RECONSIDERING STATE, PARTY, AND SOCIETY IN EARLY REPUBLICAN TURKEY: POLITICS OF PETITIONING

Yiğit Akın

doi:10.1017/S0020743807070547

RECONSIDERING STATE, PARTY, AND SOCIETY IN EARLY REPUBLICAN TURKEY: POLITICS OF PETITIONING

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 August 2007

Yiğit Akın

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Yiğit Akın: Affiliation:
Yiğit Akın is a graduate student in the Department of History, Ohio State University, 230 West 17th Ave., 106 Dulles Hall, Columbus, Ohio 43210-1367, USA; e-mail: akin.16@osu.edu

Article contents

Extract
HISTORICAL CONTEXT AND THE INSTITUTIONAL ASPECT OF PETITIONING
THE ART OF SELF-FASHIONING: LANGUAGE OF PETITIONS
CONCLUSION

Rights & Permissions

Extract

On 4 February 1934, the secretary-general of the Republican People's Party (RPP) received an utterly distressed letter penned by Kerimoğlu Ethem, a young waiter employed at the restaurant of Şakir Usta, located in the small western Anatolian town of Bergama. Ethem's letter contained harsh complaints about the head of the RPP's Bergama branch, who had sworn at the waiter and beaten him because of a minor problem with service. “Except a few loyal supporters, no one likes him in Bergama,” wrote Ethem, “but people are afraid of raising complaints against him as he is the head of the party. I write to inform you about this immoral man, who degrades the esteem of the party in Bergama and openly defies the government's authority.” Upon receiving Ethem's letter, the secretary-general immediately ordered party inspectors to investigate the allegations. Ethem's complaint was just one among many that flooded the secretary-general's mailbox during the early 1930s.

Information

Type: ARTICLES
Information: International Journal of Middle East Studies , Volume 39 , Issue 3 , August 2007, pp. 435 - 457
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0020743807070547 [Opens in a new window]
Copyright: © 2007 Cambridge University Press

Haven't we had enough of the wrongdoings of this party boss? He kicked the youth out of the party, he beat drivers on the street, and finally he slapped an innocent like me in public. Will the leaders of our exalted People's Party approve all these and keep silent?¹

“Bu reisin yaptıkları yetmez mi? Fırkadan gençleri kovar, sokakta şoförleri döver ve en nihayet benim gibi bir masumu kalabalık halk huzurunda hem de büyük bir tavr-ı hakaret ile tokatlar da mübeccel Halk Fırkamız rüesası sükût eder mi?” Petition of waiter Kerimoğlu Ethem, BCA-CHP 490..01/530..2123..1 (4 February 1934).

The opening of the Prime-Ministry Republican Archives (Başbakanlık Cumhuriyet Arşivi [BCA]) has provided historians with a wealth of new information relevant to the study of early republican Turkey, which has allowed for a closer look at the nature of the Kemalist regime, its daily functions, and the dynamics of relationships among the party leadership, state bureaucracy, and citizens. Among the records of state and party bureaucracies, historians also come across traces left by people from various social classes whose voices have only rarely been heard. Citizens' petitions to the secretary-general of the RPP, the chief executive officer of the single ruling party of interwar Turkey, constitute only one of many untapped sources of this type.²

According to the RPP statues of 1927, the secretary-general (fırka katib-i umumisi) and the vice president (umumi reis vekili) made up the party leadership (umumi riyaset divanı) together with the president. Cumhuriyet Halk Fırkası Nizamnamesi (Ankara: TBMM Matbaası, 1927), 8–9. During the period under consideration, Recep Peker was the secretary-general of the party. On Peker, see Ahmet Yıldız, “Recep Peker,” in Modern Türkiye'de Siyasi Düşünce II: Kemalizm, ed. Ahmet İnsel (Istanbul: İletişim Yayınları, 2001), 58–63.

This article examines the language, content, and historical significance of a set of such petitions in order to shed new light on state–society relations within the historical context of state formation in early republican Turkey. These petitions, combined with other primary and secondary sources, help historians reconsider the intricate web of discursive and practical interactions between people and representatives of state and party power. In this regard, petitions serve as a richly diverse and completely unexplored body of sources for examining everyday politics and restoring people's agency and their historical role as social actors.³

Although recognizing the importance of these petitions sent to the secretary-general in gaining a deeper insight into early republican Turkey, I acknowledge the limitations of the following analysis. RPP or the secretary-general was not the only recourse of petitioners. An aggrieved person could also apply to the Petitions Commission of the GNA, individual MPs, local administrative organs of state, ministers, the prime minister, and, of course, Atatürk himself.

Scholars have generally agreed that the state in the early republican period was a coercive, interventionist, and transformative entity, but they have differed in their assessments of Kemalist policies. Some historians, who mostly adopted modernization theory and/or the nationalist/developmentalist metanarrative, have approached the Kemalist regime as the driving force of social and political transformation that enlightened the Anatolian people, who were either ignorant and politically indifferent to contemporary events or simply subservient to powerful local landlords and religious authorities.⁴

Classical accounts of this literature are Niyazi Berkes, The Development of Secularism in Turkey (Montreal: McGill University Press, 1964); Bernard Lewis, The Emergence of Modern Turkey (New York: Oxford University Press, 1968); Stanford J. Shaw and Ezel K. Shaw, History of the Ottoman Empire and Modern Turkey (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977); and Geoffrey L. Lewis, Turkey (New York: Praeger, 1955).

Other scholars have challenged the basic premises of previous studies and developed a more critical assessment of the Kemalist state apparatus as a repressive mechanism that dominated daily life and left little room for any alternative voices.⁵

Among representative accounts of this approach, primarily see Mete Tunçay, Türkiye Cumhuriyeti'nde Tek Parti Yönetimi'nin Kurulması: 1923–1931 (Ankara: Yurt Yayınları, 1981); Çağlar Keyder, State and Class in Turkey: A Study in Capitalist Development (London/New York: Verso, 1987); Levent Köker, Modernleşme, Kemalizm ve Demokrasi (Istanbul: İletişim Yayınları, 1990); Taha Parla, Türkiye'de Siyasal Kültürün Resmi Kaynakları: Kemalist Tek Parti İdeolojisi ve CHP'nin Altı Oku (Istanbul: İletişim Yayınları, 1992); Cengiz Aktar, Türkiye'nin Batılılaştırılması (Istanbul: Ayrıntı Yayınları, 1993); Ahmet İnsel, Düzen ve Kalkınma Kıskacında Türkiye: Kalkınma Sürecinde Devletin Rolü (Istanbul: Ayrıntı Yayınları, 1996).

Although both of these frameworks have undeniably contributed to our understanding of the early republican period, their essentially exclusive interpretation of state formation as a unidirectional process imposed from above has portrayed ordinary people as passive bystanders or hapless victims of policies. Most studies have ignored citizens' perception of the Kemalist regime and their complex relations with it.⁶

For similar observations, see Şerif Mardin, “Projects as Methodology: Some Thoughts on Modern Turkish Social Science,” in Rethinking Modernity and National Identity in Turkey, ed. Reşat Kasaba and Sibel Bozdoğan (Seattle, Wash.: University of Washington Press, 1997), 64–80; Reşat Kasaba, “Kemalist Certainties and Modern Ambiguities,” ibid., 15–36; Gavin D. Brockett, “Revisiting the Turkish Revolution, 1923–1938: Secular Reform and Religious ‘Reaction’,” History Compass 4 (2006): 1060–1072. Admittedly, this problem is partly related to the enormous difficulty in finding relevant historical sources. Although it is relatively easy to uncover what Kemalist elites were thinking about society, depiction of ordinary people's reaction to Kemalist policies has proven to be much more difficult.

Both of these otherwise contrasting approaches imply a radical disjuncture between state and society. They tend to explain state–society relations in terms of neatly divided antagonists, describing the early republican state as monolithic, unitary, and external to society, while treating society as autonomous from the state and/or in complete reaction to it. Similarly, both approaches describe the state as essentially unaffected by demands of other social and political actors, and society as either absolutely passive or fiercely resistant to any imposed transformation. Such a limited interpretation of history can obscure the dynamic character of social and political life in early republican Turkey. A more demystifying approach breaks up the monolithic conception of the state and treats it as a historically and politically contingent formation.⁷

George Steinmetz, “Introduction: Culture and the State,” in State/Culture: State-Formation after the Cultural Turn, ed. George Steinmetz (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1999), 1–50.

The representation of “the state” as a coherent, unified entity which has the legitimacy to rule is produced through everyday practices of bureaucratic state apparatuses (e.g., taking censuses, conducting cadastral surveys, conscripting soldiers, issuing passports, mapping land, printing money, passing laws, etc.) as well as through the discursive/symbolic performance of state bureaucracy. As Timothy Mitchell aptly states, it is through these “mundane processes of spatial organization, temporal arrangement, functional specification, supervision and surveillance, and representation” that the state appears as distinct and relatively autonomous from society.⁸

Timothy Mitchell, “Society, Economy, and the State Effect,” ibid., 95. See also idem, “The Limits of the State: Beyond Statist Approaches and Their Critics,” American Political Science Review 85 (1991): 77–96. Similarly, Thomas Hansen and Finn Steppuat suggest approaching each actual state as a historically specific configuration of a range of practical/institutional and symbolic/performative features and functions. “Introduction: States of Imagination,” in States of Imagination: Ethnographic Explorations of the Postcolonial State, ed. Thomas Blom Hansen and Finn Stepputat (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2001), 1–38.

Once we turn our attention away from the notion of state as a discrete entity (which regulates society) to the “state-effect” or the “state-idea,” as Philip Abrams puts it, we can extend our analysis of the state to involve the cultural dimension of state building. Ferguson and Gupta suggest that “states are not simply functional bureaucratic apparatuses, but powerful sites of symbolic and cultural production that are in themselves always culturally represented and understood in particular ways.”⁹

James Ferguson and Akhil Gupta, “Spatializing States: Toward an Anthropology of Neo-liberal Governmentality,” American Ethnologist 29 (2002): 981. For Philip Abrams, the state is “at most a message of domination—an ideological artifact attributing unity, morality and independence of the practice of government.” “Notes on the Difficulty of Studying the State,” Journal of Historical Sociology 1 (1988): 81.

This broader conceptualization of the state calls for analysis of everyday practices of state institutions at different levels and examination of cultural construction of “the state” through these practices.¹⁰

For the pioneering study on the process of formation and consolidation of state as a cultural process with manifest material and social consequences, see Philip Corrigan and Derek Sayer, The Great Arch: English State Formation as Cultural Revolution (Oxford: Blackwell, 1985).

The state, however, is not solely the product of elites' symbolic and cultural projects. This new perspective allows historians to formulate new questions about how states and their hegemonies were constructed materially and discursively and how they were conceptualized, negotiated, accommodated, and subverted in everyday practices of various social classes.¹¹

I do not employ the term “hegemony” in the sense of a commonly shared ideological and political pattern that is produced and propagated by the elites. What hegemony constructs is, as William Roseberry notes, “not a shared ideology but a common material and meaningful framework for living through, talking about, and acting upon social orders characterized by domination.” William Roseberry, “Hegemony and the Language of Contention,” in Everyday Forms of State Formation: Revolution and the Negotiation of Rule in Modern Mexico, ed. Gilbert M. Joseph and David Nugent (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1994), 361.

It is only by conceiving of the state as contested and contingent upon bureaucracies' functions and representations as well as people's experiences that one can grasp the complexities of everyday politics in early republican Turkey.¹²

Here I use the term “politics” in the sense offered by Keith Michael Baker, who defines it as being the process of “making claims; as the activity through which individuals and groups in any society articulate, negotiate, implement, and enforce the competing claims they make upon one another and upon the whole.” This conceptualization of politics as a complicated web of interrelated practices offers historians the advantage of rescuing politics from the monopoly of the elite circles, parliamentary debates, and governmental decrees. Furthermore, it opens new avenues to merge “high” politics with broader segments of society, as well as with a wider array of popular and individual forms of expression and contestation such as the local press, pamphlets, songs, rumors, clandestine literature, rituals, ceremonies, and festivals. Keith Michael Baker, Inventing the French Revolution: Essays on French Political Culture in the Eighteenth Century (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 4. See also William Sewell, “Ideologies and Social Revolutions,” Journal of Modern History 57 (1985): 57–85; Wayne Te Brake, Shaping History: Ordinary People in European Politics, 1500–1700 (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 1998), 6–7.

The hegemony of the Kemalist ruling elite was not formed within a political and social vacuum. On the contrary, elites' authority was constructed in constant negotiation with people who relentlessly raised their demands and disputed the legitimacy of political figures while constantly questioning their acts. In this regard, petitions to the secretary-general gave authors the opportunity to express concerns to the party leadership by narrating their experiences, drawing on and challenging the prevailing notions of Kemalist vocabulary and the regime's master narrative. Through various strategies, petitioners mediated and/or transformed the regime's nationalist and populist discourse to further their own interests. In this sense, the regime's founding principles and master narrative turned into a discursive field on which the meanings of state, nation, and citizen were being constantly redefined and contested.

HISTORICAL CONTEXT AND THE INSTITUTIONAL ASPECT OF PETITIONING

Petition writing has been neither unique to Turkey nor specific to the early republican period. In the Ottoman Empire, petitioning was a familiar mode of recourse for individuals from various classes, religions, ethnicities, and professions. From the earliest periods on, people enjoyed the right to present written appeals (arzuhal or arz-ı hal) to the imperial bureaucracy on a broad range of social, economic, and legal issues. Petitioning was instrumental for urban and rural producers/subjects (reaya) to convince high bureaucracy to intercede in their cases, to eliminate excessive taxation or any form of oppression (zulm), to lodge a complaint about abusive bureaucrats and officials, and to remedy local injustices.¹³

Suraiya Faroqhi, “Political Activity Among Ottoman Taxpayers and the Problem of Sultanic Legitimation (1570–1650),” Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 35 (1992): 1–39; idem, “Political Initiatives ‘From the Bottom Up’ in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth-Century Ottoman Empire,” in Osmanistische Studien zur Wirtschafts- und Sozialgeschichte: In Memoriam Vanco Boskov, ed. Hans Georg Majer (Wiesbaden: O. Harrassowitz, 1986), 24–33; Amy Singer, Palestinian Peasants and Ottoman Officials: Rural Administration Around Sixteenth-Century Jerusalem (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 119–31; Fariba Zarinebaf-Shahr, “Ottoman Women and the Tradition of Seeking Justice in the Eighteenth Century,” in Women in the Ottoman Empire: Middle Eastern Women in the Early Modern Era, ed. Madeline C. Zilfi (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1997), 253–63.

As thousands of examples preserved in registers demonstrate, petitioners were able to initiate wide-ranging changes in the application of imperial laws and regulations.¹⁴

Linda T. Darling, Revenue-Raising and Legitimacy: Tax Collection and Finance Administration in the Ottoman Empire, 1560–1660 (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1996), 281.

In this respect, petitioning also served important political goals for the Ottoman imperial administration, the legitimacy of which was based on sultanic claims of preserving social order and provisioning justice for all subjects.¹⁵

According to Halil İnalcık, for example, opening channels through which people could present complaints directly to the sultan was one of the defining characteristics of “justice.” Halil İnalcık, “Şikayet Hakkı: ‘Arz-ı Hâl’ ve ‘Arz-ı Mazharlar’,” Osmanlı Araştırmaları 7–8 (1988): 33–54; idem, “State Ideology under Sultan Suleyman I,” in The Middle East and the Balkans under the Ottoman Empire: Essays on Economy and Society (Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press, 1993), 70–94; idem, “Adaletnameler,” Belgeler 2 (1965): 49–145. For alternative characterizations of “justice” by different historical actors, see Boğaç A. Ergene, “On Ottoman Justice: Interpretation in Conflict (1600–1800),” Islamic Law and Society 8 (2001): 52–87.

Even as the process became more bureaucratic in later centuries, the imperial bureaucracy considered responding to petitions and issuing decrees for rectification of malpractices as an invaluable opportunity to fulfill sultanic responsibilities and affirm the mystical union between ruler and ruled. Thus, the Ottoman ruling elite placed a significant emphasis on keeping these administrative channels functioning, which helped perpetuate the sultan's image as ultimate guardian of justice and sole protector of the weak.¹⁶

Suraiya Faroqhi, “Die Legitimation des Osmanensultans: Zur Beziehung von Religion, Kunst und Politik im 16. und 17. Jahrhundert,” Zeitschrift für Türkeistudien 2 (1989): 49–67; Hakan T. Karateke, “Legitimizing the Ottoman Sultanate: A Framework for Historical Analysis,” in Legitimizing the Order: The Ottoman Rhetoric of State Power, ed. Hakan T. Karateke and Maurus Reinkowski (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2005), 13–52.

From the mid-17th century onward, the central bureaucracy recorded summaries of complaints, appeals, and decrees issued in response into “registers of complaint” (şikayet defterleri) and “registers of sultanic commands” (ahkam defterleri), for the purpose of monitoring local abuses and ensuring compliance with existing imperial orders.¹⁷

İnalcık argues that petitioning activities took a more organized form in the 18th century. Halil İnalcık, “Centralization and Decentralization in Ottoman Administration,” in Studies in Eighteenth-Century Islamic History, ed. Thomas Naff and Roger Owen (Carbondale, Ill.: Southern Illinois University Press, 1977), 44, fn. 63. See also Rhoads Murphey, “Continuity and Discontinuity in Ottoman Administrative Theory and Practice during the Late Seventeenth Century,” Poetics Today 14 (1993): 419–43. On these registers, see Said Öztürk, “Sosyo-Ekonomik Tarih Kaynağı Olarak Ahkâm Defterleri,” in Pax Ottomana: Studies in Memoriam Prof. Dr. Nejat Göyünç, ed. Kemal Çiçek (Ankara: SOTA-Yeni Türkiye, 2001), 611–39; Hans Georg Majer, ed., Das Osmanische “Registerbuch der Beschwerden” (Şikayet Defteri) vom Jahre 1675 (Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1984), 13–21. For the grievance administration at the province level, see Michael Ursinus, Grievance Administration (Şikayet) in an Ottoman Province: The Kaymakam of Rumelia's “Record Book of Complaints” of 1781–1783 (London: Routledge-Curzon, 2005).

The emergence of these special registers signifies the Ottoman effort to institutionalize petitioning. Despite increasing bureaucratization of the process after tanzimat reforms, the Ottoman ruling elite continued to entertain petitioning as a powerful device that allowed them to demonstrate imperial benevolence and justice materialized in the sultan. Along with other occasions, the sultan's procession to the mosque for Friday prayer (cuma selamlığı) served as an opportunity for people to hand petitions directly to the sultan, a practice that lasted until the end of the empire.¹⁸

Mehmet İpşirli, “Osmanlılarda Cuma Selamlığı (Halk-Hükümdar Münasebetleri Açısından Önemi),” in Prof. Dr. Bekir Kütükoğlu'na Armağan (Istanbul: Edebiyat Fakültesi Basımevi, 1991), 459–71. Abdülhamid II was the Ottoman ruler who placed utmost emphasis on receiving people's petitions personally. See, for example, François Georgeon, “Le Sultan Caché: Réclusion du Souverain et Mise en Scéne du Pouvoir à L'Époque de Abdülhamid II (1876–1909),” Turcica 29 (1997): 93–124. Abdülhamid established a special institution, Maruzat-ı Rikabiyye Dairesi, with the sole purpose of collection and examination of petitions. For more information on this organization, see Hakan T. Karateke, Padişahım Çok Yaşa! Osmanlı Devletinin Son Yüz Yılında Merasimler (Istanbul: Kitap Yayınevi, 2004), 119–21; Tahsin Paşa, Abdülhamit ve Yıldız Hatıraları (Istanbul: Ahmet Halit Kitaphanesi, 1931), 19.

In the early republican period, people of diverse economic and social backgrounds penned petitions to Kemalist leaders as well as to special institutions which were established to review and respond to such petitions. Even in the turbulent times of the War of Independence, the Petitions Commission (İstida Encümeni) of the first National Assembly received petitions and examined supplicants' needs and complaints.¹⁹

Nizamname-i Dahilinin İstidalar Hakkındaki Fıkralarına Dair 170 Sayılı TBMM Kararı, Düstur 3, vol. 2 (10 September 1337 [1921]): 134. See also Türkiye Büyük Millet Meclisi'nin 25nci Yıldönümü Anış (Ankara: TBMM Basımevi, 1945), 151–54. The first volume of the register of petitions at the GNA dates back to March 1337 [1921]. Servet Armağan, Dilekçe Hakkı ve 1961 Anayasası (Istanbul: Fakülteler Matbaası, 1972), 149, fn. 6.

The 1924 constitution granted citizens the right to petition to the Petitions Commission (having changed its name to Arzuhal Encümeni) of the Grand National Assembly (GNA).²⁰

A. Şeref Gözübüyük and Suna Kili, eds., Türk Anayasa Metinleri, Tanzimattan Bugüne Kadar (Ankara: Ajans-Türk Matbaası, 1957). Also see A. Şeref Gözübüyük and Zekâi Sezgin, eds., 1924 Anayasası Hakkındaki Meclis Görüşmeleri (Ankara: Ankara Üniversitesi Siyasal Bilgiler Fakültesi Yayınları, 1957).

Issue 82 of the constitution and issue 50 of the GNA's internal regulation secured citizens' right to apply to the GNA, either to redress a personal grievance or to denounce an impropriety related to the public good (amme menfaati).²¹

Teşkilât-ı Esasiye Kanunu ve Nizamname-yi Dahili (Ankara: Türkiye Büyük Millet Meclisi Matbaası, 1925).

The Petitions Commission was obligated to discuss each petition, reply to the petitioner with a written answer, and compile weekly summaries of supplications.²²

Lütfi Duran, “Türkiye'de Umumi ve Nihai Merci: Arzuhal Encümeni,” Siyasi İlimler Mecmuası 24 (1955): 388–91; Armağan, Dilekçe Hakkı, 150–51.

According to contemporary observers, complaints and supplications sent to the Petitions Commission had several possible functions. They could trigger the control function (yüksek tenkit ve murakabe salahiyeti) of the GNA on government and administrative structure, or they could inspire long-term government policies. Finally, the petitioning process might serve as a “safety valve,” releasing the pressure of grievances and discontents in a manageable way.²³

Ali Fuat Başgil, “Vatandaşların Büyük Millet Meclisine Müracaat Hakkı,” in Tedris Hayatının Otuzuncu Yıldönümü Hatırası Olmak Üzere Medeni Hukuk Ordinaryüs Profesörü Ebül'ula Mardin'e Armağan (Istanbul: Kenan Matbaası, 1944), 537–66.

GNA yearbooks show that thousands of disgruntled petitioners wrote to the Petitions Commission hoping to receive various sorts of assistance or to rectify an unjust situation.²⁴

Armağan, Dilekçe Hakkı, 152–53.

People who wanted to circumvent official administrative and legal processes turned directly to the Petitions Commission. The vast number of petitions submitted proved that people became increasingly aware that, through the channel of the Petitions Commission, they might attain a satisfactory outcome in cases that would be dismissed if they followed formal legal channels.²⁵

Sıddık Sami Onar, İdare Hukukunun Umumi Esasları (Istanbul: Marifet Basımevi, 1952), 1258, fn. 1.

Although thousands of petitions were directed to the GNA Petitions Commission, it was not the only institution that received people's appeals and complaints in the early republican period. Other addressees included provincial state agents such as valis or kaymakams, individual MPs, ministers, the prime minister, and, of course, Atatürk. Local party heads were also frequent receivers of petitions. As contemporary accounts state, long lines of petitioners “in search of jobs, relief, or favors for self, kin, and friends” filed through offices of the chairmen of provincial party organizations.²⁶

Donald E. Webster, The Turkey of Atatürk: Social Process in the Turkish Reformation (Philadelphia, Pa.: The American Academy of Political and Social Science, 1939), 178.

During the republican regime's first years, however, the party's treatment of requests was far from systematic. Even though local party authorities may have fulfilled petitioners' demands, the RPP hardly functioned as an institution that systematically processed, investigated, and classified people's requests to facilitate the information flow between government and people. The party organization, which could actually funnel people's appeals, complaints, and opinions to appropriate governmental agencies, was “rigid, inflexible, and an ineffectual channel for upward communication.”²⁷

Joseph S. Szyliowicz, “Elites and Modernization in Turkey,” in Political Elites and Political Development in the Middle East, ed. Frank Tachau (Cambridge: Schenkman, 1975), 38.

Furthermore, as Erik J. Zürcher noted, in this early period, the party made little effort to solicit local support for the government's radical policies and propagate republican ideas.²⁸

Erik J. Zürcher, “Institution Building in the Kemalist Republic: The Role of the People's Party,” in Men of Order: Authoritarian Modernization under Atatürk and Reza Shah, ed. Touraj Atabaki and Erik J. Zürcher (London: I. B. Tauris, 2004), 106. See also Mahmut Goloğlu, Devrimler ve Tepkileri, 1924–1930 (Ankara: Başnur Matbaası, 1972), 221–23; Şevket Süreyya Aydemir, Tek Adam: Mustafa Kemal, 3 vols. (Istanbul: Remzi Kitabevi, 2001), 3:363–65.

It was only from the early 1930s onward that the RPP acquired new roles as part of a much larger effort to reconstruct the regime's legitimacy and to mobilize the masses behind republican ideology. While eliminating all civil-society organizations, the RPP embarked on a course of radical transformation to become an institution intended to serve as a conduit between government and populace. The RPP's changing role should be understood within the historical context of economic depression, widespread displeasure with the government, and vigorous attempts by Kemalist elites to relegitimize their rule and reestablish their authority.

People's dissatisfaction with Kemalist policies, which overlapped with material burdens caused by the Great Depression and bad harvests in 1928–29, culminated in a wave of popular appreciation for the new opposition party, the Free Republican Party (FRP) or Serbest Cumhuriyet Fırkası.²⁹

On FRP, see Walter F. Weiker, Political Tutelage and Democracy in Turkey: The Free Party and Its Aftermath (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1973); Çetin Yetkin, Serbest Cumhuriyet Fırkası Olayı (Istanbul: Karacan Yayınları, 1982); Cem Emrence, Serbest Cumhuriyet Fırkası: 99 Günlük Muhalefet (Istanbul: İletişim Yayınları, 2006); Cemil Koçak, Belgelerle İktidar ve Serbest Cumhuriyet Fırkası (Istanbul: İletişim Yayınları, 2006).

The Kemalist elite was shocked by FRP success in municipal elections (in spite of all government interventions) and by feelings of popular discontent toward the RPP organization and state officials.³⁰

American ambassador Joseph C. Grew noted that “the Gazi, Fethi, even İsmet didn't know the state of opinion in Turkey, had no idea apparently of the strength of the resentment which was gathering momentum underneath.” Joseph C. Grew, Turbulent Era: A Diplomatic Record of Forty Years, 1904–45, ed. Walter Johnson (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1952), 874. See also Hasan Rıza Soyak, Atatürk'ten Hatıralar, 2 vols. (Ankara: Yapı ve Kredi Bankası Yayınları, 1973), 2:436.

The regime began to experience profound uncertainty regarding the relationship between the administrative/political apparatus and society. The intensified political crisis, which coincided with a deteriorating socioeconomic situation³¹

For the economic depression and its social impacts, see Yorgaki Effimianidis, Cihan İktisad Buhranı Önünde Türkiye (Istanbul: Kâatçılık ve Matbaacılık A.O., 1935–36); İlhan Tekeli and Selim İlkin, 1929 Dünya Buhranında Türkiye'nin İktisadi Politika Arayışları (Ankara: ODTÜ Yayınları, 1977); Emel Göksu, 1929 Dünya Ekonomik Buhran Yıllarında İzmir ve Suç Coğrafyası (Izmir: Izmir Büyükşehir Belediyesi Yayınları, 2003); Elif Akçetin, “Anatolian Peasants in Great Depression,” New Perspectives on Turkey 23 (2000): 79–102.

and several reactionary outbursts, such as the Menemen incident³²

Gavin D. Brockett “Collective Action and the Turkish Revolution: Towards a Framework for the Social History of the Atatürk Era, 1923–38,” Middle Eastern Studies 34 (1998): 44–66; Hamit Bozarslan, “Le Mahdisme en Turquie: L'‘Incident de Menemen’ en 1930,” Revue des Mondes Musulmans et de la Méditerranée 91–94 (2001): 297–320; Nurşen Mazıcı, “Menemen Olayı'nın Sosyo-Kültürel ve Sosyo-Ekonomik Analizi,” Toplum ve Bilim 90 (2001): 131–46; Kemal Üstün, Menemen Olayı ve Kubilay (Istanbul: Çağdaş Yayınları, 1977).

and Kurdish rebellions in the eastern provinces,³³

Reşat Hallı, Türkiye Cumhuriyeti'nde Ayaklanmalar (1924–1938) (Ankara: Genelkurmay Başkanlığı Harp Tarihi Dairesi Yayınları, 1972); Nicole Watts, “Relocating Dersim: Turkish State-Building and Kurdish Resistance, 1931–1938,” New Perspectives on Turkey 23 (2000): 5–30; Hamit Bozarslan, “Les Révoltes Kurdes en Turquie Kémaliste (Quelques Aspects),” Guerres Mondiales et Conflits Contemporains 38 (1988): 121–36.

led to a “legitimacy crisis” for the Kemalist leadership.

Faced with such paramount crises, the government resorted to measures aimed at minimizing discontent, relieving social tension, restoring government authority, and spreading the regime's ideology to even the remotest parts of the country. Officials drew up a series of new austerity measures to tame inflation, control agricultural prices, and resuscitate the economy.³⁴

Tekeli and İlkin, 1929 Dünya Buhranında; Korkut Boratav, Türkiye'de Devletçilik (1923–1950) (Ankara: Savaş Yayınevi, 1982); Şevket Raşit Hatipoğlu, Türkiye'de Zirai Buhran (Ankara: Yüksek Ziraat Enstitüsü Basımevi, 1936); Atıf Güray and Vahdi Yurtmen, Buğday Krizinde Türkiye (Ankara: Yüksek Ziraat Enstitüsü Basımevi, 1937).

In addition, Kemalists took several steps to combat corruption within the party and ameliorate popular resentment brought on by party members' actions.³⁵

Ahmet Ağaoğlu, Serbest Fırka Hatıraları (Istanbul: Baha Matbaası, 1969), 107; Mahmut Goloğlu, Tek Partili Cumhuriyet, 1931–1938 (Ankara: Turhan Kitapevi, 1974), 341–52.

A special commission, the Assembly of Forty (Kırklar Meclisi), was established to investigate party wrongdoings.³⁶

Avni Doğan, who himself was a member of this commission, writes that they discussed the problem caused by party officials' condescending manners toward people. Avni Doğan, Kurtuluş, Kuruluş ve Sonrası (Istanbul: Dünya Yayınları, 1964), 217. Even before 1930, undisciplined party cadres gave rise to criticisms. For example, see Ahmet Ağaoğlu's report of 1926 about widespread corruption among party members. Soyak, Atatürk'ten Hatıralar, 2:493–99. For similar observations, see also Aydemir, Tek Adam, 3:364.

Officials also adopted vigorous policies to extend the party's presence in social life and inculcate the population with Kemalist ideology through People's Houses (Halkevleri) and the Public Orators Organization (Halk Hatipleri Teşkilatı).³⁷

CHF Halk Hatipleri Teşkilatı Talimatı (Istanbul: Devlet Matbaası, 1931); Sefa Şimşek, “Tek-Parti Rejimlerinde Siyasi Propaganda Olgusu ve CHP Halk Hatipleri Teşkilâtı,” Türkiye Günlüğü 46 (1997): 106–119; Hakkı Uyar, “Tek Parti Yönetimi'nde Halka Yönelik Propaganda: İnkılap ve İstiklal Konferansları,” Toplumsal Tarih 17 (1995): 52–56; Işıl Çakan, Konuşunuz Konuşturunuz: Tek Parti Döneminde Propagandanın Etkin Silahı: Söz (Istanbul: Otopsi Yayınları, 2004): 67–75; Serdar Öztürk, Cumhuriyet Türkiyesinde Kahvehane ve İktidar, 1930–1945 (Istanbul: Kırmızı Yayınları, 2006), 183–248, 353–480.

Especially after the third congress in 1931, Kemalist leaders attempted to transform the party into a two-way functioning mechanism through which republican ideals were transferred to the people and people's opinions and complaints could be conveyed to the political leadership and state institutions. Thereby the Kemalist leadership aimed to facilitate the interaction between government agencies and people through the party mechanism.³⁸

Answering the question of how well the party fulfilled this intermediary role is beyond the scope of this article. Here I just want to point out the new mentality of the Kemalist ruling elite concerning the party's role and the corresponding transformation that the party organization underwent. More research is needed to illuminate how these changes resonated with local party divisions.

This institutional effort to measure popular opinion highlights one of the most intricate dilemmas of government practices in early republican Turkey. There was a stark contradiction between Kemalist leaders' desire to know what people were really thinking and their deep concern about the threat that free expression of political opinions could pose.³⁹

Sheila Fitzpatrick cogently states that “[t]his is a contradiction that all repressive, authoritarian regimes must try to resolve.” Sheila Fitzpatrick, Everyday Stalinism: Ordinary Life in Extraordinary Times—Soviet Russia in the 1930s (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 164. For a similar argument in a broader Pan-European context, see Peter Holquist, “‘Information is the Alpha and Omega of Our Work’: Bolshevik Surveillance in its Pan-European Perspective,” Journal of Modern History 69 (1997): 415–50.

After the failure of two attempts at organized opposition, resurgent religious activism, and ensuing rebellions in eastern Anatolia, the Kemalist ruling elite was extremely wary of oppositional arguments. At the same time, however, these reactionary movements against the regime's fundamental principles and the shocking degree of popular support for the FRP rendered Kemalist cadres anxious to know public perceptions of the course of events. Yet, having suppressed political opposition and free elections; having liquidated intermediary civil organizations such as the Turkish Women's Union (Türk Kadınlar Birliği), the Teachers' Union (Muallimler Birliği), Turkish Hearths (Türk Ocakları), and the Reserve Officers' Society (İhtiyat Subaylar Cemiyeti); and having shut down all newspapers that dared to criticize government policies, the Kemalist leadership lacked the means to find out popular opinion.⁴⁰

After the promulgation of the press law (1931) Kemalists allowed only those newspapers which disseminated government propaganda to continue their publication. For the press law, see Nurettin Güz, Serbest Cumhuriyet Fırkası Sonrası Basında Muhalefet ve 1931 Matbuat Kanunu (Ankara: Gazi Üniversitesi İletişim Fakültesi Basımevi, 1993); Ceyhan Koç, “Tek Parti Döneminde Basın-İktidar İlişkileri (1929–1938)” (PhD diss., Hacettepe University, 1993). For more information on the newspapers shut down by the Kemalists, see Mustafa Yılmaz, “Cumhuriyet Döneminde Bakanlar Kurulu Kararı ile Yasaklanan Yayınlar, 1923–1945,” Kebikeç 6 (1998): 5–80; Mete Tunçay, Arif Oruçءun Yarınءı (1933) (Istanbul: İletişim Yayınları, 1991); Hakkı Uyar, “Serbes Cumhuriyet Gazetesi,” Tarih ve Toplum 95 (1991): 46–51; idem, “Serbes Cumhuriyet Gazetesi Üzerine Bazı Düşünceler ve Tek Parti Yönetiminin Kurulması,” Tarih ve Toplum 102 (1992): 50–52; idem, “1930'larda Türkiye Basınında ‘Liberal’ Muhalefet: Ağaoğlu Ahmet'in Akın Gazetesi,” Toplumsal Tarih 41 (1997): 43–50. For liquidated civil society organizations, see Esat Öz, Türkiye'de Tek Parti Yönetimi ve Siyasal Katılım, 1923–45 (Ankara: Gündoğan Yayınları, 1992), 195–96; Yaprak Zihnioğlu, Kadınsız İnkılap: Nezihe Muhiddin, Kadınlar Halk Fırkası, Kadın Birliği (Istanbul: Metis Yayınları, 2003), 256–58; Füsun Üstel, İmparatorluktan Ulus-Devlete Türk Milliyetçiliği: Türk Ocakları (1912–1931) (Istanbul: İletişim Yayınları, 1997), 321–84.

From the early 1930s on, party authorities reorganized party structure and launched several mechanisms to systematically gather information about popular dissatisfaction, political and economic corruption, and bureaucratic malfeasance while redressing people's grievances. In some cases the party refashioned existing mechanisms in line with this new orientation. The “demands system” and “party inspection tours” were two such mechanisms set up as conduits through which local information flowed upwards. Both mechanisms were designed to mediate between popular demands and complaints and actions of the political center while promoting centralization of party organization and combating widespread problems at the local level. Together with other attempts, these efforts demonstrate the Kemalist ruling elite's project to transform the party into a “well-functioning, well-hearing, well-saying, vocal and active” (iyi işler, iyi duyar, iyi söyler, sesli ve hareketli) organization.⁴¹

CHF Katib-i Umumiliğinin Fırka Teşkilatına Umumi Tebligatı, cilt.I, Mayıs 1931–Aralık 1931 (Ankara: Hakimiyet-i Milliye Matbaası, 1933), 21. The reorganization of the party along these lines might also have been influenced by the authoritarian single-party models in Europe. Recep Peker's ideal of a “well-functioning, well-hearing, well-saying, vocal and active” party organization recalls Mussolini's description of the Fascist Party as the “capillary organization” of the regime. Emilio Gentile, “The Problem of the Party in Italian Fascism,” Journal of Contemporary History 19 (1984): 263. See also Philip Morgan, “‘The Party is Everywhere’: The Italian Fascist Party in Economic Life, 1926–40,” English Historical Review 114 (1999): 85–111.

The demands system (dilek sistemi) was a hierarchically organized mechanism that transmitted local complaints and requests from lower divisions to upper levels of the party.⁴²

Although the demand system was launched before the third congress, its applicability and effectiveness were severely limited. See Mete Tunçay, “CHF'nin 1927 Kurultayı'nın Öncesinde Toplanan İl Kongreleri,” Ankara Üniversitesi Siyasal Bilgiler Fakültesi Dergisi 36 (1981): 281–334.

The system was made up of local (ocak), township (kamun/nahiye), county (ilçe), and provincial (il) units, above which stood the supreme organ, the Grand Congress. Lower party divisions were charged with processing demands and complaints from the local population and reporting them to upper divisions. At each level, party authorities were required to investigate demands and problems, inform the local bureaucracy of pertinent issues, and collaborate with it to fulfill people's needs. According to RPP regulations, provincial congresses were to prepare reports regarding needs and problems that should be resolved at the national level and send them to the Grand Congress. When demand lists from provinces were presented to the Grand Congress, a special commission (dilek encümeni) processed them and compiled separate reports for each ministry. Demands and complaints covered a broad range of activities under the jurisdiction of municipal and governmental agencies. Lower-level party organizations asked for reduction of tax rates, assistance for agricultural credits, radical steps in land distribution, aggressive measures to fight malaria, improvement of the quality of villagers' cigarettes (köylü sigarası), reparations for mosques, and so on. They made demands concerning the quality of health-care services, mass transportation, street lighting, and laws for fighting prostitution.⁴³

See, for example, Vilâyet Kongrelerinin Dilekleri ve Umumi Kongre Lâyiha Encümeninin Mazbataları (Ankara: T.B.M.M. Matbaası, 1931); CHP İzmir Kamun 1934–1935 Kongrelerinde Saptanan Dileklere Şarbaylıktan Verilen Karşılıklar (Izmir: 1935); CHP Büyük Kurultayı'na Sunulan Vilâyet Kongreleri Dilekleri Hülasası (Ankara: n.p., 1935); CHP Kırşehir Dilekleri (Kırşehir: Vilayet Basımevi, 1936); Muğla CHP Kongre Dileklerine Alınan Cevaplar (Muğla: Halk Basımevi, 1937); CHP 1937 Zonguldak İli Ocak, Kamun Kongreleri Dileklerine Alınan Karşılıklar (Zonguldak: Meti Basımevi, 1938); CHP Büyük Kurultayı'na Sunulan Vilâyet Kongreleri Dilekleri Hülasası (Ankara: Ulusal Basımevi, 1939); Kayseri Vilâyeti İçinde 1938 ve 1939 Yıllarında Akdedilmiş Olan Cümhuriyet Halk Partisi Kongrelerinin Genel Sekreterlik, Vilâyet ve Belediyece Takibi İcabeden Dilekleri (Kayseri: Sümer Matbaası, 1940); CHP 1940 Kongre Dilekleri (Ankara: Recep Ulusoğlu Basımevi, 1941); 1941 Kaza Kongreleri Dilekleri (Ankara: Alaeddin Kıral Basımevi, 1942); CHP 1943 Kaza Kongreleri Dilekleri (Ankara: Zerbemat, 1944).

Thanks to the demand system, as the secretary-general argued, people's influence on the government did not remain limited to the elections: “The nation, which is the source of sovereignty, continuously contributes to the state administration through the way of the party mechanism.”⁴⁴

Recep Peker, CHP Genel Sekreteri R. Peker'in Söylevleri (Ankara: n.p., 1935), 6; CHP Dördüncü Büyük Kurultayı Görüşmeleri Tutulgası (Ankara: Ulus Basımevi, 1935), 51, 117–19; CHF Kâtibiumumisi Recep Beyin Bir Nutku—Fırkanın Ankara Vilâyet Kongresi Münasebetiyle Verilen Ziyafette Söylenmiştir, 26-XII-1932 (Ankara: Hakimiyeti Milliye Matbaası, 1933), 5–6.

Party inspectors' periodic tours to provinces, on the other hand, entailed supervising the operation of local party agencies, scrutinizing party cadres, enforcing party norms, and monitoring implementation of party decisions. Inspectors sent to provinces were supposed to report on complacency and corruption of local party officials and propose measures for eliminating specified inadequacies. Inspectors' responsibilities were limited to party affairs in the first years of the regime, but after the third congress they were significantly extended to reach out to every aspect of local life. From 1931 on, party inspectors were charged with supplying detailed information about people's complaints about laws, taxes, local bureaucracy, local party organization, party leadership, municipal services, and city council activities. Party authorities also asked inspectors to gather people's opinions about the party, political opposition, and religious propaganda, and to measure the mood of workers, peasants, artisans, and tradesmen.⁴⁵

Cumhuriyet Halk Fırkası Teftiş Raporu (Ankara: Yenigün Matbaası, 1931); CHF Kâtibiumumisi Recep Beyin Bir Nutku, 6–7. For more information on the inspection mechanism, see Murat Metinsoy, “Erken Cumhuriyet Döneminde Mebusların ‘İntihap Bölgesi’ ve ‘Teftiş Bölgesi’ Raporları,” Tarih ve Toplum: Yeni Yaklaşımlar 3 (2006): 103–69.

After being processed and classified at party headquarters, summaries of inspectors' reports were sent to related ministries. The inspection mechanism thus served not only to supervise party organization and cadres but also to elicit information about distant corners of the country. This change in inspector's responsibilities reflects regime leaders' willingness to get in touch with the living realities of local life. While utilizing this reporting system to keep informed of malfunctions and identify trouble spots in the provinces, the party also attempted to equip state bureaucracy with authorized knowledge about previously opaque local society.⁴⁶

There were some other mechanisms through which the Kemalist ruling elite learned about local realities. Karpat, for example, argues that People's Houses reviews published by editors who “were in close contact with ordinary people and were aware about living conditions and towns” served as channels of communication. Kemal H. Karpat, “The Impact of the People's Houses on the Development of Communication in Turkey: 1931–1951,” Die Welt des Islams 15 (1974): 74. Despite all these measures, local life was still an isolated phenomenon into the 1950s. See Paul Stirling, Turkish Village (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1965); Mahmut Makal, Bizim Köy: Bir Köy Öğretmeninin Notları (Istanbul: Varlık Yayınları, 1950).

Besides these structural measures, severe economic and social circumstances of the early 1930s compelled the leadership to take symbolic steps to strengthen the regime's legitimacy. Mustafa Kemal himself planned an extensive tour in order to publicly exonerate the Kemalist leadership for its suspension of electoral democracy, to examine problems in the countryside and, finally, to intervene in malfunctioning local bureaucracies.⁴⁷

Ahmet Hamdi Başar, Atatürk'le Üç Ay ve 1930'dan Sonra Türkiye (Istanbul: Tan Matbaası, 1945). The first part of Mustafa Kemal's tour began on 17 November 1930, the day the Free Party dissolved itself. For details of the tour, see Ayın Tarihi 23–24 (1930): 6824–34; Ayın Tarihi 25 (1931): 7052–76, 7279–94. See also “Gazi Hz.'nin Seyahati,” Cumhuriyet, 30 September 1930; “Gazi Hazretleri Uzun Bir Tetkik Seyahatine Çıkıyor,” Cumhuriyet, 4 November 1930.

On many occasions, he heard the voices of peasants, artisans, officials, and merchants, and members of the party, as well as the voices of people who complained about the party. He made several attempts, at least cursory ones, to deal with their problems and tried to present the regime as being mindful of people's needs and grievances.⁴⁸

Soyak, Atatürk'ten Hatıralar, 2:449. See also Grew, Turbulent Era, 875. The British ambassador in Istanbul, Sir George Clerk, in his report on Mustafa Kemal's tour sent to the foreign secretary in London noted that “Şefki Sami Bey, a representative of the Ministry of Finance who is in the presidential suite, has stated in private that Mustafa Kemal is making very thorough enquiries from all grades of society, and is trying very hard to circumvent the efforts of his Ministers to prevent unwelcome news from reaching his ear. He has been painfully surprised at the extent of the general poverty and misery, and particularly impressed by the prevailing dissatisfaction with the state of tobacco trade.” Bülent Gökay, ed., E 71/69/44 in British Documents on Foreign Affairs: Reports and Papers from the Foreign Office Confidential Print, Series B, Turkey, Iran, and the Middle East, 1918–1939, 35 vols. (Frederick, Md.: University Publications of America, 1997), 32:163.

Apparently this image of the regime leader in personal contact with the people was exactly what his frequent country tours sought to achieve.⁴⁹

There is an extensive literature on Mustafa Kemal's journeys. See for example Reisicumhur Gazi Mustafa Kemal Paşa Hazretlerinin Sonbahar Seyahatleri (Istanbul: Matbuat Müdiriyet-i Umumiyesi Yayını, 1923); Taha Toros, Atatürk'ün Adana Seyahatleri (Adana: Adana Kent Konseyi, 2001); Mehmet Önder, Atatürk'ün Yurt Gezileri (Ankara: Türkiye İş Bankası Yayını, 1975); M. Fahrettin Kırzıoğlu, Gazi'nin Kuzeydoğu Gezileri (Ankara: n.p., 1974); Ertuğrul Zekâi Ökte, Gazi Mustafa Kemal Atatürk'ün Yurtiçi Gezileri (Istanbul: Tarihi Araştırmalar Vakfı Yayınları, 2000). Of course, there were other forms of the legitimizing process of the Kemalist leadership. In early republican Turkey, the power of the state and Kemalist elites was made visible through several ways of “dramatic display” such as national rituals, monuments, theater, and fine arts. See, for example, Hasan Ünder, “Atatürk İmgesinin Siyasal Yaşamdaki Rolü,” in Modern Türkiye'de Siyasi Düşünce II: Kemalizm, ed. Ahmet İnsel (Istanbul: İletişim Yayınları, 2001), 138–55; Faik Gür, “Atatürk Heykelleri ve Türkiye'de Resmi Tarihin Görselleşmesi,” Toplum ve Bilim 90 (2001): 147–66; Kıvanç Osma, Cumhuriyet Dönemi Anıt Heykelleri, 1923–46 (Ankara: Atatürk Araştırma Merkezi, 2003); Eyal Arı, “People's Houses and Theater in Turkey,” Middle Eastern Studies 40 (2004): 32–58; Duygu Köksal, “Art and Power in Turkey: Nationalism and Asthetics During the Single Party Era,” New Perspectives on Turkey 31 (2004): 91–120.

On the 1930–31 tour, as on his previous journeys, Mustafa Kemal was inundated with numerous petitions, mostly fiscal grievances and complaints about mistreatment at the hands of local officials. In the journey report, he pointed to problems created by indifference toward complaints and appeals:

One of the easiest ways in which a government and a party can lose power is unresponsiveness to people's complaints and to the requests of local party branches. People's appeals and complaints must always find a true echo in our state organization. Each complaint and appeal submitted to the government should meet with a justifiable answer that is signed by the minister (or by the governor in provinces), not only by secondary officials. This reply should come in a timely manner, in accordance with the importance of the issue.⁵⁰

Gürbüz Tüfekçi, ed., Atatürk Seyahat Notları 1930–1931 (Istanbul: Kaynak Yayınları, 1998), 48.

Furthermore, he believed that these complaints could be utilized to find out how well the state mechanism functioned. At the same time, classification of complaints according to content would give an overall picture of the problems from which the masses suffered. To this end, summaries of complaints had to be compiled on a three- to six-month basis in order to prepare them for discussion at party gatherings and governmental meetings.⁵¹

Ibid., 48–49.

The gradual erosion of governmental prestige and the impact of Mustafa Kemal's report must have compelled the Kemalist elite to begin to take people's petitions more seriously. During the summer of 1931, the RPP General Executive Committee (Umumi İdare Heyeti) decided to reorganize party operation under thirteen bureaus, each with different responsibilities. In a confidential circular sent to local party heads, the secretary-general informed the branches that the executive committee would be putting new regulations regarding party functioning and organization into practice, and that each committee member would be assigned to overlook a certain bureau. Local party branches were required to embrace the new format and restructure their organizations accordingly.⁵²

CHF Katib-i Umumiliğinin Fırka Teşkilatına, 18–19. According to some memoirs, Mustafa Kemal himself suggested this kind of comprehensive party organization. During one of his trips to the RPP central office, he ordered that party officials should keep archives on foreign political parties, prepare files for state officials, and establish propagandist and receptive mechanisms: “A modern political party is a mechanism operating like a state.” Niyazi Ahmet Banoğlu, Nükte ve Fıkralarla Atatürk, 2 vols. (Istanbul: İnkılap ve Aka Kitabevleri, 1981), 2:91.

In this new organizational scheme, the Second Bureau (Ale'l-umum Dilekler ve Müracaatlar Bürosu) was devised to deal with supplications and complaints sent to party offices. The Kemalist leadership must have thought that charging the party with dealing with people's needs and complaints would strengthen its intermediary role and restore the regime's legitimacy.

Historical evidence containing details about the Second Bureau's structure and operation is limited. As remarks on petitions reveal, however, petitions seem to have been at least read, processed, and forwarded to related state agencies.⁵³

There are several hundred original petitions in the RPP collection at the BCA, but the majority of petitions must have been forwarded to the relevant institutions for handling.

All petitions received by the secretary-general were recorded in party inventory lists and classified in related files of the newly launched structure of the RPP. The diversity in content and style and the presence of numerous “informal” petitions suggest that people were not expected to fulfill strict requirements to submit petitions or to comply with formal directives in order to render their petitions adequate for legal consideration. This welcoming approach toward petitions and complaints was in sharp contrast to most legal/official treatment of petitions in other historical contexts.⁵⁴

For examples of these kinds of strict rules in 19th-century Prussia, see Jörg Karweick, “Tiefgebeut von Nahrungssorgen und Gram: Schreiben and Behörden” in “Denn Das Schreiben Gehört Nicht zu Meiner Taeglichen Beschaeftigung”: Der Alltag Kleiner Leute in Bittschriften, Briefen und Berichten aus dem 19. Jahrhundert. Ein Lesebuch, ed. Siegfried Grosse (Bonn: J. H. W. Dietz, 1989), 17–87. Similarly, in late 19th-century Austria–Hungary, “the form petitioning letters were supposed to take was indeed prescribed and followed strict conventions.” Christina Hammerle, “Request, Complaints, Demands. Preliminary Thoughts on the Petitioning Letters of Lower-Class Austrian Women, 1865–1918,” in Gender and Politics in the Age of Letter-Writing, 1750–2000, ed. Caroline Bland and Maire Cross (Hampshire: Ashgate Publishing, 2004), 116.

However, the secretary-general's receptiveness to petitions should not be taken to mean that he met people's pleas without prior investigation and verification of their claims. In most cases, local party authorities were asked to provide a good deal of information to handle petitioners' demands.

In the early 1930s, petitioning was an extremely valuable form of communication for both senders and receivers. Given the highly authoritarian circumstances in which other forms of expressing popular opinion were suppressed, petition writing was one of the few modes of interaction between bureaucratic/political elites and the people. Petitioning mediated between political elites' need for political legitimacy and people's concerns regarding their social, political, and economic experiences. On the other hand, by ameliorating grievances generated by cadres in the countryside, party chiefs tried to demonstrate the regime's benevolence. At the same time, they dissociated themselves from responsibility for local irregularities. Especially after 1930, petitions provided important data “from below” to maintain control over bureaucratic inefficiency and corruption of local officialdom.⁵⁵

For a similar process in Soviet Russia, see Margaret Mommsen-Reindl, Hilf Mir, Mein Recht zu Finden: Russische Bittschriften von Iwan dem Schrecklichen bis Gorbatschow (Frankfurt am Main: Propylaen-Verlag, 1987); Sheila Fitzpatrick, “Supplicants and Citizens: Public Letter-Writing in Soviet Russia in the 1930s,” Slavic Review 55 (1996): 78–105; idem, “Signals from Below: Soviet Letters of Denunciation of the 1930s,” in Accusatory Practices: Denunciation in Modern European History, 1789–1989, ed. Sheila Fitzpatrick and Robert Gellately (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997), 85–120. For Nazi Germany, see John Connelly, “The Uses of Volksgemeinschaft: Letters to the NSDAP Kreisleitung Eisenach, 1939–40,” ibid., 153–84.

In several accounts it is apparent that Kemalist elites relied on petitions, supplications, and denunciations to oversee implementation of certain laws, to avoid local abuse of state power, and to counteract bureaucratic indifference and arbitrariness.⁵⁶

In addition to numerous petitions sent to the secretary-general, see Hikmet Bil, Atatürk'ün Sofrası (Istanbul: Uncu Yayınları, 1981), 62–63; Hulusi Turgut, ed., Atatürk'ün Sırdaşı Kılıç Ali'nin Anıları (Istanbul: İş Bankası Kültür Yayınları, 2005), 603–4.

Some phrases in petitions show that people were encouraged by the central bureaucracy to write denunciations. For instance, in his letter of denunciation against the governor of Niğde, Ali Sakıp argued that he was denouncing the official in reaction to the secret order given to him by the minister of public works: “The Minister ordered us to inform the Ministry if the local governors acted against the Law of the Obligation for Road Construction [Yol Mükellefiyeti Kanunu].”⁵⁷

Petition of Hamit Cezmi, BCA-CHP 490..01/530..2126..2 (25 April 1934).

Likewise, some petitioners referred to the encouraging words of the secretary-general as the main reason behind their appeals.⁵⁸

Petition of Muallim Arif Feyzi, BCA-CHP 490..01/533..2137..2 (21 October 1934); “Encouraged by the interest shown to our previous petitions” Petition of Hilmi and Ahmed from Kütahya, BCA-CHP 490..01/533..2137..2 (21 October 1934); “Because you ordered to write a petition…” Petition of Seniha from Yenişehir, BCA-CHP 490..01/533..2126..2 (15 May 1934).

Practical considerations and concerns about information flow notwithstanding, Kemalist leaders must have seen the petitioning process also in an ideological sense. They implied the importance of direct contact between people and government by emphasizing “popular sovereignty” and “the decisive role of people in the state-building process.” Populism (halkçılık) was the defining rhetoric of the Kemalist regime that distinguished it from the Ottoman past.⁵⁹

Mustafa Kemal, for example, described the new republic as “a people's state, the state of the people” wheras its predecessor, the Ottoman Empire, had been “a personal state, the state of individuals” (“… yeni Türkiye Devleti bir halk devletidir, halkın devletidir. Müessesatı maziye ise bir şahıs devleti idi, eşhasın devleti idi.”), Atatürk'ün Söylev ve Demeçleri, 3 vols. (Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu Basımevi, 1945–54), 1:309. See also Tarih: T.T.T. Cemiyeti Tarafından Yazılmıştır, 4 vols. (Istanbul: Devlet Matbaası, 1931–34), 4:184; Elaine D. Smith, Turkey: Origins of the Kemalist Movement and the Government of the Grand National Assembly, 1919–1923 (Washington, D.C.: Judd & Detweiler, 1959), 50; Asım Karaömerlioğlu, Orada Bir Köy Var Uzakta: Erken Cumhuriyet Döneminde Köycü Söylem (Istanbul: İletişim Yayınları, 2006), 51–86.

The very existence of the regime was legitimized, at least in theory, by attentiveness to the people's interest and welfare. In order to maintain links with the people in whose names the party exercised its power, petitioning, along with other mechanisms, was given particular emphasis.

The new approach toward people's supplications and complaints reflects the radical institutional transformation that the RPP as well as the Kemalist regime underwent at this historical juncture. Dispatching inspectors to provinces, setting up a nationwide demand system, receiving petitions personally, and launching a specific institution to deal with appeals and complaints, leaders of the regime showed their endeavor to keep in touch with people from a wide range of social strata. On the one hand, the ruling elite utilized these mechanisms to grasp more of the “complex and unwieldy reality” of people's lives that was hitherto “seen” only through the prism of simplified approximations of documents and statistics such as maps, censuses, and cadastral lists.⁶⁰

James C. Scott, Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1998), 76–77. This is not to suggest that the Kemalist elite acquired undistorted accurate information about the society through these mechanisms. As I discuss in the remainder of this essay, petitioners often used various discursive strategies to convince the addressee.

On the other hand, the ruling elite sought to keep administrative channels open or to at least give the impression that it was possible for everyone, even those deprived of social and economic power, to communicate with leaders.

THE ART OF SELF-FASHIONING: LANGUAGE OF PETITIONS

Although petitioning was an effective mechanism for the Kemalist elite to gain insight into people's attitude toward the new regime, it was petitioners' needs, grievances, and agendas, rather than concerns of the addressee, that conditioned the petitions' substance. Petitioning opened channels through which people could inform authorities about local problems and ask for help; denounce a rival, a corrupt local official, or an abusive governor; make suggestions about national policies; and influence policymaking. Petitioning also offered them powerful strategies to cope with various problems of everyday life and to negotiate their subordination.

In attempts to persuade their addressee, people often tried to create a “fictional narrative” by embellishing stories about themselves, conveying their emotions, and remolding their identities.⁶¹

My reading of petitions as cultural artifacts is informed mostly by the following studies: Natalie Zemon Davis, Fiction in the Archives: Pardon Tales and their Tellers in Sixteenth-Century France (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1987); Patricia Ewick and Susan S. Silbey, “Subversive Stories and Hegemonic Tales: Toward a Sociology of Narrative,” Law & Society Review 29 (1995): 197–226; idem, “Narrating Social Structure: Stories of Resistance to Legal Authority,” American Journal of Sociology 108 (2003): 1328–72; Michel Foucault, “Lives of Infamous Men,” in The Essential Foucault: Selections from Essential Works of Foucault, 1954–1984, ed. Paul Rabinow and Nikolas Rose (New York: New Press, 2003), 279–93; Barbara Herrnstein-Smith, “Narrative Versions, Narrative Theories,” Critical Inquiry 7 (1980): 213–36; Margaret R. Somers, “Narrativity, Narrative Identity and Social Action: Rethinking English Working-Class Formation,” Social Science History 16 (1992): 591–630; Margaret R. Somers and Gloria D. Gibson, “Reclaiming the Epistemological ‘Other’: Narrative and the Social Constitution of Identity,” in Social Theory and the Politics of Identity, ed. Craig Calhoun (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing), 37–99.

A close look at petitions reveals rhetorical strategies employed by authors to exploit certain legal provisions, principles, and new discourses of the regime, especially in instances when it served their interests. By using several techniques, petitioners contested the claims and responsibilities of the Kemalist ruling elite. From the petitioners' perspective, the state did not stand as an external entity distinct from social life. Rather, people discursively constructed and utilized “the state-idea” to push for their own interests.

Deciphering the discursive practice inscribed into petitions, however, does not provide an unproblematic or value-free route to meaning. Petitions sent to government authorities are far from being documents that provide direct access to people's minds, because their production was governed by the relationship between sender and addressee as well as by the reality they designate.⁶²

Roger Chartier, “Genre between Literature and History,” Modern Language Quarterly 67 (2006): 136.

To appear loyal and deserving to the secretary-general, petitioners may have misrepresented their circumstances and distorted the truth. As Mikhail Bakhtin plausibly states, they might have been using one language when speaking to each other, another when addressing outsiders, and a third “official” language when writing petitions to authorities.⁶³

Mikhail Bakhtin, The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays, ed. Michael Holquist, trans. Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist (Austin, Tex.: University of Texas Press, 1981), 285–86.

Therefore, given the nature of petitions, it is almost impossible to provide an adequate answer to the question of whether petitioners' stories were heartfelt or distrustful. All the same, by using these sources cautiously, we can find out what petitioners felt were the best ways to approach authorities in order to get what they wanted, which discursive and ideological patterns they employed to express their arguments, and which strategies they adopted for self-representation.⁶⁴

In the 1920s and 1930s, Turkey was still a society where a significant number of ordinary people were illiterate or semiliterate. Almost half of the petitions considered here were put to paper by handwriting, whereas the rest were written by typewriter, replete with errors of spelling and punctuation, however. Occasionally, instead of a signature, petitioners marked documents with personal seals. Especially for those illiterate supplicants, the resulting document must have been a collaborative process between supplicant and paid scribe (arzuhalci). Although scribes, some of whom were state employees, included certain formulas for mediating petitioners' demands, I observe that they largely employed these structures to frame substance that was provided by the petitioner. Even in the most professionally scripted petitions, it is not difficult to “hear” the voice of the petitioner. For the story of a junior town clerk who also worked as scribe, see Lilo Linke, Allah Dethroned: A Journey through Modern Turkey (New York: A. A. Knopf, 1937), 150–54. Also some peasants asked for help from members of People's Houses to draft their petitions to government offices. However, as Başgöz and Wilson observed, “should the letter written by the volunteer fail to win the case, the People's Houses were often blamed.” İlhan Başgöz and Howard E. Wilson, Educational Problems in Turkey (1920–1940) (Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press, 1968), 156.

As petitioners' narratives show, people were engaged in a creative process of crafting their own political and social personae. The justification of demands often took the form of strong references to personal deprivation and neediness as well as to the loyal and hardworking character of the petitioner. Petitioners were always aware that the more vividly they described living conditions and the more touchingly they conveyed demands and/or complaints, the greater the chances were that their petitions would be taken into consideration.

The textual strategy of recurring references to national identity implies that people were well aware of the likelihood that petitions would be rejected if they exclusively mentioned their private interests. Although there was no fixed guideline for deciding the limits of “public” and “private,” petitioners engaged in a veiled negotiation to describe “private” demands as being of “public” importance. To this end, they interwove their own “private” concerns with issues of national importance. Thereby, they attempted to go beyond private interests and participate in the broader discursive public sphere. Appealing for assistance, therefore, required petitioners to compose a text which not only delineated their impoverished circumstances but also underlined the significance of the secretary-general's intervention in this specific case for the whole national project. Considering the Kemalist regime's prestige, petitioners indirectly expressed that it was in the government's interest to aid them.

Kazım, a young teacher in Suşehri, penned a poignant petition asking for party assistance to improve his family's living conditions. In a melodramatic tone, Kazım wrote that, like many others, he found himself, his wife, and their three children beset by economic woes. In his narration, Kazım's poverty became most visible when he recounted that the kerosene for his lamp ran out while he was writing a poem about the declaration of national sovereignty in order to enlighten (tenvir) the people in his small town. Kazım wrote that his wife had warned him to buy kerosene, but he ignored her for he had no money.⁶⁵

Petition of Kazım from Suşehri, BCA-CHP 490..01/529..2122..2 (12 February 1933).

Pleading for financial support from the secretary-general, he skillfully implied that he could not continue to write poems about republican principles and enlighten the people if the party did not satisfy his plea.

Similarly, Mehmed Emin, a young government employee in Bilecik, declared that his poverty left him unable to fulfill familial obligations to buy new dresses for his children for the celebration of the republic's anniversary.⁶⁶

Petition of Mehmed Emin from Bilecik, BCA-CHP 490..01/529..2121..2 (7 January 1934).

When he asked the governor for compensation, the governor became angry and expelled him from his office as if he “expelled a servant from his manor.” Emin pleaded for the secretary-general to intervene and punish the governor. If the governor was not punished and his money not paid, Emin stated, he could not dress his children for the ceremony.

The idea of the state as a “benevolent father” (devlet baba) was one of the regime's legitimacy-providing myths that petitioners used to justify their claims. Denying inequalities and antagonism among social classes and ignoring significant religious and ethnic differences, Kemalists sought to forge an image of the Anatolian people as a peacefully unified, homogenous, and harmonious “national family.”⁶⁷

Carol Delaney, “Father State, Motherland, and the Birth of Modern Turkey,” in Naturalizing Power: Essays in Feminist Cultural Analysis, ed. Sylvia Yanagisako and Carol Delaney (New York: Routledge, 2002), 177–99.

Emphasizing strong bonds of fraternity among members of society, they tried to replace the rather abstract, less accessible language of “national unity” with the easily understandable metaphors of “family” and “household,” “parents” and “children.”⁶⁸

For usage of these metaphors in educational institutions, the army, and People's Houses, see Selda Şerifsoy, “Aile ve Kemalist Modernizasyon Projesi, 1928–50,” in Vatan, Millet, Kadınlar, ed. Ayşe Gül Altınay (Istanbul: İletişim Yayınları, 2000), 155–88. See also Nükhet Sirman, “Kadınların Milliyeti,” in Modern Türkiye'de Siyasi Düşünce IV: Milliyetçilik, ed. Tanıl Bora (Istanbul: İletişim Yayınları, 2002), 226–44. In her analysis of Reşat Nuri Güntekin's widely read Çalıkuşu, Sibel Erol shows that also in literature the family was the central metaphor through which national identity was communicated. Sibel Erol, “Güntekin's Çalıkuşu: A Search for Personal and National Identity,” Turkish Studies Association Bulletin 15 (1991): 65–82.

The family romance, the term historian Lynn Hunt offers in her study of revolutionary politics in France, was an important site of symbolic construction through which the Turkish state represented itself not only as unified and powerful, but legitimate as well.⁶⁹

By family romance, Lynn Hunt means “the collective, unconscious images of the familial order that underlie revolutionary politics.” Lynn Hunt, The Family Romance of the French Revolution (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 1992), xiii. See also Anthony D. Smith, National Identity (Reno, Nev.: University of Nevada Press, 1991), 76–79, 172–74.

However, whereas Kemalist elite utilized the family metaphor to underscore children's unquestioned obedience and allegiance, petitioners used it to remind the state of parental duty and responsibility to achieve the happiness and prosperity of the family.

In theory, the Kemalist regime abolished hierarchical relations between ruler and people by establishing a citizen-state that rendered each member of society equal before the law. The paternalistic aspect of the ruler was normally associated with the Ottoman period, and Kemalists publicly denounced such an unequal relationship between ruler and subjects. In reality, however, Kemalist elites continued to invoke the state's paternal benevolence. Although Kemalists aimed at breaking off all ties with the Ottoman past, this reproduction of the paternal image was an attempt to reproduce the metaphor of “father state” in the republican period and fill the space left by the myth of the sultan as “father of the people.”⁷⁰

For the paternalistic performance of Abdülhamid II, see Nadir Özbek, “Philanthropic Activity, Ottoman Patriotism and the Hamidian Regime, 1876–1909,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 37 (2005): 59–81.

Although filling this gap, Kemalist rhetoric sought to replace those tyrannical (as in the case of Abdülhamit II) or feeble (as in the case of Vahdettin) “fathers” with a benevolent and strong father figure, that is, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk.

In the Kemalist regime's official discourse, Atatürk was configured as founder of the republic, teacher of the people, commander-in-chief of the army, and finally, father of the nation. Petitions sent to the secretary-general of the RPP, however, reveal that, in the people's eyes, the benevolent father figure was hardly limited to Atatürk. Frequently petitioners addressed the secretary-general as “benevolent father.” Both the people and the addressee were willing to embrace the paternalistic rhetoric and utilize its benefits. Within the imagery of “father” and “family,” there was an implicit promise of paternal care and protection. In return for citizens' obeying the laws and paying taxes, the state was obliged to “cherish [the people] as parent [and] protect their lives, independence, and wealth,” a message that was reiterated by a civic-education textbook of the time.⁷¹

Maarif Vekaleti, Yurtbilgisi Dersleri-İlkokul 5 (Istanbul: Maarif Basımevi, 1939), 30–31.

“Taking the state at its word,”⁷²

I borrow this phrase from Jeremy Straughn's insightful article “‘Taking the State at its Word’: The Arts of Consentful Contention in the German Democratic Republic,” American Journal of Sociology 110 (2005): 1598–1650.

authors of petitions placed pressure on the addressee to behave like the ideal “father figure,” whose distinguishing characteristics were pity, compassion, justice, charity, and protection. “Aren't you the fathers of the nation? Are orphan hearts wrong in looking for consolation in your embrace?” asked A. Azmi from Uşak.⁷³

Petition of Uşaklı Azmi, BCA-CHP 490..01/527..2112..2 (n.d.).

“As the savior of the millions, I think your conscience would not allow that we become miserable” wrote another petitioner who was likely to fall into ruin.⁷⁴

Petition of Azize from Diyarbakır, BCA-CHP 490..01/530..2123..1 (11 February 1934).

“I heard that you are a merciful man and that you respond to everyone, from the weakest to the mightiest, benevolently,” cried a distraught widow, appealing for financial assistance.⁷⁵

Petition of Seyyide Kübra, BCA-CHP 490..01/530..2126..2 (22 May 1934).

In contrast to orphans, widows, and mothers who framed themselves as dependent upon the secretary-general's charity, men addressed him as a fellow father figure. Male petitioners typically noted the detrimental effects of impoverishment on their ability to fulfill their responsibilities as breadwinners and fathers. The petitioners' pleas masked the implied threat that if their economic situation continued to place their families' future at risk, it would be shameful not only for the petitioner but also for the young republican regime, which itself was a great family of citizens. If petitioners themselves did not deserve the secretary-general's benevolence, surely their innocent and helpless children did. For instance, Şevket, who retired from the State Munitions Factory (İmalat-ı Harbiye), cried out that poverty left him unable to fulfill his familial obligations: “For the last two and a half years in Istanbul, I have been crushed under the weight of extreme poverty with five people [in my family]. My nineteen-year-old son and two daughters ages eight and sixteen were deprived of the benefit of education [nimet-i maarif,] because of our lack of financial means. We desperately need your compassion and mercy.”⁷⁶

Petition of Şevket, BCA-CHP 490..01/529..2122..2 (26 January 1934).

Similarly, İhsan Hüsnü, who was fired from his job, entrusted his honor and his children to the secretary-general: “I would be heartened if you and the party would protect them.”⁷⁷

Petition of İhsan Hüsnü, BCA-CHP 490..01/529..2121..1 (8 July 1933).

Describing his poverty touchingly, Uzun Hasanoğlu Mehmet wrote, “I am writing these sentences in the last minutes of our lives and wretchedness. O Turkish unity, O mighty national force, the People's Party, I submit these four lives [the lives of my four children] to your compassion. Please save us!”⁷⁸

Petition of Uzun Hasanoğlu Mehmed, BCA-CHP 490..01/532..2132..2 (2 October 1934).

As these and many other petitions suggest, petitioners did not passively accommodate the paternal image of the state/party but rather insisted that Kemalist authorities live up to their commitments and mitigate people's material pains.

In fashioning their political persona as dedicated nationalists, many petitioners employed the distinctive strategy of narrating tales of their bravery in the War of Independence (1919–22) and their usefulness during implementation of Kemalist reforms in the 1920s and 1930s. Referring to military service, establishment of social reforms, and personal and familial costs associated with these was one of the most frequent patterns around which petitioners articulated their claims.

The nationalistic and liberating character of the War of Independence presupposes people's dedication to the national cause and their unity with the nationalist leadership. Victory in such a war was perceived and portrayed by the government as the triumph of the entire nation. Through revolutionary discourse and symbols, republican leaders underscored the immediate response of the Anatolian people to the call to arms and their commitment to defend the nation. Despite the significant number of deserters and passive and active resistance movements to the War of Independence,⁷⁹

TBMM Gizli Celse Zabıtları, 4 vols. (Ankara: Türkiye İş Bankası Kültür Yayınları, 1985), 1:85–89. See also Ergun Aybars, İstiklal Mahkemeleri (1920–1927) (Izmir: Dokuz Eylül Üniversitesi Yayınları, 1988). Here, I do not mean that there was not voluntary involvement to the War of Independence. What I emphasize are postwar attempts to gloss over and forget the enormous problem of desertion. For the process of official determination, codification, and representation of the past, see Ana Maria Alonso, “The Effects of Truth: Re-Presentations of the Past and the Imagining of Community,” Journal of Historical Sociology 1 (1988): 33–57.

Kemalists made special effort to portray the Anatolian people as volunteers who fought out of an altruistic sense of obligation to their national community.⁸⁰

Among numerous examples, see Gazi Mustafa Kemal Paşa, “Büyük Zafer Hakkında,” in Atatürk'ün Söylev ve Demeçleri, 1:240–60; “Dördüncü Toplanma Yılını Açarken,” ibid., 293–94; “Orduya ve Millete Beyanname,” in Milli Mücadele Dönemi Beyannameleri ve Basını, ed. Zekai Güner and Orhan Kabataş (Ankara: Atatürk Kültür Merkezi Yayını, 1990), 23–24; Falih Rıfkı Atay, Çankaya (Istanbul: Bateş Yayınları, 1998), 319. See also discussions in the GNA on the Law for the Medal of Independence, Cihangir Gündoğdu, “Büyük Millet Meclisi'nde İstiklal Madalyası Kanunu Tartışmaları-I,” Tarih ve Toplum 210 (2001): 35–41.

This emotive image of citizens who voluntarily sacrificed themselves for the greater good played a central role in the creation of the republican myth. Idealization of ordinary people, who eagerly came together around a transcendent ideal to expel the invader, became one of the key elements in constructing a single national identity. In this process, the Kemalist leadership succeeded in representing itself as the embodiment of people's dedication to the national cause and emphasized generic links between itself and the people in order to legitimize the new political order.

Although nationalist rhetoric of “equality in sacrifice” implies a social contract of citizenship based on rights and obligations, Kemalists remained reluctant to discuss rights and protections granted in return for military service.⁸¹

Skocpol convincingly argues that states extend obligations most radically in times of wars, revolutions, and state collapses. Theda Skocpol, States and Social Revolutions: A Comparative Analysis of France, Russia, and China (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1979). For an insightful discussion of citizenship as historically specific terrain within which continuous struggle(s) over rights and obligations take place, see articles in Theory and Society 26 (1997) (special issue on “Recasting Citizenship”).

They either underlined the “unconditional” support of people who did not expect anything except for national independence or described military service as a moral obligation owed the state that every citizen had to fulfill.⁸²

Ayşe Gül Altınay and Tanıl Bora, “Ordu, Militarizm ve Milliyetçilik,” in Modern Türkiye'de Siyasi Düşünce IV: Milliyetçilik, ed. Tanıl Bora (Istanbul: İletişim Yayınları, 2002), 140–54; Füsun Üstel, Makbul Vatandaşın Peşinde: II. Meşrutiyet'ten Bugüne Vatandaşlık Eğitimi (Istanbul: İletişim Yayınları, 2004), 180–84.

Moreover, despite the protection of war veterans implied in (earlier) political propaganda, the Kemalist elite did not implement a comprehensive affirmative action and welfare policy for veterans.⁸³

The seventh issue of the first political program of RPP, the Nine Principles (Dokuz Umde), promised that the party would take necessary measures to prevent the poverty of soldiers and civilians (as well as widows and orphans) who participated in the War of Independence. Tarık Zafer Tunaya, Türkiye'de Siyasi Partiler (1859–1952) (Istanbul: n.p., 1952), 580–82. On the Nine Principles, see also Ziya Gökalp, Doğru Yol: Hakimiyet-i Milliye ve Umdelerin Tasnif, Tahlil ve Tefsiri (Ankara: Matbuat ve İstihbarat Matbaası, 1339 [1923]).

Petitions thus shed light on whether or not ordinary people accepted the myth as it was told in official discourse. As these sources reveal, war veterans and their relatives did not seem willing to give up rights and protections which, they assumed, were earned in blood. Petitioners meticulously listed their services to the nation and alluded that they should now be reimbursed by the state. Petitioners sought compensation for services rendered, property damaged, and funds advanced on behalf of the national cause.

Şükrüoğlu Kemal's petition, for instance, embraced characteristic discursive patterns of service to state and nation, sudden material deprivation, and enmity toward minorities. During the War of Independence, Kemal financially supported the nationalist cause and sent clothing, shoes, and weapons to soldiers in Anatolia. Due to his service in the national forces (kuva-yı milliye), he was tortured and beaten several times by the enemy, the scars of which he still carried on his body. After the war, while working as an officer in a small timber company in his village, his boss fired him, scorning his Turkishness and honor, and replaced him with an Armenian employee. Kemal asked for the secretary-general's help in returning to his job: “My assurance is my Turkishness and my service to Anatolia and the People's Party risking my life.”⁸⁴

Petition of Şükrüoğlu Kemal from Ayancık, BCA-CHP 490..01/532..2132..2 (30 September 1934).

Ziyaettin, who wanted to be appointed to a different position, wrote, “If you recompense one tenth of my useful services at the beginning of the national movement (harekat-ı milliye) and the Adapazarı offensive, you would elevate my family from the catastrophic situation we are in.”⁸⁵

Petition of Ziyaettin, BCA-CHP 490..01/46..187..3 (23 August 1930).

Salih from Ankara, a maimed sergeant, recounted that he lost both his legs in the Anafartalar war and could not find a job; “I don't have any other solution but to apply to the justice of the party.”⁸⁶

Petition of Salih, BCA-CHP 490..01/537..2157..1 (5 March 1937).

Other examples include the petition of Sami from class 1-D of Ankara Boy's High School. Sami first narrated that his family was murdered by French occupiers in Antep, a tragic event that left him an orphan and “entrusted him to the nation's mercy.”⁸⁷

Petition of Sami, BCA-CHP 490..01/530..2126..2 (21 March 1934).

Living in impoverished conditions, he begged to be enrolled in a boarding school. He found the possibility of not being accepted incompatible with Kemalist leaders' high principles. An anonymous petitioner wrote that he had been exiled to India because he resisted British troops during the occupation of Istanbul, although he later succeeded in returning to participate in the national struggle. While he was transferring ammunition to Anatolia, he was arrested again and sent to the British prison in Moda, where he was severely tortured by British troops. Furthermore, during the municipal elections of 1930, he campaigned against the FRP to help the RPP win in the Fatih district of Istanbul. Despite his service, he was fired and left in poverty because he lacked a powerful protector.⁸⁸

BCA-CHP 490..01/528..2115..1 (n.d.).

Petitioners were well aware of the apparent discrepancy between their presentations of a chivalrous, heroic personality in the past and their powerlessness in the present. In order to bridge this gap, petitioners portrayed themselves as loyal and hardworking citizens who had fallen on hard times not because of their own faults but because of external factors. This maneuver helped displace agency onto the Kemalist leadership, who proved incapable of keeping promises or maintaining a decent standard of living for the people, even those who actively participated in national salvation. “In return for my honorable years in the army, today, I cannot find even a modest job as a clerk, because of the Great Depression,” wrote Muzaffer, a retired officer, asking for the secretary-general to find him a job.⁸⁹

Petition of retired officer Muzaffer, BCA-CHP 490..01/528..2115..2 (5 March 1933).

Similarly, Seyit, who took part both in World War I and the War of Independence, could not support his wife and six children: “They live in the deepest poverty that no human being could stand.”⁹⁰

Petition of former reserve officer Seyit from the village of Egsik, BCA-CHP 490..01/531..2127..1 (21 May 1934).

Although this veiled assertion was a common feature of many petitions, some petitioners did not hesitate to depict their loyalty to the party and regime as the major reason for their financial hardships and relate their destitution directly to losses during “the hard times of the Turkish nation.” Musaoğlu Ali, from the village of Yanyurt in Niğde, wrote that he was injured during the national struggle and lost his legs: “I have already paid my debt with blood, fighting on the fronts of the War of Independence. Now, I have neither any income to take care of my family nor any hope. My wife and six children were left homeless. To save my family from poverty, provide me a couple of oxen and send them to my village.”⁹¹

Petition of Musaoğlu Ali from the village Yanyurt of district Aksaray in Niğde, BCA-CHP 490..01/529..2122..1 (30 January 1934).

Similarly, Mahmud Nedim, the last governor of Yemen, wrote a plaintive letter explaining that he had to borrow four liras from one of his friends in order to pay for his son's high-school enrollment. He stated that although he had spent all of his money for the sake of the Turkish nation and national struggle, he was paid only seventy liras a month in retirement. Although he was over seventy, he asked, as a favor from the secretary-general, to be employed at an open position.⁹²

Petition of Mahmut Nedim, BCA-CHP 490..01/536..2149..2 (9 October 1935).

Fashioning himself as “the island of rectitude,” Cezayirlioğlu Hüseyin Avni from Urla alienated many and fell into destitution while striving to implement Kemalist reforms: “It is natural to be resented by the lawless while setting up integrity and to be offended by the ones who cling to the past, while implementing new and progressive ideas.”⁹³

Petition of Cezayirlioğlu Hüseyin Avni from Urla, BCA-CHP 490..01/533..2137..2 (24 February 1933).

Like many others, he desired compensation for his material losses.

People who lacked control over bureaucratic malfeasance and injustice used petitions to involve the secretary-general in their everyday concerns in order to have their demands fulfilled and justice restored. In doing so, petitioners usually blamed intermediaries rather than directly expressing resentment against the regime's principles or highest cadres. Furthermore, criticism rarely turned from personal evaluations to political/ideological generalizations. The Kemalist regime's principles, which were “guiding people to righteousness,”⁹⁴

Petition of Arife, wife of Memed from district Tokmakkapı of Sivas, who was murdered without provocation, BCA-CHP 490..01/530..2126..2 (8 May 1934).

as one petitioner wrote, could not be the reason for corrupt local officials. Against unresponsive, abusive, and deceitful local bureaucrats, petitioners evoked the image of the just and merciful ruler who would punish violators of republican law and those who deviated from Kemalist principles. Hamit Cezmi, who was fired, begged the secretary-general to help him return to his job. “Speaking Kemalist,”⁹⁵

I borrow this term from Stephen Kotkin's discussion of “speaking Bolshevik” as a set of discursive practices for self-identification in Stalinist Russia. See his Magnetic Mountain: Stalinism as Civilization (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 1995).

as Hamit Cezmi and other petitioners knew well, might grant them the rhetorical power to convince their reader and evoke an official response. Therefore, he used the image of Abdülhamit II, the eternal “other” of the republican discourse, to emphasize deviation from republican principles and to draw a picture of corruption in his hometown. Governor Ali Sakıp, as Hamit Cezmi denounced him, was immoral and lazy. He could have had the position of governor only under Abdülhamit's rule. “My discharge, therefore, is not a personal issue. It is an assault on the personality of the minister and the constitution.”⁹⁶

Petition of Hamit Cezmi, BCA-CHP 490..01/530..2126..2 (25 April 1934).

In a denunciation written about the unlawfulness of the governor of Çorum, a petitioner legitimized his complaint by citing the secretary-general on the meaning of the “revolution”: “Sir, I heard that you said in a lecture given in People's House of Ankara that the Kemalist Revolution means to uproot the old, the bad, and the harmful and replace them with the good, the useful, and the right… I believe that the party and the government will live up to these promises.” If the government did not punish this corrupt governor, Hakkı implied, it would not live up to what it had promised.⁹⁷

Petition of Hakkı, BCA-CHP 490..01/530..2126..2 (29 April 1934).

CONCLUSION

The petitioners' narratives that comprise the basis of this article have afforded rich opportunities to gain insight into contemporary views and perceptions of self and society, the state's role in social life, as well as the rights and duties of citizens in the emerging republic. Hearing petitioners' voices may help historians of early republican Turkey overcome the exclusive focus on nation-state that renders many historical actors invisible, or what Peter Linebaugh and Marcus Rediker called, “the violence of abstraction in the writing of history.”⁹⁸

Peter Linebaugh and Marcus Rideker, “The Many-Headed Hydra: Sailors, Slaves, and the Atlantic Working Class in the Eighteenth Century,” Journal of Historical Sociology 3 (1990): 226.

This is, however, not simply to advocate a so-called “history from below” approach to replace the top-down approaches to early republican history. Focusing exclusively on the everyday practices of “the common people” and divorcing them from broader social, cultural, and economic structures would reproduce the duality between ruler and ruled, dominant and subordinate, and center and periphery.⁹⁹

For an insightful discussion of problems of “history from below,” see Jim Sharpe, “History from Below,” in New Perspectives on Historical Writing, ed. Peter Burke (University Park, Pa.: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2001), 25–42.

Petitions prove that there was a much more complicated, multilayered, multifaceted relationship between people and the state and party authorities than has previously been assumed.

In early republican Turkey, petitioning was a multifunctional practice both for the state and party officials, as well as for people at large. Under highly authoritarian conditions where free elections were abolished, the press was strictly censored, and almost all other means of communicating with the state and party authorities were absent, petitioning maintained the transmission of popular opinion to the authorities. However, in turn, the regime became vulnerable to criticism. It was the elite's concerns for production of knowledge about the local populace and for restoration of their legitimacy that led to creation of new institutional practices through which people raised their demands. Similarly, the very discourse which the ruling elite used to advance these legitimacy claims empowered petitioners in their interactions with state authorities.

Through petitions (and, of course, other forms of social action), people negotiated political, social, and ideological transformations taking place at this formative historical juncture in Turkey. Petitioners used their own characterization of the state to criticize government policies and bureaucracy. Employing an idealized image of the state, people placed pressure on the addressee to meet their needs in return for their submission to the government's authority and asked the Kemalist leadership to keep promises implicit in nationalist rhetoric. Further research involving similar sources will illuminate how people participated in everyday forms of state formation in early republican Turkey and thereby help to deepen our understanding of the complex dynamics of the state-building process.

Author's note: I extend my gratitude to Lisa Balabanlılar, Günhan Börekçi, Stephen Dale, Carter V. Findley, Kyle Heatherly, David L. Hoffmann, Emre Sencer, and five anonymous IJMES reviewers for helpful advice and comments.

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RECONSIDERING STATE, PARTY, AND SOCIETY IN EARLY REPUBLICAN TURKEY: POLITICS OF PETITIONING

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HISTORICAL CONTEXT AND THE INSTITUTIONAL ASPECT OF PETITIONING

THE ART OF SELF-FASHIONING: LANGUAGE OF PETITIONS

CONCLUSION

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