The Roots of the Racial Nationalism of the Committee of Union and Progress: Ideas, Individuals, Influences

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.51442/ijags.0027

Keywords:

CUP, dictatorship, ideology, Turkism, Turkology, racial kinship, Turan, Central Asia, language, Pan-Turkism, social-Darwinism, Gobineau, Le Bon, Vambery, Cahun, von der Goltz, Parvus, “the nation in arms”

Abstract

The Armenian, Assyrian and Greek genocides perpetrated within the Ottoman Empire by the Turkish government at the beginning of the 20th century were not only the direct implementations of ideological convictions or a result of a single decision. Those were, rather, the amalgam of certain theories adjusted to political and economic developments in the country and the desire to turn the multi-ethnic and multi-religious empire into a Turkish nation-state. Stressing the importance of ideas and ideologies in the process of historical development, this article attempts to show certain strains of CUP members’ worldview by deliberately singling out foreign thinkers and ideas that had a role on the formation of their worldview and on their political actions. This article refrains from discussing Turkism as a whole, but rather examines certain paths of the introduction of European thought to the mindset of CUP high ranking officials and ideologists, hoping to illuminate the background of their subsequent decisions and actions which had a tragic impact on the fate of millions of non-Muslim people in the Ottoman Empire.

Author Biography

Regina Galustyan, Armenian Genocide Museum-Institute Foundation

Researcher at the department of Comparative Genocide Studies named after V. Dadrian of the Armenian Genocide Museum-Institute Foundation. She has earned her MA in History at the International Scientific-Educational Center of NAS RA. Her research interests cover the Armenian Genocide, CUP ideology, and Turkish nationalism. She has published articles on the subjects in national and international journals and edited and annotated a memoir of a genocide survivor.

References

Michael Freeden, “Ideology and Political Theory,” Journal of Political Ideologies 11, no. 1 (2006): 3-22

Şükrü M. Hanioğlu, Preparation for a Revolution: The Young Turks, 1902-1908 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001)

Derya Bayır, Minorities and Nationalism in Turkish Law (Farnham: Ashgate, 2013)

Stepan Sapah-Gulian, Պատասխանատուները [Those Responsible] (Providence: Yeritasard Hayastan, 1916)

Halide Edib, The Turkish Ordeal: Being the Further Memoirs of Halide Edib (New York and London: The Century Co., 1928)

Arsen Avagyan, Геноцид армян: механизмы принятия и исполнения решений [Genocide of Armenians. Mechanism of Decision-making and Implementation] (Yerevan: AGMI, 2013)

George Horton, The Blight of Asia, an Account of the Systematic Extermination of Christian Populations by Mohammedans and of the Culpability of Certain Great Powers; With the True Story of the Burning of Smyrna (Indianapolis, Kansas City, New York: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1953)

Harry Stuermer, Two War Years in Constantinople: Sketches of German and Young Turkish Ethics and Politics (London, New York, Toronto: Hodder and Stoughton, 1917)

A. D. Hagopian, “The Situation in Constantinople,” Armenia (NY), no. 8, March 1912

Zarevand, Միացեալ, անկախ Թուրանիա կամ ի՞նչ կը ծրագրեն թուրքերը [United and Independent Turania or What the Turks Plan?] (n.p., 1926)

Jacob M. Landau, Pan-Turkism: from Irredentism to Cooperation (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1995)

Niyazi Berkes, The Development of Secularism in Turkey (London: Hurst&Company, 1998)

Ernest Edmondson Ramsaur, The Young Turks: Prelude to Revolution 1908 (New York: Russell & Russell, 1970)

Ernest Edmondson Ramsaur, The Young Turks: Prelude to Revolution 1908 (New York: Russell & Russell, 1970)

Şükrü M. Hanioğlu, The Young Turks in Opposition (New York, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995)

Charles Warren Hostler, Turkism and the Soviets (London, George Allen &Unwin, 1957)

Taner Akçam, A Shameful Act: The Armenian Genocide and the Question of Turkish Responsibility (Metropolitan Books: Henry Holt and Company, New York, 2006)

Eric Weitz, A Century of Genocide: Utopias of Race and Nation (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2006)

Arthur de Gobineau, The Inequality of the Human Races, trans. Adrian Collins (London: William Heinemann, 1915)

Gustave Le Bon, Психология Народов и Масс [The Psychology of Peoples and Masses] (Москва: АСТ, 2018)

Francis Darwin, The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, vol. I (New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1887)

Arminius Vambéry, The Story of my Struggles: The Memoirs of Arminius Vambéry, vol. I (London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1905)

Ahmed Emin, The Development of Modern Turkey as Measured by its Press (New York: Longmans, Green & CO, Agents, 1914)

Arminius Vámbéry, Travels in Central Asia (performed in 1863) (London: John Murray, Albemarle Street, 1864)

Arminius Vambéry, The Story of My Struggles: The Memoirs of Arminius Vambéry, vol. II (London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1905)

Hermann Vambéry, Das Türkenvolk in seinen ethnologischen und ethnographischen Beziehungen (Leipzig: F.A. Brockhaus, 1885)

“Türk Yurdu” in Masami Arai, Turkish Nationalism in the Young Turk Era (Leiden, New York, København, Köln: E.J. Brill, 1992)

Léon Cahun, Introduction à l’histoire de l’Asie. Turcs et Mongols des origins à 1405 (Paris, Armand Colin et Cie, 1896)

Tekin Alp, The Turkish and Pan-Turkish Ideal (Liberty Press: London, no date)

Yusuf Akçura, Ismail Fehmi, “Yusuf Akçura’s Üç tarz-ı siyaset [Three Kinds of Policy’]” Oriente Moderno 61, no. 1 (1981)

Handan N. Akmeşe, The Birth of Modern Turkey: The Ottoman Military and the March to World War I (London: I.B. Tauris, 2005)

Fuat Dündar, Modern Türkiye’nin Şifresi. Ittihat ve Terakki’nin Etnisite Mühendisliği (1913-1918) (İstanbul: İletişim Yayınları, 2008)

I. I. Goloborod’ko, Старая и Новая Турцiя [Old and New Turkey] (Moscow: Pol’za, 1908)

Asim M. Karaömerlioğlu, “Helphand-Parvus and his Impact on Turkish Intellectual life,” Middle Eastern Studies 40, no. 6 (2004)

George Katkov, “Революция и германское вмешательство,” в Тайна Октябрьского переворота. Ленин и немецко-большевистский заговор. Документы, статьи, воспоминания [“Revolution and German Intervention” in Mystery of the October Revolution. Lenin and the German-Bolshevik conspiracy. Documents, articles, memoirs], compiler V. I. Kuznetsov (Saint Petersburg: Aleteĭia, 2001)

Karl Radek, “Парвус,” в Силуэты: политические портреты /А. Лунчарский, К. Радек, Л. Троцкий [“Parvus” in Silhouettes: Political Portraits /A. Lunacharsky, K. Radek, L. Trotsky], eds. V. Zhuravlev, V. Loginov (Moscow: Politizdat, 1991)

Erik J. Zürcher, Turkey, a Modern History (London, New York: I.B. Tauris, 2004)

Sergeĭ Aleksandrov, “Немецкий агент Парвус,” в Тайна Октябрьского переворота. Ленин и немецко-большевистский заговор. Документы, статьи, воспоминания [“German Agent Parvus” in Mystery of the October Revolution. Lenin and the German-Bolshevik conspiracy. Documents, articles, memoirs], compiler V. I. Kuznetsov (Saint Petersburg: Aleteĭia, 2001)

Hans-Lukas Kieser, “World War and World Revolution: Alexander Helphand-Parvus in Germany and Turkey,” Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History 12, no. 2 (2011)

Zbynek Zeman, Winfried Scharlau, The Merchant of the Revolution: The Life of Alexander Israel Helphand (Parvus), 1867-1924 (London: Oxford University Press, 1965)

«Թիմուրլենկի մասին» [About Tamerlane], Azatamart (Constantinople), no. 1420, 21 January 1914

Halide Edib, Memoirs of Halide Edib (London, New York: The Century CO, 1926)

T. Lothrop Stoddard, “Pan-Turanism,” The American Political Science Review 11, no. 1 (1917)

Nazan Maksudyan, “The Turkish Review of Anthropology and the Racist Face of Turkish Nationalism, Cultural Dynamics 17, no. 3 (2005): 291-322

Illia Xypolia, “Racist Aspects of Modern Turkish Nationalism,” Journal of Balkan and Near Eastern Studies 18, no. 2 (2016): 111-124

On the emergence of Sun-Language theory see Ben Kiernan, Blood and Soil: A World History of Genocide and Extermination from Sparta to Darfur (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007)

Kathryn A. Manzo, Creating Boundaries: The Politics of Race and Nation (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 1995)

Uğur Ümit Ungör, The Making of Modern Turkey: Nation and State in Eastern Anatolia, 1913-1950 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011)

Weitz, A Century of Genocide, 21-22; Mark Levene, “Why is the Twentieth Century the Century of Genocide?” Journal of World History 11, no. 2 (2000)

Murat Ergin, “‘Is the Turk a White Man?’ Towards a Theoretical Framework for Race in the Making of Turkishness,” Middle Eastern Studies 44, no. 6 (2008)

Stephan H. Astourian, “Modern Turkish Identity and the Armenian Genocide: From Prejudice to Racist Nationalism” in Remembrance and Denial: The Case of the Armenian Genocide, ed. Richard Hovhannisian (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1999)

Marwa Elshakry, Reading Darwin in Arabic, 1860-1950 (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1973)

«Մամուլը» [The Press], Loussaper (Cairo), no. 1, 1 December 1904

Robert G. Perrin, “Herbert Spencer’s Four Theories of Social Evolution,” American Journal of Sociology 81, no. 6 (1976)

Downloads

Published

2022-06-10

How to Cite

Galustyan, R. (2022). The Roots of the Racial Nationalism of the Committee of Union and Progress: Ideas, Individuals, Influences. International Journal of Armenian Genocide Studies, 7(1), 6–25. https://doi.org/10.51442/ijags.0027