth-century international society placed on the Ottomans are examined. The second section constructs a nar- rative of the unexpected choices the Republic of Turkey made after independence in 1923 until Mustafa Kemal’s death in 1938 (and the beginning of World War II in 1939). The third section analyzes these choices through the framework of stigmatization offered in Chapter 2.

The stigmatization of the Ottoman Empire

I, who am the sultan of sultans, the sovereign of sovereigns, the dispenser of crowns to the monarchs on the face of the earth, shadow of God on earth, the sultan and sovereign lord of the Mediterranean and the Black Sea, of Rumelia and Anatolia, of Karamania and the land of Rum, of Zulkadria, Diyarbakir, of Kurdistan, of Azerbaijan, Persia, Damascus, Cairo, Aleppo, of the Mecca and Medina, of Jerusalem, of all Arabia, of the Yemen and many other lands, which my noble forefathers and my glorious ancestors – may God light up their tombs – conquered by the force of their arms and which my august majesty has made subject to my flaming sword and vic- torious blade, I, Sultan Süleyman Han, to thee, who art Francis, king of the land of France. (Opening of a letter sent by Ottoman Sultan to King of France, 1525)

The Sublime Porte promises a firm protection to the Christian Religion and to its Churches; it further permits the Ministers of the Imperial Court of

10 Interview with French Reporter Maurice Pernot (October 29, 1923), in Atatürk, Atatürk’ün Bütün Eserleri, p.23. Also see Yılmaz, İngiliz Basını.

Russia to make in every circumstance various representations to the Porte in favor of the below-mentioned Church erected at Constantinople, no less than of those who serve it, and promises to receive those remonstrances with attention, as made by a respected person of a neighboring and sin- cerely friendly power. (Article 7, The Treaty of Kuchuk Kainardji, 1774)

The first capitulation privileges granted by the Ottoman Empire were to Francis, King of France, who is the addressee of the letter cited above. The original capitulations were designed to give France an edge over her European rivals by exclusively profiting from trade within the Ottoman Empire. As is evident from the opening paragraph of the letter Suleiman the Magnificent wrote to King Francis, the Ottoman leaders of the sixteenth century had no worries about their standing vis-à-vis Europe.11 It is interesting to compare that letter and others from that period with late-eighteenth- or nineteenth-century docu- ments. For instance, the language of the Treaty of Kuchuk Kainardji (Küçük Kaynarcı) of 1774 provides a stark contrast. This treaty ended a six-year war with Russia but was the basis of future conflicts. It was interpreted by St. Petersburg to give Russia the right to act as the sole guardian of the Orthodox Christians in the Ottoman Empire. The Crimean War of 1853 was provoked by Istanbul’s refusal to recognize this claim.12

It is not hard to see why Russia would use this treaty to make such an advantageous claim. Article 7 is written in rather odd language: it calls Russia a friendly power, and makes it sound as if the Sublime Porte was looking for a consultant to advise it on affairs of the Church. The power that Russia claimed Article 7 granted is so out of keeping with what was usually achieved through military battle that some historians regard the treaty as an example of “Russian skill and Turkish imbecility.”13 Other observers, such as Metternich, had a more limited reading of the rights conferred to Russia under the treaty (privileges having been granted to other powers previously).14 Nevertheless, the Western powers controlled almost the entirety of commercial transactions within the empire, thanks to the privileges of capitulations, and frequently interfered in domestic affairs on behalf of the non-Muslim groups.

11 See also Bull, Anarchical Society, p. 14; Naff, “Ottoman Empire,”

pp. 143–4.

12 Davison, Essays in Ottoman and Turkish History, p. 30.

13 Ibid., p. 29. 14 Ibid.

It would be tempting to chalk this entire situation up to the chang- ing power dynamics that resulted from the weakening material cap- acity of the Ottomans. The Ottomans had lost control over important trade routes and had fallen behind Europe in terms of military advancement. However, to attribute the developments of the eight- eenth and nineteenth centuries simply to material strength would miss an important point: the degree to which the Ottomans, in addition to their losses on the battlefield, were weakened by the burdens imposed on them by the new stigmas they encountered (and internalized) as a consequence of their increasing participation in the European inter- national order.15

For instance, judging from the historical record of the Ottoman millet system up to the nineteenth century,16 it was not entirely clear why the Christian groups in the Ottoman Empire needed special pro- tection.17 Intervention in domestic affairs on their behalf was usually justified by reference to the fact that the Ottoman Empire was ruled by an absolutist regime18 and that there was no constitutional protec- tion of individual rights within its borders.19 Ironically, every step the Ottoman rulers took to neutralize this criticism brought them ever closer to internalizing the normative order of the European society.

In 1839, the Sublime Porte issued the Tanzimat Declaration, which was intended as a binding contract between the Palace and its sub- jects. With this declaration, the Sultan accepted limits on his author- ity, recognized the sanctity of life, property, and individual honor, and declared that government would be formed not by his will but in accordance with “fundamental principles” embodied in written laws.20 Since it was unclear what these “fundamental principles” were, the Ottoman High Council issued a verdict saying they would

15 Cemil Aydın’s Anti-Westernism in Asia makes this point most convincingly.

16 Leaving aside the human toll of the original conquests, most brutal acts by the empire against the Christian millets took place in the nineteenth century.

17 Or more protection than the other subjects of the Sultan. See Göçek, Rise of the Bourgeoisie; Göçek, Social Constructions of Nationalism; Braude and Lewis, Christians and Jews; Shaw, “Financial and Administrative

Organization”; Shaw, Between Old and New; Davison, “Turkish Attitudes.”

18 See the discussion of the theory of “Oriental Despotism” in Hobson and Sharman, “Enduring Place,” 88.

19 Davison, Essays in Ottoman and Turkish History; Berkes, Türkiye’de Çağdaşlaşma.

20 Berkes, Türkiye’de Çağdaşlaşma, p. 188.

have to be derived from the Sher’ia rules. This decision put the rights of non-Muslim subjects in question. Could the laws derived from the Sher’ia principles of Islam really protect their rights? At the end, Tanzimat worsened the situation that it sought to prevent; starting with Britain, the Western powers became the entitled inspectors of how the Tanzimat Declaration was going to be implemented.21

In response to Western pressures, the Porte issued another dec- laration in 1856 (Islahat Fermanı). This declaration recognized all Ottoman subjects as citizens. Muslim and Christian subjects were to be treated equally, and have common courts. Christians would have representation in local councils and serve in the army22 and freedom of speech was recognized. As specially requested by the British ambas- sador, there would be no punishment for converting. European mer- chants were invited to participate in increased commerce. Fuat Pasha, the foreign minister, defended the declaration to detractors by saying that the interventions of Western powers would now be prevented.23

Yet the 1856 declaration satisfied no one. The local Christian lead- ers were unhappy because the millet system had taken a huge blow, and their authority had been severely limited. Dr Stephan, a high- ranking Greek, complained to the Sultan: “Are the sectarian inequal- ities in Europe, in France, England, Prussia any less?” He went on to question why there was a need to give so many special privileges to the Christian millets in the Ottoman Empire.24 The Christian public was unhappy about the military service provision. The British ambassador was not pleased with the declaration because he did not believe it went far enough in protecting missionary activities. The French ambassador was not happy because it was not guaranteed that French methods in education and the French Civil Code would be used after the reforms. The Austrian ambassador brought advice from Metternich, who told the Ottoman leaders that there was no need for Turks to become Europeans and they should formulate their own laws without paying heed to what Europe thought.25

21 Engelhardt and Ali, Türkiye ve Tanzimat, pp. 130–3; Berkes, Türkiye’de Çağdaşlaşma, p. 189.

22 The previous arrangement was that Christians had their own millet, with separate representation. They did not serve in the army, and paid taxes in lieu of military service.

23 Berkes, Türkiye’de Çağdaşlaşma, p. 191.

24 Ibid. 25 Ibid.

Taking Metternich’s advice was not on the cards. This was partly because the Ottoman Empire, by this time, had become “the Sick Man of Europe.” However, this was not just a simple description of the poor material conditions of the empire as it is often assumed to be. To the contrary, such subjective judgments themselves, accompanied by double standards and lifestyle intrusions, were contributing to the loss of material capability by weakening the domestic administrative system. French observer Ubicini wrote in his Lettres sur la Turquie that the rights granted to non-Muslims in the Ottoman Empire were creating a stark contrast to the situation of Jews in Britain. The reality was that the European society of states was very much acting like the established “old village” of Winston Parva.

The underlying issue in nineteenth-century developments was that the rulers of the Ottoman Empire were under the illusion that they would be left alone in their domestic affairs and that the sover- eign rights of the empire would be recognized only if they met civ- ilization standards,26 as Russia supposedly had a century before. Meeting civilization standards, they believed, would leave them free to address the problems of the economy and military shortcomings without interference. In reality, this illusion drove them to accept the nineteenth-century Standard of Civilization that would never treat a Muslim power as an equal, and simultaneously undermine, by their own hands, the already weak hold the Ottoman government had over its territories. The Ottoman Empire did not lose all of its sover- eign power in battlefields; that power was chipped away by her own gradual acceptance of and aspirations to the Standard of Civilization by which the European powers ostensibly operated. The more the Ottoman Empire aspired to meet European standards, the weaker it became. Indeed, the more the Ottoman Empire participated in the international system, the more she internalized the norms of modern- ity, the more “ashamed” the leaders became of their own people and institutions, dedicating limited resources to emulation efforts which were doomed to fail.

The internalization of Western judgment about the Ottoman Empire happened gradually. The initial exposure to the West was through the non-Muslim minorities, especially the Greeks, who often

26 Aydın, Anti-Westernism in Asia, p. 19.

were employed in translator positions and made up a good portion of the empire’s intellectual elite. For instance, the first example of the “declinist”27 analyses of Ottoman history (which dominates Turkish historical accounts to this day – more on this below) can be found in Dimitri Kantemir’s 1716 tome The History of the Rise and Fall of the Ottoman Empire. Toynbee also points to this link: “By the later decades of the seventeenth century, however, the general attitude of Oriental Christendom towards the West had undergone a profound change – partly, perhaps, because the bitter memories of Western oppression had gradually been effaced by time, and partly because at this moment the West itself rather suddenly ceased to fight wars of religion.”28 In this way, the Ottoman Greeks became the locomotives of Westernization in the Ottoman Empire and the influence of their newly acquired worldview increased after the Ottoman defeat in the Russo-Turkish War of 1768–74, which had led to the aforementioned Treaty of Kuchuk Kainardji. Toynbee notes:

It had been bitter for the Osmanlis to be beaten by the peoples of the West … It was far more humiliating to be beaten by an Oriental Christian people and to be compelled to grant to that people privileges which would place it in the same rank as the Western Powers … The shock produced by the Treaty of Kuchuk Kainarja [sic] was so great that it inspired Ottoman statesmen to attempt reforms on Western lines; but these first Ottoman reformers started from the military end like Peter the Great, and not from the commercial end as their own Oriental Christian subjects had started in Peter’s generation, now a century past.29

Toynbee criticizes the Turks’ military emulation as being shortsighted and faults the Turks for not realizing that “the military efficiency of the West was a symptom, and not the cause of the West’s general superiority.”30 Yet in any other age, not only would this be the appro- priate response to military competition, it would also be a sufficient response.31 As discussed in Chapters 1 and 2, the onset of modernity had changed the equation, but one can hardly blame the Turks (or the Russians for that matter) for not realizing at first that military emulation

27 Beinin, Workers and Peasants, pp. 18–19.

28 Toynbee, Turkey, p. 34. 29 Ibid., p. 36. 30 Ibid., p. 37.

31 As Aydın notes, “the development of the image of a universal West was not a simple product of ‘previously ignorant’ Ottoman, Chinese or Japanese intellectuals ‘discovering’ the superiority of European civilization.” Anti- Westernism in Asia, p. 15.

would not be enough. Not that it mattered in the end: once the Ottoman Empire took Westernization to be a state project, internalization of the modernist ontology at all levels and sectors became a question of when, not if.

The declinist historical tradition referred to above is a perfect example of this process. According to this tradition, still taught in Turkish high schools, the Ottoman Empire went through five distinct histor- ical phases: Foundation (1299–1453); Rise (1453–1566); Stagnation (1566–1699); Decline (1699–1774); and Collapse (1774–1922). This tradition has come under attack in recent decades from historians32 for overlooking very complicated processes after the onset of the supposed “stagnation” phase – the last three centuries of the Ottoman Empire follow an uneven trajectory, with some periods of progress and peace, and some periods of regression and turmoil.33 For instance, despite its depiction in the West as the example of Oriental despotism par excel- lence, the Ottoman Empire in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was also marked by the kind of increased bureaucratization which was the harbinger of the modern state in Western Europe.34 Ironically, this development was later interpreted, even by Turks themselves, as one of the causes of Ottoman decay.35 Two things were influential in turn- ing this account into the official history of the empire: the trauma of loss of empire and the internalization of the Western view of all things Ottoman. The former explains why this account was favored by the republican regime after the official collapse, the latter explains why we find the view in wide circulation before the collapse.

In other words, while the account of Ottoman backwardness became the official history after 1923, there was plenty of internalization of Western standards before that date,36 first among the non-Muslim elite, then among the educated elite among the Muslim population,37 most notably the newly Westernized military cadets.38 As Aydın notes,

32 E.g. İnalcık, Karpat, Hodgson as quoted and discussed in Armağan,

Osmanlının Kayıp Atlası, chapter 1.

33 See also the discussion in Chapter 1.

34 Darling, “Finance Scribes”; Faroqhi, “Crisis and Change.”

35 Armağan, Osmanlının Kayıp Atlası, p. 75.

36 Aydın argues that the main shift happened in the two decades after the Vienna Congress. Anti-Westernism in Asia, pp. 16–17.

37 E.g. works of Mustafa Sami Efendi, Sadik Rifat Pasha, as discussed by Aydın, Anti-Westernism in Asia, pp. 18–21.

38 Ibid., p. 72. Also see Tunaya, Türkiye’nin Siyasi Hayatında.

“parallel to their recognition of a superior universal civilization in Europe, members of the Ottoman elite agreed that they themselves were less modern and less civilized than the Europeans and hence needed rapid reforms in order to develop in the same direction.”39 Throughout the nineteenth century, there was a growing worry among the elites that the Ottoman Empire was really “the Sick Man of Europe.” Toynbee’s remarks about the applicability40 of this term to Turkey are quite interesting:

The picture of the Turk as “the Sick Man” has had a curious history. It sub- stituted itself in the imagination of the West for the older picture, in which the Westerner was the sinner and Turk was the Scourge of God … The phrase

… was coined by the Czar Nicholas I in 1853, during a conversation with the British Ambassador in St. Petersburg. “We have on our hands a sick man – a very sick man … He may suddenly die upon our hands …” From that day to this, the imminent decease of the supposed invalid has perpetually been awaited by his neighbours – by some of them with pleasurable expectancy, by others with anxiety, but by all with a dogmatic faith which seems cap- able of surviving any number of disillusionments. It was awaited in 1876 and in 1912 and, most confidently of all, in 1914; and now, when the Turk has given incontrovertible evidence of outward health and vigour by impos- ing the peace-settlement of Lausanne upon the victorious Allied Powers, his imminent dissolution through some hidden internal disease is prophesied with all the old assurance … This persistence of the “Sick Man” theory indi- cates how powerfully the Western attitude towards Turkey is governed by a priori notions and how little it is based upon objective facts.41

Toynbee was quite right in observing that the term was an exag- geration at best, but he was underestimating the damage done by this label. A great deal of Ottoman sickness was actually caused by the belief that it was sick – like a patient who is hospitalized for a curable ailment but catches some deadly virus in the ward. In fact, Ottoman efforts at liberalization, which were intended to keep the empire together, only seemed to speed up its dismantling. By the end of the nineteenth century, the Ottoman Empire had lost almost all of its territories in Europe. This created a backlash against the

39 Anti-Westernism in Asia, p. 24.

40 See also Stavrianos, Ottoman Empire.

41 Toynbee, Turkey, pp. 9–10.

liberalization reforms and strengthened various reactionary ideo- logical currents among the Muslim elite such as pan-Turkism and pan-Islamism.

The 1856 declaration had two major consequences: it increased the speed of nationalization processes among the Christian groups – who were also the main beneficiaries of increased European commerce42 – and created a backlash among the now disgruntled Muslim subjects who were shut out of any benefits this new European-style admin- istrative system was supposed to provide.43 It did earn the Ottoman Empire a half-hearted recognition as a European power in the Paris Peace Conference. However, this recognition did not bring any real change in practical treatment.

In 1876, the Ottoman Empire adopted a constitutional mon- archy regime and assembled its first Parliament. The parliamentary regime was suspended after only two years following the blunders of the humiliating Turko-Russian War of 1877–8. The constitution was restored following the Young Turk revolution in 1908. In the interim period, the model for the Ottomans favoring Westernization had become Japan.44 It was believed that Japan had been successful because the Japanese had been able to Westernize selectively.45 The Ottoman intelligentsia and ruling class by then had jumped on vari- ous ideological bandwagons that were quite different in tone than the conciliatory measures of the early nineteenth century. The Sultan chose to emphasize pan-Islamism and stress his position as the Caliph in order to retain Muslim subjects such as the Albanians and the Kurds within the empire. The military elite and the Young Turks increasingly favored a revisionist strategy.46 Here we may turn to Goffman for

42 In contrast, Tsarist Russia – not a paragon of individual rights by any stretch – as a European power, had the right to shut its borders to the influence of Western trade.

43 The Ottoman Muslims in general, and the Turks in particular, had a strong belief that they had earned, by their past victories, the right to be Hakime-i Milliye (the Ruling Millet). See Akçam, Türkiye’yi Yeniden Düşünmek,

p. 191; see also Lewis, The Emergence of Modern Turkey, p. 127; Bozkurt,

Azınlık Imtiyazları, pp. 60–1.

44 For an extended discussion of this development, see Worringer, “‘Sick Man of Europe’.”

45 Berkes, Türkiye’de Çağdaşlaşma, p. 370.

46 “While the despot of Turkey and the despot of Russia tremble and hide … it has come to pass in the Far East among this admirable people that, like the Turks, have been treated … as barbarians … [that] the Japanese tended

insight: “Instead of cowering, the stigmatized individual may attempt to approach mixed contacts with hostile bravado, but this can induce from others its own set of troublesome reciprocations.”47 The import- ant point is that both the conciliatory and the revisionist measures were formulated as a response to the Ottoman Empire’s character- ization (and self-characterization) as a tyrannical, backward, semi- civilized state.

As the break-up of the empire continued, the Ottoman intelligentsia who may otherwise have tempered the excesses of the Sultan became radicalized themselves: “Concluding that their liberal experiment had been a failure, the [Committee of Union and Progress] leaders turned to Pan-Turkism, a xenophobic and chauvinistic brand of national- ism that sought to create a new empire based on Islam and Turkish ethnicity.”48 In 1908, the Parliament reopened, and the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP) took the helm of government. However troubling the Pan-Turkism of the CUP regime may seem in light of the subsequent events, such as the mass killing of Armenians, it has to be acknowledged that this ideology came of age at the end of the nine- teenth century and as a result was very much shaped by the dynamics described in Chapter 1.

The strategy of the CUP can be seen as a last-ditch effort to over- come the general insecurity caused by Ottoman stigmatization and the simultaneous unraveling of the empire. As difficult as it is to under- stand in hindsight, the leaders of the CUP firmly believed, at this late date, that the dissolution of the empire could be stopped if only the right measures were implemented domestically. In foreign relations, the Young Turks became embroiled in some destructive wars,49 not the least of which was World War I. The Ottoman Empire’s desire

to develop in all the Far East their material and moral influences, ‘to make themselves the guardians, otherwise the masters, of the yellow world.’ … They whose civilization, achieved in half a century, has become superior to European civilization which has fallen into decay; they who do not have to reproach massacres, who do not have to gag any mouths out of which a

liberal word came, who do not have to exile or suppress patriots. … Indeed, for our part, it is this ‘yellow’ civilization that we wish to see universalized.” Mechveret Supplement Français, French organ of the CUP, 1905, as quoted in Worringer, “‘Sick Man of Europe’,” 207.

47 Goffman, Stigma, p. 18.

48 Melson, “Paradigms of Genocide,” 157.

49 See the Balkan Wars.

to recapture lost territories in the West was partly motivated by its desire to hold on to its remaining territories in the East. The empire’s status among her Muslim subjects hinged on her potential to stand as an equal to Europe.50 The Young Turks, and other Ottoman leaders, still believed in 1913 that the empire was salvageable.51 Unfortunately for them, along with her allies Germany and Austria-Hungary, the Ottoman Empire was defeated in 1918. The Armistice of Mudros was signed on October 30, 1918. Soon afterwards, most of the remain- ing territories of the empire were under occupation. The Ottoman Empire had failed miserably in her quest to regain equal footing with Europe.

Turkey’s renewed quest for normalcy

When they took Belgrade from us, the enemy delegates also asked for the town of Niş. The Ottoman delegate stood up. “Why ask for so little?” he said, “We’ll be happy to give you Constantinople!” For our fathers, this is how close Niş was to Istanbul. We thought that the Turkish nation could not survive if we left Vardar, Tripoli, Crete and Medina.52

The War of Independence (1918–1922)

Understanding the developments of the interim period between the Mudros Armistice (1918) and the abolition of the Sultanate (1922)

50 For example, see the letter from Earl Kitchener, British High Commissioner in Egypt, to Edward Grey, British Minister of Foreign Affairs (November 3, 1913):

Turkish collapse appears complete. From now on, they cannot maintain their old position either in Europe or elsewhere. A Mussulman in Cairo told me that if the Turks cannot stay in Europe by force they will no longer have the right to rule over Islam. The population, while disliking the Turks, is very upset about the defeat of a Muslim power, (In Şimşir, İngiliz Belgelerinde)

51 Letter from Gerald Lowther, British Ambassador in Istanbul, to Edward Grey, British Minister of Foreign Affairs (January 6, 1913): “Turks still cannot face the bitter reality. They still think they can negotiate,” in ibid. Letter from Edward Grey, British Minister of Foreign Affairs, to Gerald Lowther, British Ambassador in Istanbul (January 11, 1913): “I’ve met with the Ottoman Ambassador Rashid Pasha. I told the Turks that if they want to save Istanbul they should give up Edirne, and they would lose everything if there is a war. All my words were in vain. Rashid Pasha notified that the Ottoman delegation was going to leave the conference,” in ibid.

52 Atay, Zeytindağı, p. 10.

is essential to contextualizing the foreign policy choices open to the Republic of Turkey in the interwar period. During the four years of the Independence War,53 the Western powers were the deadly enemies of the Turks, whereas the Bolsheviks and Muslims of Asia provided monetary and moral support.

After Mudros, the remaining territories (Asia Minor) of the Ottoman Empire, namely those territories that had not been officially partitioned, came under occupation. The ostensible justification was Article 18 of the Armistice, which provided that the Triple Entente and its allies could occupy parts of Turkey to provide for the secur- ity of local non-Muslims. Having already moved into Arabia and the Levant, the British stationed their ships in Istanbul; Greek forces took control of Western Anatolia; Italians were in the Mediterranean region; and the French moved into the southeast.

In 1918, Turkish leadership and the intelligentsia in Istanbul were divided on what would be the best course to retain some semblance of independence after defeat. One group favored appealing to prin- ciples of self-determination, as outlined by the US President Woodrow Wilson. It was unclear, however, how effective this approach would be, considering that Wilson had not recognized Turkey as a nation that was entitled to self-determination.54 Another group favored ask- ing for a mandate status from one of the Western powers, the United States being the popular choice. Yet another group believed that the only salvation lay in the Turkish hold over the Caliphate seat. Some believed that the British would help and protect what was left of the Ottoman Empire because they would have use for a friendly Caliph, who would help control the large Muslim populations under British

53 This is how this period is referred to in Turkish history (Kurtuluş Savaşı – the term may also be translated as War of Liberation or Salvation). Because the alternatives from Western accounts (Greco-Turkish War, Turkish– Armenian War, etc.) give an incomplete picture and, furthermore, obscure the role of Western powers in this war, I see no reason not to defer to the Turkish terminology.

54 “Although the US maintained a policy of careful neutrality towards Turkey, President Wilson’s exhortations to his countrymen to be neutral in thought as well as in deed in the war, apparently were not meant to apply to the Turks … When Woodrow Wilson was considering the appointments shortly after his election in 1912, Colonel House suggested Henry Morgenthau as Ambassador to Turkey; Wilson replied, ‘There ain’t going to be no Turkey,’ to which House rejoined, ‘Then let him go look for it.’” Evans, United States Policy, p. 29.

colonial rule. In other words, the Sublime Porte had given up any remaining hope of countering European power, and was now looking to prolong its own existence under any conditions.

The Ottoman Army was disbanded by the Armistice. In the meantime, local resistance movements started popping up around Anatolia. Through some clever maneuvering, Mustafa Kemal,55 who had resigned from his post in the Ottoman Army, managed to take control of the umbrella council of resistance movements, and brought all the militia in the various battlefronts under his leadership in the last quarter of 1919. It was also around this time that he first met with the Bolsheviks, and got some guarantee of support from them by implying that an independent Turkey might be friendly to commun- ism.56 The Treaty of Kars, declaring mutual friendship, was signed in 1921, in effect shutting down the Eastern Front.

The British pressured the Istanbul government of the Sultan to delegitimize the resistance movements of Anatolia. Mustafa Kemal and all those who joined him were declared traitors by the Istanbul government. In response, Mustafa Kemal argued that the Sultan was a prisoner of Western powers, and that a legitimate government could only be formed in unoccupied areas. He called all of his supporters to Ankara. When the Ottoman Parliament issued a decree in sup- port of Kemal, the British forces took official control of Istanbul, dis- solved the Parliament and arrested any representative who had not yet fled the city (March 1920). This was a strategic mistake on the part of the British. Soon after, on April 23, the nationalists opened their own assembly in Ankara, and Mustafa Kemal was able to claim that, since the Ottoman Parliament had been closed unconstitutionally, the Ankara Assembly was the true representative of Turkish people. He further grounded the Ankara government’s legitimacy by appealing to the Islamic world for support. He argued that the Anatolian resist- ance movement was trying to save the Caliph from Western hands.57 Because the Ottoman Empire had mostly depleted her resources during the protracted wars of the early twentieth century,58 the Anatolian resistance could not count on any local funds in its

55 Having previously made a name for himself as a great soldier in the quashing of the infamous March 31st rebellion, when the fundamentalist mobs tried to sack the Sultan, and also in the famous Battle of Gallipoli during World War I.

56 Perinçek, Atatürk’ün Sovyetlerle. 57 Aydemir, Tek Adam.

58 Italian invasion of Tripoli; the two Balkan Wars; World War I.

battles against the occupying armies. The military expenditures were financed partly by the Bolsheviks59 and friendly Asian Muslim groups.60 Throughout the war, Mustafa Kemal continued to reaffirm the Ankara government’s trust in and friendship with the Bolshevik cause: “Both armies are fighting to end the intrusion of capitalist Europe into Asia. Therefore, the two armies are united in cause and purpose. One of them has ensured the victory of the red banner of revolution, and the other has protected the dignity of the red Turkish flag.”61 During the Independence War, the British regarded this alli- ance as a marriage of convenience.62 They were more concerned with how their support of Greece versus Turkey was being perceived in India.63

The Turks were able to organize an army strong enough to con- vince the French and the Italians to withdraw without much fight- ing. Since the Eastern Front was closed after the Treaty of Kars, the Ankara government was able to concentrate all of its forces in the Western Front, and defeat the Greek forces after several battles in

59 A report by the British Secret Intelligence Service, Constantinople Branch (April 21, 1922):

The Financial Position of the Angora Government: … In drawing up the new budget, the Finance Department of the Angora Government had made a special effort to make it appear moderate and the total expenditure was estimated

at 25 million liras Turkish. This amount, it was estimated, would be covered by gold to the value of 2 millions which had been promised by the Ukrainian Government. Taxes were expected to produce ten million Turkish liras, and the balance of five millions was to be covered by special war contributions including the contribution imposed upon every village and district. Şimşir, İngiliz Belgelerinde.

60 M. M. H. J. Chotani, President of Central Khilafet Committee, Bombay, sent 50,000 pounds to Angora through Netherland Bank (February 18, 1922); Mr. A. H. S. Khatri, Hon. Gen. Sec. Cent. Khilafet Committee Bombay, wrote that 90,000 pounds were already sent, and another 10,000 were on the way (September 14, 1922). Şimşir, Homage.

61 Bolluk, Kurtuluş Savaşı’nın, p. 113.

62 See the memorandum by the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs respecting intervention between Greece and Turkey in Şimşir, İngiliz Belgelerinde.

It was after the war had been concluded, and both the Ankara and the Bolshevik governments had shown their staying power, that the British grew more concerned about the durability of this alliance.

63 See for example debates in the House of Commons and speech of the Prime Minister Mr. Lloyd George on British Near Eastern Policy (April 8, 1922) in Şimşir, İngiliz Belgelerinde.

1921 and 1922.64 Greece withdrew all of her soldiers from Anatolia in the course of weeks, and the British remained the only occupy- ing power with her continued presence in Constantinople. The two sides sat down in Mudanya to negotiate an armistice. In the mean- time, Greece continued withdrawing and left Eastern Thrace under Turkish control. Mustafa Kemal indicated to the Western powers that Turks were willing to fight until all territories with a Turkish majority were under their control.65 An armistice was signed in October 1922.

The last of the Ottomans and the birth of modern Turkey (1922–1923)

“İsmet,” Lord Curzon said, “You remind me very much of a music box. You play the same old melody every single day, until you make us all ill: Sovereignty, Sovereignty, Sovereignty …” (From the memoirs of Joseph C. Grew, American observer at Lausanne)

The Ankara government had most of its terms accepted at the Mudanya Armistice and had recaptured control of most of the Anatolian ter- ritories occupied after World War I. By contrast, the Istanbul gov- ernment had shown no willingness to fight the occupation and had sabotaged most resistance efforts. The Istanbul government had therefore lost all legitimacy. The Parliament in Ankara abolished the Sultanate on November 1, 1922, and declared Turkey a republic. The last Sultan, Mehmed Vahdeddin, and all the remaining members of the Ottoman dynasty left Istanbul on a British military ship. The office of the Caliphate was separated from the Sultan and was retained for the time being. The British forces remained in Constantinople until the Lausanne Treaty recognizing the new borders of modern Turkey was signed in 1923.

64 In the meantime, the Istanbul government signed the Treaty of Sevres. The treaty left Turks only the middle part of Anatolia that had not come under any occupation. The Ankara government refused to recognize the treaty, claiming that the Istanbul government was no longer authorized to sign treaties and that the Turkish Parliament would have to ratify the treaty for it to be binding.

65 As enumerated in the National Pact, which was contained in the last decree of the Ottoman Parliament. The current borders of Turkey coincide with the National Pact, minus Mosul and Western Thrace, plus Antioch.

The conference for the peace treaty was convened in Lausanne on November 20, 1922. Mustafa Kemal had sent his second-in- command, İsmet Pasha, as the chief negotiator. The Western powers were in for a surprise: İsmet Pasha made it clear from the start that Turkey would accept nothing less than equal treatment. This was not what the Western powers had in mind. For instance, French news- papers cautioned prior to the conference that while the capitulations should be lifted eventually, the Turkish courts were not yet up to par with their European counterparts and that no decisions should be taken in haste.66 The British delegation seemed confident that it was going control the negotiations throughout the conference.67

İsmet Pasha was aware of the fact that, despite the recent military victories, the Western powers respected neither the new Ankara gov- ernment nor Turkey. Therefore, he started the conference with a sig- nificant symbolic gesture. After Lord Curzon, the head of the British delegation, had made a speech welcoming all the delegates, İsmet Pasha stood up, and gave a long-winded speech himself.68 In the early days of the conference, İsmet Pasha made it known that Turkey would no longer put up with capitulations, nor would she accept any foreign interference in domestic affairs: “Turkey is a nation that wants auton- omy … Foreign populations and their property, foreign rights are guaranteed under the public laws of Turkey.”69 Ironically, it was the Japanese delegate, Hayachi, who most vehemently opposed Turkish demands for the lifting of capitulations. Hayachi told İsmet Pasha that Japan, too, had suffered from capitulations, and so he sympathized with Turkish demands. However, not even in Japan had the capitula- tions been lifted before the implementation of necessary administrative and legal reforms.70 İsmet Pasha was not persuaded by this argument; he said that there was no possibility of Turkey agreeing to keep the capitulations when they were not being utilized “even in Greece or

66 Karacan, Lozan, p. 59. 67 Ibid., p. 50.

68 Joseph C. Grew reports that this made a very bad impression, but as the conference went on, he would grow to respect İsmet Pasha to the degree that he personally pushed for a unilateral agreement between the United States and the Ankara government. See Grew, Turbulent Era; Grew, Lozan Günlüğü.

69 Karacan, Lozan, p. 131.

70 Goffman, Stigma, p. 107: “The stigmatized individual exhibits a tendency to stratify his ‘own’ according to the degree to which their stigma is apparent and obtrusive. He can then take up in regard to those who are evidently more stigmatized than himself the attitudes normals take to him.”

the Balkan countries.”71 He further argued that Turkey saw no justice in an international system that would spare former Ottoman territor- ies such as Greece from capitulations and would implement them in Turkey. He said, “We came to this conference because it was guar- anteed we would be treated as equals. However, we are constantly faced with demands that would impugn our independence. No sover- eign nation, not even Greece, has faced these sorts of demands! The Turkish nation, before anybody, is entitled and has the right to be treated as other sovereign nations.”72 It was the constant refrain of the Turkish delegation during the conference that the Turkish laws were up to European standards and that there was no need for intervention in Turkish domestic affairs. The conference had reached an impasse. An editorial in The Times argued on December 29, 1922: “Either the Turks will accept the reasonable demands before them and secure the necessary support for the development of their country, or they will relegate Turkey into the position of a completely isolated country in an Asian desert.” Despite these gloomy predictions, the Turkish dele- gation would not accept anything less than full sovereign equality.73 The conference proceedings were suspended in February 1923.

Even after the proceedings were resumed in April, there were some glitches. The British wanted to keep the High Commission of Health in Istanbul operational, arguing that for the last 70 years it had kept contagious diseases out of Europe. İsmet countered that the right place for this commission was either Arabia or India; that Turkey had established a perfect medical system during the war and that Turkish medical schools were on a par with their European counterparts.74 When the treaty was signed on October 2, 1923, Turkey had forced

71 Karacan, Lozan, pp. 133–4; italics added.

72 Ibid., p. 198; italics added.

73 From Joseph C. Grew’s memoirs, February 5, 1923:

Child, Bristol and I were almost immediately in Lord Curzon’s chambers … Curzon suddenly appeared; he rushed into the room like an angry bull, gave us a sideways glance, and started pacing around, shaking his fists into the air. He was sweating profusely while he looked us up and down. He started yelling: “We sat here for four fatal hours and İsmet responded to everything we said with the same tired refrain: Independence and Sovereignty. We did everything we could. Even Bombard shook his fist and told İsmet that what he was doing amounted to war provocation.”

74 Karacan, Lozan, p. 231. Also, here we see an example of the identification of Asia/East with disease.

Western powers to agree to most of her demands.75 An American reporter with a penchant for hyperbole observed that the West had never bowed so low before the East.76

A sovereign Turkey: now what? (1923–1938)

It was not clear from the outset what direction the Ankara government would take after sovereign recognition. One possibility the Western powers feared was that it would try to influence the Asian Muslims by using the power of the Caliphate. Another distasteful possibility for the West was that it would adopt communism, as had been implied and promised during the Independence War. The first of these fears was soon put to rest.

Turkey’s relations with the “East”: 1923–1938

As noted in the previous section, the Ankara government enjoyed widespread support from the Muslim world throughout the years of the Independence War. Once the final battle had been won, Ankara was flooded with telegrams77 of congratulations and visits from rep- resentatives of Muslim communities around the world.78 The corres- pondence during and in the immediate aftermath of the Independence

75 Article 28: Each of the High Contracting Parties hereby accepts, in so far as it is concerned, the complete abolition of the Capitulations in Turkey in every respect.

76 Atay, Çankaya, p. 338. On the same page, Atay also reports that on seeing the Turkish Army enter Istanbul, Lt. Armstrong said: “I hear my spirit rebelling. Turks think they are in Suleiman the Magnificent’s times. It hurt my pride to see the British Empire’s honor soiled in the mud before all of Asia.”

77 A few examples: Letter from the President of the Khilafat Committee (September 10, 1922) – “Following resolution passed meeting of Delhi citizens tender hearty congratulations to Kemalists on their decisive victory in Asia Minor”; Letter from the President of the Khilafat Committee (November 10, 1922) – “Convey to Ghazi Mustafa Kemal and mujahidin on behalf of Sind Moslems heartiest congratulations on their brilliant victory …”; Letter from Indian Community of Johannesburg (September 14, 1922) – “Indians both Muslims and Hindus in South Africa congratulate you, your colleagues and your brave noble invincible army for having saved the honour of Islam by

the valour of your selfless and Islamic spirit in having vindicated the cause of righteousness …”; for more letters from communities in Bombay, Shahjanpur, Surat, Balliasub, Ballia, and others, see Şimşir, Homage, pp. 13–21.

78 “Debates in the HoC and Speech of the PM Mr. Lloyd George in British Near Eastern Policy (4/8/1922): Lt. Comm. Kenworthy: … In Angora, which

War is marked by two themes: that Turks were fighting in the name of Islam, and that Turks were fighting against colonial intrusion. Both were considered righteous causes.79

However, relations started cooling off when Muslim representa- tives in Ankara became aware of the Turkish discussions to abolish the Caliphate. Perhaps because the Ankara government needed the support of Muslim communities during the negotiations in Lausanne, the office of the Caliph was spared when the office of the Sultanate was abolished in 1922 and Turkey proclaimed a republic in 1923. Ankara continued to attract and inspire representatives of Eastern communities.80 In the first couple of years after the military victory, there were even those who came to declare their official loyalty to the Ankara government81 or proposed that Mustafa Kemal should become the new Caliph.82

Nevertheless, the Turkish Parliament, with Kemal’s prodding, voted to end the office of the Caliphate on March 3, 1924. The reasons for

is now the capital of the Turkish nationalists, there is a representative of every Moslem community in the world …” Mustafa Kemal is interviewed by the owner of Islamic News, Indian Reporter Abdulkayyum Malik

(26/8/ 1923): “Us Turks are grateful for the services of our Indian brethren who have helped us through the darkest of times.” Şimşir, İngiliz Belgelerinde, p. 329.

79 And not just by Muslims either:

Report of the British Consul at Sarajevo to Sir C.A. Young (Belgrade) 25/9/1922: … on Sept 12th the following passage occurred in the ‘Hrvatska Sloga,’ an organ of the Croatian Peasant Party. “In Kemal the World sees the protagonist of a nation struggling for existence. The sufferings of the Turks find sympathy in the hearts of all the Oppressed. We greet Kemal’s victory with joy, not only because many Croatians are Muslims, but because it is the triumph of truth over evil, of law over lawlessness, of the national spirit over imperialism and oppression”

In Şimşir, İngiliz Belgelerinde. See also “Extract from the ‘Jugoslawski List’ (pro-Government Organ in Yugoslavia) of September 15th, 1922,” in Uğurlu, Yabancı Gözüyle.

80 The Westminster Gazette, July 9, 1923, in Yılmaz, İngiliz, p. 69.

81 “Extract from the minutes of Kemal’s meeting with Upmal, representative from Moscow (1/1/1921): Mustafa Kemal: The Yemenis … came here as the subjects of the Ottoman Empire and declared their trust in the Ankara government. I told them that we did not want their servitude. I instructed them to organize around a popular sovereignty movement and maybe after that we could discuss a federation. Yes, there is a nationalist government in Baghdad. They, too, came to me for assistance. Because we do not have enough resources to support them at the moment, I dispatched a small battalion to Mosul for motivational support …” in Şimşir, Homage.

82 Atay, Çankaya, p. 377.

this controversial move83 will be discussed later in more detail. Let us note at this point that in British newspapers this decision was con- sidered a strategic mistake on the part of Turkey. Both The Times and The Economist were under the impression that this was going to hurt Turkey’s relations with the Sunni Muslim community and also with Muslim states that had been admirers of the new Ankara gov- ernment, such as Egypt, Afghanistan, and Iraq.84 In the end, while relations with the Muslim communities under British control almost disappeared, Turkey managed to establish friendly relations with sov- ereign Muslim states.85

Afghanistan had gained her independence from Britain in 1919, and was one of the first states, along with the Soviet Union, to recognize the Ankara government with a friendship treaty. The treaty acknowl- edged the awakening of Eastern nations against imperialism.86 Iran also quickly established diplomatic relations with Turkey. During the 1920s, their mutual friendship was reaffirmed with several treaties. In 1935, Turkey, Iran, and Iraq came together to sign a tripartite treaty, and were later joined by Afghanistan. Two years later, the Sadabad Pact87 was signed. The parties recognized each other’s sovereignty and promised to consult others in matters of common concern and to take any disputes to the League of Nations.

83 “General Review of the British Secret Intelligence Service Information During the Period April–August, 1922: … it is noteworthy that a number of delegates from Moslem countries, who assembled at Angora earlier in the year to discuss a scheme to convoke a Pan-Islamic conference, refused to participate in such a conference on discovering that one of its objectives was to discuss changes in the Khalifat.” Şimşir, Homage, p. 71, 74.

84 The Times, March 5, 1924; The Economist, March 8, 1924, in Yılmaz,

İngiliz.

85 After Mustafa Kemal’s death in 1938, he was deeply praised throughout the Muslim world, e.g.:

Press interview with Jinnah, President, All India Muslim League: He was the greatest Mussalman in the modern Islamic world and I am sure that the entire Mussalman world will deeply mourn his passing away. It is impossible to express adequately in a press interview one’s appreciation of

his remarkable and varied services, as the builder and the maker of Modern Turkey and an example to the rest of the world, especially to the Mussalman states in the Far East. The remarkable way in which he rescued and built

up his people against all odds, has no parallel in the history of the world. (Şimşir, Homage, 204)

86 Dilan, Türkiye’nin, p. 73.

87 The pact became moot after Iran was invaded in World War II.

Turkey’s relations with the Balkans88 took a similarly peaceful turn soon after 1923. Turkey signed a friendship treaty with Albania in 1923 and with Bulgaria and Yugoslavia in 1925. Friendly relations with Greece were also established.89 The first Balkan Conference was convened on October 5, 1930, with Albania, Bulgaria, Romania, Turkey, Yugoslavia, and Greece in attendance. The attendees issued a joint declaration recommending the formation of a Balkan Pact. War between the members of the Balkan Pact would be prohibited; eco- nomic, social, cultural, and political cooperation would be encour- aged. The second Balkan Conference took place in October 1931, and Turkey took an active role in trying to maintain the status quo in the Balkans.90 In the next two conferences, Turkey and Greece cooperated to curb the revisionist aims of Bulgaria. In 1933, Turkey and Greece signed the Pacte d’Entente Cordiale. The sides agreed to respect each other’s borders, to consult each other in international disputes, and to protect each other’s interests in international conferences (by pos- sibly sending a common representative). Turkey signed cooperation treaties with Romania and Yugoslavia in 1933 as well. These three treaties formed the basis of the Balkan Pact, from which Albania and Bulgaria were excluded. The Balkan Entente was formed in 1934 and operated successfully91 until 1936. After 1937, the actions of Germany and Italy in Eastern Europe brought about the dissolution of the pact, despite Turkey’s efforts. The pact had its last meeting in 1940.

Ankara–Moscow relations: 1923–1938

As noted in the previous sections, when the Republic of Turkey was proclaimed in 1923, relations between Moscow and Ankara were as close as they had ever been. The two sides remained relatively friendly in the interwar period. Tevfik Rüştü Aras, Minister of Foreign Affairs from 1925 to 1938, wrote in his memoirs: “The friendship between Turkey and the USSR came out of the interwar period even stronger

88 Though the Balkans are not really East, at this time in history they were not really West either. Toynbee considered the Balkan states to be part of the “Near East.”

89 Discussions of a Turkish–Greek “EU” in the late 1920s. See Clark, Twice a Stranger, p. 201.

90 Dilan, Türkiye’nin, p. 89.

91 Acting together during Italy’s invasion of Ethiopia and also during the Montreux Conference over the status of the Straits.

for the trials imposed by the unexpected, chaotic developments of the international system.”92 While this friendship was a significant con- tributing factor to Turkish independence in 1923, it is hard to believe that Moscow would agree with Aras’s optimistic assessment; this was a “friendship” that gave the Bolsheviks much less than they bargained for. In fact, throughout the interwar years, the ties between the two states gradually decayed and completely snapped after World War II. As previously discussed, during the Independence War, members of the Ankara government frequently hinted that they were going to adopt socialism once they were fully sovereign.93 They even promised to use the seat of the Caliph94 to help the Bolshevik designs in foreign relations. When Mustafa Kemal sent Tevfik Rüştü Aras to Moscow on a diplomatic mission, he told Aras: “If the world does not recog- nize us, we will unite with the communists, and find our place in the new world order. But under no conditions will we ever accept foreign

92 Aras, Atatürk’ün, p. 33.

93 “From the editorial of Hakime-i Milliye, the official organ of the Ankara Government (8 March 1921): … We will adopt most principles of socialism without giving up our national administration. For example, we will gradually nationalize factories. We will increase public ownership for the benefit of the people. In other words, we will become state socialists …”; “Mustafa Kemal: … faced with the ominous possibility of losing our country to British colonialism, if the practical application of Bolshevik principles offer salvation, we might need to adopt those principles regardless of how difficult it might be to implement them …”; “Letter from Mustafa Kemal to Ttcherin: … It is my sincere belief and that of my compatriots that once the Western proletariat on the one hand, and the enslaved Asian and African peoples, on the other hand, figure out how the international capital exploits them for maximum profit and tricks them into killing and enslaving each other, and once they know in their hearts that colonization policies amount to murder, that day will be the last day of the hegemony of the bourgeoisie.” Perinçek, Atatürk’ün Sovyetlerle, p. 407.

94 Extract from the transcript of the meeting between Mustafa Kemal and Comrade Esba, the Propaganda and Action Officer for the Eastern Peoples (January 29, 1921):

“If we gain control of the Caliph, we can use him as a weapon to unite all the Muslim People against the West. This issue also requires the reinterpretation of Islamic ideas so that they do not contrast with the principles of revolution. I think that once all the Muslim states gain their independence and taste popular sovereignty, their devotion to the Caliph will disappear … Us Turks are among the most mistreated peoples of the

world. Therefore, the International [sic] can count on our support. With our struggle against Western imperialism, we support the 3rd International’s [sic] ideas in action.” Ibid.

intervention. We are sincere in this promise; this is not a game.”95 The Bolsheviks returned Mustafa Kemal’s enthusiasm by giving the Anatolian resistance military and monetary support. Furthermore, they lobbied for Ankara’s inclusion in international conferences.96

After the Republic was proclaimed, the Ankara government did not adopt socialism, preferring a mixed economy in state planning. In foreign relations, however, the two states remained close at first. Turkey consulted with the Soviet Union over important foreign policy decisions, such as the decision to join the League of Nations in 1932. However, by the 1930s, these relations had started to show signs of strain.

Soviet emissaries reported97 the repeated pronouncements of Mustafa Kemal that the two regimes should become more similar. However, by the 1930s, the Republic of Turkey had been around for almost a decade and had not yet delivered on any of its substan- tial promises to Moscow. A telegram by the Soviet Ambassador in November 1933 expresses his suspicion that Turkey was using the Soviet card to strengthen her power in the West and to improve her standing in the Balkans.98 A meeting between the Soviet Representative Comrade Karahan and Mustafa Kemal on November 29, 1935, was symptomatic of this tension in the relationship. In his top-secret report to Stalin, Comrade Rozengolts relayed the following scene from this meeting:

Kemal … asked why he was not congratulated on the anniversary of Turkish independence … Karahan reminded him of the congratulatory telegram sent by Comrade Kalinin. Kemal, with a resentful voice, said “Yes, I am aware of that and have even replied to it, but I am not talking about messages brought by middlemen. I am not only the President of Turkey, but also the leader of the Turkish People.” And looking at Karahan, he asked: “Who is your leader?” Karahan replied that Comrade Stalin was our leader. “Then why did he not send me the telegram personally? Everybody else did. He is trying to show that he does not want to recognize me.” Karahan told him that it was not acceptable for Comrade Stalin to send congratulatory

95 Aras, Atatürk’ün, p. 205. 96 Ibid.

97 Telegram from Soviet Ambassador Astahov to People’s Commissariat of Foreign Relations (April 3, 1933) in Perinçek, Atatürk’ün Sovyetlerle.

98 Telegram from Soviet Ambassador Astahov to People’s Commissariat of Foreign Relations (November 10, 1933). Ibid.

messages … Kemal, still resentful, told him that he was a great friend of the Soviet Union, that this friendship would continue as long as he lived, but that he would honor this friendship only if it was a relationship of equals, that the middlemen hurt all this … [Karahan tried to reassure him] … Kemal interrupted Karahan …: “I will accept this friendship only if there are equal relations; I will not accept any other kind. You might have a powerful and well-equipped army, but I am not afraid of it. I am not afraid of anybody in this world, you included …”

Both sides had stopped trusting each other. In October 1939, Turkey signed a mutual cooperation treaty with Britain and France about which Moscow was very displeased. The treaty marked the de facto end of the friendship between the Soviet Union and Turkey, only a year after Mustafa Kemal’s death.

European views regarding modern Turkey

After the Lausanne Conference, relations between Turkey and Western powers, especially Britain, were lukewarm. First, there was the unset- tled dispute over the status of the Mosul province.99 Second, Western observers were skeptical of the domestic reforms the Ankara govern- ment was pushing through in Turkey at great speed. Diplomatic rela- tions would not be improved until after the settlement of the Mosul question in 1926. Perceptions about the durability of Turkish reforms also started to change toward the 1930s.

After the proclamation of the Republic in 1923, the Ankara gov- ernment started pushing drastic reforms in every aspect of life in Turkey. These changes were meant to help Turkey join the commu- nity of “civilized nations.” Originally, the European press were skep- tical of these reforms, especially because they were being imposed from above. In the early years, it is possible to see two kinds of views reflected in the press and books about Turkey. The first view argued

99 Britain claimed that Mosul province belonged to Iraq – a British mandate – for geographical and strategic reasons. Turkey argued that the province had a Turkish majority and, therefore, belonged in Turkey. The League of Nations recommended that the Mosul province stay with Iraq at least for a

25-year mandate period and asked that the Kurds in the region be given some local autonomy. One day after the Mosul decision of the League of Nations Council, Turkey signed a new friendship treaty with Moscow. See e.g. Dilan, Türkiye’nin, p. 38.

that modernization efforts would not succeed100 and that Mustafa Kemal was being oppressive and authoritarian101 in his efforts; the second, friendlier view thought that Turkey should be congratulated for trying102 (again with the implication that the reforms would likely fall short).103 The British press in general viewed Turkey’s foreign pol- icy before the settlement of the Mosul dispute as revisionist and no different than the strategy of the Young Turks.104 That judgment sof- tened somewhat after the Ankara Treaty resolving the Turkey–Iraq border dispute.

For instance, the Daily Telegraph (December 31, 1927) noted that the new Turkey had full independence and was pleased about its mili- tary prestige. However, according to the Telegraph, Turkey wanted more, because Turkey had become the leader of an Asian movement that resisted European influence and it claimed full equality with Europe. Moreover, Turkey wanted her leadership to be recognized by the Muslim world. The Times, on the other hand, was of the opin- ion that Turkey had already attained a special place between Europe and Asia thanks to her own efforts. Turkey was perceived in Asia as an ambassador of Western European civilization. In the meantime, Europe, The Times said, admired, with some reservations, what the country had accomplished.105 The eminent British historian Arnold Toynbee concurred: “The fundamental fact in modern Turkish his- tory is that the Turks, starting from an historical background and a social system far removed from ours, have latterly been coming on to our ground as fast as it has been humanly possible for them to travel over the rough country that intervenes.”106

By the 1930s, the coverage in Europe regarding Turkey had become even more positive. For instance, in 1930, the Contemporary Review argued that Turkey and Japan were the most modern countries of Asia. In an article published on November 2, 1933, Near East and India observed that Turkey had made the transition from the Middle

100 The Spectator (March 8, 1924); The Spectator (August 5, 1925) in Yılmaz,

İngiliz, pp. 75, 78.

101 The Morning Post (July 23, 1926). Ibid, p. 79.

102 The Times (October 17, 1925). Ibid, p. 77.

103 See ibid. for other examples and a detailed discussion of trends. Also see Toynbee and Ross, “Modernisation of the Middle East,” for a discussion among British scholars about the developments in Turkey.

104 Yılmaz, İngiliz, p. 157. 105 July 25, 1928, p. 13.

106 Toynbee, Turkey, p. 8.

Ages to modernity in only a decade, and that now Turkey was a strong “border guard” in the Near and Middle East. Indeed, throughout the 1930s, Turkey was seen as a devoted facilitator of international peace.107 In 1937, The Morning Post108 declared Turkey to be the most peaceful country in Europe. Thus, by the time of Atatürk’s death in November 1938, the days when Lord Balfour called Atatürk the “most terrible of all the terrible Turks”109 and deemed Turkey a coun- try of brigands110 were in the past.

The League of Nations

Despite the unfavorable rulings of the League of Nations on mat- ters concerning Turkey in the 1920s,111 Turkey accepted the League’s invitation to join in the work of the Preparatory Commission for the Disarmament Conference in 1928. Turkey also ratified the Briand– Kellogg Pact in 1929, participated in the International Opium Convention, and implemented several humanitarian and legal mea- sures recommended by the League.112 Having established such friendly relations with the League, a question arose in the early 1930s as to why Turkey had not joined the League. In 1931, the view expressed by Foreign Affairs Minister Aras was that Turkey could not join the League yet, because it was not clear if Turkey could be a member of the Council of the League of Nations: this situation violated the equal rights and treatment principle that had been the cornerstone of Turkish policy since independence. A year later, however, Aras observed that Turkey would be happy to join the League if it was

107 The Times, October 29, 1932, p. 9; Daily Telegraph, December 1, 1933,

p. 21; The Listener, November 29, 1933, p. 820; The Economist, April 8,

1936, p. 122; Fortnightly Review, v141, March 1937, pp. 328–9; in Yılmaz,

İngiliz.

108 March 24, 1937, p. 12.

109 Time Magazine (November 21, 1938): Obituary of Atatürk.

110 Güçlü, “Turkey’s Entrance.”

111 In this period, Turkey viewed the League with great suspicion. See

e.g. extract from Isaac F. Marcosson’s Mustafa Kemal interview, Saturday Evening Post (July 13, 1923): “Mustafa Kemal: The biggest mistake of the League is its separation of nations into those who have the right to rule and those who deserve to be ruled over.” In Uğurlu, Yabancı Gözüyle. The

main points of contention were: the population exchange issue; the “Etabli” problem; and the Mosul dispute. See Güçlü, “Turkey’s Entrance.”

112 Here’s an example of how such reforms were received:

thought that Turkish foreign policy was compatible with the League’s principles.

Following Aras’s suggestion, the Special July Session of the League of Nations Assembly unanimously voted to invite Turkey to join. All the members spoke in favor of admitting Turkey, emphasizing the country’s strategic importance between Europe and Asia.113 Thus, Turkey was elected to the Council in 1934 and became a very active member, committed to keeping the status quo and peace in Europe.

After Turkey joined the League in 1932, she entered a rapproche- ment period with the Western powers, especially Britain and France. Britain supported Turkey in the Montreux Conference in 1936, and helped settle the question of the status of the Straits in Turkey’s favor. The same year, King Edward VIII visited Istanbul and signed a trade agreement. As the situation in Europe grew tense in 1938, Turkey started negotiating alliances with Britain and France. Finally, despite Germany’s threats of withholding products and credit from Turkey, a tripartite agreement was signed in 1939, which put Turkey in the Allied camp.

Shaping modern Turkey

Turkey lost 85 percent of its territories and 75 percent of its popula- tion between 1870 and 1920.114 This fact and the experience of the Ottoman Empire with the intervention of Western powers in domes- tic affairs had two effects on the Turkish mindset after 1923: a dis- cernible paranoia about territorial integrity and a strong desire to be respected in the international system. In the interwar period, these two attitudes were – and had to be – intimately connected. However, in the beginning Turks themselves were divided on how best to achieve the status the country so desired.

“One other example of progress is that Japan has just raised her marriage age to sixteen, and Turkey has raised her marriage age to fifteen for boys and girls. That is not at all a bad example for certain European countries, who retain the marriage age of twelve, comforting themselves with the reflection that marriages at such an age very seldom take place, quite forgetting the effect their example may have on smaller or less civilized countries.” Crowdy, “Humanitarian Activities,” 161 (italics added).

113 Güçlü, “Turkey’s Entrance.”

114 Ottoman Archives.

In the first session of the Turkish Parliament during the Independence War, there were three main divisions in the Assembly. The largest group, headed by Mustafa Kemal, favored a pragmatic approach, negotiating with both the West and Russia as conditions required. A second group favored Eastward expansion. The smallest group wanted Turkey to become an active influence in the Turkic Republics of Central Asia, with Moscow’s assistance.115 These groups roughly corresponded to the three dominant ideological movements in the late Ottoman Empire: Turkish nationalism with selective Westernization (i.e. the Japanese model), Pan-Islamism, and Pan-Turanism. Mustafa Kemal rejected both Pan-Islamism and Pan-Turanism because he found their aspirations unrealistic.116

After the military victory, the main division in the Parliament regarding domestic policy was between, on the one hand, those who favored keeping the old Ottoman system, either entirely or partially intact, and, on the other, those who favored adopting a new, Western system.117 In the end, the Westernizing forces won out. There are two reasons for this: first, Mustafa Kemal’s personal influence; and second, the fact that the Westernizing camp made a more compelling case, given Turkey’s previous experience in the international system and the contemporary standards of international society.

In mainstream approaches to history in Turkey, Mustafa Kemal (Atatürk) gets almost exclusive credit as the driving force behind Turkish domestic reforms. While exaggerated, this view has some basis in reality. Atatürk had consolidated his power as the leader of the new Turkish nation during the Independence War. The war- time Parliament made him executive-in-chief and gave him wide latitude in his powers. After the Republic was established, he was elected President. Leaving aside assassination attempts and two brief forays into a multi-party system, Atatürk did not face substan- tial opposition. Therefore, the fact that he personally was commit- ted to Westernization, and that most of these reforms were planned and implemented by him personally, is important in explaining why Turkey chose the path of Westernization.

115 Report of the General Officer Commanding in Chief, Allied Forces, Constantinople; No. C.R.A.F. 543, October 5, 1921, in Şimşir, İngiliz Belgelerinde.

116 Atatürk, Söylev. 117 Demirel, Birinci Meclis’te Muhalefet, p. 34.

However, Atatürk’s personal biases are not an adequate causal expla- nation for this choice. First of all, attributing everything to Atatürk’s power – as the official account in Turkey has been wont to do since his death – leaves open the question of why Atatürk himself favored this path. Second, such an account also misses the complexity of Turkish politics in that era. Atatürk was no Stalin and the early sessions of the Parliament are notable for lively discussion and debates despite the absence of formal party structures.118 While the system was not demo- cratic, Atatürk preferred to rule by persuasion rather than persecution. This is why, for instance, he drafted The Speech and read it to the Turkish Parliament over the course of three months. The Speech chron- icles Atatürk’s motivations, plans, and decisions from the end of World War I to 1927.119 It is a very detailed account that aimed to justify and legitimize his actions to his contemporaries and to future generations. Therefore, we must ask why Atatürk’s audience found the program of Westernization compelling. Furthermore, they did not merely come on board; the general population was very much energized by Atatürk’s program, and continued on the same path even after Atatürk’s death – so much so that even contemporary Turkey is still marked by the worldview of the interwar period. They did so because Westernization/ modernization were presented to skeptics and detractors as the only way to exist and thrive in the international system. In the debates over and justifications of each of the proposed reforms, there is a common thread: the Westernization camp always made an intimate connection between (Western) civilization on the one hand, and autonomy, sov- ereignty, and power on the other hand. It was argued that a country could not have the latter without the former.

“There Is Only One Civilization”

In 1923, the idea that all laws and rules should follow the Western model gained traction not only in the Cabinet (and the Parliament at large) but also among the leaders of influential groups such as the Türk Ocakları120 (“The Turkish Hearth”) organization.121 The principle that

118 Ibid. 119 Atatürk, Söylev.

120 Türk Ocakları was a neighborhood organization for youth with a clear purpose of nation-building. Üstel, Türk Ocakları.

121 Atay, Çankaya; Demirel, Birinci Meclis’te Muhalefet; Özer, Osmanlıdan Cumhuriyete; Berkes, Türkiye’de Çağdaşlaşma; Özer, Avrupa Yolunda.

this was the only way a state could survive in the international system became the centerpiece of Turkish policy.122

For instance, the Minister of Justice, Mahmut Esat, said in 1924: “The Turkish Nation, who is committed to following the path to join Modern civilization, cannot modify Modern civiliza- tion according to its needs; it has to adapt to the demands of this civilization whatever the cost.”123 Modern civilization, according to Turkish Westernizers, was based on principles of rationality and enlightenment. Any Ottoman institution that did not embody these two principles had to be left behind. The Sultanate had to go, because it was against the popular will. The Caliphate was an office that could only exist in a theocratic system – and religion clearly was not rational,124 so the Caliphate also had to be abol- ished. Religion had to be forced into the private realm, as it was in Europe. Religious clothes were banned in public, and religious schools and organizations were closed. Basically, everything from the alphabet to the education system, from the civil code to clothing had to change and become “rational,” “practical,” and “modern,” just as it was in Europe.125

The noteworthy aspect of the rationalizations for these reforms is how they were simultaneously grounded in nationalist rhetoric. The nationalist Türk Ocakları organization was supposed to operate according to the dual principles of nationalism and Westernization. Their founder, Hamdullah Suphi, explains this duality:

Türk Ocağı … is progressive and contemporary. [A member] knows that this organization is an ambassador of the West in the East. Türk Ocağı … is Westernizing. We only became aware of our Turkishness when we approached Europeanness, and we will be Turks as long as we feel European. There is only one civilization though it varies in form. However, Türk Ocağı aspires to the Western form of civilization.126

122 Berkes, Türkiye’de Çağdaşlaşma, p. 469.

123 Ibid., p. 470.

124 Especially Islam, which, in addition to being non-rational, was also “Eastern” and “backward.”

125 Berkes, Türkiye’de Çağdaşlaşma, p. 607.

126 Suphi, “Irk ve Milliyet,” 7.

The same sentiment was echoed in the organization’s activity pro- gram issued in 1926. The program claimed that Eastern civilization was in ruins and that Turkey was now an ambassador of the West in the East.127

Atatürk resorted to similar themes to justify the reforms. In The Speech, he said that the essential principle was that the Turkish nation should live with dignity and pride, which could only happen with full autonomy: “However rich and strong a nation may be, if she is not fully independent, she will be viewed as a servant by the civilized people.”128 According to Atatürk, the Ottoman Empire had lost all dignity and was viewed as a subjugate for this reason.129 Furthermore, he argued that foreign policy130 had to be compatible with domes- tic form131 and vice versa.132 Atatürk’s official biographer and friend

127 See Türk Ocakları Mesai Programı in Üstel, Türk Ocakları.

128 Atatürk, Nutuk (Söylev): Belgeler, p. 43.

129 “Atatürk’s briefing of the Neue Freie Presse Reporter about the Republic (22/9/1923): … Suppose you have two men before you; one of them is rich and has all kinds of vehicles at his disposal; the other is poor and has nothing in his hands. Apart from this material difference, the latter is no

different or deficient in moral spirit. This is the situation of Turkey against Europe. Apart from defining us as a tribe that is doomed to backwardness, the West has done everything to hasten our ruin. When West and East appear to clash, it is best to look toward Europe to find the source of conflict.” Uğurlu, Yabancı Gözüyle.

130 “Atatürk’s interview with French reporter Maurice Pernot on the eve of the creation of the New Republic (29/9/1923): There are many countries, but there is only one civilization; for a nation to progress, it needs to join in this one and only civilization … We have always walked from the East towards West. If we seem to have changed our course recently, you must admit that it was through no fault of our own. You made us do it. However, even if our bodies are in the East, our opinions look toward the West. We want

to modernize our country. Our only goal is to constitute a modern, and therefore Western, state in Turkey.” Uğurlu, Yabancı Gözüyle.

131 “Gentlemen! Our nation will demonstrate her intrinsic qualities in this new state and prove that the Republic of Turkey rightfully belongs among the independent, civilized states of the world.” Atatürk, Söylev, p. 380.

132 “Atatürk’s Speech to Turkish Parliament regarding the Proclamation of the Republican Regime (29/9/1923): Gentlemen! For centuries our nation has been victimized and unjustly treated in the East because it was thought that the Turkish nation was lacking in certain qualities. In the recent years, our nation has demonstrated, with advancements in education, tendencies and faculties, that those who passed judgments of Turkey were people easily deceived by appearances and lacked critical analysis skills. Thanks to the

Atay remarks that Atatürk did not believe in the mermaid myth.133 Atatürk and the Westernizing camp in the early republican period were convinced that no problem could be solved without making a clear choice about which civilization Turkey belonged to. According to them, Turkey deserved to be independent, autonomous, and well respected, but first she had to prove this to the world by demonstrat- ing she was civilized.134

Religion, particularly the fact that Turkey’s was Islam, was seen as the biggest obstacle to joining “Civilization.” This is the reason why the Caliphate had to be abolished, despite the costs to Turkey’s relationships with Muslim communities in India. Those in domestic politics who were in favor of keeping the Caliphate thought that the regime could be changed to a theocracy with minimal effort, with the Parliament acting as an advisory council to the Caliph.135 They argued that this would put Turkey in a spiritual leadership position in the world, especially if the Caliph was backed by a Parliament repre- senting the popular will.136

Atatürk and the Westernizing camp based their argument on two main points: one, a theocracy could not join the community of civ- ilization; two, having the Caliph in Turkey would decrease, not increase, Turkey’s stature.137 Atatürk argued that a Westernized, mod- ern Turkey that had joined the community of civilization would have a higher stature in the Muslim world as the messenger/ambassador of the West and Western values, than would a theocratic state harkening

new regime, it will be even easier for Turkey to prove her qualities to the civilized world. Turkey will prove with her masterpieces that she deserves the status she has heretofore occupied in the world.” Atatürk’ün Bütün Eserleri.

133 Atay, Çankaya, p. 434.

134 “A Speech delivered by Atatürk on the 2nd Anniversary of the Victory Day (30/8/1924): Gentlemen! Our nation’s goal, our nation’s purpose, is to be a civilized nation as recognized by the entire world. As you know, the existence, the worth, the right to independence and sovereignty of every tribe in the world is correlated with its possession and its ability to provide products of civilization. If a tribe cannot produce masterpieces of civilization, they are condemned to live without their independence

and sovereignty. The history of humankind proves this point. Walking on the path of civilization is a life-or-death matter. Those who falter or turn back on this path will be doomed to drown under the powerful floods of civilization.” Atatürk’ün Bütün Eserleri.

135 Berkes, Türkiye’de Çağdaşlaşma, p. 449.

136 Ibid., p. 456. 137 Atatürk, Söylev, pp. 347–84.

back to a bygone era.138 It was with this same logic that the religious lodges were banned. Explaining that decision, Atatürk said:

the Republic of Turkey cannot be a country of dervishes, cult followers and religious fanatics. The most righteous, the most real cult (path) is the cult of civilization. Doing what civilization requires and demands is enough to be human. Leaders of cults will understand the truth of my words and will immediately shut down their lodges of their own accord, and accept the fact that their followers have now reached this level of maturity.139

Once religion was forced into the private realm, everything else rem- iniscent of the old religious order had to follow suit.

Turkish leaders were also of the opinion that one of the main rea- sons the West had been so prejudicial against Turkey in the past was because of the difference in costume. Therefore, one of the first reforms to be implemented had to do with adapting the Turkish costume, for both women and men, to the European standard. Hats received par- ticular attention, and the European-style felt hat became the sym- bol of the new regime.140 Atatürk himself argued that the fez was a symbol of ignorance, backwardness, fundamentalism, and hatred of civilization. By throwing it away, Turkey would show that there was nothing separating the Turkish nation from civilized nations.141

In 1924, the education system was centralized. Subsequently, in 1926, civil law was changed almost entirely, and the new civil code was modeled on the French and Swiss civil codes. The criminal code was based on the Italian model. Islamic courts were abolished and polygamy was banned. The equality of sexes was recognized. In 1928, the new Turkish alphabet was adopted. This was derived from

138 Ibid., p. 392.

139 Kastamonu speech, August 30, 1925, Erüreten, Türkiye Cumhuriyeti, p. 86.

140 Law on Wearing Top Hats (Şapka) November 25, 1925 – Preamble, The reasoning for the law:

“Even though the hat issue is of no real concern on its own, because Turkey plans to join the family of modern and civilized nations, for us it has special significance. Until now the fez and the turban were marks segregating Turkey from other civilized nations. It has become apparent that all civilized and modern nations have the top hat in common. Our mighty nation will

be a model for everyone by wearing this modern and civilized headpiece as well.” Ibid., p. 6

141 Atatürk, Söylev, p. 409.

the Latin alphabet, whereas the old one had used Arabic script. The lunar Islamic calendar was exchanged for the Western calendar, and Islamic measurement units were replaced by the metric system. In 1934, legislation introduced Turkish citizens to surnames. Finally, in 1935, women were given the right to vote and compete in elections. Throughout his tenure, Atatürk personally encouraged women to get into professions that traditionally were not open to women, including politics, aviation, and the natural sciences. He also supported Turkish women’s entry to international beauty pageants,142 with the expressed purpose of showing the world how civilized Turkish women were under the new Republic.143

Heads and tails: stigmatization, national habitus, and sovereignty

Your opinion that Turkey carries an important role in the fate of Eastern nations is entirely right. I think that Turkey plays an interesting role due to its geographical location on the borders of the Eastern and Western worlds. This situation is beneficial on the one hand, but perilous on the other. Because we are able to stop the spread of Western imperialism to the East, we have gained sympathy of Eastern peoples who view Turkey as a model. On the other hand, this situation is dangerous for us because it places the entirety of the burden of the aggression towards the East on our shoulders. All of Western hatred is focused on us. Turkey is proud of its position and is happy to fulfill this duty for the East. (Mustafa Kemal, speaking with Comrade Esba, January 29, 1921)

142 The first beauty pageant in Turkey was organized by the Cumhuriyet newspaper in 1929. The 1930 pageant was held with the purpose of sending the winner to the European Beauty Pageant in Paris. The newspaper claimed that this would show the world how modern Turkey was, how beautiful Turkish women were, and that Turks belonged to the white

race. A true Turkish beauty would have the following qualities: character, health, smartly applied make-up, moral aptitude, proper hygiene, a sweet demeanor, a taste in clothing, sincerity, genuineness, and abstinence from any exercise or diet that would unnaturally enhance the body, quoted in Resimli Ay (January 26, 1930). Özer, Avrupa Yolunda, p. 304.

143 The first beauty queen of Turkey was sent to Europe with much fanfare. The following year’s queen, Keriman Halis, was declared Miss Universe. Turkey had now proved to the world how “modern” Turkish women were. Thankfully, after her victory, Turkey took a break from beauty pageants for several decades.

Turkey now defends the European civilization at the gates of Asia. But at the same time, Turkey is protecting Asia against all of Europe’s imperialist desires. (Herbert Melzig, Atatürk)

In the previous section, I explained how, in less than a decade, Turkey went from being perceived as a great threat to the West, especially Britain, to a state perceived as committed to peace and order. In the interwar period, Turkey came to be respected by both the West and the East for both its foreign policy and domestic reforms, at least compared to its recent past. It is not possible to explain this outcome without understanding the significant degree to which the concern for status in the international system shaped the domestic and foreign strategies of Turkey after World War I.

In the 1920s, Turkey chose a domestic system because of concerns over its status in the international system. The choice was made in the context of a normative ideal that placed a premium on “modernity” and tied the right to be independent to the level of civilization. Those domestic choices, in turn, brought Turkey closer to the West in the 1930s. This is not to say that material constraints did not play any role, but ultimately what tipped the outcome in favor of the West was Turkey’s obsession with attaining membership in the community of civilized nations, thereby guaranteeing its independence. Having won on the battleground against Western powers and their allies, Turkey’s independence was not in danger because of any threat of military occupation, but because of its stigmatized status as an outsider in the international system. This is the condition the Turkish leaders wanted to rectify.

Turkey sought equal status with the West because the new Turkish nation’s habitus was shaped by an imperial past. In the case of former empires, the domestic expectations about international recognition are especially high, because maintaining ontological security requires preserving continuity in relationships to the world to the degree that is possible. Empires have hierarchical worldviews.144 After the nineteenth century, Turkey’s ontological security was continuously threatened by not having a prestigious (or “normal”) position in the international system, and the Ottoman Empire’s defeat and collapse only made this

144 For Turkish views of their place in the Ottoman world, see Bozkurt, Azınlık Imtiyazları, pp. 60–1; Lewis, The Emergence of Modern Turkey, p. 127;

Akçam, Türkiye’yi Yeniden Düşünmek, p. 191.

problem more acute. As the heir of the Ottoman Empire, the new regime in Turkey had to justify its legitimacy to a domestic audience united by the common belief that Turkey should have a higher stature in the international system, even if they disagreed on the best way to attain such stature.

As the successor state to the Ottoman Empire, the domestic audi- ence (or at least the intelligentsia) in Turkey was acutely aware that Europe and the West did not apply status standards to Eastern states uniformly or objectively. The experience of the Ottoman Empire with capitulations and foreign interventions on behalf of minorities had taught the leaders of Turkey that these standards were used to deny Turkey her sovereign rights and to weaken her material power. In other words, there was a general sense that the treatment of the Ottoman Empire in the nineteenth century was unjust and discriminatory. This belief is evident in all of the arguments of the Turkish delegation at Lausanne and Turkey’s insistence that all residual institutions of for- eign presence be removed from the country. Furthermore, stigmatiza- tion of Turkey was not only something Turkish leaders had dreamed up as a justification for their failure to stop the empire from unrav- eling, or as an excuse for their future shortcomings. Turks were very much aware that a priori nations as discussed by Toynbee (see above, pp. 120–2) were the number one obstacle to their normal functioning and ontological security in the international system.

Turkey accepted that it had to prove to the West that it deserved to belong to the family of civilized nations through actual, visible steps, but simultaneously asserted that this was a choice Turkey was mak- ing and, moreover, was capable of making. Turks wanted to believe that they had been wrongly denied respect in the past for superfi- cial, not intrinsic, reasons: the stigma of civilizational backwardness did not reflect an incorrigible defect. The leaders and the population of Turkey embraced the modernity standards of the early twentieth century, because implicit in the idea of modernity was the principle that “the most deserving” would advance.145 Because of the prom- ise held out by this logic, the content of the normative ideal was not

145 As Bauman also notes, “ethnic-religious-cultural strangers are all too often tempted to embrace the liberal vision of group emancipation (erasing of a collective stigma) as a reward for individual efforts of self-improvement and self-transformation.” Modernity and Ambivalence, p. 71.

questioned. Turkish leaders insisted on the moral and intrinsic equal- ity of the Turkish nation with the West, and presented Turkey’s lower stature and defeat as resulting from a combination of factors such as historical happenstance, the fault of the West, and the exaggerated influence of religion in Ottoman affairs.

The obsession with cosmetic changes, such as the hat law, makes sense when seen in this light. It was as if Turkey were a man who intrinsically, naturally, belonged in the family of “civilized nations” and he was marginalized only because he happened to be wearing the wrong kind of hat. All of the Westernizing reforms were justified to the domestic public with the logic that all of the powerful, civi- lized countries were doing things in this particular way, and that since Turkey naturally belonged in that group, Turks should also adopt the same ways. This is exactly the kind of strategy Goffman describes when he talks about stigmatized individuals “correcting” their dis- crediting attribute.

As the above discussions make clear, there is no explanation besides Turkey’s obsession with joining the community of civilized states that explains the lengths Turkey went to in transforming its domestic sys- tem. The Caliphate was relinquished because a theocracy was not compatible with (Western) civilization and principles of modernity. Turkish women went from the private domain to walking around on stages in their bathing suits within five years, because Turkey had to prove that it was a modern state and it did not deserve to be stigma- tized. Every domestic reform was undertaken with this goal.

Realists argue that material competition produces like units, so they may attribute Turkey’s transformation to military defeat alone. However, such an explanation overlooks the fact that in the Turkish case, the Turkish Army, which would be the main factor in a compe- tition of material strength, was already modernized to a great extent, even if it lacked resources. It was the first Ottoman institution to import European teachers and adopt European standards; German officers had trained its officers throughout the nineteenth century. When Turkey won the Independence War in 1922 and the Republic was created in 1923, the army was the unit most “like” its Western counterparts. Furthermore, it had proven itself in battle against unlikely odds. If military competition or security was the only fac- tor driving Turkish policy, Turkey could have stopped there. There would have been no need to completely uproot the entire gamut of

the country’s traditions and institutions. The domestic reforms, as is made clear in numerous speeches cited above, were very clearly driven by the quest for stature and civilization.

The choice to socialize, and to pursue socialization to this degree, was a strategic choice for the new regime: yet it was sustainable because it promised the domestic society the kind of respect its national habitus had conditioned it to expect, but could not attain through military means. The fact that Turkey had come perilously close to losing its sovereignty meant that the distance to the estab- lished “old village” was great, and the degree of emulation it had to go through to prove its right to an equal standing was high. The dominant norm of sovereignty also required comprehensive changes, since the modernity standard was a simple abstraction away from the civilization standard.

Any argument that Turkey’s socialization was an accident or imposed from outside is mistaken. There were some groups in soci- ety that had internalized the normative ideal of the international system, but many people in key places had not. The leaders of the new regime – notably, Atatürk – were mostly soldiers. They had Westernized military training and were familiar with European lit- erature, but had not spent much time in Europe or had any extended contact with Europeans besides German military officers during World War I. Very few of them had traveled abroad after 1918. Despite Atatürk’s quest to gain Turkish entry into “civilization,” it is clear from his speeches that he was not a particularly fervent admirer of Europe.146 If the leaders were somewhat skeptical about the nor- mative demands of Europe, the domestic population was even more so, many groups preferring their traditional ways. Because Turkey had won the Independence War and had her terms accepted at the Lausanne Conference, there were very few foreigners in Turkey after 1923. To sum up, in Turkey’s case, it is not possible to speak of the

146 He liked to drink and he was a womanizer, though he pushed reforms that he thought were necessary for the country but that he could not personally adapt to. For instance, it is reported that he would only listen to Turkish classical and folk music in private, but he diverted Turkey’s entire budget for the arts into the creation of operas and Western-style music. Similarly, in public he was a strong force for the equality of women, arguing that a nation with half of its population behind curtains cannot be civilized: but in private he was patriarchal. His only marriage was short-lived because Latife Hanım was too opinionated and outspoken. Ca|lışlar, Latife Hanım.

socializing influence of “victorious” powers. The decision to com- pletely Westernize might have been top-down, but it was also organic. A majority of the reforms were undertaken in the 1920s when Turkey was almost isolated from the West and her only powerful “friend” was the Soviet Union. The evidence permits no other interpretation besides strategic socialization to overcome stigmatization within an international system that was marked very clearly by an established- outsider dynamic.

Turkey’s decision to commit itself to a wholehearted Westernization/ modernization/civilization project in its domestic realm is what ulti- mately brought it closer to the West in terms of military alliances, and drove it away from the Soviet Union. Furthermore, Turkey’s insistence on its own sovereign recognition as a civilized nation was the under- lying principle driving Turkey’s arrangements with Eastern states.

Turkey could have chosen to align herself entirely with the Soviet Union, and in fact there were strong material incentives to do so. However, Turkey’s priority was always acceptance and equal treat- ment by the West. On several occasions, Atatürk said to his colleagues they would join Moscow if necessary, but he always made it sound as if this was the less preferable option. The Soviet Union before World War II was not yet a superpower, but it was more powerful than Turkey and some of the European states. Why was the Soviet Union’s friendship and military support not enough for Turkey? The Soviet Union had been isolated from international society after the Bolsheviks took over, and aligning with the Soviet Union completely would mean finding a place in a “new world order”; it was unpredict- able how this world order would rank compared to the existing one. In addition, the more Turkey wanted to become recognized as a civi- lized nation and took the steps to bring about this outcome, the closer it became ideologically to states that the Soviet Union had distanced itself from. There is also the sense that since the Soviet Union had taken itself out of this status game, its stature had lessened in the eyes of Turkey; in the confrontation between Mustafa Kemal and Comrade Karahan cited above, Mustafa Kemal is not acting as if he is dealing with a country that is considerably stronger than Turkey. The Soviet Union at the time was openly claiming the mantle of “Easternness” in an attempt to challenge the normative power of the established core. Moscow’s strategy no doubt held some initial appeal for Turkey – the life of the discreditable requires a much higher degree of information

management than the life of the discredited. As Goffman observes, “[A stigmatized individual] can voluntarily disclose himself, thereby radically transforming his situation from that of an individual with information to manage to that of an individual with uneasy social situations to manage.”147 Nevertheless, as Goffman notes, disclosure requires the willingness to take on uncomfortable encounters – and the memory of such were much fresher in Turks’ minds in the inter- war years than they were for the Russians. At some level, therefore, the Russians’ flaunting of the Eastern label bothered the Turkish lead- ers and decreased their willingness to be associated with the Soviet Union: “a person who wishes to conceal his disability will notice disability-revealing mannerisms in another person. Moreover, he is likely to resent those mannerisms that advertise the fact of disabil- ity, for in wishing to conceal his identity he wishes others to conceal theirs.”148 This would actually establish patterns of treatment that Turkey would adapt in the future vis-à-vis all “Eastern” nations.

Ultimately, Turkey joined the League of Nations, even though the League, as an instrument of European power, had not treated Turkey favorably at all. Turkey worked very hard to maintain the status quo in the Balkans and the Near East, instead of actively fighting against Western imperialism, as had been predicted in the early 1920s. While Turkey was against the mandate regime in principle, she was actu- ally a transmitter of Western norms into mandated regions. By her own constant attempts to prove that she deserved to join the com- munity of civilized, modern nations, Turkey legitimized the norm that sovereignty was something that needed to be earned, and that a nation needed to prove itself to the world community before it could become fully independent. When Turkey encouraged Eastern nations to organize around popular sovereignty movements and win their independence, it was because she wanted to lead the way for the nations of the East. In effect, for all of the anti-imperialist rhet- oric of the war years, Turkey turned out to be the best emissary for imperialist norms – if it was possible for Turkey to successfully trans- form itself, the implication was that there was no inherent structural problem with civilization standards. Of course, Turkey took it even further. Under the guise of an “anti-imperialist” rhetoric, Turkey

147 Goffman, Stigma, p. 100. 148 Ibid., p. 86.

actively encouraged other “outsider” countries to commit to the same advancement strategy. This strategy should not be taken lightly, for as Toynbee remarked, Turkey was seen as something of a test case for Westernization: “in studying the Westernization process in Turkey, we are increasing our understanding of the human world in which we ourselves live and move and have our being; for the issues with the West are confronting other non-Western peoples the world over.”149 The fact that Turkey’s actions ended up affirming the normative order of the established-outsider dynamic definitely had something to do with Turkey’s positive reception by the West in the 1930s.

Conclusion

I believe that the best policy is to be as powerful as possible in every field. Do not think that being powerful refers only to force of arms. On the contrary, I believe that this force comes last among the factors which constitute the whole. I believe that being powerful means being strong in the scientific, technical and moral areas. For if a nation is devoid of these values, even if we imagine all its members are equipped with the most advanced arms, it would be wrong to regard it as powerful. To be armed is not sufficient to take one’s place as a human being in today’s community of humanity … I believe that for my country … to achieve the progress of which I am well aware and of which we have gone without, it is necessary to work hard and continuously – in peace and tranquility, and above all while establishing freedom and independence. (Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, Ataturk’un Butun Eserleri, p. 288. Speech given on August 30, 1924)

The point of this chapter has been to illustrate that every step that Turkey and Turkish leaders took in the fateful years between 1918 and 1938 had an alternative. The choices they ended up making, taken together, can only be explained by the established-outsider dynamic that had been effective in the international system up until and during that time, as well as by the Turkish leaders’ awareness of, adherence to, and, at times, resistance against this structure. Turkey is indepen- dent, sovereign, and confused about its identity today because of this dynamic and its desire to seek normalcy within it.

In the summer of 2007, hundreds of thousands of people marched on the streets of Turkey’s major cities against the purported Islamization

149 Toynbee, Turkey, p. 300.

of the Republic. The trigger for these marches was the fact that the wife of the then presidential candidate, Abdullah Gül, wears a headscarf. It has since come to light that these marches may have been organized by an underground organization of ex-military men, journalists, and bureaucrats bent on provoking the military to stage a coup to unseat the Justice and Development Party (AKP) government. Nevertheless, the majority of the hundreds of thousands of people who marched were sincere in their fears that there was something very troubling about the presidential candidate. Many Turks continue to believe that a president whose wife wears a headscarf would be worse for Turkey’s image abroad than a military junta regime. Among the many slogans expressed on these marches were: “The spirit of the 1920s lights our way,” “Just because you like the Rose,150 we cannot tolerate his thorn.” What is especially interesting about these developments is the fact that at the time of the marches, the AKP had been in power for almost five years. What brought things to a head (literally) was the realization that the headscarf, which is a symbol with incredible power in Turkey, was about to be attached to the head of state, which only has sym- bolic power. Even today, many Turks believe that respect in the inter- national system can only be attained through Westernization, which they understand as being synonymous with displaying the superficial attitudes and markers of modernity. In the case of Turkey, the deci- sion after defeat to overcome outsider status by following a strategy of stigma correction has taken on a life of its own, and has come to defini- tively shape the state identity around feelings of inferiority against the West and superiority toward the East. It is this decision around which all domestic cleavages are still organized.

Problems of the present day can all be traced back to the strat- egy Turkey settled on after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. The Turkish modern state identity was a deliberate construction in direct response to the lessons drawn from the international interactions of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and not an endogen- ous manifestation exclusively emanating from dynamics within state borders. When the Ottoman Empire was replaced by Turkey, the new regime took it upon itself to fashion a domestic strategy that would allow the state to feel ontologically more secure in its relations with

150 A play on words: the presidential candidate’s last name means rose. I assume his wife is supposed to be the thorn.

the West. The goal was to change the hierarchical, stigmatizing rela- tionship between Turkey and Europe, and join the circle of the “estab- lished” states, but the republican regime constructed their strategy around a worldview that was based in the internalized lessons from the normative structure of the nineteenth- and early-twentieth- century international system. For instance, the Turkish state bor- rowed its understanding of secularism from the 1920s French model; in fact even the term is the same: laicism. This is the understand- ing that was incorporated into the modern Turkish state identity. Because this particular understanding of secularism is linked with Turkish understanding of “modernity,” questioning it creates great anxiety for most secular Turks. Their understanding of the concepts of “nation” and “state,” for instance, also remain firmly rooted in the normative ideals of the 1920s. Therefore, any demands for free- dom of religious observation and/or accommodation of ethnic minor- ity identities are interpreted as threats to Turkey’s “modern” identity. While there is hardly any consensus in the West as to how best to accommodate group rights, to argue that such things are un-modern is to skip over almost a century of developments in Western identity politics.151 Every hot-button issue in contemporary politics, from the inflexible definition of secularism employed by establishment Turks to the resistance to Kurdish efforts for recognition to the Armenian genocide, is rooted in Turkey’s post-defeat quest for “civilization,” and is therefore an unfortunate side effect of Turkey’s responses to its stigmatized position.

Those were formative years for modern Turkey, and the aspirations as well as the psychoses of that period continue to shape the Turkish mindset. I think it would be fair to argue that, while the fall from grace as a great empire and the humiliating years of foreign inter- vention that the Ottoman Empire had to endure as a member of so- called “semi-civilized” humanity are a thing of the past, the wounds they have inflicted are still open. The European Union path on which Turkey has willingly set itself recycles many of these same issues, and Turkey’s present-day attempts to place itself as a model of a secular or a moderate Muslim country, or as a mediator in Middle Eastern conflicts, echoes Turkey’s earlier attempts to regain its lost status by

151 For an excellent discussion of secular Turks’ static understanding of “modernity” and the “West,” see Özyürek, Nostalgia for the Modern.

trying to be a leader in the movement against imperialism at the exact same moment the country was wholeheartedly emulating the civiliza- tion of the imperialists.

Even in its most isolationist periods, the citizens and leaders of the Republic of Turkey have never stopped playing to an imagined audi- ence that is constantly assessing how civilized and modern Turkey is.152 Turks resent this intrusive gaze but crave its approval, and sus- pect the approval when it is dispensed, yet sense discrimination when it is not. While secular, urbanized Turks feel the effects of this gaze most strongly, even the most reactionary Turks are not immune to its penetration. Unlike in most “developing” countries, Turkey’s choices have not been dictated from outside, but have been propelled through Turkey’s seemingly inconsistent exercise of auto-Orientalism on the one hand and belief in its own intrinsic greatness on the other hand. This experience is something Turkey shares with Japan and Russia, and there is some solace to be found in that fact, and also in the knowledge that, given the realities of the international system, this path has served Turkey better than the alternatives. However, there is something particularly corrosive to the soul about always seeing one- self from others’ eyes – it is not good for the individual psyche, and it is even worse for groups.

There is an apocryphal story about the first Turkish Miss Universe, Keriman Halis, who represented Turkey in the competition which was held in Belgium in 1932. In crowning Keriman, the head of the jury supposedly said:

Dear members of the jury, today we celebrate the victory of the European Christian civilization. Islam, which has been dominating the world for

152 Here is but a recent example:

“Michelle Obama may have been the star of the US President’s European show, but Turks were deprived of the chance to see her when she chose to return to her children … The Turkish media have been following Michelle Obama’s European visit with interest, carrying stories of her dress and exploits … A picture of her at the G20 summit in London, standing next to Emine Erdogan, the wife of the Prime Minister, Tayyip Erdogan, attracted mixed emotions, however, since Mrs Erdogan’s Muslim headscarf is viewed with distaste by secular Turkey’s establishment … ‘I bet she decided not to come because she didn’t want to be involved with our headscarved crowd,’ said Cigdem, 39, an accountant. ‘Who would? I’m glad we don’t have to watch her posing side by side with them here.’ ” Erdem, “Disappointment”.

1600 years, is now finished. Europe has finished it. Miss Turkey, Keriman, the representative of all Muslim women who once upon a time looked out to the world from behind curtains, is now among us in a bathing suit … This year we are not only selecting Miss Universe. We are celebrating the victory of Europe. The granddaughter of Suleiman the Magnificent … wants us to admire her. And we admire this girl because she has adapted to our ways. We select her as Miss Universe with the hope that all Muslims will follow in her footsteps. We will raise our glasses in honor of the vic- tory of Europe.

Unfortunately, despite numerous references to this speech in conser- vative Turkish sources, I could not verify its authenticity from any Western source, and if it is real, it was also downplayed in main- stream Turkish newspapers of the time. However, even if it is only a figment of the imagination of Turkish conservatives, as it may very well be, I find it a suitable note to end this chapter with. Pursuit of status, regardless of the advantages it brings to the individual lower- ranking agent, makes those who have higher status stronger by legit- imizing and normalizing their arbitrary normative order.

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3「野蠻人」：土耳其（1918-1938）