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CHapter 1 iMagining the seCular nation: Mustafa keMal and the Creation of Modern turkey In every phase of the period of decline . . . the borders of the State of Turkey narrowed a bit more, the spiritual and material strengths of the Turkish nation failed a bit more, the state’s independence was challenged, the wealth of land as well as the nation’s honor and population were destroyed and corrupted with a determined speed. Finally in the period of Vahdettin’s sultanate—as the 36th and last exalted Ottoman sultan—the Turkish nation was brought before the deepest chasm of captivity. Mustafa keMal, noveMber 1, 1922 Continuing for many years, the Turkish Revolution [Türk inkılâbı] has undertaken the effort to secure and confirm in the law its very existence and mentality, as well as the new principles that are the foundation of social life. What does the Turkish Revolution mean? This revolution [inkılâp] denotes a far more extensive transformation than the idea of political revolution [ihtilâl] which at first it alludes to. Mustafa keMal, noveMber 5, 1925 tHese first two CHapters make the case for the absence of a popular national identity in Turkey prior to 1945. Not only did the “Turkish nation” not predate the establishment of the Republic of Turkey in 1923, but Mustafa Kemal did not succeed in inculcating in the people an identification with the new nation that he set about creating through the Turkish Revolution. Until political liberalization began in 1945, two elements critical to the existence of the modern nation were notably absent. In early republican Turkey people had neither the freedom to exercise common legal rights nor a mass public culture in which they might participate. Consequently I advance a theoretical explanation of the formation of a popular national identity in Turkey that 26 how happy to Call oneself a turk depends on the manifestation of these critical elements after the passing of the country’s founding president and the authoritarian regime over which he presided. The Turkish nation and a popular national identity in Turkey are new, largely the products of the twentieth century. Contrary to the nationalist historical narrative that emerged after the establishment of the Turkish Republic in 1923, neither the nation nor popular identification with that nation can be taken for granted: they require an explanation. The processes by which the inhabitants of Anatolia and Eastern Thrace came to identify as “Turks” constitute a critical dimension of the social history of the transformation from Ottoman Empire to Turkish nation-state. Moreover, they offer a healthy corrective to the overemphasis on the Kemalist elite’s commitment to imagine a nation, to establish territorial sovereignty on behalf of a people, and then to inculcate in them a national identity. Mustafa Kemal Atatürk was one of the great nationalists of the twentieth century. He seized on the new international order following World War I and not only imagined the existence of a “Turkish nation” and the possibility of an independent Turkish nation-state but devoted his life to an effort to realize this vision. On November 1, 1922, after the formal dissolution of the 600-year-old Ottoman Empire by the new Grand National Assembly of Turkey, Mustafa Kemal reminded its members that only three years earlier the “nation” had been on the brink of disaster at the hands of the last, corrupt Ottoman sultan. One year later, on October 29, 1923, upon the proclamation of the new Republic of Turkey and his election as its president, Mustafa Kemal declared that the same nation had achieved its destiny through the establishment of its own independent state in the heartland of the former Ottoman Empire. In so doing the Turkish nation had demonstrated that it belonged among the modern, “civilized” nations of the world.1 Mustafa Kemal’s words illustrate the immense power of nationalism to generate retrospective historical narratives that represent the past in terms favorable to the emergence of modern nation-states. Nationalist historical narratives take it for granted that the nation is the natural and primordial form of human collective identity, each nation deriving from unique and innate cultural attributes that dictate an individual’s own primary identification with the nation. At the same time they emphasize that, despite the primordial character of national identification , over the course of history any given nation has faced numerous obstacles to organizing as an independent sociopolitical entity; conse- [52.15.63.145] Project MUSE (2024-04-25...

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