A sembol of Turkey's westernization adventure: Hat revolution

Modernization efforts in Turkey dates back to the Ottoman Empire in the 18th century reform movement. The modernization studies, which started in the Ottoman period, gathered Ottoman intellectuals around three views in general. While the first view defends that modernization movements in the Ottoman Empire should be taken by innovations in science and technique while keeping the traditions in mind, the second view has seen the western civilization as a whole and advocated modernization by taking both the traditions and techniques of the West together. The third view was that all kinds of modernization were wrong and they wanted to protect the traditions in every field. The intellectuals who had a second opinion during the Republic period dominated the politics of the country and started to implement westernization in a downward manner. For the aim of the targeted civilization; political, administrative, legal systems, especially from education to culture elements in all areas were eliminated, rather western-style procedures were introduced. One of the methods introduced in the Westernization is the hat revolution. The necessity of wearing hats covered by the costumes of costumes led to serious debates, protests and trials. This study, which is almost a symbol of Turkey's modernization process will be analyzed hats and Westernization process in his background.