This bibliographic essay samples the available literature, which is vast (in English and Turkish), on the relationship of archaeology and museums to successive political ideologies in late nineteenth and early twentieth century Anatolia. Building on insights from the overview of the available literature, this essay will provide a curated list of further related readings.

In the suffocating atmosphere of the fin-de-siècle Empire, Ottoman intellectuals devised various ideologies to reinforce the state’s power and stave off imperial demise. Ottomanism was intended to prevent separatist movements and gather all non-Turks under an umbrella identity, but the Balkan Wars (1912-1913) devalued this “cosmopolitan” policy (Findley 2010, 202). Pan-Islamism aimed to unite all Muslims under Ottoman rule against European countries, but the Arab Revolt (1916-1918) undermined it (Omer 2021, Özcan 2025). To compensate for these failed ideologies, pan-Turkism was introduced to unite Turkish and Turkic peoples in central Asia against Russia. However, a second, competing Turkish nationalism, Turkism (Türkçülük), appeared, focused on Anatolia, which was conceived as “the Turkish heartland and idealized the culture of the Turkish peasant population” (Zürcher 2017, 128-129).

The collapse of the Ottoman Empire resulted in dramatic sociopolitical change not only in Anatolia but also in the Balkans, the Midde East, North Africa, and Europe. Following the demise of the empire, many nation-states were established in these regions, one of which was Türkiye/Turkey in Anatolia, which fought for and won international recognition as an independent nation with the Lausanne Treaty on July 24^th, 1923. The nascent Turkish government worked to effect significant sociocultural changes to reinforce its political structure, paying special attention to history and archaeology as foundational for a national identity. This identity was based on the second of the Turkish nationalisms mentioned above: Turkism (Türkçülük).

From the last years of the Ottoman Empire to the early years of the Turkish Republic, archaeological and museum ideas and practices changed in response to changing political and ideological struggles. In the Ottoman Empire, the first museological studies emerged under the influence of Ottomanism, which privileged the multiethnic and multicultural social milieu of the empire (Ertürk 2024, 16-17). Ottoman museum curators embraced different time periods and cultures—Greek, Roman, Byzantine, Assyrian, Caledonian, Egyptian, Phoenician, Hittite—as contributing to the Empire’s larger cultural heritage. Ottoman rulers and administrators invested heavily in museums to claim, “ownership of the legacy of civilization” through which, it was imagined, the Empire could be shown to have participated in the rise of “Western civilization” (Shaw 2007, 253–279).

In the republican period, archaeology and museological policies (along with many other social programs) were more intensively used to build “the new citizens of the Republic” (Savino 2012, 255) and, ultimately, a new common national culture and identity (Ertürk  2024, 16-17). For this work, the development of Turkish archaeology was deemed imperative, leading to the establishment of such institutions as the Turkish Historical Society in 1931 (Türk Tarih Kurumu), the Turkish Institute of Archaeology in 1934 (Türk Arkeoloji Enstitüsü), and the Faculty of Language, History and Geography in 1936 (Dil ve Tarih-Coğrafya Fakültesi, or DTCF, in Ankara University 1936) (Ünar 2020, 133-4).

The government’s support of academic archaeology was used to emphasize the depth and diversity of an Anatolian heritage “scientifically” tied to a specific, bounded ethnic group and consonant with a “secular understanding of national identity”. Moreover, the Turkish History Thesis of the early republican era claimed that the Turks had established a civilization over thousands of years that was equivalent to that of Europeans (Atakuman 2017, 171).

Between 1932 and 1938, the Turkish Historical Society sponsored several archaeological projects to prove that the Turks had existed since “ancient times” and demonstrate their contributions to the history of “world civilization” (Polat 2024, 120). The artifacts uncovered from the excavations in Anatolia were housed in three places until 1966: in the White Tower (Akkale), in the Roman Temple of Augusts, and in the new Archaeological Museum or the Hittite Museum in the Bedesten. In 1968, these collections were moved to the Bedesten facility, renamed the Museum of Anatolian Civilizations (Anadolu Medeniyetleri Müzesi), and to the new Ethnography Museum in Ankara (Savino 2012, 260-1). Furthermore, The Turkish Historical Society organized “History Congresses” in 1932 and 1937 to highlight the importance of biological anthropology and prehistory, seen as scientific disciplines to which Turks could contribute as well as Westerners and to emphasize the significance of Turkish history for world history (Toprak 2011, 18). The government also established many People’s Houses (Halk Evleri) in different cities in the 1930s, not only to disseminate the early republic’s principles and reforms but also to expand museums nationwide to raise public awareness of history and museums (Yaşar 2023, 237-40).

Today, archaeology and museum studies have a large degree of autonomy in Türkiye, but it is occasionally possible to see the influence of official or national historiography on these fields.    

This piece was edited by Nicholas Barron.

Works Cited

Atakuman, Çiğdem. 2017. “Shifting Discourses of Heritage and Identity in Turkey: Anatolianist Ideologies and Beyond.” In In Search of Pre-Classical Antiquity: Rediscovering Ancient Peoples in Mediterranean Europe (19th and 20th c.), edited by A. De Francesco, 166–182. Leiden: Brill.

Ertürk, Aleyna. 2024. “Museum and Exhibition Activities in the Context of Transformation of Social Memory after 1980.” Master’s thesis, Middle East Technical University.

Findley, Carter Vaughn. 2010. Turkey, Islam, Nationalism, and Modernity: A History. New Haven: Yale University Press.

Omer, Spahic. 2021. “Examining the Concept of Pan-Islamism.” Al-Itqan: Journal of Islamic Sciences and Comparative Studies 5 (2): 21–51. https://journals.iium.edu.my/al-itqan/index.php/al-itqan/article/view/197

Özcan, Azmi. 2025. “Hamidian Pan-Islamism in the Ottoman Empire (1876–1908): A Reassessment.” In The Oxford Handbook of the History of the Global South (Online ed.), edited by A. G. Mahler, C. J. Lee, and M. Popescu. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Polat, Erdal. 2024. “Cumhuriyet Dönemi Arkeoloji Politikaları ve Bir Cumhuriyet Aydını Ekrem Akurgal” [Republican-era Archaeology Policies and a Republican Intellectual, Ekrem Akurgal]. Atatürk Araştırma Merkezi Dergisi 40 (109): 113–134.

Savino, Melania. 2012. “Narrating the ‘New’ History: Museums in the Construction of the Turkish Republic.” In Great Narratives of the Past: Traditions and Revisions in National Museums (Linköping Electronic Conference Proceedings, 78:16), edited by Dominique Poulot, Felicity Bodenstein, and José María Lanzarote Guiral, 253–264. Linköping: Linköping University Electronic Press.

Shaw, Wendy. 2007. “Museums and Narratives of Display from the Late Ottoman Empire to the Turkish Republic.” Muqarnas 24: 253–279.

Toprak, Zafer. 2011. “Adem-Havva’dan Homo-Alpinus’a Türk Tarih Tezi” [From Adam-Eve to Homo-Alpinus the Turkish History Thesis]. Toplumsal Tarih 206: 16–29.

Ünar, Şükrü. 2020. “Atatürk Döneminde Türk Arkeolojisi” [Turkish Archaeology during the Atatürk Era]. Anasay 11: 129–148.

Yaşar, Hakan. 2023. “Artık Her Şehirde Bir Müze Olacak: Erken Cumhuriyet Dönemi’nde Halkevlerinin Müzecilik Çalışmaları” [From Now on Every City Will Have a Museum: The Museum Activities of the People’s Houses (Halkevleri) in the Early Republic Era]. History Studies 15 (Cumhuriyetin 100. Yılı Özel Sayısı): 237–259.

Zürcher, Erik J. 2017. Turkey: A Modern History. New paperback ed. London: I.B. Tauris.

Further Readings

Archaeology and Museums in the Ottoman Empire and the Early Turkish Republic

Atakuman, Çiğdem. 2008. “Cradle or Crucible: Anatolia and Archaeology in the Early Years of the Turkish Republic (1923–1938).” Journal of Social Archaeology 8 (2): 214–235.

Çağlar, Taner Fikret. 2017. “The Historiography of Ottoman Archaeology: A Terra Incognita for Turkish Archaeologists.” Cihannüma: Tarih ve Coğrafya Araştırmaları Dergisi 3 (1): 109–122.

Hitzel, Frédéric. 2020. “Osman Hamdi Bey ve Osmanlı Arkeolojisinin Başlangıcı” [Osman Hamdi Bey and the Beginning of Ottoman Archaeology]. Aktüel Arkeoloji, May 28.

Polat, Erdal. 2025. “Osmanlı İmparatorluğu’nda ve Türkiye Cumhuriyeti’nde Arkeoloji” [Archaeology in the Ottoman Empire and the Republic of Türkiye]. Aktüel Arkeoloji, October, 26: 26-44.

Shaw, Wendy M. 2011. “National Museums in the Republic of Turkey: Palimpsests within a Centralized State.” In Building National Museums in Europe 1750–2010: Conference Proceedings from EuNaMus, 925.

Sinitsyn, Fyodor. 2026. “Turkish ‘Sun Language Theory:’ Soviet Influence and Soviet Reaction, 1932–1936.” Journal of Balkan and Near Eastern Studies: 1–17.

Toprak, Zafer. 2012. Darwin’den Dersim’e: Cumhuriyet ve Antropoloji [From Darwin to Dersim: The (Turkish) Republic and Anthropology]. 1st ed. İstanbul: Doğan Egmont Yayıncılık.

Social and Political Developments in the Ottoman Empire and Turkey During the Late 19^th and Early 20^th Century

Eissenstat, Howard. 2003. “History and Historiography: Politics and Memory in the Turkish Republic.” Contemporary European History 12 (1): 93–105.

Eissenstat, Howard. 2004. “Metaphors of Race and Discourse of Nation: Racial Theory and State Nationalism in the First Decades of the Turkish Republic.” In Race and Nation: Ethnic Systems in the Modern World, edited by Paul Spickard, 322-346. Oxford: Taylor & Francis Group.  

Karčić, Hikmet. 2020. “Sèvres at 100: The Peace Treaty That Partitioned the Ottoman Empire.” Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs 40 (3): 470–479.

Özdoğan, Mehmet. 1998. “Ideology and Archaeology in Turkey.” In Archaeology under Fire: Nationalism, Politics and Heritage in the Eastern Mediterranean and Middle East, edited by Lynn Meskell, 111–124. London: Routledge.

Özdoğan, Mehmet. 1999. “Türkiye Cumhuriyeti ve Arkeoloji: Siyasi Yönlendirmeler, Çelişkiler ve Gelişim Süreci” [The Republic of Türkiye and Archaeology: Political Influences, Contradictions, and Development Process]. In Bilanço 1923–1998: Türkiye Cumhuriyeti’nin 75 Yılına Toplu Bakış Uluslararası Kongresi. Cilt 1: Siyaset, Kültür, Uluslararası İlişkiler, edited by Zeynep Rona, 193–204. İstanbul: Türkiye Ekonomik ve Toplumsal Tarih Vakfı.

Ünlü, Barış. 2023. “The Turkishness Contract and the Formation of Turkishness.” In Kurds in Dark Times: New Perspectives on Violence and Resistance in Turkey, edited by Ayça Alemdaroğlu and Fatma Müge Göçek, 90–118. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press.

Ülker, Erol. 2005. “Contextualising ‘Turkification’: Nation-Building in the Late Ottoman Empire, 1908–18.” Nations and Nationalism 11 (4): 613–636.

White, Jenny B. 2014. Muslim Nationalism and the New Turks. New edition with a new afterword by the author. Princeton: Princeton University Press.