National Romanticism: The Formation of National Movements

Namık Kemal: Motherland, or Silistra

NAMIK KEMAL: MOTHERLAND, OR SILISTRA Title: Vatan yahud Silistre (Motherland, or Silistra) Originally published: Istanbul, n.p., 1889 Language: Ottoman Turkish Excerpts taken from Vatan yahud Silistre, reprinted by the Turkish Ministry of Culture (Ankara, 1990), pp. 25–34; 44–46; 56–57; and 84–85. The play was translated into German by Leopold Pekotsch, with the title Heimat oder Silistria (Vienna, 1887). About the author See Namık Kemal, Ottoman History, pp. 94. Context This play, seminal in the propagation of an Ottomanist national consciousness among the wider Ottoman populace, was written and performed at a time when the Balkan provinces of the Empire were simmering with revolt. Vatan is set at the time of the Crimean War (1853–56), and narrates the story of a group of Muslim Ottoman civilians who volunteer to join the army in defense of the castle of Silistra (now in northern Bulgaria) that was besieged by the Russian army. It must be noted that the evocation of the Crimean War, and in particular the siege of Silistra (1854), played a significant role in enhancing the play’s emotional impact, since, in public memory, it represented the only palpable victory gained by the Ottoman army in the recent past. While espousing patriotic zeal in its fiery sentimentalism, Namık Kemal ’s epic on the defense of the Ottoman motherland is also redolent of the rising Islamic sentiment of the 1870s. With the relative freedom allowed during the initial years of the reign of Abdülaziz (1861–1876), Ottoman intellectuals of various tendencies gained the opportunity to voice shared NAMIK KEMAL: MOTHERLAND, OR SILISTRA 487 anxieties and demands arising from the rich social ferment of the Late Tanzimat (see Ahmed Midhat Efendi, The basis of reform). The tenor of the public debate, however, was largely dictated by the rising sentiments of the historically dominant and privileged Muslim population. In the wake of the 1856 Reform Edict, which re-affirmed the state’s commitment to institutional reforms based on European models and sanctioned the rights given to the non-Muslim communities, the critical discourse on the reform agenda of the Tanzimat was suffused with an unmistakably conservative and traditionalist mood. Vexed by the indefinite prospects of economic integration with Europe, several members of the burgeoning intelligentsia (from men on the fringes of the constitutionalist movement to more xenophobic ultraconservatives ) called for a re-examination of the impact of the Tanzimat program at large. Prompted by the new and multi-layered debate on the future of the Tanzimat, those in charge of the official reform policy also realized the urgency of being more responsive to the changing realities of Ottoman society (especially those of the dissatisfied Muslim populace). They believed that it was time to refurbish Tanzimat ‘Ottomanism’ as a coherent ideology with a wider popular basis. Thus, while the state retained the rhetoric of international cosmopolitanism it inherited from the founders of the Tanzimat, the weight of Islam as a basis of legitimacy became more accentuated within the everyday official discourse of the Abdülaziz era (as observed in the new emphasis placed on the title “caliph” by the sultan himself). In sum, in an attempt to procure the political commitment of the Muslim masses, the reformist strategy of the Tanzimat was realigned with reference to the rising conservative mood in the public psyche. Namık Kemal’s treatment of the term ‘vatan’ clearly evinces the fundamental flaw in the configuration of a common sense of Ottoman patriotism during the Late Tanzimat. While, in theory, the novel Ottoman notion of patrie demanded the allegiance of all ethno-religious elements in the empire, the sentiments that actually went into the making of the idea perceptibly appealed to the dominant Muslim community. Throughout his literary and scholarly works, Namık Kemal weaves an emotional aura around the concept of vatan as a sacred domain that was drenched in the blood of the Ottoman martyrs. It was impossible for non-Muslim Ottomans to project themselves into the national-dynastic mythology conjured up by Kemal. In his historical writings, he recounts the story of the fatherland, in romantic grandiloquence, by evoking the glories of the Ottoman conquests and the valiance of the sultan ’s armies. In Namık Kemal’s grand narrative of Ottoman splendor, all heroic deeds are fulfilled in the name of the dynasty and of Islam. It is no coin- 488 NATIONAL HEROISM cidence, therefore...