Wednesday, June 26, 2013
C1.23 (Oudemanhuispoort)
One of the great challenges of contemporary Turkey is how to best construct democratic institutions without rejecting a Kemalist legacy that was manifestly not democratic. It is perhaps for this reason that the historiography of this period has treated the parallels between Kemalist Turkey and other authoritarian regimes of the interwar era so daintily. For example, in his landmark biography of Atatürk, Andrew Mango notes Kemalism’s borrowings from both Soviet and Fascist models, but nonetheless argues somewhat defensively that dictatorship was a necessary means, rather than an ideal end. Defending Atatürk’s legacy from the taint of fascism, Mango is forced to explain away or ignore its excesses. Yet, while Kemalist repression is certainly not comparable to the mass destruction of the Nazis or Soviets, comparisons with other interwar dictatorships such as Hungary and Romania and even Italy seem fair. Brutality was not a matter of day-to-day life in the early Republic, but threats to the regime were dealt with harshly. Show trials were infrequent, but not unheard of; resistance was dealt with aggressively and through overwhelming force, which in the case of Dersim, may well be considered genocidal.
This paper attempts to broaden discussions of the Kemalist Revolution by placing Turkey in a broader context of interwar nationalisms. In doing so, it will both challenge a common tendency to accept “Turkish exceptionalism” while placing Republican Turkey squarely within a global history of authoritarian modernism. In this framework, the Kemalist emphasis on dirigisme, on race science, on centralized control, and on making a “New Turk” all point to the extent to which Kemalism was part of a global moment for authoritarian nationalisms.
