This paper analyzes Mustafa Kemal Ataturk’s much neglected book Conversation with “Officer and Commander” written in 1914 while serving as military attaché in Sofia. In it, Mustafa Kemal outlined his main ideas about leadership and war. In this paper, I focus on two critical concepts in his military thought: the “intellect” (dimag) and “conscience” (vicdan). Intellect helps direct an army in war and guides officers in taking initiative. Conscience calls forth the highest ideals of the profession, including patriotism and religious faith. A careful reading of the Ottoman original published in 1918 shows the passion behind these two concepts in Mustafa Kemal’s thought and character. Intellect and conscience help explain Mustafa Kemal’s earlier decision to translate two German manuals for small unit tactics (1909-1911). The second half of the paper shows how Mustafa Kemal applied intellect and conscience as Commander-in-Chief (Ba?komudan) in the critical Battle of Sakarya (23 August to 13 September 1921) during the Turkish War of Independence (1919-23). Here I critically dissect the order issued by Mustafa Kemal three days before the battle (20 August) for dissemination to all units and then address how he responded to the loss of Mangal Mountain in the second day of combat. This part of the paper is based on primary source material obtained at the General Staff Directorate of the Archives of the Military History and Strategic Studies in Ankara. The discussion of intellect here is linked to a statement by the Prussian military theorist Carl von Clausewitz (1780-1831) on the essence of military genius. The paper ends by suggesting that an understanding of intellect and conscience in Mustafa Kemal’s military career provides insight into the subsequent reforms under Ataturk’s statesmanship as President of the Republic of Turkey.

From its inception in the first half of the nineteenth century—most scholars point to Poe’s The Murders in the Rue Morgue of 1841 as the first story containing all the elements of the detective story—detective fiction has been a powerful tool for propaganda. A largely European construction (with some inspiration from the United States), detective fiction consistently presented positive images of detectives and police officers in general in an attempt to assuage public fears of the new police forces (Reitz, Detecting the Nation: Fictions of Detection and the Imperial Venture, 2004). Indigenous detective fiction in Turkey, beginning in 1912, also had significant propaganda value; the difference being that instead of building support for new police forces, Turkish detective fiction worked to present an image of an ideal Turk alongside concepts of Turkish nationalism. Following a difficult recovery period after a decade of wars and Mustafa Kemal’s moves to secularize the country in the 1920s, the 1930s saw the rise of what Soner Ça?aptay calls “High Kemalism” (1930-1938). That is, in effect, a period during which concepts of Turkishness received a great deal of political attention. Efforts were made to define the term “Turk” and to determine who could call himself a Turk. Ankara set down fairly clear criteria for the definition of Turk and, in its immigration and resettlement policies of the period and it set Turks apart for advantageous treatment (Ça?aptay, 2006). In this paper I will focus on the criteria, or character traits, one must have to be considered a Turk. Specifically, I will address this question with reference to a popular detective hero of the 1940s, Orhan Cak?ro?lu. Murat Akdo?an wrote more than thirty Orhan Cak?ro?lu detective stories between 1941 and 1945 and there is a great deal of intentionality in the elements of Orhan Cak?ro?lu’s character. In this paper I will compare these definitive character traits to those criteria that Ankara deemed necessary for Turkishness. In so doing, I will assess the level to which Orhan Cak?ro?lu was the prototypical Kemalist Turk.

This paper attempts to undertake an analysis of state power in Turkey from a rather distinctive perspective. Inspired by Foucauldian analysis of disciplinary power and anthropological approaches to the state, it shifts the attention away from the peaks of institutional hierarchies and state/society, military/civilian dichotomies, and focuses on two institutional practices, military conscription and the gendarmerie, where those very distinctions become blurred. Military conscription, an obligation for all male citizens of Turkey, also constitutes the primary source of manpower for the gendarmerie, one of the prominent state apparatus for maintaining order and discipline in the countryside. Using interview material collected during filed work in Turkey in 2004-2005, the paper follows on the footsteps of the conscripts, first, as targets of various disciplinary techniques within the barracks, and then, as gendarmes, as they go on to embody and transmit state power over civilians in the countryside. As such, the paper tries to highlight the continuities between the workings of state power both within and outside the barracks and to illustrate how the so-called civilians themselves at times become willing culprits in reproducing power relations that engulf them in their civilian lives.

In 1924, supporters of the Caliphate, then the highest office of authority in Sunni Islam, argued that an elimination of the institution by Turkish nationalists would precipitate a revolutionary reaction within Turkey and upheaval among Muslims on a global scale. Actual reactions by Muslims within Turkey and beyond proved to be contrary to these predictions. Anti-secular explanations within Turkey and beyond traditionally attributed the lack of disturbance within Turkey (and even afar) to the wielding of a presumably heavy-hand by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk and other nationalist leaders in the early republic. In my paper, I argue that the abolition of the Caliphate was not an act merely of secularization. Indeed, I further contend that, rather than resorting to any presumed acts of brutality, the Turkish leadership relied heavily on a discourse of anti-colonialism and of decolonization to justify their actions vis-à-vis the Caliphate and thus eliminated opposition both domestic and international. In support of my arguments, I explore two aspects of the Caliphate and its religious and political importance in the later years of the institution. First, I situate my study in terms of the wider histories of colonial/imperial powers of the period and their agendas to appropriate indigenous institutions and to manipulate them in ways that would both enhance their own bases of authority and detract from any opposition of anti-colonial/-imperial interests. At times, such strategies of working through indigenous institutions obfuscated evolving power relationships, enabling transitions from colonial to neo-colonial relations (along with new categorizations of such relations, as with “protectorates” or “mandates”) amid the international push towards decolonization. In this early-twentieth century context, we thus scrutinize the British and French influence over the Caliphate during the period of their occupation of Istanbul. Second, I examine the nationalist discourse from the emerging Turkish republic in Ankara and its focus on the Caliphate as a corrupted and degraded institution that had fallen into the hands of Western colonizers, thus negating its legitimacy and necessitating its abolition. In this analytical framework, we may thus discern the abolition of the Caliphate to have been an emerging nation-state’s attempts at decolonization from within amid Western powers’ attempts at instituting neo-colonial hegemonies over the lands of a defunct Ottoman Empire. This research speaks to not only the histories of the Caliphate but contemporary debates regarding its demise and recent suggestions regarding its restoration.

My paper analyzes the images presented to Ottoman women in the press in an attempt to modernize their dressing styles and ways of conduct immediately after the Young Turk revolution. For this purpose, I analyze the Ottoman women’s journal “Mahasin” (Virtues) that was published between the years 1908 and 1909. This journal is laden with images geared towards shaping Ottoman women’s conceptions of fashion, beauty and personal care. Moreover, the journal is written and published by a group of mostly male, Muslim intellectuals who defend the rights of women, their important role in society, and their necessity as actors in the process of modernization and Westernization. In my paper, I argue that these male intellectuals created a “new image” for the Ottoman woman immediately following the Young Turk Revolution. This new image manifested itself with an increased emphasis on women’s appearance, their rights and responsibilities, and their place in Ottoman society. The journal “Mahasin” represents this effort to shape the new woman according to the needs of the age, and that is why it is has a crucial role in the study of the Ottoman women’s movement at the beginning of the 20th century. Preliminary bibliography: “Feminist/Nationalist Discourse in the First Year of the Ottoman Revolutionary Press (1908-1909): Readings from the Magazines of Demet, Mehasin and Kadin (Salonica)”, M.A. Thesis, Tülay Keskin. “The Ottoman Women’s Movement: Women’s Press, Journals, Magazines and Newspapers from 1875 to 1923”, M.A. Thesis, Vuslat Devrim Alt?nöz. “Debating Progress in a ‘Serious Newspaper for Muslim Women’: The Periodical Kadin of the Post-Revolutionary Salonica”, Ayfer Karakaya-Stump, British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies (November, 2003), 30 (2), pp. 155-181. “Unimagined Communities: State, Press and Gender in the Hamidian era”, Elizabeth B. Frierson. “Late Ottoman Society: the Intellectual Legacy”, Elizabeth Özdalga. “Osmanl? Kad?n Hareketi”, Serpil Çak?r. “Osmanl? Kad?nlar?n?n Hayat Hakk? Aray???n?n bir Hikayesi”, Aynur Demirdirek. “Nezihe Muhittin ve Türk kad?n?, 1931: Türk feminizminin dü?ünsel kökenleri ve feminist tarih yaz?l???ndan bir örnek, Ay?egül Baykan, Belma Ötü?-Baskett”. “In Pursuit of the Ottoman Women's Movement”, Aynur Demirdirek, in “Deconstructing images of "the Turkish woman", edited by Zehra F. Arat. “Image and imperialism in the Ottoman revolutionary press, 1908-1911”, Palmira Brummett. ”Jön Türklerin Siyasi Fikirleri, 1895–1908”, ?erif Mardin. “The Young Turks; the Committee of Union and Progress in Turkish politics, 1908-1914”, Feroz Ahmad. “?stanbul Kütüphanelerindeki Eski Harfli Türkçe Kad?n Dergileri Bibliyografyas?”, Kad?n Eserleri Kütüphanesi ve Bilgi Merkezi Vakf?.

In Turkey, as in other contexts, national celebrations have been important instruments of political socialization, legitimacy and mobilization. Yet Turkish historians have rarely studied the culture of national celebrations in Republican Turkey, nor have they examined closely the emergence and functioning of that culture in the early decades of the Republic. While historians of the early Republic focused on the more explicitly political “reforms,” celebrations were largely assumed to exist within the separate sphere of folklore despite the very political nature of these celebrations. The few exceptions to this include the works of Arzu Ozturkmen and Kathryn Libal. I agree with Ozturkmen’s suggestion that we study celebrations in the context of the formation of national identities. While reforms initiated by the state were potentially more confrontational and conflictual, national celebrations constituted a less confrontational, and potentially more participatory and inclusionary path of social and cultural change. In this paper I first give an overview of national celebrations in Turkey. Then I turn to 23 April, National Sovereignty and Children’s Day, and 19 May, Youth and Sports Day, and study how 23 April and 19 May were celebrated in the 1930s, what those celebrations meant for those involved, who were included, who were excluded, and how they related to the larger questions of reform, nation building, secularism and modernization. I rely on a wide range of primary sources for this paper including archival sources, mainly from the Prime Minister’s Archives of the Republic in Ankara, and published interviews and interviews I conducted in several towns in Turkey. Newspapers, detailed celebration reports sent from the provinces complete with photographs, and oral historical data provide rich insights into how these special days were celebrated not only in Istanbul and Ankara, but also in the small, distant towns of Anatolia. By focusing on a number of specific instances of celebrations I investigate what the collective experience of these celebrations meant for the organizers, participants and audiences in terms of their social, cultural, and political identities. I argue that these celebrations, along with the education system, were instrumental in the creation of a generation of Turkish citizens in the 1930s with a shared republican national culture.