Abstract
In 1922, the Ottoman-Turkish humorist magazine Ayine published a caricature titled “Changing Heads,” which consisted of six strips representing different historical moments. Set in 1918, the first scene titled “War” depicts Ottoman soldiers and their German allies, recognizable by the Ottoman military cap Kubuluk and the Prussian spiked helmet, respectively* The second strip “After the War” from 1919 shows several headpieces with Ottoman connotations: the Fez,2 the Kalpak,3 and the Kubuluk. The next one refers to the armistice of Mudros of October 1918, which sealed the end of World War I for the Ottoman Empire.4 The image represents an Italian and a British man wearing a military cap, and a French one with a bicorne. The two other men wearing a turban and a Fez symbolize the occupied territories in Northern Africa and Arabia. “After the Armistice,” dated 1921, depicts the Turkish War of Independence and refers to the British occupation of Istanbul on March 16, 1920, and the 1919 invasion of Asia Minor by Greece. The headwear that is shown in this image consists of three European brimmed hats, a Greek national headgear, and a military cap. The next sequence called “Peace” addresses the Armistice of Mudanya that took place in the Autumn of 1922, showing five Fezzes and a Turban.
The author would like to thank Ellinor Morack, Malte Fuhrmann, P. G. Macioti, Karina Müller-Wienbergen, Rebekka Habermas, and the editors of this volume for their constructive suggestions on this article.
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Notes
I refer to the conceptualization of hegemonic masculinity by Raewyn Connell. Connell defines masculinity not only in contrast to femininity but also in relation to other subordinated or hegemonic masculinities. He situates masculinity in a contested field of power, one part of which is the gender order. The author argues against an idea of fixed gender roles, or the “male sex role” model, which reduces masculinity to specific characteristics that are inherited or aspired to by all men in favor of a concept of multiple masculinities, which are historically and socially produced. Hegemonic masculinity should be understood as enacted practice, not just as a set of role expectations. See R. W. Connell, Masculinities, 2nd ed. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005).
This phrase came up in the mid-nineteenth century. Originally a comment by Tsar Nicolas I. of Russia on Sultan Abdülmecid’s health, it came to embody the state of Ottoman politics. See Selim Deringil, The Well-Protected Domains: Ideology and the legitimation of Power in the Ottoman Empire 1876–1909 (London: Tauris, 1998), 3. George Mosse has elaborated on the history of the interrelationship between the idea of a “healthy” nation and a modern ideal of masculinity in nineteenth-century Europe.
See George L. Mosse, The Image of Man: The Creation of Modern Masculinity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996).
R. W. Connell and James W. Messerschmidt, “Hegemonic Masculinity: Rethinking the Concept,” Gender &; Society 19, no. 6 (2005): 851, 852.
For an overview of possible applications of this concept in historical scholarship, see John Tosh, “Hegemonic Masculinity and the History of Gender,” in Masculinities in Politics and War: Gendering Modern History, ed. Stefan Dudink, Karen Hagemann, and John Tosh (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2004), 41–56.
Christopher Breward, “Manliness, Modernity and the Shaping of Male Clothing,” in Body Dressing: Dress, Body, Culture, ed. Joanne Entwistle and Elisabeth Wilson (Oxford: Berg, 2001), 165.
See Arus Yumul, “Bitmemiş bir Proje olarak Beden,” Toplum ve Bilim no. 84 (2000): 37–50; Arus Yumul, “Fashioning the Turkish Body Politic,” in Turkey’s Engagement with Modernity: Conflict and Change in the Twentieth Century, ed. Kerem Öktem, Celia Kerslake, and Philip Robins (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), 349–369.
Partha Chatterjee, Nationalist Thought and the Colonial World: A Derivative Discourse? (Tokyo: Zed Books, 1986.);
Mrinalini Sinha, Colonial Masculinity: The “Manly Englishman” and the “Effeminate Bengali” in the Late Nineteenth Century, Studies in Imperialism (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1995).
Wilson Chacko Jacob, Working out Egypt: Effendi Masculinity and Subject Formation in Colonial Modernity, 1870–1940 (Durham: Duke University Press, 2011).
Edward William Said, Orientalism (repr. 1978; London: Penguin Books, 2003).
On this problem, see Lila Abu-Lughod, “Feminist Longings and Postcolonial Conditions,” in Remaking Women: Feminism and Modernity in the Middle East, ed. Lila Abu-Lughod (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998), 3–32; Deniz Kandioyoti, “Some Awkward Questions on Women and Modernity in Turkey,” in Remaking Women, 270–288.
In her study on dress and the establishment of a mass fashion system in the Ottoman Empire, Charlotte Jirousek argues that headgear had been a major marker of gender identity before the introduction of Western-style clothes, as the cut of women’s and men’s clothes resembled each other. Charlotte Jirousek, “The Transition to Mass Fashion System Dress in the Later Ottoman Empire,” in Consumption Studies and the History of the Ottoman Empire, 1550–1922: An Introduction, ed. Donald Quataert (New York: State University of New York Press, 2000), 210–212.
I owe this quote to Houchang Chehabi, who took it from Karl Klinghardt’s study from 1924. See Karl Klinghardt, Angora—Konstantinopel: Ringende Gewalten (Frankfurt: Frankfurter Societäts-Dr., 1924), 94;
Houchang Chehabi, “Dress Codes for Men in Turkey and Iran,” in Men of Order: Authoritarian Modernization under Atatiirk and Reza Shah, ed. Touraj Atabaki and Erik J. Zürcher (London: Tauris, 2004), 209–237.
See Niyazi Berkes, The Development of Secularism in Turkey (Montreal: McGill, 1964), 403, 404.
The national sovereignty of the Turkish state came along with the abolition of the capitulations as a sign of inequality in international society. The capitulations had originally been voluntary concessions granted to other sovereigns that acquired treaty status with the changing balance of power in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The Anglo-Ottoman Commercial Convention of 1838, for instance, set major conditions for the economic positioning of the Ottoman Empire in the world economy by ending all local monopolies and protectionist trade practices. In addition, subjects of those states that were granted capitulations remained under their laws while staying on Ottoman territory. A growing number of Ottoman Christians also acquired subject status of these foreign powers, thereby falling under the capitulation of that power. In addition, what enabled that redefinition is the relative homogenization of Turkish society past the previous decades in terms of ethnicity and religion through social engineering, including genocide, forced assimilation, and deportations. On these various developments, see Donald Quataert, The Ottoman Empire, 1700–1922 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 19;
Soner Çağaptay, Islam, Secularism and Nationalism in Modern Turkey: Who Is a Turk? (London: Routledge, 2006);
Hamit Bozarslan, “Kurds and the Turkish State,” in Cambridge History of Modern Turkey, ed. Reşat Kasaba (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2008), 333–356.
If not indicated otherwise, all translations from Ottoman and modern Turkish sources are my own. Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, Atatürk’ün Söylev ve Demeçleri, 1906–1938 (Ankara: Atatürk Araştirma Merkezi, 2006), 220–226;
Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, Nutuk, 1920–1927 (Istanbul: Milli Eğitim basimevi, 1970), 896.
See Emma Tarlo, Clothing Matters: Dress and Identity in India (London: Hurst, 1996).
Informal Colonialism can be characterized as the force toward states to open their markets for products of the superior state and the guarantee of foreign property. Therefore, economic and strategic interests were enforced by other measures than that of a colonial state. Jürgen Osterhammel, Kolonialismus: Gesehiehte—Formen—Folgen (München: Beck, 2009), 23–26.
Parla and Davison quote and refer to Article 22 of the Covenant of the League of Nations, which established the mandates in the Arab territories of the Ottoman Empire. Andrew Davison and Taha Parla, Corporatist Ideology in Kemalist Turkey: Progress or Order? (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2004), 69.
Donald Quataert, “Clothing Laws, State, and Society in the Ottoman Empire, 1720–1829,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 29, no. 3 (August 1997): 403.
This code was introduced for all men, with the exception of those of religious ranks. In contrast to the Westernization of men’s clothes, existing regulations for women’s dress were reinforced by Mahmud II. See Cihan Aktaş, Tanzimat’tan Günümüze Kihk Kiyafet ve İktidar (İstanbul: Nehir Yayinlan, 1989), 63.
See Christopher Breward, “Manliness, Modernity and the Shaping of Male Clothing,” in Body Dressing: Dress, Body, Culture, ed. Joanne Entwistle and Elisabeth Wilson (Oxford: Berg, 2001), 165–181.
See Şerif Mardin, “Superwesternization in the Ottoman Empire in the last Quarter of the 19th Century,” in Turkey: Geography and Soeial Perspeetives, ed. Peter Benedict and Erol Tümertekin (Leiden: Brill, 1974), 403.
The decree also authorized a notion of citizenship as a central category of European political economy and constituent of nation-states. See Joel Beinin, Workers and Peasants in the Modern Middle East (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 44;
Halil İnalcik, “Application of the Tanzimat and Its Social Effects,” Arehivum Ottomanieum 5 (1973): 97–128.
On these developments, see Şerif Mardin, The Genesis of Young Ottoman Thought: A Study in the Modernization of Turkish Political Ideas (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1962).
See Murat Birdal, The Political Economy of Ottoman Public Debt: Insolvency and European Financial Control in the Late Nineteenth Century (London: Tauris, 2010); Beinin, Workers and Peasants in the Modern Middle East, 44–70.
İdris Bostan, Ege Adalari’nm Idari, mali ve Sosyal Yapisi (Ankara: Stratejik Araştirma ve Etüdler Milli Komitesi, 2003);
Ayşe Nükhet Adiyeke and Nuri Adiyeke, “Recent Discoveries in Turkish Archives: Kadi Registers of Midilli,” Tureiea: Revue Études Turques 38 (2006): 355–362.
Klaus Kreiser, Atatürk: Eine Biographie (Munich: Beck, 2008), 111, 239;
Orhan Koloğlu, Islamda Baçhk (Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu Basimevi, 1978), 60, 63;
Selami Kiliç, “Şapka Meselesi Ve Kilik Kyafet Inkilab,” Atatürk Yolu 4, no. 16 (November 1995): 531, 532;
Kiliçzade Hakki, Son Cevap (İstanbul: Yeni Osmanli Matbaa ve Kütübhanesi, 1331 [1915]), 49;
Şükrü Hanioğlu, “Garbcilar: Their Attitudes toward Religion and Their Impact on the Official Ideology of the Turkish Republic,” Studia Islamiea 86, no. 2 (1997): 133–158.
The boycott started within protest against the annexation of Bosnia and Herzegovina by Habsburg Emperor Josef II on October 5, 1908. See Donald Quataert, Social Disintegration and Popular Resistance in the Ottoman Empire, 1881–1908: Reactions to European Economic Penetration (New York: New York University Press, 1983);
Y. Doğan Çetinkaya, 1908 Osmanli Boykotu: Bir Toplumsal Hareketin Analizi (İstanbul: İletişim, 2004).
On the relation of the creation of new spaces like Promenades and the development of legal equality for Ottoman subjects, see Nikēphoros Diamanturos, ed., Spatial Conceptions of the Nation: Modernizing Geographies in Greece and Turkey (London: Academic Studies, 2010).
See Erik J. Zürcher, “Young Turks, Ottoman Muslims and Turkish Nationalists: Identity Politics, 1908–1938,” in Ottoman Past and Today’s Turkey, ed. Kemal H. Karpat (Leiden: Brill, 2000), 151–179;
Fatma Müge Göçek, Social Constructions of Nationalism in the Middle East (New York: State University of New York Press, 2002).
Tüccarzade İbrahim Hilmi [Çiğiraçan], Avrupalilaşmak [Becoming European], ed. Osman Kafadar and Far Öztürk (Ankara: Gündoğan Yayinlan, 1997);
Tuǵǵār-Zāda Ibrāhīm Ḥilmī, Awropalylašmaq (Konstantinopel: Kitābḫana-i-islām wa-’askarī, 1916), 15.
See Başak Ocak, Bir Yayincmin Portresi, Tüccarzâde İbrahim Hilmi Çiğiraçan (İstanbul: Müteferrika, 2003); Osman Kafadar and Faruk Öztürk, “Nesillerinin Unuttuğu Bir Aydin Tüccarzade Hilmi ve Avrupalilaşmak,” Tarih ve Toplum, no. 161 (May 1997): 261–266.
For other Ottoman authors who dealt with the Westernization theme, see Tank Zafer Tunaya, Türkiye’nin Siyasî Hayatinda Batililaşma Hareketleri (İstanbul: İstanbul Bilgi Üniversitesi Yayinlan, 2010).
Regarding the shift of authority from father to husband in late Ottoman discourse, see Nükhet Sirman, “Gender Construction and Nationalist Discourse: Dethroning the Father in the Early Turkish Novel,” in Gender and Identity Construction: Women in Central Asia, the Caucasus and Turkey, ed. Feride Acar and Ayşe Güneş Ayata (Leiden: Brill, 1999), 162–176.
Ignaz Goldziher, “Die Entblößung Des Hauptes,” Der Islam 6, no. 4 (1915). For a survey on different aspects of sartorial practices in the Ottoman Empire, see Suraiya Faroqhi and Christoph K. Neumann, eds., Ottoman Costumes: From Textile to Identity (Istanbul: Eren 2004).
See Penelope J. Corfield, “Dress for Deference and Dissent: Hats and the Decline of the Hat Honour,” Costume 23 (1998): 71.
Barbro Karabuda, Goodbye to the Fez: A Portrait of Modern Turkey (London: Dobson, 1959), 48.
See Mete Tunçay, Türkiye Cumhuriyeti’nde Tek Parti Yönetiminin Kurulmasi (Istanbul: Tarih Vakfi, 2005);
Ergün Aybars, İstiklál Mahkemeleri (Ankara: Bilgi Yayinevi, 1975).
For a social history of the early republican politics of dress, see Hale Yilmaz, Becoming Turkish: Nationalist Reforms and Cultural Negotiations in Early Republican Turkey, 1923–1945 (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2013).
See Houchang Chehabi, “Dress Codes for Men in Turkey and Iran,” in Men of Order: Authoritarian Modernization under Atatürk and Reza Shah, ed. Touraj Atabaki and Erik J. Zürcher (London: Tauris, 2004), 225.
This motive can be related to dragon-slaying legends in the Turco-Persian mythology, which is however beyond the scope of this chapter. Here, it is sufficient to say that many of these legends refer to the recognition of the legitimacy of the ruler, who kills a dragon in order to consolidate his questioned authority or rule. See P. O. Skjærvø, Dj. Khaleghi-Motlagh, and J. R. Russell “AŽDAHĀ,” in Encyclopaedia Iranica, ed. Ehsan Yarshater, vol. 3 (New York: Bibliotheca Persica Press, 2000), 191–205.
Next to the religious reactionary, another declared enemy in the coverage of the protests against the Hat Law is the deserter: “This is not the Republic of some pilgrims, Muslim preachers and fanatic deserters.” Cumhuriyet 26 Teşrin-i sani 1341 [November 26, 1926]. On the close relationship between the military and citizenship in the Turkish nation-state, see Ayşe Gül Altinay, The Myth of the Military Nation: Militarism, Gender, and Education in Turkey (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006).
In a recent publication on the Turkish Hat Law, Camilla T. Nereid challenges this oft-repeated dichotomy of progress and reaction. Instead of following the Kemalist paradigm, which grants legitimacy to only one version of modernization, she follows a model of multiple modernities and traces five different versions of it. Camilla T. Nereid, “Kemalism on the Catwalk: The Turkish Hat Law of 1925,” Journal of Social History 44, no. 3(2011): 707–728.
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© 2015 Pablo Dominguez Andersen and Simon Wendt
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Jana, K. (2015). Changing Heads and Hats: Nationalism and Modern Masculinities in the Ottoman Empire and the Republic of Turkey. In: Andersen, P.D., Wendt, S. (eds) Masculinities and the Nation in the Modern World. Global Masculinities. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137536105_12
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