How Happy to Call Oneself a Turk: Provincial Newspapers and the Negotiation of a Muslim National Identity

Chapter 5: Muslim turks against Russian Communists: The Turkish Nation in the Emerging Cold War World

CHapter 5 MusliM turks against russian CoMMunists: the turkish nation in the eMerging Cold war world It is as though the blood running in Korea is running in our veins: it is uniting us once again, it is rekindling our national feelings. The fire that comes from this blood has created a greater, enduring determination in our own blood. Now we believe in ourselves far more. her gÜn (every day) (istanbul), deCeMber 12, 1950 Islam completely rejects the ideology of communism and its application in any form. The strongest weapon able to counter communism is the power of faith and spirit. It is impossible for a true believer [mümin] to identify with Communist ideas and actions . . . In communism we see nothing resembling human rights, human freedom, freedom of religion, security of property or person, or the sacredness and inviolability of the family. ahMet haMdi akseki, Minister of religious affairs, august 25, 1950 tHe aBsenCe of a coherent Turkish nation and a popular national identity in Turkey throughout the single-party period is betrayed by the way in which, in practice, the Kemalist elite defined the nation in contradistinction to the people. During the War of Independence Mustafa Kemal had promoted the idea of a united nation struggling against European colonial powers. No sooner had hostilities come to an end, however, than he pursued a very different foreign policy, epitomized by the motto “Peace at Home, Peace Abroad.” This emphasized the new Turkey’s place as part of the “civilized” world. Consequently it became necessary to imagine a new “other” against which to define Turkey: the people he set out to transform through the Turkish Revolution.1 The defining principle of laiklik was predicated on the Kemalist elite’s determination to define the new Turkey as distinct from the allegedly MusliM turks against russian CoMMunists 145 Eastern, traditional, backward, and superstitious Ottoman Muslim traditions to which the people had long been bound. Kemalist nationalism therefore set itself apart from the very people it identified as constituting the nation. Just as nationalist ideologies are the products of the times in which they are conceived, political liberalization and the crystallization of a Muslim national identity in Turkey in the decade after 1945 reflect the realities of the emerging Cold War world. Accordingly, popular identification with the nation was predicated not on a fundamental distinction within Turkish society but on an awareness that the nation was united in opposition to a common external enemy in the form of Soviet imperialism and international communism. Both individual and collective identities derive in part from the nature of relationships with the “other”—other people and other groups. These relationships draw attention to the ways in which an individual is distinct, and only when “there is an Other can you know who you are.”2 In Turkey people came to know and identify the other through the new national print culture. This chapter examines how the pages of print media between 1945 and 1954 reveal popular conceptions of the Turkish nation in relation to the rest of the world as well as how provincial newspapers, in particular , facilitated the negotiation of a Muslim national identity in the context of the early Cold War. On the one hand, the limited nature of public freedoms in these years is evident: both leftists and Pan-Turkists found that the law increasingly restricted the opportunity to express their perspectives in print. On the other hand, it is clear that print media played a critical role in conveying information about the world to people and in framing their perceptions of Turkey’s place in that world. The often acrimonious debate concerning laiklik that characterized these years occurred in the context of considerable uncertainty as Turks recognized the challenges inherent in the Cold War. Initially, in the face of Soviet belligerence, their shared concern was whether Turkey could depend on the “West” for support. After the Korean War Turks understood their own contribution to the conflict to have been decisive in the outcome: uncertainty was transformed into widespread confidence in the importance of the Turkish nation to the world. Print media reveal that Turks conceived of their nation not only in accordance with the Kemalist vision of a modern nation deserving of membership in the “civilized” world but also as a Muslim nation rooted in the East but very much a part of the West. 146 how happy to Call...