Tracing the Ottoman Legacy of Deficient Horizontal Relations in Turkish Civil Society

10.26686/wgtn.17005060.v1 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

◽

Aeuy-Jai Gajaseni Tongbor

Keyword(s):

European Union ◽

Civil Society ◽

Ottoman Empire ◽

Historical Analysis ◽

Social Attitudes ◽

Major Topic ◽

Strong State ◽

Late Ottoman Empire ◽

Late Ottoman ◽

Turkish Society

<p>This paper attempts to supplement a literature concerned with Turkey‘s Ottoman legacy, especially as it pertains to the functioning of civil society in Turkey. It does so because the efficacy of civil society in Turkey is a major topic of discussion in light of its European Union accession bid, and Turkey‘s Ottoman legacy is yet to be comprehensively teased out. While the strong state tradition which is part of the Ottoman legacy is well documented, relations within society separate from the state‘s influence are yet to be subjected to an historical analysis. While the influence of the state on Turkish society is pervasive, and must be a component of any analysis of civil society in Turkey, analysis focusing on Turkey‘s strong state legacy has obscured other interesting facets of the country‘s Ottoman legacy. This paper posits that deficiencies in Turkish civil society are not just the result of the strong state tradition, but also reflect social attitudes that can be traced to a number of policies implemented in the late-Ottoman Empire.</p>

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The Young Turks' Crime against Humanity

10.23943/princeton/9780691153339.001.0001 ◽

2012 ◽

Cited By ~ 17

Author(s):

Taner Akçam

Keyword(s):

Ottoman Empire ◽

Religious Diversity ◽

Armenian Genocide ◽

Ethnic Cleansing ◽

Turkish Republic ◽

Young Turks ◽

East And West ◽

Late Ottoman Empire ◽

New Evidence ◽

Late Ottoman

Introducing new evidence from more than 600 secret Ottoman documents, this book demonstrates in detail that the Armenian Genocide and the expulsion of Greeks from the late Ottoman Empire resulted from an official effort to rid the empire of its Christian subjects. This book goes deep inside the bureaucratic machinery of Ottoman Turkey to show how a dying empire embraced genocide and ethnic cleansing. Although the deportation and killing of Armenians was internationally condemned in 1915 as a “crime against humanity and civilization,” the Ottoman government initiated a policy of denial that is still maintained by the Turkish Republic. The case for Turkey's “official history” rests on documents from the Ottoman imperial archives, to which access has been heavily restricted until recently. It is this very source that the book now uses to overturn the official narrative. The documents presented here attest to a late-Ottoman policy of Turkification, the goal of which was no less than the radical demographic transformation of Anatolia. To that end, about one-third of Anatolia's 15 million people were displaced, deported, expelled, or massacred, destroying the ethno-religious diversity of an ancient cultural crossroads of East and West, and paving the way for the Turkish Republic. By uncovering the central roles played by demographic engineering and assimilation in the Armenian Genocide, this book will fundamentally change how this crime is understood and show that physical destruction is not the only aspect of the genocidal process.

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