ERKEN CUMHURİYET DÖNEMİ MÜZİK TARTIŞMALARINDA MEŞRULAŞTIRICI BİR ENSTRÜMAN OLARAK TÜRK TARİH TEZİ

Özet

The goal of the early republican elite was to form a new national identity supportingwesternization and the consciousness of secular Turkishness while excluding the Ottoman-Islamic legacy as much as possible. Turkish History Thesis was, above all, an ideologicalinstrument for supporting and legitimizing these objectives. The influence of the TurkishHistory Thesis on music debates of the early republican period is reflected by the argumentson the Central Asian and archaic Anatolian origins of Turkish music, the alleged impact ofthis archaic Turkish music on the other great music traditions of the world such as Westernmusic and the famous pentatonism thesis. In these debates, the Turkish History Thesis hasbeen employed as an ideological instrument rather than a scientific explanation. Theideological background underlying the Turkish History Thesis and its various extensions inthe field of music has dominated not only the official view but also the oppositional discourse,despite its weak scientific basis. This fact points to the extent of ideological hegemonyexercised by the dominant cultural discourse on the oppositional one and also presents a goodcase of how the survival strategies of the oppositional culture against the attacks of an officialdiscourse pave the way for the internalization of this dominant discourse by it.