Kemalist historiography

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Kemalist history textbook, used between 1931 and 1941.

Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, founder of the Republic of Turkey, whose cult of personality is the main influence on Kemalist historiography.

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Kemalist historiography (Turkish: Kemalist tarihyazımı) is a narrative of history mainly based on a six-day speech delivered by Mustafa Kemal [Atatürk]^[a] in 1927,^[1][2] promoted by the political ideology of Kemalism, and influenced by Atatürk's cult of personality.^[3] It asserts that the Republic of Turkey represented a clean break with the Ottoman Empire, and that the Republican People's Party did not succeed the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP).

Kemalist historiography views Ottoman traditions as an obstacle to the introduction of Westernising political reforms, and instead adopts the heritage of pre-Islamic Turks, which it considers to be naturally progressive, culturally pure and uncorrupted. The historiography magnifies Mustafa Kemal's role in the World War I and Turkish War of Independence, and omits or attempts to justify the suffering of religious and ethnic minorities during the late Ottoman Empire and the Turkish Republic, often viewing them as a security threat to the state, or rebels instigated by external powers.

The mainstream historians of this historiography were centrist Kemalists particularly İsmail Hakkı Uzunçarşılı and Enver Ziya Karal, left-wing Kemalists such as Niyazi Berkes and Mustafa Akdağ, right-wing Kemalists like Osman Turan, it was also adopted by Western historians such as Bernard Lewis who took on Kemalist ideas as it is.^[4]

Today, Kemalist historiography is embraced and further developed by Turkish neo-nationalism (Ulusalcılık),^[4][b] and sometimes by anti-Kemalist conservatism and Islamism, especially in the case of Armenian Genocide denial.^[6]

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