Popular history and historiography in Turkey (1915-1950)

Popular history and popular historiography emerged in the Turkish historiography following the year 1908 when the 2nd Constitutional Monarchy was declared has been used as a tool to create a certain perception of political culture, particularly in the last 15 years. Popular historiography was at war with the official history discourse during the same period whereas, during the single party era, was rather on the side of the official history. In the introduction section, a concise story of the relationship between the powers controlling the workings of the state in Ottoman to Republic Turkey with first the history and then the popular history is told. After examining the academical aspects of the popular history and historiography, a philosophical discussion of issues we feel were necessary to add, namely conceptualisation, the role of the popular history in the engineering of the political culture, and the reasons why some popular historians were not supporting the Turkish Revolution and official history is included. In the first part of the study, development processes of such concepts as "history," "historian" and "historiography" are broadly explained. Even though the veterans of the social sciences are not in consensus in depicting these concepts due to the parametric differences in reading the transformations dependent on time and place, there is no doubt that going over such differences would enrich our repertoire within the context of our subject matter. Second part of the study comprises the examination of the historiography in Ottoman State in two chronologically separate periods. Literature study on historians and their works revealed that a transition from a social organisation supported by myths in the early Ottoman period to a model comprising national motifs despite the existence of centrifugal forces in play in the late Ottoman periods. Within this context, the ambivalent sway of the historians and history during the Foundation Period between the Ottoman heritage and the values adopted and lauded by the new state called "the republic" are depicted. In the third and final part of the study, in parallel with the formation of the "Official History" discourse, such points as the organisations, tools, areas of interest and enthusiasts of popular historiography, biographies of the popular historians and whether they were instrumental in the engineering of the political culture are scrutinised. It will be a significant contribution of this part which tallies strongly with our main topic that it may effect the classification of the subject matter popular history particularly focuses and the correction of continuous errors in biographies.