Turkish History Thesis

The Turkish History Thesis (Türk Tarih Tezi) is a Turkish ultranationalist,[3][4] pseudohistoric[5][6] thesis which posited the belief that the Turks moved from their ancestral homeland in Central Asia and migrated to China, India, the Balkans, the Middle East, and Northern Africa in several waves, populating the areas which they had moved to and bringing civilization to their native inhabitants. The theory was developed within the context of pre-Nazi scientific racism, classifying the Turks as an "Alpine subgroup" of the Caucasian race.[7] The intent of the theory was a rejection of Western European assertions that the Turks belonged to the "yellow or mongol" race. Mustafa Kemal Atatürk took a personal interest in the subject after he was shown a French language book that claimed Turks "belonged to the yellow race" and were a "secondaire" people.[8][9]

This article is part of
a series about
Mustafa Kemal Atatürk

Reforms

Kemalism

Mustafa Kemal Atatürk's signature
Yusuf Ziya Özer, a law professor and one of the conceivers of the Turkish History Thesis.[1]
Ahmet Cevat Emre, a writer who was influenced by social Darwinism, which he wrote about in the monthly family magazine Muhit during the early republican period.[2]

In the aftermath of World War I, the Turks strove to prove that they were the equals of the Western nations, an attempt which bore historical and racial connotations. The Turkish History Thesis created a third alternative to existing narratives claiming that Greece or Mesopotamia, or both, were the "cradles" of Western civilization. The thesis itself rested on a spurious intellectual foundation by claiming that the Turks had a Hittite ancestry which was of Central Asian Aryan origin. The thesis insisted that all Turkic peoples had a common racial origin and it also insisted that they had created a great civilization in their Central Asian homeland in prehistoric times and have preserved their language and racial characteristics ever since. According to the thesis, the Turks had originally migrated from Central Asia to China and from China, they migrated to India, where they founded the civilizations of Mohenjo-daro and Harappa, and from India, they migrated to other parts of the world.[10][11]

The Thesis was made known to the public during the First Turkish Historical Congress, which was held between 2 and 11 July 1932.[12] The congress was attended by eighteen professors of the University of Istanbul (then known as Darülfünün), of which some would be dismissed after the congress.[13] 196 Turkish high school teachers were also mentioned in the protocol of the congress.[13] The opening speech belonged to Mahmut Esat Bozkurt, during which he criticized the western scholars for their interpretation of the Turkish history.[14] He claimed that the Central Asian Turks have departed the Stone Age 7000 years before the Europeans and then dispersed westwards as the first people to have brought civilization to the humans.[14] Afet İnan, an adoptive daughter of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk and member of the Turkish history committee of the Turkish Hearths, pushed the view that the Turks were what was racially called "brachycephalic" and they have established a developed civilization around an "inner sea" which is located in Central Asia.[15] According to her, they left after the "inner sea" dried up due to climate change and from there, they spread out and disseminated civilization to other cultures, including the cultures which existed in China, India, Egypt and Greece.[15] The internal contradictions of the Turkish History Thesis became more pronounced in later decades as Colonel Kurtcebe sought to raise the modern Turkish people's awareness of its connection to Central Asia and the Mongols. He believed that an emphasis on Western-style historical education had caused the Turks to be uninterested in Mongolian history. This emphasis on Western-style historical education produced a confused doctrine which forced military publications to maintain the Turkish History Thesis's connection to European races, but at the same time, it promoted an image in which the Turkish military was superior to the military forces of all Western powers due to its roots in a Central Asian past.[16]

The thesis was influenced by the book Türk Tarihinin Ana Hatları (The Mainlines of Turkish History) published by the Committee for the Study of the Turkish History (TOTTTH) of the Turkish Hearths[17] and became a "state dogma"[18] which was included in school textbooks.[19][20] During Atatürk's government, scholars like Hasan Reşit Tankut and Rıfat Osman Bey were encouraged that the findings of their studies in history and social sciences be in line with the Turkish Historical Thesis and the Sun Language Theory.[21] The Turkish Historical Thesis is connected with the Sun Language Theory published in 1935 which stipulates that all languages have their origin from the Turkish language.[22] Prominent scholars like Zeki Velidi Togan and Nihal Atsız who challenged the Turkish Historical Thesis lost their jobs at the University.[23]

Turkish History Thesis and Hittites

Kemalism provided an important position to Hittites and Hittite symbolism in constructing Turkish identity and nationhood. Kemalist researchers, such as Ahmet Ağaoğlu (who was an advisor to Atatürk and a politician who played an important role in creating the Turkish Constitution of 1924), believed that the nation must portray Hittites as a world-domineering Turkish race with firm roots in Anatolia.[24]

Modern genetic researches on Turkish samples show that Anatolian Turks are a mixture of Turkic tribes and Anatolian natives; however, unlike the Turkish History Thesis, these two admixtures do not originate from the same ethnicity, race, or identity.[25]

References
  1. Alexis Heraclides; Gizem Alioğlu Çakmak (2019). Greece and Turkey in Conflict and Cooperation From Europeanization to De-Europeanization. Routledge. ISBN 978-1-138-30188-7.
  2. Bayraktar, Uğur Bahadır (2013-06-30). "(Social) Darwinism for Families. The Magazine Muhit, Children and Women in Early Republican Turkey". European Journal of Turkish Studies. Social Sciences on Contemporary Turkey (16). doi:10.4000/ejts.4837. ISSN 1773-0546.
  3. Ter-Matevosyan, Vahram (2019). Turkey, Kemalism and the Soviet Union: Problems of Modernization, Ideology and Interpretation. Springer. p. 71. ISBN 978-3-319-97403-3.
  4. Altinay, A. (2004). The Myth of the Military-Nation: Militarism, Gender, and Education in Turkey. Springer. p. 176. ISBN 978-1-4039-7936-0.
  5. Yavuz, M. Hakan (2003). Islamic Political Identity in Turkey. Oxford University Press. p. 51. ISBN 978-0-19-028965-2.
  6. Vryonis, Speros (1991). The Turkish State and History: Clio Meets the Grey Wolf. Institute for Balkan Studies. p. 77. ISBN 978-0-89241-532-8.
  7. Gürpinar, Doğan (2013). Ottoman/Turkish Visions of the Nation, 1860–1950. Palgrave MacMillan. p. 83. ISBN 978-1-137-33421-3.
  8. Cagaptay, Soner (2006). Islam, Secularism and Nationalism in Modern Turkey: Who is a Turk?. Routledge. p. 54. ISBN 978-1-134-17448-5.
  9. Kieser, Hans-Lukas (2 October 2019). "Narrating Talaat, Unlocking Turkey's Foundation: Talaat Pasha Father of Modern Turkey, Architect of Genocide, by Hans-Lukas Kieser, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 2018, 552 pp., USD$39.95 (hardcover), ISBN 978-0-691-15762-7". Journal of Genocide Research. 21 (4): 562–570. doi:10.1080/14623528.2019.1613835. S2CID 182444792. Atatürk feverishly attempted but failed to evacuate Islam from Gökalp's explosive mixture. To this fact, his Turkish History Thesis of the 1930s is a tragicomic testament, the political logic of which cannot be detached from the synchronous exterminatory campaign against Dersim's Alevi Kurds. On provincial ground, this campaign went hand in hand with anti-Alevi Sunni stereotypes. Atatürk's historical efforts toward the end of his life were pathetic. He tried in vain to retain Gökalp's exalted Turkism alone, wanting to put republican nationalism on a scientific fundament of racial anthropology, ethnohistory, and linguistics.
  10. O'Donnabhain, Barra (2014). Archaeological Human Remains: Global Perspectives. Springer. p. 203. ISBN 978-3-319-06370-6.
  11. Shaw, Wendy (2008). "The rising of the Hittite sun The Rise of the Hittite Sun. A Deconstruction of Western Civilization from the Margin". Selective Remembrances. University of Chicago Press. pp. 170–171. doi:10.7208/9780226450643-006 (inactive 1 August 2023). ISBN 978-0-226-45064-3.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: DOI inactive as of August 2023 (link)
  12. Uzer, Umut (2016). An Intellectual History of Turkish Nationalism. The University of Utah Press. p. 102. ISBN 978-1-60781-465-8.
  13. Ergin, Murat (2017). Is the Turk a White Man?: Race and Modernity in the Making of Turkish Identity. Brill Publishers. p. 131. ISBN 978-90-04-32433-6.
  14. Ergin, Murat (2017), p. 132
  15. Cagaptay, Soner (2006), p. 51
  16. Sencer, Emre (2016). Order and Insecurity in Germany and Turkey: Military Cultures of the 1930s. Routledge. p. 29. ISBN 978-1-315-44327-0.
  17. Cagaptay, Soner (2004). "Race, Assimilation and Kemalism: Turkish Nationalism and the Minorities in the 1930s". Middle Eastern Studies. 40 (3): 87–88. doi:10.1080/0026320042000213474. ISSN 0026-3206. JSTOR 4289913. S2CID 143862985.
  18. Döşemeci, Mehmet (2013). Debating Turkish Modernity: Civilization, Nationalism, and the EEC. Cambridge University Press. p. 63. ISBN 978-1-107-04491-3.
  19. White, Jenny (2014). Muslim Nationalism and the New Turks: Updated Edition. Princeton University Press. p. 26. ISBN 978-0-691-16192-1.
  20. Koruroğlu, Ayten; Baskan, Gülsün Atanur (2013). "An Overview and History Education in Republic of Turkey and Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus". Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences. 89: 786–791. doi:10.1016/j.sbspro.2013.08.933.
  21. Uzer, Umut (2016). An Intellectual History of Turkish Nationalism. The University of Utah Press. p. 94. ISBN 978-1-60781-465-8.
  22. Jacob, David (2017). Minderheitenrecht in der Türkei. Mohr Siebeck2017. p. 151. ISBN 978-3-16-154133-9.
  23. Uzer, Umut (2016). An Intellectual History of Turkish Nationalism. The University of Utah Press. p. 127. ISBN 978-1-60781-465-8.
  24. Erimtan, Can (2008). "Hittites, Ottomans and Turks: Ağaoğlu Ahmed Bey and the Kemalist Construction of Turkish Nationhood in Anatolia". Anatolian Studies. 58: 158. doi:10.1017/S0066154600008711. JSTOR 20455417. S2CID 163040610.
  25. "The genetic structure of the Turkish population – Ethnicity Prediction".
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