The “Speak Turkish Campaigns” and the Jewish Community During the Reformation and Nation Building Process of the Early Turkish Republic, 1928‐1938’

AKDOĞAN, Nuran Savaşkan. ‘The “Speak Turkish Campaigns” and the Jewish Community during the reformation and nation building process of The Early Turkish Republic, 1928‐1938’. Jewish Migration: Voices of the Diaspora. Raniero Speelman, Monica Jansen & Silvia Gaiga eds. ITALIANISTICA ULTRAIECTINA 7. Utrecht: Igitur Publishing, 2012. ISBN 978‐90‐6701‐032‐0. SUMMARY In the first years of the Turkish Republic, as it made its way to becoming a nation‐state, the “Turkification” of language and the “Speak Turkish” campaigns were significant policies. The shift from the millet (nation), based on Islamic rule, which was a system constructed by the Ottoman Empire, to the ‘one nation ‐ one state’ policy of the secular modern Turkish Republic affected the various ethnic groups residing in Turkey, in the sense that all nations had enjoyed the same status under the protection of the Ottoman Empire. In the new nation state, however, these groups were no longer considered millets within the Republic; in fact, this new system presumed all individuals living in Turkey to be Turkish citizens according to its policy of building a homogeneous nation. This new approach sparked a revolutionary spirit, and initiated a process of modernization leading to an evident socio‐economic transformation. These changes affected alls level of society, and specifically impacted minority groups (non Muslims) and antagonists to this new regime. The linguistic revolution and the “Speak Turkish” campaigns applied much pressure to minority groups, the most obvious of which was the Jewish community. The “Speak Turkish” campaigns resulted in the need for the Jewish community to re‐draw the community boundaries that defined its cultural identity. KEY WORDS Speak Turkish Campaigns, non‐Muslim minorities, Jews, Turkification, language revolution, nation‐ state © The authors The proceedings of the international conference Jewish Migration: Voices of the Diaspora (Istanbul, June 23‐27 2010) are volume 7 of the series ITALIANISTICA ULTRAIECTINA. STUDIES IN ITALIAN LANGUAGE AND CULTURE, by Igitur Publishing. ISSN 1874‐9577 (http://www.italianisticaultraiectina.org). 89 THE “SPEAK TURKISH CAMPAIGNS” AND THE JEWISH COMMUNITY DURING THE REFORMATION AND NATION BUILDING PROCESS OF THE EARLY TURKISH REPUBLIC, 1928‐1938* Nuran Savaşkan Akdoğan Public Administration Institute for Turkey and the Middle East Recent developments in world politics, the prevalence of national movements and identity politics and a focus on ethnic problems have given rise to questions about the future of nation states based on majority politics. As a result of these questions, the situation of refugees, migrants, and minorities have become prominent discussion points. Turkish minorities1 have become increasingly vocal as a result of changes in legal, civil and human rights brought about by Turkey’s desire to be part of the European Union. In the aftermath of the Elza Niyago event in 1927, the Turkish‐Jewish community became accustomed to withholding public reactions to social, political and economic decisions enforced by the government that impacted its status.2 However, almost a century later, recent developments in information and communication technology, discussions about cultural identity, and new policies have stimulated a new openness. The weekly newspaper Şalom, the Gözlem publishing house, various web sites, and foundations such as the 500. Yıl Vakfı have broken the community’s silence in the Turkish public sphere. Turkish minorities have traditionally muffled their reactions to government policies and the events brought about by them. Traumatic events of the past may partially explain this silence. Another reason can be traced back to the beginning of the twentieth century and the development of the nation state. Prior to that, the administrative regime was based on a multiethnic structure in which many different ethnic groups coexisted under the millet (nation) system.3 However, the transition to a nation state system was based upon a homogeneous citizenship policy, which accepted all as equals and sought to eliminate the differences such as religion, language and race. The shift from the millet, based upon Islamic rule and a system of the Ottoman Empire, to ther secula modern Turkish Republic’s ‘one nation ‐ one state’ policy, affected all ethnic groups ‒ i.e. all nations and subjects living under the protection of the Ottoman Empire, that were no longer to be considered millets within the Republic ‒ but presumed all living in Turkey to be Turkish citizens (Hobsbawm 1990). Furthermore, this shift brought about radical ideological, administrative, and policy changes including: the abolition of the Sultanate (1922), the Caliphate (1924), Sharia Courts (1924) and Madrasas (1924) and the unification of education (1924). These 90 reforms sought to create a new system of state along with a new lifestyle based on secular and Western thought. This resulted in a sweeping social change, from language to fashion, from the legal system to economic life. In the light of this, the first fifteen years of the Turkish Republic can be called an era of reform and nation building. One of its most prominent aspects was a linguistic revolution in which the Ottoman language was banned from official and public spheres. In its place, the Turkish language, written in a specially developed version of the Latin alphabet, was institutionalized within the remarkably short span of three months. The spirit of the era and the success of these reforms fostered its rapid spread. The language revolution affected all literate Turkish people. The language revolution and “Speak Turkish” campaigns compelled the various ethnic communities to alter their modes of communication to Turkish in the public sphere. Among the minorities whose mother tongues were not Turkish, the most affected group was the Jewish community. The remainder of this article focuses on the impact of the linguistic revolution and the “Speak Turkish Campaigns” between 1928 and 1938 on Turkey’s Jewish community. This investigation has relied upon a thorough study of the period’s daily newspapers.4 Ultimately, this study investigates the new boundaries of Jewish identity drawn within that of a Turkish identity. LANGUAGE UNIFICATION It was in 1928 that the Early Turkish Republic eschewed its Ottoman heritage and implemented the Language Revolution, a policy that aimed at a national language and cultural unity. Prior to this, under the Ottoman Empire’s millet system, non‐ Muslim minorities enjoyed the rights to freely speak and publish in their own languages. The Republican elites aimed to build a nation state that was blind to differences in language and religion. This project was based upon “one language, one ideal, one culture” nationalism. For Rıfat Bali, the minorities of that period clashed with this national project (Bali 2000, V), whereas the ruling elite sought to quell symbolically all economic and political foreign pressure (capitulations) experienced during the Ottoman Empire. As the Jewish community was the largest non‐Muslim group that resisted learning Turkish, it gradually became the linguistic campaign’s main focus. For example, while the Jewish community did not integrate linguistically, the Armenian and Greek groups did.5 Furthermore the Armenian exile (1915) and the population exchange (1923) between Turkey and Greece led to a decline in the population of these groups. Parallel to this, written Arabic was not permitted in the Ottoman Empire, as it was considered to be sacred to the Koran (17).6 In any case, the Turkish Jews resisted the linguistic policy, and persisted in speaking other tongues: Ladino and French. Meanwhile, the Jewish community retained its thriving economy, which in its isolation thwarted the Early Republic’s economic agenda of carving out a local 91 bourgeoisie. Partially compelled by these economic motives, the government would harbor no tolerance for deviation from the reform movement. According to Levi (1998, 66), Turkish newspapers in the 1920s regularly attacked the Jewish community in claims of its privileges, dominant economic role, and resistance to the Turkish language.7 Meanwhile, the Lausanne Treaty permitted minorities to speak their own languages and entertain the rights to education in their native tongues.8 In Bali’s opinion, this right was only reluctantly tolerated by the government: “You, Turkish Jews, insisted on speaking Spanish even though they expelled you 450 years ago. […] You did not use Turkish. So, you are ungrateful people” (2000, VII). In 1927, 97.3% of the total population was Turkish‐Muslim. This situation, for Shaw & Shaw (1983), provided a convenient basis for conducting national policies by the institutions as Republican People’s Party (RPP‐Cumhuriyet Halk Fırkası)9 and Turkish Hearts (Türk Ocakları)10 (1983, 446). Among the 16.157.450 Turkish citizens during the 1930s, 13.899.073 spoke Turkish. As reflected in the below table, the rest of the population spoke Kurdish dialects together with 22 other languages (Çağaptay 2002, 258). 1935 POPULATION on the basis of religion or belief TOTAL 16.157.450 Muslims 15.838.673 Greek ‐ Orthodox 125.046 Jews 78.730 Armenian Gregorian 44.526 Catholic 33.155 Protestant 8486 Christian11 4725 Atheist 559 Other 12.965 Besides the founding of the Turkish nation state, a secondary aim to abolish a perceived negative view of Turks became apparent. A strongly nationalist approach proliferated. The acceptance of Turkish as the official language paralleled this approach.

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