THE RELATION BETWEEN HISTORY AND POLITICS ACCORDING TO HANIOGLU

No doubt M. Sukru Hanioglu is at the top of the list of historians illuminating the last period of Ottoman history. Leaving aside the articles he has written in various academic magazines and books, a list of the books he has authored is enough in itself to show the dimensions of his contribution:  “Preparation for a Revolution: The Young Turks, 1902-1908,” Oxford University Press, 2000.  “The Young Turks in Opposition,” Oxford University Press, 1995.

 “Kendi Mektuplariyle Enver Pasha (Enver Pasha in Light of His Own Letters),” Der Publications, 1989.

Professor Hanioglu has been a faculty member at Princeton University, one of the U.S.’s most distinguished universities, from the 1990’s to date, and chairman of the Middle East Research Department for the last three years. He is a source of pride for Turkey as a social scientist, not only for being an extremely fastidious researcher and superior analyst, but also with his intellectual character tied to independent values and critical method.

His new book is entitled “Osmanli’dan Cumhuriyet’e Zihniyet, Siyaset ve Tarih (World-view, Politics and History from the Ottomans to the Republic, Baglam Publications, 2006), and it is comprised of articles published in Zaman newspaper from the fall of 2002 to the summer of 2006. I am very happy that a short time after I began writing for Zaman, I encouraged my old friend Professor Hanioglu to write for Zaman once every two weeks as well. His Zaman articles, which combine his broad knowledge of history with an analytical logic, are the most valuable contribution made in recent years to the understanding of Turkey’s presence in light of the historical behind-the-scenes reality of the transitional period from the Ottomans to the Republic.

In regard to the interest shown to these articles, Hanioglu says the following: “These commentaries that were aimed at bringing different perspectives to current issues received an unexpected amount of interest. While messages related to my academic publications generally don’t reach two-digit numbers, I received close to 50 notes after each newspaper commentary. I had an opportunity to exchange ideas with many people, even if it was in a virtual realm.” (p. 9)

In this article I want to dwell on his last piece, published in Zaman in two parts, entitled “History, Politics and the 1915 Tragedy in Light of the Vote in the French Assembly” (October 26-27), which was not included in Professor Hanioglu’s book, but which is extremely worthy of attention. Here Hanioglu interprets the relationship between history and politics in view of the bill accepted on October 12th by the French Assembly that makes denial of the “Armenian Genocide” a crime. He takes this “denial” argument even further: It is impossible to leave history to historians, and it is inevitable that politics interpret history. The problem is not with politics’ interpreting history; it is with imposing your interpretation, as the only truth, on society and prohibiting debate. (In this respect, Hanioglu reminds those supporting the thesis, “Let’s leave history to historians,” that the Turkish Parliament declared May 27th as a “Constitution and Freedom Holiday” on April 3, 1963, and that it made it a crime to “insult the memory of Ataturk” on July 25, 1951.)

Hanioglu points out that it is past the time for producing politics by means of free discussion instead of countering prohibition with prohibition, when taking up the issue stemming from the question, “What Happened to the Ottoman Armenians?” In other words, the most important historian of the Union and Progress period says to stop curtailing debate by means of Turkish penal code 301 and elsewhere and, instead, allow for the production of new and result-oriented politics by means of free historical debate to counter the campaign for “recognizing genocide” and now “punishment for the denial of genocide.” Actually, this is the task before us.

With this opportunity, I would like to note on the record that I am one of those eagerly awaiting his book-in-progress on the Committee for Union and Progress’ reign of power (1908-1918).