Anatolian Studies 58 (2008): 141-171
Can Erimtan
c/o British Institute at Ankara
Abstract
This article analyses the position of the Hittites in the theoretical development of Turkish nationalism in the 20th
century. The piece provides an outline of the full content of the Hittite claim in a Turkish nationalist context, particu-
larly its promulgation as part of the so-called 'Turkish History Thesis'. Following this, I will give full weight to the
historical circumstances surrounding the emergence of the Hittite trope in Turkish writing. Basing myself on the work
of Mete Tuncay, I will give proper prominence to the publication of the propaganda tract Pontus Meselesi (1922). It
is my contention that the Turkish intellectual of Azeri descent, Agaoglu Ahmed Bey, was the sole author of the text
Pontus Meselesi The remainder of the article consists of a close reading of this geo-text. I will demonstrate that
Agaoglu's discovery of the Hittites as worthy forebears for the Anatolian Muslims, whom he refers to as 'Turks' in his
text, was the outcome of an ideologically motivated reading of 19th century European accounts of ancient Near Eastern
history. The article shows that the propagation of the Kemalist concept of Turkish nationalism in Anatolia dates back
to 1922, a year prior to the establishment of the Republic of Turkey.
Ozet
Bu makalede, 20. ytizyil Turk milliyetgiliginin teorik gelishninde Hititlerin yeri incelenmektedir. Burada ozellikle
Turk milliyetgiliginin arka planmda goriilen ve 'Turk Tarihi Tezi' nin bir pargasi olarak resmiyet kazanmis. olan Hitit
temasi anahatlan ile ele ahnmaktadir. ArdindanTurk yaziminda ortaya gikan Hitit raecazlanm agiklar nitelikteki tarihi
gercekler turn boyutlan ile degerlendirilmektedir. Mete Tuncay tarafmdan yapilan cahsmaya dayanarak, propaganda
konusu olan Pontus Meselesi (1922) yaymma vurgu yapilmaktadir. Bu rnakalenm yazan, Azeri kokenli Turk entellek-
tiieli Agaoglu Ahmed Bey'in Pontus Meselesi metninin tek yazan oldugu goriisundedir. Makalenin geri kalanmda bu
cografi-metin yakindan incelenmektedir. Agaoglu, metin icjnde Anadolu musliimanlanni 'Turk' olarak adlandinr ve
onlann atasi olarak da Hititleri gosterir. Bu makale, Agaoglu gikanrmnm 19. yiizyil Avrupasmdaki Eski Yakm Dogu
tarihi anlatimlarmdaki ideolojik yonlendirmeyle sekillendigi gostermektedir. Makalede Anadolu Turk milHyetgil-
igindeki Kemalist kavram yayihmmm Tiirkiye Cumhuriyeti'nin kurulmasmdan bir yil onceye, 1922 yilma dayandigi
anlatilmaktadir.
APontus government, which had been planned upon
the most beautiful and fertile shores of the northern
Black Sea, was completely obliterated together with its
supporters. (Applause)
Mustafa Kemal Pa§a addressing theTurkiye Biiyuk
Millet Meclisi during its first session following the
conclusion of the Lausanne negotiations
13 August 1923 (TBMM)
This article deals with the issue of Turkish nation-
alism and the way in which the Turkish leadership
utilised the field of ancient history in the process of
forging a new identity for the Muslim inhabitants of
Anatolia. In conjunction with this broader concern, the
article will also determine the nature of the sources of the
rather strange idea that, in the second millennium BC, the
Hittites constituted the first Turkish presence in Anatolia.
In this connection, the book Pontus Meselesi, published
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Anatolian Studies 2008
by the provisional Ankara government in 1922, carries a
huge importance. This book could be characterised as a
so-called 'geo-text', to use Sam Kaplan's recent coinage
(Kaplan 2004). He defines a geo-text as 'a book
containing textual representations of territories and
populations'. In view of the broad scope of the article, I
will present the material in two parts. The first part of the
article will outline the full content of the Hittite claim in
a Turkish nationalist context. In addition to this intro-
ductory goal, I will give full weight to the historical
circumstances surrounding the emergence of the Hittite
trope in Turkish writing. A second plank of the article's
first part will be to supply a fully-rounded intellectual
and biographical background of the main propagator of
the Turkist claims relating to the Hittites; Agaoglu
Ahmed Bey, the sole author of the text of Pontus
Meselesi, In the second part of the article the geo-text
Pontus Meselesi itself will be subjected to a close reading
and evaluated in the context of Turkish nationalism as
comprehended by the geographical frame of Anatolia.
Throughout the 1930s and 1940s, Turkey's scholarly
community seems to have accepted the premise of the
Turkish nature of the Hittites unquestioningly. I will
argue here that Anatolia, which comprised the territories
conquered by the Kemalist resistance movement during
the War of Independence (1919-1922), and solidified in
the articles of the Treaty of Lausanne (1923), was
forcibly turned into a homogeneous Turkish homeland by
the leaders of the state of Turkey. As a corollary to this,
I will contend that this form of social engineering was
applied to the past as well. In other words, I will attempt
to illustrate how Kemalist intellectuals utilised Anatolia's
past to strengthen Turkey's present. Such an attitude
could be termed 'Whiggish', in reference to Herbert
Butterfield (1900-1979) who coined the phrase a 'Whig
interpretation of history' in 1931 (Butterfield 1931: V~
VI, 3-5). Peter Burke describes the 'Whig interpretation
of history' matter~of-factly as 'the use of history to
justify the present' (Burke 1997: 1). In this respect, the
Turkish state's mobilisation of the fields of history,
history writing and archaeology was of the utmost impor-
tance. The Turk Tarih Kurumu (TTK or Turkish History
Foundation), founded upon Atatiirk's (1881-1938) (then
still known as Mustafa Kemal Pa§a or simply the Gazi)
personal instigation, was active in encouraging the
archaeological discovery of Anatolia and in distributing
its findings nationwide in the form of books, articles and
pamphlets. And with regard to the Hittites, the opening
of Etibank or 'The Hittite Bank', as a state-run financial
enterprise on 2 June 1935 could be interpreted as an
official measure that was meant to ensure that Turkish
citizens would be aware of their ancient forebears even
while conducting financial transactions {Etibank Kanunu
1960). I would like to show that the origins of these
strange developments can be found in the war-torn years
of the early 1920s, when the negotiations at Versailles
and President Woodrow Wilson's efforts to ensure the
survival of small nations produced quite an impact on the
people living in the area that would officially become
known as Tiirkiye or Turkey.
In 1923, the foundation of the Republic of Turkey at
the very edge of Europe led to a cultural malaise among
its intellectual and political leaders alike. Established on
the remains of the multi-ethnic yet staunchly Islamic
Ottoman Empire, the Republic set out to emulate
Western civilisation from an early date. Previously, the
Ottomans had attempted to adopt and adapt various
European inventions and innovations to improve their
Islamic traditions and institutions, notably in the military
and bureaucratic fields. The Republic's leadership, by
contrast, chose to abandon the cultural idiom of Islam
and to opt instead for the civilisation of the West as
Turkey's structural and intellectual framework. In his
argumentative book Turkey at the Crossroads, the
political scientist Dietrich Jung calls the implementation
of the Kemalist reform movement a 'cultural transfor-
mation of Turkish culture', which entailed the 'deliberate
dissolution of Ottoman-Muslim culture'. But he then
continues that this 'radical picture of the Kemalist
reforms', such as is apparent in the majority of the books
dealing with the subject bearing such telling titles as
Phoenix Ascendant: The Rise of Modern Turkey or Allah
Dethroned: A Journey Through Modern Turkey, 'served
as a smokescreen to hide the continuities between
Ottoman modernisation and the formation of a Turkish
nation-state'. Jung calls these 'traces' a 'submerged
legacy' (Jung, Piccoli 2001: VII, 61).
In many ways, the ideological position of Turkish
nationalism in the guise of the political doctrine of
Kemalism was in this respect meant to replace the
religion of Islam as the binding force fashioning a unitary
and homogeneous state. The Republic's leadership thus
decided that the Turks were to form part of the European
concert of nations, rather than become identified with the
predominantly Arab Middle East. In its fervour to create
a more palatable historical reality for the Turks of
Anatolia, free of the perceived backwardness of Islam
and its Ottoman defenders, the Republican authorities
did not shy away from deliberately promoting an
alternate historical reality that was aimed at bolstering
the supposed nationalist pride of the Anatolian
population.
One of the aspirations of the so-called 'Kemalist
project' could therefore be defined as the construction of
a 'new' Turkish historical persona, embodied by the
Hittite Empire. This persona would be unburdened of the
142
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Republic's Ottoman antecedents and disconnected from
the wider world of Islam. After the Republic's
foundation, Kemalist Turkey regarded the West as the
locus of its destiny. The government's argumentation
indicated that the Turks' past pre-figured Turkey's future.
In this context, the historian Erik Ziircher's remark that
the articulation of the Kemalist principle entailed the
'creation of historical myths' seems apposite (Ziircher
1993: 189). These 'myths' were supposed to bypass
Turkey's Ottoman centuries and instead concentrate
everybody's attention on alternative Turkish ancestors.
This policy decision culminated in the formulation of the
so-called Turk Tarih Tezi or 'Turkish History Thesis' in
the early 1930s. During the First Turkish History
Congress at the Ankara Halkevi (2-11 July 1932), this
'Thesis' was officially presented to the nation's educa-
tional, scholarly and intellectual community.
The personal involvement of the president of Turkey,
Mustafa Kemal, was of crucial importance in developing
the 'History Thesis'. The contemporary historian and
close personal friend of Mustafa Kemal, Afet [Inan]
(1908-1985), recounts that the impetus the Republic's
president needed to devote his full attention to the matter
of history and historiography had been the racist
relegation of the Turks to a secondary stage in human
development by French and other European specialists.
On 23 April 1930, during the sixth congress of the Turk
Ocaklan, an organisation inherited from the previous
regime and re-established in 1924 (Georgeon 1982:168-
215), Afet Hanim, as well as other members, proposed
the establishment of a committee (heyet) for the scientific
study of Turkish culture and history (igdemir 1973: 3-4).
As a result, the Committee for Research on Turkish
History (Turk Tarihi Tetkik Heyeti) was founded (an
organisation that was to become the Turk Tarihi Tetkik
Cemiyeti and eventually the Turk Tarih Kurumu orTTK).
Upon Mustafa Kemal's personal instigation the Heyefs
researchers then developed the so-called Turk Tarih Tezi
['Turkish History Thesis'], which was published in a
massive tome entitled Turk Tarihinin Ana Hatlari (605
pages) (Behar 1996: 102-07). In 1931, the Ministry of
Education published the book's introductory part as a
brochure (Methal Kismi) (Eyice 1968).
The authors of the Ana Hatlari expound on the fact
that Central Asia had been the 'original' homeland
('Ana-Yurdu') of the Turks, a notion current in the
Ottoman Empire since the late 19th century. The
Ottoman historian Ahmed Vefik (1823-1891), for
instance, had earlier referred to the Ottomans' ancestors
as having been one of the Turkish tribes living in Central
Asia ('Tataristan-i Kebir') in his textbook Fezleke-i
Tarih-i Osmani (1286/1869) (Vefik 1286/1869). Ahmed
Vefik could arguably have based his words on Joseph von
Hammer-Purgstall's (1774-1856) magisterial volumes,
which would have been known to him. In his first
volume, Hammer-Purgstall starts off with characterising
the Ottomans as a Turkish tribe whose origins were in
Central Asia ('Turkestan'), harking back to a remote
period in history ('[c]'est dans les siecles les plus
reculees qu'il faut chercher l'origine du peuple turc, d'ou
descend la race actuelle des Ottomans') (de Hammer
1835: I). The Ana Hatlari, on the other hand, goes a lot
further, stating that, while the rest of the world was still
enveloped in an intensely primitive life ('en koyu vah§et
hayati'), the Turks' ancestors had already attained a high
level of civilisation. Quite literally the book claims
Central Asia to have been the place of origin of human
civlisation: '[tjlie era which separates the stage of
humanity from the stage of bestiality started here
[Central Asia] in a true and obvious sense' (TTAH 1930:
49). From here, according to the Ana Hatlari, the Turks
had been moving westward, in regular migratory waves
across thousands of years, civilising the rest of the world
in the process (TTAH 1930: 52). Turning its attention to
Anatolia or Asia Minor specifically, the Ana Hatlari
simply calls its early inhabitants Turks: '[t]he population
of Asia Minor are Turks who have been made known
with names such as Hittite and other comparable ones'
(TTAH 1930: 231). The Ana Hatlari places the
Republic's direct predecessors, the Ottomans and the
Seljuks, on an equal footing with the Bronze Age inhab-
itants of Anatolia:
The statefs] (the Turkish migrants) founded, such as
the Hittite, Seljuk, and Ottoman states, would be
known by the name of the tribe or family that was the
most powerful and that exercised government (TTAH
1930: 59-60).
These quoted sentences contain the first official
endorsement of the Hittites as a Turkish ethnic group
who founded a Turkish state organisation in Anatolia.
The Ana Hatlan refers to these prehistoric inhabitants of
Anatolia with the neologism 'Eti', a Turkish alternative
to 'Hittite', a term with obvious Biblical references
common in numerous European languages. In the early
20th century the Ottoman authorities were aware of
Hittite remains on Anatolian soil. The French architect
and archaeologist Charles Texier (1802-1871) had
discovered an impressive site near the central Anatolian
village of Bogazkoy in 1834 (Texier 1839). Texier
erroneously identified the site as the ancient city of
Pteria, a claim which, Sir William Mitchell Ramsay
(1851-1939) says, was apparently commonly accepted
throughout the latter part of the 19th century (Ramsay
1890: 29). But even at that early stage the site was
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Anatolian Studies 2008
brought into connection with the Hittites, as Ramsay
states that '[t]he hypothesis which identifies the people
of [what was thought of as] Pteria with the Hittites of
north Syria has found numerous adherents' (Ramsay
1890: 34). In 1906, the Hamidian government (1876-
1909) granted the Assyriologist Hugo Winckler (1863-
1913) permission to excavate the site. The first
excavation was undertaken under the auspices of the
Vorderasiatische Gesellschaft and the Berlin Orient-
Comite and yielded about 10,000 cuneiform tablets
(Winckler 1906). These discoveries led to the identifi-
cation of the site near Bogazkoy with the city of
Hattusas, the capital of the Hittites.
The history textbook Biiyiik Tarih-i Umumi
(1328/1912)r in use during the Second Constitutional
period (1908-1918), calls these prehistoric inhabitants of
Anatolia 'Hititler', in accordance with European usage
(BTU 1912: I, 329-36). Even though their material
remains are visible throughout the whole of Anatolia
('Asia Minor' or 'Asya-i Sagra'), the textbook rightly
indicates that at the time (1912) full information was not
available on this 'tribe' (or 'nation', 'kavim'), in spite of
its important position in the ancient world. This was the
result of the fact that the Hittite script had at this stage
not yet been deciphered (BTU 1912: 329). The Ottoman
educational system during the Second Constitutional era
had thus sufficed with replicating European views on
matters relating to Anatolia's prehistory. The Ana
Hatlari's bold announcements indicate that Ziircher's
above-mentioned 'historical myths' had been able to
assert themselves in less than two decades (1912-1930).
As a result, one wonders about the origin of such claims
and assertions. Particularly, the contention regarding the
supposed Turkish nature of the Hittites seems puzzling.
By contrast, scholars, such as J0rgen Knudtzon (1854-
1917) and particularly Bedrich Hrozny (1879-1953) had
argued and proven that the Hittite language belonged to
the so-called Indo-Germanic (Indo-European) language
group (Knudtzon 1902; Hrozny 1915; 1917). In other
words, on what basis did the Turkish scholars working on
Turk TarihininAna Hatlari claim the Hittites as prehis-
toric Turks?
In his Turk Cumhuriyetinin Tek Parti Ybnetiminin
Kurulmasi, published in 1981, Mete Tuncay points to a
book entitled Pontus Meselesi, published in 1338/1922,
as the 'harbinger' for many of the claims made by the
'History Thesis' a decade later (1932) (Tuncay 1981:
300). The book's introductory section contains all the
pertinent information. Pontus Meselesi was published by
the Matbuat ve istihbarat Muduriyet-i Umumiyyesi, the
press and information organ established by the Ankara
government on 7 June 1920. Prior to the establishment
of the Republic in 1923, the Kemalist resistance
movement had set up a provisional government in Ankara
in the form of a Grand National Assembly or Biiyiik
Millet Meclisi (BMM) (23 April 1920) (Toynbee,
Kirkwood 1926: 88) (fig. 1).
Following the end of the First World War, the Entente
powers emerged as victorious and proceeded to occupy
the former Ottoman territories, including the capital
Istanbul (15 March 1920) (Toynbee, Kirkwood 1926: 87;
Mumcu 1982: 50). In contrast with this apparent
Ottoman acquiescence in the capital, an Anatolian
resistance movement confronted foreign occupation
under the leadership of Mustafa Kemal Pasa. Erik
Ziircher states that Mustafa Kemal was chosen to head
the armed opposition by members of the secret society,
Karakol, set up during the last week of October 1918 by
the leading Unionists Mehmed Talat (1874-1921) and
Enver Pasa (1881-1922). In 1919 leading members of
the group approached Mustafa Kemal to head the
resistance movement, as his reputation was untainted.
The subsequent Kemalist indoctrination and re-evalu-
ation of Turkish history has ensured that the important
role played by the Unionist movement in setting up a
resistance movement has been largely ignored. Ziircher
remarks that '[t]he difficulty in assessing Karakol's role
Fig. 1. Pontus Meselesi (2001) (source: www.ideefixe.
comlkitapl)
144
Erimtan
is, that most of its leading members were purged in 1926'
(Zurcher 1.984: 68-105; 1993: 141, 147). The movement
led by Mustafa Kemal Pa§a received the name Kemalist
from an early date. Zurcher remarks that 'the Kernalists
were facing Great Britain, France, Italy as well as
irredenta movements of Greeks and Armenians' (Zurcher
2000: 55). After the establishment of the Republic the
name Kemalism was kept in use to denote the specific
type of Turkish nationalism and political ideology that
was to become identified with the Cumhuriyet Halk
Firkasi (later, Partisi). Acccording to Suna Kili, the term
Kemalism denotes the 'ideology of the 1920 Turkish
Revolution'. Kili further contends that 'this Revolution
comprises both the Turkish National Liberation
Movement and later reforms which involved rapid and
radical change of the Turkish state and society' (Kili
1969: 2, 203). The early 20th century French journalist
and political commentator Michel Paillares uses the
terms 'Kemalist' as well as 'Enverist' freely in his
polemic book on the Young Turkish machinations against
Western powers (Paillares 1922). Paillares actually sees
Mustafa Kemal as Enver Pasa's (1880-1922) successor
as the proclaimed Unionist 'saviour of the fatherland' ['le
sauveur de la patrie'], and the Kernalists as 'heirs' to the
Unionists (Paillares 1922: 54, 412). This contemporary
voice seems to strengthen the case of certain modern
scholars, such as Erik Zurcher and Dietrich Jung, who
see the appearance of the Republic in 1923 not as the
complete break with the past, as argued by subsequent
Kemalist indoctrination and propaganda, but as largely in
continuation with the previous Unionist regime and
contingent upon Ottoman institutions.
Mustafa Kemal drafted a document at the so-called
Erzurum Congress (23 July-5 August 1919) that became
known as the Misak-i Milli or 'National Pact' (Toynbee,
Kirkwood 1926: 84-85; Mumcu 1982: 39). This six-
article declaration pronounces the 'continued existence
of a stable Ottoman sultanate and society' as the main
aim of an Anatolian resistance movement (reproduced in
Toynbee, Kirkwood 1926: 85-86). On 28 January 1920,
this important document was presented to the Ottoman
parliament (Meclis-i Mebusan) that subsequently
'legally adopted' its resolutions in a secret meeting
(Toynbee, Kirkwood 1926: 85; Jaeschke 1989: 87).
Afterwards, the TUrkiye Buyuk Millet Meclisi (TBMM)
effectively managed the resistance movement and thus
constituted a de facto government replacing the Meclis-
i Mebusan, dissolved by Sultan Mehmed VI
(Vahideddin) (1918-1922) on 11 April 1920 (Mumcu
1982: 50). The TBMM consisted of 390 members who
adopted a constitution (Tegkilat-i Esasiyye Kanunu or
'Law of Fundamental Organisation', to use Arnold
Toynbee's translation) on 20 January 1921, a legal
document which replaced the original Ottoman Kanun-i
EsSsi (23 December 1876/6 Zilhicce 1293, see Genckaya
1876). The TeskilSt-i Esasiyye furthermore determined
that the principle of 'popular sovereignty' ('Hakimiyet
bila kayd ii §art milletindir') was to embody the new
government's basis of authority (Toynbee, Kirkwood
1926: 90; Mumcu 1982: 57). Moreover, the document
speaks of a 'Turkiye Devleti' (art. 3) ('State of Turkey')
in the absence of an effective Ottoman government. The
usage of the term 'Turkiye' to refer to the Ottoman
Empire was rather common in the latter part of the 19th
century. The Ankara government's adoption of the name
Turkey ['Turkiye'] appears to be a tacit acknowl-
edgement that Europe was now the determining factor in
global, including Ottoman, affairs. The name 'Turkey'
had been commonly used in Europe since the 16th
century. In the 18th century, for instance, the periodical
Mercure de France (Slatkine Reprints 1969) headed the
section dealing with events in the Ottoman Empire with
the designation Turquie, which would seem indicative of
the popular nature of the name 'Turkey' in Europe. In
1910, the writer and educationist Kazim Nami [Dura]
(1876-1967), who was to become an ardent Kemalist,
wrote that nearly everybody called the 'Ottomans'
cherished homeland [Anatolia] Turkey', and that 'there
is no difference in saying either "Turkey" or the
"Ottoman lands'" (Duru 1999: 40). Quite naturally,
Zurcher rightly believes that Mustafa Kemal 'used
"Turkey" simply as a synonym for "Ottoman Empire'"
(Zurcher 2000: 59). Significantly, the document does
not mention a head of state.
The Anatolian resistance movement as represented by
the TBMM was an amalgam of a great many ideological
factions, with the Unionist and Islamic wings as its
strongest members. The TBMM did not consist of
political parties, all of its members being united under
the wing of the Miidafaa-i Hukuk Cemiyeti (Society for
the Protection of Rights), led by Mustafa Kemal.
Individual members did, however, not necessarily
subscribe to Mustafa Kernal's principles. Jung declares
that 'within the National Movement there was a strong
support for constitutional monarchy' (Jung, Piccoli 2001:
59). Ihsan Gune§, on the other hand, indicates the
various intellectual movements were represented in the
first Meclis, the most prominent one being the populist
wing (Halkgihk) he claims. Gune§ further lists such
groupings as a Reform Group (Tslahat Grubu'), a
Unionist Group ('ittihatci Grub') and a Group for the
Defence of Sacred Institutions ('Muhafaza-i Mukaddesat
Grubu') (Giine§ 1997: 153-92). In December 1919,
upon arriving in Ankara, Mustafa Kemal Pasa immedi-
ately addressed the local notables and talked to them
about the difficulties facing the 'Ottoman state and
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Anatolian Studies 2008
people' ('Osmanh devleti ve milled') (Ziircher 2000:
58). Ziircher argues that Mustafa Kemal, at the time,
used the noun 'millet' in its original Ottoman meaning as
denoting a religious community, and thus he seems to
have been specifically thinking of the Ottoman people as
'we Ottoman muslims' (Ziircher 2000: 58). Additional
documentation can be found in a letter to the French
president, Alexandre Millerand (1859-1943, term of
office 1920-1924). In this missive Mustafa Kemal Pasa
states that 'the Ottoman people ... [are] bent upon
defending [their] sacred, century-old rights as a free,
independent State' (Toynbee, Kirkwood 1926: 89). In
other words, he addressed both the Ankara notables and
the French president about the desires and characteristics
of the Ottoman Muslims, and not about those of the
Turkish inhabitants of Anatolia. Erik Ziircher declares
that '[ujntil the very end, the . . . milli mucadele
['national struggle' or War of Independence] in Anatolia
was waged in the name of the liberation of the Muslim
population' (Ziircher 2000: 59).
The following year, after the successful conclusion of
the War of Independence (Mudanya Armistice, 11
October 1922), two parliamentary decisions led to the
effective abolition of the institution of the sultanate. On
30 October 1922, decision no. 307 proclaimed the
demise ('inkiraz') of the Ottoman state and the formation
of the Grand National Assembly's government (Diistur
1929: 149). In the next days, 1-2 November 1922,
decision no. 308 declared that the Grand National
Assembly of Turkey was the only rightful representative
of governmental sovereignty in the land (Diistur 1929:
152). As a result, the Ankara government had in this way
declared the sultan an illegitimate figure, and had thus
neatly separated the institutions of the sultanate from the
caliphate. The Ottoman dynasty was allowed to retain
supposed spiritual power over the world of Islam, but
was cut off from the political life of the Anatolian
Muslims. These two parliamentary decisions were not
reached without difficulty however, as was forcefully
recounted by Mustafa Kemal in his famous Nutuk or
Speech, even issueing the threat that 'some heads will be
cut off, if the 'actuality' of the Grand National
Assembly's authority to abolish the sultanate were to be
questioned (Atatiirk 1963: 577). Opposition to Mustafa
Kemal's leadership was vocal, yet remained powerless to
stop the dissolution of the Ottoman state at the hands of
the Kemalist faction in the Meclis (Demirel 1994).
The outcome of these developments was that the
Ankara government under Mustafa Kemal's firm
leadership could now set out to mould the ideology of
Turkish nationalism into a quasi-religious force that was
to provide the Anatolian Muslims with a new identity and
belief-system. The zealous Kemalist propagandist Tekin
Alp [Moise Cohen] (1883-1961) declared in 1928 that
'we' (Kemalists) are completely patriotic and Turkish
nationalist in outlook ('Biz dogrudan milliyetperver ve
Turk milletcisiyiz') (Alp 1928: 5). Eight years later, he
went as far as openly declaring that Kemalism only
recognised 'one deity', namely 'nationalism'
('Kemalizm bidayettenberi bir tek tannya tapmisttr:
Miilicilik') (Alp 1936: 31). The publication of the book
Pontus Meselesi and the Turkification of the ancient
Hittites will have to be evaluated in the context of the
construction and the solidification of the particular
Kemalist form of Turkish nationalism. As a result, I will
now provide a brief, yet detailed, account of circum-
stances surrounding the production of the geo-text that
was to supply the Kemalist leadership with an ostensibly
scholarly basis upon which to establish their ideological
claims and aspirations.
As indicated earlier, Pontus Meselesi was published
under the auspices of the Directorate General of Press
and Information (MatbuSt ve Istihbarat Miiduriyet-i
Umumiyyesi), which was at the time headed by the well-
known figure of Agaoglu Ahmed Bey (1869-1939).
Agaoglu Ahmed was born in Azerbaijan, but went to
Tiflis, Moscow and Paris to complete his studies. His
academic dedication enabled him to become a leading
proponent of Islamist and Turkist thinking upon his
return east. Agaoglu was also one of the four founding
members of the Turk Ocagi (Aral 1992: 74, n. 21), as
well as an ordinary member of the Unionists' Central
Committee (since 1912) (Merkez-i Umumi) (Shissler
2003: 160). In addition, he was one of those prominent
figures in Istanbul - military, political as well as intel-
lectual leaders - exiled to Malta (§im§ir 1985). He was
released in 1921 and returned to Istanbul, where he
received financial aid from Hamdullah Subhi [Tannover]
(1885-1966) enabling him to make his way to Ankara
(Sakal 1999: 39; Shissler 2003: 165). In Ankara,
Hamdullah Subhi asked Agaoglu to travel to the Black
Sea region and eastern Anatolia, as a member of so-
called Ir§ad Heyetleri or 'Guidance Committees'.
Agaoglu was to undertake this trip in order to gather
support for the resistance movement, while at the same
time he was also supposed to collect material evidence
on the abuses that had been perpetrated by the Greek-
Orthodox population group. According to Stanford J.
Shaw (1930-2006) 'advocates of a Pontus Greek state'
had orchestrated 'massacres of their own to remove the
Turkish population' in the vicinity of 'Trabzon' (Shaw
1977: 343). Mustafa Kemal himself was pleased with
Agaoglu's accomplishments and offered him the direc-
torship (muduriyei) of the Press and Information Office,
in a telegraph dated 29 November 1921. Agaoglu
commenced work at the Directorate upon his return to
146
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Ankara on 26 January 1922 (Sakal 1999: 39-40). The
book Pontus Meselesi appeared subsequently in the
further course of the year 1338/1922 (Pontus 2002: 45).
The book consisted of an introductory piece
(Mukaddime) and five sections presenting illustrative
documentation on the atrocities committed against the
Muslim population of the eastern Black Sea region (280
documents in all). As mentioned by Fahri Sakal,
Agaoglu was then called to attend a hearing at the Grand
National Assembly (Sakal 1999: 41). At the hearing, he
made the following telling statement: '[a]nd later I
completed a 500-page document, a book pertaining to the
Pontus atrocities in the space of a month and a half
(quoted in Sakal 1999: 41). This succinct, yet rather
hyperbolic, statement shows that the Islamist and Turkist
intellectual Agaoglu Ahmed Bey was likely the sole
author of the Mukaddime section of the book Pontus
Meselesi For this reason, it would seem prudent to
scrutinise the intellectual background and activities of
this pivotal figure in order to determine the 'scholarly'
origins of the claims relating to the Turkishness of the
Hittites. Agaoglu*s assertions relating to the Turkish
nature of the Hittites turned out to be an important deter-
minant in the further development of Turkish nationalism
in the 1920s and 1930s (fig. 2).
Agaoglu Ahmed's intellectual development, as
relevant to such issues as history, race and nationalism,
seems to have been primarily shaped by his time in Paris
(1888-1894). According to Ada Holly Shissler, in Paris
Agaoglu had been particularly under the sway of
Professors James Darmesteter (1849-1894) and Ernest
Renan (1823-1892), while also being greatly influenced
by Madame Juliette Adam (1836-1936) (Shissler 2003:
65-66). In the Salter's La nouvelle revue, Agaoglu
published a seven-part article entitled 'La societe
persane' which appeared in the period March-April
1891 to November-December 1893 (Shissler 2003: 66,
82, 259). While living in Paris, Agaoglu even attended
the Ninth International Congress of Orientalists in
London (5-12 September 1892), delivering a lecture on
'Les croyances mazdeens dans la religion chiite*
(Shissler 2003: 66). The multi-part article, as well as the
public lecture display the influence of Darmesteter, an
eminent Orientalist and specialist of Iran's pre-Islamic
traditions (Max Muller 1895). Shissler argues that
Agaoglu left Azerbaijan 'with a religious-imperial
identity, i.e. as a Rus MuslimarC (Shissler 2003: 84). For
that reason, one could maintain, the young Agaoglu
Ahmed felt at ease to write and lecture about Iran,
Shi'ism and its pre-Islamic roots. His encounter with
Ernest Renan, 'among the most famous Frenchman of
his age', must have also impressed the young Azeri
(Shissler 2003: 66-67).
Fig. 2. Agaoglu Ahmed Bey (1869-1939) (source:
Shissler 2003)
An historian, Orientalist and social thinker, Renan
was a complex figure, who brought to bear 'a quite varied
influence' on Agaoglu (Shissler 2003: 73). Renan was a
'deeply religious person and one convinced of the
important role that religion had to play in the devel-
opment and stability of a society or civilisation' (Shissler
2003: 70). Yet, he was staunchly anti-clerical and
insisted upon the separation of church and state as 'the
only sound arrangement' (Shissler 2003: 67). One of his
most famous texts must be the lecture he delivered in
1882: 'Qu'est qu'une nation?' (Renan 1994: 17-18;
Shissler 2003: 71). This famous piece makes the
following programmatic statements.
A nation is a soul, a spiritual principle. Only two
things, actually constitute this soul, this spiritual
principle. One is the past, the other is the present.
One is the possession in common of a rich legacy of
remembrances; the other is the actual consent, the
desire to live together, the will to value the heritage
which all hold in common.
One can very well imagine that, upon reading these
lines, Agaoglu Ahmed Bey could not but address his own
identity as a Shi'ite subject of the Russian Tsar Alexander
III (1881-1894) living in the capital of the Third
Republic of France (1870-1940) under its third president
Marie Francois Sadi Carnot (1837-1894).
147
Anatolian Studies 2008
His mentors, Darmesteter and Renan, both agreed on
the tact that nationalism was not contingent upon racial
or ethnic considerations. Instead they each asserted the
existence of rather abstract, romantic qualities. Renan
speaks of a 'spiritual principle', while Darmesteter
points to the importance of cultural factors ('tradition')
as determinants in his essay 'Race and Tradition'
(Darmesteter 1971:155-77). Holly Shissler summarises
that, in Paris, Agaoglu encountered 'a new emphasis on
the nation and national spirit, linked to national
historical roots and joined in a state, as the engine and
prerequisite for all real advancement and progress'
(Shissler 2003: 84). These impressions were, concep-
tually speaking, totally new and strange notions for the
young Agaoglu living abroad, separated from his
familiar intellectual sources and inspirations. Following
his return to the East, these new impressions and experi-
ences matured to make Agaoglu Ahmed one of the
leading thinkers in the Ottoman Empire, contributing
regularly to the periodical Turk Yurdu.
After his return from Malta, he also wrote prolifically,
even becoming editor-in-chief of the daily Hakimiyet-i
Milliye, the newspaper set up on Mustafa Kemal's orders
on 10 January 1920. This paper thus acted as Mustafa
Kemal's and the Biiyiik Millet Meclisi's voice, broad-
casting their decisions and actions to a wider public
(Bolluk 2003: 8-10). The paper's editorials reflected the
leadership's thinking on such subjects as the caliphate or
the fate of the 'nation' {millet) and other current issues of
interest to the resistance movement. A look at the paper's
productions prior to Agaoglu's tenure would provide an
understanding of the intellectual environment he was to
become active in, before dealing head-on with his Pontus
Meselesi. The anonymously published editorial 'Asrm
Prensipleri' (21 February 1920) spoke at length of
President Woodrow Wilson's (1856-1924) Fourteen
Points, and the way they affected the Anatolian
movement (Bolluk 2003: 42-44). The ideas expressed
here could shed some light on the way in which Agaoglu
was to try to bring his Parisian experiences into accord
with the 'nationalist' and intellectual demands of the
Anatolian resistance movement.
President Wilson led the US into the First World War
on 6 April 1917 with the start of a general mobilisation.
He delivered a speech to the US Congress on 8 January
1918, in which he put forward his proposal to ensure
world peace following the eventual cessation of the
hostilities (Armistice of Compiegne, 11 November 1918).
Wilson's guiding principle that each 'nation' should have
the opportunity for 'autonomous development' proved to
be a contentious issue. His 'Twelfth Point', which deals
specifically with the Ottoman Empire, was of vital impor-
tance to the Anatolian resistance.
XII. The Turkish portion of the present Ottoman
Empire should be assured a secure sovereignty, but
the other nationalities which are now under Turkish
rule should be assured an undoubted security of life
and an absolutely unmolested opportunity of
autonomous development (Fourteen Points).
On 5 November 1918, the Allied Powers condi-
tionally accepted Wilson's Fourteen Points as a basis for
peace negotiations (Fourteen Points). The acceptance of
the Fourteen Points implied a tacit acknowledgement
that the former Ottoman territory of Anatolia was to be
divided amongst its non-Muslim inhabitants.
The editorial 'Asrm Prensipleri' applied Wilson's
principles to the case-of the Anatolian Muslims to state
that this kind of 'nationalist principle' ('milliyet esasi')
was primarily based on territorial considerations, and
thus conducive to the case of the Anatolian Muslims.
Such a type of nationalist principle can only
constitute a nation that relies on a population which
inhabits [an area] within [established] bounds which
possesses the same political and legal characteristics
comprising the majority regarding its essence and
basing itself on the memories of a long past, on the
traditions of an old civilization (Bolluk 2003: 43).
This general exposition was followed by the
announcement that '[o]urs is also a nation whose national
shape ('mill! vaziyetimiz') has been determined by its
borders' (Bolluk 2003: 44). And the article continues to
declare that '[t]hose people living within [our borders],
irrespective of their race ('irklan') or nationality
('kavimleri'), are counted our co-nationals ('miiletda§imrz')
(Bolluk 2003: 44). The editorial employs an argumentation
reliant on the legal premise of ius solis ('right of soil') as
determining the conditions for citizenship, or rather 'co-
nationality' or 'commonality' as the editorial was published
before the existence of the Republic of Turkey proclaiming
its inhabitants to be citizens.
The editorial's declarations seem to indicate that
Ziircher's insistence that the 'national struggle' was
primarily waged for the 'liberation of the Muslim
population' of Anatolia, does not necessarily imply an
ethnically Turkish constituency. In the aftermath of the
First World War, Anatolia was home to ethnically hetero-
geneous Muslim groups: in addition to a large majority
of Turkish Muslims, there were Kurds, Arabs, Lazes,
Muslim Georgians, Greek-speaking Muslims, Albanians,
Macedonian Muslims, Pomaks, Serbian Muslims,
Bosnian Muslims, Tatars, Circassians, Abkhazes and
Daghestanis among others (Andrews 1992). These
Muslims had settled in Anatolia as refugees of the Russo-
148
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Ottoman war of 1878, and of the disastrous Balkan Wars
(1912-1.913) (Ziircher 1993: 171). Arnold Toynbee's
(1889-1975) admittedly propagandists Turkey: A Past
and a Future (1917) insightfully declares that 'the
Ottoman Government, during the last fifty years., has
been settling . . . Moslem immigrants ['Mouhadjirs']
from its lost provinces or from other Moslem lands that
have changed their rulers' (Toynbee 1917: 5-6). As a
result, it would seem safe to state that in 1919, war was
thus waged in the name of Islam to restore the Ottoman
sultan and caliph, and for the benefit of the ethnically
diverse Anatolian Muslims (fig. 3).
The editorial 'Asnn Prensipleri' was published on 21
February 1.920, at a time when the fate of the Ottoman
Empire had not yet been decided. For the Ottomans the
First World War ended on 30 October 1918, with the
signature of the Mudros Armistice after which a 'long,
slow period of anxious waiting' ensued (Toynbee,
Kirkwood 1926: 68). Even though the Peace Conference
convened on 18 January 1919, the Entente powers were
'pre-occupied . . . with settling the destinies of Europe'
(Toynbee, Kirkwood 1926: 68; Ziircher 1993: 150-51).
In the meantime, President Wilson's Fourteen Points
kept the Ottoman public in suspense as well. As illus-
trated, for instance, by the Wilson Prensibleri Cemiyeti,
founded by Halide Edib [Adivar] (1884-1964) on 4
December 1918, which argued in favour of a US mandate
for Anatolia (Tevetoglu 1991:147-94). When the Treaty
of Sevres was finally signed on 10 August 1920, the
Anatolian resistance movement could not accept its
stipulations. Treaty Article 89 envisioned President
Wilson's decision with regard to the ultimate fate of the
'Vilayets of Erzerrum, Trebizond, Van and Bitlis' to be
final and universally acceptable (Treaty 1920: I, 25). In
view of his self-declared interest in the destiny of small
nations, Wilson's decision (22 November 1920) to grant
the greater part of the Trabzon and Erzurum vilayets to
the newly established Armenian Republic (28 May 1918)
did not come as a surprise ('President Wilson's Letter',
Treaty 1920: II, ml~T2), Furthermore, Treaty Articles
62-64 envisaged the possible creation of an independent
Kurdistan in southeastern Anatolia (Treaty 1920: I, 21).
Such conditions were unacceptable to the Kemalists. The
'national struggle' eventually succeeded in securing the
territories that had been aimed at in the Misak-i Milli
('National Pact'), thus making the declarations in the
Sevres Treaty redundant. As a result, by the time that the
Mudanya Armistice (11 October 1922) was concluded,
Mustafa Kemal could claim the whole of Anatolia as the
territorial body subject to the TBMM's jurisdiction. The
subsequent negotiations between the Kemalists and the
Allies started on 20 November 1922 in the Swiss town of
Lausanne (Toynbee, Kirkwood 1926: 111).
Fig. 3. Halaskaran-i Islam: propaganda sheet produced
by the Ankara government with representations of the
resistance movement's leadership. The heading reads
'The Liberators of Islam' in translation (source: Dumonl
1983)
Agaoglu Ahmed had been active in Ankara since late
January. As editor of the Hdkimiyet-i Milliye, he composed
an article series entitled 'ihtilal Mi, inkilab Mi' that was
published in the period May-August 1922, when the Treaty
of Sevres was theoretically still on the cards. In these
writings he partially employed an Islamic rhetoric to justify
the actions of the TBMM. The article thus shows that
Agaoglu Ahmed Bey has to be regarded as one of the major
ideologues who defended and consolidated the Kemalist
movement. On 10 May 1922, for instance, Agaoglu
Ahmed wondered about the direction that the 'nation' and
the 'state' ('bu millet ve devlet') were to take (Agaoglu
1942: 8). He then firmly declares that the resistance
movement was primarily an Anatolian movement, not
necessarily reliant on Istanbul or even beholden to the
Ottoman state (18 May 1922) (Agaoglu 1942: 24).
Praising the Anatolian people (villagers and farmers),
Agaoglu quotes Mustafa Kemal Pasa declaring that the
Anatolian villagers are the 'real owners of the land' (18
July 1922) (Agaoglu 1942: 57). In this context, he also
1.49
Anatolian Studies 2008
refers to Wilson's Fourteen Points in terms similar to the
anonymous editorial, thus declaring that the Anatolian
resistance movement represents a 'nation' deserving its
own state and territory (28 July 1922) (Agaoglu 1942: 60).
The article was thus a clear declaration of intent aimed
at an internal audience. Approximately two months later,
the Mudanya Armistice (11 October 1922), and subse-
quently the start of negotiations at Lausanne (20
November 1922), prepared the way for the actual
construction and solidification of the 'Turkish nation',
which was to consist of members of the diverse Muslim
groups inhabiting Anatolia (Bahadir 2001). And it would
appear that the Kemalist leadership also called upon the
well-known Islamist and Turkist Agaoglu Ahmed Bey to
contribute to this; exercise in social engineering. As the
director of the department responsible for printed propa-
ganda (which is basically the primary task of a Directorate
General of Press and Information in a war context),
Agaoglu was asked to prepare the text Pontus Meselesi that
would function as a well-documented set of arguments in
book form that would disprove the claims of non-Muslim
population groups on the territory of Anatolia. Agaoglu
Ahmed's statement at the TBMM hearing indicated that
the composition of the volume Pontus Meselesi carried
considerable weight at the time. It would seem that the
book was apparently prepared in a rather hurried fashion,
as the constituent quires of the book had separate sets of
page numbers (Pontus 2002: 45). The resultant book only
bears the year 1338 (corresponding to 1922) as the date of
its publication. Agaoglu got back to Ankara from his
mission in the Black Sea area on 26 January of that year,
and in the period May-August he worked on his multi-part
piece in Hakimiyet-i Milliye. In view of the book's
contents, it seems likely that Pontus Meselesi appeared
prior to 20 November when the negotiations got under way
in Lausanne. This could mean that the book was indeed
prepared, written and printed in the space of approximately
one month (September-October 1922). The book Pontus
Meselesi was distributed for free (Meccanen Tevzi Olunur)
and translated into French (La question du Pont Euxin) to
be printed in Istanbul the following year (Pontus 2002:45),
possibly before the conclusion of the negotiations in
Lausanne on 24 July 1923 (fig. 4).
The active propaganda efforts undertaken by the
leaders of the Greek-Orthodox, or Rum, population of
the eastern Black Sea littoral provided the impetus for the
book's publication (Onur 2004). The aim of the Greek-
Orthodox leadership was to carve out a piece of Anatolia
to found a Greek-Orthodox nation state, as a so-called
Republic of Pontus. In his The World after the Peace
Conference Arnold Toynbee insightfully remarks that, at
the time, the 'Turkish nationalists were concerned to
maintain the integrity of their national territory'
(Toynbee 1925: 79). The promulgation of Wilson's
Fourteen Points on 5 November 1918 led to a frantic
activity amongst various non-Muslim population groups
of Ottoman Anatolia. For example, the Armenian-
Egyptian notable Boghos Nubar Pasha (1851-1930) sent
a letter, dated 11 May 1920, to the French Ministry of
Foreign Affairs stating that 'the Armenian people possess
sacred rights on this country [the vilayet of Adana or
Cilicia]' (quoted in Kaplan 2004: 405). Anatolia at the
time consisted of 14 vilayets (provinces) and two
independent sancaks (subdivisions of a province). The
Black Sea littoral was divided into the vilayets of
Kastamonu in the west and of Trabzon in the east
(McCarthy 1983: 1). The historian Justin McCarthy
declares that the 'ethnic character of Ottoman Anatolia
had been set by the Turkish invasions that began in the
eleventh century'. He continues that these conquests
replaced 'much of [Anatolia's] Orthodox Christian
population', yet he maintains that 'no major Christian
religious group can be said to have disappeared'.
McCarthy confidently concludes that 'Anatolia remained
a mix of Muslim and non-Muslim communities until
World War 1' (McCarthy 1983: 1). He nevertheless
acknowledges that the 'Muslims of Anatolia were by no
means a homogeneous ethnic group' either (McCarthy
1983: 7). According to Stefanos Yerasimos (1942-2005)
the origins of the political activities of the Greek-
Orthodox community in the eastern Black Sea region had
begun in earnest in 1908 (Yerasimos 1988-1989), after
the second promulgation of the Ottoman constitution (on
23 July, also known as the tlan-i Hurriyet or 'Procla-
mation of Liberty'). In her Memoirs, published in 1926,
Halide Edib [Adivar] poignantly remarks that 'the whole
empire [Muslims as well as Non-Muslims] had caught
the fever of ecstasy' at the time (Adivar 1926: 258).
Black Sea
A Pontus
Fig. 4. Map of the Pontus region (source: http://upload.
wikimedia.orglwikipedialcommonsl5l55IPontus.png)
150
Erimtan
The name Pontus, extensively used by Greek-
Orthodox activists, is a reference to ancient history.
After the death of Alexander the Great (301 BC), Pontus
denoted a small kingdom in the northeast of Asia Minor
along the southern coast of the Black Sea. The kingdom
particularly flourished under the rule of Mithridates VI
(Mithradates Eupator, ca 131-63 BC), until he was
defeated by Pompey (106-48 BC) of Rome in 66 BC
(Gologlu 1973; TCEE). This allusion to ancient times
was obviously meant to create the impression of a conti-
nuity between the ancient Greeks living in Asia Minor
following the death of Alexander the Great and the
Ottoman Greek-Orthodox community resident along the
southern coastline of the Black Sea.
In the course of the 1910s and 1920s, the Metro-
politan of Trebizond, Philippides Chrysanthos (1881-
1949) was the foremost propagator of the so-called
Pontus cause, according to Mahmut Gologlu (1915-
1982) (Gologlu 1973: 247). After the start of the
Versailles Conference (18 January 1919), he even
travelled to Paris where he arrived on 29 April. The
Metropolitan presented an 18-page tract to the
conference on 2 May 1919 (Chrysanthos 1919). This
Memorandum, as well as other pieces of 'evidence'
presented to the conference by the various Greek delega-
tions (for example, a Memorandum submitted to the
Peace Conference [7 pages] presented by the Paris-based
National Delegation of the Euxine Pontus) contained
deceptive claims relating to the numbers of Greek-
Orthodox living in Anatolia. McCarthy insists that the
'figures presented ... by the Greeks ... show many more
Greek residents in Anatolia than do Ottoman statistics'.
He confidently continues that these figures 'were, in fact,
a well-considered deception' (McCarthy 1980: 66~~76;
1983: 90). The Greek president, Eleftherios Venizelos
(1864-1936), for example, presented his own statistics,
which had ostensibly been drawn up by the Greek-
Orthodox Patriarchate in Constantinople. According to
McCarthy, these statistics had in fact been commissioned
from 'one Professor Soteriades, who was paid to falsify
the data' (McCarthy 2001: 124-25). In addition, George
Soteriades (1852-1941) even published a piece with a
map entitled 'Hellenism in the Near East: An Ethno-
logical Map compiled from the Latest Statistics' as a
supplement to the 1 March 1919 issue of the London-
based weekly periodical The Sphere: An Illustrated
Newspaper for the Home (Soteriades 1919). The Metro-
politan of Trebizond, Chrysanthos, for his part, presented
the numbers supposedly contained in the 1908 Salname
(Yearbook) of the vilayet of Trabzon (Chrysanthos 1919:
2). Chrysanthos alleged that 500,000 Greek-Orthodox
individuals were listed in the mentioned Salname, adding
that his booklet's claims were 'based upon incontestable
facts and documents' (Chrysanthos 1919: 1). But, as
McCarthy points out, in Trabzon Salndmes had ceased to
be published in 1905 (McCarthy 1983: 95). The
Memorandum declares succinctly that 'the region of
Pontus should constitute an autonomous Greek State'
(Chrysanthos 1919: 6). Philippides Chrysanthos tried to
prove the age-old roots of his constituency (Pontus), as
well as their numerical superiority over the Muslim, and
particularly Turkish, inhabitants of the area. According
to Justin McCarthy the time-frame 1878-1911 could be
described as 'the best period' in the lives of the
'population of Ottoman Anatolia', in socio-economic
terms. That period also saw a 'steady rate of population
growth' (50%). He claims that in 1912 the total
population of Anatolia numbered ca 17.5 million, of
which 83% were Muslim (McCarthy 1983: 2, 117, 133).
He further adds that by 1922, 3 million Muslims, ca
600,000 Armenians and ca 300,000 Greeks had perished
(McCarthy 2001: 85-86). In addition, the current
director of the Washington Institute's Turkish Research
Program, Soner Cagaptay, indicates pointedly that '[a]s
late as in 1912, Christians made up 20% of Turkey's
population; [whereas] in 1927, there were merely over 2
per cent [Christians left in Anatolia]' (Cagaptay 2004:
86). Venizelos' ploys at Versailles, on the other hand,
were meant to convince the victors that the state of
Greece had a right to occupy Izmir and its surrounding
areas (Shaw 2000: 463-581).
With regard to the book Pontus Meselesi, the link that
Chrysanthos attempted to create with the ancient
kingdom of Mithridates in his Memorandum appears
significant. One can safely state that, as a result of the
stature of ancient Greece and its Classical civilisation,
which Greek publicists and politicians alike cunningly
kept on bringing to the fore, public opinion in the West
was a priori favourably disposed towards Greece, Greeks
and their claims. The historian and Versailles-Treaty
expert, Margaret MacMillan, laconically summarises the
early 20th century public's attitudes as 'Greece was
Western and civilized, Ottoman Turkey Asiatic and
barbaric'. She reasons that the traditional opposition
between Christianity and Islam led to an attitude at the
Versailles conference table which saw the negotiations as
'a chance to win a victory in that age-old clash of
civilizations', slyly referring to the paradigm coined by
Huntingdon in 1993 (Huntingdon 1993: 22-49).
MacMillan asserts further that the British prime minister,
David Lloyd George (1863-1945, in office 1916-1922),
at the time, even compared Venizelos to Pericles (ca
495-429 BC), the propagator of radical democracy in
Classical Athens (MacMillan 2003: 347-65). In other
words, the conspicuous presence of ancient Greeks in
Asia Minor constituted a serious challenge to Muslim
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Anatolian Studies 2008
claims on 20th century Anatolia. Given their under-
standing of Wilson's Fourteen Points, these references to
Greek antiquity must have disturbed the Kemalists
greatly.
The Kemalist resistance movement operating from
Ankara regarded the Fourteen Points as providing a
legalistic basis for its territorial aims. In Anatolia,
Kemalists understood the Fourteen Points as a decla-
ration of a 'nationalist principle' ('milliyet esasi'),
inclusive of a territorial corroboration. The editorial
'Asrm Prensipleri' defines this 'nationalist principle' not
just as contingent upon the presence of a clear majority
share in the total population of a certain area. In
addition, the editorial asserts that this majority of the
population should possess 'memories of a long pastV
These inhabitants should rely on the 'traditions of an old
civilisation'. Woodrow Wilson did not mention these
specifications in his Fourteen Points. As a lawyer
turned historian, Wilson did not present proposals
dealing with the concept of nationalism, proposals
which nevertheless earned him the Nobel Peace Prize in
1919 (Nobel 1919). His vision for 'the peace of the
world' was supposedly based on the 'true spirit of
modern democracy', and clearly not upon a theoretical
and conceptual understanding of such vague notions as
nationhood or nationalism. The Wilsonian under-
standing of the issue seems to take the existence of
nationhood as self-evident, as a patent truth reflected in
the numbers of population groups. The way in which the
Kemalists chose to understand Wilson's position,
however, seems to have been more influenced by the
work of certain European, or rather French, thinkers on
nationalism, the nation and the nation state. The
wording employed in the 'Asrm Prensipleri' recalls
Ernest Renan's 'Qu'est qu'une nation?'. In defining the
qualities of a nation, Renan mentions 'the possession in
common of a rich legacy of remembrances', as well as
'the will to value [this] heritage' (Renan 1994: 17-18).
As a result, the followers of Mustafa Kemal believed
that European public opinion could only be won over by
presenting them with arguments which followed
Renan's line of thinking, and not just by the presentation
of 'facts' and 'figures', which seemed to satisfy
Wilsonian expectations. In view of Greece's claims on
western Anatolia, the so-called Pontus problem in the
northeast presented a thorny issue that needed to be
resolved quickly. The liberal atmosphere of the Second
Constitutional period had led to a flourishing of the
ambitions of the Greek-Orthodox population of the
northeastern Black Sea littoral. Yerasimos proclaims
convincingly that economic power and wealth, as was
wielded by the Rum merchants and traders in the area,
quite naturally led to a desire for heightened political
confidence and clout. These frustrated feelings of
political authority, in his view, in turn led to the
emergence of armed strife and resistance to attempts at
re-establishing centralised control after the downfall of
the Ottoman governmental infrastructure (Yerasimos
1988-89).
Shaw argues that after the British landing at Samsun
on 9 March 1919, 'Greek bands' revolted 'openly'
leading them 'to slaughter their Muslim neighbours in
the hope of founding the new [Pontus] state' (Shaw
1977: 329). In a period of approximately two years after
the signature of the Mudros Armistice (30 October
1918), nearly 750 Muslims were killed by so-called
Pontus gangs consisting of Greek-Orthodox extremists.
In response to this unrest, the Ankara government set up
a designated army unit to suppress Anatolian insur-
gencies against the TBMM's authority on 9 December
1920, the so-called Merkez Ordusu (Balcioglu 1991: 1~
10). The TBMM placed the Merkez Ordusu under the
command of the Mirliva (Major General) Nureddin
Ibrahim (1873-1932) (Balcioglu 1991: 10-13). At the
time, Nureddin Pasa wrote down that a 'state ideal' ('bir
devlet mefkuresi') was present in every 'Rum' (Greek-
Orthodox) inhabitant of Anatolia (Nureddin Paga's
kdhname quoted in Balcioglu 1991: 62). In other words,
the Kemalist leadership regarded these gangs as
harbingers of a possible rival government in Anatolia, a
rival that was likely to receive liberal support from the
erstwhile Entente powers negotiating the fate of the
former Ottoman dominions in Paris. But in spite of these
supposed far-reaching ideals harboured by gang
members, the Merkez Ordusu was primarily engaged in
collecting weapons and tracking down and disabling
small armed gangs. According to Gologlu, Nureddin
Pasa flushed out all the Pontus gangs and their sympa-
thisers by February 1922 (Gologlu 1973: 254). Gologlu
states that about 3,500 gang members were killed, and
nearly 2,000 individuals taken prisoner. A number of
gangs escaped to central Anatolia where they continued
to raid the local population. In Gologlu's opinion, they
eventually joined the regular Greek army fighting the
Kemalists forces (Gologlu 1973: 254). The fact that the
Merkez Ordusu forced approximately '25,000' Greek-
Orthodox villagers, suspected of supporting the gangs
and their assumed aims, into exile in the course of their
operations seems to have been Nureddin Paga's most
significant, and arguably most controversial, accom-
plishment (Gologlu 1973: 254). The Ankara
government's response to the Pontus insurgency was thus
an example of what has become known as ethnic
cleansing nowadays. The term is as yet still rather ill-
defined (Bell-Fiakoff 1993; Petrovic 1994; Preece 2000),
but is here used to denote the forced deportation of the
152
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Rum population of the northeastern littoral of the Black
Sea. This was a policy that was to receive official
sanction on 30 January 1923, when the negotiators at
Lausanne complied with the idea of the League of
Nations' High Commissioner for refugees, Fritjof
Nansen (1861-1930), of a population exchange between
the Greek-Orthodox inhabitants of Asia Minor and the
Muslims living in Greece. Nansen first aired this
proposal on 1 December 1922 (Zurcher 2003; Yildinm
2006: 40).
The propaganda tract Pontus Meselesi was part of this
strife between the Greek-Orthodox and Muslim inhabi-
tants of Anatolia. The rhetoric of Mukaddime to Pontus
Meselesi was nevertheless operative on several levels.
This geo-text primarily functioned as a scholarly corrob-
oration of the Kemalist attempt to transform the ethni-
cally heterogeneous Muslim inhabitants of Anatolia into
a homogeneous Turkish nation, in addition to being a
defensive tract consisting of 280 documents illustrating
Greek-Orthodox atrocities. In view of the just-described
Kemalist policy of ethnic cleansing in the northeastern
Black Sea region, the book Pontus Meselesi was also the
Ankara government's attempt to prevent that the
Kemalists be tarred with the same brush as the Unionists.
The Unionist leadership, which following a coup in
January 1913 'was in complete control of the internal
political situation', implemented a policy of enforced
relocation (tehcir) of the 'entire Armenian population of
the war zone to Zor [Deir-ez-Zor or Dayr-az-Zawr] in the
heart of the Syrian desert' (Zurcher 1993: 115, 120). To
this effect, a 'Temporary Law of Deportation' ('Tehcir
Law') was put into force on 29 May 1915, which expired
on 8 February 1916 (Dadrian 1995: 224). In the course
of the execution of this Unionist policy of ethnic
cleansing, numerous massacres and other outrages took
place. Zurcher claims that a figure of '[bjetween
600,000 and 800,000' casualties 'seems most likely'
(Zurcher 1993: 120). At the time, the press in the West
carried numerous reports on the fate of these Ottoman
Christians. According to the foreign correspondent John
Kifner, ' [t]he New York Times covered the issue exten-
sively - 145 articles in 1915 alone' (Kifner 2007). On 24
September 1915, the paper, for example, carried the
headline '500,000 Armenians Said To Have Perished'.
The article states that,
Charles R. Crane, a Director of Roberts College,
Constantinople, and James L. Burton of Boston,
Foreign Secretary of the American Board of Commis-
sioners of Foreign Missions, visited the State
Department today [23 September 1915] and conferred
with... officials regarding the slaughter of Armenians
by Turks and Kurds in Asia Minor (NYT, 24/9).
On 7 October 1915, the paper reported that,
Viscount Bryce, former British Ambassador to the
United States, in the House of Lords today [6 October
1915] said that such information as had reached him
from many quarters showed that the figure of 800,000
Armenians destroyed was quite a possible number.
'The death of these people', said Lord Bryce,
'resulted from the deliberate and premeditated policy
of the gang now in possession of the Turkish
Government' [the Committee of Union and Progress]
(NYT, 7/10).
The following year, on 21 August 1916, the New York
Times carried an item which seemed to give further
credence to these numbers:
The Rev. Harold Buxton, Secretary of the Armenian
Refugees Fund, has just returned to England after
devoting three months to relief work in the devastated
villages. In an interview he gave details which
entirely confirm the grave statements made by Lord
Bryce some months ago in the House of Lords (NYT,
21/8).
James Bryce (1838-1922), the erstwhile Regius
Professor of Civil Law (1870-1893) who was created
Viscount in 1913, was no stranger to matters relating to
war crimes. The British prime minister, Herbert Asquith
(1852-1928, in office 1908-1916), had earlier (12 May
1915) charged him to head a commission 'to consider
and advise on the evidence collected on behalf of His
Majesty's Government as to outrages alleged to have
been committed by German troops during the present
War' (Bryce Report 1915). With regard to the Armenian
massacres, the British Foreign Office also commissioned
Lord Bryce and Arnold Toynbee 'to establish the facts
and to make them public'. The resultant propaganda tract
carried the title The Treatment of Armenians in the
Ottoman Empire, 1915-1916: Documents Presented to
Viscount Frey of Falloden:
The sources of the documents are very varied. Some
of them were communicated to the Editor directly by
the writers themselves, or, in the case of private
letters, by the persons to whom the letters were
addressed (Blue Book 1916).
The documentation in this so-called Blue Book
amounts to a veritable catalogue of atrocities committed
in the name of the Ottoman government led by the
Unionists. The Foreign Office, which commissioned its
composition, had been in charge of the production and
153
Anatolian Studies 2008
distribution of 'propaganda' since 'October 1915'
(Sanders 1975: 122). Arnold Toynbee, writing in his
propaganda book Turkey: A Past and a Future (1917),
calls the Tehcir policy and its execution a 'daemonic
effort' (Toynbee 1917: 3), noting further that 'the
Ottoman Government [took] ruthless steps to eliminate'
'[t]he Greeks and Armenians' of Anatolia (Toynbee
1917: 5). Publications such as the above-quoted texts
and the extensive coverage the Armenian massacres
received in the contemporary press ensured that the term
'genocide', created in the aftermath of the Second World
War, would retrospectively be applied to the Unionists'
Armenian policy. The Polish scholar and jurist Raphael
Lemkin (1900-1959), who coined the term genocide in
1943 (in the preface to his classic study Axis Rule in
Occupied Europe dated 15 November 1943, Lemkin
1944: Preface), wrote in 1946, that 'history has provided
us with other examples of the destruction of entire
nations, and ethnic and religious groups'. He first lists
'the destruction of Carthage', and ends his short survey
with 'the massacre of the Armenians' by the Unionists
(Lemkin 1946: 227-30). Lemkin's words assured that
the Unionist government of 'Turkey' would be remem-
bered primarily for having perpetrated '[t]he Twentieth-
Century's First Genocide', as phrased by the law
professor and historian Alfred de Zayas (de Zayas 2003:
157-81).
In 1920, at the conference table at Sevres, Damad
Ferid Pasa (1853-1923) freely admitted the Ottoman
government's responsibility for numerous atrocities,
massacres and other acts of destruction. Damad Ferid
had pointed the finger at the Unionist leadership as the
true culprits. The Ottoman statesman seems to have
thought that his rapid condemnation of the Unionists
would garner sympathy for the Ottoman state that had
been misled by its corrupt and immoral leadership
(McCarthy 2001: 120). In contrast, the Entente powers
simply ignored the Ottoman's wishes and proceeded to
divide the Ottoman territories amongst themselves. The
Unionists, or the Young Turks as they were known in the
West, received everybody's scorn and hatred as the
perpetrators of unspeakable crimes and murders. Still,
Ferid Pasa's actions at the Peace Conference had further
'blackened the name of the Turks' (McCarthy 2001:121).
Given the Unionists' posthumous reputation, the
Kemalist leadership was also concerned with the West's
perception of its policies and actions. The contemporary
press kept a close eye on events in Anatolia. The New
York Times, for example, published numerous articles
dealing with the events in 'Asia Minor' at the time. Items
published carry such telling headings as 'Turks Burn 24
Greek Villages (Pontos)' (30 March 1922); '303,328
Massacred, Greek Minister says' (2 June 1922); and
'Turks Massacre 15,000 More Greeks' (14 June 1922).
The Ankara government must have been aware of these
claims (NYT). These and similar negative reports in the
Western press might very well have convinced the
Kemalist leadership to produce the book Pontus Meselesi
in the period September-October 1922 and to release its
French version in the summer of the following year, prior
to the official adoption of the policy of population
exchange {Mubadele) and the signature of the Lausanne
Treaty on 24 July 1923. The propaganda text was a clear
effort to persuade audiences at home and abroad of the
legitimacy of the Kemalist movement and the nefarious
nature of Greek-Orthodox claims on Anatolian soil. The
text countered the emergence of claims that Kemalists
had perpetrated unwarranted massacres of Greek-
Orthodox inhabitants on the Black Sea shoreline.
Instead, the documents presented proved that Muslims
had been the victims of violence at the hands of Greek-
Orthodox gangs. Contrary to these Kemalist claims,
nowadays numerous activists clamour for the recognition
of what is called the 'Pontic Greek Genocide'. On an
academic level, the Centre for Comparative Genocide
Studies at the Macquarie University in Sydney
(Australia) was particularly active in propagating the idea
that the Greek-Orthodox population of the northeastern
Black Sea coast was the victim of a policy of genocide
(1993-2000). In January 1998, the Macquarie Centre for
Comparative Genocide Studies even set up the Pontian
Genocide and Asia Minor Holocaust Studies Unit
devoted to the 'study of and teaching about the Genocide
of Pontian Hellenes and the Holocaust of Asia Minor'.
This Centre organised a conference on 17-19 September
1999, entitled Portraits of Christian Asia Minor, which
featured the 'Pontian genocide' prominently on its
agenda (Hionides 1997). The Centre was succeeded by
the Sydney-based Australian Institute for Holocaust and
Genocide Studies in 2000. Whereas, the Greek-
American artist and writer Thea Halo published her
mother's memoirs under the title Not Even My Name in
2000. The book details how SanioThemia Halo survived
'death marches' organised by the Kemalists (Halo 2000).
In the remainder of this article then, I will demon-
strate that Agaoglu's discovery of the Hittites as worthy
forebears for the Anatolian Muslims, whom he refers to
as Turks, was the outcome of an ideologically motivated
reading of 19th century European accounts of ancient
Near Eastern history. At the outset of Pontus Meselesi,
the reader encounters the statement that the book as a
whole was prepared by an impartial committee ('bi-taraf
bir heyet'), arguably a reference to the so-called irsad
Heyetleri or 'Guidance Committees', based on
documents ('evrak ve vesaik') its members gathered in
the eastern Black Sea region (Pontus 2002: no page
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number). Following this declaration, the work opens
with a preamble or Mukaddime (Pontus 2002: 55-108),
which contains important information arguably extra-
neous to the further content of the book in question, as
was common in Islamic writing (Ibn Khaldun 1958). The
evidence I presented in the first part of the article
indicates that Agaoglu Ahmed Bey is the sole author of
this introductory section. Agaoglu's text opens with the
following confident statement.
Before everything else the world's public opinion
['cihan efkar-i umumiyesi'] has to know that the
Anatolian terrain is from beginning till end Turkish
['basdan nihayete kadarTiirkdur'] (Pontus 2002: 55).
This apparently straightforward statement is a lot more
convoluted than might appear at first sight. In the
article's first part I put forward the contention that the
War of Independence {Milli Mucadele) was fought
primarily for the upkeep of Muslim independence under
the banner of the Ottomans. In Europe and America,
however, the Ottoman Empire was known as 'Turkey'.
The terms 'Muslim' and 'Turk' had been in use inter-
changeably for centuries. President Wilson also spoke of
the 'Turkish portion of the present Ottoman Empire' in
his Fourteen Points, arguably referring to regions that
were primarily Muslim in make up and character. The
Anatolian resistance movement had been organised on
the basis of the defence of the rights of the Muslims, as
illustrated by the wording of the Misak-i Milli or
'National Pact' (1919) declaring that the aim of the
resistance was the 'continued existence of a stable
Ottoman sultanate and society'. The Kemalist use of the
term milli in this context is not coincidental. This word
derives from the noun 'millet', which in its original
Ottoman meaning denoted a religious community or
'nation'. Mustafa Kemal and his followers were thus
referring to the Ottoman Muslim community or 'nation'
as their constituency (Ziircher 2000: 56). Agaoglu's text,
however, was written in response to the Fourteen Points
and the supposed Greek-Orthodox attempts to found an
independent state in northeastern Anatolia. Mustafa
Kemal made a cunning move when he promoted Agaoglu
Ahmed as Director of the Matbuat ve istihbarat
Muduriyet-i Umumiyyesi on 29 November 1921.
Agaoglu had been one of the foremost personalities of
the Turkist movement in the Second Constitutional era.
Ziircher claims that his thinking in Istanbul was shaped
by Pan-Turkist sentiments and Islamic revivalism
(Ziircher, 'Ottoman Sources': 4). Given his earlier time
in Paris, Agaoglu had also been exposed to nationalist
ideas and notions of the benefits of the nation state. It is
my contention that the groundwork for the adoption of
Turkism or Turkish nationalism as the projected Kemalist
state's identity was being prepared in the pages of the
Mukaddime to Pontus Meselesi in 1922.
Agaoglu mentions Anatolia as a Turkish homeland.
This Turkish homeland corresponds neatly to the terri-
tories the Kemalists had been able to conquer from the
various imperialist forces (Great Britain, France, Italy,
Russia). He therefore alludes to a strictly geographical
definition of the term Turk, as encapsulating the nation-
alist aims of the Anatolian resistance movement. The
above-quoted Asrm Prensipieri' had earlier also hinted
at a geographical definition of the Kemalists' 'nationalist
principle' ('milliyet esasi'), without mentioning the noun
Turk however. Written before the start of the Lausanne
negotiations (20 November 1922), Agaoglu's text would
appear to be one of the first printed broadcasts of the
Kemalist adoption of a kind of Turkish nationalism in
lieu of an Islamic definition of its constituency. In
response to Greek claims on Anatolia, Agaoglu Ahmed's
text proposes an Anatolian nationalism based on
Turkism. In the 19th century certain Ottoman writers
had also talked about Anatolia. These Ottomans, though,
had not thought of Anatolia as a Turkish homeland, but
as a regional starting point for Gazi Osman Bey (ca
1281-1324) and his successors to found an Islamic state
with universal pretensions. A case in point is the Young
Ottoman Namik Kemal (1840-1888), whose line that the
Ottomans founded a world empire from the humble
beginnings of a small tribal unit ('cihangirane bir devlet
cikardik bir asjretten') in his poem Hurriyet Kasidesiwas
renowned throughout the Ottoman world of letters
(Gocgiin 1999; Namik Kemal 1326: 50). In his
Mukaddime to Pontus Meselesi, Agaoglu, however,
completely abandons any talk of Ottomans or even
Islamic legitimacy. The Mukaddime proposes a strictly
geographical definition of Kemalist nationalism, as a
concept equivalent to the mention of the territory of
Anatolia. Agaoglu endorses the legal notion of ius solis,
which had been introduced into a Kemalist discourse by
the Hakimiyet-i Milliye editorial 'Asrin Prensipieri'.
Agaoglu Ahmed abandons an Islamic line of reasoning in
favour of a secularist understanding of the term Turk as a
referent to the Kemalist constituency.
As a well-known figure on Istanbul's intellectual
scene associated with the Turk Ocagi during the Second
Constitutional era, Agaoglu Ahmed was no stranger to
spreading a distinctly Turkist message. Prior to his activ-
ities in Istanbul, Agaoglu had been active in Azeri
politics for 14 years and even instrumental in organising
Azeri resistance against Russian-backed Armenian
aggression after his return from Paris (1894). He was
forced to flee the Russian Empire, and went to Istanbul
following the constitutional revolution of 1908 (Sakal
155
Anatolian Studies 2008
1999: 14-17). As an Azerf exile in the Ottoman Empire,
his activities necessarily involved the wider Turkic world
outside the Ottoman sphere. His article series Turk
Alemi' in Turk Yurdu (a total of eight articles published
between 1327/1911 and 1328/1912-1913) is an illus-
tration of these interests. These pieces present various
developments in the wider Turkic world, which at the
time was under Russian rule. Shissler calls the article
series 'a rather typical nationalist manifesto', in the sense
that Agaoglu talks about 'Turkish Muslims' as consti-
tuting the nation in question (Shissler 2003: 173, 260-
61). Even though Agaoglu was a prominent figure on the
Ottoman scene, his main concern was the fate of the
Turkish Muslims living in the lands of the Tsar. One
could argue that Agaoglu's non-Ottomanist agenda-led
Zurcher to characterise the Azeri's thinking as Pan-
Turkist in this period.
In the course of the First World War, the Ottoman
government organised a designated army to help the
Azeris against attacks by Armenian and Russian forces.
Reports of a massacre of the population of Baku on 31
March 1918 seem to have been the main impetus for the
setting up of the Kafkas islam Ordusu, under the
command of Enver Pa§a's brother Nuri. Agaoglu Ahmed
was also part of this enterprise; he joined the army as
political adviser (siydsi miisavir). Nuri Pa§a's army
liberated Baku on 15 September. The provisional Azerf
government headed by Feth Ali Han Hoylu [Hoyski]
moved there from its base in Gence where the Republic
of Azerbaijan had been proclaimed on 28 May 1918
(Sakai 1999: 26-27; gagla 2002: 89-109; Ozcan 2002:
154-55). Once a political infrastructure was in place in
his homeland of Azerbaijan, Agaoglu started playing an
active part, even entering the newly established Azeri
parliament. After the start of negotiations in Versailles
(18 January 1919), the newly established Republic of
Azerbaijan decided to send a delegation to Paris. And
quite naturally, Agaoglu Ahmed was to be part of this
committee. They stopped at Istanbul before embarking
on their journey to France. Even though Agaoglu
travelled with an Azeri diplomatic passport, British
forces arrested him as a leading Unionist and exiled him
to Malta (Ozcan 2002:155). The Republic of Azerbaijan
ceased to exist on 28 April 1920 when the 11th Red Army
entered Baku and set up Soviet-style government (Cagla
2002: 89-109). His actions in the Caucasus show
Agaoglu to have been an advocate of Azeri nationalism.
Far from being an intellectual with Pan-Turkist leanings,
his experiences in Paris had made Agaoglu Ahmed Bey
more than susceptible to the benefits of the nation state,
and turned him into an ardent proponent of the principle
of nationalism. Upon his release from Malta in 1921,
Agaoglu joined the Kemalists in Ankara. Rather than
pursuing his earlier dream of an independent Republic of
Azerbaijan, political pragmatism seems to have prevailed
to transform Agaoglu into a leading Turkish nationalist in
the mould of the Kemalist movement.1
In his Mukaddime to Pontus Meselesi, Agaoglu was
also insistent upon the ancient character of Anatolia as a
Turkish homeland.
[Anatolia] has been the Turk's home country, the
Turk's homeland ['Tiirkun oz vatam, Tiirkun 6z
yurdu'] for thousands of years (Pontus 2002: 55).
He thus adds a temporal dimension to his earlier-
mentioned geographical definition of Turkism
(Anatolia). In a sentence apparently directly aimed at
Greek and Armenian designs on Anatolia, he continues
that 'this piece of land ['bu cuz-i memleket'] is a Turkish
country that will not accept division ['tecezzi']' (Pontus
2002: 55). These programmatic statements are followed
by a paragraph that negates the importance of the Seljuk
and Ottoman contributions to the development of the
Anatolian Turks.
As a matter of fact, the Turks did not arrive in
Anatolia with Ertugrul Gazi or even with those who
constituted the Seljuk governments. The Turkish race
has been present in Anatolia since the oldest and most
unknown of times. As has been illustrated by history
the first inhabitants of Anatolia were Turanians
(Pontus 2002: 55).
Agaoglu Ahmed here employs the well-known
Islamic trope of presenting history as an active partic-
ipant in the development of his argument. In other
words, he indicates that books written by well-respected
authorities, in other words history, contain assertions of
the supposed Turanian nature of Anatolia's earliest
inhabitants. These Turanian Anatolians pre~dated the
Rum Seljuk Sultanate (1077-1307) as well as the first
presence of Ottoman tribes in Asia Minor. European
audiences were familiar with the notion that the Turks
had migrated into Anatolia from Central Asia as a result
of the activities of the French historian and Orientalist
Leon Cahun (1841-1900) and his Introduction d Vhis-
1 Both Holly Shissler and Ufuk Ozcan comment upon
Agaoglu's remarkable ability to recast himself into a new role
or identity. Ozcan identifies five separate stages in Agaoglu's
development: Persianism, Jadidism, Unionist Pan-Turkism,
Kemalism and liberalism (Ozcan 2002: 248-49). Shissler, for
her part, sees Agaoglu as primarily shifting from an Iranian-
Shi'ite identity to one that became more and more focused on
the Turkish world (Shissler 2003:146).
156
Erimtan
toire de VAsie (1896), which had apparently been
'written without reference to oriental sources' (Lewis
1968: 51, n. 1). But here Agaoglu seems to be referring
to a different kind of discourse, however; to a discourse
related to the concept of Turan in the ancient world.
The poet Ferdowsi (940-1020) had used the noun in
his famous Shahndme ['Book of Kings'] (ca 1000),
which recounts the pre-Islamic mythology of Iran. The
Shahndme contains the story of the ruler Feridun who
divided the world amongst his three sons. Tur received
the lands beyond the river Oxus (Amu Darya), which
became known as Turan (Zimmern 2000: 27). And
according to the propaganda Manual on Turanians and
Pan-Turianism (1920), compiled by the British Naval
Intelligence Division, the territory of Turan was 'approx-
imately represented by Russian Turkestan' in the early
20th century (Manual 1920: 14). In the second half of
the 19th century, Western linguists, historians and other
writers employed the term 'Turanian' as a 'loose desig-
nation of all or nearly all the languages of Asiatic origin
that are neither Aryan nor Semitic' (Manual 1920: 14).
The Manual elaborates further that the 'word has also
been used in a racial sense with similar indefiniteness'
(Manual 1920: 14). The book Christianity and Mankind
(1854), written by Christian Bunsen (1791-1860), seems
to have been the first instance of such a usage of the term
'Turanian' (Manual 1920:14).
At the same time, Agaoglu's 'Turkish' contemporary,
[Mehmed] Ziya Gokalp (1876-1924) also used the noun
'Turan' in a Turkish-language context. Ziya Gokalp is
generally regarded as the theoretical founder of Turkish
nationalism in the form of a 'cultural Turkism' as
adopted by Kemalism (Parla 1985: 35). The periodical
Geng Kalemler, set up by among others Ali Canib
[Yontem] (1887-1967) (Arai 1992: 24-47), provided a
ready vehicle for Ziya Gokalp's writings that communi-
cated his message. In 1910, he published the poem
Turan. The last stanza of the poem proclaims Turan to be
the 'grand' and 'eternal homeland' of the Turks ('[v]atan
biiyiik ve muebbed bir ulkedir: Turan') (Parlatrr, Cetin
1999: 68). According to Taha Parla, 'Gokalp tried to
create in his own words, "an ideal which existed only in
the realm of imagination, not in the realm of reality'"
(quoted and translated from Ziya Gokalp's Turkgiilugiin
Esaslan [1923] in Parla 1985: 34).
Through his use of the word 'Turanian' in his
Mukaddime to Pontus Meselesi, Agaoglu Ahmed seems
to have illustrated in territorial as well as temporal terms
that Anatolia is a Turkish homeland. He bases his
insights on 'history', or rather on the work of universally
respected authorities. The first such authority he cites is
Fritz Hommel (1854-1936), and particularly his
Geschichte Babyloniens undAssyriens (1888). Agaoglu
refers to this book as containing the claim ('iddia') that
the Sumerians were a race of Turanian origin ('Turan! bir
asla mensub') (Pontus 2002: 56). At the same time,
Agaoglu also quotes Joseph Halevy (1827-1917) as
representative of the opposite view that claims the
Sumerians as Semitic (Pontus 2002: 56). Abandoning
the Sumerian claim, Agaoglu subsequently declares that
theTorah ('Tevrad') and the Bible ('Kitab-i Mukaddes')
refer to a people identified as the Hittites known from
Egyptian and Assyrian records (Pontus 2002: 59).
Concentrating on the Hittites, Agaoglu Ahmed then
refers to the Egyptologist Auguste Mariette's (1821-
1881) work, which declares that the Hittites' power and
influence ('nufuz') were clearly felt in ancient Egypt
(Pontus 2002: 59). As a well-known figure in the study
of Pharaonic Egypt - Mariette had been the first
government-appointed Director of Ancient Monuments
(Mamur al-Antiqai) in Egypt in 1858 as well as the first
head of the then newly established Egyptian Museum in
Cairo (Reid 2002: 39-50, 55-56) - his testimony on the
position of the Hittites in the ancient world must have
carried a lot of weight in Agaoglu's eyes. In the next
instance, Agaoglu mentions the war between the Hittites
and the Egyptians, which resulted in the signing of a
peace treaty between the two states ('devleteyn beyninde
miinakid muahede'), inscribed on a 'silver plate'
('giimus, levha') (Pontus 2002: 59). In a footnote,
Agaoglu refers to the Presbyterian missionary William
Wright (1837-1899), who had been posted in Damascus,
to indicate that the text was written in Akkadian, the then
international language of diplomacy ('o zamanki
beynelmillel muhaberatda umumiydi') (Pontus 2002: 59,
n. 21). He uses this insight to explain that the Hittite
language had as yet not been deciphered ('[a]sil Hititce
heniiz bulunamamis.tir') (Pontus 2002: 59, n. 21). In
relying on 19th century accounts, however, Agaoglu was
completely unaware of recent developments in Hittite
studies, particularly Bedrich Hrozny's decipherment of
the Hittite language and its identification as an Tndo-
Germanic' language (Hrozny 1915).
In the further course of his text, Agaoglu (fig. 5) relies
extensively on Wright's The Empire of the Hittites
published in 1884. In his book's preamble, Wright
declares his intent as follows.
The object of this book is to restore the Empire of the
Hittites to its rightful position in secular history, and
thus to confirm the scattered references to the Hittites
in sacred history (Wright 1884: VII).
William Wright's self-confessed aim all but reinforces
Agaoglu in his intent to 'discover' a worthy forebear of
the Turks in prehistoric Anatolia. The Kemalist Agaoglu
157
Anatolian Studies 2008
fAfc
* cbiifrij -
Fig. 5. The Hittite Empire: geographical extent (source:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8I84/Hi
ttite__Empire.png)
first uses the testimony of a respected French authority
on Pharaonic Egypt to intimate the Hittites' stature and
prowess in the ancient world. He then turns to an English
missionary writing to confirm the holy scriptures. As a
result, Agaoglu can paint a highly positive Hittite image
that acts as a counterweight to the impressive depictions
of Pharaonic Egypt, Assyria and Biblical protagonists.
As a result, Agaoglu Ahmed feels completely at ease
portraying the Hittites as a world-domineering Turkish
race with firm roots in Anatolia.
The area of diffusion ['intisar sahasi*] of this Hittite
state, that ruled over central Anatolia starting from
the 16th century till the 12th century BC
['kablelmilad'], and later until the eighth century in
northern Syria, can be determined by the monuments
they have left behind (Pontus 2002: 59).
After having established the Anatolian credentials of
the Hittites, Agaoglu refers to the discoveries made by
the earlier-mentioned Charles Texier as well as Georges
Perrot (1832-1914) (Perrot, Chipiez 1892), who had
been sent to Anatolia in 1861 (Pontus 2002: 59-60).
Following this allusion to the site at Bogazkoy, the
Kemalist proceeds to enumerate other Hittite sites
throughout Anatolia. He mentions a site at 'Oyuk'
(Alaca Hoyiik), northeast ('sark-i sjmali') of BogazkSy, a
site at 'Eflatunpmar' in the vicinity of the Beysehir lake,
and the presence of numerous monuments and inscrip-
tions at the locality of 'ivriz' (Pontus 2002: 60) (fig. 6).
Agaoglu Ahmed then turns anew to the site at
Bogazkoy, and elaborates on Hugo Winckler's above-
mentioned expeditions (Winckler 1906). Even though
these excavations had been undertaken on behalf of the
Vorderasiatische Gesellschaft and the Berlin Orient-
Comite, the erstwhile Young Turk turned Kemalist
Agaoglu indicates here that the Ottoman government
through the Imperial Museum in Istanbul had commis-
sioned the enterprise ('Muze-yi Humayun namma')
(Pontus 2002: 60). In addition to Winckler, he states
that the Assistant Director of the Imperial Museum,
Theodor Makridi (1872-1940), was responsible for the
excavations and finds, which were transported to
Istanbul and to various European museums (Pontus
•2802:~60)rHMakridi himsetf^writing-irH-908-,~would also
have it that the Ottoman government, rather than
German Orientalist institutions, had been responsible
for the excavations (Macridy-Bey 1908: 177-205).
Agaoglu emphasises the discovery of numerous
cuneiform tablets at the site, and even goes on to
describe this find as an 'archive' ('vesaik hazinesi')
(Pontus 2002: 60). One can assume that Agaoglu had
here been thinking of the impressive Ottoman archive
holdings that had been organised into a Hazine-i Evrak
or archive in 1846 on the instigation of Mustafa Resjd
Pasa (1800-1858) (Qetin 1982: 98-102).
The Mukaddime to Pontus Meselesi downplays the
important role played by Hugo Winckler in the explo-
ration of the archaeological site at Bogazkoy (fig. 7).
Winckler's agenda in excavating the site was in great
measure determined by his own theoretical insights on
the development of the ancient Near East (Winckler
1899). In Germany, he was the main proponent of the
so-called Pan-Babylonian school of thought that flour-
ished between 1900 and 1914 (Winckler 1892), when
the First World War brought an end to such purely
If-.
iff V \-
•7 ». t
Fig. 6. Alaca Hoyiik: Sphinxes' Gate (source:
http://www. pbase.com/dosseman/image/36007074, with
permission of D. Osseman)
158
Erimtan
Fig. 7. Bogazkoy: Lions' Gate (source: http://www.
pbase.com/dosseman/image/33141196, with permission
ofD. Osseman)
academic exercises (Winckler 1902; 1907). Winckler's
pre-occupation with the Babylonians and their influence
upon later cultures and civilisations did not transform
him into an enthusiastic defender of the Hittites and
their role in the ancient world. Agaoglu thus pays him
but scant attention, despite his high standing as a
cuneiform philologist and Assyriologist. Instead he
relies more easily on the opinions of William Wright
whose agenda appears more congruous to the
Kemalists' object of converting ancient Anatolia into a
Turkish homeland.
After having ascertained the Hittites' diffusion
throughout the whole of Anatolia, and their high level of
civilisation, as witnessed by the impressive site at
Bogazkoy and its 'archive of cuneiform tablets', Agaoglu
turns to Wright's book again. Agaoglu quotes Wright to
indicate a physical continuity between the Hittites and
Anatolia's current population: '[t]he deities . . .
[depicted] on Hittite sculptures wear the same clothes as
those worn by contemporary Anatolian villagers' (Pontus
2002: 61). In his Empire of the Hittites, however, Wright
had actually been quoting the words of another authority,
the British consul-general in Anatolia (1879™1882)
Colonel Sir Charles William Wilson (1836-1905).
Colonel Wilson had been a member of the Palestine
Exploration Fund since 1867, and in 1872 was even
elected to the Council of the Society of British Archae-
ology. During his tenure in Anatolia, he travelled exten-
sively in the remoter districts of the region (PEF).
According to William Wright, Colonel Wilson 'examined
most of the Hittite inscriptions and sculptures in Asia
Minor' (Wright 1884: 59). It would even appear that
Agaoglu based his insights on the geographical diffusion
of the Hittites and their monuments on Colonel Wilson's
words, as recorded by Wright.
At Ifiatun Bunar, near the lake of Beischehr, there is
a large monument of Hittite origin; and at Ivriz, near
Eregli, there is a well-preserved rock-hewn
monument, representing a thanksgiving to the god
who gives fertility to the earth.
The god wears the very dress still used by the
peasantry of Anatolia; ... and the tip-tilted shoes are
the ordinary sandals of the country, with exactly the
same bandages and mode of fastening.
It is interesting also to notice that some of the patterns
on the priest's dress have not gone out of fashion
amongst the Cappadocian peasantry (Wright 1884:
61-62).
This quotation shows that Agaoglu had no first-hand
experience of Anatolia's ambience, and that his
knowledge of Hittite remains on Anatolian soil was
based on the observations and judgements of European
experts.
As an Ottoman intellectual of Azeri descent, Agaoglu
Ahmed's physical knowledge of 'Turkey' or the wider
'Ottoman lands' (Duru 1999: 40), was apparently limited
to the city of Istanbul and its immediate environs. As a
result, he relied on the accounts of well-respected author-
ities to supply him with information and arguments.
Basing himself on the works of European ancient Orien-
talists, Agaoglu states that the Hittites had occupied an
important position on the world stage for a period of
approximately 1,000 years ('bin sene zarfinda'). And
that they had been the equals ('muadil') of the Egyptians
and the Assyrians in that period. Then he ventures to
compare the Hittites to the Phoenicians, in the sense that
these two ancient peoples had constituted a link
('vasitahk') between Europe and Asia2 - the latter, by sea
('bahren') and the first, by land ('bern') (Pontus 2002:
62-63). The Kemalist Agaoglu portrays the Hittite
Empire as a worthy forebear of the Anatolian Turks, an
ancestor whose material remains indicate that their state
organisation and civilisation had been of the highest
standard, comparable to such awe-inspiring ancient civil-
isations as those of Egypt and Assyria (fig. 8).
Agaoglu passes over in silence the decline of the
Hittite Empire, sufficing to say that the Hittites' descen-
dants were unable to uphold a centralised state (Pontus
2002: 63). He then abruptly turns to the rise of Iran, and
the conflicts between the Greek 'colonies'
2 Writing in the second half of the 20th century, Sabatino
Moscati declared that 'the civilization of the Phoenicians
emerges as ... a decisive element in the establishment of
fruitful relations between the East and the West throughout the
Mediterranean' (Moscati 1968: 244).
159
Anatolian Studies 2008
Fig. 8. Eflatun Pmar (source: http://en.wikipedia.org/
wikilImage :Eflatun _pinar.jpg)
('miistemleke') on Anatolia's west coast and the
Achaeraenids (559-330 BC). This conflict ended with
the appearance of Alexander the Great (356-323 BC),
leading to the preponderance ('nufuz ve tesiri') of Greek
culture ('Yunan medeniyeti') in the whole of Anatolia
('btitim Anadolu') (Pontus 2002: 63). And then
('[bjadehu'), Anatolia came under Roman administration
('Romalilann idaresi'), and even played an important
part in the development of Christianity, in view of the
'foundation' of the 'first seven Christian churches'
locally ('ilk yedi kilise buralarda teessiis etmisdi')
(Pontus 2002: 64). He then talks about the arrival of
Tndo-Germanic peoples' ('Hind-Cerman akvami') in
southeastern Europe (Pontus 2002: 64), only to proclaim
that 'Anatolia [has been] [a] Turkish [land] since the first
[recorded] eras of history' (Pontus 2002: 65). Agaoglu
Ahmed follows this programmatic statement by referring
to the French scholars Gaston Maspero (1846-1916) and
Jacques de Morgan (1857-1924). In particular, Agaoglu
quotes de Morgan's Mission scientifique au Caucase:
etudes archeologiques et historiques (1889) to indicate
that Turanian or Turkish peoples had been living in the
region since the fourth millennium BC (Pontus 2002:
65). Basing himself on this authoritative voice, Agaoglu
declares:
. . . since the oldest times there has been a Turanian
people present in Anatolia. A great number of
dynasties have ruled these people under various
governments.
Rum [Greek-Orthodox] and Armenians, however,
arrived later in Anatolia and like the Rum on the
shorelines, a number of Armenians are present in the
vicinities of Van and Bitlis (Pontus 2002: 65).
In this way, Agaoglu seems to have abandoned his
prehistoric discourse to tackle directly the claims of the
Greek-Orthodox and Armenian population of Anatolia.
Agaoglu declares that the Greek-Orthodox population's
('Rumlar') claim that they have been suppressed under
'Turkish administration' ('Turk idaresi') is 'unfounded'
('asilsiz') (Pontus 2002: 65). It is interesting to note that
the Kemalist does not speak about Ottoman adminis-
tration or hegemony.
In the next instance, Agaoglu elaborates on the
religious history of the Turks, which would indicate that
the just-quoted usage of 'Turk' is racial or ethnical,
rather than religious or ideological. He states that '[i]t is
well-known that ['(m)alumdur ki'] the original national
religion ['asil milli dinleri'] of the Turks was shamanistic
['samam']' (Pontus 2002: 65). The European scholar
Marie Antoinette Czaplicka (d. 1921), attached to
Somerville College (Oxford), writes in her Turks of
Central Asia (1918) that,
[The] religion of the Turks who were responsible for
the inscriptions in the Yenisei and Orkhon valleys,
seems to have been the same Shamanism which is
still to be found among many Turanians (Czaplicka
1918: 30).
Agaoglu must have been aware of these and similar
theories given his stay in Paris. The Orkhon inscriptions,
which stem from the eighth century AD, had been
discovered in 1889 by the Russian explorer Nikolai
Mikhailovich Yadrinstev (1842-1894). The inscriptions
comprise minor Chinese texts and the oldest known
material in a Turkic language. They were studied in 1891
by the Russian Turkologist Vasilii Radlov (1837-1918)
(Radloff 1894-1899) and deciphered by the Danish
philologist Vilhelm Thomsen (1842-1927) in 1896
(Thomsen 1919-1931). In spite of his deeply-felt
personal beliefs and his commitment to furthering the
cause of Islam, in this instance Agaoglu follows the lead
of European authorities describing the nature of Central
Asian Turkic society.
Prior to writing the Mukaddime to Pontus Meselesi,
Agaoglu Ahmed's multi-part article 'ihtilal Mi, inkilab
Mi' (May-August 1922) displayed a more traditional
appreciation of Islam and its relationship to the
population of Anatolia. On 24 May 1922, Agaoglu's
piece states that a 'great characteristic' ('buyiik sifat') of
the 'Anatolian population' ('Anadolu halki') is its
'fidelity and devotion' ('s[a]dakat ve merbutiyet') to
'sacred institutions' ('mukaddesat'), which he then
defines as 'religion, nation, the caliphate and traditions'
('din, millet, makam~i hilaTet ve ananat') (Agaoglu 1942:
31). Agaoglu clearly refers to Islam when talking about
160
Erimtan
'mukaddesat', as testified by his allusion to the figure of
the caliph. In the same piece he goes on to explain that
'[tjhis struggle [the Milll Mucadele or 'National
Struggle'] possesses a religious character' (Agaoglu
1942: 31-32). In his Mukaddime, Agaoglu's exposition
on the Turks' 'original national religion' fasil mill!
dinleri') as being 'shamanistic' ('§amani') would have
been tantamount to blasphemy in the eyes of conser-
vative believers. The era before the Prophet's appearance
on earth {asr-i saadei) was after all the devr-i cdhiliyye or
the time of ignorance and paganism, when mankind had
not been aware of Allah's will and the rewards of the
afterlife. Agaoglu Ahmed develops a purely Turkist
discourse in his Mukaddime to Pontus Meselesi, devoid
of Islamic sanction or argumentation. In other words,
Agaoglu Ahmed is consistent in pursuing a secularist
definition of Turkish nationhood (fig. 9).
In the following pages of his Mukaddime to Pontus
Meselesi, Agaoglu pursues his relativistic approach to the
Turks' religious history stating that 'later' ('bilahare') the
Turks partially accepted Judaism and Christianity before
converting to Islam. In his view this sequence of
religious affiliations shows that 'Turks have always
behaved in an impartial and tolerant manner ('bi-taraf ve
miisamahakar') towards various religions' (Pontus 2002:
66). This sentence discloses that Agaoglu's secularist
rhetoric was also meant to provide a diachronic argumen-
tation to dispel Greek-Orthodox claims of massacres
perpetrated by Kemalists in the northeastern Black Sea
region. Even though Agaoglu composed the Mukaddime
to discredit Greek-Orthodox claims on Asia Minor, and
to defend Kemalist pretensions to Anatolia as an ancient
Turkish homeland, he does not shy away from praising
the Ottomans in the following pages. Agaoglu was
writing before the abolition of the sultanate (30 October-
2 November 1922), and even treated the Ottoman
centuries as illustrative of the Turks' alleged attitude of
tolerance towards other religions.
His exposition starts off with the legendary originator
of the Ottoman state:
[W]hen Osman Bey founded the new state, he did not
alter the Christians' religious laws in a brave and
noble [fashion] befitting his Turkishness (Pontus
2002: 66).
This succinct sentence simultaneously conveys two
important messages. The Ottomans' Turkish character
(Turklu[k]') is presented as a kind of safeguard of the
tolerance and forbearance bestowed upon the Christian
populations living within the borders of their state. More
importantly, Agaoglu shows that this was no accident, but
had been in place from the very start of the Ottoman
existence, using the terms 'Turkish' and 'Ottoman' as
synonymous. In the Second Constitutional period, the
textbook Kiiguk Tarih-i Osmani (1327/1911) declares
curtly that 'the Turks are the ancestors of the Ottomans'
(Altmay 1327: 3). Agaoglu takes these earlier assertions
of the Ottomans' pedigree to imply that the Ottomans are
Turks. And he goes on to cite further examples of
tolerance exhibited by Ottoman sultans, such as Mehmed
II (1451-1481) and Murad III (1574-1595) (Pontus
2002: 66-67). Agaoglu concludes by outlining the
benefits of the proclamation of the first Ottoman Consti-
tution or Kanun-i Esasi (1876/1293).
Following the proclamation ['tanzim ve ilan'] of the
KanOn-i Esasi, however, all the non-Muslims under
Turkish administration, be they Greek-Orthodox
['Rum'], [or] be they Armenian, [or] be they other
congregations, came into possession of all the consti-
tutional rights of the Muslims (Pontus 2002: 68).
The Mukaddime to Pontus MeselesVs broad historical
introduction ends at this stage. Agaoglu employs the
remainder of his 'Prolegomena' to sketch the devel-
opment of the Greek-Orthodox resistance movement,
first on the Greek mainland and subsequently in the so-
called Pontus region of Anatolia.
161
Anatolian Studies 2008
In the main body of his Mukaddime, Agaogiu Ahmed
Bey is thus able to paint a fully rounded historical
picture of Anatolia as a Turkish homeland. Agaogiu
starts off by positing the Sumerians and primarily the
Hittites as the first Turkish presence in the region. And
he ends his survey with the Ottomans as the last Turkish
state organisation to have previously united Anatolia. In
other words, Agaogiu suggests the existence of an
unbroken continuity of Turkish rule in Anatolia from the
second millennium BC right up to the 20th century with
at first the Ottoman government to be succeeded by the
Kemalist TBMM in Ankara (23 April 1920). As a
corollary to his exposition on Anatolia's inherent
Turkish nature, he also highlights the Turks' remarkable
tolerant attitude towards various religions, particularly
Christianity. His presentation of the first Ottoman
Constitution or Kanun-i Esasi as having ensured a
perfect equality between Muslims and non-Muslims,
could be understood as the moral of his Anatolian
narrative. Agaogiu Ahmed effectively uses the
Ottomans, and particularly their first Kanun-i Esasi, as
the culmination of the development of Turkish history in
Anatolia, prior to the appearance of the Kemalist
movement.
Agaoglu's unspoken claim is that the Hittites (fig.
10) were the true precursors of the Kemalists, as repre-
sentatives of the 'Turks' of Anatolia. Even though the
Kemalist movement was originally conceived as a way
of safeguarding the Ottoman existence, Agaoglu's
Mukaddime to Pontus Meselesi could be seen as one of
the earliest texts to intimate a break between Kemalist
Anatolia and Ottoman Turkey. Mete Tuncay's
contention that the propaganda text Pontus Meselesi was
the 'harbinger' for many of the claims made by the
'History Thesis' remains the only serious yet cursory
attempt to contextualise this sample of the printed
production of the early 1920s. Biisra Behar, in her
succinct study on the development of the 'Official
History' thesis, first published in 1992, remains vague
about the actual sources employed by Turkey's political
and historical elite in their efforts to supply the new
nation state with a suitable past (Behar 1996: 17-85).
The biographer Ufuk Ozcan, on the other hand, is
confident in claiming that Agaogiu played an important
part in the development of the 'History Thesis' in her
monograph (Ozcan 2002: 219-22). Agaogiu Ahmed
Bey was an acknowledged member of the Turk Tarihi
Tetkik Cemiyeti (founded 15 April 1931) and a
contributor to the First Turkish History Congress (2-11
June 1932) with a lecture on the legal history of the
Turks ('iptidat Turk Aile Hukuku ile iptidai Hindo-
Avrupa A0e Hukuku Arasinda Mukayese' in BTTK
1932: VII, 261-69).
Fig. 20. Cuneiform tablet: court record, early second
millenium BC (Ankara, Anadolu Medeniyetleri Muzesi)
(source: http:ilwww.pbase.comldossemanlimagei33314130,
with permission ofD. Osseman)
The fact that Agaogiu abandoned an Islamic rhetoric
in his composition of the Mukaddime to Pontus Meselesi
(September-October 1922), after he had employed Islam
and the Anatolian population's deep commitment to the
cause of the caliphate in his Hakimiyet4 Milliye article
(May-August 1922), seems to point to a severe policy
shift on the part of the Kemalist leadership. The imminent
start of the Lausanne negotiations (20 November 1922)
might have necessitated such a radical redefinition of the
Kemalist constituency. One could argue that Agaoglu's
use of an exclusively Turkist (secularist) discourse in his
Mukaddime was in some ways connected with Wilson's
Fourteen Points. They speak of nations and their right to
'autonomous development'. As a result, the characteri-
sation of the Kemalist constituency as the Muslims of
Anatolia seemed at odds with this insistence on a national
rather than religious understanding of a population unit
(nation). Even more important than the recognition that
Agaogiu seems to have developed a Turkist discourse in
response to perceived political pressure at the negotiation
table in Lausanne, is the fact that a second layer of his
rhetoric is firmly based on the actual geography of
Anatolia, and on its past.
The Mukaddime to Pontus Meselesi did not just
function as a defensive tract, but also offered a viable
alternative to the Islamic rhetoric employed by defenders
of the Ottoman cause. The Kemalist leadership's
162
Erimlan
decision to invest the broad peninsula that lies between
the Black Sea and the Mediterranean Sea (Anatolia) with
a demographic defined in Turkist terms seems to have
been primarily pragmatic in nature. Mustafa Kernal Pa§a
himself addressed this issue to the TBMM in the
following way.
I am neither a believer in a league of all nations of
Islam, nor even in a league of the Turkish peoples . . .
[instead, our] government must be stable with a fixed
policy, grounded in facts, and with one view and one
alone - to safeguard the life and independence of the
nation within its natural frontiers (Armstrong 1932:
218-19).
These words quoted by Harold Armstrong (1891-1943)
indicate the Kemalists' distaste of either an Islamist or
Pan-Turkist philosophy. Mustafa Kemal's interpretation
of the TBMM's strategy as reliant on the 'natural
frontiers' of the 'nation' appears telling in this instance.
The Anatolian resistance movement had been able to
wrest the Anatolian peninsula away from imperialist and
irredentist forces. In effect, they had forged borders
which were 'none other than the armistice line of
October 1918' (Zurcher, 'From'). The northern and
southern edges of the 'liberated' territory were consti-
tuted by water, thus natural in the most obvious sense.
The southeastern perimeter was bordered by the state of
Iraq under British Mandate (25 April 1920) and the
French-dominated federation of four Syrian states
(Damascus, Latakia, Aleppo and Jebel Druze) (June
1922); and the northeastern by the newly-formed
Transcaucasian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic
(Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan) (March 1922). As a
result, the Anatolian territory occupied by the Kemalists
was bounded by either natural or politically and militarily
enforced frontiers that could not be altered. The
Kemalists thus arguably exercised power over a
supposed 'nation within its natural frontiers' resident in
the mainland of the Anatolian peninsula. The Kemalist
leadership subsequently set out to transform the ethni-
cally diverse population of Anatolia into a 'Turkish
nation'. The historian Arnold Toynbee, who had earlier
vilified and denounced the 'Ottoman Government' or
'Turkey' (Toynbee 1917), referred to Turkey as an
'almost homogeneous nation of one nationality and
language and one national ideal' in his decidedly pro-
Kemalist book Turkey (1926), written in conjunction
with Kenneth Kirkwood (1899-1968) (Toynbee,
Kirkwood 1926: 147-48). In contrast to such announce-
ments, late 20th century opinion declared Turkey to be an
ethnic mosaic rather than a uniform nation (Andrews
1992). Erik Jan Zurcher argues that one cannot see the
'Turkish nation as a primordial entity' present in
Anatolia, which emerged after a long Ottoman-Islamic
slumber. Instead, he self-assuredly states that 'Turkey as
we know it is not the inevitable result of a natural devel-
opment but the product of acts of will on the part of
ideologically motivated leaders'. These leaders did not
shirk from applying a policy of 'ethnic cleansing' on a
massive scale to arrive at a supposedly purely Turkish
homeland (Zurcher 1998). The Greek-Orthodox exiles
from the Pontus constitute a telling example of the
Kemalist policy of enforced 'Turkification'.
This exercise in social and ethnic engineering was
supported by Agaoglu Ahmed and his Mukaddime to
Pontus Meselesi. In his text, Agaoglu supplies the
'Turkish nation of Anatolia' with Turanian ancestors
present in the area since the second millennium BC. The
geo-text Pontus Meselesi inscribes the Turks (or the
Hittites) on the Anatolian territory, as an intrinsic part of
its ambience. In effect, in his text Agaoglu transforms
Anatolia into the geo-body of the projected slate of the
Kemalist movement, to borrow the term coined by
Thongchai Winichakul (Winichakul 1994). Winichakul
sees a 'geo-body' as the 'most concrete identification' of
a nation (Winichakul 1994: X). Kemalist intellectuals,
and particularly Agaoglu Ahmed, were under strict
French theoretical influence and thus tried to supply their
understanding of Turkish nationhood with a fully-
developed conceptual foundation. Agaoglu particularly
relied on Kenan's 'Qu'est qu'une nation?' in devising an
alternative, Ottoman-free pedigree for the Anatolian
Turk. It seems that Agaoglu took Renan's phrase that a
nation holds 'the possession in common of a rich legacy
of remembrances' to apply directly to the relationship
between the Anatolian Turks and the widespread Hittite
remains throughout Anatolia. One could argue that he
regarded Hittite artefacts as constituting a tangible
'legacy' to the Anatolian Turks. In addition, the fact that
his mentors, Darmesteter and Renan, both agreed that
nationalism was not contingent upon racial or ethnic
considerations, but rather on a 'spiritual principle' seems
to have persuaded Agaoglu that his appreciation of
prehistoric Anatolia was conceptually sound. In early
20th century Anatolia, Kemalists applied a policy of
ethnic cleansing in conjunction with an 'enforced' Turki-
fication as a means of constructing a homogeneous
nation state called Turkiye (or Turkey). In his aptly-titled
Turklesdirme or 'Turkification' (1928), the propagandist
Tekin Alp (1883-1961) declares that Agaoglu provides
the best definition of the concept of nationalism
describing 'a nation' as a 'state of mind' or 'mentality'
('milliyet demek zihniyet demekdir') (Alp 1928: 46).
Tekin Alp's appreciation of Agaoglu's understanding of
nationalism recalls Darmesteter and Renan.
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Anatolian Studies 2008
Tekin Alp himself propagates the idea of a policy of
assimilation to transform non-Turks into Turks
('intibak'), and in order for this drastic application of
social engineering to succeed he refers to Ziya Gokalp to
indicate that 'culture and education' ('terbiye') should be
the main factors in bringing about a complete 'Turkifi-
cation' (Alp 1928: 34-45). According to Zurcher, the
wholesale adoption of this policy led to the 'forced
assimilation of the 30 percent or so [of the population]
which did not have Turkish as its mother tongue'
(Zurcher, 'From'). Agaoglu approaches the population
of ancient Anatolia in much the same way. As his
Turkism was not racially or ethnically inspired, he
declares that the Hittites who had entered Anatolia at the
end of the third millennium B€ were Turks as they had
appropriated the 'state of mind' of Anatolia. In the
Mukaddime to Pontus Meselesi the early 20th century
Turkish geo-body thus constitutes the abstract quality of
Turkluk (Turkishness) in the past. One could argue that
Agaoglu regards the Hittites as Turks by mere virtue of
the fact that the 20th century population of Anatolia was
supposed to be Turkish. He justifies his reverse logic by
means of references to numerous 19th century European
scholars whose usage of the terms 'Turan' and
'Turanian' seemed to prefigure the Kemalist appreciation
of Anatolia.
In a broadly-speaking Ottoman intellectual context,
Agaoglu's use of 'Turanh' necessarily pointed to Ziya
Gokalp's theories, which all but reinforced his reverse
logic. In the article 'inkilapcilik ve Muhafazakarlik',
published on 17 May 1339/1923 when the negotiations at
Lausanne were still under way, Gdkalp seems to have
adopted Agaoglu's reverse logic with regard to the
Hittites and various other ancient peoples (Gokalp 1980:
38™42). Taking his well-known distinction between a
national 'hars' ('culture') and an international
'medeniyet' ('civilisation') as his starting-point, Gokalp
characterises the Ottomans as purely Oriental ('sark');
and the new Turkey as Western ('garb') through the
Kemalists' adoption of European civilisation while
safeguarding Turkish and Islamic culture (Gokalp 1980:
39). Following this assertion, Gokalp states that
European civilisation is the continuation ('devam') of the
ancient ('kadim') Mediterranean civilisation (Gokalp
1980: 40). And following a similar kind of reverse logic,
he claims that '[t]he first inhabitants of western Asia
were the Turks', thus insinuating that current European
civilisation is nothing but the outcome of ancient Turkish
ingenuity. Ziya Gokalp provides a list of ancient peoples
with Turanian roots ('Turani'), such as the Sumerians, the
Alanians, the Scythians and, significantly, the Hittites
(Gokalp 1980:40-41). In other words, following the end
of the War of Independence, Ziya Gokalp seemed to have
abandoned his earlier purely theoretical appreciation of
the land of Turan. Presumably influenced by Agaoglu
Ahmed's insights, he also regarded such ancient residents
of Anatolia as the Hittites as Turanian if not simply as
Turkish in an ethnical or racial sense.
Agaoglu Ahmed's reliance on Renan and
Darmesteter's views led to his application of the
Kemalist policy of imposing Turkish homogeneity to
Anatolia's past. His unwarranted trust in the 19th
century European use of the words 'Turan' and
'Turanian' turned the Hittites into prehistoric Turks who
had founded a strong state with imperial pretensions in
the second millennium BC. The fact that Ziya Gokalp
had also become susceptible to Agaoglu's fanciful claims
relating to the Hittites, and other prehistoric peoples,
discloses the weight carried by his Mukaddime to Pontus
Meselesi in post-Lausanne Turkey. After the successful
conclusion of the treaty on 24 July 1923, the Kemalist
leadership appeared divided about the course to follow.
Mustafa Kemal himself first mentioned the idea of a
'republic' as the frame for a Turkish nation state under
his tutelage on 27 September 1923, during an interview
with the correspondent of the liberal Viennese daily Neue
Freie Presse (Mango 2002: 391-92). Zurcher claims
that 'the Turkish nationalist discourse [was] introduced in
1923 without any argumentation or discussion of its
content as something ... entirely self-evident' ( Zurcher,
'Ottoman Sources': 7). The social scientist ibrahim
Bahadir agrees with Zurcher's argument, and declares
that Mustafa Kemal changed his attitude to the issue of
religion as defining the make up of his constituency in
1923. Bahadir claims that, after the conclusion of the
Lausanne Treaty, Turkish nationalism became the crucial
component in the description of Anatolia's population
(Bahadir 2001:142). in contrast to this statement, a look
at the book Pontus Meselesi and its impact on the intel-
lectuals associated with the Kemalist movement shows
that a 'Turkish nationalist discourse' was being
developed in Kemalist circles from approximately
September-October 1922. TheTurkist claims developed
by Agaoglu seem to have prepared the intellectual ground
for the creation of the Republic of Turkey as a Turkish
homeland, in the past as well as in the present.
On 29 October 1923, the TBMM declared the
republic to be Turkey's form of government. In
Zurcher's view, this was 'really the result of a coup d'etat
by a radical wing within the movement for the defence of
national rights led by Mustafa Kemal Pasha' (Zurcher
1998). Subsequently, the new state's leadership began
the construction of a Turkish homeland on the peninsula
between the Black Sea and the Mediterranean Sea
(Anatolia) in earnest through its active propaganda
efforts and social engineering. In the early years of the
164
Erimtan
Republic, Agaoglu Ahmed Bey's contention that the
Hittites had constituted the earliest Turkish presence in
Anatolia was not enthusiastically received. At the time,
the Maarif VekaTeti (Ministry of Education), founded in
1923, published Dr Riza Nur's (1879-1942) massive
Turk Tarihi (12 volumes) (Nur 1242-1244). The third
volume deals solely with the history of Turkey (Turkiye
Tarihi'), a topic which receives a rather idiosyncratic
interpretation at his hands (Nur 1242-1244; III,
1342/1924). Riza Nur regards the Seljuks and the
Ottomans as one dynastic continuum, and he even
displays his Pan-Turkist proclivities by means of the
declaration that the original Seljuk state had stretched
from China to the Mediterranean, and from the Aegean to
the Black Sea (Nur 1242-1244: III, 58). Rather than
looking at ancient peoples resident in Anatolia, Riza Nur
sees the Republic's dynastic predecessors as the origi-
nators of the concept of a Turkish state on Anatolian soil.
[The Sultanate of Rum]... is the essence of the state
that has continued up to today under the name of
Turkey. In other words, the nation is still the same
nation, the state is still the same state (Nur 1242™
1244: HI, 57-58).
Nur sees the republican government under its first
president, Gazi Mustafa Kemal (1923-1938), as the
rightful heir to the Ottoman-Seljuk throne.
The Republic's educational establishment did clearly
not adhere to Agaoglu's discovery of the Anatolian
Turks' original forebears. Schools in early Republican
Turkey received a revised version of the multi-volume
history textbook used under the previous Ottoman
administration, the Buyiik Tarih-i Umumi. The revised
edition received the seemingly simpler title Umumi Tarih
(UT 1926). The sections dealing with the ancient Near
East consider the civilisations of Egypt, Assyria and
Chaldaea, the Phoenicians, the Hittites, the Iranians and
the Hebrews (UT 1926:5-106). With regard to 'Turkey',
the textbook starts out with the contention that the
Hittites, whom the book refers to as Eti in this revised
version, had migrated into Anatolia from Asia.
Following this introductory statement about their
migration into Anatolia, the textbook adds the following
telling statement: 'ffjheir origins have till now been
assumed ['zann'] to be Turanian' (UT 1926: 70). The
UmumiTarih explains that this surmise ('zann') had been
current as a result of the fact that the Hittite script had at
the time been unintelligible. But now that this scientific
hiatus has been partially bridged (an obvious reference to
the work done by Hrozny) the textbook self-assuredly
proclaims that the Hittites did not belong to the Turanian
race (Turan irkina mensub olmadiklan anlagildi') (UT
1926: 70). The Umumi Tarih was even reprinted in 1928
(UT 1928). As a result, Agaoglu Ahmed Bey's claim that
the Hittites were the real forebears of the Republic of
Turkey did not seem to have wide currency in the course
of the new state's first decade.
As outlined in the first part of this article, in 1930 the
publication of Turk Tarihinin Ana Hatlari marked a
dramatic change in the official perception of the
Anatolian Turks' past. In the period preceding the
official proclamation of the 'History Thesis', the
Kemalist government had been occupied with the imple-
mentation of a whole range of Westernising measures
(the so-called inkilab). In the period between 4 March
1925 and 4 March 1929, the Takrir-i Siikun Kanunu
('Law of the Maintenance of Order') was in effect. This
meant that Turkey was governed by an emergency legis-
lation during these four years (Zurcher, 'From'). The
contemporary Halide Edib [Adivar], who had also taken
part in the War of Independence (Adivar 1928), says that
the 'Law of Maintenance of Order . . . re-establish[ed]
Revolutionary tribunals, with absolute power to arrest
and execute anyone suspected of endangering the public
order' (Adivar 1930: 220). These so-called 'Revolu-
tionary tribunals' or istiklal Mahkemeleri had originally
been legally founded on 26 September 1920, in the
midst of the ongoing war against foreign occupiers
(Aybars 1975). In those four years the most drastic
reforms were introduced by the government. These
reforms were supposed to transform Turkey into a new
country, into a new European nation. Halide Edib
further matter-of-factly characterises the Kemalist state
during these years as the 'Turkish dictatorship' (Adivar
1930: 258). These drastic reforms, such as the abolition
of the caliphate and the Islamic §eriat (3 March 1924)
and its replacement by the Turk Medeni Kanunu, based
on the Swiss Code Civil (4 October 1926), and the intro-
duction of a new Latin-based alphabet (1 November
1928), were carried through by means of 'terrorist
methods', as phrased by Halide Edib (Adivar 1930:
223). She goes on to say that '[p]opular opposition to
any measure of which the army approved ... would have
been useless' (Adivar 1930: 234).
These drastic measures ensured that the Anatolian
Turks were cut off from their own past by the end of the
1920s. Halide Edib says markedly that '[t]he continuity
of Turkish culture has been abruptly broken' as a result of
the inkilab reforms.
Now the graver danger of being cut away from the
Turkish culture of the past is looming on the horizon.
The new generation rising within the next 20 years
will be as strangers in the country and to its past
(Adivar 1930: 235).
165
Anatolian Studies 2008
The Kemalist one-party state did seem to have such a
development in mind. Agaoglu Ahmed Bey's presen-
tation of an alternative Anatolian past in 1922 gave the
Kemalist leadership the opportunity to rewrite the history
of the Anatolian Muslims or Turks once the state had
been firmly established and the population thoroughly
pacified.
The Kemalist leadership pushed the Ottomans to the
margins of society, as predecessors tainted by their
association with Islam as a non-nationalist and instead
universalis! creed. The ideological position of Kemalism
advocated an ostensibly secularist value system, and
presented the Anatolian Turks with a territorially based
form of nationalism throughout the 1920s. The author-
ities implied that Turkish nationalism was centred on-the
mainland of Anatolia. Agaoglu Ahmed Bey's propa-
ganda tract Pontus Meselesi contained the nucleus of the
'History Thesis' to be developed in the course of the
1930s. According to Soner Cagaptay, the 1930s,
however, saw the appearance of a racially inspired
nationalism in Turkey, a form of nationalism that went in
tandem with the outrageous claims of the 'History
Thesis' which transformed the Turks into the 'race' (irk)
at the root of human civilisation and language (Cagaptay
2004: 86-101). The authorities regarded the Hittites as a
new race which had entered Anatolia. These prehistoric
immigrants formed a new population of Turkish stock
which supplanted the local, less-developed inhabitants of
Asia Minor.3
On a purely conceptual level, removed from the
viscidities of human relations, Kemalist nationalism
denoted, and still denotes today, a different under-
standing of Turkish nationality or TiXrkliXk, formally
grounded in the concept of ius solis. Kemalist nation-
alism holds, in theory, that every citizen of the state of
Turkey, resident within its borders is a Turk' (or a
Turkish citizen) (Yegen Summer 2002: 200-17). The
88th Article of the Republic's first Constitution (Tegkilat-
i Esasiye Kanunu), accepted on 20 April 1340/1924,
leaves no doubt about this.
The name Turk, as a political term, shall be under-
stood to include all citizens of the Turkish Republic,
without distinction of, or reference to, race or religion
(Earle 1925: 98).
3 Even though Cagaptay appears correct in declaring the 1930s
to have been the decade when racial theories flourished
throughout Europe and in Turkey, Ziya G6kalp's above-cited
'InkilapcHik ve Muhafazakarhk' already seemed to point to a
racial bias as early as May 1923 (Gokalp 1980).
This legal attitude is the outcome of the state's appropri-
ation of Ziya Gokalp's understanding of Turkism as
primarily cultural in nature. In fact, this appreciation of
Turkism appears very close to the ideological position of
Ottomanism, propagated in the Ottoman Constitution, or
Kanun-i Esasi, of 1876. The Constitution's 8th Article
declares that,
All subjects of the empire are called Ottomans,
without distinction whatever faith they profess; the
status of an Ottoman is acquired and lost according to
conditions specified by law (Gengkaya 1876; see
also Ubicini 1877: 23).
In other words, people living within the Ottoman
borders were deemed Ottoman citizens or Ottomans
irrespective of ethnic background or religious creed. In
the Republic of Turkey the issue of religion is also
officially ignored. The Treaty of Lausanne deals only
curtly with the issue of minorities or 'non-Moslem
nationals of Turkey' (Earle 1925: 83). The state of
Turkey assumed that minorities would be absorbed into
the mainstream Turkish population as fellow-citizens or
fellow-Turks with equal rights and duties. And,
officially Islam was shunned as tantamount to professing
allegiance to the Ottoman sultan-caliph. Nevertheless,
on a grass-roots level every Turk was also expected to be
a Muslim. In other words, in conjunction with its
geographical limitations, Turkish nationalism also
adhered to a religious categorisation as the main deter-
minant in ascribing nationality to its citizens. This
situation remains valid till today. The academic and
commentator Ahmet insel, writing in the daily Radikal,
argues that Islam ('Muslumanhk') is one of the 'main
arteries' which 'nurture' nationalism in Turkey. He
further remarks that the general population of Turkey
has always based its sense of personal identification and
social coherence on religious ('dini aidiyet') rather than
ethnic factors. And reasons that such a situation persists
today as well (insel 2005). The fact that the newly-
established Republic, after abolishing the caliphate in
1924, set up a Directorate of Religious Affairs (Diyanet
i§leri Reisligi) on 3 March (Law No. 429) to administer
the nation state's spiritual needs appears significant
(Jiischke 1966: 181, Diyanet).
This view of Turkish nationalism in the Republic of
Turkey parallels the development of Ottomanism in the
early 20th century. Following the Balkan Wars (1912™
1913), the Ottomans lost most of their territory in
Europe, which led to more waves of Muslim migrants
fleeing into Anatolia. As a result, the Unionist under-
standing of Ottomanism or Ottoman citizenship became
contingent upon Islam. Zurcher laconically establishes
166
Erimtan
that the 'vast majority [of the Ottomans], certainly of
the Unionists . . . subscribed to a kind of Ottoman
Muslim nationalism' following the Balkan Wars
(Ziircher, 'From'; 2000/2002: 150-79). As already
mentioned, Arnold Toynbee had in 1917 pointed to the
Ottoman government policy of settling Muslim
'Mouhadjirs' in Anatolia, and he at the time even
predicted that 'they [were] probably destined to be
absorbed' into the mainstream of the Muslim population
of Anatolia (Toynbee 1917: 12). The Ottoman
government's willingness to accommodate a heightened
Muslim demographic definition of its territories even
seems to have entered into the stipulations of the Treaty
of Constantinople (29 September 1913), which brought
an end to the Second Balkan War (16 June-18 July
1913). The first of the added Protocols (No. 1) specifies
'the optional and mutual exchange of Bulgarian and
Moslem populations'. In spite of the supposed
'optional' nature of the exchange, the Protocol further
adds that the 'exchange shall take place by entire
villages' (Treaty 1913: 37). In addition, the Unionists
also seem to have adopted a plan to deport the Greek-
Orthodox population of Anatolia (Pentzopoulos 1962:
55-56). The then Greek prime minister, Venizelos
(1910-1915), 'was [thus] forced to accept' an Ottoman
proposal which envisioned the 'exchange of the [Greek-
Orthodox] rural population of the Smyrna region
against the Moslem minority of Macedonia'. The
outbreak of the First World War in 1914 prevented the
realisation of this scheme (Pentzopoulos 1962: 56). In
his earlier-quoted text of 1917, Toynbee argues that the
'Armenian "Deportations", which followed Turkey's
intervention in the war' were also effected 'under the
flag of religion' (Toynbee 1917: 28-29). The Unionists
thus seem to have been motivated primarily by their
espousal of a kind of Muslim Ottomanism, as a way of
safeguarding the continued existence of the Empire
unified under the aegis of the sultan-caliph, Mehmed V
[Resad] (1909-1918).
The Kemalist construction of Turkish nationalism or
nationhood became equally reliant on the numerous
Muslim immigrants now living in Anatolia, as a result of
the influx of the 'Mouhadjirs' and the Unionist policy of
Muslim settlement (McCarthy 1996; Diindar 2001).
Fuat Diindar, speaking with the journalist Talin Suciyan
on 16 April 2006, stated that the Unionists 'left a very
"adequate" population composition to Mustafa KemaF
and the Republican authorities. Diindar elaborated that
'a more harmonious population composition was
created' as a result of the Unionists' adoption of Muslim
Ottomanism in their attempt to forge a homogeneous
territorial unit in Anatolia (Diindar 2001). The further
development of nationalism in Turkey, however, moved
away from a purely territorial understanding of the
notion of TurkliXk, Already in the above-quoted 88th
Article of the Turkish Constitution (1924) an indication
of this evolution seems prefigured: '[ejvery child born in
Turkey, or in a foreign land of a Turkish father ... is a
Turk' (Earle 1925: 98). This confusion paved the way
for the conceptual construct of Turkish nationalism
becoming subject to racial (ethnic nationalism) rather
than cultural factors (civic nationalism). From adhering
to the French model of nationalism, contingent upon a
territorial argumentation (ius solis), Turkish nationalism
evolved into German-style nationhood based on ethnic
homogeneity (ius sanguinis) during the 1930s and 1940s
(Poulton 1997).
The Republican leadership's attempt to disconnect
the Turkish citizens from their Ottoman past led to an
official search for an alternate historical reality that was
supposed to bolster the alleged 'nationalist' pride of the
Anatolian population. Based on Agaoglu Ahmed's
misguided claims, the TTK and other proponents of the
'History Thesis' were hard at work to establish the
Hittites as worthy Anatolian forebears of the Republic
of Turkey throughout the 1930s and 1940s. Due to the
development of racial theories in the 1930s, the Hittite
Empire as the true forebear of the Republic of Turkey
became a prehistoric ethnically Turkish state organi-
sation in the minds of Turkey's leadership and its wider
population. The Turk Tarihinin Ana Hatlan signifi-
cantly speaks about the 'Turkish race' ('Turk irkf), and
how this race had civilised the rest of humanity in the
course of their migrations. The Hittites, as an ethnic
sub-group of the wider Turkish race, had migrated to
Anatolia where they set up the earliest Turkish state
structure in an Anatolian context (TTAH 1931: 8-9).
The active archaeological programme propagated by
the Turk Tarih Kurumu throughout the 1930s and 1940s
supported and sustained the official belief that
Anatolia's prehistory had been a purely Turkish affair, a
conviction that can still boast its proponents today.
These rather fanciful ideas about the nature of prehis-
toric Anatolia and its population originate in Agaoglu
Ahmed's contribution to the propaganda efforts of the
provisional Ankara government in its concern to create
a Turkish homeland in early 20th century Anatolia, a
homeland which was unencumbered by the presence of
either ethnic or religious minorities. Anatolia's present
was supposed to be purely Turkish, and similarly, the
Republican leadership also perceived Anatolia's past as
a solely Turkish entity. The ethnically divergent
Muslim population of the Anatolian peninsula received
a new Turkish identity in the 1920s that was to form the
basis of Republican citizenship throughout the 1930s
and beyond.
167
Anatolian Studies 2008
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