European and Russian Cultural Interactions with Turkey

Clark, Katerina

doi:10.1215/1089201x-2322489

Cited by 7 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 2 publications

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“… Clark (2013)’s analysis supports the ‘pro-European’ claims to the Republican understanding of Turkish nationalism. Clark (2013: 207) claims that Atatürk launched a “pure Turkish” movement to free the language from Arabic and Persian vocabulary and grammar, introduced a Roman alphabet to replace the Arabic script, and rejected the Arabo- Persianate literary tradition in favor of the European.…”

Section: The Second Period (1923–1945)mentioning

confidence: 59%

“…The extant scholarly literature during the Republican period is primarily informed by the disciplines of History ( Aktürk, 2007 ; Aytürk, 2004 ; Barlas & Güvenç, 2009 ; Criss, 2008 ; Hanioğlu, 1997 ; Lewis, 1961 ; Murgeseu, 2000 ; Tachau, 1964 ; Waterfield, 1973 ; Yapp, 1992 ) and Politics ( Brewin, 2000 ; Criss, 2008 ; Helvacıoğlu, 1996 ; Heper, 2004 ; Keyman, 2006 ; Kösebalaban, 2007 ; Müftüler-Baç, 2000 ; Nas, 2001 ; Oğuzlu, 2002 ; Polat, 2006 ; Robins, 1996 ). Nevertheless, there are also works informed by other genres such as Literary Studies ( Clark, 2013 ; Ergin, 2010 ; Sabatos, 2000 ; Tahir & Türker, 2000 ; Wood, 1929 ), Sociology ( Ahıska, 2003 ; Keyder, 1993 ; Zarakol, 2010 ), Fine Arts ( Bibina, 2000 ; Kuran-Burçoğlu, 2003 ), Architecture ( Bozdoğan, 1998 ), City Planning ( Tekeli, 1998 ), Music ( Turan & Komsuoğlu, 2007 ) and Sports ( Şenyuva & Tunç, 2015 ) which provide a multi-disciplinary value to the research on the Republican period. However, as previously highlighted, except for a handful of sources, the bulk of the literature does not necesarily focus on the identity discussions between Turkey and Europe on a systematic fashion, but briefly touches upon the effects of the Republican transformation in the creation of a new Turkish identity and its reflections in Europe.…”

Section: The Second Period (1923–1945)mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Historical method with reference to archival research, including the archives on the minutes of the League of Nations sessions, and British, French, Italian and Turkish diplomatic archives, remains another popular method used in the literature ( Barlas & Güvenç, 2009 ; Criss, 2008 ; Lewis, 1961 ; Waterfield, 1973 ). Moreover, textual analysis examining history books ( Aktürk, 2007 ; Murgeseu, 2000 ), national press ( Barlas & Güvenç, 2009 ; Wood, 1929 ; Zarakol, 2010 ) and literary texts such as poems and novels ( Ahıska, 2003 ; Clark, 2013 ; Ergin, 2010 ; Sabatos, 2000 ; Tahir & Türker, 2000 ; Zarakol, 2010 ) proves to be another notable methodological preference. Finally, studies examining the identity discussions of Republican Turkey reflected into fine arts such as operas ( Turan & Komsuoğlu, 2007 ) and paintings ( Bibina, 2000 ) bring metohodological novelty to the scholarly literature, despite the fact that there is no such study scrutinizing the image of Europe in Turkish fine arts.…”

Section: The Second Period (1923–1945)mentioning

confidence: 99%

“… Clark (2013: 207) claims that Atatürk launched a “pure Turkish” movement to free the language from Arabic and Persian vocabulary and grammar, introduced a Roman alphabet to replace the Arabic script, and rejected the Arabo- Persianate literary tradition in favor of the European. Clark (2013: 207–8) argues that in such a political environment, one might assume that the Republican regime would reject European writers such as Loti and Farrère who idealized Ottoman Muslim Turkey; but on the contrary, both writers were commended by the Turkish government for their invaluable contributions to Turkish literature. On the other hand, Aktürk (2007) claims the opposite.…”

Section: The Second Period (1923–1945)mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Therefore, Republican reforms aimed to dismantle the old regime by erasing its traces from the state apparatus. For instance, the adoption of Latin alphabet is considered by many as an attempt to purify Turkish language from Arabic and Islamic elements ( Aytürk, 2004 ; Aktürk, 2007 ; Clark, 2013 ). Similarly, Zarakol (2010: 147) explains that the headgear reform was viewed as the symbol of the new Turkey, while the fez was associated with the old Turkey as ‘a symbol of ignorance, backwardness, fundamentalism, and hatred of civilization’.…”

Section: The Second Period (1923–1945)mentioning

confidence: 99%

See 4 more Smart Citations

Europe and Turkey: identities in evolution. An analytical literature review

Gulmez¹,

Topal²,

Rumelili³

2023

Open Res Europe

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This research aims to offer a valid answer to the question of how Turks and Europeans perceived each other in cultural and identity terms throughout history. With this purpose, it makes a thorough analytical review of the extant scholarly literature on identity relations between Turkey and Europe. There is an evident lack of scholarly attention on the evolution of mutual representations comparatively in the long durée. Most scholarly works focus on specific periods of time and investigate either how Turks view Europe or visa-versa. This systematic review provides the basis for an evolutionary analysis of mutual identity representations between Turkey and Europe over more than a two-hundred-year period. The period under focus starts with the French Revolution (1789) triggering intensive identity debates between Ottomans and Europeans and lasts until mid-2010s when bilateral relations between Turkey and the European Union went into disarray. This long period has been divided into four shorter periods each starting and ending with a remarkable event in world politics or bilateral relations. The study examines each period in relation to four focal issues, namely, nationalism, civilization, status in international society, and state-citizen relations generating intensive identity discussions in both Turkey and Europe. The article first presents the key findings of the relevant literature on European representations of Turkey and on Turkish representations of Europe in the four historical periods. Then it scrutinizes the extant literature on each period with respect to the four focal issues. Overall, the study, through a comprehensive literature review, demonstrates the ways in which mutual identity representations in Turkey and Europe have been contested over a two-hundred-year period.

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Section: The Second Period (1923–1945)mentioning

confidence: 59%

Section: The Second Period (1923–1945)mentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: The Second Period (1923–1945)mentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: The Second Period (1923–1945)mentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: The Second Period (1923–1945)mentioning

confidence: 99%

See 3 more Smart Citations

Europe and Turkey: identities in evolution. An analytical literature review

Gulmez¹,

Topal²,

Rumelili³

2023

Open Res Europe

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Domesticating the avant-garde in a nationalist era: Aesthetic modernism in 1930s Turkey

Köksal¹

2015

New Perspect. Turk.

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This paper investigates the rise of aesthetic modernism in Turkey's early republican era (i.e., the late 1920s and the 1930s), with an emphasis on the influence of international cultural currents on Turkey's intelligentsia. The paper concentrates on the modernist ideas and works of the D Group, who advocated a high modernism in the plastic arts, and the literary modernism of the socialist poet Nâzım Hikmet (Ran). Firstly, it addresses the historiographical argument that aesthetic modernism in Turkey was a derivative enterprise, a low-grade replica of European modernism. Secondly, it argues that the early republican intelligentsia found itself in a dilemma with regard to modernist currents. For them, aesthetic modernism was a sign of the modern epoch, but it also carried a radical potential for a critique of bourgeois modernity. Aesthetic modernism not only promised change, functionality, and renewal, but also manifested such disturbing symptoms of modernity as individualism, melancholy, degeneration, and restlessness. The paper reaches the conclusion that figures such as the D Group artists and Nâzım Hikmet translated the avant-garde international currents of aesthetic modernism into the early republican context, opting for positive and optimistic versions of modernism rather than adopting its more alienating, pessimistic, and despairing features. Through their works, an intellectual debate on aesthetic modernism was initiated in early republican Turkey.

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Vâlâ Nureddin’s Comic Materialism and the Sexual Revolution: Writing across Turkey and the Soviet Union

Ertürk

2021

Comparative Literature

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Focusing on the life and work of the Turkish novelist and translator Vâlâ Nureddin (1901–67), this article provides a historical overview of Turkish and Soviet literary entanglement in the early twentieth century. A collaborator of the globally acclaimed Turkish communist poet Nâzım Hikmet, Vâlâ was educated at the Communist University of the Toilers of the East from 1922 to 1924. Returning to Turkey in 1925, he launched his career in the daily Akşam (Evening), bringing Soviet and Turkish literature into conversation in his serialized translations and literary adaptations of Soviet erotic fiction. In reading Vâlâ’s neglected 1928 erotic historical comedy Baltacı ile Katerina (Baltacı and Catherine), unique among Vâlâ’s writings in its direct and explicit imagination and specification of an entangled revolution, this article suggests, by way of specific attention to this work’s comedic elements, that Vâlâ imagined the collapse of both Russian and Ottoman imperial sovereignty in terms of sexual revolution. It argues that a study of this unjustifiably neglected erotic comedy not only deepens our knowledge of early republican Turkish literature and culture, but provides a more nuanced understanding of the Moscow-centered transnational literary space produced in the aftermath of the Bolshevik revolution, or what scholars in Slavic studies have called the “Soviet republic of letters.”

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European and Russian Cultural Interactions with Turkey

Cited by 7 publications

References 2 publications

Europe and Turkey: identities in evolution. An analytical literature review

Europe and Turkey: identities in evolution. An analytical literature review

Domesticating the avant-garde in a nationalist era: Aesthetic modernism in 1930s Turkey

Vâlâ Nureddin’s Comic Materialism and the Sexual Revolution: Writing across Turkey and the Soviet Union

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