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The Paradox of Turkish Nationalism and the
Construction of Official Identity
AYtE KADIOOLU
the 'underdeveloped' world all act as westernizers, and all talk like
narodniks.3"'
The superior material qualities of the West, its science and technology,
however, can only be synthesized with the spiritualityof the East with a
project 'from without' which necessarily involves the intellectualswho take
upon themselves the task of transforminga popularconsciousness 'steeped in
centuries of superstitionand irrationalfolk religion'.-' By adopting a positi-
vistic stance that was intolerant towards the religio-mystical tradition, the
Republican elites in Turkey instigated a distancing of popular, religious
elements thatthenceforthrepresentedthe 'cause of the just.'
The proclamationof the Republic in 1923 was followed by the abolitionof
the office of the caliphatein 1924. Othersteps were taken in the course of the
1920s and early 1930s towardssecularizingthe Republic. These includedthe
abolitionof the Ministryof Religious Affairs and Pious Foundations,abolition
of religious courts, proscriptionof male religious headgear,namely the fez,
dissolution of the dervish orders,reformof the calendar,and adoptionof the
Swiss Civil Code. By the end of the 1920s, radicalreformswere passed such
as disestablishmentof the state religion (10 April 1928), adoptionof the Latin
alphabet (I November 1928), and the use of the Turkish language in the
Islamic call to prayer (3 February 1932).32 These reforms constituted an
onslaughton the existing culturalpractices.They opted for a general state of
amnesia which would lead to a process of estrangementof the people from
some of theirown culturalpractices.Feroz Ahmadrefersto the adoptionof the
Latinalphabetin place of the Arabicscriptas the 'most iconoclastic reformof
the period.'33He says: 'At a stroke,even the literatepeople were cut off from
theirpast. Overnight,virtuallythe entire nationwas made illiterate'.34
The notion of an Islamic state was anathema to the Republican elites
organizedaroundthe RepublicanPeople's Party.They wantedTurkeyto reach
to the level of contemporarycivilization by emphasizing notions such as
science, modem education, rationality and secularism. The 1920s and the
1930s were crucialyears in the makingof the new RepublicanTurkeyand the
emergence of the 'new Turks'.3 In the course of this transformation,there
were certaincriticalturningpoints thatportrayedthe graduallyincreasingcon-
flict between the state and the civil society. In fact, one of the first opposition
partiesthatwas foundedin November 1924, the ProgressiveRepublicanParty
- led by ex-officers like Ali Fuad Cebesoy and Rauf Orbay,opted for 'restor-
ing the sovereignty of the people over that of the state'.36 The Progressive
Republicansdeclaredtheir commitmentto liberalismand promisedto respect
religious opinions and beliefs. Yet, their attempts to pose themselves as a
viable opposition failed when an extraordinarylaw - Takrir-iSiikunKanunu
(the Law for the Maintenanceof Order)- was passed in March 1925 as a
TURKISH NATIONALISM AND OFFICIAL IDENTITY 187
Peoples' Party represent the premises of the Turkish Republic that were
formulatedat thattime. Since liberalismand democracyhad alreadybeen dis-
creditedin the eyes of the Republicanelites in the 1930s due to the instability
of the regimes in WesternEurope,they were not includedwithin the founding
principles of the Republic. Moreover, the principlesof liberalismand demo-
cracy did not coincide with the interests of the Republicanelites internally
since they were constantly trying to tighten their grip on the periphery.The
efforts of the Republicanelites to createa systematicideology led to the publi-
cation of a monthly called Kadro. Kadro, which began publicationin Ankara
in January1932, aimed at 'creatingan ideology original to the regime'.39The
Kemalist regime tightened its grip over the periphery in the aftermathof
revolts such as the 1925 Kurdishrebellion - which was actually a religious
reaction- andthe 1930 Menemenincident.In fact, the dynamicsof events that
paved the way to overt attemptsat creatinga Republicanideology from above
manifesteda latent fear of the Kemalistelites that Anatolia would be split on
primordialgroup lines.40That fear channelled the Kemalist elites towards
furthersocial engineering.
By 1930, it was generally agreed by the Republicanelites that the reforms
that were undertakenin the course of the 1920s had not taken root. This
problemwas to be remediedwith furtherreformsfrom above thatwere geared
towards creating a new Turk. The emerging new Turkishidentity, then, was
distinguishedby its manufacturedcharacter.Turks were a 'made' nation by
virtue of emphasizing their difference from the Ottomansalong the similar
Jacobin lines that the French revolutionaries followed in creating the
Frenchman.The ferventdesire to breakwith the past was clearly manifestedin
the ensuing reforms.From 1923 onwards,the new Turkswere to be governed
from their new capital at the heart of Anatolia, Ankara, in a mental state
that was havoc and can perhaps best be described as 'voluntary amnesia'.
The Republicanstate had the mission of elevating people to the level of con-
temporarycivilization. Since any peripheralrevolt was interpretedas an effort
to revive the old religious order,Republicanreformscontainedanti-religious
themes or in the words of Mardin'showed a clear distastefor religion'. 41 The
plain fact remained, however, that the Kemalist ideology could not replace
Islam in the lives of the people. The teachings of the Kemalist doctrinewere
internalizedonly by the intelligentsiawhich contributedto the widening of the
rift between the centerand the periphery.
The Republicanelites' attemptsto create an ideology was only skin-deep
and not espousedby all the classes. The Republicwas foundeduponprinciples
that were not genuine but were rathermanufacturedfrom above. In short, the
Republic was not democratic.Democracywas not one of the six arrowsof the
RepublicanPeople's Party.
In the aftermathof the militarycoup on 12 September1980, a trendwas set
TURKISH NATIONALISM AND OFFICIAL IDENTITY 189
groups and others who are toleranttowards religious images have begun to
representthe newly polarizedpoliticalcleavages in Turkeyin the 1990s.
It is meaningfulto refer at this point to the mannerin which the Westernist
and Islamic discourses are interwoven in the Turkishcontext in spite of the
fact that both trendsin their currentpolitical manifestationsare waging a war
to exclude one another. In other words, while the secular Westernists are
increasingly becoming more hostile to religious images by relying on and
commodifying the image of MustafaKemal Ataturk,the religious groups are
increasingtheir attacks on the decadent Western culture. Ironically, Ataturk
who set the trajectoryof Turkishmodernizationtowardsa zealous Westerniza-
tion, had never abandonedthe rhetoricof a synthesis between the West and
Islam. In fact, he adopted for himself and for the Turkish military the title
'gazi' (connoting a crusadingspirit sharedby the Muslims who waged wars
againstthe infidel). Ironically,the syntacticand semantic structureof the dis-
course of the Islamists who have attackedthe decadence of the West of the
past decade is laden with representationsof post-Enlightenmentrational
thought. ismet Ozel, for instance, who is a prominentIslamic poet in Turkey
has titled his autobiography:Waldo, Sen Neden Burada Degilsin? (Waldo,
Why Aren't You Here?), which is a statementmade by an Americanthinker
Henry David Thoreauwhen his friend Ralph Waldo Emerson came to visit
him in jail.46
NOTES
1. On the issue of women's paradox between traditionand modernity, see Ay.e Kadloglu,
'Women's Subordinationin Turkey: Is Islam Really the Villain', Mildlle East Journal,
Vol.48, No.4 (Autumn 1994), pp.645-61; Ay,e Kadioglu, 'Alaturkalik ile lffetsizlik
ArasindaBirey Olarak Kadin' (Women Between Being Traditionaland Unchaste), Giir4i,
No.9 (May 1993), pp.58-62.
2. Partha Chatterjee,Nationalist Thoughtand the Colonial World: A Derivative Discourse
(Minneapolis:Universityof MinnesotaPress, 1993).
3. See, for instance, Ken Wolf, 'Hans Kohn's LiberalNationalism:The Historianas Prophet',
Journal of the Historyof Ideas, Vol.37, No.4 (Oct.-Dec. 1976), pp.651-72.
4. Hans Kohn,Prelude to Nation-States,TheFrenchand GerrnanE.xperience,1789-1815 (New
Jersey:D. Van NostrandCompany,Inc., 1967), p.2.
5. George L. Mosse, The Crisis of German Ideology: Intellectual Origins oJ the ThirdReich
(New York: Schocken Books, 1981), p.6. See also, Ay~e Kadioglu, 'Devletinin Araryan
Millet: Almanya Ornegi' (A Nation in Search of its State: the German Case), Toplum ve
Bilim, No.62 (Yaz-Guz 1993), pp.95-1 12.
6. George L. Mosse, The Crisis of GermanIdeology.
7. Ibid., p.6.
8. Ibid.
9. Ibid., p.7.
10. ParthaChatterjee,Nationalist Thoughtand the Colonial World,p.2.
11. serif Mardin,'EuropeanCultureand the Development of Mcdern Turkey', Ahmet Evin and
Geoffrey Denton (eds.), Turkeyand the European Community(Leske, Budrich: Opladen,
1990), pp.13-23, esp.15.
12. Ibid., p.16.
13. NiluiferGole, ModernMahrem:Medeniyetve Ortunme(ModernPrivacy:Civilizationand the
Veil), (Istanbul:Metis Yayinlari), 1991, pp. 11-47.
14. serif Mardin,'EuropeanCultureand the Developmentof ModernTurkey',p. 18.
15. See serif Mardin, Turk Modernlemesi (Turkish Modernization), (Istanbul: Ileti?im
Yayinlarn,1991), pp. 36-37, for a review of FelatunBey and RaklmEfendiwithinthe context
of Turkishmodernization.
16. Ibid., pp.37-40.
17. aerif Mardin,'The Just and the Unjust', Daedalus, Journalof the AmericanAcademy of Arts
and Sciences, Vol.120, No.3 (Summer 1991), pp.113-29.
18. Ibid., p.114
19. Ibid., p.126.
20. Niyazi Berkes (ed.), TurkishNationalismand WesternCivilization:Selected Essays of Ziya
Gokalp(Westport,Connecticut:GreenwoodPress, Publishers,1959), p.20.
21. Ibid., p.21.
22. Ibid., p.22.
23. Ibid.
TURKISH NATIONALISM AND OFFICIAL IDENTITY 193