What is the motivation behind this against the Ottomans?

Yeni Şafak · Yasin Aktay - What motivates this stance against the Ottomans?

The massacre of history staged in İzmir on the occasion of the hundredth anniversary of İzmir's liberation from the Greek occupation has been talked about for days. History, of course, is by nature always being rewritten. By whom is it written? For what is it written? In the company of which present-day interests or questions is it written?

While all of this drives us to rewrite the history we know anew and differently, it is as normal as the diversification of historical knowledge and perspectives. The way one looks at history makes it possible to write historical documents and data into a different story as well.

Up to here everything is normal, and different historical angles can debate one another in a contest of information and documents. But when history is turned, by those in positions of political representation, into a matter of ignorant political opportunism, in a slapdash levity, without resting on any basis and according to the occasion, it leads somewhere very different. You also saw off the very branch you are sitting on.

The speech the Mayor of the İzmir Metropolitan Municipality gave at the concert held as part of the celebration is like the story of the Prophet Noah, who wanted to throw a girl into the well while a goat was lowered to him from the sky. In the name of Kemalism, which he represents with great fanaticism, what came out of his mouth leaves behind neither Kemalism, nor Mustafa Kemal, nor the War of Independence, neither friend nor foe, nor a memory that correctly recalls even a single moment of history.

In fact the liberation of İzmir is one of the most important founding events of Kemalist history. It has its heart-cooling episodes, such as the "Greeks dumped into the sea," and it is among the most important events of the entire Kemalist genesis. But in none of these do the Greeks escape being the primary enemy.

This can of course be debated, and has been debated. That the Turkish War of Independence was fought against the Greeks rather than the British, the real actors, and that a historical, national pride and identity was produced on that basis, has always been what most needed to be questioned. But the Kemalist historical creed, without allowing it to be questioned, always places only the Greek at the focus of enmity. Even the wars we fought and won against the British in the World War are not made an occasion for celebration, so that they do not become a subject of history. Until recently no one even knew how the Victory of Kut al-Amara had been made to be forgotten by this whole nation.

That one side of our national identity is built on anti-Greek sentiment, and our founding on deliverance from the Greek, is, from whichever side you look at it, something quite incompatible with Türkiye's historical and national greatness. But a choice had to be made here. Although the real power and manager of the occupation, the force behind the Greek, was the British, Britain was not regarded as the other, the enemy, of our national identity.

The politics of Trans-Kemalism

Enmity toward the Greeks was put forward in Kemalist historiography to protect the real actor in the occupation to which the Ottomans were subjected, and it is important. It is almost as if the Greeks occupied İzmir on their own, with their own forces, whereas it was again the British who called them to İzmir and gave them every kind of support. Kemalist historiography still has room for this much. But on the hundredth anniversary the Mayor of İzmir reads an entirely different history:

"It was a hundred years ago... Those who ruled these lands (...) threw an entire nation into the fire solely and only to preserve the sultanate in their palaces. They trampled our human dignity and our passion for independence underfoot, and surrendered. One morning the soldiers of imperialist countries, with their dirty boots and dirty ambitions, occupied the waters of the gulf and our beautiful city."

Under the intoxicating effect of a frenzied atmosphere of music and entertainment with thousands of young people present, this is of course not a subject that can be brushed aside as a delirium.

Or is it only thus that one can get out of this affair?

Perhaps so, for even Kemalist historiography could not go this far. This now means that, in the name of Kemalism, historical consciousness is surpassing itself, entering a thorough trance, consuming itself, or turning into its opposite. The famous French philosopher Jean Baudrillard wrote that the very same process occurred for the Enlightenment, modernity, the economy, and art: their surpassing themselves, turning into their opposites and becoming meaningless, resulting not from their deficiency but from their excess.

In view of the way the CHP, the official representative of the Kemalist ideology, has lately been devouring everything there is in the name of the Atatürk legacy as though it were an authorized consumer, we are not surprised by this either. By what authority can relations with the HDP be linked in succession to the PKK, and from there to the PYD, and from there to American mandate-seeking? We watch with astonishment the example of how the extremism displayed in the name of Kemalism gives a sense of authority to open even Kemalism's most delicate and most sacred domains to development.

The history Tunç Soyer read, however, has nothing to do with that authority either. It is an example of nonsense that admits of no interpretation, and the arrival of the fanaticism displayed in the name of Kemalism at a point of meaninglessness that surpasses even Kemalism is why we call it Trans-Kemalism.

Otherwise it is something everyone knows: it was Sultan Vahdettin himself who sent Mustafa Kemal to Anatolia, with extraordinary authority and means, with vehicles and personnel, in a manner that would also lead to the liberation of İzmir.

Murat Bardakçı even explains that the War of Independence itself was an Ottoman state operation.

Where might the motivation come from that makes one spew rancor at the Ottomans, who took the most effective measure possible against them, while removing the Greek from being the enemy and not remembering at all the British behind him?