Continuity and Reconversion of the Nobility of the Ottoman Empire at the Beginning of the Turkish Republic

While the world war had noticeable political consequences in that it brought about the disappearance of the Ottoman empire and the institution of the Middle East’s first republic in 1923, it did not produce the social effects Turkish republican historiography has given it, i.e. the radical institution of a meritocratic society on the ruins of an ancien regime social structure. The arrival of new State activities had encouraged the reconversion of bureaucrats at the end of the Empire, so that when the republic was set up, the reputation of certain dignitaries’ sons as jurists, academics or managers largely surpassed the perception they gave of themselves as men of the ancien regime: they easily found their place in a new regime that valorized their competence more than it worried about their origin, to the extent that some of them then became parliamentarians of circumscriptions in regions their ancestors had held in their power during the Ottoman period. To put it succinctly, while republican Turkey proclaimed the most complete break-off with the ancient regime in pursuing the aims announced by Kemalist nationalism, it found the means of reinforcing the State’s executives and establishing its legitimacy in the continuity and valorization of the former imperial nobility.