THE BALKANS IN TURKİSH HISTORIOGRAPHY: A PRELIMINARY DISCUSSION

Throughout history nations have tried to establish their own ideas of nationalism. In doing so, each country aimed to create their own version of 'history. In order for them to succeed, long-forgotten traditions, customs and legends were put to use in the process of nationbuilding. Another aspect, opposite ‘emphasizing forgotten aspects of history’, was to neglect some historical events in order to enable people to forget these traumatic events. One fine example is Turkey, which tried to neglect all the painful events that happened during and after the Balkan Wars in order to start the newly founded Republic of Turkey with a clean sheet. This was probably due to the fact that the newly established Turkish nation should not be based upon the atrocities committed against the Turks by others, nor the hatred against those who were responsible for these deeds. The most famous example of these atrocities are the events of 1915, mistakenly labeled 'genocide' by some. Just as during the Balkan Wars, the events of 1915 exposed a large number of Turks to persecution and torture; as well as large-scale ethnic cleansing and forced migration. Therefore the remaining region, Anatolia, was proclaimed the 'Turkish Motherland'; which is interesting since the history of Turks in the Balkan region is far more stretched. Turkish tribes entered the Balkan some thousands of years prior to Anatolia, but eventually either assimilated or were victims to the previously mentioned methods of ethnic cleansing; in both cases they subsequently disappeared from history. To forget the pain of the Balkan Wars as well as the events of 1915, Turkey has long been neglecting these aspects of its own history This paper should be seen as a preliminary research in an attempt to put more of an emphasize on this field of study.