Türk Millî Kimliğinin Kuruluşunda Osmanlı'nın Reddi: On Beşinci Yıl Kitabı

The concept of national identity brings in the identity of the excluded and antagonized other together with the accepted and sublimated past and culture. The 'other' is usually another national identity against whose sovereignity the independence is achieved, or a minority which is thought of threatening the homogeneity. The definition of the other provides more information on the national identity than what is accepted and sublimated by it. However, the other is not persistent; instead, it changes according to the po¬licies of national identity and thus has to be studied within definite time intervals. I aim at analysing the spirit of Turkish national identity within the first fifteen years following the establishment of the Republic by a critical reading of the On Beşinci Yıl Kitabı ('The Book of the Fifteenth Year') in search of the other. In this book, I found out, to my surprise, that the other was neither the adversaries in the Independence War not the minorities described in Lausanne Agreement, but the Ottoman past. The 'othering' of its own po¬litical past by the Turkish national identity evaluated with reference to theories of nationalism brings up Eric Hobsbawm's concept of invention of tradition.