Communitarian Structures and Social Change

Abstract

Until recently the majority of the studies on modern Turkey have focused primarily on the Republican period, even to the extent of ignoring the influence of the Ottoman past. Outside of Turkey, only a handful of historians of the older generation who witnessed the birth of the Republic were interested in contemporary history, but those who were would often divorce their treatment of the evolution of modern Turkey from all but its most immediate antecedents. Modern Turkish history was viewed as a process that began after the replacement of indigenous institutions with those adopted by westernizers.¹ Meanwhile in Turkey, the intelligentsia, whose ranks then included the members of the academic profession, were taking stock of the Turkish revitalization, rewriting history to stress the Turkish (rather than Ottoman) past and attempting to reinforce the nation-building program by inculcating a sense of national unity based on a common cultural past of the Turkish-speaking people.²