The Young Turks and the Boycott Movement: Nationalism, Protest and the Working Classes in the Formation of Modern Turkey.

• Author: Volaric, Klara
• Position: Book review

The Young Turks and the Boycott Movement: Nationalism, Protest and the Working Classes in the Formation of Modern Turkey

By Y. Dogan Cetinkaya

London and New York: I.B. Tauris, 2014, 320 pages, $95.00, ISBN: 9781780764726.

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The Young Turks and the Boycott Movement of Y. Dogan Cetinkaya represents valuable insight into three boycott movements that took place during the Second constitutional period. The author places them in the mass politics context, which started with the CUP period when society, unlike previous periods, became more actively involved in politics. One of the consequences of this involvement were the three boycott movements: the first in 1908 as the result of Austria-Hungarian annexation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, the second during 1910-11 following the outburst of the Cretan question, and the third in 1913-14 again as the outcome of the circumstances immediately following the Balkan Wars. All of these boycott movements were separately discussed in the book's chapters.

According to Cetinkaya, the book has two main goals. The first goal is to show that the Young Turks and CUP did not start the boycott movements, but boycotts were rather the consequence of the spontaneous public meetings were Ottoman citizens expressed their attitude toward current political and social issues. The second goal of the book was to point out that Turkish nationalism, in this period, was not just a current of thought, but had vivid social dimensions, which was expressed especially in the last boycott movement. Thus, the intention of the book is to fill the gap or better yet to change the mainstream perception in Turkish historiography about the role of the CUP in the boycott movements and the nature of these movements, which I believe the author successfully carried out.

The first chapter of the book, therefore, begins with the overview of Turkish historiography that dealt with the non-Muslim and Muslim bourgeoisie, working classes, and the state in this period. I consider this chapter as a sort of introduction to the late Ottoman state and society because the described context was quite sketchy; it posed the main, traditional questions, like could we speak about the Muslim bourgeoisie? In other words, this chapter draws from the mainstream topics that preoccupy Turkish historiography. Because this book was written in English and is therefore aimed at non-Turkish audiences as well, I expected that Cetinkaya would refer more to...