“Nationalism is not the awakening of nations to self-consciousness: it invents nations where they do not exist.”
Ernest Gellner (1964, p. 169)
Introduction
This following chapter explores the negotiation and application of Hittite archaeology in Turkey during the establishment of the Kemâlist Republic, headed by Mustafa Kemâl Atatürk, during the 1920s, as part of a democratic nationalisation programme. This study provides the contrast to the perceptions and applied negotiations of British imperialism portrayed through the display of Garstang’s Hittite archaeology collection in Liverpool, as discussed above. Here I focus primarily on postcolonial interpretations of selected aspects of political decisions and cultural reformations by the Cumhüriyet Halk Partisi (CHP - Republican People’s Party) which utilised heritage, history and archaeology as the basis of a sustained united national identity, indelibly marking them as implements of politics. This chapter marks the third and final phase of Garstang’s career in knowledge discovery, conservation and reattribution which commenced the establishment of foreign institutes of archaeology and museums (i.e. Palestine and Turkey) as a method of preserving and restoring ownership of artefacts and knowledge to the local rightful nations.
As support for the British imperial system dramatically waned during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, concurrently the Ottoman Empire was being decisively deconstructed by the rising politically-minded and European-educated Turkish middle class (Göçek, 1996). The architecture and contents of British public institutions such as the Liverpool Public Museum promoted a local homogenised British identity along with themes of knowledge colonisation (Chapter Four). Similarly, following the removal of Ottoman rule, the Kemâlist republican government, as it was also known, implemented a programme of nationalisation
160 aimed at the native population through the collection of archaeological artefacts and a renegotiated interpretation for the creation of a united national heritage. Political theories of ownership based upon Hittite archaeology were presented by the Kemâlists, to attain territorial control, autonomous government, and a consolidated socio-political framework for their nation. These archaeological theses of territorial inheritance concerning the Hittites were directly derived from the publications of Archibald Sayce and John Garstang. Osman Hamdi Bey was Garstang’s Ottoman contact in Istanbul as he excavated at Sakçagözü. He was also the Europeanised first director of the Imperial Ottoman Museum. He was responsible for the issue of excavation permits, permissions of artefact exports and held strong links with academic institutes in Europe and America. Halil Ehdem Bey followed his brother as director at a time when Turkish archaeology ceased to be a source of colonial knowledge collection for European imperial agents.
History and archaeology were recognised as powerful international socio-political forces by the reformist CHP (People’s Republican Party). They established local archaeology museums and public imagery promoting a unified and homogeneous Turkish heritage in a bid for self-colonisation.
The following discussion explores specific political aspects of Kemâlist government reformation policies for self-colonisation based upon Western Enlightenment beliefs. These utilised Hittite archaeology as defined earlier by Western academics. The CHP presented their interpretation of a Hittite cultural inheritance to European nations and I will here portray how Turkey gained control both over a geographical territory but also over a culturally disparate people following the loss of the unifying label of ‘Ottoman’. There are parallels with Britain here too: as the British nation lost Christianity as a leading social civilizing element, British imperialism was similarly projected through education and museums and effectively imposed as a replacement for a united identity to live up to. Garstang, as an archaeologist acting within academic and political circles in Britain and Turkey, experienced these aspects of socio-political reform in both the Occident and the Orient.
161 Postcolonialism is necessarily a discussion of politics from a theoretical perspective drawing on the Marxist tradition of anti-imperial critique (Ghandi, 2011, p. 27). Though not exclusively so, in this case discourse is applied to a variety of contexts and purposes regardless of its academic source. The following chapter explores the political role played by archaeology, heritage and the incipient museums sector that was starting to appear during the early Turkish Republican period (1920-1940s) from a postcolonial stance.
Museums were fundamental to the complex and multi-layered transformation of Turkey’s political regime, national self-perception, and the positioning of itself within the Western world. This chapter proposes that this was achieved by adapting a European political philosophy framework to transform what was a geographically and culturally varied remnants of the Ottoman Empire into a single, self-defining democratic, secular and ‘modernised’ (i.e. westernised) Turkish Republic, headed by the CHP in 1923. This investigation demonstrates that to this end the state used Hittite Anatolian archaeology as the pivotal iconic and territorial tool at the heart of its museums agenda.
The archaeological territorial thesis that allowed the Kemâlists to achieve nationhood through the Lausanne Treaty (1923) was that proposed by the British Oriental archaeologists William Wright and Archibald Sayce (Garstang’s Oxford mentor) in 1884 (The Hittite Empire) and John Garstang’s geographical mapping of recognised Hittite sites in Turkey and Northern Syria (1910; 1929).
The chapter concludes with a comparative discussion of the imperialist and colonial epistemological commonality between the socio-political metanarratives of the museums of Britain and Turkey during the period in which John Garstang’s ‘Hittite Collection’ gallery was open at the Liverpool Public Museum.
5.1: A European-Kemâlist nationalistic political reformation process
The Kemâlist socio-political republican variant was adopted from 19th century Germanic Romantic ideas of national homogeneity requiring a common language, history culture and race (Yong, 2003, pp. 61-2). This approach worked well initially and a common sense of solidarity was achieved in order to expel foreign colonialist
162 presence and partitioning (i.e. the British, French, Italian) (image 5.1). Once this was repelled it became more problematic to impose and maintain such a homogeneous national identity through state control due to the variety of cultures, faiths and heritage which demanded acknowledgement within the bounds of the new Turkish state. As discussed in Chapter Two, during the late Ottoman period, Germany held sway over the field of archaeological exploration in Anatolia.
Image 5.1: Map illustrating the Allied partitioning of the Ottoman territories according to the Treaty of Sévres (1920) (Courtesy of Str1977, 2007 online)
These early alliances in turn led to the later portrayal of Turkey as a persistent non- Christian ‘Oriental other’ in the West as leverage by Britain and America for political purposes during the run up to WWII as alliances were forged for the coming conflict (see Appendix Twelve).
In addition to close political relations with Germany, the leaders of the Kemâlist government sought to emulate a European democratic political model with which it was familiar through the middle class European education its members had received (Wallerstein, 1991, pp. 91-106). They had been educated in Paris and Berlin during the time of Charles Maurras (1868 – 1952) at universities that had promoted philosophies of nationhood above all (Rémond, 2006, p. 8). Popular
163 interpretations of Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche’s (1844- 1900) ideals of ‘Übermensch’, as laid out in Die fröhliche Wissenschaft (1882) in his bookAlso sprach Zarathustra: Ein Buch für Alle und Keinen (2006), while effectively ignoring his Über Wahrheit und Lüge im außermoralischen Sinn in his other publication Die Geburt der Tragödie, Oder: Griechentum und Pessimismus (Nietzsche, 1999), were adopted. The Kemâlist party was made up of members of the socially, economically and politically favoured who envisaged modernity as a process of westernisation that required disengagement from the Ottoman-Islamic tradition (Yavuz, 2007, p. 27).
The Kemâlist ideology of nationhood led to the “Six Arrows” of the CHP (Republican People’s Party). Each of these ‘arrows’ represented republicanism, nationalism, populism, secularity, statism and revolutionism with the aim of upholding a unified new national identity above all (Ersanlı, 2006, p. 105).
Here I wish to put forward a postcolonial understanding of the role that archaeology played within the Kemâlist movement. I touch upon the various aspects of the historical context, the sectors of society that the new nationalist regime applied to, and the archaeological symbols used to implement it. The latter is mostly pertinent since I believe that later postcolonialist theorists (e.g. Bhabha) tend to limit themselves to a purely theoretical realm which, in turn, somewhat obfuscates discourse when applied to specific case studies. Bhabha’s various theoretical strands can appear to merge one into the other with equal degrees of disconnection when applied to worked examples of historico-political situations (2007, p. 187).
There is a crucial difference between Western colonisation and internal Kemâlist self-westernising ‘colonisation’. Apart from the obvious self-administered modus operandi, in Western colonialism a degree of autonomy by the colonised was always allowed to appear, no matter how superficial. This was not something that was allowed within Kemâlist Turkey. Initially attempts (1924-30) were made for a democratic opposition representation in government (e.g. Progressive Republican Party, 1924-30) (Mango, 2004, pp. 130, 418) however the political instability a
164 multi-party system allowed at this point made Atatürk revert to a single-party presidential position, enforcing the Tanzimat and dissolving the government opposition. Anything that allowed past cultural connections to linger in any form was forcefully removed. Foucault’s theory of ‘representable materiality’ (2008, pp. 23-79) and Derrida’s ‘iterability and difference’ (2001, p. 29) were allowed for within Western colonial edicts, however inherited icons and notions of an Ottoman identity were to be eradicated in Kemâlist Turkey denying any possibility of a representable social difference. Essentially the problem of transcribing a new discourse of identity from one governing regime to the other in Turkey should not have arisen since the new force was a local Anatolian government. However the political philosophies that the Kemâlists imposed were so culturally alien to the preceding Ottomans’ national consciousness (which was made up of myriad ethnicities) that a problem with the repeatability of this nation-unifying materiality could not fail to emerge (Bhabha, 2007, pp. 28-56).
Official Turkish history states that Mustafa Kemâl Atatürk generated the first cells of resistance support against the Allied occupation from within Anatolia (Evans, 1982, p. 18). Meanwhile historian Erik Zürcher writes that in fact Atatürk was chosen as leader of this resistance movement created by the Karakol, a secret society formed by Unionists Mehmed Talat and Enver Paşa in 1918. Their role was to protect Muslim Unionists from Christian and Allied entities by relocating to Anatolia and enforcing ‘Turkification’ (1984, p. 84). In June 1919 Atatürk, Rauf Orbay, Ali Fuat Cebesoy, Refat Bele and Kâzım Karabekir each represented a military district in Anatolia and established the strategy of national movement against foreign occupation based upon the Unionist Young Turk nationalist discourse (Toynbee and Kirkwood, 1926, p. 87). The resulting declaration formed the basis of the National Pact (Misak-i Milli) of 1920 (VanderLippe, 2005, pp. 12-3). British military forces were dispatched from Istanbul to deal with Atatürk’s party and in May, 1920 Atatürk and his nationalist military party were sentenced to death (Evans, 1982, p. 36).
The National Pact of February 1920 conceptualised a national Turkish state and established the political intentions of the War of National Liberation by the
165 provisional government Büyük Millet Meclisi made up of the Kemâlist resistance movement (Toynbee and Kirkwood, 1926, pp. 84-8). Primarily the pact defined the geographic boundaries of the Turkish nation (millet) to be defended by nationalist military forces seeking ethno-religious nationalism. The Turkish nation was defined as a Muslim resident of Anatolia and Thrace. This excluded the Caucasus, central Asia, the Balkans, Kurds or other non-Muslim ethnicities who were non-Muslims, wore traditional clothing or did not fully integrate with “true” Turks and in the process completely relinquished their native inherited identity (Yavuz, 2007, p. 26). Finally the National Pact imposed a policy of national unity and equality in this National Struggle (VanderLippe, 2005, p. 13). These goals included achieving a completely Anatolian Turkish independent status with no compromises allowing for previous Ottoman circumstances. These parameters made the European Treaty of Sévres (1920) redundant (Erimtan, 2008, p. 149) and negotiations had to be reopened at Lausanne in 1923. Zürcher argues that the founding aims of the resistance movement were to liberate the Muslim Ottomanised (Osmanlilik) people from Western and Ottoman influence. Secular linguistic nationalism for a westernised (non-Ottoman) Turkish nation was enforced following the official recognition of governmental sovereignty at the Grand National Assembly in 1922 led by Atatürk (Gonlübol, 1982; Zürcher, 2000, p. 59).
The idea of nationhood as a homogenised identity marker is a creation of Western industrialised society (Kushner, 1997, p. 219). Atatürk applied this idea to a demographically heterogeneous landmass which had previously been grouped together under the name of Ottoman, but now would be Turkey. Being called Turkish during the Ottoman Imperial rule was not particularly meaningful and was construed as derogatory (Zürcher, 2000, pp. 58-9). Now “Turkey” and “Turkish” meant something so fundamentally and positively strong that it was intended to unite everyone, regardless of educational or social standing, ethnicity, language, faith, or heritage, to definitively dispel the previous legacy. Everyone was to find that they were a united Turkish people historically, territorially and culturally, with a common national history underpinned by an archaeology that would consolidate the nation’s significance internationally (Derrida, 1984; Eriksen, 2010, p. 125;
166 Atakuman, 2008, p. 216). Atatürk’s public rhetoric defined this totalitarian stance and revealed its French revolutionary roots (Vivian, 2007, p. 379):
Atatürk’s address to the Turkish Youth of October 1927:
“This holy treasure [Turkish Republic] I lay in the hands of the youth of Turkey. O Turkish Youth! Your first duty is ever to preserve and defend the National independence; the Turkish Republic. That is the only basis of your existence and your future. This basis contains your most precious treasure. In the future, too, there will be ill-will, both in the country itself and abroad, which will try to tear this treasure from you. If one day you are compelled to defend your independence and the Republic, then, in order to fulfil your duty, you will have to look beyond the possibilities and conditions in which you might find yourself. It may be that these conditions and possibilities are altogether unfavourable. It may be that the enemies who desire to destroy your independence and your Republic represent the strongest force that the earth has ever seen; that they have through craft and force, taken possession of all the fortresses and arsenals of the Fatherland; that all its armies are scattered and the country actually and completely occupied.
Assuming, in order to look still darker possibilities in the face, that those who hold the power of Government within the country have fallen into error, that they are fools or traitors, yes, even that these leading persons may identify their personal interests with the enemy's political goals, it might happen that the nation came into complete privation, into the most extreme distress; that it found itself in a condition of ruin and complete exhaustion.
Even under those circumstances, O Turkish child of future generations! It is your duty to save the independence, the Turkish Republic.
The strength that you will need for this is mighty in the noble blood which flows in your veins.”
M.K. Atatürk from "The Speech", October 20, 1927
5.2: A unified Turkish history as demarcated by Western academics
This section explores the extensive presence and use of European theories of archaeology, and political methodologies of nationality and secularisation as applied by the CHP to both regain their geographical territory from the Allies and to recreate a homogenised and secularised Turkish nation. The Turkish Historical
167 Association (est. 1931) was charged with putting together a definitive Turkish history that would provide identity, nationhood, homogenisation of tribes and legitimate ancestral claim to the Turkish territories following the guidance of Woodrow Wilson’s Fourteen Points (1918) for peace negotiations. An association between native territory and national autonomic rights under the protection of the League of Nations was sought (Erimtan, 2008, p. 142). This homogenizing approach was all that stood between Turkish nationalism and European colonialism.
Atatürk’s provisional government published a thesis of Turkish legacy based upon the book Pontus Meselesi, published by a year prior to the Treaty of Lausanne during which the Republic of Turkey was established in 1923. The Pontus Meselesi
was written by Ağaoğlu Ahmed Bey who was the unionist president of the Turkish Hearths movement established during the last years of Ottoman rule. He was a disciple of Ernest Renan (1823-1892) as a student at the Sorbonne in Paris (Shissler, 2003, p. 71). During the 1920s Ahmed Bey was a close advisor to Atatürk and acted as Directorate General of Press and Information in Ankara (Bertram, 2008, p. 277). The Pontus Meselesi is now considered a ‘geo-text’, defined as a document which represents territories and populations (Kaplan, 2004). It was used as an interpretation of history to justify political actions. The name Pontus explicitly refers to ancient history when Pontus denoted a kingdom along the southern coast of the Black Sea claimed after the death of Alexander the Great (301BC). This region flourished under Mithradates Eupator (ca. 131-63 BC), it later became the Roman province of Pontus (under the rule of Pompey in 66 BC) with Galatia as its prosperous neighbour (Erimtan, 2008, p. 151). The first city of Galatia, where Alexander dedicated a temple to his own achievements was later named Ánkyra by the Pontus Hellenics (c. 333BC) (Lloyd, 1986, p. 119). This site was to become modern Ankara. This is not the only instance where Atatürk linked his legacy with that of the preeminent Hellenic emperor. No political decision of ideology, nominal or practical, was taken without underpinning it with this newly generated communal antiquity linking with Western historicity. Essentially Garstang, as an informal British information collector interested in the undefined Hittite geography, indirectly contributed to the political geo-text when he initialised his mapping of
168 Hittite sites to validate the history of the Anatolian Hittite Empire. This information was first published in 1910 and revised in his publication The Hittite Empire (image 5.2) (Garstang, 1929).
Image 5.2: Map of the Anatolian Hittite Empire (Garstang, 1929)
After 1923 the Kemâlists enforced secularisation upon a staunchly Islamic pan- Turkic region and Hittite history and archaeology would come to replace religion as the unifying identity for this new nationality. This followed perfectly in the political philosophical tradition of Renan that religion and state should be separate entities and one should utilise history as the national basis for commonality (1994, pp. 17- 8).
A European archaeological understanding of an Anatolian Hittite empire was to be the basis of a new heterogeneous history of contending ethnicities. Prof. Henry Sayce, as early as 1880, had stated his belief that “Carchemish was a centre from which the art, the religion, and the civilisation of the East may have been carried through Asia Minor to the Aegean, and then to Greece. Its inhabitants could further boast of belonging to a race which had achieved what it has been granted to but few to achieve – the invention of a system of writing.” He continued “[t]here is much in the art of early Greece, more especially as displayed in objects lately found at Mycenae and elsewhere, which cannot be derived from a Phoenician source, and