A descriptive study on the Turkish translations of La Bannière Bleue within the context of "national historical memory construction" and historiography

The subject of this dissertation is to analyze and describe the role played in the "construction of national historical memory" by the translations in the Constitutional and Republican Periods of the historical novel entitled La Bannière Bleue (Paris, 1876-77) by Léon Cahun, which played an important role in introducing the concepts of "Turk" and "Turkism" to the Western public opinion and in Turkish historiography. The prominent features of Turkish nationalism in two different historical periods allow historical researchers as well as those coming from other disciplines to make a conceptual inquiry and description. Approaching the translations of La Bannière Bleue published in two different historical periods in terms of the role they play in the formation of "Turkish nationalism" and "Turkish historical memory" also means describing the formation of "a culture repertoire." In this context, the translated texts in Arabic characters dated 1912 (Gök Sancak) and 1913 (Gök Bayrak) were determined as the Second Constitutional Period, and the first translated text in latin characters (Gök Bayrak) dated 1933 was determined as the research and examination objects of the text within the scope of the Republic period. Since the sources of this historical novel of Léon Cahun, in which he tells about "the oldest Turks" in the context of Central Asian Turkish communities, are historical sources, its acceptability as a historiographic text has been tried to be questioned. The act of "remembering" is "the reconstruction of the past with the help of data borrowed from the present" (Halbwachs 2017, 66). It has been examined by some historiography and memory researchers that historiography can be seen as an act of "reconstructing, reviving, reconstructing, reinterpreting". The act of "reconstructing the past" as an act of remembering brings with "a past that will be endlessly re-described" (cf. Jenkins 1997, 76). Therefore, it become significant to question the fact that the "reinterpreted" past gives birth to "reconstructed histories/pasts" with every different experience. When this fiction is acted upon, it becomes clear that the "construction of national historical memory" in the Turkish target system is an observable phenomenon through translated historiographic texts as well as through historiographic texts. Therefore, it is possible to talk about a "translational historiography repertoire" that approaches and reinterprets the same Turkish history differently. Questioning the different reflections of Turkism/Turkish nationalism through translation in the Ottoman-Republican systems made it necessary for translators to be described as historiographers through translated texts. In both periods mentioned, the traces of how the "national historical memory" was reconstructed through Necip Asım and Galip Bahtiyar, who can be seen as representatives of Turkism, are mentioned. It has also been observed that in the translations of La Bannière Bleue in these two periods, translators translated historiographical texts for "different purposes". It has also been questioned in the context of the thesis how translated historiography texts in the OttomanRepublican systems turned into a "repertoire" in the "construction of national historical memory" and occupied a place in the polysystem. This "transformation" in the OttomanRepublican systems has been approached in terms of the "norms" that determine the translators' decisions within the translation of Gök Sancak and Gök Bayrak. How the textual-linguistic material choices presented by the aforementioned texts contribute to the "construction of national historical memory" or how they prove this "reconstruction" has been evaluated through examples. In the light of "operational norms", it is described by questioning how different "purpose and conditioning" in both periods construct two different "national historical memories" and reveal two different "Turkish historiographic texts". Translations of the historical novel La Bannière Bleue, especially the "Turkist" discourse adopted in the Ottoman-Republican systems, have an important place in terms of their "reconstruction" in line with the political conditions of the period. Considering that La Bannière Bleue is a historiographic text centered on "Turkish nationalism", it can be said that it also reshaped the "Turkish historiographic repertoire" in the Turkish target system. It is also important to examine the features of "reconstructed / interpreted / described / qualified" Turkish historiography in the light of these translations, in terms of presenting a method and approach to other "imported" historiographic texts in the relevant field. Keywords: Historiography, reconstruction, Turkish nationalism, construction of national historical memory, translation historiography repertoire, translation norms