The Making of Modern Turkey: Nation and State in Eastern Anatolia, 1913-1950

334 Pages·2011·3.466 MB·English

by  Uğur Ümit Üngör

THE MAKING OF MODERN TURKEY
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The Making of
Modern Turkey
Nation and State in Eastern Anatolia,
–
1913 1950
Ğ
U UR ÜMIT ÜNGÖR
1
3
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Contents
Preface vii
Acknowledgements xvii
ListofIllustrations xix
ListofMaps xx
ListofAbbreviations xxi
Introduction 1
1. NationalismandPopulationPoliticsintheLateOttomanEmpire 8
AnintroductiontoDiyarbekir 8
Theadventofnationalism 25
Thediscoveryofsocietyandpopulationpolicies 33
Violence,victimization,andvengeance 42
Discussion 51
2. GenocideofChristians,1915–16 55
Warandpersecution 55
‘Burn,destroy,kill’:thepersecutionbecomesgenocidal 71
Centreandperiphery:wideningandnarrowingscopesofpersecution 86
Discussion 100
3. DeportationsofKurds,1916–34 107
1916:phaseone 108
1925:phasetwo 122
1934:phasethree 148
Discussion 166
4. CultureandEducationintheEasternProvinces 170
TheYoungTurkculturalrevolution 170
Thenationintheprovince:cultureandeducationinDiyarbekir 186
TheboardingschoolforKurdishgirls 204
Discussion 212
5. TheCalmaftertheStorm:ThePoliticsofMemory 218
Silencingtheviolence:theorganizationofoblivion 218
Damnatiomemoriae:destructionandconstructionofmemory 224
MemorypoliticsinDiyarbekir 232
Toponymicalchanges 240
Discussion 245
Conclusion 251
Bibliography 265
Index 297
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Preface
Thisbookarguesthatfrom1913to1950,theYoungTurkregimesubjectedEast
Anatolia,anethnicallyheterogeneousspace,tovariousformsofnationalistpopula-
tionpoliciesaimedatethnicallyhomogenizingtheregion.Itbuildsuponthework
of other scholars who evolved the thesis that the international system of nation
statesthroughoutthepasttwocenturiesdevelopedfromapre-nationalglobalorder
ofstateswithculturallyheterogeneousterritories,intoaself-perpetuatingsystemof
nationstatesthatproducesnationalisthomogenizationbyvirtueofvariousformsof
populationpolicies.Thebookislimitedintimeandspacetoaddressingpopulation
policies in the Young Turk era (1913–50) in Eastern Turkey. It begins with the
Young Turk seizure of power in the 1913 coup d’état and ends with the end of
Young Turk rule in 1950.1 It will describe how Eastern Turkey as an ethnically
heterogeneous imperial shatter zone was subjected to various forms of nationalist
population policies aimed at transforming the region into an ethnically homoge-
neousspacetobeincludedintotheTurkishnationstate.
How was Eastern Turkey moulded by Young Turk population policies? Why
was the Turkish process of nation formation so violent in this region? Why do
politicaleliteslaunchpoliciestoincreasehomogeneityintheirsocieties?Thesewill
be the guiding questions in this book. The focus will be on an account of the
implementationofthesenationalistpopulationpoliciesintheeasternprovinces,in
order to discuss the policies in detail. This book argues that the Young Turk
nationalistelitelaunchedthisprocessofsocietaltransformationinordertoestablish
and sustain a Turkish nation state. In this process, ethnically heterogeneous
borderland regions were subjected to more encompassing and more violent forms
of population policies than the core regions. The eastern provinces were one of
these special regions.This book highlightsthe role played by the Young Turks in
the identification of the population of the eastern provinces as an object of
knowledge, management, and radical change. It details the emergence of a wide
range of new technologies of population policies, including physical destruction,
deportation, forced assimilation, and memory politics, which converged in an
attempttoincreasepopulationhomogeneitywithinthenationstate.Thecommon
1 Abriefnoteaboutterminologyisinorder.Inthisstudy,IwillfollowZürcher’suseoftheterm‘Young
Turkera’tobundletogethertheCommitteeofUnionandProgress(CUP)(IttihadveTerakkiCemiyeti)
anditsdescendanttheRepublicanPeople’sParty(CumhuriyetHalkPartisi),whichruledtheOttoman
EmpireandtheTurkishRepublicintheperiod1913–50.Thisstudyadvancestheargumentthatastrong
continuityofpopulationpoliciescanbeobservedbetweentheCUPera(1913–18)andtheKemalistera
(1919–50).Erik-JanZürcher,‘TheOttomanLegacyoftheTurkishRepublic:AnAttemptataNew
Periodization’,in:DieWeltdesIslams32(1992),237–53.‘EasternTurkey’willrefertotheareaeastofthe
lineAdana-Giresun,moreorlessboundedbytheformerOttomanprovincesofSivas,Erzurum,Trabzon,
Van,Bitlis,Mamuret-ulAziz,Aleppo,andDiyarbekir—thelatterbeingthemaintheaterofexemplification
inthisstudy.
viii Preface
denominator to which these phenomena can be reduced is the main theme of
populationpolicies.
The dominant paradigms in the historiography of the great dynastic land
empires can be characterized as a nationalist paradigm and a statist paradigm.
According to the first paradigm, the phenomenon of nationalism led to the
dissolutionoftheempires.Centrifugalnationalismnibbledattheimperialsystem
for several decades until the empire crumbled into nation states. Due to their
relativelyearlyacquaintancewithnationalism,themainforcebehindthisnational-
istdisintegrationwasoftenlocatedamongminoritygroupssuchasCzechs,Serbs,
Greeks, and Armenians. In this interpretation, the Young Turks too, were a
nationalist movement that reacted to minority nationalisms by pushing for the
establishmentofaTurkishstateintheOttomanAnatolianheartland.In1923,they
succeededwhenaunitaryTurkishnationstaterosefromtheashesoftheOttoman
Empire.
Albeit not totally diametrically opposed to this paradigm, the statist paradigm
emphasizes the imperial state context, claiming that the imperial political agendas
weredominatedbyretainingwhatwasleftoftheirlandandregainingformerlylost
territory. Persecutions and deportations are seen as a guarantee to obviate poten-
tially disloyal groups and establish a loyal demographic majority in case of post-
conflictterritorialnegotiations.Byconsideringtheproblemfromthisangleforthe
Ottoman case, the persecutions can be seen as the result of calculated plans to
preclude external meddling in Ottoman internal affairs by ‘abolishing’ the mino-
rities.Thedeportationsandmassacreswerethusbornoutofthecontingenciesand
exigencies of war and state security, and the Young Turks merely improvised and
reacted to these pressures. Most of their decisions and measures ran counter to
a purely nationalist program and reveal a much more utilitarian, Realpolitik
approach. According to the statist paradigm, they were by no means stalwart
believersinideologiesofnationalism.
This study will attempt to challenge both of these paradigms by emphasizing
that they are not mutually exclusive, and that all of their differences are not
completely reconcilable. The relationship between state formation and nation
formation, as two disparate but cognate phenomena, needs to be closely scruti-
nized. Two prior studies of Eastern Turkey have functioned as inspirational
sounding boards for this book. Mark Levene argued that once the Western
nation-state system had percolated into Ottoman minds, it was only a matter of
timebeforetheempire’seasternprovinceswouldbecomea contestedterritoryfor
nationalist elites pursuing their own visions of future nation states. When the
YoungTurksgainedtheupperhandandlaunchedtheirpoliciesofethnichomog-
enizationthatengulfedarangeofvictims,itwasthemodelofthenationstatethey
had in mind.2 Hans-Lukas Kieser’s authoritative study of the eastern provinces
describestheoriginsandmanifestationsofthecomingofnationalismtotheregion.
2 Mark Levene, ‘Creating a Modern “Zone of Genocide”: The Impact of Nation- and State-
Formation on Eastern Anatolia, 1878–1923’, in: Holocaust and Genocide Studies 12, no. 3 (1998),
393–433.
Preface ix
Kieseralsodiscussesthehomogenizingeffortsbetween1913and1938andargues
thatthesecanbeseenasnation-statepoliciesonanimperialscale.Armeniansand
Kurdsbecamedifferentialvictimsoftheseforcesindifferentperiods,butforsimilar
reasons.3 These studies approach the history of Eastern Turkey from a long-term
perspective,andbothfocusonnationalismasacatalystforviolentsocialchange.4
This book extrapolates from these, and other studies by deepening the notion of
nationalist homogenization and demonstrating that the treatment of minorities
wereintegralpartsoftheYoungTurkutopiaofthehomogeneousnationstate.
This book can be located in the field of historical sociology, the comparative,
theoretical,andhistoricalstudyofhumansocieties.Itis a combinationofprocess
analysis and pattern identification that together forms a sociologically informed
history.
Processanalysisidentifiescausalmechanismsofbroadscopeaswellasconditions
that affect activation, interaction, and outcomes of those mechanisms. It tries to
determine how, why, and under what conditions certain processes (in our case,
population policies) have developed. Reconstructing these processes by which
societieschangeengageshistoricalsociologistsinlookingsimultaneouslyatorgani-
zational settings, individual biographies, interpersonal networks, contested bodies
ofthought,andconnectionsamongallofthem.5Fromthisparticular lens,thisis
not an expressively bottom-up or top-down study, or feminist, subaltern or
deconstructivist study. It does not exclusively feature chronologies of decision-
makingprocessesinpowercentresbasedonprimarysources,norpresentnarratives
of the lived experiences of the people based on oral histories. Rather it sets out to
tracepoliciesandprocessesintheirrelativeintegrationandcomprehensiveness.
Patternidentificationisthesearchforrecurrentstructuresandsequencesacross
time and space. This methodology assumes that causally independent, particular
historicalepisodesthatmayseemuniqueinfactdonotonlyspringfromacommon
historical source, but also resemble each other as they follow common principles,
abstracted from time and place.6 It is a secondary, more modest aim of this book
thatitsoutcomeswillserveforfuturestudiesfocusingmoreonpatternidentifica-
tion, by comparing how processes of population policies repeat themselves in
similarformsinothersocieties aswell.Eventhoughthisbookisnotinexecution
a comparative study, the history of this particular region is by no means unique
from a global perspective. This implicitly comparative approach takes up several
criticalconcepts(stateformation,nationformation,massviolence,andpopulation
3 Hans-LukasKieser,DerverpassteFriede:Mission,EthnieundStaatindenOstprovinzenderTürkei
1839–1938(Zürich:Chronos,2000);id.,‘ModernisierungundGewaltinderGründungsepochedes
türkischenNationalstaats(1913–1938)’,in:GeschichteinWissenschaftundUnterricht57,no.3(2006),
156–67.
4 Seealso:FikretAdanırandHilmarKaiser,‘Migration,Deportation,andNation-Building:The
Case of the Ottoman Empire’, in: René Leboutte (ed.), Migrations et migrants dans une perspective
historique:permanencesetinnovations(Florence:EuropeanUniversityInstitute,2000),273–92.
5 NorbertElias,‘ZurGrundlegungeinerTheoriesozialerProzesse’,in:ZeitschriftfürSoziologie6
(1977),127–49.
6 TonZwaan,CiviliseringenDecivilisering:StudiesoverStaatsvormingenGeweld,Nationalismeen
Vervolging(Amsterdam:Boom,2001),19–36.