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Captive Turks: Crimean Tatars in Pan-Turkist Literature

2014; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 50; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/00263206.2013.870897

1743-7881

Rory Finnin,

Soviet and Russian History

AbstractIt has become accepted that, during the Soviet period, Turkey 'ignored the plight' of the Crimean Tatars, who were brutally deported to Central Asia by Stalin in 1944. This narrative of Turkish indifference with respect to the Crimean Tatar 'question' overlooks a corpus of material that tells something of a different story. This corpus is literary. The Crimean Tatars figured centrally in Pan-Turkist poems and pulp fiction novels as protagonists whose victimization by the Communist regime was represented in order to provoke outrage and action, not silence and passivity. These literary texts seek to elicit in the reader what can be called 'irredentist solidarity', a convergence of fellow-feeling that involves a total identification of the Other as the same. NotesI would like to thank Etem Erol and Nader Sohrabi for their invaluable guidance and input on an earlier draft of this essay.1. B.G. Williams, The Crimean Tatars: The Diaspora Experience and the Forging of a Nation (Leiden: Brill, 2001), p.230.2. 'Zustrich prem'ier-ministra Turechchyny Redzhepa Taiipa Erdohana z Holovoiu Medzhlisu kryms'kotatars'koho narodu Mustafoiu Dzhemilievym', Medzhlis kryms'kotatars'koho narodu, 14 Sept. 2012, http://qtmm.org/ua/ua-новини/1953-зустріч-прем-єр-міністра-туреччини-реджепа-тайїпа-ердогана-з-головою-меджлісу-кримськотатарського-народу-мустафою-джемілєвим (accessed 26 Jan. 2014).3. V. Prytula, 'Krym vidviduie turets'kyi prem'ier', Radio Svoboda, 12 Sept. 2012, http://www.radiosvoboda.org/content/article/24705550.html (accessed 2 Oct. 2012).4. 'Hlava Medzhlisu Mustafa Dzhemiliev vziav uchast' u 4-mu z'izdi Partii spravedlyvosti i rozvytku Respubliky Turechchyna', Medzhlis kryms'kotatars'koho narodu, 1 Oct. 2012, http://qtmm.org/ua/ua-новини/2018-глава-меджлісу-мустафа-джемілєв-взяв-участь-у-4-му-з-їзді-партії-справедливості-і-розвитку-республіки-туреччина (accessed 26 Jan. 2014).5. P. Reddaway, 'The Crimean Tatar Drive for Repatriation', in E. Allworth (ed.), The Tatars of Crimea: Return to the Homeland, 2nd ed. (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1998), p.233. 6. M. Perlman, 'Bütun Müslümanlar Mustafa Cemiloğlu'nu savunmali', Milliyet, 15 Feb. 1976, p.1; Anatolii Levitin-Krasnov issued a similar appeal in 'Müslüman Dünyasına Çağrı', trans. F. Yurter, Emel, No.93 (1976), p.22. 7. 'Ülkü Ocakları, Cemiloğlu için Ecevif'e telgraf çekti', Milliyet, 11 Feb. 1976, p.10. The TRT television channel broadcast news reports of Dzhemiliev's death on 5 Feb. 1976. See K. Özcan, Kırım Dramı (Istanbul: Babıali Kültür Yayınılıği, 2010), p.197.8. A. Fisher, The Crimean Tatars (Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press, 1978), p.181; the passage is reprinted in Emel, No.53 (July–Aug. 1969), pp.22–3; I. Kreindler, 'The Soviet Departed Nationalities: A Summary and an Update', Soviet Studies, Vol.38, No.3 (July 1986), p.396.9. Y. Akçura, Üç Tarz-ı Siyaset (Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu Basımevi, 1976), p.28.10. J. Landau, Pan-Turkism: From Irredentism to Cooperation (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995), p.149.11. A.N. Whitehead, Science and the Modern World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1953), p.116n and p.130; quoted in W. Iser, How To Do Theory (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2006), p.60.12. W. Iser, Prospecting: From Reader Response to Literary Anthropology (Baltimore, MD and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989), p.239; W. Iser, The Fictive and the Imaginary: Charting Literary Anthropology (Baltimore, MD and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993), p.5.13. Iser, Prospecting: From Reader Response to Literary Anthropology, p.52.14. M.E. Yurdakul, 'Ey Türk Uyan', Mehmed Emin Yurdakul'un Eserleri: Şiirler, Vol.1 (Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu Basımevi, 1969), p.135. Yurdakul is referred to as the 'first nationalist poet of Turkey' in U. Schamiloglu, 'Tatar or Turk? Competing Identities in the Muslim Turkic Word during the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries', in: Ergun Çağatay and Doğan Kuban (eds.), The Turkic Speaking Peoples: 2,000 Years of Art and Culture from Inner Asia to the Balkans (Munich: Prestel, 2006), p.240. For the sake of clarity and consistency, I will refer to him by his pen name 'Yurdakul' in this article, although 'Mehmet Emin' or 'Emin Bey' is preferred in Turkish sources. Erik J. Zürcher asserts that Mehmet Emin Yurdakul 'came from the Turkic areas of the Russian Empire'. He was born and raised in Istanbul. See E.J. Zürcher, Turkey: A Modern History, 3rd ed. (London: I.B. Tauris, 2005), p.132.15. M. Yanardağ, MHP değişti mi? Ülkücü hareketin analitik tarihi (Istanbul: Gendaş, 2002), p.288.16. Yurdakul, 'Ey Türk Uyan', p.131.17. Ibid., p.136.18. These journals on the whole prefer esir Türkler to the more neutral dış Türkler (outside Turks), a term also in circulation in Pan-Turkist circles. Unlike esir, dış explicitly introduces concepts of inside/outside that are irrelevant for the more ardent Pan-Turkist. In any case, as Lowell Bezanis notes, the term dış Türkler still 'betrays a subtle irrendentism suggesting that these groups await deliverance and that Turkey is the natural protector of their interests'. L. Bezanis, 'Soviet Muslim Emigrés in the Republic of Turkey', Central Asian Survey, Vol.13, No.1 (1994), p.61.19. Toprak, No.15, (1 Feb. 1956).20. M. Aydin, 'Turkish Foreign Policy: Changing Patterns and Conjunctures during the Cold War', Middle Eastern Studies, Vol.36, No.1 (Jan. 2000), pp.107–8. In 1945, the Soviet Union also declared that it would not renew the Turkish–Soviet non-aggression pact. As Fisher notes, this declaration came soon after the deportation of the Crimean Tatars, which lends credence to the thesis that they represented for Stalin a potential 'fifth column' in a war with Turkey. Fisher, The Crimean Tatars, p.169.21. O. Bolulu, 'Bu Toprağa ve İnsanına Dair Destan'dan', Toprak, No.1, (1 Dec. 1954), p.43. This description of Turan is reminiscent of another found in the Pan-Turkist 'canon': '[F]rom wherever the sun rises to wherever the sun sets' (güneşin doğduğu yerden battığı yere kadar). See H.C. Güzel et al. (eds.), Genel Türk Tarihi, Vol.9 (İstanbul: Yeni Türkiye, 2002), p.398.22. The suffering of this race at the hands of the Soviet regime provokes 'a boiling hatred' for Moscow in the heart of Körüklü's lyrical persona: 'Moskofa kalbimden kinimdir taşan'. R. Körüklü, 'Bırakın a dağlar', Toprak, No.4 (March 1955), p.12. Elsewhere the poet boasts that 'there is the mark of a Muscovite's lip on my foot' (Moskofun dudak izi var ayaklarımda). R. Körüklü, 'Sesleniş', Emel, No.3 (March 1961), p.26.23. H.B. Ulusoy, 'Gelsin', Toprak, No.1 (1 Dec. 1954), p.14 (emphasis added).24. G.M. Uytun, 'Gelsin', Toprak, No.16 (1 March 1956), p.12 (emphasis added).25. M. Belge, Kemalizm, 3rd ed. (Istanbul: İletişim, 2001), p.34.26. For centuries, religion held a primary position in the hierarchy of identity markers in Crimea. Before Gaspıralı, in fact, it had been common in the nineteenth century to refer to the Turkic language of the peninsula as the 'Muslim language'. See H. Kırımlı, National Movements and National Identity among the Crimean Tatars, 1905–1916 (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1997), p.36. But with his first work Russkoe musul'manstvo (Russian Islam), written in Russian and published in 1881, Gaspıralı employs designations of the ethno-national variety. When he chooses to refer specifically to the Tatars of the Crimean peninsula, rather than to the 'tiurko-tatary' located generally in the Russian Empire, he writes of 'Crimean Tatar schools' (krymskie tatarskie shkoly) and 'the emigration of Crimean Tatars' (emigratsi[ia] krymskikh tatar), for example. I.B. Gasprinskii, 'Russkoe Musul'manstvo', Rossiia i vostok (Kazan': Tatarskoe knizhnoe izdatel'stvo, 1993), pp.47 and 28. It is therefore inaccurate to state, as Edward Allworth does in his fine introduction to The Tatars of Crimea, that Gaspıralı 'writes of "Tatar-Muslim traits" but, significantly, does not choose the form Crimean Tatars' in Russkoe musul'manstvo. See E. Allworth, 'Renewing Self-Awareness', in Allworth (ed.), The Tatars of Crimea: Return to the Homeland, pp.7–8. Gaspıralı's role in promoting 'Kırım Türkleri' has been complicated somewhat by the recent discovery of a poem attributed to him entitled (in Crimean Tatar) 'Tatar og'lu tatarym' (I am a Tatar, a son of the Tatars). See R. Fazyl, 'Gasprinskiinin ian''y tapylg''an shiri', Ian''y Diun'ia, 12 April 2008, http://www.yanidunya.org/?p = 244 (accessed 14 Oct. 2012).27. İ. Gaspıralı, 'Yine lisan bahsi', Tercüman, 21 Nov. 1905, as cited in Kırımlı, National Movements, p.41. As Uli Schamiloglu points out, the term Tatar was first recorded in Old Turkic inscriptions near the Orkhon River in Mongolia in the eighth century. Schamiloglu, 'Tatar or Turk?', p.233.28. One of the most prominent advocates of the term Kırım Türkleri was the Crimean Tatar émigré historian and civic activist Edige Kırımal. 'I deliberately [use] the term "Turks of Crimea (Crimean Turks)" instead of the former name, "Tartars of Crimea." We have a common cause with the Turkish peoples, we put our hopes in solidarity with them and their future assistance.' E. Kırımal, 'The Tragedy of Crimea', The Eastern Quarterly, Vol.4, No.1 (Jan. 1951), p.3. It must be emphasized that the usage of 'Crimean Tatar' and 'Crimean Turk' is largely situational. Despite his advocacy of 'Crimean Turk' above, for instance, Kırımal used 'Crimean Tatar' when establishing the Krim-tatarishche Leitstelle (Crimean Tatar Office) in Berlin in 1944. In eventually choosing Türk over Tatar, he follows in the footsteps of the Kazan Tatar intellectual Abdullah Battal-Taymas, who in 1925 wrote a history of the Kazan Tatars titled Kazan Türkleri. See Landau, Pan-Turkism, p.84.29. The Turkish state, which sought to assimilate its national minorities to the greatest extent possible, also promoted the use of Türk at the expense of other ethnonyms, even citing on at least one occasion the use of Tatar as evidence of kabilecilik, 'tribalism'. Bezanis, 'Soviet Muslim Emigrés', p.81. See also Williams, The Crimean Tatars, p.252.30. A. Nekrich, The Punished Peoples: The Deportation and Fate of Soviet Minorities at the End of the Second World War, trans. G. Saunders (New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 1978), p.19. Nekrich also believes the term 'Crimean Turks', as employed by Crimean Tatar émigrés like Kırımal advocating their cause in Germany during the war, 'did much to harm the Crimean Tatars in the fateful year of 1944'. Ibid., p.19.31. N. Eren, 'Crimean Tatar Communities Abroad', in Allworth (ed.), The Tatars of Crimea: Return to the Homeland, p.337.32. G.M. Uytun, 'Garipsi', Emel, No.5 (July–Aug. 1961), p.24.33. 'Yeniden Çıkarken', Emel, No.1 (Nov. 1960), p.1.34. Emel was reissued in 1960 at the initiative of the Kırım Türkleri Yardımlaşma Cemiyeti (Aid Society of the Crimean Tatars). It continues to be published today. The journal's long run is to be contrasted with, for instance, that of Kırım, a Crimean Tatar émigré journal which appeared in 1957–58 and 1960 under the leadership of Mehmet Sevdiyar, who was associated with the Crimean Tatar newspaper Azat Kırım (Liberated Crimea) during the Nazi occupation of Crimea. Bezanis, 'Soviet Muslim Emigrés', p.108.35. A. Güleç, 'İçimde Bir Büyük Vatan Ağlıyor', Emel, No.5 (July–Aug. 1961), p.19.36. F.E. Boray, 'Özüm koşu ozsa edi…', Emel, No.7 (Nov.–Dec. 1961), p.17.37. See H.B. Paksoy, 'Chora Batir: A Tatar Admonition to Future Generations', Studies in Comparative Communism, Vol.19, No.3–4 (Autumn–Winter 1986), pp. 253–65.38. İ.B. Gaspıralı, Kendi kalemiden İsmail Bey Gaspıralı: idealleri, işleri, tavsiyeleri ve haberleri, Vol.1 (Istanbul: Türk Dünyası Araştırmaları Vakfı, 2006), p.13.39. See especially T. Erer, 'Kırım Türkleri ve Esir Türkler!', Türk Birliği, No.19 (Oct. 1967), p.25.40. E.B. Koryürek, 'Milli Neşide', Türk Birliği, No.2 (May 1966), p.4.41. Turk Birliği, No.33 (Dec. 1968), p.22.42. 'Rus ve komünizm', Türk Birliği, No.3 (June 1966), p.3; Advertisement, Türk Birliği, p.19. Atatürk did not support a Pan-Turkist position when in power. This did not stop Alparslan Türkeş's ultranationalist MHP, however, from appropriating Atatürk as a Pan-Turkist utopian. See T. Bora, 'Nationalist Discourses in Turkey', The South Atlantic Quarterly, Vol.102, No.2/3 (2003), p. 447.43. T. Ateşli, 'Kahrolsun Komünizm', Türk Birliği, No.6 (Sept. 1966), p.18.44. A. Kılıç, 'Kırım Türkleri ile niye ilgilenmiyoruz?', Milliyet (12 June 1969), p.3.45. Bora, 'Nationalist Discourses in Turkey', p.437.46. Yalçıner's wife is believed to have secretly informed the national intelligence service about the junta's activities. N. Kirişçioğlu, 12 Mart (İnönü–Ecevit) ve 1960 Tahkikat Encümeni raporum (Istanbul: Baha Matbaası, 1973), p.227.47. This letter is given as an appendix to the novel Kırım Kurbanları. M. Pişkin and M. Coşar, Kırım Kurbanları, 3rd ed. (İstanbul: Yağmur Yayınevi, 1976), no page given.48. Aydin, 'Turkish Foreign Policy', p.125.49. M. Pişkin and M. Coşar, 'Sunuş', in Kırım Kurbanları, p.7.50. Ibid., pp.9 and 15.51. Ibid., p.218.52. Ibid., p.10.53. Ibid., p.12.54. In this regard, Pişkin and Coşar follow in the footsteps of Hüseyin Nihal Atsız, whose ultranationalist novels (e.g. Bozkurtlar Ölümü [The Death of the Grey Wolves, 1946] and Ruh Adam [Soul Man, 1972]) appealed to a young audience. J.M. Landau, 'Ultra-Nationalist Literature in the Turkish Republic: A Note on the Novels of Hüseyin Nihal Atsız', Middle Eastern Studies, Vol.39, No.2 (2003), p.206.55. Pişkin and Coşar, Kırım Kurbanları, p.19.56. Ibid., pp.31–3.57. Ahmet's journey brings him to Kharkiv, where he witnesses the horrors of the Holodomor, Stalin's brutual terror-famine of 1932–33, and encounters a Russian official named 'Puşkin' who dismisses the starving Ukrainian children there as the 'offspring of traitors' (hainlerin çocukları). Ibid., p.95.58. Ibid., pp.115, 142, for example.59. Ibid., p.47.60. Ibid., p.38.61. Ibid., p.328.62. Ibid., p.9.63. Atsız has been called the 'subconsciousness of the ultranationalist movement' in Turkey. See C. Saraçoğlu, 'Ülkücü Hareketin Biliçaltı Olarak Atsız', Toplum ve Bilim, No.100 (2004), pp.100–124. His last novel Ruh Adam, which centres on the exploits and ill-fated loves of Lieutenant Selim Pesat, finds its protagonist on trial before God and the sultans of the Ottoman Empire, for instance. On 'formal mimetics', see M. Głowiński, 'On the First-Person Novel', New Literary History, Vol.1 (Autumn 1977), pp.103–14.64. H. Anastasiou, The Broken Olive Branch: Nationalism, Ethnic Conflict, and the Quest for Peace in Cyprus, Vol.1 (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2008), p.148.65. Ibid., p.145 (emphasis added).66. R.G. Lienhardt, Social Anthropology, 2nd ed. (London: Oxford University Press, 1966), pp.144–5.67. Zürcher, Turkey: A Modern History, p.288. In privileging both an ancient concept of Turkishness and a devout Muslim way of life, the 'Sentez' bears the influence of Ziya Gökalp. It also departs from him (and his desire to synthesize Islam with western modernity) in its pronounced suspicion of the ideals of European civilization.68. P.J. White and J. Jongerden, Turkey's Alevi Enigma: A Comprehensive Overview (Leiden, Boston: Brill, 2003), p.79; Zürcher, Turkey: A Modern History, p.288.69. Gündüz concludes the novel with this couplet from Ersoy's İstiklal Marşı: 'Canı, cananı bütün varımı alsın da Hüda / Etmesin, tek beni vatanımdan dünyada cüda' (Let God take my life, my loved ones, and all my possessions / If this be His will, but may He never separate me from my vatan in the world).70. Zürcher, Turkey: A Modern History, pp.268–9. Mehmet Akif never reconciled himself to the secular state of Turkey. He was exiled to Egypt and remained there until his death.71. A. Gündüz, Kırım: Türk'ün Drami (Istanbul: Gündüz Yayınevi, 1982), p.104.72. Ibid., p.47.73. R. Tapper, Pasture and Politics: Economics, Conflict, and Ritual among Shahsevan Nomads of Northwestern Iran (London and New York: Academic Press, 1979), p.298.74. Gündüz, Kırım: Türk'ün Drami, pp.54 and 61.75. Ibid.76. 'V Turechchyni znialy fil'm pro istoriiu kryms'kykh tatar', Krymtatar.in.ua, 10 Sept. 2012, http://krymtatar.in.ua/index/article/id/509/ps/11 (accessed 9 Oct. 2012).77. Y. Bahadıroğlu, Kırım Kan Ağlıyor (Istanbul: Yeni Asya Yayınları, 1994), p.17.78. Y. İpek, 'Vatanda Gurbet', Kalgay, No.7 (Jan.–March 1998), p.17.