Источниковедение и историография Турции
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debates never culminate, the historical perspective that accords most with the agenda of
newly emerging political power predominates over the others. To examine this argument,
two important turning points in the recent history of Turkey can be pointed out.
The 1923 Revolution had incited its own version of history that fortified the hinges
of its existence and its legitimacy. This version that locates itself within amodernization
narrative with an overemphasis on the unprecedented rupture represented by 1923 from
the dark Ottoman ages, has maintained its power as the official history until recent
times despite the fact that it has received serious critiques from liberal and conservative
historians and that it has undergone some modifications from the 1940s onwards.
Today, with the change in the political climate that the country has been witnessing
for more than a decade, a new version of historiography becomes predominant. In
simple terms, this new version synthesizes liberal conceptual and theoretical repertoire
with the myths and Ottoman nostalgia of the conservative historiography. In addition,
just like the Kemalist historiography that had established itself on the counter narrative
of the Ottoman past, new liberal-conservative historiography establishes itself on the
counter narrative of the republican elite. This counter narrative gains integrity with the
accompaniment of centre-periphery approach and reinterpretation of the significant
facts and affairs of the Early Republican era that has a certain place in the collective
memory of the society like the Dersim Rebellion of 1937.
In this study, apart from analyzing the premises and arguments of this newly
dominant historiography through basic works of historians, debates in the periodicals
and conferences, if this new historiography forms the new official history discourse
of Turkey will be also examined.
Süleyman Demrici (Erciyes University, Kayseri, Turkey
)
The State of Ottoman Historiography in Modern Turkey:
Some Notes on the Foundation of the Ottoman Empire and
Gazi/Gaza Concepts
Since the beginning of the 20
th
century, conflicting arguments have been made
about the origins, development and characteristics of the Ottoman Empire, which
started as a small border country. In his “Foundation of Ottoman Empire”, published
in 1916, Herbert Adams Gibbons claims that the state is built by mixed nation of
people from Turkish pagan and Greek Christian roots. According to Gibbons, roots
of the Ottoman Empire should be searched referring to the European elements rather
than Asian Turkish ones.
In 1935, M. Fuat Köprülü contradicted Gibbons by claiming that Ottoman
Empire mainly belongs to Turkish and Muslim elements. In 1937, Paul Wittek rejects
Köprülü’s claim about Ottomans’connection to Oguz Kayı tribe.Wittek argues that the
foundations of the empire would not base on a tribe.According to him, this foundation
bases on the concept of
Gaza
, or the holy war against the neighboring Christian world.
