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1st President of Turkey | ||
TheTurkish History Thesis (Türk Tarih Tezi) is aTurkishultranationalist,[3][4]pseudohistoric[5][6] thesis which posited the belief that theTurks moved from their ancestral homeland inCentral Asia and migrated to present-dayChina, theIndian subcontinent, theBalkans, theMiddle East, andNorthern Africa in several waves, populating the areas which they had moved to and bringingcivilization to their native inhabitants. The theory was developed within the context of pre-Naziscientific racism, classifying the Turks as an "Alpine subgroup" of theCaucasian 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 aFrench language book that claimed Turks "belonged to the yellow race" and were a "secondaire" people.[8][9]
In the aftermath ofWorld 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 thatGreece orMesopotamia, or both, were the "cradles" ofWestern civilization. The thesis itself rested on a spurious intellectual foundation by claiming that the Turks had aHittite ancestry which was of Central AsianAryan origin. The thesis insisted that allTurkic 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 theirlanguage and racial characteristics ever since. According to the thesis, the Turks had originally migrated fromCentral Asia toChina and from China, they migrated toIndia, where they founded the civilizations ofMohenjo-daro andHarappa, 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 theUniversity of Istanbul (then known as Dârülfünûn), 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 toMahmut Esat Bozkurt, during which he criticized the western scholars for their interpretation of the Turkish history.[14] He claimed that theCentral Asian Turks have departed theStone 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 ofMustafa Kemal Atatürk and member of the Turkish history committee of theTurkish 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 toclimate 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 theMongols. He believed that an emphasis on Western-style historical education had caused the Turks to be uninterested inMongolian history.
The thesis was influenced by the bookTürk Tarihinin Ana Hatları (The Mainlines of Turkish History) published by the Committee for the Study of the Turkish History (TOTTTH) of theTurkish Hearths[16] and became a "state dogma"[17] which was included in school textbooks.[18][19] During Atatürk's government, scholars likeHasan Reşit Tankut andRıfat Osman Bey were encouraged that the findings of their studies in history and social sciences be in line with the Turkish Historical Thesis and theSun Language Theory.[20] 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.[21] Prominent scholars likeZeki Velidi Togan andNihal Atsız who challenged the Turkish Historical Thesis lost their jobs at theUniversity.[22]
Kemalism provided an important position toHittites and Hittite symbolism in constructing Turkish identity and nationhood. Kemalist researchers, such asAhmet Ağaoğlu (who was an advisor to Atatürk and a politician who played an important role in creating theTurkish Constitution of 1924), believed that the nation must portray Hittites as a world-domineering Turkish race with firm roots in Anatolia.[23]
Modern genetic researches on Turkish samples show thatAnatolian Turks are a mixture ofTurkic tribes and Anatolian natives; however, unlike the Turkish History Thesis, these two admixtures do not originate from the same ethnicity, race, or identity.[citation needed]
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.
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