Young Turk memoirs as a historical source: Kazim Karabekir'sIstiklal Harbimiz

Abstract

Historians of the Western world generally take it for granted that good historical research, especially when it is concerned with the modern period, has to be based on primary sources. In the language of the historian this nearly always means archives. For the historian of the Middle East, however, it is often impossible to consult the relevant archives. The older collections are often inadequately systematized or catalogued and the modern archives are often seen by the nation-states of the Middle East which guard them, as too sensitive to be opened to researchers, especially to foreigners. This situation certainly obtains in Turkey. There, too, the availability of the archives to historians, even Turkish ones, is very limited. The Basbakanlik Arsivi ('Archives of the Office of the Prime Minister), into which the Ottoman state archives are incorporated, is to all intents and purposes closed for the period after 1914. The archives of the Turk Tarih Kurumu (the 'Turkish Historical Society') and of the Turk Devrim Tarihi Ensuittisu ('Institute for the History of the Turkish Revolution'), which house some important private collections, are open only to a select group of trusted Turkish historians. The reasons for this policy are not stated officially, but it is hard not to imagine that the Armenian problem may have something to do with it. In such a situation the historian who strives to evaluate the current representation of historical events in modern Turkey has to look for alternative sources, which can take the place of the archival materials as primary sources, even if only temporarily. Among these alternative sources may be mentioned: foreign archival collections, published documentary collections,' the contemporary press in Turkey2 and abroad and also the memoirs and autobiographies of the protagonists of the period. A large number of works in this last-named category has appeared in Turkey in the last 30 years, especially in the 1950s and 1960s.3 They frequently offer facts and opinions about the history of the national independence movement and the 'Kemalist' revolution, which differ considerably from those of the generally accepted Turkish historiography. One can discern in Turkey an 'official' or 'orthodox' historical tradition which has developed since the mid-1920s on the basis of Mustafa Kemal Atatiirk's own version4 and which has ever since been canonized in an endless stream of schoolbooks, official publications and popular histories and guarded jealously by the Turk Tarih Kurumu.5 The dissident autobiographies and memoirs seem hardly to have affected this tradition, if at all, in spite of their sometimes wide readership. Nevertheless, used in combination with other types of sources and with each other, these works may offer the opportunity for an important readjustment of the image created by the