From devastating warfare to deficient welfare: the Ottoman-Turkish disabled veterans of the First World War (1918-1930)

Abstract

Although disabled veterans have usually been described as the First World War's most visible legacy in European history, there has been a lack of interest in them in Ottoman-Turkish historiography. This article aims to fill this gap by examining the hardships the Ottoman-Turkish disabled veterans encountered and the treatment they received at the hands of the authorities from the end of the First World War through the formative years of the Turkish Republic (1918-1930). The article demonstrates the dismal state of the early twentieth-century Ottoman-Turkish welfare system and social state policy regarding war veterans, and, more importantly, reveals the ideological and cultural reasons for the neglect of First World War veterans. Choosing the victory in the War of Independence, rather than the defeat in the First World War, as its foundation myth, the new Turkish nation-state tended to ignore the disabled veterans of the First World War and prioritized those of the former. The weakness of disabled veterans' associations prevented them from becoming an influential civil pressure group. Moreover, the militarist image of the healthy masculine warrior as a representation of the strong society made the visibility of disabled veterans less desirable.