Institutional belief · Race, anthropology and historiography
Turkish History Thesis
Turks were treated as an ancient white or “Alpine” race whose ancestors carried civilization outward from Central Asia and founded or strongly shaped many of the world's early civilizations.
1 episode
Current understanding
Current understanding
Modern populations are products of complex migration and mixture, not discrete civilizational races. The obsolete “Alpine,” “Caucasoid,” and similar racial taxonomies do not describe natural human divisions, and the origins of ancient civilizations cannot be assigned to a single modern ethnic or racial people.
Institutional episode
Turkey
The Turkish History Thesis became an official framework of early Republican historiography and school history. The Türk Tarihi Tetkik Cemiyeti prepared a four-volume school history series published by the Ministry of Education, while state-sponsored history congresses promoted the thesis. In 1937 the health ministry organized a nationwide anthropometric survey of roughly 64,000 people, with the statistics administration processing the data; Afet İnan used the results to support the thesis's claim that Turks belonged to the white “Alpine” race and had carried civilization outward from Central Asia.
Institutions
- Türk Tarihi Tetkik Cemiyeti / Türk Tarih Kurumu
- Maarif Vekâleti
- Sıhhat ve İçtimaî Muavenet Vekâleti
- İstatistik Umum Müdürlüğü
Documented consequences
- National history curriculum
- State-sponsored racial anthropology
- Reinterpretation of ancient civilizations
Institutional machinery
The Türk Tarihi Tetkik Cemiyeti, renamed Türk Tarih Kurumu in the mid-1930s, developed the thesis and prepared the four-volume secondary-school history series published by the Maarif Vekâleti. The 1937 nationwide anthropometric survey was organized through the health ministry, with the İstatistik Umum Müdürlüğü processing the resulting records. Congresses and individual researchers were important parts of this machinery, but they are not substituted for the formal institutions that carried the programme.
Sources and what they establish
- A Country of White Lilies — Inter-Imperial Nation-Making and Development from the Russian Empire's Periphery to Post-Ottoman TurkeyComparative Studies in Society and History
Describes state-sponsored efforts to establish Turks as members of the white Alpine race, the Turkish History Congresses, and the large anthropometric survey associated with Afet İnan.
- Tarihçe — Türk Tarih KurumuTürk Tarih Kurumu
Official institutional history stating that the society prepared the four-volume secondary-school history books and that they were published under the Maarif Vekâleti.
- Ayşe Afet İnan (1908–1985)Atatürk Encyclopedia
Describes the 1937 nationwide anthropometric survey, the health ministry's organizational role, the statistics administration's role, its scale of roughly 64,000 people, and İnan's use of the results to support the Turkish History Thesis and white-Alpine racial claim.
Last reviewed: 23/08/2026