Between 'Revolution' and 'Counter-Revolution': Contemporary Reflections of Turkish Republican Revolution

Abstract

Between ‘Revolution’ and ‘Counter-Revolution’: Contemporary Reflections of Turkish Republican RevolutionMehmet Arısan (Istanbul University) Turkish Republican Revolution is generally accepted as the direct outcome of the Turkish Independence War. This was actually a war that was fought for saving the last remains of the Ottoman Empire. In this sense it can hardly be claimed as a republican war, nor can it be defined as a revolutionary war that aimed a republican transformation. Most of the Anatolian people fought against the Greeks in the independence war thought that it is a war against the Ottoman Empire and they just tried to save the last remaining territories of the Empire. Even though there was a certain anger against the Sultan for his cooperation with the occupation forces in Istanbul, it can be hardly claimed that there was any trace of the idea of Republic amongst the Anatolian people who were fighting against the enemy during the independence war. After the Republic was declared by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk and his associates, the idea of Republic began to be perceived as identical to the idea of “independence” and “victory” rather than being a “revolution”. Indeed it appeared as a “declaration” rather than “revolution”. However the developments that enabled people to perceive “revolution” in a particular way may well be defined as a revolution, even if it is emanated from above. Moving from this point the paper basically questions the perception and understanding of the “Republican Revolution” and the current claims of “counter-revolution”. In doing this, it also intends to demonstrate the shortcomings of the wide spread understanding of modern Turkish politics based on a binary opposition between Kemalism (Kemalist secularism and republicanism) vs. Islamism (including all the traditionalists and Islamic-conservative nationalists). Indeed Turkish politics have long been perceived from a revolution vs. counter-revolution axis even though this approach has some variations in itself. The paper starts by questioning the notion of the “republican revolution” and discusses on what terms it can be accepted as a “revolution” or not. Moving from this point the paper will refer to some significant historical moments in modern Turkish history that have been defined or claimed as counter-revolutions such as the rise of the Democrat Party to power in the 1946-50 period and the military interventions which some of them have been defined as counter-revolutions while some others as attempts of “retrieval” of the ‘republican revolution’. However, the paper is not an extensive re-reading of all these historical moments of an alleged “counter-revolution”, which supposedly culminated by the rise of AKP (Justice and Development Party) that finally led to the transformation to a presidential system from a parliamentary one. The paper rather tries to answer the question of whether we can talk about a “counter-revolution” by focusing on the conditions of possibility or impossibility of a “republican revolution”. It concludes that rather than a clearly defined “revolution” or a clearly defined unique regime of “Kemalism”, Turkish Republic mostly stands on a ground of a functional vagueness. It is capable of producing tutelary and authoritarian tendencies (which is intrinsic to all the competing political movements in Turkey) but always defies to be defined within a clear-cut ideology and doctrine. This has always sustained the regime even though sometimes it becomes quite shaky.