Description
This large rare map shows the newly founded Republic of Turkey, as divided by its health and social districts. Marked are the four basic districts with four colours, sub-districts with their names in the key, and towns with schools and health care centers.
The social security and health care were a part of the reforms by Kemal Atatürk, and were systematically applied to the country.
The map was made in the year of the first census in Turkey, in 1927, which showed the population of 13 648 270 living in an area almost equal to today’s Turkey.
Historical Context: The New Republic of Turkey & Kemalism
The present map is one of the earliest and most impressive graphic scientific publications of the new ‘Kemalist’ regime that ruled Turkey from the early 1920s onwards. It was published soon after the Turkish National Movement won the Turkish War of Independence (1919-23) and declared the foundation of the Republic of Turkey (October 29, 1923), a state that was to be reformed on radically modern, secular lines.
Medical care played a major role in the late Ottoman Empire, the massive, pan-national entity that the Republic of Turkey supplanted in Anatolia and Eastern Rumelia. However, the late Ottoman production of thematic cartography was quite limited and tended to be linked to episodic commercial projects or noble patronage, and often appeared within the context of value-laden narrative. The new ‘Kemalist’ regime, so named for Mustafa Kemal ‘Atatürk’ (1881 1938), the Turkish National Movement’s legendary leader and the founding president of the Turkish Republic, ushered in a radical state ideology that had profound ramifications for science and cartography.
Kemalism was founded upon six fundamental pillars, or the ‘Six Arrows’: Republicanism; Populism; Nationalism; Secularism; Statism and Reformism. In short Atatürk sought to replace the ancient pan-national, religious and inefficient old Ottoman state with a modern, Westernized nation focused upon the popular aspirations of the Turkish people. The new state was to foster progress through education and economic development, backed by modern science and technology. In 1924, Atatürk was hailed as hero by the vast majority of his people. However, he faced many forbidding challenges. The late war, which was both civil (Nationalists vs. Royalists) and a multifronted fight against external enemies (France, Britain, Greece, Armenia, and various Arabic entities) had caused immense physical destruction to the country and great dislocation to Turkey’s workforce, resulting in high unemployment. The Ottoman Empire had also left the prime industrial entities with inherent inefficiencies that made them ill-suited to the Kemalist vision. Atatürk knew that he had to rapidly and radically reform and jump-start the national economy, otherwise popular support for his regime, and his radical agenda, would crumble.
Ahmet İHSAN TOKGÖZ (1868 – 1942)
The publisher Ahmet İhsan Tokgöz (1868 – 1942) was probably one of the most influential figures of the literature of the late Ottoman Empire, connecting the influences from the West with Ottoman tradition.
Growing up in Shkodra, Albania, and Damascus, Syria, Ahmet İhsan finished a law degree. A keen translator and a big fan of the Jules Verne novels, he made first translations of Verne’s text to Ottoman, starting a new genre of the adventure novels in the Ottoman world. Ahmet İhsan is also remembered as a founder of most influential Ottoman illustrated literary and cultural magazine Servet-i Fünun (ثروت فنون) or Wealth of Knowledge, which promoted Ottoman modern literature. He was the magazine’s editor from the first number in 1888 until his death in 1942.
References: Ziyad EBÜZZİYA, TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi. AHMED İHSAN TOKGÖZ (18671942) (On-line version: https://cdn.islamansiklopedisi.org.tr/dosya/2/C02000637.pdf).
