The launching of the Turkish thesis of history:

Official URL: http://risc01.sabanciuniv.edu/record=b1150159 (Table of Contents)

The following is a dissertation on the Turkish Thesis of History, focusing specifically on a certain instant in its development, namely the First Turkish History Congress in which the Thesis was fully formulated. Taking its lead from the ideas of Benedict Anderson, the dissertation is based on the assumption that the nations are imagined cultural constructs; and that it is primarily the style in which it is imagined that gives a nation its distinctive character. Developing these ideas, the work turns its attention to the methods of such imagination and incorporating the ideas of Anthony D. Smith on national myths, devises a conceptual framework for making sense of the interrelations among the formation of nations, the writing of national histories and the creation of national myths. In light of this theoretical framework, the papers of the Congress are analyzed in detail in order to trace clues of the distinctive characteristics of Turkish nationalism-its peculiarities which were to a large extent dictated by the limits (real or imagined) in reaction to which Turkish nationalism developed.