2/n Constitutional Struggles in the Muslim World 2/n

Ottoman Empire and Modern Turkey

2.1 People, Place and Patterns

If you remember what we discussed last

 week, the challenge that is faced now by the Muslim world, but also by much of the rest of the developing world, in the 18th and 19th century is primarily military. It's the growth of European power that these countries that have lived relatively stably for hundreds of years are now faced and have to deal with. And they try in different ways to adapt, as you see in this photo, you will see they're trying to adapt European forms of military organizations. They introduce military weaponry into their navies and armies. They buy weapons from Europe, as here you see the German battleship, Goeben, that is given to Turkey and becomes the flagship, Yavuz, of the Turkish Navy. And these military reforms that are now necessary, they obviously cost money. So, paying for these reforms becomes one of the main drivers of reform. And so, military reforms ensue the need for administrative, and ultimately, economic reforms. And that's what we will talk to you about today. So, the challenge is how to increase the taxable base, the productive economy, to produce the material and manpower resources needed for the security needs that the state is now faced with. On all these three fronts, military, administrative, and economic, the reforms seek to address a very objective need. But the Muslim world, in particularly now, the ultimate empire that we will talk today as a predecessor of modern Turkey, is doing great steps forward, but ultimately, these reforms remain half-hearted and insufficient. As we discussed last week, there are four response patterns that we can discern in the Muslim world. And remember, these are ideal types in the verbarian sense. So, they're deliberately stripped down, abstract mental images to make sense of a complex reality, but you rarely see them as purified in actual social reality. The four models are, just to recapitulate, emulation and secularism, religious modernism, traditionalism, and ultimately, fundamentalism in the 20th century. So, looking at emulation. In some respect, emulation should be the default pattern. Ultimately, after all, this is how we solve puzzles in real life, when we faced with a superior way of doing things, we normally look how others have approached that problem, and we copy their approach. So, faced with superior armies with a vastly more competitive industry that is more cheaper and produces higher quality, we would expect, or we could expect, that the Muslim world would simply look to Europe and copy these approaches lock, stock, and barrel. After all, this is how the Japanese approached their entrance into the modern period. But as we will see, this is not how the story happened in the Muslim world. There are two reasons why we begin this course with an examination of Turkey. One historical, the other material. The historical reason is the extremely important role that Turkey's predecessor state, namely the Ottoman Empire, played in the genesis of many modern Muslim nations. If you look at the geographical extent of the Ottoman empire, it encompasses the area currently taken by many Muslin nations, and you can easily imagine that this legacy affects their current political and social life, and a topic to which we'll return to in the course of this course. But for now, the more important reason is the material aspect. That the Turkish Republic that sprang from the ruins of the Ottoman Empire, is the one Muslim nation that has taken emulation of Western practices,

including Western law, the furthest. So, while emulation might appear as the most logical response to a challenge, it is not the response taken by the majority of Muslim nations. Turkey remains an outlier in this respect, almost an exception to the rule. And the reasons for this are manifold. But perhaps the most important is the sheer operation of difficulty of transposing and receiving such a complex package of institutional arrangements, including bureaucratic law. And even Turkey, as perhaps the most successful Muslim nation in this process of reception, has had a very bumpy road in this respect. And the reception of Western practices took almost a century. And it's the process that we will explore further in this week. And part of the explanation that, for the relative success in Turkey, in this respect, is the enormous political capital at the disposal and the ideological clarity expressed by the leaders of this transformation process in the 20th century as Turkey became a republic. And this process is heavily identified with the personal personality of Mustafa Kemal, who was later then called Ataturk, The Father of the Turks, who oriented himself strongly along the French model of a strict separation of church and state, Laïcité in French, and it's perhaps the most important of the principles of Kemalism, as the political ideology came to be called, and that we will explore further down in this week. Kemalism, as this set of constitutional principles came to be known, is premised on the explicit acknowledgement of the inadequacy of the half-hearted reforms that were undertaken in Ottoman times, something that we will explore in the video 2.3 this week. And this radical, official acknowledgement of relative failure is missing in virtually all other Muslim nations, and it's perhaps one of the strongest explanations for the relative success of Turkey as opposed to the relative failure of most other Muslim nations. And it's a point, for example, that Sadekel Azam expresses very forcefully in his book, Self Criticism After the Defeat, something that we will come back to later in this course. The reason for the success of the Turkish, the approach of the Turkish Republic in the 20th century, is heavily due to the enormous political capital that it's leaders particularly, Mustafa Kimal, but also the other military leaders had, as the commanders of the successful War of Liberation, fought after the first World War. A topic to which we will come back in video 2.4 this week. I've chosen to present, alongside Turkey, another large and very diverse group of nations. Namely it's the Asian and Caucasian republics that emerged from the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. Again, the reasons are two-fold, historical and material, apart from the rather mundane reason that I need to squeeze a lot of material into my 11 weeks. The historical, and perhaps slightly contrived reason, is the ethnic and linguistic bond between many of the Turkic, people of Central Asia and the modern Turkish nation that also traces its origin to Central Asia from which they moved several centuries ago. And these linguistic and ethnic bonds remain quite strong despite the separation that communism imposed on these people. More immediately obvious however, is the material observation that the central Asian republics, like Turkey, are both in social and institutional outlook remarkably more secular then many if not most of the other Muslim nations. The historical and slightly contrived connection is the extremely important role that Turkish mercenaries and slave soldiers have played in most of Islamic history and were drawn from what is currently central Asia, the place these republics are placed. But also the strong linguistic and ethnic bonds that exist between the modern Turkish nation and the Turkic peoples of central Asia. More immediately obvious, however, is the observation, the material observation that despite a very strong and enduring in rediscovering Islam after the collapse of communism '91, the central Asian republics remain remarkable secular in both social and institutional outlook, making them much more similar to modern Turkey than to many of the other Muslim nations. And this is obviously a result of 70 years of ASIS social engineering done undertaken by the communists. And in this respect it's worth noting and it might be surprising for a western audience that in the central Asian republics, but the public and the elites look back with a very large amount of

nostalgia to the communist period. Because it is generally remembered as a period of stability, relative prosperity, and social and political certainty. All things that collapsed after the dissolution of the Soviet Union. And it is worth noting that this illusion of the Soviet Union was precipitated by the revolt of the Baltic Republics in the north and the refusal of the Russian Federation to continue to subsidize the southern republics so, the connection is clear. The central Asian republics were, on the Communist period, the recipients of very considerable transfer payments, very considerable institutional support, cultural support. And they had access to a very large and functioning internal market. And the part of an integrated economy of which they serve specialists' needs. So the republics, they're ill prepared for independence after the dissolution of the union in 91. And there are at least three interrelated factors that explain why they were so ill prepared for independence. Perhaps the most important are the colonial borders that were drawn up by Russian colonialism and Communist gerrymandering that cut across viable political and ethnic communities and did not necessarily, were not aimed at creating administrative units that were self-standing. Second reason, as I just mentioned, is, on the communist periods, all of these republics were given highly specialized economic tasks as part of a larger planned economy. So, once the planned economy collapses, the cotton economy for example, of Uzbekistan was ill-prepared to stand on its own or some of the production facilities that relied on inputs that were now no longer forthcoming. And the third equally important point is the extremely shallow political culture that developed in all of these nations. These were Relatively pre -modern society's when Russian Colonialisam approached. So, they did not have time to build the institutions necessary for modern life or even for the aggregation of political interest. Which again explains their actively strong interest in religion now after 91 as a tool for social identity building and nation building, if you want. So the central Asian and Caucasian republics, most of which had very tenuous of any state tradition before the advent of Russian colonialism, they largely continued with the inheritance of communism with the institutional and legal structure that had been built in the 70 years prior. And this includes the relative absence of religion in public and constitutional law. And now faced with the need for independence, they did look to Turkey for inspiration. So if you now look a little bit at the constitutional provisions, let's begin with Turkey. Article 1 of the Turkish Constitution describes the state of Turkey is a republic. And then it continues in Article 2 to describe the characteristics of the republic. And I quote, the republic of Turkey is a democratic, secular and social state governed by rule of law. Within the notions of public peace, national solidarity and justice, respecting human rights, loyal to the nationalism of Ataturk, and based on the fundamental tenets set forth in the preamble. And then it has Article 4, the irrevocable provisions, which exempt the first three articles from being amenable to change through the politic process. So Turkey describes itself as a democratic, secular and social state. Now look how the Central Asian Republics describe themselves in their constitutions. Let's begin with the Kyrgyz Republic. It's the first article in its constitution describes the Kyrgyz Republic is a sovereign, democratic, secular, unitary and social state governed by the rule of law. Here, immediate, almost verbatim similarities to the Turkish Constitution. Article 1 of the Kazakh Constitution, states the Republic of Kazakhstan proclaims itself a democratic, secular, legal, and social state whose highest values are an individual, his life, rights, and freedoms. Likewise, the first article of the Turkmen Constitution describes it as a democratic, legal, and secular state in which the government takes the form of a presidential republic. Article 1 of the Tajik Constitution describes it as a sovereign, democratic, law-based, secular, and unitary state. Article 1 of the Uzbek Constitution describes it as a sovereign, democratic republic. And its Article 2 describes that the state shall express the will of the people and serve their interest. Article 7 of the Uzbek Republic, the Uzbec Constitution is equally important. It describes it, the people are the sole source of state power. Finally, the Caucasus Republic of Azerbaijan describes itself in the preamble, the object of the state is to build a law-based secular state to provide the command of law as an expression of the will of the nation. And its Article 1 is expresses this sentiment even stronger than the Uzbek Constitution. It says, the sole source of state power in the Azerbaijan Republic are the people of Azerbaijan. So you have not only is there no mention at all of Islam or Islamic law or its being a source or the source or any inspiration follow. There's an explicit commitment to secularism in all of these republics. This is both the inheritance of communism but also the model role of Turkey. So these are exceptions to the models that we will see in the other constitutions, in the rest of the Muslim world where Islam is generally given a much more prominent role than here. Now, for the remaining few minutes, let's turn a little bit to the economy. One of the most striking aspects of modern Turkey, and also one of the reasons of the appeal it currently enjoys, both in central Asia, in the Caucasus, but also elsewhere in the Muslim world, is extremely impressive economic performance. If you look here at the chart of GDP per capita over time in present day dollars, you see a relative stagnation from the 1960s right up to the 1990s. And then you see a certain degree of increase from the 1990s to 2000. And then from 2000 to 2002, there's a drop, and then from 2002 onwards right up to now and it continues you have an extreme rate of growth and an extreme rate of growth per capita. So people are, in the last 15 years, have roughly tripled their income per household. And this period of growth

coincides roughly with the as an Islamist party itself describes it as a social conservative party. It marks the shift from the old Communist state led import substitution

economic model to a now, market-oriented liberal economy based on free-enterprise and in particular, an import-led development model. You see in this map that

shows GDP growth annually, it's very varied throughout history. But you can see that Turkey has managed, and particularly also in the last year, very impressive rates of growth. And the observation here is that, Turkey, with the possible exception of Malaysia, is the only Muslim nation that has managed to successfully build a globally competitive, productive industry. And the real question, also for this course now is, to what extent the ruling AK Party, the Justice and Development party, can take credit for this transformation and for the observation that we will explore further down in this week? It's ascent to power is a direct result of the consecutive dismantling of many of the strictures of the Kemalist state, that has on the particularly imposed under the aspiration for EU membership, that has opened the political space, for the Islamic oriented parties, and particularly, the AK Party to come to power and transform the economy. So the current developments we see in Turkey playing out right now, the upheavals are, to some extent, also the popular backlash to this dismantling of the Kemalist status quo, and towards a free market, liberal economic model, at the same time linked with the conservative Islamic-oriented social model. And this tension is played out right now in the streets, but we will also explore it in the rest of this week. 

2.2 Ottoman History

[MUSIC] Let's talk a little bit about the origins of the Ottoman Empire. It started off as a relatively small Turkic tribe that broke off from the Seljuks in 1299 which is generally seen as the beginning of the Ottoman Empire. Located on the eastern periphery on Anatolia, it quite soon became engaged with conflict with the Byzantium

Empire that was located in Constantinople. Eastern Rome is the other name that you might of heard before. And it fought its first battle with Byzantium in 1302, successfully. And then remained engaged in constant conflict with Byzantium for the next 150 years until 1453 where it destroyed the Byzantium Empire, occupied the city of Constantinople, and turned it into its capital city, renaming it Istanbul. Here you have a painting of the siege of Constantinople. Subsequently it expanded into, as you can see on the map, it expanded into eastern and central Europe, occupying large parts of the Balkans, including Hungary. Which became Ottoman tributary states, and then simultaneously also it expanded further northeast into the Black Sea and the Crimea. The siege of Vienna was attempted twice in 1529 and 1683. Both times the siege itself failed, as you can see on these paintings. But it was a very dramatic moment for western Europe, and you can easily imagine how the course of history would look different if that siege had succeeded and it's only the second time that the Islamic empires encroached on western Europe proper. First time if you might remember from last week was when the Umayyads came from Spain into Southern France. The Ottomans simultaneously moved eastwards engaged in conflict with the Safavid Empire in the present day Iran and southwestwards towards the Abbasid Caliphate that operated out of Cairo. And it defeated the Abbasid Caliphate in 1517, and this particular defeat is momentous because it, as you remember, the Abbasids were the holders of the caliphate. And so the Ottoman sultans in Istanbul are now assuming in 1519, two years after the defeat of the Abbasids, they transferred the caliphate to themselves. We'll return to the issue of the caliphate later in this week when we talk about the Turkish Republic's decision to abolish that institution. Let's now talk a little bit about the ethnic diversity of this empire, which is linked to the way it was created. Like previous Muslim empires, the Ottomans were primarily interested in enlarging the area governed by Muslims. But as such, they had no interest

necessarily in converting the subjugated populations to Islam as, perhaps, other religions might have done. And this is not necessarily due to a particular notion of tolerance, as some Muslim apologetics in the 20th century might have presented it. But primarily due to the limited physical abilities of these conquerors, and the particular incentive structure that developed out of the way Islamic law had developed, particularly with respect to taxes. So the Ottoman empire was highly heterogeneous and contained a multitude of ethnic, linguistic, religious communities that lived not so much with each other but side by side. It has been described as a mosaic, which I think is a good image to describe the particular way the society was structured. While the Sunni Muslims were clearly the privileged group in that empire, it would be inaccurate to paint a picture of general suppression of minorities. It is important to remember that all of the minorities, particularly the Jewish and Christian minorities, were heavily involved in the administration, which again goes back to the way the Muslim conquerors, the Ottomans but also their predecessors, were governing the areas that had come under their control. They generally left the administration in place, for practical reasons, because they did not have the administrators themselves, they had no experience with administration. These are horse people from the steppe, warriors more than administrators so it was a logical decision to leave the administration in place. But also because the way taxation was governed in the religious law it was more advantageous for them to tax non-Muslim populations. So to cut a highly complex story short, while forced conversion certainly did take place, and while Muslims enjoyed a privileged position, the Muslim expansion both in pre-Ottoman periods and under the Ottomans did not lead to homogeneous Muslim societies. And this is for primarily two reasons. First, the Muslim conquests were undertaken by relatively small if committed troops, which lacked administrative experience and capability. So the conquerors generally left the existing administrative practices in place and allowed the subjugated populations to continue with their way of life, in particular with established religious and social practices. Secondly, prophetic practice had established a very strong legal precedent and a highly convenient precedent of how to deal with subjugated non-Muslim populations. Remember both the Koran and the Prophet, they recognized the so-called People of the Book. Those who shared the monotheism, they believed in one God, at that time the Christians and the Jews. So the religion recognizes them as people who have a faith that's almost as good as Muslims, they're not clearly inferior to Muslims,

but they are recognized as decent enough. So the law and prophetic practice and the Koran recognize the Dhimmi status for the People of the Book and that status is a relatively simple bargain. It's a contract of protection by the Muslim ruler in exchange for payment of a special tax. And that, this protective contract could be extended to people living permanently under Muslim rulers, that would be Dhimmis or also people who come for a temporary period into Muslim lands and then they would get a protective letter. So, this precedence of the special tax in return for protection, paid by the People of the Book, was then extended to the Zoroastrian people of Iran, when Iran came under Muslim dominance and to the Hindu people of India. And this process of extension offered status to people who were originally not covered, but it's a sign of flexibility that is shown by the Islamic law and Islamic governance in practice, however it has never been recognized dogmatically. And Muslim apologetics in recent times have pointed out to this practice of the Muslim state allowing non-Muslims to live freely within it, under it's protection, and prospering, as a sign of the tolerance of the religion. It is questionable whether tolerance really is or was the motivating factor here, rather than opportunism and convenience of governance. And particularly in the Ottoman's sense, lack of interest in creating strong integrated statehood. But the practical effect was certainly much more advantageous legal and

social position for the minorities than they experienced in other types of governance in other parts of the world. One of the elements explaining the rapid expansion of Islam under the Ummayads and the Abbasids, and still observable in Ottoman times is the willing acceptance of non-Muslim populations of their new Muslim overlords. Particularly in the Byzantium and the Sasonic territories that came under Muslim sovereignty. Here of Muslim authority was not necessarily imposed but actually came about by contract between the subjugated populations and the new Muslim ruler based on the legal institution of the Dhimmi who's protected in return for paying a Jizya tax. And the willingness to accept this position is linked to this tax often being actually lower than what these populations had been paying to the Byzantine or Sassanid previous rulers, and by the autonomy that they generally enjoyed under Muslim rule to govern their own affairs. Another striking and recurring feature of Muslim governance is the dislocation of rulers from the the ruled. It's quite rare that the rulers spring up from the same area in which they actually come to run, to govern. So we have often an ethnic and linguistic difference between the two. And they often originate from geographically fairly distant areas. So the combined effect of this legal and religious heritage, the military limitations of small conquering armies, and certainly not least, the habitual predisposition of particularly the Ottomans throughout history would explain the rather distant form of governance that we see in the Ottoman Empire. It's a form of governance by proxy. And part of this reliance on proxy rulers is the inability of the Ottomans to reliably assess and collect resources from the lands that came under their control. Initially after the conquest, all land belonged to the state, the ruler. But the ruler generally did not administer these lands himself or through his administrators. But, they gave them as, the institution was called in Ottoman times as to the individual soldiers in return for military services. And while we cannot explore fully here the complexity of that system, one thing it's important to note that this arrangement that looks feudal and is feudal in certain aspects did not develop the highly stable mutual rights and obligations between patron and client that we see in the European and some other feudal systems in the world, but it remained relatively unstable, in legal terms. Secondly, the tax take accruing to the state, both in absolute terms and in relative terms, remains very small. Because the, it's called the middle man, the actual person administrating or to whom the lands was given, the soldier

kept most of the benefits of these lands. And as the system disintegrated also the military services were no longer as reliably given to the ruler. So which then eventually lead to the system of Iltizam, the tax farming, where the right to tax is auctioned off to private individuals which causes its own problems. So as we will see shortly, this Inability to collect taxes is one of the reasons the modernization period in the 19th century brings about financial collapse in both Egypt and the Ottoman Empire. Because the costly modernization processes cannot be paid for, reliably, from the tax base that in objective terms should have been there. So another feature of Islamic governance in general, and Ottoman governance in particular, is the noted lack of interest in creating, in regulating the legal affairs of its subjects in a comprehensive manner. Perhaps this is due to legal and religious stipulations, but that is now one of the issues that can be debated. But at this point we can simply observe that legal matters were left almost exclusively to the religious communities, which in the Ottoman Empire that was a highly heterogeneous multi-ethnic, multi- religious empires, led to the system of millets, as they came to be known in the Ottoman Empire. Where each religious community was operating its own courts and regulating its own administrative affairs themselves. Here we have a picture of a Qadi court regulating the Muslim communities. And these courts where, I mean the Muslim courts, the Qadi courts, were sanctioned by the government, but they were essentially private religious scholars administrating a law that was developed by private individuals, not by the state. And this we will come back to repeatedly throughout this course. It's one of the noted shortcomings, both of the institution of the caliphate and of the Islamic governance as such, that the ability to authoritatively state what the law is never accrued to the state but was left with private individuals. For the non-Muslim populations, this meant that they could govern their own affairs in their own courts and system, in their own communities. Which is on the one hand highly advantageous, on the other hand contributed to this fact that we do not have populations that actually draw together, but remain very separate. And it's as you see in this picture here, the different flags represented different millets in the Ottoman Empire. And as soon as the government then tried to come up with state law, that affects and regulated their own affairs, These entrenched rights and interests of the millets obviously were affected, and that showed some, I mean that created the resistance. And in the particular Ottoman case, it's important to note, and we come back to this later, that the millets that were religiously different from the Muslim rulers had attracted the interests of outside powers, mainly Christian European powers, who then took it upon themselves to protect certain of these religious communities. Both for, perhaps generally felt reasons of kinship, but, also, and perhaps, primarily, as a rather convenient excuse to interfere in the internal affairs of the Ottoman

empire for self interested reasons. And we will return to the question of the legal equality of the Ottoman citizens, and how it affected the millet system in the next video dedicated to the Ottoman reform movement in the 19th century. 

2.3 Ottoman Reform: Tanzimat and Majallah

Let's now talk a little bit about the decline and the reform movements within the Ottoman Empire. The Ottoman Empire reaches the height of its power under the reign of Suleiman the Magnificent as its known in the West. Or, Suleiman the Lawgiver, as he's known in the east, in the Ottoman lands. He lived from 1494 till 1566, and as you can see he had a predilection for big hats. And on this photo his hat is somewhat smaller. This is an image that is hanging in the United States House of Representatives where he's featured as one of 20 plus famous lawgivers in human history. So he's a man of the law and he focused on reforming the, the Qanun, the, the laws that were within the realm of the state to, to engage. Not, as opposed to the Sharia, which is the, the divine law made by private scholars as we discussed. But we will not so much talk about Suleiman right now. As such his empire is an enormous almost a super power in modern parlance. Great power with extensive reach and

greater ambition still and is also an extremely, an extreme. The active supporter of the arts and of culture, here, you see in this painting, this is the Suleimaniye Mosque that the famous Ottoman artist Sinan built for, for Suleiman, and is named after him. And as you can easily see, it is modeled on the Christian church, the Hagia Sophia. That was built in Byzantine times in Constantinople and whose the way whose magnificent way of building that have not be lost by that time and that Zinon managed to rediscover and builds again in the Suleymaniye Mosque and as we will see later on And it's a particular way of building mosques that has become very influential. So, it is at the end of Suleiman's reign that we see the, the height of Ottoman expansion. And if you look at the, the map, now we see a very extensive empire around the, the Southern shore. Southern and Eastern shore of the mediterranean and with strong holdings in the Balkans and towards Europe. And encroching on Europe as we discussed earlier on. It had an ambition towards Europe. So it is now here and this map is from 1609. It shows the the period when the Ottoman Empire is in a sense admitted into the club of the European great powers. It becomes now Bonified a European power that effects the course of military affairs in Europe. Certainly, in the Mediterranean. obviously, this geographic expansion and maintenance is built on military strength. And, the Ottoman empire at this Period had an extremely competitive military structure, very effective navy, very effective mi army good weapons production, and a highly disciplined armed force. And perhaps this is a good moment to dwell a little bit on the particular type of the military force on which the Ottomans rely. Here you have a, a European painting by a Janissary soldier of the, I think it's by [INAUDIBLE]. And the slave soldier system is a peculiar Muslim institution that began in 1830 under the Abassids and then was continued with the Ottomans who started with it formally in 1383 and maintained it for 500 years right up to its abolition in 1826. And what we, in modern parlance, we equate slavery with an extremely unfavorable social position. But it's important to remember that in the, the way it played out in Muslim periods, its. It was a social status that opened up avenues for social mobilities right up to the very top of the, the hierarchy. we have, not in Ottoman periods, but in, in other Muslim societies, particularly in, in, in, in Egypt these slave soldiers actually became the rulers. And certainly decided who their Sultan would be and the Sultan was often drawn from their own circles. So how that this system function? You see here in this painting, it's contemporary from the era. It shows how young boys are brought to the Sultan to enter the the the training for, to become

janissaries. And janissaries is indeed a term the Turks used, in the Egyptian periods it was called manlous which means the owned, the property of the sultan. So the system was that young boys would be either captured and in later periods were actually sold by their parents Often in, and that's important, always in non-Muslim areas. So these are often Christian or other boys of other religions. That were selected, and the, the selection process was fairly rigid. They were brought, bought as slaves. Came, were brought to the capital, and then entered particular training institutions where further selection was happening. And at that time then they were circumcised, and converted to Islam, and taught Turkish, and schooled and underwent military training and discipline, and discipline was very harsh. And the idea and the particular source of the strength of these slave soldiers was that these young boys, who were uprooted both culturally and family wise, now made their the corps became, de facto, their family. And for long periods of Muslim history, they were actually prohibited from marrying, or from having families, so they remained within the corps. And the corps, and the owner, who was the ultimately the Sultan, and higher military officers took care of him and his needs. And, they were very disciplined and a very, very effective fighting force. And as we mentioned already last week, it was these type of soldiers, the Mamlouks in Egypt Who defeated the Mongol onslaught in 1258, and it's the same type of military organization that's also at the source of Ottoman military strength throughout much of it's history. The problem with the Janissaries is that. Over time, the rigid rules that were the source of its military effectiveness were eroded. Janissaries began to marry. They began to ensure that their own offspring would get into the system, which previously was strictly prohi, prohibited. And they become, became local extractors of local rents, basically without actually delivering military services. So there is now a paradoxical situation At the end of the 18th century and persisting all throughout the 19th century right up to the first World War. With the Ottoman Empire is large but internally weak and is no longer able to defend itself very effectively against outside encroachment and is also no longer able to maintain

internal control and stability As well as it could of and was needing, needing to do. And the part of CCNL that all of the European nations has territorial or strategic interest in the territories of the ultimate empire. But all of them were at the same time concerned. About territorial gains being made by other European nations upsetting the balance of power overall in Europe. So, we have this paradoxical situation that the Ottoman Empire is now weak and is unable to assert itself. But it's actually propped up by its competitors. Not because they, feel sympathy for the Ottoman Empire, but because they are worried about the gains from disintegration of the empire accruing to their, the other European nations, and thereby the overall stability of the European balance of power would be affected. So, the Ottoman Empire is now living on borrowed time, so to say. The 19th Century does not treat the Ottomans very well. It starts bad, off badly in, 1804 til 1850, you have the Serbian revolution here in the, northern, the, the, the Balkan holdings begin to strong unrest. You have and which begins the period of nationalist agitation, particularly in the Balkans, which then later on in the 20th century also spread to the Arab and other holdings of the Ottoman's. So it begins with the Serbian uprising 1804, 1815. And you have Greece becoming independent in 1830 under [UNKNOWN] uprising and strong support by the European powers. Then you have in 1831-1833 Mohammad Ali of Egypt, formerly the loyal subject of the Empire, actually attacks the Empire, and takes much of the Syrian province, and establishes himself there. And the Ottomans are, trying to meet him militarily but are heavily beaten by Muhammads Ali's now modern. The front army and they can only repel him from Syria with the help of the Europeans in 1839 which then leads in 1840 to the convention of London where the European grade powers formally commit themselves to the maintenance of the Ottoman empire. To the, you know, to continue the existence of the Ottoman Empire. Which, as I said before, it's a little bit of a paradoxical situation. So, out of this convention, Muhammad Ali of Egypt becomes a hereditary first king of Egypt. But, recognizes Ottoman sovereignty. The Crimean War in 1854 til1856, in which the Ottoman Empire is fighting against the, the, the Russian Empire and is, is, is allied with Britain and France. is formally won, but the, the result of that war is not very auspicious for the Ottomans. It leads the, to strong resentment in Turkey. It begins a period of reform in Turkey, and ultimately to the Russo-Turkish War of 1877 til 78. Which leads to the ultimate independence of Bulgaria and later on the loss of the, the Bosnia-Herzegovina to, to Austria. And Romania and Serbia become fully independent at that time. So and ultimately these Balkan countries will ally themselves, and attack the Ottoman Empire in 1912 and

1913. And all this is ultimately the outcome of the Crimean war. One strong symbol of the situation in which the, the Ottoman Empire has now maneuvered itself into, is the near autonomy, the virtual autonomy enjoyed by Egypt under Muhammad Ali at the time. The moderate rulers further to the east of Egypt had Similary assumed more or less autonomous status, only nominally recognizing the sovereignty of the Ottoman

sultan. And at any rate, since 1830 Algeria has become a French protectorate, and then Tunisia and Morocco follow a few decades later, and fall under French control. So we see that the Ottoman Empire is now under considerable pressure. So in, in parts of the Ottoman Empire, particularly in the admin, the higher administration and the, the military leadership There's now realization that reform is needed. That stagnation continuing as it was will lead to, disintegration of the, the empire. And we've mentioned already last week the, the precedent of the, the Japanese reform movement from Starting 1850, 50, 1868. And there's now the precedent of Russian reform that sets in after, in 1856, after the, the last Crimean war. There is the present within the Ottoman lands of the, of basically autonomous Egypt under Mohammed Ali that embarks on an extremely ambitious modernization period. starting in 1804. So there's now a realization in the Ottoman Empire that we need to do the same if we want to stay alive, and if we want to ensure the survival of the Empire. And In the Ottoman Empire this reform takes the, the the, the characteristic of military reform. Because that seems to be the most pressing. So there is now the introduction of military drill, military trainers drawn from Europe. the beginning creation of military schools to train Leaders, but it's also the realization that ultimately, railways, telegraphs, modern production has to, armament productions have to, to be adopted as well in order to meet that military challenge. The measures taken were very ambitious. And they took a very long time to produce results. The Ottoman Empire did not, really reap the benefits from them. But we see that the army that then Ultimately won the Turkish war of liberation is a result of these reforms that were started now in the 19th century. So in a sense, there is a belated success to these reforms. More importantly than the military aspects. Of this reform. Are however, the administrative and legal reforms have been started almost as an afterthought to the military reforms. And there came to be known the period as a tanzimati-i hayriye the beneficial reorderment or adjusment of society that begins in. 1839 and goes right up to 1876 and depending on how you count some would even would say up to 1908. But at the, the most important reform. It exists three. And I'll ask you to pay attention to the dates in which they are promulgated. So the first that starts the Tanzimât reform movement is the Hatt-i Sharif Gülhane, Gülhane is a palace in which the edict was promulgated from 3rd of November 1839. And it sought, primarily, and I'm quoting. To bring the benefits of a good administration to the provinces of the Ottoman Empire through new institutions. And as it [INAUDIBLE] itself, this is now the beginning, where we see, Cent, a central bank is created. There's a, military college is created. Se, specialized colleges for military doctors are created. The post office is ultimately created, et cetera. So it focuses on the creation of institutions, physical or organizational bodes that do certain things. In which the Ottoman Empire is lacking, the next important reform documents is the Hatt Humayun Islahat Fermani, I, I apologize to the Turks in the audience may my pronunciation is pursed, its the, the Imperial reform edict Of, and now note the date again. It's the 18th February of 1856. And, this document, whereas the first document primarily assumed to create new institutions The the hatt-i-humayun aims to create legal equality of the, among the Ottoman citizens, to create a common Ottoman citizenship, and abolish the system of personalized religious communities that we had before. And this is a very, very momentous decision taken, and we will see that it, it has certain problems attached with it. But the aim is to create an equal, creed-blind Ottoman citizenship. And open the recruitment into the administration, and the military, to non-Muslims, and to ensure that all Ottoman citizens, Muslims and non-Muslims alike, would have equal access to courts and be treated equally before the law. And then the third important reform edict is the Kanun-Esasi, the, the, the First Ottoman Constitution of 23rd December, 1876. And The combined effect of these three reform edicts is, is very, very important, very large.

It's leads to a transformation of society. It's far-reaching, but while these legal changes and institutional grating continue well into the 20 century and affect life in the 20 century, it's important to remember that overall, the reforms remain halfhearted. And insufficient to meet the challenge. And the explanations for this are manifold. Three elements I'd like to point out, but there are obviously more factors involved here. The first element, this is a revolution from above. It's a, it's a, it's a decision taken by the, the top bureaucrats, and [UNKNOWN] down. And, it's a very small group, that have a certain vision. But there is no Popular movement whose demands are being met with these reforms, and therefore there is also no natural ally in this process. That's the first aspect, it's a revolution from above by a very small group of people. Second, there are strong social interests. Who are now negatively affected by these reforms, parts of, the, the religious establishment in all of the communities whose interests are being negatively affected. Now the state takes over the two primary areas in which they had been dominant, in the education and the administration of justice. And who therefore now seek to undermine these reforms in order to protect their normative, but also material interests. And the third element, and it's, it's not an inconsequential point, is that these, and I asked you to pay attention to the dates when these reform edicts were promulgated. These reform edicts are now Being pronounced in response to European pressure for reform and a betterment of the minorities, that most of the European powers have interest in. So they seeked, they sought to improve the lot of the minorities, which they had protected. And which, for which the, the Ottoman Empire had to give them legal, legal rights to, to, to represent [INAUDIBLE]. And the, the [INAUDIBLE] treaties that have been imposed on the Ottoman Empires in previous. Period, but remember the paradox that I mentioned to earlier on. At the same time the European powers are not really interested in creating a strong Ottoman Empire. They have particular, narrow self interests in these lands, but they, they are committed to maintaining the institutions, so. The pressure that's coming from the outside is, is double-edged. It aims at improving the minority's position, but at the same time it stops short and seeks to prevent any movement, any reforms that would really make the Ottoman state stronger. And now if you remember the dates. We have the first edict in 1839, which is at the time when the Ottoman Empire has to rely on European help to repel the, the expansion of Muhammad Ali's Egypt into Syria, 1839. You have 1856, which is exact the same time where the Ottoman Empire has to rely on European allies to Fight off Russia in the Crimean war. And it's the, the European publics that forced their governments to put pressure, in, in normative terms here. And then ultimately their constitution has

promulgated in 1876, again comes at the end, at the beginning of the Russ, Russo-Turkish War. Of 1870 77, 78. So, and the constitution was aimed, among other things, in creating a favorable public opinion in the European lands to support. The Ottoman Empire in this, this period. And as you see on this painting here, this is now the Berlin Conference. That settled the, the Rasso-Turkish war. And that's thought to stabilize the, the position that came out of the out of this war. And so to, to stabilize this, this weak and declining Ottoman empire. Four reasons of balance of power as I said before. Now, whatever the, the inadequacy of the reforms. It's clear that they had a strong impact. What is the effect of these, reforms? It's important to remember that the combined effect of the military, administrative, and legal changes wrote by these reforms dramatically increased the capacity of the Ottoman Empire. The State to do anything with this population. It might of still be insufficient to meet the challenge from outside, but internally it's now able to do things that it had never been able to do before. Remember it used to be a, a somewhat aloof thing, form of government and now it'is able to do a lot more. So it's no longer distant, relatively harmless state, but more, much more interfering in the lives of its citizens. And this greater scope for interference combined with the nationalist ideology that is simultaneously developing in Europe. And is rapidly spreading to the Balkans and out later on also to other parts of Ottoman area. Is now creating a very toxic mix for the Ottoman state because. Communities that had basically been left alone are now subject to constription, sub, subject to higher taxation, subject to higher police powers. And at the same time, these communities now form to start to develop an identity that is distinct from the Ottoman identity. So they now see themselves as Serbs, as Bulgarians, as Romanians. Ultimately, as Arabs. We'll come back to that toxic mix of nationalist agitation, and greater state ability to interfere with its subjects throughout this course. As the other nations develop their own statehood. But for now, let's dwell a little on the, the, the, the legal forms that the reform movement took. We have now in the beginning of the 19th century greater commercial interaction. Between the Ottoman Empire and European, mainly European tradesmen, who are now also resident in in the Ottoman lands. And, as a result of the capitulations now Most of the minorities and certainly most, all of the, the European citizens are virtually exempt from the jurisdiction of the Ottoman state. Though the response taken is to create mixed courts composed, as you can see here this is a contemporary picture of such a mixed court, they are composed of Europeans Judges and ultimate judges often that they called the, the local consuls and it's in these courts that commercial disputes involving Ottoman citizens both Muslim and non-Muslim in particular and European subjects are adjudicated.

And these mixed courts apply The the commercial code, the, the Kanumname-i Ticaret, from 1850, which is basically an exact translation of the relevant French commercial code. These courts however, were unable to cope with the rising number of cases as [INAUDIBLE] grew. So the question now arose, where, in which

venues should these debates take place? these, these disputes take place. And the Muslim qadi courts that would be the most obvious alternative. They were rather unattractive to Europeans because, given these courts were applying traditional Islamic law and followed traditional Islamic procedure and therefore. the the right to witness of non-Muslims was basically non-existant and generally Mus, non-Muslims would be at a disadvantage in this course. So, this was, would not have been the

party course would not be a very attractive venue if the state sought to impose a universal court system. So the solution would be to create a civil code. A comprehensive civil code that could then be applied by a universal, newly created state system of courts. And now that raises the question. which type of civil code and initially, the Ottoman Empire followed the lead of the the Egyptian approach, which was simply to translate the relevant code civil as it was, is came to be known. of the French Republic simply translated into Ottoman Turkish, as Egyptians had translated into Arabic and used this. But, following considerable opposition, not mainly normative opposition by the, the religious establishment that project of translation was abandoned halfway through, and instead it was decided to codify existing Islamic rules on commercial law in the Hanafi tradition. Tempered by certain rules from the other three Sunni schools of thought. And this collection of commercially relevant Islamic law that was in compiled in the years of 1869 til 1876, came to be known as the Magella, and it was promulgated in 16 books ultimately comprising eight, 1,851 individual articles. So it's a very comprehensive effort. And it was then promulgated throughout the Ottoman lands, and was then the law that was applied by newly created state system of courts. For the first time, the, a Muslim state, or the, the Muslim state. The, the Egyptians had gone there before. Was now having a unified court structure in which all of the citizens would be which would be open and, and, and responsible for all citizens. But, and this is important, it is now applying basically a codified form of Islamic law, so it's the first time that non-Muslims actually become subject to Islamic law in, commercial and, and civil law. It's important to remember that family and inheritance law were again following objections. Were left out of that codification efforts. So for family and inheritance remained in the private religious communities. It's hard to overstate the impact of the magella of this this codification effort, and here is we see here the, the, the first page of the, the, the magella. It's, if you remember the Ottoman area is very large. This is now the law of the land, and therefore the magella continued to be, important throughout, the Ottoman lands. Way beyond the, the, the, the decline of the Ottoman Empire itself, so it remained in Turkey enforced until only until 1926, when it was abolished and replaced by civil court created on the French model as initially had been planned In Albania until 1928, in Lebanon until

1932. In Syria, until 1949, in Iraq until 1953, in Cyprus right up to the 1960s, in Israel right up to 18 1984. And it remains in slightly altered form in force in, in Kuwait, in Jordan, and in the Palestinian territories. So you can see that its, its importance as a legal promulgation is important both for in the ideational reasons, and also in practical reasons, because it's, it has affected the, the legal reality of a very great proportion of the Muslim populations. 

2.4 Creation of the Republic

Let's talk today a little bit about the creation of the Turkish republic after the destruction of the Ottoman Empire. And it's worthwhile spending a little bit of time at this formative period of the republic. Because that's the source of the peculiar strength of the leadership that characterizes its ability to transform Turkish society as much as it has done. Before we go to Turkey, let's think a little bit about other dependent countries in the global south, and their leaders, and we see a peculiar form of, I call it the hero figure, the hero leader. In many of the developing countries that have tried to cast off foreign oppression, and assert themselves. And whether it's Gamal Abdel Nasser in Egypt or Che Guevara and Fidel Castro in Cuba, or Salvadore AlIende in Chile, or Kwame Nkrumah in Ghana, the first African leader that achieves independence for his nation. All these people are become formative figures of national identification in the period of independence afterwards and they assume a larger than life personality. And we see in almost all of them a deliberate historization of their past, a creation of a myth around them. The almost superhuman

achievements that they have done. And often an aspect of personality cult springs after because it helps to legitimize the state. And I invite you to look at the writings of Joseph Campbell and you can Google it. He has a very good interview series with him called the hero's journey, where he describes the universal aspects of this journey. And if you identify them, you see elements of this in almost all of these political biographies as the states then churn them out. And we will see some of it in the person of Otto Turk. As the Turkish republic consolidates itself. But before we go there, let's think a little bit about the end of the Ottoman Empire. As we discussed in the last video, the Ottoman Empire was obviously aware of its military inferiority. And it had sought to take measures to address this. We have military missions from France, from Britain, that work in the Ottoman Empire. But we have, as you see here, from the early 19th century, you have contacts with Prussia and then later Germany. To supply the Ottoman Empire with military training, expertise, and also weaponry. And obviously Germany was an attractive partner because Germany did not have territorial or political ambitions itself and was in competition with the main challenges of the Ottoman Empire. Namely, Britain, France and Russia. On this picture you see Helmuth von Moltke the Elder, the head of the general, German general staff later on, who was serving the Ottoman Army in the early 19th century, and then. From 1882 after the success of the German army against France, the Prussian army, and the creation of the German empire in 1870 to 71, obviously the military prestige of Germany was at the height. And therefore the Ottoman Empire looked to Germany for a concerted effort to train its army. So, this is where Moltke, who was by that time now the chief of general staff, he nominated a military mission that was sent to the Ottoman empire. And here in the middle you see German officers in Ottoman uniform. And on the left, you see General von der Goltz, von der Goltz Pasha as the Ottomans called him, who was the head of the first military mission in Germany from 1882 onwards. That military mission sold the Ottomans lots of armaments. It began the creation of railways, created the disciplining of the Ottoman army, but this process did not go very, it was not very encompassing. Which then lead to the disastrous performance in the Balkin war that we have just described, which then motivates the Ottoman's to ask for a second a military mission after the Balkan Wars. And here we see the German military mission that is then sent to the Ottoman Empire in June 1913 to redress the shortcomings of the Balkan War. And it is led by Otto Lehman Von Zander. And here is, as you see here, he instigates a renewed effort in disciplining and drilling the Ottoman Army. He has unprecedented authority over the Ottoman Army. Here is a picture of the Bagdadbahn that was trying to create a railway so that was instigated already under the first mission. And here you see a picture of the German battle cruiser Goeben that's now given to the Ottoman Empire just at the outset of World War I. And the German military mission is having now a very large impact on the reorganization of the Ottoman Army. And it's important that they assume command authority in the Ottoman Army. Now, as you all know, 1914 World War I breaks out. And it's a war that pits Germany in a two front war against both Russia and France and Britain on the other side. And if you'll permit me to show you on the map, some of the broad outlines of this conflict. So on this map of the European theater of the first World War, you can imagine the German army and its allies being locked down in trench warfare here in Flanders against the British and French forces. The German navy is controlling the Baltic Sea, and therefore stopping supply routes to the Russian Empire. And the war has now locked down into stalemate. Their supplies are not reaching the Allies, and the war is not moving. So it becomes immediately apparent that the sea connection through the Mediterranean, through the straits here controlled by the Ottoman Empire. Into the Black Sea are now very important to supply the Russian empire with its needed war material. You can see the next slide, these extremely narrow straits of the Dardanelles and the Bosphorus are always important for international shipping, but now they assume crucial importance. And the Ottoman Empire has joined the war on the side of the German Empire, and has blocked the straits, both straits for international navigation. Given the dreadful performance of the Ottoman Empire in the previous Balkan Wars. The Allies expect a rapid victory, and so they stage a sea attack on the peninsula of Gallipoli, that is at the time defended by Mustafa Kemal and his troops. This attack fails however. They are unable to take the peninsula. Having failed to take the peninsula by sea It is clear that a land invasion will follow next. And I cannot stress enough, the importance of this campaign, both for the integrity of the Ottoman empire, it's survival as some form of state, and also for the overall conduct of the war. So in preparation, or in anticipation of the land attack, the German general, the head of the German military mission, Otto Liman von Sanders, is put as the Supreme Commander of the Defense of the Dardanelles, and the Gallipoli Peninsula and one of his local commanders is Mustafa Kemal. He is shown with some of his troops, who is in charge of the troops on the Gallipoli peninsula. And they managed to repel also, the land attack. And it's an extremely bloody battle. 100,000 dead on both sides, 250,000 wounded on both sides. And it's a battle that is vividly remembered on both sides, particularly in the Australian and New Zealand forces, because for them, it continues to be the biggest battle they ever fought. And Mustafa Kemal, who is until now a relatively unknown commander, is now reaching prominence. It takes until after the war until his prominence is wide and known. But his defense of Gallipoli is really the foundation stone of his future reputation. And, ultimately, in the First World War, the Ottoman Empire collapses and here we have the Arab's revolt, here, as symbolized by the movie that you might have seen. Lawrence of Arabia was one of the British agents that instigated Arab rebellion in the Hajas, against Ottoman troops. And we will come back to these issues later. What concerns us now, is simply that the plans of the Allied forces for the disintegration and dismemberment of the Ottoman Empire ultimately come to fruition because the Ottoman Empire loses the war, alongside its ally Germany. You might remember what we discussed in the previous video about the the interests that some of the European great powers had in the Ottoman Empire. And they propped up its continuous existence simply because they were afraid of benefits accruing to their enemies. Now, at the end of World War I, these considerations no longer applied. And the victorious powers of World War I are now free to follow their interests in the Ottoman lands that are now up for grabs. As you can see here on this map, the plans that the victorious Allied forces had for the Ottoman Empire, and that they imposed on the Ottoman Empire in the Treaty of Sevres of 1920, are extremely harsh. You see on the left, some territories extrude through the kingdom of Greece. You have in the east, the newly created Republic of Armenia, with very large territorial holdings in Anatolia, around the Devan lake and southwards, too. And you have territory set aside for a future Kurdish state, after a referendum. And until that Kurdish state is to be created, these territories would be under the influence of the mandate power Britain and France will be getting, and we will get with that later. The territories of today's Syria and today's Iraq has mandates. And you see in the south of the Ottoman Empire, territories that will still belong to the rump that is remaining of the Ottoman Empire. But they will be subject to international influence, and they're internationalized. So you have an Italian international zone and a French international zone, in addition to the territory around the Straits being internationalized, and, therefore, no longer under Ottoman control. And these are extremely hard peace settlements, similar to the peace settlements imposed on the German empire after the war. And you can see that it is not a particularly popular settlement. And the representatives of the Ottoman empire that you see here that actually went to Serf and signed this treaty were heavily criticized for this. And the Turkish national movement that is now forming is rejecting this settlement. They do not accept the Treaty of Serf and the peace settlements. At the same time, you have Greece, that is to be compensated with some of the territories from this

Ottoman empire as you saw later on, is now attacking after World War I in 1919. The kingdom of Greece is attacking the Ottoman empire, seeking to gain territorially from this now defeated Ottoman empire. And it is here that the Turkish War of Liberation is fought out from 1919 til 1922. Greece, allied with Britain and France, is fighting the Ottoman army, and here we see the Turkish national movement is asserting itself. The Turkish military leaders are fighting off this attack, and they are ultimately victorious. And this is, they win decisively both against Greece, and against Britain and France. And in the Treaty of Lausanne, the Turkish state that is now beginning to form, is achieving its present day borders. And also it ends all of the capitalations hat have been imposed on the Ottoman empire in previous centuries. And the only limitation on its sovereignty is the International Regime for the Straits that they also managed to get rid of in 1936, afterwards. So it is here that the source of the enormous political capital of the military leaders that have fought this war of liberation lies in the assertion, the rescue of the nation from near total collapse, and

occupation and colonization by foreigners. And if we look now again at the map that the Allies had in mind for the Ottoman empire, or what would remain from the Ottoman empire, you see that both the Greeks and the Armenians would have been the beneficiaries of that settlement. And that might point to some of the harshness of the way this war was fought. And remember what we said in the last video. The Ottoman empire was a mosaic of different nationalities living next to each other. So they were always intermingled. So what is happening now in the Turkish war of liberation is that, communities are either annihilated or expelled. And the Treaty of Lousanne

formalizes this, so we now have population exchanges, particularly between Greece and Turkey. 1.5 million Greeks are expelled from now Turkish territories, and about half a million Turks are expelled from now Greek territories. So the populations are disentangled and ethnically homogenous. Areas are created. And I leave it to your imagination to consider the human horrors that happened. Both in the war, and that also led to the destruction of communities that had lived there for literally thousands of years. Some of the Greek communities had been there for more than 2,000 years. And these cities have been annihilated, these communities. And, so for the Greeks this is the, it's described as a catastrophe, for the Turks, this is the beginning of the national life as a new Turkish nation. And this background, with the Armenian

genocide, with the population exchanges, we need to remember that

 it's miseries on both sides. We cannot say that it is only one side that is committing these atrocities. But here lies some of the viciousness of the nationalists' rhetoric and the hostilities that continue to dominate political life in the region. What is important now for us is to to look at. It is here that the Turkish Republic assumes its borders. It is here that the nationalist myth of Turkey as a new republic, as a new nation exists, and it is created. And it's a myth that assumes, as we will discuss in the next video when we talk about the Kemalist principles. It assumes a common nationality, a common identity, a common language of everybody who lives there. Will have in this, throughout the 20th century, massive problems with the refusal to recognize Kurdish identity. And also as I just described, we have a massive problem with acknowledging some of the atrocities that happened in this war by the Ottoman, and later Turkish troops. Precisely, here we see images attributed to the Armenian genocide. The reason why the Turkish Republic finds it so hard to this day to come to grips with this history is precisely because the very identity. The very legitimation of this new process, is so intimately tied up with the military performance of its leaders. And it is difficult for people who are unaware of this history to understand the degree of reverence expressed. Particularly to the figure of Mustafa Kemal, later called Ataturk. Here we see a picture of him in a classroom. And virtually every classroom in Turkey, virtually every public office building, every office room will have a picture of him. He's on every bank note, he's absolutely omnipresent, precisely because he embodies the very beginning of Turkishness. As a new nation springing out from this old. But it also applies to some of the other military leaders that then assumed important position in state, army and society in the creation of the republic. So it is here, where the grounds for the massive nationalism that defines the Turkish state, and Turkish societies throughout the 20th and 21st century, now, lies. It's, in the beginning, in the national myth that is surrounding the war of liberation and its founding history, so to say. And its, what we will also mention in the next video, is what Nietzsche calls a useable past. Here it is at this time where the national narrative is created and that's why it is felt to be so damaging. To smear this national narrative and the figures who were responsible for it.

2.5 Kemalism and its Problems

As we just discussed , the importance of Mustafa Kemal for the development of the Turkish state and the Turkish Republic, can hardly be overstated. Kemalism, as his guiding ideology came to be known, can be boiled down to six fundamental principles. And it's, it's an, a political ideology that is inspired by the western European tradition of, of scientific positivism. In the wake of, or in the foot steps of August Gunt. who's basic idea can be somewhat up for the, the the importance of order. For, for progress in, in, in society. As you can see for example in the model in the Brazilian flag. [FOREIGN] This is exactly, that is an expression of positivism as a political ideology. And it's roughly the same, it's the, the same principles that guide now the new leaders of the Turkish Republic. So the six principles of Kemalism are Republicanism, Populism, Secularism, Reformism, Nationalism, and Statism. And let's go into each of them for, briefly. Republicanism is probably the easiest to

understand. And it's simply a rejection of the formerly monarchic principle that had guided the Ottoman Empire. Here you see a picture of the, the, the last Sultan, Memek VI. Who was normally still the head of the Ottoman Empire, and who was then deposed by the Turkish National Assembly. This is perhaps not so surprising that the New Republic deposes the old king. That we have seen before. More momentous is the decision, taken shortly afterwards, to also depose the last caliph. You might remember. The Ottoman Sultans had assumed the, the office of the Caliph from the Abbasid Caliphate in 1519. And had occupied the, the post in personal union. The post of the Sultan and the post of the Caliph together. And so this is, and the, the role of the Caliph was the, the spiritual leader of the entire Muslim community. That's how the, the, the office was seen by and defined by themselves. So the decision now of the Turkish Republic to also abolish the office of the Caliphate, can be compared in its momentousness only only if, if you make an analogy. If you think for example, fascist Italy under Mussolini and Rafidron at the same time. If they had decided to abolish the Papacy, And the impact this would have had for Christian faith in general, and particularly for the Catholics, in particular. Instead, as you all know, Mussolini

entered into a [FOREIGN] into a state treaty with the papacy. So this is the approach, one of the most ruthless politicians, we, Europe has seen in the last few centuries. Has taken with respect to important religious office. And, that might allow you to understand the, the, drasticness of the Turkish Republic's decision to simply abolish that office, and all that came with it. And it has left a void in the popular imagination of Muslims throughout, and it was a void keenly felt already at the time. If you might come back throughout the course, to the implications of the evolution of the Caliphate. The second principle is Populism. Which is a run-of-the-mill cooperatist idea that was floating around at the time in quite a, quite a few different polities. And it's the idea that the, the nation as a corporate body, as an almost organic body, transcends class differences, agenda differences. any other divisions that could be imagined. And that therefore, the organic body of the, the people making up the nation is in unity. And in, and is achieving social cooperation under the guidance of the state. And, the, the, the emphasis given to the improvement of the lot of women. The, the incorporation of women into the political process. The adoption of, for example, the Swiss civil coat in replacing previously religiously inspired civil laws and personal laws. All are expression of this principle of Populism. The third principle is perhaps the most important. And that is the one principle that has come to define modern Turkey. Particularly in opposition to much of the rest of the Muslim world. And as we discussed in the beginning of this week, actually something that it has in common with the

post-Soviet Republics. And that is the principle of secularism, or laïcité, as the, the principle is called in French. And that the Turkish government explicitly imported from France and uses as a turk, as a, as a loaned word in Turkish now. And the, here we see on this picture. Its the, the first Turkish edition, Turkish language edition of a Quran which is a momentous achievement in a sense. It's the, it's the idea that the, the believers should be able to read for themselves. And therefore no longer be dependent on an intermediary class of priests, who will, or will speak Arabic which is a different language. And therefore stressing a, a, a supranational identification. So this is why this first Turkish edition of the Quran was actually commissioned. By the state, by [UNKNOWN] personally, and was then distributed. And, and the other side of the picture you see, a similarly important move that goes into the same direction is the momentous decision of the Turkish government to switch to a Latin alphabet. That is a decision that was highly controversial at the time The decision of the Turkish state in 1928 to introduce Latin, the Latin alphabet, was helped by the decision taken two years earlier to do the same in the Central Asian Turkish Republics. And what the move to a Turk, to a Latin alphabet indicates, it's not just a linguistic movement. It's also at the same time, it removes you from the rest of the religiously inspired Muslim community that uses the Arabic script. And we see exactly the same issue resurfacing In some of the other, nations, where the threat towards, a nationalist reinterpretation of identity, in opposition to an Islamic identity. Is, has often taken the form of the, the script. So the principle of laicism was not immediately included in the Constitution. The 1924, the first Republican Constitution of 1924, Constitution still mentions in its Article two that Islam is a religious, the religion of the Turkish State. That article is abolished in an amendment in 1928. And it is only in 1937, so 14 years after the first constitutional convention, that the Kemalist principles, including secularism are now included in the Constitution, and given Constitutional weight. So this gives you an indication that already despite all the power that, of the, the, the Turkish Revolutionaries that we discussed in the last video. This was an, highly momentous and difficult and highly controversial move. And we will see these same debates in some of the other Muslim countries that we will follow in the course of this of our journey here. The fourth principle of Kemalism is Reformism. And if you allow me to make a slightly far reaching analogy. It could perhaps be compared to Trotsky's idea of a permanent revolution. It's the idea that the reforms instigated by the, the new rulers of Turkey in the 1920s and 30s, should not stop there. That this is not a process that will stop at one point, that it's a continuous process towards ever greater modernization, and development of state and society. And it's the idea that the traditional, backward concepts. In thought, in social organization, in social, in, in, in institutional arrangements, need to be actively overcome and combatted. And that this is not a process that can be simply achieved in the course of a few reforms. So, this is the principle of Reformism, or as it's also called revolutionary, revolutionism.

It's a difficult word to pronounce. And, one of the symbols of this, this, or the, the, the, the iterations of this principle is a decision by the Turkish Republic to abolish certain types of, of, of, of clothing. So the, the, the traditional turbans for men or also the, the traditional fez there. The, the brimless Turkish hat that is, was used to be produced in Tunisia was now abolished by the Turkish government. And as we will see later on, it actually had very, a very negative impact on the industry of Tunisia that used to

produce these hats, but that is a side note. But you see that the, the Turkish state takes an active interest in trying to change very personal habits. In this case, you know, the dress. Because you believe is the way you dress, affects the way you think and the way you organize yourself in society. And that Is a principle that's also then taken on in some of the other countries. For example, there's a Shah in Iran, adopted exactly the same principle. with respect to, to, to closing in roughly around the same time. The fifth principle is Nationalism. And that is perhaps something that is most known, or is most immediately apparent when you come to Turkey. Is extreme nationalism of its people, and of its state. And here it's, perhaps as we discussed in the last video, it's important to remember that this is a new nation. It's a new nation coming and ev, springing up on the ruins of a very old state. Which seems like a contradiction. And this shows that the, the Turkish identity and the notion of a Turkish's, Turkish nation is not clearance, not clearly defined. So as we can see on this photo which shows the, the creation of the Turkish Historical Association. And Ataturk is right in the middle. So he again takes a personal interest, in. So why would the state take an interest in the Historical Association? It should be something slightly academic. And only of academic interest. But that is because the The social engineering of the new republic depends on the, this community believing in something that is non- religious and non-ethnic. And that is the idea of the Turkish nation. Which is defined in the, officially, as a non-racial definition of, of a group. It's, it's linguistically based. And it's based on a common notion of history and language. And it's a good explan, example of what Friedrich Nietzsche, the German philosopher, calls a usable past. This is a creation of a past. This is not an authentic past that really existed and was remembered by people. This is a creation. It's an artificial history writing because it's a history that is then useful for political purpose. And we see this in many other nations as well. And if you allow me now to make a, a slight excursus to our fine university. Vilhelm Thomsen, one of the greatest Danish linguists. Who is, as you see on this paint photo, is one photo of himself, and the other photo shows him as one of six eminent scientists of the University of Copenhagen. In front of our main building. He is actually the linguist who discovered the, the, how to read the earliest Turkich

inscriptions, as you see in the middle of the, the photo. It's, it's the, the transcription of the early Orkhon script that Vilhelm Thomsen managed to decipher, and that was very important for the Turkish. For this creation of a usable past in, in Turkish national history writing. And here on this slide, you see on the left is a recreation of some of the inscription found in front of one of the big universities in, in Turkey today. And on the map you see the red dot. This is the place, the, the Orkhon Valley in the middle of Mongolia. Where these institutions were found. And which indicates roughly the area where the Turkey people initially originated. And as you can see, this is an important focus of identification for the Turkish history writing and nationalist agitation. The last principle is Statism or Ethertism. And that is again, it's not a peculiar

Turkish invention. It's the idea created at the time, not created, sort of floating around at the time and very much, very popular particularly in response to the enormous success that the Soviet Union achieved in its industrialization. Was the, the belief that the state needs to take an active role in the economy. And, not only regulating it but actually investing and actually running a planned economy. So it's not communism as such. But it's the, the belief that the state should play a very important role. And lest, and you might be forgiven for, for, for not knowing the context. This is not, the role of the government in the economy is not necessarily a Communist idea. Planned economy was used, for example, at the French Republic after World War II very successfully. And again, so we see certain analogies to France here. But so, athetitism in the Kemalist iteration means that the state needs to take an active role, not just regulating. But investing and owning the important, means of production. And the, this role of the state as a major investor and owner shows when we in the, the next video when we talk about the the, the challenges of the next of the last 15 years in the the, the social conservative Islamist parties. This is also one of the bones, bones of contention between them. Here you see a painting of the a picture of the, Turkish National Airlines, Turk Hava Yollari, THY, which for many years used to be among travelers, you, they hate you. The abbreviation was used, because it was such a dreadful airline. And the state still owns slightly less than 50% in this airline. But it has now been partly privatized. And it has, in the last 15 years, experienced an enormous expansion both in quality, and in range, and in modernization. It's now generally deemed as one of the best airlines. Generally featuring very highly on, on customer satisfaction forms. So, here we see this, this principle of, of Statism. Has been explicitly rejected by the new Islamist or socially conservative parties, that have come to power in Turkey since 2002. And which, as you can easily imagine, brings them into conflict with those who have, used to benefit from the role of the state in the economy. So, to briefly summarize the, these six Kemalist principles, were not initially in the constitutional compact of 1924. Also not in the amendment of 1928. But they were then given constitutional power force in 1937, and have hold this ever since. There have been some shifts in emphasis. But by and large the Turkish Republic has bound itself to these six principles. And to briefly go over some of the most important reforms, that have sprang from these six principles. also there are in the 1920s and 30s and in the, that the degree of their of the strengths of their commitment. And their willingness to actually transform society is, they have set Turkey apart from all of the other Muslim nations. Even if you see, in some of the other nations, some of these reforms being also taken up. And among the most important ones are some of them I've already mentioned, is the 1922 the abolition of the Sultanate. And in 1923 the the Proclamation of the Republic. In 1924, the abolition of the Caliphate. The 1923 through the Treaty of Lausanne, the assum, assumption of firm borders of the Turkish Republic. And with that, also, the abolition of the capitulations. The unfair treaties imposed on the Ottoman Empire throughout centuries. The 19, also in 1924, the abolition of sharia courts. And their replacement with a comprehensive state run, court system. Then in 1925, the abolition of the headgear that we just mentioned. in the same year, the abolition of the religious orders and the dervish lodges. The in the same year, 1925, the introduction of the Gregorian calendar. You know, Replacing the Islamic calendar, In 1926, a new penal law modeled on the Italian penal law. So, implicitly is abolishing Islamic penal regulations or stipulations. In the same year, as I mentioned, the introduction. of a new civil code modeled on the Swiss civil code. Basically just translating the Swiss civil code into Turkish law. In the same year then you have an obligations law. And and a, law of torts, and the law of, commercial law which then replaced the, the Magellad that had been abolished earlier on. That we talked to earlier on. the 1928 the Turks Educational Association that is tasked with unifying educational system. And therefore abolishing the role of the religious authorities in education. as I mentioned, in 1928 the adoption of a Turkish, a new Turkish alphabet based on the Latin script. The 1931, the, the creation of the Historical Association that we mentioned. And all this that follows from it for the, the creation of a usable past. in 1934, the law in, instituting family names. This is actually where Mustafa Kemal is then given by Parliament the, the surname Ataturk, father of the Turks, as an honor. Some the, the, later President of the Republic [FOREIGN] is given his last name in recognition of the seed of, of the battle he won against the Greeks in the War of Liberation. So this is the introduction of family laws is an important part of modern administration. Because it allows you to, to, to classify and structure people. And it's, again, it's, it's a reform that has, for example, been taken up by Iran, around roughly the same point. in 1934, also, the introduction of full political rights both passive and active for women. A first in the Muslim world. Earlier than some of the, the Christian European countries. And last but certainly not least, in 1937, the former commitment of the state to secularism in the constitution. So these reforms really succeeded in transforming state and society based on the six Kemalist principles. So are there any problems with Kemalism as a political ideology? Well, as we discussed in the last video, there are some problems with the personality cult that has sprang up around Ataturk, and his image. There is some problems with respect to liberalism and, and to freedom to discuss certain aspects of Turkish history, that we also discussed in the last video. But perhaps the most important problem with Kemalism is the role of the armed forces, in politics. Something that has affected, quite

dramatically, the outside perception of Turkey, as a truly modern state. As we see here in the 1980 Newsweek cover about the, the coup d'etat of, at the time. The army has always en, enjoyed a very prominent role in Turkish politics, in the Turkish Republic. And as we discussed in the last video, that is premised on the very strong

political capital that the leaders of the War of Liberation enjoyed after the successful prosecution of the the war. And the, the, the way that they were able to, to withs, repel the, the Allied invasion after the World War I. So the, the Army sees itself, and has been given particular constitutional recognition of that role. It sees itself as the guardian of Kemalism. In particular the guardian of the, the continued progress along the, the modern secular nationalist state. So whenever they felt these principles were in danger, they interfered in politics. And they did this for the first time in 1960, where they deposed the the civilian government, and actually executed the civilian government at the time. And they returned power to, to different civilians shortly afterwards, but that was the first adoration. And from then on, it was clear to everybody involved in Turkish politics that they were watched. And in 1971, the army interfered again at a time of great political turmoil in Turkey. So actually that was a cue that perhaps was welcome by some relatively large parts of the population, but it was also quite bloody. And the army stays in power for about two years reinstigating Marshall law, as they saw fit during this two year period. In 1980, the army staged their third full, full fledged coup d'etat. Which is now a very bloody affair and leading to a large exodus of, of many Turks into Western Europe as asylum seekers. The army now stays in power 'til 1983. This is the incident that prompted the, the Newsweek cover that we have just seen. In 19, in 1997, you have the first, what one of the admirals involved called the first post-modern coup. The army actually did not have to stage a full-fledged coup. They simply issued a memorandum. To the civilian authority saying, these are our demands, you better follow them, otherwise we take you off; and their demands were met. You have, in 2007 a similar statement being issued by the army to the now Islamist government. Saying that the army sees itself as an active participant in the political discourse of, of Turkey. And they will not allow the Kemalist principles, in particular Secularism, to be endangered by the politicians. And showing to the politicians that they are being watched. And as you can easily see these, this is an, a role of the armed forces that is at odds with the way, particularly European Union, sees its the its ideal form of social arrangements among its member states. And as we will discuss in the, in the next videos, this is one of the strongest bones of contention that is holding up the, well has held up the accession process. But as the, the trials, the very publicized trials from 2010 'til 2012, for the first time in Turkish history, alleged conspirators of an alleged 2003 coup d'état of the army, were actually put on trial, and convicted. Including some very high-ranking generals. So there was a, an alleged 2003 coup d'état by the army. And it was now discovered. And in 2010 til 2012 in very high profile court cases, these conspirators in the armed forces were convicted. So we see now a shift to stronger civilian control of the armed forces. But it remains one of the issues that occupy our interest. 

2.6 Westernisation and Islamism

As we discussed, the whole point of the restructuring of Turkish State in society, with the creation of the Republic, was an orientation towards the West, towards Europe. Was trying to socially reengineer society to make in the image of the West. And this process has made very large steps forward in the past 70 years, 80 years. So we see that Turkey stays neutral during World War II. It does not join the war on the side of the Axis powers, which could have been expected given the strong sympathies for Germany in the region at the time. It stays neutral, and after the second World War, it is a strong supporter of the United States, and is at the same time a strong

recipient of United States support. So it is one of the original recipients of Marshall Plan Aid in 1948, and is therefore seen from the other side of the Atlantic, seen as an integral part of Western Europe. And it is here we see the poster of Marshall Plan Aid. And through being a recipient of Marshall Plan Aid, Turkey is also becoming a founding member of the OECD, which is, if you might know, basically a type of the club of the industrialized countries. Turkey for a long time remained something of an oddity in that organization, but is now a bona fide member, and has by now built up an economy that would It clearly justified its continued existence in it. And as you see in this map, it is a rather exclusive grouping of states in which Turkey is now a member. As you can see it is an outlier in the region. None of its neighbors, with the exception of Greece, none of its Muslim neighbors has achieved access into the OECD. So Turkey is also a founding member of the Council of Europe, which was founded in 1949, and through this membership it has also a founding signatory of the European convention on human rights. And we all know that Turkish to Turks human rights record is problematic as evidenced by a multitude of cases at the court on human rights. But again, it needs to be remembered, it is the only Muslim country, of the region now so that the post Soviet period, we have in some other Muslim countries that have joined, but it's the only, that from the beginning, was a member. And it has been a relatively good implementor of these decisions. And if you compare it, for example with Iran, or Saudi Arabia, or Syria, its immediate neighbors, it is quite a

different type of social arrangement that Turkey allows its citizens to take it to supranational human rights court. It is, given the strong relationship to the United States, it is also not founding, but very soon, in 1952, it joined NATO. Was considered to be a very important member by the United States and the rest of the Alliance, because it secured the southern flank of Western Europe, and held and bound quite significant Soviet troops in the bordering Turkey. So here on this map you see the membership of NATO. And it is also the membership in NATO that has made it very attractive conduit for the essential Asian and Caucuses Republics after the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Because through the NATO partnership for peace program, these countries were drawn into the institution and orbit of NATO and through NATO, because military integration is easier than economic and social integration. We're brought closer to the existing stabilizing institutional arrangements that exist in Europe and Turkey played a very important bridging role. It is also, as you can see here, in a picture of a bust of Ataturk in Israel, it used to be for a long time the only Muslim nation

that recognized the State of Israel. It has had good diplomatic relations since 1949. Was the first Muslim country to recognize Israel and relations have been both economically and military fairly cordial until rather recently with the unfortunate Gaza flotilla incident of 2010. And since then diplomatic relations have been somewhat downgraded, and military cooperation has been suspended. But I think it's safe to say that this is just a passing irritant. It is quite likely that they will resume. Turkey has also been a very active military participant in Western Alliance both maneuvers trainings and also military engagements, as we see here. And Turkey is an important contributor to the International Stabilization and Assistance Force in Afghanistan. Here you see Turkish troops advising Afghan police, policemen, and training them. And being a Muslim nation, working in the Muslim environment of Afghanistan, the Turkish contribution to ISAF has been very much welcomed by the rest of the Alliance. As I said, Turkey has always tried to maintain good relations with the rest of the Muslim world. It is a founding member of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, used to be called the Organization of the Islamic Conference, has been a founding member since 1969. And here, as you see on this map, Turkey is, if you want to put it that way, in its natural habitat. It is surrounded by other Muslim nations, so this is a much more natural grouping for Turkey. It is less exposed than it was in the OECD, and it does play a very active role also in this organization. As I mentioned, the relations between the United States of America and Turkey have, ever since the second World War, been very, very good, and it and it is the United States that, for it's own strategic reasons, has been an extremely strong supporter of Turkish membership in the European Union. You see here, a newspaper clipping of President Obama, joining the uninterrupted ranks of all his predecessors that have likewise urged the European Union to admit Turkey as a full member, and we will come to some of the problems with that position in a minute. But just keep it in mind that it's particularly United States, and some of it's more Atlanticists looking allies in Europe, that have likewise pushed for European membership of Turkey. One of the reasons made by these Atlanticists, supporters of Turkish membership in the European Union. is the potential bridging function that Turkey could play and has played in the military sector and arguably could also play in the social and economic sector. Hence, the arguments always made that Turkey's strong economic and social performance, its vibrant democracy could serve as a model and help to reduce tensions between the so-called western model and much of the Muslim world. And this is one of the issues that we will come back to as the course progresses. Let's talk for a few minutes about the US session process. This is obviously the big white elephant that is in the room whenever people talk about Turkey. It is geographically, yes, it has a relatively small stretch of European territory, but it is by and large an Asian nation, and has an Asian history. But it is also obviously, and if you remember two videos back, it has had throughout it history a very strong engagement with Europe. However, that engagement used to be rather negative. It was an antagonistic relationship. So the question now is whether Turkey could or should join the Europeans Union. Formally the decisions has been taken on the side on both parts. There has been accession agreements in, in place for a long time. Negotiations have been going on for literally decades, but as you can see from the length of the proceedings, it has not been an altogether simple process. The council decision from 2008 lays down the expectations particularly from the European Union towards Turkey, and the conditions that Turkey has to fulfill in order to achieve full membership. And we will go into this now a little bit, what this entails. The first thing and that is probably the most problematic, the most difficult thing for any candidate country is to use the technical term, [FOREIGN], the existing collection, the comprehensive body of European law that is now in existence and has to be accepted and implemented in total by any new member. And the acquis communautaire consists of the legislation, the legal acts, the court decisions, that together in their entirety constitute the body of European law. And as you can imagine, after now more than a half century of European degration, this Is very comprehensive, extremely detailed and very, very demanding set of requirements that is now being imposed on new candidate state. And these, the implementation of this very vast body of law, indeed as you see in the present slide, the consolidated treaties now, this is a very heavy book now. And apart from just the treaties, you have the rest of the legal materials that are binding. And these are negotiated in 35 chapters with each of the candidate states, and Turkey's negotiations on these 35 chapters have proven to be much more demanding than for example for with Iceland or Croatia, which just joined. And we will see in a minute why these are, why these negotiations continue to be so difficult. One of the other requirements for membership, apart from simply implementing the key, in the legal sense, the existing laws that exist, are what the European Union, in it's 1993 European Council, formally expressed and formally put out. They are called the Copenhagen Criteria, because the European Council was held in Copenhagen at the time. And they set out and were at that time directed both toward Central and Eastern Europe, but also had Turkey already at the time. Setting out the path for membership for the new countries that have emerged from the post-Soviet space. And it's a set of institutional arrangements, that the European Union, both for practical, but especially for normative reasons, considers to be indispensable. These are the candidate states are supposed to have achieved the stability of institutions that guarantee democracy. Democracy is the first normative achievement and institutions that guarantee it. The rule of law, human rights, respect and protection for minorities. And we'll see that this is a problem in the Turkish context. The existence of a functioning market economy, which as we see, this is one of the things that came out amidst its traditional iteration, was not necessarily committed to. So there have been significant changes in the In the economy of Turkey, in response to that requirement of a functioning market economy based on private enterprise. As well as the capacity to cope with competitive pressure and market forces within the European Union. As you know, the whole idea of the European Union is the creation of a common market where no national protections and boundaries of commerce should exist. So, Turkey and some of the other candidate countries were deemed not to yet have reached the stage of economic competitiveness to survive in that market. But as you will see at the end of this video, we might actually see a change here. Because given the recent strengths of the Turkish economy, it might now actually have reached where it not only can cope, but thrive in this competitive market. Now with respect to the EU Accession Process and the demands it has placed on Turkish state and society, we're dealing with a true dilemma, a paradox of the old kemalist elite. As we hear in the last video, the whole point of the kemalist ideology was the emulation of the west and the transformation of the Turkish society to become like a normal European society. In order to achieve this they have created a number of tools. Both the principals that we discussed, and the reforms that they introduced, and the institutional set up of the state, that were meant to carry out this task of transforming a backward oriental society into a modern, forward-looking society on a par and equal to the West. And some of the institutions that we created with tools in this transformation. And perhaps the most important is the armed forces, but there are others the courts, the educational institutions. The entire state sees itself as governed by a clear mandate of transformation. Now what we see is that this club Of western nations that this society wants to join has now developed. And it's imposing conditions of membership that require the Turkish state to actually dismantle part of this toolset that they have created for this. So you see the certain paradox that exists. Within the Kemalist elite, perhaps the most important of which is the armed forces. And for us now, it's important to point out that in the process of ongoing accession negotiations, Turkey has in, as with the other candidates. It's an anticipatory adaptation to the institutional legal, social and economic [INAUDIBLE] the existing body of rules in the European Union. Has in anticipation has already started to change quite significantly, its own institutional setup. And this change has now opened the political space for political movements that were inconceivable 30 years ago. And that to whom The Kemalist elite still bound to these six principles is very much antagonistic. And this is something that the outside world watches carefully. How is the military gonna react? And here we see back, nobody expects an open coup again. But as we saw in 2007, the military still is making demands and make them felt to the Islamist in power. So, understanding this paradox, this dilemma that exists both for the Kemalist elite and for the Turkish state and society in general helps us. To go a long way in understanding the current upheavals and protests that are unfolding in Turkey right now. Between the socially conservative, economically liberal, Islamically oriented party that has benefitted from the opening of the political space under the aspiration of EU membership. And the old Kemalist elite that is still wedded to the integrity of the principles and does not want to see the old institutional arrangements that has characterized the Turkish Republic for so long, seeing them dismantled. So for Turkish succession in to the European Union, there remain a number of contentious issues. One we already mentioned is the civilian control of the armed forces. That is a big issue but it is in the process of being resolved. But raising new issues, as we have seen. The other are minority rights. They're participation rights. They're cultural rights. The ability to speak their own languages, to teach in their own languages. We've seen great strides towards this, but this is likely to yield new tensions. And whether the Turkish state is able to deal with these tensions in a constructive manner is one of the points that will decide whether this process is favorable. The other issue is immigration and free movement and the period, the grace period if you wanna call it this way, in which immigration from Turkey will be delayed into Western Europe. You already have a very, very sizeable Turkish minority in many of the Western European nations, they're generally distinct. The question is now how well assimilated or integrated they are. But they resist assimilation and the Turkish government has been very active in treating them as foreign citizens. So there is a fear that if these numbers rise more that they will cause more social problems in the host nations. So these are issues that remain. Conscientious, particularly with Turkey. But one other is the fear, some of these issues also arise with member states that now are already members. Bulgaria, Romania, they have raised similar problems. However they are much smaller than Turkey. If you look at the map here, it's posed geographically. Turkey is a very large country and it is geographically rather distant from the rest of Europe, as you see here. But as the next graph shows, it's already now Turkey would be the second largest member state, after Germany. And given the much higher birth rate in Turkey, as opposed to the rest of Europe where populations are actually shrinking. We can assume that by the time Turkey would actually become a member, or shortly thereafter, Turkey would be the biggest member state. With all that follows this in voting power in the Parliament and in the council and in the other institutions. So this is and remains to, it causes certain fears along the existing members of the union. The other is that if you look at this graph that we already shown earlier on. GDP per capita in Turkey has risen

dramatically in the last 15 years. However, it remains still much lower than in the rest of Europe. If that rate of growth continues this problem will probably solve itself then. It's no longer at the very large and very poor country, it's joining the Union. And as you see in this graph GDP has been, the GP growth overall has been very, very fluctuating, but overall much higher than in the rest of the union. It is perhaps more in the social or ideological, if you wanna call it that, where particular fears exist. And it needs to be said that, and that is the question now, is Turkey simply too big to poor, too different? Or is this just a euphamism for it is too Muslim? And that's exactly how Turks perceived this debate in Europe. That they are being singled out due to their religious aspect. And this is a problem and we will come back to this in the course of our journey here together. Because it also affects other countries. With respect to Turkey however, there is an issue with the extreme nationalism. And we've seen that their nationalism was consciously created in the Turkish Republic and served generally positive social aims. There are however questions whether it might now have reached a stage where it is at odds with the general social consensus in the other member states. If you look at this extract from the website of the Turkish Armed Forces, they have a specific section. It's called historical issues. That deals with the Armenian issue. And basically where Turkey refuses to acknowledge that things happened there in the course of the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire. For which Turkey as a nation, as a state should take responsibility. It is quite possible to come to a new definition of your national history and your national identity. And therefore if we acknowledge the power and the reasoning for the Turkish nationalism as it developed in the 20th century. It is not inconceivable that a new form of nationalism can be found that is perhaps more amenable to its neighbors. Including some of which are now members of the European Union and in all likelihood would pose problems to accession. And this concludes our session on Turkey and Central Asia. And we will return to some parts of Central Asia when we talk about Iran. I hope you enjoyed it. I hope you can now put the Turkish debate into a little bit more of a historical context and I look forward to seeing you next week.