Everyday Resistance and Selective Adaptation to the Hat Reform in Early Republican Turkey

International Journal of Turcologia

Volume: VIII N:16 - AUTOMNE/AUTUMN 2013


Aims and Scope: The International Journal of Turcologia is a refreed journal. The journal aims at meeting the need for a major international publication devoted to all aspects of Turcology. The IJT is a journal that examines social, political, cultural, historical, linguisti-cal and literature issues in Turcology, especially 19th and 20th centuries.

Editorial InformationAcademic Editors

İlhan Alemdar Historien d’art, ParisBahriye Çeri Yıldız Technical University, İstanbul

Kayoko Hayeshi Tokyo University of Foreign StudiesTimour Muhidinc INALCO, Paris

Cüneyd Okay İstanbul Technical University

Editorial BoardGabor Agoston Georgetown University

Yorgo Dedes University of LondonBenjamin Fortna University of London

Priska Furrer University of BernGottfried Hagen University of Michigan

Tooru Hayashi University of TokyoFrédéric Hitzel CNRS, Paris

Slobodan Ilic Eastern Mediterranean UniversityMatthias Kappler University of Cyprus

Tijana Krstic Pennsylvania State UniversityGabriel Piterberg University of California, Los Angeles

Börte Sagester University of GiessenGrazyna Zajac Jagiellonian University in Krakow

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Table of Contents

Everyday Resistance And Selective Adaptation To The Hat Reform

In Early Republican Turkey

Murat METİNSOY .....................................................................................7

Relatives or Strangers?: On the Relations Between Turkey And Finland

Burcu SUNAR ...........................................................................................49

The Greek Factor On Turkey’s Way To EU Membership

Duygu Öztürk ...........................................................................................69

Baghdad Pact- Pro-Westernization Of Turkish Security Policies And Its

Refl ection On Middle East Strategies

Gizem Bilgin AYTAÇ ................................................................................99

The Series Of Modern Biography During The Tanzimat Reform Era:

Kitabhane-i Meşahir

Gül Ayşe AKAR .......................................................................................107

The Modernization Problem in Reşat Nuri Güntekin’s “Eski Hastalık-Old

Sickness” Novel

Bülent AKKUŞ ........................................................................................121

Alexis Heraclides. The Greek-Turkish Confl ict In The Aegean: Imagined

Enemies.

Hazal Pabucçular .....................................................................................143

7

Everyday Resistance And SelectiveAdaptation To The Hat Reform In Early

Republican Turkey

Murat METİNSOY*1

Abstract

The Hat Law is one of the hallmarks of the early republican Turkey’s mo-dernization process. The nationalist-modernist elite attempted to modernize the society through changing the cultural codes like clothing styles. The sym-bols such as headgears became an essential means through which the new regime transformed the society from religious-traditional to modern-secular one. The state intervention in symbolic and cultural realms of the society, specifi cally the Hat Law of 1925, created widespread social reactions and prompted several uprisings. Many Islamic scholars rejected and fi ercely cri-ticized the hat reform. In many provinces, masses staged several anti-hat protests. These widely-known individual opposition and collective protests were not the only form of popular disapproval or resistance. Ordinary people drew on several resistance and disobedience strategies in daily life so as to avoid the wearing new hat or keep away from the social changes the hat reform implied. The political and intellectual history approaches, however, have not examined such forms of people’s everyday politics. Culturalism also captured modernist accounts and conservative literature, both of which explained the anti-hat protests in reference to the people’s religiosity. This article, drawing on new historical sources from several archives, examines the everyday-covert forms and complex causes of people’s negative respon-se to the hat reform, and brings to light how the society negotiated the hat reform in daily life, even without organized-political action.

The secular reforms launched by the Turkish Republic du-ring the interwar period were one of the most comprehen-

* Istanbul University, [email protected].

8 International Journal of Turcologia / Vol: VIII No: 16

sive cultural modernization programs in the world history. Even though their points of departure and their evaluations differ, both the modernist-nationalist historiography and cri-tical accounts (Marxian, conservative or Islamist) have been captured by conventional state and elite centrist approach in their assessment of the secular reforms of the Turkish Repub-lic. They have taken the secular reforms especially in respe-ct of the elite motivation and state policies. The modernist accounts have regarded the secularism as a progressive step against the religiosity.1 Critical approaches have often emp-hasized the repressive, exclusionary, and authoritarian agen-da of the Republican elite behind the secularizing reforms.2 Finally, conservative accounts have seen the secular reforms as an alienation of the “irreligious” westernist elite from the Muslim society and as a “blindfold imitation” of the West (Batı taklitçiliği).3

However, all of these different approaches, focusing on the legal, cultural, and institutional reforms and the victimization of a few religious dissidents and uprisings, have shared the people’s passivity thesis in the face of the single-party regi-me.4 The literature on the Kemalist secularism, be they mo-dernist or critical, has never dealt with the everyday and more complex interactions between the reforms and the ordinary people. The everyday resistances, creative adaptation strate-gies, and the informal contestation over the reforms between the state and individuals, especially in Anatolian provinces, have been barely touched or completely ignored.

Besides, the accounts on the response of the people to the secular reforms failed to see the social and economic dyna-mics that paved the way for the people’s discontent with and resistance to the secular reforms. Whereas the modernizati-on-national development narratives have identifi ed all dis-

9Everyday Resistance And Selective Adaptation To The Hat Reform In Early Republican Turkey

content with the secular regime with “religious backlash” (irtica), stemmed from religiosity and fundamentalism of the “ignorant” masses; the conservative accounts have related the discontent with secularism to the hurt of the people’s religious integrity by the “irreligious regime.” The social, economic and psychological motivations and reasons instigating the dissent and resistance to the secular reforms have not been so far exp-lored in detail.

Another common point of the modernist and critical appro-aches is the exaggeration of the impact of the secular reforms on society. The scholars have generally overestimated the inf-luence of the secular reforms and assumed a rupture with the traditional and Islamic way of life. Even though some more insightful accounts have admitted the continuity in every-day life especially in localities, this has generally remained in between lines, but not substantiated thoroughly. Both the mo-dernist literature and the critical accounts have overestimated the extent of the change by failing to see the tenacity of the traditional and customary way of life, sometimes entirely, and sometimes combined with the modern forms.5

This paper reveals how the ordinary Turkish men actively responded to the hat reform in daily life through everyday resistance or selective adaptation strategies rather than par-ticipating in well-known organized protests and rebellions. It uncovers the everyday and informal ways through which popular politics was practiced and public opinion was exp-ressed under the Turkish single party regime. Thus, it shows unexamined avenues of political participation and expres-sion of opinion in Turkish politics. In addition, instead of overwhelmingly culturalist approaches of both the secularist and conservative accounts, this article underlines the soci-oeconomic factors and individuals’ emotional world in an


analysis of men’s response to the secular reforms, specifi cal-ly, the hat reform.

Meanings Of The Hat ReformThe Turkish Republican regime’s cultural modernization

attempts through the politics of symbols have not been anal-yzed in detail. Scholars, especially Marxian intellectuals, scor-ned it and underestimated its symbolic role in political life and socio-cultural change. The politics of symbols via clothing codes was peculiar neither to Turkey nor to the Kemalist sing-le party regime. However, almost all governments even before the modern era pursued politics of symbols in order to legi-timate their rules or socio-cultural order. During the interwar period, Stalin adopted a worker uniform to emphasis on the working-class characteristics of the Soviet regime; Mao wore clothing similar to that of Chinese peasants and workers in order to show how he represented these social groups; Hitler and Mussolini liked to wear militaristic uniforms to demons-trate that they heavily relied on the army force and pursued offensive policies. In other words, clothing functioned as a sy-mbolic instrument through which the authorities transformed the society or showed the main ideological motivations and policy choices. 6 The founders of the republican Turkey also made use of the symbolic force of clothing by adopting the western hat instead of fez in 1925.

Contrary to the widely-believed arguments, the Turkish single-party state’s intervention in clothing styles of its citi-zens was the result not only of an admiration for the western culture. There were threefold underlying motivations for such hat reform. The fi rst was to secularize a society dominated by tradition and religion. The new regime aimed to replace


the religious and traditional bonds with the national identity. Therefore, it is not surprising to see that the new authorities started to eliminate the religious-traditional markers of the in-dividuals’ identities so as to make them equals before each ot-her and the laws as citizens of the Republic of Turkey. The new regime also aimed to separate the Turkish population from the rest of previous Ottoman populations in Balkans, North Afri-ca and Arabian Peninsula, who continued to wear fez. In this regard, the abolition of fez was a part of nation-building pro-cess which emphasized the difference of Turkishness from the Islamic community (ummah).

The second was related to the state-building process. In other words, the one of the main thrusts behind the state’s in-tervention in the people’s headgear was to demonstrate who was able to make laws and who was in power in the country from that time on. In revolutionary epochs, the targets and implications of radical changes in symbols are as important as the content of those symbols and novelties. Sometimes the unique target of a new law or a symbolic change is to make the people understand that the laws and decisions will be made by the new rulers from then on.7 As a contemporary observer wrote,

To put a Western hat on the head of every Turk would serve as an ever present reminder to the country that new customs were the vogue. It betokened, too, the power of the new go-vernment, and at the same time was a blow against religious fanaticism, for the hat with its brim meant awkwardness in touching one’s forehead to the ground as required in the Mos-lem prostration for prayer.8

Indeed, a would-be Kemalist politician such as Ali (Çetin-kaya) had wore a calpack (kalpak) and had criticized and des-


pised a journalist wearing a panama hat as being alienated from national values during a trial of the Independence Tri-bunals (İstiklâl Mahkemeleri) held just before the enactment of the Hat Law. However, the same member of the Indepen-dence Tribunals immediately adopted western hat right after the proclamation of the Hat Law, and this time, did not hesi-tate to harshly condemn a turbaned Islamic scholar of Fatih Mosque, Atıf Hoca, as an opponent of the new hat and the new regime because of his anti-hat pamphlet, penned before the Hat Law.9 This sudden change of attitude is not surpri-sing because what is important is not the content of the law or the shape of the hat, but to obey the new authority that made the rules.

Third, the changes in the images and symbols of the society via the transformation of the clothing codes served to show the western countries the fact that Turkey would be free from the old order from that time onward. Such kind of symbolic changes was devised to erase the oriental and backward image of Turkish society in the eyes of the western powers, who con-sidered the oriental world to be backward, uncivilized, and submissive.10 In other words, the new Turkish rulers, aware of the perilous western otherization of the oriental societies for imperialist aims, strived to present the new Turkey as same as the western societies, not as other of it.11

The Importance Of The HatIn almost all societies, the clothes and the images adopted by

people identifi ed their religious and ethnical community, soci-al status and ideological stances. The Ottoman-Turkish society also was not an exception to this rule. In the Ottoman-Empire, especially the headgear was a major symbol that defi ned the


individual’s belief and socioeconomic rank. Styles and colors of headgears varied according to people’s religious, social, and occupational positions. “Changing the conical hats” (külâhları değişmek) was an Ottoman-Turkish idiom, which means “fal-ling out with someone.” In society in which religious laws and traditional values constituted the basis of the political and so-cial life, the religious functionaries as ideological agents of the regime had enjoyed a privileged status indicated by their clot-hes, turbans, and robes. For instance, the white and greed tur-bans and robes were their diacritical marks as ulema (Muslim theologians and scholars). In other words, their clothing was the symbol of the power of the Islamic religious order. Despite it was opposed in the beginning, the fez, similarly, became an important symbol of the ordinary Muslim subjects distinguis-hing them from the non-Muslims. It was also suitable for Isla-mic religious duty, because it was brimless.12

As for peaked caps, hats, especially homburgs and pana-mas, they were signs of being a non-Muslim. Apart from the-ir symbolic meaning, peaked caps and close-fi t suits, jackets and pants were not suitable for praying in mosque because they made it diffi cult to perform prayers fi ve times a day. In addition, for a long time, both large and small manufacturers and merchants produced or traded these traditional clothes throughout the Empire. That is to say, the clothing codes of the Ottoman society were underpinned not only by religious attachment but also an economic system. In short, the styles of dress and headgear in the Ottoman society implied a social, political, and ideological position of the individual.13

The clothing and appearance of a person underlined his or her gender status as well.14 The segregation of sexes was ba-sed on certain clothing codes, especially the veil and charshaf,


which isolated the women’s face and body from the sight of men. Moreover, moustaches and sometimes beards indicated masculinity and supremacy of masculinity over feminity. The-refore, lack of them was a subject of derision among the Mus-lim men folk.

Therefore, any attempt to renew the clothing codes or int-roduce a new clothes triggered popular and religious ba-cklashes. The introduction of the fez as a new headgear by Sultan Mahmut II produced a huge negative response in the fi rst half of the 19th century. Many individuals who disap-proved the fez nicknamed Sultan Mahmut as “Infi del King” (Gavur Sultan).15 Likewise, the new clothing codes of the re-publican regime proclaimed on 25 November 1925 (The Law about the Need for Hat, Şapka İktizası Hakkında Kanun, No: 671) also were not welcomed by the people, who had always had a bond of love with their own headgear and traditional appearance, or rather, with the existing social and cultural system.

The outlawing of the fez, turban, and other traditional and religious clothes in public places caused anger among the majo-rity of the people who were strongly affi liated with Islamic and traditional way of living. Many people insisted on wearing the traditional headgear and clothes against the laws. Many exp-ressed their strong aversion to secularism and Republican re-forms via protesting or rising up against the new hat. On the other hand, a considerable part of the population obeyed or pretended to obey the laws in public places in an adaptive man-ner, but continued to wear their traditional clothes at home. Some tried to circumvent the laws by superfi cially obeying the ban on wearing the fez, veils, and charshafs, but by adopting more different sorts of brimless headgears and different forms


of head covers. In localities, the pressure of social milieu, local traditions and rules, eschewing from neighbors overcame the rules and principles imposed by the government.

Many uprisings and protests broke out throughout Anato-lia right after the adoption of the Hat Law towards the end of 1925. Hatred of or antipathy to the Hat Law were prevalent. Critical periods like the establishment of the Free Republican Party and the death of Atatürk gave further rise to voices of the hopes for turning back to the traditional clothes. In other words, the people’s attitudes towards the clothing reforms are a litmus test for understanding how far the Repub- lican modernization drive penetrated into society in the short run and how and how far the ordinary people negotiated the implementation of the Republican reforms.

Everyday Resistance And Selective Adaptation To The Hat ReformRegarding society’s reception of the Hat Law, Turkish histori-

ography had frequently focused on uprisings and collective pro-tests against the Hat Law in Istanbul, Bursa, Erzurum, Trabzon, Rize, Giresun, Malatya, Kayseri and Kahramanmaraş. Histori-cal accounts of discontent with the Hat Law have always been confi ned to these short and dramatic sides of the story ended with the execution of the protesters by Independence Tribunals. However, the great part of the story was not limited to these rio-ts and tragic ends and took place in the complexity of everyday life. Popular dissent, resistance and selective adaptation strate-gies in various forms prevailed throughout Anatolia.

Many people refused to put the new hat on their head. In many places, the men withdrew from the street and pub-


lic life for a while to protest the Hat Law covertly. Those men who were opponents of the new hat and new regime discouraged their neighbors and friends with derisive jokes and anti-hat rumors. Those who continued to wear banned headgear began to carry a new hat in order to wear it when they saw approaching police, gendarme or state offi cials. Some wore the new hat in public places, while wearing fez or turban in daily life. Some, who did not like the hat and continued to wear old headgear, kept a hat to wear when they went to the state offi ces in downtown. Some people resisted the new codes in anonymous ways by pretending to be religious functionaries, who were left free to wear turban. Many people who disliked the new hat managed to avoid legal prosecution by wearing various kinds of shapeless skullcaps, balaclava, fur caps, kalpaks, and various forms of conical hats. The most important common nuance of all these headgears was the lack of brim that was seen as sin because it made diffi cult to pray. Another advantage of the-se usual headgears was their relative low prices and availa-bility throughout the country. Finally, even those ordinary men who obeyed the laws adopted the less brimmed hat, peaked (kasket), and often wore it by turning its brim back especially in mosque.

Understanding why the many Muslim people of Anato-lia were unwilling to adopt the western clothes requires a look at the demographic change during and right after the demise of the Ottoman Empire. With the contraction of the Ottoman Empire during the 19th century, the great part of Muslim and Turkish populations in the Caucasus, Crimea and especially Balkans gradually migrated into Anatolia. The ethnic and religious composition of the population along with the socio-economic features of the people un-


derwent a dramatic change from a heterogeneous imperial demographic structure to a more homogenous population in religious and ethnic terms.16 An enormous portion of Ar-menian population was deported during the last quarter of the 19th century and then during the World War I. The Muslim people had begun to make up the great majority of the population in the Ottoman Anatolia from the late nine-teenth century onward. This also constituted the one of the main bases of the Panislamist policy launched by Abdul-hamid II.17 In a similar way, it was partly this demograp-hic transformation that made Islamism and then Turkism appropriate ideologies among the Turkish middle class, in-tellectuals, bureaucrats, and their representatives, i.e. the Committee of Union and Progress.

During the fi rst quarter of the 20th century, the successive wars in the Balkans, Caucasus, and Arabian Peninsula, aga-inst the Great Powers, the nascent nation states and the newly emerging nationalist-irredentist movements triggered anot-her tragic and massive immigration wave of Muslim popula-tion escaping from the lands separated from the Empire. The last phase of a great and dramatic population movement took place between the Anatolian Greeks and the Muslim popula-tion of Greece just after the Turkish National Struggle.18 Most of those who left Turkey, be they Armenian and Greek, had constituted the more secular city-dwellers and middle-classes engaged in manufacturing, commerce and jobs requiring qua-lifi cation. The émigré Muslim population consisted of mostly peasants and farmers. The cultural impact of this demograp-hic change on Turkey was signifi cant as well as the economic effects, even though such cultural impact is not a well-exami-ned story in Turkish history. Indeed, these newcomer Muslim people brought also their memoirs fi lled with hostility and


revulsion toward those who deported them out of their home-lands.19 Probably this cultural impact led the new Anatolian people to an antipathy toward the western images and sym-bols. Both the Muslim people of the Empire in Anatolia or out-side Anatolia who had had to leave their lands and homes in the Balkans and Caucasus to take refuge in Turkey had fought against the Christian peoples, who wore the same brimmed hats and clothes the Republican regime ordered them to wear. The Christian clothes and headgear had bad connotations in the minds of the Muslim believers as a memory of the symbols of enemies. Furthermore, in the eye of poor Ottoman workers, peasants and low-ranked state offi cials, the hat symbolized the Ottoman middle and wealthy class, mostly consisting of the non-Muslim minorities.

Furthermore, the violence and attacks between the com-munities in the Ottoman Empire sometimes emerged in the forms of attacks on such symbols. In the Ottoman era, for example, one popular verbal attack of Muslims subjects on non-Muslims subjects was to say, “Shit on your hat.”20 The-refore, it is not unexpected that an ordinary Muslim would hate such symbols and those who adopted them, like the re-publican elite. Marmaduke Pickthall, a British scholar and traveler, for example, writes how he had to take off his hat and put on a fez before his visit to a Muslim quarter in Le-banon in order to protect himself from a probable attack of Muslim community.

An important religious factor also led the pious Muslim men to refuse the western hat. For the Muslim people, kee-ping the head covered during prayer was an indicator of res-pect to God. However, they needed brimless headgear so that they could prostrate and touch their foreheads to the ground.


In this regard, peaked hats and caps made diffi cult and impos-sible to perform prayer.

Finally, the manufacture and trade in fezzes, turbans, and other traditional brimless headgear were important sectors of the Ottoman economy. Many merchants, traders, and artisans had long been engaged in manufacturing and trade of fez and other traditional local headgears. The hat reform undermi-ned their business.21 Therefore, the strong economic interests vested in the manufacture and trade of customary headgears made it diffi cult to eliminate them easily. As will be shown below, the police had to struggle with the clandestine trade of these headgears during the period, especially after the death of Atatürk, which stimulated the illicit fez trade when hopes arose of turning back to the old order.

In the fi rst ten years of the Republic, the fez did not disap-pear in the countryside. One reason was the lack of suffi cient hat stocks on the market. Another was the high cost of the new hats and hat black-marketeering. The state organization did not keep pace with the legal reforms. Although the state prohibited the fez, there were not nearly enough western hats to go around.22 When hats appeared in the market, they were so expensive that many poor people could not afford them. For this reason, while some had to wear women’s hats, some resisted wearing hats or found new forms of headgear instead of the prohibited fez.23

Undoubtedly, this was not the most important reason behind avoidance of wearing the new hat. People’s intense dislike of it, fi erce criticism of and active resistance to it were apparent throughout Anatolia. In this public criticism and resistance, es-pecially the popular culture played a crucial role discouraging ordinary people from adopting the new hat easily.


Ridiculing the HatWearing a western hat became an object of mockery, especi-

ally in the countryside. This also was a main source of the di-sobedience to the Hat Law as reported by Harold Armstrong, a foreign journalist who travelled throughout Turkey towards the end of the 1920s. In his detailed travel account on Republi-can Turkey, he told about such a scene in which a person who had put a hat on his head was laughed at by his companions and thus he refused to wear hat even before the offi cials.

“Looking around at the crowds, I could now believe the tales I had heard and previously thought fantastic: His friends lau-ghed at him, telling him that he had become more unbeliever than the unbeliever, from a sound follower of the Prophet he had become at one bound a Catholic priest. And the old man had reput on his fez, taken the hat before the Governor, fl ung it on the ground, trampled on it and gone gladly to be handed for disobedience.”24

Poking fun functioned to discourage the people to wear the legal headgear and to resist the rules about clothing. For instance, a widespread anecdote told among the Mus-lim people, who hated the new hat was about a Greek mer-chant in Trabzon who mocked the Muslim people for we-aring European hats: “It must be actually diffi cult to wear this hat. You had always cursed us by saying, ‘Shit on your infi del hat’; now, how will you put on these hats stuffed with your shit?” 25 It is very hard and perhaps impossible to ascertain whether or not this humorous incident happe-ned in real life. On the other hand, regardless of whether or not it occurred, this anecdote, probably fabricated by the opponents of the new hat, expressed the people’s negative perception of the new hat.


When the Hat Law was passed, the people in Erzurum thought up a joke ridiculing the wearers of the new hat. Ac-cording to the joke, the people deliberately mistook the hat for a chamber pot (lazımlık). One day, a person wearing a pa-nama hat had taken his hat off to respectfully greet another person. However, the greeted person had mistaken the hat for a chamber pot and said, “Forget it, my friend, forget it, it is pro-per only for beers to fi ll it” (Galdır gurban galdır, onu doldurmak ayıya mahsustur).26

Anti-Hat RumorsAnti-hat rumors also worked for the sake of the same goal.

As stated below, in 1930, and especially in 1938 and 1939, word of mouth alleging the reacceptance of the fez and the abolition of the Hat Law pervaded the country. For many, the Free Re-publican Party or the death of Atatürk harbingered return to the native Muslim headgear and clothes. During the 1930s, in spite of the consolidation of the RPP’s monopoly of high poli-tics, the coffeehouses persisted in providing the discontented people with informal and non-monopolized space in which confl icting views and opinions were expressed and transmit-ted among the local communities. Expressions of challenging opinions gained momentum towards the end of the decade, especially with the deterioration of Atatürk’s health condition in 1937 and his death in 1938. For example, according to a re-port by the Denizli Police Directorate, the coffeehouses in De-nizli province were full of “reactionary” and “religious” peop-le belonging to plebian groups. They often talked against the Republican regime and reforms.27 In many instances, rumors against the new western hat, modern clothes, Atatürk and the RPP also fi rst appeared in coffeehouses.28


Women’s receptions in homes were among the well-known communication mediums of seditious news and opponent dis-courses between the people. Women in these receptions talked about not only fashion, recipes and individual gossip, but also prices, economic situation, and politics.29 Women’s receptions functioned especially as rumor mills. As far as we know from a denunciation letter in the police archives, women who met in homes discussed and criticized the hat reform. For instan-ce, one of the women at a home reception in Eskişehir said, “Atatürk is dead, therefore the hat will be removed, we will wear charshaf again, the dervish lodges will reopen, and our old costumes will return.”30

Especially upon the death of Atatürk, the rate of counters-tatements by clerics in mosques and other public places inc-reased considerably. In a report by the Directory-General of Security to the Ministry of Internal Affairs, such activities and counterstatements were outlined as follows:

“There were those who preached in mosques against the regime, who wore some illegal clothes against the hat law, who talked against our respectable leaders, and who strived to stimulate tariqas and dervish convents (…). Reactionary propaganda rose especially after the death of our eternal chief, Atatürk. This propaganda originated from İstanbul and spread to Anatolia through Samsun and Ankara. In Anatolia, rumors and groundless allegations circulated among the people. It is generally talked that 'The government is planning to repair the mosques and to educate new teachers for the villages'; 'The government has decided to put a religion course in the curriculum of primary schools'; 'Female students will not be permitted to go beyond secondary school, and they will be educated in schools separate from male students'; 'Those women who are working


in government offices will be dismissed and will be housewives from now on, thereby the population will increase.' ”31

As reported by the İstanbul Police Directory to the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the police had received intelligence in De-cember 1938 that some people in “conservative districts” were saying, “The fez will replace the hat,” and “The religious con-vents will reopen.” Upon this report, the Minister of Internal Affairs Şükrü Kaya ordered the İstanbul Governorship to in-vestigate the sources of such rumors and to take stricter mea-sures to prevent their further the spread.32

According to the police records, various news and rumors about which changes would be underway in the near future were circulating in schools, mosques and coffeehouses in İs-tanbul in November 1938. Some of them were alleging an im-minent reinstitution of the old headgears and traditional way of life.33 Likewise, women who gathered at a home reception in Eskişehir on 28 November 1938 talked about political mat-ters as well as this or that. They alleged that because Atatürk had died, the new hat would be removed, women would wear carshaf, and the dervish lodges would reopen.34 Similarly, in the villages of Muş, peasants talked about the re-institution of medreses, the re-establishment old sultanate, general amnesty for all criminals and tax amnesty. Some said that “İnönü is our real father; he will close all of the girls’ schools and wear kalpak, and warm towards Syria.”35

Anti-Hat PlacardsAnother means through which the people expressed their

disapproval of the new hat was the placards. Right after the


Hat Law of 1925, in some places, dissenters expressed their negative feelings and opposition against the new hat by me-ans of anonymous placards plastered on walls or on doors. One of them was of an anti-hat placard hung on the wall of Taşhan, the central building and marketplace in Sivas in No-vember 1925. According to a security report sent to the go-vernment, a placard against the Hat Law that criticized the People’s Party’s reforms was detected there.36 By December of that year, the people of Sivas marched in the streets protesting the new hat. Before and during the incidents, protest posters were plastered on the buildings.37

The poor people who affi liated with the communist groups also used counter-hegemonic and anti-government language of anti-secularism. Expressing their discontent with the social and economic order through the criticisms of the bourgeois se-cular and cultural reforms, they employed an anti-secular and anti-reforms discourse in order to agitate the ordinary people. According to the trials held in İzmir in 1929, for example, a groups of poor and allegedly communist artisans and wor-kers had been accused of writing a placard titled “To Hapless and Poor Brothers who were Deceived and Poisoned Every-day by the People’s Party’s Opium” (Halk Fırkasının Her Gün Yeni Bir Ayfonla Uyutulan ve Zehirlenen Yoksul ve Bedbaht Kar-deşler!), addressing to the religious feelings of the people th-rough blaming the secular reforms. The placard, blaming the Hat Law as well as the language reform, the modern-looking extravagant women and men, the sports and dancing activi-ties of the middle-classes, stated that the young virgin women were compelled to involve in prostitution and that the young men were deceived by the sports and dances diverting their attention from the daily bread struggle.38


Pressure of Social MilieuThe pressure of the local social milieu and culture was ge-

nerally more infl uential than the legal pressure of the state in the countryside and in distant quarters of even the big cities. The rumors were, for example, one of indicators of the local informal news and expectations denying the offi cial news and orders. In addition, many people who disliked and refused to wear the new hat advised and warned their friends and rela-tives not to wear it. İrfan Orga, a staff offi cer, for instance, told of his experience of the hat reform. One day, the barber in his quarter kindly requested him to put off the “ill-omened” hat by arguing, “The hat is inappropriate for a Muslim, because it is a Christian headgear. Therefore, if a Muslim wears it, Allah will never forgive him.”39

Some people did not accept the hat due to the requests and warnings of the infl uential religious people and clerics. For example, some local merchants or landowners who wanted to go into politics within the local RPP branches had to withdraw from the politics because the elder relatives or hocas and sheikhs with whom they affi liated or they respected requested that they not wear the new hat under any circumstances.40

Families and relatives were especially an important factor in discouraging the men from wearing the hat. Sarkis Çer-kezyan, for example, writes in his memoirs that an infl uen-tial person in their village named Mustafa Ağa did not go out of his home for a while after the proclamation of the Hat Law in order to protest the change. In the end, he had to buy a new hat in order to go into the downtown free from any possible prosecution. When he came to his house with a hat on his head, his wife, daughters and daughters-in-law began to cry out and scream by saying, “Our father, our father, you


also became an infi del, our father.” This attitude of his family distressed him for a long time.41

Therefore, even in big centers, the hat wearers walked in the street shyly and timidly during the period. For most of the pe-ople, wearing a hat was not seen as acceptable. In some quarters, young boys who were encouraged by the adults who took a dim view of the hat wearers disturbed the modern-looking men and women wearing the new hat. In some instances, they mocked and ridiculed those people who wore them. Some children th-rew stone at the hat wearers and affronted them, shouting, “ga-vur!” (infi del). Therefore, there were many people who prefer-red to carry their hat in their hand rather than putting it on their heads in the street.42

Everyday Resistance, Avoidance and Selective Adaptation StrategiesDuring the 1930s, the Anatolian people negated the Hat

Law or adapted to the ban on fez in daily life in several ways. The one passive way for resistance to the new hat was to withdraw from the public places for a while. Indeed, many people in Anatolian countryside refused to wear the new hat and consequently avoided going out of home. As Mitat Enç noted in his memoirs, in Gaziantep, so many people began to lay low and to lock themselves into their houses after the Hat Reform that the number of those people who went to shopping decreased signifi cantly. Many swore up and down by saying, “If I wear it, let my wife become free” (Giyersem, avradım boş olsun).43

For those people who insisted on wearing the traditional headgears, there were several ways to escape the prosecution.


Pretending to be a religious man was one of them. According to law, religious functionaries were allowed to wear religious costumes, only during the working hours. The religious cos-tumes were forbidden them outside of working hours. Howe-ver, many religious-minded people tried to get over the offi -cial clothing rules by pretending to be a Muslim preacher. In his trip to Turkey, Harold Armstrong noted how the ordinary people eclectically dressed after the Republican reforms. He was also surprised by the great number of religious functiona-ries like hocas and imams in streets:

“The people in the streets and in the market-place wore a fantastic mixture of clothes. Mainly they kept their old-fashioned shoes and trousers, and mixed them with European coats and hats… Here and there a hoca or an imam, wearing long robes and fez with green turban, walking slowly by recalled the old dignity of the Turks.”44

As far as we understand from the memoirs of the contem-poraries, some of those people whom Armstrong supposed were hoca or imam were not religious functionaries in fact, but they pretended to be religious functionaries so as to escape the police prosecution. Therefore, the application for offi cial certi-fi cate for wearing religious costumes, especially for turban, to the Provincial Muftis increased in these years.45

Some men continued to wear the fez, but as soon as they noticed a gendarme or police, took it off and hide it inside their clothes.46 In villages, the people who wore fez or turban, collectively bought only one hat and kept it in one of the hou-ses in village or generally in Village Room, for use of those peasants who had to go to the downtown. In addition, some peasants who needed to wear the new hat in public places and government offi ces put on fez under their hat which was


bigger than the fez and other kinds of traditional brimless he-adgears. Whenever they became free from the public places and government offi ces, they took off this big hat.47

In his memoirs, Rıza Nur pointed out how peasants in Sinop did not accept the new headgear. Even those peasants who lived in villages in close proximity to the city center made a few hat from the very poor quality of fabric. These hats were kept in the guest room of the village. The peasant who needed to go to the city center left his fez or turban in the guest room and put on one of these hats. After they had returned to the village, the fi rst thing the peasants did was to put the hat back and then pick their traditional headgears from the guest room.48 Similarly, in Bolu, for instance, the peasants preferred to use the hat when they went to the city center, but in the villages, they preferred to wear their tradi-tional hats.49

Another resistance technique or selective adaptation met-hod to the new rules regarding the headgear was to adopt different but more acceptable sorts of headgear. These hea-dgears were not against the rules, but also did not comply with the offi cially prescribed hats. In other words, many people gave up fez reluctantly and reservedly, but refused to wear the new hat. Instead, they kept their heads uncove-red in public places, or wore brimless headgear, which did not prevent the touching the forehead on the ground during prayer and did not remind of the Christians’ large brimmed hat. Instead of the fez, many people began to wear, for ins-tance, hand-made caps such as fur caps, skullcaps, conical hats, kalpaks, and woven wool caps, and many other inte-resting sorts of caps in forms of tea-cozies or baby-bonnets, as described by Lilo Linke, a German journalist who toured


Turkey extensively in 1935. Besides, these popularly disco-vered and easy-made headgears were much cheaper than the new fashion hats.50

Accordingly, on the implementation of the hat reform in the central Anatolia, two contemporary foreign observers wrote that even though the majority of people seemed to be complying with the new regulations, they did it so superfi -cially that the regulations were insignifi cant to infl uence the people’s lives:

“In the interior of the country as I trekked to the South, I saw the Old Turk in all his glory. The new law, it is true, obliges him to discard the fez, and wear European dress; but he has only superfi cially obeyed the order.”51

Indeed, although the majority of the men gave up wearing the fez, they were still hostile towards the new hat and insis-ted on not wearing it. According to memoirs of Ali Nar, who lived with his family in Sarıkamış and Yozgat during the ear-ly Republican period, noted that the elders of his village had remained with turban and papak (a kind of fur cap).52 The pe-asants in his village, deeply attached to the religion, had not accepted the new hat:

“My father had never put on his head the hat and I put on my head a kind of woven skullcap made from wool. In my old village, anybody with a beard never wore the new hat and imam of the village was always in his religious clothes of tur-ban and robe.”53

A 1930 election district report of the Çanakkale deputy, Yu-suf Ziya Gevher, also shows how the people even in a western province did not comply with the government’s legal regulati-ons about the headgear. Furthermore, according to this report, even the local RPP bureaucrats and state functionaries were


not able to effectively struggle against the people who disobe-yed the Hat Law.

“It was of course very grievous to see how negatively the inhabitants of Biga perceived the hat and to hear especially how they had to wear it reluctantly and how they saw the resistance to the Hat Law as a heroism. On the other hand, it is enough to demonstrate my distress to see the fact that the local administrations, state offi cials and even our own party organization protected the traditions and customs of this narrow milieu rather than to impose our principles and ideas on them.”54

The records kept by the police in the late 1920s show that in İstanbul some who were discontented with the new kind of headgear began to wear odd and completely brimless he-adgears something like cones in a sarcastic manner.55 As a consequence of the increase in the number of people wea-ring odd headgears different from the new hat recognized by the state, the government had to issue a circular banning some sorts of headgears put on against the law towards the end of 1930.56 This shows that the new hat did not meet with the approval of the ordinary people even though they left the fez. The following years of the single-party regime, even in its most authoritarian phase, would prove the tenacity of this popular mood.

A report of 11 April 1933 based on police observations and sent from the Eskişehir Governorship to the Ministry of Inter-nal Affairs, called the attention of the authorities to the nati-ves of Eskişehir of all ages who had recently begun to wear skullcaps instead of hats. Those who wore that headgear were growing in number day by day. The governorship recommen-ded the Ministry to ban offi cially these skullcaps, which were


not be so different from the old fashion nightcaps and not re-lated to the new hat.57 Likewise, the Bolu Governorship, in a report to the Ministry of Internal Affairs, noted the salience of widespread noncompliance to the Hat Law everywhere from the centre to the fur-fl ung of the province:“In defiance of the modern hat, some people in the

province wear different headgears such as woven wool berets, skullcaps and conical headgears called inadiye, and schoolchildren were increasingly using woven skullcaps.“58

The general inspector of Thrace, Kazım Dirik, reported that the ordinary people, artisans, and peasants even in this wes-tern region of the country still wore several kinds of traditi-onal headgear as a midway between the fez and the modern hat. In summary, he described the situation as follows:

“During the inspection tours to my inspection region, I saw that some citizens wrap turban on their heads and wear skullcaps in some villages and especially in the shopping districts of the cities (…).“59

By 1935, upon a countrywide increase in the number of men wearing skullcaps instead of the hat sanctioned by the law, which resulted in an increase in the lawsuits that stem-med from the confl icts between the police and people, the Ministry of Justice had to call the attention of the Ministry of Internal Affairs to this acute problem. In order to preclude the invasion of such lawsuits to the courts, the Ministry of Justice requested the Ministry of Internal Affairs to take the necessary administrative measures to prevent the use of the skullcaps by the adult people.60

Brimless headgears such as fur caps, woolen skullcaps, co-nical caps, and many other types of headgear other than the western hat were so widespread that some provincial admi-


nistrations had to prohibit their use.61 Nevertheless, neither such prohibitions nor the ideological hegemony of the regi-me convinced the people to surrender to the offi cial headgear. Instead of a western hat sanctioned by the law, some preferred to wrap a cloth around their head in the form of a bundle.62 Of them, many were prosecuted by the police and taken to the courts on the grounds that they had violated “the laws of the revolution” (inkılâb kanunları).63 Notwithstanding these mea-sures, as noted by an eyewitness, the streets and market pla-ces were full of the vendors with colorful conical hats made with paper. In rural areas, some men also put on their heads women’s headgear or covered their head with handkerchiefs. The police sometimes fi ned them, too.64

In the face of such legal actions against the wearers of the headgears other than the legally recognized hat, the suspects also defended themselves and sometimes brought a lawsuit against the security forces or state servants, claiming that the police and the gendarme had violated their individual free-dom and civil rights. In Trabzon, for instance, two peasants sued a police offi cer for insult and physical violence. They de-fended themselves and charged the police offi cer before the court as follows:

“We went downtown to buy corn. We were going to the notary’s office in order to sign a debenture, passing through the garden of the municipality. A police officer, getting closer to us, immediately intercepted Ahmet whose hat was not on his head, but a wrap. The police offi cer forcibly took this wrap from his head against his will. I said to the offi cer 'Please, let off, don’t exaggerate'; but he seized the headgear of Ahmet, and crushed it under his foot and cut with a penknife; then, he kicked Ahmet’s leg. ”65


In another case, the complaint of the peasants who were treated harshly by the sub-district director (nahiye müdürü) caused the removal of the director from the offi ce. When investigating the villages, the director of the Aslanapa sub-district of Kütahya had seen a peasant boy with a slip-per adorned with beads on his head. Although he had or-dered the peasant boy, named İsmail, to take this slipper off his head, İsmail did not obey the sub-district director. The-reupon, he had forcibly taken off the slipper and thrown it on the ground. İsmail then attempted to take and put it on his head again. The director was thoroughly annoyed and foamed with rage in the face of İsmail’s fi rmness and tried to force İsmail bodily to take off the slipper. Upon this, İsma-il, showing his knife and throwing a stone at him, and had come out against the director. Meanwhile, some peasants had begun to support İsmail. For fear of the angry peasants, the director called the gendarme. However, the peasants did not hesitate to resist the gendarme with stones and stick, but in the end, the gendarme soldiers reinforced by additional soldiers arrested fi fteen peasants. Then, upon the complaints of the peasants, the Minister of Internal Affairs, Şükrü Kaya, dismissed the sub-district director on account of misusing his authority and insulting the peasants. According to Kaya, “such a cruel administration itself might pave the way for an insurgence.”66

Disputes between the state offi cials and citizens, like the above-mentioned case, which were ended in the police and gendarme stations or the courts were not exceptional, but part and parcel of the daily routine of the early Republican Turkey. The security forces also frequently took those citizens who violated the Hat Law to the courts. In some instances, the people, who incurred the wrath of the security forces, did


not hesitate to sue the cruel offi cials. It is understood from the correspondence between the local and central administrators that the local judges usually found these citizens not guilty. In some cases, the public prosecutors launched legal investiga-tion about the police and the gendarme who resorted to the use of physical force to implement the Hat Law. The comp-laints of Tahsin Uzer about the judicial authorities refraining the ardent security forces and administrators in the struggle against the illegal headgears is a good evidence of this. In his report, Uzer criticized the judiciary by saying that because the public prosecutors in his inspectorate region, comprising of Erzurum, Ağrı, Kars, Artvin, Rize, Trabzon, Gümüşhane, and Erzincan, frequently resorted to legal proceedings about the police offi cers who were authorized to prevent individuals from wearing the illegal headgear, the campaign against ille-gal headgears had almost come to a halt. Uzer reported that the police offi cers intervened in the wearer of such improper headgears in accordance with the legal requirement of their task; however, the judicial authorities usually regarded such interventions as outrage and unlawful. The courts and local governments in many places came into confl ict with each ot-her in this great problem of the regime.67

Another selective adaptation method to escape from the prosecution was to wear a more acceptable legal hat: peaked. Majority of people, especially the peasants, adopted this hat with lesser brim as compared to other legal headgears with much bigger brims. This hat had only a small and partial brim. Hence, it was possible to use it when fulfi lling the religious duty by turning the peak back. In some places, some people who disliked the brimmed hat wore it by turning the peak back even in daily life.


By the way, even among those people who had to obey the Hat Law by adopting the peaked cap, a hope for retreat from the Hat Law was alive even in the later years of the 1930s. That is, the existence of many people who wore the legal hat does not necessarily indicate that the people adopted the new headgears willingly. For instance, a peasant with a peaked cap whom Lilo Linke had interviewed expressed his hatred for the new hat venomously:

"The Hat Law, for instance, forbade him to wear the fez. At first, he had tried to disobey it but muhtar (village headman), ‘the bastard of a pig,’ had fi ned him. Then he stayed indoors for a week or two. But he could not gaze at the walls forever, so he had ordered his son to buy him a cap in Sivas market. When he got it, he looked at it with contempt and not touched it for many days. At last, his peasant avarice had gained the upper hand. He had paid for it, so he might just as well wear it. He found that all the villagers had covered their heads with similar headgear, and his opposition slowly died. After all, what did it matter? Allah could not blame him for submitting to force. If the arrow of Providence be spent by the bow of fate, there is no shield against it save resignation. One day, insallah, the wicked Government would be swept away, and for the moment he kept his fez carefully hidden.68"

For many that long-awaited time came with the death of Atatürk, which raised the hopes of many dissidents and gave rise to the emergence of a new wave of rumors, acts of noncompliance and resistances in daily life throughout the country. In some quarters of İstanbul like Eyüp, the police began to hear various conversations and rumors claiming that the ban on the fez would be lifted or that the people would begin to wear fez instead of the western hat.69


This expectation among the people was not limited to this traditional and religious district of İstanbul. From Eyüp to all the counties of İstanbul, from İstanbul to every corner of Tur- key, could be he-ard news of the same kind as stated above.

Accordingly, the illicit trade of fez in large quantities ree-merged even in the big cities. Undoubtedly, the ordinary pe-ople’s hopes or expectations for the return to the old days were so infl uential that many merchants and shopkeepers invested in the hope that the state would retreat from the reforms.70 Most likely, the old fez merchants also must have played a role in the emergence of such expectations and rumors since the outlawing of the fez had undermined their business, because this popular mood provided an opportunity for fez sales at an increased rate. The police records are rife with reports about illicit fez marketing in a number of provinces.71 Police seized and eliminated 500 fezzes in a trade company in İzmir.72 Many police reports give information about the fez traders in İzmir and the seized fezzes in their houses or stores in 1938 and 1939.73 Likewise, in Kayseri, the security forces found hundre-ds of fezzes ready for sale in the store of a company.74 Again, it was reported from Kırşehir that thousands of fezzes had been confi scated by security forces and many of them were destroyed at once.75

As far as is understood from the police reports, the main target market for fez sales was the central Anatolian provin-ces and villages, rather than big western city centers. Rural territories, which were closed to the outside and far from the bureaucratic apparatus of the state, comprising com-munities with their strong ties with the religion, customs and traditions, were the most likely potential customers for fezzes.76


Those who were prosecuted owing to the noncompliance with the Hat Law shared a common social position. The pe-asants, the nomadic tribes, the low-income small-scale arti-sans in the Anatolian districts and sub-districts were among the primary consumers of such fezzes. In the city centers and counties, fezzes were to a great extent preferred by the lower income people, especially self-employing shopkeepers and ar-tisans. When looked at the individuals listed in a police recor-ds as having been taken to the court within a month of 1935 because of their disobedience to the Hat Law by wearing fez, it is possible to see such individuals with similar social posi-tion as shopkeeper Hayri Efendi, greengrocer Hüseyin, coffee seller Ali, and craftsman in Ali Rıza.77

The artisans in those Anatolian cities and towns, isolated from manufacturing and commercial activities or in those regions which underwent a state-sponsored industrializa-tion process digging the grave for the small-craftsmen, felt threatened in the face of the changes supported by the go-vernment and therefore did not welcome the reforms. The state-led industrial drive and other state economic policies diminished the profi ts of many craftsmen such as tinsmit-hs, blacksmiths, carpenters, tanneries, saddlers, cabbies, makers of wooden-kitchen utensil, and many other fi elds. As a contemporary observer noted, Kayseri in late 1920s, for example, was full of such craftsmen who were inclined to oppose any change in any sphere of their lives, and ac-cordingly to oppose to the reforms.78 Kayseri was not an exceptional model. The Anatolian cities and towns were full of such craftspeople sharing similar interests, feelings and moods in the face of the radical cultural reforms ac-companied by the pauperization.79 This socioeconomic ba-ckground led the low-income and self employing groups


to approach the Hat Law and many other secular reforms much more cautiously.

Symbolic Politics of Anti-Nationalists:The Case of HatayThe politics of hat reached an interesting point in Hatay

when the Turkish government pursued an active policy to an-nex the province. Pro-Turkish population in the province sud-denly left their customary fezzes and adopted the new hats in the mid-1930s. By doing so, they aimed to demonstrate their desire to be part of the new Turkish state. The Turkish gover-nment also supported this symbolic change to show the wor-ld how Hatay’s population wanted to unite their compatriots across the border. On the other hand, those residents of Hatay who did not want to join the Republic of Turkey, especially Gre-eks and Armenians, abandoned their modern hats and began to wear Muslim’s red fez. The opponents of the Turkish gover-nment aimed to “prevent hat-wearers forming a majority and thereby strengthening Turkey’s claims. Thus, in Hatay, the hat became the symbol of those who wanted Turkish rule and the fez the symbol of those who wanted to be citizens of Syria.”80 This case, I think, demonstrates how the hat played a symbolic role in contestation between the pro-regime and anti-regime political forces. In other words, the hat became a symbol th-rough which the people expressed their political position, their support or disapproval for the new Turkish rulers and regime.

Concluding RemarksThe new regime led by the RPP government embarked a

comprehensive reform program of secularism in the legal,


cultural, and social realms. Undoubtedly, many people, es-pecially the educated middle-classes approved and suppor-ted these secular reforms, or at least shifted back and forth between the active support and passive consent. On the other hand, some politicians and intellectuals found these reforms too radical and criticized them. Some religious lea-ders and thinkers in Anatolia, who found the secular refor-ms and practices detrimental to their culture and interests, rose against the regime. Many ordinary people also percei-ved the Kemalist secularism as loss of cultural integrity and alienation, and consequently opposed to the regime acti-vely. We are familiar with the accounts about these aspects of the social response to the secular reforms. Both nationa-list-modernist historiography and critical accounts, whet-her leftist or conservative, overemphasized such middle-c-lass and elite responses and open mass protests in good or bad connotations. In addition, these accounts explained the response to the hat reform with cultural factors such as “pe-ople’s legitimate resistance to state’s assault on religious fe-elings” or “backward looking reaction of the ignorant mas-ses.” However, the scholarly literature on early republic has not dealt with the ordinary people’s vast array of critical responses to the secular reforms in everyday life. Nor have the historians explored in detail the main social and econo-mic motivations that fuelled the reactions to the hat.

This article has described and discussed this very impor-tant but lost chapter of the Turkish political life by focusing on, though scratching the surface, the ordinary people’s ne-gative perceptions, seditious talks, word of mouth, alternati-ve interpretations, aspirations, and complaints regarding the hat reform. Moreover, this paper has uncovered resulting daily resistances or adaptation mechanisms, which negated,


curbed and reshaped the hat reform. According to the main fi ndings of this study, fi rst, the secular reforms of the repub-lican regime, specifi cally the Hat Law, were not uncontested and unchallenged in everyday life. The resistance to the se-cular reforms and the attempts to adapt them to the existing way of life were not limited to a handful open uprisings and riots, which were eliminated by the state. The main interac-tion, contestation, and negotiation space between the state and the society over the hat reform was the everyday life. Many people in localities responded to the reform by a gre-at variety of mundane, anonymous, and indirect methods in the everyday routine.

A considerable part of the people resisted to the hat reform in various ways. Some passively withdrew from the public life to protest the reforms. Some refused to wear new hats and clo-thes and insisted on wearing their age-old headgears. Many, who remained in the double-sided pressure between the tra-ditional and religious social milieu and the secular legal rules, adaptively and cunningly created new combinations. For ins-tance, men put on their heads neither fez or turban nor new hats, but conical hats, woven skullcaps, brimless or less brim-med hats like peaked (kasket). Many continued to wear their traditional headgears in private realms, they took off them in offi cial places and town centers.

The main reason of the men’s avoidance of the new hats was not only their strong religious attachment or conserva-tism; the problem was more complex. Wearing the new hats distressed the local people. Particularly the poor and low-in-come men, the new hat meant the new costs. In addition, Tur-kish men were generally under pressure of each other, in other words, the local social milieu. For that reason, many individu-


als, not because of their religious fanaticism, but for practical reasons, insisted on wearing their local headgears or found a compromise between traditions and the laws. What is more, the headgears did have a symbolic meaning and force. It dis-tinguished the supporters and opponents of the government and social order. Even some non-Muslim men who had long been accustomed to wearing the western hats abandoned it for a brief period to show their discontent. Among them were those fez traders who lost a big market. They also challenged the new hat for their economic reasons. Many low income and poor men resented the new hat, not because of the shape of the new hat but because of their wearers, who, in the eyes of them, were rich, better-off or at least contended with the existing government economic policies. Therefore, some se-cular-socialist opponents of the regime also adopted anti-hat discourse in their daily propaganda against the government policies. In a nutshell, the anti-hat discourse or behaviors have complex motives.

How did these reactions affect the state and the politics? Undoubtedly, the republican single-party regime did not give up the hat reform. Today, the Hat Law is still in effect, but neither the legal authorities nor the governments apply to it. The main reason for this is that the main targets which led the founders of the republic to enact the Hat Law have already been reached. Another reason is undoubtedly the passive re-actions of the vast majority to the hat, in the form of refusing to wear the western hats at least. Except for a small minority of intellectuals, bureaucrats and middle class urban-dwellers, the great part of Turkish people have not adopted the hat pro-moted by the Kemalist elite or found middle ways by wearing brimless or less brimmed headgears at grass-roots level.


The political and ideological struggles through and over clothing and symbols like headgears, especially over women’s veil and headscarf, still continue to occur today. A closer look at the Kemalist hat reform and social response to it shows us the importance of a detailed study of the policies and struggles concerning symbolic elements such as fashion and clothing to grasp the current grassroots dynamics of political life and the power of cultural-symbolic elements in state-society relations.

(Endnotes)1 Author’s Note: I would like to thank Elif Mahir Metinsoy, Ferdan Ergut, Na-

mık Sinan Turan and Levent Ürer for their comments and Turkish Academy of Sciences (TÜBA) for its fi nancial support.

Bernard Lewis, Niyazi Berkes, Tarık Zafer Tunaya and many other nationalist or modernist scholars adopted this view. See Bernard Lewis, The Emergence of Modern Turkey. London; New York: Oxford University Press, 1961; Niyazi Berkes, The Development of Secularism in Turkey, Montreal: McGill Univer-sity Press, 1964; Tarık Zafer Tunaya. Türkiye’nin Siyasi Hayatında Batılılaşma Hareketleri, Volumes 1 and 2. İstanbul: Cumhuriyet, 1999; Tarık Zafer Tunaya, İslamcılık Akımı. İstanbul: İstanbul Bilgi Üniversitesi, 2003; Çetin Özek, 100 Soruda Türkiye’de Gerici Akımlar, İstanbul: Gerçek Yayınevi, 1968.

2 Mete Tunçay, for instance, argues that Mustafa Kemal’s main motivation for the abolition of the Caliphate was to reinforce his own personal authority. See Mete Tunçay, Türkiye Cumhuriyeti’nde Tek Parti Yönetiminin Kurulması (1923-1931). İstanbul: Tarih Vakfı Yurt Yayınları, 2005, p: 80. See also Erik Jan Zürcher, Turkey: A Modern History, London; New York: I. B. Tauris, 2004, p: 167, 179.

3 See Necip Fazıl Kısakürek, Son Devrin Din Mazlumları, İstanbul: BD Yayın-ları, 1974); Sadık Albayrak, İrtica’ın Tarihçesi: Devrimler ve Gerici Tepkiler, İstanbul: Araştırma Yayınları, 1990; Sadık Albayrak, İrtica’ın Tarihçesi: Tek Parti Dönemi ve Batıcılık, İstanbul: Araştırma Yayınları, 1990; Sadık Albayrak, Türkiye’de Din Kavgası, İstanbul: Sebil Matbaacılık, 1975; Şükrü Karatepe, Tek Parti Dönemi, İstanbul: İz Yayıncılık, 1997; Abdurrahman Dilipak, Bir Başka Açıdan Kemalizm, İstanbul: Beyan Yayınları, 1988; Yavuz Bahadıroğlu, Osman-lı Demokrasisinden Türkiye Cumhuriyetine, İstanbul: Nesil Yayınları, 2008; Hasan Hüseyin Ceylan, Cumhuriyet Dönemi Din-Devlet İlişkileri I, İstanbul: Risale Yayınları, 1991.


4 For example, see Hülya Küçük, “Sufi Reactions Against The Reforms After Tur-key’s National Struggle: How a Nightingale Turned into a Crow,” The State and The Subaltern: Modernization, Society and the State in Turkey and Iran, ed. Touraj Atabaki , I.B. Tauris: New York, 2007, pp: 123-142; Binnaz Toprak, “Dinci Sağ,” Geçiş Sürecinde Türkiye, ed. Irvin Cemil Schick and Ertuğrul Ahmet To-nak, İstanbul: Belge Yayınları, 1998, pp: 246-247.

5 For works overemphasizing the impact of the secular reforms on society, see Niyazi Berkes, The Development of Secularism in Turkey, Montreal: McGill University Press, 1964; Bernard Lewis, The Emergence of Modern Turkey, London; New York: Oxford University Press, 1961; Tarık Zafer Tu-naya, Devrim Hareketleri İçinde Atatürk ve Atatürkçülük, İstanbul: Baha Matbaası, 1964.

For more critical or conservative literature overrating the effects of the secular reforms see Nilüfer Göle, “Modernleşme Bağlamında İslami Kimlik Arayışı,” Türkiye’de Modernleşme ve Ulusal Kimlik, ed. Sibel Bozdoğan and Reşat Ka-saba, İstanbul: Tarih Vakfı Yurt Yayınları, 1998, p:73. Göle states that the Kemalist authoritarian modernization caused a big change of the civilization of Turkish society. In addition see, Richard Tapper, Islam in Modern Turkey, London: I.B. Tauris, 1991, pp: 189-221; Ahmet T. Kuru, Secularism and State Policies Toward Religion: The United States, France, and Turkey, Cambridge: Cambridge Uni-versity Press, 2009; Şükrü Karatepe, Tek Parti Dönemi, İstanbul: İz Yayıncılık, 1997; Cihan Aktaş, Tanzimattan Günümüze Kılık Kıyafet ve İktidar, İstanbul: Nehir Yayınları, 1990; Sadık Albayrak, İrtica’ın Tarihçesi: Tek Parti Dönemi ve Batıcılık, Vol. 5.

6 Linda Baumqarten, What Clothes Reveal: The Language of Clothing in Co-lonial and Federal America, New Haven: Yale University Press, 2011; Richard Frigley, The Politics of Appearances: Representations of Dress in Revolutio-nary France, Oxford: Berg Publishers, 2002; Jean Marie Allman, Fashioning Af-rica: Power and the Politics of Dress, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2004; Kate Haulman, The Politics of Fashion in Eighteenth-Century America, Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2011; Judd Stitziel, Fashi-oning Socialism: Clothing, Politics and Consumer Culture in East Germany, Oxford: Berg Publishers, 2005; Juanjuan Wu, Chinese Fashion: From Mao to Now, London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2009.

7 For a classical work on the politics of symbols in the revolutionary moments, see Lynn Hunt, Politics, Culture and Class in the French Revolution, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984. For her analytical approach to the functions of the symbolic change during the French Revolution, see p: 58. For the impor-tance of the symbolic element in power struggle and revolutionary moments in Russian Revolution, see Orlando Figes & Boris Kolonitskii, Interpreting the Russian Revolution: The Language and Symbols of 1917, New Haven: Yale


University Press, 1999. About the meaning of the changes in the clothing codes during the revolutionary period as an indicator of rupture with the past, see Paul Connerton, How Societies Remember, Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989, pp: 10-11.

8 Henry Elisha Allen, The Turkish Transformation: A Study in Social and Reli-gious Development, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1935, p: 87.

9 Şevket Süreyya Aydemir, Suyu Arayan Adam, İstanbul: Remzi Kitabevi, 2012, p: 310, 315.

10 Murat Metinsoy, “Şapkanın Kerameti: 84. Yılında Şapka Reformu,” www.bia-net.org, Nov. 24, 2009.

11 For the same reason, the Kemalist elite supported the anthropological re-search and argued that the Turkish nation, belonging to brachycephalic race like Europeans, shared the western nations’ racial characteristics. The Republican regime’s interest in anthropology was not related to a racist ideology or conviction. Kemalists struggled against the western racist and orientalist theories that put forward that the non-western societies, inclu-ding Turks, lagged behind in the evolution of human being, and therefore had different and inferior racial characteristics embodied in dochycephalic skull shapes. In this regard, the Kemalist perception of the anthropology was not racist or ideological. During the age of racist assaults and impe-rialism, Atatürk and Kemalist bureaucrats appropriated the opportunities of the anthropological research to claim the equality of Turkish nation in relation with the European nations. However, it is possible to say that the single party government did not hesitate to make use of this anthropologi-cal research in internal colonization of non-Turkish population in Anatolia, especially to legitimize the intervention in Kurdish and Alawite tribes in Eastern Anatolia. See Zafer Toprak, Darwin’den Dersim’e: Cumhuriyet ve Antropoloji, İstanbul: Doğan Kitap, 2012.

12 For a brief account of the socio-political importance of headgears in the Ot-toman society see John Norton, “Faith and Fashion in Turkey,” Languages of Dress in the Middle East, ed. Nancy Lindisfarne-Tapper and Bruce Ingham, Richmond: Curzon Press, 1997, pp: 149-157.

13 Ibid, pp: 149-157.

14 Ibid, pp: 155-156.

15 See Tuncer Baykara, Osmanlılarda Medeniyet Kavramı, İzmir: Akademi Kita-pevi, 1992, pp: 60-63, 101-108; Taner Timur, Osmanlı Çalışmaları, Ankara: İmge Kitapevi, 1996, pp: 119-180;

16 For demographic change see Donald Quataert, The Ottoman Empire, 1700-1922, New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000, pp: 115-116.


17 François Georgeon, Sultan Abdülhamid, trans. by Ali Berktay, İstanbul: Homer Kitabevi, 2006, p: 226.

18 See İbrahim Erdal, Mübadele: Uluslaşma Sürecinde Türkiye ve Yunanistan, 1923-1925, İstanbul: IQ Kültür Sanat Yayıncılık, 2006; Mehmet Ali Gökaçtı, Nüfus Mübadelesi: Kayıp Bir Kuşağın Hikâyesi, İstanbul: İletişim Yayınları, 2004.

19 Justin McCarthy, Death and Exile: The Ethnic Cleansing of Ottoman Mus-lims, 1821-1922, Princeton, N. J.: Darwin Press, 1995.

20 See Mustafa Çetin Baydar, Geçidi Bekleyen Şehir: Erzurum, Ankara: Akçay Yayınları, 1997, p: 86.

21 Kemal Zeki Gençosman, Altın Yıllar, İstanbul: Hür Yayınları, 1981, p: 116.

22 Bernard Newman, Turkish Crossroads, London: Robert Hale Ltd., 1951, p: 65.

23 Archive of General Directorate of Security (Emniyet Genel Müdürlüğü Arşivi [EGMA]) [13211-16].

24 Harold Armstrong, Turkey and Syria Reborn: A Record of Two Years of Tra-vel, London: J. Lane, 1930, p: 123.

25 Baydar, Geçidi Bekleyen Şehir, p: 86.

26 Mehmet Zeki Kılıç, Erzurum Fıkraları, İstanbul: Erzurum Kitaplığı, 2001, p: 78.

27 To the Ministry of Internal Affairs, General Directorate of Security Affairs. EGMA [22552-33], 25.10.1937.

28 EGMA [13211-16], 07.12.1938.

29 Barbara C. Aswad, “Visiting Patterns among Women of the Elite in a Small Turkish City,” Anthropological Quarterly, XLVII, No. 1 (1974), p: 20.

30 Ministry of Internal Affairs Archive (İçişleri Bakanlığı Arşivi [İBA]) [12212-4], 28.11.1938.

31 İBA [12212-4].

32 İBA [13211-10], 07.11.1938.

33 İBA [12212-4], 28.12.1938.

34 İBA [12212-4]. 28.11.1938.

35 İBA [12212-4], 24.02.1939.

36 “Intelligence about the play staged in the Erbaa Junoir High School, the attack in a woman teacher in Zile, and the poster criticizing the hat reform and the Pe-ople’s Party, posted on the wall of Taşhan in Sivas,” Prime Ministry Republican Archives, Catalogue of the General Directorate of the Transaction of the Prime Ministry (Başbakanlık Cumhuriyet Arşivi, Muamelat Genel Müdürlüğü Katalo-gu [BCA MGMK], [30.10/101.654.15.], 16.11.1925.

37 Jeremy Seal, A Fez of the Heart: Travels Around Turkey in Search of a Hat, London: Picador, 1996, p: 107.


38 Kerim Sadi, Türkiye’de Sosyalizmin Tarihine Katkı, İstanbul: İletişim Yayınla-rı, 1994, p: 790.

39 İrfan Orga, Bir Türk Ailesinin Öyküsü, İstanbul: Ana Yayıncılık, 2002, p: 219.

40 Mine Göğüş-Tan, Aksu Bora, Mustafa Sever and Özlem Şahin, Cumhuriyet’te Çocuktular, İstanbul: Boğaziçi Üniversitesi Yayınevi, 2007, p: 92.

41 Sarkis Çerkezyan, Dünya Hepimize Yeter, ed. by Yasemin Gedik, 2nd ed.; İs-tanbul: Belge Yayınları, 2003, p: 76.

42 See Orga, Bir Türk Ailesinin Öyküsü, pp: 219-220.

43 Mitat Enç, Selamlık Sohbetleri, İstanbul: Ötüken Neşriyat, 2007, p: 196.

44 Armstrong, Turkey and Syria Reborn, p: 122.

45 İsmail Kara, Kutuz Hoca’nın Hatıraları: Cumhuriyet Devrinde Bir Köy Hoca-sı, İstanbul: Dergâh Yayınları, 2000, p: 178.

46 Ibid., p: 175.

47 Ibid., p: 177.

48 Rıza Nur, Hayat ve Hatıratım, Vol. IV, İstanbul: Altındağ Yayınevi, 1967, p: 1316.

49 Göğüş-Tan et.al., Cumhuriyet’te Çocuktular, p: 91.

50 Lilo Linke, Allah Dethroned, London: Constable & Co. Ltd., 1937, p: 22.

51 Julius R. Van Millingen and Sirdar Ikbal Ali Shah, Turkey, London: A. & C. Black, 1932, p: 13.

52 Ali Nar, Anadolu Günlüğü, İstanbul: Beyan Yayınları, 1998, p: 105.

53 Ibid., p: 112.

54 Report of the RPP Çanakkale Deputy, Yusuf Ziya Gevher, about the RPP’s Orga-nizational Structure in Çanakkale. Prime Ministry Republican Archive, Repub-lican People’s Party Catalogue (Başbakanlık Cumhuriyet Arşivi, Cumhuriyet Halk Fırkası/Partisi Katalogu [BCA CHPK]) [490.1/729.478.1].

55 EGMA [13211-16], 30.03.1930.

56 Circular Letter No. 5307 and Date. 03.11.1930 that banned the headgears which are against the Hat Law. EGMA [13211-16], 03.11.1930.

57 EGMA [13211-16], 11.04.1933.

58 EGMA [13211-16], 02.08.1935.

59 Inspector General of Trakya, Kazım Dirik, EGMA [13211-16], 07.02.1940.

60 EGMA [13211-16], 08.05.1935.

61 Ibid.

62 EGMA [13211-4], 19.03.1939.

63 EGMA [13211-16].


64 İrfan Orga, Bir Türk Ailesinin Öyküsü, p: 220.

65 EGMA [13211-16], 07.03.1939.

66 BCA MGMK [30.10/128.923.10], 01.04.1936.

67 The Third Inspector-General, Tahsin Uzer, EGMA [13211-16], 21.03.1939.

68 Linke, Allah Dethroned, p: 180.

69 EGMA [13211-10], 07.11.1938.

70 For importance of rumor, popular culture and popular opinion for marketing strategies of companies, see Jean-Noël Kapferer, Dedikodu ve Söylenti: Dün-yanın En Eski Medyası, İstanbul: İletişim Yayınları, 1992.

71 EGMA [13211-10], 07.11.1938.

72 Ibid.

73 Ibid.

74 Ibid.

75 Ibid.

76 Ibid.

77 EGMA [13211-16].

78 Armstrong, Turkey and Syria Reborn, p: 165.

79 Murat Metinsoy, Everyday Politics of Ordinary People: Public Opinion, Dis-sent, and Resistance in Early Republican Turkey, 1925-1939. Ph.D. Disserta-tion., Boğaziçi University, The Ataturk Institute for Modern Turkish History, Istanbul, 2010, pp: 467-475; 598-608.

80 Norton, “Faith and Fashion in Turkey,” p: 162.

Everyday Resistance and Selective Adaptation to the Hat Reform in Early Republican Turkey

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