PDF Dosyası - Ankara Üniversitesi Kitaplar Veritabanı

ATATÜRK AND THE ıDEA OF A REPUBLICANSTATENada ZIMOVA *The dissolution of the Ottoman Empire and the transformation ofTurkey from the traditional Ottoman Sultanate into a modern republicanstate was one of the most impressive developments following World WarI. That transformation and foundation of the Republic of Turkey in 1923is conneced with the activity of the leader of the Turkish War of independence,Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. In 1981, we commemorated the lOOth anniversaryof his birth. Atatürk's centennial was an occasion not only forworld-wide celebration, but also an impetus for majör scholarly activitiesabout his role and achievement.Similarly, the 75th anniversary of the Republic of Turkey offers newopportunities to study how much the primary aims of the republican Turkeyand the main tenets of earlier Turkish modernization efforts had incommon. The present contribution does not attempt to deal with fullrange of issues that may be implied by its title. its purpose is a more modestendeavour, an account of one strand in the tangle of the large subjectfield: a reconsideration of the process of the formation of the Turkish republicanstate, or at least some of its most important features. Thoughthat process itself occurred in the early of the 1920's, its roots go back asfar as the mid-19th century.At that time, the beginnings were seen of the movement of theYoung Turks who were later to rise in the revolution of 1908. Their activityis to be seen within the entire context of the lengthy reform transformationof the Turkish society and the development of the Turkish nationalconsciousness. That development cannot be characterized as a mereprocesss of quantitative growth of one single quality. The Turks, as BernardLewis stresses, "despite the survival of the Turkish language and theexistence of what was in fact, though not in theory, a Turkish state" 1 hadidentifıed themselves as Muslims and subjects of the Ottoman state and* Charles University, Prague.1. Lewis, Bernard, The Emergence of Modern Turkey. OUP, London 1961, p. 2.47