The Kurds and Settlement Policies from the Late Ottoman Empire to Early Republican Turkey: Continuities and Discontinuities (1916–34)

This article discusses the effect of medical education on politicization during the late Ottoman period. The article focuses on the nineteenth-century emergence of the epistemological and etiological shift in medicine on a global scale, which led to the dominance of the modernization paradigm in the environment of the Military School of Medicine in Istanbul. The ideas favoring modernization and progressivism became widespread through partnerships and differences between the two generations of physicians represented by the periods of Tanzimat (1839-1876) and Abdülhamid II (1876-1909). Based on the narratives of prominent physicians of the late Ottoman and Early Republican Turkey, the article aims to illustrate that all the activities in the school resulted in the gradual transformation of the perspective of the students in contrast to their professors, interpreting the concept of progress as an effective basis to assist the modern aspirations of the administrative elites, composing the hidden curriculum of modern medical education in the Ottoman context. The younger generation began to equate materialism with solidarity, political activism, and insurgency, which would finally enable them to lead the movement against the monarchy or sultan. This generation would also occupy leading administrative positions in the first decades of the new Turkish Republic.

This article uses the story of the Albayrak Tea Company and its founder Mustafa Nezih Albayrak as a prism to examine the formation of a class of Muslim merchants in early Republican Turkey. Mustafa Nezih Bey, an Ottoman bureaucrat who ventured into business in the late 1910s, became one of the most prominent tea merchants in the early Republic, paving the way for its mass consumption. Looking at the overlap between the late Ottoman bureaucracy and the Turkish bourgeoisie, this study aims to show a continuation in the economic field rather than a break between the Late Ottoman Empire and Early Republican Turkey. The making of the Republican merchant elite was a complex process that involved not only state policies and long legacies of merchant activity from the Ottoman era but transformations in education and mass media in the aftermath of the 1908 Revolution.

A review of Benny Morris and Dror Ze'evi's The Thirty-Years Genocide deals with the experience of Armenian, Assyrian, and Greek minorities in late Ottoman and early Republican Turkey. The thesis of a long genocide challenges the international law concept of genocide while reopening a line of interpretation of long-standing persecution that is close to Christian memory, but far from contemporary historians' emphasis on political decision-making. The review specifically deals with the Assyrians who were less of a passive victim than Morris and Ze'evi maintain.

<i>Orphans and Destitute Children in the Late Ottoman Empire</i>. By Nazan Maksudyan. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2014. Pp. xviii + 232. $39.95 (hardcover).

ABSTRACTIn the modern world, festivals and commemorative ceremonies, national pledges, songs are all used to help students connect to each other and their wider society, particularly to the nation state and its ideals. The purpose of this article is to demonstrate how such rituals were used to different ends in terms of nation-building in the Republic of Turkey. The Western-oriented identity of the Turkish Republic began to take shape during the Ottoman era, and education played a very significant role in this. This paper first introduces the educational rituals of the Otoman state to set the scene for the main discussion, which centres on the development of new rituals in the Turkish Republic. Religious and sultanic rituals were replaced by new rituals which fostered Turkish identity and promoted secular nationhood. To this end, the most effective educational rituals – national festivals, flag-raising ceremonies and Turkey’s student pledge – are examined in detail.

This article explores the images and status of Turkish-citizen Kurds in Turkey. Kurds in Turkey mostly have been seen as prospective-Turks and accordingly have been subject to the assimilationist practices of throughout the Republican period. However, recent signs suggest that this image and status of the Kurds are not as secure as they once were. Kurds are now perceived by many as pseudo-citizens. A historical reading of practices in Turkey indicates that this change in the Kurds' image may be accompanied by a change in their status and that they may now be subject to the discriminatory practices of citizenship. The article concludes with an argument as to why such a fundamental change has taken place in the image and status of Kurds in Turkey. Portraying the status of Kurds vis a vis is not easy. This is because Kurds' status in Turkey's (national-) political community always has been ambiguous. Although the Kurds have, in principle, been considered proper members of the Turkish nation, there are instances in which Kurds were seen as outside of the circle of Turkishness. The ambiguity in question is due mainly to several factors. First, legal as a formal status has never been the sole marker of in Turkey. In other words, there always has been a gap between Turkishness as citizenship and Turkishness as such. Secondly, Turkish itself has not been a firm category. Instead, as I will argue, Turkish has, from the beginning of the Republic, oscillated between an ethnic and a political definition of the (Turkish) nation. Accordingly, the status of Turkish-citizen Kurds, with respect to the Turkish nation or to the political community in Turkey, has been blurred. Kurds have been subject to both the assimilationist and discriminatory practices of citizenship, which undoubtedly drew legitimacy from the oscillation in question. However, the ambiguity in the status of Kurds vis a vis is due mostly to the fact that the Turkish state, or the establishment1 in Turkey, has not maintained a stable image of Kurds. The most appropriate term to define this unstable image and perception of Kurds is prospective-Turks. As prospective-Turks, or potential members of the Turkish ethno-cultural community, Kurds have long been considered a part of the (national-) political community, i.e. a part of as defined by citizenship. Citizenship practices that Kurds have enjoyed have been shaped accordingly. Like many other inhabitants of the country who are considered prospective-Turks (Circassians or Bosnians, for instance), Kurds mainly have been subject to the assimilationist practices of citizenship. In other words, Kurds have, in principle, been invited to become Turkish. Nevertheless, the idea that Kurds are prospective-Turks always has left open the way to a counter-perception that Kurds may not become Turkish. In certain cases this counter-perception has prevailed over the assimilationist one. When this happened, Kurds were considered as outside of the circle of Turkishness, and were left subject to the discriminatory practices of citizenship. In general, however, Kurds have been regarded as a part of the circle of and have been subject to intense Turkification. In other words, the idea that Kurds are prospective-Turks has worked almost as a meta-image during the Republican period. However, today's current images concerning Kurds indicate that this meta-image is not as stable as it has been. Accordingly, this article examines the shifts in the public images of Kurds in Turkey. Yet, before investigating why the meta-image of Kurds as prospective-Turks is being challenged, it is first necessary to see how this image emerged and became dominant. Kurds as Prospective-Turks While Kurds have, in principle, been considered prospective-Turks throughout the Republican period, the image of Kurds during the years leading up to and including the inception of the Republic (the early 1920s) was different. …

America and the Making of Modern Turkey: Science, Culture and Political Alliances

The Nusayri community, residing primarily in the coastal regions of Syria, Antakya (Antioch), and Çukurova, remained largely isolated from mainstream Ottoman society due to their distinct religious beliefs and esoteric practices. Despite their official recognition as Muslims, they were often marginalised within the broader Islamic community. This article examines the efforts undertaken during the late Ottoman period and the early years of the Turkish Republic to integrate the Nusayri community into the dominant social and political order. These efforts, characterised by a combination of religious reform and cultural assimilation policies, can be understood as processes of identity construction. The study, based on an in-depth analysis of Ottoman and Republican archival documents, highlights the instrumental role of education in these processes. The article also notes the shift from religious to national identity as the focus of identity-building activities from the Ottoman to Republican period. In this process, it was emphasised that identity construction, which was implemented in the form of belief correction during the Ottoman period, evolved into race correction during the Republican period. Despite these efforts, the Nusayri community largely retained its distinct language, cultural traditions, and religious beliefs, suggesting that the attempts to impose a singular national identity met with limited success.

Alevism emerged as a political problem during the Ottoman Empire in the 16th century and was handled within the scope of modernisation, nationalism, and nation-building in the 19th and 20th centuries. Land losses of the Ottoman Empire and the loss of superiority against Europe pushed the state elites to make reforms and build a homogeneous structure from the population in the remaining lands. This situation gained different aspects and continued in the period of reforms and under the rule of the Committee of Union and Progress. During these periods, Alevis were seen as an internal threat while trying to be kept as a part of the whole. The new republican regime, which were built after the collapse of Ottoman Empire continued these policies that aimed at the Islamization and nationalisation of Alevis and their inclusion into the national community. Alevism became the target of different political movements, from Islamism to Turkism, of several governments during this period. This study identifies the approaches to Alevism during this period within the context of John Breuilly’s understanding of nationalism. In this regard, the late Ottoman and early Republican period nationalism policies and their attitudes toward Alevis will be the focal point of this study. The study will claim that different power centers during the late Ottoman and early Republican periods defined Alevis as within the national body but perceived them as a domestic threat. The study contributes to the literature as it applies Breuilly’s views on nationalism to the late Ottoman and early Republican periods. The study also claims to contribute to the literature on Alevism, as it discusses Alevism within the context that Breuilly draws.

Ali Bey Huseyinzade (1864-1940) was one of the most significant Azerbaijani Turkish intellectuals in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, formulating Azerbaijani national identity around its Turkish, Islamic and territorial dimensions. His solution to the ambiguities of the identity crisis among the Turkic-Muslim people of Azerbaijan was Turkification, Islamization and Europeanization for the Turkic and Muslim peoples of the Caucasus and Ottoman Turkey. Ali Bey Huseyinzade1 was an influential Azerbaijani Turkish intellectual who had a direct impact on Turkish nationalists in the late Ottoman Empire and early Republican Turkey. Huseyinzade’s formulation of the triple processes of Turkification, Islamization and Europeanization spread among the Azerbaijani and Ottoman Turkish intellectuals in their respective countries. This article aims to discuss the ideas of Ali Bey Huseyinzade, especially regarding nationality, religion and Westernism and their impact on intellectuals and policy makers in the Caucasus and Turkey. His physical odyssey from Tsarist Russia into the Ottoman Empire is indicative of his ideological proclivities and his subsequent influence on the Turkish-speaking peoples in the two major empires in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

In histories of preventing and treating tuberculosis, many physicians came to prioritize the place and role of the home by the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This was as true in the West as it was in the late Ottoman Empire. Also common, practices of scapegoating the poor and other marginalized populations as TB’s sources and carriers were pervasive. In this article, we examine how ideas of health, TB, and home converged to accentuate class in the ostensibly objective public health literature and propaganda of late Ottoman and early republican Turkey. Analyzing both textual and graphic narratives found in primary sources written in Ottoman Turkish, our study explores how officials – lacking resources and alternatives – opted to pursue ambitious public health propaganda campaigns to at least achieve broad educational inoculation of the population. In doing so, rudimentary matters of treatment were taught and legislated in ways that aligned with the contemporary propagation of national citizenship.

The concept of homeland, vatan, the essential part of the nation-state establishing the link between the people and the territory, territorializes the national identity by creating a sense of belonging to the sacred soil and turning the imagined boundaries into physical ones. In Turkey, constructing the borders of the national identity and vatan required the transformation of the Ottoman imperial paradigm into a nation-state. Republican reforms were unprecedented in terms of combining Turkish identity with territoriality. With the establishment of the Turkish nation-state, a sense of nationalism substituted servitude to the sultan with loyalty to vatan. This was revolutionary in that the nation was disassociated from Islam and God as the community of believers and from the Ottoman sultan as his loyal servants and now was anchored to the life-giving vatan. This article examines the change in the pedagogy of space in Turkey from the late nineteenth century to the first three decades of the twentieth century, exploring how the mental maps of Turkish people shifted from an imperial to a national scope.

The decade of war and violence culminating in the Conference of Lausanne was formative for the modern state of Turkey, as it was for interwar Europe’s diplomacy and appeasement. Yet the currents that gave rise to the defining events of the period – ultranationalism, imperial proto-fascism, and pan-Islamism – have yet to be definitively integrated into historiography. The case studies in this book reappraise key events, concepts, and individuals in late Ottoman and early Republican Turkey. Divided into four parts, the book first examines squandered opportunities for democratic reform of the multi-ethnic empire, as well as the emergence of extreme politico-religious ideology in the late Ottoman period. It then examines the continuity of these currents in Kemalist Turkey in case studies including anti-Kurdish campaigns and biographical studies of key actors, insiders, and ideologues such as Ziya Gökalp, Cavid Bey, Riza Nur, and Mahmut Bozkurt. The final part of the book explores the legacy of Turkey’s violent formation vis-à-vis its relations with wartime ally Germany in the context particularly of the Armenian genocide. Together, the chapters in this book emphasise the legacy of foundational violence which marked the formation of authoritarian modern Turkey, while highlighting the need for new, inclusive democratic social contracts.

Reviewed by: An Intellectual History of Turkish Nationalism: Between Turkish Ethnicity and Islamic Identity by Umut Uzer Zeynep Geylan Umut Uzer. An Intellectual History of Turkish Nationalism: Between Turkish Ethnicity and Islamic Identity. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2016. 288 pp. Paper, $25. ISBN: 978-1607814658. In An Intellectual History of Turkish Nationalism: Between Turkish Ethnicity and Islamic Identity, Uzer traces the changes in the phenomenon of "Turkish Nationalism" with a detailed analysis of published texts. Given the abundance of literature on politics, Uzer easily fills a gap by keeping his analysis primarily on the texts while addressing the political context only when necessary. He defines nationalism as "a cultural phenomenon based on language, sentiments, and symbolism and thus cannot be defined as purely an ideology or a political movement" (p. 9). He begins by exploring the birth of Turkish nationalism by highlighting three main factors behind its emergence. Later, he defines three different nationalisms as he traces the transformations in Turkish nationalism from a forward-thinking, revolutionary approach to a conservative ideology that highlights the Islamic past of Turkey. Uzer defines the three main factors that led to the formation of Turkish nationalism as: beginning of nationalist movements among non-Turkish minorities under Ottoman rule that made Ottomanism "irrelevant"; discovery of a Turkish history that existed before the Ottoman Empire through texts; and migration of Turkish people from Russia who admired the culture but disliked the rule of the sultan, which kindled the need for a "Turkish Nationalism." The second factor, discovery of pre-Ottoman Turkish texts, was the main motivation for the Ottoman intelligentsia to reconnect with their roots. In line with the main argument of many scholars, enabling an earlier history for these [End Page 267] individuals re-shaped their identity.1As soon as the new literature was absorbed, subsequent texts began to be published by many "impactful" authors. Uzer summarizes each by their specific contributions throughout the first chapter. He concludes that these three factors culminated at a time when the Young Turks began to emerge and the Ottoman Empire was at the edge of dissolution, hence resulting in the creation of a Turkish nationalism. The author acknowledges that the way Turkish nationalism came to be was not necessarily a bottom-up movement but rather was from the top down where the political context at the time did not leave any other choice. While the Ottoman Empire collapsed and the Turkish Republic was established, the newly founded Turkish nationalism was difficult for masses to fully adopt. As the initial Turkish nationalism found it difficult to establish roots, it transformed into different versions. Uzer identifies three main versions of Turkish nationalism as Kemalist, Ethnic, and Conservative Nationalism, which all reinforce and influence each other one way or another. As soon as the Turkish Republic was founded by Atatürk, a Kemalist version of Turkish nationalism was simultaneously constructed and emphasized. Kemalist nationalism, as the first form of Turkish nationalism, mainly adopted a territorial approach that also carried strong ethnic undertones. It emphasized the importance of maintaining the hard-earned motherland while also putting emphasis on the ethnic roots of Turkish people to reinforce unification. Kemalist nationalism mainly stressed Westernization, secularism, and modernity, however, still mentioned Islamic notions because the Muslim masses were responding positively. Before moving onto Conservative Nationalism, which remains dominant in today's Turkey, Uzer defines "Ethnic Nationalism." While the author recognizes that Kemalist nationalism has its ethnic components, ethnic nationalism remained as a different version of Turkish nationalism that gave more importance to race and ethnicity and Kemalist nationalism mainly underlined the unification of language and religion. According to Uzer, ethnic nationalism was never a dominant approach in Turkey; however, it remains grounded to this day. He notes that in the future, ethnic nationalism has the potential to gain momentum if more individuals embrace the separatist Kurdish identity that is dominant in the southeastern Turkey. [End Page 268] The final chapter deals with conservative nationalism that had been dominant in Turkey since the 1950s. Uzer identifies the main factors behind the emergence of conservative nationalism as: democratization, which unified all opponents of Kemalist nationalism under a conservative party; urbanization, which resulted...

Objective - An individual improves his/her cognitive level by implementing terminal behaviour changes to his/her own life through educational institution located in his/her living space. In this context, the education system of a country is very important in terms of mental development and how people perceive the world. Developments in the world after the French Revolution had influenced Ottoman. Various institutional reforms had been required because of repeated military defeats in the late Ottoman period. In this regard, renovation of educational institutions modelled on Western-based was thought as a saver solution for the empire in period of regression but this modernization process also brought many problems with it. We can understand the approach to education of societies by way of literary works such as novels written in that period. Methodology/Technique - In this study, the late Ottoman education system is examined by the critical review of through novel. It is narrated the late Ottoman fall reflecting in the field of education. The irregularity system of that period is criticized. It has been adapted to Turkish cinema especially by adhering to the novel which is a remarkable reference about the history of Turkish education system. Findings - The quality difference in education between centrums and suburbans shows administration of suburban was omitted by Ottoman. Besides, the inequality between man and woman can be observed. It was emphasized that, in Ottoman, men is always right and strong and women are useless and not able to consider. Republic let the woman to arm their rights and gave us the belief that women can be powerful and right. Novelty - The study reviews the education system of Ottoman empire based on the novel. Type of Paper: Review Keywords: Late Ottoman; Modernization; Westernization; Education Problems. JEL Classification: I21, I24.