Remembering 'Three Styles of Politics' once again

In 1895, during his second term at the War Academy, Akçura was assigned to the Staff Officer class, but was later punished for his Turkist activities and exiled to Fezzan. Reaching Tripoli in 1899, Akçura found an opportunity before being taken to Fezzan and escaped to Europe, where he joined the Young Turks. Akçura, who studied political science in Paris, wrote his thesis on "An Essay on the History of Ottoman State Institutions." After graduation (1903), since he was banned from returning to Istanbul, he went to Kazan to stay with his uncle. It was in Kazan that he penned the article "Three Styles of Politics" (1903), which examined the three options and three paths facing the Ottoman Empire.

During his four years in Kazan, Akçura worked as a teacher of history, geography, and Ottoman Turkish literature, and published the newspaper Kazan Muhbiri. Together with Turkists such as Ismail Gasprinsky, Alimardan Bey, and Abdürreşit Kadı İbrahimov, he founded the Union of Muslims of Russia party. Thanks to this party, the Northern Turks would, for the first time, have the opportunity to send representatives to the Duma (the Russian Parliament).

After the declaration of the Second Constitutional Era, he arrived in Istanbul in 1908, where he would teach political history at the Darülfünun (University) and the School of Political Science (Mülkiye), become one of the founders of the Turkish Association and the Turkish Hearths, and take on the roles of editor-in-chief and editor of the Türk Yurdu journal.

Yusuf Akçura (1876-1935) wrote "Three Styles of Politics" in Kazan in 1903. The article, which was serialized in the newspaper Türk in Egypt in 1904, would only find the opportunity to be published in Istanbul in 1912, after the Second Constitutional Era. When the article was first published (1904), the Second Constitutional Era (July 23, 1908) had not yet occurred, the Italo-Turkish and Balkan Wars (1912-1913) had not yet been fought, and Tripoli (Libya) and Rumelia had not yet been lost. One should reflect on why the impact that this article, written by Akçura at the age of 27, has had on our intellectual world has not lost its relevance despite the more than 100 years that have passed since.

In his article "Three Styles of Politics," Akçura examines the movements of Ottomanism, Islamism, and Turkism in terms of the continuation of the Ottoman Empire's political existence and its ability to protect its geography. He concludes that Ottomanism, which could be summarized as the unity of Ottoman subjects—Muslims and non-Muslims—under the axis of Ottoman identity, had no basis in reality at the time the article was written. He explains with examples that, in the face of ethnic incitement and manipulation by Europe and Tsarist Russia, non-Muslim ethnicities would not respect the idea of Ottomanism. The events that occurred after the Balkan defeat should be evaluated as a practical confirmation of the bankruptcy of Ottomanism.

Islamism proceeds from the idea that the Muslim ethnicities of the Ottoman subjects could live together as subjects of the Caliph-Sultan. The Albanian revolt that took place during the Balkan War would prove that Islamism would not be enough to keep Muslims of different ethnicities together. In 1903, when the article was written, there was neither an Albanian revolt nor an Arab revolt. The Balkan War (1912) and the Arab revolt that would erupt during World War I (1916) would be tragic and cautionary proofs of Akçura's foresight. The Arab revolt, which began with the incitement of England by turning its back on the Caliph's call for Jihad during World War I, would bring an end to the dream of Islamism, just as it had for Ottomanism.

Turkism is the idea that, instead of Ottomanism and Islamism, which had no chance of survival or implementation, existence could only be maintained through a state structure based on the Turk, who was the primary/founding element of the Ottoman Empire. The enlightenment/modernization that developed at the center of Turkism is the process of the sprouting of an idea that would materialize on October 29, 1923, and would be realized in the Republican era on the axis of a nation-state unitary structure, beginning with intellectuals and starting to find a base among wider masses.

Let us remind those who dream of Neo-Ottomanism and a Postmodern Caliphate once again: Before leaving Turkey to face such heavy costs with the dream of Friday prayers in Damascus, you should have read "Three Styles of Politics" at least once. If you had read it, you would not have dragged the nation into new pains and new disasters in pursuit of a dream that turned into a mirage in the Arab deserts 100 years ago, a dream that the wind scattered and destroyed the moment it was written in the desert sand!