Historical Revisionism vs. Conspiracy TH PDF

Journal of Balkan and Near Eastern Studies
ISSN: 1944-8953 (Print) 1944-8961 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/cjsb20
Historical Revisionism vs. Conspiracy Theories:

Transformations of Turkish Historical Scholarship
and Conspiracy Theories as a Constitutive Element
in Transforming Turkish Nationalism
Doğan Gürpinar
To cite this article: Doğan Gürpinar (2013) Historical Revisionism vs. Conspiracy Theories:
Transformations of Turkish Historical Scholarship and Conspiracy Theories as a Constitutive
Element in Transforming Turkish Nationalism, Journal of Balkan and Near Eastern Studies,
15:4, 412-433, DOI: 10.1080/19448953.2013.844588
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/19448953.2013.844588
Published online: 14 Nov 2013.
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Download by: [Doğan Gürpinar] Date: 01 July 2016, At: 09:39

Journal of Balkan and Near Eastern Studies, 2013
Vol. 15, No. 4, 412–433, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/19448953.2013.844588
Historical Revisionism vs. Conspiracy

Theories: Transformations of Turkish
Historical Scholarship and Conspiracy
Theories as a Constitutive Element in
Transforming Turkish Nationalism
Doğan Gürpinar
Downloaded by [Doan Gürpinar] at 09:39 01 July 2016
This paper discusses the surge of neo-nationalism and conspiratorial thinking in tandem
with the rise of the Turkish revisionist historiography highly critical of Turkish
nationalism and its legacy in the 20th century in the 2000s. The paper also examines the
demonization of these historiographical deviations by proponents of Kemalist nation-
statism. Because these revisionists challenged nation-statist assumptions, such as the
innocence of the Turkish nation and its self-victimization, their academic output was
perceived as blasphemy against the common values of Turkish society, further fomenting
neo-nationalist sentiment. Thus, the paper argues that the genesis of a revisionist
historiography and the rising popularity of conspiracy theories among the public cannot
be disassociated from each other.1
Sevres vs. Lausanne: The ‘Historical Setting’ of the Conspiracy Theories and the
Rise of Turkish Neo-nationalism
In the 2000s, the meteoric rise of the popularity of conspiracy theories in Turkey was
observed, especially among the educated upper middle classes,2 as a reaction to the
reformist Islamist JDP’s (Justice and Development Party/AKP in Turkish) coming to
power in Turkey in 2002, which was a major blow to them.3 These conspiracy theories
delivered their adherents with a ‘political kit’. They provided satisfactory and
comprehensive answers to the quandaries of domestic and international politics and
geopolitics, and imbued those who adhered to them with self-confidence in arguing
politics. In this paper, it will be argued that the conspiracy theories in circulation in
the 2000s are not just manifestations of a transforming Turkish nationalism in
general and a Kemalist nationalism in particular. On the contrary, they became the
building blocks and constructors of Turkish neo-nationalism (ulusalcılık),
refashioning it as an encompassing, uncompromising hard-line ideology, less
q 2013 Taylor & Francis

Historical Revisionism vs. Conspiracy Theories 413
tolerant of diversity in Turkey. They became active agents in the moulding of hard-
line secular nationalism rather than being its symptoms and manifestations in an age
in which knowledge is produced and reproduced anonymously and collectively via
cyberspace, websites, blogs, twitters and forwarded mails which disseminate
conspiracy theories and alternative political and historical perspectives, thereby
establishing their own reality and ‘regime of truth’.
In this decade, dozens of theories regarding secret plots by the rulers of the world
to dismember Turkey were circulated among websites, blogs, Internet mailing groups
and Facebook, as well as in the popular press and on TV channels. In this cultural
environment, Sözcü, a newspaper with meagre financial means and a proponent of
belligerent hard-line Kemalist and xenophobic views, espoused a conspiratorial
vision of world politics, in which the European Union (EU) and the USA are depicted
as conspiring with the ruling reformist Islamist JDP government. It reached a daily
circulation of 200,000 by 2010 and 300,000 by 2012, making it the fourth biggest
newspaper in circulation figures, and its success was mainly due to its hostile stance
against the JDP government and the West.4 Many public opinion leaders who are well
regarded, especially by the upper middle class, and whose books reached high
circulation numbers emerged as promoters of these conspiracy theories. Among these
leaders are leftists such as Attila İlhan, Soner Yalc ın, Erol Manisalı and Yalc ın Küc ük.
Numerous eccentric but popular conspiratorial themes were employed and exploited
exhaustively, such as Christian missionary activity in Turkey,5 alleged Greek claims in
the Eastern Black Sea (Pontus),6 Israeli territorial claims in south-east Turkey,7 the
ambitions of the ecumenical Greek patriarchy in Istanbul8 and the Vatican’s intrigues
on Turkey.9
Even more strikingly, this vision became popular especially among the upper
middle class because of its hostility to the governing reformist and Islamist JDP.
Although the themes of these conspiracy theories vary, the underlying plot of these
theories was fixed. The overarching assumption stipulates that the ruling, moderate
Islamist JDP was in the service of Western imperialists, who are committed to
dismember and destroy Turkey. Simultaneously, the JDP was implementing its
hidden agenda to Islamize Turkey. For those who subscribed to these conspiracy
theories, these two processes complemented each other. While the secular nationalists
were staunch defenders of the republic, the Islamists entertained no loyalty to the
republic, and hence would be indifferent to, if not pleased by, the collapse of the
republic at the hands of its enemies. Moreover, the minute liberal intelligentsia
encouraged this process due to their aversion to the nationally minded Kemalist
establishment.10 It is ironic that as the JDP government pursued a pro-EU line, the
upper middle classes became Euro-sceptics,11 which could hardly have been imagined
a few decades ago.
Conspiracy theories themselves may be hollow and absurd, but the fact that a
considerable portion of people, including the well educated, believe in them makes it
a salient subject to study. For example, the conspiratorial (and anti-Semitic) books of
the former leftist Soner Yalc ın are widely read among the upper middle classes. His
two books arguing that Sabbatians (Jewish converts to Islam in the 17th century)
played a major role in the history of modern Turkey sold more than 250,000 copies
414 Doğan Gürpinar
(not taking into account the tens of thousands of pirated copies) and became an
iconic book.12 The blatantly anti-Semitic, anti-JDP trilogy of Ergün Poyraz, who was
later detained for being a member of the illegal anti-JDP organization ‘Ergenekon’
and proven to be on the payroll of military intelligence, were bestsellers among the
upper middle classes.13 A considerable number of the bestselling books read by the
well educated are conspiracy theory books depicting Turkish politics as an eternal
struggle of the ‘good people’ endeavouring to defend the Turkish nation-state against
the evil forces in alliance against the republic. This alliance consisted of Islamists,
liberals, leftists, Jews and the West (the EU and the USA). The themes of this
implausible alliance are mostly not local artefacts but exports from the international
conspiracy theory industry. They resemble Nazi conspiracy theories, Soviet
conspiracy theories and American conspiracy theories in certain aspects.14 This
new allure to conspiracy theories is also partially a symptom of the rapid global
increase in conspiracy theories. Neo-nationalism and its conspiratorial vision overlap
to a considerable extent with the conspiratorial visions of the Tea Party Movement
and its belief that the American republic is being encroached upon by an array of
conspiring enemies.15 The Turkish secular nationalist conspiracy theories should be
examined within a structuralist analysis that shows the components of the structure
(conspiracy theory) as fixed, regardless of the ideological predispositions and cultural
proclivities of the proponents of the conspiracy theories. However, they also bear
innovative characteristics and are unique constructions derived from the reservoir of
the official historiography of the Kemalist republic.
The assumption that the ‘whole world is against us’ emerged as the principal tenet
of Turkish neo-nationalism (ulusalcılık),16 superseding conventional images of
singular national foes like Greeks, Arabs and Armenians. This became the dominant
discourse of the Turkish neo-nationalism adhered to by the secular middle classes.
Greeks or Armenians were no longer perceived as yearning to dismember Turkey; the
entire world is planning to eradicate the Turkish nation-state.17 Greeks and
Armenians may only be hit men manipulated by greater global forces. The EU and the
USA began to be perceived as the foremost enemies of Turkey (also among the
educated upper middle classes) as Greece, the traditional enemy, began to be
perceived as an unlikely foe and an insignificant threat. According to a survey
conducted in 2010, 37.5 per cent of the ‘educated’ Turks regarded the USA as an
enemy. The other ‘perceived enemies’ were as follows: Armenia (10.9 per cent), Israel
(10.6 per cent) and Greece (6.1 per cent).18 According to another survey, 46 per cent
of the respondents ‘tend to agree’ with the statement, ‘A crusader spirit shapes the
character of European politics towards Turkey.’19
Although the plot as formulated by the neo-nationalist leadership was persuasive
enough in the eyes of its true believers, it had to be historically proven and
historicized. ‘Proving it historically’ would also make it scientifically sound and
irrefutable. In a sense, the conspiracy theories present themselves as rational
inductions and almost iron laws of history. Thus, numerous books undertook this
mission, examined late Ottoman and early 20th-century Turkish history along these
lines, and ‘disclosed secrets’. Many of these books became commercial successes.
Conspiracy theories, the conspiratorial historiography in circulation, and the themes
employed in these conspiracy theories and conspiratorial historiography in the 2000s

are legion. However, the plot remains the same. They advance the official Kemalist
historiography and radicalize it.20 The sharp dichotomy established between the
staunch defenders of the secular Turkish republic and its enemies within and abroad
constitutes the thrust and the underlining paradigm of all these ‘nationalized’
conspiracy theories. The second premise of all these conspiracy theories assumes
close cooperation and coordination between the co-conspiring enemies within and
enemies abroad, all collaborating to destroy the secular Turkish republic.
The themes, premises and assumptions of these conspiracy theories are
concomitantly very novel and age-old. These conspiracy theories derive from the
vocabulary and grammar of the founding nationalist ideology of the secular Turkish
republic. Nevertheless, their extremism, popularity, and exploitation of these
emotionally-laden historical references are novel and unprecedented.21
The ‘Sabbatian craze’ of the 2000s attests to this development very well. Sabbatians
are the descendants of those who converted to Islam from Judaism following the
conversion of Sabbatai Sevi, the Jewish mystic and self-styled messiah of the 17th
century. The Sabbatians lived as a closed community in Salonika before their
expulsion during the Balkan Wars.22 Anti-Sabbatianism had traditionally been a
theme exploited predominantly by Islamists. Sabbatians were targeted as false
Muslims pursuing a hidden agenda. Islamists also tacitly (and falsely) implied that
Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, who was born in Salonika, was a Sabbatian and that the
Westernization of Turkey was a Sabbatian plot aimed at eliminating Islam from
Turkish culture. By destroying Islam, the cement of Turkishness, it would be possible
to destroy Turkey itself.23 The Sabbatian theme was rediscovered (in the secular
public sphere) in the 1990s. Beginning from the early 2000s, two leftists, Yalc ın Küc ük
and Soner Yalc ın, played a prominent role in popularizing the issue of Sabbatianism
in the secular milieu. They advanced a conspiratorial interpretation of the history of
the Turkish republic24 and stigmatized Sabbatians and Jews.
These conspiracy theories also offered ‘history in a nutshell’. They arise from a very
particular interpretation of the course of modern Turkish history. In brief, this
narrative posits the foundation of the republic in 1923 in tandem with the Treaty of
Lausanne signed in 1923 and the Sevres Treaty signed by the Ottoman government in
Istanbul in 1920 (but not recognized by the National Movement in Ankara) as the
two antagonistic, decisive moments of modern Turkish history.25 The Treaty of
Lausanne was regarded as sacrosanct by secular nationalists because it resulted in the
establishment of the secular republic and the liberation of Anatolia from European
and Greek occupation (and imperialism).26 The Sevres Treaty is portrayed as the
diametrical opposite of the Treaty of Lausanne. Whereas Lausanne epitomizes
the liberation of Turkey from any kind of foreign influence or control, Sevres, on the
contrary, was depicted as the very symbol of submission to Western imperialist foes
not only in political, but also in ideological, terms.27 From this historical perspective,
Sevres smacks of the empty imperial pageantry, corruption, effeminacy, submissive
culture and self-serving selfishness of the Ottoman ancien régime, and it symbolizes
non-national cosmopolitan liberals. Lausanne, on the contrary, represents selfless
zeal, commitment, masculinity, audaciousness and vigilance, as well as ideological

self-righteousness.28
All the circulating conspiracy theories build on this ‘historical setting’. This
narrative perceives the developments of the late Ottoman Empire and the Turkish
War of Independence (1918–22) not as belonging to a unique historical context, but
as an episode in an enduring and eternal struggle.
Various historical events are depicted as crystallizations of this eternal struggle
between these unchanging and permanently opposed parties. It is so much so that
these secular intellectuals do not refrain from equating Western imperialism with the
‘crusader mentality’, thus rendering this clash eternal and permanent.29 The 31 March
Incident in 1909,30 the Sheikh Said rebellion in Kurdistan in 1925,31 all the Islamist
upheavals (such as the Menemen Incident in 1930 near Izmir) and Islamic
organizations are presented as episodes in the same eternal struggle, which had to be
approached with vigilance. Likewise, a mechanism that deems various and
extraneous historical moments, processes and actors as identical is implemented.

For example, in this neo-nationalist imagery, the IMF (International Monetary Fund)
is rendered as identical to the Ottoman Public Debt Administration (Düyun-u
Umnumiye). British imperialism is equated with contemporary American
imperialism and that of the EU. The intellectuals, journalists and politicians who
sought reconciliation with victorious Britain instead of renouncing the clauses
imposed by Britain and her allies after the First World War are equated with the pro-
EU, pro-USA and pro-Western opinion leaders and predispositions. Contemporary
liberals are equated with the appeasers of 1918 and with the Muslim/Turkish liberals
of the late Ottoman Empire, who sympathized and allied with the non-Muslims of
the Ottoman Empire and were discredited after the victory of the Ankara government
as traitors.32 Khoyboun, a short-lived secessionist Kurdish organization founded in
exile in the French protectorate of Syria in 1927 and supported by the Armenians in
Syria who survived the 1915 massacres, became the showcase exhaustively exploited
by the neo-nationalists as proving the enduring evil alliance of Kurds and Armenians
(in the payroll of imperialism) against the Kemalist republic.33
A new-fangled phenomenon that surged in the 2000s was the anti-liberal rhetoric
advanced by the neo-nationalists. Although Kemalism had also advanced an anti
liberal posture in the 1930s,34 the anti-liberalism of Kemalism abated with the
transition to a multi-party regime and Kemalism was reformulated as a transitory
tutelary stage for democracy.35 When the JDP assumed power in 2002, an immanent
fear stemmed from the JDP’s religious and conservative background and much-feared
secret Islamist agenda. Remarkably, the contours of anti-JDP rhetoric transformed
over time. In time, the JDP began to be accused of collaboration with Western
imperialists, and, hence, liberalism emerged as the principal foe that had manipulated
and instrumentalized the JDP. In the JDP, the neo-nationalists perceived the
embodiment of the ‘double threats’ of reaction and Western aggression. According to
the neo-nationalist intellectual vanguard, the JDP and its Islamist baggage were
promoted by the USA and the EU, given that their common enemy was the secular
republic.36 Moreover, for them the USA is actively engaged in crafting a ‘moderate
Islam’ to dilute the secularism of the Kemalist republic.37 In time, the emphasis moved
from the Islamic reactionarism of the JDP to its notorious collaboration with the
Western powers. The JDP’s pro-EU agenda was countered by an aggressive anti-EU
campaign propagated by secular neo-nationalists. Ironically, this neo-nationalist
ideology, which was originally advanced by ex-leftist intellectuals (as well as some
right-wing nationalists), exploited the anxieties of the secular middle classes
concerning the JDP and the Islamic threat, and hijacked it for their xenophobic and
anti-imperialist agenda via the employment of the magical clichés set of Kemalism.
Thus, Kemalism was transformed radically in opposition to the pro-EU and pro-liberal
Islamist JDP government. Kemalism had included a ‘civilizationist’ component,
praising the West and claiming progressivism for itself.38 In the world of globalization
and with the deepening of democracy in Turkey, these features of Kemalism were
jettisoned and what remained was flagrant anti-liberalism. The staunchly secular
middle classes were influenced by these hard-line, secular, neo-nationalist ideological
entrepreneurs and subscribed to this anti-liberal and anti-Western ethos.39
The Emergence and Rise of Left-Liberal Revisionist Historiography in Turkey

As conspiracy theories became normalized and spread among the middle class, a
‘countermovement’ was also evolving. Concomitant with the growth of neo
nationalism and conspiratorial thinking, a certain portion of Turkish academia broke
with the Kemalist – nationalist premises and outspokenly confronted nationalism,
seeing it as ‘the mother of all ills’. In fact, this paper suggests that these two
developments were the two consequences/mirror images of the same process in
interaction.
While the left was marginalized not only in terms of its constituency, but also in
terms of intellectual capital by the 1990s, liberalism emerged as the principal axis of
opposition to the Kemalist establishment and its historical legacy. In fact, this nascent
liberal intelligentsia was overwhelmingly comprised of ex-socialists who were
disillusioned by the prospects of the socialist project. This liberal intelligentsia and
the left-liberal historians were heavily critical of both the nationalist and assertively
secular agenda of the Turkish republic. Arguably, Turkish historical revisionism
derived from this ideological and ideational background.
Turkish historiography made a qualitative leap in the 1980s. The new generation of
historians who earned their doctorates in the USA and Europe were influenced by the
latest academic shifts and academic literature on Western Europe. New Perspectives on
Turkey began to be published in 1987 by Turkish social scientists resident in the USA
with a foreword stipulating that, ‘the last decade has witnessed a considerable increase
in the volume of academic research [on Turkey]’ and ‘more than ever before, this
research reflects a richness of debate and a diversity of critical perspectives’.40 This
generation of historians was overwhelmingly composed of people from leftist origins,
some of whom kept their commitments, while others abandoned their political
commitments. A new intellectual/academic habitus was also emerging within the left
as manifested by the launching of Toplum ve Bilim, which began to be published in
1977 as a socialist academic journal by the socialist circle Birikim. In time, it evolved
into an academic journal open also to non-Marxist and non-socialist studies. This
progression was reminiscent of the evolution of the British history journal Past and
Present where the Marxist and leftist perspectives prioritizing social and economic
history were, over time, gradually supplanted by critical historical anthropology
influenced by the revolution in historiography. From its inception, Past and Present
proclaimed its mission as ‘to reach and serve a wide democratic audience rather than
a closed circle of academic peers’.41 This posture eventually led to the transformation
of the outlook of the journal as well.
As conventional leftist politics and Marxism declined politically, intellectually and
ideologically (not unlike in the West), the new generation in Turkey leaned to a left-
liberal predisposition in the 1980s.42 As class politics and the perceptions of the
acuteness of class contradictions collapsed, a new nemesis began to be perceived in
the state or the national security establishment and its organic ideology, Kemalism
and nationalism. The state and nationalism, which had not occupied significant
places within the Marxist scheme of the social and political order, now became
responsible for many of the ills of the country, especially after the unexpected
brutality of the 1980 military junta. The Althusserian moment and the Althusserian
interpretation of the state transformed over time into a non-Marxist interpretation of
the state, influenced by the new engagement with the state in Western academia and
by the efforts to ‘bring the state back in’. Such an intellectual transformation was
particularly discernible for those young academics who had taken their intellectual
formations in American academia. They became critical of nationalism and nation-
states, as well as the conventional paradigms of the social sciences.
In fact, this development was not peculiar to Turkey. The new critical historical
scholarship (and social sciences in general) which emanated from a leftist
background and 196843 also questioned the national myths of the USA, Britain,
France, Germany and other Western European states, unlike the previous generation
of social scientists, whose structural functionalist paradigms were in line with the
national historiographies.44 As nation-states eroded with the collapse of what Harvey
Kaye dubbed ‘grand-governing narratives’,45 the national historical mythologies were
also largely demolished in the West in the 1970s. Thus, Turkish revisionism is not
unique, but a derivation of the new critical historiography. In the same decades,
French (and Anglo-American) historians challenged the reigning paradigm of the
French Revolution, which fomented heated debates in the 1980s and demolished the
mythologies of left-republicanism in France.46 In Israel, the studies of the ‘New
Historians’ in the 1980s challenged and ravaged the founding myths of Zionism and
the establishment of Israel in 1948.47
Historians such as Engin Deniz Akarlı and Selim Deringil questioned the
conventional portrayals of Abdülhamid as an Islamic reactionary adverse to Ottoman
modernization.48 Mete Tunc ay,49 Cemil Koc ak50 and Ahmet Demirel51 (and the
Dutch historian Erik Jan Zürcher)52 challenged the basic premises and assumptions
regarding the Kemalist Single Party Regime (1923– 50) and the Turkish National
Struggle (1919 – 22). Mistreatment of non-Muslims and their expulsion/murder was
another new popular theme that had been extensively studied.53 Other historians
who obtained their intellectual formations in the Anglo-American academic culture
and developed a dispassionate and disinterested approach to history, demolished the
principal contours and premises of Kemalist historiography.54 The 1990s genres of

‘myth of . . . ’ and ‘invention of . . . ’ increasingly popular in international academia
were particularly salient in Turkey, where the Kemalist myths were bashed one by one
by a new generation of historians who were inspired both by the latest
historiographical trends and their political proclivities.
However, these revisions remained unnoticed by the general public. Apparently,
academia and the general public were universes apart, and the shifting of paradigms
and the newly emerging critical approaches remained the preserve of academics. They
remained debates within the elitist and left-liberal historiographical community,
confined to the university campuses of the most prestigious universities in Istanbul
and Ankara, and left-liberal intellectual milieus. In fact, two ‘regimes of truth’
coexisted in strict isolation from each other and developed their own epistemologies.
These two worlds simply ignored each other.
However, this coexistence could not be maintained forever. The dissenting views of the
historiographical community were revealed and opposed when it came out that
prominent historians of Turkey studying the late Ottoman Empire were organizing a
conference in 2005 on the Armenian community in the late Ottoman Empire during
which the fate of the Armenian community was to be discussed. The fate of the
Armenians in 1915 was a taboo subject in Turkey. Before the conference, a few historians,
such as Taner Akc am and Halil Berktay, had already challenged the official line of the
Turkish state, in which Turkish society fully believed. Taner Akc am was the first Turkish
scholar who had studied and problematized the 1915 Armenian massacres and its moral
burden on Turkey. His interest in the subject emerged during his political exile in
Germany in the 1980s thanks to his leftist background, but simultaneous with his
alienation from organized left and Marxism. Thus, Taner Akc am is the earliest example
of the leftist generation giving birth to revisionist and critical Turkish historical
scholarship.55 Halil Berktay also articulated his views in two interviews he gave to the two
leading Turkish newspapers in the year 2000. These interviews were a turning point in the
emergence of a public debate on 1915 after decades of denial and amnesia, and Berktay
immediately became a nemesis for nationalists.56 Nevertheless, the views of these
historians could be characterized as worthy of exclusion from mainstream public debate.
They could be isolated as the opinions of some marginal (and leftist/Marxist) historians,
as not worthy of consideration, and as not to be taken seriously.57 However, disturbingly,
it gradually became clear over time that the views of Akc am and Berktay were shared by
many of the prominent historians of the late Ottoman Empire.
Three universities were involved in the organization of this conference. These
three, Boğazic i University, Bilgi University and Sabancı University, were among the
most prestigious universities in Turkey and are all located in Istanbul. Boğazic i
University was originally Robert College, a high school founded and run by American
missionaries from the 19th century until it was reorganized as a state university in the
late 1960s.58 Due to its origins, Boğazic i University has been a bastion of liberalism
and is well integrated into Anglo-American academia. Sabancı and Bilgi are
foundation universities reputed for their solid liberal commitments and well
integrated into the international academic community. Thus, when these universities
gained notoriety, they were accused of being too liberal, and their loyalties were
questioned.59 The fact that these universities recruited the leading historians of
Turkey had to be obliterated. The conference was scheduled to be held in May 2005,
but it had to be postponed due to strong public opposition and protests.60 It could
not be held until September 2005 in the face of controversies, threats and grave
tension.61
The impact of the free articulation of dissenting opinions on the Armenian
massacres in 1915 was appalling for the general public and devastating for the neo
nationalist intelligentsia. This became a landmark moment in which two ‘regimes of
truth’ faced each other eye to eye. The intensity of the tension derived from the fact
that the official narrative on the Armenian massacres constituted one of the principal
pillars of the regime of truth of the Turkish state. Culpability for these massacres
would incur enormous moral liability; tarnish the self-styled claim to national
innocence, benevolence and self-reputation of the Turkish state and the Turkish
people; and blemish the course of Turkish history. Apparently, this would also be
tantamount to casting doubt on the credibility of the foundational axioms of

Kemalism and the Turkish nation-state. It became clear that what was at stake was not
only the Armenian policies of the late Ottoman Empire (and the early Republic), but
policies implemented against Greeks, Kurds, Jews and other minorities. Thus, it had
to be denounced outright.
Although these were issues studied exhaustively by prominent Turkish historians
and social scientists beginning in the 1990s, these works were ‘revealed’ to the general
public in the second half of the 2000s amidst heated debates and controversies. The
revisionist historians critical of the course of the establishment and consolidation of
the Turkish nation-state began to be asked to air their opinions in the popular media
even though the popular media continued to be dominated by Kemalist and
mainstream opinion leaders articulating and reiterating the mainstream historio
graphical narrative. Despite this predominance though, the opinions of the
revisionist and critical historians were conveyed and represented in the popular
media. Nevertheless, this process and the emergence of a liberal intellectual and
political axis opposed to the Kemalist establishment and sympathetic to the JDP were
observed with distaste and abhorrence. The emergence of a new epistemic
community meant that Kemalist epistemology could no longer maintain its
monopoly on information in the mainstream popular media.
Two ‘Regimes of Truth’

At this conjuncture, the rise of neo-nationalism (ulusalcılık) reinvigorated and
popularized the official narrative. It also reinvented and radicalized it.62 Formulated
and internalized in the world of nation-states, the official historiographic narrative,
in which national mythologies were convincing, was still tenable. However, what was
persuasive, hegemonic, tenable and mainstream in a certain historical context may
not be as convincing at another historical juncture. Thus, the scholarly defence of the
official line deteriorated and began to be defended within a conspiratorial perspective
reducing all historical processes and developments to the struggles of two
uncompromising and diametrically opposed parties.
The Turkish Historical Association (THA) (Türk Tarih Kurumu) was founded by
the Kemalist regime and contributed to the development of Turkish historiography
and its scholarly character. It published the journal Belleten beginning in 1937.63
Belleten was to function as the Turkish equivalent of Historische Zeitschrift (founded
in 1859) in Prussia/Germany, Revue Historique (1876) in France, Rivista Storica
Italiana (1884) in Italy and the English Historical Review (1886) in Britain.64 It was to
be a national historical journal embodying and promoting Turkish scholarship
(within Kemalist and statist premises). The THA was the leading national historical
organization and gathered prominent historians from its foundation. Although the
THA was effective in the development of history as a scholarly discipline within a
state-centric paradigm, arguably it could not adapt itself to changes in scholarly
paradigms and methodology.
Turkish historical scholarship had endorsed the Kemalist and state-centric
paradigm since the 1930s and had advanced within this framework. The history of the
Ottoman Empire, Ottoman modernization and Turkic history were studied in

conformity with Kemalist axioms. Kemalist axioms were not necessarily restricted to
compliance with the Kemalist ideology but also involved the main contours of
Kemalist nation-statism. Politically mainstream and centrist Kemalist historians such
as İsmail Hakkı Uzunc arşılı65 and Enver Ziya Karal (president of the THA between
1973 and 1982),66 left-wing Kemalist historians such as Niyazi Berkes67 and Mustafa
Akdağ,68 right-wing nationalists such as Osman Turan69 and Anglo-American
historians accepting Kemalist axioms as a given, such as Bernard Lewis,70 all shared
these (modernist, state-centric, evolutionist) premises. These premises were
universally held regardless of the political predispositions and convictions of the
historians. This consensus shattered with the paradigmatic shift ushered in by the
‘cultural turn’ beginning with the 1970s challenging the basic premises of
historiography. With this dramatic paradigmatic shift, the modernist assumptions
of historical scholarship (on the nature of the state, society and nation, as well as
knowledge) were severely criticized and discredited. Thus, those who refused to
emulate this paradigmatic shift, such as the THA, remained anachronistic in their
methodology, historical perspectives and paradigms, and operated outside the
international historiographical community. The THA lost its previously hegemonic
role in historical scholarship. In the 2000s, the THA’s main function became the
production and reproduction of the official line to counter Armenian allegations, in
addition to publishing numerous monographs on Turkish history following a
Rankean-cum-statist methodology and perspective. To counter the fact that the
genocidal aspects of the 1915 massacres are acknowledged by mainstream Western
scholarship, the THA and like-minded organizations and historians developed their
‘alternative’ historical corpus and epistemology that whitewashes the deeds and
misdeeds of the Young Turk leadership.71 After the decades in which almost no study
regarding the 1915 Armenian massacres was undertaken,72 a ‘denialist literature’
emerged after the commencement of the terrorist activities of the Armenian Secret
Army for the Liberation of Armenia (ASALA). Whereas the first wave of denialist
literature was produced within a conservative historical vision by right-wing
nationalists, such as the books of Mehmet Hocaoğlu and Altan Deliorman in the
1970s,73 the second wave was devised by the national security establishment
(especially after the military coup of 1980) and recruited left-leaning and centrist –
statist intellectuals (rather than right-wing intellectuals). The second wave included
the studies of Türkkaya Ataöv, Bilal Şimşir, Salahi Sonyel and Mümtaz Soysal.74
Ambassador Kamuran Gürün’s semi-official book75 written in 1983 as a response to
Armenian allegations while he was the undersecretary of the Ministry of Foreign
Affairs served as the main reference for the denialist studies.
The production (and translation) of the denialist literature and epistemology
remained predominantly a state monopoly in the 1980s.76 Nevertheless, this literature
boomed in the 2000s when numerous studies, monographs based on doctoral
dissertations and books on 1915 were published by various commercial publishing
houses by authors in line with the basic premises of the official line. When numerous
books written by historians of Armenian descent, such as Vahakn Dadrian, and
memoirs by survivors of the massacres were translated into Turkish in the 2000s,
there was a reaction. An alternative ‘denialist’ corpus comprised of books with a more
thorough and specific research agenda surfaced and benefitted from the burgeoning
publishing market for such books.
Although the emergence of a critical historical canon addressing the history of
modern Turkey is most visible with regard to 1915 thanks to certain left-leaning
publishing houses, a new critical historiographical publishing market has been
successfully established and has matured. This vibrant crusade has been countered by a
massive corpus written by state-centric historians depicting modern Turkish/Ottoman
history within a certain paradigm that sees the Turkish/Ottoman centre as inherently
and intrinsically benevolent and exonerated from any guilt whatsoever. This
historiographical corpus did not emerge only due to political necessities, but it arose
more due to the pervasiveness of a certain mindset entrenched among state-centric
historians. Along with the THA, some other state-sponsored and many more non-
state-sponsored institutions and independent scholars from Turkish universities
continued to produce and reproduce their own historical epistemology in line with
state-centric paradigms and axioms. They existed in an academic/epistemic world/
habitus closed to the outside; within this world, academic journals were published,
doctoral dissertations were supervised and monographs were produced. That is, the
apologist corpus was privatized and deregulated by the 2000s. Not unexpectedly, the
boundaries between scholarly studies (albeit barely scholarly) and popular histories
rooted in conspiratorial visions of history became blurred and indistinguishable.
While the scholarly contributors were predominantly from rightist/conservative
origins and served as apparatchiks of the academic establishment institutionalized by
the military junta in 1980 –83, the popularizers were overwhelmingly secular neo
nationalists immersed in socialist/leftist conspiratorial visions and in threats from
imperialism. Nevertheless, the conformity of these two dispositions against the
perceived common threat under the aegis of the Kemalist nation-state was remarkable.
By the 2000s, these two historical corpora had established two radically different
and mutually exclusive historical scholarships, not only in terms of their ideological
perspectives, but also in terms of their methodology, their theoretical frameworks,
and the issues deriving from their contrasting ideological premises which were
prioritized and problematized. The institutionalization of YO ¨ K (Council of Higher

Education), established by the military junta in 1981, was also functional in the
maintenance of the ideological compliance of the universities in following an official
and dictated line.77 The parochialism of YO ¨ K was also influential in the development
of an alternative and ‘national’ scholarship with its own reference system, but
complying with the ideological thrust of the military junta. The junta also established
a set of state-run research institutes that organize, support and coordinate academic
research (and conferences, colloquiums, etc.) on academic and historical matters
expedient to state and national security. Thus, the gap between the culture of the
international social science academia predominantly based in a few prestigious
universities in Istanbul and in Ankara, and the subscribers to the nationalist,
apologist and uncritical historiography widened. Hence, two different and mutually
exclusive and irreconcilable ‘regimes of truth’ regarding the Ottoman Empire and
Turkish history gradually emerged and prevailed.
As the state-centric historiography could not adapt to changing paradigms and

perspectives and reinvent itself, the state-centric and Kemalist historiography took
refuge in amateurish propaganda representations of the past. Conservative state-
centrism became less convincing for academia. Thus, this historiographical school
capitulated to a newly emerging, radicalized neo-nationalism (ulusalcılık). Kemalism
lost its all-encompassing hegemonic power over the intelligentsia. This was followed by
the emergence of an alternative quasi-intellectual sphere where the main tenets of
Kemalism were propagated by populist quasi-intellectuals and where liberal scholars
(and intellectuals) were ridiculed.78 This process brought Kemalism to be reinvented at
the hands of these semi-intellectuals as a fringe nationalist and xenophobic ideology. At
the same time, the jettisoning of the ‘civilizationist’ baggage of Kemalism also
facilitated the death of Kemalism (as we know it), which in effect had belonged to the
world of nation-states in the age of Keynesianism and had failed to adapt to the realities
of the age of globalization and neo-liberalism. Thus, we may argue that a conspiratorial
historiography was substituted for traditional Kemalist scholarship, which could not
maintain the hegemonic position in academia it had previously enjoyed.
In the neo-nationalist indoctrination, as argued above, the history of the late
Ottoman Empire and the Turkish republic was depicted as a war of good vs. evil, the
national forces embodying the ‘good’ and the aligned reactionaries and imperialists
embodying the ‘evil’. Turkishness and the Turkish/Ottoman centre were associated
with the eternal ‘goodness’, and all the antagonistic dynamics, political movements,
ideologies and ethnicities were accordingly juxtaposed as ‘evil’. In this Armageddon
imagery, an impeccable dichotomy was established between ‘imperialism’ and ‘anti
imperialism’. In this configuration, all the movements, ideologies and exploits that go
against the interests of the Turkish state were depicted as lackeys of imperialism. They
were assisted by the corrupt Ottoman ancien régime and reactionary forces. The pro-
Western Turkish intellectuals, politicians and public figures were discredited not only
as cosmopolitan traitors, but also as corrupt and effeminate figures. Moreover,
liberalism is introduced as the organic ideology of these corrupt, effeminate, and
cosmopolitan individuals and milieus. In this paradigm, Lausanne and Mustafa Kemal
Atatürk were imagined as the very symbols of cessation of this entanglement. With
Lausanne and Atatürk, full independence and sovereignty were gained, and the sway of
obscurantism and Islamic reaction over state governance was eradicated. These double
threats were eliminated and exterminated simultaneously, and this was not a
coincidence. Given the alliance between the two, this was a predictable outcome.
Atatürk saved the Turkish nation from both of these threats and liberated Turkey.
This neo-nationalist (ulusalcı) vision of history eternalized a certain moment in
history. Within this paradigm, time is frozen. Nations and states are taken as eternal
entities in permanent struggle with diametrically opposed interests. Thus, what was
valid in the 19th century and in 1918 – 22 is equally applicable to the 2000s. What has
changed is only the mise-en-scene. Beneath the surface, the gist of the national
aspirations and enmities remains fixed.
Although the basic parameters of this historical vision derived from the national
official historical account, as this historiography became anachronistic and parochial,
conspiracy theories found fertile terrain in which to flourish. As this historical
narrative collapsed in an age when all the national mythologies became less
convincing, conspiracy theories supplanted sober historical narratives. Thus,
although the surge in the popularity of conspiracy theories became a global
phenomenon after the 1990s, the conspiracy theory industry in Turkey differs in the
sense that these conspiracy theories derive their legitimacy from an already existing
and inherited historiography and mindset. These conspiracy theories are
contextualized within a certain historical paradigm and a historical framework.
The national mythologies were transformed into conspiracy theories as the Kemalist
historiography lost its comprehensiveness and intellectual rigor in an age of decline of
nation-states and of the well-grounded paradigms crafted by the nation-states.
Conclusion
The uncertainties ushered in by globalization and neo-liberalism make people feel
more insecure and are likely to lead them to perceive their nation-state, which is also
under strain, as a safe haven where they feel protected.79 Thus, we may argue that an
intimate, emotional bond between the nation-state and the individuals in question
is forged.80 This imagined dichotomy between the good old nation-state and ruthless,
predatory globalization possibly led people to presume that their nation-state was
being targeted by a seamlessly organized master plot. Thus, we can suggest that
conspiracy theories gained an unprecedented popularity, especially among the
educated middle classes, due to the intimate submissive relationship the Turkish
educated middle classes established with their state and their national identity.
Accordingly, critical historiography that questions and debunks the thrusts of the
foundational myths of modern Turkey and Kemalism was perceived as an immoral
transgression against the very values esteemed by the society and the very integrity of
the society. Hence, the upper middle classes could take refuge in the sanctuary of the
conspiratorial historiography of the proponents of neo-nationalism.
Thus, the rise of Turkish historical revisionism and its demolition of national
mythologies, and the rise of the popularity of conspiracy theories and conspiracy
theory-like historical accounts have to be analysed in tandem. It is not only that they
mutually influenced each other but that they were born into a certain historical and
cultural milieu in which the conventional axioms bolstered by Kemalist official
historiography had begun to be challenged and had lost their persuasiveness. While a
certain portion of academia abruptly diverged from the ‘hegemonic mainstream
consensus’ and shattered the Kemalist legacy, which was constitutive in the
development of modern scholarship in Turkey, and pursued a revisionist scholarship
especially critical of nationalism and Kemalism, officially sanctioned scholarship and
a larger audience subscribed to a vulgarized version of Kemalism. In this context, the
Kemalist paradigm, which used to represent the mainstream and centrist worldview,
turned into a radical and xenophobic worldview. As the ‘civilizationist’ dimension of
Kemalism and Kemalist nationalism were jettisoned and Kemalism’s difficult but
tenable relation with liberal democracy crumbled after its encounter with profound
liberalization and democratization, it became more defensive and produced a
xenophobic historiography of its own in the age of globalization.
As a conclusion, two radically opposed representations of the course of modern

Turkish history emerged, and Turkish society was divided between the adherents of
these two contesting narratives. In fact, one of the motivations and reasons for the
surge of neo-nationalism and the emergence of its own idiosyncratic historiography
was the development of a revisionist and critical historiography and critical social
sciences in Turkey. In fact, these two radically opposed historical visions were both
repercussions of the erosion of the nation-state and its organic ideology. Once
Kemalism lost its capacity ‘to hold the centre’ and to provide encompassing and
satisfactory historical perspectives and narratives at the end of the modern age, it had
to be abandoned. This could be accomplished either by tilting to an alternative liberal
and critical engagement with the course of modern Turkey or by radicalizing and
marginalizing Kemalism by tainting it with conspiratorialism.
Epilogue
What we observed by 2008 –10 was a ‘silent revolution’ by the JDP that had toppled the
Kemalist national security establishment (and also partially the national security/
academic establishment). This was undoubtedly due in part to power politics and the
JDP’s wars of attrition. Nevertheless, it was also partially due to Kemalism’s intellectual
and moral demise in an age of historical revisionism in Turkey. After the JDP assumed
actual power, it gave up its reformist ethos. In this cultural milieu, the JDP also seems to
be awash in conspiratorialism. This attitude became more evident as the JDP began to
see the state ‘as its own’ and not as an enemy. This attitude also reflects the party’s
grassroots and cadres’ nation-statist, conservative and semi-Islamic sensitivities. It is
also remarkable to observe the overlap between the conspiratorial visions of both
seculars and conservatives as they share the same nation-statist axioms and impulses.
This disposition towards a conspiratorial vision of history seems to endure, especially
as 2015, the 100th year of the genocidal Armenian massacres, approaches. Official state
policy remains stringently denialist even though slight twists such as the
incorporation/introduction of some rhetorical innovations and the development of
a new, more relaxed language that emphasizes the sufferings of ‘both sides’ have been
introduced, thereby trivializing Armenian suffering. An Ottoman nostalgia and

fetishism has also surged among the JDP political and intellectual elite, who perceive
the Ottoman Empire as sacrosanct, and this has instigated heated historical debates
between Kemalists and conservatives; a debate on modern Turkish identity beneath
seemingly historical polemics. This new Ottoman euphoria is a blow to the revisionists
who are disenchanted with the past. Nevertheless, the revisionist historians enjoy more
freedom to air their opinions and dissenting views, and they reach a larger audience
that is more open to persuasion by revisionist historians. Their appearances in the
media, their public recognition and their respectability have increased significantly. As
it became more secure in its power, the JDP began to foster its conservative
intelligentsia and hence ebb the public visibility of the revisionist liberal intellectuals.
However, these intellectuals continue to entertain influence on the conservative youth
in particular, as unlike their elders, they are more welcoming to the critical assessments
of JPD, most notably due to their shared disavowal of Kemalism with liberal
revisionists and the rise of a new critical attitude to nationalism and nation-state in
Islamic circles. Furthermore, many revisionist arguments have become common
knowledge in a short span of time. Revisionist historians have without any doubt
emerged as influential actors in the reshuffling of the mental cosmology of Turkey, and
they continue to impact public opinion regardless of the level of political backing they
enjoy. To conclude, disputes over history in Turkey have not ended, and thus history
continues to be a controversial terrain where ideological foes fight and where
conspiratorial history is still a deus ex machina for many.
Notes
[1] This paper omits the conspiracy theories widely held among conservatives and confines itself
to the secular neo-nationalist (ulusalcı) conspiracy theories in Turkey. Since the triumph of
the reformist-Islamist JDP over the Turkish national security establishment in 2008 – 10, the
conspiratorial visions of the conservatives became more public and visible. These
conspiratorial visions definitely require scrutiny and therefore needed to be addressed in
another paper.
[2] One terminology issue needs to be clarified. Whereas middle class in American political
science usage refers to the large section of the society lying between the poor and the rich, in
Turkey, where the middle class is much smaller in size, this idiom in common usage refers to
the well-off upper chunk of the society who are most likely university graduates and
professionals (and staunchly secular). This (misconceptualization) also derives from the fact
that, in terms of cultural politics, rich and upper middle class share the same attitudes and
political culture (and both troubled with JDP and Islamic politics). This paper will employ
the term ‘upper middle class’ to refer to this social cluster. Thanks to the economic boom in
the 2000s, the middle class expanded in size getting closer to the American/European pattern
and became considerably more heterogeneous. We lack substantial research on this
transformation.
[3] For some studies on the rise of conspiracy theories and the mentality of their subscribers in
the educated secular middle classes of Turkey, see Füsun U ¨ stel and Birol Caymaz, Sec kinler ve
¨
Sosyal Mesafe, İstanbul Bilgi Universitesi, İstanbul, 2009; Ali Bayramoğlu, Çağdaşlık Hurafe
Kaldırmaz: Demokratikleşme Sürecinde Dindar ve Laikler, TESEV, İstanbul, 2006; Ferhat
Kentel, Meltem Ahıska and Fırat Genc , Milletin Bölünmez Bütünlüğü: Demokratikleşme
Sürecinde Parc alayan Milliyetc ilik(ler), TESEV, İstanbul, 2007.
[4] For the circulation figures of Sözcü and its meteoric rise from 2008 to 2010 week by week, see
,http://www.medyatava.com/tiraj.asp..
[5] ‘“AB’ye Gireceğiz Diye Dinimiz Elden Gidiyor”’, Sabah, 3 January 2005.
[6] Yusuf Sarınay, Hamit Pehlivanlı and Abdullah Saydam, Pontus Meselesi ve Yunanistan’ın
Politikası, Atatürk Araştırma Merkezi, Ankara, 1999; Arslan Bulut, Çift Başlı Yılan:
Karadeniz’de Yüzyılın İkinci Rumlaştırma Operasyonu, BilgeOğuz, İstanbul, 2007. For a study
of the Pontus paranoia, see Ömer Asan, ‘Trabzon Rumcası ve Pontos Etnofobisi’, in Güven
Bakırezer and Yücel Demirer (eds), Trabzon’u Anlamak, İletişim Yayınları, İstanbul, 2009.
[7] ‘GAP’ta İkinci Filistin Oyunu’, Sabah, 13 June 2006.
[8] Aytunc Altındal, Türkiye ve Ortodokslar, Anahtar Kitaplar, İstanbul, 2005; Sadi Somuncuoğlu,
İstanbul’da Yeni Roma İmparatorluğu, Akc ağ Yayınları, Ankara, 2004; Uğur Yıldırım, Dünden
Bugüne Patrikhane, Kaynak Yayınları, İstanbul, 2004; Süreyya Şahin, Türkiye’deki
Patrikhaneler, İıke Yayıncılık, İstanbul, 2003; Mehmet Çelik, Türkiye’nin Fener Patrikhanesi
Meselesi, Akademi Kitabevi, İzmir, 1998.
[9] The ‘leading conspiratorial Vatican expert’ (and also leading ‘conspiratorial Greek Patriarchy
expert’) of Turkey is Aytunc Altındal, another former leftist who committed himself to reveal
the incognito power and ambitions of the Vatican over Turkey and efforts to manipulate
Islam. See Aytunc Altındal, Papa XVI. Benedikt. Gizli Türkiye Gündemi, Destek Yayınları,
İstanbul, 2006; Aytunc Altındal, Vatikan ve Tapınak Şövalyeleri, Alfa Yayınları, İstanbul, 2005;
Aytunc Altındal, Üc İsa, Anahtar Kitaplar, İstanbul, 1993.
[10] For some popular neo-nationalist books targeting the liberal intelligentsia and accusing them
of treason: Mustafa Yıldırım, Sivil Örümceğin Ağında, Toplumsal Dönüşüm Yayınları,
İstanbul, 2004; Necip Hablemitoğlu, Alman Vakıfları: Bergama Dosyası, Otopsi Yayınları,
İstanbul, 2001; Necip Hablemitoğlu, Şeriatc ı Terörün ve Batının Kıskacındaki U ¨ lke: Türkiye,
Toplumsal Dönüşüm Yayınları, İstanbul, 2003.
[11] Hakan Yılmaz, Türkiye’de Orta Sınıfı Tanımlamak, Boğazic i Üniversitesi Bilimsel Araştırma
Projeleri ve Ac ık Toplum Enstitüsü Projesi, 2007, p. 8, , http://hakanyilmaz.info/yahoo_site_
admin/assets/docs/HakanYilmaz-2007-TurkiyedeOrtaSinif-Ozet.28470911.pdf. (accessed
11 September 2010). Hakan Yılmaz prefers to define the top 22 per cent of the Turkish
society as the upper class (üst sınıf) rather than (upper) middle class.
[12] Rıfat Bali, A Scapegoat for all Seasons: The Dönmes or Crypto-Jews of Turkey, Isis, İstanbul,
2008, pp. 12 – 13. For the anti-Semitism of Soner Yalc ın’s books, also see Necati Polat, ‘Yeni
Anti-Semitizm: Efendi Üzerine Notlar’, Doğu-Batı, No. 29, 2004, pp. 179– 194; Rıfat Bali,
‘What is Efendi telling us?’, in Bali, op. cit., pp. 317 – 349.
[13] Ergun Poyraz, Musa’nın Çocukları, Togan Yayıncılık, İstanbul, 2007; Musa’nın Gülü, Togan
Yayıncılık, İstanbul, 2007; Musa’nın Mücahidi, Togan Yayıncılık, İstanbul, 2007. However, it
was Turgut O ¨ zakman’s literal narrative of the Turkish National Struggle (1919– 22) depicting
the Turkish National Struggle in a highly chauvinistic language which became a phenomenal
bestseller in Turkey, especially among the middle classes. Turgut O ¨ zakman, Şu Çılgın Türkler,
Bilgi Yayınevi, İstanbul, 2005.
[14] For the American right-wing conspiracy theory industry, see Robert Alan Goldberg, Enemies
Within, Yale University, New Haven, CT, 2001; Michael Barkun, A Culture of Conspiracy,
University of California Press, Berkeley, 2003; Peter Knight, Conspiracy Culture: American
Paranoia from Kennedy to the X-Files, Routledge, New York, 2001; Mark Fenster, Conspiracy
Theories: Secrecy and Power in American Culture, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis,
2008; Kathryn S. Olmsted, Real Enemies: Conspiracy Theories and American Democracy, World
War I to 9/11, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2009. For the rise of conspiracy theories in the
Arabic world especially with the 1990s, see Matthew Gray, Conspiracy Theories in the Arab
World, Routledge, London, 2010.
[15] For a thorough study of the Tea Party Movement as a response to the presidency of Barack
Obama, see Theda Skocpol and Vanessa Williams, The Tea Party and the Remaking of
Republican Conservatism, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2012. For the patriotic historical
visions of the Tea Party activists which resemble the conspiratorial interpretation of ‘patriotic
history’ and the emotional bond Turkish secular neo-nationalists forged with the Kemalist
Single Party Regime, see Jill Lepore, The Whites of their Eyes: The Tea Party’s Revolution and
the Battle Over American History, Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ, 2010. For a
comparison of the mental structures of the Tea Party with Turkish secular neo-nationalism
(as well as the Islamist conservative populism of the JDP), see Doğan Gürpınar, ‘Tea Party:
Amerikan Ulusalcılığı?’, Taraf, 8 August 2011.
[16] Although ulusalcılık is translated into English as neo-nationalism for want of any better
alternative, in Turkish it means ‘nationalism’. However, because it is a Turkish (Mongolian)
word as opposed to the Arabic word milliyetc ilik (nationalism), it has secular, and thus leftist
and Kemalist, connotations. For the rise of neo-nationalism in Turkey, see Doğan Gürpınar,
Ulusalcılık: İdeolojik O ¨ nderlik ve Takipc ileri, Kitap Yayınları, İstanbul, 2011; Emrullah Uslu,
‘Ulusalcılık: the neo-nationalist resurgence in Turkey’, Turkish Studies, 9(1), March 2008,
pp. 73– 97; Onur Atalay, Kızıl Elma Koalisyonu: Ulusalcılar, Milliyetc iler, Kemalistler,
Paradigma Yayıncılık, İstanbul, 2006.
[17] For some books which gained considerable popularity importing American right-wing
conspiracy theories and adapting them to Turkey and localizing them, see Erol Bilbilik, Derin
Dünya Devletinin Adamları, Kırmızı Kedi Yayınları, İstanbul, 2009; Erol Bilbilik, Dünyayı
Yöneten Gizli O ¨ rgütler, Profil Yayınları, İstanbul, 2009; Aydoğan Vatandaş, Apokrifal, Timaş
Yayınları, İstanbul, 2009; Aydoğan Vatandaş, Agharta, Timaş Yayınları, İstanbul, 2008;
İbrahim Karagül, Hesaplaşma Yüzyılı, Timaş Yayınları, İstanbul, 2007; Ali Çimen and Hakan
Yılmaz, İpler Kimin Elinde?, Timaş Yayınları, İstanbul, 2000. Whereas some of these authors
are conservatives employing Islamic stereotypes and perceptions, from the 2000s onwards,
secular nationalists surpassed conservatives in advancing a conspiratorial understanding of
international politics, at least before 2010 – 2011. They employ Kemalist stereotypes and
perceptions to develop a conspiratorial worldview.
[18] See ‘Eğitimli Kesime Göre, ABD Düşman, Azerbeycan Dost’, Radikal, 19 January 2010.
[19] Hakan Yılmaz, op. cit., p. 38.
[20] For a study of republican high school history textbooks, see Etienne Copeaux, Espaces et
Temps de la Nation Turque: Analyse d’une Historiographie Nationaliste, 1931 – 1993, CNRS
Editions, Paris, 1997.
[21] The left-Kemalist historiography expounded by Doğan Avcıoğlu and others was also a major
inspiration in the neo-nationalist interpretation of modern Turkish and Ottoman history.
This interpretation hails Atatürk and the secular Turkish republic as liberation from both
obscurantism and Western imperialism. This interpretation makes the Kemalist paradigms
more uncompromising and self-righteous. For the classical examples of this left-Kemalist
interpretation of history, see Doğan Avcıoğlu, Türkiye’nin Düzeni: Dün, Bugün, Yarın, Cem
Yayınevi, İstanbul, 1973; Milli Kurtuluş Tarihi, Tekin Yayınevi, İstanbul, 1974. It is no
coincidence that many of the neo-nationalist opinion leaders (such as Atilla İlhan, Erol
Manisalı, Alpaslan Işıklı, Soner Yalc ın and Yalc ın Küc ük) came from leftist backgrounds and
that the term ‘ulusalcılık’ was coined by left-wing nationalists to dissociate themselves from
the right-wing connotations of the word ‘nationalist’ (milliyetc i in Turkish) although these
two words are synonymous.
[22] For the history of the Sabbatian community, see Marc David Baer, The Dönme: Jewish
Converts, Muslim Revolutionaries and Secular Turks, Stanford University Press, Stanford, 2010.
[23] Rıfat Bali, A Scapegoat for All Seasons, op. cit., pp. 17– 78.
[24] Soner Yalc ın, Efendi: Beyaz Türklerin Büyük Sırrı, Doğan Kitapc ılık, İstanbul, 2004; Soner
Yalc ın, Efendi 2: Beyaz Müslümanların Büyük Sırrı, Doğan Kitapc ılık, İstanbul, 2007; Yalc ın
Küc ük, Putları Yıkıyorum, İthaki, İstanbul, 2004; Yalc ın Küc ük, Tekelistan, YGS Yayınları,
İstanbul, 2002; Yalc ın Küc ük, Şebeke, YGS Yayınları, İstanbul, 2002; Yalc ın Küc ük, İsyan,
İthaki, İstanbul, 2005.
[25] For a comparison of the Treaty of Sevres and the Treaty of Lausanne, see Baskın Oran, ‘1919–
1923: Kurtuluş Yılları’, in Baskın Oran (ed.), Türk Dış Politikası, Vol. I, İletişim Yayınları,
İstanbul, 2001, p. 222, pp. 237 – 238.
[26] For the significance of Lausanne in the ideological and political establishment and
legitimization of the Turkish republic, see Oran, ibid., p. 222. Temperley, one of the doyens of
the history of diplomacy, wrote just one year after the Treaty of Lausanne that this treaty
‘seemed destined, in all human probability, to inaugurate a more lasting settlement, not only
than the Treaty of Sévres, but than the Treaties of Versailles, St. Germain, Trianon and Neuilly’.
Temperley’s prediction turned out to be impressively accurate. Quoted in M. S. Anderson,
The Eastern Question, Macmillan, London, 1972, p. 376.
[27] For the Sevres complex, see Wolfango Piccoli and Dietrich Jung, Turkey at the Crossroads:
Ottoman Legacies and a Greater Middle East, Zed Books, London, 2001, pp. 115– 118; Kemal
Kirişc i and Gareth Winrow, The Kurdish Question and Turkey, Frank Cass, London, 1997, pp.
184, 193; Philip Robins, Suits and Uniforms: Turkish Foreign Policy Since the Cold War, Hurst,
London, 2003, pp. 102 – 104; Michelangelo Guida, ‘The Sevres syndrome and “Komplo”
theories in the Islamist and secular press’, Turkish Studies, 9(1), March 2008, pp. 37 – 52; Uslu,
op. cit., pp. 76– 82; Hakan Yılmaz, ‘Two pillars of nationalist Euroskepticism in Turkey: the
Tanzimat and Sevres syndromes’, in Ingmar Karlsson and Annika Strom Melin (eds), Turkey,
Sweden and the European Union: Experiences and Expectations, Swedish Institute for European
Policy Studies, Stockholm, 2006, pp. 29 – 40.
[28] For the establishment of a dichotomy between the republic in Ankara, and the decadent
Empire and 19th-century Ottoman reformism (Tanzimat) by the Kemalist semi-official texts,
see Yusuf Hikmet Bayur, Yeni Türkiye Devletinin Harici Siyaseti, Akşam Matbaası, İstanbul,
1934, pp. 1 – 3; Türk Tarihinin Ana Hatları, Kaynak Yayınları, İstanbul, 1999, pp. 460, 465 –
466; T. T. T. Cemiyeti, Tarih III (Yeni ve Yakın Zamanlar), Devlet Matbaası, Ankara, 1933, pp.
188– 310; Yusuf Hikmet Bayur, Türk İnkılabı Tarihi, Vol. I, Tarih Kurumu, Türk Ankara, 1991,
p. II, p. 149. Also, see Can Erimtan, Ottomans Looking West?, I. B. Tauris, London, 2008,
pp. 145– 167.
[29] For example, see Mustafa Yıldırım, op. cit.; Alev Coşkun, Yeni Mandacılar, Cumhuriyet
Kitapları, İstanbul, 2008; İ. Reşat O ¨ zkan, Yeni Mandacılık, Ümit Yayıncılık, İstanbul, 2001;
Erol Manisalı, AB Süreci mi? Sevr Süreci mi?, Derin, İstanbul, 2006; M. Emin Değer,
Emperyalizmin Tuzaklarındaki U ¨ lke: Oltadaki Balık Türkiye, Kilit Yayınları, İstanbul, 2012.
[30] For example, see Doğan Avcıoğlu, 31 Mart’ta Yabancı Parmağı, Bilgi Yayınevi, Ankara, 1969.
[31] Although there is no substantial evidence that the Sheikh Said rebellion was encouraged and
supported by the British, it has been widely believed in Turkey that the rebellion was initiated
and encouraged by the British to be able to keep Mosul and Kirkuk. For a semi-official
account of the rebellion and its suppression written by the son-in-law of İsmet İnönü, see
Metin Toker, Şeyh Sait ve İsyanı, Akis Yayınları, Ankara, 1968. For an academic study of the
Sheikh Said rebellion, Ömer Kürkc üoğlu, Mondros’tan Musul’a Türk-İngiliz İlişkileri, İmaj
Yayınları, Ankara, 2006; Robert W. Olson, The Emergence of Kurdish Nationalism and the
Sheikh Said Rebellion, 1880 – 1925, University of Texas Press, Austin, 1989.
[32] For example, see Attila İlhan (ed.), Bir Millet Uyanıyor, Bilgi Yayınevi, İstanbul, 2005,
pp. 9– 32.
[33] Yusuf Sarınay, ‘Hoybun Teşkilatı ve Türkiye’ye Karşı Faaliyetleri’, Atatürk Araştırma Merkezi
Dergisi, 14(40), March 1998, pp. 207– 244; Yavuz Selim (ed.), Taşnak-Hoybun, İleri Yayınları,
İstanbul, 2005; Abdulhaluk Çay, Her Yönüyle Kürt Dosyası, Boğazic i Yayınları, İstanbul, 1993,
pp. 401– 416.
[34] For example, for the speech of Recep Peker and the discussion following Recep Peker’s speech
to the Party Congress in 1937, see Murat Yılmaz, ‘CHP İlkelerinin 1937’de Anayasaya Girişi ve
Liberalizmin Yasaklanıs¸ı’, in Murat Yılmaz (ed.), Modern Tu¨rkiye’de Siyasi Düs¨nce:

¸u
Liberalizm, İletişim Yayınları, İstanbul, 2005, pp. 199 – 201.
[35] See Cemil Koc ak, Belgelerle İktidar ve Serbest Cumhuriyet Fırkası, İletişim Yayınları, İstanbul,
2006, pp. 633 – 692; Cemil Koc ak, İkinci Parti, İletişim Yayınları, İstanbul, 2010.
[36] For some books written by prominent public figures subscribing to secular neo-nationalism
along these lines, see Erol Manisalı, AKP, Ordu, Amerika U ¨ cgeninde Türkiye, Truva, İstanbul,
2008; Merdan Yanardağ, Bir ABD Projesi Olarak AKP, Siyah Beyaz Yayın, İstanbul, 2007.
[37] Bahadır Selim Direk, Küresel Tuzak: Ilımlı İslam, Ulus Dağı Yayınları, İstanbul, 2008; Erol
Manisalı, İslamcı Siyaset ve Cumhuriyet, Derin Yayınları, İstanbul, 2006; Yaşar Nuri O ¨ ztürk,
Allah ile Aldatmak, Yeni Boyut, İstanbul, 2008; Cengiz O ¨ zakıncı, Türkiye’nin Siyasi İntiharı:
Yeni-Osmanlı Tuzağı, Otopsi, İstanbul, 2007; Cengiz O ¨ zakıncı, İrtica, 1945 –1999, Otoposi
Yayınları, İstanbul, 1999. Although the term ‘moderate Islam’ deserves a comprehensive study,
in short, it derives from the Kemalist/Marxist assumption that imperialism and the ruling
classes always prefer and encourage religiosity and obscurantism. For a classical
argumentation of this stance within a Kemalist – Marxist synthesis by the left-wing nationalist
and Kemalist Doğan Avcıoğlu, see Avcıoğlu, Türkiye’nin Düzeni, op. cit.
[38] Apparently, there is no one official and authorized version of Kemalism. For an effort to
conceptualize the Kemalism of the Single Party Regime as a comprehensive ideology, see Taha
Parla and Andrew Davison, Corporatist Ideology in Kemalist Turkey, Syracuse University Press,
Syracuse, 2004.
[39] For some anthropological studies on the political dispositions of the Turkish middle class, see
Esra O¨ zyürek, Nostalgia for the Modern, Duke University Press, Durham, NC, 2006; Yael
Navaro, Faces of the State, Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ, 2002; Berna Yazıcı,
‘Discovering our past: are we breaking taboos? Reconstructing Atatürkism and the past in
contemporary Turkey’, New Perspectives on Turkey, No. 25, Fall 2001, pp. 1– 30.
[40] ‘Foreword’, New Perspectives on Turkey, I(1), Fall 1987, p. 1.
[41] George Iggers, Historiography in the Twentieth Century, Wesleyan University Press, Hanover,
1997, p. 90.
[42] For the transitions from orthodox leftist/Marxist politics to left-liberal predispositions from
1980 to 1990s, see Doğan Gürpınar, ‘The trajectory of left-liberalism in Turkey and its
nemesis: the great rupture in the Turkish Left’, Insight Turkey, 14(1), January 2012, pp. 147–
168; Doğan Gürpınar, Düne Veda: Türkiye’de Liberalizm ve Demokratlık (1980– 2010),
Etkileşim Yayınları, İstanbul, 2013, pp. 118 –155.
[43] For an insightful autobiographic work merging the course of his personal academic career
with the transformations of historical scholarship and social sciences, see Geoff Eley, A
Crooked Line: From Cultural History to the History of Society, University of Michigan Press,
Ann Arbor, 2005. Eric Hobsbawm’s memoir also enables us to trace how the historian’s
political commitments and ideological dispositions as well as the changing political and
mental structures shape the development of his/her historical scholarship. The book depicts
Hobsbawm’s break with the British Communist Party and classical Marxism for his
advancement of a new kind of social and economic history. Eric Hobsbawm, Interesting
Times, Pantheon Books, New York, 2002. For a study of the personal, ideological motivations
of historians to write history, see Jeremy D. Popkin, History, Historians & Autobiography, The
University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 2005. Also, see George Mosse, Confronting History: A
Memoir, University of Wisconsin Press, Madison, 2000. For the transformation of Middle
Eastern Studies in the 1970s by a new left-leaning generation of scholars, see Zachary
Lockman, Contending Visions of the Middle East: The History of Politics of Orientalism,
Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2004.
[44] For some studies on the historiographical turn beginning from the 1970s, see George Iggers,
op. cit.; Victoria Bonnell and Lynn Hunt (eds), Beyond the Cultural Turn: New Directions in
the Study of Society and Culture, University of California Press, Berkeley, 1999.
[45] Harvey Kaye, The Powers of the Past, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 1991,
pp. 40– 64.
[46] For the founding text of French revisionism, see Francois Furet, Interpreting the French
Revolution, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1981. For the controversies which
erupted during the 200th anniversary of the French Revolution in 1989 and reactions to the
revisionist French historians, see Steven Laurance Kaplan, Farewell, Revolution: Disputed
Legacies, France 1789/1989, Cornell University Press, Ithaca, NY, 1995; Steven Laurance
Kaplan, Farewell Revolution: The Historians’ Feud, France 1789/1989, Cornell University Press,
Ithaca, NY, 1996. Also, see Pierre Nora (ed.), Realms of Memory, 3 vols, Columbia University
Press, New York, 1996.
[47] Simha Flapan, The Birth of Israel: Myths and Realities, Pantheon, New York, 1988; Benny
Morris, The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, 1947 – 1949, Cambridge University Press,
Cambridge, 1988; Avi Shlaim, Collusion Across the Jordan: King Abdullah, the Zionist
Movement, and the Partition of Palestine, Oxford University Press, New York, 1998; Ilan Pappe,
The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, One World, Oxford, 2007; Zeev Sternhell, The Founding
Myths of Israel: Socialism, Nationalism, and the Making of the Jewish State, Princeton
University Press, Princeton, NJ, 1998. For a personal account of setbacks suffered by
revisionist historians in Israel that marginalized them and the flight of Pappe to Britain, see
Ilan Pappe, Out of the Frame: The Struggle for Academic Freedom in Israel, Pluto Press,
London, 2010.
[48] Selim Deringil, The Well-Protected Domains: Ideology and Legitimization of Power in the
Ottoman Empire, 1876 – 1908, I. B. Tauris, London, 1998; Engin Deniz Akarlı, ‘The tangled
ends of an empire: Ottoman encounters with the West and problems of Westernization—an
overview’, Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East, 26(3), July 2006, pp.
353 – 366; Engin Deniz Akarlı, ‘The problems of external pressures, power struggles, and
budgetary deficits in Ottoman politics under Abdülhamid II (1876 – 1909)’, unpublished
dissertation, Princeton University, 1976.
[49] Mete Tunc ay, Türkiye Cumhuriyeti’nde Tek-Parti Yönetiminin Kurulması (1923 – 1931), Yurt
Yayınları, Ankara, 1981.
[50] Cemil Koc ak, Türkiye’de Milli Şef Dönemi:1938 – 1945, Yurt Yayınları, Ankara, 1986; Cemil
Koc ak, Umumi Müfettişlikler (1927 – 1952), İletişim Yayınları, İstanbul, 2003; Cemil Koc ak,
Belgelerle İktidar ve Serbest Cumhuriyet Fırkası, op. cit.
[51] Ahmet Demirel, Birinci Meclis’te Muhalefet: İkinci Grup, İletişim Yayınları, İstanbul, 1994;
Ahmet Demirel, Ali Şükrü Bey’in Tan Gazetesi, İletişim Yayınları, İstanbul, 1996.
[52] Erik Jan Zürcher, The Unionist Factor: The Role of the Committee of Union and Progress in the
Turkish National Movement, Brill, Leiden, 1984; Erik Jan Zürcher, Political Opposition in the
Early Turkish Republic: The Progressive Republican Party, 1924 – 1925, Brill, Leiden, 1991; Erik
Jan Zürcher, Turkey: A Modern History, I. B. Tauris, London, 1994.
[53] Ayhan Aktar, Varlık Vergisi ve ‘Türkleştirme’ Politikaları, İletişim Yayınları, İstanbul, 2000;
Ayhan Aktar and Tu¨rk Milliyetcilig˘i, Gayrımu¨slimler ve Ekonomik Do¨nu¸u ¨s¨m, I˙ letis¸im
Yayınları, İstanbul, 2006; Soner Çagaptay, Islam, Secularism and Nationalism in Modern
Turkey: Who is a Turk ?, Routledge, London, 2006; Rıfat Bali, Cumhuriyet Yıllarında Türkiye
Yahudileri: Bir Türkleştirme Serüveni (1923 –1945), İletişim Yayınları, İstanbul, 1999; Rıfat
Bali, 1934 Trakya Olayları, Kitabevi, İstanbul, 2008; Fuat Dündar, Modern Türkiye’nin Şifresi:
İttihat ve Terakki’nin Etnisite Mühendisliği, 1913 – 1918, İletişim Yayınları, İstanbul, 2008; Fuat
Dündar, İttihat ve Terakki’nin Müslümanları İskan Politikası, 1913 – 1918, İletişim Yayınları,
İstanbul, 2009.
[54] Among many others, see Şükrü Hanioğlu, Preparing for a Revolution, Oxford University Press,
Oxford, 2001; Şükrü Hanioğlu, Young Turks in Opposition, Oxford University Press, Oxford,
1995; Şerif Mardin, Religion and Social Change in Modern Turkey: The Case of Bediüzzaman
Said Nursi, State University of New York Press, Albany, 1989; Selc uk Akşin Somel, The
Modernization of Public Religion in the Ottoman Empire, 1839 – 1908, Brill, Leiden, 2001;
Aykut Kansu, The Revolution of 1908 in Turkey, Brill, Leiden, 1997.
[55] The publications of Akc am include, Taner Akc am, Türk Ulusal Kimliği ve Ermeni Sorunu,
İletişim Yayınları, İstanbul, 1992; Taner Akc am, From Empire to Republic: Turkish Nationalism
and the Armenian Genocide, Zed Books, London, 2004; Taner Akc am, A Shameful Act: The
Armenian Genocide and the Question of Turkish Responsibility, Metropolitan Books, New York,
2006; Taner Akc am, ‘Ermeni Meselesi Hallolunmuştur’, İletişim Yayınları, İstanbul, 2008.
[56] See ‘Ermenileri O ¨ zel O¨ rgüt Öldürdü’, Radikal, 9 October 2000; ‘Serinkanlı Olalım’, Milliyet,
20 October 2000.
[57] For the emergence of a consciousness on 1915 among Turkish historians, academics and
political activists in the late 1990s and early 2000s before the issue became a popular cause for
Turkish political activists, see Ragıp Zarakolu, Sivil Toplumda Türk-Ermeni Diyaloğu, Pencere
Yayınları, İstanbul, 2009; Fatma Müge Göc ek and Ronald Grigor Suny, ‘Introduction: Leaving
it to the historians’, in Fatma Müge Göc ek and Ronald Grigor Suny (eds), A Question of
Genocide, Oxford University Press, New York, 2011, pp. 3– 5.
[58] For the history of the Boğazic i (Bosphorus) University and its foundation as a state university,
see John Freely, A History of Robert College, Yapı Kredi Yayınları, İstanbul, 2001.
[59] Hikmet Çetinkaya, ‘ABD İslamcılığı . . . (1)’, Cumhuriyet, 26 September 2007; Vural Savaş,
‘Soros’un Destek Verdiği Üniversiteler’, Aydınlık, 4 Eylül 2005, p. 64; Erol Mütercimler,
Fikrimizin Rehberi: Gazi Mustafa Kemal, Alfa, İstanbul, 2009, p. xix.
[60] ‘Ermeni Konferansı Ertelendi’, Milliyet, 25 May 2005.
[61] ‘Ermeni Konferansı Tartışmalı Başladı’, Sabah, 25 September 2005. The proceedings of the
conference were later published. İmparatorlug˘un C¨ku¸ ¸ o ¨s Do¨neminde Osmanlı Ermenileri, Bilgi
Üniversitesi Yayınları, İstanbul, 2011.
[62] For this process of radicalization, see Uslu, op. cit., pp. 73 – 97.
[63] In fact, before Belleten and the Turkish History Association, there was an emerging
historiography beginning from 1908, which was absorbed into the Kemalist official line in the
1930s. See Hasan Akbayrak, Milletin Tarihinden Ulusun Tarihine, Kitabevi, İstanbul, 2009.
[64] Margaret Stieg Dalton, The Origin and Development of Scholarly Historical Periodicals,
University of Alabama Press, Tuscaloosa, AL, 1986; George Iggers, op. cit., p. 27.
[65] İsmail Hakkı Uzunc arşılı, Osmanlı Devletinin Merkez ve Bahriye Teşkilatı, Türk Tarih
Kurumu, Ankara, 1948; İsmail Hakkı Uzunc arşılı, Osmanlı Devletinin İlmiye Teşkilatı, Türk
Tarih Kurumu, Ankara, 1965; İsmail Hakkı Uzunc arşılı, Osmanlı Tarihi, Vols 1– 4, Türk Tarih
Kurumu, Ankara, 1947.
[66] Enver Ziya Karal, Osmanlı Tarihi, Vols 5– 8, Türk Tarih Kurumu, Ankara, 1947; Enver Ziya
Karal, Fransa, Mısır ve Osmanlı İmparatorluğu, Milli Mecmua Basımevi, İstanbul, 1938; Enver
Ziya Karal, Halet Efendinin Paris Büyükelc iliği, Kenan Matbaası, İstanbul, 1940.
[67] Niyazi Berkes, The Development of Secularism in Turkey, McGill University Press, Montreal,
1964.
[68] Mustafa Akdağ, Türkiye’nin İktisadi ve İctimai Tarihi, Türk Tarih Kurumu, Ankara, 1959;
Mustafa Akdağ, Celali İsyanları (1550 – 1603), Ankara U ¨ niversitesi, Ankara, 1963.
[69] Osman Turan, Selc uklular Zamanında Türkiye, Turan Neşriyat Yurdu, İstanbul, 1971.
[70] Bernard Lewis, The Emergence of Modern Turkey, Oxford University Press, London, 1961. For
an assessment of this classical work by Bernard Lewis on its fiftieth anniversary discussing it as
representative of the historical scholarship of its time, see Erik Jan Zürcher, ‘The rise and fall
of “modern” Turkey: Bernard Lewis’s emergence fifty years on’, in Erik Jan Zürcher, The Young
Turk Legacy and Nation Building, I. B. Tauris, London, 2010, pp. 41– 53.
[71] In the Turkish Historical Association, an office was instituted with the name ‘Armenian
Affairs’. The task of this office is to develop an official line denying any responsibility for the
death of the Armenians during the First World War. Some studies undertaken to respond to
the Armenian allegations are as follows: Yusuf Halac oğlu, Ermeni Tehciri ve Gerc ekler: 1914 –
1918, Türk Tarih Kurumu Yayınları, Ankara, 2001; Facts on the Relocation of Armenians
(1914– 1918), Turkish Historical Society Printing House, Ankara, 2002; Kemal Çic ek,
Ermenilerin Zorunlu Göcü, 1915 – 1917, Türk Tarih Kurumu Yayınları, Ankara, 2005; Hikmet
Özdemir, Salgın Hastalıklardan O ¨ lümler, 1914 – 1918, Türk Tarih Kurumu Yayınları, Ankara,
2005. Also, see , http://www.ttk.org.tr/index.php?Page¼Sayfa&No ¼ 111 . (accessed 9
April 2010).
[72] The major exception is Esat Uras, Tarihte Ermeniler ve Ermeni Meselesi, Yeni Matbaa, Ankara,
1950.
[73] Mehmet Hocaoğlu, Arşiv Vesikalarıyla Tarihte Ermeni Mezalimi ve Ermeniler, ANDA Dağıtım,
Istanbul, 1976; Altan Deliorman, Türklere Karşı Ermeni Komitecileri, Boğazic i Yayınları,
İstanbul, 1975.
[74] Türkkaya Ataöv, Talat Paşa’ya Atfedilen Andonian ‘Belgeler’i Sahtedir, Barok Ofset, Ankara,
1986; Türkkaya Ataöv, Ermeni Sorunu: Bibliografya, A. U ¨ . Siyasal Bilgiler Fakültesi Yayınları,
Ankara, 1981; Salahi Sonyel, Displacement of the Armenians, n.p., Ankara, 1978; Bilal Şimşir,
The Genesis of the Armenian Question, Turkish Historical Society, Ankara, 1984. Also, see Orly
Saldırısı Davası, 19 Şubat – 2 Mart 1985: Şahit ve Avukat Beyanları, Ankara U ¨ niversitesi Siyasal
Bilgiler Fakültesi Yayınları, Ankara, 1985; Mim Kemal O ¨ ke, Ermeni Sorunu, 1914 – 1923, Türk
Tarih Kurumu, Ankara, 1991; Şinasi Orel and Süreyya Yuca, Ermenilerce Talat Paşa’ya
Atfedilen Telgrafların Gerc ek Yüzü, Türk Tarih Kurumu, Ankara, 1983; Erdal İlter, ‘Ermeni
Mes’elesi’nin Perspektifi ve Zeytun İsyanları (1780 – 1880), Türk Kültürünü Araştırma
Enstitüsü, Ankara, 1988.
[75] Kamuran Gürün, Ermeni Dosyası, Türk Tarih Kurumu, Ankara, 1983. The book was also
translated into English and French. Kamuran Gürün, The Armenian File, K. Rustem and
Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London, 1985; Kamuran Gürün, Le Dossier Armenian, Societe Turque
de’Histoire, n.p., 1983. For his own account of how he was involved with encountering the
Armenian allegations and his efforts to create an awareness on the issue among academicians
and the larger public, see Kamuran Gürün, Fırtınalı Yıllar: Dışişleri Müsteşarlığı Hatıralarım,
Milliyet Yayınları, Istanbul, 1995.
[76] Also, see Nurşen Mazıcı, Belgelerle Uluslararası Rekabette Ermeni Sorununun Kökeni, 1878 –
1918, Der Kitabevi, İstanbul, 1987; Recep Şahin, Tarih Boyunca Türk İdarelerinin Ermeni
Politikaları, Ötüken Yayınları, İstanbul, 1988.
[77] For a history of YO ¨ K, see İlhan Tekeli, Türkiye’de Yükseköğretimin ve YO ¨ K’ün Tarihi, Tarih
Vakfı Yurt Yayınları, İstanbul, 2010, pp. 193 – 387.
[78] For the institutionalization of the quasi-academic national security bodies, see Doğan
Gürpınar, Türkiye’de Aydının Kısa Tarihi, Etkileşim Yayınları, İstanbul, 2013, pp. 205 – 210;
Etienne Copeaux, Espaces et Temps de la Nation Turque, CNRS, Paris, 1997, pp. 81 – 85; Yüksel
Taşkın, Milliyetc i Muhafazakar Entelijansiya, İletişim Yayınları, İstanbul, 2007, pp. 266 – 274.
For a portrayal of this ‘quasi-intellectual sphere’, ‘in the zenith of the neo-nationalist surge’,
see Uslu, op. cit., pp. 89 – 90.
[79] For the collapse of the classical modern world of Keynesian economies and nation-states and
the anxiety this transformation ensued, see Ulrich Beck, Risk Society: Towards a New
Modernity, Sage, Newbury Park, 1992; Anthony Giddens, Modernity and Self-Identity: Self and
Society in the Late Modern Age, Polity, Cambridge, 1991; Anthony Giddens, Consequences of
Modernity, Stanford University Press, Stanford, 1990; Anthony Giddens, Beyond Left and
Right: The Future of Radical Politics, Polity Press, Cambridge, 1994.
[80] For the imagined relations cultivated between individuals and nation-states, see Michael
Herzfeld, Cultural Intimacy: Social Poetics in the Nation-State, Routledge, London, 1997.
Doğan Gürpinar completed his PhD at Sabanci University, Istanbul, on the subject of
the late Ottoman Foreign Ministry. A revised version of his dissertation is published
by I. B. Tauris as Ottoman Imperial Diplomacy. He is Assistant Professor at Istanbul
Technical University.
Address for correspondence: İstanbul Teknik Üniversitesi, Fen-Edebiyat
Fakültesi, İnsan ve Toplum Bilimleri Bölümü, 34469 Maslak, Istanbul, Turkey.
Email: dgurpinar@itu.edu.tr

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Journal of Balkan and Near Eastern Studies

ISSN: 1944-8953 (Print) 1944-8961 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/cjsb20

Historical Revisionism vs. Conspiracy Theories:

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Historical Revisionism vs. Conspiracy

q 2013 Taylor & Francis

employed in these conspiracy theories and conspiratorial historiography in the 2000s

zeal, commitment, masculinity, audaciousness and vigilance, as well as ideological

extraneous historical moments, processes and actors as identical is implemented.

The Emergence and Rise of Left-Liberal Revisionist Historiography in Turkey

principal contours and premises of Kemalist historiography.54 The 1990s genres of

tantamount to casting doubt on the credibility of the foundational axioms of

Two ‘Regimes of Truth’

Ottoman Empire, Ottoman modernization and Turkic history were studied in

prioritized and problematized. The institutionalization of YO ¨ K (Council of Higher

As the state-centric historiography could not adapt to changing paradigms and

As a conclusion, two radically opposed representations of the course of modern

introduced, thereby trivializing Armenian suffering. An Ottoman nostalgia and

pp. 145– 167.

pp. 401– 416.

Liberalizmin Yasaklanıs¸ı’, in Murat Yılmaz (ed.), Modern Tu¨rkiye’de Siyasi Düs¨nce:

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