THE TURKIFICATION OF TURKEY
Hurriyet
h/opinion/10397767.asp?scr=1
Nov 20 2008
Turkey
Turkey’s Defense Minister Vecdi Gönul made the headlines recently
with his remarks on the history of the country’s nation-building
process. "One of the great achievements of Ataturk… is the
population exchange between Greece and Turkey," he said, speaking
at the commemoration of the death of the country’s founder. "Could
Turkey be the same national country had the Greek community still
lived in the Aegean or Armenians lived in many parts of Turkey?"
These words of the minister — whose ministry is a most weird one,
because it is subordinate to the military that it is supposed to
supervise in a real democracy — implied that he was content with
the loss of Turkey’s Armenians and Greeks. The former had been "lost"
during the tragic expulsion of 1915, and the latter were "exchanged"
with the Turks in Greece in 1923. And according to Mr. Gönul,
Turkey became the nation it is today thanks to these designs on its
populace. Before criticizing the minister, I think we should simply
acknowledge that he was telling the truth.
Yes, in the past century Turkey has been "Turkified" by state
power. This was done by the removal of the non-Muslim elements,
first, and then by the assimilation of the non-Turkish Muslims into
"Turkishness." Turkey’s ethnically conscious Kurds, who are the only
"survivors" of this Turkification policy, are today also the focus
of the country’s deepest problem.
This historical truth definitely sounds irritating to the liberal and
even multi-cultural ears that most of us have. But we can get such
things right only by putting them in their historical context. And we
can understand this context only by going back to the Ottoman Empire.
In the middle of the 15th century, with the conquest of Constantinople
and other Balkan territories, the Ottoman state had turned into a
multi-ethnic and multi-religious empire. And until the beginning of
the 19th century, it had little reason to worry about the continued
existence of this structure.
Yet as the tides of European nationalism poured in, the Christian
people in the Western parts of the empire started to crave
independence. First the Serbs and than the Greeks rebelled, and the
latter achieved their independent state as early as 1829. It was a
sign of the coming troubled times.
In return, the Ottomans started to think of ways to win the hearths
and minds of their non-Muslim subjects. Soon they would try this by
turning them into full citizens with equal rights, through the reforms
edicts of 1839 and 1856. "I notice the Muslims of my people in the
mosque, the Christians in the church, and the Jews in the synagogue,"
said Sultan Mahmud II, who initiated this reform process. "There is
no other difference between them in terms of my love and justice." But
this policy called "Ottomanism" did not work. Uprisings among Christian
people of the empire continued.
At the end of the disastrous Ottoman-Russian war of 1877-78, the
empire lost most of its Balkan territories by having to accept the
independence of Romania, Serbia, Montenegro and Bulgaria. This would
soon lead the Ottoman elite to lose their hopes of the loyalty of
their Christians citizens. (The Jews, meanwhile, remained always
loyal and thus trusted.)
The fall of Ottomanism brought forth "Islamism," the policy of Sultan
Abdulhamid II, which was based on the idea of keeping the Muslim
elements of the empire intact. (This is not to be confused by the
radical ideology of Islamism devised by 20th century thinkers such as
Sayyid Qutb.) But when even the Muslim Albanians revolted in 1912,
and Muslim Arabs showed signs of nationalism, "Islamism" turned out
to be ineffective as well. That’s why "Turkism," an ideology that had
been flourishing among the Young Turks since the early 20th century,
dominated the scene. Turks were now the only element that was trusted.
Neighbor against neighbor Islamism’s appeal actually continued for a
while, and the War of Liberation, 1919-22, was based on it rather than
Turkism, but the triumph of the latter was predestined by history. At a
time when almost all emerging states were trying to create homogeneous
societies, Turkey could hardly have been different. Moreover, the
bloody reconquista of the Balkans created not just distrust but also
was disgusting to the Christian elements of the empire.
The newly emerging Balkan states were as nationalist as they could
be, and their militants decided to take revenge of the "Turkish yoke"
from their Muslim neighbors. Thus, as the Ottoman armies were pushed
back to Anatolia, especially in the bloody Balkan Wars of 1912-13,
drones of fleeing Balkan Muslims reached Istanbul, bloody and bruised,
and brought news of the Muslim-slaughtering infidels. The horrific
things you saw in the Balkans in the 1990’s, that ruthless "ethnic
cleansing" that the Serbian Chetniks carried out against Bosnian
Muslims, was just a sequel to what had happened a century ago.
That’s why the founders of modern Turkey were convinced that
cultural homogeneity was the only way to keep the nation intact. I
am not saying this to justify the tragedies caused by their mindset,
most notably the dreadful expulsion of Armenians in 1915. But I am
saying this to explain the historical context. The Turkification of
Turkey was not a malicious plot by fascist minds, but the outcome
of a troubled historical process that turned nation against nation,
neighbor against neighbor.
Today, of course, we live in a different age. It is time to heal the
wounds of the past and make peace with the enemies of yesteryear. The
only valid criticism against minister Gönul might be that he did not
stress this enough in his controversial speech. But he was telling
the truth, and the truth is bitter. And that is because the history of
not just Turkish nationalism in particular, but nationalism as such,
is bitter.
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