Modern History

Reprinted from the Middle East Studies Association Bulletin, Winter 2000 (with changes in orthography to HTML standards).
Copyright 2000 by the Middle East Studies Association of North America
Ismet Inönü: The Making of a Turkish Statesman, by Metin Heper. 270 pages, bibliography, index, photographs. Leiden: Brill, 1998. $85.00 (Cloth) ISBN 90-04-09919-0

This is a belated biography in English of the Turkish Republic’s most accomplished politician, written by one of its most prolific and versatile social scientists. It does not pretend to be a social scientific work nor an analytic narrative of Inönü (1884-1973) and his times: the author modestly refers to the study as an essay. He elevates Inönü’s political career and makes a case for the crucial role that the ‘Second Man’ played in the country’s political transformations and traditions.

Ismet Inönü consists of an unequivocal acclamation of Inönü as a principled politician guided by a deep-seated commitment to democracy and secularism, and as a responsible, trustworthy, tolerant, industrious, and meticulous individual. Heper engages in an illustration of the distinctive personal and statesmanly qualities of Inönü with a medley of examples from his published letters and memoirs, press articles, and contemporary and retrospective appraisals of both Turkish and foreign scholars, journalists, and statesmen.

This is not an authorized biography. Heper does not utilize evidence deriving from private or exclusive access to interviews or documents. Nor is it a definitive biography. The recently catalogued Inönü papers, the presidential archives, and military and parliamentary documents should provide a wealth of additional information on Inönü’s life and career. Significantly, however, this is a biography that serves the useful purpose of reclaiming Inönü from the shadow of Atatürk and positing him as a statesman who shaped Turkish policymaking and politics not only from the late thirties to the early seventies, but also during the Atatürk era. Heper argues that credit due to Inönü has generally been accorded to Atatürk. “As Atatürk was not interested in day-to-day government, nor indeed in the economy nor in every foreign affairs issue,” writes Heper, “Inönü gradually concentrated all executive power in his hands” (p. 20).

Authoritarianism, according to the author, was not an end for Inönü but a means to an end. Thus, Heper offers a charitable appraisal of Inönü’s assumption of the title Millî Sef (“national chief”) during his single-party rule from 1938 to 1945. It was part and parcel of the ‘Inönü project,’ a grand plan toward multi-party democracy under a strong state that, the author suggests, was guided by Inönü’s conscience more than internal and external political conjunctures. Inönü emerges as the consummate politician who afforded respect to formal political procedures and institutions in the post-War period and a guardian of democracy even when out of power: “Inönü himself, of course, always acted responsibly whether in power or opposition” (pp. 194-95). As Heper further demonstrates, Inönü remained aloof from the people and advocated state autonomy, even as he harbored a commitment to the interests of a seamless nation as conceived by the bureaucratic elite. The author concludes that Inönü was respected but not liked. The antipathy is difficult to appreciate given Heper’s forbearance in addressing Inönü’s role in controversial, arbitrary, and unpopular policies.

In addition to distinguished service to the Ottoman government, Ismet Inönü served as founding father, general chief-of-staff, foreign minister, prime minister, president, and opposition leader in the new Turkey for over fifty years. This book is a potent reminder that his life and times deserve close study and reappraisal. Further research on Inönü is likely to corroborate much of the secondary evidence that Heper has compiled in representing Inönü.

Hasan Kayali
University of California, San Diego
Britain and the Revolt in Cyprus, 1954-1959, by Robert Holland. 347 pages, map, illustrations, bibliography, index. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998. $85.00 (Cloth) ISBN 0-19-820538-4.
Britain and the Revolt in Cyprus provides a rich account of the events that surrounded the revolt against British Colonial rule in Cyprus during 1954-60. The author draws heavily from the Public Record Office of the United Kingdom, the National Archives, Private Papers of high level British and American officials, UK parliamentary papers, memoirs of the major players, and news sources. The account of events is detailed to the hour of the day covering six years with a brief history of British rule between 1878-1955. At times, this narrative is full of important information on how the British administrators tried to sort out the complex chain of events on the island while, at other times, Holland loses the reader in a monotonous retelling of day-to-day events. The book starts slowly and does not take on an international flavor, providing an assessment of events within the context of regional and international politics, until chapter 5. Towards the end, however, the reader is provided a fascinating analysis of power politics being played out between the domestic and external political actors.

Among the valuable insights provided by Holland one finds how Turkey and Greece took control of the Cyprus agenda (chapter 11), how the Turkish Foreign Minister frequently influenced British government’s policies over the island (chapters 10 and 11), and how, contrary to popular myth, Grivas and Makarios competed for hegemony in Greek Cypriot politics. The book provides much important information, but it has some shortcomings. For example, although diplomatic relations between Greece and Turkey are so crucial to the author’s argument on Greek-Turkish power politics in the region, he brushes aside the issue by stating, “the complex details of Greco-Turkish diplomacy can only be skated over here” (p. 298). Similarly, he argues “we shall not follow with any precision the Cypriot ‘bazaar’ between Greece and Turkey which climaxed in what was to be widely called ‘the miracle of Zurich’” (p. 304). One is puzzled by such observations since the author does not shy away from giving a detailed account of the internal political power play between the Greek Cypriot leadership and the British Colonial administrators. Finally, the author presents a somewhat biased assessment of the Turkish Cypriots’ reaction to the events as if they were the spoilers of what would have been a more satisfactory resolution of the revolt against the British. Furthermore, he uses the terms “Moslem” and “Turkish Cypriots” (for example, p. 327) interchangeably in referring to the island’s Turks while he talks about the Greek majority only in ethnic terms.

Taken in its entirety, this book is a valuable contribution to the historical literature on contemporary Cypriot politics. One should consider reading it as a prerequisite to reading another important book that also gives an account of events, based on declassified British records, leading to the collapse of the 1960 constitutional system.[1] Each work covers Britain’s role in the Cyprus problem with a detailed analysis of political intrigue on the island as well as the roles played by external powers. Furthermore, this book by Holland should be read along with the memoirs of Hugh Foot, George Grivas, Harold Macmillan, John Reddaway, and Stanley Mayes’s book on Makarios for comparison and assessment of events.

Birol Yesilada
Portland State University

[1] Salahi Sonyel, Cyprus: The Destruction of a Republic: British Documents 1960-65 (Paul & Company, 1997).
Imperial Identities: Stereotyping, Prejudice and Race in Colonial Algeria, by Patricia M. E. Lorcin. 323 pages, notes, appendix, bibliography, index. London, UK: I. B. Tauris, 1999. $19.95 (Paper) ISBN 1-86064-376-0
This work on colonial Algeria, an unaltered paperback version of a 1995 hardbound book, adds to the already extensive literature in French and English on French imperial theories and practices. Central to this exercise is the way in which ‘the Kabyle Myth’ was formulated and later institutionalized–intended, in the first instance, as a political mechanism of control by separating and conquering colonized peoples but infused by a deeper intellectual, ‘scientific,’ and moral purpose that was racist in its implications. Although not necessarily intentionally conceived in racist terms or propagated by legislation or policy, the imperial imperative constructed a distorted dichotomy between the ‘good’ Kabyle and the ‘bad’ Arab whose consequences included the buttressing of racial stereotypes already extant in Europe. It was no surprise, therefore, that during the assimilationist phase of French colonial policy (appr. 1830 to 1880), the Berbers of the Kabyle would be viewed as more assimilable than the Arabs to French culture and civilization. When association replaced assimilation as official French policy, the ‘damage’ had already been done as a clear racist hierarchy was established in which the French colons were ranked on top, followed by Jews, Kabyles, and, at the bottom, Arabs.

Lorcin has organized her materials into five parts and eleven chapters including an introduction. Part One of Imperial Identities covers the first four decades of French colonial rule when the policy of assimilation was attempted but ultimately replaced by one of association. This occurred as the expanding European population made it seem less necessary to integrate the more ‘progressive’ elements of native society, that is, the Kabyles. Among the early proponents of the Kabyle myth was none other than Alexis de Tocqueville himself, who believed the Kabyles to be less ‘committed’ to Islam than their Arab coreligionists and therefore more receptive to French civilization.

Part Two elaborates on the intellectual, ideological, and methodological factors that contributed to the racialization of socio-geographical categories. Part Three, the last substantial section of the book, covers the 1871-1900 period when the colonial administration of Algeria passed out of military into civilian hands, a process that ensconced Algérie française in virtually every sphere of political, economic, and social life. Rather than spawning new ideas, civilian rule simply refashioned itself to accommodate its changing needs. Thus, the Kabyle myth was superceded by a Latino-Mediterranean myth, one result being the further racialization of Algerian society.

Part Four is the shortest and the weakest of the book’s sections. It superficially reviews the legacy of colonialist racialist policy in the popular, academic, and political spheres. Its extremely brief treatment of the post-independence legacy is devoid of any analytical or historical merit, leading the author to completely misinterpret the evolution of a Berberist identity in the Kabyle of the 1970s and 1980s. The Berber ‘spring’ of 1980, for example, was no mere “up-dated echo of past attitudes [of the Kabyle myth]” (p. 235), but a true reflection of a resurrected political idea revolving around language identity, cultural expression, and political democracy. Aside from this minor interpretive misstep, Locin has produced a solid work of scholarship on French colonial history which should find a ready audience among students and scholars alike.

John P. Entelis
Fordham University
The Remaking of Saudi Arabia: The Struggle Between King Sa’ud and Crown Prince Faysal, 1951-1962, by Sarah Yizraeli. (Dayan Center Papers 121) 219 pages, appendices, sources, index. Tel Aviv: Tel Aviv University, 1997. $14.95 (Paper) ISBN 965-224-026-5
Yizraeli focuses her attention on the political dynamics that occurred during the period of transition which followed the death of the founder of Saudi Arabia, `Abd al-`Aziz Al Sa’ud, in 1953 to the events in 1962 that led to the deposition of his successor and son, Sa’ud, in 1964. She writes that this decade was the crucial formative period in Saudi Arabia and argues it is best understood as a struggle between conservative and reformist princes, Sa’ud and Faysal respectively. She portrays Sa’ud as authoritarian and heedless of budgets. He appointed his own sons to security positions and tried to exclude Faysal from authority. He increased the power of the royal diwan as he circumscribed the cabinet. In contrast, Faysal is portrayed as a determined reformer who sought to institutionalize politics and to balance forces within the ruling family. The two monarchs disagreed over fiscal and monetary policy, development approaches, and security policy. The debate within the ruling family ended with the reaffirmation of its monopoly on power, economic development, and security policies designed to serve the interests of princes, the denial of political participation to a wider public, and government bodies designed to perpetuate the predominance of the royal family.

Yizraeli is most interesting when she explores intra-familial dynamics: the competition, stand-offs, compromises, and constant shifting of coalitions within the Al Sa’ud. It is particularly interesting to watch the ebb and flow of Prince Talal’s power. She also contributes when she demonstrates the way in which maternal lines mattered under Faysal but not under Sa’ud.

The account of these struggles however leaves the reader puzzled. If Faysal eventually won the struggle, how can this outcome be called reformist? He is reformist only if the institutionalization of the power monopoly of the ruling family can be called a reform. Yizraeli also maintains that the transformation of the tribal polity into a modern nation state was an outcome of the way the kingdom responded to outside pressures—the economic change associated with oil–rather than as an outcome of domestic change. It was the oil company, Aramco, which pressed for a modern administrative apparatus. The company fulfilled “the task assumed elsewhere by colonizing Western states that catalyzed the creation of modern government machinery” (p. 102), thus moving the country from patrimonialism to institutionalization. Still, there are inconsistencies between her argument and her evidence. She hopes to explain transformation as a consequence of external development but then focuses her attention on the personal struggle between two men. She labels Faysal reformist, but provides evidence that he slowed down modernization and reform. Talal is a radical, yet one who opposed reform austerity measures. Yizraeli implicitly seems to use a framework that suggests a choice must be made between tradition and the West. A more complex framework would have better captured the richness of that period in Saudi Arabian development.

Gwen Okruhlik
University of Arkansas