THREE POLICIES by Yusuf Akcura

The above essay is a complete translation into English of the most important works of one of the founders of Turkish nationalism. The essay describes three courses that could be taken to salvage the Ottoman state: 1)Ottomanism :create a uniform nation out of all religious and subject peoples of the Empire 2)Pan-Islamism- create a strong feeling of Islamic belonging and creation of Pan-Islamic nation 3)Turkism- the creation of a mythical Turkish identity to encompass all Turkic peoples.

He prefered number 3:

... "Turkish nationalism --the idea of the unification of the Turks-- is still a new born child. That strong organization, that living and zealous feeling, in short, those primary elements which create a solid unity among Muslims do not exist in Turkishness (Turkluk). The majority of the Turks today have forgotten their past!"

Secular Trends and Turkish Identity{PDF}states on page 8 of 16 that Akcura was placed as president of the newly found Turkish Historical Society. It is no wonder why you cannot have serious historical discussions with Turks since the founder of their powerful historical society, was he an ideologue establishing Turkism or engaging in real research?

Who is innocent of such nationalistic trends? With the breakdown of large empires nationalism was the only thing that could keep even homogenuous groups together. Of course that had the side effect of emnity between nations.

hi,

discusing the past is hard with us true. because the people who know history cant speak english nor use computer :(
the ones who can use computer has no interest in history.

look 1 week ago i read a book called 1453 . writen by a american i m not sure just gave it to my father. and there were so much things that we didnt know .

and last weekend . i go to the city walls . and i see the goldengates that the 4 th chrusiders stolen. or the white towers near the 1 military door.
also topkapý that is the place that we enter the city.

we only know in 50 days we took it. that s all. or the fall of otoman emperor.

becase they are people who live in dynesty and we were slaves basicly.

or how we lose selanik ( teseloniki ) or the islands ?? or sofia.
even
we had a huge battle for 2 years .
nobody know the munbers or the map plans what happened. how we win.
or if we lost it what would hapen . we discus here some times even the lack of information even the very best people it is pity .
isnt it there in greece too ? we discus here but how may of your friends have the same info or history education .!! i read some posts some of u has a good info back round, some has only sided info .

well if we wont learn history we have to live the same situations.
stay well
Kaan

Most people are not interested in history much, period, serious historical texts never get high print runs or have a large bookstore footprint. In school anywhere you learn history in a convoluted way. You are given low class text narratives with no sources. So you cannot evaluate anything or even tell how good the narrative is without doing alot of reading of scholarly works that do actually use footnotes and bibliography to construct their narrative. History is kind of like poker, using the best sources and accurately representing them is a better hand than using less authorative sources.

But the point of this post was how Turks view history. History is like something to protect "devlet ana" for Turks from my experience and the evidences, such as putting a nationalist theorist like Akcura as first head of the powerful Turkish Historical Society. The Greek state and most other Western states do not really have positions on this historical event or that and then historians are in trouble if they find to the contrary.

it is devlet baba ! father figure. ;)

history in here thought very basicly but in some schools tought percetly with great re sources. but mostly very poorly

Even or leader ataürk has a world countries who dont teach its new generations the realy of the past are doomed to live the same history .

still now in turkey u can find only 3 books about cyprus war.

2 books about istanbul war in 1453 or look at the war we had in anatolia
started at 26 august still 3 books and all in military archives. or the 1500 000 greeks leaving turkey and 350 000 turks returnýng from balkans and greece. very little.
or the thruth about the ottomans. the black side of ottomans

how they change after taking istanbul 80 years later all atacks turn from west to east to fight the other turkish countries. or muslim countries.

few notes. from history.

we have a famous word in turkish . when u expect some thing to hapen good and it becomes a big disapointment. we say ( what we expected what we found )
this is told by fatih sultan mehmet when he entered istanbul.
they were expecting a huge city with rich houses and jewlwery . but found nothing. and had also some claches with the other goups who help sultan mehmets army.

moslty he used balkan christian goups to atack walls and the last days the jenisary s . so when the doors are breached and italians soldiers run ( becase of their leader was wounded) and the last king of konstantinopolis died . so Mehmet let the christian goups atack the city for priceand plunder . after 1 day of fight and stealing in the city . he ordered to stoped every body . and ordered the army groups out of the city . and some refused . becasue the promised 3 days of sacking . so his fresh army had to force the balkan ( bulgarian bosnýan serbýan tatar groups out of the city )

but our history never told this. it says we all turks fight and took the city from christians.
fatihs army was nearly 120 00 thousand and 70 000 was christian.

such as the chrusider army 4 th one who destroyed istanbul .

Agia sofia still has remarks of that.
even vikings were in the in hagia sofia and curved the walls. in wiking alfabet (Haldar) thought to be a viking comander.) chrusiders and vikings


together.http://www.sabah.com.tr/2007/01/16/gnd114.html


basicly all for gold.

redness of a apple calls for a rock !

stay well my friends

Kaan






lots of blanks in the history.

stay well