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The Young Turk Historical Imagination in the Pursuit of Mythical Turkishness and its Lost Grandeur (1911–1914)

2016; Routledge; Volume: 43; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/13530194.2016.1139443

1469-3542

Ümit Kurt, Doğan Gürpınar,

Jewish and Middle Eastern Studies

AbstractBased on a comprehensive reading of the 1912–1914 issues of the journal Turkish Homeland, the highbrow intellectualist periodical of the Turkist intellectuals and the ruling Committee of Union and Progress, this article argues that sublime Turkishness envisaged by the Young Turks can be construed as a character build-up. The article also examines how history was utilized as an arsenal from where the sublime 'Turkish character' was extracted in a decade in which interest towards Turkic history burgeoned, arguing that valiant Turkic heroes from the glorious Turkic past were discovered or rediscovered to stand out as exemplary men and epitomes of incorruptibleness inspiring the new youth. Notes1 In the words of Yusuf Akçuraoğlu, these organizations, founded in the relatively free environment following the proclaimation of the Second Constitutional (Tanzimat) period, were the product of 'Turkism's organizing period', see Yusuf Akçuraoğlu, Yeni Türk Devletinin Öncülleri; 1928 Yazıları (Ankara: Kültür Bakanlığı, 1981), p. 188; Akçuraoğlu, Türkçülüğün Tarihi (İstanbul: Kaynak Yayınları, 1998), p. 164. Also for the above-mentioned organizations' founding regulations, see Füsun Üstel, İmparatorluktan Ulus-Devlet'e Türk Milliyetçiliği: Türk Ocakları (1912-1931) (İstanbul: İletişim, 1997), pp. 15–35, 100–5.2 For the foundation and founders of Turkish Homeland, see Akçuraoğlu, Yeni Türk Devletinin Öncülleri, p. 92; and Tarık Zafer Tunaya, Türkiye'de Siyasal Partiler, vol. 1 (İstanbul: Hürriyet Vakfı, 1984), pp. 415–16.3 Tunaya, Türkiye'de Siyasal Partiler, p. 415; İsmail H. Dânişmend, İzahlı Osmanlı Tarihi Kronolojisi, vol. 4 (İstanbul: Türkiye Yayınevi, 1955), p. 387; Fethi Tevetoğlu, Mehmed Emin Yurdakul (Ankara: Kültür ve Turizm Bakanlığı, 1988), p. 24; Akçuraoğlu, Yeni Türk Devletinin Öncülleri, p. 192.4 For Turkish Homeland's publication programme, see Akçuraoğlu, Yeni Türk Devletinin Öncülleri, pp. 234–5.5 Francois Georgeon, Türk Milliyetçiliğinin Kökenleri Yusuf Akçura (1876-1935) (Ankara: Yurt Yayınevi, 1986), p. 61.6 Joep Leersen, 'National Thought in Europe: A Cultural History', in David Hopkin and Timothy Baycroft (eds.), Folklore and Nationalism in Europe (Leiden: Brill, 2012); Suzanne L. Marchand, Down from Olympus: Archaeology and Philhellenism in Germany 1750–1970 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996); Margarita Diaz Andreu, A World History of Nineteenth-Century Archaeology: Nationalism, Colonialism, and the Past (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007).7 Paul Langford, Englishness Identified: Manners and Character, 1650–1850 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000); Adrian Hastings, The Construction of Nationhood: Ethnicity, Religion and Nation, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997); Steven Pincus, Patriotism and Protestantism: Ideologies and the Making of English Foreign Policy, 1650–1668 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996); Linda Colley, Britons: Forging the Nation 1707–1837 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1992); Kathleen Wilson, The Sense of People: Politics, Culture and Imperialism in England 1715–1785 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998); Colin Kidd, The Forging of Races: Race and Scripture in the Protestant Atlantic World, 1600–2000 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006); Kidd, British Identities Before Nationalism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999).8 Langford, Englishness Identified: Manners and Character, 1650–1850; Colley, Britons: Forging the Nation 1707–1837; Gerald Newman, The Rise of English Nationalism: A Cultural History, 1740–1830 (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1997).9 Herbert Benario, 'Arminius into Hermann: History into Legend', Greece & Rome 51(1) (2004), pp. 83–94.10 George S. Williamson, The Longing for Myth in Germany: Religion and Aesthetic Culture from Romanticism to Nietzsche (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2004), pp. 84–94; Leersen, 'National Thought in Europe: A Cultural History', p. 121.11 Jason Tebbe, 'Revision and "Rebirth": Commemoration of the Battle of Nations in Leipzig', German Studies Review 33(3) (2010), pp. 618–40; Martin Thom, Republics, Nations, and Tribes (London: Verso, 1995).12 Johann Gottlieb Fichte, Addresses to the German Nation (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008).13 Jeffrey Herf, Reactionary Modernism: Technology, Culture, and Politics in Weimar and the Third Reich (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1986).14 Christopher E. Forth, The Dreyfus Affair and the Crisis of French Manhood (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006).15 Robert A. Nye, Crime, Madness, and Politics in Modern France: The Medical Concept of National Decline (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984); Nye, Masculinity and Male Codes of Honor in Modern France (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998); Zeev Sternhell, Neither Right nor Left: Fascist Ideology in France (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995); Venita Datta, Birth of a National Icon: The Literary Avant-Garde and the Origins of the Intellectual in France (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1999).16 Ümit Kurt, 'Türk'ün Büyük, Biçare Irkı': Türk Yurdu'nda Milliyetçiliğin Esasları (1911-1916) (İstanbul: İletişim, 2012).17 P. Risal [Mohez Cohen], 'Türkler Bir Ruh-i Milli Arıyorlar', Türk Yurdu 1(21) (1912), pp. 351–3; 'Türkler Bir Ruh-i Milli Arıyorlar', Türk Yurdu 1(22) (1912), pp. 365–7; 'Türkler Bir Ruh-i Milli Arıyorlar', Türk Yurdu 1(24) (1912), pp. 407–9; 'Türkler Bir Ruh-i Milli Arıyorlar', Türk Yurdu 2(26) (1912), pp. 45–8; 'Türkler Bir Ruh-i Milli Arıyorlar', Türk Yurdu 2(27) (1912), pp. 54–7; 'Türkler Bir Ruh-i Milli Arıyorlar', Türk Yurdu 2(28) (1912), pp. 68–70.18 Funda Selçuk Şirin, İmparatorluk'tan Cumhuriyet'e Bir Aydın: Falih Rıfkı Atay (İstanbul: Tarihçi Kitapevi, 2014), p. 46.19 The following few paragraphs are partially incorporated from another paper by one of the authors of the article. See Doğan Gürpınar, 'What is in a Name? The Rise of Turkic Personal Male Names in Turkey (1908–38)', Middle Eastern Studies 48(5) (2012), pp. 689–706.20 David Kushner, The Rise of Turkish Nationalism (London: Frank Cass, 1977); Kemal Karpat, The Politicization of Islam: Reconstructing Identity, State, Faith, and Community in the Late Ottoman State (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), pp. 357–67; Doğan Gürpınar, Ottoman/Turkish Visions of the Nation (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), pp. 80–1.21 Kushner, The Rise of Turkish Nationalism, pp. 28–31.22 Yusuf Akçuraoğlu, 'Türk ve Tatar Birdir, Türkler Medeniyete Hizmet Etmiştir', Türk Yurdu 1(24) (1912), p. 426.23 Cornell Fleischer, Bureaucrat and Intellectual in the Ottoman Empire: The Historian Mustafa Ali (1541-1600) (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1986), pp. 282–6. We owe this information to Ali Yaycıoğlu, see Ali Yaycıoğlu, 'Devrimler Çağında Cengiz Han'ın Torunları: Osmanlı, Fransa ve Rusya İmparatorlukları Arasında Mehmed Cengiz Geray'ın Hikayesi', seminar delivered at Şehir University, 2015.24 Ahmed Cevdet Paşa, Kısas-ı Enbiya ve Tevarih-i Hulefa, vol. II (İstanbul: Bedir Yayınevi, 1969), pp. 386, 400.25 Namık Kemal, Osmanlı Tarihi (İstanbul: Mahmut Bey matbaası, 1910), p. 26.26 Murat Belge, Genesis: 'Büyük Ulusal Anlatı' ve Türklerin Kökeni (İstanbul: İletişim, 2008), p. 258.27 Georgeon, Türk Milliyetçiliğinin Kökenleri Yusuf Akçura, pp. 91–2; Nizam Önen, İki Turan: Macaristan ve Türkiye'de Turancılık (İstanbul: İletişim, 2005), pp. 122–3.28 Masami Arai, Turkish Nationalism in the Young Turk Era (Leiden: Brill, 1992), p. 67.29 Kemal, Osmanlı Tarihi, p. 14.30 Halide Edip, Yeni Turan (İstanbul: Nehir Yayınları, 1991), p. 30.31 Önen, İki Turan: Macaristan ve Türkiye'de Turancılık, p. 123.32 Hasan Akbayrak, Milletin Tarihinden Ulusun Tarihine (İstanbul: Kitapevi, 2009), p. 263.33 Ahmet Ağaoğlu, 'Büyün Gün', Türk Yurdu 4(100) (1916), p. 311.34 Ağaoğlu, 'Türk Medeniyet Tarihi', Türk Yurdu 2(41) (1913), p. 303.35 Ağaoğlu, 'Türk Alemi', Türk Yurdu 1(1) (1911), p. 15.36 Ibid., p. 15.37 Ziya Gökalp, 'Ergenekon', Türk Yurdu 2(48) (1913), pp. 456–9.38 Akçuraoğlu, 'Türk ve Tatar Tarihi', Türk Yurdu 1(19) (1912), p. 319.39 Ibid., p. 319.40 Ibid., p. 319.41 Fuad Köprülüzade, 'Edebiyatımızda Milliyet Hissi', Türk Yurdu 2(44) (1913), p. 360.42 Max Nordau, 'Milliyet', Türk Yurdu 4(87) (1915), p. 173.43 Ağaoğlu, 'Türk Alemi', p. 15.44 'Türklerin Büyük Hakanına Türk Yurdu'nun Küçük Bir Armağanı', Tahrir Heyeti 3(15) (1912).45 'Cemiyet-i Turaniye ve Asya Tarihinde Turaniler', Tahrir Heyeti 2(14) (1912), pp. 230–34.46 İzzet Ulvi, 'Türklük Duygusu Osmanlılık Fikrine Mani mi?', Türk Yurdu 1(16) (1912), p. 269.47 For the rise of the discourse of 'manly character', see J.A. Mangan and James Walwin, Manliness and Morality: Middle-Class Masculinity in Britain and America, 1800–1940 (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1987).48 George Mosse, The Image of Man: The Creation of Modern Masculinity (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), p. 8.49 Philip Nord, 'Social Defence and Conservative Regeneration: The National Revival, 1900-1914', in Robert Tombs (ed.), Nationhood and Nationalism in France: From Boulangism to the Great War (London: Harper Collins, 1991), pp. 218–9.50 Eugen Weber, 'Pierre de Coubertin and the Introduction of Organized Sport in France', Journal of Contemporary History 5(2) (1970), pp. 3–26.51 Mosse, The Image of Man: The Creation of Modern Masculinity, pp. 40–7.52 Yusuf Akçuraoğlu, Türk Yılı 1928 (Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu, 2009), pp. 437–9; M.F. Togay, Yusuf Akçura ve Eserleri (İstanbul: Hüsnü Tabiat Basımevi, 1944), p. 61.53 For the moulding of the ideal citizen, submissive to authority but vigilant against domestic and external enemies, see Füsun Üstel, Makbul Vatandaşın Peşinde (İstanbul: İletişim, 2004), pp. 125–126.54 Allen Warren, '"Popular Manliness": Baden-Powell, Scouting, and the Development of Manly Character', in J.A. Mangan and James Walwin (eds.), Manliness and Morality: Middle-Class Masculinity in Britain and America, 1800–1940 (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1987), pp. 200–4.55 For the poetry written for children to infuse them with national pride and national vigilance, see Cüneyt Okay, Meşrutiyet Dönemi Çocuk Edebiyatı (İstanbul: Medyatek, 2002). For a study on the short stories for children in Turkish in the post-1908 Ottoman Empire and their moralism, see Gülsüm Pehlivan Ağırakça, Osmanlı Döneminde Çocuk Hikaye Kitapları (İstanbul: Dem, 2014).56 For the paramilitary organizations and the boy scouting, see Sanem Yamak Ateş, Asker Evlatlar Yetiştirmek: II. Meşrutiyet Döneminde Beden Terbiyesi, Askeri Talim ve Paramiliter Gençlik Örgütleri (İstanbul: İletişim, 2012); Zafer Toprak, 'II. Meşrutiyet Döneminde Paramiliter Genlik Örgütleri', Tanzimat'tan Cumhuriyet'e Türkiye Ansiklopedisi, vol. II (İstanbul: İletişim, 1985), pp. 531–6; Yaşar Tolga Cora, Constructing and Mobilizing the 'Nation' through Sport: State, Physical Education and Nationalism under the Young Turk Rule (1908-1918) (Unpublished MA thesis, Central European University, 2007).57 Şirin, İmparatorluk'tan Cumhuriyet'e Bir Aydın, p. 53.58 Ibid., p. 44.59 For a study of these paramilitary organizations as 'character building societies', see Cora, Constructing and Mobilizing the 'Nation' Through Sport.60 Şirin, İmparatorluk'tan Cumhuriyet'e Bir Aydın, p. 45.61 For Ziya Gökalp and his 'new life' ideal, see Taha Parla, The Social and Political Thought of Ziya Gökalp (Leiden: Brill, 1985), pp. 57–9; Andrew Davison, Secularism and Revivalism in Turkey: A Hermeneutic Reconsideration (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1998).62 Ömer Seyfettin, Bomba (İstanbul: Zaimler Yayınevi, 1962), p. 80.63 Ziya Gökalp, "İttihat ve Terakki'nin Paramiliter Gençlik Örgütleri", B.Ü. Beşeri Bilimler Dergisi, VII (1979), p. 96. We thank Hasan Rua Demircioğlu.64 Halide Edip, 'Erenköyü "Yeni Turan" Köyü', Türk Yurdu 1(24) (1912), p. 418.65 For Max Nordau, see Michael Stanislawski, Zionism and the Fin de Siècle: Cosmopolitanism and Nationalism from Nordau to Jabotinsky (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001); Melanie E. Murphy, Max Nordau's Fin-de-Siècle Romance of Race (New York: Peter Lang, 2007); George Mosse, 'Max Nordau, Liberalism and the New Jew', Journal of Contemporary History 27(4) (1992), pp. 565–81.66 Max Nordau 'Milliyet', Türk Yurdu 4(86) (1915), p. 161.67 For War and Peace as a historical novel, see Dan Ungurianu, Plotting History: The Russian Historical Novel in the Imperial Age (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2007), pp. 115–18; Jerome De Groot, The Historical Novel (New York: Routledge, 2010), pp. 39–40.68 Michel Winock, 'Joan of Arc', in Pierre Nora (ed.), Realms of Memory III: Symbols (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997–1998), pp. 433–80.69 For Napoléon and his impact on the 'rise of national historicism', see Leersen, National Thought in Europe: A Cultural History (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2006), p. 119.70 For the emergence and rise of the historical novel as a genre in the post-Napoléonic decade of 1830s Russia, see Ungurianu, Plotting History, pp. 8–12.71 For the new romantic interest towards thee medieval age in the nineteenth century, see John M. Ganim, Medievalism and Orientalism (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005); N.J. Higham, King Arthur: Myth Making and History (London: Routledge, 2002); Andrew Wawn, The Vikings and the Victorians: Inventing the Old North in 19th-Century Britain (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2000); Maurice Samuels, The Spectacular Past: Popular History and the Novelin Nineteenth-Century France (New York: Cornell University Press, 2004).72 For the pre-Walter Scott historical novels, see Richard Maxwell, The Historical Novel in Europe, 1650–1950 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011). Maxwell is critical of dating the birth of the historical novel to Walter Scott, seeing this as a distortion originally contrived by Georg Lukacs, see Maxwell, The Historical Novel in Europe, pp. 7–8.73 A. Dwight Culler, The Victorian Mirror of History (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1985), p. 26.74 For Walter Scott and his historical imagination, also see Ian Duncan, Modern Romance and Transformations of the Novel: The Gothic, Scott, and Dickens (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992); Christopher Harvie, 'Scott and the Image of Scotland', in Raphael Samuel (ed.), Patriotism: The Making and Unmaking of British National Identity (London: Routledge, 1989), pp. 173–92; Caroline McCracken-Flesher, Possible Scotlands: Walter Scott and the Story of Tomorrow (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005).75 Richard J. Evans, Cosmopolitan Islanders: British Historians and the European Continent (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), pp. 70–6. For Thomas Carlyle's views on the French Revolution along these lines, also see Hedva Ben Israel, English Historians on the French Revolution (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), pp. 127–47.76 For the Pompeian imagination in the nineteenth century, see Goran Blix, From Paris to Pompeii: French Romanticism and the Cultural Politics of Archaeology (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009).77 For Cezmi, see Gürpınar, Ottoman/Turkish Visions of the Nation, pp. 29–30.78 Mehmet Fatih Uslu, Çatışma ve Müzakere: Osmanlı'da Türkçe ve Ermenice Dramatik Edebiyat (İstanbul: İş Bankası Yayınları, 2014), pp. 157–68.79 For the social and cultural imageries of the Young Ottomans, the first 'modern' Turkish intellectuals who developed a compound of identities in line with these premises, see Şerif Mardin, The Genesis of Young Ottoman Thought (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2000).80 Uslu, Çatışma ve Müzakere, pp. 151–7.81 Laurent Mignon, Ana Metne Taşınan Dipnotlar (İstanbul: İletişim, 2009), pp. 134–6.82 Uslu, Çatışma ve Müzakere, pp. 168–77.83 For this imagination, see Maurus Reinkowski, 'The State's Security and the Subjects' Prosperity: Notions of Order in Ottoman Bureaucratic Correspondence (19th Century)', in Hakan Karetepe and Maurus Reinkowski (eds.), Legitimizing the Order (Leiden: Brill, 2005), pp. 199–204.84 Seyfettin, Bomba, p. 72.85 Risal, 'Türkler Bir Ruh-i Milli Arıyorlar', p. 45.86 Ibid., p. 45.87 Ibid., p. 45.88 Ibid., p. 45.89 Murat Belge, 'Genç Kalemler and Turkish Nationalism', in Celia Kerslake, Kerem Öktem, and Philip Robins (eds.), Turkey's Engagement with Modernity (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), pp. 33–4.90 Belge, 'Genç Kalemler and Turkish Nationalism', p. 260.91 Seyfettin, Bomba, p. 72.92 Yusuf Akçuraoğlu, 'Müverrih Léon Cahun ve Muallim Barthold'a Göre Cengiz Han', Türk Yurdu 1(1) (1911), pp. 18–19.93 Safvet, 'Gemilere Verilen adların Tarihçesi', Tahrir Heyeti 1(12) (1912), Vol. 1, No. 12, PP. 193-94. pp. 193–94.94 Edip, 'Erenköyü "Yeni Turan" Köyü', p. 417.95 Tahir Alangu, Ömer Seyfeddin: Ülkücü Bir Yazarın Romanı (İstanbul: May Yayınları, 1968), pp. 344–72; Gürpınar, Ottoman/Turkish Visions of the Nation, p. 38.96 Levent Cantek, Erotik ve Milliyetçi Bir İkon: Karaoğlan (İstanbul: İletişim, 2003), p. 64.97 Bahadır Türk, Hayali Kahramanlar, Hakiki Erkekler (İstanbul: İletişim, 2013).98 İsmet Özel, TV Show Karşıt Görüş, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uV3yLF, 2009, 18 July 2014.