Healing the Nation

This book explores how the Great War influenced the construction of identity and nationalism in the Ottoman Empire. What did Ottoman prisoners of war imprisoned in Russia and Egypt during the Great War understand of nation, culture and Islam? And what role did science play in the imagined future of the nation for the Ottoman-Turkish psychiatrists who diagnosed prisoners following post-war repatriation? Doctors' interpretation of prisoners' health issues led to far-reaching questions about the relationship between the prisoners' physical bodies and mental states on the one hand, and the body politic and collective mentality of the Turkish Republic during the interwar period, on the other. During the interwar years, when the military's vigour was still taken to be a reflection of the nation's health, doctors projected the worrisome picture of the shattered nerves of both prisoner and non-prisoner alike onto the nation at large. The Great War revealed the poor health of the nation and gave medical men the chance to regenerate it through eugenics.Just as officer prisoners in the camps excluded ignorant peasants from their discursive construction of the nation, the psychiatrists disqualified those seen to threaten the nation's body. It uses previously untapped sources to reveal a new story of prisoners, medicine and nationalism. It broadens the discussion of nationalism to include both ideological and biological factors. It explores the social, demographic, psychological and medical impact of the Great War on the Ottoman Empire and Modern Turkey.

"This highly original and impeccably researched study helps us understand not only the workings of the Ottoman military establishment but also the state formation in the late Ottoman Empire and the influence of German theories of medicine, psychiatry and eugenics in this complex process." - M. Sükrü Hanioglu, Princeton University "His skill and craft as a social historian shines brightly in this account of Ottoman soldiers who were not heroes, as he tells us two stories at once: the tale of those who were silenced and that of those who did the silencing." - Turkish Review, Nergis Canefe (York University, Toronto)"This is a fascinating study, readable, always interesting, well written and set out and based on extensive primary research in the Ottoman archives, in the Public Record Office, in the US national archives, in the camp newspapers and drawing on a host of other material. As a study of the health consequences of war, Healing the Nation should appeal to doctors and psychiatrists as well as students of late Ottoman and early republican Turkish history." - Jeremy Salt, Social History of Medicine"The original sources and new insights offered by Healing the Nation gives scholars of the Ottoman Empire, Turkey, and the modern Middle East much to consider. Few, if any, works preceding this study have considered the history and legacy of wartime internment, thus adding considerably to the breadth of our understanding of World War I." - Ryan Gingeras, The American Historical Review "Weaved together in a comprehensive work with inquisitive reasoning and clever writing style, [Healing the Nation] deserves a warm welcome to historiography." - Sanem Güvenç Salgirli, Insight Turkey "beginning with tracing Turkish nationalism among POWs and following with the analysis of the reports of medical doctors, Yanikdag creates a unique and untraditional approach to point out the trajectory of the emergence of Turkish nationalism among POWs... the author's approach is a methodologically creative way to discuss the Ottomans' role in the Great War. Consequently, the medical publications, the bibliography, and above all the prisoners' literature, including prison-camp newspapers, poems, folk songs, and cartoons that the author unearthed, make the book a real gem for scholars." -- Haldun Yalçinkaya, TOBB University of Economics and Technology, Ankara, ar in History

Yucel Yanikdag is Associate Professor of History at the University of Richmond. Born in Istanbul, he received his Ph.D. from The Ohio State University.