Book Reviews / JESHO 54 (2011) 87-115 95

Reşat KASABA ed., The Cambridge History of Turkey. Vol. 4: Turkey in the Modern World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008. xxiv + 574 pp. ISBN: 978-0-521-62096-3 (hbk.). £100.00.

Turkey in the Modern World is the last volume of the four-volume Cam- bridge History of Turkey project and covers the period from the end of the eleventh century to the end of the twentieth century. The first volume, edited by Kate Fleet, comprises the four centuries from the arrival of the Turks in Anatolia to the conquest of Constantinople, or, in other words, the fall of the Byzantine Empire. The second volume, edited by Suraiya Faroqhi and Kate Fleet, narrates the period between 1453 and 1603, dur- ing which the Ottoman Empire established itself as a world empire. The third volume, edited by Suraiya Faroqhi, is devoted to what might be termed the early modern or the post-classical period, situated right in the middle of the Classical and the Modern periods of the Empire, spanning the years between 1603 and 1839, when the classical Ottoman system underwent radical transformations. The fourth and last volume explores the history of Turkish modernization or the history of modernization in Turkey and covers the period from the proclamation of the Tanzimat in 1839 to date. As a whole, Turkey in the Modern World possesses three outstanding qualities. Firstly, the contributing writers try to narrate and explain nine- teenth and twentieth-century Turkish history and various aspects of Turk- ish modernization without taking recourse to the prevailing dominant historical paradigm in Turkey, which may be termed as “Kemalist histori- cal discourse” and constitutes a “positivist” and “essentialist” moderniza- tion narrative. Secondly, in a way that complements its first quality, the volume in general adopts a view that does not define Republican Turkey as a “break” from the Ottoman Empire but as part of a “continuity.” Thirdly, the chapters of the volume are predominantly authored by leading scholars in the field who all utilize the latest scholarship and literature. The volume consists of two parts. The first part, entitled “Ottoman Background and Transformation” is arranged chronologically and com- prises chapters on, respectively, the Tanzimat (by Carter V. Findley), the reign of Abdulhamid II (by Benjamin C. Fortna), the Second Constitu- tional Period (by M. Şükrü Hanioğlu), and the struggle for independence (by Hasan Kayalı) and culminates in a chapter on Atatürk (by Andrew Mango). Leaving aside some exceptions, the texts in general are dominated by a political history narrative that ends with Atatürk’s death in 1938. The

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2011 DOI: 10.1163/156852011X539626 96 Book Reviews / JESHO 54 (2011) 87-115 second part, entitled “Republic of Turkey,” on the other hand, is arranged thematically and comprises a dozen chapters devoted to various political, economic, social, and cultural aspects of Republican Turkey, or Turkish modernization, ranging from population movements to emigration, from the relations between the army and politics to those between religion and politics, from the Kurdish question to women’s movement, and from architecture to literature. Aside from all these positive qualities, the volume also has certain short- comings that should be underlined. Firstly, the chronological arrangement of the first part and the thematic arrangement of the second one create certain problems. For instance, the chapter by Kemal Kirişçi entitled “Migration and Turkey” naturally takes up the story from the 1920s, but fails to demonstrate what the editor has claimed about the history of Turk- ish modernization in the introduction: “Any study of Turkey’s modern history has to address the legacy of the Ottoman empire, even though Mustafa Kemal Atatürk and other early Republican leaders insisted on a clean break between the Ottoman past and the new republic.” If we could also trace the migration movements from the Balkans and Russia that started in the 1850s and had a great impact on the shaping of modern Turkey, we could have had a better understanding of Turkish moderniza- tion. Due to problems arising from this binary arrangement, we can hardly trace continuities. This problem occurs in numerous other chapters and themes throughout the volume. Secondly, there is an apparent dispropor- tion in the length of certain chapters. For instance, the chapter by Hasan Kayalı entitled “The Struggle for Independence” narrates the six years between 1918 and 1924 in a very detailed text of 34 pages; on the other hand, the Tanzimat (1839-76) chapter is 26 pages, the one on Abdulhamid II (1876-1908) is 23 pages, and the Second Constitutional Period (1908-18) chapter is 49 pages long, which are all thus in clear con- trast to Kayalı’s chapter. Hasan Kayalı’s chapter allows for going into details while the rest of the chapters are naturally confined to providing only gen- eral summaries. Thirdly, some parts of certain chapters overlap: for instance, Andrew Mango’s chapter on Atatürk and Kayalı’s chapter on “The Struggle for Independence.” Moreover, in the chapter devoted to Atatürk, the period before 1922 is narrated in more detail, leading to greater overlaps and repetitions with the chapter on the war of independence. If we add the chapter devoted to the period until 1938 in Feroz Ahmad’s contribution entitled “Politics and Political Parties in Republican Turkey,” the repeti- tions become even more significant. Of course, these can all be regarded as