Internationalism and the New Turkey

ISBN-13: 9783031009341 / Angielski / Miękka / 2023

Erik Sjöberg

Opis

This book examines international education in Turkey after World War I. In this period, a movement for peace and international education among American educators emerged. This effort, however, had to be reconciled with the nationalist projects of new nation-states emerging from the war. In the case of the Near East that meant coming to terms with the radically nationalist modernization project of Kemal Atatürk’s Turkish Republic. Using the case of Robert College, an American educational institution in Istanbul, which aimed to foster a future local elite of a multi-ethnic and multi-religious student body, the book sheds light on the negotiation between two conceptions of modernity, as represented by American internationalist ideals and the tenets of Kemalism the Westernizing, yet deeply ethnocentric national ideology of post-1923 Turkey. Based on recently declassified archival sources, this study addresses the educational intentions and strategies for adjustment of college faculty. It also offers a rare insight into the mindset of young students attempting to make sense of what internationalism and religious, ethnic and national identity meant in the Ottoman past and in the new republican Turkey. Focusing on Robert College and the forgotten case of its dean and social studies instructor, Dr. Edgar Jacob Fisher, it addresses the little-researched field of internationalism and peace education in interwar Turkey.

Spis treści

Contents

Chapter 1. Introduction: Internationalism and the new Turkey. 3

Earlier research on Robert College and American missionary education in Turkey. 6

Argument, material, and perspectives. 9

Outline of the book. 15

Chapter 2. Background: Robert College and late Ottoman society. 22

Nineteenth-century beginnings: Protestant mission in the age of Ottoman reform.. 23

A non-sectarian college on Christian grounds: Robert College’s first half-century. 30

The end of the Tanzimat and the age of Hamidian reaction. 33

The beginning of the Young Turk era, 1908-1914. 36

The Ottoman Empire’s Great War and the Armenian genocide. 39

Robert College during the World War and the Armistice. 41

The war after the war, the Lausanne Treaty and the new Turkey’s “Year One”. 45

Chapter 3. Years of transition: Adapting to the republican order, 1923-1927. 53

“This desert of discord”: The politics of Turkish nationalism, 1923-1927. 55

“Riding for a fall”: foreign and communal schools in the age of nationalist educational reform.. 62

Three men and a donkey: Robert College and the Edgar Fisher affair of 1924. 66

From tug-of-war to US-Turkish rapprochement, 1925-1927. 82

“A cure for war”: the new secular mission of the American colleges. 89

Chapter 4. “A moderate and true nationalism”: The philosophy and practice of internationalism and peace education at Robert College, c. 1927-1933. 98

To end all wars: education for peace and internationalism after the Great War. 99

Enlightenment’s belated offspring: John Dewey and the new Turkey. 103

Practicing world-mindedness: Extracurricular activities in the service of peace at Robert College. 110

The internationalism that dare not speak its name: Teaching on the problem of nationalism.. 121

“This particular dream”: American exceptionalism, Turkish nationalism, and the notion of Turkish-American kinship  127

Chapter 5. Wonderful changes, broken unity: Modernity, Ottoman past and national belonging in the essays of Robert College students. 134

“This broken unity”: Ottomanism for the post-Ottoman world. 134

Recovering perceptions of students: aims and material 137

“Wonderful changes have taken place”: Modernity vs. tradition. 140

Ourselves and Others: Perceptions of national belonging and ethnic minorities. 147

Minority voices: Self-representations among Turkish Greek and Armenian students. 155

The shadow of 1915: Memories of violence in students’ essays. 164

Concluding remarks: The Near East and the “great brotherhood of nations”. 171

Chapter 6. Internationalism defeated: The downfall of Edgar Fisher. 176

The domestic political context: The Free Republican Party and the turn towards totalitarianism.. 177

“Anti-foreignism” and the Turkish History Thesis. 181

“The injustice of this business”: The second Fisher incident, 1933. 184

Building harmony: making sense of Fisher’s expulsion. 194

Chapter 7. Epilogue and conclusion. 207

Epilogue: The long twilight, 1934-1971. 207

Conclusion: The (inter-)nationalism of Robert College. 215

O autorze

Erik Sjöberg is Associate Professor of History at Södertörn University, Sweden.

Blurb

“Based on recently declassified sources, this excellent monograph addresses the little-researched field of international education in Interwar Turkey. Its careful analysis of changes and personal dramas at the legendary Robert College in Istanbul offers striking new insights that include Western appeasement of Ankara. Ultranationalism in education and history teaching culminated in Turkey’s unopposed ‘History Thesis’, involving a poignant “fall of international education” in the 1930s.”

—Hans-Lukas Kieser is Associate Professor of History at The University of Newcastle, Australia 

“By using new archival material, Sjöberg has written a fascinating account of the Robert College in Istanbul in the crucial years of the transition from the Ottoman Empire to the Turkish Republic. In addition to presenting a highly original history of this premier institution, Sjöberg also explains how the idealist hopes for liberal education were crushed in Turkey in the 1920s and 1930s.”

—Reşat Kasaba, Henry M. Jackson, School of International Studies, University of Washington, USA

This book examines international education in Turkey after World War I. In this period, a movement for peace and international education among American educators emerged. This effort, however, had to be reconciled with the nationalist projects of new nation-states emerging from the war. In the case of the Near East that meant coming to terms with the radically nationalist modernization project of Kemal Atatürk’s Turkish Republic. Using the case of Robert College, an American educational institution in Istanbul, which aimed to foster a future local elite of a multi-ethnic and multi-religious student body, the book sheds light on the negotiation between two conceptions of modernity, as represented by American internationalist ideals and the tenets of Kemalism – the Westernizing, yet deeply ethnocentric national ideology of post-1923 Turkey. Based on recently declassified archival sources, this study addresses the educational intentions and strategies for adjustment of college faculty. It also offers a rare insight into the mindset of young students attempting to make sense of what internationalism and religious, ethnic and national identity meant in the Ottoman past and in the new republican Turkey. Focusing on Robert College and the forgotten case of its dean and social studies instructor, Dr. Edgar Jacob Fisher, it addresses the little-researched field of internationalism and peace education in interwar Turkey.

Erik Sjöberg is Associate Professor of History at Södertörn University, Sweden.