A Kızılbash massacre in 1782: Memory, defamation and violence
FİKRET YILMAZ
This article analyses the prosecution of the Emre Sultan villagers in Karahisar-i Sahip in 1782 and its consequences. The persecution resulted in a massacre in which more than one hundred villagers were burned to death along with the dervish lodge in which they had taken shelter, and the destruction of the Emre Sultan village. The persecution and massacre were justified on the grounds that the villagers were Kızılbash and were planning an uprising under the leadership of a self-proclaimed dervish as mahdi. However, due to the fact that systematic persecution of the Kızılbash in the Ottoman Empire ended many years ago and the contradictions in the documents regarding the incident, there is a strong possibility that the alleged uprising may not be true. The main thesis of the article is that this justification was fabricated by the sanjak administrators as a pretext for the massacre. On the other hand, the article argues that the discourse of slander and defamation against the Kizilbash was not completed in the manner in which it was produced in the 16th century and continued to expand with new slanders and rumours until 1782. It endeavours to show that this discourse represented the preliminary stage of the physical violence to which the Kızılbash were subjected and was in fact an integral part of it.
Keywords: Ottoman History, Kızılbash, Alawi, Bektashi, candle extinguishing, massacre, memory, violence
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Historiography of economic thought, modern public finance and Ottoman fiscal bureaucrats, 1876-1908
NADİR ÖZBEK
This study analyses the mindset of Ottoman bureaucrats, some of whom wrote important works on economics and finance, and their thoughts and practical suggestions on the problems of Ottoman finance. The Ottoman archives contain a large number of reports (layiha) written by Ottoman bureaucrats at various levels, including finance ministers, dealing with issues such as tax collection, debt management, money and credit issues, budget deficit and economic development. It is generally accepted in Ottoman-Turkish historiography that the financial institutions and practices introduced during the Tanzimat era were, at best, poor copies of Western institutions and that Ottoman bureaucrats and intellectuals lacked a long-term perspective in economic thinking. This paper will critique the implicit but still vibrant and widespread Eurocentric approaches in historiography, without losing sight of the fact that the institutions and practices that constitute modern public finance are administrative technologies that enable the appropriation of social labour in accordance with the local and global needs of capital accumulation.
Keywords: Ottoman public finance, modern fiscal state, history of Ottoman economic thought, Ottoman history
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In the footsteps of a lost shepherd and his “keramets”: Munzur Baba and “legends” about him
YALÇIN ÇAKMAK
Dersim (Tunceli), as an important center of belief for the Qizilbash-Alevi faith, has been a locus that has been repeatedly referred to throughout history. It has earned this characteristic in that it is home to many ocaks and holy places, which are amongst the significant building blocks of this belief system. In this respect, the name “Munzur” or “Munzur Baba,” and “Munzur Gozeleri” or “Munzur Water”, also named after them, has functioned as a sacred place in the belief universe of the region for centuries. There are many various accounts of the name and legends embedded in historical records as to this sacred place and a consequent corpus of evaluations based on this accounts. None the less, the data and interpretations put forward thus far have not had the potential to provide the opportunity to make a holistic analysis; nor have they managed to ensure a satisfactory response to related questions. This especially results from the “pilgrimage”-oriented narrative itself, which corresponds to part of the miracles believed to have been performed by the character by the name of Munzur. In this study, it is aimed to present the etymology of the name Munzur, a comparison of the pilgrimage narrative with its counterparts in different geographies and to offer an authentic and distinct narrative of “Munzur who dialogues with wolfs,” a narrative eclipsed by the pilgrimage narrative, thus providing the chance to develop a different reading and interpretation.
Keywords: Munzur, Alevi-Qizilbash, Dersim, Tunceli, Keramet (miracle)
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Affective dispositions, Bolshevism and Stalinism: The rational actor in his emotional environment
RONALD GRIGOR SUNY
Stalin was described by Churchill as “a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma,” highlighting the difficulty of understanding the Soviet Union. Stalin’s acceptance of the Nazi-Soviet Pact was surprising even to the British Prime Minister and was seen as explicable by the rationality of national interests. But Stalin’s choices in domestic and foreign policy were shaped not only by economic and strategic calculations but also by personal insecurities and a desire to maintain power. His revolutionary past and personal experiences led to an erosion of his capacity for empathy and a turn towards Machiavellian calculation. In the 1930s, Stalin made harsh strategic decisions, filled with distrust of those around him. His affective disposition –the emotional world in which he operated– contained both emotional tendencies and rational calculation. He envisioned politics as warfare. Stalin’s distrust and suspicions fueled internal purges and policies of terror within the party. The emotional climate in the Soviet Union during the 1930s was largely shaped by fear, betrayal, and vulnerability. Stalin’s political choices created an emotional environment linked to massive social engineering projects and large-scale purges. Under Stalin’s leadership, individuals in the Soviet Union were reshaped into politically conscious citizens integrated with the building of revolution and socialism.
Keywords: Stalin, Bolshevism, Soviet Union, emotions, political consciousness
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A Non-extraordinary suggestions from an extraordinary businessman: Muzaffer Halim Neyzi’s Büyük İstirham
EROL ORTABAĞ
Muzaffer Halim is an extraordinary type of businessman who was born in the Ottoman period. He started working as a civil servant, and after he was dismissed from the civil service at the end of the First World War, he entered the business world. In the first years of the War of Independence, he went to Ankara and succeeded in supplying military equipment to the army, in the following years he took on the procurement of goods to the government and took on the tenders for public works. One of his most important hobbies apart from his work was reading German and French books on economics and finance. His pursuit of reading eventually led him to write his book, Büyük İstirham, which included his suggestions on the problem of money shortage in the Turkish economy in an environment where the Great Depression swept the world. He published his book with his own financial resources, and presented it for discussion, starting at the highest level, to the ministers and the academic community. The main focus of his work is to abandon the gold standard in order to solve the problem of money scarcity. This study examines this forgotten work of Muzaffer Halim, whose suggestions were not only disregarded, but his book was in danger of being confiscated and prosecuted.
Keywords: 1929 World Economic Depression, Turkish economy, monetary policy, gold standard, deflation, emmission volume
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Literature of Ottoman photography history: A history of historiography
İDİL ÇETİN
The emergence of the history of photography as a distinct field of study in Western countries went hand in hand with the valuation of photography on the Western art markets in the 1970s. A large number of works were published one after the other in this period, leading critics to say that they were witnessing an era of the rediscovery of photography. Interest in the history of photography was born in Turkey under the influence of this development, and the first comprehensive studies on the subject were carried out by collecting old photographs from the Turkish and foreign markets. This article analyses the conditions under which the history of photography became a subject of interest in Turkey and the type of studies that emerged as a result. It then discusses what kind of issues have been ignored and made invisible by the dominant narratives emanating from these studies.
Keywords: History of Ottoman photography, historiography of photography, Yeni Fotoğraf magazine, Bonfils studio, Abdullah Frères
