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About the Book and the Editor ATATURJ( AND THE MODERNIZATION OF TURKEY edited by Jacob M. Landau Mustafa Kemal AtatOrk, who founded the Republic of Turkey sixty years ago, dedicated himself to westernizing the Turkish state and its society and culture. In this first attempt to evaluate Atatlirk's overall contribution to the modernization of Turkey, an international group of scholars examine a broad range of subjects, including the Kemalist ideology in the context of Atati"lrk's quest for modernism; Ataturk's impact on Turkey's political culture and civil bureaucracy; his experiments with state inten'ention in the economy; and his attempts to reform Turkish law, education, and language. Although the main focus of the book is on C\'aluating how Atatiirk's innovations effected change in the Turkey of his day, the authors also consider the contribution of the Kemalist regime in the light of what had occurred earlier, during the late Ottoman Empire, as well as how its legacy has affected the Turkey of today. Jacob M. Landau is professor of political science at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and coordinator of ~iddle East research at the Ulli\Tfsity's Harry S. Truman Research Institute for the Advancement of Pe,lee.
Published in cooperation with The Harry S. Truman Research Institute for the Advancement of Peace The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Ataturk and the Modernization of Turkey edited by Jacob M. Landau
Westview Press / E.]. Brill /
Boulder, Colorado
Leiden, The Netherlands
A WeJn'iew Replica Edition All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by ,IllY means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any inform,trion storage and retrie\'al system, without permission in writing from the publisher. Copyright © 1984 by Westview Press, Inc. Published in 1984 in the United Stares of America by Westview Press, Inc, 5500 Central Avenue, Boulder, Colorado 80301. Frederick A, Praeger, Presidell[ ;lIld Publisher Distributed outside North America by E.J. Brill, P.O. Box 9000, Leidcn, The Netherlands Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Main entry under ritle: AtatOrk and the modernization of Turkey. Includes index. I. Kcmalism-Addresses, essays, lectures. 2, TurkeyPolitics ,md go\'ernment-1918-1960-Addresses, essays, lectures. 3. Turkey-Ciyilization-'--Occidcll[al intlucnces -Addresses, cssays, lectures. 1. Landau, Jacob M. DR590.A837 1984 956.1'024 83-16872 ISB~ (U.S.) 0-86531·986·3 ISB~
(!'\crh.) 90 04 07070 2
Printed and bound in the United States of America 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Contents
Preface Introduction: Ataturk'~ Achievement: Some Considerations, Jacob Mo Landau
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ix xi
PART 1: KEMALIST IDEOLOGY 1 2
The Kemalist Regime and Modernization: Some Comparative and Analytical Remarks, SoN. Eisenstadt Prelude to Reforms: Mustafa Kemal in Libya, Rachel Simon 0
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The Origins of Kemalist Ideology, Paul Dumont
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Atarurk's Quest for Modernism, Osman Okyar
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3 17 25 45
PART 2: POLITICAL CULTURE AND BUREAUCRACY 5
The Political Culture of Kemalist Turkey, Franlt Tachau 0
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The Impact of Atatiirk on Turkey'S Political Culture since World War II, Udo Steinbach 0
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Ataturk and the Civil Bureaucracy, Metin Reper
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Continuity and Change in Turkish Bureaucracy: The Kemalist Period and After, ilter Turan 0
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PART 3: SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC ISSUES 9 10
Kemalist Views on Social Change, Sabri Mo Akural The Traditional and the Modern in the Economy of Kemalist Turkey: The Experience of the 1920s, William Mo Rale
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Contents
1
Atatiirk's Etatism, Z. Y. Hershlag ....... ................. 171
:ART 4: WESTERNISM AND CULTURE 2
The Modernization of Education in Kemalist Turkey, Michael Winter . ....................................... 183
3
Ataturk's Language Reform as an Aspect of Modernization in the Republic of Turkey, G.L. Lewis ..... 195
,4
Ataturk and the Arts, with Special Reference to Music and Theater, Metin And . ........................ 215
l5
Ataturk's Legacy: Westernism in Contemporary Turkey, David Kushner . ................................ 233
'ART 5: PERCEPTIONS OF KEMALISM l6
The Kemalist Reform of Turkish Law and Its Impact, Vakur Versan .. ........................................ 247
l7
Kemalism as an Ideology of Modernization, jsmet Giritli .......................................... 251
~ist of Contributors ........................................ 255 :ndex ..................................................... 257
Preface
The papers in this volume were presented and discussed at an international symposium on Atattirk and the Modernization of Turkey, which was held at the Harry S. Truman Research Institute for the Advancement of Peace of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, in October 1981, to mark the centenary of Mustafa Kemal's birth. Scholars from six countries-France, Great Britain, Israel, Turkey, the United States and West Germany-examined and discussed Atatiirk's lifework and achievements at the symposium, in an attempt to evaluate their significance for his own time as well as for post-Kemalist Turkey. It is our hope that this volume of proceedings will make a contribution to the understanding of the impact of Atatiirk and his followers on Turkey in the twentieth century. It is my pleasant duty to express my appreciation to the Truman Institute for convening the symposium and for undertaking the publication of these proceedings together with Westview Press. Special thanks are due to Mr. Barry Youngerman for copy-editing a difficult text so ably and in such a good-humored manner and to Ms. Norma Schneider, Director of Publications of the Truman Institute, for her indefatigable and patient handling of all the details necessary for the editing and publication of this work. I am responsible for any errors of fact or judgment that remain.
Jacob M. Landau Jerusalem, 1984
Ataturk's Achievement: Some Considerations Jacob M. Landau
A serious study of the essence of modern Turkey must include an evaluation of the pervasive impact of Mustafa Kemal Atatlirk and the reasons for his success. Merely to suggest that he was a markedly charismatic leader would be begging the question: how did he succeed, in the face of enormous odds, in turning defeat into victory, first on the battlefield and then during the ensuing peace? Atatiirk's feats as strategist and field commander in both the First World War and Turkey's War of Independence would have sufficed to ensure his place among major world leaders. However, he will probably be remembered even more as the builder and modernizer of the Republic, a role that demanded vision, determination and endless patience. Even before he was elected Turkey's first president, a position to which he was reelected three times, Atatiirk had adopted certain ideas on how a modern state and society should look, had begun to recruit his cadres, and had planned how to implement the ideas that were later dubbed Kemalism. What is most impressive about Atatlirk as reformer is the totality of his approach, his drive to institute change in practically all areas of life, from the roots up. His step-by-step implementation of these objectives testifies to a sense of realism and excellent timing: for him reforms were the art of the possible. Not every reform was a success; but even the failures, by highlighting the difficulties he had to face, testify to the scope and nature of his achievements. Perhaps his most signal failure was in the economic field. However, Turkey was a poor, little-developed country, lacking many of the skills necessary for economic expansion. Furthermore, its economy was largely dependent on external factors, and suffered heavily from the international economic crisis that began in 1929. To Ataturk's credit, he did manage to institute some heroic economic measures at the time, which yielded dividends in later years. The new regime was more successful in foreign relations, another field in which Turkey's actions were somewhat dependent on others. That Turkey mended its fences very capably and has managed to remain at peace is no mean achievement considering its geopolitical situation. XI
XII
Jacob M. Landau
Atatiirk wanted peace in order to concentrate on reforming Turkey and its people, a task that occupied most of his energies during the fifteen years of his presidency. He continued to supervise the details even in his final years, failing health notwithstanding. Many of the ideas tried out in that period were his own; others were taken from his predecessors or from people in his entourage. But it was always he who made the final decision regarding which reforms to apply, how to implement them, and in what order of priority. And it was he who constantly urged one and all to carryon. To accomplish these goals, he surrounded himself with capable and willing collaborators, many of them hand-picked from among those he called the "men of the future." Among his many accomplishments, the following stand out in particular: creation of a modern republican state structure with a constitution, an elected parliament and other western-type institutions; founding of a political party as the chief agent of modernization, and brief experiments with a multi-party system; recruitment of a modern bureaucracy; building of a new capital at Ankara; disestablishment of religion by removing religious officials from their institutionalized positions and secularizing education and the courts; emancipation of women both politically (through passive, then active voting rights) and socially (by instituting monogamy and discouraging the veil); adoption of the Latin in place of the Arabic alphabet, and reformation of the Turkish language; and urging men to adopt western clothing. Each one of these would have to be considered ambitious; together, their impact was staggering. But Atatiirk knew that in order for them to succeed to the point where they set new everyday norms, a radical change of outlook was imperative. Therefore, he and his close collaborators-the new Turkish elite-set personal examples in every area. However, this by itself would hardly have sufficed, for the old habits were deeply ingrained, especially in the countryside where the. bulk of the people lived. Futhermore, some of the reforms were actively opposed by various sectors of the population. Atatiirk therefore set out to alter the mentality of his peopleperhaps his most difficult task. He encouraged national pride, especially in the wake of military victory, and never tired of telling his countrymen that they should be happy to call themselves Turks. For he wanted to instill in them a new sense of purpose within the framework of the new patriotism. The language reform and intensified historical research were both meant to further pride in an attachment to Turkey. This was not as easy as it may sound, for it entailed the abandonment of old loyalties: to Islam, to the Ottoman Empire, and to people of Turkic origins beyond the borders of the new republic. The new Turkish patriotism may have also been intended as an antidote to communism and fascism, which were already beginning to make themselves felt in the country.
Ataturk's Achievement: Some Considerations
xiii
Atatiirk's primary goal was a modernized, secular Turkey which could compete successfully with other states, nations and societies at the highest level of contemporary civilization. But he also wanted to mold a Turk who, while modernized (he would probably have said civilized), would still be proud of his own heritage and deeply attached to his fatherland. Considering Atatiirk's background and temperament, it is easy to understand why he chose this combination of values; but that did not make the task of reform any easier. On the contrary, there is a dialectical contradiction between modernism and patriotism, and this did in the end have an affect on what he tried to accomplish. In any case, fifteen years were hardly enough for such a massive endeavor. Although his immediate successors continued Atatiirk's campaign, they lacked his stature; also they were forced to contend with the manifold problems raised by the Second World War and its aftermath. Even today, the majority of the rural population remains largely unaffected by modernization and closely attached to traditional ways. In the 1960s and 1970s, new ideologies offered tempting alternatives to Kemalism. Mainly but not solely on the left, some of them found eager adherents. The Kemalists were criticized for having left the fundamental social and economic structure largely intact while concentrating on more superficial, symbolic issues. They were also criticized for being insensitive to some of the enduring cultural values of the bulk of the Turkish people. Nonetheless, the very fact that the critics on both sides of the political spectrum had to take Kemalism as their frame of reference, if only to attack it, goes far to prove the vitality of the Kemalist approach. Similarly, the military interventions of 1960, 1971, and 1980 were all carried out in the name of Kemalism against a perceived menace to the state and its ideology. The most recent intervention displays all the signs of a return to the Kemalism conceived by Atatiirk. Finally, the fact that UNESCO declared 1981, the centenary of his birth, as "The Year of Atatiirk" testifies to his unique stature and to the durability of his work. This brings us back to our original question: what was the secret of Atatiirk's success? Perhaps we can approach a satisfactory answer by saying that his charisma, sense of mission and unyielding drive for change, combined with his realism and knack for selecting suitable assistants, helped bring about lasting modernization in many areas of Turkish life. Numerous are Atatiirk's admirers throughout the world, but it is the Turks who most cherish him and his service to Turkey. Like George Washington, Atatiirk has remained "great in war, great in peace, great in the hearts of his fellow countrymen."
Part 1 Kemalist Ideology
1 The Kemalist Regime and Modernization: Some Comparative and Analytical Remarks S.N. Eisenstadt
The Classical Theories of Modernization In the following pages we shall attempt to analyze some aspects of the Kemalist regime and the transformation of Turkish society under its aegis from the point of view of the comparative study of modernization, thus throwing light on the validity of different theories of modernization. A closer look at the Kemalist experience exposes the relative inadequacy of those early theories of modernization which posited a unilinear development or transition from traditional to modern societies, and a movement of the latter toward some common end stage. The studies of development and modernization that became, from the Second World War, a major focus of research in sociology, political science, economics and anthropology heralded a revived interest in comparative macro-sociological studies, in the dynamics of various civilizations, in the relations and contrasts between modern and premodern western and non-western civilizations, and in the historical process, which had been among the major foci of classical sociological theories. These studies also served as the background for most aid and d.evelopmenr programs undertaken by national and international agenCies. The emphasis was on how to "develop" the "under-developed" societies. New analytic approaches and new methodological tools of inquiry were used in post-Keynesian and econometric studies, attitude studies, survey research, demographic and ecological research, and in sociological and political analysis. This work linked up with some of the major theoretical developments in those fields, especially the 3
S. N. Eisenstadt
"systemic" and structural-functional approaches to social and political life. This combination of developments in sociological theory with research into the "Third World" reopened the major classical problems of sociological theory. These included the characteristics and internal dynamics of various types of societies, their processes of change and conditions of stability, the process of transition from one type of society to another, and the extent to which such transition evi!.1.c.~s a discernible universal evolutionary tendency from the simple to the complex. The analysis of historical process thus came back to the forefront of sociological concern and theory. The research that developed out of these concerns and dominated comparative studies in the social sciences in the 1950s and 1960s attempted first of all to identify the differences between traditional and modern societies. These were defined in many ways by using socio-demographic indices such as urbanization, occupational structure, the spread of the communications media and the like. They were also defined in terms of structural differences-traditional societies being characterized, to use P~n~L.tcuuinDlogy, by pa~~icularistic and ascripti\,e criteria of role allocation, and modern societies by universaJis_l!C:_.,ln
The Kemalist Regime and Modernization
5
socio-demographic and/or structural indices mentioned above necessitated the almost total destruction of all traditional elements. When scholars working within this paradigm addressed themselves to the problems of transition, they developed two crucial assumptions: the process of modernization tends to follow relatively similar patterns in the economic, political and other institutional spheres; and once the institutional kernels of a modern system are established in any one of these areas they lead to similar, irreversible structural and organizational developments in all social spheres and to sustained growth in the common evolutionary direction. These assumptions were especially important in guiding the initial analysis of "transitional" societies and their variability, but the very attempts to explain this variability gradually undermined the initial model of modernization. This is most apparent in the way the concept of stages was utilized, and in the explanation of the varied ability of traditional societies to effect the transition. Typologically, transitional societies, standing between traditional and modern societies on different indexes of "modernization," constituted a special developmental "stage." However, the concept also acquired a dynamic connotation that stressed the historical transitionality of such societies, and the inherent tendencies which pushed them in the direction of modernity. By virtue of this connotation the systemic qualities and the static, self-perpetuating tendencies of transitional societies were subordinated to their presumed "dynamic" tendencies to develop in the direction of the end-stage of modernity, even though it was sometimes acknowledged that societies may "halt" at some intermediate stage. Accordingly, non modern societies were studied in terms of their relative resistance to internal or external forces of modernization. Even though there was a growing recognition of the possible diversity of traditional societies, it was still assumed that such diversity would virtually disappear at the end-stage of modernity. These general assumptions were also shared by the various theories of the convergence of industrial societies. Both the theories of modernization and those of convergence assumed that it was the organizational dynamics of economic and political institutions, especially those shaped by industrial technology, that provided the dynamic force or structure of any complex society. Both theories assumed that as the world became more and more developed and industrialized, societies would become relatively more similar, because the internal dynamics of modernization or industrialization created certain organizational and institutional problems which tended to obliterate any major differences in institutional patterns. The theories assumed that differences were stronger at the start of change and therefore most evident in the period of transition. The more societies became modernized, developed and industrialized, the
6
S.N. Eisenstadt
more similar they became, leaving only the area of folkloristic usages and customs as a sort of survival of tradition, varying greatly from one soCiety to another.· Thus they portrayed a world growing more and more homogeneous under the driving force of technology and industrialization and, to some degree, of the tendency toward wider political participation.
The Breakdown of the Paradigm By the 1950s and early 1960s, both the momentum of research and developments on the world scene made it more and more clear that the various assumptions analyzed above were unable to explain either the specific changes that had occurred in various modern and modernizing societies or the institutional constellations that developed within them. It became apparent that the various socio-demographic or structural indices of modernization could indicate only the extent to which traditional, self-contained societies or communities had weakened or disintegrated, or to paraphrase the title of Daniel Lerner's bookthe extent to which traditional society is passing. They could not by themselves indicate the extent to which a viable modern or posttraditional society capable of continuous growth might develop, or exactly what kind of society would develop and what its institutional contours would be. Similarly, it became clear that the mere destruction of traditional forms of life did not necessarily assure the development of a viable modern society, and that the disruption of traditional family, community, or even political settings often tends to lead to disorganization, delinquency and chaos rather than to the foundation of a viable modern order. There was also a growing awareness that in many countries modernization had been successfully implemented under the aegis of traditional symbols, and even by traditional elites. In such countries, many tokens of tradition-the Emperor in Japan, the symbols of the realm in Britain, the symbols of provincial life in Holland-were retained or even reinforced. In other cases, as for instance Russia, the modernizing elites tried, even if haltingly, to revive such traditional symbols after early attempts to undermine them. The recognition that the earlier assumptions were inadequate for the analysis of many new nations has given rise to the concepts of "breakdowns" of modernization and "political decay." Researchers have analyzed the conditions under which such breakdowns and ipolitical decay take place. The concept of "traditional" societies has lemerged as a key tool in the study of modernization. ~But these concepts and analyses were still largely bound by some of the premises of the earlier models. The studies did not ask what might happen after such a "breakdown" occurred, or what type of
The Kemalist Regime and Modernization
7
socio-political order could develop after such periods of decay. It seems that they somehow assumed, if only implicitly, that a breakdown would be followed by either a new recuperation towards modernity, or a general regression towards some (Unspecified) chaotic instability. In actual fact, while the elements of chaos and institutional instability were not lacking-whether in Africa or Burma, in Indonesia or Latin America-this very instability often tended to evince a continuous /and systematic pattern of its own. Breakdowns or stagnation did not necessarily lead to the total collapse of the new regimes or to their return to traditional social and political forms. These polities certainly differ in many ways from the "older" modern polities of the West; nor do they necessarily develop in the direction of other models of modernity like Russia or Japan. Yet however strong their similarity to their traditional settings, they are by no means any longer simple replications of those settings. Moreover, however stagnant or unstable the regimes may seem to be they evince some capabilities for reorganization and continuity, developing various internal and external policies aimed at assuring for themselves the conditions of such continuity. The new developments have shown that while the older theories are indeed of great importance in the analysis of common problems stemming from such processes as urbanization and industrializationproblems which do indeed consistently arise in the different stages of development-they are unable to explain the specific institutional modes of coping with these problems, which vary between societies, or the crises that develop within these societies. Thus, for example, it is not possible to explain the relative instability of Turkey's democratic regime, the propensity to military take-overs, or the specific characteristics of the country's military regimes in terms of the degree of urbanization, exposure to mass media, and the like. One must analyze the institutional contours of the Kemalist regime that developed out of the specific historical experience of lTurkey. In particular, one must examine the country's basic cultural 10rientations; the structure of its primary elite and the modes of lconstitutional control; the international system impinging on it and ,its mode of incorporation into that system; the structure of its secondary .elites; and the movement of protest that developed over the years. The Specificity of the Turkish Revolution A good way to analyze these specific aspects of the Turkish historical experience and their repercussions for the modern institutional contours of Turkey is to compare the Kemalist revolution with the great , "classical" revolutions in England, America, France and Russia. The special background characteristics of the Turkish revolution greatly influenced the institutional pattern of the postrevolutionary Kemalist regime, distinguishing it from other modern postrevolu-
I
8
S.N. Eisenstadt
tionary regimes. However, before analyzing these specific patterns, it might be worthwhile to stress the characteristics which the Turkish revolution shared with other modern revolutions. All these revolutions pushed the societies in which they took place toward modernization in both the organizational and the symbolic spheres. The postrevolutionary societies experienced growing structural differentiation and specialization. They became integrated into international organizational frameworks and markets; market economies and modern industrial or semi-industrial institutional frameworks were developed; relatively open, non-traditional systems of stratification and mobility were elaborated, in which criteria of achievementeconomic, occupational and educational-become relatively predom-inant; traditional strata formation was weakened and replaced by more open class formation in the structuring of social hierarchies and centralized political systems. These organizational changes were closely associated with the basic premises of the revolutionary image-freedom and solidarity-and with their basic institutional derivatives-the undermining of traditional legitimation, the restructuring of centerperiphery relations, the growing impingement of the periphery on the center in the name of revolutionary premises, and the far-reaching transformation of the nature and contents of societal centers and of the rules of access to them. Such social transformation, of course, took place in varying degrees in all the modern and modernizing societies. In revolutionary societies it occurred by means of violent upheavals and through specific constellations of processes of change. Social transformation entailed first of all a considerable convergence between (1) restructuring the symbols and legitimation patterns of the center and access to it, and (2) changes in principles of distributive justice, in the legitimation and structure of institutional activities and/or in the delineation of the boundaries and symbols of membership in the collectivity. Furthermore, changes in the political sphere itself crystallized in a specific pattern. Thus, there was a coalescence of changes in the symbols and patterns of legitimation of regimes, in the composition of the ruling class, in the bases of access to the center, in center-periphery relations, and in positions of control over resources. But beyond this outcome, common to all modernization processes, there developed some very important differences, such as that between democratic and autocratic results. The best way to understand the different outcomes of revolutions, and implicitly also of processes of transition to modern social and political systems, is to analyze them within the broader framework of their discontinuity from prerevolutionary societies. What, then, were the most important variables within such discontinuities? They seem to have been: the degreee of change in the symbols of collective identity and of the legitimation of regimes; the amount of violence and violent institutional and
The Kemalist Regime and Modernization
9
symbolic disruption from the past and the extent to which such violence was symbolically upheld; and the degree of discontinuity in the organization and premises of institutional structures. Different postrevolutionary societies showed wide variations in their sometimes paradoxical constellations of discontinuities. The outcome of the Kemalist revolution differed greatly from those of other modern revolutions. Its most salient characteristics in terms of discontinuities and subsequent patterns of institutionalization were a shift in the bases of political legitimation and the symbols of the political community, together with a redefinition of the boundaries of the collectivity. The redefinition of the political community took place in a unique way: the society withdrew from the Islamic framework into that of the newly defined Turkish nation. While this process appears similar to the path followed by the European nation-states, it in fact involved the negation of a universal framework: Islam. This was not the case in Europe. The Turkish revolution completely rejected the religious basis of legitimation and attempted instead to develop a secular national one as the major ideological parameter of the new collectivity, with very little emphasis on the social components of ideologies. This shift was connected with an almost total displacement of the former ruling class-political as well as religious-by the members of the secondary (bureaucratic and intellectual) elites. A parallel development involved the broadening of markets, initially controlled by the new ruling elite, and the opening up of the flow of resources. Attempts were made to crystallize new economic institutions modelled on the capitalist system but imbued with a strong etatist orientation. Unlike the ruling group, the stronger elements of the traditional social and economic spheres were not displaced. In urban and rural settings displacements occurred in two seemingly contradictory directions. First, the old elitist establishment and bureaucracy became stronger, formulating etatist policies and orientations. Second, there was a movement towards a somewhat more autonomous class formation based partly on the links between the bureaucratic elements and the stronger socio-economic ones. The shifts in the principles of legitimation and in the symbols and boundaries of community, together with the change in the ruling class, were connected with the ideological restructuring of centerperiphery relations towards modernity. Concomitantly, political participation was in principle extended to broader strata, although in the early years of the revolutionary regime it was entirely controlled by the ruling group. A Comparison These outcomes can be compared-even if very schematically-with two "extreme" cases-the English revolution on the one hand and
10
S.N. Eisenstadt
the Russian on the other. In some ways the Turkish revolution can be seen as a case between these two extremes. The English revolutionary process from the Great Rebellion to the Glorious Revolution, generated a relatively small degree of discontinuity in the symbols of the political community, although there took place a rather marked shift in the bases of legitimation. This shift was connected during the Great Rebellion with considerable violence, although the later European and Asian revolutions were far more violent. The revolutionary outcomes in England included major shifts in the importance and power of different segments of the ruling class. The new elements-landed and urban middle groups, lower echelons of the aristocracy, and especially the professional, religious and independent political entrepreneurs (closely related to but not identical with the aristocratic and rural and urban middle-class strata)were incorporated into the center without extensive symbolical or physical destruction of the more traditional aristocratic and court groups. At the same time there occurred far-reaching though gradual changes in some of the basic principles of hierarchization of the social structure as well as in the criteria of access to resources and to the power base which controlled the use of these resources. Criteria of economic standing slowly became more important, interweaving more closely with those of social status and political power. This development was connected with the increasing strength and autonomy of urban, agricultural, commercial and semi-industrial middle classes. The growing control these groups exercised over the use of their resources was bound up with the autonomy of private property and civil rights. The ascendancy of the rule oflaw was connected with the broadening of access, especially among various middle groups, to the major markets, as well as with their growing control over the flow of resources among the markets. The stress on private property and civil rights was initially instrumemal in the dissociation of many of the lower (particularly rural) groups from the bases of their resources, and in the creation of an urban proletariat. Such dissociation was only partial or temporary. The institutionalization of civil rights, the rule of law, and the sovereignty of parliament later became starting points for the political organization of these groups and for the crystallization of their own rights of access to the center after prolonged struggle. Thus access to markets and to their control, so closely related to the legal system, was also extended to the proletarian groups that emerged in the wake of the dislocations caused by capitalistic developments in agriculture and later by the Industrial Revolution. Concomitantly, England experienced an intensification of change in the meaning of institutions and in the restructuring of roles. In the economic sphere this meant that the capitalist system or mode of production constituted not only an organizational framework but also a new, self-legitimizing system with new, autonomous roles and
The Kemalist Regime and Modernization
11
symbols. In the political field there took place, as indicated above, shifts in the principles of legitimation, expressed in a seemingly constant restructuring of relations between the socio-economic and political orders towards differentiation, and a growing articulation of autonomous access by socio-economic groups to the center. Contrary to this pattern, the outcome of the Russian Revolution exhibited an extreme degree of discontinuity from the prerevolutionary structure. Under the Bolsheviks, Russia broke totally with the past in restructuring the socio-political order. This took place first in the symbols of the polity and in its legitimation. Concomitantly, the ruling class was almost exterminated and totally displaced by the new, revolutionary party elite, which constituted a unique type of modern ruling class, and by new upper (usually party and bureaucratic) social and economic groups. Even if these groups sometimes came from older, non-proletarian elements, they were organized according to entirely new principles of hierarchization focused on the political dominance of the new ruling elites. Russia also witnessed the almost complete displacement of lower groups, especially the peasants, who lost whatever limited control they once had over their own resources. Changes also occurred in the meaning and structuring (although not necessarily in the organization) of the major institutional spheres. The movement was away from a partly capitalist economy to one regulated by the state, vaguely defined or legitimized in terms of its contribution to the modernization of the collectivist economy, with very strong emphasis on heavy industrialization and control by the new party bureaucracy. The restructuring of the Russian economy was based on the expansion of markets and the flow of resources, while the ruling class made determined efforts to control, through coercion, the access to these markets and the flow of resources. Similarly, while center-periphery relations were theoretically restructured according to the basic tenets of modernity (which emphasize the participation of broader strata in the center and its accountability), actual access to the center was narrowly restricted by coercive measures. Unlike the traditional Russian center, its Bolshevik successor continuously mobilized the periphery, without, however, allowing it to get autonomously organized. Historical Roots of the Structure and Ideology of the Kemalist Revolution How can we explain these variations-and what is their implication for the institutionalization of the Kemalist regime? It might be worthwhile first of all to delineate some of the specific characteristics of the Ottoman Empire in the realm of Islamic civilization, from the point of view of revolutionary tendencies. Islamic civilization or civilizations evince a very complex pattern from the point of view of revolutionary potentialities. This pattern
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has been characterized by the continuous prevalence, within Islam, of cultural orientations which were indeed conducive to the development of revolutionary tendencies, but which often remained latent. The relative weakness of these orientations was strongly connected with the development, in the realm of Islam, of structural characteristics-above all of patrimonial as against imperial regimes-which minimized the structural conditions conducive to the development of strong potential revolutionary tendencies. The root of these rather contradictory tendencies lies in several aspects of the history of Islam, which we shall briefly analyze. Several important cultural orientations crystallized in the Islamic realm: the distinction between the "cosmic" transcendental realm and the mundane one; the stress on overcoming this chasm through total submission to God and through this-worldly (above all, political and military) activity; the strong universalistic element in the definition of the Islamic community; the principled autonomous access to salvation, through submission to God, of all members of the community; the ideal of the ummah (the political-religious community of all believers distinct from any ascriptive, primordial collectivity); and the ideal of the ruler as the upholder of the purity of the ummah and of the life of the community. In the Islamic realm the original vision of the ummah assumed complete convergence between the socio-political and the religious community. Many of the later caliphs (such as the Abbasids and Fatimids) came to power on the crest of religious movements which upheld this ideal, legitimized themselves in such religious-political terms, and sought to retain popular support by stressing the religious aspect of their authority and by courting the religious leaders and religious sentiments of the community. Political issues were the central problem of theology in Islam. At the same time, however, because of the historical patterns of the spread of Islam, there developed, at least during quiet periods of different Islamic regimes, a relatively strong segregation between this-worldly and other-worldly activities, with a generally stronger emphasis on the latter. In close relation to these developments, the historical spread of Islam gave rise to a high degree of symbolic and organizational autonomy of political elites; to a relatively high symbolic but only minimal organizational autonomy of religious elites; and to a growing separation of the two. The religious leadership was largely dependent on the rulers and did not develop into a broad, independent or cohesive organization. Religious groups and functionaries were not organized as a separate entity, nor did they constitute a tightly organized body, except when, as in the Ottoman Empire, they were organized by the state. Thus there developed a strong dissociation between the political and the religious elites as well as between these elites and the local community, because of the strong ideological
The [(emalist Regime and Modernization
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dissociation of the universal Islamic community and the vanous primordial ones. But there was always prevalent in Islam a strong latent religious-ideological orientation towards unification of these spheres. The combination of religious orientations, structures of elites, and relations between elites and local ascriptive communities gave rise, in imperial and patrimonial Islamic systems alike, to some unique types of ruling groups, and to a distinct pattern of accountability of rulers. The most distinctive of the elites were the military-religious rulers who emerged either from tribal and sectarian clements or from the institution of military slavery, which created special channels of mobility, such as the quI system in general and the Mameluke system and Ottoman devjz"rme in particular, through which the ruling group could be recruited from alien elements. The combination of all these factors had several repercussions on the politics of accountability of rulers. On the purely symbolic level, the rulers were supposed to uphold the ideal of the ummah and to be accountable to it; but this ideal was given up quite early in the history of Islam and instead there developed the theological acceptance of any ruler as preferable to anarchy. And yet the older ideal was never fully given up, and it is the combination of the two that explains several crucial aspects of the political dynamics in Islamic countries. In stable Islamic societies there were rather effective routine checks, religious or otherwise, on the authority of rulers. It was the religious leaders, the ulema and the Sufi sheikhs, who were the keepers of the law and, through it, of the boundaries of the community. They were thus not only an indispensable partner in any ruling coalition, but also a very potent factor in possible confrontations with the rulers. It is true that, as Bernard Lewis has shown, a concept of revolution did not emerge in Islam. But at the same time, there developed, as indicated by E. Gellner in his interpretation of Ibn Khaldun, a less direct yet very forceful pattern of accountability of rulers, manifest in the possibility that rulers could be deposed by a combination of sectarian groups in a tribal resurgence against "corrupt" or weak regimes. Given all these historical processes, it was only under very special circumstances that imperial or quasi-imperial regimes developed in Islam. It happened during the early Abbasid period, which was indeed often regarded as an exception, the product of a distinctly revolutionary movement. The Ottoman Empire, despite the prevalence, as has been pointed out by ~erif Mardin, of many patrimonial features, was another approximation to an imperial regime in the realm of Islam. It is this background of the Ottoman regime in the realm of Islamic civilization, along with the revolutionary situation itself, that explains the structure of the Turkish revolutionary elite with all its repercussions for the outcome of the Kemalist revolution. The revolution was
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undertaken by military officers, among whom autonomous political leadership and autonomous religious and intellectual elements had been relatively weak. Nevertheless, these officers emerged from a modern educational setting and evinced strong ideological and intellectual tendencies. The ideology they carried was secular, rationalist, nationalist, anti-religious, and etatist, with relatively weak social orientations or themes. Consequently, they displayed a relatively low level of antagonism towards the upper and middle social classes, as distinct from the former political and religious elites; however these classes were not allowed any autonomous access to the new center, just as they had been barred from the older one. The revolutionary groups had relatively little contact with the lower classes and the movements of rebellion that flourished among them. To understand these characteristics of the Kemalist revolutionary elite, as those of other revolutionary elites, one must look to the historical background, especially to the structure of the prerevolutionary center-its relative rigidity or openness, the degree of cohesion of its ruling elites and their solidary relations with other groups in society. The revolutionary situation and experience itsSlf played roles as well. There are several important aspects to the rigidity or openness of a center, including: its tactical response to new demands; its relative denial of autonomous access by other groups; its homogeneity or heterogeneity; and the relationship among groups and elites in the center, those aspiring to access, and other social actors (secondary elites, social classes, broad ascriptive collectivities). The Ottoman center was a mixture of imperial and patrimonial elements. The imperial element was strongly rooted in the ideology of Islam and in the orientations of some of the groups within the center; the patrimonial element was evident to some degree in the organization of the center, in the composition of the periphery, and in center-periphery relations. The onset of modernization intensified the development within the center of a relative plurality of elements: rulers, different groups of bureaucrats, semi-professional groups, and the military. Some of these elements established relatively solidary relations with upper groups of the rural periphery, and in a sense provided an important link between some of the stronger and internally solidary elements of the periphery with the center. This Ottoman center, like its Russian but unlike its English counterpart, was based on the principled denial of autonomous access by broader groups, giving rise in the postrevolutionary situation to a far-reaching pattern of discontinuity. Not only did rupture and discontinuity occur in the symbols and legitimation of the political regime to an extent unknown in the English case, but these trends were also connected with the displacement of the ruling class. At the same time, however, the Turkish center was relatively pluralistic, and
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this tendency grew stronger as it responded to modernization. Accordingly, in the Kemalist revolution, discontinuity in the symbols of political legitimation and removal of the former ruling group were not connected with drastic changes in the composition of the upper social groups, with far-reaching dislocations of other groups, or with any marked shift in their access to the center. All these developments attested to the more general tendency that the more pluralistic the center and the more~politicaLly open it is to at least certain broader groups, the greater the chances that the tendency toward restructuring the principles of political legitimation as well as the principles of access to the center will not be connected with total restructuring of the basic principles of the major institutional spheres. This was closely related in Turkey to relatively solidary relations among the newer groups within the center, and hence also to a relatively small degree of coerciveness in the institutionalization of the postrevolutionary regime. At the same time, because, as we have seen, these solidary relations were not based on new autonomous political or, above all, religious orientations or activities, and the revolutionary experience itself was not connected with mass movements, there did not develop in Turkey stable institutional complexes with new meanings which could promote or maintain extensive organizational changes in institutional spheres, beyond the general etatist orientations. The combination of these various factors explains some of the additional problems in the long-term institutionalization of the Kemalist regime. The relative weakness of the coercive element in the institutionalization of this regime explains how the relatively peaceful transition from the initial autocratic to the later democratic regime was possible. At the same time, one of the most important results of the combination of the weakness of the autonomous religious elements, the relatively secluded culture of the secular revolutionary elite, and the weakness of social ideology was the relatively weak institutionalization of legitimation in terms which would be acceptable to all groups, and hence the relative instability of the postrevolutionary regimes. This was closely connected with the oscillation between, on the one hand, independent institution-building by more autonomous strata which started to develop during the postrevolutionary period, and, on the other hand, the more etatist, semipatrimonial policy which remained very much in line with some of the older Ottoman patterns. These various aspects of the structure of the center and its relations with other elites and broader strata influenced the center's ability to mobilize the resources needed for coping with the problems attendant on the transition to modernity, its ability to incorporate new claimants (or potential claimants) to participation, and its ability to establish links with the broader strata in order to effect institution-building. In this way, these aspects of the structure of the center and of the major groups also influenced the different outcomes of the revolution.
2 Prelude to Reforms: Mustafa IZemal in Libya Rachel Simon
Ideology and policy are dynamic processes. Influenced by beliefs, tradition and cultural interchange, they must also reflect daily needs and practical capabilities on both the personal and the wider political, economic and social levels. When Mustafa Kemal first began to lead the Turkish nation in its War of Independence, and later as Turkey's first president, he already had a clearly defined picture of how to help his country become a modern state on a par with the most progressive countries in the world. But even though he had a definite plan for putting his notions into practice, he had to act cautiously in light of the many obstacles inherent in traditional Turkish beliefs and habits and in prevailing social, cultural and economic ties. It is hard to trace the development of Atati.irk's ideology, as few contemporary descriptions of his early ideas and attempts to implement them survive. His stay in Libya is one of the rare episodes for which both contemporary and later documentation exists. Mustafa Kemal came to Libya on two occasions. In the autumn of 1908, right after the Young Turk Revolution, the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP) sent him to that province to look into its social, political and security problems; while there he visited both Tripoli and Benghazi. l At the end of 1911, he volunteered in his capacity as an Ottoman officer to fight the invading Italians alongside fellow Ottomans and local Libyans. He served in Cyrenaica, both in Tobruk and at central headquarters near Derna, until the autumn of 1912. Both visits provide glimpses of his thoughts, capabilities and personality.
Ideology As a representative of the Young Turks in 1908, Mustafa Kemal tried to propagate their doctrine among the Libyans and to encourage a cross-section of the population to participate in Young Turk politics. 11
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His first objective was to indoctrinate those who were already politically oriented: As was to be expected, he has found a great deal of ignorance [in Tripoli] as to the policy pursued by the Salonica Committee of Unity and Progress and its objects, and a still greater confusion of ideas as to its principles. His mission has therefore been to a large extent of an educational character. ... 2 In Benghazi too he pursued "the object of expounding the programme and political aims of the Committees at Salonica and Constantinople."3
One of the most important Young Turk principles was the centrality of the constitution; Mustafa Kemal took pains to explain this innovation to traditional society. He called on his Benghazi audience "to ensure the consolidation of liberty and the peaceful development of the new constitution."4 While the Kemalist constitution of the 1920s was to differ from the 1876 constitution revived by the Young Turks of 1908, the principle of basing political activity and the rule of law on a written constitution provides a link between the two periods. On the other hand, the concepts of "nation" and "state" underwent radical changes between the Young Turk and the Kemalist eras. In 1908, the homeland encompassed the whole of the Ottoman Empire. Mustafa Kemal called upon the Libyans to join their co-nationals in seeking the social and cultural regeneration of their common homeland ["Ia pat ria"], newly liberated after 32 years of slavery.s In later years, the "state" came to mean Turkey, divested of non-Turkish Ottoman provinces, and the "nation" referred to the homogeneous Turkish group rather than the pluralistic Ottoman population. Nevertheless, one concept remained: the equality of all citizens, whatever their religion or origin, and their cooperative efforts for the benefits of the common homeland. The focus of loyalty and power also shifted between the two eras. In 1908, the sultan still commanded general allegiance, both in his imperial-political capacity and as caliph of all the Muslims. In Tripoli, "in a number of conferences [Atatiirk] endeavoured to dissipate such unfounded notions as that of the Constitutionalists being fundamentally opposed to the union of the Khilafet (Caliphate) and the Sultanate .... "6 The people in Benghazi made it very clear that they regarded the caliph-sultan as the foremost authority in the empire after God and the Prophet, and that they did not recognize any authority independent of his will. Even Mustafa Kemal still regarded the sultan as the center of power; he sought "to obtain the loyal cooperation of all the various races and creeds in the Ottoman Empire, owing allegiance to the Sultan."7 Though his republican ideas may already have ripened, he did not make them public. Indeed, as late as the early 1920s, he was still treading very carefully on the road to the repUblican regime he desired, in deference to the political
Mustafa Kemal in Libya
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traditionalism of many Turks at the time, and due to considerations of external power politics. He still had to deal with the Ottoman monarch, cautiously divesting him first of his political and then of his spiritual-religious functions. The subject of religion and state also came up during the 1908 visit. Mustafa Kemal had to reassure his audience in Tripoli that the Young Turks were not opposed to sacred law-the shari (a. 8 This acceptance of the preeminent role of Muslim religious law and the conjunction of spiritual and temporal power in the ruler is characteristic of the period. Ataturk was to abandon both concepts later on in favor of government by elected leaders guided by a secular constitution and secular laws. But when reorganizing political life in Libya in 1908, he did not discriminate against religious functionaries. In fact, one of his staunchest supporters in Tripoli was a religious official: [Mustafa Kemal] has been ably seconded by Sheykh Ali Hayat Efendy [chief clerk of the shari'a court in Tripoli], the leader of the Progressists, who has made himself conspicuous by his outspoken denunciation of the evils of absolutism on the same occasion, and the necessity for common action on behalf of Progress on the part of all Ottomans, irrespective of differences of race, religion or language. Such an avowal of Liberalism, unprecedented on the part of an Ulema here, has . . . greatly excited the reactionary Ulema, who talk of unfrocking him or of depriving him of his post. 9
Winning over an influential local religious figure was an important achievement for the CUP, even though it was suspected "that personal hatred or pique has largely entered into the formation of the parties." Mustafa Kemal's readiness to accept such an alliance may have been motivated by an awareness of the political and social power of these functionaries which made their support or at least their goodwill essential. In any case, as long as they did not mix religion with politics, Mustafa Kemal would not boycott them. In the Turkish Republic there is a clear division between state and religion, but religion as such is free. Religious functionaries are simply confined to purely religious activities and barred from intervening in politics or proselytizing. Mustafa Kemal's 1908 visit to Libya also raises the question of army intervention in politics, common practice in the era of the Young Turks, many of whose leaders were officers on active duty. Himself an Ottoman officer (erkan-i harp Kolajjasz), the Young Turk emissary did indeed intervene in local political matters and party politics. But the stands he took were of a very general, non-partisan nature, aimed at unifying the nation and restoring the state to its former prominence. The political activities of the Young Turk officers may have convinced Mustafa Kemal that the army should stay out of politics; however, Kemalist ideology did consider it to be the guardian of the state, the
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defender of Turkey not only from external enemies but also from internal threats against the constitution. During both his visits to Libya, Mustafa Kemal maintained cordial but self-confident relations with foreign diplomats. He acted as he thought his country should: from a position of equality, ready to learn, but unashamed of himself. He regarded the understanding and goodwill of foreign states as important, but not crucial.
Political Activity One of the main purposes of Mustafa Kemal's 1908 visit was to organize Young Turk political activity. He concentrated on two goals: to make the CUP the principal political party in the province, and to broaden popular participation in its activities: Since Kemal Bey's arrival [in Tripoli] the two parties of Muttehidyn [sic] and Watania have coalesced and now form one designated EI Ittehad EI Watany or Patriotic Union. Neither the Progressists or Patriotic Unionists probably come up to the standard required of them by the Liberal Modernism of Salonica, but consideration will doubtless be taken of the facts that political parties of any kind are complete novelties in Tripoli, that politically speaking this country stands on a different footing towards the Empire in comparison with the European and Asiatic dominions of the Sultan and consequently Ottoman national feeling requires development 10cally.1O
In addition to winning over an influential religious notable, Mustafa Kemal managed to convince other Tripolitanians to become involved, as is evident in later accounts and in the fact that the Tripolitanian representatives to the next Ottoman parliament were CUP members. In Cyrenaica, more isolated and traditionalist than Tripoli, success was limited: [the] efforts to reconcile the Arab Notables and the careless Arab people to the ideas of the Young Turks seem to have failed, although their efforts to that end were not unskillfully directed. One of the foremost Arabs at Benghazi afterwards informed me that the Arab Notables and leaders in general looked askance upon the proceeding of the Young Turks, that they recognised only the Sultan in his quality as Khalif as their legitimate ruler, and that they shunned participation in the proceedings of a Club where their very presence might later on be imputed to them as a crime. /I
Despite this lack of enthusiasm, Mustafa Kemal and his colleagues: at once started reorganising the existing Young Turks' Club, which they criticised as composed exclusively of Turkish Officials and a few officers, and not including representative members of the great Arab Community
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at Benghazi; and they remodelled it into a Committee or Club affiliated to the Committee of Union and Progreee [sic] at Salonica, and working upon similar lines at a similar programme. Two Arab Notables, Emhaishi Pasha and Regeb Ali Yussef, were induced to join this club, and the Muressarif was elected as its President. 12
Mustafa Kemal saw his task as twofold: to correct the political program of the local Young Turks by bringing it into line with CUP doctrine, and to make the local club a genuine Ottoman movement rather than an exclusively Turkish group of government officials and officers. The CUP, and Mustafa Kemal personally, wanted all layers of the population to participate in politics so that their group could represent the entire Ottoman nation. They sought members in the center as well as in the peripheral provinces, from among educated people and illiterates; rich and poor; city dwellers, villagers and nomads. This concept of mass participation, and the need to enlighten and attain the approval of the common people became cornerstones of Kemalist ideology. Political participation, as organized by Mustafa Kemal in Libya, was channeled through clubs and mass meetings. The Hub was the basic unit of activity, where party members were to meet regularly to discuss the events of the day, to elect representatives, to try to influence both the Central Committee and the local population, and to initiate communal enterprises. Mass meetings, in which Mustafa Kemal himself took an active part, were aimed at attracting support for the CUP from non-members. Although Mustafa Kemal's success in establishing modern politics in Libya was limited by the region'S traditionalist character and by fears of reprisals should the government change hands once more, he did succeed in laying out the basic pattern of Kemalist political activity of later years.
Military Policy Army and security affairs occupied much of Mustafa Kemal's time, even during his first visit in 1908. He was instrumental in healing a breach that had opened up between the common soldiers and westernized Young Turk officers. According to his memoirs,13 he managed to pacify the soldiers who had come up through the ranks (alaylt) by assuring them that they were under no special scrutiny because of their social and educational background. He also took part in a ceremony in Tripoli in which army units swore allegiance to the constitution;14 the army's loyalty to the constitution was to be a cornerstone of republican Turkey. Part of Mustafa Kemal's 1908 mission was to bolster the security of the local population. He led the Benghazi garrison in a battle drill outside the town, instructing the troops in modern tactics. ls In the course of the drill, he encircled the home of a rebellious sheikh and
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brought him to heel, as an example to other unruly local strongmen. 16 He also began planning for a militia to protect both urban and rural residents. 17 Four years later, as commander of the eastern front of Cyrenaica, Mustafa Kemal had more opportunity to show his mettle as a military leader. He stressed cleanliness, discipline, order and drill on and off the battlefield,l8 as well as unconventional initiatives in the fighting itself; the importance of outward appearance, and the belief that symbols can influence thought and behavior, became characteristic of Kemalist Turkey. Although most of the local volunteers were divided into tribal units headed by traditional chiefs, their superior commanders were regular Ottoman officers, graduates of the military academy. Mustafa Kemal did not see eye to eye with Enver Bey, supreme commander of Cyrenaica; he judged Enver's military moves to be flamboyant and inefficient. He himself tried to adjust his tactics to the terrain, the enemy's situation, and the condition of his own troops. He divided his force into small units, rotating reconnaissance and guard assignments across the regions under his control. When launching attacks he made full usc of the information acquired, and usually succeeded in besting the Italians. Personality
The contemporary reports by the British and Italian consuls describing Mustafa Kemal's 1908 visit can be regarded as objective primary sources, unbiased by internal Ottoman conflicts and unblurred by later events. J. Alvarez, British Consul in Tripoli, was very impressed. He discerned certain qualities that later became evident to all: He is an eloquent and fluent speaker, as I can testity, having heard him expound the principles and objects pursued by his party with remarkable lucidity, some five days ago, when he was enthusiastically applauded by a large audience representative of every class of the population.l 9
Even at this early stage, his listeners in Tripoli, some of whom probably did not understand Turkish (he used a translator for Arabic), were convinced by his arguments and enjoyed listening to him. Years later, he would see himself as the people's educator, imparting rudimentary knowledge, explaining why times were difficult, and expounding on the need for change. Following a private meeting, the consul commented: He called on me the other day and I had the opportunity of observing that he was very silent and of a reserved disposition. He gave me the impression, which I trust will be confirmed later on, of an energetic character and resolute temper, both of which may eventually be required
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should certain anarchical tendencies, which I have observed locally, continue. 20
The consul was confident that his guest's special qualities destined him for a major role in the future. Notes 1. More details and references can be found in my article "Beginnings of Leadership: Mustafa Kemal's First Visit to Libya, 1908," Belleten, XLIV, 173 (1980), pp. 69-82; Turkish version, ibid pp. 83-96. 2. British Consul J. Alvarez to Sir G.A. Lowther (British Ambassador in Constantinople), Tripoli, 17 October 1908, Public Record Office, London (PRO), Foreign Office series (FO), 195/2271. 3. Vice Consul R.A. Fontana to Sir G.A. Lowther, Benghazi, 21 December 1908, PRO, FO, 195/2271. 4. Fontana, loc cit. 5. Italian Consul Piacentini to the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Tripoli, 18 October 1908, Archives of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Rome (ASD), SP, pac. 5. 6. Alvarez, loc cit. (n. 2). 7. Fontana, loc cit. 8. Alvarez, loc cit. (n. 2). 9. Alvarez, loc cit. (n. 2). 10. Alvarez to Sir G.A. Lowther, Tripoli, 9 October 1908, PRO, FO, 195/ 227l. 11. Fontana, loc cit. 12. Fontana, loc cit. 13. Afetinan, "Atatiirk'ii dinledim: Trablusgarp'ta Hiirriyete Kar~l isyan," Belleten, VIII, 31 (1944), pp. 77-78; Lord Kinross, Ataturk, The Rebirth of a Nation (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson 1964), pp. 32-33. 14. Alvarez to Sir G.A. Lowther, Tripoli, 21 October 1908, PRO, FO, 195/2271. 15. Same sources as in n. 13. 16. Same sources as in n. 13. 17. Amin Mul)ammad Sa'id, Sirat Mustafa Kamal Basha (Cairo, 1922), p. 6; The Jell' (London; in Hebrew), XII, 40 (1908), p. 16. . 18. Turkish State Archives, Presidential Archives, Ankara, Italya Harbl (Trablusgarp), A, no. I-b, D,- no. 2, 22.5.12-15.10.12, vesika no. 3329, 22.5.12-6.8.12: Derne Kumandan giinliik emir dcfteri (Hareket i~i). 19. Alvarez,loc. cit. (n. 2). 20. Alvarez, loco cit. (n. 10).
3 The Origins of IZemalist Ideology Paul Dumont
Was there, strictly speaking, a Kemalist ideology? Numerous authors have asserted that Kemalism did not really represent a system of ideas, but was more ap91iti9Lpracticeaimed at placing the new Turkey into the orbit of reform and progress in a completely pragmatic manner. One of Mustafa Kemal's close associates, Recep Peker, said in a speech delivered in 1935: We are not among those who scribble on paper before getting down to action. We prefer to achieve results first. Superficial people reproach us with working without a plan or a program, but they lose sight of the fact that the best plans and programs are not always written down; the cardinal plan, the source and the starting point of all our programs are the energy and the insight concentrated in the brain and in the soul of our spiritual leaders.'
Much of this is true. When we examine the path followed by the Kemalist regime during the 1920s and 1930s, we are forced to admit tKat Mustafa Kemal and his associates often let themselves be guided by the necessities and circumstances of the moment. Nevertheless, it is difficult to agree with those who maintain that Kemalism never was an ideology. True, the rulers of the Turkish Republic created no great doctrine. However, in spite of this, it is indisputable that the revolution they headed was inspired by a certain number of guiding ideas, gradually codified-though loosely and often awkwardly-by the ideologists of the Republican People's Party, ideas which had at the time already penetrated into numerous countries of the so-called "Third World." When Tekin Alp published his work Le Kemalisme in 1937, he was not dealing with some vague prescriptions for political, economic and social development, but with a network of doctrinal options which had already been the subject of numerous official and semi-official exegeses. Certain admirers of the national revival achieved by Mustafa Kemal proclaimed that the Kemalist revolution constituted a total break with the past. "Nothing of what has happened in Turkey from 1922 to 25
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empires had not survived the conflict, and various republics were created on their ruins. As early as 1918, the first Muslim republic, that of Azerbaijan, was born of the dismemberment of the Transcaucasian Federation, established only a few months before. Other Muslim peoples of the former czarist empire soon endowed themselves with republics too, and the republican idea spread to Syria and North Africa. The push haq been given, and Turkish nationalists fell in step with a movement on the march. We do not know precisely when the project of creating a republic took shape in the mind of Mustafa. Kemal. Nevertheless, we can, judging from the reports from meetings of nationalist leaders during the summer and autumn of 1919,12 assume that the republican idea guided at least some of his actions from the very start of the independence struggle. However, Turkey was not yet ready to turn her back on the sultanate and the caliphate, and Mustafa Kemal and those who shared his views proved patient. At the beginning of 1921, when a new constitution was being devised, they energetically beat about the bush, not yet daring to act according to their convictions. Only in October 1923, more than a year after the caliphate was abolished, did they decide to take the plunge and proclaim the Republic officially. During the first years of the new regime, republicanism (cumhuriyetfilik) was generally cited as the foundation of Kemalist ideology. It comprised the notions of popular sovereignty, freedom and equality before the law. Mustafa Kemal often sprinkled his speeches and public declarations with an emotional defense of the republican system. 13 The stress on republicanism was intended to help accustom the Turkish people to the idea that the change in regime after the War of Independence was non-reversible. It constituted a doctrinal barrier against those who still hoped for a return to the sultanate and the caliphate. Just as in the case of the Young Ottomans, when Mustafa Kemal praised the republican idea he was thinking of the great western democracies, the French Republic in particular. The institutional machinery set up by the Ankara government transformed Turkey into a true democracy in principle. In practice, however, the Kemalist regime fell short of its models. Practical necessity forced Mustafa Kemal to establish a mixed governmental system tinged with ad-hoc absolutism and futurist democratism that were more liberal in some aspects than many western democracies. Did Mustafa Kemal consider this unusual paternalist dictatorship merely a transitory phase on the road to total democracy? The two attempts at a multi-party system, in 1924 and 1930, are generally viewed as indications of the democratic tendencies of the new regime. However, the failure of both experiments tends to prove that the leaders of the young Turkish Republic were ready to tolerate the formation of a pluralist democracy only in the absence of opposition forces.
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29
Nationalism The program of the Republican People's Party, drawn up at the beginning of the 1930s, defined the nation (millet) as follows: "A nation is a social and political formation comprising citizens linked tegether by the community of language, culture and ideal." 14 At a university conference in 1931, party secretary Recep Peker expanded on the notion: We consider as ours all those of our citizens who live among us, who belong politically and socially to the Turkish nation and among whom ideas and feelings such as "Kurdism," "Circassianism" and even "Lazism" and "Pomakism" have been implanted. We deem it our duty to banish, by sincere efforts, those false conceptions, which are the legacy of an absolutist regime and the product of long-standing historical oppression. The scientific truth of today does not allow an independent existence for a nation of several hundred thousand, or even of a million individuals ( ... ). We want to state just as sincerely our opinion regarding our Jewish or Christian compatriots. Our party considers these compatriots as absolutely Turkish insofar as they belong to our community of language and ideal. 15
These explanations show that nationalism (milliyetfiJik) , as understood by the Kemalists, aimed principally at ensuring the cohesion of the Turkish Republic and preventing separatist movements that might eventually threaten the unity of the country. This was by no means a hypothetical danger: the 1925 Kurdish revolt led by ~eyh Said had threatened to turn out badly for the Republic, and some even thought it might lead to an independent Kurdish State under British tutelage in Eastern Anatolia. The rather liberal definition of the concept of the nation offered by the republicans cleverly bypassed religious, racial and ethnic issues. Major components of national consciousness which had caused much antagonism in the past were thus consigned to oblivion, at least in theory. By stressing the linguistic and cultural components of the national phenomenon, Kemalists could hope that a vigorous policy of turkification would suffice to integrate various not yet completely assimilated ethnic groups into the Turkish nation. This definition of the nation would appear to be a radical departure from the views that had prevailed in Turkey in the past. Although by the early nineteenth century the minorities in the sultan's empire had already acquired a very clear consciousness of national specificity, at the time of Abdiilhamid II the term millet still referred essentially to the religious community. In Macedonia, for instance, Greeks and Bulgarians were not always clear as to their nationality. The decisive factor often was whether the village church was dependent on the Greek Patriarchate or on the Exarchate. As lare as the 191Os, certain
30
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theoreticians of the Young Turk movement, the best known of whom was Ziya Gokalp, had included racial and religious criteria in their definition of the nation. 16 It would, however, be an error to think that the nationalism of the Republican People's Party owed nothing to the ideological concepts accumulated during the preceding decades. Upon closer examination we can see that the Kemalist approach was closely tied to conceptions elaborated by the Ottoman intellectuals of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In particular, the heavy stress on the principle of linguistic community was an old leitmotip among champions of Turkish nationalism. In 1913, Ziya Gokalp had devoted many emotional pages to the question in the journal Turk Yurdu) 17 the main organ of the pre-war nationalists. Well-known intellectuals, such as Ahmet Agaoglu, Yusuf Ak~ura, the historian Fuad Koprulu and the poet Mehmed Emin, had further elaborated on the issue in the same journal. 18 Others before them, including the pu.blicist Ali Suavi, the poet ~inasi and the pedagogue and journalist Ismail Gasplrah, had also stressed the importance of language as a factor in national unity. Similarly, the Kemalist concept of the community of culture and ideal had already been substantially developed in the writings ofZiya Gokalp and other authors at the beginning of the century. Even concerning the two main points on which Kemalist nationalism differed from pre-war Turkish doctrine-the religious criterion and the racial factor-the change was not as great as one might expect. The theoreticians of the Young Turk period first assigned an important role to Islam as a factor of national cohesion which might prevent the dismantling of the empire. But having come to the conclusion that the idea of an Islamic community (ummet) ummah in Arabic) was in contradiction to that of a nation (millet), they proceeded to criticize Islamism severely and demote religion to the status of a simple cultural factor in the national identity mixture. 19 The Kemalists, eager to assert their profile as a secular movement, totally eliminated Islam from their definition of the concept of the nation; in practice, however, they continued to give a certain consideration to religion. Following the suggestions of Ziya Gokalp and some other pre-war intellectuals, they tried to elaborate a kind of turkified Islam, which they thought would help consolidate the national idea of Turkey.20 Attitudes toward the racial question showed a similar continuity. The most notable ideologists of the early twentieth century strongly emphasized the racial component, at least some of them favoring panTurkish unity based on consanguinity and the historical family relationship with the various peoples of Central Asia. When the First World War broke out, some Young Turk leaders thought the time had come to put these theories into practice; their attempts, although well received here and there, failed. Remembering this fiasco, and
The Origins of Kemalist Ideology
31
hoping to avoid trouble with Moscow, the Kemalists decided to eliminate the notion of race from their official definitions of nationalism. Nevertheless, the literary and journalistic production of the first decades of the Republic 21 and school textbooks of that period give a very different picture. The yearning for Turan) the hypothetical ancestral Turkish homeland, continued to occupy just as important a place as it had in the writings of Ziya Gokalp and his contemporaries. The famous verse of Gokalp: "The fatherland of the Turks is neither Turkey nor Turkestan; their fatherland is the vast and eternal Turan,"22 was far from banned. It was on the lips of every schoolehild in the new Turkey. To sum up, we may say that Kemalism decided to play the cards of unity of language and cultural cohesion, relying principally on a linguistic and cultural rcconquista to solve the problem of the notyet-assimilated minorities. However, they kept certain questionable trump cards up their sleeves to use in case of need.
Populism Populism is a rather vague notion. From the second half of the nineteenth century, the term was applied to various movements mobilizing the intelligentsia for the service of the economic, cultural and social progress of the masses. The most widely known example was that of the Russian narodniki who organized a memorable "going to the people" crusade that inspired similar movements in several countries abroad, particularly in the Balkans. The term is sometimes also understood as a synonym for democracy, recalling the classic formula of "government by the people and for the people."23 For the Kemalists, the word halkftltk (populism) corresponded to all these notions. It implied an attachment to the idea of democracy and militant intellectual activity aimed at leading the people on the road to progress. But it also had a much more specific meaning: a vision of a Turkish nation constituted not of classes but of solidary, closely interdependent occupational groups. It was a Turkish version of the solidarist ideas outlined by the French radical politician Uon Bourgeois and the sociologist Emile Durkheim. Like republicanism and nationalism, the populism of the Republican People's Party had rather venerable antecedents. At the time of the Sultan Abdiilaziz, when the narodniki movement was developing in the czarist empire, certain Ottoman intellectuals had begun to display an interest in the problems of the masses. Most prominent was Ali Suavi; deeply aware of the economic and political backwardness of Turkey, he advocated ideas that closely resembled the views of many Russian intellectuals. 24 Toward the end of the century, populism (which did not yet bear that label) was already implanted in Turkish literature, represented in particular by rhe poet Mehmed Emin. After the Young Turk
32
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Revolution of 1908, the word halk (people) and its derivatives became among the most frequently used terms in the Turkish vocabulary. In nationalist reviews such as Turk Yurdu entire columns were devoted to action in favor of the masses. A journal expressly dedicated to the cause of populism appeared in Istanbul; it was called Halka dojjru (Toward the People). The available data does not definitively indicate to what degree Turkish populism was indebted for its ideas to the narodniki movement and other foreign currents, but'there is reason to believe that external models did exercise some influence. Significantly, many of the Turkish populists were Tatar or Azeri emigrants from the czarist empire. Particularly noteworthy were Yusuf Ak~ura and Ali Huseyinzade. After the First World War, the earlier view of populism as a mobilization of a benevolent intelligentsia on behalf of the masses gave way among certain ideologists, notably Tekin Alp and Gokalp, to a different approach. In 1918, shortly after the October Revolution, Gokalp came to the conclusion (based on Emile Durkheim's thesis in De la division du travail social) that the class struggle was pointless. It was possible to combat the endless "social Darwinist" class competition by organizing society so that all occupational groups would be solidary with one another. Gokalp labeled this form of social organization, called "solidarist" by Durkheim, as populism. He defined the term as follows: If a society comprises a certain number of strata or classes, this means that it is not egalitarian. The aim of populism is to suppress the class or strata differences and to replace them with a social structure composed of occupational groups solidary with each other, In other words, we can summarize populism by saying: there are no classes, there are occupations! 25 Gokalp's populism was heavily tinted with corporatist views. Along with other writers, in particular Tekin Alp, who published a number of articles on the question,26 Gokalp believed the corporation should be the basic cell of economic, social and political organization. The idea enjoyed real success among the nationalists at the beginning of the War ofIndependence, and in 1920 some of the deputies assembled in Ankara seriously considered that elections to the Assembly should be conducted on the basis of occupational groups.27 Mustafa Kcmal himself seems to have been captivated by the idea; however, when the new constitution which was to replace that of 1876 was being discussed, he opted for a much vaguer form of populism in which the people was the only sovereign, exercising power directly or indirectly.28 Nevertheless, the theory of the solidarity of occupational groups remained one of the basic principles of Kemalist ideology. Thus, the Economic Congress convened in Izmir in 1923 to discuss the reconstruction of the Turkish economy was held under the banner of
The Origins of Kemalist Ideology
33
brotherhood between the various occupational categories. 29 The plan to base all political, economic and social life on corporations had few supporters, but Gokalp's rather vague slogan, "there are no classes, there are only occupations," had been integrated into the official doctrine of the state. Republican leaders, first and foremost Mustafa Kemal, said in speeches and declarations to journalists that Turkish society was not yet sufficiently developed and had no clearly delimited social classes, but that care should be taken to avoid class conflicts and to implant solidarity among the different categories of the population, so that they would feel like members of one great family.30 This populist theme was presented as a response to the Marxist concept of class struggle. In 1918, Gokalp developed his thesis in reaction to the revolutionary events that were upsetting Europe. The Kemalists adopted the solidarist ideas in order to fight communism and the Bolshevik conception of class struggle. Populism was also a justification of the single-party system. Since Turkish society was classless, it was not necessary to have parties defending sectoral interests; the Republican People's Party acted as the spokesman for all groups, representing the entire nation. "No party in the civilized world," wrote Mahmut Esat Bozkurt, one of the theoreticians of Kemalism, in 1938, has ever represented the whole nation as completely and as sincerely as the Republican People's Party. Other parties defend the interests of various social classes and strata. For our part, we do not recognize the existence of these classes and strata. For us, all are united. There are no gentlemen, no masters, no slaves. There is but one whole set and this set is the Turkish nation. 31
Of the six arrows, popUlism was the one most in evidence during the 1930s. Republican authorities engaged in intense propaganda on its behalf, and the country was covered with hundreds of People's Homes, embodying the idea of national solidarity. Populist ideas seemed universally accepted. The young Turkish bourgeoisie was happy to find such an easy answer to possibly embarrassing social questions. Most intellectuals considered populism an adequate solution to the country's problems. And the lower classes appeared to be pleased with being thus placed in the limelight, though they sometimes had to put up with attentions and exhortations that they did not readily understand. However, although populism was the best accepted of all the Kemalist principles, it was also the one that aged most quickly. The utopia of a united nation, welded together to form one great family, was destined to sink under the weight of accelerated modernization and industrialization after the Second World War.
Paul Dumont
34 Revolutionism
The term inkilabftlzk is generally translated as revolutionism, but several authorities have noted that revolution does not adequately express the notion of inkilab. The Ottoman word which comes closest is ihtiliil, which conveys the i~ea of a sudden and violent change in the political and social order. Inkilab implies radical change executed with order and method. Unlike isliihat, "reform," it does not apply to partial improvements in certain limited sectors of social life, but rather to attempts at social metamorphosis. Like the other key words of the Kemalist vocabulary, inkilab was not a new term. It was already in use at the time of the Young Ottomans, when one revolutionary, Mehmed Bey, used it as the title of a periodical he founded in Geneva in which extremely radical opinions were aired. 32 Within a few decades, inkilab had become part of the normal vocabulary of Turkish nationalists, at least of those who had nothing to fear from the censorship of Sultan Abdiilhamid and could express themselves more or less freely. The term was sometimes incorrectly used to refer to revolutionary outbursts in various European countries during the nineteenth century, but it was generally distinguished from the word ihtiliil. Thus, for instance, Yusuf Ak<;:ura wrote in 1905 on the subject of the Russian revolution: Every society comprises different classes. These classes are never in a perfect state of equilibrium and society is in a perpetual state of inkilab. But the change has a slow rhythm, sometimes almost undiscernable . . . . The ihtiliil on the contrary is a sudden and brutal break-down of social equilibirum. The revolution (ihtiliil) is a change (inkilab) compressed within a very short period of time. 3J
At the time of the Young Turk Revolution, there were some hestitations as to whether the event should be labelled an ihtiliil or an inkilab. It all depended on one's view of what was happening and the importance one attached to current developments. We may assume that it was not fortuitous that the republicans used the term inkilab when referring to the process headed by Mustafa Kemal. They meant to stress that the Kemalist revolution was neither a simple convulsion of the social order nor an episode of reformism, but rather a movement aiming at a complete transformation of society by radical measures, to be imposed by force if necessary. For a Kemalist, to be an inkilabct meant to devote oneself to the cause of modernization and to struggle relentlessly to transform Turkey into a rapidly advancing country capable of playing an important role in the chorus of European nations. The revolution meant among other things a transformation in outlook, the adoption of western ways of life, a fight against ignorance and superstition, the import
The Origins of Kemalist Ideology
35
of new techniques, economic development and, in particular, a constant resort to science. This conception of inkilab was not peculiar to the republicans. The men of the Tanzimat and the nationalists of the pre-war period had pursued the same aim: to revolutionize society by scientific means and to apply to Turkey the methods that had proved so effective in the West. In the writings of modernist ideologists of the second half of the nineteenth century and the first years of the twentieth, one often finds programs similar to those of Mustafa Kemal and his supporters: modernization of the educational structure, borrowing of techniques and ways of thinking from the West, emancipation of women, secularization of the state and so forth. Such a program had begun to be executed by the sultans of the Tanzimat, and the process was accelerated immediately after the Young Turk Revolution. The members 'of the Committee of Union and Progress did not limit their activity to publishing manifestos and professions of faith. They introduced numerous reforms, and in the few years during which they were in authority Turkey witnessed remarkable transformations. Taking up where the CUP left off, Mustafa Kemal was to effect even more radical changes. As the rhythm of innovations was so rapid and so noticeable from the outside, observers in Turkey and abroad came to believe that the Kemalist Revolution was by its very nature profoundly different from all past processes of change in Turkish society. This view was upheld by Mustafa Kemal himself: "If you remember the past of some six years ago," he said at the end of the twenties, you will realize that we now have different foundations and different principles governing the state, the common relations between members of the nation, the advance on the way to civilization-in one word everything that concerns our structure, our organization and our national needs. These great changes effected by our nation in the space of only six years represent grandiose movements, more sublime and intense than what is commonly meant by the word revolution. 34
This triumphant language, coming from a man who had just saved his country and was building Turkey into a model of national development for other non-western countries, was absolutely justified. However, Mustafa Kemal neglected to add that his inkilab was in truth an extension of a reformist movement whose first manifestations had appeared as far back as the beginning of the nineteenth century. Secularism The term secularism, usually employed in English to represent the fifth arrow, does not exactly correspond to the word layiklik as used
Paul Dumont
36
by the Kemalists. ~s _&~ti ,,;B~~s noted, .seculari.sm. has a m~ch more general meanlllg than t:lIC1sm: The basIC conflIct In seculansm is not necessarily between religion and the world, as was the case in Christian experience. The conflict is often between the forces of tradition, which tend to promote the domination of religion and sacred law, and the forces of change. 35 Laicism refers more narrowly to a specific process of separating church from state. It is no accident that the Kemalists chose the term layiklik to refer to one of the major pillars of their doctrine. Had they so desired, they could have selected a vaguer term; they ~. s_~~s the "princ~f separation of reli ious and a societi~~ The Ankara government struggle fiercely to free state institutions, juridical structure, the educational system and society in general from the intluence of men of religion. Tht:._~~_olition__ .Q[.L~~ caliphate in March~...was the firs.LQ,f a seIj,Cs- of aI1tlcTeiical-~~which hel~d make Kemalist Turkey into a beacon ~.~ of}I:ti _Miqd.I~n:~K:rbQlm;l~l!!D2Tt~ures wersrece~~y poo.r!yJ~y_ th~-
Like other key principles of Kemalism, layiklik had rather old antecedents. When at the start of Abdulmecit's reign the Ottoman authorities undertook to reform juridical institutions and to elaborate penal and commercial codes influenced by those existing in France, they were already acting in the spirit of laicism. The competence of religious law, the [eriat (sharl(a in Arabic) was restricted in favor of new legal rules whose compatibility with Koranic principles was extremely doubtful. The introduction several years later of a certain number of public schools which escaped the influence of the ulema was another modest but significant step on the way to laicism. It was to be followed by other codes, other public schools at different levels, and numerous other innovations, all of which lead to the laicization of Ottoman institutions. While the bureaucracy of the Porte was thus gradually building a modern and secular Turkey to the distress of traditionalists yearning for the good old days, laicist ideas were gaining ground in society at large. They were spread by certain Masonic lodges and by intellectuals belonging for the most part to the Young Ottoman circles. In 1867, one of the latter, Mustafa FaZlI, an extremely rich Egyptian prince and prominent member of the Masonic lodge ['Union d'Orient, very clearly expressed an idea that was to be gradually implanted among many members of the intelligentsia: Religion ( ... ) rules over the spirit, and promises otherwordly benefits to us. But that which determines and delimits the laws of the nation is not religion. If religion does not remain in the domain of eternal truths, in other words, if it descends into interference with worldly affairs, it hecomes a destroyer of all as well as of its own self.36 .
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At about the same time, Ali Suavi, another Freemason influenced by French ideas, also railed against the intervention of religion in lay affairs, asserting that the Ottoman Empire would become a real modern state only when its rulers proceeded to a complete laicization of its administrative, juridical and educational institutionsY In the last quarter of the nineteenth century, after the accession of Abdiilhamid II, religion regained some of the ground lost during the previous decades. The new sultan was firmly persuaded that Islam was a capital asset in the struggle to preserve the integrity of the empire. But many intellectuals, steeped in clandestine literature often of French origin, continued to express secularist sympathies, as far as it was possible to do so without drawing the fire and lightning of Hamidian censorship. Some, like Bqir Fuad, went so far as to flirt with atheism. 38 The interest of the liberal Ottoman intelligentsia in the religious issue was further piqued by the struggles then being waged over that very problem in various European countries, particularly France. After the Young Turk revolution, the dispute around the religious question flared up once more. The adherents of the various Islamist currents all maintained that religion had an essential role to play in the social and political life of the country.39 Occidentalists and Turkists, while proclaiming their attachment to Islam (which they would have preferred to see modernized and turkified), called for an end to the intervention of religion in lay affairs. The fight for laicization of the Ottoman state was spearheaded by Abdullah Cevdet, in his review ictihad ("Free Opinion"), which sometimes expressed undisguised anticlerical ism. We find in this journal, which strongly influenced Mustafa Kemal, a large number of proposed reforms which were later implemented under the Republic: suppression of the tekkes and zaviyes (convents and monastic cells), closing of the medreses, latinization of the alphabet, emancipation of women and prohibition of the farJaf (traditional feminine dress), replacement of Islamic headgear by Western hats, and turkification of the Koran and of traditional religious texts. The Turkists did not lag behind. True, they talked about the role of Islam in the formation of Turkish nationalist consciousness, and Ziya Gokalp, for one, wrote some moving religious poems. All the same, they pleaded with zeal in favor of a laicist policy. In 1915, in a memorandum submitted to the leaders of the Committee of Union and Progress, Gokalp proposed that religious courts, schools and foundations be secularized and the jurisdiction of the ~eyh-iil-islam be limited to purely religious questions. 40 The following year, the first steps toward implementing this program were taken. The ~eyh-iil-islam was removed from the Council of Ministers and his ministry transformed into a simple department. He later lost jurisdiction over religious courts to the Ministry of Justice.
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39
Etatism In the context of the Kemalist Republic, the word devletfilik, "etatism," has two separate but related meanings. In a general way, it refers to a strategy of state intervention in all social, economic, cultural and educational activities. "Etatism, as applied by us," proclaimed Ataturk, "while giving priority to individual work and effort, consists in the intervention of the state in all spheres, whenever the general interests of the nation are involved, and this with the aim of leading the country with the least delay to prosperity and welfare." In a more limited sense, the term indicates a specific economic policy. Bernard Lewis describes this economic etatism in the following way: "Etatism means the emergence of the state as a pioneer and director of industrial activity in the interests of national development and national defence in a country where private enterprise and capital were too weak to do anything effective."41 In its general sense, etatism implies a paternalist approach in which the state has responsibility for organizing the life of the nation and finding solutions to all its problems. The expression devlet baba (the father-state) was very current at the time of Mustafa Kemal, especially among the lower classes. The Kemalist state, like its Ottoman predecessor, was the supreme authority for all important initiatives and decisions. However, most references to Kemalist etatism concern the economic policy used by the Ankara government to reorganize the Turkish economy after the trauma of the War of Independence and to fight the severe local effects of the worldwide economic depression of the 1930s. The policy eventually became one of the sacred pillars of Kemalist ideology. Turkey'S planning and development policies were heavily influenced by the experiences of the Soviet Union, as Z.Y. Hershlag among others has stressed. 42 But the economic etatism of Mustafa Kemal had clear indigenous roots as well. Turkey had a long history of state intervention in economic affairs. In the mid-nineteenth century, the state was already the main industrial entrepreneur. It ran most of the largest factories, including arms and ammunition works (particularly at the famous Tophane factory, dating from the reign of Sultan Bayezid II), spinning mills, fez factories, textile mills, tanneries and porcelain works. Later in the century, it was the state that encouraged the influx of foreign capital. True, the great enterprises financed by these funds, in public services (gas, tramways, water), mining, railways and harbor installations were privately owned, but they benefitted from facilities granted by the sultan, and enjoyed the government's meddlesome protection. During the reign of Abdulhamid II, the most widely read book on economics was Ahmed Midhat Efendi's Ekonomi Politik, published
40
Paul Dumont
in 1880. While recognlzmg the importance of private initiative (his father was a textile merchant, and he himself was very successful in business), the author clearly supports a policy of state intervention. 43 For a while after the Young Turk Revolution, the supporters of liberal economics were in a dominant position. But interventionist ideas were revived during the 1911 crisis with Italy, as nationalists demanded the creation of a national economy freed from foreign tutelage. 44 Not only intellectuals favored a statist policy. The government formed by the CUP rapidly displayed interventionist tendencies, and took an active role in stimulating the economy from 1912. A host of measures aimed at encouraging the formation of a national entrepreneurial class included a June 1914 Bill to Encourage Industry. This bill closely resembled the law the Kemalists were to draw up thirteen years later, which was to become one of the fundamental instruments of economic policy of the young Republic. 4s With the outbreak of the First World War, the statist tendencies of the Turkish government became even more pronounced. At war with its main financial backers and suppliers of manufactured goods, the country was forced to try various economic experiments. New enterprises started appearing everywhere, and those in authority did their best to stimulate the new trend. They worked to organize a national banking system, took charge of the construction of new railways, and developed military industries. They formed numerous commercial mixed companies, with part of the capital provided by either the CUP or the Public Treasury. Usually based on war profiteering, the companies quickly prospered. 46 The ferment in the business world was accompanied by an outpouring of writings on economic problems. Nationalist ideologists, led by Ziya Gokalp and Tekin Alp,- pleaded more ardently than ever for a "national economy." The Iktisadiyat Mecmuast (Journal of Economy), principal organ of economic studies in Turkey, kept up a constant call for the creation of a national entrepreneurial class and insisted on the importance of state intervention in achieving that goal. Nationalist ideologists did not see etatism as solely a wartime expedient. They foresaw that even when peace was concluded it would remain the only workable solution for Turkey.47 When hostilities did finally cease, they intensified their campaign for an etatist policy. Ziya Gokalp published a series of pro-statist articles; he summarized his position in these words: The new Turkey which has to introduce the latest and most developed techniques of Europe cannot afford to wait for the spontaneous rise of the spirit of enterprise among individuals in order to industrialize ( . . . ). Only the state can achieve the task of introducing large-scale industry in every field. The Turkish state has the power to be an independent national state. Turks are temperamentally etatists. They expect the state to take tbe initiative in everything new and progressive.
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Even social changes are introduced through the state in Turkey and it has been the state which has safeguarded social changes against the forces of reaction ( ... ). The state and provincial or local councils may follow one of the four possible lines with regard to economic policy: (a) the simplest, direct state enterprise to be carried out by its Own employees; (b) the authorization of certain private entrepreneurs to undertake economic enterprises; (c) mixed enterprise, to be carried OUt through the combination of state and private capital; (d) another mixed system ... which is the same as the method of our tax farming already used in our country. . . 48
Although the republican government tended to present its post1930 economic policy as a new departure, Kemalist etatism was in reality a direct extension of practical experiments and theoretical discussions which began during the last decades of the nineteenth century and accelerated during the Young Turk period. Mter some hesitations during the first years of the Republic, when the leadership leaned toward a more liberal economic policy, the pressure of events caused Mustafa Kemal and his associates to rapidly revert to the formulas that had proved their efficacy during the war years. Once the direction was set, the Kemalists promoted state intervention more systematically and on an even larger scale than their predecessors. In the face of a discouraging international climate, they were able to organize a real strategy of development, planning a host of projects and carrying most of them to fruition. There is an unbroken continuity in Turkish modernist doctrine from the ideology of the Tanzimat to the six Kemalist arrows. One can discern numerous changes along the way, but the main lines are clear: Kemalist thought was closely linked to that of the Young Turks, and it owed much to the ideological movements of the second half of the nineteenth century. It has often been written that the Kemalists imported their doctrine and system of values from the West. It is in fact easy enough to recognize the influence of the Enlightenment, Comte's positivism and Durkheim's solidarism. But Mustafa Kemal and his associates rarely borrowed their ideas directly from foreign models. They were guided by convictions that had already inspired several generations of Ottoman Turkish reformers and, duly assimilated, had become part of the national intellectual patrimony. What distinguished the Kemalist era was the manner in which reforms were executed. The step-by-step policy of the past gave way to an unconditional radicalism dictated by the new circumstances. Turkey itself had some difficulty assimilating this rapid pace of change, but the reforms drew the attention of the entire world. There are those who say that the main ingredient that turns a work of art into a masterpiece is style. We can similarly say that it is style that turns change into revolution.
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Paul Dumont
Notes 1. Quoted by Tekin Alp, Le Kemalisme (Paris: F. Alcan, 1937), p. 15. 2. Paul Gentizon, Mustafa Kemal ou l'Orient en marche (Paris: Bossard, 1929), p. vii. 3. Ali KazallCigil, for instance, has clearly emphasized this point in a recent study: "The Ottoman-Turkish State and Kemalism," in A. Kazanctgil and E. Ozbudun eds., Ataturk Founder of a Modern State (London: C. Hurst, 1981) . 4. The influence of the French model in particular hilS often been stressed. On this question, see P. Dumont and J.-L. Bacque-Grammont, eds., La Turquie et la France it l'epoque d'AtatUrk (Paris: ADET, 1981). 5. Cf. the article "DjumhOriyya," in the Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd ed, s.v. 6. Bernard Lewis, "Turkiye Cumhuriyeti'nin Kurulu§unu Haztrhyan Du§iince Aktmlan" (The Ideological Trends that Prepared the Foundations of the Turkish Republic), in AtatUrk Konftranslart 1973-1974, (Ankara: Turk Tarih Kurumu, 1977), p. 17. 7. Hilmi Ziya Ulken, Turkiye'de 9agdaf DUfunce Tarihi (History of Contemporary Thought in Turkey), 2nd ed. (Istanbul: Ulken, 1979), pp. 74 ff. See also ~erif Mardin, The Genesis of Young Ottoman Thought (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1962), pp. 382-383. 8. H.Z. Ulken, op. cit., p. 75. 9. ~. Mardin, op. cit., pp. 296-297. 10. B. Lewis, " ... Dii§iince Aktmlan," op. cit., p. 17. II. Numerous works have been devoted to the intellectual development of Mustafa Kemal. Recent studies include Enver Ziya Karal, "The Principles of Kemalism," in A. Kazanctgil and E. Ozbudull, op. cit.; Giirbiiz Tufek~i, Atatiirk'un DUfunce Yapm (The Structure of Ataturk's Thought) (Ankara: Tes-i§, 1981); Artun Unsal, "La bibliothcque politique franpise d' Ataturk," in P. Dumont and J.-L. Bacque-Grammont, op. cit. 12. See in particular Ulug igdemir, Sivas Kongresi Tutanaklart (Records of the Sivas Congress) (Ankara: Tiirk Tarih Kurumu, 1969); idem., Heyet-i Temsiliye Tutanaklart (Records of the Representative Committee) (Ankara: Turk Tarih Kurumu, 1975). 13. Numerous quotations can be found in G. Tiifek~i, op. cit., pp. 156 ff. 14. Tank Zafcr Tunaya, Turkiyede Siyasi Partiler (Political Parties in Turkey) (Istanbul, 1952), p. 585. 15. Quoted by Tekin Alp, op. cit., pp. 253-254. 16. Many authors have emphasized this point. See, for example, Bernard Lewis, The Emergence of Modern Turkey, 2nd ed. (London: Oxford University Press, 1968), pp. 350 ff. . 17. In particular in Gbkalp's well-known series of articles Turklefmek, Islamlafmak, Muastrlafmak (Turkification, Islamization, Modernization), large extracts of which can be found in Niyazi Berkes, ed., Turkish Nationalism and Western Civilization (New York: Columbia University Press, 1959). 18. See, in this connection, P. Dumont, "La revue Turk Yurdu et les musulmans de I'Empire russe, 1911-1914," Cahiers du Monde russe et soviitique, XV, 3-4 (1974).
The Origins of [(emalist Ideology
43
19. See for instance Z. Gokalp, Turklel1nek, isla mla{mak , Muastrlafmak, op. cit. 20. See P. Dumont, "Hojas for the Revolution: the Religious Strategy of Mustafa Kemal," Journal of the American Institute for the Study of Middle Eastern Cipilization, I, 3-4 (1980-81), pp. 17-32. 21. Particularly significant are the plays given in the "People's Homes" and published in Republican People's Party organs. See P. Dumont, "Theatre et cinema dans la Turquie kemaliste: deux vecteurs de la pensce officiclle," in Turcica, XIII (1981). 22. These arc the two final verses of "Turan," one of the most famous poems of Gokalp, first published in 1911 in the Salonica journal Genf [(alemler (The Young Writers). 23. That was how Tekin Alp defined populism in Le [(emalisme, op. cit., pp. 175 ff. 24. ~. Mardin, op. cit., p. 372; H.Z. Ulken, op. cit., pp. 74 ff. 25. Quoted by Zafer Toprak, "Mqrutiyct'te Solidarist Dii~iince Halk~lhk" (Solidarist Thought at the time of the Young Turks: Populism), in Toplum pe Bilim, I (1977), p. 92. 26. Several of these articles were published in the Istanbul journal Yeni Mecmua in 1917 and 1918. 27. See Z. Toprak, "Halk~lhk ideolojisinin olu§umu" (The Formation of Populist Ideology), and ilhan Tekcli and Selim ilkin, "Kor Ali ihsan iloglu Bey ve Temsili-Mesleki Programl" (Ali ihsan iloglu Bey, the Blind, and the Program of Occupational Representation), in Ataturk Doneminin Ekonomik pe Toplumsal Sorunlart, 1923-1938 (Economic and Social Problems at the Time of Atatiirk, 1923-1938) (Istanbul, 1977). 28. Sec the text of the constitution of 1921, the first draft of which appears in ismail Arar, Atatiirk'un Halkftltk Programz (Atatiirk's Populist Program) (Istanbul, 1963). 29. Much has been written about this congress. See, for instance, William Hale, The Political and Economic Depelopment of Modern Turkey (London: Croom Helm, 1981), pp. 35 ff. 30. Numerous quotations ean be found in G.D. Ti.ifek~i, op. cit., pp. 153 ff. 31. Quoted by Z. Toprak in "Halk~lhk ideolojisinin olu§umu," op. cit., p.28. 32. B. Lewis, The Emergence . . . , op. cit., p. 156; ~. Mardin, op. cit., p.49. 33. Quoted by Fran~ois Gcorgeon in Aux origines du nationalisme turc (Paris: ADPF, 1980), pp. 53-54. 34. Quoted by Tekin Alp, op. cit. 35. Niyazi Berkes, The Development of Secularism m Turkey (Montreal: McGill University Press, 1964), p. 6. 36. Quoted by N. Berkes, op. cit., pp. 208-209. 37. H.Z. Ulken, op. cit., p. 76; but cf. ~. Mardin, op. cit., pp. 360 ff., which stresses the complex and ambiguous character of Suavi's thought on the role of religion in public affairs. 38. On the subject of Bqir Fuad, sec M. Orhan Okay, Be{ir Fuad, ilk Turk Poziti)'ist pe Naturalisti (Bqir Fuad, the First Turkish Positivist and Naturalist) (Istanbul: Hareket, undated).
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Paul Dumont
39. On the Islamists, see Tank Zafer Tunaya, jslamctllk Cereyam (The Islamic Trend) (Istanbul: Baha, 1962). 40. Stanford]. Shaw and Ezel Kural Shaw, History of the Ottoman Empire and Modern Turkey, vol. II (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977), pp. 306-310. 41. B. Lewis, Turkey To-Day, quoted in Z.Y. Hershlag, Turkey. The Challenge of Growth (Leiden: E.]. Brill, 1968), p. 49. 42. Z.Y. Hershlag, op. cit., pp. 63-65. 43. Sina Ak~in, Jon Turklcr vc jttihat vc Terakki (The Young Turks and Union and Progress) (Istanbul: 1980), p. 280. 44. Feroz Ahmad, "Vanguard of a Nascent Bourgeoisie: The Social and Economic Policy of the Young Turks. 1908-1918," in Osman Okyar and Halil inalclk eds., Social and Economic History of Turkey (1070-1920) (Ankara: Meteksan, 1980), p. 336. 45. F. Ahmad, op. cit., p. 337; on the subject of the 1927 Law for the Encouragement of Industry, see Z.Y. Hershlag, op. cit., pp. 52-54. 46. F. Ahmad, op. cit., pp. 341 ff. 47. This thesis was developed by Tekin Alp in "Harbden Sulha intikal iktisadiyatl-Devlet iktisadiyatl" (From War to Peace: the State Economy), in the journal jktisadiyat Mecmuasl, 62, 64 (1917), pp. 1-3. 48. Ziya Gokalp, Turkish Nationalism and Western Civilization, trans. and ed. by Niyazi Berkes (New York: Columbia University Press, 1959), pp. 310-311.
4 Atatiirk's Quest for Modernism Osman Okyar
We must view Atatiirk's quest for modernism in a historical persective, approaching the subject not from an abstract theoretical angle, but from the standpoint of a member of the Ottoman army officer corps at the beginning of the twentieth century. We will begin by inquiring into the practical origins of Atatiirk's political thinking. Then, we shall summarize his overall view of modernization. The westernization movement emerged in the Ottoman Empire at the outset of the nineteenth century, when some major achievements were registered in establishing a new Ottoman army along European lines and in laying down the rudiments of a centralized modern administration. Nevertheless, the empire continued to suffer heavy defeat at the hands of Russia (1876-1877) and the Orthodox communities in the Balkans, which gradually turned into independent or semi-independent states (1912-1913). Reforms in the economy, in education and in the teaching and assimilation of western science and technology had been slow to take hold due to the many difficulties inherent in westernizing a population from the top down. - The West, confident of its material and spiritual superiority, viewed the Ottoman state of the first decade of the twentieth century as the sick man of Europe. Turkish practices, and the government's actions against the revolts and double-dealing of its Christian subjects, were criticized as barbarous and savage. ·Turkey was considered morally and religiously backward, and its traditional ways and costumes, in particular the fez, became objects of derision. A good description of the European approach toward Turkey and the Turks was drawn by the British historian Arnold Toynbee in his book The Western Question in Greece and Turkey. Written mostly in Istanbul in 1921, during the War of Independence between Turkey and Greece, the book is full of penetrating insights into the condescending, scheming and ultimately self-destructive approach of the West towards Turkey; a country considered outside the bounds of western civilization. Mustafa Kemal belonged to the generation of officers and administrators who had become, so to speak, half-westernized in the early 45
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decades of the twentieth century. They had some knowledge of European languages, mostly French, maintained some contacts with westerners, and had been strongly influenced by western idea!> and attracted by western science. But, owing to the dualistic nature of Ottoman education, they also knew Arabic and Persian in addition to having complete mastery over the Ottoman language. They had been taught Ottoman literature and Islamic theology; they appreciated Turkish music, fine arts and folklore. In other words, they were astride two different cultures and civilizations, perhaps more at home in the old Ottoman Islamic world, but definitely impelled towards the modern European world which they were daily discovering. . In one fundall1ent
Atatures Quest for Modernism
47
like independence. Nationalism had progressed so far into the minds of all races and communities in the empire that even a supposedly faithful and privileged group such as the Albanians were contaminated. Its spread to the Arabs, the second largest Islamic group in the empire, was only a matter of time. What would then be left of the traditional multi-national Ottoman concept? However, despite all the signs pointing towards the inevitable breakdown of the empire even before the outbreak of World War I, few people were realistic, hard-thinking and bold enough to accept the consequences and draw the necessary lessons. After pan-Islamic attempts at integration by Sultan Abdiilhamid had proved a failure, some of the leaders of the Union and Progress group, such as Enver Pap and Cemal Pa§a, toyed with another utopian integrationist idea: pan-Turkism. Mustafa Kemal was.one_oLthe very few military leaders who perceiv~cl that.Jh~()l,!ly soJurion was retrenchment into the basic Turkish homeland, abandonment of the imperial concept of rule over different communities, concentration on developing the homogeneous Turkish element in Anatolia, and leaving the rest to take care of themselves. Until the end of World War I, such ideas could not be expressed openly and clearly; they would have represented treason to the Ottoman ideal in the eyes of most of the Turkish majority. Mustafa Kemal found himself at the very center of the crucial events that prepared the way for the breakdown of the empire during the second decade of the century, beginning with the fierce resistance of a handful of Turkish officers to the Italian invasion of Tripolitania in 1911, the catastrophic defeat of the Ottoman army in the Balkan War, and the retrieval of Edirne from the Bulgarians after disputes among the Balkan allies. A conflict within the Union and Progress group, between Mustafa Kemal and Fethi Okyar on the one hand, and the triumvirate of Enver-Cemal-Talat on the other hand, over the role of the military in politics and over Enver's increasing dictatorial tendencies, led to the appointment of Fethi as minister, and Mustafa Kemal as military attache in Sofia. Mustafa Kemal won an appointment to a divisional command post in the Dardanelles during World War I after personally requesting active service, even though he had opposed Turkey'S participation on the German side. His epic defense of the Dardanelles against the combined sea and land assault of the Allies in 1915, and his successes in stopping a Russian offensive around Mu~ and Bitlis on the Eastern Front in 1916, led to an appointment to an army command on the Palestine Front in 1917. He violently disagreed with Enver and Falkenhayn, the German supreme commander on the Southern Front, over defence strategy against the British advance. Arguing that positions north of Jerusalem and Baghdad were hopelessly exposed, he called for retrenchment and a new defence line just south of Anatolia, from the Mediterranean to Aleppo and MosuL In a report sent to the Ministry of War from Adana, just
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after the armistice in October 1918, he called for the formation of a strong government in Istanbul which would include himself. He also opposed allowing the British and French to cross the armistice lines to disband the Turkish armies in northern Syria and Iraq. These experiences must have helped reinforce Atatiirk's mistrust of any solution along Ottoman lines, and his subsequent search for another, nationalistic basis on which to lay the foundation of the new state. The bulk of the Ottoman army was provided by the Turkish element. The Turks had been fighting more or less continuously since the Italian attack on Tripolitania in 1911 to avert the European and Russian threat, protecting large numbers of other Islamic and nonIslamic peoples and communities of whom few participated in the fighting. Why should the Turks shoulder the burden of maintaining a far-flung empire where they were not even in the majority? The peoples on whose behalf they had been fighting for centuries were peacefully carrying on with their daily lives and earning money while the efforts of the Turks were all directed towards fighting. Such ideas must have occurred to Mustafa Kemal during his long years of campaigning on various fronts, especially on that of Palestine. Characteristically, they turned up in the speech he gave at the opening of the Economic Congress he convened in Izmir in March 1923, prior to the signing of the Lausanne Peace Treaty. In this speech Atatiirk pointed out that by assuming sole responsibility for military and administrative affairs during the long centuries of Ottoman rule, the Turks had been unable to give thought and attention to their own economic activities and that this had led to the economic decline of the empire. Atatiirk's economic thoughts clearly paralled his political ideas, which stressed retrenchment towards a limited but homogeneous and nationalistically based state within the frontiers of Anatolia. However, during the months following the armistice of October 1918, when he was in Istanbul exploring possible ways to frustrate Allied plans for dividing up Turkey, Atatiirk did not reveal his developing ideas regarding a political solution. He was too shrewd a politician to show his hand while the overwhelming allegiance of the people was still directed towards the Ottoman state and its symbol, the sultan. Furthermore, he thought it might still be possible to enlist the sultan's cooperation in the creation of a new independent Turkish state. But two grave Allied mistakes, and a clarification of the sultan's attitude, brought him to the decision that he must become open in his efforts to swing Turkish public opinion towards the solution he had been slowly nurturing in Anatolia, where he had been posted by the sultan in May 1919. The first Allied mistake was their decision to support the Greek army occupation of Izmir in May 1919; the second was their dissolution of the Turkish Parliament in Istanbul in March 1920, after it had
Ataturk's Quest for Modernism
49
approved the National Pact accepted by the congresses of Erzurum and Sivas in July and September 1919. These actions constituted clear evidence of the Allied intention to trample Turkish sovereignty and dismember the country. As the sultan's only reaction was one of feeble protests, there was nothing left for nationalist Turks but to rally to AtatOrk's movement in Anatolia. To sum up, by early 1920 AtatOrk had openly declared that his aim and that of the new nationalist movement in Anatolia was the creation of a new Turkish state in those regions where Muslim Ottomans were in the majority. Regions with a Muslim Arab majority, such as Iraq and Syria, were explicitly left outside the boundaries of the National Pact. The exact form and nature of the new Turkish state was not spelled out in the National Pact, but the notion that the resistance movement would be independent of the sultan was gradually revealed by Ataturk following his 1919 appointment by the sultan as Inspector General in Central and Eastern Anatolia. Indeed, as Dankwart Rustow shows, AtatUrk was the only man bold enough to conceive that a movement independent of the sultan (and hence of British pressure on the sultan) could unify the resistance throughout Anatolia. ' Growing independence from the sultan would inevitably lead to a republic completely divorced from the Ottoman Empire, upon which AtatOrk would base the modernization of the country. Years before, he had conceived, dimly at first, that radical modernization could not be carried out within the framework of the theocratic Ottoman state, with its different religions, communities, cultures and languages. Modernization required a homogeneous state united by the bonds of religion, language and culture. The political problem was to convince the Turkish people to give up their attachment to the grand empire conception. The imperial system represented a cultural tradition, a way of life and of looking at the world. Its personalized symbol, the sultan-caliph, had longstanding spiritual and practical religious significance. A break with these traditions and a plunge into a new and foreign world would not be easily digested by the Turkish people. They had to be conditioned first, and this had to be accomplished by presenting them with clearcut and convincing grounds. The mistakes of the western Allies helped AtatOrk change the allegiance of the Turkish people; the rest he accomplished by his own political and military leadership between 1919 and 1923. AtatOrk was still careful to refrain from expressing an antagonistic attitude towards the Ottoman system or the sultan himself. He did, however, violently criticize the sultan's entourage. When the National Assembly convened in Ankara in April 1920, Ataturk even sent a message to Sultan Vahideddin asking him to recognize the Ankara Parliament. If Vahideddin had made this move it might have won
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him a role in the new Turkey; but he refused on the advice of his prime minister, Tevfik Pa~a. The final blow to the sultanate came when, after the defeat of the Greek army and its retreat from Anatolia "'- in August 1922, the British government invited representatives from both the Ankara and the Istanbul governments to a peace conference to be held in Lausanne. In November 1922, judging that the moment had arrived to end the de-facto situation of dual government, Mustafa Kemal asked parliament to abolish the sultanate. The post of caliph was retained, its incumbent to be elected by the National Assembly. ,... Vahideddin remained caliph but, fearing for his life, he fled Istanbul aboard a British destroyer on 16 November. The spectacle of the Turkish sultan taking refuge with the enemies of the nation represented a crucial blow to the sultanate in the eyes of Turkish public opinion. Even so, parliament did not proclaim the Republic formally until a year later. The Lausanne Peace Treaty ceded to Turkey most of the territory within the national boundaries laid down by the National Pact of 1920. The proclamation of the Republic on 29 October 1923 provided the political preconditions for Atatlirk's quest to modernize the country. ~ The great task of the modernization was to change the Turkish people's outlook and behavior from inward-looking, passive and shaped by collective religious and institutional values to active, outwardlooking and more realistic in terms of the economic and materialistic values of the modern world. For centuries Turks had resigned themelves to fate, turned their back on the outside world and material reality. This philosophy had been a source of strength in earlier centuries, but Europe's progress in science turned the tables decisively against the Ottoman Islamic world view, and led to an ever increasing politicalmilitary imbalance between the empire and Europe. The impulse towards change had to come from the top; it had to be imposed upon a largely indifferent and even unwilling population. Throughout the nineteenth century, during the Tanzimat period and the subsequent reign of Abdiilhamid II, westernization proceeded slowly and hesitantly, but without interruption, to take root, first in the Turkish army and then in the central and local administration. The educational system was reformed; new secondary schools were designed to impart the essentials of modern science and, perhaps, the rudiments of a foreign language. Such westernization had been born when it became clear at the start of the nineteenth century that the Ottoman state would soon be brought to the point of extinction if its army was not reorganized. It was the survival of the state, rather than any belief in the virtues and advantages of western civilization, that constituted the prime motive behind this early attempt at westernization. This partly explains its hesitant course; the Islamic communities were very reluctant to
Ataturk's Quest for Modernism
51
accept the changes, as they clung to traditional Ottoman values. Even the few leaders and administrators who did push for modernization remained attached sentimentally to the Ottoman past. The westernization movement therefore preserved traditional institutions, such as the medrese and the Islamic legal system, while adding new westernstyle institutions and methods. Nonetheless, this westernization did not really penetrate into the hearts and minds of the bulk of the population. The slow pace of westernization frustrated the young officers and administrators of the early twentieth century. For them, the ultimate scapegoat for all the delays and backwardness was the absolutist regime of Abdulhamid. Turkey's problems would be solved if only the constitution and political rights suspended by the sultan in 1877 were restored. Rather naively, these modernizers, who joined the secret Committee of Union and Progress, believed that this single act of political reform was the key to progress. Atatiirk, too, !Jelieved in political reform, in giving the people a voice in running the country. But he differed from most of his contemporaries on two.essenti
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to be made between political freedom versus rapid social, cultural and economic change. And when Atatiirk was called upon to make s-ucha choice during his presidency, heput-the'-b-roader aspects of modernization· ahead of political freedom. This happened in 1925, WIlei1a reactionary uprIsing against social and cultural reforms broke out in Eastern Anatolia, and again in 1930, when the short-lived experiment with open political democracy that had begun with the establishment of the Liberal Party under Fethi Okyar revealed the difficulties inherent in achieving smoothly working democratic institutions. And what of the progress of modernization since Atatiirk, and the controversies surrounding his political approach? Clearly there are profound behavioral, cultural and material difficulties in transforming a traditional society with a cultural background far removed from Europe into a modern one with considerable European elements. Pr<:)~J~f cultural assimilation underlie the present Turkish political and ec~ic crisis. When modernization occurs too rapidly and haphazardly, the resultant, society, neither old nor new, begins to search for a definite cultural identity, and this leads to a ~arizat.ion of attitudes. This is what has been happening in Turkey since the departure of the charismatic and fatherly figure of Atatiirk. While he was alive, he took responsibility for all major developments, and did not hesitate to admit mistakes or change course. With his death, the movement towards modernization was left without a guiding figure to control developments that strayed from the path of westernization. But, in spite of confusion among intellectuals and the divisions of the recent past, there is hope that the common sense of the people and their continuing attachment to the path marked out by Atatiirk will overcome the extremist currents, hostile to his ideas. The fact that Atatiirk occasionall had to resort to forcible methods al1~L!:ule _the:... country III an authoritarian way has convinced some western observers and contemporary Turkish political scientists that !Je was an autocrat who supported dic!!ltor~!liP--fQLIurkey. Turkish Marxists are in the forefront of such observers, as this view supports their conviction that Turkey should be ruled from the top as a totalitarian state. They go one step further, using Atatiirk's radical modernizing stand and his promotion of state economic enterprise in the thirties, to reach the conclusion that Atatiirk was a Marxist at heart. If this view is allowed to gain ground in Turkish public opinion, the cause of Marxism in Turkey would surely benefit because of the continued hold of Atatiirk on the deep feelings of the Turkish people. The Marxist argument is an example of the distortion of history, where the wish is father to the thought. Apart from confusing radical modernization with social revolution in the Marxist sense, and economic etatism with a change from liberalism to totalitarian state
Ataturk's Quest for Modernism
53
control, Turkish Marxist writers misunderstand AtatOrk's view of modernization and the role of political reform. They misconstrue tactical political moves as evidence of Atatiirk's long-range goals. If, as I have tried to show, Ataturk aimed at liberati.ng. I!Lfl~.s from the various social, cultural, economic and psychological constraints of the/. Ottoman Islamic system and world yiew..JlOwcan he\:!av_e in.Koded to. subject diem to comprehensive and total control in the political sphere? True, the problems involved in pushing the social body towards a different set of values required temporary restrictions on political freedom. But, as these restrictions always remained within the framework of the liberal 1924 constitution, they were very far from resembling in either spirit or application the contemporary communist and fascist models. For political liberation always remained an integral component of Ataturk's long-term goals. Note 1. Dankwart A. Rustow, "Atatlirk, Personality and Achievement," in AtatUrk and Turke:v of Republican Era (Ankara: Union of Chambers of Commerce, 1981 ).
Part 2 Political Culture and Bureaucracy
5 The Political Culture of Kemalist Turkey Frank Tachau
Political culture, according to Sidney Verba, "consists of the system of empirical beliefs, expressive symbols, and values which defines the situation in which political action takes place . . . . [I]t refers to the system of beliefs about patterns of political interaction and political institutions. It refers not to what is happening in the world of politics, but what people believe about those happenings." Moreover, "political culture forms an important link between the events of politics and the behavior of individuals in reaction to those events; for, although the political behavior of individuals and groups is of course affected by acts of government officials, wars, election campaigns, and the like, it is even more affected by the meanings that are assigned to those events by observers." Finally, "there is a close circle of relationships between culture and structure," and "the study of political culture may . . . lead to a new perspective on the political history of a nation ... "1 We shall try here to apply these concepts to the Turkish case, beginning with the relationship between political culture and political structures. This point is central to an understanding of the political culture of contemporary Turkey. The Turkish political system has undergone a number of institutional changes, particularly since the beginning of the twentieth century, which had a profound impact on political culture. At the beginning of the century, the Ottoman Empire was still in existence, with its heritage of religious legitimacy and dynastic authority, its tradition of the state, its heritage of the cultural and physical frontier symbolized by the military, and its strong notions of public welfare and the preservation of order. To be sure, changes had begun to impinge on this traditional complex, but the institutions of the empire remained largely intact. Then came the Young Turk Revolution, the Balkan Wars, World War I, the Arab Revolt, and finally the Turkish national resistance movement, all culminating in the total collapse of Ottoman political 57
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institutions and their replacement by republican institutions molded in the image of the West. It would be surprising indeed if such drastic changes in structures did not produce changes in political culture. On the other hand, it would be equally surprising if traditional elements of political culture disappeared altogether. While Almond and Verba correctly suggest that the causal relation between culture and structures is probably circular, it may be noted that culture, involving as it does such imponderables as values and beliefs, is generally more resistant to rapid manipulative change. Although structures are also resistant to change, they may collapse rather rapidly in the face of a deep-seated crisis. This seems to be what happened in Turkey in the aftermath of the critical events of the early twentieth century. In contrast to structures, values and attitudes, being subjective, are difficult to determine and measure. On occasion, they too may appear to change rather suddenly, but it is often unclear how deepseated such changes really are, and whether in fact attitudes and values only appear to be changing rapidly.
I The traditional culture of the Turks was dominated by Islam. Among the major Muslim ethnic groups in the Middle East, the Turks are distinguished by their relatively late acceptance of Islam. However, they accepted it in their indigenous territories before migrating into the Middle East, and they seem to have embraced it with considerable enthusiasm. As Bernard Lewis has pointed out, the Turks characteristically occupied the frontiers of Islam and were engaged in defending and extending them for centuries after their first encounter with the faith. 2 Indeed, many of the military successes and consequent expansions of Islam into new realms during the Middle Ages and early modern times were accomplished under the leadership of the Turks. Not surprisingly, Lewis suggests that "Their faith has from then until now retained some of the peculiar quality of frontier Islam, of the militant and uncomplicated religion of the frontiersman" (p. 11): The Islam of the Turkish frontiersmen was thus of a different temper from that of the heartlands of Islam. Unlike their brothers who had gone to Iraq or Egypt as Mamluks, and been brought up in the cosmopolitan atmosphere of the old Islamic capitals, the free Turks were lslamized and educated in the borderlands, and their Islam was from the first impregnated with special characteristics of the frontier. Their teachers were dervishes, wandering ascetics and mystics, usually Turkish, preaching a very different faith from that of the theologians and the seminaries of the cities. Not for them was the subtlety-or the laxness-of Abbasid Baghdad, the easy-going tolerance and diversity of a mixed urban civilization-or the meticulous and exclusive orthodoxy
The Political Culture of Kemalist Turkey of the schools. Theirs was a militant faith, still full of the prist~ and directness of the first Muslims; a religion of warriors, whos~ was a battlecry, whose dogma was a call to arms (p. 12). .
Thus, while the commitment of the Turks to Islam was strongly emotional, it was not linked with any specific Muslim ideology or theology (as, for example, Iranian national identity was linked with Shi'ism). Nor was it the sole thread in the tapestry of Turkish culture and consciousness. If the frontier and Islam are two aspects of traditional Turkish political culture, a third is the concept of authority. This concept reached its epitome under the Ottoman Empire and was personified by the sultan (or padishah, as he was known among the Turks). His power to rule was considered absolute. The system which grew up around him was a textbook version of the concept of patrimonialism, as set forth by Max Weber. It was based on the fundamental principle that "every society must have one ruler with absolute power and with the authority of issuing regulations and laws outside the religious law."3 Moreover, this principle was linked to and bolstered by the Islamic religious tradition, according to which the padishah "was the direct representative or shadow of God in the world . . . He held the highest position in the divine arrangement of the world."4 Thus the various officials of the Ottoman Empire, whether soldiers, civil servants, religious functionaries, judges, or sages, all ultimately derived their legal authority from the padishah, and their power from institutional or personal links with him. The military tradition may also have helped inspire the implicit assumption that unquestioned obedience was owed to such awesome authority. The notion of authority, however, was not based solely upon the person of the padishah. A strong tradition of the state also prevailed among the Turks, surviving in such folk expressions as de vIet baba, the "father-state," with the people cast in the role of children (memleket focuklan). Both the not~<2.n_Q[~_1!!h9_ri!y jI).herem in thcJeadership Qf the sultanaoarne-nQilQ!LQf th~ paternal position of the state are IiliK.5dwitJWhe--turlhe.cpIinciRJe_o(!he pupTic welfare. In the' words of one scholar, the governing principle was "the old oriental maxim that a ruler can have no power without soldiers, no soldiers without money, no money without the well-being of his subjects, and no popular well-being without justice."5 In other words, the state is ~~lig~~_.':~~_ b_c. s.?lig.t_o.~s_
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patronage" based on an exchange of material goods and services for protection and the maintenance of order and prosperity.14 II This elaborate and powerful Ottoman system of government, once the scourge of Europe, began its decline in the sixteenth century, culminating in total collapse and replacement by an entirely new political system early in the twentieth century. Here we need note only those aspects of the decline which help illuminate contemporary Turkish political culture. First of these was the ebbing of the tide of physical expansion and the subsequent shift in the military balance between the empire and Christian Europe. This had the effect of "closing the frontier." For a society and polity geared to operate as a frontier state, this development required a profound shift for which Ottoman institutions were not prepared. IS A second aspect of the decline was the shift in European economic and commercial activity from the Mediterranean basin to the open seas, and the concomitant shift of power and wealth to Northern and Western Europe. Although the effects of this shift occurred only gradually, nevertheless, "from the seventeenth century ... the transference of the routes of world trade to the open ocean deprived Turkey of the greater part of her foreign commerce and left her, together with the countries over which she ruled, in a stagnant backwater through which the life-giving stream of world trade no longer flowed."16 For a society taught to think of itself as a world power, the resultant unfavorable power balance was bound to have deleterious psychocultural consequences. One indirect effect of these international developments was a shift in the balance between center and periphery. The government, saddled with the heavy new expenses of a growing army and no longer in need of the cavalry traditionally supplied by the fiefholding sipahis withdrew the fiefs and offered them instead to those who could regularly collect and relay tax revenues to the central government. A new class of provincial notables, the ayan, emerged. Thus, what had been centrally controlled fiefdoms parceled out as a reward for loyal military service were in effect gradually transformed into semi-autonomous feudal landholdings awarded in exchange for revenues badly needed by a chronically depleted treasury.17 By 1808, these ayan had become so powerful, and the sultanate so weak, that they were able to extract a "deed of agreement" officially ratifying their status and rights. "Thus," summarizes Lewis, "at the dawn of the nineteenth century the sultan was brought to Runnymede, to sign a charter that gave formal recognition to feudal rights and autonomies in the Ottoman Empire."18 Superimposed on this continuing conflict was the growing power and influence of the West. The increasingly obvious superiority of
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European military and technological organization prompted the Ottomans to seek to borrow and adapt appropriate techniques. Furthermore, European economic interests and institutions increasingly sought entry into and dominance over Ottoman internal markets and external trade. It was not long before these twin aspects of foreign encroachment began to affect the conflict between center and periphery as well. For one thing, bureaucrats at the center began to view western principles of government and political organization as potential means for bolstering their power against the challenge from the provinces. But more crucially, the opposition by janissaries and clerics at the center to the threatening western techniques and institutions provoked reformers to champion modernization and, eventually, to abandon the culture's traditional religious orientation and advocate secularization. 19 The result was a twofold bifurcation of Ottoman Turkish society, ideology and culture. The traditional gap between rulers and ruled remained in many ways the most pervasive cleavage; although as the central government weakened and local notables gained strength, the rulers themselves came to be split, as one group continued to look to the central authorities while a second group began to respond to the forces of localism and provincialism and the new socio-economic forces pushing up from below. But now there was a new split, unprecedented in the history of the Ottoman Empire, between traditionalists and those who may roughly be called modernizers or reformers. It too was confined to the ruling groups, primarily to those at the center with spillover effects in the provinces. The issue was how the Ottoman Empire could most effectively stem the tide of decline and assure its survival. The question came to be posed in these terms: How can this state be saved? Modernizers argued that only through the adoption of new techniques such as those successfully developed by the West could the Ottomans hope to hold their own in a threatening international environment. Initially confining themselves to the military and technical spheres, they gradually came to favor a modern administrative system and a political environment appropriate to such a system, including revolutionary limitations on government, and equal rights for all citizens. Their opponents argued that the survival of the empire depended on a return to pristine tradition, particularly in its religious aspects. Although the split between modernizers and traditionalists was initially confined to the center and was unrelated to the older cleavage between center and periphery, the two gradually came to reinforce one another. As the modernizers gained the upper hand at the center, it became ever more clear that they intended to use their ideas and techniques to help the center reassert its traditional authority over the periphery. At this point, the interests of the periphery came to coincide with what was left of the traditionalist group at the
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center-the religious functionaries. It became evident that the religious piety of the masses, who were largely uninvolved in these conflicts, made them potential supporters of the provincial elite in league with the religious establishment. Religion, which once served as a bridge between center and periphery, now served to widen the gap.20 The only recourse for dissident elements at the center was to appeal to the more traditionalist values of those on the periphery. This is precisely what Mustafa Kemal did when he organized the nationalist resistance movement in the hinterland, and it was one of the keys to his early success. His later actions against the religious establishment strongly suggest that the religious appeals of the early days were only tactically motivated. 21 From the 1920s on, those at the center of power were essentially modernizers; those on the periphery were more inclined to traditionalism, especially in the religious sphere. In sum, the political culture of the Turkish Republic inherited a number of not always compatible strands and skeins: a strong tradition of state authority, the most vivid symbol of which was the historic reality of the Ottoman state; a religious orientation, preserved for centuries in the structure of the Ottoman Empire, and later on traditional folklore and popular piety; a tradition of political elitism, represented by what has been called the Ottoman ruling institution; a tradition of borrowing from the West in order to fight external enemies more effectively (defensive modernization); and a thread of national consciousness, to which we will now turn our attention.
III The dominance of the Ottoman Empire by Turks was most visible in the official use of their language; one's use of Turkish was the most obvious mark of membership in the central politiGal and military elites. Yet, perhaps curiously, no clear sense of Turkish national identity appears to have survived: "The first Turkish converts to Islam . . . identified themselves completely with their new faith, and seem to have forgotten their separate Turkish past with astonishing rapidity and completeness ... under the double weight of the imperial and Islamic traditions. In the twofold struggle against Christendom and heresy, the nascent Turkish sense of national identity was overlaid and effaced."22 Thus, although Europeans continued to refer to the Ottoman Empire as Turkey and to Ottomans as Turks, among the Ottomans themselves the terms were largely unknown. The concepts of fatherland and nation, which gained political currency in modern Europe as the absolute monarchies lost control of the territorial sovereign states, were foreign to Islamic and Ottoman political thought. Gradually, however, as European concepts and techniques seeped into the empire, Ottoman writers adapted traditional Islamic terms to convey the new European concepts. Namlk Kemal eloquently declaimed on the concepts of fatherland and patriotism
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in the 1860s and 1870s. 23 The term the writers chose to convey the sense of nation (millet) was a source of considerable confusion, as it had previously been applied to the non-Muslim religious communities. The Turkish elite was ultimately infected by the virus of nationalism. 24 The course of the disease, if such it was, shows that political ideas follow political reality. The first concern of the political elite was to save the Ottoman state from collapse. As new threats to its continued survival appeared, political leaders and writers cast about for a formula that would rally popular support. They first offered the notion of an Ottoman nationality common to all subject-citizens regardless of religion or traditional status, in diametrical opposition to the traditional view that non-Muslims deserved only second-class status. Quite apart from the lack of enthusiasm among non-Muslims groups, it is small wonder that Muslim elements were not very supportive. With the accelerating series .of nationalist uprisings and breakaways in the Balkan territories during the nineteenth century, it became clear in any event that the concept of an Ottoman nation was a chimera. Accordingly, a second notion came to the fore: Islamism. By the early twentieth century, it seemed to some observers that the only loyal Ottoman citizens left were Muslims, primarily Turks and Arabs. Consequently, a proper definition of nationality and citizenship should stress the common Muslim identity, which at any rate had been among the major legitimating forces bolstering Ottoman authority over the centuries. But this attempt to foster a new basis for popular identity faltered in the face of the Arab Revolt against Ottoman authority during World War I. One I)f the complaints of the Arabs was that Ottoman government was a Turkish ethnic monopoly, and that Islamism was a thin veneer designed to conceal this fact. Besides, it was charged, the Young Turk regime had forsaken traditional Islamic principles in favor of infidel, western ways. The bankruptcy of this second notion was now manifest to all. It was then but a small step for the Turkish elite to openly acknowledge the reality of Turkish ethnic dominance, as the concept of Turkish nationalism came to the fore. In the words of a study of nationalism published some years ago, Each stage in the evolution of nationalist thought has tended to be the product of . . . circumstances which bring a community face to face with a crisis in its national existence, and stimulate its intellectual leaders to probe more deeply into the meaning of the forces which underlie the national existence and unity, so that these forces are brought to the level of conscious thought. 25
The Turkish case is as good an illustration as one could ask for. Far from seizing upon Turkish ethnic identity as a source of group solidarity and pride and a prop for the existing state, Ottoman Turkish
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thinkers and political leaders did not focus on this aspect of their culture until political exigencies left them almost no alternative. On the other hand, we should not assume that Turkish ethnic nationalism was an artifact lacking substance or support in prior Ottoman Turkish political or cultural experience. Turkish ethnicity survived at the very least in the language, spoken officially in ruling institutions and used in rural villages throughout Anatolia, an important heartland of the empire. Nineteenth century European observers had noted the linguistic link with Tur~ic groups of inner Asia; when members of these Turkic groups found their way to Istanbul, it required only the proper political circumstances to bring nationalist ideas to the forefront of collective consciousness. 26 It was not the first time, nor would it be the last, that a term of derision had become a badge of pride. There is another sense in which the new concept of nation was in fact an extension of traditional ideas emerging from the Ottoman experience. Although the nationalist movement led by Mustafa Kemal AtatOrk is commonly referred to as a revolution, it lacked systematic and widespread violence such as characterized the French Revolution; nor did it have the active support of the masses.27 Yet it cannot be denied that radical changes did occur. Were these changes a matter of appearance only? It would hardly seem so. What changed was the ideological foundation of the system: according to one interpretation, society came to replace state as the "ultimate basis of authority."28 AtatOrk himself drew a sharp distinction between the "personal" rule of the sultan and the "people's state," based on the principle of popular sovereignty. 29 When AtatOrk proclaimed that "the voice of the people is the voice of God,"30 he was articulating a radical ideology indeed: . . . if the voice of the people was that of God, then the analogy attributed to society the singularity and the ultimacy that are the qualities of the divine legislator. Like God, society was one and sufficient unto itself The nation was indivisible, and so were the people. While nationalism, as the recovered collective conscience of the Turks, guaranteed that indivisibility, it also provided the necessary concepts for meaningful action, good and evil, and salvation. Since all authority was social in origin, none but society could provide deliverance for the individual. 3 \
IV In short, contemporary Turkish political culture embodies a number of concepts which emerge from the political experience of the Turkish people. From the tradition of the Ottoman Empire comes the notion that the state is a proper repository of legitimate authority, and that the legitimate wielders of that authority have a responsibility to preserve the public order and promote the general welfare. From that experience
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there also emerges the notion that the social order over which the state presides should be stable and unchanging, and that there is a natural division between the rulers and the ruled. From the Ottoman and pre-Ottoman tradition comes the belief that the Turks are a proud, strong, and capable people: capable of military prowess and conquest, of governing a world state such as the Ottoman Empire at its height. The Islamic aspect of the tradition contributes the idea that the Turks are believers in a religion superior to any other. Contrariwise, the latter years of the empire bequeathed a nagging doubt as to the adequacy of the Islamic-Ottoman-Turkish system in confronting the massive power of modern Europe, and a strong tendency to adapt and borrow European ideas, techniques and institutions. This mixture of traditions and ideas includes cont1icting clements. As one might expect, so long as political stability and relative success prevailed, doubts could be stilled. But when that stability and success faded, ideological clashes and violent confrontations erupted. Political structures in Turkey underwent fundamental change twice during the twentieth century. The first occasion was the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and the rise of the Turkish Republic; the second was the transformation of an authoritarian one-party pattern into a competitive multi-party pattern after World War II. The first change involved formal, far-reaching constitutional changes; the second was accomplished without formal amendments in the constitutional order. Notwithstanding three instances of extra-constitutional change since 1946 (in 1960, 1971, and 1980), the basic constitutional or political structures have remained intact, although some of their interrelations have been modified. The fundamental changes in the political sphere were interrelated with some profound socio-economic transformations. The details need not detain us here; they have been thoroughly analyzed in the scholarly literature, and are clearly evident to even the most casual observer of the contemporary Turkish scene. A number of scholars have suggested that Turkish political culture, especially but not exclusively among the political elites, has inherited from the Ottoman Empire a deep distrust of political opposition. This is said to explain the factionalism and intolerance of opposition parties which has characterized much of Turkish politics in recent years, particularly since 1950. 32 But if intolerance of opposition may be associated with a low level of interpersonal trust, as would seem logical, and if a low level of interpersonal trust is antithetical to the maintenance of a democratic political order (as is argued by Almond and Verba), how can we reconcile the low level of political tolerance (or interpersonal trust) with the apparent continuing commitment to democratic politics in contemporary Turkey? This apparent dilemma would seem to be resolved in a number of possible ways: either the
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relative frequency with which democracy has been interrupted by crisis and breakdown suggests that democracy in fact is not a healthy political phenomenon in Turkey; or, low level of interpersonal trust, Almond and Verba to the contrary notwithstanding, is not necessarily incompatible with either democratic values or democratic politics; or, finally, low level of interpersonal trust and intolerance of opposition are not, in fact, characteristic of Turkish political culture. In a rather interesting research project, a young Turkish political scientist has recently turned his attention to this problem. He concludes that there is no evidence to support the argument that Turks are intolerant of political opposition, are lacking in interpersonal trust, or favor elite or one-party rule. Such attitudes are not more strongly evident among Turks than among citizens of other democratic political systems such as India, the United States, Great Britain, Mexico, Italy, and West Germany.33 KalayclOglu explains the apparent signs of intolerance and instability in terms of what he calls "amoral partyism" -the obsession with winning the next election. Such an explanation does not, however, explain the emergence of amoral party-ism itself, nor does it link such a phenomenon with preexisting elements of Turkish political culture. In this paper, we can only suggest some possible solutions to the dilemma. One such solution rests on a recognition that potential internal contradictions can exist in a given political culture. For example, it is a deep-seated and widely recognized principle of American politics that there should be separation of church and state. At the same time, there is a widely held assumption in American society that the United States is a specifically Christian society, and that only atheists, scoundrels, or potentially disloyal people would consider it inappropriate to require public school children to offer a prayer at the beginning of each school day. Similarly, in the Turkish context, a group of respondents subscribed with almost equal strength to two potentially contradictory statements, one characterizing "most people" as basically untrustworthy, the other characterizing people as "basically good most of the time."34 As we noted earlier, Turkish political culture inherited from the Ottoman tradition an unusually high regard for the concept of the state and of state authority. Insofar as opposition parties are perceived as hampering the exercise of state authority, they are bound to be regarded with sllspicion or even stronger sentiments by those in power. And, in fact, the survey cited earlier tends to show considerable hesitation or reservations concerning opposition parties. Although a very high proportion of the respondents recognized the legitimacy and value of opposition parties and agreed that "opposition parties may one day become governing parties," about halfthought opposition parties had been unfair in their criticisms of the government, and 25% to 33% felt that they had divided the country.35
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V Frederick Frey has drawn up a checklist of attributes of Turkish political culture. Although they are intended to apply only to the political culture of the elite, these attributes are loosely characteristic of society at large. According to Frey, Turkish political culture is characterized by great in-group cohesion, elevation of group interests and loyalty over the individual, emphasis on strength and heroism, affinity for comprehensive ideologies, pride, insecurity, and "a deep democratic impulse."36 Other observers have noted additional attributes, some of which we mentioned earlier in our discussion of Ottoman traditions: admiration of courage in battle, benevolence toward others-even to the point of grave self-sacrifice-and unswerving loyalty to one's superiorsY There is some evidence that admiration of physical courage and bravery may have given way to respect for education, knowledge, and technical skilJ.38 The various attributes mentioned above appear to be remarkably consistent with one another, save one. And this brings us back to the dilemma mentioned earlier by KalaYCloglu, i.e., the apparent contradiction between authoritarian values and tendencies in Turkish political culture, and the allegedly "deep commitment" to democracy. Some light on this question has been provided by a study of the political attitudes and behavior of rural migrants to urban areasthe squatters (gecekondu dwellers)-who constitute a very large proportion of the urban population. These people occupy a critical position in society; not only do they provide an important link between rural hinterland and urban center, but they clearly embody the kinds of upwardly mobile economic and social aspirations without which socio-economic development makes little sense. They are not a uniquely Turkish phenomenon, but both in Turkey and in other third world countries they were largely ignored by social scientists. Thus, it has not until recently been possible to test the hypothesis that the squatter settlements or shantytowns surrounding major third world cities, including those in Turkey, were major sources of sociopolitical instability and violence. 39 In fact, we now know that inhabitants of urban squatter settlements in Turkey have been supportive of the prevailing political system, knowledgeable about it and its impact on their lives, and pragmatic in their approach to political action. A study by Kemal Karpat, for example, revealed that "the principal goal pursued by the gecekondu dwellers in local and national politics was to assure the survival of the settlement, to secure its incorporation into the city, and to obtain the benefits that this incorporation entailed."4o As for more general goals or values, Karpat found that "egalitarianism and the belief that the wish of the humblest peasant and the will of the government were somehow congruent-or should be made so-appeared to be
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among the outstanding features of the migrants' political culture." There are also traces of traditional Ottoman political culture among the squatters: "The squatters view the state as an indispensable political organization that cannot be forsaken in any way. Its role is perceived to be similar to that of a father. The idea that man must live in some form of organized political society is the squatters' cardinal political belief. The state is regarded as established for the people's common good and protection, and as a sort of moral being that can not do wrong" (p. 202). On the other hand, the squatters have no illusions about the divinity of the state. "They see the essential justification for the existence of the state in its continuous endeavor to materialize the protective and providing missions regarded to be the very essence of the state in a manner useful to . . . individuals, including the squatters themselves" (p. 203). A remarkable feature of this mixture of traditional and pragmatic attitudes is that it combines elements of authoritarianism (respect for the concept of the state) with an understanding of and commitment to democracy (articulation of demands, knowledge of political parties, belief in the efficacy of voting, etc. ). Although many of the squatters migrated to the cities fairly recently (i.e., within the past ten or twenty years), their political culture is more akin to that of the city than that of the rural countryside from whence they came. Thus, their rate of participation in elections is closer to the lower level of the cities than the higher level of the rural precincts; indeed, one scholar concluded that "gecekondu residents vote as often [i.e., in the same proportion] as the highest income groupS."41 Moreover, squatter precincts in the large cities reflect the autonomous voting pattern characteristic of urban voters rather than the more mobilized patterns characteristic of the less developed rural areas. Individual voters show a greater readiness to switch parties, and squatter precincts reflect these individual decisions, increasingly swinging away from the Justice Party and toward the Republican People's Party between the elections of 1965 and 1977. According to one scholar, this is a reflection of the tendency for "deferential and solidary motives for participation, which . . . play an important role in the more traditional rural areas of the country, ... to largely be replaced by the instrumental motives in the cities."42 Initially, the more instrumental political attitudes of the urban squatters benefitted the conservative Justice Party, probably because, in Karpat's words, the party "had the means to grant economic advantages such as the title to the house and to improve the quality of life in the gecekondu by installing amenities such as water and electricity in exchange for votes."4J In more recent elections, a swing toward the RPP reflected a tendency towards ideological voting along a left/right spectrum and a corresponding class orientation to political participation, largely lacking in earlier elections. 44
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Both the reverence for the state and the commitment to democracy can perhaps be explained by an examination of the political history of the Turkish people. Political culture is, after all, a product of political history. The collapse of the Ottoman Empire spawned the legacy of Turkish sensitivity to western social and cultural derision. On the other hand, the unexpected success of the nationalist resistance movement in the so-called national struggle (Milli Mucadele) against foreign (especially Greek) occupation forces was a major factor in reversing the shame and self-doubt vis-a.-vis Europe. This political and military success evoked renewed pride in the concept of the Turkish state, now bolstered by nationalism and social solidarity as legitimating concepts, in place of the tarnished image of Islam (among the elite). The free election of 1950 marked a further significant development in Turkish political history and culture. Often referred to as a ruralizing election, its immediate effect was to mobilize the preponderance of peasants and render their votes an important variable in national elections. A second, and related, effect was to make Turkish politics truly competitive. One of the ways the parties responded was to compete for available votes in every possible way, including the extension of public facilities (electricity, water, roads) and the maintenance and increase of subsidies for agricultural products. The lesson was not lost on the supposedly unsophisticated voters. Democracy not only came to be valued, but was in fact downright profitable for many. Small wonder that they found no difficulty reconciling their traditional respect for state authority with a new-found fondness for democracy! The initiation of competitive politics in 1950 was followed by a period of unprecedented economic growth and general prosperity, so that non-rural voters found it difficult to discredit the new regime. When the majoritarian party of Menderes moved in a distinctly authoritarian direction in the 1959-1960 period, a military coup was necessary to prevent consolidation of this tendency. Despite the military interregnum, however, the connection between votes and benefits was not easily broken. Undoubtedly, this is at least one reason for the continuing commitment of Turks to democratic values.
VI Unfortunately, the last ten to fifteen years have introduced yet another element into Turkish political history and culture. I refer to the rising tide of political violence which began in the late 1960s and reached its climax in 1980, culminating in the military coup of 12 September. Although political militance and violence are not unknown in Turkish history, the scope and intensity of such activity in the pre-coup period was unprecedented. We are faced here with a paradox: the coexistence of the concept of legitimate state authority and widespread anti-state activity of the most extreme sort. Perhaps the contradiction was itself
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a source of extreme frustration and tension, paving the way for the military coup as a reassertion of the legitimacy of strong state authority. The question of how an essentially orderly and authority-respecting society could absorb the level of violence of 1979 and 1980 (with a reported average of over 20 deaths per day toward the end of this period) without collapsing in civil war and anarchy remains to be considered. In a recent, characteristically insightful article, ~erif Mardin argued that the outburst of violence was a product of social change, of the ruralization and "de-elitization" of politics and society. This process, according to Mardin, began with the 1950 electoral victory of the Democrat Party: An outstanding item in the informal agenda of the Democrat Party was to erase all traces of what its members considered the tyranny of the [political and social] Center and its uppity officials. From this followed a governmental policy that consciously undermined anything that resembled the RPP elitist bureaucratic style. This meant as much the disdainful cultural attitude of the RPP elite-they wore neck ties, they appreciated Mozart, they introduced Homer and Montaigne into the lycees-as its elitist structural underpinnings. 45
This populism of the Democrats was welcomed by villagers and small townsmen, continues Mardin, because "an alien culture-a culture that they had seen as the replacement of their own indigenous Islamic culture-was no longer being forced down their throats." Two consequences ensued: ... the erosion of the Kemalist world-view, at least the erosion of its quite explicit admiration for nineteenth-century bourgeois European culture. Two important mediating structures between village and smalltown culture and the central institution of the Republic were lost. On the one hand, village problems, now not even resolved at the village level, were let loose in a much wider social field. On the other, the Kemalist ideology which would have reshaped world-views for candidates to elite status was also eroded. 46
Along with this erosion, demographic and economic expansion combined to overwhelm the educational system so that it was incapable of performing its earlier function of urbanizing provincial aspirants and socializing them for recruitment into the elite. Hundreds of thousands of aspirants each year are unable to find openings in the universities: among those who gain admission are "many persons from the countryside who are potentially alienated in a fast moving society. But here they find nothing to counter the impersonality, the boredom and the surrender to ambient influences that characterizes the educational system all the way to the university."47 Moreover, the rise to
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prominence and wealth of upwardly mobile businessmen and entrepreneurs created tensions of yet another kind: The contrast between the ideals of traditional Turkish society-courage, equity, mutual help-and the new rules of the game-cunning, miserliness, skewed income distribution-have made the young contemptuous of bourgeois society just as German adolescents were contemptuous of Burgerlichkeit in the days preceding Hitler's ascent to power. 48
Mardin finds the key cultural element in this picture of social change and cultural dislocation to be "the internalization of the role of the epic hero": In a culture where waging war has continued to have a deep positive meaning this role is magnified. How these processes work to affect some individuals more than others, and what the precise mechanism of switching into violence consists of, has to be studied separately and the relevant empirical evidence uncovered. But, for the moment, I think that the link between identifying with a hero who is, in the overwhelming majority of the cases, a tough aggressive warrior and the use of violence is clear. What survives as material for identity formation among the Turkish cultural flotsam is disembodied hero culture. Transmuted into xenophobia or super-nationalism, the old core authoritarianism now functions as an identity-anchoring mechanism for the young person who is particularly affected by the strains of change. At this juncture both Marxism and National Socialism appear, the latter with its more recently gained wisdom concerning the usefulness of Islamic themes. Both movements are ready to use the authoritarian component of the traditional culture while providing the outlines of a new and satisfying identity. Consequently, even Marxists are beginning to understand that, since they are dealing with an identity problem, Islam is an important ingredient in catching souls. 49
In the wake of revolution in Iran and assassination in Egypt, it seems evident that the syndrome described here is not limited to Turkey. Once again, perhaps the tradition of state authority has provided a basis for the Turks to pull back from the abyss which so often seems to engulf their Middle Eastern neighbors. It remains to be seen whether the new regime will prove better able than its immediate predecessors to maintain a viable balance between state authority, democratic principles, social tension, conflict, and change. Notes 1. Verba, pp. 513-516. 2. ~ewis, 1968, p. 11. 3. InalClk, p. 43. 4. Berkes, p. 13.
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5. inalClk, p. 43. 6. Akarll and Ben-Dor, p. 138. 7. Berkes, p. 11. 8. The concept was first elaborated by Edward Shils, as follows: "Society has a center. There is a central zone in the structure of society . . . The central zone is not, as such, a spatially located phenomenon. It almost always has a more or less definite location within the bounded territory in which the society lives. Its centrality has, however, nothing to do with geometry and little with geography. The center, or the central zone, is a phenomenon of the realm of values and beliefs. It is the center of the order of symbols, of values and beliefs, which govern the society." See "Center and Periphery" in The Logic of Personal Knowledge: Essays Presented to Karl Polanyi on His Seventieth Birthday, 11 March 1961, p. 117. The concept has been applied to the Ottoman Empire by ~erif Mardin in his "Center-Periphery Relations: A Key to Turkish Politics?" in Daedalus (Winter 1973), pp. 169-190; reprinted with additions in Akarh and Ben-Dor, pp. 7-32. 9. Akarh and Ben-Dor, p. 139. 10. Ozbudun, p. 27. 11. Loc. cit.; Gibb and Bowen, pp. 46-52. 12. inalClk, p. 44. 13. Ozbudun, p. 28. 14. Sunar, pp. 5-6. 15. Lewis, 1968, pp. 24-27. 16. Ibid., p. 28. 17. inalClk; Lewis, pp. 447-450. 18. Lewis, 1968, p. 448; but cf. Heper, 1980, p. 89, who argues that the local notables were able to flourish only because of the weakness of the central government; in law and in theory the center remained dominant. Nonetheless, the conflict between center and periphery was profoundly affected by these developments. 19. Ozbudun, p. 32. 20. Mardin, 1975, pp. 14-15, 19. 21. Idem, 1971. 22. Lewis, 1968, pp. 331-332. 23. Idem, 1966, pp. 78-79. 24. Tachau. 25. Royal Institute, pp. 50-51. 26. Tachau, Ch. 2; Lewis, 1968, pp. 343-352. 27. Mardin, 1971, pp. 198-199. 28. Sunar, p. 54. 29. Heper, 1981. 30. Quoted in Lewis, 1968, p. 466. 31. Sunar, p. 61. 32. Mardin, 1966; Dodd, 1969, p. 317; Frey, 1975, pp. 65ff. 33. KalaYCloglu. 34. Ibid. 35. Ibid., p. 30. 36. Frey, 1975, pp. 64-72. 37. See, e.g., McClelland, p. 161; Dodd, 1979, p. 70. 38. Hyman et al., but cf. Frey, 1964, p. 229. 39. Ozbudull, pp. 183-184.
The Political Culture of Kemalist Turkey 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49.
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Karpat, p. 200. Ozbudun, p. 200. Ibid., p. 210. Karpat, p. 220. Ozbudun. Mardin, 1978, p. 246. Ibid., pp. 246-247. Ibid., p. 251. Ibid., pp. 251-252. Ibid., p. 252.
References Almond, Gabriel and Sidney Verba (1963), The Civic Culture (Princeton: Princeton University Press). _ _ _ (1980), The Civic Culture Revisited (Boston: Little, Brown). Akarli, Engin D. and Gabriel Ben-Dor, eds. (1975), Political Participation in Turkey: Historical Background and Present Problems (Istanbul: Bogazis:i University Publications). Berkes, Niyazi (1964), The Development of Secularism in Turkey (Montreal: McGill University Press). Dodd, Clement H. (1969), Politics and Government in Turkey (Berkeley: University of California Press). _ _ _ (1979), Democracy and Development in Turkey (Hull: Eothen Press). Frey, Frederick W. (1964), "Education: Turkey," in Robert E. Ward and Dankwart A. Rustow, eds., Political Modernization in Japan and Turkey (Princeton: Princeton University Press). _ _ _ (1975), "Patterns of Elite Politics in Turkey," in George Lenczowski, ed., Political Elites in the Middle East (Washington, D.C.: American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research). Gibb, H.A.R. and Harold Bowen (1950), Islamic Society and the West, Part I (London: Oxford University Press). Heper, Metin (1980), "Recent Instability in Turkish Politics: End of a Monocentrist Policv," International Political Science Review, I, 1. _ _ _ (1981), "Ataturk and the State," paper presented at the fifteenth annual meeting of the Middle East Studies Association (Seattle, Washington). Hyman, Herbert, Frederick Frey and Arif Payaslioglu (1958), "The Values . of Turkish College Youth," Public Opinion Quarterly, XXII. InalClk, Halil (1964), "The Nature of Traditional Society: Turkey," in Robert E. Ward and D.A. Rustow, eds., Political Modernization in Japan and Turkey. Kalaycloglu, Ersin (1981), "Elite Political Culture and Regime Stability: The Case of Turkey," paper presented at the conference on "The Centennial of Mosca's Theory of the Ruling Class" (Northern Illinois University, DeKalb). Karpat, Kemal H. (1976), The Gecekondu: Rural Migration and Urbanization (London: Cambridge University Press). Lewis, Bernard (1968), The Emngence of Modern Turkey, revised edition (London: Oxford University Press). _ _ _ (1966), The Middle East and the West (New York: Harper and Row).
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Mardin, ~erif (1966), "Opposition and Control in Turkey," Government and Opposition, I, 3. ____ (1971), "Ideology and Religion in the Turkish Revolution," International Journal of Middle East Studies, II, 3. ____ (1975), "Center-Periphery Relations: A Key to Turkish Politics?" in Akarll, op_ cit. ____ (1978), "Youth and Violence in Turkey," Archives Europeennes de Sociologie, XIX, 2. McClelland, David C. (1963), "National Character and Economic Growth in Turkey and Iran," in Lucian W. Pye, ed., Communications and Political DeJlelopment (Princeton: Princeton University Press). Ozbudun, Ergun (1976), Social Change and Political Participation in Turkey (Princeton: Princeton University Press). Rustow, Dankwart A. (1965), "Turkey: The Modernity of Tradition," in L.W. Pye and S. Verba, eds., Political Culture and Political Development (Princeton: Princeton University Press). Royal Institute of International Affairs (1939), Nationalism: A Report by a Study Group of Members (London: Oxford University Press). Shils, Edward (1961), "Center and Periphery," in Essays Presented to Karl Polanyi on His SeJlentieth Birthday (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul). Sunar, Ilkay (1974), State and Society in the Politics of Turkey's DeJle!opment (Ankara: Ankara University Faculty of Political Science). Tachau, Frank (1958), The Ideas of Turkish Nationalism, unpublished Ph.D. dissertation (University of Chicago). Verba, Sidney (1965), "Conclusion: Comparative Political Culture," in L.W. Pye and Sidney Verba, eds., Political Culture and Political DeJlelopment, op. cit.
6 The Impact of Ataturk on Turkey's Political Culture since World War II Udo Steinbach
On 12 September 1980 the army seized power in Turkey to save the country from a severe political, economic and social crisis. Turkey's politicians had shown themselves incapable of the necessary action. Both Declaration No.1 of the National Security Council (NSC), and the statement made by General Staff Chief and NSC Chairman Kenan Evren continually refer to AtatOrk. Thus Evren declared that the NSC, in pursuing its objectives of bringing peace to the country and furthering its development, would avoid taking sides politically and stick to the path marked out by AtatOrk's principles. As far as the education system was concerned, it would propagate Atatiirk's principles into the furthest corners of the country.l In accordance with army tradition going back to the very beginnings of the Turkish Republic, the generals felt a sense of responsibility toward Kemalism, which they believed should once again provide the framework for Turkey'S political and socio-political development. They hoped to bring more stability and continuity to the country and its political system than it had enjoyed in recent years. The military intervention, 2 however, highlights the discrepancy between actual developments and the vision of Kemalism kept alive by the army. It would appear that a process of political, ideological and social differentiation has been taking place in Turkey since the Second World War (and more rapidly since 1961), so that the fundamental elements of Kemalism have lost their formative and creative function.
Post-W ar Transformation The discrepancy between official doctrine and actual developments in Turkey since the Second World War is a consequence of both the 77
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nature of Kemalism itself and the far-reaching transformation which the country has undergone.-' Nature of Kemalism. Ataturk stands in the tradition of the reformist movements of the Ottoman Empire,4 but with a difference: the defeat of the Ottoman Empire by the European great powers and, more importantly, by the nationalist mo\'ements among the non-Turkish peoples of the empire, taught AtatD.rk that only a purely Turkish state could survive as a political entity. Furthermore, the failure of nineteenth- and twentieth-century reformist endeavors to revive the empire, which retained traditional structures, made Ataturk realize that it was necessary to separate modern from traditional elements. This meant separating the state, which he aimed to shape along European lines, from the Islamic religion, the foundation of all Ottoman traditions. Thus, Ataturk's message may be generalized in two basic points: nationalism and secularism. For him, the realization of these aims was a practical, indeed a pragmatic, issue. The reforms he introduced in the 1920s and 1930s, as well as his economic and foreign policies, derived less from any complex thought about the politics, social fabric, economy or traditions of Turkey than from a simple determination to pursue the path of westernization, which he recognized to be the only viable course. Ataturk was not hostile to cultural and religious tradition, but he considered it to be a long-range obstacle to national revival. The six principles of Kemalism, formulated in response to the emerging needs of the modernization process, should be regarded not as the articles of a political manifesto but rather as a rationalization of this determination to modernize. Kemalism was indeed one of the first modernization ideologies of the Third World; however, unlike the modernization ideologies of Europe (e.g., Marxism) or the ideological endeavors of Ataturk's successors in various parts of the Third World (e.g., Latin America), Kemalism did not start from an analysis of the structure of Turkish society. Modernization in Turkey ~as imposed by order; the principles of Kemalism arose largely from the practical requirements of this process. Post-war change. Although the transformations following World War II occurred very unevenly, none of the post-1961 Turkish governments managed to carry out the urgently needed reforms. The country's East remained underdeveloped compared with its West, due to complex historical, economic and social factors. The differential shows up in per capita income, population density, school graduations, number of doctors, infrastructure and availability of consumer goods. The problem is intensified by an extremely uneven distribution of cultivated land. Attempts at land reform-to eliminate the remains of feudalism and redistribute land for the benefit of landless peasants
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79
and farmers with inadequate holdings-have repeatedly failed. Although no exact figures are available, one can assume with some degree of certainty that around 5% of landowners hold more than 40% of cultivated land, while half of all farming families hold less than 2 hectares of land, adding up to only 7% of cultivated land. These small farmers, together with landless peasants, farm workers and seasonal workers on the land, belong to the lowest income groups, at times living barely at the subsistence level. Income differentials have generally widened in recent years. Inflation has outpaced wage, salary and pension increases for unorganized blueand white-collar workers and civil servants. These negative developments, hitting the lower and middle-income groups hardest, have been exacerbated by an unjust tax system. 5 Social tensions have been intensified by an economic crisis which grew steadily more severe after 1975, and led to a total collapse by 1980. 6 Unemployment has become a grave social problem as the creation of new jobs lagged behind the population growth of 2.1 % per annum. Moreover, the introduction of modern farming techniques has reduced agricultural employment. Unemployment rose steadily from 1.5 million (11%) in 1962 to 2.5 million (14%) in 1979, even though the number of Turks employed abroad increased from 20,000 to around 800,000 in that same period. To these figures one must add seasonal unemployment in agriculture and hidden unemployment. Young people have been particularly hard-hit by the social and economic crisis. Work is scarce, and it is difficult to gain admission to job-training institutions. Only one out of ten university applicants is accepted. In any case, it has become more and more difficult for those who do complete training or a course of study to obtain a job worthy of their qualifications. In the absence of favorable prospects for graduates, Turkey's universities on the eve of the military takeover were breeding grounds of discontent and arenas for militant conflict. Kemalism in the Multi-Party System, 1950-1960 ismet in6nii's decision to allow a multi-party democracy to emerge brought far-reaching changes in the political and social balance of power, opening the door to new political forces. Up to the end of the 1940s, the process of modernization, and indeed the leadership of the country, had been in the hands of a bureaucratic elite entrusted by Atatiirk with the task of implementing the principles he had laid down. This elite was organized politically in the Republican People's Party (RPP), which in turn could be confident of the support of the army out of whose ranks many of its leading personalities had come. Ruling from the center, they coopted the most influential elements in the periphery-large landowners and rural notables-in order to win support in even the furthest corners of Anatolia for the new idea of the nation as the foundation of the unity and dignity of the Turkish
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people. Economic and social structures were left largely unaffected, and land reform measures were shelved. The rural population was largely untouched by economic development, social change, cultural reorientation towards the West or attempts at secularization. 7 The decision to open up the political system was the result of a series of political and economic developments that begun under Atatiirk and accelerated in the years after his death. The decision in itself was an indication of the remarkable process of differentiation that had taken place within Turkish society, making the concept of populismthe unity of society as transcending all class and functional differences-seem unrealistic. The triumphant 1950 electoral victory of the Democrat Party led by Adnan Menderes 8 showed just how much things had changed. The prominent position enjoyed by the bureaucracy during the first years of the Turkish Republic was to a significant degree part of the Ottoman heritage. After 1950, a party representing the masses began to force the old government party out of its power positions. The rivalry between political parties brought about a process of debureaucratization as hierarchical authority declined and non-bureaucratic instruments were increasingly used in social interaction. 9 Bureaucratic dominance was reduced in the economic field as well. The Democratic Party (DP), like its successor, the Justice Party, was backed by the private sector, which in turn was able to expand with DP support. The DP discovered the untapped political potential of rural Turkey. Its successes signalled a growing rural participation in politics. This "Anatolization" of politics brought new regional accents into Turkey'S elite, till then recruited from the West of the country as it had been under the Ottoman Empire. Conflicts arose between old and new elite groups, and the country's political culture could hardly remain unaffected. The conflicts between the Kemalist elite and the new political forces came out into the open under Menderes. A new economic course giving more scope to the private sector, a more liberal attitude towards religion in public life (in particular in the schools), the closing of the People's Houses (which had been involved in political problems even before Menderes) and a foreign policy shift which became obvious when Turkey joined NATO-all these were indications that the political culture of Turkey had begun to be determined by new elements. Not that the continuity of the Kemalist process had in any way been interrupted insofar as modernization of the political system and the economic development strategy; nor was the western orientation called into question. On the contrary, under Menderes the country joined the West in an institutional sense, setting the course for the following two decades. But while Turkey continued to adhere to the two fundamental principles of Kemalism, nationalism and secularism,
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an attempt was made, perhaps without conscious intent, to bridge the gap with traditional Turkish political culture, society and religion. The country's new leadership moved closer to the rural masses, still closely bound by tradition. The resultant expansion of political participation prepared Turkey for a bridge-like role in foreign policy as well, which became more and more obvious toward the end of the 1970s. During Menderes's era, it was already becoming clear that Kemalism had to be seen as a dynamic force working towards a new Turkey rather than a fixed development scheme or a final aim for political, social, cultural and economic development. Seen from this perspective, the Kemalist era (up to 1950) was only the first stage of a process of transformation from the Ottoman Empire towards some future destination which is still somewhat unclear. The process has rapidly accelerated during the Second Turkish Republic (since 1961).10 The leaders of the 1950s had little sympathy for the Kemalist bureaucrats who had kept them out of power for so long. They too called themselves Kemalists when necessary, and there is no reason to doubt the sincerity of their claim. Nevertheless, the old Kemalist elite, in particular its representatives in the RPP and the army, were suspicious of the aims and methods of the new regime. The military coup of 27 May 1960 bore all the marks of an attempt at reinstating a Kemalist bureaucratic regime in the center of power. ll
The End of the Consensus After the return to democracy, ideological diversification kept pace with escalating social tensions. The emergence of Marxist and extreme left-wing groups, and the revival of Islam as a politically effective force, called into question the continued validity of Kemalism. Was this a full about-face from Atatiirk, or would it be possible to make some connection between Atatiirk's legacy and these trends and forces, which were not really new but were surfacing politically for the first time? What direction would modernization take after the new beginning of 1961? The fathers of the new constitution obviously foresaw a fusion of Kemalist principles and multi-party democracyl2 The constitution's preamble refers to the mobilizing power of Turkish nationalism and Atatiirk's reforms. As had been the case in the 1924 constitution, the dominant position was assigned to parliament in line with the basic conviction that sovereignty was in the hands of the people. This had been Atatiirk's message when he confronted the caliphate with its foundations in Islam; religion and state were to be strictly separated. Populism lives on in Article 4, which provides that supreme power can "in no way be left to anyone individual, group or class." The constitution started off with the implicit assumption of broad consensus among political and ideological forces. It provides
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no mechanism for the dissolution of parliament by an external body in the event of domestic political difficulties. Article 57 bans any political party with a religious, regional or racist basis, and Article 83 of the Law Governing Political Parties rules out parties with labels such as communist, anarchist, fascist or National-Socialist. However, the attempt by the military to anchor Kemalism (as they understood it) in the constitution in a multi-party context soon ended in failure. The Justice Party, successor to the banned Democrat Party, won an absolute majority in the 1965 elections. The relative success of ideologically extremist parties on the right and the left showed that consensus was only an illusion; the Marxist Turkish Workers' Party obtained 3% of the votes in its first attempt. By 1965, one could distinguish each of the three political streams by its attitude toward Kemalism. The RPP, under the leadership of the aged ismet inonu, stood for a Kemalism which sought to change society through reforms imposed from above and carried out by a ruling elite strictly bound to Atatiirk's principles. The party still comprised a bureaucratic elite rather far removed from the vital interests and feelings of the masses. The non-ideological Justice Party did not actually repudiate Kemalist principles; but neither did it feel bound to them in their program of action. The furtherance of private enterprise, the tolerant attitude towards religious groups and the continuing dominance of the Anatolian rural element entailed a rather detached, indifferent attitude towards Kemalism. Furthermore, the conflict between the "Kemalist" military and the Democrat Party, which had come out into the open in 1960, could still be felt. Finally, the religious and Marxist groups which emerged in the 1960s openly (or nearly so) opposed Kemalism and the Kemalist reforms.1-1 However, while the emergence of religious forces can be seen as a further development of the backward-looking process which began with the founding of the DP, the dynamic spread of Marxism can be seen as an attempt to take the process of radical change begun by Ataturk beyond what is seen as the unsatisfactory transformations of Kemalism. In many respects Turkish Marxism can be understood as a sort of "ultra-Kemalism," which has at heart the same concerns as the founder of the state, but which has learned to ask more radical questions about society.14 A Reinterpretation of Kemalism
Has the influence of Kemalism on the political culture of Turkey waned since the mid-1960s, or has it gained new substance in the context of far-reaching social changes? An important turning point was the RPP's reorientation towards a left-of-center course. This label was first used by ismet inonu in the mid-1960s. Under the growing influence of a younger faction, led by Bulent Ecevit, it gradually came
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to express a pOI!~k~p~~g~
This transformation, symbolized by Ecevit's assumption of the RPP chairmanship in 1972, radically changed the structure of Turkish democracy_ For years, the tension between center and periphery was the determining factor in shaping the party system. 16 Increasingly, this pattern has been replaced by a program-based and functionally determined party arrangement in which ideological and political programs play a more important role in voters' decisions, not only at the extremes of the ideological and political spectrum but in the political center as wellY Kemalism is being defined more broadly in the political culture of the country. It remains a dynamic force for social transformation in that its most fundamental message-modernization of society and continuing revolution (inkiliiPftltk) with the "revolution from above" now to be followed by the "revolution from below" l8-has been maintained. But, in a situation of dramatic social and economic transformation, the party's program can no longer be limited to general principles of development; it must include specific plans of action as well. It is almost inevitable that the "neo-Kemalists" will gravitate toward socialism, either moderate or radical. These neoKemalists are not the army officers of bygone years; they have studied at western universities and acquired the appropriate political vocabulary. Besides, from the early 1960s, Turkey experienced an unprecedented degree of liberalism, and the major western political and ideological literature flooded into the country. The changes of recent years left the RPP with a built-in contradiction. It professed loyalty to the tradition ~t Ke.maLAtatllrk-atthr§lITl~_ tJ.§:jhat 'It -plac~a ~ii~~ILoii_-il1.e-'CqeJllocratiLWt~.:_-.'!~
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entered into a coalition with Marxists, and liberals and conservatives joined up with reactionary forces. The political and ideological center has weakened :20 the common ground of the 1960s, when the major parties all claimed some sort of Kemalist base, has dwindled. This is not the place to examine why the political system ceased to function, forcing the events of 12 September 1980. One should merely observe that politicians failed to find an answer to the social challenge, that no clear economic concept had been worked out, that the parliamentary system had become less and less credible, and that foreign policy had taken on a more and more shady appearance. The assertion that Kemalism is finished and has to make way for other ideological or socia-political concepts cannot be verified. True, the old-line Kemalists of the early 1960s (of whom there were many in the army), who consider total westernization the only solution to all the people's problems, have played a less important role since the second half of the 1960s. Their attempts to split the party have ceased to win any real support. On the other hand, the extreme ideological and political groupings have not been able to play a decisive role within the balance of parliamentary power. Their share of votes never exceeded 25%.
Why Did the Second Republic Fail? The destruction of the Second Turkish Republic cannot be attributed to the mere existence of extremist parties; nor can it be traced to the country's ideological and political polarization. The most important reason for its failure was large-scale violence and fragmentation on the political and ideological periphery which the political system was unable to cope with. What causal relationship is there between these developments and the political culture of Turkey as molded by Ataturk? For there is no other Islamic country-despite the fact that similar social, cultural and economic tensions exist in them as well-where the phenomenon could have broken out with a similar degree of intensity. A glance at the political culture of the Ottoman Empire and the early years of the Republic may be useful in this context. The reformers of the new state were never really able to overcome the almost insurmountable cleft between the "high culture" of the court and the urban upper class, and the localized system of values found chiefly in the rural areas. Non-urban society too was fragmented along tribal, clan or family lines, making communication within society as a whole rather difficult. Although the concept of national identity began to win recognition after the founding of the Republic in 1932, the dominating loyalty within society continues to be solidarity within the smaller social groupings. ~or was the Republic able to overcome Ottoman elitism, in which a hierarchy of social roles determined the individual's status within society and officials enjoyed prominence over the rest of the population.
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Under the Republic, the leading role was taken over by a bureaucracy which set the process of modernization in motion in accordance with its own ideas, and which was distinguished fwm the mass of the population by numerous privileges. The educational system, although lauded as a central factor in overcoming underdevelopment, remained the property of the center, who used it to strengthen ties with the non-urban population by training new recruits for elite status. While educational systems in Europe were conveying generally accepted sets of values as the basis of social communication within society as a whole, the Turkish system concentrated on propagating the ideology of the center, of a vague nationalism or of Kemalisl11. No actual subject matter was presented which could have affected a social adjustment. Thus, modern Turkey still lacks a genuine middle class, not only in the economic sense, but more importantly in the sense of a middle-class ethic. The old inclination towards basing social structures on status affiliation has kept status and non-status groups apart, and increased the segmented nature of society as a whole. Kemalism was always more of a theory for society 21 than one which had grown Ottt of society. Atatiirk's innovation was to usc his talents as a technician of social and political processes to create a new society instead of propping up the one that already existed. But he did not really succeed in implanting the values and symbols of the new Republic in the hearts of the masses. It was only the intellectuals, who benefitted from the system both economically and socially, who were able to identify with Kemalism and its guiding principles; the masses did not find it quite so easy. Nationalism was the principal formula Atatiirk used in turning a multi-ethnic conglomeration into a national state for "Turks." The masses, for whom Islam had been the foundation of state and society, were scarcely able to understand this. The younger generation, no longer able to accept a simplistic Kemalism of slogans, has been looking for more complex modernization formulas. Other ideologies, in particular the varieties of Marxism, have become socio-political guidelines for the elite. However, these too are theories for Turkish society which did not arise out of the Turkish experience. Their proponents are oriented towards political activism-the task of reorganizing society-and not towards analyzing how it really operates. Theoretical discussions on the left, and the extremist ideas of the racist or religious right, are only marginally related to the real situation of Turkish society or the actual social, economic and political problems of the masses. Any theoretical dispute, such as that over the real meaning of Marxism, immediately leads to a split into tiny factions and sub-factions which lend their support to anarchism and urban guerilla movements. Among the Turkish elite-the heirs ofKemaJism-
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political programmatic discussions, faction-building, and the sudden change over to activism are never very far apart. The extreme, violent expression of socio-political divergencies can be partly explained by the persisting elitist feelings of Turkish academics. In accordance with their self-image, those who have become conscious of the problems facing society and the need for reform feel it their duty to rescue the country. This sense of mission can be felt even where terrorism has assumed its most bloody and criminal forms. Conclusion Atatiirk's influence on Turkey's development (in the widest sense of the term) has remained complex and far-reaching. With the reorientation of the RPP from the mid-1960s, Kemalism-transformed into a sort of social-democratic program-has finally been able to overcome the "classic" split between the Kemalists and the mass of the population. In the context of the extensive social changes in urban and rural society of the late 1960s and early 1970s, the party was able to increase its electoral strength considerably. However, this development led to splits within the Kemalist camp which increased polarization in the country as a whole. It has become obvious that certain principles of Kemalism no longer hold true: economic development and social change have given birth to a class structure, or have at least encouraged the articulation of group interests, and populism (halkflltk) has lost its meaning. Today Kemalism is only one of many competing political forces in Turkey. The army had to intervene in 1980,22 as the Turkish state was on the verge of falling apart. After the generals complete the difficult tasks of suppressing terrorism and implementing a number of necessary reforms, they will still be faced with the question of what the foundations of the new political system should be. General Evrenno doubt in an attempt to rule out any similar claim for Islam or Marxism-has announced that Kemalism will once again fulfill this role. But just what does he have in mind? Does he mean the old Kemalism whose decline as a political force was evident even in the 1950s? The army has twice intervened on behalf of this kind of Kemalism, and each time it has failed. And "neo-Kemalism" has become a political program which must compete with the others. As for its immediate practical policies, particularly in the economic sphere, the regime has taken on a totally pragmatic appearance in no way related to the principle of etatism. In three decades of democracy, Turkey has become an ideologically and socially diversified society. Thus, the Third Republic will have to be a pluralistic democracy if it is to stay in tune with actual social conditions. The role of the Kemalists should be similar, mutatis mutandis, to that of the Gaullists in France today. The problems of the basic spiritual and intellectual orientation of the country, and of
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the determinants of political culture, will nevertheless remain. The role of a bridge between Europe and the Islamic world, which began to emerge under Menderes, may very well once more become the determining factor in the political culture and policies of Turkey.
Notes 1. Resmi Gazete, 17103 bis (12 September 1980), p. 6; cf. Ernst E. Hirsch, "Die einstweilige Ordnung der tiirkischen Verfassung," Orient XXII, 3 (1981), pp. 431-449. 2. For an analysis of army interventions in Turkey, see Gerhard Weiher, Militar and Entwicklung in der Turkei 1945-1973 (Opladen: Leske and Budrich, 1978). 3. The most recent comprehensive bibliography on the subject is by William Hale, The Political and Economic Development of Modern Turkey (London: Croom Helm, 1981). 4. See Roderic H. Davidson, "Ataturk'iin Siyasi Reformlan ve Tanzimat," in 0. Okyar, A. Yalpn, M. Hi~, M. Saglam, R. Kandiller, eds., Ataturk l'e Cumhuriyet Donemi Turkiyesi (Turkiye Ticaret Odalan, Sanayi Odalan ve Ticaret Borsalan Birligi, 1981), pp. 28-56; Ali KazanClgil, "The OttomanTurkish State and Kemalism," in Ali KazanClgil, Ergun Ozbudun, eds., Ataturk, Founder of a Modern State (London: C. Hurst, 1981), pp. 37-56. 5. Cf. Hale, op. cit., pp. 128-140, 161-173. 6. For detailed studies sec Miikerrem Hi~, Analysis of the Turkish Economy (Istanbul: Istanbul Universitesi iktisat Fakultesi, 1980). 7. See the still valuable study by ismail Be~ik~i, Dojju Anadolunun Duzeni. Sosyal Ekonomik ve etnik temeller (E. Yaymlan, 1969). 8. Sec Ergun Ozbudun, Social Change and Political Participation in Turkey (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1976). 9. On the role of bureaucracy in Kemalist Turkey, see L.R. and N.P. Roos, Managers of Modernization, Organizations and Elites in Turkey (1950-1969) (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1971). 10. On the evolution of Kemalism after World War II, see Udo Steinbach, Kranker Wachter am Bosporus (Freiburg-Wtirzburg: 1979), pp. 29-44, 138142. 11. See Weiher, op. cit., pp. 118-119. 12. Ernst E. Hirsch, Die Verfassung der Turkischen Republik (Frankfurt a.M-Berlin: Metzner, 1966); C.H. Dodd, Politics and Government in Turkey (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1969); idem, Democracy and Development in Turkey (Hull: Eothen, 1979, pp. 94-105). 13. See Friedrich-Wilhelm Fernau, "Die politischen Parteien der Zweiten Tiirkischen Republik. Eine Ubersicht tiber ihre Entwicklung," Orient XVIII, 3 (1977), pp. 91-94. 14. See ~erif Mardin, "Ideological Currents in Turkey in Historical Perspective," paper presenred at a conference on "The Crisis of Turkey and Prospective Solutions," sponsored by the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung (Bonn, 1981). 15. For this development, sec Nermin Abadan, 1965 Sefimlerinin Tahiiii (Ankara: Ankara Universitesi Siyasal Bilgiler Fakultcsi, 1966); "Cumhuriyet
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Halk Partisi Program I," in Ferruh Bozbeyli, ed., Parti Programlart (Istanbul: Ak, 1970). 16. See ~erif Mardin, "Center-Periphery Relations: A Key to Turkish Politics?" in Engin D. Abrh, Gabriel Ben-Dor, eds., Political Participation in Turkey. Historical Background and Present Problems (Istanbul: Bogazis:i University Publications, 1975), pp. 7-32. 17. See Sabri Sayan, "Some Notes on the Beginnings of Mass Political Participation, in Akarh and Ben-Dor, op. cit., pp. 121-134. 18. As explained by B. Ecevit; see his Ortantn Solu, 4th ed. (Istanbul: Tekin, n.d.); and idem, Ataturk ve Devrimcilik (Istanbul: Tekin, n.d.). 19. Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi Programt (1976) (Ankara: Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi, 1976); see also Ak Gunlere Karp; Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi 1973 Sefim Bildirgesi (Ankara: Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi, 1973). 20. See Ncrmin Abadan-Unat, "Major Issues of Turkish Political Parties under the Light of Structural Change," in Die turkische Krise (Bonn: Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, 1981). 21. ~erif Mardin, "Ideological Currents," loco cit_, pp. 5-7. 22. On the traditional, social and political role of the Turkish army see Kemal Karpat, "The Military and Its Relation to the State and Democracy, in Die turkische Krise, op. cit.
7 Atatiirk and the Civil Bureaucracy Metin Heper
In every aspect of the modernization enterprise in non-western societies, the western model has been predominant. This holds true in the case of bureaucratic reform as weILl Within the general reform strategy of "induced" rather than "organic" change, 2 it has generally been assllmed that by first adopting the end-product of development, i.e., a bureaucratic-political organizational structure, the western developmental experience can be replicated. Ever since the break in the Ottoman "iron curtain," the reform pattern in Turkey has been no exception .., The men of Tanzimat (1839-1876) wished to create a civil bureaucratic structure corresponding to the legal-rational authority pattern 4 of the West. However, in their case legal-rationality was no more than an effort to shield themselves from what they conceived as intrusions into the civil bureaucratic establishment. Ali Pap, for instance, was a firm believer in official formalities, which he thought would keep the administrative hierarchy free from the interference of the sultan. s Besides, in a society where the bureaucratic center could always aspire to and sometimes succeed in controlling the periphery,6 the basic ecological prerequisite for a Weberian bureaucratic institution, namely a constitutive system preempting substantive rationality, was totally lacking. 7 The Ottoman policy always evinced strong patrimonial characteristics,H but following the Classical Age (1300-1600),9 the system gradually developed from traditional patrimonialism to personal rulcrship. Traditional legitimation was weakened; the basis of loyalty was inextricably linked to material incentives and rewards. lo After the demise of the Classical Age the practice of intisap, "a tacit relationship established by mutual consent between a powerful individual and a weaker one," II intensified. As a precaution against future intrigues, each official of rank, when acceding to an important position, filled all the critical posts with his coterie of proteges. Even in the Tanzimat period, the individual pashas retained their own clientele groups. During the reign of Abdl1lhamid II (1876-1909), the practice reached its apogee. This time, however, it was the sultan in particular who resorted to this method, in an attempt to dismantle 89
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the remammg vestiges of institutionalized recalcitrance against his rule by completely debureaucratizing the system, particularly at its higher IevelS. 12
Atatiirk's Perception of Civil Bureaucracy
Atatiirk's disparagement of the typical Ottoman bureaucrat was not mitigated even by the phenomenon of a Re~id or Ali Pa~a who, although they operated in a personalistic style, at least had the lofty purpose of saving the state by cultivating a historical bureaucratic empire tradition. 13 His impressions were formed by observing contemporary bureaucrats as they strove to promote their personal interests through total subservience to the sultan. These were the functionaries whom the Young Turk leaders had deemed reactionary and useless, dismissing as many of them as they could. 14 Most of these former bureaucrats later managed to creep back into the service. Atatiirk agreed with the Young Turks. In his view, the civil bureaucrats perceived themselves as no more than emanations of the person of the sultan, whose motives were sacrosanct; they aimed thus to safeguard their own petty interests. IS As early as 1917, Atatiirk complained of malfeasance and abuse of authority on the part of these bureaucrats. If> During the War of Independence, Atatiirk's judgment became even more severe. He later claimed that his 15 March 1920 instructions to all parts of the country concerning the upcoming elections, had been hesitantly followed by the leading bureaucrats at the local level, in contrast to the wholehearted cooperation of the people. Even more destructive were those civil servants who actively worked against the national effort to save the country. Atatiirk kept pleading, and at times demanded, that the sultan's government in Istanbul remove these civil servantsY
Atatiirk's Vision of the Civil Bureaucracy
During the War of Independence, Atatiirk did his best to see that critical posts were assigned to those civil servants who satisfied the requisites of a strong sense of nationalism, a capability to carry out given tasks effectively, and initiative. IS The Istanbul government reacted with hostility to his suggestions. As a last ditch effort, he made what proved to be a futile attempt to educate the existing functionaries to the goals of the Anatolian movement. 19 All in all, Atatiirk's experience with the civil bureaucracy both before and during the War of Independence was very discouraging. As early as 12 July 1920, he called for a major effort to prevent the emergence of a bureaucratic class (memur smtji), and warned against wasting time trying to find a job for every soul in this "class." All
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the difficulties Turkey was facing could be overcome, he claimed, if only these admonitions could be successfully heeded. 20 On the other hand, Atatiirk did recognize the need to provide for the welfare of the civil servants. 21 They abused their authority only when they were in dire financial need. 22 After all, together with the military officers, civil servants were "the people who kept the state machinery running." 13 It may be surmised that early in the 1920s Atatiirk, although he knew that a competent civil bureaucracy was indispensable, simply did not trust the incumbent officials to accomplish tasks that called for more than instrumental rationality. In the early stages of the War ofIndependence, he did look for some initiative from the civil servants, but that was when he had not yet mobilized critical support behind his struggle and needed any help he could get. When viewed from a larger perspective, Atatiirk's revolution may be seen as a reaction against personal rulership. The basic motive behind the revolution, then, was the desire to create an impersonal, sovereign institutionalized "state" infused with norms developed independently of the "center" and "society." 24,25 The locus of "state ness" may vary. As Nettle explains, ". . . the overall conceptual identification of state with law, with bureaucracy, or with government merely reimposes an artificial (and to a large extent self-defining) notion of state by grouping structures that are better particularized and that are part of the state in some empirical situations but not in many others."26 In post-revolution France, the sovereignty wrested from the king had been transferred to the "nation" in name only; the bureaucracy appropriated unto itself the responsibility for defining the public interest. 27 In the Ottoman Turkish context, the men of Tanzimat aspired to playa similar role. 28 Atatiirk passed over the civil bureaucracy as an appropriate locus of "stateness," as he was unwilling to revive the "bureaucratic class" 29 of earlier periods. "The government of the Sublime Porte," he said, "should be replaced by that of the Turkish Grand National Assembly."30 He later identified the office of the presidency as a proper locus for the "state."3l Atatiirk opted for a Hegelian state-one that would safeguard the general interest without overwhelming civil society.32 However, he rejected one integral element of the Hegelian state-"the absolute class." For the civil bureaucracy, he adopted instead the machine model first conceptualized by J.H.G. von Justi in the eighteenth century: "A properly constituted state must be exactly analogous to a machine, in which all the wheels and gears are precisely adjusted to one another and the ruler must be the foreman, the mainspring, or the soul-if one may use the expression-which sets everything in motion."33 For Atatiirk, the governmental structure was a machine, even at the level of the Turkish Grand National Assembly, which he considered
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a "substratum administrative."·H The civil bureaucracy was a lesser part of the governmental machine, a mere instrument (kiibil-i istimal bir cihaz).·15 As in the Prussia of Frederick II (1740-1786), it should be an impersonal organization structured on the basis of strict hierarchy and staffed by civil servants acting in accordance with the letter of the law; these functionaries should receive a practically oriented education.·ll> Ataturk revived the Turkish version of Richelieu's commissairc-the agent of monarchial discipline-noting that bureaucratic irregularities had been on the rise ever since the corps of supervisors (miilkiye hcyet-i tcftijiycsi) was abrogatedY In his ideal-typical formulations, Weber perceived that the impersonal character of the bureaucracy38 rendered it a neutral structure easily controlled by any element that gained dominion over it. In his empirical analyses, however, he saw a distinct possibility of Bcamtcnherrschaft, where those who manned bureaucratic organizations were the actual rulers of a state.·w The young Marx, too, argued that the central organizing principle of bureaucracy was not a protection against abuse, but a powerful source of it; the bureaucracy shrouded all its actions in a secrecy preserved internally by hierarchy and against outsiders by the closed, corporate nature of the institution. 40 But Ataturk had no intention of remaining an outsider. Whenever he deemed it necessary he would bypass the upper strata and deal directly with subordinates. 41 As von Justi would have put it, Atatlirk was not part of the machine but an overseer of its workings. 42 As Rustow notes, "In dealing with subordinates, he [let] them feel the full vigor of law. In shaping his own actions . . . he inclined to stretch the law without actually breaking it."43 Can we then conclude that Ataturk had a vision of a legal-rational bureaucracy in which he himself acted as the constitutive system preempting substantive rationality and the civil bureaucracy operated as an impersonal machine with formal rationality? After all, had not his bureaucratic blueprint shown Weberian signs? Had he not pointed out that "matters of detail" (tcferruat) should be left to the specialists (erbab-z ihtisas)? Our response must be primarily in the negative. Early in the game, he simply did not trust the civil bureaucrats, and even a minimum level of rationality is possible only where there is some organizational autonomy. Even after the War of Independence, when he could better control these functionaries, he found them unqualified for the tasks they had to perform. 44 Atatlirk wanted more than efficiency; the civil servants were to be loyal to the Republic'S goals (Cumhuriyet me}: kurcsi).4S Yet the Republic'S bureaucrats were not to be Hegel's "absolute or universal class"; substantive rationality would be defined for them, in the form of the Kemalist principles of republicanism, nationalism, populism, secularism, etatism and reformism. Furthermore, the civil service was expected to display a legalrationality of outcome, rather than the Weberian type. In the procedural
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type, an order, regulation or law is rational because it is legal. In the outcome type the criterion of rationality is the goal. 46 In the Turkish case, the goal was Kemalism. Atatiirk thus opened a Pandora's box; once the shackles of procedural legal-rationality were broken, the outcome was unpredictable, especially since Ataturk had routinized substantive rationality by insisting on the machine model. Perhaps this is why the civil bureaucracy after Ataturk aspired to a guardianship role, overstepping the careful jurisdictional lines that Hegel had specified for his "absolute class." Indeed, the bureaucratic ruling tradition during the early republican period recalls Plato's government by guardians who personified the essence of the public interest and the approved ideology, and who were to be their devoted instruments. 47 For the Turkish bureaucrats, the guiding ideology was a static version of Kemalism. 48 Following the transition to multi-party politics, the bureaucratic ruling tradition was increasingly threatened. The bureaucrats, however, were generally unable to abandon their guardian role. When the threat increased, instead of living by the rules of representative government they opted for "negative politics," doing their best to preserve their caste characteristics by manipulating the machint: built decades earlier. 49
Conclusion As Bent has noted, "Ataturk was far more successful in pointing out the direction the state should go than in setting up organizations able to bring about the goals he had in mind."so This is because the goals themselves were contradictory. In this sense there is a significant parallel between Atatiirk and Abdulhamid. Not unlike the Great Elector of Prussia (1640-1688), both these rulers required loyalty as well as competence from their civil servants. Sl Abdulhamid demanded personal loyalty, while Ataturk defined a routinized substantive rationality for his civil servants. Neither of the two borrowed neat models from the West, even though Ataturk, unlike Abdulhamid, wanted Turkey to adopt western culture intact. Ataturk's vision of civil bureaucracy was shaped by his perception of the Ottoman hureaucracy as well as by the goals he set for Turkey. He limited himself to formulating these goals, and was not actively involved in the actual day-to-day operation of the bureaucracy. In any case, the problems he faced required solutions that counteracted one another, with problematic implications for the civil bureaucratic structure. Ataturk is often accused of having been preoccupied with the "superstructure," without paying adequate attention to socio-economic problems. This may be so (if one takes the view that economic and social development is possible without first changing one's way of looking at things). What is often overlooked, however, is that his
94 vlSlon of the "superstructure," only partly realized was largely distorted after his death.
Metin Heper In
his lifetime,
Notes 1. Henry Jacoby, The Bureaucratization of the World, trans. Eveline Kanes (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1973), pp. 166-167. 2. I use "induced" and "organic" as in A.F.K. Organski, The Stages of Political Development (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1965). 3. Peter F. Sugar, "Economic and Political Modernization [Turkey]," in Robert E. Ward and Dankwart A. Rustow, eds., Political Modernization in Japan and Turkey (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1964), pp. 147 ff.; Stanford - J. Shaw, "Some Aspects of the Aims and Achievements of the Nineteenth Century Ottoman Reformers," in William R. Polk and Richard L. Chambers, eds., Beginnings of Modernization in the Middle East (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1968). In their more recent work Shaw and Shaw have taken up the same theme in greater detail; see Stanford J. Shaw and Ezel Kural Shaw, History of the Ottoman Empire and Modern Turkey. Vol. II: Reform, Revolution, and Republic: The Rise of Modern Turkey, 1808-1975 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977). 4. Carter V. Findley, Bureaucratic Reform in the Ottoman Empire. The Sublime Porte 1789-1922 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980). I use "legal-rational authority pattern" here as in Max Weber, Economy and Society: An Outline of Interpretive Sociology (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978), pp. 217 ff. 5. Roderic Davison, Reform in the Ottoman Empire, 1856-1876 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1963), pp. 85, 9l. 6. ~erif Mardin, "Power, Civil Society and Culture in the Ottoman Empire," Comparative Studies in Society and History, II (1969), pp. 258-281; see my "Center and Periphery in the Ottoman Empire, with Special Reference to the Nineteenth Century," International Political Science Review, I (1980), pp. 81-105. 7. By "constitutive system" I refer to "a primary component of government which includes as subcomponents an elected assembly, an electoral system, and a party system"; see Fred W. Riggs, "Bureaucratic Politics in Comparative Perspective," Journal of Comparative Administration, I (1969), p. 17. Those who believe that a bureaucratic organizational pattern corresponding to the Weberian legal-rational authority became institutionalized in the Ottoman polity to a greater degree than I believe to have been the case should note that Weber's conceptualization of bureaucracy, in terms of legal-rational authority and formal rationality, failed to take into account the use of power within and outside of organizations; see Lloyd 1. Rudolph and Susanne Hoeber Rudolph, "Authority and Power in Bureaucratic and Patrimonial Administration: A Revisionist Interpretation of Weber on Bureaucracy," World Politics, 41 (1979), p. 196. 8. I treat this matter in my "Patrimonialism in the Ottoman Turkish Public Bureaucracy," Asian and African Studies, 13 (1979), pp. 3-2l. 9. For this period, see Halil inahk, The Ottoman Empire: The Classical Age 1300-1600, trans. Norman Itzkowitz and Colin Imber (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1973).
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to. Guenther Roth, "Personal Rulership, Patrimonialism and Empire Building in the New States," World Politics, 20 (1968), pp. 195-196. 11. Stanford J. Shaw, History of the Ottoman Empire and Modern Turkey. Vol. I: Empire of the Gazis. The Rise and Decline of the Ottoman Empire 12801808 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976), p. 166. 12. Engin D. Akarh, "The Problems of External Pressures, Power Struggles and Budgetary Deficits in Ottoman Politics under Abdulhamid II (18761909): Origins and Solutions," Unpublished Ph.D. Dissertation, Princeton University, 1976, pp. 84 ff. See also Sir Edwin Pears, Life of Abdulhamid (London: Constable, 1917). 13. See my "Political Modernization as Reflected in Bureaucratic Change: The Turkish Bureaucracy and a 'Historical Bureaucratic Empire' Tradition," International Journal of Middle East Studies, 7 (1976), pp. 507-521. 14. Sir Edwin Pears, Forty Years in Constantinople, 2nd ed. (London: H. Jenkins, 1916); Sidney Whitman, Turkish Memoirs (London: Heinemann), p. 194. 15. Ataturk'iin Soylev ve Demerleri (SD), II, 1906-1938 (Ankara: Turk Tarih Kurumu Bas!mevi, 1959), p. 104. 16. AtatUrk'iin Tamim, Telgrafve Beyannameleri (TTB), IV, 1917-1938 (Ankara: Ankara Oniversitesi Baslmevi, 1964), p. 2. 17. Nutuk: Gazi Mustafa Kemal Tarafmdan (istanbul: Devlet Bas!mevi, 1938), pp. 207-208. 18. Ibid., p. 205. 19. SD, II, p. 62. 20. SD, I, Turkiye Buyuk Millet Meclisinde ve GR.P. Kurultaylartnda), ikinci Bask! (Ankara: Turk Tarih Kurumu Bas!mevi, 1961), p. 90. 21. SD, II, pp. 90-91. 22. TTB, IV, p. 2. 23. SD, II, pp. 90-91. 24. I take this definition of the state from Nettle and Birnhaum: J.P. Nettle, "The State as a Conceptual Variable," World Politics, 20 (1968); Pierre Birnhaum, "State, Centre and Bureaucracy," Government and Opposition, 16 (1981). According to Birnhaum's three-fold typology, in those cases where the center plays a more significant role than the state, major societal decisions are the outcomes of clashes between the representatives at the center of the major social groups-the bureaucracy, aristocracy, bourgeoisie, labor, etc. Where one comes across neither a state nor a center, there is no central decision-making mechanism; that responsibility devolves to the localities. 25. I elaborate on this argument in my paper, "Ataturk and the State," submitted at the Turkish Symposium, University of Pittsburgh, 9-10 November, 1981. See also my "Transformation of Charisma into a Political Paradigm: Atatlirkism in Turkey," Journal of the American Institute for the Study of Middle Eastern Civilization, I, 3-4 (Autumn/Winter 1981), pp. 6582. 26. Nettle, op. cit., p. 563. 27. Joseph LaPalombara, "Values and Ideologies in the Administrative Evolution of Western Constitutional Systems," in Ralph Braibanti, ed., Political and Administrative Development (Durham: Duke University Press, 1969), pp. 192 ff. 28. I discuss this in my "Political Modernization as Reflected in Bureaucratic Change," op. cit., p. 511.
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29. Ataturk always used the phrase "the bureaucratic class" (memur smtfi) in the sense used by M. de Gournay, the very person who coined the word "bureaucracy": " ... the officers, clerks, secretaries, inspectors, and intendants ... appointed to benefit the public interest; indeed the public interest appears to have been established so that offices might exist"; see Martin Albrow, Bureaucracy (London: Macmillan, 1970), p. 16. Ataturk, in fact, pointed out that the bureaucrats' abuse of their authority had made them intensely hated by the people (TTB, IV, p. 2). 30. SO, II, p. 106. 31. I discuss this in my "Ataturk and the State," op. cit. 32. Ibid., passim. I use "Hegelian state" as in Shlomo Avineri, Hegel's Theory of the Modern State (London: Cambridge University Press, 1972). 33. Cited in Martin Krygier, "State and Bureaucracy in Europe: the Growth of a Concept," in Eugene Kamenka and Martin Krygier, cds., Bureaucracy: The Career of a Concept (London: Edward Arnold, 1979), p. 17. 34. SO, I, p. 211. 35. Ibid., p. 298. 36. TTB, IV, p. 490; Enver Ziya Karal, Atatul'k'ten DUiiinceler (Ankara: Tiirk Tarih Kurumu Baslmevi, 1956), p. 132. By emphasizing practically oriented education he opposed the aristocratic model in which learning is a leisure activity pursued for its sake. On the unsuitability of that model for Weberian bureaucratic organization, see John Armstong, The European Administrative Elite (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1973), p. 159. 37. SO, I, p. 285. 38. In his Economy and Society, op. cit., pp. 988-999. 39. "Parliament and Government in Reconstructed Germany," Appendix, II, in ibid., p. 1465. 40. Martin Krygier, "Saint-Simon, Marx and Non-Governed Society," in Bureaucracy: The Career of a Concept, op. cit., p. 46. 41. Charles A. Sherill, A Year's Embassy to Mustafa Kemal (New York: C. Scribner and Sons, 1934), pp. 217, 220-222. 42. Cited in Krygier, "State and Bureaucracy in Europe . . . ," op. cit., pp. 17-18. 43. Oankwart A. Rustow, "Atatlirk as Founder of a State," Daedalus, 97 (1968), p. 810. 44. SO, Tamim ve Telgraflart, V, Hazlrlayanlar: Sadi Borak ve Dr. Utkan Kocatlirk (Ankara: Turk inkilap Tarihi Enstitusu, 1971), p. 3l. 45. SO, I, p. 340. Harris notes that AtatOrk sometimes used ambassadorial assignments as rewards for faithful collaborators in the struggle for independence. See George S. Harris, "The Atatlirk Revolution and the Foreign Service, 1919-1931," paper presented at the Sixth Annual Meetings of the Middle East Stlldies Association of North America (Columbus, Ohio, 1972), p. 27. 46. For this distinction I draw upon Roderik Martin, The Sociology of Power (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1977), pp. 81-82. 47. Fritz Morstein Mary, The Administrative State. An Introduction to Bureaucracy (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1957), p. 55. 48. Sec note 13 above, and also my "Recalcitrance of the Turkish Public Bureaucracy to 'Bourgeois Politics': Multifactor Political Stratification Analysis," The Middle East Journal, 30 (1976), pp. 485-500, and my joint article with c.L. Kim and C-T Pai, "The Role of Bureaucracy and Regime Types: A
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Comparative Study of Turkish and South Korean Higher Civil Servants," Administration and Society, 12 (1980), pp. 137-157. 49. I discuss these developments in my "Negative Bureaucratic Politics in a Modernizing Context: The Turkish Case," Journal of South Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, 1 (1977), pp. 65-84. 50. Frederick T. Bent, "The Turkish Bureaucracy as an Agent of Change," Journal of Comparative Administmtion, 1 (1969), p. 48. 51. ~erif Mardin, "Ataturk, Burokrasi ve 'Rasyonellik'," in Ataturk Del>rimleri 1. Milletleral'ast Sempozyumu Bildirileri, 10-14 Amltk 1973 (Istanbul: Sermet, 1975).
8 Continuity and Change in Turkish Bureaucracy: The Kemalist Period and After jlter Turan
The Turkish Republic was an early example of a newly established political system that adopted rapid modernization as a primary goal. The adoption of such a comprehensive goal always necessitates "a degree of political consolidation both between the elites themselves and between elites and non-elites." I Consolidation implies the achievement of cohesion between various elites, mass compliance with shared elite preferences, and the generation of popular support for government policies. 2 Intra-elite consolidation often constitutes the first step of the modernization process. It may be achieved by an accommodation between competing elites or alternatively by a struggle among elite groups until one group succeeds in establishing a clear domination over the others. Once intra-elite consolidation is achieved, the stage is set for the introduction and the execution of policies aiming at the creation of a modern society. This in turn assumes the availability or the development of institutions through which policies can be formulated and carried out. During the formative process preceding the founding of a new political system, institutions such as political parties, military organizations, and sometimes civilian bureaucracies may gradually develop. Alternatively, some or all of these institutions may have existed under a previous regime, but may now define new goals for themselves, including the structuring of a new political system. Except in very rare instances, a new system possesses some institutional capability to govern and affect change even in its earliest stage. The question
[ would like to extend my appreciation to my colleague Dr- Cemil Oktay for sharing his ideas and knowledge with me during the preparation of this papcr- My thanks go also to Professor Metin Hepcr for comments on an earlier version.
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of intra-elite consolidation often arises when elite groups lack common views and understandings on what is to be done after independence is achieved. The elite groups which achieve the dominant position in a political system are faced with the challenge of securing mass compliance with their preferences. If their goals include radical change, it becomes imperative to buttress the institutions through which political control is exercised and change is affected. Toward this aim, several tendencies typically appear. The first tendency involves the expansion of the role of government in the daily life of the citizens. This expansion contains a vertical as well as a horizontal dimension. The vertical dimension pertains to the scope of governmental intervention and regulation; governmental activities and functions expand to cover fields previously considered to be in the private domain. The horizontal dimension refers to the spatial expansion of government into geographic locales where such presence has previously been lacking or merely symbolic. These two processes taken together may also be called penetration ..~ The second tendency is centralization~ If the ruling elite has a modernizing orientation, policies formulated at the center are expected to be carried out uniformly throughout the periphery. This results in two complementary developments: the increasing presence of the agents of the center in the periphery and the increasing reliance of these agents on the center for instructions on what they should do. These developments, in turn, create a need for the standardization of government operations. Centralization may also derive from the apprehension of the ruling elites that the political community may not hold together unless central control is exercised. In systems where there are deep ethnic or religious cleavages, with different groups living in geographically discernible areas, such apprehensions may indeed be well-founded. However, there is a tendency on the part of the "central elites" to perceive the periphery as primordial, parochial and therefore antinational and anti-modern; this perception serves to reinforce centralist tendencies. Governmental expansion and centralization to secure compliance with the nation-state and its modernizing policies means a growth in the size of the bureaucracy and in its political importance. Because the political leadership may often have bureaucratic origins, and because it is reliant on the bureaucracy for its own success, the bureaucracy tends to become as much a political as an administrative institution, playing "a basic part in establishing, determining and implementing political and major policy directives. "4 In the absence of other channels, it also serves as a channel for regulating and aggregating interests. 5 Although on many occasions a political party is also established to serve as an instrument of securing mass compliance and support, it tends to be controlled by the bureaucracy. As Heeger has noted:
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Few organizations possess the resources to sustain themselves. . . . Government parties arc . . . usually organized through the lIsC of governmental authority and apparatus. Deprived of that authority and apparatus, such a party is . . . likely to become congeries of elites."
Compliance with elite preferences may be enhanced by the existence of a charismatic leader. The charisma of a leader is in itself hardly sufficient, however, in gaining acceptance of modernist policies, unless supplemented by such institutions as bureaucracies and political parties. The ability of governments to secure compliance for their policies by other tha.n coercive means may be taken as an indication that such policies enjoy some support among the mass publics. Most modernizing governments view the passive acceptance of their polices by the citizenry as being insufficient, however. Through the use of symbols, through campaigns aiming at mobilizing the citizens to rally to the support of governmental policies and through policies designed to produce concrete and immediate benefits for individual citizens, social groups and communities, attempts are made to render the citizens active participants in the process of change and modernization. The preceding theoretical discussion will be taken as a frame of reference in examining the consequences of the Kemalist bureaucratic legacy on post-Kemalist developments.
The Emergence of the Republican Bureaucratic Elites The strategy of Atatiirk in founding a new nation-state was to direct public attention to foreign occupation, while developing a set of new institutions which gradually evolved into a full-fledged government.? Until late 1922, Turkey had two governments: the dejure government of the sultan in Istanbul and the de facto government of the nationalists in Ankara. Only after the abolition of the sultanate did the Ankara government begin to acquire legal foundations for its authority. The actual achievement of authority by the nationalists, however, followed a different course. The collapse of the empire after the First World War and the willingness of the Istanbul government to accept total and unconditional surrender had created a critical situation for the Ottoman military and civilian bureaucrats, who were the masters of what Eisenstadt has termed a "bureaucratic empire."R The de facto disestablishment of the Ottoman state left these bureaucrats without an empire. These people owed their social existence to the presence of a centrally organized state, and they had been socialized into devoting their highest loyalities and services to that abstraction. It is not a coincidence that the Turkish independence effort was led primarily by Ottoman military and civilian bureaucrats. Even before Mustafa Kemal landed at Samsun to begin organizing the nationalist effort, some key military officers had rallied to his
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support. By mid-June 1919, he had become confident enough to issue an order to army commanders not to leave their posts, and not to turn their commands over to new appointees if the latter were judged to be unreliable. 9 More generally, a combination of Ottoman military and administrative elites had accepted the idea of orgJ.nizing and/or extending their loyalties to a political organization which had defined its mission as the liberation of the Turkish heartland from foreign occupation and the sultan's government from captivity. The establishment of nationalist authority was a gradual process. Some Ottoman bureaucrats joined the nationalists after the summer of 1919, when they completed their basic organizational work with the congresses of Erzurum and Sivas. In some areas, there was hesitation to recognize the authority of the nationalists, but the Greek invasion and the inability of the Istanbul government to resist facilitated the shift of loyalties of many Ottoman bureaucrats to the Ankara government. Finally, in some instances, the nationalists extended their authority into certain areas by military and quasi-military action. By 1921, the nationalists had consolidated their hold in most areas of present-day Turkey, excluding those under foreign occupation. Such consolidation had proved possible because many bureaucrats had accepted the liberation of the homeland, and hence the redemption of the "state" from foreign occupation and control, as a primary goal. The ability of the nationalist leadership under Mustafa Kemal to create a political organization that could conduct a successful war of independence did not indicate, however, the presence of either intra-elite or elite-mass consensus of what was to be done after the war. The major bone of contention was whether the sultanate-caliphate would be reinstituted following the war, or whether the government of the Grand National Assembly should be continued in some form. This rift among the bureaucratic elites who had led the war effort was, in fact, the manifestation of a deeper cleavage having historical roots. With the eighteenth century introduction of educational institutions modeled after Western European systems, with the aim of defensive modernization, the seeds of an intra-elite conflict had been sown. The basic division was between two groups which may be loosely called the "westernizers" and the "traditionalists." 10 Although there were varying shades of opinion within each group, and some individual attempts at synthesis, the basic dichotomy was strong. Frey has summarized the nature of the intra-elite struggle: Much of the history of Ottoman modernization lies in the gradual production of enough of these "new Turks" to provide each other with personal security and psychic reinforcement and then to secure control over crucial segments of the two main institutions, the military and the bureaucracy. I I
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The definitions of "tradition" and of "modern" or western changed over time in that changes, once accepted, became tradition, while new aspirations deriving from Western Europe dictated new goals for the westernizers. One fundamental area of disagreement persisted over time-the question of secularization. 12 The issue concerned the very basis of political legitimacy. During the war, the nation was increasingly accepted as the source of political authority. The traditionalists who joined the war effort, on the other hand, justified their participation by viewing the war as a struggle to liberate the sultan-caliph from captivity and reinstitute the old system, in which they would continue to occupy an important place. As long as attention was focused on the war, cadres with such divergent orientations could cooperate; but with its successful conclusion, the stage was set for a final struggle. In the elections of 1923, most members of the Second Group faction, the small rival of the Defense of Rights Group led by Mustafa Kemal, were eliminated from the Grand National Assembly. Only three were reelected.l.~ The Defense of Rights Group, assuming the name People's Party, won an overwhelming majority of votes, and proceeded to declare Turkey a republic. The westernizers finally had won the battle in which they had held the upper hand for more than half a century, terminating the intra-elite struggle which had marked the politics of the Ottoman Empire for nearly two hundred years. Characteristics of the Republican Bureaucrats Dankwart Rustow has noted that 93% of the Ottoman staff officers and 85% of the civil servants remained in Turkey after the empire's collapse. 14 These cadres, although divided among themselves in terms of ideology, represented a "bureaucratic ruling tradition." 15 Therefore, their role perceptions, their ideas about the role of government in society and about the relations between government and citizenry, were important inputs in the shaping and functioning of the political and administrative institutions of the Turkish Republic. 16 What common characteristics can be attributed to the OttomanTurkish bureaucrats? Whether of military or civilian origin, they constituted an intelligentsia, and a political class whose mission was to retain political, economical and social control over society. Their approach to administration was regulative, rather than representational or mobilizational. 17 Representing the state, they felt responsible for the welfare of the citizens. Perhaps more accurately, the ruled were seen not as citizens but as subjects whose prime duty was obedience to their benevolent rulers, thereby freeing the political-administrative cadres from constraints which popular rule might have imposed on them. The same orientation accounts for the practice of introducing change from above or from the center. Change was perceived as the exclusive
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prerogative of the state, which was responsible for the well-being and harmony of its subjects. Change originating from the periphery was resisted by the bureaucrats. One can say that "the bureaucratic elite resisted evolution and the legalization of a civil society," 18 defined as a society where the socio-cultural, political and economical spheres are autonomous rather than components of an undifferentiated totality. The Ottoman bureaucratic elite was sure of its cultural superiority to the ruled. Its members "derived their claim to status and power on the basis of their formal education."19 With the ideological westernization of the bureaucrats, a significant culture gap emerged between them and those they ruled. They cared less about how Ottoman subjects viewed them than about being seen as westerners in the eyes of Europe. The consequence was an alienation of the ruling elite from the masses. 20 The westernizer-traditionalist struggle had led to increased politicization among the elite. Particularly after the fall of Abdulhamid II in 1908 and his deposition in 1909, a combination of military and civilian bureaucrats had become the political masters of the empire. This erosion of the distinction between politics and administration, a distinction never solidly established in the empire, continued during the War of Independence. The republican bureaucracy inherited this orientation. Finally, in the minds of the bureaucrats, the state was their raison dJetre. It was the institution to which they gave their ultimate loyalty and devoted their services. The survival and strengthening of the "state" was a preponderant concern in their actions. Consolidation of Kemalist Bureaucratic Elites
The military and civilian elites which achieved a dominant position in the government of the Grand National Assembly and which were eventually successful in establishing a republic proceeded to consolidate their position to the point where their westernizing orientation and policies would not be seriously challenged in the foreseeable future. During the War of Independence, special Independence Courts were established to penalize individuals who had betrayed or resisted the nationalist cause. 21 After the founding of the Republic, purges were conducted among the military and civilian bureaucrats to eliminate those who had not joined the nationalists and to prevent them from entering the service of the new regime. 22 A group of prominent Ottoman intellectuals who had expressed opinions against the Republic and its policies were exiled. In order to avert potential power conflicts among military and civilian bureaucrats a fundamental agreement was effected in 1924 between Mustafa Kemal and the highest ranking commanders of the armed forces; those officers, who held both military and parliamentary posts, were asked to choose between them in order to sever the link
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between the armed forces and everyday politics. In return, the armed forces were given freedom from political intervention. The position of chief of staff was elevated to the same rank as minister of defense, previously his superior,23 symbolically substituting civilian-military equality for civilian supremacy over the military. It would be difficult, and not very meaningful, to try to distinguish between military and civilian elites in the period before the successful conclusion of the War of Independence and the founding of the Republic. Although many who organized and led the nationalist movement were of military origin, they performed political and administrative roles in addition to military roles, sometimes simultaneously, sometimes in sequence; this applies to Mustafa Kemal himself. Once the war was over, it became increasingly necessary to distinguish between the civilian bureaucracy and the military. Victory had reduced the need for a large army and the need to channel the bulk of public resources to the overriding purpose of winning the war; now it was important to develop functionally specific institutions to carry out the westernization policies of the new nation-state. The early recognition of the potential conflict between the corporate interests of the military and civilian branches of the government, and the achievement of a modus vivendi to regulate it, demonstrates Mustafa Kemal's political genius. It should be remembered, however, that whatever their differences, the military and the civilian bureaucracy shared the "bureaucratic ruling tradition" and a commitment to centrally directed westernization policies. Consolidation of the bureaucratic elite was also aided by staffing the legislature with former bureaucrats. Frey has demonstrated quite convincingly that the legislatures of the AtatOrk era, as well as those which functioned during the single-party era up to 1950, were staffed in large part by deputies of bureaucratic origin. 24 This congruence of background not only facilitated communications between legislators and bureaucrats, but also provided assurance that these two elite groups did not possess divergent views on the westernization process; it thus buttressed their joint political domination. 25 From the early days of the Republic, care was taken to insure that no counter-elite challenging the westernist outlook and policies would develop into a political force. Many government actions can be interpreted in this light. The caliphate, for example, provided a political symbol around which potential opposition could rally. Its abolition removed the last vestige of the ancien regime which could still stand in the way of the westernization process. Similarly, the closing of the tekkes and zaviyes, the banning of religious orders, and the placing of the evkaf (religious endowment, Arabic waqf) under the control of the state, were all designed to eradicate semi-autonomous institutions where traditionalist counter-elites might organize to challenge the political domination of society by westernizing bureaucratic elites.
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By 1928, the government felt confident that the traditionalist groups had been brought under control, and the article in the constitution describing Turkey as an Islamic Republic was removed. In 1931, through the Directorate of Religious Affairs, the government took over the payment of religious functionaries. 26 The ulema, one of the four pillars of Ottoman society (along with the palace, the bureaucracy, and the military) was thus reduced to a mere appendage of the Kemalist bureaucratic apparatus. The educational system, was seen as the instrument through which the long-term coherence of the elite would be achieved. In 1924, a Unification of Education Law was enacted, bringing all educational institutions under the control of the Ministry of National Education. The traditional institutions of higher learning, the medreses, were closed. In 1928, the Arabic script was replaced by the Latin alphabet, and in the 19305 a campaign to turkify the language was launched. In order to appreciate the implication of these policies for elite coherence, it must be recognized that education was the key to social mobility in the Republic, and that those moving up the educational ladder during this period, in the absence of alternatives, inevitably aspired to and often succeeded in obtaining goVefl,lment jobs. By giving education a secular, western-oriented republican content, the bureaucratic elite socialized newcomers to their ranks into a system of values they were trying to propagate in society.27 The unification of education was an attempt to minimize exposure to conflicting values, norms, and ideas. The change in the alphabet and the purification of the language helped the young generation sever its ties with the past and become a source of reliable republican cadres. The local notables as an elite group had cooperated with the nationalists during the War of Independence, but they were largely uninterested in the cultural westernization policies pursued by the Kemalist Republic. The central bureaucratic elites hoped that as they transformed society, differences of cultural orientation between themselves and the local elites would disappear; but, in the meantime, some accommodation had to be reached. A policy of complementary coexistence was adopted. The local notables, often through the Republican People's Party, were led to support the government and its policies. In return, they enjoyed access to the bureaucracy and support for their provincial activity. The government, on its part, refrained from policies such as the land reform which would undermine the economic-cum-social power of the local elites. Standardization and Centralization of the Bureaucratic System The consolidation of the center, as can be inferred from the preceding discussion, involves the achievement of a common set of understandings, the realization of a congruence of values, and the development
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of an esprit de corps among the bureaucrats and politicians, so that they can operate as a cohesive group in formulating and implementing government policies. This, in turn, requires the existence or development of a bureaucratic system lending itself to the formulation of policies and their uniform implementation throughout society. Uniformity in policy application assumes that bureaucrats, irrespective of their vertical or horizontal location in the bureaucratic system, an:' recruited and paid through a standard system, follow similar rules of procedure and observe similar guidelines in their actions. In other words, a degree of standardization must be achieved. The lack of congruence between the goals of the bureaucratic elites and those of. the citizens means that the central organs of the bureaucracy, those located in the national capital, must be the hierarchical superiors of the local units of administration. Policies of change emanating from the center are expected to be applied strictly at lower levels. Local inputs into the decision-making process are viewed as undesirable and often as detrimental to national modernization goals. Consequently, an expansion of the authority of the center at the expense of local autonomy is likely to occur. This tendency is referred to as centralization.
Standardization. In the Ottoman bureaucratic system, salaries of bureaucrats, on the whole, were low and irregular. 28 With the founding of the Republic, efforts were made to construct a general frame or structure for the civil service system, whose basic characteristics were determined by law in 1926. Civil service careers were to be based on merit. 29 Recruitment was competitive, with some exceptions where appointive powers could be exercised. A 1929 law fixed the salary system. These laws tied advancement in the system to educational attainment and seniority, creating an educational caste system.·~o Technical and legal standardization was put into force. The change of alphabet was one instrument of standardization. Since Arabic letters are unsuitable for writing the Turkish language, several writing conventions and alphabetic adaptations had been in usc. The adoption of the Latin alphabet rendered it possible for the bureaucracy to employ a single technique for written communications. 31 The adoption of the Gregorian calendar and the metric system may be viewed in the same light. All civil servants were now provided with tools that had the same meaning throughout the administrative system. Such changes, it should be added, represented the continuation of standardization policies adopted toward the end of the Ottoman era. Ortaylt has drawn attention to the lack of codification of laws in the Ottoman era.·n Several legal systems and traditions coexisted in the imperial bureaucratic system. 33 In matters of civil law, for example, local custom and religious affiliation were important inputs in the judicial decision-making processes. Starting in 1926, new civil, com-
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mercial and penal codes were enacted. These laws aided standardization in two ways: they were to be enforced throughout the land without allowance for local variation, and, as adaptations of Western European systems, they were all based on the same tradition of Roman law. The different codes all reflected the same legal paradigm.
Centralization. A major process of bureaucratic centralization had been underway ever since the reign of Mahmut II. The trend continued until the demise of the empire, gaining in intensity during the rule of the Committee of Union and Progress. The Republic inherited a centralized bureaucratic structure. Even the geographical organization of administrative units and subunits was retained essentially intact. 34 To insure compliance with the new modernization policies, particularly outside the urban centers, Atatiirk had to rely upon his provincial military and administrative representatives . . . . This included a network of provincial governors and district governors who were appointed by and directly responsible to the central offices of the Ministry of Interior. . . . Much of their activity was guided by directives from Ankara. 3s
An example of further centralization during the Republic was the Village Law of 1924. The law recognized the village as a legal person and imposed on it a number of responsibilities. The headman and council of elders were held responsible for the realization of these obligations.~6 Since little was left to the initiative of the village organs, the law, in essence, rendered the headman a functionary of the central government. However, the intensification of centralized rule during the early years of the Republic was not, for the most part, a consequence of a change in the law. As noted above, a heavily centralized system was already in existence. Several new features did, however, contribute to the further growth of administrative centralization. As the center now judged its extensions on the periphery in terms of how well they carried out westernization policies, the local agents of the central government became highly dependent on the center for instructions in helping them do the "right" things. Public resources were brought almost exclusively under central control, making local units heavily dependent on allocations from the center. 37 The propagation of rapid cultural change often necessitated the employment of compulsory means; in resorting to these means, authorization and support by the central organs of administration was important. Finally, the Republic covered a smaller territory, which facilitated communications with the center.
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The Expansion of the Bureaucratic System With the founding of the Republic, citizens witnessed a growth in the presence and intervention of government in their daily lives. After 1924, for example, Turks were obliged to send their children to primary schools closely scrutinized by the Ministry of National Education. From 1926, only marriages conducted by an authorized agent of the central government were recognized as binding. At the same time, inheritance began to be regulated by national rules as opposed to local custom. A universal military conscription system for all qualified males began to operate effectively on a nationwide scale. The peasants became more familiar with central law enforcement as jendarmerie (rural quasi-military police) stations began to spread through the countryside. They were asked to contribute resources, including unpaid labor, to the construction of school buildings and roads. The expansion of the role of government in society was not confi ned to immediately visible activities. The government also took over economic activities which had previously been performed, totally or in part, by private, sometimes foreign actors. The Ottoman economy had been subject to extensive control by outside forces, due to a series of economic concessions extended to foreign governments and companies. For example, the Ottoman Public Debt Administration had been granted a monopoly on tobacco, matches, salt and spirits, all important and steady sources of income, in order to collect on Ottoman debts. The Ottoman Bank, an Anglo-French company, performed functions ordinarily performed by nationally owned central banks. Public transport systems, such as railroads and shipping lines, as well as public utilities in major centers, were operated by foreign companies. The empire did not have effective control of its foreign trade, as foreign governments prevented the imposition of customs duties and other regulatory measures. The republican government pursued a policy of nationalizing foreignowned enterprises and revoking concessions to foreign governments. Some steps in this direction were negotiated with foreign governments as early as the Lausanne Conference preceding the declaration of the Republic. Later on, the government proceeded gradually to acquire foreign-owned transport and utility companies. Railroads were integrated under the State Railroad Company, and shipping lines incorporated into the Turkish Maritime Lines. Utilities, on the other hand, were turned over to municipal governments. The property of the Ottoman Public Debt Administration was transferred to the Turkish State Monopolies. A Central Bank was established, with exclusive rights to issue legal tender and regulate monetary policy, reducing the Ottoman Bank to the status of an ordinary bank. The Republic gradually developed a customs system, and introduced regulations on foreign trade.
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During the 1923-1930 period, government resources were allocated mainly to the achievement of national control over the economy. The state itself did not attempt to evolve into a major actor in securing economic development. The 1923 Economic Congress of Izmir had opted to leave the realization of economic development in private hands. The failure of the private sector to fulfill this expectation, the 1929 depression and its unfavorable effects on the Turkish economy, the reluctance to involve foreigners in economic activity, and the apparent economic successes of the Soviet Union 38 all contributed to the evolution of a policy of etatism, or state capitalism. 39 Etatism was an attempt not to eliminate private economic activity, but to introduce the state as a major actor in industrial development where private enterprise had plainly failed. A National Industrial Development Plan was prepared in 1933 and put into effect during the 1934-1938 period. Large industrial investment banks like So.merbank and Etibank were created during this period. The industrial backbone of Turkey, comprising the State Economic Enterprises, was in large part built during this time. The development and application of the etatist doctrine gave the bureaucratic elites another power base for their domination of the political system. On the political side, the major instrument developed to supplement the penetration of the central administration to the provinces was the Republican People's Party. After the founding of the Republic, this government party registered a noticeable expansion. Although the RPP was a separate organization, in practice it worked closely with the state, giving the bureaucracy direct contact with local notables and, symbolically, with the masses. The organization of the party largely resembled that of the bureaucracy. In terms of leadership positions, there was often a convergence. Until the change to multi-party politics, the same individual served as head of state and head of the party. In some periods, one individual served as both prime minister and secretary general of the party. Provincial and subprovincial party units were often headed by governors and subprovincial governors respectively.40 In 1931, the RPP engaged in an effort to develop People's Houses to serve as centers of cultural activity. These institutions, under the domination of provincial and subprovincial bureaucrats, were particularly designed to attract the educated youth, keeping them away from rival political socialization channels and coopting them into the republican intelligentsia. In 1939, the system was expanded to include People's Rooms, enabling the party to reach smaller units of settlements in the more rural areas. 41 The party also served as a gatekeeper of access into the bureaucratic and other status positions in society. A decision taken at the 1927 Party Congress provides a good example of this function: "The candidates for positions in all political, administrative, social, economic,
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external and other similar organizations, even the candidates for village headmen, should be subject to approval by the party."42 On two occasions, in 1924 and 1930, there were experiments with the establishment of rival parties. In the first case, the government disbanded the new party; in the second, it chose to dissolve itself. The bureaucratic reaction to these experiments was, on the whole, unfriendly. The bureaucratic elite found it difficult to accept the existence of political organizations which did not share their political orientation and could someday challenge their politically dominant position. The Kemalist Bureaucracy: An Appraisal The Westernist wing of the nationalists, led by Mustafa Kemal, had been successful in achieving political domination over the emergent political system, which was proclaimed a republic in 1923. These leaders were the representatives of an almost two-century-old tradition of Ottoman westernizers. They wanted to build a modern society through radical socio-cultural change. Having inherited a centralized administrative system and a sizable bureaucratic cadre, whose traditions they shared, the Kemalists had a ready instrument in realizing their vIsIons. Consolidating their hold on the bureaucracy, the Kemalists set on a path of rapid westernization, via policies formulated at the center and implemented by the bureaucracy. The leadership was convinced of the validity of its vision, and did not feel its reforms should be compromised by the reluctance of the masses to accept them. This attitude coincided closely with Ottoman notions of statecraft. The Ottomans had used religion to legitimize political action. Secularization meant that an abstraction called the nation would now take over this function. The citizens continued to be viewed as passive objects. As Mardin has observed: "Altogether, the Kemalists had a fine understanding of regulation, but they missed the revolutionarymobilization aspect that in certain contemporary schemes of modernization mobilized masses for a restructuring of society."43 Change through regulation without immediately apparent benefits for the masses failed to generate popular acceptance of westernization policies. Rather than reevaluate these policies, the bureaucrats were inclined to impose them by compulsory means, confirmed in their apprehensions that the largely peasant masses were ignorant, backward, and reactionary and should not be provided with opportunities to participate in the political decision-making process. The bureaucrats, after having closely identified with the westernization goals of the political leadership, were granted extensive authority, which they grew accustomed to use rather freely in an unchallenged fashion. Their behavior served to increase the distance between themselves as a "political class with high social status" and
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those they were supposed to rule. As Karpat has expressed concisely: " ... the relationship between government institutions, the philosophy of elites, and the needs and the aspirations of the social strata were not functionally harmonized."H Bureaucratic elites were increasingly resented by the other segments of society. This outcome is sad to contemplate. These bureaucrats were not merely aiming to protect their "class interests." They were dedicated to the service of the state and the nation in the way they knew best. But despite their "populist convictions, [they] were in fact a small urban ruling elite and . . . they pursued their ideals largely with methods true to the classic Ottoman tradition."45 They were state and nation builders, not revolutionaries, if we mean by revolution a change in the social structure.
The End of Bureaucratic Dominance: The Multi-Party Period Political evolution of the counter-elite. The War of Independence and the founding of the Republic substantially reduced the political influence of the urban middle class. Some of its members left Turkey; others were wiped out by the nationalization program. The transfer of the government to Ankara and a lack of familiarity with those who occupied power positions there limited the access of the economic middle class to the new leadership. However, this class eventually revived. In accordance with the terms of the Lausanne Treaty, Turkey could take control of its taritf policy after 1929. That year, new higher protective tariffs were introduced, encouraging increased private investments and the growth of new industries. 46 Although the scope of such investments did not satisfy the political leadership, which proceeded to adopt a policy of etatism, the private economic sector continued to develop. The population of Turkey during the early years of the Republic was predominantly rural. Local notables, whose power and status derived from land ownership, local commercial activity and, at times, religious functions, dominated the provincial scene socially and economically. As we have noted, these groups had joined the nationalists, albeit hesitantly at first, during the Independence War. After the founding of the Republic, they had complied with its westernization policies. In return, policies which might have challenged their local domination were avoided. On the two occasions when new political parties were formed, however, many local notables had demonstrated a willingness to support them, in order to ward off domination by the westernist bureaucratic elites. The unexpected level of support enjoyed by these new political parties helps explain why the RPP governments quickly suppressed them. Several developments of the late 1930s paved the way for the later erosion of bureaucratic power. The death of AtatOrk allowed rival
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factions within the RPP to compete more effectively for domination within the party. Atatlirk, rather than trying to stamp out these factions, had chosen the role of arbiter. The presence of rival factions had given him flexibility in shifting policies. With the arbiter gone, the power struggle among groups with differing ideological and policy orientations could be conducted more effectively. The Second World War also indirectly encouraged the decline of bureaucratic power. Although an intricate system of alliances and policies kept Turkey out of the fighting, the country was forced to maintain a fully mobilized army, and it was affected by the changed economic conditions. Full-scale mobilization imposed new hardships on the population. In need of greater manpower, financial resources and supplies, the central bureaucracy became more extractive. Shortages of food supplies, clothing and similar items were widespread, and a distribution system favoring the bureaucrats led to intensified public resentment. The war also resulted in the accumulation of capital in private hands. As an exporter of agricultural products and raw materials, Turkey's foreign trade continued to produce a surplus throughout the war; exporters were the main beneficiaries. As government resources were exhausted, and the need for new revenues intensified, the wealth accumulated in private hands appeared to be the only major source of funds. In 1945, a wealth tax was enacted, essentially giving tax authorities a free hand in levying any amount of tax they thought appropriate on those engaged in private economic activity. The tax was soon suspended, but not before the damage had been done: some individuals had been wiped out, but, more important, the tacit alliance between the bureaucratic elite, the economic middle class and local notables was irreparably shattered. In 1945, the government had proposed a land reform. It may have been designed to mobilize peasant support for the political leadership, which had alienated the economic middle class and the local notables. The move backfired, however. The local notables and their representatives in the National Assembly strongly attacked the idea, while no major manifestation of support for the government appeared in the countryside. The peasants probably suspected that land reform would simply create another instrument of bureaucratic intervention and domination. A combination of factors led to the evolution of the Democrat Party (DP) and its victory in the elections of 1950,47 Thus political leadership passed from the bureaucratic-political elites to the economic elites. The exceptionally high voting turnout and the large margin of the Democrat victory were indications of the accumulated resentment by the masses against bureaucratic elitism. 48 The bureaucratic elites, confident of their ideas and power, had grown complacent and failed to take cognizance of the development
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of new power bases in society. As a consequence, they failed to make adjustments in policies or to coopt the potential opposition by allowing it more representation within political institutions.
The Democrat Party and the bureaucracy. With the victory of the Democrat Party, the bureaucratic elite was put under the political leadership of a counter-elite with which it had no organic ties. 49 In parliament, the number of deputies coming from bureaucratic backgrounds had also diminished. The bureaucratic domination of society had come to an abrupt end. The close relations between the RPP and the bureaucrats rendered the latter suspect in the minds of the democrats. Such suspicions were not entirely without justification. Not that the bureaucrats continued to take orders from the RPP; they were simply unused to taking orders from a political leadership whose preferences appeared to deviate significantly from their own. The Democrats, for their part, had won an election by mobilizing the masses against the state bureaucracy. Their motto was "enough, now the nation has the word," implying that the masses had not had an input in running society: The new parry promised it would bring services to the peasant, take his daily concern as a legitimate concern of politics, debureaucratize Turkey and liberalize religious practices. Finally, private enterprise, equally hampered by bureaucratic controls and angered by its dependence on political influence, was also promised greater freedom.50
Because the bureaucratic response to the demands of the DP government and the provincial leadership was slow, and often negative, the new holders of political power intensified their intervention in daily bureaucratic matters, removing and demoting civil servants who failed or refused to carry out their orders. The Democrats wanted a bureaucracy which would serve them in the same fashion that the bureaucracy had served the RPP during the single-party era. They failed to recognize that the congruence of ideology and role expectations between the government, the RPP, and the bureaucracy had been unique to the single-party era and could not be replicated, and might not be desirable, in a competitive political system. The anti-intellectual, anti-bureaucratic, localistic spirit of the Democrat Party had already alienated the bureaucrats. Constantly challenging their actions and punishing them only served to increase their consciousness as a political strata and to unify their ranks. The political decline of the bureaucracy was soon followed by an economic and social decline. The economic expansion policies pursued by the DP, financed by the printing of new money, combined with an increasing shortage of foreign currency, led to intensified inflation in the mid-1950s. The earnings of salaried employees, mainly the
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bureaucrats, did not keep up with inflation. The DP government was not particularly sensitive to the complaints of the bureaucracy. Political and economic decline gradually led to a fall in social status as well. The political elite of the single-party period was being reduced to a not very significant stratum of the population. Various causes, which we will not treat here,51 resulted in a decline of DP popularity. To arrest this decline, the party became more repressive of the opposition. More important, it intensified its efforts to provide symbolic gratification for the masses by utilizing religious, anti-secular, anti-state symbols. The prime minister paid homage to the leaders of religious orders; he referred to university professors as "those in black gowns," and rendered the opinion that he "could run the military with reserve officers if it were necessary." The bureaucratic elite, already losing ground on the socio-economic front, began to perceive a threat to the republican value system, and to the institutions which they had fought so hard to build and preserve. It was now their raison dJetre which was being challenged. Because of the repressive policies aimed against political opposition, the RPP also felt its existence was in danger. On 27 May 1960, the first Turkish experience with competitive political life came to an end when a group of military officers under the name of the National Unity Committee assumed power "to avoid national bloodshed" and to "restore democracy." This was met as a welcome relief by the bureaucrats and the RPP. Restoration of the bureaucracy after 1960. Celal Bayar, president of the Republic during the DP period, commented that the 1961 constitution amounted to the "constitutional legitimization of the bureaucracy and the intellectuals as one source of authority in addition to the people."S2 Although this was an exaggeration, it is true that the 1961 constitution reflected a distrust of the masses as the only source of authority. A number of institutions, such as the universities and the judiciary; were given autonomy, and others, such as the Constitutional Court, were newly created. Many of these institutional arrangements were actually inspired by the experience of the western democracies; unlimited political power legitimized by popular will may actually hamper the functioning of a democratic system. After 1961, the percentage of deputies of bureaucratic origin in the Grand National Assembly registered an increase; it has not declined significantly since that time."' Such an increase has not been accompanied, however, by a corresponding increase in the power of the bureaucracy as a "political class." The pay scale of civil servants was improved. It continues to be adjusted periodically, but never, in terms of purchasing power, to the level it attained in the single-party period when civil servants were among the primary possessors of a cash income.
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The revival of bureaucratic power after the revolution of 1960 was short-lived. The same constituencies which had supported the DP extended their support to organizations which claimed the DP legacy, after competitive politics replaced bureaucratic politics in 1961. By 1965, the Justice Party, claiming to be the inheritor of the DP, was solidly established in power. The strains in the relations between bureaucracy and government resurfaced, but their importance had declined. The bureaucratic and intellectual groups, which had achieved a consensus that DP rule should come to an end, had fallen into disagreement on what should be done afterwards. Each group also experienced internal centrifugal tendencies. For example, some bureaucrats found it convenient or desirable to work closely with the powers that be, while others remained sympathetic to the RPP. With the introduction of new ideologies into Turkish society, ideological cleavages emerged among the bureaucrats, dysfunctional for their solidarity as a political strata. New recruits into the bureaucracy did not share the group consciousness and ideological orientations of the older bureaucrats. The socialization process was not totally successful, as new recruits were exposed to diverse influences before and after thev became bureaucrats. With the decline in economic and· social status and in political importance, and the gradual loss of a sense of mission as the guardian of cultural modernization, the Turkish bureaucracy has moved from being a major actor in policy formulation and implementation to being an obstacle which governments have to contend with in formulating and implementing their own policies. A notable exception to this general trend has been the armed forces. The Turkish Army has maintained its esprit de corps and its effectiveness. It has accepted "saving the Republic" (or "saving the state" in the Ottoman vernacular) as a fundamental mission, assuming political responsibility in cases where civilian politics is judged to have failed.
The Current Impact of the Early Republican Bureaucratic Tradition
As a political system evolves in response to both environmental change and forces deriving from within the system itself, its component units or subsystems also change. Change, however, is never a uniform process. Subsystems may adapt at different rates and in different ways which may actually conflict with one another. Even though the bureaucratic elite has ceased to be the arbiter of the development process,54 it largely continues to see itself as an elite charged with special guardianship responsibilities for society and the political system. As late as 1980, 36% of the bureaucrats in selected ministries felt that they both knew and protected the national interest better than did the citizens. 55 In a more comprehensive fashion, Frey has argued:
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One of the central problems of Turkish politics is. . the problem of elitism. By this term, I mean the tendency of a small privileged sector to dominate society and, consciously, or unconsciously, to regard its domination as legitimate and desirable because of the cultural and intellectual inadequacy it attributes to non-elite elements .... Despite manifest structural changes and fluctuations .... one of the basic and most enduring patterns is a strong tendency toward elitism .... Perhaps Turkey's central political problem at present is how to deal with these strong residual tendencies toward elitism in the face of much newer bur comparable strong pressures toward structural pluralism. 56
Kemalism was elitist in its approach to politics, but the domination of society by a bureaucratic elite was not explicitly embodied in Kemalist doctrine. One element of the doctrine, populism, had simply been interpreted to mean rule for the masses rather than rule by the masses. The structural pluralization of Turkish society and the ensuing decline in the power of the bureaucrats created a role crisis for which official ideology did not provide explicit solutions. The result has been a susceptibility to ideologies which more clearly provide for elite guidance of socio-economic change. The rapid spread of various socialist and extreme nationalist doctrines among the bureaucrats in recent years can be attributed partly to the situation which can be summarized as an elite in search of an elitist ideology. The Turkish bureaucratic elites have always had an ambivalent and somewhat condescending attitude toward entrepreneurs. Particularly after the development of etatism as an economic doctrine, bureaucrats became convinced that the state should lead the industrialization and economic development effort. The expansion of the private sector was constantly resisted by the bureaucratic cadres; in all probability, this has been dysfunctional for economic growth. A similar distrust of foreign capital and investments, understandable in the early history of the Republic in light of the Ottoman experience, has not on the whole favorably disposed the Turkish bureaucracy toward foreign investment in Turkey. Government attempts to attract foreign capital by liberalizing investment laws have not been notably successful, as investors have discovered that a favorable legal environment does not necessarily mean a favorably disposed bureaucracy. In some ways, however, the Turkish bureaucratic elite has indeed aided in achieving rapid economic development. The initial development of industrial capacity by the state in the late 1930s, a trend continued by almost all governments to this day irrespective of economic philosophy, has facilitated private economic development in two ways. First of all, without the infrastructural investments realized by the state, private economic development would not have been possible. In addition, private industrialists rely on state production of major inputs such as steel and petrochemicals for their own production. Secondly, through the State Economic Enterprises, the
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bureaucracy has served as a major source of managerial and technical personnel for the private sector. Had a technical-managerial cadre of bureaucratic origin not been available to the private sector, its rapid growth would have been considerably hindered. In the earlier years of the Republic, the middle class was comprised largely of bureaucrats. The current middle class has a much broader base, including elements from the free professions, commerce and industry. But thanks to the educational achievements of the Republic, and to its modernization policies in general, this middle class shares the modernist values cultivated for so long by the bureaucracy. 57 Until recently, the bureaucracy, in spite of its shortcomings, has been one of the main agents contributing to political stability. On several occasions when consensus between political parties has been absent, the existence of a well-organized bureaucratic machine has helped the political system survive conflict, antagonism and indecision. The Turkish bureaucracy has now reached a crossroads. Currently divided within itself in terms of rank and status, the bureaucracy does not have a clearly delineated identity, and hence, it lacks the cohesion and unity of outlook necessary for the initiation and the implementation of dynamic socio-economic development as a national goal. 58
It is still in the process of adjusting to a new situation, burdened by its own past. There continues to be a lack of congruence between the value systems of the bureaucrats and those of the entrepreneurial groups, the free professions and the mass pUblics. The values prevalent among the latter are managerial-technical and pragmatic. They want bureaucrats to be public servants, not political masters. The bureaucrats, on the other hand, continue to subscribe to a bureaucratic-clerical rationality and to see themselves as guardians of the state and a source of political authority. The mutual adjustment between governments, bureaucrats, political parties, entrepreneurial groups and mass publics is an ongoing process. Turkish society and Turkish political institutions are in such flux that any long-range prediction would in all likelihood turn out to be erroneous.
Notes 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8.
Heeger, p. 47. Ibid. Binder, et al. Eisenstadt, pp. 243-244. Ibid. Heeger, p. 5l. Turan, p. 57. Eisenstadt, p. 4.
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9. Turan, p. 53. 10. See also Kongar, 1981a, pp. 461-462. 11. Frey, 1975, p. 45. 12. For an interesting discussion of the growth of secularism as a fundamental element of westernization-modernization, see ~ukru Hanioglu, Bir Siyasi DUfunur Olarak Dr. Abdullah Cevdet ve Diinemi (istanbul: Os:dal, 1981). 13. Frey, 1965, p. 312. 14. Rustow, 1964, p. 387. 15. Heper, 1974. 16. Roos and Roos, pp. 5-6; Chambers, pp. 306-307. 17. It has sometimes been argued that change from above without mobilization of the masses as active agents of change is also a form of mobilization. See David Apter's "Systemes, processus et aspects politiques du developpement economique," in Industrialisation et Societe (The Hague: Unesco-Mouton, 1963). I am inclined to think that in a strategy of change where the object of change is given a passive or obedient role, the object is being regulated rather than mobilized. 18. Heper, 1977b, pp. 57-58. 19. Karpat, 1973, p. 263. 20. Ibid., p. 45. 21. Aybars. 22. Tuncay, pp. 307-329. 23. Rustow, 1964, pp. 379-380. 24. Frey, 1965, p. 181. 25. Roos and Roos, p. 79. 26. Lewis, p. 413. 27. Heper, 1977a, p. 97. 28. Lewis, p. 375. 29. Tutum, p. 96. 30. Chambers, p. 308. 31. Orraylt, 1977b, pp. 406-412. 32. Ibid., p. 5. 33. Oktay. 34. ~aylan, pp. 29-30. 35. Roos and Roos, p. 24. 36. Gozubiiyiik, pp. 3-10. 37. Tax collection, for example, was taken over totally by the state and intermediaries were eliminated. The system of designating income from a specific source for a specific expenditure was also abolished. All allocations began to be made from the national budget. 38. Turan, p. 114. 39. My colleague Mehmet Gens: has suggested that the shift to etatism may also have been a natural consequence of the earlier nationalization policies. Once nationalization was completed, the bureaucracy could no longer acquire enterprises, so it set out to construct its own. 1 think this is sound reasoning which requires further inquiry. 40. Turan, p. lOI. 41. Ibid., pp. 101-102. 42. Op. cit., p. lOI. 43. Mardin, p. 184. 44. Karpar, 1973, p. 45.
120 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58.
Dter Turan Rustow, 1973, p. ll8. Hale, p. 17. See Turan, pp. 105-106, and Erogul, passim. Karpat, 1973, pp. 79-80. Saylan, p. 46. Mardin, p. 184. See Turan, pp. 123-126. Mardin, p. 186. YOcekok, p. 282. Neyzi, p. 148. Bozkurt, 1980, p. 130. Frey, 1975, p. 43; see also Heper, 1977a. Neyzi, p. 138. Sunar, p. 140.
References Aybars, Ergun (1974), istiklal Mahkemeleri (Ankara: Bilgi). Binder, Leonard et al. (1971), Crises and Sequences in Political Development (Princeton: Princeton University Press). Bozkurt, Orner, ed. (1977), YOnetim Sosyolojisi (Ankara: TODAIE). _ _ _ . (1980), Memurlar: TurkiyeJde Kamu Burokrasisinin Sosyolojik Gornnumu (Ankara: TODAIE). Chambers, Richard L. (1964), "The Civil Bureaucracy," in Robert T. Ward and Dankwart A. Rustow, eds., Political Modernization in Japan and Turkey (Princeton: Princeton University Press). Eisenstadt, S.N. (1969), Political Systems of Empires (New York: Free Press). Erogul, Cern (1970), Demokrat Parti (Ankara: Siyasal Bilgiler FakOltesi). Frey, Frederick W. (1965), The Turkish Political Elite (Cambridge: M.LT. Press). _ _ _ . (1975), "Patterns of Elite Politics" in George Lenczowski, ed., Political Elites in the Middle East (Washington, D.C.: American Enterprise Institute). GozObOylik, A. ~eref (1977), "Koy idaresi" in Oguz An, ed., Koy Sosyolojisi Okuma Kitabt (Istanbul: Bogazi~i Oniversitesi). Hale, Peter F. (1981), "Assessments, Origins and Objectives of Etatism," paper presented to TOrkiye i~ Bankasl International Symposium on AtatOrk, (Istanbul, 1981). Hanioglu, ~Okru (1981), Bir Siyasi DUfunur Olarak Abdullah Cevdet ve Donemi (Istanbul: Ucdal). Heeger, Gerald A. (1974), The Politics of Underdevelopment (New York: St. Martin's). Heper, Metin (1974), Burokratik YOnetim Gelenegi (Ankara: o.D.T.O.). _ _ _ . (1977a), Turk Kamu Burokrasisinde Gelenekfilik ve Modernlefme (Istanbul: Bogazi~i Oniversitesi). _ _ _ . (1977b), "TOrk Kamu BOrokrasisinde Modernlqme: Saf Patrimonyalizmden Patrimonyal Yasalhga Gcli~im," in Orner Bozkurt, ed., YOnetim Sosyolojisi (Ankara: TODAIE). _ _ _ . (1973), "Degi~en Turkiye'de Olumsuz Burokratik Politika," in Armagan: KanIJn-IJ EsasiJnin 100. Ytlt (Ankara: Siyasal Bilgiler Fakiiltesi).
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Karpat, Kemal H. (1973), "Structural Change, Historical Stages of Modernization and the Role of Social Groups in Turkish Politics," "Social Groups and the Political System After 1960," and "Ideology in Turkey After the Revolution of 1960," in Kemal H. Karpat, ed., Social Change and Politics in Turkey (Leiden: E.J. Brill). ____ . (1959), Turkey's Politics (Princeton: Princeton University Press). Kongar, Emre (1979), TiJrkiye'nin Toplumsal Yapzsz, 3rd cd., (Ankara: Bilgi). _ _ _ . (1981a), Ataturk ve Devrim Kuramlan (Ankara: j~ Bankasl). _ _ _ . (1981b), Toplumsal Dejfifme Kuramlart ve Turkiye Gerggi (Istanbul: Remzi Kitabevi). Lewis, Bernard (1961), The Emergence of Modern Turkey (New York: Oxford University Press). Mardin, ~erif (1973), "Center-Periphery Relations: A Key To Turkish Politics," Daedelus (Winter). Neyzi, Nezih (1973), "The Middle Classes in Turkey," in Kemal H. Karpat, ed., Social Change and Politics in Turkey (Leiden: E.}. Brill). Oktay, Cemil (1981), "Turkiye'de Ybnetsel Geli§menin Genel <;::izgileri," unpublished manuscript. Onaran, Oguz (1977), "Ybnetim-Politika ili§kileri ve Halkla ili§kiler Birimlerine Du§en Gbrevler," in Ytlltk 1974/1976 (Ankara: SBF /BYYO). Ortayli, tiber (1977a), "Osmanli Burokrasisinin Ozelliklerine Kar§da§tlrmah Bir Yakla§lm Denemesi," in Orner Bozkurt, ed., Yonetim Sosyolojisi (Ankara: TODAIE). ____ . (l977b), "Tarihsel ve Toplumsal Nedenleriyle Turk Harf Devrimi," in Ataturk Doneminin Ekonomik ve Toplumsal Sorunlan 1923-1938 (Istanbul: ITIA Mezunlan Dernegi). _ _ _ . (1979), Turkiye idare Tarihi (Ankara: TODAIE). Roos, Leslie and Noralou Roos (1971), The Managers of Modernization (Cambridge: Harvard University Press). Rustow, Dankwart A. (1964), "The Military" in Robert T. Ward and Dankwart A. Rustow, cds., Political Modernization in Japan and Turkey (Princeton: Princeton University Press). ____ . (1973), "The Modernization of Turkey in Historical and Comparative Perspecrive," in Kemal H. Karpat, ed., Social Change and Politics in TtJrkey (Lciden: E.}. Brill). ~aylan, Gencay (1976), "Mulki idare Amirligi Sisteminin Belirleyici Ozelligi . Merkez~ilik," and "Gunumuz idare Amirlik Sistemini Nitelendiren Egilim: Siyasal-Y6netsel Yapl Butunle§mesi,'~ in Kurthan Fi~ek, ed., Turkiye'de Mulki ldare Amirligi (Ankara: Turk Idarecilcr Dernegi Bilimsel Ara§tlrma D1Z1SI 1). Sunar, tlkay (1974), State and Society in the Politics of Turkey's Development (Ankara: Siyasal Bilgiler Fakultesi). Tuncay, Mete (1978), "Hey'ct-i Mahsusa'lar (1923-1938)," in Armagan: Kanun-u Esasi'nin 100. Ytlt (Ankara: Siyasal Bilgiler Fakiiltesi). Turan, titer (1969), Cumhuriyet Tarihimiz (Istanbul: <;::aglayan). Tutum, Cahit (1980), "Turk Personel Sisteminin Sorunlanna Genel Bir Yakla~lm," Amme idaresi Dngisi, XIII, 3. Yucek6k, Ahmet N. (1980), Toplum-Kurum ili!kileri Aftslndan Turkiye'de Parlamentonun Evrimi, unpublished dozentur thesis (Ankara: Siyasal Bilgiler Fakultesi).
Part 3 Social and Economic Issues
9 Kemalist Views on Social Change Sabri M. Akural
A critical assessment of Kemalist views-the views of Atatiirk and his disciples-requires their delineation in the analytical framework of the different disciplines of the social sciences. The methodology employed in this study stems from the wide-ranging interests of the Kemalists in socia-political problems, which necessitate the utilization of both the topical and the historical approaches. As the basic issue of Kemalism 1 was social change, it is necessary to deduce the underlying assumptions in order to understand what the Kemalists meant to accomplish with their reforms. Only then can we achieve a clear insight into Atatiirk's views on social change. These assumptions are nowhere clearly stated or elaborated by Atatiirk or his early disciples. It is therefore unwise to attempt to impose a greater theoretical consistency than the evidence supports. Any such attempt at consistency can be attained only by distortions and excisions of Atatiirk's views or statements. Another reason for deducing the underlying assumptions of Kemalist reforms is to construct a framework within which they may be compared with Gokalp's views, 2 that is, with the views of the reigning Turkish conservatives. Turkish conservative views on social change deserve more serious attention than they have been given by the Kemalists. 3 Among the many Turkish intellectuals who are cited by Olken, 4 only Gokalp realized the critical importance of cultural continuity and stability.5 The reinterpretation offered herein consists of a rearrangement of elements already on hand, a reordering of previous insights into a harmonious composite. The rejection of part of the Kemalist interpretation, imposed upon widely disparate events in recent Turkish historY,6 required a deliberate reorganization of clusters of ideas and previously unfamiliar facts. This study proposes to survey Kemalist views on social change in the context of the six principles formulated by Atatiirk for the purpose of cultural manipulation and social change: secularism, nationalism, populism, etatism, republicanism and revolutionism (reformism). 125
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In Atatiirk's declarations and in the works of the Kemalists, one can find support for ideas representing a wide spectrum of western ideologies and theories. For this reason, Kemalist views may, strictly speaking, be considered neither "methodological" nor "scientific." It will, however, be shown that Kemalism, which remains an intellectual force of considerable importance, is based on various compatible assumptions, and that there does exist a certain harmony among its manifest goals. The six principles of Kemalism officially adopted by the Fourth Grand Congress in 1935 represent a political program for social change. However, Lord Kinross's claim that Atatiirk had a master plan for reforms and economic development 7 simply does not accord with the facts. Atatiirk had an acute understanding of what could and could not be achieved through the Turkish political process during the 1920s and 1930s. As a secular reformist, he was essentially a relativist who behaved benevolently and in a circumspect manner. In short, he made practical decisions as he faced specific issues, and did not always begin with a definition of what is philosophically absolutely right; nor did he look upon politics as an arena in which the absolute right must be realized. Nevertheless, a phalanx of Kemalist intellectuals did try to present Atatiirk's views as an all-embracing master doctrine outside of which no serious thinking could be done.
Secularism Secularism was the foundation stone on which all the other Kemalist reforms were built. It is the most salient and fundamental aspect of Kemalism. Atatiirk regarded secularism as a necessary component of modernization and social change. 8 As such, he correctly viewed the caliphate as a threat to the security of his regime, and he abolished it in 1924. Kemalist secularism is not to be understood as the encouragement of atheism; however, neither was it a simple matter of separation of religion and state in order to promote westernization. Atatiirk not only secularized the courts and schools, he also worked systematically to disestablish the ulema, whose influence he considered detrimental to progress. 9 The jeriat (Islamic religious laws; shari'a in Arabic) remained, at least in theory, the only source of laws in the Ottoman Empire until the Tanzimat reformers started to build a limited secular legal system during the mid-nineteenth century. Further measures intended to bring about secularization were adopted in the 1908-1918 period, and many Young Turks, such as Abdullah Cevdet and Gokalp, propagated secularism as a vehicle of modernization. However, secularism was not enforced as an official policy of the state until Atatiirk.
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Besides the abolition of the caliphate and the ~eriat courts in L_ " the basic secular reforms carried out by Ataturk consisted of: in 1925-passage of the Hat Law, closing down of religious tombs (turbes) and dervish meeting places (tekkes) , and adoption of the Gregorian calendar; between 1926 and 1930-abolition of Islamic laws and adoption of the Swiss civil code, the Italian penal code, and the German commercial code; in 1928-nullification of the constitutional article adopting Islam as the state religion; and, in 1935the change of the Islamic sabbath to Sunday. Ataturk, like the Young Turks, justifiably perceived the ulema as a hindrance to social change. While the Cistercian monks pioneered agricultural innovations in Europe and laid the foundation for the English wool trade during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries,1O the ulema in the Ottoman Empire showed no interest in economic activity. The lack of progress during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in the Islamic world may in part be attributed to the fact that the ulema dlirn.?ITen~jy!t1'lfOTi<: Importanceto_~~KFut-~ro~.. ~!Lt<:~ assure obedience to the Islamic dhii:- as ""ltwas then understood. The 'ltfCIineonearnT~-ii~- the medrese-; paralle!edby the- revl val of secular learning in the Ottoman Empire, created a new demand during the late nineteenth century for intellectual freedom, which on various occasions was used to repudiate the spiritual authority and doctrinal decisions of the ulema. ll ~am, according to Atat_~rl~LW.~.L~~~entj~!!y __~_ra~iQ.~_J~"jjgiQJh demaoomg no-intermediary clergy, only faith, reason, and the exercis~ OTVinue:'7Tms simple so-rt ot rationalism, however, f(lU~
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In their oppositIOn to the social side of Islam, the Kemalists underestimated the role of religion in the private lives of individuals. There is an intellectual element in religion's search for purpose and values, and an element of emotional security in faith. But the Kemalists supposed that turning away from Islam toward scientific knowledge would create a new Kemalist man, highly logical and experimental; thus, they vociferously encouraged Turkish youth to study science. The historical fact that the most advanced and civilized peoples have been profoundly religious did not weaken their resolve. The secularism that held sway up to 1950 gradually began to give way to something suspiciously like a new religious fanaticism. Religious revivals have surfaced intermittently in one region or another over the past three decades, among both popular and cultivated circles. But Turkish conservatives have so far failed to structure a welldeveloped conservative philosophy tempered with the insights of Islamic faith and the wisdom of history. The Kemalists, who read the works of the philosophes, were convinced that the secular spirit of the Enlightenment had put an end to the role of Christianity in Western Europe, partly as a result of the philosophes' own literary skill and effective campaign against all organized religion. 14 But for all the ferocity of the attacks upon Christianity by Voltaire, Rousseau, and the encyclopedists, the eighteenth century remained a basically religious age in Europe. IS Similarly, the Kemalists failed to kindle the secular spirit among the Turkish masses. Nor did the expected "reformation" of Islam take place, as neither the ulema nor the secularists were ever sufficiently devoted to the spirit of free rational inquiry to examine the history of Islam, Christianity, and Judaism with critical detachment. A learned analysis of western civilization cannot be attempted without the use and understanding of the Bible. The fact that western society is Judeo-Christian, however, was more than the Kemalist secularists could admit; therefore, they failed to explore Judea-Christian influences. This was inexcusable for those who advocated western reforms, as western civilization originated in the Middle East,16 while Islam, through the Koran, drew a great deal from the Old Testament. But the Kemalists, who wanted to modernize the Republic by westernizing it, failed to use this relationship as a point of reference in understanding the Judeo-Christian tradition. We still do not really know how the Kemalist reforms affected the conditions of daily life, behavior, and beliefs of men and women of the various classes in Anatolia. Political history proper should embrace not only developments within the intellectual class; it must also reflect Common beliefs and sentiments. Analyzing Atatiirk's ideas in terms of their reception by a small group of Turkish intellectuals and according them their proper place in the history of ideas does not reveal how his thoughts filtered through to the broader reading public
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or what impact they had upon the beliefs and sentiments of the vast majority of people who were illiterate. As early as the 1840s, groups of medical students occasionally engaged in symbolically defiant acts against religious sanctionsY During the reactionary Hamidian regime, men like Tevfik Fikret and Abdullah Cevdet launched a bold crusade against all Islamic institutions, IS and some clerics cast aside their Islamic values to become westernists. IY Such incidents illustrate the degree of social change that took place during the nineteenth century within various elitist Ottoman milieus. The apparent signs of religious indifference on the part of the ruling elite during the Kemalist era should not therefore occasion surprIse. But the available literary evidence suggests that during the Ittihat and Kemalist eras the vast majority of the people of Anatolia remained fundamentalist in religion, nativist in prejudice, and conservative in life style. 2o Victims of a progressivist fallacy, the Kemalist historians see the Ittihat and Kemalist reform movements as a series of chronic struggles between the forces of light and darkness-the forces of freedom and progress versus despotic sultans and reactionaries. They fail to show how and to what degree the Anatolian people were reconciled to the lttihat and Kemalist reforms. Precisely what sources inspired Ataturk and his followers is difficult to determine. It is, however, important to remember that the dominant European view in the 1920s on the issue of social change was that of Max Weber. In The Protestant Ethic, Weber identified Protestant religious values as the source of European economic development. 21 Whether Kemalist secularism was, in fact, like Protestantism, a protest against religious orthodoxy is somewhat irrelevant to the subject under study. What does matter is that while the Kemalist intellectuals were sear~hing for the determinants of social change and economic development, Max Weber popularized the notion that Protestant religious values had had a decisive impact on European economic development. Just as Protestantism represents a different attitude toward religion than medieval Catholicism, so the Kemalists tried to bring about an attitudinal change toward Islam by the propagation of secularism. Permissiveness toward religious conversion is indicative of the absence in a given society of the social rigidities that hinder progress. Though acceptance of secularism and the experience of religious conversion cannot be equated psychologically, both require considerable change in religious attitude. The acceptance of secularism makes further socio-political change acceptable. The Turkish elite acquired highly rational and scientitic values hospitable to progress, and their perception of religious and traditional values changed. The Kemalist civilizing mission emphasized progress through secularism within the ruling elite, and the goal of progress replaced the God-centered way of life within that section of Turkish society.
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But the economic development that took place during the Kemalist era was not great enough to cause fundamental changes in the socioeconomic structure of the country as a whole. For this reason, while the attirudinal change within the ruling elite intensified its own future expectations and westernized consumption habits, until 1950 Anatolia remained a land of closed religious communities, where Kemalist fiats on secularization remained unincorporated into the value system. Material progress and its consequences are not, after all, accepted modes of Islamic salvation. The social mobility created by economic development during the 1950-1980 period brought about more fundamental changes than the Kemalist fiats of 1922-1950. Kemalism, which once represented the radical cultural reformism of Ataturk, has now come to be perceived as the moderate center in Turkish politics. If the permanence of Ataturk's basic principle of secularism is to be assured, a considerable degree of cultural receptivity to further social change is required. Nationalism
Turkish nationalism arose out of the ashes of the Balkan wars. At a time when Ottoman Turks had been abjectly defeated, pan-Turkists consoled them with visions of a messianic future. In contrast, Ataturk's Turkism was confined to Turkey, and his objections to the ideology of pan-Turkism were as strong as his criticisms of pan-Islamism. 22 The conservative nationalists, who owed a great deal to the panTurkists, advocated cultural nationalism and opposed all types of cosmopolitanism. 23 They echoed a trend that can be traced back to the Orkhon inscriptions and Bilge Kagan (683-734), who issued the first known warning to the Turkic peoples against cultural imperialism. H German Volkish philosophers and romanticists like Herder,25 Fichte,26 5chopenhauer,27 Arndt 28 and Treitschke,29 seeking to "liberate" the German way of life from Christian dogma, had advocated patriotism and inveighed against cosmopolitanism. So Gokalp advocated national religion and cultural nationalism. 30 His criticism of the leriat laws constituted an analogous blow to Islamic dogma. 31 On the religious issue, Atatiirk's approach may have been similar. According to his longtime advisor and spoke man Karaosmanoglu, his aim in abolishing the sultanate and caliphate was to get rid of the non-Turks employed in those institutions. Karaosmanoglu also ascribes Ataturk's preference for the Turkish ezan (call to prayer) and the Turkish translation of the Koran to his desire to nationalize Islam. 32 If Karaosmanoglu is correct, Ataturk's national religious inclinations unmistakably echo the opinions of Gokalp and the Volkish philosophers. However, while the 1935 program of the Republican People's Party seems to indicate that the Kemalists did indeed consider it essential
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to preserve the "special character and the entirely ill dependent identity of the Turkish social community,"3J behind the rhetoric this statement expresses nothing more than Atatiirk's search for a common identity for the new nation. In his parlance, "cultural reforms" was a catchphrase for the imperatives of progress which would in fact undo familiar Ottoman Turkish cultural forms. In contrast, the conservatives set culture aside as a sanctuary for society's self-image, free from the interventions of politics.3~ Studies on Ataturk clearly show that he had no racial prejudice. 35 But Kemalists persisted in viewing the Arab and Persian influence on Turkish culture as an insidious plague, and considered Near Eastern civilization inherently inferior to European civilization. 3(, There is no doubt that, during Atatl1rk's time, the development of Near Eastern cultures was arrested; there was a lack of progress, a backwardness, a stagnation. Yet it must be acknowledged that the relative merit of different cultures cannot be positively determined. Rightist groups in Turkey have often simplistically sought to blame complicated historical events and social problems on outside elements like the devJirme, minorities, Masonic lodges or aliens. It is therefore quite surprising that the Kemalists opted for exogenous causes in their attempt to attribute the backward state of Turkish society to Arabic and Persian influence. In any case, the rightists and Kemalists differed insofar as approach. As Lipset and Raab have pointed out, rightists always advocate the suppression of diverse opinions,u a policy which, for well-known reasons, is detrimental to progress and social change. The main Kemalist emphasis was not on the suppression of diverse opinions. Rather, Atatiirk's nationalism was manifest in his cultural activities and reforms. Chief among these were the alphabet reform (1928) and the establishment of the Turkish Historical Society (1931) and Turkish Linguistic Society (1932). Atatl1rk used both history and language to promote social change. The uses of history. Although his practical work focused on the modernization efforts of the Turkish Republic, Ataturk also dealt with broader concepts of historical change. His ideas on the dynamics of change and his' emphasis on the cultural factors underlying sociopolitical change had a signiticant impact on Turkish historical studies. This is clearly manifest in Karpat's characterization of historical studies in Turkey: . . . most of the studies on Turkey have relied heavily on cultural factors in explaining the changes in the country. Turkey's history of transformation for the past one hundred and fifty years has been, for most scholars, an effort co adopt western institutions. 38
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The identification of Ataturk with cultural determinism clarifies the affinity between his ideas and his reforms. But the cultural determinism of both the Kemalists and the conservatives can be faulted for paying too little attention to the economic factor. Lewis, in his article on modern Turkish historiography, notes approvingly that Ataturk used historians and their craft as an instrument of national government. 39 In fact, Kemalist historians refrained from exploring the many contours of history; instead, in an unduly presentminded way, they sought a single clement, theme or hero. Official republican history therefore emerges as the very flattened account of a march from darkness to light. A detailed analysis of the impact on Turkish studies of the Kemalist interpretation of history will not be attempted here. It must be mentioned, however, that Ataturk's language theory of history (gunCf dil) is only one aspect of this interpretation. That theory now looks less like an objective linguistic commentary than a product of the acute anxiety of the times. The westernizers-that is, the Young Turks and the Kemalists-played an important role in the creation of this anxiety. B. Lewis's argument that Turkish national self-respect had been sadly undermined before Ataturk began to propound his historical thesis is not altogether justified. 40 Lewis docs not consider that what was admittedly true in the case of the demoralized westernized intellectuals did not apply to the conservative masses, who did not suffer the subjugation or shame of colonial rule. Though the early Ottoman military victories remained a source of pride for the Kemalists, they tended to consider all existing Ottoman institutions as "antiquated," "medieval" or "decrepit." It did not occur to the Kemalist historians that in attributing the Ottoman decline to pan-Islamism and pan-Ottomanism Ataturk was looking for a rationale to support his regime rather than for the causes of the empire '5 decline. The conservatives disagreed with this view and looked to the past for inspiration. Kemalists associated even moderate conservative elements with the views of reactionaries blinded by religious dogmatism. In fact, however, the conservative account of the tribulations of the Turkish people was usually informed by a national consciousness. Conservatives such as Gokalp wanted to cope with modern Europe by reviving the Old Turkic culture and adopting western technology. Atattirk wanted to ward off western aggression by etTecting reforms which he thought could ultimately help the Turks incorporate into the powerful western ci\·ilization. In both cases, the obstacle was the popular identification of Ottoman traditions with Islam. Gokalp approached the problem with a factitious claim: "Ottoman civilization is an oriental civilization. Oriental civilization is not Islamic civilization. It is a continuation of Eastern
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Roman civilization."41 No Kemalist has yet devised a satisfactory solution for this dilemma.
Language reforms. Atatilrk used language reforms as a tool in changing the existing Ottoman order:U Only a man who understood the linguistic links between man and his social environment, and the cultural constraints exercised by language on the individual, could have advocated the type of radical language reform he promoted. The RPP Regulations adopted in 1927 are illuminating for the study of Kemalism. Article Five of this document recognizes the unity of language, sentiments and ideas as the strongest bond of national solidarity, and attaches a special priority "to the development of the Turkish language and Turkish culture."4~ Atatiirk's language reforms indicate that he was interested in the influence of language on world view. He must have recognized that Arabic, like Persian, represented a particular view of the world. By purifying Ottoman Turkish from Arabic and Persian he hoped to see the emergence of a different worldview among Turkish-speaking people. 44 For if reality is viewed in varying ways in different languages, and if linguistic terms and concepts are closely linked to social values, the Islamic faiths produced in Arabic or in Turkish cannot be perfectly consistent with one another. Atatilrk was pursuing this linguistic assumption when he favored the translation of the Koran. He sought the impress of some new national norms on Islamic practices in Turkey. From the point of view of Atatiirk's linguistic relativity, the Koran can be shown to reflect the mode of thought of an old Arabic community. At this point Atatilrk's view rests on non-methodical theological grounds, as Islamic belief holds that the Koran is God's own revelation in Arabic. Atatiirk's language-reform theory presupposed that the influence of Arabic and Persian on Turkish was detrimental to progress. 45 He arbitrarily classified Turkish as desirable and Arabic and Persian undesirable for the progress and health of Turkish social life. To the Kemalists turkification meant one thing in regard to language reforms and another in the cultural sphere. They favored the forceful exposure of Turkish society to western cultural influences in the case of legal reforms, and at the same time persisted in reintroducing old and unfamiliar Turkic words. Massive westernizing social reforms proceeded apace with the "purification" of the Turkish language. The Platonic assumptions of the Kemalist position on Old Turkic words 41> are inconsistent with and even contradictory to their behaviorist assumptions regarding cultural change. While giving the Kemalists credit for their emphasis on education, one should not fail to note that their language policy functioned as an adjunct to the mental manipulation of the younger generation, by severing its cultural ties with the Ottoman past. Predictably, the contradictory components of Kemalist nationalism, that is, turkification and westernization, resulted
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in time in incongruities in Turkish social life: Italianate architecture, Uighur and G6ktiirk names, and bluejeans. The Kemalists viewed Ottoman Turkish as an inappropriate tool for the modern age, finding it particularly ineffective in the expression of discoveries of modern science. They tried to remedy its shortcomings by purging Arabic and Persian words and substituting Old Turkic expressions and new words developed from Turkish word-stems. Although the Kemalists achieved partial success in this task, the controversy over the purification of Turkish is still raging in Turkey today. Radical language reformists at the Turk Dil Kurumu, founded by Atatiirk, advocate a purified everyday Turkish which they hope will turn out to be a more effective tool of progress. After all, even everyday English is not appropriate to the current state of knowledge in specialized fields, as English speakers well know. Atatiirk's abandonment of the Arabic script in favor of the Latin alphabet in 1928 was not merely a symbolic act expressive of his determination to secularize Turkey. He did hope to sever the cultural ties between future Turkish generations and their Ottoman Islamic traditions; but he also believed that the Latin script would make reading and writing easier to learn and consequently raise the literacy rate. The alphabet reform was in fact an aspect of his broader linguistic reform program; it should thus be treated under the heading of the "nationalism" principle rather than in the context of "secularism." The ostensible reason for the abandonment of the Arabic alphabet was that it created irregularities in Ottoman Turkish spelling. The closer letter/sound relationship that the Latin alphabet provides would facilitate the teaching of reading in the public schools. The Kemalist language reformers were inclined to stress the inadequate vowel representation in Arabic. They apparently regarded the phonic method as the only viable way to teach reading, a view no longer accepted by many reading specialists. Recent psycholinguistic research indicates that less-than-perfect letter/sound correspondence is not a serious obstacle to the successful learning of reading. According to psycholinguistic theory, reading can best be understood as a selective process, very similar to listening. 47 The listener does not hear every sound or even every word in the stream of language. 48 Rather, using his knowledge of the syntax of his language and his familiarity with its semantic content, the listener anticipates what the speaker will say, and then listens selectively to confirm or revise his prediction. In other words, listening is a process of constructing the meaning or deep structure of a sentence from the phonetic, syntactic and semantic cues in its surface structure. 49 Reading, like listening, is a receptive language process. According to this theory, the reader does not read every word or letter, but rather uses the three cue systems in written language (graphophonic, syntactic and semantic) to sample what is written, to predict on the
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basis of those cues, and then to confIrm or correct that prediction according to its congruence with subsequent graphophonic, syntactic and semantic information. Moreover, there is a reciprocal relationship among these three cue systems: the more the reader can rely on syntactic and semantic cues, the less he is tied to print. Thus we read much more quickly when the topic is familiar. Research on the errors made by proficient oral readers supports the psycholinguistic theory of reading. 50 These studies show thar even the best readers make some errors when they read material of average difficulty. Moreover, these erroneous readings frequently resemble the actual word in the text in semantic as well as graphophonic characteristics. Studies of beginning readers, which show similar types of errors, suggest that beginning reading instruction ought not to isolate letter/ sound relationships as in the phonic method, but rather ought to encourage the neophyte to use all three cue systems by presenting him with meaningful material in which all three systems are operating. When this is done, inexact letter/sound correspondence, such as in Ottoman Turkish using Arabic script, becomes less of an obstacle to learning than it is when beginning reading instruction is based solelyand without theoretical justification-on phonics. It is true that the time required to learn to read a given language is positively correlated with the degree of its letter/sound correspondence. But this difference is generally only a matter of months. In any case, the pace of learning is greatly affected by non-linguistic factors as well, including intelligence, previous experience with books, social and political considerations, and method of instruction. Moreover, once the ability to read has been acquired, proficient reading seems to proceed as efficiently in a language like Ottoman Turkish using Arabic script as it does in modern Turkish using the Latin script. Atatiirk was not the first to suggest alphabet reform. Ali Ahunzade and Enver Pa~a advocated reform of the Arabic script in 1864 and 1914, respectively, in order to make it more phonemic.~d In 1912, Hiiseyin Cahit and Abdullah Cevdet came out in favor of adopting the Latin script. 52 Yet, even though the Latin script had already been adopted by the Albanian Muslims, and (in 1927) by the Soviets for the Turkic peoples in the U.S.S.R., when Atatiirk officially proposed the adoption of the Latin alphabet in 1928 few outside his intimate circle favored the idea. 5,~ Finally, certain additional political attitudes and ideological considerations played a role in the 1928 alphabet reforms, including a residue of hostility toward the Arabs in the aftermath of the First World War and the desire for acceptance by the European community. As Atatiirk hoped, the adoption of the Latin script and the employment of unfamiliar "new" Turkish words isolated the younger generation from its historical past.
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Historians and social scientists in the field of Turkish studies, though their comprehension of methods of teaching reading is negligible, do not hesitate to voice their "common sense" notions on Atatiirk's alphabet reformsY It is by now a well-established academic tradition to cite the reforms as a forward step towards westernization, and no questions are raised concerning the actual efficacy of the Latin alphabet for teaching reading by such scholars as Agop Dila~ar, Hikmet Bayur, Bernard Lewis, ~akir Dlkiita~lr, Uriel Heyd, Nihad Sami Banarh, Hasan Rqit Tankut and Geoffrey Lewis. But the Arabic alphabet was not a major obstacle in teaching reading; nor was it a determining cause of the widespread illiteracy in Turkey during the early years of the Republic. More and better schools, improved teacher training, and better socio-economic conditions were the major factors in the decline of illiteracy in Turkey. The most that can be said is that the Latin alphabet does seem to yield an initial advantage of a few months for beginning readers. But it may be argued that a similar saving in time would have been achieved by modifying the Arabic alphabet to represent more closely the phonemes of Turkish. Populism In dealing with Kemalist ideas on populism, one must distinguish between political rhetoric and political practice. The confusion of the Kemalists over the concept of populism dates back to their earliest official statements on the subject. The 1935 program of the Republican People's Party makes this statement on populism: "We consider the individuals who accept an absolute equality before the law, and who recognize no privileges for an individual, family, class or community, to be of the people and for the people (populist)."55 In the same year, at the Fourth Congress of the RPP, Recep Peker, then SecretaryGeneral, made this remark: "We do not believe in regional interests nor in the privilege of feudalism, agaltk, of families and of groups."56 Several objections can be raised against these two statements. First, neither the principle of equality before the law nor the rejection of the sultanate is sufficient reason to describe a political system as populist. Fascism and communism are also anti-monarchic, but they are anti-democratic as well. Second, agalzk has continued to exercise both socio-economic and political influence throughout modern Turkish history. As the 1950 election showed, the poor peasants of Turkey opposed not the agaltk, but the secular bureaucratic Kemalist elite. The origins of Turkish populism are often traced by Kemalist historians to Atatiirk himself. 57 In fact, long before Atatiirk embraced it as one of his principles, the concept of populism had entered Turkish intellectual life from three different sources: 58 Russian intellectuals of the narodniki movement (1870 to 1890); Russian Turks such as Hiiseyinzade Ali, who were well acquainted with the founders
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of the Ittihat Party (Abdullah Cevdet, one of these founders and the man who initiated Gokalp into the party, advocated populist principles in his magazine, htihat, in Switzerland in 1905); and the Armenian Socialist Huncak Party. Magazines such as Genf Kalemler and Felsefe Mecmuast, published in Salonika shortly after the 1908 revolution, also advocated populism.;;9 Gokalp and Orner Seyfettin were intimately involved with both magazines. The early Turkish populists did not favor pan-Turkism, but Turkic migrants from Russia succeeded in winning the movement over to that orientation. Before Ataturk incorporated it into his political program, populism had come under attack from three groups: westernists, Onomanists and Islamists. Hamdullah Suphi, a westernist of Gokalp's stripe, pushed the concept in a pan-Turkish direction. The Ottomanists accused the populists of nationalism. Islamists were disposed to accept the concept of nationality only in the case of the non-Muslim communities, and viewed nationalism among Turks or any other Muslim community as inconceivable; they accused the populists of being racists.('O Jaschke's claim that the peasants were the real beneficiaries of Ataturk's reforms has no factual justification.!>l As Landau points out, most Kemalist reforms were "focused on the cities, towns and the main provincial centers. The villages, large and small, were somewhat neglected .... "62 Kemalist populism, in theory imbued with egalitarian values, did not in practice seek to reconstruct the economic order. Kemalist reform policies reflected the parochial concerns of the urbanized intellectuals, not the aspirations of the peasant community. It is true that as early as 1 March 1922, in his inaugural address to the Grand National Assembly, Atatiirk called the peasants "the real owners and masters of Turkey," and declared that his government's economic policies were dedicated to the realization of "this noble goal."(>3 But in the absence of effective price supports, agricultural goods remained artificially cheap, and the peasants experienced no appreciable economic gains throughout the Kemalistera.Primitive agricultural methods, the lack of roads and transportation facilities, inefficient marketing, the inelasticity of demand for agricultural goods, and even agricultural taxation all conspired to favor the urban consumers. Kemalist reform policies were therefore often ignored in the remote regions of Anatolia. The egalitarian sentiment in the Kemalist popUlist program in time became a class phenomenon confined largely to the leftist intelligentsia and its allies in the media and the bureaucracy. This inner tension, in an otherwise politically stable state, remained as a note of unresolved discord during the formative period of the Republic. Practical populism was a luxury that the Kemalists could not afford, especially while engaged in the kind of unpopular reforms which
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AtatOrk had in mind. They might toy with populism as a foreign policy strategy (especially with respect to the U.S.S.R.), but one cannot explain, given the dynamics of the Turkish body politic and the choices available, why such an ideology had to be endorsed in 1937 as an amendment to the 1924 constitution. The Kemalists, like the Young Turks and the Ottoman ruling class (askeri) before them, were very comfortable with the existing elitist institution. As model elitists, they emphasized egalitarianism in its elitist aspects, but they lacked the social skills and attitudinal disposition necessary for the successful practice of populism.1>4 Class privileges were abolished by law in 1924. It is a we\l-known fact, however, that a great proportion of the leading positions in the Ottoman Empire had been occupied by an aristocracy of talent rather than of birth. So when all citizens were solemnly proclaimed equal before the law, the new governing class which exercised sovereignty in the name of such abstractions was echoing the rhetoric of the leaders of the French Revolution, not speaking to Turkish realities. AtatOrk also used populism to counter the exhortations of domestic communists, who were echoing the rhetoric of the Soviet Revolution with fictitious claims that a class struggle existed in Turkey. Although Turkish communists did not constitute a serious challenge to the regime during his lifetime, AtatOrk wanted to dampen the flames of their propaganda. The following excerpt from his speech at the RPP Congress in Izmir on 27 January 1931 may best be understood as a rejoinder to the communist argument for the necessity of class struggle: "Our party is an institution which is aiming to serve the rights of each class in an equal manner, without harming anyone of them. Our actions have proven this."o5 This is not, as leftist interpretations of Kemalism would have us believe, a statement of intent for the equitable distribution of wealth. AtatOrk denied the existence of classes in Turkey, and discerned no conflict of interest among the factors of production. o6 He called his party the "people's party," and claimed that it represented the interests of a\l classes equally. But he also recognized that the new war-torn nation required a good dose of national solidarity. And populism was apparently designed to serve that purpose. Some Kemalist historians might protest that the Kemalist revolution, if not its 1908 predecessor, was not entirely a bureaucratic phenomenon; it was also, they claim, a popular movement to a considerable degree. Given the Kemalist stress 011 populism, one might then expect that the movement served the interests not only of the bureaucracy and the provincial notables, but of the downtrodden masses as well. But Kemalist populism did not build a welfare system and did not engage in economic reorganization. In two fields, however, Kemalist populism did bring about social change: education and women's rights. AtatOrk understood the role
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of schools as agencies of social change. Aware of the loyalties of the people, and intent on drastically altering the whole religious spectrum, he placed the entire educational network under political control and built a genuine public educational system. As for women's rights, he said in 1926: "If a society consisting of men and women is content to apply progress and education to one half of itself, such a society is weakened by half. A nation aiming at progress and civilization must not overlook this."67 Etatism Etatism was officially recognized as a tenet of Kemalist policy in 1937, when the constitution was amended. Turkish industry made undeniable progress under this economic system, which involved high tariffs and massive capital investments by the state. The literature on this subject is too extensive to be summarized here,68 except to note that foreign criticism of Kemalist etatism often reflects a laissez-faire bias. 69 The Kemalists at first hoped that progressive cultural and political reforms under a self-reliant, anti-imperialist regime would automatically yield substantial economic development through private enterprise. But during the 1920s and early 1930s these exaggerated expectations proved to be utopian. It was not until a decade after its establishment that the republican regime undertook a limited degree of etatist industrialization, and this only with considerable Russian and German economic aid. All in all, the economic development achieved by Atatiirk and his disciples during the 1923-1950 period was not as remarkable as their political and cultural accomplishments. Their economic success was confined to the development of an infrastructure. Agricultural output did increase by 58% between 1923 and 1932, as indicated by Hershlag,7° but the base-year figures used were unusually low due to the long years of war and intercommunal strife. Nor did the national wealth grow faster than the rate of population in the 1940s. 71 Etatism as an economic system requires an ever greater application of rationality. In Turkey, the proper balance between cost and benefit was never found. When Atatiirk was grappling with the problem of economic development, modern developmental economics was still in its formative years; it offered precious few concrete proposals. Yet an elementary knowledge of economic history would have provided the Kemalists with the insight that their optimism about quick results was not justified. In Europe, the masses who carried the burden of the industrial revolution remained illiterate and culturally deprived throughout the nineteenth century. In any case, the Kemalists, who were quick to adopt western habits of consumption, seldom devoted their major efforts to industrialization and agricultural improvement. True to the intellectual traditions of the early Ottoman reformists,
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their attention remained focused on the political, educational, and religious components of modernization. They failed to grasp the practical orientation of western commercial and technological culture. A reading of Tanzimat,72 the best general study on Ottoman Turkish reforms, suggests that the Kemalists, like Tanzimat leaders, failed to perceive the vital relationship between technology and social change. They were preoccupied with expressive activities, albeit to a lesser extent than the early Ottoman Turkish reformers, thanks to the seductiveness of western intellectual trends. While the Japanese developed a bias in favor of western mechanical tools, the Ottoman reformers and Kemalists tended to define the task of social change in cultural, political, and intellectual terms. This tendency continued until 1950, when American aid began to alter Turkish economic conditions significantly. The rise of a new technical and professional elite in the 1950s posed a challenge to the Kemalist bureaucratic elite, and brought about a new political stratification. For the Kemalists, this challenge suggested that a technological emphasis was perhaps ill-suited or irrelevant to the maintenance of their political power. Neither Atatiirk himself nor the Kemalists were unaware of the role of technology.73 Then, why were they so ready, like the Ottoman Turkish reformers before them, to assume (wrongly, as we are beginning to discover) that political and cultural reforms are as effective in promoting economic growth as they are in fostering educational gains? During the second half of the nineteenth and first half of the twentieth centuries, opportunities were certainly available for Turks to participate in the physical sciences and engineering; but few did so. The physical sciences were short-changed not because their methodological presuppositions conflicted with Islamic theology; both the Ottoman reformists and the Kemalists were secularists. Rather, it may be argued, the reformists' lack of interest stemmed from an aesthetic orientation toward moral and contemplative concerns. They were best equipped by temperament and training to frame political and poetic complaints about a world in which they saw chiefly literary trends and political threats.
Republicanism On the eve of the republican era, anything looked better than the sultanate of Vahidettin, who as a sultan-caliph was hopelessly flawed. The Kemalists regarded Atatiirk's position of charismatic leadership in the Republic as the focal point for future socio-political developments, which they felt could emerge only when the political center remained in the hands of an elitist leadership.7-+ It does not follow, however, that Turkey's problems were solved with the declaration of the Republic. No major changes in technolo~y or bureaucracy occurred
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to make the old ways of thinking obsolete. Petty officials, in the timehonored Ottoman fashion, continued to keep the populace in line.
Fundamental changes in political systems usually occur as a result of social imbalances, economic crises and violent revolutions. In France in 1789, and in Russia in 1917, the culture and the socio-economic systems were so out-of-phase with reality that they ceased to be effective. In Turkey, by contrast, the disruptions of the years 19191923 were confined to the change of leadership; they did not involve the elimination of the existing socio-economic system. Neither Atatiirk nor any of his supporters openly wanted to establish an authoritarian state in Turkey. But, as events and trends such as the Kurdish rebellion and opposition to Kemalist reforms continued to develop, the new regime assumed an authoritarian-though not totalitarian-character. True, the constitution of 1924 did not provide for an authoritarian state, but constitutional provisions do not always affect current events and trends, which are determined by long-range socio-economic trends. In the context of the authoritarian Ottoman Turkish heritage, democratic pluralism has always looked profoundly untidy to the Kemalists. Dogmatism, the intellectual manifestation of authoritarian socio-cultural elements, finds egalitarian elitism and bureaucratic regimentation more deeply satisfying than anything the private institutions of a liberal society can possibly offer. Such a charge of elitism, of course, strikes at the exposed flank of any movement, conservative, liberal or radical, which makes claims for the primacy of the intellect?5 Gokalp's position on Kemalist republicanism is instructive in this regard. During the years 1908-1918, he supported constitutional monarchy; neither he nor his fellow conservatives favored the establishment of a republican regime. But after 1922, unburdened by any romantic notion that Kemalist "republican democracy" represented plebiscitarian democracy, Gokalp regarded Atatiirk's charismatic leadership as the focal point for future socio-economic developments, which could emerge in Turkey only when the center of the new political system was in the hands of an authoritative leader.76 Revolutionism (Reformism) What Atatiirk meant by revolutionism (inkilaPfzltk) has never been sufficiently clarified. The First Regulation of the People's Party, adopted in 1923, clearly stated that the organization was not "a party of revolution but of reform."77 Revolutionism was included in the constitution as official policy only in 1937. In effect, it expressed the intent of the party to replace any traditional institution it considered inimical to progress. Adoption of this principle did not usher in any radical socioeconomic reforms. Although the Kemalists did prove to be radical in the cultural field, they preferred to retain the status quo in socio-
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economic life. All in all, Kemalism was not one of the most formidable of revolutions; it had little efTect on the economic way of life of the peasants, who remained the overwhelming majority. With Atatiirk's death, a new ruling class emerged: the Kemalist functionaries. Ever anxious not to appear as radicals, they took care to avoid being identified with revolutionism. As a "responsible establishment" they became strongly attached to power and its economic rewards.
Theoretical Implications of the Kemalist Reforms
Our study of the Kemalist reforms suggests that Atatiirk and the Kemalist intellectuals believed in the merit of exogenous determinants of change, as had the Tanzimat reformers and the westernized Young Turks. The Kemalists' views on social change are thus contrary in every relevant respect to the organic growth concept of the functionalists, who believe that social change is closely related to internal stresses and conflicts. In this conviction functionalists look to such phenomena as structural constraints, status groups and stratification/ 8 As an advocate of national unity, however, Atatiirk refrained from identifying socio-economic conflicts as a source of social change. Instead, he emphasized, through his cultural reforms, the role of ideas. Kemalism is not a formal ideology with a well-elaborated metaphysics and epistemology. It is a developmental model emphasizing the role of secularism and nationalism in social change. Among the six principles of Kemalism, only secularism and nationalism had far-reaching effects on the modernization of Turkey. Republicanism was necessary for historical reasons, if secularism was to be maintained. Etatism, originally intended as a means of promoting populism, i.e., solidarity, aided nationalism in helping to create a Turkish bourgeoisie. Populism, used briefly to gain popular support for the new regime, later became a mere rhetorical component of nationalism. Revolutionism, devoid of any content of its own, merely refers to Atatiirk's methods of implementing secularism and nationalism. Kemalist historians often use terms such as the "new republic" and "modern Turkey" to refer to the political entity created by Atatiirk, but Gokalp considered the new national state as the culmination of his brand of Turkism, which had flourished during the ittihat era. Turkish nationalism existed before Atatiirk appeared on the historical scenc. 79 Opinions vary as to the intellectual antecedents of Atatiirk's reforms. As E. Kuran points out, B. Lewis, like Tank Z. Tunaya, emphasizes the influence of the materialist Abdullah Cevdet, while Uriel Heyd and Peyami Safa stress the influence of Gokalp, who favored continuity.80 In the context of Turkish intellectual history, Gokalp's influence on Atatiirk's views does indeed appear to be very prominent.
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Ataturk's thoughts on secularism may be traced to positivism, which was in vogue when he was a young officer;81 Young Turk officers were making "a point of honor of drinking cognac and eating ham."82 Auguste Comte's positivism rejects the supernatural in favor of materialism. ~3 Like Comte, whose slogans of solidarity disparaged individual liberty after the 1848 revolution in France, Ataturk believed in progress and science. The Kemalists claimed that secularism was conceived largely as a developmental device, a means of bringing Turks into contact with European people and ideas. 84 Since secularism was not endemic to Muslim Turkish society, it becomes obvious that Ataturk's persistence on this point reflected his basic belief that major social change in Turkish society could be brought about only by the forceful intrusion of alien values and social patterns. 85 It seems possible that Kemalist circles were familiar with the theory of the three stages of human intellectual development: magical, supernatural and scientific. 86 Such a theory would accord with their belief in evolutionary progress and their conviction that past Islamic practices had led to failure. Whether Kemalist secularism was, like Protestantism, a protest against religious orthodoxy is somewhat irrelevant to the subject under study. What does matter is that when the Kemalists were searching for the determinants of social change, they selected secularism-which in the broadest meaning of the word is a religious philosophy-from external sources, and advocated its forceful intrusion into the Islamic social pattern of Turkish society. Since religion is totally divorced from science in Kemalism, the spiritual needs of man are greatly obscured. Among today's prominent social scientists, only Robert A. Nisbet assumes that all important social changes are brought about by exogenous determinants. But even Nisbet's thesis, as elaborated in his Social Change and HistorY,87 cannot be used effectively to defend the Kemalist strategy because it rejects the evolutionary theories to which the Kemalists subscribed. Other scholars, such as E.G. Pulleyblank, in his studies in Chinese history, refuse to explain historical change in terms of external forces. 88 Ataturk came to believe late in life that studies in ancient Turkic history could provide some needed guidelines for the new Republic; here, too, he was in accord with much contemporary thought in the West. Many western historians of the first quarter of the twentieth century, especially the proponents of scientific history, were convinced that history could be studied to analyze social change. 89 The early Kemalists, however, misunderstood the nature of historical inquiry and failed to base their research on historiography proper. Their works have a markedly ethnocentric coloration and contain many distortions of historical facts in the service of patriotic impulses.
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Atatiirk's implied linguistic assumptions, however, contain some remarkable consistencies. Atatiirk had clear ideas about cultural manipulation through language reform. If language is a product of the cultural field, and the consciousness of the individual and the collective consciousness of the nation are verbal in character, then language can be used to manipulate individual and collective consciousness. The essentials of Islamic belief and other non-progressive Middle Eastern cultural values conveyed through the Ottoman Turkish language led to the stagnation of Ottoman culture. It could be conjectured that the introduction of European culture and scientific ideas into Turkish culture would be facilitated by radical language reforms. It can therefore be argued that Atatiirk's support for the Europeanization of Turkish life through radical language reform was convincingly sound. Conservatives like Gokalp maintained that all major social changes in Turkish society should be generated in accordance with endogenous determinants. 9o Gokalp insisted that any intrusion of external sources into the Turkish social pattern was unwarranted and would be fatal to social stability.9j He confined his search for the determinants of social change to a functional analysis of Turkish cultural values and institutions. He was not opposed to borrowing per se, but he drew a distinction between culture and civilization, using Volkish terms. 92 He favored the preservation of Turkish ethnic culture and national norms, while advocating the adoption of European science and technology as a necessity of national survival. According to Gokalp, the methods and implements of civilization are almost always rational and can be borrowed at will. In practice, however, there is no way of predicting whether certain borrowed elements of culture can be successfully adopted. 93 It is hard to believe that Gokalp, a man of considerable erudition, would fail to observe the close relationship between culture and civilization. He may well have deliberately assigned unorthodox definitions to those inseparable concepts to further his particular views on social change and to provide a plausible rationale for the retention of traditions. If we look into the historical course of European modernization, we can see the shortcomings of this conservative formulation. Since the scientific revolution, European societies have made an unprecedented effort to adapt to scientific knowledge through a considerable revision of traditional value systems-as expressed in the Reformation and Enlightenment movements. The early Ottoman reformers of the Tanzimat era ignored the relationship between civilization and social structure in the Wesr. 94 In the 1870s, when the Tanzimat reforms collapsed, many people were blaming the disasters the Ottomans had suffered on the effort to imitate western societies. 9s Yet Atatiirk dared to advocate radical cultural, political and institutional rearrangements as a precondition for the adoption of western civilization.
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Was he successful? In reflecting on the views of Perlmutter, Hurewitz, Rustow and others,% on the modernizing role of the military in developing countries, one can argue that if the military coups of 1960, 1971 and 1980 do not signal the birth of a classical praetorianism in Turkey, they may at least indicate that civilian governments based on political parties are still widely perceived there as lacking legitimacy. The modern Kemalist concept of citizenship may have not yet replaced the Ottoman concept of reaya. Since Turkey entered the take-off stage of economic development thirty years ago, the progressive role of the military has been gradually preempted by a new managerial and professional class. Nevertheless, the tendency to justify the military coups on the grounds that no quick democratic solutions exist for some of the socio-economic problems created by rapid social change may indicate that Kemalist authoritarianism, originally directed at the suppression of religious fanaticism, has been gaining wide consensus as a comprehensive political solution. The recent revival of interest in Kemalism emanates not from a genuine interest in the Kemalist agenda for social change, but rather from the current military regime's preoccupation with internal security problems. Ataturk and Kemalism are now often invoked by the advocates of law and order as code words. The recent conservative embrace of Kemalism reveals no genuine transformation in Turkish conservative ideology. The numerous and widespread state-sponsored commemorative celebrations during the Ataturk Centennial in 1981 occasioned a great number of prose memorials for Ataturk which may be described as "stock eulogy." All the symposia, colloquia, conferences, lectures, autobiographical accounts and memoirs, none of them diverging from the received version, revealed more about current Turkish political culture and the patriotic sentiments of the nativist military rulers than they did about the underlying assumptions of Kemalism. In Turkey today, neither the Kemalist principles nor G6kalp's conservative prescriptions are any longer at work as major forces in the processes of social change. The most dynamic factors shaping present-day Turkish culture are the changes wrought by science and technology. The cultural reforms of Kemalism have often been depicted by the political left as implements of progress. Yet it must be said that the shallow behaviorist approach behind Kemalist secularism, influenced by the scientific pretensions of the regnant behaviorist social science of the 1910s and 1920s, was inconsistent with the movement's liberal aims. In the role of social therapists, the Kemalists prescribed a regimen to cure the traditional Turkish social system of its irrationalities. Their intention was to bring religion, education, language and even attire fully into the domain of the therapeutic Kemalist state.
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Conclusion
This study has demonstrated that when trying to interpret the Kemalist reforms, the issues can rarely be resolved by reference to the works of reformist intellectuals alone, no matter how rigorous the comparative methodology employed. The way one looks at historic events depends largely on the questions asked and the perspective employed. Most contemporary Turkish historians basically share the perspectives of the reformist intellectuals. That is why this study has made frequent attempts to point out the deficiencies of the Kemalist interpretation. Atatiirk's views on social change gain considerable cohesiveness and credibility when brought into the confines of a much-needed conceptual framework. His numerous secularizing reforms were highly compatible with his alphabet reform and with those reforms designed to promote nationalism and westernization. Historically, the adoption of a new script is often associated with religious conversion; the adoption of the Latin script by Atatiirk signified his intent to bring about a radical transformation in Turkish religious attitudes, i.e., the adoption of secularism, a non-indigenous religious philosophy, and the disestablishment of Islam. The fact that Atatiirk and his disciples-like legions of social scientists and educationalists-can be shown to have erred in their evaluation of the benefits of the Latin script does not detract from the fact that its adoption was in itself highly compatible with the secular aims of Kemalism. This study also suggests that the Kemalist reforms did not represent the triumph of any articulated ideology. The principles of Kemalism do involve certain coherent and consistent ideas about social progress, but they are not anchored in a philosophy with a unique metaphysical and epistemological system capable of interpreting the universe, life and social existence. Kemalism offers a limited guiding vision of what the Turkish state and Turkish society could be, but it is not an ideology in a formal sense. Atatiirk's advisors were not men of profound intellectual convictions. Neither they nor Atatiirk himself entertained any suspicions that there were basic defects in the contemporary capitalist western civilization which they so greatly admired.
Notes 1. The word "Kemalism" may have been coined by Yakup Kadri Karaosmanoglu. It appears in his article published in the old Milliyet, 28 June 1929, p. l. 2. A useful list of Gokalp's works is provided by Cavit Orhan Tiitengil in Ziya Gokalp Hakktnda Bir Bibliyografva Denemesi (Istanbul: Berksoy, 1949), pp. 14-51. Sec also 0!iyazi Berkes, "Ziya Gokalp: His Contribution to Turkish Nationalism," Middle East Journal, VIII, 4 (1954), pp. 375-390; Uriel Heyd, Foundations of Turkish Nationhlism: The Life and Teachings of Ziya Gokalp
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(London: Luzac and Harvill, 1950); Ismet Binark & Nejat Sefercioglu, Ziya Gokalp BibliyografYast (Ankara: Tiirk Kiiltiiriinii Ara~tIrma Ensririisii, 1971). 3. We will not have a clear view of Turkish conservative ideology until we have critical editions of the biographies of the ulema: the tezkere's of numerous divan poets; the hadikah's of the vizirs, and the genealogies of the shaikhs. 4. Hilmi Ziya Olken, Turk~vede C;a,gdaf DUfunce Tarihi, 2 vols. (Konya: SeI~uk, 1966). 5. Ziya G6kalp, Turkish Nationalism and Western Civilization: Selected Essays of Ziya Gokalp, trans. and ed. Niyazi Berkes (London: Allen & Unwin, 1959), pp. 202-205. 6. The standard otticial guidelines were set by the Turkish Historical Society'S four-volume Tarih published in 1932-1933. In particular, Volume IV of this series, which is devoted to the history of the Republic, contains the basic elements of the Kemalist interpretation. Another set of semi-official guidelines was i~sued by Recep Peker and !v1ahmut Esat Bozkurt. Recep Peker, Recep Peker'in Inkilap Tarihi: Dersleri, U1kiiniin Kitaplan, No. 6 (Ankara: Ulus Baslmevi, 1936); Mahmut Esat Bozkurt, Ataturk ihtilft/i, Istanbul Oniversitesi Ne~riyatl, No. 160 (Istanbul: Burhaneddin, 1940). Many of the articles by Kemalist historians in the early issues of Belleten are riddled with cliches; almost all works published in Turkey before 1950 on the Kemalist reforms and on major political events are in conformity with Atatiirk's Nutuk, on which no critical study has yet been made. The Kemalist interpretation is not confined to school textbooks; it permeates serious works to a considerable degree. Admittedly, works on Atatiirk and his reforms are subject to the hazards one would encounter in dealing with any nation's contemporary history. Surprisingly, however, the Kemalist interpretation is applied to the earliest reformist sultans as well; see Enver Ziya Karal, III Selim'in Hatt-t Humayunlarz, 2 vols. (Ankara: Turk Tarih Kurumu, 1946), and Osmanl! Tarihi, Vols. V-VII (Ankara: Tiirk Tarih Kurumu, 19471956); Yusuf Ak~ura, Osmanlt imparatorlu,gunun Da,gtlma Devri: XVIII-XIX Astrlarda (Istanbul: Maarif, 1940). Although the facts are judiciously recorded in these works, they present a monochromatic interpretation of the history of early Ottoman reforms. In order to advance the study of contemporary Turkish history, one must first establish a certain psychic distance from the Kemalist sphere of perceptions. We must recognize that Kemalist historians have no privileged access to the underlying causes of historical events. Bernard Lewis observes rather approvingly that Atatiirk used historians and their craft as an instrument of national government. B. Lewis, "Historywriting and National Revival in Turkey," Middle East Affairs, Vol. 4 (1953), pp. 218-222, 224. On Atatiirk's historical thesis-that the Sumerians and Hittites were both Turkic peoples-Lewis makes this vindicatory remark: "It would be a grave error to deride all this as the whim of an autocrat. Kemal was too great a man to organize an elaborate campaign of this sort out of mere caprice, or out of a simple desire for national self-glorification. One of the reasons for the campaign was the need to provide some comfort to Turkish national self-respect, which had been sadly undermined during the last century or two." Bernard Lewis, Ema;gence of Modern Turkey (London: Oxford University Press, 1968), p. 359. The task of "drafting" history books and imposing Kemalist interpretations on historians was not indeed a matter of mere whim or caprice; the very
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survival of Atatlirk's regime depended on the extirpation of the popular loyalty felt toward Islamic institutions and the Ottoman dynasty. Ercument Kuran claims that the vast majority of the Turkish people during the 1920s remained loyal to Ottoman ruling institutions. E. Kuran, AtaturkfUluk Ozel-ine Denemeler (Ankara: KliltOr Bakanltgl, 1981), p. 19. Although there have been a few conspicuous instances of a new departure in recent Turkish historical writing, the orientation underlying present Turkish historiography is still conventionally Kemalist, and in a peculiar way "conservative." Elitist Turkish historians always prefer "enlightened" works that judge the masses in a hostile light to those that approve of their sentiments. This Kemalist commitment to hostility toward the backwardness and religiosity of the masses is just as distorting as any other dogmatic a priori commitment. 7. Lord Kinross (John Patrick Balfour), Atatitrk: A Biography of Mustafa Kemal, Founder of Modern Turkey (New York: Wm. Morrow, 1965), pp. 429430. E. Kuran says that Ataturk advanced different views on a given issue under different circumstances; see his AtatitrkfUliik, op. cit., p. 10. 8. Niyazi Berkes, The Development of Secularism in Turkey (Montreal: McGill University Press, 1964), pp. 479-503. 9. During a talk with the tradesmen and artisans of Adana on 16 March 1923, Ataturk made this comment: "You know that those scoundrels who led us astray often wrapped themselves in the cloak of religion and deceived our naive and pure people by always invoking the jeriat"; AtaturkJun Soylev ve Demefleri, II, T.B.M. MeclisiJnde ve c.H.P. Kurultaylartnda J 1906-1938, 2. Baskl (Ankara: T.T.K. Baslmevi, 1959), p. 127. 10. On the work ethic and the various Christian religious orders, see Cambridge Modern History, Vol. I, The Renaissance, cd. G.R. Potter (1957) and Vol. III, The Counter-Reformation and Price Revolution: 1559-1610, ed. R. Wernham (1968). 11. Berkes, Secularism, op. cit., pp. 155-192, 289-304, 377-410. 12. Berkes, Secularism, op. cit., pp. 483-503. Berkes notes (pp. 494-496) that ismail Hakkl BaltaCloglu favored the application of literary criticism to the Koran and a philosophical approach to Islamic theology, but his efforts did not culminate in any religious reforms because Ataturk shrank from tampering with the religious consciousness of the people. 13. For the legal enforcement of secularism, see <;etin Ozek, Turkiyede Laiklik: Gelzjim ve Koruyucu Ceza Hukiimleri (Istanbul: Baha, 1962). 14. The secularists misapplied the philosophes' criticism of the Christian clergy to the ulema. As B. Lewis points out, "The ulema are men of religious learning, not priests; they receive no ordination, have no parishes, and perform no sacraments." Bernard Lewis, ed. and trans., Islam: From the Prophet Muhammed to the Capture of Constantinople (New York: Harper and Row, 1974), p. xvii. 15. c.L. Becker, The Heavenly City of the Eighteenth-Century Philosophers (New Haven, Yale University Press, 1932). 16. Denis de Rougemont, The Idea of Europe, trans. Norbert Guterman (Cleveland: World Publishing Co., 1968), pp. 1-45. 17. Berkes, Secularism, op. cit., p. 118. 18. Ibid., pp. 338-340. 19. ~evket Siireyya Aydemir, Enver Paja: MakedonyaJdan Ortaasya)a (Istanbul: Remzi Kitabevi, 1972), p. 232.
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20. Literary works such as these can be utilized as sociological evidence: Yakup Kadri Karaosmanoglu, Yaban; Falih R.Jfk. Atay, Batli Y,liart; Kemal Tahir, Kayun Kamburu: ~evket Siireyya Aydemir, Toprak [fvanma; Mahmut Makal, Bizim Kay. 21. Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (New York: Scribner's Sons, 1952). For an opposing view on this problem, sec H.M. Robertson, Aspects of the Rise of Economic Individualism: A Criticism of Max Weber and His School (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1933). 22. Henry Elisha Allen, The Turkish Transformation: A Study in Social and Religious Development (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1935), p. 54. 23. Gokalp, The Principles of Turkism, trans. Robert Devereux (Leiden: Brill, 19(8), pp. 72-75. 24. Gokalp, Turkish Nationalism, op. cit., p. 180. 25. Robert Reinhold Ergang, Herder and the Foundations of German Nationalism (New York: Octagon, 1966), pp. 99-100; Johann Gottfried von Herder, J. G. Herder on Social and Political Culture, trans., ed., and with an Introduction by F.M. Barnard (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969), pp. 3-60. 26. Peter Viereck, Metapolitics: The Roots of the Nazi Mind, rev. ed. (New York: Capricorn, 1965), pp. 6-7, 189-199. 27. Fritz Stern, The Politics of Cultural Despair: A Study in the Rise of the German Ideology (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1961), pp. 72-73, 281-282. 28. Hans Kohn, Nationalism: Its Meaning and History (New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1965), pp. 35-37. 29. Hans Kohn, The Mind of Germany: The Education of a Nation (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1960), pp. 131-168, 180-188. 30. Gokalp, Turkish Nationalism, op. cit., pp. 123, 171; Principles of Turk ism, op. Cit., pp. 72-75. 31. Heyd, Foundations, op. cit., pp. 82-103. 32. Yakup Kadri Karaosmanoglu, "Ataturk ve Ataturks:uluk," in Ataturk Devrimleri T. Milletlerarasl Simpozyumu Hildirilert, Istanbul University AtatOrk Ara~tlrma EnstitOsO No. 5 (Istanbul: Sermet, 1975), p. 100. 33. Suna Kili, Kemalism (Istanbul: School of Business Administration and Economics, Robert College, 1969), p. 78. 34. Gokalp, Turkish Nationalism, op. cit., pp. 152-156. 35. No one who knew him intimately ever imputed racial prejudice to AtatOrk. 36. Berkes, Secularism, op. cit., pp. 462-465,470; B. Lewis, Modern Turkey, op. cit., pp. 267-274. 37. Seymour Martin Lipset and Earl Raab, The Politics of Unreason (New York: Harper and Row, 1970), pp. 1O-11. 38. Kemal Karpat, cd., Social Change and Politics in Turkey: A StructuralHiStorical Ana~ysis, Social, Economic and Political Studies, Vol. VII (Leiden: Brill, 1973), pp. 5-6. 39. B. Lewis, "History-writing," op. cit., pp. 218-222, 224. 40. B. Lewis, Modern Turkey, op. cit., p. 359. 41. Gokalp, Turkish Nationalism, op. cit., p. 265. This issue should not be confused with the well-known scholarly debate concerning the impact of Byzantine institutions on early Ottoman institutions. Gokalp implies that
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Islamic civilization was less "oriental" than Ottoman and Byzantine civili· zations. 42. The development of the Kemalist thesis and Ataturk's early interest in language reforms are treated in Ru~en E~ref Unaydm, Hattralar: Turk Dili Tetkik Cemiyeti'nin KuruluJundan ilk Kuruttaya Kadar (Ankara: Recep Ulusoglu Baslmevi, 1943); Mehmet Ali Agakay et at., Dil Devriminin 30 ytlt (Ankara: Turk Dil Kurumu Tamtma, 1962); A. Dilas:ar, Devlet Dili Olarak Turkfe (Ankara: Ankara Universitesi Baslmevi, 1962); M. Necmettin Hacieminoglu, "Milli Egitim Bakanhgmm Dil Politikasl," in Turk Dili i[in I: Turk Basmmda <;:tkan Turk Dili ile ilgili Makaleler, IV, A 5 (Ankara: Turk Kulturunu Ara~urma Enstitusu, 1966), pp. 117-120. Two good historical studies on Turkish language reforms are: Agah SlrrJ Levend, Tiirk Dilinde GeliJme ve SadeleJme Safhalart, Turk Dil Kurumu, D, 31 (Ankara: Turk Tarih Kurumu Baslmevi, 1949), and Uriel Heyd, Language Reform in Modern Turkey (Jerusalem: Israel Oriental Society, 1954). 43. Kili, Kemalism, op. cit., p. 63. Herder, like other German romanticists, also observed an "intimate connection between language and national character." John Lyons, Introduction to Theoretical Linguistics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1968), p. 24. 44. The fact that every language has its own unique concepts can be cited as a point against the Kemalist view. Whorl' attributes the conceptual differentiation between European languages and Hopi to the peculiarities of these languages. Benjamin L. Whorf, Language, Thought and Reality, ed. John B. Carroll (Cambridge: M.I.T. Press, 1956), pp. 139-148, 215. It is incomprehensible from this point of view how the Kemalists expected to westernize Turkey and its culture by the turkification of Ottoman Turkish. If Whorf is right, the Kemalist language reforms would have brought Turkey closer not to the western world but to the culture of the distant reaches of Central Asia. 45. Various issues concerning the relationship between language and cognitive development are discussed in John De Cecco, ed., The Psychology of Language, Thought and Instruction: Readings (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1967), pp. 254-346. 46. The Platonic idealist notion that a name or a word is a real thing can still be observed in the use of magic words, incantations, and even prayers. Platonic idealism is critically discussed by Ogden and Richards from a philosophical, linguistic and psychological point of view. C.K. Ogden and I.A. Richards, The Meaning of Meaning: A Study of the Influence of Language upon Thought and of the Science of Symbolism (New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1946), pp. 154-156. 47. Kenneth S. Goodman, "Reading: A Psycholinguistic Guessing Game," in Harry Singer and Robert B. Ruddell, Theoretical Models and Processes of Reading, 2nd ed. (Newark, Del.: International Reading Association, 1976), pp. 497-508. 48. D.B. Pisoni, "Speech Perception," in W.K. Estes, ed., Handbook of Learning and Cognitive Processes, Vol. VI, (Hillsdale, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum, 1978), pp. 167-233. 49. Noam Chomsky, Aspects of the Theory of Syntax (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1965). 50. Kenneth S. Goodman, "Analysis of Oral Reading Miscues: Applied Psycholinguistics," Reading Research Quarterly 5 (1969), pp. 9-30.
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51. Berkes, Secularism, op. cit., pp. 196, 423. 52. Ibid., p. 422. 53. Ibid., pp. 474-476. 54. B. Lewis, Modern Turkey, op. cit., pp. 276-278, 425, 428, 432-433; Heyd, Language Reform, op. cit., pp. 19-20; Daniel Lerner as cited in Kili, Kemalism, op. cit., pp. 69-70. 55. Kili, Kemalism, p. 78. 56. Ibid., p. 74. 57. Ibid., pp. 35-41; 73-74. 58. Berkes, Battctltk UlusfUluk ve Toplumsal Devrimler (Istanbul: Yon, 1965), pp. 95-96. 59. Ibid., p. 97. 60. Ibid., p. 100. 61. Gotthard Jaschke, "Kemalizmin Temel Du~unceleri ve Tarih," in Atatiirk Devrimleri I. Milletlerarasl Simpozyumu Bildirileri, Istanbul U niversitesi Ataturk Devrimleri Ara~tlrma Enstitusu No. 5 (Istanbul: Sermet, 1975), p. 19. 62. Jacob M. Landau, "Islamism and Secularism: The Turkish Case," Studies in Judaism and Islam (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1981), p. 368. 63. Atatiirk'iin Soylev ve Demefleri, op. cit., I, p. 225. 64. Selek convincingly argues that Ataturk and the Kemalist elite did not possess sufficient knowledge to perceive the socio-economic implications of populism. Sabahattin Selek, Anadolu jhtilftli (Istanbul: Istanbul Matbaasl, 1968), p. 713. 65. Atatiirk'iin Soylev ve Demefleri, op. cit., II, 1906-1938, p. 264. 66. Re~at Kaynar, "AtatiirkS:iiliik" in Atatiirk Devrimleri I. Milletlerarasl Simpozyumu Bildirileri, Istanbul Oniversitesi Atatiirk Devrimleri Ara§urma Enstitiisii 5 (Istanbul: Sermet, 1975), p. 254. 67. Philip Paneth, Turkey: Decadence and Rebirth (London: Richard Madley, 1943), p. 124. 68. There are also good bibliographies on the subject in the works of Hershlag and Karpat. Zvi Yehuda Hershlag, Turkey: An Economy in Transition (the Hague: Van Kevlen, 1958); Kemal Karpat, Turkey's Politics: The Transition to a Multi-Party System (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1959). 69. Two western works of this type are: Max W. Thornburg, Graham Spry, and George Soule, Turkey: An Economic Appraisal (New York: Twentieth Century Fund, 1949); Malcolm D. Rivkin, Area Development for National Growth: The Turkish Precedent (New York: Praeger, 1965). 70. Hershlag, Turkey, op. cit., p. 50. 71. Ibid. p. 286. 72. Tanzimat I, Yiiziincii Ytldoniimii Miinasebetile (Istanbul: Maarif, 1940). 73. Kili, Kemalism, op. cit., pp. 100-101. 74. Bulent D ave r, "Ataturk'iin Yeni Turk Devletinin Siyasi ve Ekonomik Sistemi Hakkmda Du~unceleri," Beige/erie, IX, 53 (1972), pp. 4-7. 75. Kenneth S. Lynn, "Elitism on the Left," The Reporter, XXIX, (4 July 1963), pp. 37-40. 76. Gokalp, The Principles of Turkism, op. cit., pp. 52-53, 125. 77. Kili, Kemalism, op. cit., p. 35. 78. Alfred Jules Ayer, Language, Truth and Logic (New York: Dover, 1946), p. 137.
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79. David Kushner, Turk Milliyetfiliginin Doguju: 1876-1908 (Istanbul: Kervan, 1979), pp. 151-159. 80. E. Kuran, AtaturkfulUk Uzerine Denemeler, op. cit., p. 2l. 81. B. Lewis, Modern Turkey, op. cit., pp. 198, 23l. 82. Ibid., pp. 402-403. 83. Crane Brinton, Ideas and Men: The Story of Western Thought (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1958), p. 477. 84. See the works cited in Berkes, Secularism, op. cit. 85. Toynbee c1assities Atatiirk as a Herodian. According to his theory, the Herodian Jews disappeared from history by assimilation into Greek culture, while the zealots who resisted Rome were destroyed; only those zealots who preferred submission survived. Arnold Toynbee, "Tarih Konferanslan," trans. Akdes Nimet Kurat, Tarih Arafttrmalan Dergisi, I, 1 (1963), p. 246. In his work Battczltk, Ulusfuluk ve Toplumsal Devrimler, Berkes argues, as Gbkalp did a half century ago, that an excessively pro-western attitude is a hindrance to westernization. Berkes, Batzctlzk, op. cit., pp. 26, 30-34. This seemingly paradoxical attitude (anti-western westernization) requires more attention than has been hitherto given. 86. As expounded in James Frazer's The Golden Bough. 87. Robert A. Nisbet, Social Change and History: Aspects of the Western Theory of Development (London: Oxford University Press, 1969). 88. E. G. Pulleyblank, "The Beguilemenr of Historicism," in John Meskill, cd., The Pattern of Chinese History (Boston: Heath, 1965), pp. 98-106. 89. For example, Frederick J. Teggart in his works "The Circumstance or the Substance of History," AmC/"ican Historical Review, XV (1910), pp. 709719; Prolegomena to History (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1916); The Processes of History (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1918); The Theory of History (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1925). 90. Gbkalp, Turkish Nationalism, op. cit., pp. 171-183. 91. Gbkalp, Principles of Turkism, op. cit., pp. 34-35, 52. 92. George L. Mosse, The Crisis of German Ideology: Intellectual Origins of the Third Reich (New York: Crosset and Dunlap, 1964), p. 6; Gbkalp, Turkish Nationalism, op. cit., pp. 23, 104, 123. 93. Ibid., p. 288. 94. Berkes, Batzctlzk, op. cit., p. 40. 95. Berkes, Secularism, op. cit., pp. 253-288. 96. Amos Perlmutter, The Military and Politics in Modern Times: On Professionals, Praetorians, and Revolutionary Soldiers (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1977); I.e. Hurewitz, Middle East Politics: The Military Dimension (New York: Praeger, 1969); Dankwart A. Rustow, A World of Nations: Problems of Political Modernization (Washington D.e.: Brookings Institute, 1967); Cyril E. Black, The Dynamics of Modernization: A Study in Comparative History (New York: Harper and Row, 1968); Samuel P. Huntington, Political Order in Changing Societies (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1968); Manfred Halpern, The Politics of Social Change in the Middle East and North Africa (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1963); Ellen Kay Trimberger, Revolution From Above: Military Bureaucrats and Development in Japan, Turkey, Egypt, and Peru (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Books, 1978); Morris Janowitz, The Military in the Political Development of New Nations (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1964).
10 The Traditional and the Modern In the Economy of Kemalist Turkey: The Experience of the 1920s William M. Hale
The policy of etatism, or planned industrialization, led by a powerful state sector, is the economic principle most readily identified with Ataturk's revolution. It is worth remembering, however, that etatism did not become the main plank of economic policy until the official adoption of the Six Arrows by the Republican People's Party at its 1931 congress, at which time the Turkish Republic was already some eight years old. This paper confines itself to the earlier period, between 1923 and 1930. However, a full description of economic policy and development during these years is impossible within the limits of a short paper. Certain important aspects (such as fiscal and monetary policy and the settlement of the Ottoman Debt) have perforce been omitted. 1 Nevertheless, sufficient evidence can be produced to question some of the assumptions which have been made about economic development during the early years of the Republic. Economic Policies and Objectives Broadly speaking, it can be said that the economic policies of Ataturk's government in the 1920s were determined by pragmatism rather than radicalism. This was a period of revolutionary reform in the constitutional and cultural spheres, embracing the overthrow of the sultanate and caliphate, the disestablishment of Islam and the secularization of the legal system. In the economic sphere, however, ambitions and In preparing this .uticic, I mllst acknowledge my deep gratitude to the Centre tor Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies of Durham University, and the Cultural Department of Tiirkiye i~ Bankasl, whose generosity enabled me to make several study visits to Turkey. I am also much indebted to numerous Turkish colleagues for their advice and assistance, in particular to Cem Alpar, Korkur Boratav, Selim ilkin, <;:aglar Keyder, Unal Nalbantoglu and Yahya Tezel.
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policies were far more conservative. Atatiirk's intellectual interests were wide-ranging, but he had no specialist training in economics, and no rigorous attachment to any particular economic dogma. In the world at large, the capitalist system was flourishing during the 1920s, and Atatiirk and his colleagues, who were anxious to rebuild friendly political relations with the western powers, saw no immediate reason to break with it. An important initial step in determining economic policy was taken with the convening of the Izmir Economic Congress in 1923. Between 17 February and 14 March, around 3,000 delegates, organized in four groups of farmers, merchants, industrialists, and workers, put forward their economic priorities. In his opening address, Atatiirk stressed the importance of winning the economic battle, now that the military victories had been won, and linked the decline of the Ottoman Empire to its economic failures. He accepted foreign private investment, "provided it conforms with our laws," and rejected the notion that Turkish society was divided by class interests. 2 But he did not offer his audience any clear guidelines on such issues as the role of the state in future economic development, or the relative weight to be given to industrial and agricultural reconstruction. Minister of Economy Mahmut Esat Bozkurt, who had played a major role in convening the Congress, was more enlightening on these issues, though still rather unspecific. The new Turkey, he explained, was not attached to any of the existing schools of economic thought; it would follow what he called the "New Turkish Economic Schoo!." There would be a mixed economy, in which the state would be responsible for "major credit institutions and industrial enterprises. . . . In essence, our economic policy will apply the principle of nationalization (devletleftirme) in some situations, and will leave economic enterprises to prlvate undertakings in some [other] situations." A protective customs policy would be implemented, in which only those goods needed for economic development would be freely imported. Like Atatiirk, he welcomed foreign capital "on condition that it conforms to our laws and regulations and is not granted more privileges than Turks." 3 Predictably enough, the different economic groups represented at the Congress submitted proposals reflecting their own interests. The merchants, in particular, proved to be well organized and int1uential. The Muslim traders of Istanbul had organized a "National Turkish Trade Association" (Milli Turk Ticaret Birligi) and were anxious to end the domination of the non-Muslim minorities in the city'S commerce. They had previously intended to hold a foreign trade congress in Izmir, but had abandoned this plan in favor of participation in the main Economic Congress. Though they had no interest in rupturing relations with the industrialized West, they looked for government support in their campaign to end the hegemony of the minorities as mediators in foreign trade. 4
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The farmers demanded the abolition of the tithe; they were supported by the other occupational groups, though with some disagreement as to how the expected gap in government finances was to be filled. Not surprisingly, the industrialists made a protective tariff one of their first demands.' The workers group was evidently the least influential. Labor delegates proposed that the "rights of trade unions be recognized" and that the Interruption of Work Law (Tatil-i Efgal Kammu)6 be "investigated and reorganized so as to recognize the workers' rights."7 This was one of the few important resolutions passed by the Congress to have no influence on government policy; in fact, it was not for many years that trade union rights were recognized in Turkey. 8 Apart from its function of gauging opinion, the Izmir Economic Congress had an immediate importance for the government in its negotiations at Lausanne, which were deadlocked over the economic clauses of the proposed treaty. In confronting the former entente powers, the Turkish government was anxious to emphasize that, although Turks were planning to take control of their foreign trade, and foreign tirms would have to accept the abolition ofthe capitulations, the firms would be assured of a welcome in Turkey, in conformity with Turkish lawY In the event, the withdrawal of the capitulations was fully accepted by Turkey's former enemies in the Lausanne Treaty. The strong demands voiced at the lzmir Congress for a protective tariff were, however, left temporarily unrealized. In 1916 the Ottoman government had replaced the former ad Jialorem tariff with a higher one in which specific lira duties were fixed on different goods by volume. In 1919, the allied commissioners in Istanbul forced the sultan's government to reintroduce the pre-war tariff. Meanwhile, the nationalist government in Ankara maintained the 1916 tariff in the areas it controlled, quintupling the duties to allow for the decline in the purchasing power of the lira since 1916.10 The formula eventually agreed to at Lausanne was a compromise between the allied demand that the pre-war tariff be restored and the nationalist aim of a fully protective tariff system. Under Articles 1 and 2 of a commercial convention attached to the Treaty of Lausanne, both sides accepted the continuation of the 1916 tariff multiplied by a coefficient which could be adjusted in accordance with the exchange rate of the lira. li This restriction was to apply until August 1929. The tariff did not leave Turkish industry entirely unprotected, but the rates were relatively low-only around 11-12% for textiles, for example, and around 7% for metal products. 12 In effect, Turkey was left with an internationally open economy, thanks to a low import tariff and a floating, convertible currency. The Treaty of Lausanne also brought about an exchange of minority populations with Greece, so that the vast majority of the 1.1 million
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Greeks living in Turkey in 1920 had left the country by 1925 13 (an exception was made for the Greeks of Istanbul and the Turks of western Thrace, who were allowed to stay). In addition, the horrific massacres and emigration of World War I had reduced the prewar Armenian population of around 1.3 million to something over 100,000. The result was a severe shortage of skilled labor, capital and entrepreneurial experience in the early years of the Republic. During the 1920s, however, Muslim Turks began to fill the gap created by the loss of the non-Muslim middle class. The aims of the merchants' delegation at the Izmir Congress were thus largely achieved. For example, a large number of private banks were established by Anatolian merchants during the decade. Although most of them were initially small local concerns, some later grew into important financial institutions. I " Foreign Capital and Industrialization
Among other writers, Bernard Lewis maintains that "the new republican regime did not look kindly on foreign capital, nor for that matter did foreign investors show any great desire to put money into Turkey." 15 As we have seen, official statements at the Izmir Economic Congress undermine the first of these claims. Other evidence also shows that foreign capital was forthcoming, and actually played an important part in economic development at the time. The most spectacular foreign investment project-the proposed Chester Concession of 19221923-was launched for political as well as economic reasons, and soon fell by the wayside.l 6 Nevertheless, the government frequently turned to foreign capitalists to help develop the revenue-raising state monopoly industries. In 1925, for instance, a state monopoly was created for the manufacture of ammunition and explosives, and then leased to a private company, in which the Treasury held a 50% share, and French interests held almost all the rest. Similarly, the monopoly for the import of oil products, created in 1926, was leased to the American Standard Oil Company. The government's match monopoly was farmed out to a Belgian company during 1924-1929, before being re-leased in 1930 to Ivar Kruegar's "American Turkish Investment Corporation" in return for a loan of $10 million and an annual rent ofTL 1.7 million. During 1923-1924 there had been a brief experiment with prohibition; in 1926, however, a state monopoly for the manufacture of alcoholic drinks was let to a Polish-Turkish consortium, before it was taken over directly by the state in 1927.17 Foreign investors were prominent in private enterprise too during the 1920s. Calculations by Giindilz Oks:iin show that the foreign investors' share in the total paid-up capital of Turkish corporations established during the decade was 43%.18 Granted that most Turkish firms were unincorporated family businesses, this figure exaggerates foreign capital's share of total investment. Nevertheless, most modern,
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157
mechanized industry was controlled by corporations, and foreign investment was crucially important in initiating industrial development. Two-thirds of the total inflow of foreign capital went to the directly productive sectors, with the remainder accounted for by tertiary activities such as banking, trading and insurance. Public utilities, in which foreign firms had been dominant during the late Ottoman years, accounted for the largest share of directly productive investment (TL 5.5 million out of a total of TL 21 million), followed by mining, cement and food processing. These were all industries in which there was little competition from imports despite the low tariffs. 19 In the financial sphere, foreign banks accounted for about 68% of total deposits, with the long-established Ottoman Bank holding some 54% of the total. 20 State and Private Sectors
Mahmut Esat Bozkurt's speech at the Izmir Congress had endorsed the principle of a mixed economy, but had left the boundary between the state and private sectors ill-defined. In practice, state entrepreneurship during the 1920s was largely limited to basic public utilities and state monopolies, which had a primarily fiscal purpose. Of the former, the railways were easily the most important. In 1923 the Republic inherited about 4,100 km of railways, virtually all foreign owned. From Istanbul, the Baghdad Railway ran to Konya, Adana and Aleppo, with connections to Ankara and Izmir. Eastern and central Anatolia, however, were almost entirely without modern transport. With an eye to security, as well as to the need for connecting agricultural regions in the interior with national and international markets, the government began an energetic program of extending the Ankara line eastwards to Sivas and Erzurum and linking Diyarbakir with Fevzipap 011 the pre-war Baghdad Railway. As a result, about 800 km of ne\v railway were opened by 1929, with another 800 km under construction. In 1923 the government had considered allowing private companies to operate the new lines, but in 1927 their ownership was transferred to an annexed budget institution, the General Directorate of Railways and Ports. Meanwhile, the government decided to buyout the foreign-owned railways, beginning in 1928 with the Istanbul-Adana and Mersin-Adana lines. By 1929, however, there were still about 2,300 km in foreign ownership, mainly in Thrace, the Aegean region and along the Turkish section of the line between Aleppo and Mosul. 21 Apart from the state monopolies in explosives, matches, oil products and alcoholic drinks, the former Ottoman Debt Administration had farmed out its tobacco monopoly to a foreign company, known by the ponderous title of Rigie Co-Interessee des Tabacs de l'Empire Ottoman. This was bought out by the government in 1925 and transferred to a Provisional Tobacco and Cigarette Paper Adminis-
158
William M. Hale
tration. Granted the generally low level of industrialization at this time, the state tobacco factories represented an important part of Turkey's industrial base, employing some 2,500 workers in four factories by the early 1930s. The Republic also inherited from the Ottoman government four shoe and textile factories which had originally been constructed to meet the needs of the army. In 1925 they were transferred to Turkey's first state industrial bank, the Bank for Industry and Mining (Turkiyc Sanayi vc Maadin Bankast), which also began to invest in private firms in the fields of textiles, mining, rice processing, sugar and ceramics. 22 Thus, Turkey already had an important industrial public sector in the 1920s. However, it had developed due to rather extraneous considerations, such as defense, revenue raising and a haphazard inheritance from the Ottoman Empire, rather than to any ideological attachment to the principle of state entrepreneurship. On the latter score, the rulers of the Republic were still committed to liberalism rather than etatism. Nevertheless, it was a liberalism of a peculiar nature. As Korkut Boratav puts it: The years 1923-31 were a period in which state intervention limiting the freedom of action of private enterprise and state entrepreneurship, were restricted to a minimum. They are therefore commonly referred to as the 'liberal period.' However, if it is maintained that liberalism means that the state reduces to a minimum not only interference against private enterprise, bur also all kinds of economic intervention and participates in economic life only to ensure and equalize competitive conditions (apart from financing a police state), then it will be hard to call this period 'liberal.' The reason is that, during 1923-31, the state undertook innumerable interventions generally in favor of private enterprise (such as the Encouragement of Industry Law) and, more important, some of these interventions ... were in favor of particular capitalist groups. (Italics in original.) 2.1
Several steps taken by the government exemplified this approach. In 1917 Turkey's first important domestically owned commercial bank, the Ottoman National Credit Bank (Osmanlt itibar-t Milli Bankast) had been established in Istanbul by a group prominent in the Union and Progress Party, including Cavid Bey, the deputy for Biga and minister of finance. One eighth of the shares were purchased by him in the name of the state, with the remainder apparently held by private shareholders. In 1924 it was succeeded by the Turkish Business Bank (Turkiyc i j Bankasz), which had an initial capital of TL 1 million. Of this, TL 250,000 was paid lip by Atatiirk himself, with the remainder subscribed by private investors during 1925-1926. Celal Bayar, who had been manager of the Deutsche Orientbank in Bursa before the war, and then joined the nationalist movement to serve in various economic ministries during 1921-1924, became the first director general of the new bank. "In 1927 the Business Bank's capital
The Traditional and the Modern in Kemalist Turkey
159
was increased to TL 2 million, so that it could merge on equal terms with the National Credit Bank. This served both to increase if Bankast)s business and to eliminate traces of the Young Turk regime. 24 Unlike the Bank for Industry and Mining, which was entirely and directly owned by the state, the Business Bank was legally a private institution. However, it undoubtedly received a great deal of ofticial encouragement. Apart from financing commerce, it played a major part in establishing the sugar industry, in which home-produced beet sugar began to replace imports during the 1920s. In 1924 a special law offered substantial tax and other advantages to those establishing sugar factories. A year later the import of sugar became a government monopoly, with the result that domestic producers were guaranteed a high minimum price. Turkey's first two sugar factories, in which the Business Bank had an important interest, were opened at Alpullu and Upk in 1926. By 1930 about 17% of total consumption was domestically produced. 25 In the broader sphere of private industrial development, the Republic had inherited an Industrial Encouragement Law, passed by the Young Turk government in 1913. In 1927 this was succeeded by a second Law for the Encouragement of Industry (TefVik-i Sanayi Kanunu). The latter law divided enterprises into four categories, of which the most favored were those using mechanical power of at least 10 horsepower and employing at least 1,500 man/days of labor per year. Such enterprises were to be granted up to 10 hectares of free land by the government, and to enjoy rebates on local and national taxes, reduced charges for rail and sea transport and, in special cases, a subsidy of up to 10% of the annual value of output. By this means, the government sought to counteract the effects of the low import tariff stipulated in the Lausanne Treaty. This policy achieved some success in such industries as sugar, textiles and cement, where output grew substantially during the decade. On the other hand, an industrial census conducted in 1927 indicated that most manufacturing was still being carried out in small, un mechanized units. Of the 64,245 establishments included in the census, only about 9% employed more than five workers and only 4.3% used mechanical power. In terms of employment, just under 257,000 people were classified as "industrial workers," but of these only about 27,000 worked in the larger, mechanized plants which were covered by the Law for the Encouragement of Industry.20
Agricultural Policies and Development In general, government intervention in agriculture was far less direct than in industry. The Agricultural Bank, which had been established in 1888 by the Ottoman government, was reorganized and strengthened in 1924 and its capital doubled to TL 30 million. Loans extended by the bank to cultivators rose from just over TL 8 million in 1923
160
William M. Hale
to TL 35.7 million in 1930. There was also some expansion of the rural cooperative movement, which by 1932 included 590 cooperatives with some 53,000 members and had outstanding loans of TL 12.5 million. r In the fiscal field, the peasants also benefited from the abolition of the tithe (ojiir) in 1925. Officially assessed as 12.5% of the value of the crop, in practice, the tax burden on the peasant had been a good deal higher, since the government had farmed out its collection to local tinanciers who added on a substantial margin for their own profit. With the abolition of the tithe, the land tax was raised from 0.6% to 4.8% of the value of the land, but since the latter was based on pre-war valuations, the actual incidence was less than one percent. Livestock taxes were also raised, but most of the gap in state finances caused by the abolition of the tithe was filled by an increase in revenue from the state monopolies, whose products were more commonly purchased by urban rather than rural families. In effect, there was a significant shift of the tax burden from the agricultural to the non-agricultural sectors. 18 In spite of the relative lack of government assistance, there is evidence that agricultural production grew rapidly during the 1920s, except during the 1927-1928 drought. To some degree this was a natural part of post-war recovery, as peasants returned from the army to their villages and resumed cultivation of their previously neglected fields; but the extension of the railway network and the consequent expansion of markets for the agricultural surplus of Anatolia also had an effect. The volume of wheat transported by rail rose from 47.5 million kg in 1924 to 148.5 million kg in 1929-1930. 29 The transport of barley, flour and fruits also rose sharply. The decade thus witnessed the continuation of a trend initiated during the late Ottoman period, with growing agricultural production and greater integration into national and international markets. National Income and Output
Granted these policies, how did the Turkish economy as a whole perform during the 1920s? Estimates of national income, prepared by Tuncer Bulutay, Nuri YIidmm and Yahya S. Tezel and reproduced in Table 1, provide valuable answers to these questions. In the first place, overall growth of GNP between 1923 and 1930 averaged out at the remarkably high rate of 9.6% per annum. There were, however, some striking fluctuations within the period. The years 1923-1926 stand out as a period of very high growth (at 15.8% per annum, compared with 4.1% per annum for 1927-1930). These fluctuations are especially noticeable in agriculture; the value of output rose by almost 87% between 1923 and 1926, and then plummeted during the disastrous drought. Farm production recovered in 1929, but then fell again slightly in 1930, so that the value of output was only 14% above that for 1926 (partly reflecting a fall in agricultural
The Traditional and the Modern in Kemalist Turkey
161
prices in 1930). Growth in industry and services, however, was fairlv constant, at around 9.1-9.6% per annum for the period as a whol~. In spite of official attempts to develop industry, the phenomenal growth in agriculture between 1923 and 1926 meant that the share of industry and services in GNP was lower in 1930 than it had been in 1923---':precisely opposite to the normal pattern of development. The Turkish economy was still highly dependent on agriculture, and extremelv vulnerable to unfavorable weather conditions. The sharp growth in farm output during 1923-1926 probably represented a recovery from the disastrous slump caused by the withdrawal of labor from the land and the dislocation of communications during the First World War and its aftermath. In effect, Turkey used this period to make up the economic ground she had lost during the war. This conclusion is strengthened by such data as we have for pre- and post-war agricultural production, shown in Table 2.30 The output of the chief crops in 1923-1925 was still below what it had been in the Muslim year 1328 (1912/13), but it regained or surpassed these levels by 1926, to continue a much more modest rise thereafter. However, livestock holdings, which had plummeted during the war, were still below pre-war levels in 1926 (Table 3). Foreign Trade
As we have seen, Turkey had an almost free trade regime at this time, with low customs duties and no quota restrictions on either imports or exports. There were no foreign exchange controls, so that the external value of the lira was determined solely by free market forces. The accuracy of the official foreign trade statistics, shown in Table 4, is very doubtful, due to a number of technical factors. Nevertheless, a revision of these figures made by <;aglar Keyder suggests a fundamentally similar pattern of foreign trade deficits. 31 Although we have no data on invisible transactions and capital movements, it appears that this continuing deficit was financed partly by foreign investment and short-term commercial credits, and partly by the outflow of gold which had been hoarded during the war, and of the foreign currency which had been in common circulation during the immediate postwar years. The figures shown in Table 4 indicate that the heavy trade deficit which Turkey had run during the pre- and post-war period was significantly 'reduced in the 1920s, both in absolute terms and as a proportion of total foreign trade. The increase in the deficit in 1929 was a purely temporary phenomenon caused by the rush of importers to build up stocks before the new, higher tariff was imposed. By 1930, with imports newly restricted, Turkey was actually running a foreign trade surplus. The general recovery of the 1920s can be explained as a natural result of the return of peace and the consequent increase in the supply of export goods. On the other hand, the failure
...... 0N
TABLE 1 ESTIMATED NATIONAL INCOME BY SECTORS, 1923-1930 (TL million, constant 1938 prices)
Agri cui tUTe As % of GNP Industry As % of GNP Services·' As % of GNP 1111 port Taxes
1923
1924
1925
1926
1927
1928
1929
1930
245.3 38.7 80.0 12.6 289.8 45.7 24.9
347.4 45.8 73.9 9.7 316.4 41.7 27.0
354.8 41.7 88.9 10.4 366.9 43.3 41.0
458.1 46.6 101.8 10.4 384.5 39.1 43.8
333.7 37.4 122.6 13.7 396.8 44.5 45.4
401.1 40.4 121.3 12.2 422.8 42.7 50.3
527.1 45.8 126.6 1l.0 453.2 39.4 48.3
521.4 43.4 142.8 11.9 487.9 40.7 55.0
Average annual % increase 1923-1930 11.4 8.6 7.7
Gross Domestic Product" Net Factor Income from abroad Gross National Product" GNP index (1923 = 100) Population (thousands) GNP per capita (TL)
640.0
764.7
851.6
988.2
898.5
995.5
1152.2
1207.1
-6.9
-6.3
-5.4
-6.4
-6.2
-4.6
-5.1
-8.3
633.1
758.4
846.2
981.8
892.3
990.9
1150.1
1198.8
100
119.8
133.6
155.0
140.9
156.5
181.7
189.3
12,840 59.1
13,103 64.6
13,372 73.4
13,648 65.4
13,939 71.1
14,237 80.8
14,540 82.4
12,582 50.3
9.5
9.6
2.1 7.3
Includes construction, trade, transport, communications, financial services, housing income, personal and professional services, banking and government services. "Purchaser's prices.
.1
Source: Tuncer Bulutay, Nuri Ytldmm and Yahya S. Tezel, Turkiye Milli Geliri (1923-1948) (Ankara: Ankara Oniversitesi, Siyasal Bilgilcr Fakultesi, 1974), Vol. II, Tables 8.1 and 8.2e.
......
0.
W
'-
~
04.
TABLE 2 CROP PRODUCTION AND AREA, 1912/13-1930
Wheat Legumes h Tobacco Cotton
1912/13" Output Area (1,000 tons) (1,000 ha) 2,599 2,653' 87 97 38 55 20 40
1923,1925 Output (1,000 tons) 1,075 d 99 26 c }3e
1926 Output Area (1,000 tons) (1,000 ha) 2,469 3,542 119 191 54 70 27 46
1930 Output (1,000 tons) 2,718 167 47 51
Area (1,000 ha) 2,774 186 70 275
., For those parts of the Ottoman Empire which became the Republic of Turkey in 1923. Data are for Muslim year 1328. h
Includes beans
(fasu~ye,
hakla) chickpeas and lentils.
, See footnote 30. d
For 1925.
c
For 1923.
Sources: E.F. Nickolry, "Agriculture" in E.F. Mears, ed., Modern Turkey (New York: Macmillan, 1924), p. 291; Bulutay, YIidlflm and Tezel, Titrkiye Milli Geliri (1923-1948) (Ankara: Ankara Dniversitesi, Siyasal Bilgiler Fakultesi, 1974), Vo!' II, Tables 1-8, 10, 12; H. Woods, Report on the Economic and Commercial Conditions in Turkey, (London: Department of Overseas Trade, 1923), p. 16.
The Traditional and the Modern in Kemalist Turkey
165
TABLE 3 LIVESTOCK HOLDINGS 1911-1929 (million head)
Goats Angora goats Sheep Total
1911-' 8.6 4.2 12.1 24.9
1923 5.8 2.0 9.4 17.2
1926 8.1 2.7 12.9 23.7
1929 8.3 2.8 10.2 21.3
.• For those parts of the Ottoman Empire which became the Republic of Turkey in 1923.
Source: jstatistik YIUtift 1932/33 (Ankara: Ba~vekalet Istatistik U.M., n.d.), p. 212.
to achieve a balance between exports and imports until 1930 had some important implications. For contemporaries, its most striking result was the decline in the value of the lira against foreign currencies, which was taken as a sign of national economic weakness. More significantly, it appears that the effective devaluation of the lira failed to achieve a parallel increase in exports after 1926. In volume terms, exports remained more or less static during the period. The conclusion is that external demand for Turkey's exports was highly inelastic. With the onset of the depression in 1930 export demand was further restricted. Under these conditions, it was not surprising that the government eventually opted for a more highly protective and autarkic development policy. Assessments and Conclusions
The material now available undermines some of the assumptions which have previously been made about the Turkish economy during the 1920s. One of these is that the first decade of the Republic was one of economic stagnation. Richard D. Robinson, for instance, maintains that: During the initial years of republican Turkish development, from 1923 to 1930, great economic inertia existed. Despite substantial investment and government-inspired prodding, little seemed to happen which could be measured statistically.]!
This judgment now seems far too harsh. On the crudest criterion of per capita GNP, the Turks were a great deal better off in 1930 than they had been in 1923. The implication of Robinson's assessment, that etatism was inevitable in the 1930s because liberalism had failed
...... 00-
TABLE 4 BALANCE OF VISIBLE TRADE, 1913/14 to 1930 (million US dollars)'
Year 1913/14b 1921' 1923 1924 1925 1926 1927 1928 1929 1930
Average value 0[$ in TL 0.21 1.53 1.678 1.882 1.833 1.905 1.935 1.954 2.069 2.122
Imports 123.9 55.7 86.3 102.9 131.8 123.2 109.2 114.4 123.9 69.5
Exports 70.3 6.4 50.4 84.4 104.9 97.8 81.9 88.8 75.0 71.4
Total visible trade 194.2 62.1 136.7 187.3 236.7 221.0 191.1 203.2 198.9 140.9
Deficit as Deficit/ surplus -53.6 -49.3 -35.9 -18.5 -26.9 -25.4 -27.3 -25.6 -48.9 + 1.9
% of total
trade 27.6 79.3 26.3 9.9 11.4 11.5 14.3 12.6 24.6
The Traditional and the Modern in Kemalist Turkey
167
in the 1920s, cannot be rigorously upheld. Admittedly, the experiences of the first seven years of the Republic pointed to the existence of some serious structural defects in the Turkish economy. In particular, the continuing foreign trade deficits and the failure of industry to increase its share of the national income indicated the need for some important policy changes. In 1929, for example, a committee chaired by Minister of Economy ~akir Kesebir prepared a report proposing a much more active program of industrialization, based on import substitution. However, it was still assumed that this would be achieved by private enterprise, rather than state entrepreneurshipY The switch to etatism does not seem to have occurred until a later stage, after the collapse of capitalism in the great slump had initiated some searching reappraisals of policy in the advanced capitalist states as well as in developing countries such as Turkey.34 The new generation of Turkish Marxist writers has offered a radically different analysis of economic trends. For example, Stefanos Yerasimos quotes with approval the report of the agricultural commission of the First Congress of the Peoples of the East, held in Baku in 1920, which predicted that: Even if the national liberation governments in Iran and India, like the government of Mustafa Kemal in Turkey, drive the British from their lands and get the British to recognize their independence, they will still preserve the capitalist system in their countries and will continue their economic dependence in the same degree. Political independence will not save them from the influence of capitalism . . . .
The report-which was, in effect, an early statement of the thesis of neo-colonialism-went on to maintain that the result would be the growth of an oppressed proletariat and the emergence of class conflict.3s As has been shown, the assumption that Turkey was closed to foreign capital after the foundation of the Republic is very wide of the mark. On the other hand, it seems equally exaggerated to maintain that the Turkey of the 1920s was the economic slave of the capitalist West. Admittedly, the tariff restrictions of the Lausanne Treaty were a serious burden; but Turkey siezed the first available opportunity to remove them, since there was nothing the West could do to prevent her from doing so. Through such measures as the Law for the Encouragement of Industry, the government also succeeded in counteracting some of the effects of these restrictions without breaking the letter of their treaty engagements. Nor is there any convincing evidence of serious class differentiation or class conflict until a much later date. In summary, it seems fairly safe to say that the major preoccupation of Ataturk and his colleagues at this time was the reestablishment of national sovereignty and internal cultural reorientation. This helps to
168
William M. Hale
explain the immense importance they attached to the abolition of the capitulations and the development of domestic industries in those areas where the lack of a protective tariff was not an insuperable obstacle. They did not, however, have any firm commitment to the principle of etatism at this early stage, and were prepared to leave most economic activities to private enterprise (often aided by official incentives) and the operation of the market. What they achieved was a remarkable recovery from the devastation of ten years of war, the extension of the economic infrastructure (especially in transportation), some industrial development, and legal and institutional reforms which were a vital prerequisite for future economic growth. Notes 1. For a valuable summary of these aspects, see Z.Y. Hershlag, Turkey, an Economy in Transition (The Hague: van Keulen, 1958), pp. 21-24, 47-52. For monetary policy at this time, see also Aziz Koklii, TurkiyeJde Para Meseleleri (Ankara: Milli Egitim Bakanhgl, Siyasal Bilgilcr Okulu, 1947), pp. 26-44, and Selim ilkin, "Tiirkiye'de Merkez BankaSI Fikrinin Geli~mesi," in Osman Okyar and H. Unal Nalbantoglu, eds., Turkiye iktisat Tarihi Semineri, Metinler/J'artljmalar (Ankara; Hacettepe Universitesi, 1975). The settlement of the Ottoman debt is also described by D.C. Blaisdell, European Financial Control in the Ottoman Empire (New York: Columbia University Press, 1929), pp. 193-207. 2. A. Giindiiz bk~un, ed., Turk~ye iktisat Kongresi, 1923 - Izmir (Ankara: Ankara Universitesi, Siyasal Bilgiler Fakiiltesi, 1968), pp. 252-253,255-256. 3. Ibid., pp. 262-264. 4. Korkut Boratav, TurkiyeJde J)evletfilik (Istanbul: Gen;:ek, 1974), pp. 2426; Margaret S. Hoell, "Atatiirk and the ilk Turkiye lktisat Kongresi," Turkish Studies Association Bulletin, IV, 2 (1980), pp. 4-5. 5. bk~iin, op. cit., pp. 394, 426. 6. Enacted by the Young Turk regime in September 1908 to suppress the wave of strikes which had broken out after the 1908 revolution; the law banned unions and strikes. Scdat Agrah, Turk Sendikactlzgt (Istanbul: Son Telegraf, 1967), pp. 24-26. 7. bk~(in, op. cit., p. 430. 8. Under the Confirmation of Tranquility Law (Takrir-i Sukun Kanunu) of 1925 all unions and opposition parties were banned at a stroke. The 1936 Labor Law also confirmed the ban on strikes. Agrah, op. cit., pp. 36-39. 9. Hoell, op. cit., pp. 1-2. Another and more general aim was to divert the energies of the nationalist movement towards internal reconstruction and away from irredeutist ambitions for a continued military struggle against the entente; ibid., pp. 5-7. 10: C.H. Courthope-Munroe, Report on the Economic and Commercial Conditions in Turkey (London: Dept. of Overseas Trade, 1922), p. 17. 11. Commercial Convention, Arts. 1-2, in Treaty of Peace with Turkey and Other Instruments Signed at Lausanne on July 24. 1923 (London: His Majesty> Stationery Office 192~, Treaty Series no. 16, Cmd. 1929) .. 12. Ilhan Tekeli and Selim Ilkin, 1929 Buhramnda TurkiyeJnin Iktisadi Politika Araytjlari (Ankara: Drta Dogu Teknik Oniversitesi, 1977), pp. 67-
The Traditional and the Modern in Kemalist Turkey
169
69; <;aglar Keyder, The Definition of a Peripheral Economy: Turkey 1923-1929 (Ann Arbor: University Microfilms, 1978), pp. 122-123. 13. Justin McCarthey, "Greek Statistics on the Ottoman Greek Population," International Journal of Turkish Studies, I, 2 (1980), p. 70. 14. A. Giindiiz Ok'iiin, "1909-1931 Y!llan Arasmda A.~. Olarak Kurulan Bankalar," in Okyar and Nalbantoglu, op. cit., pp. 436, 451, 475. 15. Bernard Lewis, The Emergence of Modern Turkey (London: Oxford University Press, 1961), p. 277. 16. Selim ilkin, "1922-1923 Ydlan Tiirk.iye'sinde bir YabanCl Sermaye Giri§imi: Chester Demiryolu Projesi," Turkiye Ij Bankasl Uluslararasz Ataturk Sempozyumu, Bildiriler vc Tarttsmalar (Ankara, Turkiye I§ Bankasl Kiiltur Yaymlan, 1983), pp. 739-781. 17. Boratav,op. cit., pp. 114-115, 117-120. In the event, Krueger's company rapidly collapsed, the loan was repaid, and the match monopoly leased to a Turkish company pending a direct takeover by the State Monopolies Administration. Hershlag, op. cit., pp. 121-122. 18. Keyder, op. cit., p. 100. 19. Ibid., pp. 100-102. 20. Estimate for 1928; ibid., p. 176. 21. Hershlag, op. cit., p. 300; Boratav, op. cit., pp. 106-107; H. Woods, Economic Conditions in Turkey (London: Dept, of Overseas Trade, 1937), pp. 109-112, 146-148. 22. Orhan Conker, Redressement economique et industrialisation de la nouvelle Turquie (Paris: Sirey, 1937), pp. 109-112, 146-148. 23. Boratav,op. cit., p. 17. 24. Ok'iiin, "Bankalar," pp. 416-417, 439-442. 25. Boratav,op. cit., pp. 111-113: Conker, op. cit., pp. 149-150, 196. 26. Hershlag, op. cit., pp. 60-66. 27. Conker, op. cit., pp. 123-128. 28. Keyder, op. cit., pp. 56-60. 29. Ibid., pp. 54-55. 30. Nickoley gives the output of wheat for 1912/13 as 3.86 million tonnes and the area sown as 2.65 million hectares. The latter tigure seems quite consistent with other data, but the former seems far too high, since it implies a yield of 1.46 tonnes per hectare (by comparison, the highest yield recorded in the 1920s occurred in 1929, at 0.98 tonnes per hectare). If we assume that Nickolcy's estimate for the area sown in 1912/13 is correct and that the yield was the same as in 1929, then we arrive at an estimate of just under 2.6 million tonnes for the output in 1912/13. 31. In the official statistics, the figure for imports excluded those made directly by the government. On the other hand, exports were also underestimated, since they were based on the prices fixed by local chambers of commerce or obtained in local commodity exchanges, which were often well below actual market prices. Apart from this, they failed to include internal transport and handling charges. Making allowances for these errors, <;aglar Keyder (op. cit., pp. 124-128) has recalculated the foreign trade figures for 1927-1929. A comparison of his estimates with the official data shows that although the official figures underestimate both imports and exports, they do give a rough approximation of the actual trade deficit. All data are in million US dollars; Keyder's estimates converted from TL at current exchange rates:
William M. Hale
170
Official Data (Table 4) Exports Imports Deficit 1927 1928 1929
81.9 88.8 75.0
109.2 114.4 123.9
27.3 25.6 48.9
Keyders Estimates Exports Imports Deficit 102.6 113.2 92.1
123.6 127.2 137.2
21.0 14.0 45.1
32. Richard D. Robinson, The First Turkish Republic: a Case Study in National Development (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1963), p. llS. 33. Tekeli and lIkin, op. cit., pp. 102-105. 34. See William Hale, "Ideology and Development in Turkey, 19301945," British Society for Middle Eastern Studies Bulletin, VII, 2 (1980), pp. 101-104. 35. Stefanos Ycrasimos, trans. Babiir KUZllCll, Azgeli{mi{lik Surecinde Turkiye (Istanbul: Gozlem Yaymlan, 1976), Vol. III, pp. 1248-1249.
11 Atatiirk's Etatism Z. Y. Hershlag
The Controversy
There is a tendency among my fellow students of Turkey to deny the ideological character of Kemalist etatism and to consider it a purely pragmatic policy or strategy of economic development and management. This evaluation concerns the origins of etatism, its very essence and its implementation. It is said that etatism "had never been made into normative doctrine, but had been kept, rather, on the pragmatic level as the most effective way to rapid economic development."l I suspect that some semantics are involved in this and similar contentions. It can hardly be stated with such certainty that etatism was at no stage a normative doctrine. Most scholars opt for a compromise, a "balanced" assessment, which stresses the originality of both the concept and external influence, and sees etatism as combined with liberalism or free private enterprise. On the other hand, in recent years younger radical circles have become nostalgic about the "revolutionary" character of etatism. They have rediscovered the ideologically pro-etatist Kadro (newspaper) approach of the early 1930s and the less radical yeni devletyilik of the later 1940s; and they have praised the planning dynamism of the early 1960s. Implicitly or explicitly, they see a link between etatism and the currently fashionable ideas about a new international economic order based on self-reliance-sometimes bordering on autarky-and public national entrepreneurship, as a means of doing away with international and national inequality and exploitation and dispensing with transnationals. A different view, represented in the early 1930s by the anti-Kadro professor, Ahmet Agaoglu, distinguishes between the beneficial regulatory role of democratic etatism and the monopolistic, interventionist behavior of fascist-communist etatism. 2 Today, almost all those favoring state economic activity in Turkey prefer democratic etatism, but the practical meaning of the term remains in dispute.
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Z. Y. Hershlag
The Nature of Ideology We can avoid, or at least reduce, the confusion over the meaning of etatism, by examining the doctrine in the broader context of ideology in general. 3 One must always distinguish between any ideology or program and its actual implementation under prevailing political, social and economic circumstances and in response to external and indigenous forces. This is valid for capitalism, socialism, communism and, mutatis mutandis, etatism. The latter did not escape the usual discord between principles and targets on the one hand and empirical realities on the other. Even classical ideologies such as socialism have undergone deep transformations in theory and practice. Thus, the mere fact that etatism was the product of a long process of experimentation, and that it reflected conflicting views, does not detract from its standing as an ideology.4 Besides, every ideology or program, whether in its incipient stages or in its mature form, is permeated by clements of other ideologies, past or contemporary. The globe is round; ideas, experiments, successes and failures and, most of all, human expectations, roll across its surface to meet and challenge one another, regardless of borders or other barriers. No single source can ever be given exclusive credit for having shaped any ideology or program. In most cases, the influences work subconsciously. It would not be difficult to prove that laissez-faire, Marxism, anarchism, Veblenism, Keynesianism, modern liberalism, communism and "new-orderism," despite their apparent differences, have in common many intellectual sources, ideals and practical policies. To a large degree this can be attributed to a conceptual and practical convergence over the years, but the basic reason is that all these ideologies deal with the same subject: the human individual in his social environment. Turkish etatism, as a vital component of a comprehensive ideology, is not basically difTerent from other, more universal ideologies. Researchers who treat etatism as a pragmatic notion rather than an ideology can with justice note that it emerged largely as a consequence of the failure of private enterprise and liberal economic policies in Turkey (and elsewhere) to deal with current and long-range economic issues. Etatism stepped in to fill the gaps left by a sluggish private enterprise. But the historical background, the political structure, the disenchantment with capitalism and the fascination with Soviet economic performance granted Turkish etatism a strongly ideological flavor. Moreover, and this point is sometimes missed by the "pragmatists," it was precisely the pragmatic experience of the 1930s which amplified the ideological aspect of the concept. It would also be a mistake to label etatism a hybrid merely because it combined government predominance in development and industry
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(as well as in the infrastructure) with persistent efforts to encourage private and even foreign entrepreneurship. This is precisely what makes Turkish etatism unique, for therein lies its ideological, or at least conceptual flair. Despite its resemblance to mercantilist, socialist, fascist and other past and contemporary centrist ideologies, Turkish etatism has retained its own identity on two main accounts: it has not tried to become a universal historical-ideological stream, confining itself to the particular circumstances and goals of Turkey; and it has been integrated into a comprehensive theoretical system (and here it resembles Marxism) as the economic constituent of the six-point program of the ruling party, later incorporated into the constitution. Vali aptly suggests that "etatism, as the method of economic development, had its ideological source in the supreme will of the nation-state.'" If so, skeptics may comment, it was an instrument rather than a target, a pragmatic tool rather than an ideology. But it is not so easy to distinguish between the two. Marxism, whose status as a universal secular ideology cannot be denied, has considered socialism as the humanly desired ideal, but has it been a target or an instrument? Marx, Lenin and others considered socialism as merely the first stage leading to the higher stage of communism. Communism itself, in its national, statist framework, was a step toward the famous "last" stage of the "withering away of the state." Contemporary development policy has recourse to the more modern concept of "strategy." But every strategy derives from or incorporates a certain ideology. The development strategies of the various countries within the Soviet bloc, of China, of the West, or of the newly emerging nations are all permeated with a variety of ideologies.
The Emergence of Etatism What was the ideological background of Turkish etatism? Early traces of etatism, as a constituent of a wider centralist national concept, can be found in the later Ottoman period, when the state became an entrepreneur in industry and infrastructure, with and without foreign participation. The ideological motivation behind this pre-Kemalist etatism, later reflected in the Kemalist reforms as well, can be found in Ziya Gokalp's writings, which called for the supremacy of society (identified with the nation) over the individual. 6 It was, however, the unconventional and daring mind of Atatiirk,7 with his rare combination of historical perception and vision with down-toearth pragmatism and flexibility, that inspired the later etatist program. Etatism had a longer gestation period, in both theory and practice, than most of the other principal constituents of Atatiirk's program. After World War I, Gokalp maintained that private initiative in Turkey was too weak; he invoked the state (via the proposed Ministry of Economy) as the chief factor responsible for the economic life of the
174
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nation. 8 But although the chief Kemalist reforms were already initiated in the 1920s, and Ataturk's famous speech of 1927 9 was permeated with Gbkalp's spirit, economic policy continued to abide by the nonor even anti-etatist spirit of the Izmir Economic Congress of 1923. The main economic role was assigned to private enterprise, in line with a quasi-western liberalism: "the task of the state begins where the activity of private enterprise ends." The Organic Statute of 1924 defined private property and free enterprise as basic principles of the state. However, even then state economic activity was emphasized, as shown in a January 1923 government statement: "The new Turkish state will not be a state of conquerors, but an economic state." 10 In this spirit, a Superior Economic Council was set up in 1927 with the participation of diverse economic sectors, to advise the government concerning economic legislation and the start of the industrialization drive. In the 1920s, a variety of measures were proclaimed toward the aims of protecting domestic producers and workers, basing industry on domestic raw materials and boosting rural production and living standards; certain reforms called for balanced budgets and opposed any foreign assistance which compromised Turkey's independence. But etatism "waited" until the last vestiges of the Ottoman Empire could be eliminated-through the Lausanne Conference, the Izmir Congress, and a variety of economic, industrial, financial and banking laws, as well as customs policies. Even then, it took another few years of discussions and controversy, and a short-lived attempt to set up a liberal opposition party, II before etatism was actually adopted as an official economic strategy (and principle) by the Republican People's Party Congress of 1931. It was then included among the six principles, or arrows, along with republicanism, nationalism, populism, secularism and revolutionism. Individual enterprise was still retained as a "basic idea," but active government intervention was said to be required in order to "ensure the welfare of the nation and the prosperity of the state."12 The program went on to say: "'State Economy' is the name given to the theory propounding the view that it were better for the state to take upon itself the responsibility for economic problems that affect the general and common interest of the nation (just as it does for political and cultural questions) and not leave them to individuals." At the same time, a clear distinction was drawn with collectivist or communist systems, which left no room for private activity.13 The main target of etatism was rapid economic development in support of political and economic independence. The instruments were to be state entr~preneurship, industrialization, harmony between capital and labor (to be enhanced by banning strikes and lockouts), control of prices, and protectionism-all under the banner of central planning. It was another several years before etatism was officially incorporated into the constitution in 1937. In 1930, inbnu and others were still talking in terms of "moderate etatism." Such attitudes started changing
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in 1931; even Atatl1rk, usually rather cautious on this issue, volunteered the phrase that "our people are by nature etatist." 14 The Essence of Etatism "Classical" etatism was given a relatively short grace period. Eight years after its adoption, two years after its inclusion in the constitution, and only one year after the first serious attempt was made to examine the efficiency of the State Economic Enterprises and reorganize them accordingly, World War II broke out.l s A more rigid etatism was practiced during the war years (even though Turkey was a nonbelligerent until the closing phase of the war), but this must be viewed in light of the stringent controls and government interference that prevailed even among the non-etatist belligerent countries. The liberal, progressive spirit which swept the world, unfortunately only briefly, after the Second World War, affected Turkey as well; but this falls beyond the scope of our paper. One may legitimately inquire as to how long an ideology remains "classical." Was there ever a "classical laisseZ-faire?" What was the "classical" period of Russian communism? Was it the revolutionary years-the brief period up to Lenin's death-or the days of the StalinTrotsky controversy up to 1927, or the NEP era in the late 1920s, or the forced collectivization period in the early 1930s? Or was it the era of the trials, or the years of the Second World War and its aftermath? Whatever the answer, it would be hard to deny the ideological continuity of Russian communism in the economic sphere, as expressed through industrialization and five-year plans, cutting across all the turmoil, sacrifices and constant threats to survival. Viewed with a proper sense of proportion, Atatl1rk's etatism appears to have done a first-rate job in the very short time allotted it by history. True, the State Economic Enterprises were not very efficient, and a cumbersome bureaucracy did emerge, but these traits are common to almost all state economies or state sectors. In any case, the bureaucracy was largely a legacy of the Ottoman state. 16 Some failures, such as in the Karabl1k steel plant, can largely be attributed to the mistakes of German and British advisers and planners; a certain tendency to gigantomania can be traced to Russian influence and example. But significant success was registered in overall economic growth, in laying the foundations for modern industry, and in the efficient mobilization of resourcesY Etatism was an almost inescapable solution to the host of problems Turkey faced in the early 1930s. 18 Indeed, even in the West, the near collapse of this imposing capitalist edifice forced radical changes in economic thinking, starting with Keynes' The End of Laissez Faire in 1926,19 and continuing with the New Deal in the United States. By 1933, inonl1, in Kadro, could point to various western measures taken to counteract the depression. At the same time, Soviet Russia, retreating
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from the NEP, entered a dynamic, centralized development drive against backwardness, with the aid of ambitious five-year plans and controls on production and consumption. Turkey chose to borrow primarily from the West. 20 Freed from the fetters of the Ottoman system and the liabilities of empire, and confronted with the poor results of the economic liberalism of the 1920s, Turkey had to make a difficult choice between a number of alternatives. It could rely on a "natural" but slow transformation; it could provide moral and material encouragement to the disappointing domestic entrepreneurial spirit; it could, despite sad memories, turn to foreign initiative (although western awareness of Turkey's problems and depression-minded attitudes made this alternative less than promising); it could imitate the ideological strategy of the Soviet paradigm, despite the deep historical chasm between the two neighbors; or, finally, it could try to hammer out a different approach, which, while borrowing from foreign experience, ideology and even vocabulary,21 would forge a nationalist Turkish developmental concept and thereby lay the foundations for a better future. Etatism was an attempt to mobilize all available and potential domestic resources, largely in an autarkic direction, but without forgoing the advice, experience and even the assistance of other countries. Capital formation and investment were naturally considered the very foundations of rapid development. They could be mobilized only at the expense of the consumer; hence the need for planned centralized mobilization and allocation of resources, the chief economic task of the state. As the 1930s progressed, the pressure of events gave this pragmatic enterprise a more militant character. While in 1931 Turkish leaders still stressed the non-extremist character of etatism in comparison with nationalization or the suppression of private property, by the middle of the decade the same leaders were calling the concept "a matter of life and death for our generation," and explaining its supplanting of liberal economics in historic terms.22 Ataturk himself exemplified this process in his speech at the opening of the Izmir Fair in 1935. He stated, perhaps somewhat too emphatically, that etatism did not borrow ideas but "is a system peculiar to Turkey, which has evolved from the principle of the private activity of the individual, but places on the state responsibility for the national economy ... to do quickly things which have not been done throughout centuries in the Turkish motherland by individual or private activity ... it is a system different from liberalism."23 The Significance of the Controversy
There is still a great deal of relevance to the controversy over whether etatism in Turkey was an ideology or merely a pragmatic approach. We must view the issue in the historical context of the early Turkish Republic. Ataturk and his supporters worked out a political, cultural,
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social and economic scheme designed to be radically different from the Ottoman experience while still reflecting the national identity of Turkey and its presumed historical roots reaching back to the Sumerians and the Hittites. In this ideological framework, referred to as Atatiirkism or Kemalism, etatism was one of the six fundamental principles of the state. As with the other principles of Kemalism, the form in which it crystallized during the 1930s did not survive AtatOrk himself. But, while the other Kemalist ideals were later largely reduced to lipservice pieties (at least until the 1960s),24 etatism, though largely transformed, has remained a living reality. Since the early 1930s, the time of the great depression on the one hand and the concentrated Soviet developmental drives on the other, the role of the state in guiding economic and development affairs has become an almost universal rule of thumb. In Turkey, given the traditional involvement of the state in everyday life, such intervention has been much more intensive and comprehensive than in some other countries. 25 Beyond all the pronouncements that "private capital is considered to be a sacred trust," or that "etatism begins where private enterprise stops," the state has engaged in diversified economic activities, not only in the fiscal, financial and monetary fields, but also in the development of infrastructure, defense production and industry. The etatist concept took its more or less final shape around 1935; though it left formal freedom to private enterprise, it clearly put the public interest at the center of every economic activity, using state control over the public sector and the economy at large, and preserving the option of nationalization against indemnities. 26 To a certain degree, etatism reflected the convergence between two conceptually opposed systems and ideologies-capitalism and socialism-in what has been called the "mixed economy."27 Intermittently ridiculed as the "mixed-up economy," etatism is nevertheless an identifiable national concept of economic growth, as well as a developmental strategy which bears relevance for the currently less developed countries. Conceptually, etatism was clearly deveiopmental,2M with its emphasis on modernization, local processing of domestic commodities, mobilization of domestic resources, improvement of the balance of payments, and improvements in effective purchasing power through growth; however, insufficient attention was devoted to the poorer majority strata. Considering limitations of time, etatism's achievements look even more impressive. Lewis rightly notes that "in a sense, the revolt against etatism (in the fifties) was the measure of its success, for it was the etatist impulse, supplemented by the opportunities afforded by six years of neutrality in a world war, that led to the emergence of this new (commercial and industrial) middle class." 29 Nobody can deny the pragmatic origins of etatism in the frustrations of the 1920s, in Turkey and elsewhere. But gradually, under the impact
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of external elements and within the general framework of Kemalism, it became both theoretically and empirically an integral part of the Kemalist ideology, designed to bring about a major socio-economic transformation of the Republic. While some called etatism "state socialism," others stuck to the original notion that the concept was an "ideology which had grown out of Turkish history, out of Turkish experience. Kemalism embraced neither the capitalist nor the Marxist method of devdopment."30 Even though it has frequently been hampered by its own shortcomings and by external factors, etatism has intermittently reemerged as a major moving spirit of the development effort. The interesting term, "democratic etatism," was introduced at the seventeenth congress of the RPP in 1964 31 to replace the "old" etatism of the 1930s and the yeni devletfilik of the later 1940s, in an attempt to accommodate new domestic and international realities. 32
Notes 1. See, for example, Miikerrem His:, ed., Turkiye Ekonomisinin Analizi (Analysis of Turkish Economy), (Istanbul: Guray, 1980), pp. 298-299, and, the papers of Osman Okyar and Cihat iren; see also Walter F. Weiker, The Modernization of Turkey (New York-London: Holmes and Meier, 1981), pp. 6-7. 2. See Osman Okyar, "The Mixed Economy," in His:, op. cit., pp. 99100. 3. For an extensive treatment of the origins, essence and performance of etatism, see the revised edition of my book, Turkey, The Challenge of Growth (Leiden: Brill, 1968), and my "Turkey, Achievements and Failures in the Policy of Economic Development 1919-1939," Kyk/os, fase. 4 (1954), pp. 323-353. 4. Cf. R.D. Robinson, The First Turkish Republic (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1965), p. Ill. 5. Ferenc A. Vali, Bridge Across the Bosphorus (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1971), p. 365. 6. Ziya Gokalp, Turkfulugun Esaslan (Istanbul, 1939). 7. A.E. Yalman, in Turkey in my Time (Norman, Okla.: Oklahoma University Press, 1956), p. 164, quotes Ataturk's reaction to the abdication of his friend, Edward VIII: "If I were in his place, I would proclaim a republic in England, and announce my candidacy for the presidency." 8. See my Turkey, An Economy in Transition (Amsterdam: Van Keulen, 1958), pp. 39-40. 9. Gazi Mustafa Kemal, Nutuk, 15-20 October 1927 (Istanbul: Devlet Baslmevi, 1938), passim, and Ataturk'un SOylev ve Demefleri (SD), II (Ankara: Turk Tarih Kurumu Baslmevi, 1959), pp. 56-57. 10. Cf. Turkey, An Economy in Transition, p. 37. 11. Headed by Atatiirk's friend, Fethi Okyar, between August and November 1930. 12. H.P. Ufuncu Buyuk Kongre Zabttlan, 10-18 May 1931, (Istanbul, 1931).
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13. Ibid. 14. SD II, p. 262, according to Suna Kili, Kemalism (Istanbul: Robert College, 1969). 15. Resmi Gazete, No. 3950, Law No. 3460; and Cemal Kutay, Cclal Bayar, IV, 1938, p. 1664. 16. Ataturk said of the inherited bureaucracy in 1924: "Reform them? They are so bad that they cannot be reformed. We must tear down the entire system and build it over again on a rational, efficient basis." Quoted in Yalman, op. cit., p. 178. Unfortunately, bureaucracy subsequently spread even more. 17. For details, see my Economy in Transition, op. cit., ehs. VIII-XIV. 18. Cf. International Bank for Reconstruction & Development, The Development of Turkey, 1951, p. 9. 19. J.M. Keynes, The End of Laissez Faire (London, Woolf, 1926), pp. 39-40. Keynes analyzes the post-war economic crisis, and calls for a more rational allocation of resources and state intervention where private enterprise cannot or will not play its part. This sounds much like the views expressed in Turkey as early as the Izmir Congress and by the etatists. 20. See Edwin]. Cohn, Turkish Economic, Social and Political Change (New York: Praeger, 1970), pp. 7-8. 21. Turkey borrowed various terms and institutional titles from the Soviet vocabulary, e.g., Supreme Economic Council, planning committees, five-year plans and Turks t roj (which operated in Russia to handle loans, trade and cooperative projects in industry). The very concept of five-year plans was borrowed from Russia, although the Turkish plans were far less comprehensive; cooperation between the two countries included the exchange of delegations and training assistance. See Der Nahe Osten, Istanbul, 15 January 1936. 22. Recep Peker, c.H.P. Programmi izahi (Ankara: Ulus, 1931), and Deux discours de R. Peker (Ankara, 1935), pp. 13-14. 23. iktisat Vekaleti, 2inci 5- Ytlltk Sanayi Plant, 1936, pp. XXX-XXXI, and RPP, Programme, May 1935, p. 6. 24. See Kili, Kemalism, op. cit., pp. 3-8. 25. See Robert E. Ward & Dankwart A. Rustow, cds., Political Modernization in Japan and Turkey (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1964), p. 166. 26. Sec, CHP Genel Sekreteri R. Peker'in Soylevleri (Ankara: Ulus Baslmevi, 1935), quoted in Kili, op. cit., p. 75. It should be mentioned that it was the American Hines-Kemmerer mission and report that initially suggested to Turkey the need for a five-year plan and state intervemion and comrol, recommending that power be delegated to managers and to the private sector. Russian advice, offered as early as 1930, influenced the second five-year plan of 1936 (confirmed in 1938), with its stress on capital goods. See my Turkey, The Challenge of Growth, op. cit., passim, and Okyar, "The Mixed Economy" (note 2), op. cit., pp. 101-106. 27. Okyar is the main exponent of a doctrineless etatism, which he alternately defines as a mixed economy and pragmatism. See, i.a., his "The Mixed Economy in Turkey (1930-1975)," in Miikerrem His:, ed., Turkey's and Other Countries' Experience with Mixed Economy (Istanbul: Giiray, 1979), pp. 80-14. 28. Cf. Baran Tuncer, "The Regulatory Role of the Government in the Turkish Economy," in His:, op. cit., (note 27), p. 681.
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29. Bernard Lewis, The Emergence of Modern Turkey (London: Oxford University Press, 1961), p. 311. 30. Mahmut Esat Bozkurt, Ataturk jhtilalt (Istanbul: As Matbaasl, 1967), pp. 317-318, and Kili, op. cit., pp. 131-132. . .. 31. C.H.P.-si Onyedincisi Kurultay Bildirisi: Ileri Turkiye Ulkumuz (Ankara, 1964). 32. In addition to the sources already cited, I wish to single out a few more out of the large number of relevant publications: Yenal Oktay, "Economic Policy of the Turkish Republic: Half-Century of Economic Nationalism," in University of Chicago Conference on 50 Years of Modernization in Turkey (1973, mimeographed); Malcolm Rivlin, Area Development for National Growth, The Turkish Precedent (New York: Praeger, 1965); Ekrem Rize, Bugunku Turkiye (Istanbul: Slralar, 1971); Orner Celal Sarc, "Economic Policy of the New Turkey," Middle East Journal, II, 4 (1948); Stanford J. Shaw and Ezel Kural Shaw, History of the Ottoman Empire and Modern Turkey, 2 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977); Willy Spero, Moustapha Kemal Ataturk, Criateur de la Turquie Moderne, 1882-1938 (Paris: Nouvelles Editions Latines, 1958).
Part 4 Westernism and Culture
12 The Modernization of Education In Kemalist Turkey Michael Winter
The Historical Background In order to evaluate the extent of educational modernization in Kemalist Turkey, one must study the history of Turkish education before the establishment of the Republic as well as developments after Atatiirk's death in 1938. Like every true and successful revolutionary leader, Atatiirk neither ignored nor entirely reversed preexisting practices. The seeds of change, which made his seemingly drastic reforms possible, had been planted decades, or in some cases even a century, before he assumed power. Mustafa Kemal's greatness lay in his talent for recognizing such seeds and bringing them to fruition in line with contemporary conditions and his vision of the future. Again, no judgment of his educational achievement can be complete if subsequent developments are overlooked; only then can we distinguish between lasting reforms and the ephemeral developments that disappeared once his authoritative figure was no longer on the scene. The first stirrings of educational reform appeared in the Ottoman Empire in the latter part of the eighteenth century, earlier than anywhere else in the Middle East. l By the early nineteenth century, the state had begun a century of indirect but relentless struggle against the ulema, who served as guardians, administrators, and teachers in the traditional religious school system. The first hesitant reforms under Selim III (1789-1807), were confined to training officers, soldiers and military engineers in European methods. Mahmud II (18081839) extended state educational activities to the civilian population. Reform progressed at an accelerated pace in the period of the Tanzimat (1839-1876), when a Ministry of Education was established (1857), and a system of non-military schools began to emerge. A comprehensive law for the reorganization of state schools, issued in 1868/1869, provided for a comprehensive system including the elementary school (rU!diye), lower secondary school (idadiye), secondary school (sultaniye), 183
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and university. Pioneer work was done in girls' education and teacher training. Even during the politically reactionary reign of Abdulhamid II (1876-1909), educational progress did not come to a standstill. The sultan sponsored the opening of many schools. Higher training and technical education was emphasized. In 1900, Darulfiinun, the first modern university in the Muslim world, was opened in Istanbul. In the last ten years of the Ottoman Empire (1908-1918)-the Young Turk or Second Constitutional period (mefrutiyet)-pedagogical thought flourished, emphasizing terbiye (education) rather than the traditional concept of maarif (knowledge). The education of girls advanced at an unprecedented pace.
The Struggle for Modern Elementary Education In 1913, a Provisional Law of Elementary Education was promulgated;; the most important piece of legislation in the field since 1869. For the first time, control of primary schools was taken away from the' ulema, who had administered them through the evkaf (pious charitable: trust, Arabic waqf), and given to the Ministry of Education. 2 Despitea century of reform, the elementary school (stbyan, mektep) had been· barely affected. Efforts had been focused on establishing higher specialized schools to train military and bureaucratic personnel, which conservative circles had hardly dared to attack openly. But in the late nineteenth and early, twentieth ce,ntu, ries, ,the pio, n,ee,rin g efforts tOil es~_@E~'LmPc:l~m .c::lq:nentarY·,,!ichools .~I1C9uJltC::J:.cd,fier.ce and often v~olent ol2t~~~ti?n fr<:>m .m~bs incited by the hoc~s (teachers. in tr~-. ditional sc oolS). It IS slgmficant that Ataturk himself received hiS elementary schooling in a modern, secular school in his native Salonika, directed by ~emsi Efendi; the school was attacked and damaged several times by the rabble. Mustafa Kemal continued his studies in military academies, the most secular, progressive and westernized institutions of learning in Turkey. 3 . The struggle between old and new in Turkish education is recorded in the autobiographies and memoirs of Atatiirk's generation. A particularly revealing account was given by the great poet and writer Yahya Kemal, who told of his early life and education in the town of Uskup.4 He was born in 1884, three years after Mustafa Kemal. When he was five years old, he was sent, according to the general custom, to the local Koran school. which although very old was called for some historical reason Yeni Mektep (the new school). The teacher initiated him into the atmosphere of traditional learning by making him lick the writing of Rabbi Yessir, upon which some sugar had been spread. Then the boy joined a procession of his schoolmates in chanting a reiigious hymn. Yahya Kemal vividly describes the ancient pedagogical methods, based. on physical punishment (the notorious falaka). The pupils spent three years in the mektep without even once opening the primer entitled Elifba. All he learned was names of the
The Modernization of Education in Kemalist Turkey
185
prophets, and that by rote. His father decided he had had enough of l this, and transferred the boy to Mekteb-i Edeb, a modern schoo!. A vicious propaganda campaign was being conducted in the town against this school, since it was located within the Jewish quarter and its teacher was a Donme (member of a Jewish group converted to Islam in seventeenth century) from Salonika, who was believed to be trying to bring the children up as infidels. The new school was furnished with modern desks, and the children, who wore school uniforms, were properly taught from good books. Yahya Kemal concludes simply: "My transition from the Yeni Mektep to Mekteb-i Edeb was a transition from the East to Europe."5 When Mustafa Kemal assumed power, the struggle against reac:tionary forces for progressive education was far from over. The medreses lwere still respected as time-honored centers of higher Islamic learning. iElementary education, especially in the villages, was generally given lin the Koran schools, whose ultimate goal was to train a child to "ecome a hafiz, a man who knows the Koran by heart. Th~.~Q£~s iCnjoyed the sympathy of tbe .common people, who venerated them las the-guardians of religion; their mentality was far better understood land"accepted by the people ammi.g whom they lived than were the attitudes of the. young teachers sent by thegovernment.to teach their children new and strange things. Everyone who has read Mahmut h,Makal's Bizim Kay remembers the indifference and even hostility which_ \the young teacher had to face in the Anatolian village.!!- As late as . (mid-century it was reported that half the villagers were either hostile J>r indifferent toward state schools. 7 .J
l
The Law for the Unification of Instruction
Mustafa Kemal and his followers were fully aware of the importance of education, and a Ministry of Education was formed as early as May 1920, during the War of Liberation. But even in his own camp there was no lack of traditionalists. The Grand National Assembly formulated the goals of Turkish education as "religious and national," in that order.8 Vehbi Efendi, Mustafa Kemal's third Minister of Education, was a traditionalist who wanted to minimize educational .~-ehange; he appointed a curriculum committee composed largely of ~the reli.gious leaders in t~e Na~ional Assembly.9 ." DUring the War of Liberation, the school system was naturally haotiC'~_QWW~!!s!'_~!~.h.~ghb:Jr.~Illtmfd. Besides the basic dichotomy between secular and religious education, there were specialized military schools and a variety of institutions administered by missions and other foreign bodies, minorities and private organizations. Ataturk, with his excellent sense of timing, waited for the right moment; then, with one bold stroke, he unified ti).s: .. ~chQQLsy_ue.m throl!Stuht-.Law_Jor tht:J.J.n.ificatioD ai. Instruction (Tevhid-i Tedrisat) of 1924. As usual, he preferred t~~~~~~.~~,~pproach__to piecemeal
t
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I1$.asuJes which might Jlaye epcountered
lesL9PPQs~!ion
at the be-
gi,QQ!I}~. but which would not have solved the problems in the long run, T~, which placed all educational institutions under the cE!ltr~!he....M.in.iill.Y.QLEd\!~_~tion, sh.oulQ..,b.~-.!c!M~4<;9 .if1,~wider
~
perspective as a,_.!iJ~p-l.Q~!!rd, ,K<;:J!I;,tX!~iDg_t.bf_<;:.9.lJJ1t.ry". In the same caEphate was abolished and the evkaf ministry eliminated, !The closing of the medreses followed soon after. Private and foreign SChOOIS were also put under the inspection of the Ministry of Education, and all religious propaganda and displays of religious symbols were \Wrohibited ,10 .~ { The Law for the Unification of Instruction was a fundamental step lin the establishment of a unified, modern, secular, egalitarian and lnational educational system. Its nation-building role was especially :vital in a country where identity was often Islamic rather than national, i and which was fragmented into numerous regional, tribal, racial and ! linguistic units. It is worth comparing Turkey with Egypt, which, \"while formally a part of the Ottoman Empire, was actually a separate state, Both countries were exposed to European influences, and often (though not always) governed by rulers interested in educational reform. II In the nineteenth century, educational policy in Turkey often followed the lead of Egypt. In the period when Turkey was gaining full independence, Egypt too won a measure of independence which enabled the Egyptians to handle internal affairs, including education, without foreign interference. Whereas Mustafa Kemal gave urgent priority to educational reform measures in the early 1920s, similar steps were not taken in Egypt until some three decades later. Under the monarchy, Egyptian elementary education was even more fragmented than the Turkish system had been before the 1924 law. There were two types of lower-level schools: free elementary schools of inferior quality, meant for the lower classes and located mainly in the villages, and primary schools which charged tuition but offered a much better education as they included the study of a foreign language, thus making it possible for their students to go on to secondary and higher education. This undemocratic dual system continued to operate in Egypt until 1954, when it was abolished by the revolutionary regime. Furthermore, the many foreign and private schools-far more numerous than in Turkey-continued to educate Egyptian children in languages and cultures totally alien to their own national traditions. Only after the Suez crisis of 1956 were the foreign schools nationalized or closed down. Even today, AI-Azhar, a religious university, runs a school system of its own from the elementary level through university, thus keeping alive the old secular-religious dichotomy,12 Indeed, Turkey is the only state in the Middle East with a secular school system impervious to political vicissitudes. ~ear,
'tne
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Religious Education in the Turkish Republic I.~ The official Kemalist attitude was that religious instruction should be given privately at home and not in school, but the authorities acted cautiously. Contrary to what some writers claim, religious lessons were not immediately dropped from the curriculum but rather phased out. At first they continued on a voluntary basis; then they were (discontinued in the middle (orta) or junior high schools, and later i in the secondary (lise) schools. In 1932, religious instruction was I withdrawn from the curriculum of the primary schools as well. l In the late 1940s, official attitudes toward religion in ...s.eneraLand religious. inst~tionjn .pa.r.t.ic.Ular..~.gan_lQ_Ql_:wge. In July' 1947..... the mii1iSte"r of education gave permission for "privat~_r.~ligi()l!.Li!lg[uc tion" classes to op'~n, specifying that only graduates of primary schools could attend. Instruction had to be in Turkish, and only books printed in Turkish (i.e., Latin) characters could be used; Arabic and Persian had been removed from the school curricula in 1928. Warnings were issued against people who might use the classroom for political purposes or to promote foreign interests. Public pressure for the reintroduction of religious instruction in the schools did not ~. Starting in January 1949, two weekly hours of religious instruction were offered in grades four and five, on a v . It is too early to assess with certainty what the new development means. It does seem to contradict the principle of separatio'n of state and religion. And it should be noted that this innovation was made by a government which seized power in order to check the threat posed by militant fundamentalist Islamists and which swore to uphold the heritage of Atatiirk by putting an unmistakable emphasis on secularism and issuing stern warnings against the abuse of religious sentiments. The new regulation may prove to
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have been merely a pragmatic move; the official announcements stress that all religious instruction, inside and outside the schools, will remain under strict supervision and control. Another gauge of official attitudes toward religious training can be found in the history of the government schools for prayer leaders and preachers (imam hatip okullart)Y Article 4 of the Law for the Unification of Instruction provided for the establishment of special schools to train religious functionaries, since the medreses were about to be closed down. In September 1924, 26 such schools were opened. Their principals had no special religious training; they were experienced educators, imbued with the goal of turning out enlightened men of religion who would be loyal to the Republic. Most of the teaching hours were devoted to the sciences and French, with religious subjects such as Koran and Hadith relegated to a secondary position. Arabic was not taught at all. This strange curriculum did not attract many students; in any case, the prevailing anti-religious atmosphere would not have encouraged the institutes to develop. Enrollment quickly declined, and the last of the schools was closed in 1930/31. In 1951/ 52, the imam hatip okullart were reopened in a new, more religious format. Enrollment soared from 875 students in seven schools in 1955 to about 38,000 students in 150 schools (both middle school and lise level) in 1972/73. 18 Religious subject teachers are all graduates of either the Theological Faculty of Ankara University or the Higher Islamic Institutes (see below). Although the Ministry of Education supervises the imam hatip schools, the authorities appear to be concerned that fundamentalist and anti-republican trends might spread. A year ago it was expressly stated that religious instruction must be given only by the regular teaching staff, and not by graduates of the schools themselves. 19 Higher religious education followed a similar path. The Law for the Unification of Education provided for a Faculty of Theology at Istanbul University. Opened in 1924, it closed nine years later for lack of students. Since 1949, a modernist Faculty of Theology has been operating at Ankara University.20 The first Higher Islamic Institute was opened in 1960/61 to train religious functionaries and teachers ofIslam in the secondary schools. By 1972/73 there were five institutes with 2,060 students. 21 The Ministry of Education and the Structure of the School System
As is usual in the Middle East, educational policy has been centralistic from the start, as reflected in the structure of the Education Ministry. Later gestures towards decentralization did not change this basic fact. 22 Some Turkish educators who agree that a centralistic approach was inevitable in the early days of the Republic, when it was necessary to
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assert the authority of the state and its nascent educational system, say that the current need is for decentralization and more flexibility. Turkey shares the dilemma of decentralization with virtually every Middle Eastern state. It must be said that the country's education authorities have been open to foreign advice from the 19205 on; indeed, they have often sought it, as is evident from the reports on Turkish education prepared by eminent European and American educators, such as John Dewey, Kuhne, Buyse and the Kemerrer group in the 1920s and early 1930s.23 The Council of National Education (Milli Egt"tim $urasz), staffed by educators and administrators, has been a useful mechanism for discussing fundamental problems and setting guidelines for general and long-range educational policy. It meets once every few years. The Tenth Council, convened in summer 1981, adopted several important resolutions, such as the lowering of the primary school entrance age from seven to six and the conversion of many lises into comprehensive schools. Resolutions are not always implemented right away, but the councils do set the long-range goals for educational policy and strategy. 24 The basic pattern of the educational ladder in Turkey is 5 + 3 + 3, i.e., five years of primary school, the normal age being from seven to twelve; three years of middle school, normal age twelve to fifteen; and secondary school (lise) for three years, normal age fifteen to eighteen. All state education is provided free of charge. The first decades of the Republic saw occasional changes in the basic pattern. Thus, the lise course was lengthened by one year in 1949, only to revert to three years in 1954. Since then the structure has remained unaltered. The republican educational structure was based on an Ottoman precedent, which in turn had been influenced by French models. The old structure was simplified, and the number of school years reduced, to make schooling more widespread and egalitarian. 25 The OttomanTurkish nomenclature was replaced by Turkish terms. The ibtidaiye, rUJdiye, idadiye and sultaniye were renamed ilkokul, ortaokul and lise, and the Ministry of Education itself, which had been called Madrif Nezareti (later Madrif Vekaleti) has been called Mill; Egitim Bakanltgt since 1933. The elementary school curriculum is identical for all children. Differentiation begins at the middle school level, where students may begin seven-year teacher training or imam hatip programs. According to a relatively recent concept formulated in Law No. 1739 of 14 June 1973, primary and middle school studies constitute the first and second cycles of "basic education" (temel egitim). Compulsory education will eventually cover both cycles, i.e., eight years instead of five as at present.
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Literacy, Compulsory Education and Education in the Villages The most formidable challenge Kemalist education had to face was the high rate of illiteracy. In the first years of the Republic the literacy rate was below 10%. By 1927, after half a decade of vigorous effort, the percentage of Turks who could read and write (the official statistics count those above six years of age) had reached only 10.6% (17.4% for men and 4.7% for women). By 1940 the rate had climed to 22.4%, and by 1970 to 54.67% (68.98% for men and 40% for women).26 The literacy rate in ~ was estimated at over 60%, at plausible tigure; about a million men and women were participating: in adult education programs. While the literacy rate is still considered: low by the standards of the industrialized countries, it constitutes a' great achievement for Turkey, which has been more efficient in wiping', out illiteracy than most Middle Eastern countries. 27 ..J As is usual in the Middle East, the most difficult educational task has been to spread literacy and culture in the countryside. The formal school system has had to be complemented by various clubs and organized activities. In 1931, the Turkish Hearths (Turk Ocagt) were replaced by a network of People's Houses and People's Rooms (Halkevi and Halkodast); these community centers, established to diffuse Turkish culture, were closely associated with the ruling Republican People's Party. The Ministry of Education set up several programs to train teachers for village schools; in one such plan, soldiers of rural origin with some education underwent brief pedagogical courses. Special teacher-training centers were set up under the Village Educator's Law of 1937, supplemented by the Village Institute Law of 1940. The village institutes were later merged with the regular teacher training colleges. 28 There are still thousands of villages, usually small, without schools (3,899 in 1972/73); their children attend regional boarding schools, a solution devised during Mustafa Necati's 1925-1928 term as Minister of Education. The authorities try not to neglect the countryside, and the percentage of village schools in relation to the total number of schools has been rising in spite of constant urbanization. 29 The gap in school attendance rates between village and city is not nearly as wide in Turkey as it is in other Middle Eastern countries. This holds true even for girls, whose education is a chronic problem in the Middle East. In the school year 1972/73, for instance, girls comprised 46% of elementary school pupils in the cities, while in the villages the rate was only 3.7% lower. As far back as 1935/ 36, when girls constituted a third of the entire school population, the difference in girl's attendance between city and village was only 5%}O Attendance rates for the 7-12 age gr,oup, i.e., those who are obliged to go to school, are high in spite of the size of the country and the
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rural and nomadic character of the population. The rate rose steadilv: from 23% in 1927 to 29% in 1935, 35% in 1940, 55% in 1950, 67% in 1960, and 90% in 1972/73. 31 In 1981/82 some six million children were enrolled in primary schools; and less than 10% of the 7-12 age group did not attend.32 Almost no Arab country can boast such an achievement, although it must be noted that in the Arab world compulsory education is one year longer, starting at age six. One "modern" aspect of Kemalist educational reform was the emphasis on the education of women. There is evidence that Mustafa Kemal himself was a strong supporter of coeducation,H which was introduced at the university level in the academic year 1923/24, and became the norm for the entire system by 1927. Coeducation is official policy, except in special circumstances, such as at trade schools.·H Universal education, especially for women, was not always popular. The Democrat Parry decade (1950-1960) saw a sizable decline in registration of seven-year olds, from 71% in 1950 to 67% in 1955 (the rate declined 3% for boys and 5% for girls).35 One writer has attributed this decline to the Democrats' reluctance to enforce compulsory education, especially among the villagers whose votes brought them to power. 36 Later statistics prove that awareness of the importance of education for both sexes has been spreading among the villagers as well. Secondary and Higher Education Between 1935/36 and 1972/73 enrollment increased by a factor of 3.4 in primary schools, 5.2 in middle schools, 5.7 in secondary schools (lises) and 9 in higher educationY This pattern is common to the countries in the region. Secondary and higher education are expanding at a rapid pace, creating a problem of unemployment for graduates. Turkey'S authorities are aware of this problem and have been trying to encourage technical and vocational training at the secondary and higher level, but with only limited success so far. Technical training, considered.in Ottoman times as suitable mainly for orphans and poor children", was encouraged in Ataturk's period, but the lises still get the lion's share of middle school graduates: about 60%; only 15% enroll in the technical schools, 10% in teachers' training colleges, and some 8% in the commercial lises. 38 The result is an overproduction of academics and a severe shortage of technicians. Technician courses do not supply even 10% of the trained personnel foreseen in government plans. 39 At the same time, over 400,000 applicants are turned down annually by the universities. To alleviate these problems, it has recently been decided to increase university enrollment and offer more varied opportunities for vocational training at the post-middle school level.4° The government also runs foreign language schools, at the middle and lise level. This type of elite education, first offered in 1955/56,
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School year
1923/24 1927/28 1940/41 1950/51 1972/73
State primary schools 4,894 5,812 10,462 17,305 40,154
Private pnmary schools 278 231 134 123 159
Private school enrollment 33,236 29,016 14,223 14,428 24,105
Private students as % of total pnmary enrollment 9.7 6.7 1.5 0.9 0.46
would not have been possible in Atatlirk's days. The schools use either English, German or French as a medium of instruction in all but the national subjects. English has become increasingly popular at the expense of French, while German is a steady second choice. Students are admitted on a competitive basis. In 1972/73 there were eight such schools at the lise level with 2,410 studentsY Private Schools There has been a steady decline in private primary schools since the Ataturk era, no doubt as a result of the Law for the Unification of Instruction and subsequent measures. Enrollment has declined not only relative to the state schools but even in absolute termsY On the other hand, there seems to be a need for private middle and secondary schools, and although they too have been declining relative to state schools, enrollment is on the rise in absolute terms. In 1932/33 there were 57 private middle schools with 4,802 students; by 1970/71 the numbers had jumped to 112 schools and 24,397 students. The same applies to private lises: they had 2,000 students in 1927/28 and 18,978 students in 1972/73. 43 In higher education too the tendency has been to maintain state control. The universities are a part of the state education system, and the admission procedures are in principle identical for all of them. In 1971/72, twenty-one private higher institutes of learning (with some 50,000 students), teaching such subjects as commerce, engineering, architecture, pharmaceutics and chemistry, were nationalized by Law No. 1472.44 Conclusion The modernization of the school system was one of the most important and commendable of the Kemalist reforms. After eliminating the main obstacles to modern, secular education-the medreses and control by the ulema-Atatiirk initiated a system of national and, in principle,
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egalitarian education against great odds. While legal reforms, or the latinization of the script, could be carried out in a single stroke, the battle for modern education had to be fought in every single viII age, often by young and inexperienced teachers isolated in conservative milieus. The weaknesses, bottlenecks and imbalances which we still see in the system derive from economic and social problems familiar to all third world countries. In comparison with other Muslim and Middle Eastern countries facing such problems, Turkey'S educational system has achieved impressive results.
Notes 1. The best studies treating education during the final 150 years of the Ottoman Empire are: 0. Ergin, Turkiye Maarif Tarihi, 5 vols., 2nd ed. (Istanbul, 1977); B. Lewis, The Emergence of Modern Turkey (London: Oxford University Press, 1961); R.H. Davison, Reform in the Ottoman Empire, 18561876 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1963); N. Berkes, The Development of Secularism in Turkey (Montreal: McGill University Press, 1964); J.S. Szyliowicz, Education and Modernization in the Middle East (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1973); S.l. and E.K. Shaw, History of the Ottoman Empire and Modern Turkey, vol. II (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977). 2. Szyliowicz, op. cit., pp. 167-168. 3. I. Ba~g6z and H.E. Wilson, Educational Problems in Turkey, 1920-1940 (Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press, 1968), p. 194. 4. Yahya Kemal, Hatiralanm (Istanbul, 1976), pp. 1-2, 21-29. 5. Ibid., p. 29. 6. Mahmut Makal, Bizim Kay (Istanbul, 1973), especially pp. l..29-163. 7. R.D. Robinson, The First Turkish Republic (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1965). 8. The issue of religious instruction is treared in my article "Hora'at Dat ha-Islam ba-Republika ha-Turkit" (Hebrew: Islamic Religious Instruction in the Turkish Republic), Hamizrah Hehadash (Jerusalem) XVIII, 3-4 (1968). See G. Jaschke, "Der Islam in der neuen Tiirkei," Die Welt des Islams, N.S. I, 1-2 (1951), and his articles in subsequent issues up to 1964. 9. Ba~g()Z and Wilson, op. cit., p. 41. 10. Ibid., pp. 79-80. ll. See P.]. Vatikiotis, The Modern History of Egypt, 2nd ed., (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1980). 12. The Azharite ,school system is much smaller than the state system, but it is virtually independent and growing fast. 13. See my "Hora'at Dat ... ," op. cit., and the bibliographical references therein. 14. See Milliyet, 10 September 1981. 15. Ibid., 20 September 1981. 16. An article by Dr. Mustafa Sait YazlCloglu supporting compulsory religious education was published in Milliyet on 10 September 1981. The writer teaches at the Theological Faculty of Ankara University. An article strongly criticizing that idea, entitled "Geriye Dogru Bir Adlm" (A Step
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Backwards), and written by S. Eri~en, appeared in Cumhuriyet on 17 September 1981. 17. See H. Reed, "Turkey's New imam Hatip Schools," Diet Welt des Islams, N.S. IV (1956). 18. Ibid. Most of the statistical data for the present article is taken from T.G. Milli Egitim Bakanl,gt, Cumhuriyetin 50 Ytlmda. Milli Egitimiz (Istanbul, 1973). 19. See MiJliyet, 11 September 1980. 20. See H. Reed, "The Faculty of Divinity at Ankara," The Muslim World, LVI (1956) and my "Hora'at Dat ... ", op. cit. 21. Milli Egitimiz, op. cit., p. 246. 22. Shaw and Shaw, op. cit., p. 386. 23. Ba~goz and Wilson, op. cit., pp. 63-75. 24. On the councils in general, see A.M. Kazamias, Education and the Quest for Modernity in Turkey (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1966), pp. 118-119. On the Tenth Council, see Milliyet of 15 July 1981. 25. Kazamias, op. cit., pp. 121-122. 26. Milli Egitimiz, op. cit., p. 20. 27. Among the Arab countries only Jordan and Lebanon have a higher literacy rate than Turkey, and these are much smaller countries with especially favorable conditions for the spread of education. 28. Szyliowicz, op. cit., pp. 221-122. 29. Milli Egitimiz, p. 52; M. Rauf inan, Mustafa Necati (Ankara, 1980), especially p. 178. 30. Milli Egitimiz, p. 62. 31. Ibid., p. 42. 32. Milliyet, 10 September 1981. 33. Ba~g6z and Wilson, op. cit., pp. 108-109. 34. Milli Egitimiz, p. 5. 35. Ibid., p. 40. 36. Robinson, op. cit. 37. The unequal growth rates of the various levels have caused problems in staffing. The student-teacher ratio in state primary schools climbed from 1:33 in 1923/24 to 1:51 in 1945/46, and then fell back to 1:33 by 1972/ 73. The Ministry of Education has never managed to train enough teachers for the middle schools, where the smdent-teacher ratio has steadily grown from a mere 1:7 in 1923/24 to 1:43 in 1972/73. In the lise's, the burden on each teacher increased from 2.4 students in 1923/24 to 18.7 in 1940/ 41, 30 in 1970/71 and 39.7 in 1972/73. The student-teacher ratio at the university level increased from 1:10 in 1927/28 to 1:15.5 in 1945/46 and 1:15.8 in 1960/61. Milli Egitimiz, pp. 56, 95, 137, 270. 38. Ibid., p. 128. 39. Ibid., p. 187. 40. See Gunaydm, 19 September 1980 and Milliyet, 15 July 1981. I am glad to express my gratitude to Professor Turhan Oguzkan, head of the Department of Education at the Bogazi~i University, for clarifying some problems concerning the Turkish educational system in general, and secondary education in particular. 41. Milli Egitimiz, pp. 82, 105, 121, 144. 42. Ibid., pp. 44, 76. 43. Ibid., pp. 116, 152. 44. Ibid., pp. 223, 257-264.
13 Atatiirk's Language Reform as an Aspect of Modernization In the Republic of Turkey G. L. Lewis
Atatlirk's contribution to language reform was twofold: his introduction of the new alphabet in 1928, and the impetus he gave to the change of vocabulary which has made many of his own utterances unintelligible to Turks less than sixty years old who have not made a special study of language. Most people will agree that the change of alphabet was a good thing and an essential step in the modernization of Turkey. I have no doubt that it was. So, I think, will Otromanists who have ever wondered whether..5..u) I was oldu "he became" or Oldit "he died,"or, having read half-way through a sentence beginning...:... r. under the impression that it was talking about this year, realized it was talking about Bosnia. There is something to be said for Sir Charles Eliot's statement in his article "Turks" in the thirteenth edition of Encyclopaedia Britannica, after mentioning the ambiguities of the Arabo-Persian alphabet: "The result is that pure Turkish words written in Arabic letters are often hardly intelligible even to Turks and it is usual to employ Arabic synonyms as much as possible because there is no doubt as to how they should be read." The new Turkish alphabet, though not perfect, is by far the best that has ever been applied to the writing of Turkish. The change has certainly played a large part in the rise in literacy, from nine percent in 1924 to sixty percent in 1975. And for this all honor and glory to the man whose centenary we are celebrating. On the change of vocabulary, opinions differ. My own view is that the introduction of the new technical terms, largely inspired by Atato.rk, was justified, though not perhaps so much as the change of alphabet, in that many Turkish specialists seem to prefer the international technical terms of their subjects anyway. I would make an exception in the case of economics, where many experts regularly use the Turkish terms. But a great number of the new terms, especially those compounded of real Turkish elements, seem to me both ingenious and 195
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practical. If a Turk is involved in the study of what happens to materials at low temperatures, I would rather hear him talk of sojjubilim than kriyojeni. Nor can I deny that bilgisayar is an improvement on komputer. But when it comes to inventing substitutes for such words as zengin, vazife and tehlike (rich, duty, danger)-varszl, odev, fekinceI draw the line. Let me state my position even more clearly: I think it a great pity that the exponents of reform would not accept the indication Ataturk gave in the last years of his life that the reform should never have been extended to items of general vocabulary. Why they disregarded his wishes is a question to which I shall address myself later. The case for modifying the Arabo-Persian alphabet so as to make it a better medium for the writing of Turkish had been put forward as early as 1851, by Ahmet Cevdet, and various people thereafter tried their hand at the problem. Among them was Feth-Ali Ahundzade, who in 1863 proposed the addition of some new letters to indicate the vowels. In the Constitutional period, those intellectuals who regarded some modification as essential were agreed that the Arabic letters must be written, or at least printed, separately, so that students and compositors alike might be spared having to deal with three or four forms for each letter. The scheme devised by Enver Pap was the only one to be given a prolonged trial, with the backing of his Ministry of War and, it is said, with strong-arm tactics to silence the critics. It had a lot wrong with it and the look of the printed page was not attractive. Basically, only the final forms of the Arabic letters were used, with no ligatures. The vowels were variegated forms of I , J and..5, written in line with the consonants. The system was known as huruf-u munfastla, hatH cedid, Enverpafa yaztst or ordu eliJbasz. This last name was given it because it was used by the Ministry of War for official circulars. It is not clear whether the experiment was ever officially terminated or whether it just faded out with the approach of Gotterdammerung. As late as 1917 Enver published EliJba, a reading book to teach his system. Ru~en E~ref recalled Mustafa Kemal's speaking of it in 1918 as still in use: "The intention is good, but it's a half-baked job as well as untimely. . . Is wartime the occasion to play about with letters? What for? To facilitate communications? This system makes it much slower and harder to communicate than the old system. What advantage is there in undertaking such an enterprise, which slows things down and befuddles people, at a time when speed is of the essence? And besides, given that you've begun, have some courage and do the job properly." I But simultaneously with Enver's efforts to propagate his alphabet a number of journalists and literary figures had been urging the adoption of the Latin letters. I was told by Mr. Taufiq Wahby in 1972 that the possibility of replacing the Arabic alphabet by the Latin
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was a topic of conversation among Ottoman officers during the Gallipoli campaign. This idea had a long past. Ahundzade had come round to it when his suggestions for improving Arabic writing had been turned down by the Ottoman authorities in 1863. 2 The lexicographer ~emseddin Sami and his brother Abdul Bey devised an alphabet composed of Latin and Greek letters for their native Albanian, a language to which the Arabic alphabet could do no more justice than it could to Turkish. On 20 January 1910, Huseyin Cahit published in Tanin an article entitled "Arnavut HurttJatt," in which he commended the initiative and declared that the Turks would be well advised to follow it. A request from a group of Albanians for a Jetva on the subject elicited the reply that it would be contrary to the shari(a for the Koran to be written in separated Arabic letters and for the Latin letters to be taught in Muslim schools. In the spring of 1914 a series of five unsigned articles appeared in a short-lived weekly published by Kths:zade Hakkl and variously entitled Hurriyet-i Fikriyye, Serbest Fikir and Uhuvpet-i Fikriyye. These articles urged the gradual adoption of the Latin alphabet and prophesied that the change was bound to come. The writer propounded a problem to which he invited the ~eyhulislam or the Fetva Emini to reply: "The French, finding the principles of our religion very reasonable, wish to convert wholesale to Islam! Before they can be counted as Muslims, will it be obligatory for their elegant language to be written in the Arabic letters? I do not expect the answer to be 'yes,' but if it is I shall make so bold as to reply, 'With this mentality you cannot make the world Muslim.' If I am given the answer 'no,' my rejoinder will be: 'Give aJetpa permitting us Turks also to use the Latin letters. We are no more Arabs than the French are.'" Kths:zade Hakkl subsequently revealed that it was because of these articles that Tahit Pasha, as Minister of the Interior, closed the weekly down. 3 The subject had long interested Mustafa Kemal. Ru§en E§ref recalled his saying in 1918 that it had been a preoccupation of his in Syria between 1905 and 1907. 4 Halide Edip remembered a conversation with him in June 1922 on the same theme; he told her that the change would require rigorous measures. 5 Agop Dilasar tells of showing him, sometime between 1916 and 1918, Nemeth's Turkische Grammatik, which used a Latin transcription with diacriticals and two Greek characters, which Mustafa Kemal did not like. 6 A number of times, he himself wrote letters from Sofia to his friend Madame Corinne in Istanbul in a French transcription. Here is a sentence from a letter of May 1914: "Imtihan idilene inssanin here fuali moutlaka peke mouvafike djevabe vermessi mumqune o/maya bilire."7 In September 1922, at a meeting with representatives of the Istanbul press, Mustafa Kemal was asked by Huseyin Cahit, "Why don't we adopt Latin writing?" He answered, "It's not yet time." This is understandable if we remember that this was the period of the first
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Grand National Assembly, some fifty members of which were hocas (professional men of religion), in addition to eight dervish sheikhs and five men who gave their occupation as "tribal chief." At the Izmir Economic Conference in February 1923, three months after the abolition of the sultanate, a motion was proposed from the floor in favor of adopting the Latin alphabet, but it was ruled out of order by the chairman, General Kazlm Karabekir, as damaging to the unity of Islam. In a newspaper interview, while affirming his belief in the sincerity and good intentions of the proponents, he explained that to adopt the Latin letters would be to put "a splendid weapon into the hands of all Europe; they would declare to the Islamic world that the Turks have adopted the foreign writing and turned Christian. Such is the diabolical idea with which our enemies are working." This began a heated controversy in the press. The Resimli Gazete, whose editorial policy was against the proposed change, on 22 September 1923 generously published a spirited article by H useyin Cahit advocating it, but above the article came a Turkish headline in French transcription: "Latine houroufati ile Turkdje yazi yazmak mumkinmidir." This was followed by an editorial comment that the headline in the "Latin" letters occupied twice the room it would have taken in the "Turkish" letters. 8 The controversy did not subside, although there was so much else of interest happening in Turkey in those years. 9 On 28 May 1928 the Assembly debated and passed a law making the use of "the international numerals" (i.e., what in English we confusingly call "the Arabic numerals") compulsory in all official departments and institutions from 1 June. The Arabic numerals (i.e., those used in conjunction with the Arabic alphabet, which the Arabs confusingly call "the Indian numerals") did not have the sanctity of the Arabic letters and there seems to have been little if any opposition. lO But from the remarkable tactics thereafter employed by Mustafa Kemal to present the Assembly with a fait accompli, we may conclude that he was expecting trouble to result from legislating similarly for a change of alphabet. Or perhaps he simply wanted to avoid a tedious argument jn the Assembly over the details. During the debate on the numerals, Necati, the Minister of Education, was asked what objection there was to adopting also "the international letters." In his reply the minister said, "If we are a little late in this matter, it is because we are waiting for the outcome of the work of the commission, the committee, which we are forming. The alphabet problem will be solved . . . on the lines accepted by the civilized world." The Commission began work before the end of the week and it had Kemal's active participation whenever time allowed. The Commission rejected the idea of a transliteration alphabet, because they did not want Arabic and Persian pronunciations to be encouraged or perpetuated; they wanted them assimilated to Istanbul
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speech-patterns. You may recall the old story of the medrese (religious school) riot, when the BostanClba§1 and his men were chasing a crowd of disorderly softas (theological students). One softa, despairing of outdistancing them, had the bright idea of sitting down on the pavement instead of running further. The BostanCIba§1 asked him, "Which way did they go?" The softa answered, "Ba'tjtst fU [arafa, ba'tjm 0 tarafa," and was quite surprised when the BostanCIba§1 arrested him. There was much discussion of how to show the palatalized sounds of k and g. Some were in favor of kh and gh, thus khatip and derghah for the words now written katip and dergah (a device possibly suggested by the Portuguese use of h after I and n, as in velho, senhor). Another idea was that q should be used to indicate the palatalized sound of k. This may surprise western orientalists, who regard q as the natural equivalent of c-' rather than of c.J, but it is to be explained by the name given to the letter q in French (kit) and perhaps also in English (kit). The former proposal was adopted. Falih RIfkl's account of how it was later quashed is so extraordinary that it must be true: "Kemal went on to talk about the problem of the two sounds of k. On the evening when I took the Commission's proposals to him, Kazlm bzalp Pap was dining with him. 'How am I to spell my name?' he said. 'We must have a q.' Kemal said, 'What difference will one more letter make? Let's have it.' I didn't say anything at the time, but next day when I went to see him I explained the problem to him again. He took a sheet of paper and tried writing his own name, first with a q, then with a k. But at that time he did not know how to write the Latin capitals; he simply wrote them like the small letters only bigger. He wrote 'Qemal' with a big version of little q, which he didn't like at all. Then he wrote 'Kemal' with a big k. So we were spared q. It was lucky that he didn't know the script capital Q. It's a much showier letter than K."ll That same evening, when Falih RIfkl took the proposed alphabet to him, Mustafa Kemal asked what the ideas of the Commission were about bringing it into use. "I told him we had discussed two schemes, one involving a fifteen-year transitional period, the other a five-year. Either way we would begin by having the newpapers print half a column daily in the new letters, which would gradually be extended until it covered the whole paper. A similarly gradual method would be used in official departments and in schools. He looked at me and said, 'This will either happen in three months or it won't happen at all.' I thought I was a radical, but I found myself staring at him, speechless. 'My boy,' he said, 'even when we get the newpapers down to only half a column in the old letters, everyone will read that halfcolumn. If anything goes wrong in the meantime, a war, an internal crisis, our alphabet will end up like Enver's.'" 12 As soon as the alphabet seemed satisfactory, Mustafa Kemal wasted no time. On the evening of Thursday, 9 August 1928, he introduced
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it to the people attending a Republican People's Party gala in Giilhane Park. Incidentally, to remind ourselves of the boundless stamina of the man: he arrived at the gala around 10 pm, left at 1:45 am, arrived on Biiyiikada for a ball at the Yacht Club at 3 am and in the morning ~ent back to Dolmabahs:e. / On 11 August a two-hour class was held in Dolmabahs:e for officials of the presidential staff and some deputies. On 25 August there was a four-and-a-half-hour lecture and a practical. Four days later came a session for university teachers and literary people, which developed into a heated debate. At the end of tive hours, Mustafa Kemal put a resolution framed by !smet, which was adopted with no dissent: "To deliver the nation from illiteracy no other course is open than to abandon the Arabic letters, which are not suited to the national language, and to accept the Turkish letters, based on the Latin. The alphabet proposed by the Commission is in truth the Turkish alphabet and is definitive. It is adequate to meet all the Turkish nation's needs. The laws of grammar and spelling will evolve in step with the improvement of the language and with the national taste." 13 The use of the term "definitive" proved to have been premature. In August and September 1928, Mustafa Kemal went on tour, in Thrace and Central Anatolia, giving public classes in the new letters (which the villagers called Gazi Elifbast), and a number of ministers and deputies went off to follow his example in their own constituencies. His actual teaching experience at this time persuaded him that the use of the hyphen before the interrogative particle (geldi-mi? giirdunuzmu?), as laid down by the Commission, was an unnecessary complication. From Sinop he telegraphed the Ministry of Education to say that the rule was abolished. On his return to Ankara, he addressed a directive to the prime minister's office, saying that the people everywhere were applying themselves to reading and writing in the new letters, but that their pleasure and enthusiasm were being adversely affected by worry about the use of the hyphen: "The Commission thought of hyphenization as a way of facilitating the division into syllables of long words, proposing to eliminate it at some future time. The speed with which the new letters have been accepted shows that that time has come. For this reason, and on the basis of my observations among the people, it is deemed advantageous and necessary to adopt the following principles: 1. The ipterrogative particle mi will generally be written separately, as in Geldi mi? But it will be written together with any following suffix, as in Geliyor muydunuz? Ben miydim? 2. The conjunctions ve and ki, and de / da in the sense of dahi, will be written as independent words. 3. The hyphen marking a junction in Turkish grammar is abolished. Consequently, in the conjugation of verbs and in the suffixation of the verb "to be" to substantives, the suffixes will be written without
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being separated by hyphens: geliyorum, gideceksiniz guzeldir, demirdir. Similarly the lightened forms of the words ile, ,ise, ifin, iken, will be written contiguously with the preceding word and not separated by a hyphen: Ahmetle, buysa, seninfin, giderken. So too in the case of ce/fe/ea/ra and ki: mertfe, benimki, yarmki. 4. In such Persian compounds as still exist in Turkish there is no hyphen either, the vowels which show the izaJet being suffixed to the first word, as in hiisnii nazar."14 The Turk Dil Kurumu subsequently recommended the restoration of the hyphen in Persian izaJet compounds. Now the Ghazi could have chosen to keep the hyphen in these, to highlight their alien nature, and from the fact that he did not I conclude that he was not thinking at that time of hastening the "purification" of the language except in the case of technical terms. A few days after that directive, an announcement made on Mustafa Kemal's order ended the use of kh and gh to show palatalization; instead, the circumflex accent was to be used over the neighboring vowel. IS This device, though ingenious and an improvement on the other, is not totally satisfactory, because the circumflex was allowed to retain its additional function of showing vowel length. The resulting possibility of confusion becomes apparent to the student the first time he encounters, say, miitalaa and learns that the first a is long whereas the a is short. If katip survives another generation I predict that it will be written and pronounced either as katip or, if schoolteachers sufficiently drum home the palatal quality of its initial, as fatip. But more likely every ktitip will by then be a yazman. Between 8 and 25 October, all officials were examined on their competence in the new letters. It was only when he had done all this that Mustafa Kemal sought the legal authority to do so. The law embodying the change of alphabet, passed on 1 November 1928, provided that documents in the "Turkish letters" must be accepted and acted on in all government departments and commercial and private institutions at once. The letters were to be brought into use in government departments by 1 January 1929, with exemptions for certain categories of documents until 1 June. This was also the final date for accepting applications in the old characters from members of the public. The use of books printed in the old characters for instruction in schools was forbidden. The "old Arabic letters" could be used in official and private records as shorthand ("stenograji makammda") until 1 June 1930. As everyone knows, there are still some Turks who use the old letters in this way and when corresponding with their coevals. It is a matter of some interest that ismet Pap, despite initial doubts about the wisdom of the change, never used the Arabic letters again after the passing of the law. After the change of alphabet, Mustafa Kemal turned his attention for a while to history. But he never let language stray far from his
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mind. At the first Turkish Historical Congress, in July 1932, he propounded his view of Turkish history: it was not merely the history of the Ottomans and the Turks of Western Asia, not even of those of Central Asia and further east. Given that the culture and civilization of all nations came out of the Turkish homeland, Turkish history had to include all the ancient peoples too. The earliest inhabitants of Anatolia, such as the Hittites and the Sumerians, had been of Turkish onglO. On the evening after the close of the Congress, on 11 July 1932, he said, "Now the time has come to think about language." Next day he founded the Turk Dili Tetkik Cemiyeti, and the first Turkish Language Congress (Turk Dil KurultaYl) opened on 26 September. But two years before, he had written in a prefatory note to Sadri Maksudi's Turk Diti ifin, "The Turkish nation, which knows how to protect its territory and its sublime independence, must free its language roo from the yoke of foreign languages." It was this sentence which unleashed the language reform. At that first Kurultay, Huseyin Cahit spoke out: in the last fifteen years, Turkish had been greatly simplified, and Arabic and Persian constructions had been virtually eliminated. But it would be wrong to force the language. He found the complaints against the dominance of foreign words a bit exaggerated. Every nation could have in its language some words borrowed from abroad. What was needed was a comprehensive Turkish dialect dictionary. Once they had established what word-building power the language possessed, they should countenance as little as possible the unnecessary invasion of foreign words. Mustafa Kemal, however, wanted to move further and more boldly. He had always been interested in language. About 1910, when commanding an infantry regiment at Salonika, he replaced setam aleykum by merhaba as the form of greeting to soldiers from an inspecting officer. I do not know if he was also responsible for the reply, sag at, which rolls like thunder across the parade-ground. He was a keen amateur etymologist. Melahat bzgu relates a reminiscence of Admiral Necdet Uran, of a cruise on board the Ege in 1937. Atatiirk came into the chart-room and, looking at the chart with the course, rota) laid off on it, asked what the origin of the word was. The Admiral had no answer. Ataturk wrote on a piece of paper the word yurutmek underneath which he wrote the same word divided into syllables: yurUt-mek. "The origin of the word is that rut/' he said. "The Italians took it and called it rota. The Germans say it another way. So do the French. But that's its origin."16 The same writer tells of his discussing, in November 1935, the etymology of merinos (English "merino"). He related the first two syllables to the Yakut ebri/ibri, meaning "fine," and merino wool is indeed fine. He wondered whether the word had traveled to Spain with the Iber Turks, who gave their name to the Iberian Peninsula. J
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That would explain how "merino" became the name of the sheep they took there, then of the fleece of that sheep and ultimately of the cloth made from those fleeces. 17 Now I suppose we have all of us played that sort of game after dinner. IS AtatO.rk, whose intelligence one admires increasingly the more one learns of him, would probably not have let his etymological speculations go beyond an entertaining form of recreation had it not been for the enthusiastic support of scholars who knew better but lacked the courage to tell him that etymology was not a game for amateurs. The story of the first years of the language reform has been well told by our ever lamented friend Uriel Heyd. 19 What I am here concerned with is Ataturk's contribution. We have already discussed his part in the change of alphabet, an achievement enough to immortalize him had he done nothing else. In the story of his part in the change of vocabulary there are three elements: his efforts to simplify the written language by using plain Turkish; his own innovations in technical terminology, particularly in mathematics; and his experiments with using and even creating neologisms in general vocabulary. The first two I find wholly admirable; of the third he repented-the evidence is incontrovertible. I have elsewhere written 20 that a compromise between conservatives and neologists might have been possible had enough influential Turks taken to heart Fowler's article on Saxonism in his Modern English Usage. The passage I have in mind reads, mutatis mutandis: "Any writer who becomes aware that the Turkish element in what he writes is small would do well to take the fact as a danger signal. But the way to act on that signal is not to translate his Arabic and Persian words into Turkish ones; it is to avoid abstract and roundabout and bookish phrasing whenever the nature of the thing to be said does not require it." Ataturk had never read Fowler, but his own good sense had brought him to the same conclusion. He considered that the Turkish language had been swamped by a flood of Arabic and Persian, and that the intelligent use of the native resources of the language could enable one to avoid the use of foreign borrowings. That is what I believe he meant by his oft-quoted saying, "Turk dili, dillerin en zenginlerindendir. Yeter ki bu dil bilinfle ijlensin."21 In August 1930 he dictated to Afet Hamm a list of topics to which he wanted historians to address themselves. They included: "Bej~riyet menje ve mebdei ("the source and origin of humankind"). In Met's typescript he substiruted: "jnsanlann nereden ve naszl geldikleri" ("where people come from and how they come").22 At the first Kurultay, in September 1932, speaker after speaker rose to declare that Turkish was the mother of the world's principal languages, and the resemblances between Turkish and Sumerian were discussed at length. The presumption is that they were voicing Atatiirk's
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ideas. He believed that as Ankara was in Hittite territory there must be survivals of the Hittites, both individuals and words, among the Ankara people of his own day. I don't know about the words, but about the individuals he may have had a point. It was the point Sabahattin Eyuboglu was making when he wrote, "We are the people who filled the shining white theatres as we filled the dark caravanserais." 23 Have you never seen, on the streets of Ankara, faces familiar to you from Bogazkoy? I met an Egyptian lady in Cairo whose face I saw two days later in Luxor, looking out at me from a relief of the time of Akhnaton. People die, genes do not. Ataturk thought that Akhi was the Arabicized form of Eti, and it was he who changed the name of Ahimes'ud, whose tomb gave its name to a district of Ankara, to Etimesud. On hearing that Rawlinson had written in 1851 that he saw nothing Indo-European or Semitic in Sumerian, he was delighted and said, "You see?" He then had all his circle looking into Sumerian, night after night, and eventually those who thought it Turkish won the debate. He himself presided at these study-sessions. The Dil Kurumu worked in Dolmabah~e, and Hasan Rqit Tankut, chairman of the Etymology Section, was given a bedroom in the palace. One does not have to look very far to see why linguistic jingoism had so much appeal for Turks in those days. Tankut tells of a boyhood experience as one of four or five Turks in the senior class at a lycee in Damascus in 1908. They came into the classroom one day to find written on the blackboard half a dozen lines of Ottoman, containing not one word of Turkish except for the final -dir, which had been repeated several times. This -dirdirdirdir had been underlined, and against it was written, "This is Turkish."24 He tells also of how infuriated Ataturk was when he read Max Muller's famous lines beginning "It is a real pleasure to read a Turkish grammar." What he took exception to was the words, "but no society could have devised what the mind of man produced, left to itself in the steppes of Tatary," which he took to imply that the ancient Turks lived all by themselves in the wilds, out of touch with civilization. 25 Immediately after the first Kurultay, Ataturk organized sixteen working parties to establish technical terms for the various branches of knowledge: mathematics, physics, astronomy, language and so on. At the end of 1937 the Ministry of Culture produced revised lists which were distributed to schools and authors of textbooks. Ataturk himself wrote a brochure to introduce new terms for geometry, which was published anonymously at the State Press in Istanbul in 1937. The title page reads, "Published by the Ministry of Culture as a guide for those teaching geometry and those who may write books on the subject." From this little Geometri derive most of the geometrical terms current in Turkey, such as uzay (space), yuzey (surface), teget (tangent), aft (angle), dikey (perpendicular). For the various polygons
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he invented the suffix -gen, as in ufgen (triangle) and altzgen (hexagon). For "equilateral" he offered e!kenar and for "isosceles" ikizkenar. Not all his terms caught on. For "obtuse" he suggested oput, which has no obvious Turkish etymology and has been replaced by genir For "dimension" he gave boyut or direget. The latter, which looks suspiciously like "direction," he immediately dropped, but his boyut is in regular use. It was based on the Arabic hued, pronounced buut in Turkish, with the native word for "length," boy, to give it rights of citizenship. Some other words of his invention, besides the famous okul for "school," are varsayt (hypothesis), and artt, eksi, farpt, boW for "plus," "minus," "multiplied by," "divided by." The use of the term oztUrkfe for "pure Turkish" seems to derive from a favorite locution of his, "oz Turk dilimiz," "our very own Turkish language." The rule about finding the area of a triangle, base times half the height, was stated thus in the Ottoman (i.e., in this context pre1939!) terminology: "Bir musellesin mesaha-i sathiyesi, kaidesinin irtifama hasil-i zarbmm ntsfina musavidir." Atatiirk gave it like this: "Bir ufgenin alant tabant ile yarz yuksekliginin farparzgma e!ittir." The formula in modern use replaces his word for "area," alan, by yii-zolfumu and his farparzk for "product" by farptm, retaining the rest. To anyone who says that the language reform was unjustified, I would reply, "Interior opposite angles! Would you rather have your children taught ifters aftlar, or zaviyetan-t mutekabiletan-t dahiletan?" But besides his concern with making technical vocabulary more intelligible and easier for Turks to learn, he was tempted to play with general vocabulary too. We must go back to that period after the first Kurultay when Mustafa Kemal was saying, "We shall conquer Ottoman. The Turkish language will be free and independent, like the Turkish nation, and with it we shall enter the civilized world, at once and totally." Then began the twofold search, in books and among the people, the first fruits of which were the Tarama Dergisi (Istanbul 1934), based on over 125,000 slips. Although the compilers stated, quite properly, that this huge mass of material was undigested, that did not prevent enthusiasts from at once using any word they found in it. If, for example, you wanted to say "pen" without using the Arabic word kalem, you looked up kalem and chose any of the equivalents that took your fancy. You could choose yagu!, attested from Bandlrma, or yazgaf from Izmir, or the Karaim fizgif or Stzgtf, or kamt! from the 'Kamus-u Turki, or yUVU! from Pavet de Courteille, and for' a while chaos reigned. Atatiirk threw himself into the task of propagating the neologisms with the enthusiasm he displayed in all his undertakings. He wrote letters in the new language and made speeches in it, the first one at a banquet in honor of the crown prince of Sweden on 3 October 1934. For those unfamiliar with it, one sentence should suffice: "Avrupa'nm iki bitim ucunda yerlerini berkiten uluslartmtz, ataf oziu-
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klerinin tum Imlart olarak baysak, onurme) uygunluk ktldacllart olmuj bulunuyorlar; onlar bugun, en guzel utkuyu kazanmtya antklantyorlar: baysal utkusu." 26 Tankut says that the speech was first composed in Ottoman, with the Arabic words then replaced by neologisms. He says too that Mustafa Kemal delivered it with "the awkwardness of a pupil who has just started to read." 27 Now this self-inflicted injury must have been intensely galling for him, master of his own language that he was. He was equally at home in the High Ottoman of much of Nutuk and the free-and-easy colloquial he used in private conversation and when addressing the people; he sometimes dropped into it, very effectively, in Nutuk toO.28 And he must have decided, over a period of months, that he was not going to deprive himself of the full use of the instrument he wielded so well. His address opening the new session of the Assembly on 1 November 1934 is in ozturkfe, though nothing like so outlandish as the one which must have tried the skill of the Swedish crown prince's interpreter. 29 So too are the first, third and fourth paragraphs of his speech of thanks on being elected to a new term as president on 1 March 1935. But the second paragraph is in astonishing contrast; he goes back to the pre-reform vocabulary, with five Persian izaJets in six lines. A brief sample: "Turkiyenin jan ve jerefini vikaye ve £laya ve deruhte ettigim vaziJenin icabattna hasrtnefs . .. "30 It may be that he spoke like this because in this paragraph particularly he was speaking from the heart. Or he may have done it to see if anybody would notice. Who knows? At all events, I think it a sign that he was no longer happy with the more extreme products of his desire to free the language from the foreign yoke. The suggestion that Atatiirk changed his mind naturally bothers the devotees of ozturkfe. Thus in an article in Turk Dili of March 1981, Muzaffer Uyguner points out that Atatiirk left his property to the Tarih Kurumu and the Oil Kurumu; would he have made the latter organization one of his heirs if he had swerved from the ideal of language reform? This rhetorical question is repeated by M. ~. Onaran in the November 1981 number of the same journal. And the answer to it must be "Yes, because he naturally assumed that the Oil Kurumu would respect his wishes." Let us leave aside the various conflicting stories that on his deathbed he said, "Don't let the language reform lapse" or "Don't let them go on ruining the language." To establish what his own attitude was we need do no more than look at the proof-texts, samples of his own Turkish. But first a word about the Sun-Language Theory. Some time in 1935, Atatiirk was sent a copy of an unpublished paper entitled "La Psychologie de quelques eI6nents des langues turques," by a Dr. Hermann F. Kvergic of Vienna, which seems to have inspired him to produce this remarkable theory, which dominated the third Kurultay. There is a cryptic foreshadowing of the theory in
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ibrahim Necmi Dilmen's preface to Turkfeden Osmanltcaya Cep Ktlavuzu (Pocket Guide from Turkish to Ottoman), published in 1935. Having asserted that it was becoming daily more certain that "the languages termed 'non-Turkish' are equally of Turkish origin," he goes on: "There can be no doubt that the great truth we are referring to will soon show itself with the brightness of the sun." Turkish writers are unanimous that the theory was Ataturk's work. Dila~ar says in so many words that the paper entitled "The Application of the Analytical Method of the Sun-Language Theory," read to the Kurultay on Thursday, 27 August 1936, by ismail Mu~tak Mayakon, was written entirely by Ataturk. 31 It is my belief that Ataturk was also responsible for the anonymous and undated brochure entitled Etimoloji, Morfoloji ve Fonetik bakzmmdan Tiirk Dili, which sets out the principles of the theory. To be very brief, KvergiC's paper, which did not mention the sun at all, stated that man first realized his own identity when he attained the idea of establishing what the external objects surrounding him were. Language first consisted of gestures, to which some significant sounds were then added. He saw evidence for his view in the Turkish pronouns: M indicates oneself, as in men/ben and elim; N indicates what is near oneself, as in sen and elin; Z indicates a broader area, as in biz, siz. The Sun-Language Theory regarded the beginning of language as the moment when primitive man looked up at the sun and said "Ah!" Space forbids my going into detaip2 Anyone who wants a sample of how the theory was applied will find an exposition in Volume I (1937) of BeJleten, the journal of the Tarih Kurumu. On pages 311316 is an analysis in French of the name of the journal and of the French word buJletin, showing that the two words are phonetically and semantically identical and that, given that Turkish is the oldest of languages, the French word is derived from the Turkish. Now the reason for mentioning this farrago is that it was Atatiirk's farrago. What was his motive? Turkish opinions differ. Yakup Kadri saw in the theory "a concern with seeking a new shape, a middle way, for his attitude to language.3.~ This, though gently put, implies that Ataturk deliberately took up KvergiC's idea of the antiquity of Turkish and enlarged on it so as to justify ending the purge of words of Arabic and Persian origin. What Vecihe Hatiboglu says amounts to much the same: he put torward the theory to end the impossible situation in which satisfactory replacements could not be found for the words that were being expelled from the language. 34 I myself share the view of Konur Ertop: "Those who assert that the SunLanguage Theory was used by Atatiirk in order to limit the purification are overlooking Atatiirk's personality; he never refrained from acting decisively and radically in any matter which he believed might affect the good of the nation ... He did not use the theory as a means of
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turning the clock back; had he believed in the necessity for such a move, he would have made his ideas plain, openly and directly."35 I part company with Ertop totally, however, when he says that the clear proof that the theory was not advanced with the aim of slowing the pace of reform is that work on the language went on after the theory was propounded, that technical terminology continued to be put into pure Turkish and that Atatiirk was occupied with linguistic concerns almost until his death. This seems to me disingenuous; all three statements are accurate but irrelevant to the question of whether or not Atatiirk had had enough of the campaign to purge the general vocabulary. I have no doubt that Atatiirk put forward his Sun-Language Theory because he beLieved in it and that he lost interest in it when he decided it was a lot of nonsense. Tankut says the theory was carried to excess by people out to make a name for themselves, "and eventually Atatiirk abandoned the theory."36 But Atatiirk never repudiated it publicly, and it continued to be thought of as commanding his support. That is why ibrahim Necmi Dilmen, the secretary general of the Dil Kurumu, who had been lecturing on the theory at Dil ve Tarih-Cografya Fakiiltesi in Ankara, abruptly cancelled his lectures after Atatiirk's death. When his students asked him the reason, he replied, "Cunei oldukten. sonra, onun teorisi mi kaltr?" ("Mter the sun has died, does his/its theory survive?").37 It is not hard to see why a head of state, particularly one not in good health, might have decided that there were more important calls on his time and energy than the Sun-Language Theory. Five months before the theory was made public, Hitler had occupied the Rhineland. Three months before, Mussolini had annexed Abyssinia. Two months before, the Spanish Civil War began. Three days before, Germany introduced compulsory military service. But, it may be argued, Atatiirk could surely have found time to "make his ideas plain, openly and directly." Well, he could not be expected to tell the Dil Kurumu to stop work, because he wanted its work to continue, both on the technical terms and on exploring the resources of the language as it existed. But he made it as plain as could be that he did not approve of the continuing assault on words of foreign origin that had become part of the language. I could multiply the evidence, simply by adducing his speeches from November 1936 onwards. I shall confine myself to mentioning two telegrams and a passage from his last speech, opening the new legislative session on 1 November 1938, which is discussed by Melahat bzgii. 38 It is the passage in which he compliments the Dil Kurumu on its work in establishing technical terms for various sciences (and not on anything else), and remarks that the schools had that year begun to teach with books using Turkish terms. Melahat bzgu notes five "foreign words" he uses in that passage of five lines-feyizli, tesir, tedrisat,
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miihim, hddise-and comments sanctimoniously, "The younger generation is further advanced, thanks to the inspiration and the command it has received from Atatiirk." Instead of picking out five "foreign words" and overlooking another nine, she would have found it more instructive to consider the new words he did use. They number two: terim rather than tsttlah for "technical term," and okul rather than mektep for "schoo!." Well, taim was the technical term par excellence, and okul was one of his own contributions, and in any case did not have the pre-republican connotations of mektep. The two telegrams he sent were those thanking the Oil Kurumu (in the first he uses its earlier name) for its good wishes on the occasion of the Language Festival, on 26 September 1934 and 27 September 1937. Here they are: (a) Dil Bayramrndan otiinl, Turk Dili Ara~mma Kurumu gene! ozeginden, ulusal kurumlanndan birs;ok kuwnbitiklcr aldlm. Gosterilcn giizel duyglllardan klvan~ duydllm. Ben de kamuyu kutlulanm. (b) Dil Bayraml rniinasebetiyle, Turk Dil Kurumu'llun hakklmdaki duygulanl1l bildiren te!graflanmzdan s:ok miitehassis oldum. Te§ekkiir eder, degerli s:alt~rnalllzda mllvaffaklyetinizin temadisini dilerim.39
I would not like it to be supposed that the moral I draw from that second telegram is that Atatiirk had rejected the language reform. What it shows is that he was rejecting its excesses and adhering to the wholly praiseworthy side of it which consisted in reminding the Turks of the existing resources of their language. Duygu, bildiren, degerli. Had he been simply reverting to Ottoman, he could very easily have come up instead with his, teblijj eden and ktymetli or even zikzvmet. The members of the central committee of the Oil Kurumu, at least, could have been left in no doubt that his attitude had changed, by the language of his remarks to them in 1937, beginning, "I do not propose to participate for ever in the work of the Oil Kurumu" ("Turk Dil Kurumunun falzimalarma ilelebet iitirak edecek degilim") and continuing in equally pellucid Turkish: "I shall not interfere in the academic work of scholars and experts. You must make your work conform to the latest findings of scholarship."40 Some people heeded his example, at least for a while. Whereas the proceedings of the Republican People's Party's 1934 Congress were called Tutulga, those of the 1938 Congress were called Zabtt, and those of 1939 Zabztlar. Those of 1943 seem not to have been published. By 1947 they were Tutanak. Why have the Oil Kurumu and its adherents continued to introduce not just new technical terms, as Atatiirk wanted them to do, but replacements for normal items of standard Turkish?41 Many otherwise quite reasonable Turks see it as part of a Communist plot to impede
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progress by impoverishing the language, to widen the generation gap and to demoralize people by cutting them off from the records of their great past. The extremists of the right regard the reform as especially designed to decrease mutual intelligibility between the Turks of Turkey and those of the USSR, whom they dream of some day liberating. They overlook the considerable degree of mutual unintelligibility which existed even before the reform movement began and which has been vastly increased by the influx of Russian words into the Turkic languages of the USSR.41 Some Turkish Communists, on the other hand, see the reform as a bourgeois movement aimed at widening the gulf between the official and literary language and the language of the common people. It is worth remembering that the most distinguished of all Turkish Communists, NaZl1l1 Hikmet, used real Turkish and not ozturkfe. No, I don't think it was bourgeois or Communist ideology that inspired those who were not content to follow AtatOrk's lead and confine their creative urge to technical terms. I think they began, as he certainly did, with a genuine desire to close the gap between the official language and that of the people. When he decided that things had got out of hand, and reverted to his natural form of expression, they allowed a decent interval for him to depart from the scene and then resumed their work, because they had developed a taste for linguistic engineering which had become an absorbing intellectual pastime and, for some, a profession. I recall an afternoon lance spent with the great neologist, Nurullah Atas: himself. His particular concern at that time was to find a Turkish word for "in spite of," to replace ragmen. I do not remember if karitn was one of the possibilities he mentioned that day in 1953. We strolled up and down the Ataturk Boulevard, stopping now and then for coffee, while he talked about his attitude to the neologisms he kept on inventing. He did not, he said, feel at all proprietorial about them; if people accepted them he was naturally pleased, otherwise he would think up some more. Not an evil man, I thought. To those who blithely follow in Nurullah Atas:'s footsteps and go on inventing neologisms I would say, invent Turkish technical terms if you think they are likely to be used in preference to the international technical terms. If you feel you must invent any more substitutes for items of general vocabulary, buyurun, do so; it's your language. But please don't pretend you are following in the footsteps of AtatOrk.
Notes 1. Ru~cn E§ref Unaydm, Hattralar (Ankara, 1956), pp. 28-29. 2. Agih Slrrt Levend, in his Tiirk Dilinde Geli!me vc Sadelejrne Evreleri (Ankara, 1972), p. 156, states that Ahundzade produced a Slav-based alphabet, bur gives no details.
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3. M. ~akir Ulkiita~lr, Ataturk ve Harf Devrimi (Ankara, 1973), pp. 3941.
4. Unaydin, op. cit., p. 29. 5. Halide Edip Adlvar, Turk'un Atefle jmtihanz (Istanbul, 1962), p. 264. 6. A. Dilas:ar, "Atatiirk vc Tiirks:c," in Ataturk ve Turk Dili (Ankara, 1963), p. 41. This volume, which contains eight articles by various hands, is hereafter referred to as A ve TD. 7. The whole passage is given by Melahat Ozgu, "Ataturk'iin Dilimiz iizerine Egili~i," in A ve TD, op. cit., p. 25. Her version of the text is not quite satisfactory and she unaccountably remarks (p. 26) on the presence of an e "at the end of the common and proper nouns, as in heuqume for hukum and Djevdete for Cevdet," as if these were the only parts of speech in the letter where the exigencies of French orthography required a final e. She would have been better employed in noting the evidence for Kemal's pronunciation, e.g. hokum not hukum. 8. Ulkiitaw, op. cit., pp. 42-48. 9. Levend, op. cit., pp. 399-400, lists thirteen books published on the subject between 1923 and 1928 and does not attempt to list articles in newspapers and magazines. 10. After the British victory in the desert during the Second World War, when the Africa Star was instituted as a decoration for those who had taken part in the campaign, the Egyptian press quoted the announcement, which said that members of the Eighth Army would also receive a clasp in the form of an Arabic figure eight. Enterprising merchants in Cairo at once produced medal ribbons, more or less in accordance with the published description, together with clasps in the form of an inverted V. When the official supplies of the decoration arrived from England, there was some surprise and chagrin among the merchants and their customers to find that the clasps were in the form of an 8. 11. Falih Rlfkl Atay, C;ankaya (Istanbul, 1969), pp. 440-441. 12. Ibid., p. 440. 13. Ulkuta~lr, op. cit., pp. 76-77. 14. Ibid., pp. 122-123. 15. Konur Ertop, "Ataturk Devriminde Turk Dili," in A ve TD, op. cit., p. 66. 16. A ve TD, op. cit., p. 31. 17. Ibid., pp. 31-32. 18. I remember telling Fahir iz many years ago of an idea I had had for a humorous article "proving" the Turkish etymology of the French wattman. To my sorrow he informed me that a Turkish scholar, in a serious article, had beaten me to it. More recently I was sent a draft of a book by an obviously literate Englishman. His thesis was that the first inhabitants of Neolithic Europe we're of Turkish stock, that Roman Britain was a Turkishspeaking ..country, and that Turkish was a living language in Britain until the twelfth century. His evidence for the first part was such classical names as Achilles (Aktllt), Heracles (Hur AktUt), Apollo (Alp Ulu) and Artemis (Tertemiz). For the rest his evidence consisted in English pub-names, e.g. the Black Horse was originally Bol Ak HOf ("generous, clean and comfortable") and the Rose and Crown was Razz Kann ("satisfied stomach"). I suppose this is no funnier than Professor Yusuf Ziya Ozer's derivation of Aphrodite from the "Turkish" (actually Arabic) avrat (Levend, op. cit., p. 417).
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19. Uriel Heyd, Language Reform in Modern Turkey, (Jerusalem: Israel Oriental Society, 1954). 20. G.L. Lewis, "Oh! No! We never mention her (Thoughts on Turkish Language Reform)," in Asian Affairs (June 1981). 21. "Turkish is one of the richest of languages. It needs only to be used with awareness." 22. Tarih Vesikalan (Janaury 1958), opposite p. 192. 23. Sabahattin Eyuboglu, Mavi ve [(ara (Istanbul, 1967), p. 5. 24. Hasan Re~it Tankut, "Ataturk'li.n Dil <;=al1~malan," in A ve TD, op. cit., p. 113. 25. Max Muller, Lectures on the Science of Language delil'cred at the Royal Institution of Great Britain in April, May, and June, 1861 (London, 1861), pp. 295-296. 26. Text in Ataturk'un Soylev ve Demefleri, II (Ankara, 1952), pp. 274275. Text and glossary in Levend, op. cit., pp. 424-426. 27. A ve TD, op. cit., p. 125. 28. Some of Atatiirk's speech habits are noted in KtI1~ Ali, AtatUrk'un Hususiyetleri (Istanbul, 1955), p. 90. He pronounced tabanca as tapanca, ktrbaf as ktrpaf, heniiz as henus, yogurt as yugurt, sarho{ as sarfof. He insisted that muhakkak ought to be muhakkaka. He was very fond of yani, especially as a way of bringing long-winded speakers to the point. His strongest term of abuse was hebenneka. 29. AtaturkJun Soylev vc Demerleri, I (Ankara, 1952), pp. 362-364. 30. Ibid., pp. 364-365. 31. A ve TD, op. cit., p. 50. 32. Levend, op. cit., pp. 431-438, gives KvergiC's table of contents in full as well as an outline of the Sun-Language Theory. 33. Yakup Kadri Karaosmanoglu, "Atatiirk ve Turk Dili," in A ve TD, op. cit., pp. 109-110. 34. Vecihe Hatiboglu, "AtatOrk'On Dilciligi," in A ve TD, op. cit., p. 20. 35. A ve TD, pp. 90-9l. 36. Ibid., p. 125. 37. Nihad Sami Banarh, Turkfenin Strlan (Istanbul, 1972), p. 317. 38. A ve TD, op. cit., p. 37. For the full text of the speech, which was read for AtatOrk by Celal Bayar, see Ataturk'iin Soylev vc Demerleri, op. cit. I, pp. 390-398. 39. Banarh, op. cit., pp. 310, 313. 40. Abdiilkadir inan, cited in E. Z. Karal, AtaturkJten Du}·unceler (Ankara, n. d.), pp. 84-85. 41. I find Turks always eager to discuss the present state of their language, and there are countless articles on the subject in the Turkish press. One that I found instructive appeared in Tercuman for 3 July 1975. It was by Professor Sclahaddin A11Ik of Istanbul Technical University, on how the reform has brought the people into a state where they cannot understand each other. You can tell the line he is going to take before you read the article, from the way he spells his name: Sdahaddin not Sclahettin. In the course of his article he naturally uses some good old words: nesil, meJ,gul, lisan, icad, kelime, zaruret, even ebeJ7eyn. His thesis, with which I broadly agrer, is that words newly introduced into a language have the right to live only if they bring new concepts with them. But I began to count the new words he uses which do not meet that criterion: egitim, ogretim and ogretim uyesi, ogrenci, odev,
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konu, ozel, kapram, ilgi, gelenek, sornmsuz and so on and so on. Either he didn't realize these were neologisms or, knowing that they were, he accepted that he had to use them to be understood by his readers. Either way we have an indication of the extent to which the new words have taken over. 42. I did a spot check in Natalie Waterson's Uzbek-English Dictionary (Oxford, 1980). On two randomly chosen pages there were eighty-nine headwords. Thirty of these would be understood by any reasonably literate Turk, twelve might be, and forty-seven quite certainly would not. And it must be borne in mind that the compiler did not have room to include all the Russian words that have become part of Uzbek.
T
14 Atatiirk and the Arts, with Special Reference to Music and Theater Metin And
When studying the evolution of the arts during Turkey's westernization, which began early in the nineteenth century and accelerated in the Republican era, one can discern two separate strands: modernism and nationalism. Ever since their earliest contacts with the West, Turkish artists and others have been ambivalent regarding the traditional versus the modern: how to go forward and how to go back; how to maintain a balance between traditional and contemporary society, each of which has its own demands? There were four art traditions available: folk, popular, traditional elite, and western elite. Self-conscious cosmopolitans and nationalists both had to make a choice. A cultural pattern which offered more than one basic choice might have been assumed to be unstable and transitional, but Atatiirk believed it was possible to blend native tradition and western modernism harmoniously. His emphasis, however, was on modernization: he realized that attempts had to be made to transform the social and mental structure of the past and to eradicate irrational ideas, magical superstitions, and religious beliefs which provided obstacles to economic and social progress.
The Political Context Atatiirk's cultural policy was governed by both political-organizational and cultural-artistic aims. The dialectics between the two operated on the national level, with the attempt to integrate the peoples of Turkey into one single culture, and on the international level, to foster good relations with other nations. These two levels arc illustrated by Atatiirk's approach to folk dancing. As there was no single national Turkish dance, Atatiirk attempted to popularize one dance throughout the country. Atatiirk then inaugurated the Balkan Folk Dance Festivals of 1935 and 1936, in which folk-dance troupes from throughout the 215
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Balkans participated. l He not only attended all the events, but sometimes even took part in the dancing. The New York Times of 5 November 1933 reported his attempt to nat ionalize the dance under the headline: "Pasha Mustapha Kemal tries to popularize native zeybek dance."2 Atatiirk knew that if his new state was to have a durable basis he had to change the way people thought and felt. All Ottoman religious and cultural elements had to be eliminated, so that the people would identify with the Republic and its higher aims unseLfconsciously. The establishment of the Republic in 1923 and the reforms of 1925-1928 were soon followed by government support for the cultural development of Turkey. The Turkish language was revivified and the long-forgotten general and cultural history of the Turks was rediscovered and reinterpreted. Atatiirk suggested that artists seek inspiration from both early Turkish culture and the ancient civilizations of Anatolia. He also insisted that all arts be popularized. The theater was discovered as an ideal instrument for presenting aspects of national and popular culture, such as native spectacles, national history, and folklore. Since Ataturk strongly believed that drama should further state politics, he paid close attention to the content of plays, banning some or permitting them to be performed only after changes had been introduced. In the first decades of the Republic, rigid censorship banned even the leading play of the nineteenth century, Namik Kemal's Vatan yahut Silistre (The Fatherland and the Silistria). Ataturk liked this play, but banned it because of such exclamations as "Long live the Ottomans" and "Long live the Sultan." The play could be published or performed only on condition that these lines were omitted. Another example was the musical comedy Of Saat (Three Hours), by the Rey brothers (Akrem Rqit Rey and Cemal Hesit Re~it Rey). The Turkish tradition of popular theater included comic dialect ridiculing the speech of various regional and ethnic groups. As this musical singled out Arabs and Persians, authorities ordered the "offensive" sections deleted when Ataturk was trying to improve relations with Iran and Iraq. Ataturk also used the theater in his efforts to foster good relations with Greece. Greek and Turkish theatrical companies frequently visited each other's countries, and such performances were exempt from taxes. Thus, in 1931, five Greek troupes performed in Istanbul within a period of two months: the Gavrilidis-Aliki company, the Argiropoulos comedy company, the Kiveli-First dramatic company, an operetta company consisting of 60 artists, and the Semerci operetta company, totalling 150 Greek artists. To mark a visit by the Shah of Iran in 1934, Ataturk ordered an opera to be composed based on the play Ozsoy, using the two countries in the legend to represent the friendship between Iran and Turkey. The opera, called Feridun, was composed by Abmet Adnan Saygun,
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rehearsed and performed before the two heads of state within one month. This modest beginning was an important step towards the establishment of the Turkish State Opera. Atatilrk granted ethnic minorities, such as Greeks and Armenians, complete freedom to publish books, newspapers and magazines and to perform plays in their own languages. For example, the Armenian community has published a monthly Armenian-language theatrical magazine called Kulis (from the French coulisse) since 1946; 827 issues had appeared by June 1981. One of the oldest continually published theatrical journals in the world, Kulis is the only Armenian-language theatrical magazine in the world. Atatiirk as Aesthetician and Theoretician of the Arts
In trying to define art, Ataturk once used the metaphor of a soldier struggling to erect a flag on the peak of a hill: at the moment of victory, the first light of the sun strkes his face. Similarly, Atatilrk said, "The artist is the member of society who, after long striving and effort, feels the first rays of the sun on his face."3 He added: "Success in the fine arts is evidence of assured success in all reforms. Those nations that have not succeeded in this field must be pitied, because they fall far short of achieving recognition for their high humanitarian qualities."4 He also urged Turks to involve themselves in the fine arts and to make development of the arts a national ideal: I must emphasize that one of the historic qualities of the Turkish nation and society is its love of the arts and its development of them to a high standard. For this reason it is our national aim to develop continually by every means our nation's fine qualities: its innate intelligence, its devotion to the sciences, its love of the fine arts, its national unity, its capacity for hard work. 5
Talking to artisans in Adana on 16 March 1923, he said: In order to keep a nation alive it is necessary to have some fundamentals, and as you know among (he most important of them are the arts. If a nation is rich in art and people skilled in the arts, it can achieve a full life of its own. A nation that cannot do this is like a man wl>o is lame or lacks a limb, who is an invalid or crippled. But for what I want to say, even this comparison is not adequate. If a nation is cut off from the arts, one of its vital arteries is severed. But I must emphasize that it is not enough to produce individual artists. Men cannot be wholly successful working alone. When God created mankind he gave man a moral principle, which is that all are bound to work together. If this collective activity is a physical necessity, it is clear that working for a common goal is essential. As a first truth we must realize that
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if we want to progress in any of the arts, people of the same profession and art must unite and cooperate. If a nation does not give enough importance to the arts, it can expect to face great disaster. But many elements of society do not realize the degree of this disaster, nor, when they do realize it, do they know how great an effort will be needed. 6
The Ottomans had rejected the oversimplified European compartmentalization of one art from another and the fine from the applied arts. Likewise, Atatiirk respected and encouraged both arts and manual crafts in much the same way; for him artist and craftsman differed only in degree-the one might be as gifted as the other in his own field. Although his attitude in this respect was similar to the Ottoman approach, he criticized the Ottoman rulers for not giving proper importance to the crafts: "They did not see the harm done in allowing the arts to be exploited and monopolized by other nations. Our noble nation was deprived of arts. Craftsmen were scarce, and those there were, were not as skilled as they should have been."7 On 3 April 1922, at the graduation parade of the Konya Military Farriers School, he said: "The simplest arts are the most honorable ones. In civilian as well as in military life, shoemakers, tailors, carpenters, saddlers, blacksmiths and farriers are artists in respect to their status."8 In February 1922 Atatiirk sent the following telegram to a craftsman in Bursa, thanking him for the knives he had made: To the master-craftsman Recep, The knives, the products of your art, I shall keep as a souvenir not only of a Turkish craftsman from Bursa, but also as a sign of our national talent for the arts. Until a hundred years ago we Turks made everything with our hammers on our am'ils and we marketed them ourselves. That is why we were a great nation. Today is the era of iron. My wish is to see you in this period among our greatest masters, and I congratulate you. 9
Atatiirk as Propagator of the Arts Atatiirk wanted to spread the arts to the remotest corners of the country. On 10 June 1926, he told some leading members of a theater company, among them Ra~it RlZa and Muvahhit: I always value you. You have an important contribution to make to our reforms. Among all the theatrical performances I have seen so far, yours is the most polished and artistic; I advise you to take your profession seriously and to maintain good relations among yourselves. Your most important service to your country is to tour all over Anatolia and to enlighten the people as to what art is. I expect your tours to be frequent and well-organized. 1O
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But for this purpose the most important tool was the network of People's Houses and People's Rooms, institutions which had their origin in the Turkish Hearths founded in 1912 and revived in 1924. At a Hearths congress in Ankara, it was decided to incorporate and expand these bodies into a network of Halkevleri (People's Houses) in towns all over Turkey. They were designed to fill leisure hours with entertainment and educational activities with the aim of ennobling people physically, mentally and intellectually, by bringing the artsin which Kemalist principles were stressed-directly to the people. Each House was a shelter for the various performing arts and fine arts media. There were lectures, classes, meetings, libraries, publications, plays, athletics, concerts, exhibitions; social assistance and guidance of various kinds were provided. The Houses had a dual function: from the national perspective they aided cultural decentralization; on the local scene they concentrated cultural experience. In 1940, the Houses were supplemented by People's Rooms in the smallest of towns and villages, and by the time the Republican People's Party fell from power in 1950, there were 500 People's Houses and over 4,000 People's Rooms. Many contemporary actors and playwrights began their career as amateurs within the framework of the People's Houses. Starting in 1937, theater began to be used as a subterfuge to propagate Kemalist views throughout the country. Itinerant companies were already visiting small towns but, as they were generally improvisatory companies, they lacked scripts. The state began to provide them with good scripts commissioned from established dramatists on themes such as the use of religion for personal interests, outdated marriage customs, polygamy and superstition. Publi~hed e~amples of these plays include Hulleci (The Hired Husband), Itaat Ilamt (The Verdict is Wifely Obedience), §eriatfast (By Islamic Law), and Uftirukfu (The Faith Healer). In each of the media, artists took materials bequeathed by their predecessors and fashioned them anew using western forms, techniques and compositional practices. We will see how artists drew upon traditional material, followed the basic structures and processes of traditional style, and yet reshaped content and meaning in line with modern idioms. Music Ataturk had clearly formulated ideas only in the field of music. However, these ideas on music were utilized to enlighten and guide artists in other fields. Thus, by examining them, one can try to understand his views on the arts in general, especially the theater. Atatiirk's aesthetics were based on those of Ziya Gbkalp, who wanted national music to take the place of the decadent art music of the Ottomans. Gbkalp wrote:
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Today we are faced with three kinds of music: eastern music, western music, folk music. Which of them is ours? Eastern music is a morbid music, and non-national. Folk music represents our culture. Western music is the music of our new civilization. Thus, neither should be foreign to us. Our national music, therefore, is to be born from a synthesis of our folk music and western music. Our folk music provides us with a rich treasure of melodies. By collecting and arranging them on the basis of the western musical techniques, we shall have both a national and a modern music. This will be the program of Turkism in music. It is the task of our composers to bring this aim to fruition. ll
In a speech to the National Assembly on 1 November 1934, Ataturk emphasized that the test of whether a country was changing was the extent to which it grasped change in music. The significant milestones in his infusion of folklore into western-style music can be stated as follows: 1924-The Imperial Band (Muzika-i Humayun) was renamed The Presidential Orchestra and moved to the new capital. 2. 1924-The Music Teachers' School (Musiki Muallim Mektebi) was founded; it became the nucleus of the State Conservatory. 3. 1926-Young musicians started to collect folk tunes from traditional sources. The groundwork was laid by collectors such as Adnan Saygun, Ulvi Cemal Erkin, and Halil Bedii yonetken. 4. 1927- The state began to recruit young talent to study abroad on State Scholarships. 5. 1932-Foreign musicians, teachers, conductors and composers were invited to Turkey, among them such figures as Joseph Marx, Paul Hindemith, Bela Bartok and Eduard Zuckmayer.
1.
Atati.irk's policy was guided by aesthetic and ideological considerations which may be described as follows. Aesthetically, art music is the work of the individual; it is composed in a comparatively short period of time. Once committed to paper it is forever and unalterably fixed. Ottoman art and religious music lacked any real progress, its musical style having evolved very little; it is now almost impossible to perform such music even as museum pieces. On the other hand, folk music, the product of a race, reflects feelings and tastes that are communal rather than personal. It is creative, never-completed, ever-present, and found in many forms. Its vigor, emotional concentration, historic representation, and popular sentiment come from the rough, raw, varied and changing elements of cultural life, thus making it an ideal element to fit into a western frame of reference. Western music has been accepted because of its logical harmony and expressive power, and the prestige of western
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science, technology, political thought and progress. Turks must listen to symphonies, operas and oratorios for the same reasons that they wear western clothing and use the Latin alphabet. The first generation of composers, known as The Five (Cemal Rqit Bey, Ahmet Adnan Saygun, Ulvi Cemal Erkin, Necil Kazlm Akses, and Hasan Ferit Alnar) devoted much of their creative energies to rhapsodizing Turkish folk songs, which are pure melodies without any harmonic substructure; they began to add all sorts of harmonic implications to these songs, building their harmony from the melody downward and recasting the primitive form of folk music into a new and polished idiom. These composers had to face the problems that occur whenever one deviates from a monodic musical tradition with a modal system differing from polyphonic occidental music. Would it be possible to introduce harmony and European forms of composition and instrumentation into Turkish music and yet maintain its national color? It is interesting to note that one of The Five, Necil Kazlm Akses, studied the use of microtones and quarter tones with the Czech composer Alois Haba, and that Sadettin Are! and Kemal ilerici 12 tried to set up a system of harmony applicable to Turkish music. At the same time, The Five incorporated folk music into symphonies using western orchestration, although certain pitch differentiations and structures cannot be easily reproduced with European instruments and forms. The introduction of folk music into essentially non-folk contexts, with the support of an isolated sector of society, has left the ordinary man baffled and hostile. Traditional art music has not been entirely neglected. For instance, the first movement of Ulvi Cemal Erkin's Symphony no. 2 uses the "makams" of traditional art music as a source of inspiration, and the second movement uses the mystic music of the Mevlevi dervishes. The same composer's piano concerto (1942) and violin concerto (1946) are mixtures of traditional folk and art music. Similarly, Cemal Re~it Rey's symphonic poem, Fatih (1953), makes use of traditional art and janissary (Mehter) music, Adnan Saygun's ten studies for piano uses "aksak" rhythms, as element common to both art and folk music. The modal order in his oratorio-like opera Kerem, as well as his masterpiece oratorio Yunus Emre, is based on traditional Turkish music for both dramatic and mystical moods. The occasional employment of traditional instruments as well as traditional art music is well illustrated by Hasan Ferit Alnar's concerto for kanun (zither) and orchestra (1951). This can also be observed in Bulent Arel's use of the Turkish drum in his Turkish dances for orchestra, and in the last act of Adnan Saygun's opera Koroglu. Necil Kazlm Akses's symphony Itri, lJ written in homage to the great seventeenth-century Ottoman composer Itri, might have been an interesting and appropriate example of the use of traditional Turkish
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art music had it been finished. The composer did write a scherzo for orchestra based on I tri 's well-known Neva lOrr. We can conclude that the use of thematic or rhythmic folk material, and later the use of traditional art music, offered too little in the way of an evolutional system. The aim of Atarurk and the first generation composers was to create a distinctly Turkish music-a kind of national musical style which would distinguish between Turkish and European composers while remaining modern and contemporary. The Turks, however, did not really stray very far from their Occidental colleagues, who were regarded as authoritative models in form, style and orchestration. Similarly, the new music was not really modern or contemporary as it was based on European music of an earlier period. Ataturk's populist idea of using Turkish music to appeal to a large audience was not fulfilled. Attempts along this line were mere exercises or research into style. In recent works there has been a very real and decisive break. Their evolution is exemplified by Ahmet Adnan Saygun, whose first phase was largely a search for style. His second, transitional period, began with the oratorio Yunus Emre, and included the opera l(erem and Symphony no. 1. He reached full maturity in his latest period, with String Quartets nos. 2 and 3, Symphonies nos. 2 and 3, the violin concerto, partitas for cello and violin, and finally the opera l(orojj/u. Some younger Turkish composers tend to see themselves as being within the mainstream of modern music; these include practitioners of serialism, random music, concrete music and electronic music such as Bulent Are!, ilhan Mimaroglu, ilhan Usmanba~ and ilhan Baran. Ataturk's rejection of the outmoded aspects of inherited Ottoman culture caused deep dislocations in the world of traditional Turkish art music. The medium lost its vitality; it was not allowed to survive commercially and it could not survive as a museum piece because its practitioners must be both virtuoso performers and composers who create as they play and must rely on a rapport with a knowledgeable audience. Musicologists failed to inform Ataturk of the value of this resource. Although it is not polyphonic, and therefore lacks logical harmony and the use of dissonant and consonant chords to create the elaborate coherent structures of psychological tension and relaxation which were found in western music, it does offer a fascinating world of subtle, elaborate metrical phrases, rhythms, expressive modes, instrumental colors and embellished melodies. After Ataturk, Turkish traditional art music was once more tolerated, but by then it was too late. There is a fundamental gap between the values and concepts which support traditional art music and those created by modern social change. What is broadcast today by the state radio and television as "Traditional Turkish Art Music" shows Turkish taste at its very worst: indifference to aesthetic values, degrading capitulation to commercialism, blatant disregard for discriminating
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tastes, and deliberate pandering to vulgarity by imitation of the pop music of the Middle East. This menace will continue unless official support for and control over the teaching of Turkish traditional art music is established. Pop music itself raises a new issue-the folk song revival. The adoption of European lifestyles and modes of dress paved the way for the import of Euro-American pop and ballroom dance music. During the last ten years, the younger generation, in a search for identity that began with the translation of western pop lyrics into Turkish, has suddenly been seized with a fervor of admiration for folk music. They buy guitars, learn three chords, don dirty clothes, grow long hair, and are all set to "sing" such great masters of Turkish folk literature as Pir Sultan Abdal, Yunus Emre or Karaoglan. These singers often play non-folk instruments and use rhythms and harmony alien to Turkish folk music, without respect for genuine folklore. Yet it is gratifying to mention that there are exceptions: Ruhi Su, formerly an opera singer, has retained his fidelity to the traditional style, preserving intact the emotional content of Turkish folk songs. Theater 14 Atatiirk's ideas on music have begun to indirectly influence playwrights in the last two decades. The new plays are derived from native speech, customs, traditions and the historic peculiarities emerging from the native genius of the people, rather than from foreign models and influences. Some writers and artists now approach western culture as a contrasting tradition rather than as an ideal. They believe that it is vital to blend Turkish and western elements harmoniously. In each of the traditional literary and artistic media, they feel, there is an essentially Turkish form springing from the public taste, fashioned by the people themselves through the centuries. In practice, these ethnocentric ideas are being implemented by various playwrights in three different ways: One approach has been simply to take an existing traditional form and modernize it. A second category of writers feel that the contribution of traditional Turkish theater far transcends the mere borrowing of a fixed type, scenario or form. According to these writers, traditional theater is not a mere collection of superficial plots, but rather a sensibility and a fund of stage conventions and techniques that include a sense of anti-illusionistic rapport between actors and audience; an open or flexible form; development through language rather than characters; an attempt to give the impression of improvisation; and the use of music, dance and songs. A third possible approach involves a search for the spirit, the intrinsic and artistic values of all traditional Turkish art and literature. Atatiirk and the National Theater. Regarding theater as an essential element in the modernization of Turkey, the state assumed full
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responsibility for the actor's professional career and for the establishment of a National Theater. The latter goal was realized only after Atatiirk's death, but he himself laid the foundation. The first major step involved the entry of women into the theatrical profession. After watching a performance in Izmir in July 1923, Atatlirk told the theatrical troupe that the centuries-old ban against women, even as spectators, should come to an end. He had recently seen the film The Shirt of Flame, based on the novel by Halide Edip Adlvar, in which the young actress Bedia Muvahhit, wife of a wellknown actor, had appeared. That same year, Bedia Muvahhit appeared as Desdemona in Othello, with Neyyire Meyir playing Emilia. Only a few years before, the attempts of a few brave Turkish women to break the ban and appear on the stage had been stymied by legal proceedings and police persecution. Ataturk gave his assurance that, from then on, Turkish women could freely appear on the stage. Results immediately followed: that very year, Turkish women twice appeared in Vedat Orfi's musical comedy Balo Kafaklan (The Fugitives from the Ballroom). A picture of one of the actresses, Sedat Nazire Hanim, appeared on the cover of a women's magazine. Thus, 1923 opened the way for countless talented Turkish actresses, as well as women producers and directors. In that same talk in Izmir, Ataturk pledged that the state would support the theatrical arts. In Ankara, that year, some of his close associates, including journalist members of the National Assembly such as Yunus Nadi and Falih Rlfkl Atay as well as other National Assembly members and prominent government figures, founded the Turk Tyatrosunu Himayet Cemiyeti (Association for Sponsoring Turkish Theater), whose purpose was "to found and develop the Turkish theater." It planned to take under its protection one of the existing stage companies and to give it both financial and moral support. The group also called for building playhouses with the cooperation of the municipalities, first in the largest cities and then in all parts of the country. The troupe chosen by the association was the touring company of ~adi Fikret, a veteran of the Turkish stage. The choice proved illadvised, as the company was more suited to adaptations of light French comedies than the serious dramas suitable for a national theater. Nevertheless, this was a very important first step toward the later establishment of the Conservatoire and the National Theater. On 1 November 1936, Ataturk told the opening session of the National ~ssembly: I would like to reawaken your interest in the fine arts. It is a great pleasure for me to announce that in Ankara there is now a conservatory and an academy of drama. In every branch of the fine arts, the Assembly's interest and contribution will have an effect on the civil life of the nation and will increase national productivity. IS
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Exactly one year later, again at the National Assembly opemng, Ataturk said: "We have to give more dedicated support to the State Conservatory founded last year, so that in a short time it can produce the artists the nation needs for both music and the stage." 16 On 8 November 1937, Celal Bayar, appointed by Atatiirk as head of the new cabinet, declared in his policy speech: We are going to approach our national stage as a reflection of Turkish culture and the purest and most aesthetic expression of our beautiful Turkish language. Thus the national stage will become one of the most fruitful sources of our national art. To realize our aim we shall emphasize the adoption of modern technical meansY
Atatitrk as playwright and arbiter of plays. Ataturk did not hesitate to advise dramatists or to suggest subjects for the works he com-
missioned. He even acted as arbiter of plays, dictating changes in his own handwriting. One file at the National Library in Ankara contains the manuscripts of three plays by Miinir Hayri Egeli, with corrections in Ataturk's hand. He made three types of alterations. As he wanted only words of Turkish origin, he would substitute for all loan words his own suggestions. From the literary point of view, he would strike out banal images and cliches. But his most important changes were conceptual. Ataturk insisted that dramatists include at least one major female role of great character and virtue in every work. In Ta? Bebek, one of the characters declares that he cannot take women seriously, as they are merely decorative. Atarurk crossed out these lines and wrote: "We cannot think about women in this way. The presence of women is fundamental to our nation for a thousand reasons. We should forget this idea that women are mere ornaments. This must be changed." In another example from Ta? Bebek, he crossed out the phrase "Love is just an amusement" and wrote: "To consider love an amusement is not to take it seriously." When one of the heroes in Bir Olkit Yolu was about to die, he wrote: "This man should be a character who has failed to achieve his aim." He was very interested in Akzn (The Raid) by Faruk Nafiz Camhbel, a heroic play about the migration of Turkish tribes from Central Asia because of drought, because it celebrated the positive qualities of the Turks and showed them settling and finding happiness in a new land. Atatiirk made suggestions, followed the rehearsals, and was present at the Ankara premiere on 4 January 1932; it opened at the Istanbul Municipal Theater on the same day, and was soon playing all over ~he country, its three major female characters all being played by Important actresses. The playwrights turned out a great many plays during Ataturk's time, but their quality was mediocre and their style and themes uniform. They instilled patriotism, eulogized Ataturk's reforms, and glorified the War of Independence with its hardships and heroism.
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While most of these plays lack literary merit, they serve as documents testifying to the spirit of the period. Conflict was usually developed from a clash of attitudes between representatives of different generations, often within a single family. One member of the family, a traitor or a spy, is always punished without regret by his family or by others, for example, in Faruk Nafiz Camhbel's Kahraman (The Hero); Hiisamettin I~m's Ataturee ilk Kurban (First Sacrifice to Atatiirk); R. Gokalp Arlun's Gonullerin Turkusu (The Song of the Volunteers); Saim Kerim Malkan's Devrim vc Vazije (Reform and Mission); CeLil Tuncer's Devrim Yolculart (Pioneers of Reforms); Hamdi Oleay's Gunlcrden Bir Gun (One of These Days); Faruk Nafiz CamlIbel's Ate! (Fire). In Saganak (Downpour), by the well-known novelist Yakup Kadri Karaosmanoglu, a father and his elder son are portrayed as reactionary and anti-Kemalist, while the younger son and his sister-in-law are dedicated to Atatiirk's cause. When the elder son conspires against Atatiirk with a secret organization, he is sentenced to death, causing an upheaval in the family. The play was banned in 1929 after four performances, probably because the playwright, fine writer that he was, did not portray the sides in sufficiently black or white terms. Painting 18 Since the decline of the Turkish miniature over a century ago, Turkish painting has been very closely linked with French art. The origins of western painting in Turkey are to be found in the achievements of such nineteenth-century pioneers as ibrahim Pap, Tevfik Pa~a, Servili Ahmet Emin, ~eker Ahmet Pap, Siileyman Seyyit, Hiiseyin Zekayi Pap, Osman Hamdi, Halil Pap and Hac Ali; their era can be regarded as a classic period. The first stirrings of expressionism turned up in the paintings of VallI ibrahim, Feyhaman Duran, Hikmet Onat, Nazmi Ziya Giiren, Avni Lifij, Ruhi Arel and ~evket Dag. Their words began to appear in 1914 and continued in evidence through the early decades of the Republic; they concentrated on portraits, landscapes and still lifes. In the first decades of the republican period, national consciousness drew some artists towards village life and the soil, in hopes of establishing a national style and tradition. They sought to convey the realities of Turkey-its light, its rural landscapes and its people. Yet their work was not really national in spirit. Style is not a matter of the subject represented, but of how the representation is realized and the way the artist organizes his material on the canvas. Two groups of artists made fundamental new departures towards cubism and constructivism: the Society of Independent Painters and Sculptors in 1928, and Group D in 1933. Other artists, inspired by calligraphy, miniatures, tapestry and illuminated manuscripts, turned
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to the past for their sense of shape and plastic organization. The impact of archeological discoveries of earlier civilizations in Anatolia can occasionally be discerned in their works. Those of Turgut Zaim and his daughter Oya Katoglu are essentially original creations, with no trace of foreign influence; both artists create space through twodimensional Turkish perception. In their earlier efforts, Bedri Rahmi Eyiiboglu and his wife Eren Eyiiboglu, while remaining within the framework of representational art, showed a rich sense of ornamentation. They deliberately delved into Turkish tradition, emphasizing the decorative rather than the pictorial. Bedri Rahmi Eyiiboglu, one of the most versatile stylists, more than any other Turkish painter constitutes a bridge between tradition and experiment. Cemal Tollu, Sabri Berkel, Fethi Karaka~ and others cleverly translate traditional elements as well. Two significant events aided the search for a national style in Turkish painting: The Turkish National Assembly's Exhibitions of Paintings of the Provinces, which saw the appearance on the scene of artists concerned with creating a distinctly Turkish style; and The Contemporary Turkish Art Exhibition held in 1964 in Brussels, Paris, Munich and Vienna, which presented 128 selections of the 600 submitted, chosen by a jury led by the eminent critic Jacques Lassaigne. This was a test for Turkish painting as a whole; distinguished painters, such as Orhan Peker and Turgut Zaim, were omitted. The European critics detected some adroitly camouflaged Western influences. They concluded in some cases that attempts to revive traditions had failed due to lack of creativity, or that originality as an end in itself had been self-defeating. Yet they discovered a few personalities-such as Ne~et Gunal, ihsan Cemal Karaburs:ak, Turhan Erol, Bedri Rahmi Eyiiboglu, Eren Eyiiboglu, Devrim Erbil and Cihat Burak-who had used familiar methods to achieve their personal visions. This experience led even some experienced painters to change their styles; Nurullah Berk began to simulate Ottoman calligraphy and miniature, and Nuri iyem made a decisive turn from his long-established abstract style to representational painting. Contemporary painting exhibits the conflict between traditionalism and modernism, as artists move back and forth between the abstract and the representational. In figurative painting, doctrinaire naturalistic schematism has begun to break apart; some use an approximation of natural objects, others the real object, and still others combine the real with the almost irrational; some use a style based on grotesque deformation or heroic exaggeration of the human figure; and some are for the metaphonic use of nature for lyrical abstractionism, weakening and even obscuring the referrent, while remaining within the framework of representational art.
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Sculpture
Due to traditional opposition, sculpture had no comparable tradition to return to. Yet the Ottoman Turks did have a sense of sculptural form and visual order, evidenced in richly ornamented Seljuk-Ottoman tombstones; friezes with elaborate spirals, calligraphy, small leaves and palmettes; bas-reliefs or incised sculptures of stylized animal and human figures on ancient buildings; and, in some corners of Anatolia, one finds rough animal totems with sculptural qualities. Architecture, in which the Turks excelled, can also be enjoyed as a kind of sculpture, especially in the silhouette of a mosque, in monumental fountains, or in stone birdhouses. In a 1923 speech, Atatlirk emphasized the importance of sculpture: When our friend speaks of a monument, I believe he means a statue. Any nation in the world which wants to be civilized, progressive, and perfect in every way is found to produce sculptors and to make statues. Those who claim that erecting statues as memorials of history is against the laws of Islam arc those who have not studied their Islamic canon law. Since the Prophet founded the Islamic religion some one thousand three hundred years have passed. During the time when the Prophet delivered the divine ordinances idols had their place in the hearts and consciences of the people. In order to lead the people in the way of the truth, it was necessary to reject those pieces of stone, and to remove them from their pockets and their thoughts. Now that the Islamic truth has been understood and accepted and has been reinforced in their minds, by powerful evidence, it would be an insult to the Islamic world to suppose that enlightened people would still worship pieces of stone. Our nation, which is both religious and enlightened, will develop the art of sculpture, which is one of the means of progress, and will declare this to the whole world by erecting in every corner of the country beautiful sculptures as memorials to our ancestors for all the coming generations. This work has already been started. For instance, on the road between SivJS and Erzurum people will notice a beautiful statue. Furthermore, are Egyptians not Muslims? Is Islam restricted to Turkey and Anatolia alone? Those who have travelled in Egypt know perfectly well that there arc many statues of great men there. Our nation possesses two great merits in. religion and language. No force can remove these from our nation's heart and mind. In order to progress people need to do certain things. A nation which does not create paintings, a nation which docs not make statues, a nation which docs not make those things which science requires-we must confess that there is no place for such a nation on the road to progress. Whereas our nation with its true qualities is worthy to be civilized and progressive. I "
We find the following written in his own handwriting In 1935: "Make a statue of Sinan." The resulting statue of Sinan, who was
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one of the world's greatest architects, now stands in the garden of the Faculty of Letters at Ankara University. In the first decades of the Republic, young sculptors were attracted to symbolic nationalism. They erected idealized or heroic monuments to Atatiirk and his deeds, and to the War of Independence. This provided important commissions for sculptors, and also made sculpture available to a larger population, as it penetrated into the remotest corners of Turkey. While some continued in this style, there was also a rapid evolution toward current western techniques which eventually included the use of welding and brazing. The mechanistic shapes of pipes, tubes and cubes were exploited, using such varied materials as thin steel rods, plaster, bronze, painted iron or wood and the trunks or roots of trees. Happily, the Academy of Fine Arts participates in the cult of the new in both painting and sculpture. The Istanbul Museum of Painting and Sculpture, inaugurated by Atatiirk 011 10 September 1937, started a tradition of liberal purchases. The annual State Exhibition of Painting and Sculpture, begun in 1939, presents the main trends and personalities in Turkish painting and sculpture. Architecture 20 The idea of a synthesis between past and present, Turkish and western, is not new in architecture. During the early years of contact with the West, various Armenian and foreign architects tried to blend native and foreign clements, although the results were not always harmonious. Experiments in this direction present more problems for architecture than for the other arts, as architecture has a more direct effect and is more in contact with society. Nobody is obliged to look at Orhan Peker's paintings or to listen to Biilent Arel's electronic music, but people are more or less obliged to look at and live in buildings. Besides, the Turks were great masters of architecture for centuries, and a strong tradition still exists. In addition, architecture is bound by economic, social, technological and other non-aesthetic considerations. Modern architecture may use traditional elements for various reasons. An architect might feel the need to form a bridge between past and present in order to establish a national style, or to emphasize the historical significance or regional character of a particular environment, especially in a historic city like Istanbul. He might introduce a detail of traditional style to suit a special purpose. Sedat HakkJ Eidem's Turkish Coffee House in Ta~hk, Istanbul, or various mosques, may serve as good examples. The construction of mosques presents special problems. Domes and minarets, two basic elements of the Turkish mosque, are not really justifiable, given modern modes of living and architectural techniques; domes are now built of reinforced concrete, and the
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muezzins chanting the call to prayer from the minaret have been replaced by recordings. Yet the dome retains its association with spiritual values and with a sense of yearning for the past. Vedat Dalokay, an internationally known architect, designed a central mosque for Islamabad, Pakistan, as a square-domed structure with an enclosed shell roof resting on four concrete supports, and four stylized minarets, the outer skin of the building being as transparent as possible. The mosque would have been consistent with modern tastes, but ardent traditionalists found it in conflict with their sense of beauty. The foundations of the supporting piers were demolished, and a new mosque, designed by Ho.srev Taylan in imitation of the old models, was built. An eclectic, derivative style was perpetuated up to 1927 by three versatile architects: Vedak Tek (1873-1942), Kemalettin Bey (18691927), and Arif Hikmet Koyunoglu (1889). The architects of this generation were predominantly decorators of fapdes, quoting elements from Ottoman religious architecture such as cornices, arches, dummy domes with no function, columns, stalactites, Ottoman stained glass and iron grilles and glazed colored tiles. They paid a great deal of attention to sculpturing and ornamenting the fenestration. Their buildings are found mostly in Ankara, Istanbul, Izmir and Konya. However, this style receded in favor of more universalistic tendencies. Atato.rk expected architecture to serve as a useful medium for the glorification of the modern state, and as a symbol of the successful establishment of the new capital, the modern city of Ankara. He used two foreign architects to help achieve this. Helmut Jansen, an Austrian town planner, conceived the city plan for Ankara, and Clemens Holzmeister was responsible for designing its public buildings and ministries; both emphasized purist constructivism. During the 1930s, a transitional period between the first and second national eras in architecture, there was a strong reaction against foreign architects. Sedat Hakkl Eidem's studies stressed the need to explore Ottoman secular as opposed to religious architecture. And there was more interest in developing structures in line with functional uses or social needs, especially in the work of the foreign architect Bruno Taut. Through practitioners like Bekir ihsan Unal and Seyfi Arkan, architecture became conscious of itself as part of an international movement. From 1940 on, the second national period was in full sway. Emin Onat left his early style of pure functionalism to join the ranks of the national-regional stylists. There are hints of traditional Ottoman secular architecture in his work and in that of Sedat Hakkl Eidem: caves with wide projections to shelter the upper story, columns and fenestration details; concrete buildings surfaced with stone blocks, slabs of Travertine marble, or alternating layers of stones and thin brick slabs. These buildings are monumental, subjective and eclectic.
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The style is well illustrated in the buildings they designed together: the Faculty of Science and Arts at Istanbul University, and the Faculty of Science at Ankara University. Foreign architects working in Turkey during this period included Paul Bonatz, S. Egli and M. Elsacsser. A certain harmony existed between Turkish architects and, for example, Paul Bonatz, in the search for a Turkish style. Bonatz's two main works in Ankara were his housing scheme for the Saracoglu residential district, and his Opera House, which is actually a conversion of an exhibition hall. Both were given an appropriately regional flavor through the decorative use of elements from Ottoman domestic architecture on both exterior and interior. One solemn and monumental work from this period is Emin Onat's mausoleum for Atatiirk, which combines neo-classic structure and frontality with a melange of historic elements. Since 1950, Turkish architecture has been absorbing contemporary pluralist trends. It is difficult to distinguish between the pattern of a city as a whole, with its historic and modern cores and shantytown fringes, and its individual architectural components. The enthusiasm of young architects for contemporary techniques and ideas has led them to designs reminiscent of the great contemporary masters of the West, though not necessarily through direct imitation. They have abandoned decorative details, and by using functional yet decorative devices such as sunscreens or brises de soleil or making the outer skins of buildings as transparent as possible, they have freed themselves from the limitations of structure. They are designing skyscrapers, complexes of buildings and large industrial centers, and are showing an interest in city planning. Conclusion In all the arts discussed, there has been a search for a modern Turkish culture not directly inspired by the West. Since the Tanzimat period, westernization has meant modernization. Must modernization therefore mean westernization? Today both East and West share the same basic objectives: to learn about each other in order to enrich their own artistic growth. The catalogue of the Istanbul Museum of Painting and Sculpture notes: It is therefore by no means surprising to find a large number of young Turkish artists passionately devoting themselves to abstract art. They, on the other hand, remark with astonishment that many European painters, from Matisse to Klee, Kandinsky and Mathieu, have been influenced by Islamic oriental art. 21
Traditional Turkish arts thus seem to stand a chance of becoming components in an active, expressive, modern discipline. A sense of
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the traditional can coexist with the modern, and express itself powerfully in the maintenance of traditional forms. Notes 1. For the Balkan Fesitval see Memduh M. Moran, "Dance in the Balkans,"
Theatre Arts, XX, 4 (1936). 2. See also Ataturk'un Soylev ve Demefleri, V (Ankara, 1961-1972), p. 3S.
3. Dr. Utkan Kocaturk, ed., Ataturk'un Fikir ve DUfunceleri (Ankara, 1971), pp. 144-145. 4. Loc. cit. 5. Ataturk'un Soylev pe Demefleri, II, p. 272. 6. Ibid., II, pp. 32, 125-126. 7. Loc. cit. S. Ibid., II, p. 32. 9. Ataturk'un Soylev ve Demefleri, V. p. 203. 10. Ibid., V, p. 44. 11. See Ziya Gokalp, Turkish Nationalism and Western Civilization: Selected Essays of Ziya Gokalp, trans. and ed. Niyazi Berkes (London: Allp1 & Unwin, 1959), pp. 300-30 l. 12. Kemal ilerici is a theoretician as well as a composer. His system of harmony has inspired many young composers. Kemal llerici, Bestecilik Bakzmtndan Tiirk Muzigi ve Armonisi (Istanbul, 1970). 13. This was initially inspired by Yahya Kemal's poem on Itri.
14. For a detailed survey of contemporary Turkish theater, including the quotes presented herein, see Metin And, 50 Yzltn Turk Tiyatrosu (Istanbul: Ba§bakanhk Kiiltiir Miistqarhgl, 1973). 15. Ibid. 16. Ibid. 17. Ibid. IS. For a detailed survey of contemporary Turkish painting and sculpture, see Nurullah Berk-Hiiseyin Gezer, 50 Yzltn Turk Resmi ve Heykeli (Istanbul: Ba§bakanhk Kiiltur Miiste~arhgl, 1973). 19. Ataturk'un SOylev J'e Demefleri, II, p. 66. 20. For a detailed survey of contemporary Turkish architecture, see Metin Soze & Mete Tapan, 50 Yzltn Turk Mimarisi (Istanbul, Ba§bakanhk Kiiltiir Miiste§arhgl, 1973). 21. Nurullah Berk, Istanbul Rcsim vc Heykel Muzesi (Istanbul, Ba~bakanhk Kiiltiir Miistqarhgl, 1972), p. 90.
15 Atatiirk's Legacy: Westernism in Contemporary Turkey David Kushner
There was little in the early stages of Kemalism to indicate that it would turn out to be a westernizing movement. It began as a movement for national liberation closely identified with other such movements in the European-ruled empires. The Turkish national movement included Islam-oriented circles and supporters of the old regime, as well as believers in the "Eastern Ideal," who saw Turkey as inevitably bound to an emerging East which was to replace the decadent West in both power and civilization. Predominant among these "easternizers" was a group of Marxists who, although they did not necessarily advocate submission to Soviet Russia, did view the Russian Revolution as a role model. Outside the country Kemalism was hailed by many Muslims as a manifestation of Islamic revival, against the despised Christian West. Atatl1rk is well known for his tolerance for and cooperation with all streams within the movement, even those whose ideas were repulsive to him. All and any available aid was needed and would be accepted. If his strong ties with Soviet Russia required temporary cooperation with communists and easternizers, he did not balk. He likewise relied on the support of many Islamists. But his basically westernist views came clearly to the fore after his victory, when his own power was consolidated and the fate of Turkey assured. He then began to pursue his westernizing reforms with strong determination and will, with the aim of transforming Turkey into a modern nation. Then there was no longer any room in the Republic for those who advocated the old Islamic traditions, communism, or any vague eastern ideal. Not that Mustafa Kemal sought to place Turkey within the western group of nations in a political sense; in any case, no stich group yet existed as a formal alliance. His ardent nationalism stood guard over Turkey's hard-won independence from western imperialism, and he steered a prudent course, repairing relations with the western powers, maintaining friendly relations with the Soviet Union, and keeping his bridges open to other nations. The pacts Turkey signed in the 19305 233
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were regional arrangements and not motivated by the desire to formally tie Turkey to the West. It was left to Ataturk's successors to take the further step of making Turkey an actual ally of the West. This process, it might be said, began in 1939 with the tripartite agreement between Turkey, Britain, and France; it gained further impetus after World War II, when Turkey joined the NATO alliance, the Council of Europe, and other western organizations, and established a special relationship with the United States. While these new ties were based on concrete security and economic interests, they also manifested a will to become part of the West, which cemented and reinforced the formal treaties. In the words of Altemur KJhf, Turkey's inclusion in the NATO alliance "filled Turkish hearts with pride and exaltation. They were no longer 'outsiders.' They were at last part of the West."l If there were other trends in Turkish political and intellectual life in the late 1940s and 1950s, they were buried under the overall westernist orientation. This picture, however, seems to have been modified during the 1960s and 1970s, with the emergence of new political parties and groups calling for a radical revision of Turkish foreign policy and a change in the principles governing the policies and structure of the state. The Marxist left found expression in several organizations, most importantly the Turkish Labor Party, which professed a Marxist socioeconomic approach without abandoning democracy, and called for an independent policy vis-a-vis the outside world. On the other side of the spectrum was the Islam-oriented National Order Party (later the National Salvation Party) which, unable to publicly challenge secularism, advocated promotion of the "national spirit" and a close relationship with the Muslim world. Both these parties exploited and thrived on the strong anti-western ism or anti-Americanism then engulfing much of Turkish public opinion, particularly among the intellectuals and students. Until the 1980 coup, when these (and all other political parties were banned, it looked as if the early history of the Republic was repeating itself. Once again the West was imperialistic and the source of Turkey'S plight. It was essential for Turkey to return to the East, be it socialist, Muslim, or simply nonaligned. It seemed as if the old upholders of the East were reappearing on the Turkish scene. Many observers thought that Turkey might indeed be heading away from its western orientation and looking elsewhere for salvation. Internal pressures pushing for a reorientation were being accompanied by a shift in foreign policy, from complete identification with western interests toward a more flexible approach which included the active courting of friendship and cooperation with eastern bloc and Third World countries. There was an emphasis on relations with the Muslim
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world, particularly with the Middle Eastern Arab states, as Turkey began to take an active part in various Muslim conferences and organizations. The immediate reasons for this change were clear enough: the country sought support on the Cyprus issue, diversity and expansion of aid sources and markets, and greater security on its borders. But disappointment with western attitudes and policies was also a contributing factor. Many Turks resented the western (particularly American) stance on the Cyprus issue, as well as the apparent lack of enthusiasm in coming to Turkey's aid economically. The western (again American) presence in Turkey contributed to the friction and hostility. It looked as if the Turks were becoming disillusioned with their partnership with the West and desirous of trying out new orientations. 2 Yet a closer look at the way Turks have responded to the problems encountered in their relationship with the West suggests that Turkey has not abandoned its commitment to western alliances and treaties and has remained faithful to the "western inspiration" which has for so long guided its conduct at home and abroad. The public statements of Turkish leaders in recent years make it quite clear that Turkey'S commitment to NATO, the Council of Europe, the EEC, and other western forums has remained unshakable, and transcends mere political or economic considerations. The Turks still see the western community as founded on the ideals of freedom, democracy, human rights, and regard for law, and they believe themselves part and parcel of this community. BOlent Ecevit, former prime minister and leader of the Republican People's Party (RPP), has said that NATO is "a symbol of the democratic ideal and has the characteristics of being a community of nations gathered around the ideal."3 Ecevit's foreign minister, Giindiiz Ok~iin, advised the western world to stop seeing Turkey as a military advance guard and to view it instead as the front line of a specific economic and social system. "In the new stage of our relations with the United States," he says, "our cooperation should also spread to the economic, technical and cultural fields. Turkey wants to be a part of the econ?mic and political system of the entire western world."" Elsewhere Ok~iin points out that the ties between Turkey and Europe go beyond the framework of NATO, the EEC, and similar organizations, to the more important area of democratic and cultural values. 5 Leaders of the Justice Party OP), which alternated with the RPP in governing Turkey before the recent coup, expressed a pro-western commitment. Former Prime Minister Siilcyman Demirel said Turkey'S course, as set down by Mustafa Kemal, was to protect its own interests first and foremost: What would Turkey do by taking her place with the Third World or among the socialist countries? What inrerest would she have in it?
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Turkey's economic interests, her political interests, her defense requirements due to her geopolitical location and importance are in the policy she is pursuing today."
Although these words may suggest less of an ideological commitment to the West, this might stem from the generally more pragmatic nature of the JP (in comparison to the RPP) and the fact that it was frequently attacked by its rivals for pro-western policies. There is no reason, however, to doubt its faith in the western ideological system. The generals were more outspoken, perhaps because they do not need to respond to opposition charges. Describing his government's future course, Prime Minister Bulent Ulusu promised to expand ties with NATO and its member countries, particularly the United States, and said his country aimed at taking its place in the European Community. "Our relations with the Council of Europe and other institutions to which democratic countries belong will be inspired by our determination to return to a parliamentary order."7 Head of State General Kenan Evren, addressing a delegation of the Western European Union Assembly, assured his listeners that "Turkey is an integral part of democratic and free Europe and intends to remain so," and asked for Europe's trust and assistance. 8 Writers and commentators are perhaps even freer to elaborate on these issues. Guneri Civaoglu, editor of Tercuman, has written: It is clear that, if not today, some time soon the United States will no longer be a defense bulwark for Turkey. Detachment from the leader of the West may eventually come to mean Turkey'S alienation from the West, particularly when we remember that Turkey has frozen its relations with the EEC for 5 years. The near future makes it imperative for Turkey to exhibit the most intelligent and laborious efforts to remain in the bloc of liberal democratic parliamentary regimes. Our western age which depends on the strategic position of our country and our role as the forward sentry of the West is about to come to an end. Westernism is an economic and political model of civilization and world outlook. We may remain western by exhibiting these characteristics. This is important and desirable. 9
The "West" to which Turks feel they belong or wish to belong means Europe more than the United States. It was Europe, after all, which inspired generations of westernists in Turkey as they struggled to modernize their country. Even today Europe may still be considered by Turks as the torchbearer of western civilization, untarnished by the superpower politics which taints the United States in the eyes of much of the world. Such a view found lucid expresson in an article in Tercuman, written by Nazli ilicak and entitled "Turkey and the West":
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What Turkey needs to do is not to view the United States with doubt and suspicion, but to maintain our bilateral rclations within the NATO framework and at all times to preserve its [sic 1 position as Europe's buffer strength at a high level. The decision which the Council of Europe will adopt about our country is very important. If we are torn away from the European family, we shall be left alone with the United States. All those who sense this danger use their common sense and unite their efforts to keep our country in the Council of Europe. 1o
Turks are extremely sensitive to criticism from within the western, and particularly the European, "family." There has been a great deal of such criticism in western forums and in the western press over Turkey's apparent infringements of human rights and democracy and its apparent disregard for law. The new military regime has been condemned for seizing and holding on to power, and criticized over its treatment of political enemies. All this hurts, not only because the criticism comes from the West, but also because it has to do with the very essence of westernism. What is westernism if not a world outlook which respects human rights and the rule of law? In both the eyes of the West and its own eyes, Turkey may not seem to be a truly western state. It is no wonder that a great deal of energy has been devoted to self-defense and the refutation of unjust allegations. Much of the defense rests on the charge that the West simply does not know or understand Turkev. Economic difficulties, social tension, and terrorism all result from th~ peculiar circumstances of the moment; they cannot be ascribed to something more fundamental in the nature of the state or society. II Many of the problems, so Turks feel, have been blown out of proportion; others are really common to the entire world, including the western states. The Kurdish problem, for example, has been exaggerated; even if it does exist, this is only because race and regionalism have assumed increasing importance in our era, as can be seen in France, Britain, Belgium, and Spain. Similarly, the phenomena of extremism and terrorism afflict many countries apart from Turkey.12 Torture may have been used in the pursuit of terrorists and anarchists, but only by individuals, not by the state. Such cases are duly investigated; where guilt is established those responsible are punished, as befitting a state which respects law and justice. 13 It is true that mass arrests have been undertaken, but they are necessary in order to clean up terrorism; in any case, all detainees are tried in independent courts. "Does this," acting Foreign Minister ilhan Oztlrak asked a European correspondent, "happen anywhere in Latin America, Asia or Africa?"14 Turkish spokesmen insist that their country has shown a devotion to freedom and democracy unique among developing countries. The foundations were laid by Mustafa Kemal himself, and the multi-party system in effect since the 1940s has withstood many tests and trials.
David Kushner
'he military, which has had to be used occasionally in the application f martial law, and which has found it necessary several times to 1tervene in the political life of the country, also firmly believes in the emocratic process. In the words of Oztlrak: We think that the situation need not get worse after the military takeover. The situation in Turkey is special, and one must not confuse Turkey with conditions in Latin America or in Greece under the junta. The military has intervened three times and each time they have said from the first day that they wanted to strengthen democracy and improve relations with their western allies. We want to have a democracy, even though the situation in September last year forced the military to intervene. The alternative would have been that democracy in Turkey would have been lost forever. We want to get through this situation and back to democracy in the shortest possible time, and we expect our friends and allies in NATO to understand us. IS
The generals who have ruled since September 1980, and their 'epresentatives, have thus spared no effort to impress upon the outside ",orid and the Turkish public their determination to return power to :ivilian hands once their tasks have been accomplished. "We are :fetermined," said General Evren, "to attain democratic life in this :ountry and let no one have any doubts that we will fulfill our pledge md hand the duty over to a new administration to be elected in a :iemocratic manner." 16 Commenting on the Council of Europe's failure to acknowledge Turkish concern for human rights, Oktay Eksil wrote in Hurriyet: Turkey, which identified itself with the idea of becoming westernized 150 years ago, and which was converted to the "one way" system by Ataturk's reforms, will sooner or later convince everyone that it is part of the western world. And it will do this not only through its institutions, but also through its mentality and worksY
Western criticism may sometimes lead Turks to the conclusion that the West not only does not understand them, but also neither likes them nor wants them in its camp. This feeling has been reinforced by certain actions which Turks believe are aimed at expelling them from the western fold. The visa requirements imposed on Turkish citizens in 1980 by several European countries, in order to limit the influx of workers and political exiles, were taken, as one Turkish publication put it, as a "slap in the face," coming precisely when Turkey, during the third military intervention in 1980, was reaffirming its commitment to the West. 1M Official spokesmen, if less vociferous in their reaction, have given expression to the great sensitivity of the Turkish public to these measures. 19
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The EEC is widely considered to be unresponsive to Turkey's needs, requirements, or rights as an associate member. The Istanbul daily Giinaydzn complained that the West does not regard Turkey as European and does not want it to become a full member of the EEC; high tariffs are imposed on any Turkish agricultural product which has a chance of being sold in Europe, while Greece is accorded zero tariffs.20 Elsewhere the same newspaper cites a BBC program, which said that Turkey could not consider itself a European country and could not _become a full member of the EEC, as evidence of a sinister plan to drive Turkey away from the Common Market and Europe. 21 Perhaps more sophisticated, but with a similar sense of bitterness, were the words of former Foreign Minister Hasan I~lk; when asked whether he had noticed any change in the West's attitude toward Turkey, he said it would be more correct to talk of changes in treatment. The fundamental western attitude had not changed: "The source of the West's interest in Turkey is defense. What is important for the West is not whether Turkey should or shouldn't be part of the western world; defense comes first." 22 There is a sense that Turkey's relationship with the West may be one-sided: the Turks are ever eager to pursue their love affair with the West, but the West does not reciprocate in kind. Greece plays a significant role in this context. The two countries compete to gain the favor of the West. One book on Turkish foreign policy refers to a Turkish complexe de mimetisme, which may have played a role in Turkey's applicat ion to join the EEC. 23 The Turks believe that Greece is more acceptable to Europe and the West for reasons of common religion and culture. Asked about prejudice in the West against Turkey, Biilent Ecevit said: "What worries us is that Turkey is always linked to Greece in the western mind. It is as if Turkey only exists because Greece exists, despite the fact that Turkey has been a particularly important factor in world politics for centuries."24 Necati Zincirklran, writing in Giinaydzn, commented on France's attitude to Turkey as reflected in the visa issue: "This policy began when the arrogant Giscard d'Estaing came to power. According to this head of state, who is an admirer of Hellenism, Turkey is of no importance at all." 25 Greece's integration into the EEC sparked something of a psychological crisis. There are, to be sure, realistic reasons to fear that Greece may try to block any further EEC concessions to Turkey, but the issue evokes the question of identity as well. The title of one article in Giinaydzn is revealing: "They have become Europeans and we have remained Asians." The commentator praised Greece's successful efforts to join the EEC. "We, on the other hand," he wrote, are getting farther and farther from the date we had expected to achieve membership. Although our workers won the right to move freely in Europe, today, on the contrary, we cannot set toot in the Common
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Market countries without a visa. The western powers themselves admit that the West is trying to sever us from Europe and to turn us into a Middle Eastern country.}!'
In yet another article in the same newspaper, Necati Zincirklran placed more of the blame on the Turks themselves-bureaucrats, businessmen, intellectuals, and statesmen who allowed Turkey to lose the race with Greece. He concluded: "Posterity will not speak very highly of us when it suffers more severely the distresses of not being Europeans."27 Mehmed Ali Birand struck a slightly different note in Milliyet; he warned the Greeks that if they tried to give political expression to Karamanlis's statement that "Europe's frontiers end at the Aegean," Turks "will know that under no circumstances do you wish friendship with Turkey."18 Perhaps the most interesting comment was that of Miimtaz Soysal in the same daily: This is the most opportune time to rid ourselves of the complex of "being considered Europeans." This complex has agitated our heads again now that Greece has entered the EEC. We arc Turks from Turkey. Turkey is a country with one bank in Europe and the other in Asia. The same thing can be said of our geography and culture. We must realize and accept this as such and we must turn this embarrassment into a sense of superiority.
Noting that Norway refused membership in the EEC, which it considered prejudicial to its interests, Soysal wrote that such membership is not a measure of one's being European. He concluded: Turkey should not feel the need to take shelter under the wings of Europe in order to make its future more secure . . . . In making a decision we must not forget a most important point: being located between two continents, two cultures and two worlds should not necessarily create bewilderment, indecision and embarrassment for us. On the contrary, it is a unique position, which is full of opportunities, that should be turned into good account 29
The image of Turkey as a bridge between East and West frequently crops up when Turks discuss their newfound relations with their neighbors, with the socialist bloc, and with the Muslim world. But when people in the West wonder whether Turkey is reorienting itself toward the East, or even departing from its long-standing secularism and going the way of Iran, Turks often reply that the rapprochement with Asia and Africa has been motivated by practical national interests. Furthermore, they say, Turkey'S relations with the socialist bloc and the Muslim world have ample precedent in the policies of the western countries. "When Turkey's allies and partners," Ecevit pointed out, "normalize their relations and develop cooperation with these lsocialist or Muslim] countries Turkey could not be expected to remain far
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behind on the issue."3o He finds western critics unjust: "When they do it, it is all right. When we do it, it will be bad and worrying."3! Besides, "If there is a tendency to move away from the West, it is because we are forced to do so by the attitude of some western countries and by their failure to understand our economic problems."32 Security plays a key role in Turkey's new policy vis-a.-vis the East. Bordering on the Soviet Union, the Balkans, and the Middle East, the country has a unique geographic position with its own problems. As Ecevit put it: Turkey's allies should know that Turkey knows better than they what the policy ill this region should be, at least what Turkey's policy in the region should be. While the countries beyond the Atlantic and at the other end of Europe can afford large margins of risk in their policies in the Middle East, Turkey has no such comfortable positioll. 33
The underlying concept is that the best way of ensuring a country's security is to build up an atmosphere of mutual confidence with all countries in its region. As a Muslim country Turkey has a special opportunity to follow such a policy; 34 situated on the East-West and North-South crossroads, it is in a unique position to contribute to East-West rapprochement and to North-South dialogue. Turkey's policy of seeking friendship and cooperation among all the nations of the world will not only serve her own interests, but will contribute to detente and world peace, in keeping with Mustafa Kemal's motto "Peace at Home, Peace in the World."3s And yet, Turkish spokesmen make it clear that the "bridge" is somewhat more firmly grounded on the western bank of the Bosphorus. They take great pains to dispel any doubts in the West regarding Turkey'S course. Demirel's foreign minister, Hayrettin Erkmen, conceded that the Ecevit government's inclination to shift more importance to the socialist bloc had helped create those doubts. "We have set out," he said, "to make it clear that our foreign policy preferences do not tally with such doubts and that no country should entertain such doubts against Turkey."·l6 In fairness to Ecevit, it should be noted that he too has repeatedly reconfirmed his attachment to the West. He instructed his ambassadors in Europe that "Turkey has no such policy of leaving the West. Explain this in categoric terms in your capitals. Let no such anxiety or worry be created."·17 Elsewhere he has scolded the West for its "uncontemporary" anxiety over Turkey, explaining: The nature of Turkey's partnership with democratic western countries in this rapidly changing world and in this age of detente cannot be measured only by seeing how willing she is to be a frontier guard, with the banner of the cold war in her hand and with arms, most of which are left over from the Korean War and World War I1.3K
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He has called upon the West to help strengthen westernism in Turkey: "The West must change its view of Turkey and yield to the forces which want to develop and stabilize the Kemalist revolution and anchor Turkey in the West."39 Finally, Turks dismiss those in the West who fear a Turkish Khomeini, and insist that secularism-the separation between religion and the institutions of state and society-is well entrenched. As one of the foremost principles of Kemalism, it survived many trials during the multi-party period, proving its strength and acceptance. What happened in Iran could never occur in Turkey, for the two countries have vastly different political and social systems. 40 Turkish spokesmen do not worry whether the country's participation in Islamic organizations is compatible with its secularist principles. But apart from radical Islamist groups, hardly anyone favors membership in any formal Islamic bloc. Former Foreign Minister Erkmen said: "I understand Islamic union very well in the moral, cultural and political fields. But it is not as easy as is thought for Islamic countries to form a bloc."41 It is significant that while Turks always speak highly of relations with the Muslim countries, with whom they have, as they put it, traditional fraternal, religious, or historical ties, Turkey is referred to as being in NATO, in the Council of Europe, (hopefully) in the EEC, and in the West. In the words of Zafer Atay, writing in Tercuman: "Turkey will maintain friendly relations with the Islamic world, the Eastern bloc and the Third World countries, on the one hand, and, on the other, it will preserve its honorable position within the western alliance."42 Necmettin Erbakan, leader of the now-defunct National Salvation Party, may have been right when he repeatedly accused the leaders of Turkey of having a "western mentality" and wanting to belong to the "European Club." The western orientation still exercises a profound influence on Turkish leaders and constitutes a hidden but powerful dynamic force shaping Turkish attitudes and policies. Turkish foreign policy is commonly said to be based on a realistic sense of national interest, without much concern for ideology. Yet westernism remains a solid pillar of political culture, helping to accelerate Turkey's integration into the West and retard any movement in the opposite direction. Relations with socialist or Muslim countries may be based on strong foundations, but they lack the solid emotional quality which characterizes the Turkish bond with the West. The roots of Turkish westernism go back for centuries, but its contemporary strength largely reflects the impact of Mustafa Kemal, whose ideological system and reforms not only contributed to the transformation of Turkish society, but also helped shape a new selfimage for Turkey as a member of the western family of nations. This image was to become the inspiration for much of Turkey's course in the world.
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Notes 1. A1temur K!ll~, Turkey and the World (Washington: Public Mfairs Press, 1959), p. 159. 2. For internal developments, see Jacob M. Landau, Radical Politics in Modem Turkey (Leiden: Brill, 1974); Feroz Ahmad, The Turkish Experiment in Democracy, 1950-1975 (London: Royal Institute of International Mfairs, 1977); C.H. Dodd, Democracy and Development in Turkey (Hull: Eothen, 1979). The changes in Turkish foreign policy are treated in Ferenc A. Vali, Bridge Across the Bosphorus (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1971) and Kemal H. Karpat, ed., Turkey's Foreign Po/icy in Transition, 1950-1974 (Leiden: Brill, 1975). 3. Ankara Radio, 17 Nov. 1978, cited i,n Daily fuport, Western Europe, Foreign Broadcast Information Service (Washington), 20 Nov. 1978. 4. Pulse ("A Daily Review of the Turkish Press") (Istanbul), 10 Nov. 1978. 5. Ankara Radio, 24 Feb. 1979, cited in Daily Report, op. cit., 27 Feb. 1979. 6. Pulse, 24 June 1980. 7. Ibid., 29 Sep. 1980. 8. Ankara Radio, 24 Feb. 1981, cited in DaiZv fuport, op. cit., 25 Feb. 1981. 9. Tercuman, 14 July 1979. 10. Ibid., 1 March 1981. 11. See, for example, Ecevit's long elaboration on Turkey's domestic problems in his speech before the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, Radio Ankara, 10 May 1979, cited in Daily fuport, op. cit., 11 May 1979. 12. Ecevit's interview in Le Figaro, 12-13 May 1979, cited in Daily Report, op. cit., 17 May 1979. 13. General Evren in a meeting with a delegation of the West European Union, cited by Pulse, 25 Feb. 1981. 14. Interview with the Oslo Arbeiderbladet, 25 Feb. 1981, cited in Daily fuport, op. cit., 6 March 1981. 15. Loc. cit. 16. Pulse, 25 Feb. 1981. 17. Hurriyet, 31 Jan. 1981. 18. Briefing (Istanbul), 27 Oct. 1980. 19. Foreign Minister tIter Tlirkmen, speaking before the Ministerial Council of the Council of Europe. Ankara Radio, 16 Oct. 1980, cited in Daily Report, op. cit., 17 Oct. 1980. 20. Gunaydtn, 5 July 1980. 21. Ibid., 14 April 1981. 22. Interview in Gunaydtn, 24 March 1981. 23. Vali, Bridge Across the Bosphorus, op. cit., p. 335. 24. Interview in the Copenhagen Aktuelt, 23 Oct. 1978, cited in Daily Report, op. cit., 25 Oct. 1978. 25. Gunaydtn, 3 Oct. 1980. 26. Ibid., 1 Jan. 1981. 27. Ibid., 2 Jan. 1981. 28. Milliyet, 2 Jan. 1981.
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29. Ibid., 3 Ja.n. 1981. 30. Ankara Radio, 10 May 1979, cited in Daily Report, op. cit., 11 Ma.y 1979. 31. Pulse, 27 March 1979. 32. Interview in Le Monde, 10 May 1979, cited in Daily Report, op. cit., 11 May 1979. 33. Pulse, 28 April 1980. 34. Interview in Le Monde, 10 May 1979, cited in Daily Report, op. cit., 11 May 1979. 35. Loc. cit.; see also interview with former Foreign Ministers ihsan <;aglayangil and Hayrettin Erkmen in Gunaydtn, 23 March 1981. 36. Interview in Tercuman, 10 June 1980. 37. Pulse, 19 Dec. 1978. 38. Ibid., 11 May 1979. 39. Daily Report, op. cit., 25 Oct. 1978. 40. Ecevit's interview in Hurriyet, 27 March 1979. 41. Pulse, 2 Sep. 1980; see also Pulse, 24 Dec. 1979. 42. Terciiman, 14 Jan. 1980 (italics mine).
Part 5 Perceptions of I(emalism
16 The Kemalist Reform of Turkish Law and Its Impact Vakur Versan
On 29 October 1923, the day the Turkish Republic was founded, Atanlrk told the press: "Our object now is to strengthen the ties that bind us to other nations. There may be a great many countries in the world, but there is only one civilization, and if a nation is to achieve progress, she must be a part of this one civilization." Marking out the road he believed Turkey had to follow, Mustafa Kemal declared: "The Ottoman Empire began to decline the day when, proud of her successes against the West, she cut the ties that bound her to the European nations." Atatiirk declared that he would not repeat this mistake. To understand and evaluate the scope of the social revolution that Atatiirk's ideas spurred in Turkey, one must study it in the perspective of Turkish social and legal history. The legal life and social institutions of the Turks have evolved through three radically different phases since the start of the Ottoman Empire in 1299. In the earliest period, the entire system was based on Islamic law and social practices. Starting with the Tanzimat (Charter of Liberties) of 1839, these institutions had to coexist with new, European-style competitors; finally, ever since the promulgation of the Republic in 1923, secular laws and institutions have held sway. Islamic legal and social patterns, which the Ottoman Empire itself helped to perfect, functioned very efficiently during the rising years of the empire, providing a source of equilibrium and stability in political and social life. The empire survived for six hundred years with a theocratic and monarchic governmental system. Separation of powers and functions did not exist, the governing body deriving its authority from the absolute power of the monarch, who was responsible to no one and free to act as he pleased so long as he observed the commandments of the Koran. This state of affairs continued until 1808, when the first real attempt to forge constitutional restraints on the state were made, and Sultan Mahmut II was forced to sign a Pact of Alliance (Sened-i ittifak) ?47
~48
Vakur Versan
Nith the feudal lords of Macedonia; unfortunately, however, the pact .vas never put into force. While the roots of the Tanzimat reforms can be traced back to the French Revolution of 1789, the actual reform efforts in Turkey at that time were comparatively pale. Military defeats soon drove home the necessity of further reforms. When the once victorious Turkish armies began to sustain serious reverses, the ground was prepared for the Tanzimat of 1839. In the wake of expanded contacts with the West, the Ottoman prime minister drew up a Charter of Liberties (Tanzimat), which the sultan then proclaimed. While it served as a basis for various reform movements in the empire, the Tanzimat never assumed the form of a constitution. Nevertheless, the Tanzimat era was a period of reforms and growing western influence. During this period two entirely different legal and social systems coexisted, along with two entirely different sets of educational institutions: one fighting to establish and develop itself, and the other fighting to keep its place. The first Turkish constitution was promulgated in 1876 and repromulgated in 1908. But all these reforms, timidly conceived and poorly executed, did little to change the fate of the empire. One important characteristic of this period was its cultural duality, wherein institutions based on western models began to emerge alongside long-established Islamic institutions. For example, commercial and penal codes adopted from the West existed side-by-side with civil laws of Islamic origin. The old system of religious courts was supplemented by various courts based on western concepts, and schools teaching new liberal arts subjects existed alongside the old religious schools. After Ataturk landed in Anatolia and the national independence movement began, the 1921 Constitution was proclaimed. This became the new basic law for the government of the Grand National Assembly, which then proceeded to carry the War of Independence to a successful conclusion. The legal significance of this constitution was its provision for a conventional system of government in which legislative and executive powers rested with the Grand National Assembly. But when the war was over and victory achieved, a new constitution which met the organizational requirements of the new Republic of Turkey was put into effect. The Constitution of 1924 laid the groundwork for the stable and powerful government Turkey needed in order to achieve rapid social, cultural, and economic development. Atatiirk believed that only a constitution based on democracy, human rights, and liberty for all could insure the survival of the Turkish Republic. This entailed a new legal framework to do away with the Ottoman legal system, under which Muslim and non-Muslim subjects, and foreigners were all subject to different laws (or traditions having the force of laws), in line with Islamic law.
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The new secular constitution provided for legislative and judicial control over. the administration and legal safeguards for individual rights. The first consequence of its promulgation was the secularization of existing laws and social institutions and the abrogation of the requirement that they conform with Islamic law. The office of the caliphate was abolished, together with religious institutions, courts, and schools. The new legislation drew upon the laws of European countries. Ataturk believed that: "the laws of all civilized countries of the world bear a close resemblance. Turkish people are not inferior to any civilized people insofar as the idea and concept of justice are concerned. One cannot allow, therefore, the existing legal provisions of Turkish laws to fall below the laws of all civilized countries." The civil code, the code of obligations, the code of civil procedure, the bankruptcy law, and other measures relating to individual rights were borrowed from Switzerland; the commercial code was transplanted from the French, German and Swiss commercial codes; the penal code was taken from Italy. All of these were adapted in an attempt to adopt them to local requirements. A new faculty of law in Ankara supplemented the law school in Istanbul. Both trained the judges and lawyers needed to replace those who had served under the old regime, for under the constitution the judiciary was guaranteed independence. The new civil code had a great impact on the life of the Turkish people, even though some of its provisions were resisted, ignored, or simply never put into effect, especially in rural areas. It emancipated women by giving them full legal equality and outlawing polygamy. And the introduction of civil marriage made divorce more difficult. Property and inheritance were regulated in accordance with the principles of western law, and the real property registers were modernized. Certain modifications were made in the Swiss code: the age of majority was reduced from 20 to 18; anyone 15 or older could be declared an adult by the court; the marriage age was lowered to 18 for men and 17 for women. In regard to property, the new Turkish code generally recognizes the separation of matrimonial property where the Swiss code calls for its union. The Turkish code also accords a more limited right of inheritance to the surviving spouse than does Swiss law. But the modifications introduced into western codes in an endeavor to adapt them to the realities of Turkish life did not always render these codes practicable. The age-of-marriage provision proved unsuited to prevailing social customs. The courts began to be flooded by tens of thousands of engaged persons seeking to have their ages corrected, and in 1938 the marriage age was reduced to 17 for men and 15 for women, with the court being allowed to further reduce the age to 15 and 14 in extraordinary cases.
all
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Vakur Versan
Of all the new legal provlSlons, obligatory civil marriage was the most difficult to enforce. Peasants in particular found it hard to understand the formalities involved; they could not accept such requirements as submission of medical reports and filing of various forms. Medical examination of the bride was another major impediment. Men balked at the necessity of obtaining a judicial divorce decree instead of being able to divorce their wives unilaterally as they had done under Islamic law. Thus, many men and women continued to marry in the old manner, even though such unofficial marriages were declared legally null and void in 1926, and the children born of them were illegitimate. The growing number of such marriages necessitated a statute of amnesty in 1933, which made it possible to register the children born of such couples. The statute legitimized these children and, providing that neither parent had previously been legally married, recognized the marriage as valid. On the basis of this special law, 764,564 children were rendered legitimate. The fact that such enactments have been necessary on five subsequent occasions shows the striking superiority of custom over statute law. In the sphere of property law, the greatest difficulties were encountered in applying the rules relating to land. Although registration is required for both the creation and transfer of land rights, arable land has continued to be transferred without it, especially in the villages. This has compelled the legislature and the courts to develop new rules and sometimes even to discard certain provisions of the civil code. The aim of all Atatiirk's reforms, including the modernization of Turkish law, was to lead Turkey away from the oriental concept of society which he believed would prevent development and prosperity from coming to the country. It was to this end that he transplanted western principles and standards into Turkish society and law. But, while many of the new laws were instrumental in shaping modern Turkey, some of them generated new social and legal problems, especially in rural areas. Considering the developments of the last fifty years, there is good reason to believe that this superstructure of foreign origin will gradually become better adapted to the Turkish infrastructure, which, despite many changes, rests upon a historical continuity that is inevitable and perhaps even desirable.
17
Kemalism as an Ideology of Modernization ismet Giritli
Kemalism and the Kemalist Revolution aimed at making Turkey a modern society in every way. As such, it must be designated an ideology of modernization. Indeed, some noted political scientists maintain that it was the first example of modernizing nationalism, currently the most widespread ideology in the developing countries. And today, modernizing nationalism, which focuses on national development and industrialization, stands in sharp contrast to such rigid ideologies as Marxism, Marxism-Leninism, and National Socialism; it is a flexible amalgam of secularism, realism, empirical rationalism, and nationalism. Kemalist ideology may best be described as rational and scientific; it assumes that national and international problems can only be solved by intelligent and pragmatic actions. Mustafa Kemal himself was basically opposed to dogmatic and totalitarian doctrines, since they impede dynamic action. It is this Kemalism that provides the underlying foundation of the modern Turkish state. l Contemporary political ideologies are usually divided into those which are totalitarian and those which are democratic. MarxismLeninism is categorized as a totalitarian ideology of the left; National Socialism and fascism are its counterparts on the right. Regimes that promote social justice and freedom, from left to right of center in the political spectrum (including democratic socialism), use rational empiricism and pragmatism rather than dogmatism as their ideological framework. Kemalism, inspired by the national sovereignty and human rights principles of the French Declaration on the Rights of Man and Citizens (1789) is clearly among the democratic ideologies. Pragmatists reject the rigid, dogmatic terminology of fascism ("the people," "the state," "the leader," "race," etc.) and of communism ("class," "class struggle," etc.), preferring experimentation to absolute truth. Truth is viewed as being based on the observations and conclusions of reason and science; it is consequently expected to change over time. 2 251
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jsmet Giritli
Mustafa Kemal saw the consequences of fascist and communist doctrine in the 1920s and 1930s, and rejected both. He avoided any path dictated by doctrine and a set party program. Atatlirk's "principles," on which he founded the Turkish Republic, were phrased as ideological slogans: republicanism, nationalism, populism, secularism, etatism, and revolutionism/reformism. These have become symbolized as the "~ix arrows." During the one-party period following the Independence War, these principles came to be collectively known as Kemalism; they do not, however, comprise the whole of Kemalist ideology. These principles, born out of the needs of Turkish society, cannot be construed by their dictionary meanings; Atatiirk provided more elaborate interpretations in his speeches and in his policies. They should not be analyzed separately, as they are elements comprising a whole. The worldview we know of as Kemalist arises from the unity and harmony brought about by their interplay. Kemalism means a continual effort towards modernism and progress. The ideological crises that confronted liberalism and then MarxismLeninism have led some to contend that the days of rigid and dogmatic ideologies may be over. Soviet leader Khrushchev's pragmatism was labeled revisionism by the Chinese leaders. Now even the Chinese are leaning towards pragmatism, as evidenced by the policies being pursued since Mao's death. Most conspicuous among those who deny that Kemalism is an ideology are those who would like to create an ideological vacuum in Turkish society, which they would then fill with various out-ofdate, alien, and dogmatic totalitarian ideologies of the right or left. Others are simply unaware, or unwilling to acknowledge that an ideology need not be dogmatic. For there are pragmatic and democratic ideologies which can be thought of as ways of life; among these Kemalism has a solid place.' Paul E. Sigmund, Jr.,4 has edited a collection of speeches and writings of national leaders in various countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, entitled The Ideologies of the Developing Nations. In his introduction, Sigmund notes that modernizing nationalism, the main ideology among developing nations, owes more to Atatlirk than to Marx. The writer adds that the program of the Republican People's Party was the first application of this ideology. Professor Masakazu Yamazaki 5 of Osaka University believes that modernization differs from rigid ideologies like socialism, communism, and right-wing conservatism in its mildness and flexibility. He identifies secularism, realism, empirical rationalism, and nationalism as among its basic principles. It is obvious that any ideology which incorporates such characteristics is a democratic one based on the national sovereignty principle. As Maurice Duverger, Bernard Lewis, and many other scholars have pointed out, Atatiirk's aim in creating a one-party, authoritarian regime
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was unique in that it removed the possibility of a similar dictatorship ever again being formed. Dogmatic liberal capitalism, with its belief that everything in economic life was arranged by an "invisible hand," suffered a death blow in the late 1920s, and paved the way for a massive economic crisis and the creation of mixed economies. Similarly, Karl Marx's predictions of a class struggle have again and again failed to be fulfilled. Communists have come to power only by overthrowing governments. There has not been one instance of a proletarian revolution in any developed industrial society. On the contrary, workers have shared in the general prosperity of such societies, even becoming partners in the enterprises in which they work. In short, Marxism, like all other rigid and dogmatic ideologies, has fallen into great error and confusion. On the other hand, the Kemalist Revolution led by Mustafa Kemal hoped to develop and strengthen the idea of freedom and to expose dogmatism. And, as Kemalism is based on rationalism, it will continue to be contemporary and progressive, to foster a continuing process of modernization. Atatiirk foresaw what would happen in Europe, with leftist and rightist ideologies taking advantage of the freedom to destroy democratic regimes. Thus, instead of a full western type pluralism tolerating all forms of extremist political groups, he favored a limited pluralism under which fascist, communist, and religious parties are banned. I have endeavored to show that Kemalism is a democratic and nondogmatic ideology of national modernization. I believe that as such it can provide a sound model for the political, economic and cultural modernization of developing countries. Notes 1. ismet Giritli, Kemalist ideoloji-Siyasi ve Ekonomik TOnleri (Istanbul: Egitim ve Ktilriir VakfI, 1981).
Ya~ar
2. William Ebenstein, Today's Isms (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1960).
3. ismet Giritli, Ataturkun Yuzuneu alUm Ytldonumunde Kemalist Devrim ve ldeolojisi (Istanbul, 1980). 4. Paul E. Sigmund, Jr., The Ideologies of the Developing Nations (New York: Praeger, 1972). 5. Masakazu Yamazaki, "The Second Phase of Modernization," Japan Echo VI, 4 (1979).
Contributors
Dr. Sabri M. Akural, Dept. of History, Bogazis:i University, Istanbul Prof. Metin And, Dept. of Theater, Ankara University Dr. Paul Dumont, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Paris Prof. S.N. Eisenstadt, Dept. of Sociology, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem Prof. ismet Giritli, Dean, School of Journalism, Marmara University, Istanbul Dr. William M. Hale, Dept. of Politics, University of Durham, England Prof. Metin Heper, School of Economic and Administrative Sciences, Bogazi<;:i University, Istanbul Prof. Z.Y. Hershlag, Institute of Developing Countries, Tel-Aviv University Dr. David Kushner, Dept. of Middle Eastern History, Haifa University Prof. Jacob M. Landau, Dept. of Political Science, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem Prof. G. L. Lewis, The Oriental Institute, Oxford University Prof. Osman Okyar, Dept. of Economics, Hacettepe University, Ankara Dr. Rachel Simon, The Shiloah Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies, Tel-Aviv University Dr. Udo Steinbach, Director: Deutsches Orient-Institut, Hamburg Prof. Frank Tachau, Dept. of Political Science, University of Illinois at Chicago Prof. titer Turan, Faculty of Political Scicnce, Istanbul University Prof. Vakur Versan, Dean, Faculty of Political Science, Istanbul Un ivcrsi tv Dr. Michael Winter, Dept. of Middle Eastern and Islamic History, Tel-Aviv Univcrsity
Index
Such frequent~v recurring items as Atatiirk, Mustafa [(emal, Turkey and Turks ha)J( not bem included. The definite article (the, Ie, al-, etc.) haJle not been considered ill the alphabetical sequence. Abbassids 12, 13 Abdulaziz, Sultan 31, 38 Abdlihamid II, Sultan 27, 29, 34, 37, 39, 47, 50, 51, 89, 93, 104, 184 Abdlilmecit, Sultan 36 Absolutism 28, 29, 51, 59, 61, 64, 247 Abyssinia 208 Ac:tdenw of Fine Arts 229 Adam 47, 157, 217 Administration 45, 50, 51, 61, 63, 89, 92, 101, 103, 104, 107, lIl, 238, 249 Aesthetics 217 -220, 222, 225, 229 Africa 7, 237, 240, 252 Agahk 136 Agoglu, Ahmet 30, 171 Agriculture 154, 157, 159-163, 239 Ahmet P,lP, ?eker 226 Ahunude, Ali 135, 196, 197 Ak~ur,l, Yusuf 30, 32, 34, 38 Akm 225 Akses, r\ecil Kc'izlm 221 Alavh 21 Albanian I.mguage 197 Albanians 46,47, 135, 197 Aleppo 47, 157 Ali, H.K 226 Ali Pap 89, 90 Almond, G. 58, 67, 68 Aln,l[, Hasan Fcrit 221
Alp, Tekin 25, 32, 40 Alphabet: Arabic xii, 106, 107, 134-136, 195fT Latin xii, 37, 106, 107, 131, 134-136, 145, 187, 193, 196fT, 221 Alnrez,]. 22 Amcricl, see United States Anarchism 82, 85, 172, 237 Anaroli:t 29, 47-50, 66, 128-130, 137, 157, 200, 202, 216, 218, 227, 228, 248 Ankara xii, 28, 32, 36, 39, 49, 50, 101, 102, 108, lI2, 155, 157, 200, 204, 208, 224, 225, 230, 231 Anthropolog\' 3 Arab Revolt 57, 65 Arabic language 22, 26, 46, 133, 187, 188, 203tT Arabs 47, 49, 65, 135, 216, 235 Architecture 228-231 Arel, Bli/cnt 221, 222, 229 Ard, Ruhi 226 Arcl, Saderrin 221 Arisrocracv 10, 138 Arkan, Sevfi 230 Arklll, R.G. 226 Armenians 137, 156, 217, 229 Arndt, E.M. 130 Asia 66, 202, 237, 240, 252 Askeri 61 Association for Sponsoring the Turkish Theater 224 Ata~, r\urullah 210 257
258 Atatiirk'e ilk Kurban 226 Atay, Falih Rtfkl 199, 224 Atay, Zafcr 242 Ate! 226 Atheism 37, 126 Authoritarianism 52, 67-70, 73, 83, 141, 145, 252 Ayan 62 Azerbaijan 28 Azeris 32 al-Azhar 186
Baghdad 47, 58, 157 Baku 167 Balkan Folk Dance Festivals 215 Balkan Wars 46, 47, 57, 130 Balkans 31, 45, 65, 215, 216, 241 Balo Kafaklart 224 Banarh, Nihad Sami 136 Bandlrma 205 Banks 109, 1l0, 156-159 Baran, tlhan 222 Bayar, Celal US, 158, 225 Bavezid II, Sultan 39 Bayur, Hikmet 136 Beamtenherrschaft 92 Belgium 237 Belleten (magazine) 207 Benghazi 17, 18, 20, 21 Bent, F.T. 93 Berk, Nurullah 227 Berkel, Sabri 227 Berkes, Niyazi 36 Bible 128 Biga 158 Bir Ulkii Yolu 225 Birand, Mehmed Ali 240 Bitlis 47 Bizim Koy 185 Bolsheviks ll, 33 Boratav, Korkur 158 Bosnia 195 Bosphorus 241 Bourgeois, Leon 31 Bourgeoisie 33, 142, 210 Bozkurt, Mahmut Esat 33, 154, 157 Brussels 227 Bulgarians 29, 46, 47 Bulutay, TUllcer 160 Burak, Cihat 227
Index
Bureaucracy iii, xii, 14, 19, 36, 59ff., 72, 79-83, 85, 89-121, 136-138, 140, 141, 175, 184, 240 Burma 7 Bursa 158, 218 Biiylikada 200 Cadres xi, Ill, 118 Cahit, HOseyin 135, 197, 198, 202 Caliph 20, 38, 49, 50, 103, 140 Caliphate 18, 27, 28, 36, 38, 81, 102, 105, 126, 127, 130, 153, 186, 249 Camhbel, Faruk Nafiz 225, 226 Capitalism 172, 177, 178, 253 Capitulations 155, 168 Catholicism 129 Cavid Bey 158 Cemal Pa~a 47 Censorship 216 Central Asia 30, 202, 225 Centralization 100, 106-108, 111, 188 Cevdet, Abdullah 37, 126, 129, 135, 137, 142 Cevdet, Ahmet 196 Chester Concession 156 China 173 Christians 29, 45, 61, 68, 128, 198, 233 Civaoglu, GOneri 236 Civilization xiii, 3, 11, 13, 35, 45, 46, 50, 58, 128, 132, 133, 144, 145, 202, 205, 216, 227, 233, 236, 247, 249 Class struggle 32, 33, 83, 138, 251, 253 Clothes xii, 37, 45, 113, 145 Collective identity 8, 9, 46, 65 Committee of Union and Progress 17-21, 27, 35, 37, 40, 46, 47, 51, 108 Communism xii, 33, 53, 82, 136, 138, 171, 175, 209, 210, 233, 251-253 Comte, A. 41, 46, 143 Consolidation 99-102, 104-106, III
Constantinople, see Istanbul
Index
Constitution xii, 18-21, 28, 32, 53, 81, 82, 106, 115, 138, 139, 141, 173, 174, 248, 249 Le Contrat Social 27 Cooperatives 160 Corporatism 32, 33 Cosmopolitans 215 Council of Europe 234-238, 242 Council of National Education 189 Couneille, Pavet de 205 Courts of law xii, 19, 37, 104, 115, 126, 127, 237, 248-250 Culture iii, xiii, 7, 12, 18, 29, 31, 46, 49, 52, 57, 58, 63, 65, 73, 104, 106, 125ff, 130ff., 139-145, 189, 202, 204, 215ff., 222, 235, 240, 248 Cumhttriyet 26, 27 Cumhuriyetfilik, see Republicanism Cyprus issue 235 Cyrenaica 17, 20, 22
Dag, ~evket 226 DalokJ.y, Vedat 230 Damascus 204 Dance 215ff, 223 Dardanelles 47 DariilfOnun 184 Defense of Rights Group 103 Demirel, Siileyman 235 Democracy 26-28, 31, 51, 52, 67-71, 79, 81, 83, 86, ll5, 141, 171, 234, 235, 237, 238, 248, 251-253 Democrat Pany (DP) 72, 80, 82, 83, 113ff, 187, 191 Democratic socialism 251 De la Democratie en Amerique 27 Derna 17 Development 81-83, 86, 89, 99, 106, llO, 116, 117, 126, 129, 130, 139ff., 143, 145, 153ff., 157, 171-178, 216, 217, 248, 250, 251 Devlet baba 59 Devletfl"lik, see Etatism Devletleitirme, see Nationalization Devrim ve VazlJe 226
259 Devrim Yolettlan 226 Devrimcilik 83 Deviirme 13, 60, 131 Dictatorship 28, 52, 253 Dila~ar, Agop 136, 197, 207 Dilmen, i.N. 207, 208 Directorate of Religious Affairs 106 De la Division du Travail Social Diyarbakir 157 Dogmatism 141, 251-253 Donme 185 Drama, see Theater Duran, Feyhaman 226 Durkheim, E. 31, 32, 41, 46 Duverger, Maurice 252
32
Ecevit, Biileru 82, 83, 235, 239241 Economic Congress 32, 48, 110, 154, 156, 174, 198 Economics 3, 39ff., 154, 195, 253 Economy iii, xi, ll, 32, 33, 3941, 45, 62, 109, llO, 114ff., 138-142, 153-180, 253 Edip, Halide 197, 224 Edirne 47 Education (terbiye) iii, xii, 21, 3538, 45, 46, 50, 69, 72, 77, 8~ 85, 104, 106, 109, 12~ 127, 135-139, 145, 183-194, 204, 248 Egeli, Miinir Hayri 225 Egypt 58, 73, 186 Eisenstadt, S.N. 101 Ekonomi Politik 39 Eksil, Oktay 238 Eidem, Sedat Hakkl 229, 230 Elections 32, 57, 68, 70, 71, 80, 82, 90, 103, ll3, 187. See also Voting Eliot, Charles 195 Elites xii, 6, 7, 9, 11-14, 27, 36, 64, 65, 67-72, 79, 80, 82, 84, 85, 99-106, llO, 112-117, 129ff., 138, 140, 141, 191, 215 Emancipation of women xii, 35, 37, 138, 139, 191, 224, 249 Emhaishi Pap 21 Emin, Mehmed 30, 31 Emin, Servili Ahmet 226
260
Emre, Yunus 223 The End of Laissez-Faire 175 England, see Great Britain Entrepreneurs 10, 40, 41, 73, II 7, 1I8, 156, 158, 167, 171, 173 Enver Bey (later: Enver Pa§a) 22, 47, 135, 196, 199 Erbakan, Necmettin 242 Erbil, Denim 227 Erkan-i halp Kolagasl 19 Erkin, 'Ulvi Cemal 220, 221 Erkmen, Havrettin 241, 242 Erol, Turhal; 227 Ertop, Konur 207, 208 Erzurllm 157, 228 Erzurum Congress 49, 102 L'Esprit des Lois 27 d'Estaing, V. Giscard 239 EFef, Ru§en 196, 197 Etatism (devletfilik) 9, 14, 15, 3941, 52, 86, 92, 110, II 2, II 7, 125, 139-142, 153, 158, 165, 167, 168, 171-180, 252 Europe 9, 33, 40, 45, 50, 52, 61, 62, 64, 67, 71, 78, 85, 87, 104, 127, 128, 132, 139, 185, 198, 235-237, 239, 240, 253 European Community (EEC) 235, 236, 239-242 Evkaf 38, 105, 184, 186 Evren, Kenan 77, 86, 236, 238 Exarchate 29 Extremism 52 Eyiiboglll, B.R. 227 Eyiiboglu, Ercn 227 Eyiiboglu, S. 204 Ezan 130 Falkenhayn, E.G.A.S. von 47 Farmers 154, 155. See also Peasants Fascism xiii, 53, 82, 136, 171, 251-253 Fatherland xiii, 31, 64 Fatimids 12 FazIl, Mustafa 36 Felseft Mecmuasl (magazine) 137 Feridun 216 Fetva 197 Fetva Emini 197 Fevzipa§a 157
Index
Fichte, J.G. 130 Fikret, ~adi 224 Fikret, Tevfik 129 Fine arts 46, 215ff., 224-231 First World War 27, 30, 32, 40, 47, 65, 101, 135, 173 Folklore 46, 64, 216, 220 Foreign relations xi, 81, 234-244 France ix, 7, 26-28, 36, 37, 86, 91, 141, 143, 234, 237, 239 Frederick II 92 Frey, F.w. 69, 102, 105, 116 Fuad, Bqir 37 Gallipoli campaign 197 Gasplrah, tsmail 30 Gecekondu, see Squatters Gellner, E. 13 Genf Kalemler (magazine) 13 7 General Directorate of Railways and Ports 157 Geneva 34 Gentizon, Paul 26 Germans 202 Germany 208 Glorious Revolution 10 GNP 160-165 Goals xii, 69ff., 92, 93, 99, 100, 103, 107, Ill, 1I8, 126, 137, 153ff., 173, 217, 250 Government 68ff., 78ff., 90-92, 99ff., 103, 105ff., 112, 115118, 132, 145, 154, 157, 159, 160, 165, 167, 172, 174, 175, 185, 187, 191, 216, 224, 247, 248, 253 Gbkalp, Ziya 29-33, 37, 38, 40, 46, 125, 126, 130, 132, 137, 141, 142, 144, 145, 173, 174, 220 Gonullerin Turkusu 226 Grand National Assembly, see Parliament . Great Britain ix, 6, 7, 10, 68, 234, 237 Great Rebellion 10 Greece 45, 155, 216, 238-240 Greeks 29, 46, 48, 71, 102, 156, 216, 217, 240 Gregorian Calender 38, 107, 127 Group D 226
261
Index
Guerilla movements 85 Gunal, Nqet 227 Gunaydtn (newspaper) 239 Guren, Nazmi Ziya 226 Hadith 188 Hafiz 185 Hakkl, KillFade 197 Halil Pap 226 Halk 32 Halka Dogru (magazine) 32 Ha/kfxltk, see Populism Halkevi, see People's Houses Ha/kodasx, see People's Rooms Hamdi, Osman 226 Hatiboglu, Vecihe 207 Hayat, Sheykh Ali 19 Hebrew University, see Universities Heeger, G.A. 100 Hegel, G.w.F. 92, 93 Hellenism 239 Herder, J.G. 130 Heritage xiii, 29, 57, 80, 141 Hershlag, Z.Y. 39, 139 Heyd, Uriel 136, 142, 203 Hierarchies 10, 11, 60, 80, 84, 89, 92, 107 Hikmet, NaZim 210 Historical research xii, I3lff, 143, 145, 202, 216 Hitler, A. 208 Hittites 177, 202, 204 Hoca 184, 185 Holland 6 Homer 72 H urewitz, I.e. 145 Hutbe 38 Hurriyet (newspaper) 27, 238 Huseyinzade, Ali 32, 136 Iberian Peninsula 202 Ibn Khaldun 13 Ideals 29, 112, 172, 173, 217, 223, 233, 235 Ideologies iii, xiii, I, II ff., IS, 17, 19, 21, 25-44, 59, 63, 67, 72, 78, 85, 103, 113, 114, 1I6, 117, 126ff, 130, 135, 138, 142, 145, 157, 171-178, 210, 220, 236, 242, 251-253. See also Kemalism
Ideologies of the Developing Nations 252 Illiteracy, see Literacy Imperialism 233 India 68, 167 Indonesia 7 Industrialists 154, 155 Industrialization 5, II, 33, II 2, Il7, 139, 153, 156ff., 167, 174, 251 Industries 155ff., 161-163, 167, 172-177 Intlation 79, 1I4-115 Institutionalization IS Intellectuals 30, 31, 33, 37, 52, 65, 85, 104, lIS, 126, 128, 132, 137, 142, 145, 196, 240 Iran 73, 167, 216, 240, 242. See a/so Persians Iraq 48, 49, 58, 216 Islam xii, 9, 12-14, 27, 30, 37, 38, 58, 59, 64, 71, 73, 78, 81, 85, 86, 127ff., 133, 145, 153, 185, 187, 188, 197, 198, 228, 233. See a/so Muslims Islamabad 230 Islamism 137, 187, 233, 242. See also Pan-Islam Israel ix Istanbul (Constantinople) 18, 32, 45, 46, 48, 50, 66, 90, 101, 102, 154-158, 184, 197, 204, 205, 216, 230, 239 Istanbul Municipal Theater 225 Istanbul Museum of Painting and Sculpture 229, 231 1~lk, Hasan 239 1~1I1, Hi.isamettin 226 Italians 17, 22, 202 Italy 68, 249 EI Ittehad EI Watany 20 I ttihat Party 137 Izmir 32, 48, 110, 138, 154, 156, 157, 174, 198, 224, 230
ibrahim, Calli 226 ibrahim Pa~a 226 ictihad (magazine) 37, 137 idadive schools 183 ihtildl 34
262 iktisadiyat MecmuaSi (magazine) 40 ilerici, Kemal 221 ilicak, Nazli 236 imam 38 imam hatip okullan 188, 189 inkilab 34, 35 inkilabfilik, see Revolutionism inonu, ismet 79, 82, 174, 175, 200, 201 intisap 89 islahat, see Reforms iyem, Nuri 227 Japan 6, 7 Japanese, the 140 Jaschke, G. 137 Jerusalem iii, ix, 47 Jesuits 127 Jews 29, 185 Judaism 128 Justi, J,H.G. von 91, 92 Justice Party OP) 70, 80, 82, 116, 235, 236 Kadro (magazine) 171, 175 Kahraman 226 KalayclOglu, E. 68, 69 Kamus-u Turk! 205 Karabekir, K. 198 Karabuk 175 Karaka§, Fethi 227 Karamanlis, C. 240 Karaoglan 223 Karaosmanoglu, YK. 130, 207, 226 Karpat, K.H. 69, 70, 112, 131 Katoglu, Oya 227 Kemal, NatTIlk 27, 64, 216 Kemal, Yahya 184, 185 Kemalcttin Bey 230 Kemalism xi, xiii, 25ff., 33ff., 7779, 81-83, 85, 86, 93, 117, 125ff., 138-145, 171, 177, 233, 242, 251-253. See also Ideologies Le Kimalisme 25 Kemalists xiii, 31, 33, 34, 36, 40, 41, 81, 84, 86, 111, 125ff., 130ff., 141-143, 226. See also "Neo-Kemalists"
Index Kesebir, $akir 167 Keyder, yaglar 161 Keynes, M. 175 Khomeini 242 Khrushchev, N. 252 Kinross, Lord 126 K1!t~, Altemur 234 Konya 157, 218, 230 Koran 37, 38, 128, 130, 133, 184, 185, 188, 197, 247 Korean War 241 Koyunoglu, Arif Hikmet 230 Koprulu, Fuad 30 Kruegar, Ivar 156 Kulis (magazine) 217 Kuran, E. 142 Kurds 29, 141, 237 Kvergic, H.F. 206, 207 Landau, J,M. 137 Language iii, xii, 19, 29, 30, 31, 49, 50, 64ff., 132ff., 144, 145, 186, 191, 192, 195-213, 216, 225, 228. See also Sun-language theory Language reform xii, 106, 133136, 144, 195-213 Latin America 7, 78, 237, 238, 252 Lausanne Conference 109, 155, 174 Lausanne Peace Treaty 48, 50, 112, 155, 159, 167 Laws iii, 10, 13, 18, 19, 28, 36, 38, 61, 82, 91-93, 106-109, 126, 127, 136, 138, 145, 153155, 158, 159, 167, 174, 183192, 201, 228, 235, 237, 238, 247-250 Layiklik, see Secularism Leadership xi, 14, 19, 28, 30, 37, 41, 47, 49, 50, 58, 59, 65, 79, 81, 100-102, 110-114, 140, 141, 251, 252 Left-wing groups 81 Legitimation 8-15, 57, 60, 66, 68, 71, 103, Ill, 115, 145 Lenin, v.I. 173, 175 Lerner, Daniel 6
Index
Lewis, Bernard 13, 26, 39, 58, 62, 132, 136, 142, 156, 177, 252 Lewis, Geoffrey 136 Liberal Party 52 Liberalism 19, 20, 28, 29, 37, 41, 52, 80, 117, 141, 158, 165, 171, 172, 174, 176, 252, 253 Libya 17ff., 2lff. Libyans 18 Lipset, S.M. 131 Literacy 190, 195, 200 Literature 31, 37, 139, 140, 223ff. Maarif 184 Macedonia 29, 248 Mahmud II, Sultan 108, 183, 247 Makal, Mahmut 185 Maksudi, Sadri 202 Malkan, Saim Kerim 226 Mamluks 13, 58 Mao Tse-tung 252 Mardin, ~erif 13, 72, 73, III Marx, Karl 92, 173, 252, 253 Marxism 33, 52, 53, 73, 78, 81, 82, 84-86, 172, 173, 178, 233, 234, 251, 253 Marxism-Leninism 251, 252 Masonic lodges 36, 131 Mass media 4, 7 Mass mobilization 111, 114 Mass movements 15, 66, 80, 83 Mass participation 21 Mayakon, LM. 207 Mediterranean Sea 47, 62 Medrese 37, 50, 106, 127, 185, 186, 188, 192, 198 Mehmed Bey 34 Mektep 184ff., 209 Memleket focuklart 59 Memur smtJt 90 Mcnderes, A. 71, 80, 81, 87 Mentality xii Merchants 154, 156 Mersin 157 Mejrutiyet 27, 184 Me[l'eret 27 Mexico 68 Meyir, Neyyire 224
263 Middle East 36, 58, 128, 144, 183, 186, 188, 189, 193, 222, 235, 240, 241 Midhat, Ahmed 39 Military 7, 13, 14, 20ff., 45, 47, 50, 57, 59ff., 77ff., 81, 84, 90, 101-106, 113, 115, 116, 143, 145, 184, 218, 236, 238 Military interventions xiii, 19, 67, 71, 72, 77, 79, 81, 86, 115, 145, 234, 238 Millet, see Nation Milli Ejjitim Bakanltjjt, see Ministry of Education Milli Ejjitim ~umst, see Council of National Education Milli Mucadele, see War of Independence Milli Turk Ticaret Birlijji 154 Milliyet (newspaper) 240 Milliyetfilik, see Nationalism Mimaroglu, ilhan 222 Miniatures, see Painting Ministers 37ff., 105, 110, 115, 154, 158, 167, 183, 185, 187, 197, 198, 200, 235, 239, 248 Ministry of Education 189, 190, 200 Minorities 29, 31, 58, 131, 154, 217. See also Reaya and under each minority Mobility 8, 69, 73 Modernism iii, ix, xiii, 3ff., 9, 15, 20, 45ff., 101, 118, 215, 227, 232, 252 Modernization iii, xii, xiii, 3ff., 8ff., 14, 33, 35, 38, 45ff., 49ff., 63, 78-81, 85, 89, 99ff., 107, 111, 116, 118, 126, 131, 142, 144, 145, 177, 183ff., 192, 195ff., 215, 223-231, 236, 250-253 Monogamy xii Monopolies 156-160, 218 Montaigne 72 Montesquieu 27 Moscow 31 Mosques 38, 228-230 Mosul 47, 157 Mozart 72 Muezzin 38, 230
264 Mufti 38 Multi-party system 28, 67, 79-82, 110, 112ff., 238, 242 Munich 227 Music 38, 46, 215ff., 219-223 Muslims 18, 49, 59ff., 65, 135, 137, 154, 156, 184, 193, 197, 233ff., 240-242, 248. See also Islam Mussolini, B. 208 Mu~ 47 Muvahhit, Bedia 224 Muller, Max 204 Nadi, Yunus 224 Narodniki 31, 136 Nation (Millet) xiii, 9, 18, 19, 21, 29-31, 33, 35, 36, 50, 60, 64ff., 91, 103, 105, Ill, 112114, 139, 144, 173, 174, 186, 202, 205, 217, 218, 228, 233, 247 National Assembly, see Parliament National Order Party 234 National Pact 49, 50 National pride xii, 66 National Salvation Party 234, 242 National Security Council 77 National Socialism 73, 82, 251 National theater 224ff. National Unity Committee 115 Nationalism (milliyetfilik) 29-31, 46ff., 65ff., 71, 73, 78, 80, 81, 85, 90, 92, 117, 125, 130137, 142, 145, 174, 215, 233, 251, 252 Nationalists 28, 30, 32, 34, 35, 40, 101, 102, 104, 106, Ill, 112, 215 Nationalization (dcvletICftirme) 154, 176, 177 NATO 80, 234-238, 242 Nazire, Sed at 224 Necati, Mustafa 190, 198 Neo-Etatism (yeni devletfilik) 171, 178 "Neo-Kemalists" 83, 86 Nettle, J.P. 91 New Deal 175 Nisbet, R.A. 143 Nomads 21, 61, 225
Index
North Africa 28 Norway 240 Nuri, Celal 38 Occupational structure 4, 218 Okul 209. See also Schools Okyar, Fethi 47, 52 Oleay, Hamdi 226 Onaran, M.~. 206 Onat, Emin 231 Onat, Hikmet 226 Opera House 231 Opposition xii, 27, 28, 52, 67, 68, 90, 103, 114, 115, 127ff., 141, 174, 184, 226, 236, 249, 252 Orfi, Vedat 224 Ortayll, i. 107 Ottoman army 45, 48, 50 culture 144 economy 109 Empire iii, xii, 11 ff., 18, 20, 26ff., 37, 49ff., 57ff., 78, 84, 126, 127, 138 history 202 language 46 legacy iii literature 46 nation 21 parliament 20 population 18 society 106 state 50 traditions 132 Ottomanism 132, 137 Oks:un, Giindiiz 156, 235 Ozal p, Kazlm 199 Ozgii, Mclahat 202, 208 Guoy 216 Ozmak, ilhan 237 Painting 226-228 Palestine 47, 48 Pan-Islam 47, 130, 132 Pan-Turkism 30, 46, 47, 130, 137-138, 210 Paris 227 Parliament xii, 10, 20, 38, 48-50, 81, 82, 91, 102-105, 113-115,
265
Index
185, 198, 206, 220, 224, 225, 227, 236, 248, 250 Parsons, T. 4 Parties, see Political parties Patriarchate, Greek 29 Patriotic Union 20 Patriotism xii, xiii, 64, 225 Peasants 11, 61, 71, 78, 79, 109, 111, 113, 136, 137, 142, 160, 250. See also Rural population Peker, Orhan 227, 229 Peker, Recep 25, 29, 136 People's Houses 33, 80, 1l0, 190 People's Party 103, 138, 141. See also Republican People's Party People's Rooms 110, 190 Perlmutter, A. 145 Persian language 46, 133, 187, 203ft: Persians 216. See also Iran Playv.'righting, see Theater Pluralism 14, IS, 86, 117, 141, 231, 253 Police 109, 224 Political control 100, 103, 139 Political culture iii, 57-88, 145 Political participation 6, 9, 20, 21, 70, 80, 111, 113 Political parties xii, 19, 20, 33, 67, 68, 71, 8 Off. , 100, 101, Ill, 112, 118, 145, 174, 234ff. See also under each party Political power 10, 18, 19, 77, 79, 80, 140, 142, 237 Political science 3, 52, 68, 251 Political stratification 140 Political thought 221 Politicization 104 Polities 7 Polygamy 249 Populism (halkplzk) 31-33, 80, 81,86,92, 112, 117, 125, 136-139, 142, 174,252 Pragmatism 251, 252 Presidency xi, xii, 52 Press 27,31-34,37, 198,217, 237, 247. See also under each newspaper Progressists 19, 20 Proletariat 10, 11, 253
Propaganda 17-18, 33, 101, 138, 186, 218ff. The Protestant Ethic
129
Protestantism 129, 143 Prussia 92 Public opinion 234, 238 Pulleyblank, E.G. 143 Raab, E. 131 Race 19, 29, 30, 46, 82, 131, 137, 237, 251 Railways 157, 159, 160 Rationalism 251-253 Rawlinson, H.C. 204 Realism xi, xiii, 251, 252 Reaya 61, 145. See also Minorities Reformism 92, 125, 141, 142, 145, 252. See also Revolutionism Reforri'1s xi-xiii, 25ff., 34ff., 46ff., 50ff., 63, 78, 80-82, 86, 89, lll, 125-152, 174ff., 183-193, 195-210, 216, 217, 225, 233ff., 247-250 Religion xii, 11-15, 19, 29, 30, 36-38, 49, 59fT, 63ff., 67, 78, 80, 81, 111, 126ff., 143, 145, 185ff., 198, 228, 242. See also under each religion Religious groups 80ff., 216, 253 Republican People's Party (RPP) 25, 26, 29-31, 33, 70, 72, 79, 81-83, 86, 106, 110, 112-116, 133, 136, 138, 153, 174, 178, 190, 200, 209, 235, 236, 252 Republicanism (cumhuriyetfilik) 26-28, 31, 92, 140-142, 174, 252 La Ripublique 27 Resimli Gazete (magazine)
198 Resources 10, 11, 15, 105, 109, 110, 113, 175-177, 222 Rqit, Cemal 221 Rqit Pa§a, Mustafa 26, 90 Revolutionism (inkilabftltk) 34-35, 83, 125, 141, 142, 174, 252 Revolutions 7ff., 25, 27, 32, 34, 35, 66, 91, 112, 115, 138-144, 153, 233, 248, 251, 253 Rey, A.R. 216
!66
ley, C.H.R. 216 ithineland 208 Richelieu 92 Robinson, R.D. 165 Rousseau 27, 128 Rumanians 46 Rural population xiii, 9, 10, 21, 22, 60, 61, 69, 70, 80, UO, 112, 137, 160. See also Peasants Russia 6, 7, 11, 45, 137, 141. See also Soviet Union Ru!tow, D.A. 49, 92, 103, 145 RUfd~ye schools 183 Safa, Peyami 142 Saganak 226 Saglam, Hasan 187 Said, ~e)'h 29 Salonika 17, 20, 21, 137, 184, 185, 202 Sami, ~emscddin 197 Samsun 101 Saygun, A.A. 220-222 Schneider, Norma ix Schools 183-193, 208, 248-249. See also Education SchopcnhaucG A. 130 Sculprure 228-229 Second Group 103 Second World War xiii, 3, 33, 77, 78, 113, 175, 234, 241 Secularism (layiklik) 30, 35-38, 78, 80, 92, 125-130, 134, 140, 142, 143, 145, 174, 184, 187, 192, 242, 249, 251, 252 Secularization 35, 63, 80, 103, 106, Ill, 126-130, 134, 145, 153, 186ff., 249 Selim III, Sultan 183 Sened-i htifak 247 Serbs 46 Services 162-163 Seyfettin, Orner 137 Seyyit, Suieyman 226 Shah of Iran 216 Shari'a, see ~eriat Shi'ism 59 The Shirt of Flame 224 Sigmund, P.E. 252 Sinan 228
Index
Single-party system 28, 67, 68, US, 252 Sinop 200 Sipahi 61, 62 Sivas 157, 228 Sivas Congress 49, 102 Six Arrows 26, 33, 35, 41, 78, 153, 174, 252 Slogans 26, 85 Social change 80, 86, Ill, 112, 125-152 Social Change and History 143 Social classes 32-34, 79, 85, lll, 112, 118, 142, 145, 156 Social control 103 Social order 60 Social power 19, 79 Social sciences 4, 69, 125, 136, 145 Social status 10, 142 Social stratification 8, 142 Socialism 83, 117, 172, 173, 177, 178, 234, 240, 252 Socialization 106, lIO, 116 Society xi, xiii, 3ff., 8ff., 13, 3336, 51, 62, 63, 66, 69, 70, 72, 78, 80-82, 84-86, 89, 91, !O3, 106, Ill, 112, 114, 116, 117, 131, 139, 143-145, 173, 215, 217, 237, 242, 250-253 Society of Independent Painters and Sculptors 226 Sociology 3ff. Sofia 47, 197 Softa 199 Soviet Union 39, UO, 135, 138, 175, 210, 233, 241. See also Russia Soviets 135 Soysal, Mumtaz 240 Spain 202, 237 Spanish Civil War 208 Squatters 69, 70 Stalin, J. 175 Standardization 106-108 State xi-xiii, 12, 18, 19, 35-41, 45, 48, 49, 57ff., 64, 66-73, 78ff., 84-86, 90, 91, 101, 103-105, 110, 112, 116, 117, 139, 141, 142, 145, 153, 154, 158, 173-178, 186, 187, 208,
Index
223, 224, 230, 234, 237, 242, 251 State ConserYaton' 220 224 225 State Exhibition ~f Paint'ing a;1d Sculpture 229 Students 234. See also Universities Su, Ruhi 223 Suavi, Ali 26, 30, 31, 37 Suez crisis 186 Sufis 13 Sultan, thc 18, 20, 26, 27, 29, 35, 37-39, 48-51, 59ff., 66, 89, 90, 101, 103, 129, 140, 155, 183, 216 Sultanate 18, 27, 28, 62, 101, 102, 130, 136, 140, 153, 198 SUltaniye schools 183 Sumerians 177, 202 Sun-language theory 206-208. See also Languagc Suphi, Hamdullah 137 Sweden 205 Switzcrland 249 Symbols 22, 48, 49, 57, 85, 101, . 105, II 0, 115, 186, 229 SYria 28, 48, 49, 197 ~emsi
Efendi 184 $eriat (shari'a) 19, 36, 59, 126, 127, 130, 197 ~eyh-lil islam 37, 197 $inasi, 1. 30 Talat Pa~a 47, 197 Tanin (newspaper) 197 Tankut, Hasan Rqit 136, 204, 206, 208 Tanzimat 26, 35, 41, 50, 89, 91, 126, 140, 142, 144, 183, 231, 247, 248 Tarama Dergisi 205 TaJ Bebek 225 Tatars 32 Tatar\' 204 Tavla~, H lisrc\" 230 Te~chcrs 183ff., 188, 193. See also Education Technology 139 ff. , 144, 145, 221 Tck, Vedat 230 Tekke 37, 38, 105, 127 Terbiye, see Education
267 Terciiman (newspaper) 236, 242 Terrorism 86, 237 Tevfik Pa~a 50, 226 Tezel, Y.S. 160 Theatcr 215ff., 223-226 Theocracy 49, 247 Theology 12, 46, 59, 140, 188 Third World 4, 25, 69, 78, 193, 234, 235 Thrace 156, 157, 200 Tobruk 17 Tocqueville, Alexis de 27 Tollu, Cemal 227 Totalitarianism 52, 141, 251, 252 Toynbee, A.J. 45 Trade unions 155 Traditionalism xiii, 3ff., 18, 19, 21, 36, 52, 58, 63ff., 81, 102, 103, 106, 127, 185, 215, 222, 223, 227ff., 232 Transitional societies 4ff., 215 Treitschke, H. von 130 Tripoli (Libya) 17-22 Tripolitania 47, 48 Tripolitanians 20 Truman Research Institute lIl, IX Tunaya, T.Z. 142 Tuncer, Celal 226 Turan 31 Turkestan 31 Turkic peoples xii, 66, 135, 137, 210 Turkification 29, 37, 38, 106, 133ff. Turkish, see under each subject Turkish Historical Society (Tiirk Tarih Kurumu) 131, 206, 207 Turkish Labor Party 82, 234 Turkish Linguistic Society (Turk Dil Kll1'"umu) 131, 134, 20], 204, 206, 208, 209 Turkish State Opera 217 Turkish Workers' Parry, see Turkish Labor Party Turkism 142, 220. See a/so PanTurkism Turbe 127 Turk Dili (magazinc) 206 Turk Yurdu (magazine) 30, 32 Turkfeden Osmanlzea eep KtlaFuzu 207
Ulcma 19, 36, 106, 126-128, 183, 184, 192 Ulusu, Biilent 236 Ummah 12, 13. See also Ommet Unemployment 79, 191 UNESCO xiii United States ix, 7, 27, 68, 175, 234-237 Universities iii, ix, 29, 72, 79, 83, 115, 183, 186, 188, 208, 229, 231, 234, 249, 252 Uran, Necdet 202 Urban population 9, 10, 21, 22, 61, 69, 70, 137, 160 Urbanization 4, 7, 72 US1l1anba~, ilhan 222 Upk 159 Uyguner, M uzaffer 206
Of saat 216 Dlken, H.Z. 125 Dlkiitaw, ~akir 136 Ommet 30. See also Ummah Dnal, Bekir ihsan 230 Dskiip 184 Vahideddin, Sultan 49, 50, 140 Viii, F. 173 Vatan yahut Silistre 216 Venice 26 Verba, S. 57, 58, 67, 68 Vienna 206, 227 Violence 8, 69-73, 84 Voltaire 27, 128 Voting xii, 71, 84, 191. See also Elections Wahby, Taufiq 196 Wakf, waqj; see Evkaf War of Independence (Milli Miicadele) xi, 17, 28, 32, 39,
Index
45, 71, 90-92, 102, 104-106, 112, 185, 229, 248, 252 Washington, George xiii Weber, Max 59, 92, 129 West Germany ix, 68 Western Asia 202 The Western Question in Greece and Turkev 45 Wesrerniz'ation iii, xii, 21, 45ff., 50fT, 58, 63ff., 78, 80, 84, 93, 102-108, Ill, 112, 126ff., 131ff., 136-145, 184ff., 215ff., 223-231, 233-244 Women, see Emancipation of women Workers 154, 155, 159, 174, 238, 239, 253 Xenophobia
73
Yamazaki, Masakazu 252 Yeni devletfilik, see Neo-Etatism Yerasimos, S. 167 Y!ldmim, Nuri 160 Young Ottomans 26-28, 34, 36, 38 Young Turk "Revolution 17, 27, 31-32, 34, 35, 37, 40, 57, 137 Young Turks 17-21, 29, 30, 38, 41, 65, 90, 126, 127, 132, 142, 143, 159, 184 Young Turks' Club 20-21 Youngerman, B. ix Yontekcn, Halil Bedii 220 Yussef, Rcgeb Ali 21 Zaim, Turgut 227 Zav(ve 37, 105 Zekayi Pa~a, Huseyin 226 Zincirklran, Necati 239, 240