The assassination of collective memory: The case of Turkey

Muslim World

Volumn 89, Issue 3-4, 1999, Pages 193-207

  Yavuz, M Hakan ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF UTAH   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 20044392460     PISSN: 00274909     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/j.1478-1913.1999.tb02744.x     Document Type: Review

References (42)

1. Binnaz Toprak describes Islam as a code of conduct in Turkey. For more, see Toprak, Islam and Political Development in Turkey (Leiden: EJ Brill, 1981), 26-38.
2. Lerner, The Passing Traditional Society (New York: Free Press, 1958)
3. Lewis, The Emergence of Modern Turkey (New York: Oxford University Press, 1968).
4. Serif Mardin, Religion and Social Change in Modern Turkey: The Case of Bediüzzaman Said Nursi (Albany: SUNY Press, 1989)
5. Mardin, "The Just and the Unjust," Daedalus, Vol. 120 (1991), 113-129
6. Mardin, "A Note on the Transformation of Religious Symbols in Turkey," Turcica, Vol. 16 (1984), 115-145
7. Nilufer Göle, Modern Mahrem (Istanbul: Metis, 1991)
8. Göle, Mühendisler ve Ideoloji: Öncü Devrimcilerden Yenilikci Seckinler (Istanbul: Iletisim, 1986)
9. Göle, "Oteriter Laiklik ve Islami Katilim," in Islam and Demokrasi (Istanbul: Tuses, 1994), 121-132.
10. The most important authority on Islamic thought in Turkey is Ismail Kara, who is also the editor of monthly Dergah. Ismail Kara, Türkiye'de Islamcilik Dü üncesi (I-III) (Istanbul: Risale, 1986)
11. Kara, Islamcilarin Siyasi Görüşleri (Istanbul: Iz, 1994)
12. Kara, Seyhefendinin Rüyasindaki Türkiye (Istanbul: Kitabevi, 1998).
13. Besir Ayvazoǧlu, "Gelenek ve Yenile me Açisindan Bir Baki, "In Islam, Gelenek ve Yenileşme (Istanbul: TDV, 1996), 173-190
14. Görgün, "Türkiye'de Islam Dü üncesinin Geleneǧi ve Islami Dü ünce Geleneǧi," in Islam, Gelnek, 141-72.
15. M. Hakan Yavuz, "Seach for New Social Contract in Turkey: Fethullah Gülen, the Virtue Party, and the Kurds," SAIS Review, Vol. 19, No. 1 (1999), 114-43.
16. For an understanding of modern social movements, I recommend Alberto Melucci's Nomads of the Present, Social Movements and Individual Needs in Contemporary Society (London: Hutchinson Radius, 1989).
17. M. Hakan Yavuz, "Print-Based Islamic Discourse and Modernity: The Nur Movement," in Third Interntional Symposium on Bediuzzaman Said Nursi (Istanbul: Sözler, 1995), 324-50.
18. I. Kara, "Bediüzzaman Örneǧi," in Şeyhefendinin, 19.
19. This concept originates in Chingiz Aitmatov, The day lasts more than a hundred years, translated by John French (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1983). The Zhuan'zhuan treated captive warriors with cruelty by destroying the captive's memory through a terrible torture-putting the camel skin over the head of the victim. First their heads were completely shaved and every single hair was pulled out by the root. Expert Zhuan'zhuan butchers then killed a nearby nursing mother camel and skinned it. They divided the skin into several pieces and, in its still warm state, stretched it over the shaven heads of the prisoners, where it would adhere like a sticking plaster. As the skin dried, it shrunk around the victim's skull. The man who was subjected to this torture either died because he could not stand it, or he lost his memory of the past forever. He had become a mankurt, or slave, who could not remember his past life.
20. The concept of "forgetting" as an integral aspect of identity building is used by Ernest Renan, "What is a Nation?" in Homi K. Bhabha, ed. Nation and Narration (London: Routledge, 1991), 8-22.
21. Dale Eickelman and Jon Anderson, eds., New Media in the Muslim World: The Emerging Public Sphere (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999)
22. M. Hakan Yavuz, "Media identities for Alevis and Kurds in Turkey," in New Media, 180-99.
23. Interview with Mehmet Kirkinci, 25 September 1995.
24. A. Adnan Adivar, "Interaction of Islamic and Western Thought in Turkey," In Near Eastern Culture and Society, ed. T. Cuyler Young (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1951), 128.
25. For more on Kemalism, see Bobby S. Sayyid, A Fundamental Fear: Eurocentrism and the Emergence of Islamis (New York: Zed, 1997).
26. Kasaba, "Kemalist Certainties and Modern Ambiguities," in Rethinking Modernity and National Identity in Turkey, eds. Sibel Bozdoǧan and Reşat Kasaba (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1997), 29.
27. See, Izmir Halki ile Konusma (Ankara: TTK, 1982), 109.
28. David Kushner, The Rise of Turkish Nationalism: 1876-1908 (London: Frank Cass, 1977), 102. Kushner argues that with the reforms of Mustafa Kemal, Islam was no longer treated as an ideological component of Turkish identity and culture. Turkish identity was based solely on language and Western ideals. However, Islam has always been the core of Turkish identity.
29. For more, see Selim Deringil, "The Ottoman Origins of Kemalist Nationalism: Namik Kemal to Mustafa Kemal," European History Quarterly, Vol. 23 (1993), 165-91
30. M. Arai, "An Imagined Nation: The Idea of the Ottoman Nation as a Key to Modern Ottoman History," Orient, Vol. 27 (1991), 1-11.
31. Edibe Sözen, "Modernite ve Kültürel Kimlik," in Sosyoloji Konferanslari (Istanbul: Cantay Kitabevi, 1998), 153-160.
32. Büsra Er anli, Iktidar ve Tarih: Türkiye' de "Resmi Tarih" Tezinin Oluşumu (1929-1937) (Istanbul: Afa Yayinlari, 1992). The Turkish military tries to perpetuate Atatürk's fictional "Thesis of History."
33. For more on the Hititite origins of the Turks, see Türkiye Cumhuriyeti Devleti' nin Laiklik Ilkesinin Devamliliǧinin Saǧlanmasi Için Yapilmasi Gereken Faaliyetler (Istanbul: Harp Akademileri Basim Evi, 1998), 4.
34. Ahmet Eskicumali, Ideology and education : reconstructing the Turkish curriculum for social and cultural change, 1923-1946 Unpublished Thesis, The University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1994.
35. Reşat Kasaba, "Populism and Democracy in Turkey, 1946-1961," in Rules and Rights in the Middle East: Democracy, Law, and Society, eds. Ellis Goldberg, et al (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1991), 43-68.
36. For more on the politicization of the legal system, see Sami Selcuk, Zorba Devletten Hukukun Üstünlüǧüne, ed. Selcuk (Ankara: Yeni Türkiye Yayinlari, 1998).
37. Sami Selcuk, "Laiklik/sicil toplum/homo democraticus," in Zorba Devletten Hukukun, 70.
38. For more on "secular fundamentalists," see "Turkey's Secular Fundamentalists," The Wilson Quarterly (Summer 1999), 122-23.
39. Alexander Wendt argues that "social threats are constructed, not natural." Wendt, "Anarchy Is What States Make of It: The Social Construction of Power Politics," International Organization, Vol. 46, No. 2 (Spring 1992), 405.
40. Süleyman Demirel, "Bakanlar kurulu siyasi bir müessesedir. Ama MGK devlettir." (The Council of Ministers is a political institution whereas the National Security Council is the state itself.) Hürriyet, 12 December 1996.
41. For more on the expanding role of the military, see Jeremy Salt, "Turkey's Military Democracy,' Current History, Vol. 98, no. 625, 72-78.
42. Michael Meeker, "The New Muslim Intellectuals in the Republic of Turkey," In Islam in Modern Turkey: Religion, Politics and Literature in a Secular State, ed. Richard Tapper (London: Tauris, 1991), 189-219.