Источниковедение и историография Турции
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tax were abolished even before implementation in Basra, Mosul and Baghdad as a
sign of the state’s silence in this tribal region.
Kaan Durukan (İstanbul, Turkey)
The Course of Historiography in Turkey at the Turn
of the 21st Century
The paper in question is intended to provide the audience with a general,
conceptual frame of history writing in Turkey. In the first place, the significance of
four constituents, four parameters which determined the nature of historiography
in Turkey in the course of the twentieth century (namely the definition of an ethno-
national identity, the rôle of religion in a drastically changing socio-cultural milieu,
the self-positioning of the newly-founded Republic before the East-West dichotomy
and the legacy of an imperial past) will be underlined. Then, some remarkable
characteristics of the main trends such as Turkish History Thesis of the 1930s and,
to a certain extent 1940s, modes of production debate of the 1960s and 1970s, the
rise of Turkish-Islamic Synthesis after the 1980s will be briefly discussed.
Erinç Erdal (Bülent Ecevit University, Zonguldak, Turkey)
Official History in Transformation of the Early Turkish
Republic: Changes and Continuities in 1940s
This research aims to present the changes and continuities in the formation of the
official history and its dissemination through education, with particular emphasis to his-
tory textbooks used in high schools during İnönü Era of the Early Turkish Republic.
For the Turkish Republic the 1930s was a time span when the core principles
of the regime were formulized to ensure that they were publicly comprehended and
internalized.Accordingly, formal and informal educational institutions were established
for the dissemination of these principles, i. e. the official ideology.Among them, Turkish
History Association played an important role in formulation of official history called
as
Turkish History Thesis
and preparation of the history textbooks in line with it which
was among the major means to install Turkish identity and a collective memory to the
nation. In this respect, the issue of teaching history to the new generation which was
rewritten according to the official perspective became critical for the ruling elite.
On the other hand, Turkey experienced a structural transformation in the 1940s.
Namely, the years of İsmet İnönü’s presidency was the time when the regime was
consolidated and intoleration to opposing views was decreased. This also affected
the official perception of history. The clear break from recent past softened and it
was reconciled with the modernization process of Ottoman-Turkish history through
paying attention to continuities.
