Autobiography and conservative-nationalist political opposition in Early Republican Turkey

Abstract

ABSTRACTThis article examines how autobiography-writing evolved into a political space for Kazım Karabekir, Ali Fuat Cebesoy and Rauf Orbay, three major leaders of the Turkish War of Independence and the Progressive Republican Party. This article demonstrates that their autobiographies articulate a position of political opposition. This is a novel addition to academic literature that has so far presented these figures as early representatives of peripheral dissent against the Republic, or overstressed their Unionist legacy. The autobiographical politics of Karabekir, Cebesoy and Orbay extensively builds on moralizing discourses that contrast their own heroic accomplishments against the rise of a circle of military-bureaucratic elites – etraf – surrounding Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. Through textual analysis, this article maintains that the moralizing discourses they use pose a peculiar blend of nationalism and conservatism – an elitist conservative nationalism that homogenizes political differences and ideological splits. The analysis contributes to the study of Early Republican oppositional politics and conservative political imaginary in Turkey.