Millet iddiası, siyasetin ahlakileştirilmesi: Terakkiperver Cumhuriyet Partisi liderlerinin otobiyografilerinde meşrutiyet anlatıları

In this dissertation, I examine how autobiographical writing becomes a peculiar political space for Kazım Karabekir, Ali Fuat Cebesoy and Rauf Orbay, three major leaders of the Turkish War of Independence and the Progressive Republican Party (PRP). I unpack how their autobiographies have continued to shape contemporary public de-bates on political legitimacy by redefining rulership, patriotism and the national character (milli karakter). The analysis of their autobiographies transcends the scholarly works that either view PRP as a peripheral opposition against a top-down modernist center or overemphasize the Unionist political legacy. Focusing on autobiographies instead of their party program reveals the most neglected aspect of their ideological legacy within the existing literature — an idiosyncratic form of elitist conservative nationalism along with this Unionist legacy. I offer an innovative interdisciplinary approach that expands the political science discipline with anthropological and literary analyses by demonstrating the centrality of contestations over nationalist morality in shaping the right-wing conservative politics in contemporary Turkey. I analyze PRP's legacy by looking at how these autobiographical texts extensively build on moralizing discourses that presume a form of virtue specific to the Turkish nation—national character. Through an intertextual politics the authors claim to embody a nationalist morality that rests on character traits and dispositions that were displayed during the Independence War. I suggest that moralizing discourses ultimately reframe a complex set of political disagreements of the time in terms of character and personality — those who are worthy of representing and governing the nation, vs. those who are not.