Settlement Law of 1934: Turkish Nationalism in the Age of Revisionism
| Résumé |
There is a strong tendency in Turkish historiography to approach
Kemalist policies as purely domestic affairs that emanate from the
centre in a top-down manner, reflecting the clear ideological
positions of Ankara. The existing scholarship on the Settlement Law
(1934), too, has read the development of Kemalist demographic
policies in ideological terms, framing them in top-down modernist
trajectories that were long in the making since the late Ottoman
times. These perspectives often remained analytically singular and
nation-centred, failing to engage with the broader transnational
developments that were in fact crucial to the making and timing of
a range of Kemalist policies. As such, the processes of demographic
engineering are framed as devoid of historical conjuncture and
immune from unintended consequences or the constraints presented by
state capacity. In this article, I seek to overcome such limitations
by situating the Settlement Law within its due transnational context
of heightened interstate rivalries since the 1930s. Unfolding in
myriad ways across the borderlands of Eastern Europe, the complex
dynamics of interstate competition created the necessary push and
pull factors that started dislodging the Balkan Muslims from those
areas coveted by various territorially revisionist states in the
region. The demographic engineering their arrival triggered in
Turkey, I argue, was therefore as much national as
international. |
| Mots-clés |
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| Citation | Öztan, R. H. (2020). Settlement Law of 1934: Turkish Nationalism in the Age of Revisionism. Journal of Migration History, 6(1), 82-103. |
| Type | Article de périodique (Anglais) |
| Date de publication | 17-2-2020 |
| Nom du périodique | Journal of Migration History |
| Volume | 6 |
| Numéro | 1 |
| Pages | 82-103 |