Turkey: between Empire and Republic, between Ottomanism and Kemalism

Extraits de l'exposé

[...] Apart from mortality due to war and deprivation, large-scale migration also impacted the population of Anatolia. All through the nineteenth en early twentieth centuries, Muslims fled from territories which were lost by the empire to Christian revolting states (Romania, Bulgaria, Serbia and Greece are some examples) under the influence of nationalism. Eventually, these people were resettled in Anatolia. The loss of the predominantly Christian areas and the immigration of Muslims meant that as early as 1913, for the first time in its entire history, the Ottoman Empire had a Turkish majority. [...]

[...] The protest ended with the intervention of the army which finally opened fire killing 23 protestors and dispersing the crowd. The other similar documented protest occurred in Bursa in 1933 after the passing of the law concerning the proclamation of the prayer in Turkish. This law though, was not immediately followed at the Ulu mosque, where the prayer was called in Arabic according to customs. The rest of the incident is best described by Brocket in the following words this particular occasion a local police officer happened to be present and subsequently declared his intention to report the ?offenders? to his superiors. [...]

[...] As such Atatürk saw history as a tool to be shaped according to the need of the moment. Indicative to that is his reply to a young female associate of his, who, having read a French book which labelled Turks as part of the yellow race, questioned Atatürk on the matter. He replied it cannot (be so). Let us get busy on this.? (Vryonis:69). This incident was also the beginning of the creation of a history for the Turkish nation. [...]

[...] But as it has been noted and as Canefe writes is only in the aftermath of the Balkan wars (1912-1913) and the massive loss of life and land these caused, that Turkism began to appear as a viable alternative to the Ottomanist agenda.? (Canefe:143) After the war had been won in 1922, this ideological orientation changed quite suddenly. With the passing of the national emergency the need for mass mobilization had also passed. The debates conducted before 1912 now resumed their importance and the republican regime had to make some choices. In the debate on the degree of westernization, the victorious and immensely popular Mustafa Kemal and his circle identified themselves with the position of the most extreme ?westernists? of the young Turk era, who held that European civilization was indivisible and should be adopted in whole. [...]

[...] The military coup of 1960 (favored by the economic situation which had been deteriorating since 1955) led by general Gürsel can therefore be interpreted as an attempts at reinstating a Kemalist bureaucratic regime at the center of power. The leaders of the democratic party were arrested and stood trial Menderes even being sentenced to death and hanged in 1961. The 1960's : Islamists finally enter the political picture Yet after 1961 it was clear that a return to strict Kemalism and to a one party system was impossible. Thus, the fathers of the new constitution set up a fusion of Kemalist principles with a multi-party democracy. [...]