The Young Turk Legacy and Nation Building

The grand narrative of "The Young Turk Legacy and Nation Building" is that of the essential continuity of the late Ottoman Empire with the Republic of Turkey that was founded in 1923. Erik J. Zurcher shows that Kemal's 'ideological toolkit', which included positivism, militarism, nationalism and a state-centred world view, was shared by many other Young Turks. Authoritarian rule, a one-party state, a legal framework based on European principles, advanced European-style bureaucracy, financial administration, military and educational reforms and state-control of Islam, can all be found in the late Ottoman Empire, as can policies of demographic engineering. The book focuses on the attempts of the Young Turks to save their empire through forced modernization as well as on the attempts of their Kemalist successors to build a strong national state. The decade of almost continuous warfare, ethnic conflict and forced migration between 1911 and 1922 forms the background to these attempts and accordingly occupies a central position in this volume. This is a powerful history reflecting and contributing to the latest research from a leading historian of modern Turkey. It is essential for all readers interested in the history of the Ottoman Empire and Turkey, and for an understanding of a key player in the politics of the Middle East and Europe.

Erik J. Zürcher

Preface: Thirty Years of Turkish History I. Sources and Literature 1. The Politician as Historian, Historians in Poitics: The Nutuk (Speech) of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk 2. Young Turk Memoirs as a Historical Source 3. The Historiography of Constitutional Revolution: Broad Consensus, Some Disagreemant and a Missed Opportunity 4. The Rise and Fall of Modern Turkey: Bernard Lewis's Emergence fifty years on II. Imperial Twilight 5. The Ottoman Empire 1950-1922 - Unavoidable Failure? 6. The Ides of April. A Fundamentalist Uprising in Instanbul in 1909? 7. Sultan Mekhmet V's Visit to Kosovo in June 1911 8. Who were the Young Turks? 9. The Young Turk Mindset 10. Ataturk as a Unionist 11. The Ottoman Legacy of the Kemalist Republic III. The Great War 12. The Ottoman Conscription System in Theory and Practice, 1844-1918 13. The Ottoman Soldier in World War I 14. The Ottoman Empire and Armistice of Moudhros 15. Renewal and Silence. Postwar Unionist and Kemalist Rhetoric on the Armenian Genocide IV. Toward the Nation State 16. Young Turks, Ottoman Muslims and Turkish Nationalists. Identity Politics 1908-38 17. Were Progressives Conservatives? 18. Institution Building in the Kemalist Republic compared with Pahlevi Iran: The People's Party 19. Touring Anatolia at the end of the Ataturk Era: Kemalist Turkey observed by Western Visitors 20. Islam in the Service of the Calipahe and the Secular State 21. Turning Points in and Missed Opportunities in the Modern History of Turkey: where things could gone differently? Appendix Bibliography of Erik Jan Zürcher