Mavi Yolculuk (Blue Voyage): A Journey of Self-Discovery during the Early Decades of the Turkish Republic (1945–1969)
2012; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 16; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1080/13645145.2012.728022
ISSN1755-7550
Autores Tópico(s)Middle East and Rwanda Conflicts
ResumoAbstract This article investigates the birth in the mid 1940s of Mavi Yolculuk, the Blue Voyage, which is a popular tourist itinerary in Turkey today. It examines the ideology that gave rise to these boat journeys along the south-western coast of Turkey and its connection with national identity formation. It analyses travel accounts written by Azra Erhat, and writings by two other prolific writers, Cevat Şakir Kabaağaçlı and Sabahattin Eyüboğlu, considered the pioneers of the Blue Voyage. The multiple roles of these writers (as translators, artists and educators) are considered in order to discuss the role of an elite discourse and to shed light on the ideology surrounding these journeys. The article also discusses the way in which history, archaeology, geography, language and travel mingled as these local travellers attempted to create a new Turkish identity. Keywords: Mavi Yolculuk Blue VoyageTurkeyAnatoliadomestic travelidentity formationAzra ErhatCevat Şakir KabaağaçlıSabahattin Eyüboğlu Notes Notes 1. Susan Bassnett, Comparative Literature (Oxford: Blackwell, 1993), 94. 2. Edward Said, Orientalism (New York: Pantheon Books, 1978). 3. For the development of theory in travel writing and its consequences, see Mary Baine Campbell, 'Travel Writing and its Theory', in The Cambridge Companion to Travel Writing, ed. Peter Hulme and Tim Youngs (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 261–78. 4. A movement began after the revolution of 1908–9 at the instigation of Young Turks from Russia. For the Turkish exiles and immigrants from the Russian Empire, pan-Turanianism or pan-Turkism was a compelling political programme, which in its maximalist form implied the political unification within a single state, Turan, of all the Turkish-speaking peoples in their vast territories stretching from the Balkans to the Chinese border. 5. Erik J. Zürcher, Turkey: A Modern History (London: I. B. Tauris, 1993), 199. The Turkish History Thesis is extensively discussed in Bernard Lewis, 'History-writing and National Revival in Turkey', Middle Eastern Affairs 4 (1953): 218–27; Ahmet Cevat Emre, Atatürk'ün Inkilab Hedefi ve Tarih Tezi (Istanbul: Ekin Basımevi, 1956) and in earlier publications of the Turkish History Society. See also the critical study of the Turkish History Thesis by Büşra Ersanlı Behar, İktidar ve Tarih: Türkiye'de Resmi Tarih Tezinin Oluşumu (Istanbul: Afa Yayınları, 1992). 6. Institutions such as the People's Houses (Halkevleri) and the Village Institutes (Köy Enstitüleri), founded in 1932 and 1940, respectively, had a similar function. Azra Erhat emphasised the need to re-establish relations with the ancient culture of Anatolia because it contained all the resources of Western civilisation and needed only to be made known to the present population, who had been cut off from it. This could not be achieved only with archaeological research. According to Erhat, the Village Institutes and the People's Houses served as centres to disseminate the results of such research and make them embraced by the majority. Azra Erhat, 'Atatürk'ten Köy Enstitülerine', Yeni Ufuklar 12, no. 139 (1963): 15–20 (16–17). See, among others: Arzu Öztürkmen, 'The Role of People's Houses in the Making of National Culture in Turkey', New Perspectives on Turkey 11 (1994): 159–81 and M. Asım Karaömerlioğlu, 'The People's Houses and the Cult of the Peasant in Turkey', Middle Eastern Studies 34, no. 4 (1998): 67–91, and M. Asım Karaömerlioğlu, 'The Village Institutes Experience in Turkey', British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 25, no. 1 (1998): 47–73. 7. S. M. Can Bilsel, "'Our Anatolia": Organicism and the making of humanist culture in Turkey', Muqarnas 24 (2007): 223–41 (224). 8. The friends were Sabahattin Eyüboğlu, Bedri Rahmi Eyüboğlu, Sabahattin Ali, Erol Güney, Benya Rapoport, Necati Cumalı and Fuat Ömer Keskinoğlu. Bedri Rahmi Eyüboğlu (1911–1975), brother of Sabahattin Eyüboğlu and a well-known Turkish poet and artist, started to draw and paint scenes, places and people during this first voyage and continued to do so during subsequent ones. Accordingly, he completed twelve notebooks relating to various tours throughout the years with many drawings, paintings, notes and poems which were recently published: Bedri Rahmi Eyüboğlu, Mavi yolculuk defterleri (Istanbul: Türkiye İş Bankası Kültür Yayınları, 2009). In her memoirs, İsmet Kabaağaçlı Noonan, the eldest daughter of Cevat Şakir, writes that the first voyage took place in 1946 with a boat called Çiçekli Karakuş ('Flowered Eagle'); the adjective çiçekli (flowered) was added by S. Eyüboğlu. She also remembers that the wife and the three children together with the sister-in-law and brother-in-law of Cevat Şakir joined the Blue Voyagers in Bodrum. See İsmet Kabaağaçlı Noonan, Anılar Akın Akın (Istanbul: Bilgi, 2009), 253–54. 9. Erol Güney (Michel Rottenberg 1914–2009) was born in Odessa to a Jewish family that fled from the communists in 1920 to Istanbul where he was raised. Güney became a naturalised Turkish citizen and lived until 1955 in Turkey, after which he moved first to France and then to Israel. He studied philosophy, French and English literature at the newly established University of Istanbul with professors such as Hans Reichenbach, Leo Spitzer, Erich Auerbach and Herbert Diekmann between 1934 and 1938. He worked at the Translation Bureau where he produced 20 translated works together with other members of the Bureau, mainly from French and Russian. After the change of the Minister of Education in 1946 the Bureau took another track and Erol Güney resigned from his position to work as a journalist until his death. In his biography published in 2005, Güney talked for the first time about the first Blue Voyage that he joined: Haluk Oral and M. Şeref Özsoy, Erol Güney'in Ke(n)disi (Istanbul: YKY, 2005). He retold the same story in the introduction to the recently published Notebooks by Bedri Rahmi Eyüboğlu: Erol Güney, 'İlk Mavi Yolculuk', in Mavi yolculuk defterleri, 1–7. 10. Erhat, '"Şölen" Üstüne Birkaç Söz', in Plato, Şölen (Symposium), trans. by Azra Erhat and Sabahattin Eyuboğlu (1961; Istanbul: Remzi, 1995), 11–18 (17–18). 11. During the late 1960s, only 50.3% of the workers in a textile factory in Izmir considered themselves as 'Turks' and 37.5% as Muslims, when they were asked how they defined themselves. Şerif Mardin, Din ve İdeoloji (Ankara: Ankara Üniversitesi Siyasal Bilgiler Fakültesi, 1969), 132. 12. For a personal account of the Şakir Pasha family, see Shirin Devrim, A Turkish Tapestry: The Shakirs of Istanbul (London: Quartet Books, 1996) and Kabaağaçlı Noonan, Anılar Akın Akın. 13. Sabahattin Eyüboğlu (1908–1973) was among the first students sent to Europe by the Turkish government for higher education. He studied in Dijon, Lyon, Paris and London. Back in Turkey he became a lecturer at the French Department in the Faculty of Humanities at Istanbul University which had been set up by Leo Spitzer in 1933 and directed by Erich Auerbach until 1947. He directed the Translation Bureau, and together with Nurullah Ataç he was known as one of the most productive translators and essayists of the time. He produced fifty-nine translations mainly from Greek, French and Russian literature. He also produced a series of documentary films on Anatolian culture and civilisation. 14. Aslı Gür, 'Anatolia, Cradle of Civilizations: The Blue Anatolia Movement and the Humanist Twist in Cultural Essentialism', in Controlling the Past, Owning the Future: The Political Uses of Archaeology in the Middle East, ed. Ran Boytner, Lynn Swartz Dodd, and Bradley J. Parker (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2010), 81–89 (82). For a critical discussion of Mavi Anadoluculuk, see Kemal Akyıldız and Barış Karacasu, 'Mavi Anadolu: edebî kanon ve millî kültürün yapılandırılışında Kemalizm ile bir ortaklık denemesi', Toplum ve Bilim 81 (1999): 26–43 and Kemal Akyıldız, 'Mavi Anadoluculuk', in Modernleşme ve Batıcılık, ed. Uygur Kocabaşoğlu, Modern Türkiye'de Siyasi Düşünce, vol. 3 (Istanbul: İletişim, 2002), 465–81. Although in a different context, for the idea that Anadoluculuk (Anatolianism) in Turkey goes back to the years of the First World War when the Ottoman Empire was collapsing and different views for a new nationalist formation arose, see Mithat Atabay, 'Anadoluculuk', in Milliyetçilik, ed. Tanıl Bora, Modern Türkiye'de Siyasi Düşünce, vol. 4 (Istanbul: İletişim, 2002), 515–32. 15. Azra Erhat (1915–1982) was born in Istanbul. She lived in Vienna and later in Brussels, where she graduated from a classical lycée before starting her studies at Istanbul University. In addition to the Greek and Latin she learnt at the lycée, she also knew German. At Istanbul University, she was Leo Spitzer's assistant; later she moved to the University of Ankara to become Georg Rohde's assistant. In 1939, she graduated in classical philology at Dil ve Tarih-Coğrafya Fakültesi (Faculty of Language and History-Geography) in Ankara and taught there until her dismissal in 1948. Erhat was a distinguished translator, translating works mainly from ancient Greek, such as the Iliad and Odyssey by Homer (with A. Kadir), Theogony by Hesiod, Electra by Sophocles, Peace by Aristophanes, and the Symposium by Plato (with Sabahattin Eyüboğlu). In 1961, with A. Kadir, she was awarded the prestigious TDK (Turkish Language Institute) Translation Award for their translation of the Iliad. 16. Azra Erhat, Mavi Yolculuk I (1962; Istanbul: İnkılap, 1997); Mavi Yolculuk II (1962; Istanbul: İnkılap, 1997); and Mavi Anadolu (1960; Istanbul: İnkılap, 1997). 17. The greeting 'Merhaba!' was the hallmark of Cevat Şakir, who would bellow the word when he came across a friend, but also as he took leave as an affirmation of love and friendship. 18. Erhat, Mavi Yolculuk I, 9–11; 125–27. 19. Erhat, Mavi Yolculuk I, 8. 'Bir bölgeyi kendi yerlileri dışarıya doğru değerlendiremez, dışarıdan gelip o bölgenin güzelliğini, elverirliğini yeni gören ve görünce de dile getirmek, anlatmak, yaymak hevesine kapılan şairler, yazarlar, aydınlar değerlendirir'. 20. Erhat, Mavi Yolculuk I, 8. 21. Erhat, Mavi Yolculuk I, 36–7. 'Batı uygarlığının kaynağı Anadolu'dadır, en değerli kalıntıları bizdedir'. 22. Erhat, Mavi Yolculuk I, 98. 23. Erhat, Mavi Anadolu, 11. 24. Eyüboğlu, 'The Iliad and Anatolian', in The Blue and the Black, trans. Hughette Eyüboğlu and Lyne Saka (Istanbul: Türkiye İş Bankası Kültür Yayınları, 2008), 159–68 (162). 25. Although it is not easy to draw exactly the borders of Anatolia that the Blue School of Thought had in mind, it is safe to say that it 'embraced the pre-Islamic past of the peninsula, but only after introducing a sharp distinction between "this land of ours" and Greece'. Cemal Kafadar, 'A Rome of One's Own: Reflections on Cultural Geography and Identity in the Lands of Rum', Muqarnas 24 (2007): 7–25 (20). 26. Erhat, Mavi Yolculuk I, 96. Translations throughout the essay are mine unless stated otherwise. 27. Erhat, Mavi Yolculuk I, 96. 28. Erhat, Mavi Yolculuk I, 32. 29. Halikarnas Balıkçısı, Anadolu Tanrıları (1955; Ankara: Bilgi Yayınevi, 1998), 40–41. 30. Halikarnas Balıkçısı, Anadolu'nun Sesi (1971; Ankara: Bilgi Yayınevi, 1995), 50. 31. Halikarnas Balıkçısı, Anadolu'nun Sesi, 32. C. Brian Rose argues against any major migrations from mainland Greece to Asia Minor playing a dominant role in colonising Aiolis, and connects such widespread claims to the colonialist outlook and the waning of the Ottoman Empire. The empire's being under threat from Western powers at the very period when archaeologists first began to work in northwestern Turkey, during the second half of the nineteenth century, had 'created an intellectual climate wherein stories of the west colonizing the east were easy to accept at face value, as was the assumption that cultural advances on the eastern side of the Aegean, after the Bronze Age, must have been dependent on some agency from the west': 'Separating Fact from Fiction in the Aiolian Migration', Hesperia: The Journal of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens 77, no. 3 (2008): 399–430 (422). 32. See especially Halikarnas Balıkçısı, Anadolu'nun Sesi and Hey Koca Yurt (1972; Ankara: Bilgi Yayınevi, 1996). Perhaps one should also remember the Güneş-Dil Teorisi (Sun-Language Theory) proposed in 1936 at the Third Language Congress held by the Turkish Language Society that claimed all languages were derived from Turkish: see Uriel Heyd, Language Reform in Turkey (Jerusalem: Israel Oriental Society, 1954) and Geoffrey Lewis, The Turkish Language Reform: A Catastrophic Success (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999). 33. Halikarnas Balıkçısı, Arşipel (1992; Ankara: Bilgi Yayınevi, 1995), 73. 34. Erhat, Mektuplarıyla Halikarnas Balıkçısı (1976; Istanbul: Adam, 1985), 169. 'Zaten Anadolu olmasaydı, hiçbir şey olmazdı'. 35. Athanasios Moulakis, 'The Mediterranean Region: Reality, Delusion, or Euro-Mediterranean Project?' Mediterranean Quarterly 16, no. 2 (2005): 11–38 (22). 36. Moulakis, 'The Mediterranean Region', 23–24. 37. Eyüboğlu, 'Our Anatolia', in The Blue and the Black, 1–7 (2–3). 38. Eyüboğlu, 'Our Anatolia', 7. 39. Erhat, Mavi Yolculuk I, 121. 40. Erhat, Mavi Yolculuk I, 95. Embracing the Homeric Trojans as honorary ancestors of today's Anatolians belonged to a discourse with its roots in early modern Europe. Bilsel has shown how associating the origins of the Turks with the Trojan War goes back to the fifteenth century, and how this discourse was used to legitimise the Ottoman Sultan Mehmet II when he conquered Constantinople: Bilsel, '"Our Anatolia"', 233. A similar narrative was attributed to Mustafa Kemal Atatürk who allegedly claimed in Dumlupınar after defeating the Greeks at the end of the Turkish Independence War of 1919–22 that the Turks had avenged the Trojans. Eyüboğlu, 'The Iliad and Anatolia', 159–68. 41. Eyüboğlu, 'Our Anatolia', 1–2. One should also note the use of 'we' versus 'our people' in these lines. See Bilsel, '"Our Anatolia"', 236. 42. Anthony D. Smith, Myths and Memories of the Nation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 13. 43. Anthony D. Smith, Ethno-Symbolism and Nationalism: A Cultural Approach (London: Routledge, 2009), 65. 44. See Bilsel, '"Our Anatolia"' and a recent article by Fahri Işık who dedicated his essay to Şakir, Eyüboğlu and Erhat: 'Anadolu ve İon Uygarlığı: "Kolonizasyon" ve "Doğu Helen" Kavramlarına Eleştirel Bir Bakış', Anadolu/Anatolia 35 (2009): 53–86.
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