Turkey: A Past Against History by Christine Philliou (review)

Christine Philliou offers a unique account of the contested historiography on the transition from the late Ottoman Empire to the Republic of Turkey, with a focus on a prolific novelist and journalist Refik Halid Karay (1888–1965). According to the official history thesis, there is a rupture between the Unionists governments of the 1910s and the Kemalist regime of the Republic of Turkey. Western scholarship on modern Turkey until the 1980s endorsed the basic argument of this narrative, particularly to highlight the achievements of Mustafa Kemal as a savior of the Muslim majority population in Anatolia after the defeat in World War One. Opposition to the republican master narrative was often identified with Islamism, itself a main trope propagated by self-described pro-Western Turkish elites eager to present their opponents as religious, anti-modern reactionaries. Even though this master narrative has been questioned by both academic scholarship and Turkish intellectuals, there has to this point been no micro studies that reveal alternative narratives of the transition from empire to republic. In order to explore the historiographic questions of the transition from empire to nation, Philliou chooses to focus on the biography of Refik Halid Karay, a brilliant and eloquent author, whose stories are still read by many in contemporary Turkey.

Although Refik Halid is known as a traitor to the nationalist cause who was nevertheless pardoned by Atatürk, contemporary readers are unaware of the complex politics around his texts. Philliou divides his life story into seven chapters intending to allow the readers make sense of the geopolitical and world historical transformation that intersected with both the oppositional ideas and his eventual conversion to Kemalist nationalism. Chapters one through three outline how Refik Halid rose as a figure of opposition to the undemocratic excesses of the Young Turk governments after the 1908 constitutional revolution, and was found dangerous enough to be exiled to remote provincial towns such as Sinop, Çorum, and Ankara from 1913 to 1918. During this process, the Young Turk government labelled him as mürteci (reactionary), a term that was later adopted by the Kemalist regime to demonize all forms of opposition to its policies, even the liberal and constitutional ones.

The exile of Refik Halid Karay by the Unionist leaders gave him credibility among the British backed Ottoman government of the 1918–1922 period, who appointed him to the General Directorship of the Postal and Telegraph Services of the Ottoman Empire. It was during this period that Refik Halid wrote against the rising nationalist movement associated with the parliament in Ankara, depicting them as successors of the previous oppressive Unionist regime. Refik Halid used his government posts to censure and prevent Mustafa Kemal’s telegraphs to Istanbul and within Anatolia. In Chapter 4 and 5, Philliou discusses Refik Halid’s thesis on the continuity between the Young Turk and republican eras, and his condemnation of the crimes of the late Ottoman government, including those directed at the Armenian citizens of the empire. It was this staunch opposition to the nationalist movement in Ankara that eventually led to his inclusion in a list of 150 unwanted traitors in post-Lausanne Turkey. Refik Halid escaped to French ruled Lebanon and then to Syria after seeing the lynching that was inflicted on his patron and friend Ali Kemal by the nationalists. One of the most insightful aspects of Philliou’s book is to show the conflict over the history writing on the transition from late Ottoman governments to the modern Republic of Turkey. When Refik Halid decided to publish his memories on this transition in the Istanbul press in January 1924, leaders of the Ankara government came up with their official version of the events that became the basis of Mustafa Kemal’s 1927 speech, Nutuk, and suppressed dissenting alternative accounts.

Refik Halid reconciled with the Kemalist regime in 1928, which also meant that he conceded the master narrative of the rupture between late Ottoman unionists and the republic, as well...