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European Journal of Turkish Studies Social Sciences on Contemporary

16 | 2013 Demographic Engineering - Part III

Nikos Sigalas et Alexandre Toumarkine (dir.)

Édition électronique URL : http://journals.openedition.org/ejts/4526 DOI : 10.4000/ejts.4526 ISSN : 1773-0546

Éditeur EJTS

Référence électronique Nikos Sigalas et Alexandre Toumarkine (dir.), European Journal of Turkish Studies, 16 | 2013, « Demographic Engineering - Part III » [En ligne], mis en ligne le 30 juin 2013, consulté le 29 février 2020. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/ejts/4526 ; DOI:10.4000/ejts.4526

Ce document a été généré automatiquement le 29 février 2020.

© Some rights reserved / Creative Commons license 1

Forced Population Movements in the and the Early Turkish Republic: An Attempt at Reassessment through Demographic Engineering

Nesim Şeker

1 Forced migration is central theme of history. Temporally, it can be observed from ancient times to the present era ; spatially, it is possible to view it in several geographies. No period or geography of human history appears to be immune from this phenomenon. As many examples demonstrate, the manipulation of the demographic composition of a territory for the purpose of controlling and dominating its resources is not restricted to the modern age, when the practice began to take on a different character due to the political redefinition of the state and its constituents.1 Although motives of displacement, removal and elimination of a specific population group have not essentially changed from the pre-modern era, modern implementations deserve particular conceptualization not only because of the political redefinition of the state as nation-state and its essential constituent as nation but also for the subtle and diverse methods employed in manipulating populations and its universalization. In the modern age, forced population movements were no longer solely the work of ‘great’ states with the military and political strength to conquer and colonize. They were also used by ‘minor’ states with limited power, as well as by political actors claiming to form the state. The interaction of economic, political, scientific and intellectual developments in the 19th century contributed much to the dissemination of practices of manipulating the population figures and provided the means of doing it in an ‘engineered’ manner. This paper aims to introduce demographic engineering as an analytical tool and to give an overview of forced migration in the Ottoman Empire and early Turkish Republic by using the vocabulary derived from it. Rather than an exhaustive and in-depth analysis of the forced population movements, it aims to present a comprehensive conceptual

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framework which may provide broader perspective in approaching forced migration issues of, particularly, the late Ottoman era and the early Turkish Republic.

I. Conceptualizing Forced Migration in the Modern Era: Demographic Engineering

2 Though demographic engineering, in the wide sense of state intervention in population figures (in its composition, distribution and increase/decrease) can be used to denote the manipulation of population composition throughout history, its close association with ethnicity, , and the nation-state makes it appear as an essentially modern phenomenon. Although as Bookman states (1997 : 1) state intervention in population numbers during the course of ‘struggles for territory and control of its resources’ has not always been based on ethnicity, demographic engineering is usually used in the context of inter-ethnic struggles, which may occur in several forms. Thus the concept comes also to mean ‘demographic struggle for power’ with the aim of increasing ‘the economic and political power of an ethnic group relative to other groups.’ This necessarily involves an attempt to increase population numbers of one group relative to other groups (Bookman, 1997 : 1-2). McGarry defines demographic engineering as ‘the state-directed movement of ethnic groups as a technique of conflict regulation.’ In dealing with diverse ethnic groups, one of the methods that states resort to is population movement. States, he underlines, impel groups to move ‘through a variety of incentives or pressures’ or by using force (1998 : 613). The central role of the sate in moving the population is also emphasized by Weiner and Teitelbaum (2001 : 54) who consider the concept in relation to states’ search for security and suggest that : The implication of the notion of demographic engineering is that the movement of peoples is not the consequence of social and economic trends – such as differentials in wages or employment opportunities across regions. Nor does demographic engineering refer to all actions by the state that result in the large-scale movement of populations – for example, the failure of government to deal with a famine, or the neglect of the environment, or the construction of a large dam which will displace a segment of society. Demographic engineering implies that the movement itself is deliberately (italic is mine) induced by the state ; it is not the consequence of another policy or program (63). 3 Thus whether the motives are political, economic, strategic or ideological, any state policy aiming to ‘affect the size, composition, distribution, and growth rate of a population’ can be described as demographic engineering (Weiner and Teitelbaum 2001: 54). Forms of state intervention in this regard range from policies affecting birth and fertility rates with the goal of eliminating the differences between ethnic groups and incorporating smaller groups into the larger and dominant ethnic group, to population transfers, including , resettlement, , as well as economic pressures such as ‘selective tax policy’, restrictions in employment, property rights, etc. (Bookman 1997 : 32-34 ; Weiner and Teitelbaum 2001 : 54-74).

4 The relationship between demographic engineering and nationalism, particularly its ethnic form, is well-established. As McGarry aptly states, the development of nationalism has shaped demographic engineering in the modern period (1998 : 615). The impacts of the development of nationalism in this respect are twofold. First, ethnicity in many cases became the primary criterion in defining the affiliation to nation and state, which were generally named on behalf of the dominant ethnic group.

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Secondly, the groups that did not belong to the dominant ethnicity were cast out of the ‘ethnic nation’ and were relegated to minority status and/or assimilated. Whenever minorities developed ‘minority-based nationalist movements’ they confronted states and were viewed as threats to state security. As a result demographic engineering was implemented against those groups which nationalism determined as being against the state (McGarry 1998 : 615, 623). Forced population movements thus typically occurred during wars for national self-determination in which the national was defined along ethnic lines as a form of ‘ethnic unmixing through migration, murder, or some combination of both’. As a result, demographic engineering occurred frequently in the process of nation-state formation, the ‘ethnic nationalization of existing states’ (Brubaker 1996 : 154-155), and during ethnic conflicts, especially as a method of conflict management and resolution.2 5 Although the framework suggested so far has been formed through the cases of ethnic conflicts that were seen in the last two decades in the regions stretching from the to the to Africa, it seems very applicable to policies adopted by many states in the past, especially in the context of imperial decline, nation-state formation and nation-building processes. Intimately related to the rise of nationalism, particularly in its ethnic form,3 governments widely attempted to homogenize territories within their jurisdiction by employing the methods of demographic engineering. Manipulation of population figures by statistical records, deportation, assimilation, massacres and ethnic cleansing were the most frequently used methods.

II. Forced Migration in the Ottoman Empire

6 The Ottoman Empire illustrates to a great extent the manipulation of population figures under the initiative of the state. From the 16th century until its final dissolution in the first quarter of the 20th century, the Ottoman lands witnessed intensive state- induced population mobility between regions.4 Forced migration in the Ottoman Empire can be divided in three sub-periods. The first period extends from the 16th to 18th centuries when the Ottomans resorted to deportation and resettlement policy with military, administrative, economic, and to some extent political motives. During the second period, which extends from the second half of the 19th century into 1913, the Ottoman lands became a shelter for Muslim refugees coming from the Caucasus and the Balkans. In their resettlement, the Ottoman officials exclusively took immigrants’ ethnic and religious affiliations into consideration, especially after 1878. The final period, the years in between 1913-1918, population movements were the result of the policy followed by a nationalist elite aiming to ethnically restructure the Empire’s core territory, .5 In the following, an overview of each sub-period will be presented in accordance with the main purpose of this essay, which is to evaluate emigration/ immigration issue in Ottoman/Turkish history through the concept of demographic engineering.

7 through deportation (sürgün) and settlement was the principal means that accompanied military conquest in the making of the Ottoman Empire (Barkan 1949-1950 : 544, 546). Securing their domination in newly conquered territories, increasing the power of the central authority, organizing agricultural production and providing security and order seem to have been the general motives for the Ottomans for moving a particular population group from one place to another (Tekeli 1990 :

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50-54). The Ottomans resorted to mass deportation and resettlement on a large scale in order to, for example, fill empty land and make it inhabited and prosperous , or to facilitate the dispatching of troops and supplying provisions by establishing villages and towns through which they organized transportation and expeditions. There were also political motives (or goals) behind the Ottomans’ deportation and resettlement policy. Resettling Turkish and Muslim immigrants () among ‘hostile’ elements (Barkan 1951-1952 : 56-58) and moving from the conquered territories were viewed as preconditions of security and order (Barkan 1951-1952 : 62). The deportation of the heterodox population whom the state perceived as political and religious troublemakers also reveals the political motives behind population moves in the earlier periods of the Ottoman Empire (Barkan 1953-1954 : 228-229). 8 Examples of the early Ottoman deportation and settlement policy are many. One of the most illustrative cases is the deportation of groups from Anatolia into the newly conquered (Barkan 1949-1950 : 550-561). According to the deportation decree of 24 September 1572, ‘one family out of every ten in the provinces of Anatolia, Rum (Sivas), Karaman and Zülkadriye were to be sent to Cyprus’ in order to rehabilitate and provide the security on the island. The deportees were to be chosen from peasants and craftsmen who were to be exempted from paying taxes for two years in their new settlement (İnalcık 1954 : 123 ; Arslan 2001 : 337-345). Similarly, the Ottomans forcedly moved population from Anatolia into the Balkans in order to consolidate their rule there following the conquest (Barkan 1951-1952) and, conversely, moved population from the Balkans to in order to make the city prosperous (İnalcık 1954 : 123). In the 18th century, when the expansion of the Ottoman Empire through conquest came to a halt, forced migration took the form of settling nomadic tribes in order to increase agricultural production and provide domestic security (Tekeli 1990 : 52-54). 9 The settlement of nomadic tribes continued in the 19th century (Tekeli 1990 : 55) ; however, the emigration of hundreds of thousands of Muslim from territories that were no longer within Ottoman jurisdiction requires a separate assessment of this period. Throughout the 19th century challenges to Ottoman rule came mainly from two sources : , which was gradually expanding southward, and the nationalism of the subject populations, beginning in the Balkans. Thus, imperial rivalry and nationalism, and the wars fought around these produced millions of refugees in the region stretching from the Caucasus into Anatolia and the Balkans (McCarthy 1995 : 1-21). 10 The first example of emigration was that of the Crimean , who had to flee from their lands as a result of the Russian subordination of the region in the last quarter of the 18th century.6 Their immigration continued into the 19 th century, especially after the . During and following this war, hundreds of thousands Tatars were forced to move to other regions because of discriminatory Russian policies which viewed them as a ‘harmful element’ and as a threat to security, and due to fear of Russification (Pinson 1970 : 32ff ; Karpat 1985 : 66). Following the Tatars, the became the subject of the Russian policy of expulsion in the 1860s. Besides administrative, military, strategic and security reasons, ideological and cultural concerns seem to have played a role in their emigration into Ottoman lands (Pinson 1970 : 85-86 ; Karpat 1985 : 67).7 Ottoman-Russian military confrontations continued to produce Muslim refugees from the Caucasus and the Balkans in the coming decades. The most illustrative case is the 1877-1878 Russo-Turkish war.

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11 The Russo-Turkish war also displays the disruptive effects of nationalism in the Ottoman context. The principal cause of Muslim emigration from the Balkans in the aftermath of the war was nationalism, which had already become a legitimizing ideology of independence demands for would-be states in the Balkans. In addition to the considerable losses among the Muslim- due to massacres during and after the war, the emergence of independent Serbian and Romanian states and an autonomous in the post-war settlement was accompanied by the flow of Muslim-Turkish refugees in huge numbers (İpek 1994). However, this was not a new development in the Balkans. Since the beginning of the 19th century, the ‘nationalization’ process among some groups brought about the ‘othering’ of others, depending on the definition of the ‘imagined nation’. The Greek case is noteworthy in this respect since it was the first and, more importantly, became a role model for emerging in the Balkans (McCarthy 1995 : 9-10). During and after the Greek struggle for independence became the target of the Greek nationalists. They were the ‘alien’ elements of the Greek nation. They were massacred, forced to leave and had their lands seized for the sake of nationalization. From the 1820s to the 1910s, the Greek policy-makers undertook such measures against Muslims within the jurisdiction of the Greek state on several occasions.8 12 Nation-state formation gained momentum in the Balkans in the 1870s. In the aftermath of the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-1878, the emergence of autonomous Bulgaria was accompanied by the forced migration of the Muslims from the Bulgaria-owned lands. In the space of approximately two decades, from 1870 to 1888, the Muslim population of Bulgaria decreased sharply as a result of the attempts to make ‘Bulgaria for the ’ (Brubaker 1996 : 153). From this period until the end of the 20th century, Muslim emigration was to become ‘a recurrent feature of Bulgaria’s ethno- demographic development’ (Kalionski 2002 : 97). The responses of the Ottomans to Muslim emigration from the Balkans in particular may serve to illustrate not only their short-term reactions but also a long-term policy embedded in the management of ethnic, cultural and linguistic diversity, a policy that extended well into the inheritor state of the Ottoman Empire, the Turkish Republic. First was the resettlement policy that aimed to change the ethnic and religious demographic composition of definite regions for strategic, territorial and political reasons in favor of the Muslim/Turkish elements. The second policy was the ethnic restructuring of Anatolia under a deliberate act of the nationalist ruling elite. It was effectively implemented during the First World War and went hand in hand with the resettlement policy.9 13 The Russo-Turkish War of 1877-1878 caused tremendous flows of refugees into the Ottoman lands. Over a million Muslim Turks had to emigrate from the Balkans (İpek 1994 : 40-41 ; Karpat 1985 : 74). The state attempted to resettle these refugees in accordance with its military, strategic and political concerns. Muslim-Turkish refugees were resettled along the borders and in villages around the Straits in order to secure the borders and the the Straits, and to balance the non-Muslim population in strategic regions. In some cases, they were resettled in such a way as to surround non-Muslims in order to counter-balance the latter and prevent them from forming the majority. Resettlement with these motives was carried out on a wide geographical scope including , Eastern Anatolia, the of Hudavendigar and on the eve of the (İpek 1994 : 155-159 ; 176-179 ; 197 ; 206-207 ; Ağanoğlu 2001 : 101-108). In this way, the Ottoman state promoted and added a particular group of

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population as settlers into some regions populated by minority groups.10 The second response to refugee flows into the Ottoman lands was to remove definite population groups, ‘enemies which in their present location pose a problem for the authorities and an obstacle to their goals’ (McGarry 1998 : 615), ‘out of the country or from one portion of the country to another’ (Weiner and Teitelbaum 2001 : 55-56). This overlaps with the final phase of the forced migration in the Ottoman Empire which signifies a radical break from the past in dealing with refugee problem as well as ethnic issues.

III. In Search of the Loyal Nation: The Committee of Union and Progress’ Ethnic Restructuring Policy

14 McGarry formulates two broad answers to his question ‘when do states move ethnic groups?’ First, he suggests that states move a population that is categorized as ‘enemy of the state’ when it is ‘captured by radical (chauvinistic or anti-nationalist) élites.’ Secondly, states force a definite group of population to migrate when their security is considered to be threatened by minority groups. The rejection of the state’s authority by minority leaders, the existence of inter-state conflict in which a minority is perceived as a security, the ‘fifth-column’ threat, and the state’s weak control over minority regions are among the primary circumstances in which state actors feel insecure and threatened by minorities (1998 : 623-625).

15 The last climactic phase of Ottoman-Turkish demographic engineering policies can be grasped within this framework. On the eve of the First World War, nationalist elite within the Committee of Union and Progress, who perceived world events through the lens of Social Darwinism11 had seized power in the Ottoman Empire. During the First World War, they focused their efforts on the demographic restructuring of Anatolia. The survival of the state and the recently defined nation were the main motives behind this attempt, and they found the practical justification in their failure to preserve the state’s territorial integrity against minority nationalisms and the great powers’ interventions. Nevertheless, the incessant flow of Muslim-Turkish refugees from the Balkans during and in the aftermath of the Balkan Wars seems to induce the Unionist élite into action in this respect. Their suffering at the hands of Bulgarian and Greek nationalists who aimed to homogenize their territories reinforced and popularized the Turkish nationalist sentiment (Edib 1930 : 115) and it stimulated the policy-makers into developing ways of resettling them. 16 The resettlement of Muslim-Turkish refugees was not an end in itself but part of a broader project of ‘nationalizing’ or ‘Turcifying’ the Ottoman lands.12 This project had two main aspects : forcing ‘disloyal’ elements to migrate and resettling supposed ‘loyal’ refugees into evacuated places. It was with these goals that the Unionist leadership inaugurated a campaign against the Ottoman to disrupt their economic activities and to uproot them through coercive measures on the eve of the First World War (Dündar 2008 : 191-248). The implementation of this policy against the Armenian population during the War demonstrates all aspects of the Unionist demographic mentality. Legitimized by security concerns, measures ranging from murder and massacre to religious conversion, assimilation and seizure of property were undertaken simultaneously, illustrating political, demographic and economic aspects of demographic engineering.13

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17 A similar mentality was at work in the resettlement of the Muslim refugees. The Unionists made solid preparations to organize their resettlement in such a way that they would efficiently assimilate into the Turkish population.14 For example, they enacted the Law for the Settlement of Immigrants, which led to the formation of the General Directorate for Settlement of Tribes and Refugees. The resettlement of Albanian and Bosnian refugees who were expelled from the Balkans and of the fleeing before the Russian troops demonstrates that the Unionist government did not want to see any non-Turkish group forming a majority in a particular region and constituting more than 5-10 % of the population. The Directorate was also in charge of linguistic and ethnological research on ethnic and religious minorities in Anatolia such as Kizilbashes, Bektâshis, Ahîs, Armenians, Alevis, Kurds and Turcomans, unequivocally for political goals. It is estimated that approximately half of the Anatolian population, approximately 8 million souls, had to move during the First World War due to the Committee of Union and Progress’s deportation and resettlement policy (Dündar 2006 : 37-42). 18 When the First World War ended, the demographic composition of Anatolia had been radically changed as a result of the Unionist wartime policy. In the aftermath of the War a struggle broke out among the ethno-religious groups of Anatolia attempting to preserve or change the existing demographic composition in accordance with their political goals. Initially, the principle of self-determination, which was considered to be the basic principle in remapping Anatolia in accordance with the population figures of different ethnic groups on the same territory, led the competing groups to use politicized statistics on ethnic populations at the Peace Conference. 15 Turkish, Armenian, Greek, and Kurdish claimants presented a variety of numbers in order to justify their nationalist causes for annexation, or independence. In addition, each group resorted to violent measures in order to decrease the numbers of rival groups. While the Turkish nationalists, for example, spent considerable effort to maintain the demographic status quo that resulted from the Unionist wartime policy by setting obstacles before the repatriation of the surviving Armenian deportees, the Greek and the Armenian nationalists made efforts to reverse this policy in favor of their political goals by forcing the Muslim population to migrate in the Greek or Allied occupied regions, and in some cases massacring them.16 Thus between 1919-1922 there was a severe struggle among competing nationalisms aiming to fulfill their programs by increasing the size of the favored ethnic/religious group at the expense of rival groups. This struggle resulted in the almost complete elimination of the non-Muslim population from Anatolia, mainly through coercive measures. However, the resolution of the Turkish-Greek conflict through an internationally sanctioned treaty, the population exchange has tremendous symbolic significance as it shows that the ‘engineering’ mentality was not restricted to actors that were directly involved in the struggle but was a widespread means of conflict resolution.17

IV. Reshaping the Nation in the Early Turkish Republic

19 The continuity in social, political and economic structures as well as in the government policies between the late Ottoman and early Republican periods has frequently been underlined. Among the continual aspects that can be traced between these two periods, the ‘’ of social, economic and cultural life is preeminent. In this respect,

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the founders of the Turkish nation-state inherited a legacy from the previous period that would shape both their mentality as well as practices in ‘nationalizing’ Turkey.

20 The Turkish nation-state was established on a Muslim foundation in 1923. The inter- ethnic struggles that accompanied the inter-state wars between 1912-1922 and the Committee of Union and Progress’s Turcification policy resulted a territory inhabited by an approximately 98 % Muslim population. Nevertheless, the Ottoman Empire’s multi-ethnic, multi-religious and multi-lingual societal structure was inherited by the new state despite the tremendous quantitative change.18 In managing the heterogeneous society, the founders of the nation-state employed repressive and assimilative means in accordance with a that defined the constituencies of the ‘imagined nation’ in 1920s and 1930s.19 21 Taking into consideration the citizenship definition of the 1924 Constitution and the historical and linguistic studies that formed the intellectual basis of Turkish nationalism in the early Republican era it can be argued that the Turkish nationalist elite oscillated between civic-territorial and ethnic forms of nationalism (Poulton 1997 : 97). The 1924 Constitution stated that ‘the people of Turkey, regardless of religion and race, are Turks as regards citizenship’ (Kili and Gözübüyük 2000 : 138). At first sight, this definition defined citizenship as membership of the political community regardless of ethnic origin ; however, this did not come to mean that ethnicity was entirely disregarded. As many practices demonstrate, the door was left open for the cultural and linguistic assimilation of non-Muslim minorities and non-Turkish Muslims into the supreme ethnic identity.20 22 Cultural and linguistic assimilation into Turkishness, which was defined around secular and overtly ethnic nationalist terms, was the principal end, and repression, settlement and deportation were the principal means of demographic engineering in the early Turkish Republic. ‘Turcification’ policies encompassed curbing non-Muslim communities’s minority rights, which had been granted in the Lausanne Settlement (Alexandris 1992 : 135-139 ; Levi 1996 : 70-74 ; Bali 2000 : 59-77) forcing the public use of Turkish under the motto ‘citizen, speak Turkish’ (Bali 2000 : 105-109), to promoting Muslim immigration from the Balkans in order to strengthen ‘the cohesion and homogeneity of Turkish nation’, settling new immigrants among the Kurdish population to provide a Turkish majority in overwhelmingly Kurdish-populated areas and dispersing the Kurdish population among the Turks through a Settlement Law enacted in 1934 (Ülker : 2007 and 2008), and finally, changing place names, a policy Öktem (2009) calls ‘toponymical engineering’. There are many more examples of the Turcification policy,21 but at the moment it is proper to conclude that the ‘Turcification’ motive of Turkish nationalism was not restricted to the First World War and early Republican periods but extended well into the end of the 20th century.22

Concluding Remarks

23 As it can be seen throughout this study, forced migration is one of the key issues in the history of the Ottoman Empire and the Turkish Republic. From the 1950s to the present, several studies demonstrating its various aspects have been published. Nevertheless, the treatment of the issue has predominantly adhered to state-centered and nationalist outlook, especially in the evaluation of forced migration in the late Ottoman and early Republican eras. In explaining the Armenian and

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massacres, for example, representatives of such an outlook highlight security concerns and abstract the events from their social, political, ideological and economic milieu. Instead of historicizing and comparing the Turkish case with other cases, they focus on the nationalist activities of the minority leaders, who were perceived as ‘fifth- columnists’ by those who took the decision to deport the minority population. Studies of this kind are usually dominated by a narrow empirical method. Such outlook has undoubtedly served to present the deportations and accompanying events as a natural consequence, thus legitimizing and justifying the state’s actions. Studying state intervention in population figures from a nationalist perspective and methodology thus actually serves the function of ideologically reproducing the ‘nation’. Considering the late Ottoman case, the state intervened in population for ‘nation-building’ by recasting the population as ‘loyal’ and ‘disloyal’ or by using terms such as ‘us’ and ‘others’. Narrating the actions that were taken in order to create the ‘loyal’ nation through the perspective of those who undertook the actions reinforces a particular understanding of ‘us’.

24 The concept of demographic engineering should be considered a challenge to the nationalist approach to the question of ‘why do states move populations ?’ The concept does not aim at theorizing forced migration but to analyze it in a broader, integrative perspective. It brings together the social, political and economic motives behind states’ intervention in populations and allows us to make conceptual analyses of events. Situating forced migration into the context of demographic engineering also allows us to incorporate contemporary and historical experiences, as it provides us with the analytical means to compare similar cases in different times and places. In other words, it implicitly suggests that forced migration or state intervention in population is a universal phenomenon and should be treated as such. By universalizing the language of the forced migration, it enables us to write comparative cross-histories since more or less every state in the modern age has resorted demographic engineering for different purposes. Therefore, in the study of forced migration in the Ottoman-Turkish case, the employment of this concept is likely to allow the systematic treatment of the issue in a broad conceptual framework and enable us to extend the scope of discussion on past and present issues relating to identity.

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Karpat, Kemal H. (1985) Ottoman Population 1830-1914, Madison, Wisconsin, The University of Wisconsin Press.

Kili, Suna ; Gözübüyük, Şeref (2000) Türk Anayasa Metinleri, İstanbul, Türkiye İş Bankası Kültür Yayınları.

Le Vine, Victor T. (1997) ‘Conceptualizing “Ethnicity” and “Ethnic Conflict” : A Controversy Revisited,’ in Studies in Comparative International Development, vol. 32, n° 2, pp. 45-75. URI : http:// dx.doi.org/10.1007/BF02687324

Mann, Michael (2005) The Dark Side of Democracy Explaining Ethnic Cleansing, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.

McCarthy, Justin (1995) Death and Exile : The Ethnic Cleansing of Ottoman Muslims 1821-1922, Princeton, New Jersey, The Darwin Press, Inc.

McGarry, John (1998) ‘ “Demographic Engineering” : The State-Directed Movement of Ethnic Groups as a Technique of Conflict Regulation,’ in Ethnic and Racial Studies, vol. 21, n° 4 (July 1998), pp. 613-638. URI : http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/014198798329793

McGarry, John ; O’Leary, Brendan (eds.) (1993) The Politics of Ethnic Conflict Regulation, London and New York, Routledge.

Meyer, James H. (2007) ‘Immigration, Return, and the Politics of Citizenship : Russian Muslims in the Ottoman Empire, 1860-1914,’ in International Journal of Studies, 39, pp. 15-32. URI : http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0020743807212516

Nezir, Handan (2001) Aspects of the Social and Political Thought of the Ottoman Military, 1908-1914, Ph.D. Thesis, University of Manchester.

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Okutan, M. Çağatay (2004) Tek Parti Döneminde Azınlık Politikaları, İstanbul, İstanbul Bilgi Üniversitesi Yayınları.

Orhonlu, Cengiz (1973) ‘Yunan İşgalının Meydana Getirdiği Göç ve Yunanlıların Yaptıkları Tehcir’ in Sonuçları Hakkında Bazı Düşünceler,’ in Belleten, vol. XXXVII, n° 148, pp. 485-495.

Öktem, Kerem (2009) ‘The Nation’s Imprint: Demographic Engineering and the Change of Toponymes in Republican Turkey’, in European Journal of Turkish Studies, Thematic Issue n° 7, Demographic Engineering – Part I, URL: http://www.ejts.org/2243

Pavlowitch, Stevan K. (1999) A History of the Balkans 1804-1945, London and New York, Longman.

Pentzopoulos, Dimitri (1962) The Balkan Exchange of Minorities and Its Impact upon , Paris, Mouton&Co.

Pinson, Mark (1970) Demographic Warfare : An aspect of Ottoman and Russian Policy, 1854-1866, Unpublished Ph.D Thesis, Cambridge, Harvard University.

Poulton, Hugh (1997) Top Hat, Grey Wolf and Crescent : Turkish Nationalism and the Turkish Republic, London, Hurst&Company.

Schechla, Joseph (1993) ‘Ideological Roots of ,’ in Third World Quarterly, vol. 14, n° 2, pp. 239-275. URI : http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01436599308420324

Smith, Anthony D. (2001) Nationalism, Cambridge, Polity Press.

Stavrianos, L. S. (2000) The Balkans since 1453, London, Hurst & Company.

Şeker, Nesim (2005) ‘Identity Formation and the Political Power in the Late Ottoman Empire and Early Turkish Republic,’ in Historia Actual Online, n° 8, pp. 59-67. URL : http://dialnet.unirioja.es/ servlet/articulo?codigo=1993849

Şeker, Nesim (2007) ‘Demographic Engineering in the Late Ottoman Empire and the Armenians,’ in Middle Eastern Studies, 43 :3, pp. 461-474. URI : http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00263200701246157

Tekeli, İlhan (1990) ‘Osmanlı İmparatorluğu’ndan Günümüze Nüfusun Zorunlu Yer Değiştirmesi ve İskan Sorunu,’ in Toplum ve Bilim, 50, pp. 49-71.

Ülker, Erol (2005) ‘Contextualizing “Turcification” : Nation-Building in the Late Ottoman Empire, 1908-1918’, in Nations and Nationalism, 11 (4), pp. 613-636.

Ülker, Erol (2007) ‘Assimilation of the Muslim Communities in the First Decade of the Turkish Republic (1923-1934),’ in European Journal of Turkish Studies, URL: http://www.ejts.org/822

Ülker, Erol (2008) ‘Assimilation, Security and Geographical Nationalization in Interwar Turkey: The Settlement Law of 1934’, in European Journal of Turkish Studies, Issue n° 7, Demographic Engineering – Part I, URL: http://www.ejts.org/2123

Üngör, Uğur Ümit (2008) ‘Geographies of Nationalism and Violence: Rethinking Young Turk “Social Engineering,”’ in European Journal of Turkish Studies, Issue n° 7, Demographic Engineering – Part I, URL: http://www.ejts.org/2583

Weiner, Myron ; Teitelbaum, Michael S. (2001) Political Demography, Demographic Engineering, New York and Oxford, Berghahn Books.

Yeğen, Mesut (2002) ‘Yurttaşlık ve Türklük,’ in Toplum ve Bilim, 93 (Summer 2002), pp. 200-217.

Yıldız, Ahmet (2001) ‘“Ne Mutlu Türküm Diyebilene” : Türk Ulusal Kimliğinin Etno-Seküler Sınırları (1919-1938),’ İstanbul, İletişim Yayınları.

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Zürcher, Erik-Jan (2008) ‘The Late Ottoman Empire as Laboratory of Demographic Engineering,’ in http://www.sissco.it/fileadmin/user_upload/Attivita/Convegni/regioni_multilingue/ zurcher.pdf

NOTES

1. From very earlier periods, forced migration has a close association with the state. It was the political figures acting behind the state who forced a particular group of people to migrate. Typical example is the Assyrian Empire in which forced migration was a frequently observed practice. Between 11th and 7th centuries BC, it is stated that there were at least 157 population transfer practices led by the Assyrian rulers. Approximately, the name of 500 places was subjected to change and about 4.5 million persons were forced to migrate (Schechla 1993: 240). In the following centuries, forced migration was increasingly practiced as a mean of conquest and colonization. Especially, following the Age of Discovery, the Spanish carried out it on a large scale with the purpose of removing and enslaving the indigenous population in the conquered territories. In order to remove the natives from their territories, they effectively implemented a policy called descargar la tierra, empty the land. Similar methods were also practiced by the British in their conquest of, for example, and the American government in the policy of removing the Indian population in the 19th century (Schechla, 1993: 241-244; Bell-Fialkoff 1993: 111-113). 2. Attempting to classify the methods of ethnic conflict management and termination, McGarry and O’Leary suggest two principal methods; one for eliminating differences and another for managing them. As methods for eliminating differences, there are genocide, forced population transfers, partition and/or secession and, finally, integration and/or assimilation, which all actually refer to demographic engineering. For managing differences, there are mainly four methods: hegemonic control, arbitration, cantonisation and/or federalisation and consociationalism or power-sharing (McGarry and O’Leary 1993: 4). 3. The author of this study is aware of the vast literature on the terms nation, ethnicity, nation- state, nationalism and nation-building and knows that there exist several approaches, definitions and explanations changing in time. Within the limits of this study however, he does not aim to make a review of these concepts as their applicability may well differ according to space and time and in that they are subjects of a separate comprehensive study. For the purpose of this essay, therefore, they are used flexibly as broad concepts embedded in the lexicon that emerged with the rise of nationalism. For a workable review of these concepts see Smith (2001). 4. Erik-Jan Zürcher (2008) aptly defines the modern period of the Ottoman Empire in general and the late Ottoman era in particular as ‘laboratory of demographic engineering’. 5. This periodization is an approximate one. It is not claimed that it has general applicability. 6. There are diverse figures on the emigrated Tatars. While Tekeli (1990: 55) and Saydam (1997: 65) give the numbers of emigrated Tatars between 1789-1800 as 500.000, (Karpat 1985: 65) estimates it as 80.000. 7. A challenging study that urges one to think that this was not a linear development has been published by Meyer who suggests that ‘far from following a single-minded policy to expel Muslims from its territory, tsarists policy makers and bureaucrats endeavored increasingly in the late 19th and early 20th centuries to induce Muslims to remain in Russia. Indeed, while influential studies of Muslim emigration have argued that the Crimean War marked the beginning of an era in which the forcible eviction of Muslims became an objective of Russian state policy, the year 1860 in fact marked the undertaking by the Russian government of new policies designed to limit Muslim emigration. Policies aimed at retaining Muslim subjects were carried out through several instruments available to the state. These included, on occasion, attempts at dialogue and

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persuasion but also frequently involved the use of force, intimidation, and violence’ (Meyer 2007: 27-28). 8. This is not peculiar situation to the national development of Greece and observable in every case in the Balkan context. Under the circumstances shaped by the interaction of socio-economic transformation of the Ottoman millets, their cultural development through linguistic and historical studies, rise of the nationalist elites who adopted nationalism as political ideology in manifesting socio-economic grievances of their societies against the Ottoman rule and eventually striving to free themselves by seeking state-formation are observable in , Greece and Bulgaria. In all of these cases, nationalization process brought about the ‘othering’ of the Muslims (Karpat 1985: 70-75), who were perceived as the agents of the Ottoman rule and efforts to eliminate them for homogenization. For nationalization processes in the Balkans in general see Karpat (1973); Pavlowitch (1999); Jelavich (1983 and 1983) and Stavrianos (2000). 9. These were the measures taken as a result of the Muslim emigration into the Ottoman lands and should be considered separately from the Ottoman state’s response to the development of nationalism among the Ottoman millets, notwithstanding response to nationalism and refugee flows interacted and sometimes overlapped as was the case in the aftermath of the Balkan Wars. As a matter of fact, such measures as promoting Ottoman identity, extending the rights and privileges of the millets and developing modern secular criteria for citizenship as response to nationalisms of the millets (Davison 1977: 39-43) were the attempts at avoiding conflict by the state and providing integration. In that, they signify earlier attempts at the management of ethnic conflict. Resettlement of Muslim refugees and ethnic restructuring refer to a change in mentality in dealing with ethno-religious issues. Flow of Muslim refugees seems to have a vital role in this change. 10. For addition as a form of state intervention see Weiner and Teitelbaum (2001: 55). McGarry defines such settlers as ‘agents’ and suggests that they are settled in specific areas in order to consolidate ‘state’s control of the area and its resources’. Among their functions, there is minimizing ‘the risk of dissent and rebellion from local minorities (1998: 615-617). 11. Social Darwinism was very influential among the Ottoman intellectuals from 1890s to 1910s (Doğan 2006). It also influenced the Ottoman military officers, who would be the members of the Committee of Union and Progress, in militarism and nationalism. Reflections of this perspective among the Unionists can be traced in their socialization process under German military thought as well as their wars for survival from 1900s to 1910s (Nezir 2001); (Gawrych 1986). 12. For the evaluation of ‘Turcification’ as ‘nation-building’ process see Ülker (2005). 13. For the conceptual and narrative account of the Armenian deportation and massacres see Bloxham (2005), Mann (2005: 111-179), Ülker (2005), Şeker (2007), Akçam (2008), Üngör (2008) and Dündar (2008: 248-349). 14. Speaking on the integration of the Muslim refugees in the aftermath of the Lausanne settlement, Ülker points out that ‘migration became central to the nationalization policies of Turkey not only as a refugee producing process but also as a refugee incorporation device, which concerned overwhelmingly the question of how to unify the ethnically, culturally and linguistically diversified Muslim population’ explains also the motives in the resettlement of the Muslim refugees during the (2007: 2). 15. At this point, the intimate relationship between ‘size and power’ should be underlined since ‘the relative size of group of people has been crucial in determining its political and economic strength, both domestically and internationally.’ For an evaluation see Bookman (1997: 18-26). 16. The occupation of Izmir and its environ examplify this situation well. Besides massacres, between 80,000-120.000 Muslims were forced to migrate into inner Anatolia (Orhonlu 1973: 488). The Ottoman response was the prohibition of the Muslim immigration, İkdam, 28 May 1919. 17. As frequently stressed in this essay, population transfers, displacement, forced migration has been seen throughout history on several parts of the world. The peculiarity of the Convention for

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Exchange of Populations between Greece and Turkey is that ‘for the first time in history the international community accepted the forcible uprooting and the accompanying distress and hardship of thousands of peaceful and law-abiding citizens’ (Pentzopoulos 1962: 61-62). 18. According to the official census of 1935, among the 16.157.450 total population, there were Greek Orthodox, Jewish, Gregorian Armenian, Catholic, Protestant peoples besides Muslims. In addition, Turkish, Kurdish, , Greek, Circassian, Laze, Armenian, Goergian, Judeo-Spanish, Pomak, Bosnian, Albanian, Bulgarian, Tatar, Spanish, Abkhazian, Romanian and French were the languages spoken by various ethno-religious communities (Cagaptay 2004: 93). 19. Several studies have attempted to uncover the Turkish nation-state’s policy toward minorities as well as non-Turkish Muslims. Cagaptay (2006), Yıldız (2001), Bali (2000), Okutan, (2004), Aktar (2006a and 2006b) and Ülker (2007) have revealed political, economic and cultural aspects of this policy. 20. For an analysis of the relationship between citizenship and ethnic origin see Yeğen (2002). 21. A study by Guttstadt (2006: 50-56) focuses on another aspect of ‘Turcification’ policy comprising of ‘naturalization’ (giving citizenship readily to Muslim immigrants) and ‘denaturalization’ (depriving the Turkish citizenship rights of many non-Muslims) in the case of Turkish Jews. 22. From Wealth Tax of 1942 to 6-7 September Events in 1955; from the plan that was prepared by the State Planning Organization after the military intervention of 1960 for the assimilation of the Kurds (, 22 January 2008) to forced evacuation of some Kurdish villages in 1990s, it seems possible to sketch the implementation of this policy and the mentality as embedded one in the minds of administrative and political cadres in management of ethnic issues.

ABSTRACTS

This article uses the concept of “demographic engineering” for the purpose of analyzing forced migration in the Ottoman Empire and early Turkish Republic. It defines demographic engineering in a wide sense, as ‘deliberate state intervention in population figures’ for political, ideological, strategic and economic reasons. It argues that reconsidering the issue of forced migration in the Ottoman Empire and the early Turkish Republic as a case of demographic engineering provides us with an analytical tool enabling comprehensive understanding of the state-directed population movements, and challenges the state-centered, nationalist outlook that has dominated the historiography on forced migration of the late Ottoman Empire.

INDEX

Mots-clés: émigration forcée, assimilation, déplacement de populations, ingénierie démographique, déportation, nationalisme Keywords: assimilation, demographic engineering, deportation, forced migration, nationalism, resettlement

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AUTHOR

NESIM ŞEKER

Middle East Technical University Department of History

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(Social) Darwinism for Families The Magazine Muhit, Children and Women in Early Republican Turkey

Uğur Bahadır Bayraktar

Introduction and a Few Historiographical Concerns

1 The impact that Darwinism in general and social Darwinism in particular had on the mentalities of the late Ottoman and early Republican periods is beyond question. Implicit or explicit references to ‘race’ and ‘family’ were widespread during the period of the Committee of Union and Progress. While this Late Ottoman era might be considered an introductory phase, the victory of the Kemalist struggle resulted in the realization of various facets of (social) Darwinism.

2 What the present study attributes to social Darwinism is related to positive eugenics more than to racial struggle; that is, it focuses on attempts at improving the stock of the nation by means of encouraging the procreation of valuable individuals. In short, in this study social Darwinism is related to being individually fit. In this context, this study will critically analyse the core of the (social) Darwinist ideas prevailing in the early Republican era. The reason for ‘social’ being in parentheses is one of the arguments of this study. As it will be shown below it appears that the extent as well as the understanding of social Darwinism was very vague. Even though the fundamentals of Darwinism and the nucleus of social Darwinist principles concerning population, reproduction and childcare was present, there was no clear and direct mentioning of the term social Darwinism, let alone eugenics. In short, the period was somewhere between Darwinism and racist and class-biased social Darwinism.1 The primary source Muhit, a pictorial monthly family magazine, excellently demonstrates the transition from Darwinism to (social) Darwinism. The explicit presentation of the fundamentals of evolutionary ideas to the audience the magazine addressed was understandable. The new nation-state wanted to enlighten the Turkish family with the Darwinist principles, but when it comes to the overt eugenic projects the presentation become blurred. In this sense, this paper will argue that the nucleus of a mostly positive eugenicist discourse in line with the doctrines of Kemalist ideology was dominant in the circles of middle class families.2

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3 There are a few significant historiographic points that need revision. First of all, it is apparent that the employment of ‘race’ and similar terms were very beneficial for Turkish nation-state building. The term ‘race’ was employed mostly in accordance with social Darwinist thought but it is very doubtful that the period can be merely explained by this ideology. Of course the prevalence of anthropometrics and biometrics in this period attests to the accordance with social Darwinist principles, if not racism, and finding the social Darwinist nucleus of the policies of the periods is path-breaking in terms of historiography. However, this paper will argue that the racial connotations of social Darwinism were far from completing the picture of Turkish nationalism. That is, popularisation of the social Darwinist discourse, I argue, was essential prior to the establishment of grand myths such as the and . Reading the developments that took place in the early Republican period just from this perspective may lead us to miss the details. Modernisation and the making of the nation-state are familiar concerns in social Darwinism, yet crude ‘biological determinism’ does not seem to cover every social aspect of the period.3 As the current literature indicates, current historiography is mostly shaped in this manner.4 4 The Republican elite's idea of national superiority in the 1930s is well known, as are the consequent methods of both improving the privileged stock of the nation and sterilising it from degenerative elements. While the alleged superiority of the Turkish race was not in question, one should be aware of the severely restricted influence of the elites in these years. Otherwise, the rest of society is removed from the picture and what remains is the individual enlightened Republican idealists, most of whom graduated from medical schools in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.5 In line with these concerns, this study will elaborate on the (social) Darwinist preoccupations of middle class families on reproduction and childcare. Departing from the eugenics discourse that is mostly associated with Turkish nationalism, the study will show the (social) Darwinist recommendations of the Kemalist elite. While the Turkish state implemented social Darwinist ideas through laws such as the Law for Public Health (1930) and the Law for Physical Education (1938), it also aimed at public indoctrination. The magazine Muhit provided a more straightforward, popularised articulation of the (social) Darwinist principles of the Kemalist regime. Clear-cut arguments attributable to (social) Darwinist discourse were absent, but a significant number of pages was devoted to rudimentary discussions. Considering the fact that it was a family magazine addressing the middle class of the Republic, it is to be expected that the eugenic discourse was very mild, but its emphasis on health, reproduction and childcare cannot be denied. Neither the politicisation nor the popularisation of social Darwinism can be comprehended without its context and its reception among late Ottoman-early Republican intellectuals.

The Popularisation of (Social) Darwinism in Late Ottoman and Early Republican Eras

5 What is known about the Ottoman intellectuals who were interested in evolutionary and eugenic ideas in the middle of the nineteenth century is unfortunately limited.6 Darwinism and evolutionary terms first appear in an Ottoman context in the late 1860s (Alkan 2009: 336). Various figures of the Ottoman elite became interested in Darwinism, including Ahmet Midhat Efendi, Ali Suavi, Beşir Suad and Şemseddin Sami. However

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the diffusion of evolutionary terms into the Ottoman realm should not be read as indicative of a lively milieu debating evolution and its counterpart, creation. These figures were more likely to follow the popular debates than to actually investigate or add to new findings to evolutionary theory (ibid.). The influence of Western modernisation on the minds of the Ottoman literati was evident, and their interest in evolutionary theories was in accordance with this profound admiration for the West. The ideas presented to the Ottoman audience were mostly shaped along the lines of ‘encyclopedianism.’ As Doğan states, the purpose of these prominent figures was ‘to transfer the “useful” developments taking place to the people without touching their sore spot’ (Doğan 2006: 150) Similarly the works of these intellectuals were mostly translations of prominent Darwinists in Europe, such as Büchner, Darwin and Haeckel.7

6 While there were no exhaustive discussions of evolutionary terms, this does not mean that these prominent pioneering Darwinists did not have certain affinities with respect to Darwinist ideas. In an era when monotheistic religions were shaken by developments in biology, positivist ideas were accompanied by the rise of materialism.8 Beşir Fuad was known to be influenced by Herbert Spencer while writing Beşer (the Mankind) (Doğan 2006: 167). Ahmed Midhat Efendi, a prominent historian of the nineteenth century with his masterpiece Kainat (the Universe), is similarly believed to be one of the pioneering (social) Darwinists of the period according to Doğan. Ahmet Midhat, relatively dominant in the existing literature on evolution with an emphasis on Lamarckism, worked intensively on the fundamental questions that evolutionary issues raised.9 7 Indirect references to Darwin became direct in the late 1880s and 1890s when his name started appearing alongside the name of Lamarck. Evolutionary theories and terms expanded significantly both among intellectuals and popular readers. The idea was discussed that man evolved from apes in general and orangutans, chimpanzees, and gorillas in particular. The tradition of pointing out mankind’s similarities to animals began with Münif Paşa and continued with Ahmet Cevat’s magazine Muhit (Doğan 2006: 172). This tradition was to continue even into the early 1930s. Not preoccupied with the fundamentals of the theory (excluding Ahmed Midhat Efendi and a few others), the discussions on evolutionary theory and its (social) Darwinist aspects remained at a basic level. This distinction between evolution and (social) Darwinism seems to be important: The period from the last quarter of the nineteenth century to the early 1910s was very rich in terms of (social) Darwinist ideas but they were also accompanied by more superficial elaborations with the intention of expanding these ideas to the public opinion. The ‘encyclopedianist’ motivation was also apparent in the articles of the magazine Muhit. There were of course slight differences emanating from the Republican ideology as well as its strong emphasis on materialism. 8 In a global context, the visibility of eugenics was more apparent. While those nations most involved in eugenics, the US, Britain and , advanced to actual eugenic policies, Turkey hesitated well into the early twentieth century. Both the Unionist and Kemalist ideologies shared the ‘biological determinism’ of their Anglo-Saxon and German counterparts and adopted eugenics as socio-political instruments. During the Unionist years family and women increasingly became objects of interest. Emphasising the interaction between family and state during the Young Turk Period, Toprak argues that ‘sociology as a newcomer to Ottoman intellectual life influenced the making of Turkish nation-state and provided for its ideologues about the social prerequisites of a

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new society.’10 In a sense, the founding pillars of the Turkish nation owed much to social Darwinism which, according to Hanioğlu, facilitated authoritarian Unionist policies.11 There were differences with respect to the Anglo-Saxon world and Germany. Firstly, while the primary concern of those countries was the lower classes, the ‘unfit’ and the immigrants, Turkish thinkers’ use of social Darwinism was oriented towards racial notions. The constraints of the eugenicists in the with a view to creating the eugenics movement was related to ‘industrialisation, the growth of big business, the sprawl of cities and slums, the massive migrations from the country side and (in the United States especially) from abroad’ (Kevles 1995: 72). As a result of the struggle with the fact of belonging to an inferior race in the course of modernisation, ‘the spread of eugenics in Turkey occurred in just such a context, and was a movement both for and against the West’ (Ergin 2008: 282). The threat that the West constituted was ‘degeneration’ but the rise of the Republic following the turmoil in 1910s eliminated any significant degeneration threats despite a great population loss. The principal concern of the Turkish elites was to define and create a national identity and modern society (Alemdaroğlu 2006: 127-8). In a different context, the differentiation in terms of ideology was not clear. Even though Lamarckian arguments emphasising nurture over nature held their place in the Turkish context in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, they were joined by (social) Darwinian arguments in the early twentieth century. This was due to the salience of (social) Darwinism in the Turkish context and its employment by the Kemalist regime. While the radical right in Britain, rejecting the term parasitology, made degeneration a hereditary process, a breeding of the ‘unfit,’ the parasitology argument sought the cause of degeneration in the interaction between an organism and its environment.12 Political fluctuations between thanks to the discussions such as parasitology, however, did not become prevalent in countries which recently established their nation-states. The Central European nations were no different than Turkey in terms of national identities.13 The newly created nation-states were in need of national ‘legitimisation,’ if not superiority, and the metaphors of social Darwinism were one of the prevailing frameworks utilised in the early twentieth century.14 (Social) Darwinist discourse in Turkey evidently had more in common with the nation-states of the Balkans than with the West.15 9 Nevertheless all eugenics movements in the world in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries had one trait in common: the class bias of the eugenicists caused by their professional backgrounds. Firstly the eugenicists belonged to middle classes who were raised in relatively well-to-do families, mostly white-collar workers, doctors or academicians. This facet of the eugenics movement and its substantial importance in terms of political activities has usually been taken into account in the historiography of eugenics. It is not this paper’s purpose to trace the class backgrounds of all eugenicists in the West, Central and Southeast Europe as well as Turkey, but considering the fervour of middle class ideals, the eugenic movements and the following political movements can be more clearly comprehended.16 More importantly, the conclusions drawn by the eugenicists reflected their own class standards.17 Eugenics provided the middle class with ‘biological’ material not only ensuring their superiority over the so- called unfit but also imposing their moral and sexual standards over the underclasses (Kevles 1995: 107). The gender expressions formulated during the period also contributed to shape women’s identity in accordance with Kemalist ideals.18 In other words, once the pro-natalist concerns of the Second Constitutional period had been inherited by the eugenic movement of the Republican elites, the necessity of improving

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the population not only in terms of quantity but also quality was advanced against the threat that an unhealthy and crowded population would constitute to the national economy (Alemdaroğlu 2008 : 414). 10 After discussing the eugenic discussions in a more nuanced context, it can be argued that while the early twentieth century was still rich in terms of the social Darwinist principles that shaped the mentalities of the Unionist as well as Kemalist intellectuals, there were also more shallow elaborations of (social) Darwinism in publications apparently not that political. Muhit was no exception. As opposed to Ahmed Midhat Efendi, who hesitated in his encounter with the issue of evolution versus creation, the language employed by the authors of the magazine was quite straightforward and presented the evolution of man from apes as a given. While the evolutionary fundamentals were accepted as fact, the nuclei of (social) Darwinist concerns were more disguised. That is what necessitates a close reading with a view to shedding light on the mentality of early Republican families and thus inevitably also of the very elites who had a profound interest in shaping these families’ attitudes and lives.

Figure . Cover of the 35th Issue of Muhit

11 The magazine Muhit was started in November 1928 by Ahmet Cevat and its publication came to an end in 1933.19 The magazine was a pictorial monthly magazine with sections on politics, almost all of which were written by Ahmet Cevat, and other sections on poetry, national and international literature and short stories, as well as economics, science and miscellanea.20 Since Ahmet Cevat was very close to Mustafa Kemal and his ideals, the magazine was a means of popularising these ideals.21 The audience, whom Ahmet Cevat expected to like the magazine, was welcomed in the following lines: There is no organ to meet the needs of the families belonging to the middle class and above, members of whom have more or less education or are at the age of education for reading and learning; for benefiting from literature and arts, science and knowledge; for following the progress of Turkey and the realm of civilisation;

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and providing them guidance on general hygiene (hıfzısıhha), housekeeping, childcare, practical works of life.22 12 The magazine was composed of eighty pages with different sections, as Ahmet Cevat indicated. Most of the parts were reserved for the literary pieces, either translations from other languages or Turkish fictions including the episodes of Reşat Nuri Güntekin. There were introductory discussions on Western writers, poets, intellectuals.23 It should be noted that the magazine provided a sewing pattern in every issue as a supplement. There was an extensive section reserved especially for women including sections on childcare, housewives, and practical methods of housekeeping, recipes, and explanations for the sewing patterns. The first pages of the magazine were reserved for Ahmet Cevat’s editorials addressing the changing agenda of the Kemalist elites, which he explained in a simplified manner.24

13 When it comes to the legacy of evolutionary theory, however, the magazine seems to have advanced a step further. Elaborations of Darwinism owed much to Ahmet Cevat, who admitted that he was influenced by Herbert Spencer’s ‘First Principles’ while in Tripolitania.25 The ‘adventure of humanity’ now originated not from divinity but directly from the chimpanzees. In an introductory representation of Darwinism, differences were remarked in terms of humans’ skull size and ability to stand.26 Apart from these distinctive differences, the similarities to chimpanzees were emphasised in terms of the resemblance of limbs and their functions and of vestiges. The most important vestige was the eye lid that both chimpanzees and humans had. Having more perfect eye lids than chimpanzees and humans, cows and rabbits were far away from the former in terms of evolutionary theory and secondly the latter two were close relatives. Strengthening the argument with references to caecum and sacrum, Darwin had established an analogy with letters becoming null in the old words.27 Both articles in a sense furthered the reception of evolutionary theory and popularised the awareness of the origins of mankind. The emphasis on materialism and the evolution of humankind seems worthy of note to the extent that it concerned families of the new republic.28 14 The political aspects that might be associated with social Darwinism were not that clear in the rest of the articles even though Darwinist news and developments were continually published in the magazine. Even popular hoaxes were published in the journal. An example is the discovery of the Ameranthropoides loysi, a so-called large primate encountered by François De Loys in Venezuela in 1920. The subheadings were interesting: ‘A new human-faced ape discovered in America – Does Dr Montandon’s new theory turns the old theories upside down? – How was life on earth born? – What is the ologenism theory?’29 Although the purpose of the theory was to prove the missing link between South American monkeys and Indians, the article was presented with naivety.30 Considering the profound interest in science in general and evolution theory in particular at that time, the editors of the magazine did evidently not hesitate on this development whether it could be fraud or not.31

Science in the Service of Mothers and Children of the Republic

15 Muhit published new findings, hoaxes or not, but the majority of its pages was reserved for children, , and motherhood. The purpose of the ‘translated’ articles was to

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teach families scientific knowledge.32 Continuing the ‘encyclopedianist’ movement of the previous periods, these articles mainly served to popularise Darwinist fundamentals. Another subject discussed perpetually throughout the publication period of the magazine was motherhood.33 Again a translated article from Kathleen Norris, who was a popular novel writer in the US, emphasised the bliss of motherhood. Even though the article was a literary piece, its publication was no coincidence: Neither constructing scary bridges nor laying down great railways nor making the armies walk under the banners, no, none of them are as important as being pregnant and raising a child, a duty of a mother, in the world!34 16 More important than these translated articles were the original articles that corroborated the (social) Darwinist concerns of the elites. In every editorial of the magazine Ahmet Cevat underlined the importance of youth in a political as well as philosophical manner. Having realised that the twentieth century brought new perspectives on child rearing35, he exalted the belief in the ‘übermensch’ (insandanüstün) and underlined the importance of children for the creation of this overman, for contemporary mankind, he thought, considered children, not capital, as its most precious mold.36 Ahmet Cevat argued that the need for child discipline was not confined to individual children but applied to the children of the masses, for the twentieth century was ‘democratic’ in its path towards the ‘übermensch.’ The differences between classes were evident as Cevat stated: ‘How deep the differences are between the peasant and the citizen, aristocracy and bourgeoisie, and bourgeoisie and proletariat – lumpenproletariat. Differences in body and brain!’37 The twentieth century developments were, Ahmet Cevat argued, eliminating the differences between the classes and elevating all of them to the level of the ‘übermensch.’ However, Cevat was acutely aware of the Republic’s shortcomings in terms of railroad networks, electricity stations, irrigation systems, harbours and docks and of course national industries such as locomotives, airplanes, ships and factories. Accordingly, on child discipline he proposed 1) Combining practical and industrial methods with theoretical methods. It is a very beautiful work to establish different art and vocational schools. It is a necessity for the country. In our opinion, however, there is one more thing very necessary, and that is the introduction of industrialised crafts to all elementary and high schools. Every Turkish child at the age of fifteen or sixteen should be able to make planes, submarines, actual ship models as toys, to play with machines with engines, turbines (of course in the form of toys), and make them with his own hands by means of the equipments available in school workshops.38 17 The Republican ideals, despite their lacklustre compared to those of Ahmet Cevat, were profoundly invested in shaping the children of the newly established nation-state. Furthermore, this ‘discipline’ was not confined to moral and political aspects; in accordance with Ahmet Cevat’s account, economic aspects were also very prominent. The need to create a new generation did not immediately mean eugenic or social Darwinist ends.

18 Engagement was also discussed. An article translated by Dr. İhsan Nadi discussed the duration of engagement.39 Underlining the legal deficiencies of the engagement period, he argued that the deficiency should be blamed on young people’s lack of personal responsibility toward society rather than on laws.40 What he understood by responsibility indicates the marriage ideals of the Republican elites.

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[…] A parent is very wrong in considering the state of engagement as a prolongation of virginity. Some young impertinent men, however, consider the engagement as the beginning of marriage, probably as a result of the new era. Engagement is a passage, a period of transition having its particular traits, especially health dangers.41 19 Engagement was especially meant to restrict sexual relationship between prospective wives and husbands. While the prolongation of engagement was not welcomed, the violation of these special boundaries was related to the marriage: Fiancées may meet freely, but the female fiancée should be aware of the limits of her feelings and love towards her prospective husband; and a young man should avoid any acts that would violate the sacredness of female virtue. A false step taken now will lead to heavy consequences in the future. That is, if the girl remains indifferent to the things that the man could only claim as a right of marriage, the young man loses all respect for his fiancée. Or he makes her aware of this fact once they are married.42 20 The Republican elites’ concern in the context of engagement and marriage was twofold. Firstly, the possible influence of western culture in creating freer sexual relationships was considered an impediment to the nation’s moral values. Secondly, the prolongation of engagement was seen as an impediment to marriage, which was considered as the key to increasing the population of the country.43 These deleterious effects also disturbed Besim Ömer Akalın, the founder of modern obstetrics and paediatrics in Turkey. Prolongation of engagement, and hence the decrease in , according to him, were due to increased opportunities for women in education and work which in turn made them less inclined to create families. Similarly the images of luxury in novels and films were spoiling women’s natural characteristics as mothers and discouraging men from getting married (Alemdaroğlu 2006: 137-8).44

21 As already seen, engagement and marriage were not merely considered in terms of population measures. Instead, these institutions were used in order to shape the role of women in line with the ideals of the Republican elites. The women who were emancipated by the Republic were not supposed to be so ‘modern’ that they would neglect their duties in the household.45 Since the magazine addressed families and advocated for certain gender relations, it is easy to observe the materialisation of these ideas. Helping women on and off automobiles and kissing women’s hands were clear examples of how men were supposed treat women in public spaces.46 Furthermore on the section reserved for housewives, an article on the house medicine chest states the role of women plainly: […] It is an attribute of a housewife to have twenty skills on ten fingers (on parmağında yirmi marifet). A woman is obliged to become a doctor and a nurse, besides being a nanny, cook, finance minister, protocol director, consultant, consolatory, laundry-woman and ironer.47 22 The Republican elite’s considerations on urban women was evidently conservative and therefore in conflict with the modernisation reforms. Even though women were actually emancipated from their secondary position during previous centuries, the expectations placed on them only increased. While they became socially visible and eligible for employment outside of house, they were still expected, if not obliged, to accomplish the housework on their own.48 The Kemalist regime’s double discourse on women was therefore suited to the population measures of the following years.49

23 This emphasis on womanhood was entailed by the biological policies of the Republic, the aim of which was to increase population. Besim Ömer (Akalın) was one of

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those who first called attention to ‘the child question.’ In an interview in the magazine, which was more like an autobiography, Akalın stated that the question of children was fundamental to the population policy and added that the solution should be sought in terms of decreasing death rates instead of increasing births.50 Accordingly he described the aims of the Republican government as ‘decreasing death, improving the Turks.’ Making a simile of youth with the sun, Akalın described the youth as disseminating heat, light, strength, vitality, joy and merriness. The longevity of suns was largely related to their health: Today, every crop of the climate, every product of art, every capital of land is under the youth’s feet. There, the means of benefitting from them necessitates strength, and strength necessitates health. Here, I would like to repeat a sentence of Spencer “Above all, be a good animal,” and to add to that the proverb “Be strong like a Turk.”51 24 The prominence of health was nationalist as well as social Darwinist, for Akalın exalted the health of the Turkish youth, dismissing those excluded from the ‘expected’ majority: The Republican government no longer wants to see the humpbacked, feeble, weak, dumb, or foolish among its children. Our children must be strong, fit, and clever. The future of the country, the perpetuity of our Republic should be upon the strong Turkish shoulders.52 25 Sports were also encouraged for becoming fit, not only for children but adults. Frustrated after encountering a young married woman suffering from tuberculosis, Selim Sırrı offered tips for becoming fit in ten steps. He argued that exercises, contrary to the common belief, helps people become fit and gain weight.53 In addition to general education, the Kemalist elites were profoundly interested in physical education, which they regarded as a social Darwinist tool in order to stay strong against enemies.54 Whereas being fit was regarded as a weapon against outside threats, defence was by no means the only end. The education of children also had a moral purpose. In May 1931, Ahmet Cevat, this time explicitly referring to Malthus, pointed out that the question of children would be resolved by Kemalism by giving Turkish children mental virtues that were not yet present in the country.55 Yet the question was not merely confined to the small number of educated prospective mothers.56 As opposed to some European countries that had no need for standing armies, Turkey, Ahmet Cevat underlined, did need an army. This justified the policy of population increase, but also required developing children’s moral discipline, instilling in them the moral principle of ‘ realising a better production for everyone, doing good for the public’ instead of following materialist and individualist careers.57 According to Ahmet Cevat the latter was the more common aim of Turkish parents (an artefact remaining from the self- involved morals of the Ottomans) and moral duality was the crucial difference between Turkish society and the West.

26 These physiological and moral concerns were not only aimed at the generations of future leaders, but also the peasant masses. Though one might expect that the peasantry masses were seen as inferior to the urban classes, the goal of population increase seems to have been more important than such distinctions. Ahmet Cevat, upset by the peasantry’s sorry state, proposed a few provisions with a view to improving its conditions. This emphasis on peasantry, distinctive in its emphasis on ‘pure’ population, was shared by Fahrettin Kerim Gökay, who emphasised the necessity of survival and reproduction of the human species.58 Ahmet Cevat stated that giving

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every poor peasant family a tax-exempt cow and thirty acres of land was the most efficient way to ensure their welfare.59 Realising the underdeveloped state of Turkey with respect to Britain and Germany, Ahmet Cevat emphasised Turkey’s poor agricultural infrastructure, of course marking its particularity compared to earlier periods. Conceding the traditional tithe as the trouble descending from God for its origin was divine, he welcomed the new agricultural policies of the Republic. However, his concern became obvious when he stated that: The poorest strata of the peasantry has to sell the food that they or their children could eat, and as if that is not enough, they have to work in portage, service, and agricultural labour. The poorest parts of the peasantry cannot find any bread for their hearths, provide their children with milk or feed them with eggs. This very distressing state of the peasant masses that constitute the body of the nation is the most influential factor underlying the race’s failure to get rid of its physiological misery and failure to increase the population. Let organisations be established at great costs aiming to teach the peasantry how to take care of children in desired numbers, how to protect [them] from malaria and tuberculosis... It’s all meaningless unless mothers cannot feed the babies they just weaned.60 27 The nutrition problem had another, aesthetic side. Selim Sırrı (Tarcan), who wrote extensively on sports, related beauty to biological factors. He described the principles underlying beauty thus: While the species of the nations comprised of the people who know to take care of themselves evolve day by day, it is certain that the nations that remain without care experience degeneration and also that their species become interrupted. […] It should be well known that the most beautiful people grow in the nations that are most in compliance with the rules of general health.61 28 Starting from May 1932, the magazine devoted less space to scientific developments in favour of literary pieces.62 However it was evident that the Republican elite’s interest in questions of pedagogy and public health did not end. For instance, the journal Yeni Türk, which was the official journal of the Istanbul Peoples’ House (İstanbul Halkevi), continued discussions on evolution and pedagogy.63 İsmail Hakkı (Baltacıoğlu) was very interested in the youth question and wrote extensively on the matter in a series or articles called ‘The Great Dangers for the Youth?’ in the magazine Yeni Adam.64 Needless to say the question of population and children was one of the primary political issues of the period, and its elaboration and analysis owed much to evolutionary notions as well as to social Darwinist principles.

The Implicit Targets of Negative Eugenics

29 The Republican elite’s desire to create fit generations was mostly couched in terms of nutrition and general health. However, along with the measures to improve the genetic stock of the country, the existence of the ‘unfit’ caused unease. The discipline and education of ‘abnormal schoolchildren’ was one such issue. Describing them as a social group debated by the eugenicists, Nevzat Mahmut reviewed developments within the pedagogy of abnormal schoolchildren in various European states.65 He challenged the argument that no matter how much money and effort is invested in such children they will ultimately be socially devalued, thus outright rejecting the eugenicist concerns. Instead, he considered the issue from a pedagogical, social, and humanitarian perspective, and called for a solution illuminated by the advances in pedagogy for normal children. Nevzat Mahmut attributed responsibility to the society for improving

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these abnormal children, and argued that special schools should be established for them because ‘common schools’ were ‘literally a place of anguish and agony.’66

30 Even though there is no negative aspect attributable to eugenics in his account, Dr. İhsan Şükrü analysed the causes of insanity in order to demonstrate effects of insanity on future generations. The subheadings – ‘We should try not to transfer bad heritage to our children,’ and ‘Alcohol mania and terrible diseases are the greatest enemies of the mind, the brain’ – already underlined the genetic aspect of insanity. Discussing the laws of heredity by way of a tribute to Mendel, İhsan Şükrü identified two sets of causes for insanity, bodily and external factors. As one would expect, heredity comes first of among the bodily factors, followed by poisoning and infectious diseases. Syphilis was noted by İhsan Şükrü as the most important infectious disease causing insanity. 67 However, external causes were more interesting: ‘In terms of external factors we will find the aforementioned alcohol, morphine, marijuana, syphilis and some other diseases, deprivation such as hunger and captivity, and sudden and violent mental breakdowns.’68 Warning against harmful habits, Şükrü concluded that heredity, syphilis and alcohol were the most important causes of insanity. 31 Apart from these popular science articles, significant issues were the population question and the implicit discussions on ‘the unfit.’ Fahrettin Kerim dealt with the reasons why children fail in school. Having acknowledged the necessity of health evaluations before children were admitted to schools, he underlined that intelligence and character reports could also be beneficial.69 Although he warned parents about ‘idiots,’ ‘imbeciles,’ and the ‘feebleminded’ as well as the physically disabled (those with polyps, difficulties in seeing hearing etc.), he explicitly stated nothing against mental deficiencies except to note the need for special schools as existed in Europe. However, it was clear that Fahrettin Kerim believed that mentally deficient schoolchildren had to be separated from the ‘normal’ ones. While describing ‘idiot’ children, he indicated that ‘Even some of the idiots do not know anything, what they learn is merely repetition as if they were a carrot. They make weird noises, do not care about hygiene; of course, children of this kind cannot go to school.’70

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Figure . Memnune and Sabiha, sisters diagnosed with Chorea, an involuntary movement disorder.

32 This general issue was articulated through emphases on population and children, and extended to a study of parents. Paying a visit to a hospital for children and an almshouse, Mebrure Hurşit (Sami Koray) was impressed by two sisters when she noticed that they suffered from Chorea and she immediately wondered whether the disease was hereditary or not. After looking at the files, she determined that their parents were healthy.71 Therefore it was not unlikely to suggest that the only purpose of marriage was increasing population, but a healthy population. An article translated from Physical Culture argued in this manner: It is very important to be aware of the physiological duties of marriage. One of the first conditions necessary for setting up a home is health and strength. A diseased person can never become a good husband or wife. Weakness [malnutrition] is a deficiency that cannot be tolerated.72 33 While the desired prerequisites for marriage and child discipline were articulated in the magazine, some actual measures were undertaken with a view to establishing separate schools for school children deemed to be mentally unfit. Adnan Naci, paying a visit to the Izmir School for the Deaf-Mute and the Blind, informed that ‘in 1931 an experimental class was opened for the stupid.’ Soon a branch for ‘psychopath’ children would be opened.73 The School was opened in 1924 with only the section for the mute, the blind section was added in 1926 and finally the section for the ‘stupid’ was opened in 1931. Naci, discussing the purpose and ends of the institution, described the conditions for admittance to the school thus: Every student between the ages of 8 and 12 is admitted provided that they are not very stupid, do not suffer from an infectious disease, and are Turkish. The duration of education is seven years. A fee of 15 Liras a month is charged from those whose families are better off. However, currently the majority of the students are admitted free of charge. The number of student paying fee is very little.74

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34 Children were also discussed in terms of criminality. Considering centuries-old practices of crime prevention in Britain, it was stated that locking children up was not an ideal way to rehabilitate them. Rather, as an article originally published by Pictorial Review stated, ‘countries that are sensitive to this matter do not lock up children alongside grown felons, but act as if they want to prevent them from learning the various crafts of crime. The seeds of crime do not grow out of nowhere; the crafts of murder are learned in the prisons. Many quarters of society are considered the seedbed of crime.’75 Although the ultimate aim seemed to be rehabilitation, ‘evil’ evidently carried class connotations. Thieves were also considered. In a translated article from Popular Science, the possibility of curing thieves by means of surgery was discussed. Determining the points on a body that lead someone to become delinquent, the article discussed the possibility of such operations.76

35 Articles dealing with these questions of children and population declined in Muhit beginning from 1932. From then on essays of Turkish doctors or intellectuals decreased, and the only article concerning child health was ‘The Contagion of Tuberculosis’ by M. Remzi Turan. 77 Naively informing readers about the methods to protect the children from tuberculosis, Remzi Turan did indeed question the heredity of tuberculosis but not elaborate, preferring instead to focus on preventative measures.

The Rise of Turkish Racism and Conclusion

36 Ahmet Cevat’s interests, and thus the orientation of Muhit, shifted from pedagogy to anthropology and linguistics from 1931 onwards. Inspired by studies dealing with the origin of the Turks vis-à-vis the Arian races, he published a few articles on the Hittites and the Sumerians.78 Only after this date did the relatively naive discussions of positive eugenics give way to social Darwinism in the crudest sense of survival of the fittest. In spite of lacking a detailed anthropological discussion, Cevat’s discussion of Hittites dealt with the question of whether Turks were one of the Caucasian races and whether the Caucasian races originated from . The similarity of Turks with the Hittite artefacts was striking: ‘The lion-headed man published in this issue seems highly important to us. If one looks at this head carefully, it is impossible not to notice the Turkish nose.’79 Ahmet Cevat then turned to the Sumerians, enthusiastically asking in the subtitle ‘whether the nation that invented writing and used it in daily practices, saved humanity from primitivism, and advanced to high civilisation was the Turks.’80 Hittites, Ahmet Cevat believed, inherited the Sumerian traditions and thus spread civilisation throughout history thanks to other ancient civilisations such as Babylonians, Assyrians, and Phoenicians. According to him, Anatolian Hittites were believed to be of the same race as Sumerians and Turks, and the similarity between Sumerians and Turks was their agglutinative languages. Though he admitted it did not constitute conclusive proof, he then described Sumerian civilisation and its significance.81 The anthropological and linguistic discussion of the origins of the Turkish race remained at a popular level. Since Ahmet Cevat was a linguist himself, his discussion of Sumerians dwelled on language similarities.82 The discourse he constructed culminated in his claim, based on the studies of the Society for the Research of Turkish History, that the cuneiform script of the Sumerians somehow developed into the .83 In this context, Ahmet Cevat’s articles were one

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of the cornerstones in the construction of the national and racial mythology that would rise rapidly in the late 1930s.84

Figure . One of the Gudea’s statues in Ahmet Cevat (Emre), ‘Sümerlilerin Menşei,’ Muhit, no. 36 (October, 1931). The caption in Turkish is ‘Gudea’s statue. In Louvre Museum. Body of this statue has not been found. There is a scarf-like turban on his head. Despite the broken nose, it shows the characteristics of Central Asian Turks. There is nothing Sumerian here.” 37 The early Republican era was full of questions related to nation formation and it is apparent that these concerns drew significantly on (social) Darwinist principles. However, the period was not entirely ‘hardcore’ in terms of political aspects of social Darwinism. Instead, the encyclopaedianist movement, a legacy of earlier periods, was prominent in the popular press. The expansion of evolutionary theory and (social) Darwinism to the middle-class families of the Republic was one of the primary ends of the magazine Muhit. While relatively simple notions of Darwinism were presented to readers, the elites of the period were not entirely devoid of social Darwinist prejudices against the so-called unfit. Muhit did indeed entertain the notion of positive eugenics, but it did not exclude the victims of negative eugenics main priority of which was women and children. First of all, although the women of the Republic were formally emancipated, in practice their emancipation was restrained. In other words, the Kemalist discourse, while proposing modernisation reforms, heavily conflicted with the state of women and resorted to the social Darwinist notions in effect to materialise the ‘ideal’ women of the Republic; that is present and an equal in the public sphere and a qualified housewife in private sphere. Accordingly, both engagement and marriage were defined in terms of their material end of increasing productivity and ensuring the survival of the Turkish race. Secondly, children became the tools of the very same concerns.. The aim of bringing up a politically ‘conscious’ generation of youth both physically and morally for the emergent nation-state was enriched by a deep interest in

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biological explanations. The constant use of the word ‘discipline’ (terbiye) served to raise children not merely in terms of political but also of biological fitness.

38 The social Darwinist principles leading to negative eugenics was almost absent in the articles of Muhit. Since the essential question of the time was increasing population and not purifying degenerated elements, the absence is understandable. Even though it was the same period that witnessed a more negative stance toward the so-called unfit in other publications or policies, the explicit aspects of negative eugenics were only in a core form. That is, while expressing discontent regarding ‘unfit’ people, alcoholics, feebleminded schoolchildren, the insane, etc., the magazine focused on mainly on positive eugenics. Rather than an explicit hostile attitude towards lower classes, the period was mostly shaped by elites’ ideals of women and children, which they considered to be the most fundamental factors in the preservation of the race. Being a family magazine, Muhit de-emphasised the political aspects of social Darwinism and lacked biological sophistication. But its contribution to the social engineering of the day cannot be denied. The Republican elites believed in and furthered the (social) Darwinist ideas even in a comparatively naive family magazine. It was only from 1931 onwards that Turkish racism turned to explicit social Darwinism. These ideas were employed to establish the foundations of the emergent nation-state, and in this respect the magazine Muhit was no exception with its perpetual emphasis on women, children, and the racist anthropology of the 1930s.

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Alemdaroğlu, Ayça (2005) ‘Politics of the Body and Eugenic Discourse in Early Republican Turkey,’ Body & Society 11 (3), pp. 61-76.

——— (2006) ‘Eugenics, Modernity and Nationalism,’ in Turner, David; Stagg, Kevin (eds.) Social Histories of Disability and Deformity, London, Routledge, pp. 126-141.

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Alkan, Mehmet Ö. (2009) ‘Osmanlı Darwinizmi,’ Cogito 60: Darwin Devrimi: Evrim, pp. 333-358.

Arslan, Emre ‘Türkiye’de Irkçılık,’ in Bora, Tanıl; Gültekingil, Murat (eds.) Modern Türkiye’de Siyasî Düşünce, vol.4: Milliyetçilik, Istanbul, İletişim [1st ed. 2002], pp. 409-426.

Atabay, Efe (2009) ‘Eugenics, Modernity and the Rationalization of Morality in Early Republican Turkey,’ Ph.D. dissertation, McGill University.

Doğan, Atila (2006) Osmanlı Aydınları ve Sosyal Darwinizm, Istanbul, Bilgi Üniversitesi Yayınları.

Duben Alan; Behar, Cem (1991) Istanbul Households: Marriage, Family and Fertility 1880-1940, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.

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Ergin, Murat (2008) ‘Biometrics and Anthropometrics: the Twins of Turkish Modernity,’ Patterns of Prejudice 42 (3), pp. 281-304.

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Hanioğlu, M. Şükrü, Preparation for a Revolution: The , 1902-1908, New York, Oxford University Press.

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Jay Gould, Stephen (1996) The Mismeasure of Man, New York, Norton.

Kevles, D.J. (1995) In the Name of Eugenics: Genetics and the Uses of Human Heredity, Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press.

Mishkova, Diana (ed.) (2009) We, the People: Politics of National Peculiarity in Southeastern Europe, and New York, Central European University Press.

Öktem, Ülker (1992) ‘Charles Darwin’in Evrim Kuramı’nın Tanzimattaki Etkileri,’ Araştırma Ankara Üniversitesi Dil ve Tarih-Coğrafya Fakültesi Felsefe Bölümü Dergisi 14, pp. 1-13.

Öztan, G. Gürkan (2006), ‘Türkiye’de Öjeni Düşüncesi ve Kadın,’ Toplum ve Bilim 105, pp. 283-300.

Salgırlı-Güvenç, Sanem (2009) ‘Eugenics as Science of the Social: A Case from 1930s Istanbul,’ Ph.D. dissertation, State University of New York.

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Toprak, Zafer (1991) ‘The Family, , and the State During the Young Turk Period, 1908-1918,’ in Eldem, Edhem (ed.), Premiere Rencontre Internationale sur L’Empire Ottoman et la Turquie Moderne, Istanbul, ISIS, pp. 441-452.

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Turda, Marius (2004) The Idea of National Superiority In , 1880-1918, Lewiston, NY, The Edwin Mellen Press.

Turda, Marius; Weindling, Paul J. (2007) ‘Eugenics, Race and Nation in Central and Southeast Europe, 1900-1940: A Historiographic Overview,’ in Turda, Marius; Weindling, Paul J. (eds.), Blood and : Eugenics and Racial Nationalism in Central and Southeast Europe, 1900-1940, Budapest and New York, Central European University Press, pp. 1-20.

Ünder, Hasan (2008) ‘Türkiye’de Sosyal Darwinizm Düşüncesi,’ in Bora, Tanıl; Gültekingil, Murat (eds.) Modern Türkiye’de Siyasî Düşünce, vol.4: Milliyetçilik, Istanbul, İletişim [1st ed. 2002], pp. 427-437.

Yalansız, Nedim (1998) ‘1930’lar Türkiyesi’nde Demokrasi ve Kemalizm Tartışmaları,’ Çağdaş Türkiye Tarihi Araştırmaları 3 (8), pp. 25-48.

NOTES

1. In order to avoid confusion, ‘social’ will be in parentheses only when referring to social Darwinism in the context of Muhit where references to racist and elitist connotations of social

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Darwinism were implicit. In other general discussions there will be no parentheses at all. It should be also noted that the ‘social’ in parentheses does not indicate a variation between Darwinism and social Darwinism but instead a positive eugenicist social Darwinism and a negative eugenicist one. 2. Although the Republican elites were preoccupied with these ideals, the primary concern of this study is (social) Darwinist and eugenic ideas among middle-class families. This distinction is essential, because if this ‘limited’ sphere is disregarded then writing the history of the early Republican period from a (social) Darwinist perspective loses one of its most important objects, families. 3. The term ‘biological determinism’ is used here in accordance with Gould’s very important work The Mismeasure of Man. Focusing on the innate abilities of intelligence and avoiding eugenics, he nevertheless states the causes of the ‘biological determinism’ underlying the eugenics movement as well. Resurgences of biological determinism ‘correlate with episodes of political retrenchment, particularly with campaigns for reduced government spending on social programs, or at times of fear among ruling elites, when disadvantaged groups sow serious social unrest or even threaten to usurp power.’ For further details of biological determinism in terms of historical and current discussions, see Jay Gould 1996: 19-50 (the quote is on p. 28). 4. For attempts analysing Turkish modernisation on the basis of social Darwinist ideas, see Alemdaroğlu 2005, Ergin 2008. 5. Most of the scholarship on eugenics, both within and outside of Turkey, is confined to the works and ideas of intellectuals and their conflicts with each other. Writing the history of eugenics in this manner renders the very masses that these idealistic figures aimed to transform ‘invisible.’ Understanding eugenics through its ultimate end, society, avoids making society into the ‘object’ that it was in the eyes of eugenicist idealists. The need for revision seems evident. See Kevles 1995, Turda 2004. For the contexts, see Doğan 2006; Atabay 2009; Salgırlı- Güvenç 2009. 6. For an introductory discussion on the impact of Charles Darwin and evolutionary theory on Ottoman intellectuals, see Öktem 1992. 7. For Ottoman materialists in general and Darwinists in particular prior to the Second Constitutional period, see Hanioğlu 2005; Doğan 2006: 147-203. 8. Ünder (2008: 428-9) sees the interest in social Darwinism as occurring in two fields, the intellectual and political. Social Darwinism was introduced in intellectual circles during the last quarter of the nineteenth century, and intellectuals armed themselves with social Darwinism during the first decades of the twentieth century. 9. His articles ‘What Would Be If Man Lived Alone?’ and ‘Man (The Emergence of Man on Earth)’ go beyond most thinkers of the period in tackling these questions. Ahmet Midhat’s ‘Preface’ in Universe is meticulously rich in terms of its distinct emphasis on natural history with overtones of materialism. Although the volume is a translation of the French work L’Univers, which deals with general world history, Midhat’s preface underlines the tendency towards a materialistic standpoint of historiography with an emphasis on natural history on a global scale. 10. Zafer Toprak (1991: 442) adds that women and family were brought onto the agenda of the new regime during that period. 11. The interest Unionists had in materialism and social Darwinism was evident during the formation of the new nation state. Hanioğlu brilliantly shows the relation between the Unionists as empire savers who viewed the problem from the viewpoint of the state and their subsequent inclination towards authoritarian theories. For the influence of materialism and social Darwinism on Unionists, see Hanioğlu 2001 and 2006. 12. The differentiation in the political wings was almost absent in the Turkish eugenic discussions. While British as well as Soviet eugenicists were preoccupied with the ‘political’

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aspects of the eugenic policies, Turkish eugenicists were not. For the discussion on parasitology as a link between the eugenics and the Left in Britain, see Stack 2003: 87-9. 13. For ‘völkisch’ nationalism utilising racial metaphors and Darwinist notions of the struggle for existence and the survival of the fittest in Central Europe, see Turda 2004: 23-7. 14. Instead of the crises of modernity, ‘eugenic movements in Central and Southeast Europe reflected the aspirations of a segment of trained professionals dependent upon the state for funding and legitimacy, and whose main goal was strengthening of their newly created national states’ (Turda and Weindling 2007: 7). 15. In this context, it is not surprising to see that discourses on Southeastern European countries underwent similar changes firstly in terms of emergence of national identities, and then of national superiority. For the ‘long nineteenth century’ shaping national identities to be followed later by national superiorities, see Mishkova 2009. 16. It is no coincidence that ‘The primary spokesmen of eugenic discourse in Turkey were a group of medical doctors who had similar educations and political careers’ (Alemdaroğlu 2006: 134). Accordingly, the case of the eugenicists in Central and Southeast Europe was no different. 17. On both sides of the Atlantic statistics on mental deficiency were strongly class-biased. The more wealthy families somehow escaped the statistics while-lower income groups were recorded. Thus, ‘poverty could with ease be attributed to mental deficiency’ (Kevles 1995: 131). 18. Considering the fact that most sections in Muhit concerning marriage and conservative gender roles was mostly translated from American magazines of the period, one can discern a common interest in transforming women in line with population concerns in the United States. See the next section. 19. In order not to lead to any confusion it should be added that the magazine that Ahmet Cevat started published had ‘New’ (Yeni) prior to its name. However for convenience we will refer simply to Muhit instead of Yeni Muhit. In a similar vein, Ahmet Cevat’s surname, Emre, will be omitted for simplicity. 20. Temuçin F. Ertan (1997: 23) claims that Muhit rapidly evolved from being a magazine to a political and social review. Yet such discussions were almost entirely confined to the editorials of Ahmet Cevat. The subheading of the magazine ‘Monthly Family Magazine’ was replaced with ‘Monthly Family and School Magazine’ from September 1932 onwards. 21. Graduating from the Ottoman Military College (Harbiye), Ahmet Cevat (Emre) was among those officers of the Hamidian era who were discontent with the authoritarian regime. He was one of the officers exiled to Fezzan, Tripolitania. Following World War I, he became the assistant to Professor Giesse, a scholar of Ural-Altaic languages, and was admitted to Istanbul House of Liberal Arts (Dârülfünûn). Two years later Ahmet Cevat was in Baku in order to participate in the Language Committee studies. He then established close relationships with communists. Having met Mustafa Kemal only in 1928 and then become a member of the Alphabet Commission, Ahmet Cevat became a very prominent figure in the construction of Kemalist ideology in the early 1930s. He is believed to be one of the first to utilise the term ‘Kemalist.’ For brief information on him, see Ertan 1997; Yalansız 1998. 22. Ahmet Cevat (Emre), ‘Muhit Ne İçin İntişar Ediyor?,’ Muhit, no. 1 (November 1928): 1. All translations from the magazine are mine. 23. Charles Darwin was one of these ‘Famous Men.’ ‘Meşhur Adamlar: Charles Darwin,’ Muhit, no. 3 (January 1929): 172. 24. Ertan (1997: 25) rightly states that Muhit was not merely interested in the hot topics of the day, but also contributed to the systemisation and consolidation of the Kemalist ideology 25. Furthermore he regarded Herbert Spencer as the founder of positivism and evolutionary philosophy: Ahmet Cevat Emre, İki Neslin Tarihi (Istanbul: Hilmi Kitabevi, 1960), p. 77. In the same vein, his flirtation with Communism was short-lived. His interest in socialist ideas was close to evolutionary socialism rather than revolutionary socialism (Ertan 1997: 22).

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26. Ahmet Cevat described human evolution giving examples of homo erectus: pithecanthropus erectus (the Jawa Man), homo heidelbergensis (‘Heidelberg Man’), and Homo neanderthalensis. Ahmet Cevat (Emre), ‘Beşeriyetin Sergüzeşti,’ Muhit, no. 3 (January 1929). 27. ‘Beşeriyetin Sergüzeşti İnsanla Maymun Arasındaki Akrabalık,’ Muhit, no. 4 (February 1929): 277-8. Even though this article lacks author information as well as other references, it is probably a continuation of the article in the previous issue (see above). 28. Muhit was, in a sense, a pioneer in popularising materialism, particularly Darwinism. In an attempt to challenge religious views and make room for emergent Turkish nationalism in history, a four-volume history book influenced by Darwinist principles was published in 1931 by the Society for Research of Turkish History (renamed the Turkish Historical Society in 1932). While the volumes were intended to be high school textbooks, textbooks based on the volume were published from 1933 onwards for primary and elementary schools (Toprak 2012: 362-67). 29. ‘İnsana Benzeyen Yeni Bir Maymun,’ Muhit, no. 8 (June 1929). The article was published by courtesy of Scherl’s Magazin and Illustration. 30. Being a racist and anti-Semitist, Montandon evidently assembled the hoax on the basis of racist ideas about the origins of the man. Montandon used the hoax to support his view that human races evolved from different primates. While the white race evolved from Homo sapiens, the primate François de Loys found in 1920 served to argue that native American people had evolved from that primate. The article in the magazine made no references to François De Loys. Isabelle Girod and Pierre Cenlivres, ‘George Montandon et le grand singe américain. L’invention de l’Ameranthropoides loysi,’ Gradhiva, no. 24 (January 1999). 31. Popular science articles on human evolution and population continued to appear until the end of the magazine. Translated articles dealing with creation of mankind, creatures acting like humans, anthropoids, and inherited similarities served to popularise the materialist/Darwinist discourse that the Kemalist regime attempted to spread. See, ‘İnsan Gibi Hareket Eden Mahlûklar,’ Muhit, no. 40 (February 1932); ‘İnsanımsı Maymunların İnsan Oluşu,’ Muhit, no. 41 (March 1932); ‘Miras Alınan Benzeyişler – Irk ve cinsiyet meselesinin îzahı,’ Muhit, no. 42 (April 1932); ‘Nüfus ve Hayat Meselesi – Medeni Dünyada İnsanın Vasati Ömrü Uzuyor,’ Muhit, no. 42 (April 1932). In a similar vein, the origins of mankind in apes were demonstrated by Ilya Ilyich Mechnikov, a Russian microbiologist who was awarded a Nobel prize. ‘Bir Fen Adamının Nikbin Felsefesi,’ Muhit, no. 18 (April 1930). ‘Haşarat ve İnsanlar,’ Muhit, no. 19 (May 1930). 32. The magazine’s translation portfolio was quite rich. Most articles on science, health, and beauty were translations. The repeated emphasis on motherhood and womanhood was thus part of a more global trend. The translated articles come from various magazines, including American ones such as Woman’s Pictorial Review, Home Companion, Ladies Home Journal, Good Housekeeping, The House Beautiful, American Magazine, Graphic, Reader’s Digest, Sphere, Child’s Magazine, The World Tomorrow, Wide World, World’s Work Parents’ Magazine Modern Priscilla, Atlantic Monthly and French ones such as La Femme de , Lectures pour Tous, Le Miroir du Monde, Je Sais Tout, Science et la Vie, L’art Vivant, L’Illustration, Lisez moi Bleu. The translations from German were confined however to only a few magazines, namely Scherl’s Magazin, Uhu, and Das Magazin. 33. Also marriages were covered as much as motherhood. The articles in the fourth issue elucidate this case. The headings were, ‘Successful Marriages,’ ‘Parents Successful in Disciplining Chidren,’ and ‘What do you complain about in your marriage life?’ Articles about marriage might have been intended to influence the marriages of the Republican families against the impact of the ‘American’ culture of the period. ‘Muvaffak Olmuş İzdivaçlar,’ ‘Evlat Terbiyesinde Muvaffakiyetli Anababalar,’ ‘Evlilik Hayatında Şikayet Ettiğiniz Şey Nedir?,’ Muhit, no. 4 (February 1929). 34. Kathleen Norris, ‘Anne Olmak Bahtiyarlığı,’ Muhit, no. 6 (April 1929). The quotation is on pp. 408-9. Tributes to motherhood were not confined to the conservative American discourse of the

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period. ‘Becoming a good mother,’ stated Tunakan in 1938, ‘and raising fit children should be the greatest pride for a young girl’ (quoted in Öztan 2006: 275). 35. The Turkish word terbiye is very difficult to translate into English. The original phrase is çocuk terbiyesi and what Cevat meant is to a certain extent related to pedagogy, but his discussion goes beyond the scope of that discipline. In this article we will translate this word – the meanings of which cover upbringing, training, educating, maintenance, teaching manners, correction, punishment, culture, good manners, decency, proper way of conduct, socialization, and discipline – as ‘discipline.’ See 2005: 74 n. 1. 36. Ahmet Cevat (Emre), ‘Çocuk Asrı,’ Muhit, no. 6 (April 1929): 401. The subheading of the editorial was ‘The Ideal of the Overman – The Need to Create Creative Minds.’ Although Ahmet Cevat did not explicitly acknowledge the Nietzschean term, the latter issues thanks toan author’s reference to Ahmet Cevat on this notion, shows that the term is used regardless of references to Nietzsche. 37. The original statement is as follows: ‘Köylü ve şehirli, aristokrat ve burjua, [sic] ve burjua ve proleter - proleter ve serseri bu sınıflar arasında ne derin farklar var. Bedence ve dimağca farklar!’ Ibid. 38. Ibid. 39. The original author was a female doctor named ‘Zelheym’ in Turkish. İhsan Hadi, ‘Nişanlılık Nedir? Ve Uzun Sürmeli midir?,’ Muhit, no. 8 (June 1929). 40. By legal deficiencies Nadi meant the absence of legal provisions protecting husband and wide. For instance, the author was discontent that there was not legal protection for a woman who divorced her husbands but was transmitted syphilis or gave birth to children by an epileptic and drunk husband. Young people’, as the author indicates is in line with the ideas of Havelock Ellis. For a brief discussion on this British intellectual see Kevles, In the Name of Eugenics: Genetics and the Uses of Human Heredity: 85-92. For the postulates of evolutionary thought on sex, one of the major topics in which Ellis was profoundly interested, see Stack, The First Darwinian Left: 58-60. 41. Hadi, ‘Nişanlılık Nedir? Ve Uzun Sürmeli midir?,’ 617. 42. The original statement is ‘Nişanlılar serbestçe buluşabilirler; fakat nişanlı kız, müstakbel zevcine karşı göstereceği temayül ve aşkın derecesini bilmeli; genç erkek de kadın faziletinin kudsiyetini ihlâl edecek herhangi bir taşkınlıktan sakınmalıdır. Çünkü bu esnada atılmış yanlış adımlarım cezası ileride pek ağır çekilmektedir. Yağni [sic.] eğer kız, erkeğin ancak hakkı zevciyetle tesahup edebileceği şeylere karşı nişanlı iken lakayt kalmışsa genç erkek nişanlısına olan bütün hürmeti kaybeder. Veyahut evlendikten sonar bunu hissettirir.’ Ibid. 43. This concern was to solidify in the 1930s and early 1940s. For a section called ‘Why do they not Marry?’ (‘Niçin Evlenmezler?’), see Sadi Irmak, ‘Kemmiyet ve Keyfiyet Bakımından Nüfus ve Sağlık Meseleleri’ in Kendimize Doğru Memleketimizin Bazı Meseleleri (Istanbul: Foto Magazin Basımevi, 1943), 61-67. 44. The publication of an interview with Besim Ömer (Akalın) in the magazine was thus not surprising. ‘Besim Ömer Paşa - 44 Senelik bir Profesörümüz,’ Muhit, no. 12 (October 1929). 45. According to Gökalpian thinking, the idea of the nuclear, family, which was based on egalitarian principles and upheld the components of national morality, was important since it constituted the cell of the social organism and the building-block of the nation state in a Durkheimian sense. Toprak, ‘The Family, Feminism, and the State During the Young Turk Period, 1908-1918,’ p. 444. According to Duben and Behar, the ideal family here was an extention of Gökalpian thinking, which urged adapting European elements while maintaining the basic elements of the Turks’ own culture in which the family was a local cultural element (Duben and Behar 1991: 211-13). 46. ‘Muaşeret Adabı,’ Muhit, no. 8 (June 1929). The article, enhanced by illustrations, was taken Scherl’s Magazin. 47. ‘Ev Eczahanesi,’ Muhit, no. 8 (June 1929).

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48. Alemdaroğlu (2006: 138) argues that Turkish eugenicists’ ideas on women echoed the German eugenic policies, and states that ‘the majority of women were still expected to contribute to modernisation by being good mothers and housewives.’ 49. This ‘double discourse’ was not entirely confined to population concerns. ‘The nationalist discourse still imposed on women the duty of enlightened motherhood and ‘rationalized’ housekeeping, which provided the ultimate justification for their education’ (Alemdaroğlu 2005: 66). 50. ‘Besim Ömer Paşa - 44 Senelik bir Profesörümüz,’ p. 893. In fact both methods were simultaneously employed during the first decades of the Republic. 51. The statement in Turkish is: ‘Bugün her ıklimin [sic.] semeresi, her sanatın mahsulü, her toprağın sermayesi gencin ayağı altındadır. İşte bütün bunlardan istifade ancak kuvvette, kuvvet ise sıhhattadır [sic.]. Burada meşhur İngliz Filozofu Spenser in [sic.] “Her şeyden evvel iyi bir hayvan olunuz” cümlesini tekrar ve buna “Türk gibi kavi olunuz” darbı meselini ilâve etmek isterim.’ Ibid. 52. Ibid., 893. The quotation in Turkish is: ‘Cumhuriyet hükûmeti, artık, evlâtları arasında kanbur, cılız, zayıf, budala, ahmak görmek istemez. Çocuklarımız kavi, zinde, zeki olmalıdır. Memleketin istikbali, Cumhuriyetimizin bakası kavi Türk omuzlarında olmalıdır.’ 53. For thin people, semirmek, gaining weight in a healthy way, was a must for becoming fit. Selim Sırrı (Tarcan), ‘Zayıflar Nasıl Kuvvetlenir?,’ Muhit, no. 5 (March 1930). 54. The emphasis on the physical education of youth would reach a peak in the late 1930s following the enforcement of the Law for Physical Education in 1938. With that regulation, sports was no longer seen simply as a means for health and beauty, as Selim Sırrı did in the account above, but as a method to create a militarized society. See Akın 2004: 87-121. 55. Ahmet Cevat (Emre), ‘Çocuk Meselesi,’ Muhit, no. 31 (May 1931): 1. The Population question was to persist until the late 1930s. For a similar discussion, see Saraç Ömer Celal, ‘Avrupanın ve Türkiyenin Nüfus Meseleleri,’ in C.H.P. Konferanslar Serisi 9 (Ankara: Recep Uluoğlu Basımevi, 1939), pp. 51-68. 56. ‘[…] German and American women are very skilled in the art of motherhood. Generally, European women’s childcare skills are higher than ours. In our country, only the girls who graduate from high schools and colleges have been prepared to a certain extent to become good babysitters and mothers, yet even if we assumed that all of them receive an ideal motherhood training, their numbers are limited.’ Ahmet Cevat (Emre), ‘Çocuk Meselesi,’ 1. It is apparent that the class that was meant to increase was that of the educated, notwithstanding its limited size. In a similar vein, this statement underlies Ahmet Cevat’s discontent with this minority’s low marriage frequency. 57. Ibid., p. 3. The totalitarian shift associated with children’s education and morality was on the rise in the 1930s. As with physical education, the Kemalist regime envisioned a child morality in organic solidarity with the nation. For such authoritarian developments in the field of physical education, see Akın 2004: 142-90. 58. Although the idea of increasing the peasant masses seems at odds with eugenicist thought, Fahreddin Kerim Gökay’s remark is in line with the fundaments of pro-natalist policies. From the viewpoint of eugenic principles, protecting genetic material from extinction and degeneration required a population increase. The emphasis on peasants may also have been due to their relatively pristine genetic material. For a discussion of the survival of the species see Fahrettin Kerim Gökay, ‘Irk Hıfzısıhhasında İrsiyetin Rolü ve Nesli Tereddiden Korumak Çareleri,’ in C.H.P. Konferanslar Serisi 12 (Ankara: Recep Uluoğlu Basımevi, 1940), 11. 59. Ahmet Cevat (Emre), ‘Köylüye Biraz Refah Vermek için Küçük Tedbirler,’ Muhi t, no. 15 (January 1930): 1121. 60. The quotation in Turkish is ‘Köylünün en fakir tabakaları devlete o cûz’i vergiyi verebilmek için kendi yiyeceği ve çocuğuna yedireceği gıdayı pazara götürü satmak, bâzan bu da kifayet etmiyerek [sic.] şehre geli hammallık, uşaklık, ırgatlık etmek mecburiyetindedir. Köylünün en fakir kısımları

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doyasıya ekmek bulamıyor, çocuğuna süt veremiyor, yumurta yediremiyor. Milletin cüssessini teşkileden [sic.] köylü kütlelerinden bu elim vaziyeti Irkın Fisiolojik sefaletten kurtulamamasına, nüfusun artmamasına en müessir amillerdir. Köylüye istenildiği kadar çocuğa nasıl bakılacağını, sıtmadan veya veremden nasıl korunacağını öğretmek için büyük masraflarla teşkilatlar vücuda getirilsin… analar memeden kestikleri yavrularını besliyemedikten [sic.] sonar hepsi nafiledir. Ibid., 1122. Original emphasis. 61. Selim Sırrı (Tarcan), ‘Güzel ve Güzellik,’ Muhit, no. 17 (March 1930): 1302-03. The Turkish word hıfzısıhha is translated here as ‘general health’ despite its frequent translation as hygiene. Apparently the meanings that Selim Sırrı gives go beyond mere hygiene measures. 62. The 43rd issue groups these kinds of articles under the heading ‘Knowledge and Science.’ This heading does not occur again, except the 46th issue, which has the headings ‘Scientific Discussions’ and ‘Scientific Pages’. 63. (Social) Darwinist principles were not common, but there was a certain degree of Lamarckian arguments. As İsmail Hakkı argued, ‘Therefore what determines the future is not heredity. It has been argued that children sometimes inherit a strong tendency towards particular acts such as suicide, murder, theft or abuse.’ İsmail Hakkı (Tonguç), ‘Tekamül Vetiresi ve Pedagoji,’ Yeni Türk Mecmuası, no. 4 (January 1933). 64. İsmail Hakkı (Baltacıoğlu) wrote six episodes on the issue between July 1935 and September 1935. For the first article of the episode see İsmail Hakkı (Baltacıoğlu), ‘Gençlik için Büyük Tehlikeler Var mıdır?,’ Yeni Adam, no. 79 (July 4, 1935): 10. 65. Nevzat Mahmut, ‘Anormal Mektepçocukları,’ Muhit, no. 6 (April 1929). 66. The article was quite contradictory. On the one hand, Nevzat Mahmut appraised the developments in pedagogy that bridged the gap between methods aimed at normal and abnormal children, and thus relegated differences to a minor importance. On the other hand he proposed separate schools for the abnormal who, he believed, deserved to lead the happy childhood that they would not otherwise have. The Turkish reads: ‘Taliin yüzçevirdiği [sic] bu yavruları çocukluklarında olsun biraz bahtiyar etmek, hayatta bulamiyacakları [sic] saadetten biraz olsun tattırmak insanî bir vazife değil midir?’ Ibid., p. 439. 67. İhsan Şükrü (Aksel), ‘Deliliğin Sebepleri,’ Muhit, no. 18 (April 1930): 1382. 68. Ibid. 69. Fahrettin Kerim (Gökay), ‘Mekteplerde Çocukları Sınıfta Bırakan Sıhhi Sebepler Nedir?,’ Muhit, no. 19 (May 1930): 19, 79. 70. Ibid., 19. 71. Mebrure Hurşit (Alevok), ‘Etfal Hastanesinde ve Darülacezede Gördüklerim,’ Muhit, no. 31 (May 1931): 10-12. 72. ‘Evlenmeden - Evlenmenin Bütün Şartı: Sağlamlıktır,’ Muhit, no. 33 (July 1931): 58-9. 73. Adnan Naci described ‘psychopathic’ children as children ‘who are very fit in terms of intellect but lacking in morals. In other words, they are the kids who started stealing when very young, made a habit of lying, absconded from school.’ Adnan Naci, ‘İzmir Sağır Dilsizler ve Körler Mektebinde Gördüklerim,’ Muhit, no. 35 (September 1931): 17. There were 65 students in total and five of them, who were classified as ‘stupid,’ attended an experimental class along with ten blind children. ‘Stupid’ here refers to ‘aptal’ in Turkish. 74. Emphasis added. ‘Stupidity’ appears indeterminate even in a school specialised for the ‘stupid.’ Ibid., 18. The School also focused on the hereditary ‘stupidity.’ For further information on this school, see Necati Kemal (Kip), ‘Sağır, Dilsiz, körler ve aptalları ihtiva eden Anormal çocuklar müessesesinin onuncu yıl dönümü,’ in Sıhhat Almanakı (ed.), Mazhar Osman (Istanbul: Kader Matbaası, 1933). The requirement of being Turkish and the consequent acceleration of racism was evident in the 1930s. In addition to this school, the Mineral Research and Exploration Institute, Military Colleges and War Academies indicated ‘being of Turkish race’ as one of their admission prerequisites (Arslan 2008: 410).

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75. ‘Sokak Çocuklarını Cinayetlerden Kurtarmak için Çocuk Mahkemeleri ve Kurtarış Tecrübeleri,’ Muhit, no. 37 (November 1931). 76. ‘Hırsızların Cerrah Neşteriyle Tedavisi,’ Muhit, no. 26 (December 1930): 34-37. As the article pointed out, the most important spot was believed to be the thyroid gland. 77. M. Remzi Turan, ‘Veremin Sirayeti,’ Muhit, no. 37 (November 1931). 78. At the first congress held by the Society for Research on Turkish Society, a couple years before the formation of the Turkish Historical Thesis and the Sun Language Theory, there were two hypotheses awaiting evidence. The first was that Turkish was the first mother language of all the world’s languages, and the second one was the hypothesis that Turks were representatives of the Arian race that created civilisation (Arslan 2008: 412). 79. ‘Hititlerin San'atından Birkaç Numune,’ Muhit, no. 27 (January 1931): p. 56. 80. His response was ‘perhaps.’ Ahmet Cevat (Emre), ‘Sümerliler ve Medeniyete Hizmetleri,’ Muhit, no. 35 (September 1931): p. 3. 81. A pseudo-scientific proof came in the next issue. Basing himself on archaeological remnants of the Sumerians, Ahmet Cevat argued that Sumerians were of a white race instead of the Semitic race. The justification was that ‘the statutes and reliefs show them [Sumerians] as a beautiful white race. Even though Semitic races were represented with sharp and long beards, Sumerians are mostly without beards.’ Ahmet Cevat (Emre), ‘Sümerlilerin Menşei,’ Muhit, no. 36 (October, 1931): p. 5. 82. Ahmet Cevat (Emre), ‘Sümerlilerin Lisanı,’ Muhit, no. 37 (November, 1931); Ahmet Cevat (Emre), ‘Sümerlilerin Lisanı,’ Muhit, no. 38 (December, 1931); Ahmet Cevat (Emre), ‘Sümerlilerin Lisanı,’ Muhit, no. 39 (January, 1932). Although Ahmet Cevat indicated that the discussion would continue, there was no continuation. Ahmet Cevat called Mohenjo-daro, an ancient archaeological site discovered in Baluchistan in 1922, the ‘sister’ of Sumerian civilisation. More importantly, he stated that ‘it was discovered that the pictographs, which were not decrypted then, had a very close relationship with the Sumerian civilisation, also known as the first Turkish civilisation.’ Ahmet Cevat (Emre), ‘Hindistan Mesopotamyası,’ Muhit, no. 42 (April 1932): p. 17. 83. Ahmet Cevat (Emre), ‘En Eski Türk Yazısının Tarihi - 1,’ Muhit, no. 52 (February 1933). Not only was the Sumerian language incorporated into the mythic Turkish past, the Sumerians themselves became ‘Sumerian Turks.’ Ahmet Cevat (Emre), ‘En Eski Türk Yazısının Tarihi - 2,’ Muhit, no. 53 (March 1933). 84. Ahmet Cevat’s articles on (social) Darwinism were last articles of Muhit before publication ceased in May 1933, after the 55th issue. It is probable that Ahmet Cevat no longer had time to administer it, as his title on the back page of the magazine, ‘franchise owner,’ was followed by ‘Deputy of Çanakkale’ in March 1933. Ertan claims that Ahmet Cevat withdrew from political discourse since the consolidation of the single-party regime meant that it no longer needed such legitimisation (Ertan 1997: 34).

ABSTRACTS

The impact of Darwinism on the formation of modern Turkish state is indisputable. Social Darwinist theories were employed to consolidate a homogenous Turkish entity in early Republican Turkey, and were promoted not just within political spheres, but also in popular culture. Against this background, this paper analyses the role of social Darwinism in an

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illustrated monthly family magazine, Muhit. The magazine included sections on literature, popular science, and tips on housekeeping. Ahmet Cevat (Emre), who wrote the editorials of the magazine, paid special attention to the Kemalist agenda of the day. While popularising science in general and social Darwinism in particular, Muhit also included sections that were meant to shape the children and women of the Republic in line with Darwinist concerns. Kemalist conservative ideals with respect to the gender roles of women were thus reproduced through a stress on the idea of marriage and raising up healthy children. Although such articles were mostly translations from Western magazines, Muhit still served the Kemalist ideology of creating modern women with traditional roles at home and fit and healthy children for the future of the Republic. From 1931 onwards Muhit shifted from pro-natalist discussions of social Darwinism to a full-fledged racist social Darwinism. The five-year-publication life of the magazine was in that sense an important witness to the change in the Kemalist ideology.

INDEX

Keywords: social Darwinism, Kemalism, Turkey, Muhit magazine, family policies, racism, eugenism, gender, reproduction

AUTHOR

UĞUR BAHADIR BAYRAKTAR

Boğaziçi University, Atatürk Institute for Modern Turkish History

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Entretien avec Fuat Dündar Interview with Fuat Dündar

Fuat Dündar

NOTE DE L’ÉDITEUR

Entretien réalisé le 3 septembre 2011 à l’Orient-Institut Istanbul (OII) par Nikos Sigalas (NS) et Alexandre Toumarkine (AT). La transcription en a été faite par Alexandre Toumarkine, et révisée par Fuat Dündar et Isabelle Gilles. Fuat Dündar est actuellement boursier de la Fondation Humboldt et chercheur invité au Zentrum Moderner Orient (ZMO) à sur un projet intitulé ‘When Nationalism Start to Count : The in (1933-1974)’.

Définition, usages et discussion de la notion d’ingénierie

AT : Nous allons d’abord revenir si vous le voulez bien sur la notion d’ingénierie, qui est au cœur de ce dossier de l’EJTS. Comment la comprenez-vous ? Qu’en faites-vous ? J’aimerais que vous répondiez autant sur un plan synchronique que diachronique, dans la durée, depuis vos premiers travaux sur la politique démographique des unionistes vis-à-vis des populations musulmanes jusqu’à vos travaux actuels sur l’Irak de 1918 à 1932. Commençons donc par le début : pourquoi avez-vous adopté cette notion d’ingénierie ? Que vouliez-vous en faire ? Pourquoi avez-vous pensé qu’elle était importante ? FD : Mes travaux sur l’ingénierie démographique ont pour origine une question pratique. Je travaillais dans les années 1990 à l’Association des Droits de l’Homme ( İnsan Hakları Derneği (İHD)) à Istanbul où je suivais la question des villages kurdes évacués de force par l’État turc. Je me suis aperçu à ce moment que la dimension historique de ce phénomène devait également être prise en compte. C’est à cette époque qu’aux archives du Başbakanlık les documents concernant la Première Guerre Mondiale sont devenus accessibles ; je me suis dit qu’il serait bon d’y chercher les racines de tout cela.

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AT : Dans cette antériorité de votre action associative militante, la question des déplacements forcés de population a-t-elle joué un rôle ? FD : En fait, à l’association, je m’occupais surtout des questions de statistique relatives au nombre de villages vidés. Et puis il y a eu cette présentation conjointe de Hilmar Kaiser1 et Ara Sarafian 2 à l’İHD qui a joué aussi un rôle [sur ce point, lire l’introduction au premier volet de ce dossier par Nikos Sigalas et Alexandre Toumarkine]. À côté de cette présentation, il y avait de toute façon un climat qui, dans le nouveau contexte post-soviétique, post-guerre froide, conduisait immanquablement à débattre de la question arménienne, de la déportation (tehcir) et de la question du génocide. Ces questions ont commençaient à être débattues dans l’opinion publique, surtout après le reportage de l’historien Halil Berktay en 2004, et cela a certainement joué aussi un rôle. Mon premier travail, la thèse de master [publiée dans Dündar 2001, ndlr], a commencé dans les archives ottomanes, sans que je connaisse la littérature sur l’ingénierie démographique. Je suis donc parti des documents et d’eux seuls. Mon second travail, la thèse de doctorat [Dündar 2006], portait cette fois sur les non musulmans. Je l’ai mené en France. C’est à ce moment-là que je me suis familiarisé avec la terminologie. C’est là que j’ai réalisé qu’il existait en dehors de la Turquie une littérature importante sur le sujet. J’ai consulté cette littérature internationale, en particulier ce qui concernait la question arménienne. Le concept d’ingénierie sociale était lui plus large ; il venait des États-Unis et avait été utilisé pour le travail de secrétariat dans les entreprises ; il renvoyait à l’organisation du travail. Ensuite, le terme a été étendu à toutes les formes d’intervention du pouvoir dans la vie de la société. L’ingénierie démographique, elle, englobait aussi, dans une perspective large, les politiques publiques de naissance et de mort. C’était un cadre trop large pour la politique unioniste, et j’ai donc préféré utiliser le terme ‘ingénierie ethnique’, car le pouvoir unioniste, de 1913 à 1918 avait mis en œuvre ce type de politique ethnique. Mon but était double et renvoyait aux deux étymologies du mot ingénierie : en arabe hendese signifie la comptabilité et sa rationalité du chiffre ; l’autre étymologie, latine, renvoyait à la guerre, et à ses machines. De 1913 à 1918, la politique démographique des unionistes avait fait partie de leur politique de guerre, à coup de pourcentages (en fixant des seuils de 5% ou de 10%). La déportation avait à l’origine pour but de réduire drastiquement la population arménienne, mais aussi, et cela est rarement souligné, de transférer les Kurdes vers les régions de peuplement arménien, afin mieux contrôler les kurdes. NS : Quand vous faites intervenir le facteur de la guerre, c’est-à-dire quelque chose qui est lié à la contingence, aux événements imprévus, non planifés, est-ce que le terme d’ingénierie peut vous aider aussi à gérer cette contingence, à prendre en compte les évènements imprévus ? Le terme de social engineering a été beaucoup utilisé par les libéraux comme Hayek et autres pour critiquer l’idée de l’application d’un plan à la société (Sigalas 2011). L’idée du plan est pour moi très lié à l’idée d’ingénierie. N’y a-t-il pas une contradiction entre l’usage de ce terme dans votre travail et certaines parties de celui-ci où vous montrez que tout n’a pas été accompli selon un plan ? FD : Vous mettez le doigt sur un point très important. Non, je ne pense pas qu’il y ait un paradoxe. Premièrement, je n'ai pas utilisé les termes ‘ingénierie de massacre’, ‘ingénierie sociale’ ni ‘ingénierie démographique’ mais plutôt ‘ethnique’, un terme apportant une nuance par rapport à ces dénominations. C’est vrai que l’ingénierie amène à prendre parti sur la question de l’intention, de l’intentionnalité, et du fonctionnalisme. Je n’y ai pas pensé au départ, pour être franc. Mon premier travail n’avait pas pour but de prouver la justesse

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de telle ou telle thèse. J’avais entendu parler du mot ingénierie, mais je n’avais aucune idée de la littérature sur le sujet. Dans la littérature sur la question arménienne et le génocide, par contre, la question de l’intentionnalité était omniprésente. Vahakn Dadrian3 et son disciple Taner Akçam4 ont développé cette idée de l’intentionnalité. Donald Bloxham 5, à l’inverse, a considéré la guerre comme un processus cumulatif de violence. Concernant la notion de plan et son lien avec l’ingénierie, oui, au fnal je considère qu’il y a bien un plan, mais je ne sais toujours pas si c’est ce plan qui est responsable de la mort de centaines de milliers de personnes. L’argument de l’ingénierie m’a été utile pour montrer que le déplacement de population d’un point vers un autre n’avait pas que des objectifs militaires mais aussi politiques. En Turquie, l’argument pour nier le génocide tenait essentiellement à cette idée du rôle de la guerre. Face à toute cette littérature, j’ai mis en avant la dimension ethnique de cette politique de déportation. Le point où j’ai abouti m’amène à considérer les deux dimensions qui ont une relation très étroite et dialectique. Déplacer de force une population nécessite un contexte de guerre. NS : La guerre est-elle une opportunité de réaliser quelque chose de latent ? Quelles sont les dynamiques propres qui engendrent ces politiques ? FD : La guerre est quelque chose qui facilite – je préféré cette idée à celle d’opportunité – le déplacement forcé ou la déportation de population. Pourquoi faciliter ? Eh bien parce qu’aucun groupe ne se laisse faire dans ce type de situation. Il résiste, même sans armes, et cela crée une situation chaotique. Et cela, aucun pouvoir ne le souhaite. NS : La guerre ne fait-elle que faciliter ou ne fait-elle pas aussi germer une nouvelle idée ? FD : Les deux, encore que je doute qu’il s’agisse d’une nouvelle idée. La question migratoire est la grande affaire de l’Empire depuis la guerre de Crimée, voire même bien avant. Reşat Kasaba a récemment démontré dans A Moveable Empire (2009), que la migration, mais aussi la déportation et la sédentarisation étaient de longue date des pratiques essentielles de l’Empire ottoman. Alors qu’est-ce qui a changé ici ? Le fait que nous soyons face à une mentalité militaro-nationaliste. Le nationalisme moderne est lié à la conscription universelle. C’est la manière dont il intériorise la dimension militaire. Donc ce n’est pas seulement une opportunité pratique créée par la guerre ; c’est en même temps quelque chose que la mentalité militaro-nationaliste amène. S’il avait eu à gérer la première guerre mondiale, Abdülhamid II n’aurait jamais édicté la loi de déportation (Tehcir kanunu) du 27 mai 1915. Même si beaucoup de gens minimisent sa portée, cette loi est une première. Pour la première fois, un pouvoir politique cède sa compétence à ses troupes, aux militaires. Pour moi, cet abandon est possible à cause de la diffusion de la conception de la nation en armes (Millet-i Müselleha en ottoman, ordu millet ou asker millet en turc), de son transfert dans le cadre ottoman. La conscription fait que chaque individu masculin majeur membre d’une communauté est un soldat potentiel. Le Comité Union et Progrès (désormais CUP) voit donc désormais les autres groupes ethnico-religieux comme potentiellement militaires donc potentiellement dangereux. Chaque Arménien est donc un militaire en puissance et, même s’il ne se révolte pas, on considère qu’à l’avenir il pourra le faire. C’est probablement ce point qui est responsable de la part la plus importante de l’extermination. Tous les documents officiels ottomans de 1915 reprennent cette idée. Eh bien, cette idée est inconcevable à l’époque d’Abdülhamid. AT : En partant de votre dernière observation, je voudrais poser deux questions : les non- musulmans sont-ils devenus des cibles parce qu’ils sont considérés comme une menace ? FD : Depuis le début du XIXe siècle, il y a eu un certain nombre de révoltes dans l’Empire ottoman. Dans leur répression, il n’a jamais été question de s’en prendre à

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une nation dans son ensemble, par exemple à tous les Bulgares, à tous les Arméniens. Prenons le cas de la révolte d’Ilinden en Macédoine en 1903. Abdülhamid y répond par des mesures militaires, mais jamais il ne donne le droit à ses armées de s’en prendre à un groupe tout entier. Il n’a pas sur ce point la même mentalité que les unionistes. Il n’est jamais entré jusque dans les foyers. Les unionistes positivistes, eux, l’ont fait avec les non-musulmans comme avec les musulmans. Et cela pour pouvoir atteindre les individus, tous les individus. AT : On sait que la conscription n’est pas forcément considérée comme un facteur de dissolution d’un Etat. Il existe toute une école de pensée qui juge au contraire qu’elle va de pair avec la démocratisation. Faites-vous une différence entre le rôle du militarisme et celui des militaires ? FD : L’important c’est ici la manière dont le pouvoir civil se militarise, ce n’est pas le rôle de l’armée en tant que tel. Cette question est récurrente dans l’histoire de la Turquie contemporaine : c’est tout simplement celle des relations entre pouvoirs civil et militaire. Après ma thèse de doctorat, j’ai fait un travail intitulé ‘Déportation et conflits dans l’Empire ottoman et la Turquie, 1908-1947’ qui m’a amené à conclure qu’une des raisons qui permet la prise rapide de décisions concernant le déplacement forcé de populations tient à la nature de l’opposition aux unionistes. Dans le cas de la révolte d’Ilinden, pour la première fois, une organisation politique, provoque un soulèvement qui se produit simultanément dans plusieurs foyers. NS : Il y a le précédent des révoltes arméniennes de 1895-1896. FD : Ce que je veux dire c’est que la révolte d’Ilinden porte à la perfection le modèle révolutionnaire insurrectionnel déjà testé notamment par les organisations révolutionnaires arméniennes. On peut résumer les choses de la manière suivante : en 1895 et en 1903, le pouvoir ottoman attend une révolte générale des peuples de l’Empire. AT : Je voulais revenir sur votre commentaire concernant Abdülhamid. Ne risquez-vous d’être taxé de complaisance vis-à-vis de ce dernier ? Vous connaissez cette rengaine en vogue dans une certaine historiographie révisionniste : ‘Ah si Abdülhamid était resté au pouvoir, tout cela ne serait pas arrivé !’. FD : Entre l’attitude du pouvoir ottoman en 1895 et 1915, il y a une telle différence que cela me permet d’émettre l’hypothèse qu’Abdülhamid, lui, n’aurait jamais édicté la loi de 1915 sur la déportation. Pour moi, cette loi est un véritable point de rupture. Pour la première fois, une communauté entière est déportée. C’est un point de non- retour. Regardez les périodes récentes et vous comprendrez mieux l’importance de la loi de 1915 : la question de la réinstallation des Kurdes de Kirkouk déplacés sous Saddam n’est toujours pas réglée alors que les premiers retours ont été enregistrés en 2003, après la guerre d’Irak, qui est aussi la 3e guerre du Golfe. Comme on dit en turc, Papazı dövdürmeyectik (litt. ‘On n'aurait pas dû laisser le prêtre se faire battre !’ 6). La déportation est un acte irréparable, j'ose la qualifier de massacre "doux" et "légitime". AT : Revenons à l’ingénierie sociale et à la manière dont le terme a été utilisé en Turquie. Il ne s’agit plus dans ce cas, comme dans celui de l’ingénierie démographique de s’en prendre à un groupe, mais de remodeler l’ensemble de la société. FD : Comme Hamit Bozarslan, Sükrü Hanioğlu ou encore François Georgeon l’ont noté, les unionistes ont pour projet de remodeler ce qu’ils désignent comme la ‘société turque’. Une partie de ce projet est dirigé contre les non-musulmans.

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NS : N’est-ce pas là un type de projet propre à tous les nationalistes ? FD : Ce que je veux souligner ici, c’est que les unionistes n’ont pas seulement un projet dirigé contre les Grecs (Rum) ou les Arméniens, mais qu’ils considèrent la société dans son ensemble, tout entière. La plus grande différence entre Abdülhamid et les unionistes est la question du rythme. Or, dans l’Empire ottoman finissant, on passe d’une conception du politique où le pouvoir doit se donner le temps de prendre une décision à une autre ou au contraire il pense qu’il doit prendre des décisions le plus vite possible. AT : On est donc en présence d’une forme d’impatience politique ? FD : Oui. Si on avait pris le temps, un certain nombre de transformations seraient intervenues plus lentement. De 1895 à 1915, ce qui change dans la gestion de la question arménienne est le rythme. Les partis révolutionnaires arméniens veulent que les réformes qu’ils appellent de leurs vœux se réalisent sans attendre. Abdülhamid, lui, par mentalité et par tactique, est dans un cadre plus lent. Donc le décalage entre le et les révolutionnaires arméniens ne tient pas seulement aux projets, à leurs contenus, au nationalisme, ou encore aux antagonismes religieux, mais surtout au rythme. Les révolutionnaires arméniens pensent que les réformes doivent intervenir au plus vite, car sans cela le mouvement révolutionnaire risque de disparaître. AT : C’est donc lié au caractère spécifquement révolutionnaire de l’idéologie de ces partis ? FD : Oui. NS : Mais n’est-ce pas aussi lié à un contexte, à un enchaînement de révoltes et de répressions ? FD : Oui, certainement. Si le comité Hınçak n'avait pas existé, il n'y aurait pas eu les massacres des années 1890. Sans le Vilayat-ı Şarkiye Islahatı (connu sous le nom de réforme arménienne de 1914) et le contexte de guerre, en y incluant la rébellion de Van de 1915, la ‘solution absolue’ (kati surette çözümü) n'aurait pas été mise en place par le CUP. Les exigences militaire et ethnique ne sont pas antinomiques mais complémentaires. NS : le concept de ‘mentalité unioniste’ est très critiqué parce qu’il renvoie à un bloc, à un groupe monolithique. Cette mentalité est-elle vraiment partagée par tous les unionistes ? FD : J'évoquais plus haut le fait que les unionistes avaient des positions différentes. Mais la généralisation est inévitable… On sait que les unionistes prennent des décisions à l’unanimité. C'est la décision qui est importante. Par exemple, celle de la déportation a été au préalable longuement discutée. Mais les ‘trois’ [référence au ‘triumvirat’ Enver, Cemal, Talaat] avaient reçu des autres charge d’appliquer ces décisions. On sait, notamment grâce aux travaux de Hanioğlu, qu’il y avait des divergences, mais aussi des changements d’opinion chez les Unionistes. Mais on est obligé de considérer les évènements par un prisme global. On a besoin de fixité. Ma thèse ne porte pas sur les conceptions, les visions du monde, mais sur les politiques démographiques. Quand on descend dans les détails, on voit des divergences et cela ne m’a pas posé de problème de m’y référer. Mais on peut bien parler d’une mentalité unioniste. NS : Une autre question sur Talaat Pacha. Dans vos livres Modern Türkiye’nin Şifresi et Crime of numbers, vous vous centrez beaucoup sur Talaat. Vous avez eu l’occasion d’étudier les archives du Ministère de l’Intérieur sans avoir accès aux archives militaires.

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Dans la loi sur la déportation de 1915, il est écrit que les décisions de déplacement forcé incombent aux militaires. Mais si tel est le cas commet se fait-il que Talaat soit le personnage central ? Y a-t-il ici une différence entre la loi et son application ? FD : C’est vrai que ma thèse s’est concentrée sur le rôle de Talaat Pacha. Cette préférence n’est pas due uniquement à un obstacle technique, mais est aussi une préférence et termes d’argumentation. On dispose d'une grande partie des ordres codés envoyés par le pouvoir civil que représente Talaat, des ordres qu’il a utilisé pour les opérations de déportation. Malheureusement les archives militaires n’étaient (et ne sont toujours) pas ouvertes, c'est pourquoi je me suis concentré sur les opérations diligentées par Talaat. Même si les archives militaires s’ouvraient, je ne pense pas qu’on aurait un tableau très différent de celui que donne Talaat. La première raison est que Talaat, plus qu’Enver occupé sur le front, a dans cette affaire un rôle central. Dans son cas, il s’agit de dizaines de milliers de télégrammes envoyés et échangés pendant les quatre ans de la guerre, pour conduire les opérations de déplacement de population. Le fait que l’armée soit partie prenante de ce processus apparaît justement dans certains documents rédigés par Talaat. Le rôle des unités militaires dans la prise de décision est patent. On peut suivre à partir de ces télégrammes l’implication de l’armée dans ce processus. Les détails seraient peut-être un peu différents, mais la responsabilité éminente de Talaat ne serait pas remise en cause si on avait accès aux archives militaires. Deuxième point : dans les archives du Başbakanlık, dans les documents ottomans, sous l’appellation iskân, on ne sait rien de l’installation des Arméniens survivants dans des camps d’internement. Probablement que ces documents sont dans les archives militaires. La question que vous posez sur la différence entre l’ordre et son application, est problématique. Oui certainement, je n’affirme pas que les ordres ont été appliqués à cent pourcent, mais ceux qui soutiennent cette idée doivent d’abord prouver cette différence dans l’échelle locale. Malheureusement, un tel travail n'existe pas. NS : D’après le tehcir kanunu de 1915, les décisions de déplacement de population incombent aux chefs de l’armée, comme on l’a rappelé. Est-ce ce qui s’est passé dans la pratique ? Ou alors est-ce bien Talaat qui a joué un rôle fondamental ? FD : C’est le pouvoir civil qui donne cette compétence à l’armée sans qu’il soit nécessaire d’en référer au pouvoir civil. Mais cela ne suffit pas à minorer le rôle joué par Talaat. De mai à août 1915, les décisions de déportation sont prises par Talaat, en consultant l’armée, mais au final c’est Talaat qui envoie ces ordres aux gouverneurs. AT : Le débat sur la mentalité unioniste insiste sur le fait que cette mentalité a continué à sévir jusqu’à aujourd’hui. Ce dont nous débattons aussi pour les années 1910-1920, c’est la question de la continuité. FD : Cette question dépasse mon domaine d’études. Mais je me souviens avoir moi aussi réagi personnellement à certaines décisions prise pour le peuple sans le consulter et finalement contre son avis. AT : N’est-ce pas une défnition trop large ? La dénonciation de la mentalité unioniste ne renvoie-t-elle pas aussi et plutôt à la violence que l’ingénierie démographique et sociale porte en elle de manière générale ; une violence dirigée contre sa propre population ? Et puis la notion ne renvoie-t-elle pas aussi à un mécanisme de prise de décision par le haut, top down ? Enfn, comme le montre le procès Ergenekon, ne renvoie-t-elle pas aussi aux

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bandes organisées (çetecilik), au banditisme politique. S’agit-il ici d’une généalogie politique présumée de l’État profond turc qu’on pourrait faire remonter à l’Organisation Spéciale ? FD : Concernant l’ingénierie démographique, oui, il y a une continuité qui me semble évidente, en particulier dans la manière dont ceux qui prennent les décisions pensent avoir raison, parfois contre tous. Les objections les plus véhémentes sont écartées d’un revers de la main et stigmatisées comme ‘réactionnaires’. Toute critique contre le projet de civilisation est considérée comme une trahison. NS : N’est-ce pas plus largement une mentalité autoritaire plus que proprement unioniste ? FD : Si, l’ittihatçılık (unionisme) est la traduction d’autoritarisme en turc. Les unionistes étaient les premiers à initier cette tradition, des sortes de komitacı7, prétendant agir pour le peuple, mais en secret. AT : Cette mentalité a-t-elle disparu dans la Turquie d’aujourd’hui ? FD : Jusqu’à maintenant l’AKP a été un soft power obligé de composer avec l’armée. Mais aujourd’hui on peut se demander si l’AKP ne se dirige pas vers une direction antidémocratique. NS : On est ici dans le spéculatif… AT : Vous faites partie de ceux qui considèrent que le carnet de Talaat, récemment publié, est une source très importante. Certains ont dit pourtant que ce document ne contenait que des renseignements secondaires, pas de révélation, rien de sensationnel. FD : Quand des extraits ont été publiés dans la presse (dans le quotidien Hürriyet) par Murat Bardakçı (2006)8, je suis allé voir mon directeur de thèse et lui ait dit que mon travail ne comportait désormais aucune originalité et que je voulais changer de sujet ! Depuis 1998 et mon travail de master, c’était exactement l’argumentation sur laquelle j’avais travaillé, considérant que j’étais en présence d’une approche statistique et comptable. Mon directeur de thèse m’a dit de continuer… Sur le contenu du livre, on peut dire la chose suivante : Les données fournies dans le carnet recoupent celles qui apparaissent dans les télégrammes chiffrés de Talaat. Cela est également valable pour les données chiffrées, pour le style, la terminologie employée (transfert / sevk, déplacement / tehcir, etc.). J’ai compris que Talaat était très attentif aux termes qu'il emploie. De ce que j’ai vu, j’en ai conclu qu’il ne s’agissait pas d’un faux. Bien sûr, on ne peut pas être sûr tant que l’on n’a pas consulté le document original. Le livre a été publié… et la polémique a commencé (Bardakçı 2009). Bon, désormais, la plupart des gens qui travaillent sur cette question considèrent que ce cahier est authentique. Aujourd’hui, on est passé à un autre débat, portant lui sur la qualité du contenu du livre. Pour moi le livre est important, car il informe sur la mentalité unioniste. Concernant les questions démographiques et la question arménienne en particulier, s'il fallait établir une hiérarchie entre les documents disponibles, le carnet de Talaat figurerait sans aucun doute au premier rang. De là à dire que toutes les données, tous les chiffres qui figurent dans le carnet sont justes…C’est une discussion dans laquelle je ne souhaite pas entrer, tout simplement parce que nous ignorons quand ce carnet a été rédigé. Quand nous le saurons, nous pourrons entamer ce débat. Pour moi, le carnet de Talaat est le dernier tahrir defteri ottoman. Le fait qu’il soit publié 90 ans après avoir été rédigé nous permet de voir en pensée et en action un homme appartenant à une clique, un groupe secret, agissant au cœur de l’État. Caché dans des archives privées, il a été publié tardivement. Il n’est pas vraiment différent des tahrir ottomans publiés aux XVe et XVIIe siècles. Par ailleurs ce carnet ne concerne pas que la question arménienne, mais

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de nombreux autres points qui sont encore en débat aujourd’hui. Depuis le travail de Kemal Karpat (1985), on avance qu’une grande partie de la population de l’Anatolie à la fin de l’Empire est composée d’immigrants musulmans (muhacir) et que cela représente des millions de personnes. Dans le carnet de Talaat, il n’est question que de 900 000 muhacir. Cela signifie qu’il faut probablement réviser à la baisse des chiffres exagérés concernant les migrations des muhacir des Balkans vers l’Empire Ottoman. Je ne dis pas que le chiffre de 900 000 est juste. AT : Oui, car cela ne semble pas un chiffre réaliste… FD : je dis que si l’on prend en compte le fait que la population musulmane de l’Empire s’élevait en 1914 à 10-12 millions, cela signifie qu’un peu moins d’un musulman sur 10 est un muhacir des Balkans. Concernant les migrations consécutives aux guerres de Balkans, il y a dans le carnet de Talaat des chiffres qui n’ont rien à voir avec ce qu’on attendait. AT : Oui, par ailleurs on n’arrive toujours pas à évaluer le taux de mortalité durant et juste après les migrations des muhacir, et même à savoir tout simplement s’il est élevé ou non. Une partie de la solution réside peut-être dans l’estimation de ce taux de mortalité. NS : Oui. On peut aussi expliquer ce chiffre en considérant qu’une partie des immigrants musulmans a été assimilée et n’est donc plus comptabilisée comme telle. FD : Peut-être, mais le point important est que la discussion que nous avons ici est le résultat de la révision à la baisse des estimations concernant les immigrants. Le carnet de Talaat est donc aussi une pièce intéressante concernant les migrations.

AT : Au XVIe siècle, quand les Juifs d’Espagne ont trouvé refuge dans l’Empire ottoman, aucun document ottoman n’a donné de chiffre totalisant l’ensemble des Juifs immigrés. Et si on y réfléchit c’est tout à fait normal, et c’est la même chose pour les muhacir au cours du ‘long’ XIXe siècle. En fait ce que les chercheurs travaillant sur ces questions ont cherché à estimer, ce sont des chiffres introuvables. Je voulais donc vous demander si l’on peut parler à propos du carnet de Talaat d’une ‘photographie’ de ces migrations ou plutôt une photographie de la perception de ces migrations à un moment donné, comme Nikos Sigalas vient de le suggérer dans sa remarque. Est-ce que en effet, après un certain délai, les muhacir ne sortent pas de la catégorie per se où ils ont été placés initialement ? À quel point ces documents sont-ils fragmentaires ? Et cela y compris pour le pouvoir lui-même ? On dit que l’objectif de ces dirigeants unionistes est de recenser leurs populations, mais leurs instruments sont-ils fables ? Quand il travaille sur les migrations, l’État ottoman prend-il en compte un intervalle très large qui remonte dans le temps ? Quelle mémoire a-t-il de sa propre gestion des migrations ? Talaat a pris un instantané valable à un moment x, mais la durée et la continuité sont-elles prises en compte ? NS : En général, les chercheurs travaillant sur l’ingénierie démographique pensent que l’Empire ottoman s’appuie à la fn du XIXe siècle sur des compétences et des mécanismes bien huilés. À partir du milieu du XIXe siècle, les Bulgares ont produit une quantité impressionnante de cartes ethniques ; tout cela révèle une véritable discipline. Mais peut- on dire la même chose des Ottomans ? À mon avis, non. Je trouve que les unionistes ont fnalement peu de données démographiques en main. FD : Oui, c’est vrai. Le fait qu’un certain nombre de peuples de la région produisent à l’époque autant de documents démographiques, de cartes, ne signifie pas que les Ottomans font de même. Comme partout, c’est l’identité des groupes minoritaires qu’on fait ressortir dans la production de ces documents. Et cela n’est pas valable seulement pour l’Empire ottoman, mais aussi par exemple pour un État comme la Russie impériale. La préoccupation est donc de créer une science de gouvernement. Concernant le troisième point de vos questions, il faut d’abord se mettre d’accord sur ce qu’on entend par compétence. Le CUP a fabriqué des cartes ethniques et cela a été

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une dimension de sa politique démographique. Savoir si ces cartes étaient bonnes ou non est un autre débat. Il n'y a pas d’institut statistique sous le CUP. Par contre, on peut légitimement s’étonner que le CUP puisse d’un seul coup produire ce type de documents. Tout cela n’est pas tombé du ciel. En fait c’est un savoir opérationnel en fonction des objectifs et des opérations conduites. On sait, à partir des mémoires des officiers allemands dans l’Empire Ottoman, que Talaat suivait et notait les opérations de déportation à partir de cartes et que cela l’a aidé pour le suivi des opérations. L’Empire ottoman, comme l’a noté l’historienne Karen Barkey (2008), agit dans l’approximatif, dans le domaine fiscal par exemple. Il ne faut chercher une perfection ou un souci de perfection qui n’existe pas dans l’Empire. Cela dit l’absence de perfectionnisme est une chose et l’obsession du comptage en est une autre. En fait, il faut probablement attendre la République et même les années 1950 pour que l’État turc ait vraiment les moyens de faire des recensements démographiques précis. Cette précision il ne faut pas la chercher dans la période ottomane tardive. Talaat a fait des cartes dans le cadre d’un plan et non pas par simple curiosité. Il l’a fait comme une action préalable à sa politique démographique, car il avait besoin de ces données pour la mettre en œuvre. Bon, pour revenir au carnet de Talaat, moi non plus je ne suis pas convaincu par le chiffre de 900 000 concernant les muhacir, mais cela oblige à reconsidérer des affirmations comme celles de Karpat qui dit qu’un musulman anatolien sur deux est d’origine immigrée, du Caucase et des Balkans. Entre 1/10 et ½ il y a une sacrée différence !

L’Irak et les statistiques démographiques britanniques de 1918 à 1932

AT : Passons désormais à la dernière partie de cette interview qui concerne vos travaux actuels sur l’Irak. Vous travaillez sur l’Irak mandataire, en particulier sur la période 1918-1922, mais vous considérez qu’il faut aller ici jusqu’à 1926 et à l’accord sur Mossoul, voire jusqu’à 1932. Vous allez pouvoir revenir sur ces questions de limites chronologiques. De manière générale, votre travail sur le sort de l’Irak au sortir de la Première guerre mondiale éclaire d’un jour nouveau le débat sur l’ingénierie démographique. Comment êtes- vous venus à ce travail ? Quel est son intérêt et dans quel cadre chronologique avez-vous choisi de l’aborder ? FD : Ce travail est le fruit d’un choix réfléchi, mais il est aussi quelque chose qui résulte du hasard. Accepté par la Fondation Humboldt, il porte sur la manière dont les Britanniques ont conçu les statistiques démographiques de l’Irak de 1918 à 1932 et l’usage qu’ils en ont fait. Mon travail de thèse se terminait en 1918 et je me suis demandé ce qui se passait en termes d’ingénierie ethnique dans l’espace post- ottoman. J’ai pensé alors que l’Irak me fournirait les meilleurs matériaux. AT : Pourquoi ? FD : Après 1918, les débats ottomans portaient essentiellement sur deux régions : la et l’Irak. Je ne connais pas les langues balkaniques et la ‘question de Mossoul’ de l’autre côté, comme on l’a nommait à l’époque, est une question qui engageait un grand nombre d’acteurs dans la région et qui a occupé les esprits pendant une longue période. D’une certaine manière, cette question est encore d'actualité, après l’intervention américaine dans les années 2000. Cela m’a surpris. Et je me suis mis en quête de ce que l’on peut considérer comme les racines des questions et problèmes que l’Irak rencontre encore aujourd’hui. En outre, même si j’ai beaucoup travaillé sur

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les politiques démographiques du CUP vis-à-vis des musulmans, le vrai point de rupture concerne les relations entre musulmans et non musulmans et ce sont surtout les non musulmans qui en ont fait les frais. Dans le cas de l’Irak, je me suis demandé comment les frontières entre les groupes, les communautés musulmanes avaient été tracées et discutées. C’est le premier exemple pour l’espace post-ottoman. Mon matériau, ce sont essentiellement les statistiques britanniques jusqu’à 1932, et ma question concerne leur instrumentalisation par la puissance mandataire. Je suis arrivé à la conclusion que les Britanniques avaient manipulé les statistiques pour faire perdurer le statu quo. Ces statistiques ont donc été un instrument d’une politique impériale. Je veux dire par là que la Grande-Bretagne, pour ne pas donner Mossoul aux Turcs, a avancé un certain nombre d’arguments. L'un de ceux-ci était que les Kurdes représentaient 65 % de la population à Kirkouk, donc la majorité absolue (les Turcs représentaient 15 %). Cette majorité justifiait la non-restitution. Nous sommes ici en présence d’un raisonnement, d’une rationalité statistique, mobilisée en vue de défendre des intérêts impériaux. La question du bien-fondé de cette politique est un autre problème. AT : Aucun empire n’avait recouru à ces méthodes auparavant ? FD : Si, cela existait en Europe depuis le XVIIIe siècle comme l’a montré Morgane Labbé (2000) : il y a la question allemande en Hongrie, des recensements sur la langue maternelle et des cartes démographiques. Mais pour le Moyen-Orient, c’est quasiment la première fois. Il y a bien un précédent avec le Liban, des années 1840 aux années 1860. Mais le cas libanais concernait des populations appartenant à des confessions religieuses différentes (, , Sunnites, etc..) Le modèle, la création d’un état maronite, était proposé par la France. C’est projet qui est resté caduc. C’est pour cela que l’exemple de Mossoul est important. De 1918 à 1920, la région de Mossoul compte 65 % de Kurdes. En 1926, la Turquie renonce à sa souveraineté sur la région de Mossoul et accepte qu’elle passe sous mandat britannique dans ce qu’on appelle à l’époque la Mésopotamie. En 1930, une agitation kurde commence à Souleimaniye ; ce n’est pas une révolte à proprement parler, mais c’est suffisamment important pour que les Britanniques se saisissent de la question. Les élites kurdes locales envoient une pétition à la Société des Nations. Les Britanniques refont alors un recensement qui montre que la population kurde ne représente plus que 55 %. On voit bien la manipulation ici. J’ai trouvé une autre série de statistiques britannique pour l’année 1945 : le pourcentage de la population kurde est à nouveau de 65 %. AT : Quels sont les enseignements de cette question de Mossoul pour la Turquie ? Celle-ci tient aussi à l’époque un discours sur l’Irak, sur le démembrement de l’Empire au Moyen- Orient. Quelle adéquation y a-t-il entre ses discours domestiques et son positionnement international sur la question ? FD : La question de Mossoul permet, en étudiant les arguments de la Turquie lors des négociations avec les Britanniques, de dresser une comparaison avec son discours interne, tel qu’il apparaît dans les débats au parlement turc. Dans cette enceinte, il n’est pas question de statistiques, (on parle tout de même de Kurdistan), pas de carte ethnique. Voilà la différence essentielle. NS : Cette omission résulte-t-elle d’un manque de données sur la région ? FD : Non, Les Turcs ont des données démographiques et ethniques, puisqu’ils appuient leur argumentation sur ces données lors de leur négociation avec les

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Britanniques. C’est qui étonnant, c’est que les cartes concernant la région de Mossoul produites par la délégation turque lors des négociations du Traité de Lausanne n’ont jamais été publiées ! Je suis parvenu à la conclusion suivante : la transition et la continuité entre le CUP et les Kémalistes, entre Empire et république s’appuie sur trois moments, la Première Guerre mondiale, surtout 1915, c’est-à-dire en fait l’extermination arménienne, l'échange de population "gréco-turc" de 1923 et… Mossoul. La Turquie moderne a été remodelée à partir de ces trois modèles. AT : Mais on ne parle presque jamais de Mossoul… FD : En 1923, Yusuf Ziya Bey9 fait un discours au Parlement turc, demandant à ce que Mossoul soit conservée dans l’Empire, au nom du Pacte National (Misak-i Milli). Deux ans plus tard, lors de la révolte de Sheikh Saïd, ce même Ziya est fusillé, le 14 avril 1925. Donc, ce n’est pas seulement, comme on l’a dit et répété, la question du califat qui est à l’origine de la révolte de Sheikh Saïd, mais aussi celle de Mossoul. La première frontière musulmane est ainsi tracée entre des peuples qui n’avaient pas été séparés jusque-là. C’est le premier essai - on aura la même chose au Hatay en 1938 - mais il n’y a pas de solution sur le type de l’échange de population (mübadele) turco- grec de 1923-1924, avec par exemple l’envoi des Arabes du Hatay en Syrie mandataire. Ici l’identité religieuse musulmane partagée joue probablement un rôle préventif. AT : Pour revenir au cas irakien, pouvez-vous replacer la question de Mossoul dans une perspective comparative d’ingénierie démographique ? FD : Je préfère encore une fois parler d’ingénierie ethnique et statistique. AT : Il n’y a pas d’exil, de déplacement forcé, de violence, de massacres dans le cas de Mossoul ? FD : Si, mais les massacres interviennent sous Saddam Hussein dans les années 1970. Mon travail sur les statistiques concernant la région de Mossoul, dans un second temps, portera sur la période qui va des années 1930 jusqu’à 2003 pour analyser le rapport entre statistiques et déportation. [C’est ce chantier que FD a entamé depuis l’interview]. AT : Peut-on parler d’une différence entre temps de paix et temps de guerre ? NS : Ce n’est pas encore tout à fait la paix de 1918 à 1932, mais ce qu’on qualife fort justement d’après-guerre. FD : Ma thèse de doctorat portait sur l’utilisation interne des statistiques par les unionistes en temps de guerre et dans le secret. Alors que mon travail sur l’Irak prend place dans un cadre de négociation internationale, en période de paix. Un même outil dans deux contextes différents…

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AT : Fuat Dündar, merci de nous avoir permis de revenir ensemble sur votre approche de la question de l’ingénierie, à partir de vos divers travaux.

BIBLIOGRAPHIE

Dündar, Fuat (2001) İttihat ve Terakki’nin Müslümanları İskân Politikası (1913-1918), Istanbul, İletişim.

——— (2006) ‘L’ingénierie ethnique du Comité Union et Progrès et la turcisation de l’Anatolie (1913-1918)’, thèse de doctorat, EHESS Paris, sous la direction de Hamit Bozarslan.

——— (2008) Modern Türkiye’nin Şifresi. İttihat Ve Terakki’nin Etnisite Mühendisliği (1913-1918), Istanbul, İletişim.

——— (2009) Talât Paşanın Evrak-ı Metrûkesi, Istanbul, Everest.

Barkey, Karen (2008) Empire of Difference. The Ottomans in Comparative Perspective, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.

Karpat, Kemal (1985) Ottoman Population, 1830-1914 : Demographic and Social Characteristics, Madison, University of Wisconsin Press, 1985

Kasaba, Reşat (2009) A Moveable Empire : Ottoman Nomads, Migrants and Refugees, Seattle, University of Washington Press.

Labbé, Morgane (2000) La population à l’échelle des frontières : une démographie politique de l’Europe contemporaine, Paris, Éditions de l’EHESS.

Sigalas, Nikos (2011) ‘Intention et contingence’, European Journal of Turkish Studies, 12. URL : http://ejts.revues.org/4552

NOTES

1. Hilmar Kaiser est un historien allemand spécialisé sur l’étude du génocide arménien. Son ouvrage majeur est Imperialism, Racism, and Development Theories : The Construction of a Dominant Paradigm on Ottoman Armenians (Gomidas Institute, Ann Arbor, 1997). Cf. aussi Hilmar Kaiser, ‘The Baghdad Railway 1915-1916 : A case Study in German Resistance and Complicity’, in Richard Hovanissian (ed.), Remembrance and Denial: The case of the , Detroit, Wayne State U.P., 1999, pp. 67-112. 2. Dans la première moitié des années 1990, Ara Sarafian menait des recherches avec Hilmar Kaiser dans les archives ottomanes. Il est aujourd’hui le Directeur de l’Institut Gomidas, basé à Londres et qui sponsorise et mène des recherches sur le génocide arménien. Pour son analyse critique des limites mises à son accès aux archives du Başbakanlık, cf. sa contribution à L’actualité du génocide des Arméniens publié en 1998 par Edipol et intitulé ‘réexamen du “débat sur les archives ottomanes”’. Ce texte est consultable en ligne : http://www.imprescriptible.fr/cdca/ sarafian (consulté le 10/12/2013). 3. Vahakn Dadrian est historien et juriste. Il est le directeur de recherches sur le génocide au Zoryan Institut à Cambridge (Massachusetts) et à Toronto (). Ses ouvrages majeurs sont The History of the Armenian Genocide : Ethnic Conflict from the Balkans to Anatolia to the Caucasus.

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Providence, RI & Oxford, Berghahn Books, 1995 (traduction française : Histoire du génocide arménien : Conflits nationaux des Balkans au Caucase. Paris, Stock, 1996) ; German Responsibility in the Armenian Genocide : A Review of the Historical Evidence of German Complicity. Watertown, MA, Blue Crane Books, 1996 ; Warrant for Genocide : Key Elements of Turko-Armenian Conflict. New Brunswick and London, Transaction Publishers, 1999. 4. Historien turc du génocide arménien. Réfugié politique en Allemagne en 1977-1978, il a suivi une formation en sciences sociales puis a étudié la torture et la violence politique dans l’Empire ottoman et la Turquie moderne avant de spécialiser sur la question arménienne. Elève de Vahkan Dadrian, Taner Akçam a d’abord privilégié une approche juridique, avec un travail sur les procès des unionistes de 1919 à 1922 (Sa thèse de doctorat soutenue en 1995 à l’université de Hanovre porte le titre suivant : Turkish Nationalism and the Armenian Genocide : On the Background of the Military Tribunals in Istanbul between 1919 and 1922), avant d’étendre le spectre de ses investigations. Son principal ouvrage est A Shameful act : The Armenian Genocide and the Question of Turkish Responsibility, Metropolitan Books, 2006 ; publié en français sous le titre Un acte honteux : le génocide arménien et la question de la responsabilité turque, Denoël, 2008 ; réédité chez Gallimard/ « Folio » en 2012. 5. Donald Bloxham enseigne à l’université d’Edinburgh. Il est l’auteur de deux ouvrages sur l’extermination des Arméniens. Cf. Genocide on Trial : War Crimes Trials and the Formation of Holocaust History and Memory, Oxford University Press, 2001 ; The Great Game of Genocide : Imperialism, Nationalism, and the Destruction of the Ottoman Armenians, Oxford University Press, 2005 ; Il a aussi écrit sur la question plus générale du génocide The Holocaust : Critical Historical Approaches, Manchester University Press, 2005 ; et Genocide, The World Wars, and the Unweaving of Europe : essays by Donald Bloxham, Vallentine, Mitchell and Co., 2008 ; et The Final Solution : A Genocide, Oxford University Press, 2009. 6. Il s’agit d’une expression turque qui renvoie au folklore turc (pour une version proche cf. aussi l’histoire Sarı öküz). L’écrivain Sarkis Çerkezoğlu (Çerkezyan), rappelant qu’elle lui a été contée par son père, la narre dans « Her Şeyi Türk Yaptınız, Solu Bari Türk Solu Yapmayın », in Yayha Koçoğlu, Hatırlıyorum. Türkiye’de Gayrimüslim hayatlar (Istanbul, Metis, 2003) : ‘Trois compères un jour d’été se sont mis en chemin ensemble pour un long parcours. Le premier est turc, le second est kurde et le troisième arménien et prêtre. Sous la chaleur estivale accablante, les trois amis cherchent en vain un point d’eau. Apercevant un vignoble, avec de belles grappes bien mûres et juteuses, ils décident d’en manger un peu, en se disant qu’ils sauront bien dédommager plus tard son propriétaire. Or celui-ci déboule et voit les trois intrus manger son raisin. Ulcéré, il se garde pourtant de marcher sur eux, car seul il est sûr de ne pas avoir le dessus. Il voit alors qu’un des trois gaillards porte la soutane et comprend qu’il est arménien, il entend le second parler et à son accent devine qu’il est kurde, et un conclut que le troisième est turc. Il se dirige vers l’Arménien et lui lance : “Τu vois ce type, il est Turc, il peut toucher mon bien, il est du même sang que moi. Quant à l’autre, il est kurde, mais c’est mon coreligionnaire. Mais toi pourquoi te permets-tu de manger mon raisin ?”. Sur ce, il se met à le frapper violemment, sans que les deux autres, trop heureux d’être épargnés ne se portent à son secours. Il se tourne ensuite vers le Kurde et lui dit : “Bon d’accord tu es musulman, mais pourquoi te permets-tu de pénétrer dans ce vignoble sans y avoir été invité par son propriétaire ? L’autre peut bien y goûter, il est mon frère, il est Turc ; mais toi ?” avant de se mettre à le frapper brutalement. Le Turc ne bronche pas et laisse son compère se faire tabasser propriétaire du vignoble se tourne vers le Turc et lui dit : “Bon c’est bon tu es Turc, on est du même sang de la même confession, mais cela ne t’autorise pas à pénétrer ainsi dans le vignoble d’un autre en son absence !” et commence à le frapper aussi. Alors le Turc se tourne vers le Turc et lui dit : “Tu vois on n’aurait pas dû laisser l’Arménien se faire taper dessus !”’ 7. Komitacı (fr. comitadji) : signifie littéralement membre du comité exécutif de l’ORIM. Le terme renvoie à l’origine non seulement au comité exécutif, mais aussi aux membres des bandes

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formées par l’Organisation Révolutionnaire Intérieure Macédonienne (ORIM). Cette organisation secrète, constituée en 1893, est en lutte à partir de 1896 contre les Ottomans, mais aussi contre les bandes des autres nationalismes régionaux qui convoitent alors la Macédoine. Le terme en vient à désigner toutes ses bandes à la fois, puis par extension les officiers ottomans en poste dans la région et membres du Comité Union et Progrès (CUP), chargés de la répression des bandes, car ceux-ci recourent progressivement aux mêmes méthodes que les bandes qu’ils pourchassent. Une fois le CUP au pouvoir (1908), le terme est synonyme d’usage de la violence politique et, à cet effet, de recours par ce parti à des bandes organisées. (note AT) 8. Murat Bardakçı est un journaliste turc, auteur de plusieurs ouvrages sur la musique classique ottomane et sur l’histoire de membres de la dynastie ottomane, en particulier après leur exil sous la république. Ses éditoriaux et autres articles parus dans la presse concernent souvent l’histoire ottomane et turque. Il anime par ailleurs une émission consacrée à l’histoire sur une chaîne de télévision. 9. Yusuf Ziya Bey dit Koçzade (1882-14 avril 1925) a été élu député de Bitlis en 1920.

INDEX

Keywords : demographic engineering, Irak, kurdish nationalism, Kurdish question, Armenian Genocide, Ottoman Empire, minorities

AUTEUR

FUAT DÜNDAR

Fondation Humboldt, Zentrum Moderner Orient, Berlin

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Interview with Kemal Kirişçi

Kemal Kirişçi

EDITOR'S NOTE

At the time of the interview (February 2012), Kemal Kirisçi (from here on K.K.) was assigned to the Department of In ternational Relations at Boğaziçi University, where he was head of the Center for European Studies. He is a specialist on migration and refugees issues. Nowadays he is based at the Brookings Institution , an American think tank located in Washington, where he is head of the Center on the United States and Europe ’s Turkey Project at Brookings. The interview was conducted by Alexandre Toumarkine (A.T.), transcribed by Christelle Chevallier and reviewed by Nikos Sigalas (N.S.). The transcript w as reviewed by Kemal Kirişçi.

A.T. : My frst question refers to the concept of demographic engineering which was developed in the United States of the 1990s. What are for you the reasons of the invention of this concept at this particular period and what is its precise meaning ? K.K. : Let me first of all start with a confession. Engineering or demographic engineering, are two terms I personally feel somewhat uncomfortable with because these are terms that have been and continue to be used in a terribly loose manner. I have yet to come across a definition that would be operational, that would help one to identify in the real world a phenomenon that amounts to social engineering or demographic engineering. But on the other hand, these are two terms that are frequently employed and have also been employed in understanding Turkish politics as well as the politics of the later part of the Ottoman Empire.

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If you ask me what I understand of it, I would prefer a much more narrow definition whereby you have state authorities that actually engage in shaping the way a population is located in a country and the actual composition of that population. I think we are familiar with the notion, especially in respect to the turn of the previous century, that is the late 19 thcentury and the early 20th century. It seemed like it was a pretty common practice in the making of new nation states to move people around, to sometimes mix or un-mix people. I think there is a very good book with a similar title. The un-mixing of people occurring often in territories where you have populations from different ethnic and religious cultural backgrounds that become un-mixed because the leaders or the governing elite of a new nation state perceives, defines that lack of homogeneity as a source of threat and insecurity. This is something that the latter days of the Ottoman Empire as well as the early days of the Turkish Republic experienced. But I suppose one could make similar remarks about Bulgaria and Greece next door if not other parts of Europe and beyond Europe. In your question, you were making references to how this notion of demographic engineering has been adopted by the Americans in the 1990s. I suspect Americans were involved in demographic engineering back in the 19 th century as the settled population began to expand westwards in . As to the context in which it was used in the 1990s, there I get a little bit puzzled. I suspect it is used maybe in the context of the first half of the 1990s with the war in former and then in those peace plans that meant to create relatively homogeneous cantons and little statelets within mostly Bosnia-Herzegovina. I am not very familiar with the literature in that respect but I would be tempted to say that social engineering in the way in which it was understood back a hundred years ago, or eighty years ago, has lost its significance today for two reasons : One reason is a legal reason that the kinds of social engineering that was permissible back a hundred years ago, for example exchange of population between newly established states or newly formed states, today is against international law. You can not have two states coming together and amongst themselves agreeing to move around a part of their population. It is a violation of international law. Again under law, it would be a human rights violation if nowadays you tried to move people, especially for political reasons. Yes, when you are building a dam, or roads, sometimes you end up moving villages around but there is again a body of law that governs these issues and I am vaguely familiar that in the European of Human Rights there are cases that deal with these issues as people have felt that their property rights or human rights have been violated. So that is the legal aspect.

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The political aspect of it is that, compared to a hundred years ago, I think most countries, at least in Europe, have become accustomed to pluralist societies and the norm has become that politics takes place in a pluralistic environment. Some countries are better at this than others. This doesn’t mean that governments cease completely to be concerned about the way their population is composed in terms of national identity, cultural identity. Today in Europe, we see for example, Holland, Britain, not to mention the United States and Australia beyond Europe, adopting policies where a part of the population is required to take exams before they become citizens, or they adopt policies vis-à-vis settled migrants and even second generation migrants who have local citizenship, they introduce policies towards them to kind of nudge them in a direction that they believe would be of preference to the state in terms of security but also to the society in terms of its culture. This is how I think I would look at this concept of social engineering and demographic engineering. A.T. : The aspect of international law you mentioned above brings me to another question I would like to ask you. Genocide is as we know a legal concept and also ethnic cleansing acquired a legal dimension through the juridical process following the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. On the other hand, demographic engineering has not always had, as you mentioned above, a legal dimension. Could you comment on the fact that some of the notions referring to violence on populations can or even can not have a legal meaning ? K.K. : I think there too, the problem is probably the difficulty of defining what exactly social engineering and demographic engineering are. I think genocide and ethnic cleansing are relatively easier terms to define. Or, to put it differently, consensus on what these phenomena constitute is easier to establish than on social engineering and demographic engineering. Let’s take the example of what happened in Turkey during the course of 1990s, according to governmental statistics, if I am not mistaken around 300-400.000 people or Kurds mostly in south east Anatolia were dislocated, primarily as a result of government or action by the State authorities. According to NGOs and other sources, this figure is as high as around one to three million people. Although I think the source of these figures could also point out that a good chunk of those who became dislocated were not necessarily forced or moved out of their houses by the state authorities but by the circumstances prevailing in the region at the time.

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Now, the question to ask oneself is : Is this social engineering ? Is this demographic engineering ? What are the circumstances under which this is taking place ? Now if you were to ask the state authorities they would highlight, point out and argue that this is something that is taking place under the emergency rule regulations. And what these emergency rules and regulations say, is that if there is threat to law, order and security of a region the laws that come under emergency rule – and the European Human Rights Convention makes allowance for this – culminates in the suspension of certain basic rights up to a certain period and governed by very specific rules and regulations, this is what they would argue. And I think years later once this forced migration stopped, the Turkish Parliament adopted legislation with the purpose of compensating these people. Yet, there are also in Turkey many who argue that these measures were not solely taken as a function of security concerns, arising from the confrontation between the PKK and Turkish security forces, and that state authorities were also motivated with a desire to change the composition of the population of the region, but I think this is an issue born of contention. It had very important implications and ramifications in terms of politics, law, international relations, not to mention in terms of sociology. In terms of law and international relations for example, you had many people who sought asylum in western European countries, in Germany, in France, in Britain, in , in who argued that they were actually victims of persecution and repression – I don’t know if they also used ethnic cleansing – but some of these governments, in some cases did grant refugee status, often they granted refugee status on the basis of the Geneva Convention of 1951. But interestingly, some countries in Europe refrained from granting fully-fledged refugee status and argued that these people could seek protection elsewhere in the country, in Turkey, in the western part of Turkey or in Istanbul, etc. It is a very ambiguous question in Turkey ; its political consequences were that large number of people from south-eastern Anatolia ended up migrating to , Mersin, Antalya, Istanbul, Izmir, impacting on the social, cultural and political composition of these areas too. And if you just look at the last electoral results it is easy to confirm this, or the election before that. Why am I raising this ? I am raising this because I suspect I am trying to put myself in the shoes of the authorities who might have introduced these measures in a manner that is similar to the 1920s and 1930s. I think I am trying to see if they may have thought along those lines when thinking about these measures and introducing these measures. If they did, I would think that they may well have fallen short of what their predecessors back in 1920s and 1930s may have wished to achieve. What was it that they had wished to achieve back in the 1920s and the 1930s : to create through this notion of social or demographic engineering a homogenous national identity for Turkey. Whereas today we look at the political scene in Turkey and it would be very difficult to argue that as a result of the forced movement of people or internal displacement in the 1990s, Turkey has become a more homogenous society. Did they wish to achieve this and ended up failing, or was this consideration only a minor aspect of what they were trying to do and their primary concern was, as they tend to claim, solely security ? Security is something very difficult to establish. The tendency, it seems, for state authorities is to argue that these measures were introduced under exceptional circumstances in an effort to ensure security in a certain region, but then there are groups, NGO’s, associations, political movements, and even political parties who argued that no, security may have been a reason but there also was the objective of social engineering, demographic engineering in inverted commas, if you like.

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A.T. : By questioning the affliation that could exist between the forced displacements that took place in Eastern Anatolia and the demographic politics that followed in the preceding decades or even earlier, you created a link to the next question I wanted to ask you. So, I would like to expand on the issue of the continuity of demographic practices. There is a tendency today, or at least a number of researchers who work on demographic practices focusing on forced population displacements towards the end of the Ottoman empire and the period of the Republic using the term demographic engineering or closely related terms, argue for the existence of an uninterrupted political will and state action that aims to homogenise the population, which is to turkify them. In other words, this group of people believes that there is a strong continuity on the level of objectives and methods from the Young Turks – to be more precise for some of them this starts from Abdülhamid – to the recent history of the Republic. In your research on the migration policies of the Turkish Republic between the 1930s and 1950s you have underlined the stark difference between discourses and practices. Do you regard this as something contradicting the above stance of continuity, at least as far as migration policy is concerned ? K.K. : I think with some confidence one ought to be able to say that in the minds of some officials, there certainly is a continuity between the practices that you are referring to and what they may have been engaged in in the 1990s, in the sense that you may have had very specific officials, high ranking officials implicated in taking these decisions who were able in their minds, to establish a relationship between the practices of the late Ottoman Empire and the early Turkish Republic. And they may actually have also been thinking that the Turkish Republic was facing threats, security threats to what they called devlet’in bekası

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(the continuity of the state), as was the case back in the 1920s and the 1930s. I mean, I can not show the evidence for it but I am with decent probability suspecting that this would have been the case. There would also have been officials who would have been addressing the question at hand : given the circumstances, given the exigencies of the time, the legal tools and the administrative aspects of it, knowing what the Turkish law today says, knowing what the European Convention on Human Rights is saying. I suspect for example officials from the Turkish Foreign Ministry would primarily be among these people. I would think that people maybe in the judiciary may have been amongst these people while people in the military, people in the Interior Ministry may have been closer to thinking like the first group of officials. This is speculation I am doing here. I am confident – through these years, I have had occasions to refer and talk about these things – that there was also a third group consisting of officials, members of Parliament who would have been thinking in the 1990s, at a time when Turkey was aspiring to also join the at some point, to improve its democracy etc, that these ‘20s and ‘30s practices somehow can not be reconciled with those goals. Think about, for example, the 1991 elections and the way in which a group of Kurdish nationalist politicians were brought on board into the Turkish Parliament. Of course things deteriorated three years later and Leyla Zana and her colleagues had their immunities suspended and ended up in jail. I would think that the people who would have opened the way for Kurdish nationalists to come into the Parliament must have been people belonging to this third group who were saying “Yes, we have a security problem here, but at the end of the day, beyond the security problem there is also a political problem ; a political problem that can no longer be addressed with the tools of the 1920s and 1930s”. These people lost in 1993. And the measure of these people loosing was Tansu Çiller basically turning around and saying to the military “This is your problem, you solve it”. From 1993 to 1995 is the period when the military mounted a major struggle against the PKK. Time precludes us from going into the stages and details of this strategy. But we must not forget that in the beginning of this period the PKK was almost ruling (controlling) the cities and the towns. There were actually cities and towns in south-eastern Anatolia were you could not for example buy CumhuriyetorMilliyetorHürriyet because the PKK would ban it. There were also cities and towns where the PKK was running its own and levying taxes. Tansu Çiller turning to the military and giving this task over to security people, I suppose may have given the upper hand to those who might have been in the first category of people who would have seen a continuity from the 1920s and 1930s.

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However, with the PKK being forced into northern Iraq and eventually leading up to Öcalan being caught and taken to court, the situation in Turkey began to transform itself very quickly, and by the late 1990s I am tempted to say that you began to have people who were increasingly looking at these issues from the perspective of that third group of officials and members of Parliament. And at that juncture the European Union came into the picture as well, and we entered a period of reform whereby the very legal norms and values that I made references to earlier on began to acquire a greater weight and I think roughly that has been the case so far. In that context it is very interesting that the Parliament came to adopt a piece of legislation for compensating what they called victims of terrorism but also in ensuring those who wanted to go back to their villages ( köye dönüş). The Turkish think tank TESEV (TürkiyeEkonomik ve Sosyal Etüdler Vakfı) has a very good report on the implementation of this law which shows clearly that that law falls short from achieving its objectives 1 . You could again raise the question : “Why did the law fail to achieve its objectives ?” It may be partly because officials who belong to that first group of thinkers, those who see a threat, those who emphasize homogenisation at the bureaucratic level, at the administrative level, would have tried to hinder the implementation of that law. It is quite possible, though it is very difficult to say. And then, another reason for falling short of an ideal implementation of the law may have resulted from a complex set of reasons. One set of reasons may have had to do with administrative capacity and capability of responding to the challenge. Let’s take a step back. This is the 1990s and early 2000’s, a period when the Turkish economy is not doing particularly well, and you have a huge budget deficit and there is a competition for rare resources. As that competition unfolds itself who is going to prevail ? Is it the ones who are arguing that this law should be implemented, lock, stock and barrel the objective achieved, or is it a situation where some form of a modus vivendi, of a compromise deal is struck, where a little bit of that law is implemented and other resources go to a completely different implementation of different laws and regulations. I think one needs to take into consideration this phenomenon, that is, this competition for rare resources, and also administrative and bureaucratic difficulties, the capacity issues when one is dealing with social and demographic engineering to start with. I think this problematic or this phenomenon applied also to those officials of the 1920s and 1930s who were looking at social and demographic engineering as a tool to form a nation, to formulate a national identity, but came to realize that to advocate something is one thing and to try to implement it is another thing. Coming back to why the law may have not been completely successful, we have also to consider the fact that once the people have moved out of their villages, a good proportion of them chose not to return, not because they were prevented or arrested, but because they became accustomed to continuing life in urban centres at a time where the world at large is urbanising, or is under a kind of ‘global demographic engineering’. Globalisation is forcing you into the cities.

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A.T. : Let me address a different question to you. Our impression is that to a degree the notion of demographic engineering, whether it regards the later Ottoman Empire or the Turkish Republic, is always in a latent rapport with the Armenian genocide, which constitutes a kind of background, a paradigm let’s say, for all the research on violence on minority population. K.K. : Yes. You know, to try to make a bridge between an attempt on my part to try to respond to what you are saying and the earlier section, let me highlight one more issue that seems very important to me. Social engineering of the kind we have in mind from the 1920s and 1930s in Turkey, and of the kind, let’s say, in Nazi Germany, in Bulgaria of the 1980s and today’s Bulgaria, Germany or Turkey, there is a huge difference. And that difference is the difference between a political system that is reasonably plural, in which there are different political parties competing with each other, composed socially, ethnically, culturally very heterogonous entities. Where I think to try to attempt such a social engineering politically would become very difficult. I try to think of the 1990s. Even in the worst days of the 1990s in Turkey in the sense of violence in south-east Anatolia and even in the worst days of the 1990s where talking about Kurds, Kurdish identity or political solution to Kurdish identity, was tantamount publicly to committing treason. We know that there were Kurdish MPs in the Turkish Parliament. They may not have been members of radical Kurdish nationalist parties but they were members of ANAP or Doğru Yol parties. And in the corridors of the Parliament, in the restaurants, wherever they are making policy, I am sure they would be bringing up the issue of, you know, “what’s going on here?, these are the laws and the regulations here, we need to be careful, we need to watch out how far we are going and what we are doing.” That is the dynamics of the 1990s which I think today in Turkey in 2007 or 2008 is much more pluralist even if we may have all kinds of problems and disputes about Turkey’s pluralism. The 1920s and 1930s are a very different environment, not only in Turkey but in Europe at large. How many countries in Europe then would be qualifying as a democracy of the kind that we have today. Turkey was a single party regime. It might not have been of the kind of regime we had in the 1930s in Germany or or in after Franco, but nevertheless it is a single party regime and dominant ideology is also clearly one emphasizing homogeneity and is a regime that has come out from a certain experience as a function of the wars preceding the First World War and the war itself. So security-wise, they would be very jittery, and politically they are also an extension of what existed roughly in Europe with the exception maybe of France, , , Denmark, the Scandinavian countries. I think we need to make this huge difference ; we need to recognize that difference.

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Now, coming to your specific question, having tried to highlight this distinction, the so-called social engineering of the 1920s and 1930s, I think would have been heavily influenced by the experience of the preceding 10-15 years, which also includes the Armenian massacres or genocide, whatever you would like to call it. But one has also to recognize that what happen to the Armenians happened in the mid of the WWI, and as it was happening sometimes this seems to get forgotten, it is happening at a time when so called imperialist powers, France, Britain, the Anzacs etc. are in Gelibolu in March 1915 and are assaulting to break through to reach Istanbul, or at the time. And their ally, Russia, is mounting an attack from the East. I think those circumstances where very exceptional circumstances and the circumstances that prevailed in the 1920s and the 1930s were different ; however, the circumstances in 1915 would have been weighing heavily on the decision makers of the 1920s and 1930s. Why ? Because I think they roughly came from a similar political movement, a movement that is highly concerned about saving the State, and building a nation state of the kind of the other nation states that would have been built in the vicinity. Now, let me try to tie it to the remark I made earlier one that is the difference between the 1920s and 1930s in Turkey and the 1990s, not to say the Turkey of today. Just as, I think, there is a huge difference that one must acknowledge and bring into one’s analysis when one is addressing this question of social engineering, I think one has also to make a difference between the 1910s in the Ottoman Empire and the 1890s. I would argue that the Ottoman Empire, up to the 1880s, 1890s and maybe up to 1913, is not one to one similar to the 1990s but at least an imperial environment, a very heterogeneous environment where the political culture of the time is still accustomed to the fact that when they walk into the Parliament when it briefly existed in 1876 and then a little bit later on, they would have a Jewish MP next to them and on the other side an Arab Muslim or an Arab Christian and a Kurd or an Albanian, and they would be also very accustomed that in the administration they are working in there would be all kinds of cultures and identities, that is, very imperial. I think this would not have been very different in the Austrian-Hungarian Empire as well. In the minds and in the machination of these people, to think in term of genocide, I don’t know, it might not have been. I am not that much of an expert to be able to conclusively say something about it. But when you come to the First World War, I think the circumstances have changed, the political culture has changed, the leadership has changed or at least a part of the leadership has changed. And the leadership of the 1920s and 1930s is a leadership that came from those circumstances, I don’t know if some of them may have been implicated in the Armenian massacres first hand, they might have been, you know it is not my area of specialisation, but it is very clear that in the 1920s and 1930s of this region, meaning Turkey, Bulgaria, Russia, Greece, Yugoslavia, to think in terms of social engineering was not unusual. Not the Middle East interestingly, the Middle East had not gone in that area yet, but it is the world, let’s say the “modern world”. But in between laws changed, norms changed, and then the Holocaust occurred, and in 1948 was the adoption of the Convention on genocide.

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A.T. : Thank you. The last question addresses whether we have to analyse the State migration policy conceived as a consistent project, or, on the contrary, to stress the plurality of state actors. Here we are referring frst to the interactions within the state apparatus, but also to the discrepancy between projects, decisions and applications, and fnally to another interaction, between state and society. K.K. : Not only the interaction between state and society, but also between state and international community ; and not only the public sphere, but also the norms. I think this pluralism issue I have made references to maybe here what I ought to address is whether Turkey of today has a migration policy. I would argue that Turkey of today has no migration policy. Did Turkey of the past have migration policy ? Yes, I think certain Turkeys of the past had migration policies, in the plural sense of the word. The Turkey of the 1920s and 1930s had a migration policy, otherwise you could not explain the 1934 İskan kanunu (Settlement Law), you would not be able to explain the law that preceded it in 1925, not to mention the one from the Ottoman times. But the circumstances were very different ; it was a time where social engineering, by design or by default, was taking place in the whole of the Balkans, not to mention . In other words, by design Turkey and Greece were coming together and saying we are going to exchange population ; Turkey and Bulgaria were doing that ; Bulgaria and Greece were doing that ; Turkey and were doing that ; Turkey and Yugoslavia were coming and sitting down and signing agreements. The Greek-Turkish case was a bit exceptional because it was a forced exchange, migrants did not have choice, but the other agreements made it possible to move between countries a bit more voluntarily. I believe these policies had a clear distinct social engineering dimension clearly aimed at nation-building. Actually, a close reading of the İskan kanunu and especially the debate at Turkish Parliament during the drawing up and the adoption of the İskan kanunu is, in that respect, extremely telling and revealing. For example the then-interior minister of the time, Şükrü Kaya, when tabling the draft law openly said tha t this law aimed to “create” a citizen that the Turkish state would not need to fear or suspect. One could not think of a more obvious effort then what such a statement captures. However, the actual implementation of the law is an entirely other experience. Köy Hizmetleri Müdürlüğü is a fascinating bureaucracy in Turkey that, I think, now has been closed down, and is mostly remembered for building fountains and roads and bringing electricity to villages. In the past its tasks were the settling of migrants from abroad and internal resettlement. The implementation of the law and the accompanying social engineering project would very much depend on this bureaucracy’s abilities and capacity. They certainly were limited. Talking about capacity, let me give you an example that I can at least vaguely recall. In context of İskan kanunu

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, there was a lot of concern about bringing people, especially Turkish-speaking immigrants from the Balkans but also from within Turkey, and settling them in parts of Turkey where Turkish was not spoken or was very weak. And they would for example bring Turkish-speaking Bulgarians or groups from Yugoslavia and settle them along the Euphrates River, give them land , give them agricultural tools including seeds. The expectation was very much that the settlers would hopefully help to assimilate the Kurds of these regions into a Turkish identity, sort of make Turks out of them. That was the theory of it. Yet, the practice was somewhat different. I shall never forget, a couple of years ago, one judge or prosecutor telling me how one of his fascinating experiences in the mid-1990s working in or some Aegean town who had to deal with the case of one person who had property along the Euphrates. The judge or prosecutor told me how he could not understand the link between this person and this plot of land along the Euphrates River. It was a total revelation to him when I explained that the state back in the 1930s had this practice of locating migrants from the Balkans in this region but that often after 5-10 years these people failing to adjust to the environment would just pick up their suitcases and come and settle in western Anatolia. Where did the grander objective of social engineering to create a homogenous Turkish national identity go ? Well, if you wish, it floated down the Euphrates into the Gulf in many ways. I think this is a good example of objectives versus reality. I just gave you a book2 which has the Turkish jurisprudence on migration, and in there, there are fascinating cases of how the Turkish state is chasing after, in this case, Gypsies who were, if I remember correctly, located I think in Izmir, they settled there in Izmir, but they had run away and gone back to the Mersin-Adana region, and Ankara is sending an instruction to the valilik of Adana : “Go and find these guys, take them back by the ears (“ yakalayın kulaklarından”) and take them back to Izmir.” Now imagine the valilik of the 1930s with what must have been very limited resources and capabilities and many other pressing issues having to go after these people, locate them, find the resources to put them on a train and send them back to Izmir. I would not be sur prised if to do all this might have not been a major priority on their “things to do list” even if they wished it. There are a lot of such cases where objectives and implementation did not always match. Soner Çağaptay ’s book3has also very fascinating concrete examples of theAnkara Emniyeti (Security Directorate) sending instructions to distant provinces and saying “go and find this guy and bring him back”, or saying “we have just discovered that this guy has some suspect ethnic background and must be removed from his job as a teacher”.

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İskan kanunu has also an internal leg to it. And that part of it is about also social engineering and unmixing people and remixing them so that you generate this Turkish identity. So, to cut a long story short, I think in the 1920s and 1930s there was clearly migration policy. But when we come to the 1950s and the 1960s, I think that migration policy based on design started to take a different form and become a migration policy by default, meaning you have migration taking place and you are trying to respond to it. What is it ? It is migration from rural areas to urban areas. Was it designed ? It was not designed at all. Did the Menderes government build roads to encourage migration ? No. They built roads but they ended up with migration on their hands. The Menderes government encouraged modernization. Did they start to build tractor factories for agriculture ? They did. What was the out product of it with the arrival of tractors into the rural areas : Unemployment increased and people began to migrate into the urban centres. There is migration by default and the state tries to respond to it but from what I gather, not very successfully. In the 1960s, I would argue, here comes again migration policies by design. But this is in interaction with West Germany, with Holland, with France and a couple of other countries who say : “we have a shortage of labour, you have abundance of labour” and “not only have I had an abundance of labour, I am also undeveloped and would like to develop”. So let’s design a scheme, let’s ship these people to West Germany and let them become skilled and come back. That was the design, but that design went partly to failure because it was meant to be temporary. The so called “ ” were meant to go to European countries temporarily and would in due course return to Turkey. That was what Turkey, West Germany and the others expected. Instead the migration process acquired a life of its own and something completely different evolved from it as these migrants not only stayed on but also brought more and more of their families to Europe. Many became citizens while many also failed to integrate into their host societies provoking a range of societal problems 4.

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When we come to the 1980s and 1990s a completely different picture emerges with respect to migration. There is again massive migration that is taking place, I would say overwhelmingly by default. The old traditional type of migration is continuing for economic reasons, urbanisation and globalization as well. But on top of it there is a huge migration that is taking place as a result of security problems in south-eastern Anatolia. I would argue that part of it was by design. And that is what we talked about at the very beginning of this interview. But the two thirds of it at least was by default that these people felt insecure, the economy was not doing well and we know how migration goes by chain, one goes and the other follows. So 1990s, I would say, it is partly designed and we can argue whether it was social engineering or it was migration designed for security reasons that, at least on paper, was supposed to take place in context of norms and regulations of the European Convention on Human rights. These standards were set in the 1950s and the 1970s. How did it evolve ? It evolved in a different direction. Those norms and regulations were not respected and met. Why they were not met or respected ? I think partly because of capacity, but partly maybe – this is what I was trying to say earlier on – there were officials who were implementing that migration policy by design with the thoughts of the 1920s and 1930s with, let’s say, social engineering concerns in mind. But that one failed because of the circumstances and context of it. Maybe lastly, there is another migration policy that is just beginning to emerge. It is there, you will also find a bit of it in Diyanet(Presidency of Religious Affairs),Milli Eğitim Bakanlığı(Ministry of Education), Başbakanlık (Prime Ministry) you will also find a bit of it in the Turkish Foreign Ministry and you find a tiny bit of it in the form of a report of the Turkish Parliament towards the Turkish migrants in , in Germany. The issue has to do with assisting their integration into their host societies in Europe, also whether they can come and vote here in Turkey, their language education…but this is not a coherent whole, it is bits and pieces there, it has not really been brought together. One may be one last very important development is the way in which Turkey in the last decade or so is increasingly transitioning from a country of emigration towards a country of immigration. It would be interesting to study whether how much of this is design and how much of it is by default and what this would mean in terms of the conscious social engineering efforts of the 1930s to construct a homogenous national identity in Turkey. A.T. : Thanks a lot.

NOTES

1. Türkiye’de Ülke içinde Yerinden Edilme Sorunu: Tespitler ve Çözüm Önerileri , Istanbul, TESEV, 2005 (Doç. Dr. A. Tamer Aker, Yrd. Doç. Dr. A. Betül Çelik, Dilek Kurban, Doç. Dr. Turgay Ünalan ve Yrd. Doç. Dr. H. Deniz Yükseker).

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2. The Collection of Turkish Jurisprudence on Asylum, Refugees and Migration, Geneva, UNHCR, 2000. 3. Soner Çagaptay,Islam, Secularism and Nationalism in Modern Turkey: Who is Turk?, London / New York, Routledge, 2006. 4. NerminAbadan-Unat,:From Guest Workerto TransnationalCitizen , Oxford / New York, Berghahn Books, 2011.

INDEX

Keywords: demographic engineering, Ottoman Empire, minorities, Turkification, PKK and nationalism

AUTHOR

KEMAL KIRIŞÇI

The Brookings Institution Center on the United States and Europe’s Turkey Project

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Demographic Knowledge, ‘Race Suicide’ and the Making of Racial Jews in Interwar Europe

Sandrine Bertaux

I. Introduction

1 In their review of the endorsement of the term ‘demographic engineering’ in Ottoman and Turkish studies, Nikos Sigalas and Alexandre Toumarkine (2008: §12) underscored three reasons why the term particularly gained the favor of some scholars: it supports the idea of continuity between the late Ottoman empire and the Turkish nation-state, it meets with a liberal critique of state planning understood as paving the way for violence against minorities, and it helps in circumventing the taboo imposed by state ideology and apparatus over its own repressive history towards minorities. It is this latter aspect Erik-Jan Zürcher (2008: 1) invokes to explain why he first used the term back in 2005. Fearing to be exposed to state reprisals, Turkish academics invited Zürcher to introduce a collective volume published in Turkish in Turkey in which he used the term demographic engineering (Zürcher 2005). Yet, as Sigalas and Toumarkine remark, state repression alone does not explain why the term took root. Indeed, Zürcher (2008: 1) concedes that it proved to be more than a tactical move, as ‘demographic engineering’ became a positive source of inspiration he found in a work by two demographers, the late Myron Weiner and Michael Teitelbaum (2001), in their co-authored book titled Political Demography, Demographic Engineering.

2 My contribution to this third issue is on rather than in demographic engineering. I take issue with a narration of the history of humanity as a ‘struggle for demographic power’ (Bookman 1997) underpinning the category of demographic engineering. I regard demographic engineering as naturalizing the connection between population, territory and security eschewing both the modern codification of the concept of population and its power effect. My argument is that the connection between security and population underlying the category of demographic engineering is not the ‘natural’ behavior of

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‘populations’ it presents, and even promotes, but an artefact of demographic knowledge. Therefore, my aim is to shed light on the power effect of modern demographic knowledge –population theories, demographic concepts and methodology- as a way of a critique of the category of demographic engineering. It is beyond the scope of this essay to provide an overview of the historical legacy of viewing populations in struggle for survival; rather, I will limit myself to a few instances. I organize my essay as follows: first I discuss some of the basic assumptions in demographic engineering literature and oppose to it Michel Foucault’s concept of bio-politics of the population. In the second section, I address the connection between security and population in population theories and its reformulation in interwar Europe within the ‘racial suicide’ discourse. In the third section, I comment on genealogical graphs (published in Bertaux 2006: 296-297) from the archives of Demorazza, the General Direction for Demography and Race that was established to monitor the racial laws in fascist in 1938, hosted at the Italian state archives in Rome. My aim is to show how the fiction of a first generation of separated populations (i.e. ‘Aryans’ and ‘Jews’) was a requirement for anti-Semitic politics. In the last section, I discuss the effect of using demographic concepts and methods to account for the Armenian genocide and count what becomes in such narrative, ‘Armenian casualties.’

II. Political Demography: the Population/Security Nexus

3 Demographic engineering policies ‘that caused the resettlement and ethnic cleansing of targeted populations,’ Milica Zarkovic Bookman (1997: 4) argues, are not new for they ‘have characterized Emperor Justinian’s quests in ; the Spanish expulsion of Jews and from Spanish territory; European conquests of North and South American indigenous populations and the forcible removal of Africans for sale into slavery.’ By bringing together different cases from different times and spaces, the demographic engineering literature renders the historical context irrelevant. To put on the same plane slave trade, forced migrations, state-led politics of (forced) assimilation, organized race riots, cases of genocide, mass exterminations and so forth is amenable to the critique brought a decade ago by Mark Mazower (2002: 1160) when he took issue with the ranking of ‘the Holocaust as a historical benchmark for modern mass violence.’ His point was that in the wake of the return of totalitarian theories, state- centered approaches to violence overlook non-state actors while categories of genocide and ethnic cleansing downplay specific contexts and say little or nothing about the weakness or strength of the state, and more broadly, power structure and dynamics. Whereas the revival of totalitarian theories aimed at opposing an ethnic explanation to ethnic hatred (Mazower 2002: 1159) I suggest that, demographic engineering tends to naturalize them. What is more, to contend that Europe between 1850 and 1950 experienced the ‘age of demographic engineering’ as Zürcher (2008: 1) does, relegates in fact the Holocaust as yet another instance in the long catalogue of human violence listed under the rubric of demographic engineering. If demographic engineering flattens rather than sheds light on these instances, and prevents us from recasting them both in their historic singularity and in comparative perspective, it is not because of a state-centered approach to violence and specific forms of state power (i.e. totalitarianism) but because what is at issue are struggles between populations.

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4 Admittedly, demographic engineering found a favourable terrain for its promotion in the wake of heightened murderous ethnic-based conflicts and in the establishment of genocide, minority and conflict resolution studies in the 1990s in the United States (Sigalas and Toumarkine 2008: §34). Unlike the categories of genocide and ethnic cleansing that have been elaborated for legal purposes and at times, transferred into historical analysis, the category of demographic engineering however is borrowed from another field of study, the field of demographic studies. The question is no longer the way states manage their minorities or citizens at large, but the relationship between one population to another. The state is, in this perspective, the instrument of one population against other populations. 5 In the perspective of the sociology of knowledge, demographic engineering is a category that emerged from the will of demographers to create a new field of political demography. Arguing that the political implications of population trends and movements are central in the study of politics, they call for a new approach to the study of politics by bringing to the fore demographic expertise. One should bear in mind that demography or population studies are foremost taught under other well- established academic disciplines (such as historical demography) or other fields of study (for instance, urban, migration or health studies) on the one hand, and demographic research conducted under the auspices of state institutes such as the French National Institute for Demographic Studies (INED) or private foundations such as the US-based Population Council. Political demography is a new term for an old idea, namely that demography is a discipline of government. 6 Political demography was actively promoted in France in the early eighties. In 1982, an Interdisciplinary Seminar of Political Demography (SIDP) was held at the Collège de France, the highest French academic institution, and promoted by Alfred Sauvy, the long-term director of the INED and Honorary Professor at the Collège de France (Sauvy et al. 1982). It was organized by non-academic institutions, the Political Demography Institute and the Association for Demographic Research and Information (APRD), both presided by Gérard-François Dumont, who defined political demography as putting ‘problems of population’ into the life of the polis (Dumont 1982: 17). What were these population problems? Demographers argued that France was weakened by low fertility leading to an ageing trend and undermining its capacity to assimilate immigrants. Because those immigrants deemed unassimilable in French demographic literature, the postcolonial labour migrants and their families, had settled in their former metropolis, demographers argued that French national identity was being radically altered (Bertaux 2000). These trends were not to be halted easily ; countries of the Third World- a term coined by Sauvy in 1952- were experiencing high fertility rates whereas West European countries were encountering low fertility rates, and this would inevitably lead to more emigration from the Third World to Europe, putting Europe in danger of becoming ‘submerged’ by Third World immigrants (Sauvy 1987). French demographers could draw from a century-old demographic discourse that made a structural connection between labour immigration starting in the late nineteenth century in France, declining fertility and the future of national identity (Bertaux 2011). To reverse such trend they called for more ‘native’ births in order to maintain Frenchness. ‘Native’ is not a category based on citizenship distinguishing foreigners from citizens, or on birthplace distinguishing those born in France or abroad, but a racialized one that distinguished ‘French of French stock’ and those of ‘immigrant

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background,’ two mutually opposite categories codified in the 1990s (Bertaux 1997; Bertaux 2000). 7 It is no coincidence that differential fertility rates and international migrations are the core themes of political demography (Teitelbaum and Winter 1998 ; Demeny and McNicoll 2006). A case in point in political demographic expertise is provided by Population Council demographer Paul Demeny (1986). To counter low fertility rates in Europe and in order to avoid both immigration or welfare provisions as remedies, Demeny suggested nothing less than exchanging universal suffrage for a family-based electoral system, in which parents cast votes on behalf of their children. This vote familial was a central proposition to interwar French pro-natalist demographers against the granting of political rights to French women, which they eventually gained in 1944. The family vote sought to give them subordinated political rights within a patriarchal system that recognized women as mothers, wives or widows rather than as individual citizens (Bertaux 2011). My point is that demographic engineering is hardly an analytical category ; it is too or even foremost a policy-making category. 8 Demographic language is foremost a language of identity staging the ‘we’ against the ‘them’; this is a language of security. Whether it is about ‘depopulation’ or ‘overpopulation,’ as Ian Hacking (2002: 18) remarks the ‘population problem’ is always posited in relative terms for it ‘denotes both the population explosion of other peoples and too low birth rate of one’s own people.’ Political demography is predicated on the assumption that there is an inherent connection between population and security (for instance, Goldstone et al. 2012). Herein, Weiner and Teitelbaum (2001: ix) write: ‘Population- its growth or decline, its movement, its density, its characteristics, its distribution- has always been linked to questions of security. The movement of peoples has made and unmade states, and transformed societies.’ It begs the question, what constitutes a population in political demography? Populations are more than a mere aggregate of individuals or a concept of population that is linked to territorial sovereignty and designates the inhabitants under a sovereign power in a delimited territory ; instead, individuals are bound up by a common identity. The concept of population in political demography is best understood, I believe, as a biological closed reproductive group endowed with a common identity. That ethnic groups and populations are interchangeable is clear in Milica Zarkovic Bookman (1997: 1) when she defines demographic engineering as a ‘war of numbers’ in order ‘to increase the economic and political power of an ethnic group relative to others, and the method by which this is achieved entails the increase in the size of one population relative to others.’ Herein, populations are primordial categories that pre-exist the state and ‘societies.’ The least that can be said is that such an approach naturalizes power relations by reifying the state, obfuscates internal heterogeneity based on class, gender, and inherent cultural diversity of various groupings, contributing to give an essentialist definition to ethnic groups. 9 Contrary to such naturalizing effects on which the field of political demography is premised on, I contend that population is a modern concept and an artefact of demographic knowledge that turns populations and their intrinsic biological features into a security issue. Recapturing the history of the modern concept of population and its intricacy in modern forms of power in Western societies was central to Michel Foucault’s concept of biopolitics. Foucault (1978, 137-138) pointed out how the rise of demographic knowledge in the eighteenth century – and with it population statistics-

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signalled a transformation of power in which the ‘ancient right to take life and let live was replaced by the power to foster life or disallow it to the point of death.’ In biopower, the stake is no longer sovereignty juridically defined but ‘the biological existence of a population.’ He wrote, ‘If genocide is indeed the dream of modern powers, this is not because of a recent return of the ancient right to kill ; it is because power is situated and exercised at the level of life, the species, the race, and the large- scale phenomena of population.’ 10 Demographic engineering does more than ignoring contexts ; it erases the role of demographic knowledge. By positing population as an independent variable, stripped out of its historical and political economic context, it leads to believe that it is an easily manipulable object. Turning a population into a security matter is not a theoretical view but becomes a matter of necessity. Political demography (and demographic engineering) are antithetical to Foucault’s concept of the biopolitics of the population, in another dimension. With the concept of biopolitics, Foucault aimed at laying down a theory of racism in which difference or ‘other populations’ do not pre-exist racist politics but are constituted by it. In demographic engineering populations are the very cause of racism, thereby racist politics becomes a natural attribute of humanity in its inherent diversity. Ultimately, to regard the Holocaust as an ethnic conflict in Europe, as if the Aryans were an ethnic group that succeeded in seizing power, is no small victory to Aryan ideology.

III. Population Theory, the ‘Struggle for Population’ and ‘Race Suicide’

11 The connection between population and security was central to Thomas Robert Malthus who elaborated the first comprehensive population theory. With his Essay on the Principle of Population, first published anonymously in 1798, and duly authored in its subsequent revised and enlarged editions, Malthus provided the European bourgeoisie its justification not to confront the social question he gave a ‘natural’ cause, fertility. Against the ideas and ideals of the supporters of the French revolution, Malthus aimed to demonstrate that human institutions and hierarchies were shaped by the ‘principle of population’ – or human fertility – and therefore, not amenable to social reform. Even worse, he argued that any attempt to relieve poverty, by missing its cause, would lead to the opposite outcome. Malthus was the first to hold a chair in Modern History and Political Economy in England in 1805 (Collini et al. 1983: 67) and he is today widely regarded as the father of demography.

12 Malthus (1976/1798) explained that ‘population, when unchecked, increases in a geometrical ratio’ whereas ‘subsistence increases only in an arithmetical ratio.’ This unbalance creates the conditions for a struggle over subsistence that results in the negative checks that are war, misery, and vice. To avoid overpopulation, he suggested some remedies shaped by his religious system of morality. Condemning the disconnection between sexuality and procreation on the one hand and sexuality outside marriage on the other, he suggested that the poor engage in a ‘moral restraint,’ namely pre-marital sexual abstinence, or even to the abandonment of marriage altogether, that is, to life-long sexual abstinence. Infamously, Malthus (1992/1803, 249) denied a right to the means of subsistence:

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‘A man who is born into a world already possessed, if he cannot get subsistence from his parents on whom he has just demand, and if the society do[es] not want his labour, has no claim of right to the smallest portion of food, and in fact, has no business to be where he is. At nature’s mighty feast there is no vacant cover for him. She tells him to be gone, and will quickly execute her own orders, if he does not work upon the compassion of some of her guests.’ 13 For Karl Marx (Grundisse 1857/58, in Tucker 1976: 277), not only did Malthus gave a ‘brutal expression to the brutal viewpoint of capital’ but elaborated the fallacy of a natural overpopulation when treating ‘overpopulation as being of the same kind in all the different historic phases of economic development.’ Malthus ‘does not understand their specific difference, and hence stupidly reduces these very complicated and varying relations to a single relation, two equations, in which the natural reproduction of humanity appears on the one side, and the natural reproduction of edible plants (or means of subsistence) on the other, as two natural series, the former geometric and the latter arithmetic in progression.’ For Marx, surplus population was relative, and not related to the means of subsistence but to the condition of producing them and the ‘Malthusian natural man’ is to be found only in Malthus’ population theory and political economy, not in history.

14 Nevertheless, the naturalization of reproduction as an ahistorical law or a principle of population remained influential and indeed inspired Charles Darwin (2003/1859: 135) in his elaboration of the theory of evolution. Darwin acknowledges his debt to ‘the doctrine of Malthus’: ‘Hence, as more individuals are produced than can possibly survive, there must in every case be a struggle for existence, either one individual with another of the same species, or with the individual of distinct species, or with the physical condition of life (…) for in this case there can be no artificial increase of food, and no prudential restraint from marriage. Although some species may be now increasing, more or less rapidly in numbers, all cannot do so, for the world would not hold them.’ 15 In 1880s, inspired by Darwin’s concepts of natural and sexual selection, Francis Galton coined the term ’eugenics’ to designate a new science of human heredity. Galton’s eugenics was based on the belief that social hierarchy has a biological base, but as higher social classes had fewer children than lower classes, many eugenicists believed that the nation would soon be in the hands of the lower classes they despised. The encounter between Malthus’ fear of the prolific lower classes with the science of the well-born, in the new era of the masses, brought a new question to the fore: would the future of the nation belongs to those who reproduce more – the masses – rather than the elite? Power is no longer in the monopolization of means of production, wealth and intellectual leadership; it is fundamentally one related with numbers, innate qualities and fitness. In addition, as birth rates displayed steady declining trends in many West European countries, there was a concern with depopulation.

16 The theme of ‘racial suicide’ captured aspects of both quality and quantity, one of degeneration as the unfit took over the nation, and one of decadence as the number of nationals would decrease. This view was exemplified by American biologist Raymond Pearl (1912: 48) who stated at the First International Congress of Eugenics in 1912: ‘The progressive decline of the birth rate in all, or nearly all, civilized countries is an obvious and impressive fact. Equally obvious and much more disturbing is the fact that this decline is differential… generally it is true that those racial stocks which by common agreement are of high, if not the highest, value, to the state or

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nation, are precisely the ones where the decline in reproduction rate has been most marked.’ 17 Pearl devised his own theory of population – the logistic S curve (Ramsden 2002)- providing a law of diminishing fertility. Drawing from his experiments with fruit flies (drosophila) in petri dishes, Pearl (1939) argued that A Natural History of Population could be written based on a law of density and growth applying to all living organisms. Against Malthus’ population theory, Pearl claimed that populations reach, after a certain point, their saturation point. To make clear how ‘natural’ Pearl believed population trends in fertility and mortality to be is exemplified by the fact that he took as a case in point the native population in French . Denying the impact of colonization was to deny fertility as a product of complex social arrangements. Pearl was not the only scholar to elaborate a population theory alternative to Malthus. Corrado Gini, the influential demographer of the Italian fascist regime, sought too to explain how ‘nations’ are born, mature and eventually die out. Gini suggested that Italians could regenerate the ‘old’ nations in decay, namely Britain and France (Bertaux 1999).

18 My aim is not to narrate the complex history of transnational debates over the impact of the uneven distribution of fertility rates across social classes, races, cultural groups or nations, or the politics of population implemented in their wake. Rather, I want to underscore how populations were apprehended in their biological features and made available to political intervention. Ever since Malthus, fertility was regarded as a natural and independent variable. Demography was thought and practiced as a biosocial field of study, and in fact, population theoreticians rejected the title of demographer. One major obstacle remained: how could fertility be properly measured? Once again the question was solved through furthering the naturalization and de- socialization of fertility. Among others, Alfred James Lotka (1939) gave fertility its mathematical codification. He elaborated the model of stable population – exposed in his book Théorie analytique des associations biologiques ( Analytical Theory of Biological Associations)- according to which closed populations, i.e. without migration movements and, with constant fertility and mortality rates would have a constant rate of growth. Ever since, it remains central to population studies (see my last section). This new calculus is based on women alone or what is known as the ‘one-sex model.’ With the new codifications of fertility, the question was not as previously how many births for how many people, but how many surviving women in the age of procreation will give birth to how many daughters. The social aspect of reproduction, and its political economic context, is definitively erased. Consequentially, mortality does not have the same meaning for all the components of the population: that of a baby girl does not have the same value as that of an old man ; nor is that of a woman after her procreative period. 19 In the 1930s, the codification of fertility made population forecasting easier. Population projections depicted West European nations on the verge of extinction, and ultimately, the white population as a whole, likely to be submerged by non-white races, a cause or/ and a symptom of European decadence. Populations were ageing and lacked the vitality of ‘youth.’ The discourse of a specific ‘white race suicide’ was staged through statistical tables, novel graphic representations including population pyramids, and population forecasts. For instance, French population and economic statistician Alfred Sauvy (1936) I mentioned earlier, wrote in the Encyclopédie française a demographic piece inspired by the vitalism promoted in fascist regimes: ‘If German and German-Latin

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peoples, actually living upon an acquired speed’ are doomed ‘to ageing and decline,’ if ‘peoples from central Europe’ are engaged in the same trend of ‘decadence’ with some delay, ‘yellow populations do not give any sign of decay. In between the two worlds, Russia remains the great enigma of tomorrow and, even of today. Its evolution will decisively influence the demographic and political future of Europe.’ In Sauvy’s text, the threat is coming from Bolshevik Russia rather than fascist regimes which, unlike the , were actively trying to raise their fertility rate to claim greater space for their prolific nations. French demographers lauded fascist politics of population they misrepresented as ‘pro-natalist’ (Bertaux 2005, 2011). 20 This misrepresentation – politically convenient – obfuscated the fact that slogans such as ‘strength in numbers’ (Mussolini) or that the view of women as mothers in Nazi Germany concealed that what constituted the highest biological value for the nation and its imperial designs, or the white race, was a continuous object of elaboration. The Struggle for Population (Glass 1936), as one British scholar called it, was predicated on the ‘natural extinction’ of West European nations. Obviously, this did not occur. Nazi Germany led simultaneously pro- and anti-natalist policy according to different ‘populations’ to the point of suppressing the ‘lives unworthy of life’ and non-Aryans altogether (Bock 1983).

IV. The Making of Racial Jews: Genealogy and the Fiction of Purity in Fascist Italy

21 On July 14th, 1938, a manifesto on Fascism and the Problems of Race – best known as the Manifesto of the Racist Scientists – published in Il Giornale d’Italia launched the anti- Semitic campaign. While borrowing from Nazi Germany, the Italian racist politics already diversely enacted in Italian colonies to prevent racial mixing, was presented as a new turn in fascism. Signed by scientists, including the head of the Italian census bureau, it provided its scientific legitimacy to state racism. The manifesto aimed at explaining in 10 points to the Italian public that races are a scientific fact, and racism a suitable politics: ‘It Is Time for Italians to Proclaim Themselves Frankly Racist’ point 7 stated. The manifesto was wholly dedicated to prove that Jews were never assimilated in the Italian race and retained their racial features, while on the other hand, the Italian race was reconceptualized as part of the Aryan race. Published on Bastille Day, the manifesto argued that the emancipation of the Jews by the French Revolution – that is, the equality of status with Christian populations – did not lead, in Italy, to assimilation. Such a claim played out two different understandings of assimilation: a juridical one which, after the French revolution, emancipated the Jews, turning them into citizens, and a new eugenics understanding, that of miscegenation. To claim that Jews were never assimilated referred to the latter understanding in order to justify new legal discrimination against Jews: Jews never blended with the Italo-Aryan race.

22 With the racial laws in Italy, a new General Direction of Demography and Race –known as Demorazza – was created. How novel this conflation between population and race was is provided by four genealogical graphs in a single document from the archives of Demorazza.1 The document has the clear task for its anonymous author to make sense of what constitutes a racial Jew as proclaimed in the new law. It reveals how the civil servant juggles to comprehend the novel ‘racial Jew,’ hence that there was nothing evident in the passage from a religious definition to one based on race.

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23 These graphs are important because they illustrate how the constitution of racial Jews and Italian-Aryans as two mutually exclusive categories does not draw from language, territory or nationality, the traditional categories of nationalism, but from genealogy. Many Italians born in Jewish families did not practice any religion, and an estimated one-third married outside the religious community, and a significant number had also converted to Catholicism. In the eye of the anti-Semitic laws, some were nevertheless ascribed to the state category of Jew. If names and registration in Jewish institutions served as means to track down a Jewish population, ultimately it was genealogy that helped to incorporate those who could not be held as Jews according to religious criteria or names, and ascribe to them a racial Jewish identity independent from religion. The making of racial Jews was foremost a demographic task, and it rests on the necessary fiction of purity at the first generation, namely when the individual is defined by one population or race. 24 All four genealogical trees represent three generations. The first genealogical tree (a) is dedicated to purity: all individuals represented by blue dots are represented as Jews, but even purity remains elusive to the anonymous civil servant who passes from the definition of Jews through ‘family names’ to end up defining it as ‘pure blood’ over three generations. It also obliges him to work with the reproductive concept of the couple when he had erased his first mention of family. The second genealogical tree (b) introduces a first intermarriage at the first generation when an Italian represented by a red dot marries with a Jew. At the third generation, the grand children are still ‘Jewish blood’ at 75 %. It is blatant that what is at issue is the third or ‘present’ generation. In the next graph (c), whether the intermarriage takes place at the second generation (c1) or at the first (c2), the last generation is half Jewish, half Italian. Whether they are considered of Aryan Italian race or of Jewish race is a matter of law. The last genealogical tree, racial Jew is introduced as the first generation giving birth to grand- children with 25 % of ‘Jewish blood’: therefore ‘Italians’ is the verdict. These genealogical trees are one instance of how demographic knowledge rests upon a fiction of purity that holds separate closed populations with reproductive power and examines its potential mixing. In the last section, I raise another question: how does this representation of populations as separated closed groups impact on the writing of history?

V. ‘Stable Populations’ and the Case of Armenian ‘Casualties’

25 Numbers are at the core of negationist language. There is nothing curious that negationists draw from the authority of numbers and statistics because what is expected is a truth effect through the simple use of statistics and numbers. Anti- Semitic laws, deportations, camps and so on, are made irrelevant to this numeric truth. There are more or less sophisticated versions of what I term the arithmetic negationism. If for long, providing lower numbers against those established by serious historical scholarship was sufficient for negationists to gain an audience, there are more sophisticated versions of arithmetic negationism today. The Armenian genocide is a case in point.

26 As Marc Nichanian (2006) reminds us, the nature of genocide is ‘to cancel itself as a fact.’ Bringing the proof of the genocide is therefore playing into the hands of the

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executioners. Nichanian’s reflexion on ‘the historiographic perversion’ that results from the essence of genocide of not being a fact in the case of the Catastrophe, is of utmost relevance in a discussion on demographic engineering. Recent discourses of ‘forgiveness’ and ‘reconciliation’ have perceptibly moved the Catastrophe from denial to recognition in Turkey. Yet, this move is preceded, and is perhaps sustained today as well, with a new arithmetic provided not from historical analysis but from the use of demographic concepts and methodologies. 27 In the early eighties, Justin McCarthy (1983) applied to Ottoman populations the model of stable populations forged by Alfred James Lotka, whom I mentioned above. Recall that the model is based on a closed population, excluding any migration movements. In the 1960s, it was used as an instrument at the Population Division of the United Nations to establish ‘life tables’ for countries lacking statistical data. It is one of the major instruments in demographic analysis today. Drawing from Lotka’s stable population model, McCarthy reached the number of 600,000 Armenians casualties between 1914 and 1922. One may view McCarthy’s work as one of the early work in political demography in the eighties, and indeed a successful transfer from demographic studies to historical investigation. His estimate is widely endorsed by historians and political scientists today. Yet few scholars seem aware that McCarthy draws from a demographic model and calculus and few question how McCarthy obtained the number of 600,000 or his underlying assumption in approaching the genocidal case of Ottoman Armenians through demographic concepts and methods. Once elaborated, these numbers acquire the power of truth and become a hard fact of history, demography and politics. It is surprising that his estimate has gained such authoritative value, and it does reveal that demographic and statistical methods still pass for having a superior scientific status as approximating the methods of natural or ‘hard’ sciences at the detriment of painstaking historical work. 28 Frédéric Paulin (2000) provides a thorough critique of McCarthy’s use of the stable population model to investigate the death toll of Armenians. Paulin makes two related arguments. First, he reminds us that both the Ottoman state and the Armenian patriarchate provided different numbers on the Armenian population before the war, the former estimating at 1,3 million, the latter at 2,1 million. McCarthy compiles various sources with no serious grounding, Paulin argues. Second, Paulin forcefully shows how the requirements for the application of the model of stable populations are not met in the case of late Ottoman Empire. As I underscored earlier, Lotka’s work emerged from the view of a natural history of populations grasped as biological reproductive groups. This method must be used only where variations in fertility and mortality are assumed to be small and where migrations have little impact on the studied population; this is not the case. Therefore, McCarthy’s work fails by two scientific standards. It fails from the historical perspective of a critical appraisal of sources; it fails from the demographic standard in his application of stable population theory. 29 Reaching the ‘true’ or ‘reasonable’ number conceals how it puts in motion another historical narrative. Paulin unveils how this new arithmetic aims at recasting the two communities on the same footing as ‘both murderers and both victims.’ Away from the denial vs. recognition frame that prevails today, McCarthy revamps the Armenian genocide as an ethnic conflict. As Paulin points out, he obtains this confrontation between two ‘different populations’ only through an ungrounded move from proportion

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- the death rate among the Armenians is much greater than Muslims - to absolute numbers in which Muslims have a higher loss than Armenians. After Daniel Panzac, Paulin notes that most Armenians died from spring to winter in 1915 whereas most Muslims between 1916 and 1919. The confrontation thesis is simply ungrounded. 30 McCarthy’s work is typical of how political demography in providing us with a specific narrative that naturalizes power and history. It also raises political questions: If the ‘true’ number is a preliminary step to the recognition of the Catastrophe, it also voids recognition from any meaning. The point I made earlier regarding the Holocaust is valid here as well: the Armenian genocide becomes another instance in the long murderous list under the rubric of demographic engineering. Its singularity and own voice are made irrelevant ; it has no name. One should be concerned if calls to reconciliation are made on such flawed ground.

Conclusion

31 Demographic engineering may prove to have the opposite of the liberatory effect expected in late Ottoman and Turkish historiography, while providing a reductionist view of European history and historical analysis tout court. Demographic engineering or political demography, I suggest, are the offspring of population theories, demographic concepts and methods elaborated in the thirties when populations were no longer regarded as an aggregate of individuals but rather the individual bearers of different biological values, to be encouraged, discouraged, or prevented through reproduction or extermination. The de-historicizing effect of demographic engineering is all the more dangerous in that, by erasing the role of demographic thinking and knowledge in the problematization of the concept of population, it implies that demographic engineering is a requirement for having peaceful societies.

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NOTES

1. Archivio Centrale dello Stato, Ministero dell'interno, Direzione per la Demografia e Razza (1938-1944), Parte prima fasc. 12. I. (See Bertaux 2006: 296-297.)

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ABSTRACTS

This essay takes a critical stance on the category of demographic engineering. I regard demographic engineering as naturalizing the connection between population, territory and security eschewing both the modern edge of the concept of population and its power effect. My argument is that the connection between security and population that is underlying demographic engineering is not a ‘natural’ behavior of ‘populations’ but an artefact of demographic knowledge that can be traced back to interwar Europe when the population/ security nexus was reformulated in the light of ‘race suicide,’ ‘depopulation’ and the making of racial Jews. Demographic engineering is a loaded category that obfuscates how demographic knowledge constitutes populations to make them available to political intervention it calls for as a necessity.

INDEX

Keywords: Bio-Politics, Demographic Knowledge, Population Theory, Security, Fascism

AUTHOR

SANDRINE BERTAUX

IFEA-affiliated researcher

European Journal of Turkish Studies, 16 | 2013