35. Today in 1920s Turkey: 29 November 1923 (On Revising History)
Tarihimiz Değişiyor!
“Cumhuriyet ilan olundu. Hala mekteplerde padişahların destanı, meddahı olan tarihler okutuluyor. Tarihler değişmelidir.” Yusuf Akçura Bey’in Meclisteki beyanatından.
Muallim: Efendiler, tarihimizde fasıla-yı saltanat namıyla maaruf olan devir, Türk milletinin idrak ettiği ilk Cumhuriyet’tir. O devirden bugüne kadar güzeran eden asırlara fasıla-yı Cumhuriyet diyeceğiz…
Our History is Changing!
“The Republic has been declared. Still histories comprised of the legends and stories of the sultans are being taught. The histories must change.” Mr. Yusuf Akçura’s speech in the Assembly.
Teacher: Gentlemen, in our history the period known as the Interval of the Sultanate, was the first Republic the Turkish nation had ever perceived. We are going to call the centuries that have elapsed from that period until today the Republican Interval.
Comments:
This image was published exactly one month after the founding of the Republic on 29 October 1923. No sooner was the new state’s form of government declared did the satirical press demand to see tangible changes in areas such as governance, economy, and infrastructure. Change did begin occurring in various fields and at varying levels within months of the regime’s establishment and continued throughout the 1920s but indeed, it did not happen overnight.
A time-honored way to make change visible is by modifying the names of things, places, and even people. For instance, the names of many roads, towns, and schools changed across the country to reflect recent events or commemorate newly minted heroes. Another way to cement a new establishment is by modifying collective memory to favor the new regime by discrediting the old. In the case of the early Turkish Republic, its predecessor, the Ottoman sultanate was regularly framed as a dark period in the nation’s past. According to Republican rhetoric this was a period dictated by the whims of the sultan and not the public interest per se. In these ways, it is possible to give the appearance of a transformed present by re-framing or worse, omitting the past from public memory. This is precisely what Istanbul representative and prominent nationalist Yusuf Akçura advocated in a speech he delivered in the Grand National Assembly earlier that week.
Akçura’s problematic suggestion is the subject of today’s cartoon. Focusing on the feasibility of this logic-defying proposal the cartoon presents one way of nationalizing the Ottoman past by simple appellation: just call the sultanate a republic. Surely that is easier than excluding the last seven centuries from the history books. The artist further emphasizes the ridiculousness of the target of Akçura’s ideologically driven crusade, history classes, by placing the scene in a schoolroom full of disinterested students — kindly referred to as “Gentlemen” — who could not care less what is taught.
This article has been updated and modified from its first iteration published on Steemit on 29 November 2016. For the original version see:
35. Today in 1920s Turkey: 29 November 1923 (Changing History sans Time Travel)
Originally published at https://steemit.com on November 29, 2018.
