'Becoming Turkish' in early republican Turkey

'Becoming Turkish: Nationalist Reforms and Cultural Negotiations in Early Republican Turkey, 1923-1945' by Hale Yılmaz (Syracuse University Press, 328 pages, $39)

The era of Kemalist reforms after the declaration of the Turkish Republic in 1923 seems very distant today. Approaching the Republic's 100th anniversary, the talk is of regime change as the religious nationalist government bids to transform the country's political system into an executive presidency. But as Southern Illinois University assistant professor Hale Yılmaz's "Becoming Turkish" shows, the early republican period can actually shed an interesting light on the present day.

The book considers individual and communal responses to the nationalist modernization project, and how that project was implemented across the country. Both supporters and detractors tend to consider this era in black and white terms, with citizens either in total compliance with the dizzying cultural revolution or in outright rejection. Through deep research of local and national sources, Yılmaz shows that the reality was far more complicated. "Experiences of the reform processes were diverse, uneven, and incomplete," she writes. The range of reactions "included a broad spectrum of everyday forms resistance, accommodation, coping with change, or active or passive support that fell between the two extremes of violent resistance and passive submission." 

The book is based around four central chapters investigating a particular symbolic aspect of the Kemalist reforms: The famous Hat Law of 1925 and the broader issue of sartorial regulations to encourage a "Westernized and civilized" lifestyle, the application of this principle to women's dress, the language reforms abolishing the Ottoman script and...