MAPPING THE NEXT GENERATION'S IMAGINATION: BALKAN WARS AND THE TURKISH NATIONALISM

Abstract

Characterized by voluntaristic nationality in terms of citizenry concept, Ottomanismas a political ideology lost gradually its credit due to the political developments 146 inthe post-1908 Revolution period. Especially the loss of Rumeli with the Balkan Wars and with the Muslim immigration from there, the multi-ethnic composition ofthe Empire was relatively disappeared. It was commonly accepted that the Balkan wars was a turning point in Turkish nationalism, which was "materialized as apolitical ideology" 147 and was recognized as an official policy by the Unionists, who came to power with a coup d'etat in 1913. Before the Balkan Wars, Turkism was appeared as an expression of Ottoman intellectual's identity searching in terms of both the reinvention of ethnic history and a defense mechanism against the Western expansion.148 The disappointment experienced in Ottomanism transformed Turkist movement, which had been a reactionary cultural movement, into an officially accepted ideology and to some extends it "became synonymous with the Pan-Turkism" 149, which aimed the political unification of all Turkic peoples. Eventhough the approaches on the scope of official Turkism-from cultural Turkists to Pan-Turkists- was variable, one should realize that Turkism in general wase valuated in this era a compensation way for the crushing defeat in the Balkan Wars.