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Russell-Wood, ISBN 1–85168–288–0 Turkey The Quest for Identity Feroz Ahmad For my sister Ameena, and to the memory of my brother Farid, 1935–2000 TURKEY: THE QUEST FOR IDENTITY Oneworld Publications (Sales and Editorial) 185 Banbury Road Oxford OX2 7AR England www.oneworld-publications.com © Feroz Ahmad 2003 All rights reserved. Copyright under Berne Convention A CIP record for this title is available from the British Library ISBN 1–85168–241–4 Cover design by Design Deluxe Typeset by Saxon Graphics, Derby, UK Printed and bound in Finland by WS Bookwell NL08 Contents Preface viii Acknowledgements xi Notes on transcription xii Abbreviations xiii Maps xvi 1 THE OTTOMANS: FROM STATEHOOD TO EMPIRE, 1 1300–1789 The emergence of the house of Ottoman 1 Growth of the military 3 Early Ottoman conquests and expansion 5 Mehmed the Conqueror and his influence 8 Expanding Ottoman possessions 11 Süleyman the Magnificent 12 An age of revolution 16 The janissary–ülema alliance 20 Growing European influence 21 2 FROM REFORM TO REVOLUTION, 1789–1908 25 Reform of the military 25 The Sublime Porte and Mehmed Ali 29 The movement towards Westernization 31 Emergence of a new middle class 32 Tanzimat (restructuring) 33 The Young Ottomans movement 36 vi TURKEY: THE QUEST FOR IDENTITY Bankruptcy and upheaval: unravelling of the Ottoman 39 empire From autocracy to constitutionalism 41 Emerging traditionalism 44 3 THE CONSTITUTIONAL REVOLUTION: REFORM 49 AND WAR, 1908–1918 Restoration of the constitution 49 Counter-revolution 52 The accession of Mehmed V 54 Balkan wars and Ottoman defeats 57 The repercussions of defeat 60 Alliance with Germany 63 The Ottoman role in the First World War 65 4 THE KEMALIST ERA, 1919–1938 75 Atatürk’s background and rise to power 75 The birth of the national liberation movement 80 Birth of the republic 85 Republicanism takes root 87 Atatürk’s influence on the new republic 90 5 TOWARDS MULTI-PARTY POLITICS AND DEMOCRACY, 95 1938–1960 İnönü’s new presidency 95 War in Europe 97 The aftermath of the Second World War 99 The formation of the Democrat Party 100 The general elections of 1946 and 1950 102 The Cold War and its effects on Turkey 104 Domestic politics 107 Economic concerns 113 The army enters the fray 115 6 MILITARY GUARDIANS, 1960–1980 119 Government by junta 119 National Unity Committee: interim government 121 CONTENTS vii The ‘Second Republic’ 122 Economic reforms 124 Changing societal structures 126 The formation of new political parties 127 The new politics and the wider world 128 The Cyprus question 129 Political fragmentation 132 The memorandum regime and after, 1971–1980 134 The general election of 1973 138 Coalition government: RPP–NSP 140 Turkey’s renewed strategic importance 145 Mounting economic gloom 146 7 THE MILITARY, THE PARTIES AND GLOBALIZATION, 149 1980–2003 Restructuring the political system 149 The establishment of new political parties 152 The general election of 1983 153 Former political leaders re-emerge 155 Economic problems return to the fore 158 Turkey’s changing social and political landscape 161 The Kurdish question 163 Turkey and the EEC 167 Turkey’s political malaise 167 New political coalitions 168 Continuing political instability and its effects on the 170 economy Secularists and Islamists 172 The increasing importance of EU entry 175 Chronology of the Ottoman Empire and Modern Turkey 185 Glossary 207 Index 211 Preface The Ottomans were a rare imperial people who had no homeland to retreat to as their empire waned in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Other imperial peoples had returned to various home- lands: the British to their island base when they were forced to decolonize; the French to France, the Spanish to Spain, and so on. By the twentieth century, the Ottomans had no homeland for they had originated as tribal peoples who, for a variety of reasons, had been forced to migrate from the steppes of Central and Inner Asia and went in different directions. Some of these tribal confedera- tions, including the ones who came to be known as Ottoman (Osmanl) adopting the name of their leader, Osman (d.1324), migrated into the Islamic world and adopted Islam. These peoples came to be described as ‘Turks’ by the people they intermingled with. But they themselves were called by the name of the head of their tribal confederation: thus the Seljuks, the Danimend, the Mentee and the Osmanl or Ottomans. The Ottomans reserved the name ‘Turk’ for the nomadic tribesmen and peasants who continued to live under their rule but were as yet untamed or ‘uncivilized’. The merchants from the Italian city states of Venice and Genoa who came in contact with the Ottomans nevertheless called them Turks or Turque, as did the English and the French respectively. The Greek Orthodox described the rule of the Ottomans as ‘Tuorkokratia’, the rule of the Turks. For Europeans and Christians, the term ‘Turk’ was synonymous with Muslim; thus when Christians converted to Islam, they were often PREFACE ix said to have ‘turned Turk’. Turkey was also the English-language synonym for the Ottoman Empire; thus when Lord Byron wrote to his mother from Ottoman Albania in November 1809, he noted that ‘I have been some time in Turkey: this place [Prevesa] is on the coast, but I have traversed the interior of the province of Albania on a visit to the Pasha.’ It was common for Europeans to speak of the Balkan provinces of the Ottoman Empire as ‘Turkey-in- Europe’ and of Asia Minor and the Arab provinces as ‘Turkey-in- Asia’, when they described the geography of the empire. The idea of nationalism made inroads into the Ottoman Empire after the French Revolution, first among the non-Muslim commu- nities of the empire, and then among a minority of Muslim intellec- tuals who became conscious of their ‘Turkishness’, their language and their roots. But nationalism remained a concern of the minority, for the majority was still determined to maintain a multi- ethnic, multi-religious empire, right until the final defeat in 1918 during the First World War. Only after total defeat and the realization that the victors were going to partition the empire and promote self-determination did the Ottomans realize that they too had to determine their identity on the basis of nationalism and ‘nationhood’. When the nationalists created their republic in 1923, they were careful to call it the Republic of Turkey, a territorial and therefore a patriotic description, and not the Turkish Republic, which would have defined the republic ethnically. Nevertheless ‘Türkiye Cumhuriyeti’ is often rendered incorrectly as the ‘Turkish Republic’ and not the ‘Republic of Turkey’, and the assembly in Ankara as the Turkish Grand National Assembly and not the Grand National Assembly of Turkey. The nationalists were aware of the difference in meaning and chose their words with care. There was even a discussion about describing the people of the new Turkey as ‘Türkiyeli’, as the land of Turks, Kurds, Arabs, Circassians, etc., reserving the term ‘Turk’ for the ethnically Turkish. Turk was retained but with the same kind of meaning as ‘British’ or ‘American’. As with other national movements, having succeeded in creating the territorial state of Turkey and gaining it universal acceptance at Lausanne in 1923, the nationalists began the task of creating the nation of Turkey and the Turk. x TURKEY: THE QUEST FOR IDENTITY By the late 1930s, the nationalists had partially succeeded in creating a new identity for most of the population of Anatolia, with only the Kurdish population in the east and the Alevis of central Anatolia remaining disaffected, the former on ethnic- linguistic grounds and the latter on religious grounds. These problems of identity remained dormant until the early 1960s when they began to emerge in the more liberal political environment created by the new constitution of 1961. They remained unre- solved, though progress was made during the nineties when the state began considering the liberalization of the regime and the reforms that were required by the European Union in order to meet its criteria for membership. The new Justice and Development Party (AKP) claims to be more determined than ever to introduce and implement these reforms after its efforts to gain admission were foiled at the EU summit in Copenhagen on 12–13 December 2002. Acknowledgements This book has grown out of a long-standing involvement with the history of the Ottoman Empire and modern Turkey. Since it is a work of synthesis, I stand on the shoulders of the scholars who have inspired me over the years, as well as students who forced me to reconsider the subject with questions I had not thought to ask.