Turkey: A Past against History.

• Author: Koc, Mehmet Akif

Turkey: A Past against History

By Christine M. Philliou

Oakland: University of California Press, 2021, 294 pages, [pounds sterling]66.00, ISBN: 9780520276390

Starting with the emergence of political opposition within the country, the history of Turkiye is riddled with examples of political revenge, massive pressure against dissidents, and revanchism. In A Past Against History, Christine Philliou, a historian of modern Turkiye from UC Berkeley, presents a concise evaluation of modern Turkish politics, culture, and society, focusing on the concept of opposition (muhalefet) and placing special emphasis on the intellectual biography of a prominent political opponent (muhalif), Reflk Halid Karay (1888-1965).

Philliou explores the eighty-year period between the 1880s and 1960s, which includes the demise of the Ottoman Empire, ten years of continuous wars, the foundation of the new republic, and the first decades of the newborn regime. She structures her account of the major political and socio-cultural framework of each period with reference to the developments in Karay's personal and political life.

In the Introduction, Philliou elaborates upon the main concepts and general background of the research; she discusses the terms muhalefet and muhalif and the transformation process that began in the last quarter of the empire and prepared the socio-political base of the new republic. She presents Karay as a representative political and cultural figure of those transformation periods with an emphasis on his worldview and intellectual stance against authority.

The first chapter focuses on explaining the tight years (istibdat) of the Hamidian reign (1880s-1908), during which Karay was born to an elite Istanbuli family. Karay's father had served as the nazir (superintendent) of the Ottoman Bank, and Karay finished his education in modern Ottoman schools. Those years also witnessed the emergence of the political and military opposition, its coup d'etat against the sultan in 1908, and the re-declaration of constitutional order in Istanbul. Philliou compares the two constitutionalist eras (1876 and 1908) regarding the Young Ottomans and Young Turks, whose activities created the background in shaping Karay's mindset during his youth.

The second chapter discusses the contradictions of Ottoman constitutionalism and the appearance of a new constitutionalist muhalefet following the 1908 revolution until the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP) 1913 coup. These...