Turkish Experience with Totalitarianism and Fascism: Tracing the Intellectual Origins

Abstract

Many facets of ideological transformation in Turkey between the 1910s and 1930s have been extensively discussed but many more still remain to be studied and contextualised. One of these aspects concerns the existing disagreement in the scholarship over Turkey’s experience with another manifestation of totalitarianism, and particularly with fascism. The present paper explores this generally overlooked dimension and argues that even the limited research on fascism in Turkey has been mainly done from comparative perspectives. This dominant methodological approach has long prevailed the field and diverted scholarly attention from the essence of the problem. Therefore, the author aims to explore the problem by not identifying similarities and differences of the Unionism of the Young Turks era and Kemalism with their contemporary totalitarian currents; instead, the analysis will be mainly limited to the Turkish context and practices in order to trace the local manifestations of “global fascism”. He also argues that there is a compelling continuity of totalitarian ideological and political practices between the Young Turks and the Kemalists.