Throughout the nineteenth century, every political reflex and intellectual quest for the survival of the Ottoman Empire was merely a utopian formula to prevent its disintegration. The ideal of Ottomanism crumbled on the hard rocks of the waves of nationalization in the Balkans. The politics of Islamism (Ummahism) that followed completely lost its sociological and political reality in the chaotic environment of the Great War, especially when the Arabs chose their own path of independence. The split led by Sharif Hussein proved with laboratory clarity that the Ummah-oriented politics had completed its historical life.
Here, the process of the liquidation of the empire contained a tragic paradox: While the secessionist moves of the other peoples that made up the subjects resulted in a national birth (independence), for the Turkish nation, the founding element, this process literally meant isolation, liquidation and total collapse. Borders had shrunk, ideologies had collapsed, and only Anatolia, the last bastion of existence, remained.
Here you go May 19, 1919, In the midst of this great historical compression, the Turkish nation's long struggle for modernization and existence is the point of transition from the abstract to the concrete, from thought to action.
The Bankruptcy of Ideologies and the Only Prescription: The Turkish Nation State
The ideas of “Turkish nationalism” and “a modern social order”, which had long been discussed in the minds of Ottoman intellectuals, had largely remained at the theoretical level, in salons and on the pages of magazines, until May 19. The concrete realization that Ummahism was not a solution shifted the axis of legitimacy and belonging from a religious/ dynastic allegiance to a national identity. This concrete break imposed the idea of the “Turkish Nation State” not as a luxury for the Turkish intellectuals and military bureaucracy, but as the sole survival formula.
Mustafa Kemal Ataturk's landing in Samsun was the first step of this radical change of mentality on the ground. The notion of “self-determination of the nation”, which had been an abstract wish until then, lit its first spark in Samsun and turned into an organized popular movement, that is, the most concrete action.
Transition from Object to Subject and Revolution of Mentality
May 19 was the milestone not only of a military strategy, but essentially of an ideal of modernization and a social uprising. The key dynamics that make this process unique are the following:
- The Discovery of Subjective Identity: A society that had carried the burden of empire on its shoulders for centuries, that had run from front to front but had been delayed in thinking about its own identity, was again instilled with the awareness that it was the “Turkish nation”.
- Unity of Destiny and Citizenship: Reacting to a common existential threat, the masses went from being subjects to becoming modern, equal and fated “citizens”.
- Shifting Sources of Legitimacy: The fact that liberation would not come from the will of the palace or the mandate of foreign powers, but directly from the nation's own determination and decision was formulated and institutionalized in Amasya, Erzurum and Sivas.
Conclusion A Radical Step into the Modern World
As a result, May 19 is the day when the Turkish people, who have been the object of the empire for centuries but left without an identity, took their own destiny into their own hands and became a fundamental part of history. “subject” that he became a man.
May 19, 1919 marked the beginning of the march of the abstract intellectual ideas of independence, sovereignty and modernization towards a concrete state, a secular and legal order in the bosom of Anatolia. The founding flame ignited in Samsun that day was the first link in the chain of revolutions and the declaration of the republic that would follow, and the most solid foundation, both intellectual and actual, of the modern Republic of Turkey.
In the light of this great revolution of mentality and the torch of independence; Happy May 19th Commemoration of Atatürk, Youth and Sports Day, and many happy years to a fully independent and modern tomorrow!