Turkey

TURKEY. - The Turkish Republic, proclaimed on 31 Oct. 1923, is the state that emerged from the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire and from the national revival promoted by Mustafa Kemal after the Treaty of Sèvres (10 Aug. 1920). Reduced to an almost exclusively Asian territory, with a European appendage (Eastern Thrace, little larger than Lombardy), which preserves for it Constantinople (Istanbul) and therefore the Straits, it has nevertheless not given up its function as a bridge between Europe and Asia, for which it marks the passage from the Mediterranean to Transcaucasia, to Mesopotamia and to the Iranian plateau.

I. GEOGRAPHY

Its territory, measuring 776,747 sq. km. in all (of which 23,975 are in Europe), brings it into contact with Bulgaria, Greece, Iran, Iraq, Syria and the Soviet Union, but the boundaries almost never constitute a clear and solid frontier; indeed they have left behind disputes and claims that are anything but dormant. This territory consists essentially of a vast plateau, whose average elevation (700 m.) increases from west to east, crossed by various mountain ridges and as a rule made up of closed basins; two series of reliefs, parallel or nearly so to the northern coast (Black Sea) and the southern coast (Mediterranean), cut it off from maritime influences, producing a clear contrast between the coastal regions and the interior. While the former are favored by abundant or moderate (in the south) precipitation, and are therefore covered with luxuriant vegetation or scrub, the inner plateau and the mountains of the East (Armenia) are arid and steppe-like, with the exception of the short strips near the rivers, which are moreover few and all of a torrential character. The thermal contrast is also strong between the mild climate, especially in winter, of the coasts and the harsh, typically continental climate of the plateaus, where the ground is covered by snow for several weeks.

A little less than half (47.2%) of the territorial surface consists of pastures, about 1/7 of forests, and a little more than 1/4 of arable land and tree crops. The interior is the domain of pastoralism: but livestock raising is directed essentially toward sheep (26 million head) and goats (19 million); there are, however, 10 million head of cattle and 3 million of equines. In Anatolia the breeding of silkworms is notable. Cereal cultivation is spreading with artificial irrigation and yields good quantities of cereals. In the maritime regions tobacco, maize and hazelnuts prevail along the Pontus; cotton, vines, olives, citrus fruits and fruit trees along the Mediterranean. The mineral reserves are varied and considerable, though knowledge of them is still imperfect and their exploitation is only beginning, with the exception of coal, which is extracted in the region of Ereğli (4-5 million tons in recent years). For chromite (central Anatolia) T. ranks second in the world; the production of copper, iron, sulfur, manganese, lead and zinc is also notable. In the process of being exploited are, among others, mercury, molybdenum and antimony. Industry, however, is still far from its potential; nevertheless it has made much progress since 1923: in some branches (cement) it already covers national demand, while in others the equipment is being considerably expanded (textiles, glassworks, ceramics, paper, leather, chemicals) and the quantities are becoming more substantial also as regards heavy industry.

The population (20.9 million inhabitants, 27 per sq. km. in 1950) is fairly homogeneous from the national and religious point of view. Of the ethnic minorities the most conspicuous is the Kurdish one (1.5 million souls); there are then, among others, more than 150 thousand Arabs, more than 100 thousand Greeks (Constantinople), and perhaps as many Armenians, and smaller groups of Circassians, Laz, Georgians, Jews, etc.

Of the urban centers, Istanbul (1 million inhabitants), although the most populous and the most important, has yielded to Ankara (287 thousand inhabitants), in the heart of the plateau, the function of capital of the State (1923). Smyrna (İzmir) has 230 thousand inhabitants, Adana 118 and Bursa 100 thousand.

Giuseppe Caraci

II. HISTORY

For the ethnic origins, v. TURCO-MONGOLS.

1. The Ottoman Empire and its origins

In the second half of the 13th century the Byzantines of the Palaeologus family (from 1261) held from Constantinople the last outposts on the Asian continent, reduced to little more than the borders of Bithynia; another Byzantine dynasty, that of the Comneni, reigned at Trebizond. The whole of Anatolia (except coastal Cilicia, still in the hands of the last kings of Little Armenia) was in the hands of the Muslim Turks who had invaded it from the 11th century.

But there was no unified Turkish State; the Seljuqs, who from Konya had predominated for about a century and a half, had been reduced to vassalage by the Mongols, who had conquered Persia, overthrown the Caliphate of Baghdad (1258) and occupied eastern and central Anatolia. In the marginal territories of the Seljuq State of Anatolia many Turkish emirates had formed: that of Qaramân in the south

(in Cappadocia), which around 1300, with the extinction of the Seljuq State, aspired to assume its inheritance; that of Menteše (Caria), of Ajdîn (region of the Meander), of Sârûhân (Magnesia), of Gormijân (Phrygia), of Qarasî (Troad), of the Gandar (Paphlagonia) and other minor ones. Of these emirates one, which took its name from its founder 'Osmân, in Bithynia, on the border with the Empire of Byzantium, prevailed in a struggle lasting over a century, giving rise to the Ottoman Empire. It was the emir 'Osmân (Arabic 'Oțman, in the Byzantine chroniclers Ottoman, whence the name "Ottoman") who first gave considerable consistency to the emirate and extended it as far as Brusa (in 1326, which is also considered the year of his death). His successor Órân (1326-62) occupied the rest of Bithynia: Nicaea (Izniq) in 1321, Nicomedia (Izmîd) in 1337, and crossed into Europe, conquering the Gallipoli peninsula in 1354.

Who were these Turks gathered around the family of 'Osmân? When the Ottoman sultans in the 15th century took pleasure in hearing the origins of their dynasty and their kingdom recounted, legends and genealogies were formed which were later received into Ottoman court historiography. Among these the most credited afterwards was the one that traced 'Osmân back to an Ertogrul and this one to a Sulejmân, a Turcoman prince of the Oğuz stock and precisely of the Qâjî tribe, who came to Anatolia from Mahan (Central Asia) at the beginning of the 13th century to escape the pressure of the Mongols. The family of 'Osmân would have settled on the borders of Bithynia in the 13th century as vassals of the Seljuq sultan of Konya. This version is largely legendary; there is no reliable information about the ancestors of 'Osmân and it must be excluded that they came in the manner explained above from Central Asia in the 13th century. Rather it is to be held that, in any case, a frontier emirate, which around 1300 was under the command of 'Osmân, was formed in the 13th century on the borders with Bithynia and that the organization of the nascent State was not that of a homogeneous Oğuz tribe, but rather of a military lordship made up of Turks who had long since penetrated into Anatolia (the Oğuz, that is Seljuq, invasion of the 11th century) and of Turkicized natives, animated by the chivalric and religious spirit of the Muslim conquerors (iğâz) "fighters for the faith", natural antagonists of the corps of akritoi "border soldiers" stationed by the Byzantines on their frontiers. In this situation of theirs the Ottomans, heirs of the traditions of armed conquest of Islâm, brought to completion in Anatolia and in the Balkan peninsula the conquest that the Muslim Arabs had attempted in the 7th-9th centuries in Asia Minor and that the Byzantines and then the Crusades had halted, determining a state of equilibrium in the 11th-13th centuries.

The conquest of Adrianople (the date is not certain, but it is usually placed in 1361) and the transfer there of the capital from Brusa in 1368 under Murâd I (1360-89) gave the Ottomans predominance in Thrace. The Byzantine Empire was reduced to the capital, Constantinople, and its immediate surroundings; the Kingdoms of Serbia and Bulgaria became vassals of the Ottomans, who pushed their raids even into the Morea and Albania. Murâd's successor, Bâjezîd Jildîrim (1389-1402), became master of a large part of the Balkan peninsula and besieged Constantinople a first time in 1391 and then again in 1395. The united forces of the Christian princes, commanded by King Sigismund of Hungary, were defeated at Nicopolis on the Danube (1396). In Anatolia too the Ottoman Empire expanded, absorbing some of the Turkish emirates and subjecting others, such as the kingdom of Qaramân.

At this point the invasion of Tamerlane from the East arrested Ottoman expansion and delayed its developments by almost half a century. Bâjezîd was defeated at Ankara in 1402 and died a prisoner. Tamerlane having withdrawn at once, the Turkish emirs whom he had restored to power over their States were able to hold out for some time amid the discords of Bâjezîd's three sons. Constantinople had a period of relief; but soon Mehmed I, having established himself on the Ottoman throne, resumed the conquests in Anatolia and Europe, and his son Murâd II (1421-44 and 1445-51) consolidated Ottoman power by taking Salonica (1430) and a large part of Albania. His son Mohammed II (1451-81) conquered Constantinople

(29 May 1453), putting an end to the Byzantine Empire. With the political and cultural tradition of which it had been the center for centuries almost totally extinguished, Constantinople (Istanbul) became one of the principal Muslim religious, political and cultural centers; Orthodox Christianity survived in a state of subjection under the sultans, increasingly detached from the Christian West, to spiritual union with which it had adhered too late and without great enthusiasm (Council of Florence of 1439).

With the capture of Trebizond (1461) and of the Genoese colonies of Caffa and Tana the Ottomans secured possession of the Black Sea; in the Adriatic too the Turks occupied important bases and in 1480 threatened the Italian peninsula with the landing at Otranto.

2. The greatest expansion and the decline

The greatest expansion of the Ottoman Empire was the work of Selim I (1512-1520) and of his son Suleiman the Magnificent (1520-66). The conquest of Syria and Egypt (1516-17), of the Muslim holy cities of Mecca and Medina in Arabia, of Belgrade (1521), of Rhodes (1522), of Hungary (1526) and of Mesopotamia, the formation of a fleet that dominated the eastern and central Mediterranean, the capture of Algiers (1516), Tunis (1533) and Tripoli (1551) gave the Ottoman sultans possession of southern Europe as far as the Danube, of Asia Minor and Arabia and of almost all of North Africa, and they assumed and in fact bore the title of caliph emperor of the Muslims. Their antagonists in the East were the Shi'ite sovereigns of Persia, in the West the Empire of Austria and Venice, later Poland and Russia and sometimes the union of the Christian States. Venice wore itself out in the defense of its possessions in the Levant, successively losing Cyprus (1571) and Candia (1645-69) and yet managing to save the Ionian Islands and Dalmatia. The Empire of Austria saw Vienna threatened a first time in 1529 and a second time in 1683. From this last failed attempt against Vienna the decline of the Empire is usually dated, although already in other encounters, such as at Malta in 1565 and at Lepanto in 1571, it had found a limit to its capacity for expansion.

At the end of the 17th century and in the 18th century the Empire lost its first territories: Hungary, northern Serbia, the Crimea. In the 19th century the disintegration took place on a larger scale because to the external attacks, especially those of Russia, were added internal revolutions and national movements. Serbia, Greece (1821-30), Romania, Bulgaria reconstituted themselves as independent States, while Egypt obtained (1841) complete autonomy and Tunis loosened its ties with Constantinople.

From the beginning of the 19th century the Ottoman Empire was no longer a maker of history; overwhelming forces pressed upon its borders; Austria aimed at the Aegean, Russia at Constantinople and the Straits; the preservation of the Ottoman Empire was for a long time assisted by states interested in thwarting those designs; in the Crimean War (1854-55) and in the war of 1877-78 the Russian advance was halted by European intervention. The reforms (tanzîmât) begun in 1839 were not enough to restore life to the Ottoman Empire; the Balkan War of 1912-13 made it lose most of its European territory; defeat in the First World War deprived it of the Arab countries and even put in jeopardy the independence of the purely Turkish territory. The valor and sagacity of Atatürk (1919-22) saved, in the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, the Turkish State which, the sultanate having been abolished (2 Nov. 1922), became the Republic of T. (29 Oct. 1923). The last sultan, Mehmed VI, left Istanbul on 17 Nov. 1922.

3. Organization

The Ottoman Empire established itself in the conquered territories with a pre-eminently military administration, living off the labor of the subject peoples and drawing from them the backbone of its troops. The revenues of the lands were assigned to the sultan, to his family, to the ministers, to the military chiefs and to the territorial troops through the system known as that of the tîmâr and zî'âmât (revenues tied to military obligations). The janissaries, who extended and then defended the conquests, were sons of Christians reduced to slavery and raised for war; from their ranks came the governors, the generals and the ministers. There was no aristocracy, no Ottoman bourgeoisie was formed; only religious offices were the preserve of the educated Muslim class, which gave the Empire its character of a Muslim theocratic State. A. J. Toynbee (A study of history, Abridgment, London 1948, p. 177), counts the Ottoman Empire among the arrested civilizations, as an example of civilizations settled on conquered territory and incapable of carrying the development of their capacities beyond a certain limit. The formation of great European States on its borders and the rise of national movements made it untenable to maintain an organism in which no unity of culture nor consciousness of state solidarity had been formed and in which the various ethnic elements (millet "community") received external impulses or awakened to the voices of their past. The dissident nationalists of the Serbs, the Greeks, the Romanians, the Bulgarians, the Albanians, the Arabs anticipated by more than half a century the Turkish nationalism of the rulers.

From the religious point of view the formation and the duration of the Ottoman Empire meant an expansion of the Islamic faith in Asia Minor and in the Balkan peninsula; here two thirds of Albania, a large part of Epirus and Macedonia, part of Bulgaria (Vido, Rhodope), of Romania (Dobruja) adhered to Islam not so much through persecution as through local interests and immigration of Turkish elements. With the fall of the Empire, once the exchange of populations between Greece and Turkey had been carried out (1923-24), the Muslim element was reduced to Albania and Thrace with scanty minorities in Romania and in Bulgaria, in Cyprus. The Latin Catholic rite was maintained in Istanbul and in the islands.

4. Contemporary history

Born on the ruins of the Ottoman Empire, the Republic of T. (in the new Turkish-Latin alphabet Türkiye Cumhuriyeti) was proclaimed by the Grand National Assembly of Ankara on 19 Oct. 1923. The first ten years of the Republic were a succession of revolutionary reforms according to the doctrine of Kemalism embodied by its president Mustafa Kemal who, in imposing the great changes that shook the foundations of the State and of society, availed himself of the great prestige derived from his victorious conduct of the war of independence. The abolition of the sultanate (1 Nov. 1922) was followed by the abolition of the caliphate (3 March 1924); the Constitution of 20 Apr. 1924 recognized Islam as the religion of the State, but an amendment of 1928 eliminated this provision; the secular orientation was more expressly sanctioned by the subsequent constitutional amendment of 1937. The new Civil Code (an almost integral translation of the Swiss Civil Code), which came into force in 1926, meant the abandonment of the Muslim personal statute, with the consequent abolition of polygamy and the equating of woman with man in the law of succession. The revolutionary innovations did not touch only external life (abolition of the fez and compulsory wearing of the European hat, prohibition of traditional dress for men of religion) and age-old rooted habits (abandonment of the Muslim calendar for the Gregorian calendar in 1925, Sunday as the holiday in place of Friday), but also affected the cultural heritage of the Turks, abruptly set upon a rapid Westernization. To this the abolition of the Arabic script and the introduction of the Turkish Latin alphabet ("new Turkish alphabet," yeni türk harfleri) ordered by law of 3 Nov. 1928 contributed profoundly. This meant in the final analysis turning one's back on the past, ignoring centuries of Arab-Turkish-Persian culture, a heritage of ideas expressed in a script that in a short time would have remained indecipherable to future generations. This reform too was carried to its extreme consequences and, if it caused a profound cultural crisis, it cannot be said to have been devoid of positive results in that it helped the spread of elementary education and awakened a movement of linguistic reform, which erred through excesses and oddities but has been of benefit in renewing the original Turkish heritage of the written language.

The Kemalist regime also successfully attended to laying the foundations of a national economy indispensable for effective political independence. Freed from the Capitulations by the Treaty of Lausanne of 1923, T. attended to its own banking organization, favored national industry, built roads and railways, liquidated the debts contracted with the Ottoman regime's foreign debts, completed the exchange of populations with the departure from Anatolia of about half a million Greeks and the settlement of one million Turks who had fled from Macedonia.

In foreign policy the Republic of T., having regained its national territory through the war of liberation of 1919-22, having obtained recognition of full independence and sovereignty through the Treaty of Lausanne (24 July 1923), succeeded in asserting itself with dignity on the international stage, in establishing good relations of friendship with the Balkan and Eastern countries, and in having the Lausanne Convention concerning the Straits amended in its favour through the new Convention of Montreux (1936). The friendship of neighbouring Russia, just as it had served the Turks at the time of the war of independence, continued up to this point to give them support in the diplomatic arena. As the Second World War drew near, T. had a sense of the instability of the European and Mediterranean balance and drew closer to France and England, concluding agreements that were perfected in 1939 and that brought the Republic material aid and the annexation of the territory of Antioch and Alexandretta, administered by France in the exercise of its mandate over Syria. During the war of 1939-45 T. remained neutral. Russia, which in 1939 had with rude insistence invited T. to join it in the defence of the passage through the Straits, receiving a firm refusal, desisted from its attitude after it found itself in 1941 involved in the conflict and allied with the allies of T.; but it remembered these aspirations in 1945, once the war was over, at the Allied conference of Potsdam, where it obtained the right to resume negotiations with T. in order to discuss the Turkish-Russian joint defence of the Straits and the prevailing interest of the Black Sea States in that waterway. When (in 1946) Russian pressure on the Turks, who remained firm in rejecting the claims of their northern neighbours, grew worse, the former allies and especially America took on the task of supporting T. with financial means, weapons and materials. This orientation determined the foreign policy of T. in the last years, up to its admission to the Atlantic Pact (Nov. 1951).

At home the Republic of T. continued its work of developing local resources, held back in the last years by the urgency of the needs of military defence and of the maintenance of about one million men under arms. The policy of the "single party" pursued by the People's Republican Party founded by Mustafa Kemal (called Atatürk from 1934 and deceased in 1938) gave way with the rise of the Democratic Party, which developed rapidly from 1945 onwards and in May 1950 obtained a strong majority in the political elections and won power. The Democratic Party sets itself the same national and foreign-policy aims as the previous party, but has found a better following in the country through a more democratic and liberal attitude, which has already led to the softening of some excesses of the Kemalist revolutionary provisions, including in religious matters, such as the ban, now withdrawn, on reciting the call to prayer in Arabic, and the reopening of some historical mausoleums closed in 1925.

The Catholic Church in the old Turkey was able to carry on its activity fairly freely, above all in numerous schools, thanks to the protection of the great powers, in particular of France. Outside Constantinople missionary activity has almost entirely collapsed. The coming to power of the Kemalists cost the lives of more than 200,000 Christians who perished in the deportations or in the massacres. The Treaty of Lausanne, signed on 24 July 1923, decreed for the Greeks the exchange of populations: all the Greeks, except those domiciled before Oct. 1918 in Constantinople and its surroundings, had to leave Turkey, while the Turks were obliged to emigrate from Greece. The Treaty of Lausanne offered no real guarantee for the Christians, who consequently began after its signature to abandon Turkey en masse. Already before that, 170,000 Christians had left Constantinople after the victory of the Kemalists at the end of 1922.

The principal reason for the hostility of Kemalist Turkey toward Christians lay in the fact that it wanted to be a national and independent State and therefore intended to eliminate as far as possible the minorities, whose protection had in the past so often offered the Powers a convenient pretext for interfering in the affairs of Turkey. The position of the Christian minorities that remained changed radically in comparison with the old Turkey, the new one being no longer a Muslim theocratic State, but a modern secular State. In a Muslim State Christians necessarily have their own legislation in matters of marriage and family, that is, their "personal statute". After the promulgation in 1925 of the new civil law, the same for all, the Government induced the Christian communities to renounce "spontaneously" the right to a personal statute still guaranteed by the Treaty of Lausanne (art. 42). An external sign of the secular character of the State was to be the prohibition issued in 1934 against wearing ecclesiastical dress in public (except for the supreme heads of religious communities). Christians were strongly disadvantaged in social life, which caused a continuous decrease of the Christian population. In 1927 there were counted in Turkey 257,814 Christians, of whom 178,546 were in Constantinople, out of a total population of 13,648,270, whereas in 1950 only 191,262 Christians remained out of ca. 19,000,000 inhabitants.

Catholics of all rites still number 21,950, resident for the most part in Constantinople. The following ecclesiastical circumscriptions exist: the apostolic vicariate of Constantinople with 7,700 faithful, which also includes most of Asia Minor except the territories of Smyrna and Trebizond, then the apostolic vicariate of Asia Minor, with residence at Smyrna, with ca. 1,000 Catholics and a territory of 171,606 sq km, and finally the mission sui iuris of Trebizond, erected in 1931, with 214 Catholics over a territory of 189,440 sq km. For the Catholics of the Eastern rite outside Constantinople (v.) there are no circumscriptions of their own. None of the numerous bishoprics existing in Asia Minor in the time of the old Turkey is any longer provided. There are still some Eastern Catholics and also dissidents in Cilicia, at Alexandretta and in the south-eastern corner of Turkey: at Diyarbekir, Mardin and in Tur 'Abdin. Armenians are found scattered in small groups in various cities.

In recent years the Turkish government has somewhat modified its position toward religion. The return to more democratic forms of government after the death of Kemal Atatürk and the growing danger of communism have induced the government to greater tolerance. In Feb. 1949 optional religious instruction was introduced in the State schools. The Catholic schools have somewhat improved their conditions and enjoy the confidence even of non-Catholics. It is symptomatic that the "Orthodox" Church was able on the feast of the Epiphany 1952 to perform once again the traditional ceremony of the blessing of the sea.

Guglielmo de Vries

IV. LITERATURE

The literature of the Turks of the present Republic of Turkey (from 1923) and of the Ottoman Empire (from 1300) has distant roots in their most ancient history, which it is worth recalling, even if only in broad outline, from its very origins.

The most ancient home of the Turks was in the mountainous region of the Tien-shan; from there, since prehistoric times, they pushed eastward to the borders of China and into its very territory, westward to the Caspian Sea and the Black Sea, and southward into Iran and India. The Huns who pressed upon China in the 4th-3rd centuries B.C. were Turks, and who later founded an ephemeral empire reaching as far as Europe (4th-5th centuries A.D.). Later, Chinese and Byzantine sources describe, in the 6th-8th centuries A.D., a vast empire of the Turks of Central Asia whose sovereigns are mentioned in inscriptions in the Turkish language found in present-day Mongolia, in the Orkhon valley, dated from the first half of the 8th century A.D., in which the ethnic name Türk appears for the first time in Turkish (corresponding to the T'uklû of the Chinese, Τύβρνοι of the Byzantines). The Orkhon inscriptions, in a particularly runic alphabet, besides being the most ancient linguistic monument of the Turks, are a remarkable literary document for their epic narration of the events of war and the expression of human feelings. The Türk or Göktürk worshipped a (Turkish) sky god called Tenri and other deities of the earth and waters. Their kingdom ended around 745 A.D. with the predominance of the likewise Turkish people of the Uighurs, who dominated in present-day Mongolia until 860 A.D. and even later, until the 13th century, formed ethnic and political aggregates further west in what is today called eastern or Chinese Turkestan.

The Uighurs, unlike the Göktürk, were influenced by the civilizations and religions of Asia, especially Buddhism and Manichaeism and also Nestorian Christianity. From them takes its name the abundant "Uighur" literature discovered in manuscripts of eastern Turkestan at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th, in the Turkish language, with various alphabets, among which the Uighur derived from Aramaic through Sogdian prevails. This literature is not original; for the most part it consists of translations of Buddhist and Manichaean religious and moral texts; the effort to adapt the Turkish language to new concepts is considerable; but Chinese, Sanskrit and Iranian terms are often encountered.

A new phase in the literary evolution of the Turks begins in the 10th century through contact with the Muslims and with Arabo-Persian culture, into which the majority of the Turks rapidly entered following their conversion to the Muslim religion. The first Turkish people to enter Islam en masse in the 10th century was the mixed one of the Qarluq, Türkmen, Oğuz settled between eastern Turkestan and present-day Russian Turkestan and dominated by the Karakhanid dynasty (10th-12th centuries). To one of their sovereigns reigning at Kashgar in 1070 A.D. was dedicated the poem Kutadgu Bilik ("The Science that Gives Happiness"), a verbose collection of political, moral and religious teachings, the work of Jûsuf Hâğib (Jûsuf the minister). In it Arabic and Persian words are encountered, but in reduced proportion; subsequently the Arabo-Persian influence prevails and even the Uighur alphabet yields to the dominant use of the Arabic alphabet.

Turkish literature of Muslim inspiration develops especially through the work of mystical confraternities in Turkestan; Ahmed Jesevi (d. c. 1166) gives expression to religious feeling in short poems collected in a divân that had great diffusion in Central Asia until recent times. To the same Islamic religious current belong the short poem Jûsuf ve Zuleihā by a certain 'Alī (13th century?) and the Qīṣaṣ ul-Enbījā ("Tales of the Prophets") by Rabgūzī (early 14th century) in Khwarezmian. To the early years of the 14th century is ascribed the only Christian Turkish linguistic document of notable extent, the Codex Cumanicus, a Latin-Persian-Turkish lexicon with Christian religious texts in Turkish (the Creed, the Pater Noster, hymns to the Virgin) collected by Italian and German missionaries and merchants on the northern coasts of the Black Sea (Genoese colonies).

The empire of the Seljuqs, from Central Asia to Īrān and Anatolia (11th-13th centuries), while it was an instrument of ethnic Turkification of vast territories and shifted Turkish domination much further west, did not greatly affect the development of Turkish culture; Persian then prevailed as the literary and chancery language. With the Mongol invasion of the 13th century and with the new political arrangement that then took shape in the Turkish world from Central Asia to the shores of the Aegean, an arrangement not substantially modified by the Mongol invasion of Tamerlane, three linguistic-literary movements became differentiated, whose development has continued to the present day: 1) in Central Asia a literature in Eastern Turkish (improperly called Chagatai) took shape, which in the 15th century produced mainly religious works (the Mi'raġnāme, an account of Muhammad's ascent to heaven; the Tazhīrat ul-Avlijā, a collection of Muslim hagiography translated from Persian) and toward the end of the same century reached the height of artistic expressiveness with the poet and prose writer 'Alī Šir Nevā'i in the city of Herāt during the rule of Ḥusajn Bajqara, a patron of letters and the arts. To Chagatai literature also belong the Mongol sultan of India Bābur (author of lyric compositions and of an autobiographical history in prose called Bāburnāme) and the Uzbek ruler of Khiva Abū 'l-Gāzī Bahādur Ḥān (1603-63), author of histories of the Turks and Turkomans.

The scant literary activity of the Turks in Central Asia under Russian and Chinese rule now expresses itself in various modern varieties of Eastern Turkish (Uzbek, Türki). 2) In the region of the Caucasus and western Persia, the Southern Turkish called āzerī (a form of Oghuz-Turkoman Turkish with Eastern influences) lives on in many dialects, and it also established itself in literature in the songbooks of Nesīmī, Ḥabībī (15th century), Ḥatā'ī (the poetic pseudonym of Ismā'il, founder of the Safavid state in Persia) and Fuẓūlī (16th century), and had interferences with the early development of the Turkish literature of Anatolia. In āzerī literature is to be included the so-called Book of Dede Qorqut, an anonymous collection of Oghuz or Turkoman epic tales, most remarkable for their power and expressive effectiveness, founded on ancient traditions but redacted in the form in which they are known to us in the 15th century. 3) In Anatolia and European Turkey, in the territory of the State which from 1300 expanded to form the Ottoman Empire, absorbing the Empire of Byzantium (1453) and the Mamluk Sultanate of Syria and Egypt (1516), the Turkish literature called Ottoman ('oṭmānī') unfolded for six centuries, distinguished by its particularities of language (Southern Turkish evolved outside Eastern Turkish influences), environment, and mixture of culture and ethnic elements.

Arabic and Persian models (the latter especially in lyric poetry, romances and novellas) are predominant in Ottoman literature, which nevertheless is not entirely devoid of originality. The learned lyric, called divān edebījāti "literature of the songbooks", for which Bāqī (1526-1600), Nef'ī (1582-1636) and Nedīm (1681-1730) are celebrated, describes in short compositions, called qaṣīde, spring or autumn, commemorates men and events, praises and extols sultans and ministers as bestowers of benefits; in other very brief ones, called ġazel, it develops the theme of love with refined concettismo and rhetorical artifices, often shadowing forth in the symbols of love (wine, the cupbearer, the beloved and her charms) a complicated figuration of mystical love which, if it is sincere in Fuẓūlī (16th century) and a few others, is not easily recognized in the throng of imitators. The genuineness of religious feeling, outside of metaphors, made more eloquent by the simplicity of a language close to popular usage, is characteristic of a few poets such as Jūnus Emre (13th-14th centuries) and others who constitute a distinct current in Turkish literature, the so-called tekke edebīyātī (literature of the convents or confraternities); this too, however, in time degenerates into excesses and loses sincerity. Another literary current is the semi-learned one of the storytellers or minstrels (the 'aṭīq called sāz šā'irleri edebījāti), close to the people in language and intended above all for singing. Nor has the vein of popular poetry, which has touches and motifs of true and genuine art, ever failed in the deepest stratum of tradition.

Ottoman poems sing of the romantic subjects already treated by the Persians (the exploits of Alexander, the loves of Jūsuf and Zulejhā, of Meġnūn and Lejla) or set forth mystical teachings (the Ġarībnāme of 'Aṭīq Pasha) or extol the life of the Prophet (risāle-i moḥammedījīh of Jaziġī-Oġlu Mehmed, of the 16th century). A small masterpiece of this genre, simple and of heartfelt religiosity, is the Mevlīd of Sulejmān Čelebi (d. 1421), still recited today in Turkey. Almost the last fruit of the Persian mystical-romantic poetic tradition is the short poem Hūm ve 'Afg ("Beauty and Love") by Šejh Gālib (18th century).

Ottoman prose, very artificial in language and style, numbers works of history, some political treatises (a notable one by Qočī Bej of the 17th century), a bibliography by Kātib Čelebi and a famous travel account (sejāhānāme) by Evlijā Čelebi (both of the 17th century).

The most recent Turkish literature, from the 19th century to our own day, is characterized by an ever closer approach to the sources of Western thought and art and in a certain sense passes through the same phases as the political evolution of the Ottoman Empire and of the Republic of Turkey that arose on its ruins. Toward the middle of the 19th century, while the Ottoman Empire carried out the reforms (tanẓīmāt) which, however, would not save it from disintegration through the detachment of the subject peoples (Greeks, Serbs, Bulgarians, Romanians, Albanians, Arabs), the Turks learned foreign languages, above all French, came to study in Europe, reformed the schools, gave development to the press, acquired awareness of their ethnic individuality, once submerged in the broader Islamic or Ottoman community. The first affirmers of the new direction are Ahmed Vefiq Pasha (1823-91), Sinâsi (1826-71), Namîq Kemâl (1840-88), Semsuddîn Sâmi Fraşeri (1850-1904). But it is still a period of predominantly Oriental inspiration, at least in pure literature, whose most illustrious master at that time is 'Abd ul-Haqq Hâmid (1852-1937).

In correspondence with the political revolution of 1908-1909, at the beginning of this century there occurs a further step toward the renewal of the sources of inspiration and of the means of expression; its promoters are the philosopher and poet Zîjâ Gök Alp (1876-1924), the short-story writer 'Ömer Seifüddîn (1884-1920), the writer Hâlide Edîb, the novelists Ya'qûb Qadrî and Reşâd Nûri, the poet Mehmed Emîn (1869-1924). The Western-type novel is introduced into Turkish literature, essays in theatrical works are produced (until a century ago unknown to the Turks as to the Arabs and Persians) through imitation or adaptation of European models, and the language is renewed. The Kemalist revolutionary reform of 1923-38 brings Turkish culture to its definitive Westernization, to the abandonment of the Arabic alphabet in favor of Turkish-Latin (1928), to the abolition of the teaching of Arabic and Persian, and to the secularization of education. Of the effect of these reforms it can be said for now only that they have overturned the literary field, have brought about a cultural and spiritual crisis, and do not seem to exclude the reconciliation of the present with the imperishable values of the past.

Ettore Rossi

V. ART

For some time now, the opinion widespread in the Western world that Turkish art is merely a marginal aspect of Islamic art (v.) has been rejected in Turkey, since it received, rather than supplied, contributions to the centers of Muslim culture, variously identified for the individual arts in Iran, Syria, Egypt, and India itself. The sources of Turkish art have been pointed out in the very regions from which all the other Central Asian civilizations of the modern world drew, and Turkish influences on the art of other Muslim peoples have been documented. It must be acknowledged, however, that the aids of specialized studies and the knowledge of probative documents are still scanty, so that to this day it is not possible to express a definitive judgment on the subject.

The evaluation of the artistic genius of the Turks must first of all take into account the civilization they expressed before their migrations and their conversion to Islam. It is certain that in their earliest seats in Central Asia they reached a high level of culture, with frequent exchanges and contributions to the Scythian and Sarmatian civilization toward the west, and to the Hindu and Chinese civilizations toward the east. The cycle of the twelve symbolic animals representing the months of the year (mouse, ox, tiger, hare, dragon, serpent, horse, ram, monkey, bird, dog and boar), and the theme so frequent in carved friezes of the struggle between two wild animals, seem, for example, to have to be assigned to primitive Turkish art: from this, with varying meanings, they then passed to all the figurative civilizations of Asia, including the Byzantine one.

Naturally, after the conversion, the ideological content and the prescriptions of the Muslim religion determined new orientations for Turkish art as well. The injunction not to depict living persons, for example, forced sculptors and painters to abandon portraiture and the figurative motifs of human reality, in order to devote themselves solely to exquisitely decorative creations; it accentuated the process of abstract stylization of zoomorphic and phytomorphic symbols and, in miniature painting, of the human type itself. Similarly, after the conquest of Asia Minor, it was not without consequences the contact with the evolved Byzantine architecture. There is no lack of examples of ancient Christian churches adapted as mosques (among the most interesting buildings, the Guez Han church near Antalya, whose primitive structure and plan can still be identified, and the church of Kaleh near Alaya, with the typical Byzantine dome inserted into a system of coastal fortifications).

But civil architecture remained faithful, even in its various functional solutions, to the tradition of the dwelling house with external loggias and overhangs; and even decorative art knew no deviations and did not let itself be drawn outside the orbit of tradition. Only in the Rococo period, through infatuation with French culture, and in the 19th century, through a necessary opening toward the Western world determined also by political reasons, did the formal process of Turkish art deviate from its consistent and traditional line.

The positive contribution of the Turks to Islamic architecture appears substantial already in the Ghaznavid and Seljuk periods, in Persia (11th-12th centuries). The scheme of the médersa (madrasah, medrese in Turkish, a building in which the Muslim school was housed with a central hall or courtyard and subsidiary rooms for teachers and pupils, generally built on a cruciform plan, with four large fıstan, or atria, usually placed at the ends of the main axes), was introduced by the Turks into Persia and Asia Minor, and then spread to all Muslim countries. The surviving médersas in Turkey, recently converted into mosques, present, unlike those of other regions, large portals in carved marble. A typical example of Turkish influence in Egypt is the mosque of Ibn Tûlûn in Cairo.

The group of giami and médersas most artistically remarkable dates to the 14th-16th centuries. Particularly interesting as Anatolian products (with courtyard) are the Ulu Giami of Ishak Bey at Manisa (c. 1402), the Yeşil Giami of Antalya, the Ulu Giami of Birgeh and Tireh; from which descend the giami and médersas of Sivas, Niksar, Divrigi, Akşehir, Van, Konia. The Isa Bey of Seljuk (1375) can instead be considered the most perfectly preserved example of a mosque without courtyard. Variants of a more evolved type, which would determine the complex form with several Ihsan and domes, are presented by the mosque of Aqsunqur (1346).

In European territory the most distinguished monument of this period is the Üç Şerefel of Adrianople (1410-13). Other Anatolian centers rich in architectural works throughout the surrounding territory are Balat (Miletus), Bergama (Pergamon) and Selçuk (Ephesus). The ritual concept of teaching and the immobility of religious prescriptions soon made the system of constructions uniform, which did not depart from the fundamental types just mentioned until the appearance of Selim (d. 1578). A brilliant artist, he knew how to adapt his great culture to an intimate need for originality: competing with the masterpieces of Byzantine art, he succeeded in creating a new type of religious building, making agile, through a harmonious dialectic of voids and solids, the heavy wall masses and the domes. Among the major constructions of Selim (more than 300), one recalls the Suleimaniye (1550-56) and the mosque of Shahzâde in Constantinople, as well as the Selimiye of Adrianople (1570-74), highly articulated in its five vertical registers, with great clustered pillars, galleries of columns, matronea, loggias, which exalt the space circumscribed by the dome in a multiplicity of perspective variations, characterized by airy soaring.

Civil architecture, in the period of greatest splendor of the Ottoman Empire, was enriched with sumptuous palaces, such as the Old Seraglio of Istanbul, which from the Çinili Köşk (1466) to the Baghdad Köşk (1639) engaged the activity of the best Turkish architects and decorators. Public fountains (sebil), caravanserais, bazaars, baths (particularly famous those of Eski and of Yeny Kaplıça near Brussa) constitute the conspicuous heritage of a remarkable and original architectural civilization.

As with architecture, so too for the decorative arts and particularly for miniature painting (the only language through which Turkish painters could express themselves for many centuries), the original themes and forms must be sought in Central Asia, and the connections appear close not only with the art of the great Persian masters (Behzat at Mani), but also with Chinese and Indian miniaturists. The advent of the Turkish-Mongol Empire, which would reach its apogee in the 13th century, coincides with the first great flowering of Turkish decorative art, particularly in the centers of Bukhara, Herat, Samarkand.

The miniaturist of the History of the Mongols, written by Reshidduddin (14th century), is almost certainly Turkish, and the same supreme Persian miniaturist Behzat seems to be of Turkish origin. Once Anatolia was occupied, Konia became the most important center of the new Empire, and was distinguished by architects and painters such as Tebrizî and Yavakî, and by miniaturists such as Fethi, Fasihi and Aynuddevlâ (also a portraitist).

But it is in the Ottoman period, when the center of cultural radiation moved to Brussa, that Turkish miniature painting reached its apogee, with a series of masters not inferior to the Persian and Hindu ones.

From Sinan bey, a painter who left a portrait of Mohammed II, competing with Giovanni Bellini, to his pupil Bursali Ahmet, to Mirza Ali and Nakkaşhe Osman, authors of the 110 illustrations of the Hunermannâ (1577), to Baba Nakkaşhe, who seems to have studied in Venice in the workshop of Paolo Veronese, to Ahmet, called Nakshi, to Mustafa called Sai, whose work is entirely lost; to Haydar called Nigârî, all of the 16th century, one arrives in the second half of the 18th century at a last vigorous affirmation of creative originality with Abdulgelil Şelebi, called Levnî, considered by many the greatest miniaturist of all time.

Under the reign of Mahmûd II, in the 18th century, a conscious shift toward the positions of European culture took place and the historical value of pictorial documentation was admitted, overcoming the inveterate Islamic prejudice.

Turkish art had differentiated itself from that of the other Muslim regions from its very origins precisely through its innate and vigorous realism: so that in the search for expression the mark of the Turkish artist appears almost crude compared, for example, with that of a Persian painter. Once the restrictions were removed, which only exceptionally the great masters of the past had not observed, Turkish painting would create vigorous portraits (the most beautiful of which, in the 18th century, is perhaps the Ahmed III of Levnî). Then, with the introduction of oil painting, there would be in this field a whole flowering of works of very notable interest, such as the anonymous portraits of Abdulhamid I and of other princes, preserved in the Topkapı Museum in Istanbul.

However, it is only later, during the reigns of Abdulmegid (1839-61) and above all Abdulaziz (1861-76), himself a painter and collector, that the definitive encounter with European culture takes place. Artists such as Sceker Ahmet Pasciâ (1841-1907), Suleyman Seyit (1842-1913), Osman Hamdi (1840-1910), Hodgia Ali Riza (1864-1935), Huseyin Zekayî Pasciâ (1860-1919), Ahmet Ziya Akbulut (1869-1938), underwent in turn the influence of Courbet, Corot, Fantin-Latour, Renoir. Subsequently the modes of Impressionism became established, thanks to the portraitists Ibrahim Tchali (1882), Reyhaman Duran (1886); to the landscape painters Nazmi Ziya (1881-1937), Hikmet Onat (1885); while the solitary Ruhi (1883-1913) worked, a popular realist unaware of Western influence, and the much-discussed official painter Huseyin Avni Lifgi (1889-1927), a pupil of Cormon and imitator of Puvis de Chavannes.

The new generations have produced Muhittine Sâbât (1903-37), a promising master prematurely deceased, a group of interpreters of the national folklore among whom Turgut Zâym (1904) and Malik Akşel (1903) stand out, as well as the popularizers of French Cubism and Italian Futurism such as Ali Avni and Zeki Kodgiameni. These, together with others, founded in 1928 the so-called "Group D", with the intention of renewing Turkish art and bringing it abreast of Western developments.

Turkish participation in the major international exhibitions was intense in the second postwar period, especially in London, Paris, Turin (1949), Amsterdam.

For the minor arts see in particular the entry TAPPETO. The craft of ceramics flourished in the past. In Constantinople, the interior of the mosque of Rustem Pasha is entirely covered with fine ceramic tiles.

Riccardo Averini

VI. SCHOOL SYSTEM

It must be noted that in T. a true school system, worthy of the name, began to exist only with the advent of the republican regime. Before that, in fact, there existed at the Ministry of Public Education neither the appropriate directorates for the various branches of instruction, nor offices for libraries and museums. The State subsidized some type of school, but without fixed rules; it had not taken up the education of the masses as its own concern and left every initiative in matters of education to the families, which, according to their financial means, turned to some religious figure who kept school in some mosque or in its vicinity. The authorities responsible for education were at that time: the head of religion; the "E'caf", a kind of administrative director; the heads of the religious minorities, the authorities on whom the foreign schools depended, the representatives of the individual bodies and, lastly, the Ministry.

The Republic immediately brought a breath of novelty. As early as 3 April 1924, even before the Grand National Assembly approved the new Constitution (30 April 1924), a fundamental law on education sanctioned the principle of free and compulsory primary education; in 1928 Article 2 of the Constitution, which recognized Islam as the religion of the State, was repealed, the use of the Latin alphabet was imposed, and the study of Arabic and Persian was abolished in secondary schools, where only Turkish was to be taught; in 1931 Turks were forbidden to receive primary education in foreign schools; the Ministry, moreover, took over for itself the directing functions of the school organization and supervision over everything that smacks of culture and civilization (libraries, post-school institutions, publications and archaeological collections).

At present the schools are divided into 7 types: a) Nursery school. - Created in 1908, it immediately underwent substantial improvements, especially through the training of new and more numerous teachers, better prepared for the task to be performed.

b) Primary school. - Of 5 years. Those that already existed in the cities and large centers were restored, brought up to date and multiplied; but particular thought was to be given to the villages and the countryside, where the rural population was abandoned to itself. Therefore rural schools were opened everywhere, intended to raise the level of the great masses of peasants and shepherds. Indeed, it was intended to give these schools a preeminent position, because the greater part of the Turkish population is rural. And in order to have within a short time a sufficient number of suitable teachers, there were instituted in 1936 the schools called "Village Institutes", special courses of 8 months to prepare rural educators. These must be chosen from among the peasants who leave military service with at least the rank of corporal, are preferably owners of a plot of land and possess the requisites and qualities required for the mission to be carried out. These graduates must concern themselves with every kind of instruction and agricultural work pertaining to the village where they teach, and supervise that the work of viticulture, gardening, etc. is carried out well by everyone, according to scientific methods, so as truly to procure the well-being of the population. To the primary school also belong the day and evening courses instituted in special premises for the state education of adults.

c) Middle school. - Of 3 years, whose instruction comprises: Turkish language, history and geography, mathematics, physics and chemistry with notions of natural sciences and hygiene, calligraphy, music, gymnastics and military culture. Other types of middle schools are specialized for preparation for the exercise of arts and crafts, or commerce, or for clerical employment.

d) Lyceum. - Of 3 years: one enters it from the middle school, after an examination. It comprises: literature, philosophy, psychology, history and geography, mathematics, physics and chemistry, natural sciences, foreign languages, gymnastics and military culture. After the ordinance of 30 Nov. 1940, the study of Latin was introduced in the middle school and the lyceum to prepare young people for classical studies.

e) Normal school. - It is parallel to the lyceum and trains future teachers for the primary school. It also includes the types of specialized schools for the training of teachers of music and drawing, manual work and gymnastics for both primary and middle instruction.

f) Vocational schools. - They are placed under the direct dependence of a special directorate at the Ministry of Public Education. Entrusted at first to foreign specialists, they are now conducted by Turkish teachers. Their types and orientations vary according to the importance of the professions.

g) University education. - University instruction, now more or less established according to the model of the Western countries and of America, comprises several Institutes:

1. In Ankara: a) the University, established there after the transfer of the capital from Constantinople, which comprises: the Faculty of Letters, History and Geography, founded in 1935; the Faculty of Law, founded in 1925; the Faculty of Political Sciences, one of the best-equipped and most modern Turkish institutions of higher education, which traces its origins to 1848, to the School of Civil Service created by the Ottoman government to train State officials; b) the "Gazi" Institute of Physical Education, one of the most advanced in Europe; c) the Higher School of Agriculture; d) the National Conservatory, which brings together the principal musical disciplines.

2. In Istanbul: the University, established in 1925 through the reorganization of the ancient University of Constantinople. It now comprises: the Faculty of Medicine, well specialized, with the School of Dentistry, the School of Obstetrics and the Cancer Institute attached to it; the Faculty of Sciences, with the School of Pharmacy attached to it; the Faculty of Letters, the most important of its kind in the Eastern world, for literature not only Turkish but also Arabic and Iranian, with the Institute of Turcology, the Institute of Pedagogy and the School of Foreign Languages attached to it; the Faculty of Law, in which Roman law is also taught, for which a course in the Latin language was established in Istanbul and Ankara; the Faculty of Economics for commercial and financial activities. - See plates LXI-LXII.

Celestino Testore