Turkish Nationalism and Western Civilization: Selected Essays of Ziya Gokalp

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PREFACE

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THE purpose of this volume is to provide the English reader with
samples of the writings of Ziya Gökalp ( 1876-1924), the Turkish
thinker, regarding Turkish nationalism and its meaning in terms of
Islam and Western civilization. It must be emphasized, therefore, that
the present volume is not a complete edition of Gökalp's writings.

Gökalp's writings can be classified roughly into three groups:
(a) literary works, (b) writings on folklore, history, and sociology, and
(c) prose writings dealing with cultural matters in short essay form.

The first and second categories are left entirely outside the frame-
work of the present work. In excluding these, I believed that the
Western reader would lose very little. Gökalp's poetry was devoid of
art and was extremely didactic. He seems to have written poems as a
hobby and never posed as a poet. He used poetry, however, to popular-
ize his ideas in the form of rhymed slogans. This, I believe, helped to
popularize some of his ideas, but, on the whole, was a factor in causing
his ideas to be understood partially or inadequately. Another of his
aims seems to have been to develop a modern literature which would
develop into the writing of religious hymns as well as folk stories for
children, but, unfortunately, his lack of artistic genius made this
attempt almost a complete failure in so far as art went.

The second category of his writings have been excluded because of
their length and technical nature. Among them must be mentioned his
Türk Medeniyeti Tarihi (The History of the Turkish Civilization), of
which only the first volume appeared, then posthumously.

The present volume has been compiled from his essays. Again, it is
not a complete collection of this type of his writings. It contains
selections which I found to express Gökalp's often repeated basic ideas
best, to demonstrate the changes that took place in his formulations,
and to show inconsistencies or contradictions in his ideas.

This volume will be found lacking by some readers because it
includes nothing specific to one issue. Gökalp was believed to have
been the prophet of Pan-Turanism. The belief was widespread and
was shared by me when I began making an assortment of articles for
translation. Upon completing a first selection, I found, to my surprise,
that I had not included a single essay dealing directly or exclusively
with Pan-Turanism. On reviewing Gökalp's works, I found, to my greater amazement, that he wrote only two short essays on this subject
( "Türk Milleti ve Turan", Türk Yurdu, Vol. VI, No. 62 ( 1914), pp.
2053-8, and "Turan Nedir"?, Yeni Mecmua, No. 37, February 1918,
pp. 82-3), neither of which were representative specimens of his
writing, neither of which contained any theoretical formulations of his
ideology, and neither of which contained a formulation of the Pan-
Turanian ideology itself. To be sure, these essays favoured the idea,
but they were not of a nature to be written by a prophet of a movement.
Furthermore, Gökalp ceased even to mention the word 'Turan' in his
poetry after 1915, when he developed his theory of nationality ( F. A. Tansel
, Ziya Gökalp Külliyati, Vol. I ( Ankara, 1952), p. xv), and he
dismissed the idea after 1918 as one which 'may only serve to inspire
the too imaginative poets' (cf. the second article mentioned above,
p. 82 ). The present work, therefore, contains neither of Gökalp's two
essays impinging upon Pan-Turanism; neither would add to our
knowledge of the ideology itself or to our understanding of Gökalp's
system of ideas.

Both chronological sequence and topical interrelationships were
kept in view in arranging the selected articles. In other words, the
essays were arranged in a chronological order modified by the second
criterion. Fortunately, this scheme has not created much difficulty, as
Gökalp's writings underwent a logical development with time. Hence,
only a few essays had to be introduced out of their chronological order
-- to provide the reader with certain background information.

The majority of the essays have been reproduced in their entirety.
Brief excerpts from a few have been included. Some omissions have
been made from otherwise complete essays when (a) statements were
repeated, (b) the author digressed in order to clarify some points for
his Turkish readers, or (c) the author repeated ideas elaborated in other
included essays. Short additions, within brackets, have been made in
order to complete a sentence or to make it more readily understandable
to the English reader.

The sources from which the selections have been taken are given in
the footnotes in their original Turkish, transliterated into the modern
characters. The English titles are not always literal or exact transla-
tions of the originals in order (a) to adapt, without making too great
deviations, the titles to English usage, and (b) to give a more coherent
appearance to the Table of Contents with a view towards facilitating
an understanding of the intellectual content of the volume.
Despite efforts to do otherwise, it has been necessary to use many
Turkish or Turkified words in the text. (A glossary of the Turkish and
Arabic words retained in the translation is appended.) Words which
have been anglicized -- such as Ottoman, sultan, and caliph -- have been
used in their English forms. Words derived from the Arabic but used
in Turkish in their Turkified forms have been rendered according to
the present-day Turkish spelling. Where relevant, the Arabic equiva-
lents of these words are given within brackets. In cases where Gökalp
used Arabic words in their original rather than in their Turkified
forms, these have been rendered according to their Arabic translitera-
tions. (The following letters in the modern Turkish alphabet are
pronounced as indicated: c, English j; ç, English ch; ğ, almost the
English y; ö, German ö; ü, German ü; ş, English sh; and i, the
actual sound value given to the English tion in addition or ton in
carton.)

The translation is neither strictly literal nor fully adapted to the
English literary style. I have sought to solve some of the problems
posed by the fact that certain figures of speech are amenable to direct
translation, while others are not by following a middle course. I believe
that in taking some liberties with the text I have remained true to the
meaning of the original, or at least have not rendered the material in a
way contrary to the original. It was hoped that by not seeking to
achieve a fully polished English rendition the reader would get some
feeling for the style of thinking and writing of a non-English-speaking
writer.

In concluding this Preface, I should like to express my gratitude to
those who have made the appearance of this work possible. I wish to
thank the Faculty of Graduate Studies, McGill University, for a grant
towards the preparation of the translation. I am particularly indebted
to Professor Wilfred Cantwell Smith, the Director of the Institute of
Islamic Studies, McGill University, for his constant and generous
encouragement. My thanks are due also to Dr Howard A. Reed and
Professor F. Rahman, both colleagues at McGill during the prepara-
tion of the volume, for their help and encouragement. I am grateful to
Mrs Nora Grosheintz-Laval and Miss Judy Speier for reading, correct-
ing, and typing the text. I thank the editors of the Middle East Journal
for permission to reproduce the following Introduction which ap-
peared originally as an article in that journal ( Middle East Journal,
Vol. VIII, No. 4, Autumn 1954).
Finally, I want to express my gratitude to my brother, Enver
Berkes, who, as always, did not fail to give me all the necessary support
in obtaining materials for this work. To him this volume is affection-
ately dedicated.

Montreal, January 1958 NIYAZI BERKES

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