We saw in the previous chapter that when in August 1915 Dr Mazhar Osman posed the question ‘Are Turks degenerate?’, he answered the question ambiguously but with hope for the future. His answer was that Turks, like the peoples of many old nations, were ‘more or less’ degenerate, but that they could recover from this condition. However, this was based on the ultimately incorrect perception that war neurosis and other mental disorders did not exist among Ottoman troops and prisoners. As the previous chapter showed, by 1919 and 1920 they were ready to admit that these disorders did exist in significantly greater numbers among the troops, but the disorders were not properly diagnosed during the war. We also saw that the neuro-psychiatrists diagnosed many of the repatriated prisoners of war with schizophrenia (or dementia praecox, which evolved into schizophrenia as a diagnostic category). This belated acknowledgment and recognition of so many hysterics, neurasthenics, schizophrenics, malingerers and deserters among Ottoman troops and prisoners actually prepared the way for a much more dismaying answer to the same question of whether Turks were degenerate.

This chapter argues that given the post-Great War reinterpretation of the prevalence of war neurosis among the troops and high incidence of what was perceived to be schizophrenia among the prisoners of war, the neuro-psychiatrists were seized with the fear of a much more likely and real national degeneration starting in the early 1920s. The early twentieth century was still an age when the military's performance and health was interpreted as a reflection of the health of the nation.