Nurettin Topçu and the first decade of his anatolianist journal: hareket (1939-49)

104 pagesHareket is a journal, specifically a “journal of ideas” (fikir mecmuası) published intermittently between 1939 and 1982 in 187 issues in Turkey. Nurettin Topçu (b. 1909, d. 1975), a high school teacher, publisher, philosopher and prominent public intellectual, was the founder, and one of the chief contributors and administrators of this periodical. My research is on the first decade of the journal (1939-49), seeking out the themes of Anatolianism/Anatolian nationalism (Anadoluculuk/Anadolucu milliyetçilik), a version of Turkish nationalism centered on the idea of a homeland limited to Anatolia. Anatolianism is a relatively less studied and seemingly insignificant version of Turkish nationalism. However, it influenced a large number of political movements including the right wing of the Republican People’s Party and the Turkish-Islamic Synthesis. In Hareket, the narrative of Anatolianist national history begins in 1071 and pre-Islamic, pre-Anatolian pasts are barely included in a very selective and contradictory way. Sedentary life and agricultural production inherited in Anatolia and Islam are considered major constituents of the nation. The history of the Ottoman Empire is approached in a partially hated and liked periods whose chronological edges are very vague. Constitutional reforms of 1876 and 1908 are praised but considered unsatisfactory because the ultimate goal is a republic. The reign of Abdülhamit II, the rule of CUP and the Kemalist one-party era are strongly and frequently criticized. The rich republicanist discourse in Hareket embraces the “War of Independence” and the first national assembly but includes harsh critique of one-party rule of 1923-45 to a degree that the journal is once closed by the government. By the year 1949, the narrative of national history ends with the explicitly acknowledged transition to multi-party system, a new turning point of hope for the nation, or the “Muslim Oğuz Turks of Anatolia” according to writers of Hareket between the years 1939 and 1949