The Theses of an Iconoclast

Toprak Işık

Yalçın Küçük, who says he approaches history like a ‘detective’ and defines himself as an ‘iconoclast’, claims that there are six fundamental parties in Turkish history and groups them into two: On one side, those whose founders were very young, such as the ‘Committee of Union and Progress’, the ‘People's Liberation Party of Turkey’, and the ‘Kurdistan Workers' Party’… On the other side, those founded by older figures, such as the ‘Republican People's Party’, the ‘Democrat Party’, and the ‘Workers' Party of Turkey’… Those in the first group are aggressive and prone to using violence; those in the second group are conservative and cautious…

Yalçın Küçük frequently compares the Committee of Union and Progress with the era of Abdul Hamid II. While typical consensus treats these two periods as completely opposite, Küçük offers a different perspective by identifying their strategic commonalities. According to him, both sides struggled to lean the empire toward the east in order to resolve the troubles experienced in the west of the Ottoman geography; the divergence lies in their methods of implementation. Abdul Hamid tried to keep the empire together by choosing Islamization, while the Committee of Union and Progress attempted to act quickly with an effort toward Turkification, and for this reason, risked the use of violence.

In the book, the impact of Islamization and Turkification on Armenians and Kurds is examined in detail. The conflicts that Armenians, who were always considered loyal subjects in the past, began to experience with the state starting from Abdul Hamid II, and the Kurdish issue, are evaluated along with their international dimensions. Undoubtedly, it is impossible not to consider leftist ideology when looking at the history and present of Turkey. According to Yalçın Küçük, the state does more than keep the left under control; it manipulates it. He addresses the murders of Mustafa Suphi and his friends, and the liquidation of Çerkez Ethem by declaring him a traitor, within this framework. Manipulations continued to increase in the 1940s under the leadership of İsmet Paşa; to prevent the Democrat Party, which was advancing toward power, from forming an alliance with the left, state-sponsored right-wing terror was applied against the left.

Küçük acknowledges that Turkey was able to stay out of the Second World War with the policies it followed, but claims that it became completely isolated by falling into the position of a country whose word is never trusted due to its wavering in choosing sides. It is because of this isolation that Turkey struggles to get itself accepted into the Western alliance. Turkey's maneuvers to overcome this difficulty were examined before the Fifth Book. The theses regarding the use of the left as bait in these maneuvers are of great importance for understanding the behaviors of the movements in our country that contradict the ideological definitions in the literature. The fifth book does not go into detail; the subject is touched upon superficially while following İsmet Paşa's own personal line.

One of Yalçın Küçük's most striking theses concerns the first bullet of the National Struggle. Based on the line of the newspaper Hasan Tahsin wrote for and an article that appeared in that newspaper, he says:

“Hasan Tahsin is a crazed informant; he can openly advocate for revealing secret resistance cells to the delegates of the occupying forces. I cannot see it as possible for such a person to be a resistance fighter or a liberator; what is known for certain is that Hasan Tahsin was killed that day. It also seems likely that it was written that he fired a shot because he was killed.”

Küçük had stated in his previous works that the National Struggle resistance was initiated in Dörtyol and had presented evidence for this. This time, emphasizing that there was an embellishment regarding the resistance against the occupation, especially in favor of the west of the country, he quotes the following from Kazım Karabekir:

“It is a historical stain that some of our commanders and officers there did not resist during the occupation of İzmir, and did not even withdraw. Neither the soldiers nor the people, let alone resisting, are surrendering with a sense of resignation.”

This subject can be interpreted together with the following lines from the letters Enver Paşa wrote to a German woman before the First World War:

“A day will come, for better or worse; the place of our women in social life will be the same as your women. On the other hand, they will also protect the interests that Islam has reserved for them regarding the right to life in the face of men. (…) But since I say that Europe is superior to us with its culture and that we have to imitate this civilization to continue our existence, then the evils of this civilization will inevitably come to us.”

Imitating Western culture to avoid being conquered by the West… This path followed after the proclamation of the Republic seems to have been chosen in the minds of Ottoman pashas years ago. Perhaps nationalism was used as an antidote to prevent the loss of national identity in our regions that have the function of representing Western values the most. Could the goal have been to increase the effect of this antidote with the myth of having fired the first bullet of the National Struggle? Or is the myth in question related to Hasan Tahsin's Jewish origins, as Yalçın Küçük dwells on in his other works?

Küçük also examines in detail the leadership struggles experienced during the War of Independence and the founding years of the Republic. According to him, the reason why İsmet Paşa and Fevzi Çakmak, who joined the resistance very late, obtained powerful positions is the leadership rivalry between Atatürk and names like Kazım Karabekir and Ali Fuat Cebesoy.

“When I am faced with a great difficulty, I decide to wear it down without ever faltering.”

Always taking the personality traits of leaders into account, Küçük quotes this sentence belonging to İnönü in the context of his relationship with Atatürk. In his analyses through the İzmir Assassination, he argues that the final liquidation of the Committee of Union and Progress was carried out with the executions implemented on the grounds of the assassination in 1926, and that the assassination was also used as an opportunity to eliminate opponents.

Using a passive, dry language alienates knowledge and science from humans by stripping them of emotions; it reduces and even destroys both the arbitrariness and the conscientious responsibility that the process contains. Especially the latter makes it easier for knowledge and science to be placed at the service of those in power. Yalçın Küçük, on the other hand, does not hide himself even when writing about the deepest subjects; he does not hesitate to reveal his emotions. He puts forward theses that shake accepted opinions, create controversy, and even draw reactions.

In the fifth book of 'Theses on Turkey', he invites the reader to step out of the comfort zone of “official history”; he asks profound questions by breaking established rote learning. Regardless of whether they agree with his views or not, he succeeds in expanding the reader's boundaries of thought. It is a deficiency to speculate on our political history without meeting his sharp-witted analyses. Those who seek depth, those who want to broaden their horizons, and those who are not afraid to look at history with a critical eye will also notice that new seeds of thought are being planted in their minds while reading his theses.

News Source: 12punto