Author: Murat Ergin
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004330550
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 286
Book Description
In 1909, the US Circuit Court in Cincinnati set out to decide “whether a Turkish citizen shall be naturalized as a white person”; the New York Times article on the decision, discussing the question of Turks’ whiteness, was cheekily entitled “Is the Turk a White Man?” Within a few decades, having understood the importance of this question for their modernization efforts, Turkish elites had already started a fantastic scientific mobilization to position the Turks in world history as the generators of Western civilization, the creators of human language, and the forgotten source of white racial stock. In this book, Murat Ergin examines how race figures into Turkish modernization in a process of interaction between global racial discourses and local responses.
"Is the Turk a White Man?"
Author: Murat Ergin
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004330550
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 286
Book Description
In 1909, the US Circuit Court in Cincinnati set out to decide “whether a Turkish citizen shall be naturalized as a white person”; the New York Times article on the decision, discussing the question of Turks’ whiteness, was cheekily entitled “Is the Turk a White Man?” Within a few decades, having understood the importance of this question for their modernization efforts, Turkish elites had already started a fantastic scientific mobilization to position the Turks in world history as the generators of Western civilization, the creators of human language, and the forgotten source of white racial stock. In this book, Murat Ergin examines how race figures into Turkish modernization in a process of interaction between global racial discourses and local responses.
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004330550
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 286
Book Description
In 1909, the US Circuit Court in Cincinnati set out to decide “whether a Turkish citizen shall be naturalized as a white person”; the New York Times article on the decision, discussing the question of Turks’ whiteness, was cheekily entitled “Is the Turk a White Man?” Within a few decades, having understood the importance of this question for their modernization efforts, Turkish elites had already started a fantastic scientific mobilization to position the Turks in world history as the generators of Western civilization, the creators of human language, and the forgotten source of white racial stock. In this book, Murat Ergin examines how race figures into Turkish modernization in a process of interaction between global racial discourses and local responses.
The Power of the People
Author: Murat Metinsoy
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 131651546X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 419
Book Description
A fresh interpretation of the foundation of modern Turkey demonstrating the crucial role of ordinary people under Atatürk in the 1920s and 30s.
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 131651546X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 419
Book Description
A fresh interpretation of the foundation of modern Turkey demonstrating the crucial role of ordinary people under Atatürk in the 1920s and 30s.
The Politics of Public Memory in Turkey
Author: Esra Özyürek
Publisher: Syracuse University Press
ISBN: 9780815631316
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 248
Book Description
Turkish society is frequently accused of having amnesia. It has been said that there is no social memory in Turkey before Mustafa Kemal Atatürk founded modern Turkey after World War I. Indeed, in 1923, the newly founded Turkish Republic committed to a modernist future by erasing the memory of its Ottoman past. Now, almost eighty years after the establishment of the republic, the grandchildren of the founders have a different relationship with history. New generations make every effort to remember, record, and reconcile earlier periods. The multiple, personalized representations of the past that they have recovered allow contemporary Turkish citizens to create alternative identities for themselves and their communities. Unlike its futuristic and homogenizing character at the turn of the twentieth century, Turkish nationalism today uses memory to generate varied narratives for the nation and its minority groups. Contributors to this volume come from such diverse disciplines as anthropology, comparative literature, and sociology, but they share a common understanding of contemporary Turkey and how its different representations of the past have become metaphors through which individuals and groups define their cultural identity and political position. They explore the ways people challenge, reaffirm, or transform the concepts of history, nation, homeland, and “Republic” through acts of memory, effectively demonstrating that memory can be both the basis of cultural reproduction and a form of resistance.
Publisher: Syracuse University Press
ISBN: 9780815631316
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 248
Book Description
Turkish society is frequently accused of having amnesia. It has been said that there is no social memory in Turkey before Mustafa Kemal Atatürk founded modern Turkey after World War I. Indeed, in 1923, the newly founded Turkish Republic committed to a modernist future by erasing the memory of its Ottoman past. Now, almost eighty years after the establishment of the republic, the grandchildren of the founders have a different relationship with history. New generations make every effort to remember, record, and reconcile earlier periods. The multiple, personalized representations of the past that they have recovered allow contemporary Turkish citizens to create alternative identities for themselves and their communities. Unlike its futuristic and homogenizing character at the turn of the twentieth century, Turkish nationalism today uses memory to generate varied narratives for the nation and its minority groups. Contributors to this volume come from such diverse disciplines as anthropology, comparative literature, and sociology, but they share a common understanding of contemporary Turkey and how its different representations of the past have become metaphors through which individuals and groups define their cultural identity and political position. They explore the ways people challenge, reaffirm, or transform the concepts of history, nation, homeland, and “Republic” through acts of memory, effectively demonstrating that memory can be both the basis of cultural reproduction and a form of resistance.
The Thirty-Year Genocide
Author: Benny Morris
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 067491645X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 673
Book Description
A Financial Times Book of the Year A Foreign Affairs Book of the Year A Spectator Book of the Year “A landmark contribution to the study of these epochal events.” —Times Literary Supplement “Brilliantly researched and written...casts a careful eye upon the ghastly events that took place in the final decades of the Ottoman empire, when its rulers decided to annihilate their Christian subjects...Hitler and the Nazis gleaned lessons from this genocide that they then applied to their own efforts to extirpate Jews.” —Jacob Heilbrun, The Spectator Between 1894 and 1924, three waves of violence swept across Anatolia, targeting the region’s Christian minorities. By 1924, the Armenians, Assyrians, and Greeks, once nearly a quarter of the population, had been reduced to 2 percent. Most historians have treated these waves as distinct, isolated events, and successive Turkish governments presented them as an unfortunate sequence of accidents. The Thirty-Year Genocide is the first account to show that all three were actually part of a single, continuing, and intentional effort to wipe out Anatolia’s Christian population. Despite the dramatic swing from the Islamizing autocracy of the sultan to the secularizing republicanism of the post–World War I period, the nation’s annihilationist policies were remarkably constant, with continual recourse to premeditated mass killing, homicidal deportation, forced conversion, and mass rape. And one thing more was a constant: the rallying cry of jihad. While not justified under the teachings of Islam, the killing of two million Christians was effected through the calculated exhortation of the Turks to create a pure Muslim nation. “A subtle diagnosis of why, at particular moments over a span of three decades, Ottoman rulers and their successors unleashed torrents of suffering.” —Bruce Clark, New York Times Book Review
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 067491645X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 673
Book Description
A Financial Times Book of the Year A Foreign Affairs Book of the Year A Spectator Book of the Year “A landmark contribution to the study of these epochal events.” —Times Literary Supplement “Brilliantly researched and written...casts a careful eye upon the ghastly events that took place in the final decades of the Ottoman empire, when its rulers decided to annihilate their Christian subjects...Hitler and the Nazis gleaned lessons from this genocide that they then applied to their own efforts to extirpate Jews.” —Jacob Heilbrun, The Spectator Between 1894 and 1924, three waves of violence swept across Anatolia, targeting the region’s Christian minorities. By 1924, the Armenians, Assyrians, and Greeks, once nearly a quarter of the population, had been reduced to 2 percent. Most historians have treated these waves as distinct, isolated events, and successive Turkish governments presented them as an unfortunate sequence of accidents. The Thirty-Year Genocide is the first account to show that all three were actually part of a single, continuing, and intentional effort to wipe out Anatolia’s Christian population. Despite the dramatic swing from the Islamizing autocracy of the sultan to the secularizing republicanism of the post–World War I period, the nation’s annihilationist policies were remarkably constant, with continual recourse to premeditated mass killing, homicidal deportation, forced conversion, and mass rape. And one thing more was a constant: the rallying cry of jihad. While not justified under the teachings of Islam, the killing of two million Christians was effected through the calculated exhortation of the Turks to create a pure Muslim nation. “A subtle diagnosis of why, at particular moments over a span of three decades, Ottoman rulers and their successors unleashed torrents of suffering.” —Bruce Clark, New York Times Book Review
Humanism in Ruins
Author: Aslı Iğsız
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781503606869
Category : Biopolitics
Languages : en
Pages : 332
Book Description
By way of an introduction : the entangled legacies of a population exchange -- part I. Humanism and its discontents : biopolitics, politics of expertise, and the human family. Segregative biopolitics and the production of knowledge -- Liberal humanism, race, and the family of mankind -- part II. Of origins and "men" : family history, genealogy, and historicist humanism revisited. Heritage and family history -- Origins, biopolitics, and historicist humanism -- part III. Unity in diversity : culture, social cohesion, and liberal multiculturalism. Museumization of culture and alterity recognition -- Turkish-Islamic synthesis and coexistence after the 1980 military coup -- In lieu of a conclusion : cultural analysis in an age of securitarianism
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781503606869
Category : Biopolitics
Languages : en
Pages : 332
Book Description
By way of an introduction : the entangled legacies of a population exchange -- part I. Humanism and its discontents : biopolitics, politics of expertise, and the human family. Segregative biopolitics and the production of knowledge -- Liberal humanism, race, and the family of mankind -- part II. Of origins and "men" : family history, genealogy, and historicist humanism revisited. Heritage and family history -- Origins, biopolitics, and historicist humanism -- part III. Unity in diversity : culture, social cohesion, and liberal multiculturalism. Museumization of culture and alterity recognition -- Turkish-Islamic synthesis and coexistence after the 1980 military coup -- In lieu of a conclusion : cultural analysis in an age of securitarianism
Democracy, Islam, & Secularism in Turkey
Author: Ahmet Kuru
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231159323
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 226
Book Description
While Turkey has grown as a world power, promoting the image of a progressive and stable nation, several policy choices have strained its relationship with the East and the West. Providing social, historical, and religious context for Turkey's singular behavior, the essays in Democracy, Islam, and Secularism in Turkey examine issues relevant to Turkish debates and global concerns, from the state's position on religion and diversity to its involvement in the European Union. Written by experts in a range of disciplines, the chapters explore the Ottoman toleration of diversity during its classical period; the erosion of ethno-religious diversity in modern, pre-democratic times; Kemalism and its role in modernization and nation building; the changing political strategies of the military; and the effect of possible EU membership on domestic reforms. They also conduct a cross-Continental comparison of "multiple secularisms" as well as political parties, considering the Justice and Development Party in Turkey in relation to Christian Democratic parties in Europe. The contributors tackle central research questions, such as what is the legacy of the Ottoman Empire's ethno-religious plurality and how can Turkey's assertive secularism be softened to allow greater space for religious actors. They address the military's "guardian" role in Turkey's secularism, the implications of recent constitutional amendments for democratization, and the consequences and benefits of Islamic activism's presence within a democratic system. No other collection confronts Turkey's contemporary evolution so vividly and thoroughly or offers such expert analysis of its crucial social and political systems.
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231159323
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 226
Book Description
While Turkey has grown as a world power, promoting the image of a progressive and stable nation, several policy choices have strained its relationship with the East and the West. Providing social, historical, and religious context for Turkey's singular behavior, the essays in Democracy, Islam, and Secularism in Turkey examine issues relevant to Turkish debates and global concerns, from the state's position on religion and diversity to its involvement in the European Union. Written by experts in a range of disciplines, the chapters explore the Ottoman toleration of diversity during its classical period; the erosion of ethno-religious diversity in modern, pre-democratic times; Kemalism and its role in modernization and nation building; the changing political strategies of the military; and the effect of possible EU membership on domestic reforms. They also conduct a cross-Continental comparison of "multiple secularisms" as well as political parties, considering the Justice and Development Party in Turkey in relation to Christian Democratic parties in Europe. The contributors tackle central research questions, such as what is the legacy of the Ottoman Empire's ethno-religious plurality and how can Turkey's assertive secularism be softened to allow greater space for religious actors. They address the military's "guardian" role in Turkey's secularism, the implications of recent constitutional amendments for democratization, and the consequences and benefits of Islamic activism's presence within a democratic system. No other collection confronts Turkey's contemporary evolution so vividly and thoroughly or offers such expert analysis of its crucial social and political systems.
Turkey, Islam, Nationalism, and Modernity
Author: Carter V. Findley
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300152620
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 504
Book Description
Book Description: Publication Date: August 30, 2011. "Turkey, Islam, Nationalism, and Modernity" reveals the historical dynamics propelling two centuries of Ottoman and Turkish history. As mounting threats to imperial survival necessitated dynamic responses, ethnolinguistic and religious identities inspired alternative strategies for engaging with modernity. A radical, secularizing current of change competed with a conservative, Islamically committed current. Crises sharpened the differentiation of the two streams, forcing choices between them. The radical current began with the formation of reformist governmental elites and expanded with the advent of 'print capitalism', symbolized by the privately owned, Ottoman-language newspapers. The radicals engineered the 1908 Young Turk revolution, ruled empire and republic until 1950, made secularism a lasting 'belief system', and still retain powerful positions. The conservative current gained impetus from three history-making Islamic renewal movements, those of Mevlana Halid, Said Nursi, and Fethullah Gulen. Powerful under the empire, Islamic conservatives did not regain control of government until the 1980s. By then they, too, had their own influential media. Findley's reassessment of political, economic, social and cultural history reveals the dialectical interaction between radical and conservative currents of change, which alternately clashed and converged to shape late Ottoman and republican Turkish history.
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300152620
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 504
Book Description
Book Description: Publication Date: August 30, 2011. "Turkey, Islam, Nationalism, and Modernity" reveals the historical dynamics propelling two centuries of Ottoman and Turkish history. As mounting threats to imperial survival necessitated dynamic responses, ethnolinguistic and religious identities inspired alternative strategies for engaging with modernity. A radical, secularizing current of change competed with a conservative, Islamically committed current. Crises sharpened the differentiation of the two streams, forcing choices between them. The radical current began with the formation of reformist governmental elites and expanded with the advent of 'print capitalism', symbolized by the privately owned, Ottoman-language newspapers. The radicals engineered the 1908 Young Turk revolution, ruled empire and republic until 1950, made secularism a lasting 'belief system', and still retain powerful positions. The conservative current gained impetus from three history-making Islamic renewal movements, those of Mevlana Halid, Said Nursi, and Fethullah Gulen. Powerful under the empire, Islamic conservatives did not regain control of government until the 1980s. By then they, too, had their own influential media. Findley's reassessment of political, economic, social and cultural history reveals the dialectical interaction between radical and conservative currents of change, which alternately clashed and converged to shape late Ottoman and republican Turkish history.
Modern Turkey
Author: Bill Park
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136657304
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 271
Book Description
This exciting new textbook provides a broad and comprehensive overview of contemporary Turkey. Placing the country and its people within the context of a rapidly globalizing world, the book covers a diverse range of themes such as politics, economics, international relations, the Turkic world, religion and recent historical background. Tracing the evolution of Turkey’s domestic political and economic systems, and its foreign policy, from the inception of the republic to the present day, the themes covered include: the impact of globalization on Turkey’s society, politics, economy and foreign policy the role of the EU and the Turkish diaspora in the evolution of Turkish policies the main features and prominent role of Kemalism turkish foreign policy, and the new challenges and opportunities brought by the end of the cold war the position of Turkey as a ‘bridge’ between East and West, and the particular and unique dilemmas confronting a Muslim but economically developed, democratized state allied to the West Kurdish identity the Fethullah Gulen movement and the Armenian ‘genocide’. Situating the country as a ‘model’ for the wider Muslim world, this sophisticated analysis of one of the largest and most important states in the Middle East will be an invaluable resource for scholars and officials interested in Turkish politics and US foreign and security policies, and for students of the Balkan, Middle Eastern, Caucasus and Central Asian regions.
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136657304
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 271
Book Description
This exciting new textbook provides a broad and comprehensive overview of contemporary Turkey. Placing the country and its people within the context of a rapidly globalizing world, the book covers a diverse range of themes such as politics, economics, international relations, the Turkic world, religion and recent historical background. Tracing the evolution of Turkey’s domestic political and economic systems, and its foreign policy, from the inception of the republic to the present day, the themes covered include: the impact of globalization on Turkey’s society, politics, economy and foreign policy the role of the EU and the Turkish diaspora in the evolution of Turkish policies the main features and prominent role of Kemalism turkish foreign policy, and the new challenges and opportunities brought by the end of the cold war the position of Turkey as a ‘bridge’ between East and West, and the particular and unique dilemmas confronting a Muslim but economically developed, democratized state allied to the West Kurdish identity the Fethullah Gulen movement and the Armenian ‘genocide’. Situating the country as a ‘model’ for the wider Muslim world, this sophisticated analysis of one of the largest and most important states in the Middle East will be an invaluable resource for scholars and officials interested in Turkish politics and US foreign and security policies, and for students of the Balkan, Middle Eastern, Caucasus and Central Asian regions.
Turkey's Kurdish Question
Author: Henri J. Barkey
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
ISBN: 0585177732
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 259
Book Description
The Kurds, one of the oldest ethnic groups in the Middle East, are reasserting their identity—politically and through violence. Divided mainly among Turkey, Iran, Iraq, and Syria, the Kurds have posed increasingly sharp challenges to all of these states in their quest for greater autonomy if not outright independence. Turkey's essentially democratic structure and civil society_ideal tools for coping with and incorporating minority challenge_have so far been suspended on this issue, which the government is treating almost exclusively as a security problem to be dealt with by force. For the West the situation in Turkey is particularly significant because of the country's importance in the region and because of the economic, political, and diplomatic damage that the conflict has caused. If Turkey fails to find a peaceful solution within its current borders, then the outlook is grim for ethnic and separatist challenges elsewhere in the region. This study explores the roots, dimensions, character, and evolution of the problem, offers a range of approaches to a resolution of the conflict, and draws broader parallels between the Kurdish question and other separatist movements worldwide.
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
ISBN: 0585177732
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 259
Book Description
The Kurds, one of the oldest ethnic groups in the Middle East, are reasserting their identity—politically and through violence. Divided mainly among Turkey, Iran, Iraq, and Syria, the Kurds have posed increasingly sharp challenges to all of these states in their quest for greater autonomy if not outright independence. Turkey's essentially democratic structure and civil society_ideal tools for coping with and incorporating minority challenge_have so far been suspended on this issue, which the government is treating almost exclusively as a security problem to be dealt with by force. For the West the situation in Turkey is particularly significant because of the country's importance in the region and because of the economic, political, and diplomatic damage that the conflict has caused. If Turkey fails to find a peaceful solution within its current borders, then the outlook is grim for ethnic and separatist challenges elsewhere in the region. This study explores the roots, dimensions, character, and evolution of the problem, offers a range of approaches to a resolution of the conflict, and draws broader parallels between the Kurdish question and other separatist movements worldwide.
The Making of Modern Turkey
Author: Ugur Ümit Üngör
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 019164076X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 336
Book Description
The eastern provinces of the Ottoman Empire used to be a multi-ethnic region where Armenians, Kurds, Syriacs, Turks, and Arabs lived together in the same villages and cities. The disintegration of the Ottoman Empire and rise of the nation state violently altered this situation. Nationalist elites intervened in heterogeneous populations they identified as objects of knowledge, management, and change. These often violent processes of state formation destroyed historical regions and emptied multicultural cities, clearing the way for modern nation states. The Making of Modern Turkey highlights how the Young Turk regime, from 1913 to 1950, subjected Eastern Turkey to various forms of nationalist population policies aimed at ethnically homogenizing the region and incorporating it in the Turkish nation state. It examines how the regime utilized technologies of social engineering, such as physical destruction, deportation, spatial planning, forced assimilation, and memory politics, to increase ethnic and cultural homogeneity within the nation state. Drawing on secret files and unexamined records, Ugur Ümit Üngör demonstrates that concerns of state security, ethnocultural identity, and national purity were behind these policies. The eastern provinces, the heartland of Armenian and Kurdish life, became an epicenter of Young Turk population policies and the theatre of unprecedented levels of mass violence.
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 019164076X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 336
Book Description
The eastern provinces of the Ottoman Empire used to be a multi-ethnic region where Armenians, Kurds, Syriacs, Turks, and Arabs lived together in the same villages and cities. The disintegration of the Ottoman Empire and rise of the nation state violently altered this situation. Nationalist elites intervened in heterogeneous populations they identified as objects of knowledge, management, and change. These often violent processes of state formation destroyed historical regions and emptied multicultural cities, clearing the way for modern nation states. The Making of Modern Turkey highlights how the Young Turk regime, from 1913 to 1950, subjected Eastern Turkey to various forms of nationalist population policies aimed at ethnically homogenizing the region and incorporating it in the Turkish nation state. It examines how the regime utilized technologies of social engineering, such as physical destruction, deportation, spatial planning, forced assimilation, and memory politics, to increase ethnic and cultural homogeneity within the nation state. Drawing on secret files and unexamined records, Ugur Ümit Üngör demonstrates that concerns of state security, ethnocultural identity, and national purity were behind these policies. The eastern provinces, the heartland of Armenian and Kurdish life, became an epicenter of Young Turk population policies and the theatre of unprecedented levels of mass violence.