The centennial commemoration of ‘World War I’ (Harb-i Umumi) began on a hot summer day: July 28, 1914. Compared to WW2 from the view of its relatively more destructive aspect of human damage, WW1 impacted our geography and Islamic world from the heart. Although we were the biggest victims of WW1 and its political, economic and cultural impacts are still continuing, we are feeling that we don’t pay it attention – any attention. As if it is an intention to forget such a tremendous devastation and to read it through the perspective of Europeans which illustrates our mental trauma.

My purpose here is not to do a strategic analysis of WW1. However without comprehending the World war as the milestone of many political, cultural and mental trauma, the reading of today will be deficient. There are traces of this war in the current chaos and the roots of searching, flutters of the Middle East and Turkey in particular.

Let us briefly ask a question: what happened at the end of World War I? The Ottoman empire was effaced from history or from the landscape of the Islamic world, the caliphate collapsed and the way was open to divide the Middle east into nation-states and a colonization project. We ended up today with postponement of the reply to the question why the Ottomans collapsed in this war, after losing time with the myth ‘Because Germans were defeated, we were too.’

Prior to engaging in this war, a pioneer, idealist, excited and romantic group of people captured the empire and were throwing dice over a 600-century background. The team leading the Ottomans, commanding the war with its representing idea was not a ’cause’ but an ‘effect’. In order for the Ottomans tobe able to compete with Europeans, or speaking more correctly, to save the Ottoman empire, we were obligated to engage in the war that led to the devastation a century after the empire was convinced and forced into westernization.

This century-long period which began with the Reformation Era and the Commercial Contract with the British was one of the most critical periods of Islamic history. For the first time in history, an alien medicine was sought for help while suspecting one’s own values. At first, westernization began as merely a pragmatist and confined notion, but in time it developed into a state of mind.

It influenced the decision makers of the empire in the framework of the modern mentality, technique and civilization. Even if it did not infiltrate into the worlds of beliefs, our collective memory which was protected formally in a period of time shorter than a century. Due to the deficiency of the scholars’ response to the process and their ability in reading the events, the state was tried to be saved by the westernization endeavor of the bureaucratic elites and intellectuals who commanded it

As a result, in the world which began at the reign of the Abdulhamid period, the ‘end’ came, in effect, and then later on in official terms. Not only did the state dismantle, but also the most influential political structure – even from the historical aspect of Europe – was pushed aside and the Islamic world had to confront a political and theological chaos it had never encountered before.

A century after the war, Turkey held a similar claim. At least, it produced a more assertive political slogan instead of an inward discourse. The artificial borders and political structures are enforced to change which are anymore unable to be maintained in the Middle East. A new chaos period seems to open the door for the Islamic world as a path into more obscurity, conflict and establishments that will fade the hopes of the Islamic world, instead of a new order search.

In the short term, by the conservatives in the form of a slogan, which would remind the ‘collective memory’, the claim of revival for Turkey was likely to be spoken. This utterance is not beyond the capacity of excitement and rhetoric. However, at least that it evokes its position a century earlier, and that is important. In countries like Turkey, which was established on the Ottoman heritage (even if it rejected it) where the collective memory has been deleted and synthetic identities and histories are created, to gain its self-confidence is inconceivable. What is normally expected is that it accepts defeats with victories and becomes peaceful with history and uses that experience in establishing the future.

The fabric of the modern secular nation with a state identity – the nature of which has no spirit and memory – will clearly drag the society to no place. It is well understood that a civilization cannot be changed overnight, even by the owners of this system who possessed such a project. That’s why the system is tried – to be lived through conservative values and connections with historical processes.

At this very point, a problem arises: as much as this society needs the self-confidence and excitement for the uprising, the question of upon which value systems this uprising will be erected is significant. The uprising of the Constitutional Era (Mesrutiyet) was welcomed with a bureaucratic excitement and what ended it was the romantic Unionist (Ittihatçi) excitement that turned into a ‘conquest in defeat’. Falling from the classical ottoman values system and instead of assessing things from a viewpoint of civilization, because of the state reason that reduces things to practical pragmatism, it was defeated. A system which suspects itself cannot be elevated with barrowed values and cannot contain discourse beyond sentiments.

Indeed, the independence of a country like Turkey, with its heritage from the world value system and coming into the decision-maker position, will affect the region and the world system owners won’t welcome it with pleasure. At this point, the problem lies in the question of whether the conservative masses’ sentiments rising in the political discourse will turn into a thought from a sentiment. The Unionist romantism, which could not convert the sentiment into a thought, prepared the end of the Ottoman empire.

For a country, in as much as having a self-confident discourse by getting rid of an inward, fearful and passive country is important, the question of its transformation from a sentiment into a thought is also crucial. The issue is not confined to a matter of excitement and discourse. It’s a matter of system and values. This requires the sentiment to be developed into a thought. The Mesrutiyet era’s pragmatic mentality could not prevent the empire from its termination. It is apparent that the integration into the world system is not enough to have a central role. Just as the sentiment arisen with self-confidence when incorporated to the global system cannot go beyond a rhetoric, it also contains a risk of drifting into the romantic adventures.

The conquestial dreams of the unionists under the defeat is identical to a dream on having an empire under the nation-state structure and identical also to the claim for establishing justice after being incorporated into the global capitalism.

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