Out of its over 9,000 undergraduate and graduate students, about a quarter come from the United Kingdom, a fifth from other European Union member states and the rest from 150 other countries. It currently has about 200 students from Turkey, most of whom are working for postgraduate degrees. This year the LSE finally acquired a chair of contemporary Turkish studies directed by Şevket Pamuk, a distinguished professor of economic history. The chair not only provides leadership in teaching and research, but also organizes talks and conferences on social, economic and political issues. Last week I was invited to address the Contemporary Turkish Studies Research Seminar. My talk, titled the "Two Faces of Democracy in Turkey," dealt with what may be said to be the central question of Turkish politics: Constitutional government in Turkey has a relatively long history with roots in the 19th century Ottoman Empire. The Republic of Turkey has, since the introduction of multi-party politics in 1950, held 15 free general elections with peaceful transitions of power. Turkey has been negotiating EU membership since 2005. And yet it is still debated whether the democratic regime has consolidated or not. What are the obstacles to and what are the dynamics that may help democratic consolidation?
The seminar was attended by a multinational group that raised many thought-provoking questions. I was, as may be expected, also asked to comment on a recent statement by Defense Minister Vecdi Gönül in which he basically argued that the founding of the Turkish nation-state would not have been possible without the Armenian deportations of 1915-16 and the forced population exchange between Turkey and Greece in 1923. This was, briefly, my comment:
In its final period, there were mainly three rival approaches to the question of the nation and the kind of identity policies that could avert the demise of the Ottoman state. One argued in favor of the concept of an "Ottoman nation" of citizens with equal rights and responsibilities irrespective of religion, language or ethnicity. Another argued in favor of a "Muslim nation" based on religion. And yet another argued in favor of a "Turkish nation" based on language and culture. After the non-Muslim peoples of the Balkans broke away from the empire, the rivalry was mainly between the last two approaches, and the concept of the "Muslim nation" was to prevail for a relatively long period. It may be argued that both the Armenian deportations of 1915-16 and the exchange of the Greek Orthodox peoples of Anatolia with the Muslims of Greece in 1923 were policies in line with that concept.
Both the war of independence against foreign invasion between 1919 and 1922 and the founding of the Turkish Republic in 1923 were conducted based on the concept of a "Muslim nation" and in the name of the Muslim peoples of Rumelia and Anatolia. According to the constitution adopted in 1876 and re-promulgated in 1908, the Ottoman state had no official religion, whereas the Republic of Turkey's official religion until 1928 was Islam. The concept of a "Turkish nation" based on language and culture, however, gained prominence in the 1930s (at times assuming ethnic nationalist tones under the influence of European nationalisms) and prevailed until the turn of the 21st century. (The identity policies of the military regime in power between 1980 and 1983 were to tend towards the so-called "Turkish-Islamic synthesis.")
The resistance of Turkey's Kurds, who were a part of the "Muslim nation" of the Ottoman Empire, to assimilation into a nation that spoke the Turkish language and adhered to Turkish culture, however, had already started by the 1920s. The concept of the "Turkish nation" based on language and culture, which at times assumed ethnic nationalist tones, began to seriously threaten the territorial integrity of the country beginning in the 1980s. It may be argued that Turkey today is experiencing the pain of the transition from the concept of a nation based on language and culture to the concept of a civic nation, a nation of citizens with equal rights and responsibilities entitled to freely enjoy their linguistic, ethnic and religious identities.
It is extremely unfortunate that Turkey's defense minister appears to be committed to the concept of a nation based on religion, a concept that has caused great tragedies not only for Armenians and Greeks but also for the Muslims of the Ottoman Empire. The only consolation one finds in the debate his statement triggered is that no one has come to his defense and that he seems to regret what he said.
