| PREFACE
In modern historiography, the First World War is accepted as the real beginning of the twentieth century. Consequently, libraries full of works concerning all aspects of this war have been produced in English, French and German, which were the languages of the main belligerents. Since the twentieth century was mainly a century of nation-states, most of these works were based on national perspectives; works based on international perspectives were much fewer in number, although such works did increase in number beginning from the second half of the twentieth century. Because the First World War was a global event, comparative approaches that rise above the boundaries of national perspectives would undoubtedly be more correct and productive. Jay Winter studied the effect of the First World War on European cultural history by means of such a comparative approach. In his seminal work, Sites of Memory, Sites of Mourning, he stresses the fact that even the most qualified works regarding this war could not rise much above their national boundaries and that being able to do so was one of the most important challenges facing the historians of our day.1
On the other hand, the most important battles of the First World War were fought on European fronts; the events causing and ending the war all happened in Europe. That is why this war was an international event, but a primarily European one. Europe was not only the site where war began but also the geography where its main effects were most strongly felt. It was only later that the war spread to other parts of the world. Due to this absolute fact, the larger perspective reached by comparativists, including Winter, in their quest to rise above national boundaries was limited to a vague conception of Europe. In today’s global world, which has been shaken up in so many respects, such an approach has inevitably led to Eurocentrism and consequently reproduced the very limitations it was supposed to overcome.
In today’s world, where scientific research is limited by the power balance of realpolitik, as is the case in many other subjects, research on the First World War proceeds according to a certain hierarchy. Language is the most important factor of this hierarchy, according to which first of all, the war experience of the countries speaking English, French or German; secondly, comparativist approaches regarding these countries; thirdly, relatively minor belligerents like Russia, the Ottoman Empire and the Balkan states; and finally, the war experience of former colonies are considered worthy of academic interest. In particular, the last group has been studied in a subordinate position, in relation to the great powers as if they were but movie extras. Until the power discourse implicit in this academic hierarchy is overcome, a real comparison regarding in general global history and in particular the First World War will not be possible.
This book is a study of cultural history, the goal of which is to focus on the Ottoman-Turkish war experience, which is a component of the First World War that has been neglected both by global historiography and by its own national historiography. Ottoman-Turkish cultural history regarding the years 1914-1918 is a field which has been neglected for many reasons. For the above-mentioned reasons, all works of national or international cultural historiography with a European perspective have studied the First World War according to the problematic of ‘modern memory’; the subject of the debate has been the question of whether or not the war was really a point of transition between the traditional nineteenth century and the modern twentieth century.2 Given such a situation, Ottoman-Turkish culture, which is thought not to have had any relation with modernism, which was another European development, and being also linguistically handicapped, has not been honoured with much international interest. Because the Ottoman Empire was perceived as non- Western and Islamic-Oriental, even though by 1914 it had been trying to Westernize for more than a century, its cultural field, like so many other fields regarding it, was prejudicially considered to be of an imitative or derivative nature and was therefore not included even in comparative studies of the cultural histories of all belligerent countries.
The cultural aspects of the Ottoman-Turkish war experience have been neglected not only by international comparative studies, but by local historiography as well. In Turkey nowadays, what is conventionally defined as ‘modern Turkish cultural history and literature’ includes both the late Ottoman period in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and the Republican period. Nevertheless, the First World War, which was the determining event that brought about the fall of the Ottoman Empire and the consequent creation of the Republic of Turkey, has generally been neglected, particularly so from a cultural point of view. According to the dominant teleological approach, modern Turkish culture was shaped within the context of the post-1923 nation-state and national identity form; after some vague experimentation in the late Ottoman period, it found its real identity during the Republic. Late Ottoman cultural life, and its last breath in the First World War, are seen only as nuances. According to this perception, the years which make up the subject of this book were relevant only as a transition from the multi-ethnic empire to a nationally defined nation-state.
Notwithstanding this international and national neglect, this book begins with the premise that the four year long Ottoman-Turkish war experience between 1914 and 1918 was important not just from the neglected political, economic and social points of view, but also from the even more neglected cultural point of view. Even though this book presents itself as a study of cultural history, the material it studies consists predominantly of literary texts; it concentrates on literary texts related to the war and written between 1914 and 1918, while the war was happening. The fact that this study nevertheless does not present itself as a conventional or unconventional literary history derives from a distinctive preference: an attempt to make a socio-historical interpretation based on the cultural contextualisation of literary texts.
Up to now Turkish historiography and modern Turkish literary history have preferred to work separately and not just in the cultural field. Within this context, the approach followed thus far has been one in which historians have preferred to use literary texts as secondary sources, supporting denotatively a historical argument or narration. With this approach, the specific textual structure and production mechanisms of a literary text are not considered and are used only as an unproblematic testimony. On the other hand, from the point of view of literary historians, the historical circumstances are important only as a simple context used to position the literary text; also, in this case the complexities of historical processes are not considered. The result is that the probability that there may be a complex interaction between a literary text and its historical context is overlooked and a relationship, which could turn out to be highly productive for both fields, therefore fails to be established. The aim of this book is precisely such an interdisciplinarity. Its main methodological preoccupation is the question: ‘Is an interdisciplinary literary and/or cultural historiography, which trivializes neither the literary text nor the historical context, possible?’ It is with the aim of realizing this possibility that I strive in this work to interpret the literary output concerning the First World War and written during the war, within its cultural history context. At this point, it may be useful to move on from the methodological preferences on which the book is based, to the hypotheses and explanations thereof. The first hypothesis concerns the perception, recollection and representation of the First World War. We tend to perceive the First World War as a straightforward and singular entity, despite the fact that the war stretched on for almost four and a half years between 1914 and 1918. This ‘Great War’ was termed the ‘First War’ after a second war broke out some twenty years later. But when we stop and think about the whole incident, we realise that it was actually a quite complicated historical event. The relatively long duration of the war, the great variety of events that succeeded one another and that, at times, led from one to another and the many direct and indirect actors who played different roles in the whole event make it difficult for us to grasp the First World War as a totality. Even the very minor incidents that occurred during the war do not have one singular telling, and different points of view clash when it comes to interpreting any event.
This conflict in understanding the war directs our attention to an important issue, and that is the question of its recollection and representation. Neither our common world history nor our national histories include a fixed manner of describing war. Innate complexities inhibit such a comprehensive description, thus leading to various interpretations originating from the different narrators of each national culture.
Regardless of the differences, however, among points of view and narrators, the processes of recollection and representation have one common feature: belatedness. A fiction writer, an author of memoirs or even a historian, all rely on retrospection in order to be able to describe a historical event. This retrospection creates an unbridgeable gap between the historical event and its recollection, interpretation and narration, or in short, its portrayal. However, the narratee cannot distinguish the gap between that which is narrated and the event itself, because the very narrative mechanism that occurs between the event and the narration acts to make the gap invisible. If we consider a written narration, the process that makes this gap currently invisible is directly related to the time at which the writer is writing. At the moment of retrospection, while recollecting a historical event, the author is under the influence of the political, socio-cultural and psychological conditions of his or her own particular time. The present influences the recollection, interpretation and narration of the past; therefore, although we may think that the interpretation is based on the historical event, we are faced with a situation in which the historical event is based on the interpretation due to the belatedness in the narrative.
The belatedness present in all remembrances and interpretations of historical events is particularly relevant in the case of studies concerning the First World War. For example, in his book titled Literature at War 1914-1940: Representing “The Time of Greatness” in Germany, Wolfgang G. Natter presents the representation of the war in German literature in the context of this belatedness. According to Natter, the political, social, economic and cultural conditions at the moment of the creation of the literary work and the institutional relations deriving from these conditions are fundamental elements determining how the war will be remembered and interpreted. Literary works created during the war itself, when the environment was preponderantly nationalist with many elements of propaganda, will underline and develop certain points, while preferring to skip certain other points, which may be oppositional to those being put forward. These same points, which may have been at the time wilfully overlooked because they contrasted with the official way of describing the then current events, may, after a period of being forgotten or set aside, be resurrected in accordance with the changing conditions.3 The way the First World War is described in Turkish literature may also be interpreted within this context. As is the case in other countries, Turkish literature also suffers from belatedness when describing the Ottoman-Turkish Great War experience and the history of this war was rewritten at a moment when different ideologies were struggling for power. On the other hand, the elements and results of this rewriting process have been different in comparison to what happened in Germany, England, France or Russia, since the agenda of Turkish literature is different in the same way that the Turkish experience of war was different from that of Western nations. The general aim of this book is to describe and explain this difference. To be able to explain this I have to clarify another conceptual point: the difference between literary pieces describing the First World War as an unfolding event and literary pieces describing the First World War as an event of the past.
First of all, I should point out the fact that literary works created during and after the war have one thing in common: in both cases the writer is interpreting the past in the light of the time in which she/he is writing. Thus, while a writer describing the First World War after 1918 will be remembering and interpreting the events of 1914-1918 in the light of the conditions present in her/his time, a writer writing during the war years, while the events described are still unfolding, will interpret them by means of parallels and relations with her/his past. In this way literature created during the years 1914-1918 will represent an attempt to reinterpret the concepts inherited from the past in the light of the conditions of the present time.
This effort is common to all cultures, but since all national cultures are based on a different set of traditions, the results of the influence of the past on the present will be different in each country.
Industrialized European countries, which were following colonialist and imperialist policies, used their literary and cultural traditions inherited from the past for propaganda purposes in the context of their ‘total war’. Beginning from 1914, in countries like England, France and Germany, state organs took over the job of influencing local and foreign public opinion. With the help of technology and of the most developed cultural institutions, the national cultural repertoire was used for the benefit of a common aim. Essentially the main aim of all warring nations is to create an effective propaganda network, which will first of all secure the home front, and then be used to influence and convince the public opinion of allied and enemy nations. Such a network requires a developed and industrialized infrastructure. That is why the success in the field of propaganda of a warring nation is directly proportionate to its material wealth… |
