Old Elites in a New Republic: The Reconversion of Ottoman Bureaucratic Families in Turkey (1909–1939)

The Kemalist officers who set up the new regime in the aftermath of the Turkish national struggle for independence (1919–22) officially declared against the prominent senior dignitaries who had served the Ottoman imperial state. However, far from deeming it necessary to destroy a complete segment of the society as a prerequisite for establishing full control over the masses, the republican leaders pragmatically vested old families with the right to explore their competences and make use of their abilities. As far as the imperial state had been unchallenged in supervising the ongoing changes affecting the organization of socioprofessional activities, that is, the emergence of journalists, lawyers, or academics as elite segments, not only did old established families use their positions to organize their reconversion at the margins of the classical administrative sphere, but they were also promoted through the new official apparatus as diplomats, professors, and even politicians. Interestingly enough, the republican regime associated two apparent oppositions: declared antipathy toward Ottoman bureaucratic elites and the effective use of their heirs both as a way to organize the state.