Atatürk
Mustafa Kemal (later Atatürk) realized what was happening to the Ottoman Empire as a young army officer and devoted his life to reforming a nation. He rose to prominence as a hero at Gallipoli in 1915 and went on to become the last Muslim general to achieve significant success in the field when he rallied troops to drive an invading Greek force out of Anatolia in the aftermath of WWI. Greeks had seen an opportunity to recover territory lost a thousand years earlier and they very nearly succeeded. The result was massive slaughter and deportation for Greeks and Turks alike. It generated a visceral level of animosity that survives today. They called it a “population exchange.” I hope people who are advocating partition of present day Iraq are paying attention but I doubt it. It also gave Kemal enormous stature. He used it to build the modern Turkish Republic, send the last Ottoman Sultan into permanent exile, abolish the Caliphate, and drag Turks kicking and screaming into the twentieth century.
Few men in history had more effect on his people than Kemal did. He transformed the law, changed the way people dressed, their attitudes, their lives. He gave women rights they had never dreamed of under Ottomans or any other Muslims. He adopted economic measures that brought prosperity to a level Turks had never seen before. He even restructured the language. He recognized more clearly than perhaps anyone else ever did that Islam had failed to adapt to the modern era. He was determined to do something about it. He understood there was a difference between culture and faith, resolved to change the former and did. Today’s Turkey is a very different society from the time of the Ottomans. It is still Islamic but is no longer stuck in an unchanging age. It has its critics and is no paragon of Jeffersonian democracy but Turkey may soon join the European Union, an unthinkable step for any other predominantly Muslim country.
The depth and breadth of Kemalist reforms in Turkey were astonishing. To Kemal to modernize meant to Westernize and he did it with uncompromising zeal. To improve literacy he replaced Arabic script with a Latin based alphabet specially designed for the Turkish language, tossing out over a thousand Arabic words and phrases in the process. He reasoned that this would also help in learning European languages and be a boost for commerce. He made education compulsory, secular, free, and coeducational. He banned religious oriented dress in public places, including the Fez for men and the veil for women. They cannot be worn in Parliament or in the classroom. He gave women the right to vote and Turkey became the first country in the world with a female Supreme Court Justice. He abolished Islamic courts and adopted a civil code based on the Swiss model. He outlawed polygamy and concubinage. For the first time in any Muslim country women enjoyed equal rights in divorce, child custody, and inheritance disputes. Even today it is rare to see female doctors, lawyers, engineers, executives, and creative artists in most of the Islamic world, but not in Turkey.
Before Kemal changed it Turks didn’t even commonly have surnames. Kemal had been simply Mustafa until a math teacher assigned him the sobriquet Kemal, which means perfectionist. He was awarded the name Atatürk (father of Turks) when a surname law was passed in 1934. He was no European toady however. On the contrary he was a nationalist who promptly put an end to the capitulations, special privileges in trade and civil law that had been granted favored European powers for centuries. In Atatürk’s Turkey the rule of law would, at least in theory, apply equally to everyone.
None of this was easy to implement and it hasn’t been easy to maintain. It was only the sheer force of Atatürk’s will and personal prestige that made reform possible. Even today there is an uneasy truce between Islamists and secularists, though radical Islam doesn’t enjoy anything like the level of popular support it does elsewhere. When an Islamist party took control of parliament in the 2002 general elections much of Turkey held its breath, fearing the army would intervene as in the past. The generals refrained however and for their part the Islamists have respected constitutional requirements that the government be secular. But there is no question Turkey is a representative democracy, European complaints about human rights abuses not withstanding. When Americans sought permission for troops and equipment to transit Turkey en route to Iraq for the 2003 invasion it was parliament that said no. After an embarrassing delay, equipment for the highly mechanized 4th Infantry Division was reloaded onto ships for the long trip through the Suez Canal to Kuwait, arriving too late to participate effectively.
In truth the Atatürk legacy is mixed. In retrospect it isn’t clear whether all of the reforms were really necessary. Some of them remain hotly disputed. Kemalist style authoritarianism isn’t exactly a hallmark of the best in modern society. Economic growth in Turkey has been generally strong but irregular. Agriculture still represents a disproportionate share by the standards of the industrialized world. And there is this never ending animosity. Atatürk can’t be blamed for the Armenian genocide of WWI but Turkey has never acknowledged or atoned for it and his treatment of the once large Greek population in Anatolia was positively Stalinesque. Roughly 1.5 million Greeks were forcibly expelled from what had been their home for millennia and about 500,000 Turks were deported from Greece. That both governments saw the resulting homogeneity as a stabilizing factor didn’t minimize the suffering. Neither side did much to ease the pain for newcomers. Their descendents are still mad about it.
Kurds are mad too. They have never reconciled themselves to being a minority in a country dominated by Turks. Other ethnic groups got their own nation in the decline and breakup of the Ottoman Empire. They don’t see why they can’t have theirs too. Of course Kurds represent sizeable minorities in Iraq and Iran as well and they aren’t happy there either. Still Kurds do have real grievances. Turks have brutally suppressed their separatist movement, even forbidding Kurdish music and language instruction for Kurdish children, mild perhaps in comparison to Saddam Hussein but still repressive by modern humanitarian standards.
Atatürk is widely revered in Turkey, roundly despised almost everywhere else in Islam. It is doubtful his model will be replicated in other places. More is the pity. Had he come to power in an Ottoman Empire with its provinces in Asia Minor still intact the world might be a more peaceful place today, but of course one never knows. Turkey wants membership in the European Union and they will have to adopt further reforms to get it. They are already the most democratic state in the Middle East save maybe Israel. Arabs would do well to put aside their distaste for Kemalism and take note. Whatever else may be said about him he did transform a people and most of them are better off for it materially and, I would argue, spiritually. Their neighbors to the south lag far behind by every conceivable measure.
Few men in history had more effect on his people than Kemal did. He transformed the law, changed the way people dressed, their attitudes, their lives. He gave women rights they had never dreamed of under Ottomans or any other Muslims. He adopted economic measures that brought prosperity to a level Turks had never seen before. He even restructured the language. He recognized more clearly than perhaps anyone else ever did that Islam had failed to adapt to the modern era. He was determined to do something about it. He understood there was a difference between culture and faith, resolved to change the former and did. Today’s Turkey is a very different society from the time of the Ottomans. It is still Islamic but is no longer stuck in an unchanging age. It has its critics and is no paragon of Jeffersonian democracy but Turkey may soon join the European Union, an unthinkable step for any other predominantly Muslim country.
The depth and breadth of Kemalist reforms in Turkey were astonishing. To Kemal to modernize meant to Westernize and he did it with uncompromising zeal. To improve literacy he replaced Arabic script with a Latin based alphabet specially designed for the Turkish language, tossing out over a thousand Arabic words and phrases in the process. He reasoned that this would also help in learning European languages and be a boost for commerce. He made education compulsory, secular, free, and coeducational. He banned religious oriented dress in public places, including the Fez for men and the veil for women. They cannot be worn in Parliament or in the classroom. He gave women the right to vote and Turkey became the first country in the world with a female Supreme Court Justice. He abolished Islamic courts and adopted a civil code based on the Swiss model. He outlawed polygamy and concubinage. For the first time in any Muslim country women enjoyed equal rights in divorce, child custody, and inheritance disputes. Even today it is rare to see female doctors, lawyers, engineers, executives, and creative artists in most of the Islamic world, but not in Turkey.
Before Kemal changed it Turks didn’t even commonly have surnames. Kemal had been simply Mustafa until a math teacher assigned him the sobriquet Kemal, which means perfectionist. He was awarded the name Atatürk (father of Turks) when a surname law was passed in 1934. He was no European toady however. On the contrary he was a nationalist who promptly put an end to the capitulations, special privileges in trade and civil law that had been granted favored European powers for centuries. In Atatürk’s Turkey the rule of law would, at least in theory, apply equally to everyone.
None of this was easy to implement and it hasn’t been easy to maintain. It was only the sheer force of Atatürk’s will and personal prestige that made reform possible. Even today there is an uneasy truce between Islamists and secularists, though radical Islam doesn’t enjoy anything like the level of popular support it does elsewhere. When an Islamist party took control of parliament in the 2002 general elections much of Turkey held its breath, fearing the army would intervene as in the past. The generals refrained however and for their part the Islamists have respected constitutional requirements that the government be secular. But there is no question Turkey is a representative democracy, European complaints about human rights abuses not withstanding. When Americans sought permission for troops and equipment to transit Turkey en route to Iraq for the 2003 invasion it was parliament that said no. After an embarrassing delay, equipment for the highly mechanized 4th Infantry Division was reloaded onto ships for the long trip through the Suez Canal to Kuwait, arriving too late to participate effectively.
In truth the Atatürk legacy is mixed. In retrospect it isn’t clear whether all of the reforms were really necessary. Some of them remain hotly disputed. Kemalist style authoritarianism isn’t exactly a hallmark of the best in modern society. Economic growth in Turkey has been generally strong but irregular. Agriculture still represents a disproportionate share by the standards of the industrialized world. And there is this never ending animosity. Atatürk can’t be blamed for the Armenian genocide of WWI but Turkey has never acknowledged or atoned for it and his treatment of the once large Greek population in Anatolia was positively Stalinesque. Roughly 1.5 million Greeks were forcibly expelled from what had been their home for millennia and about 500,000 Turks were deported from Greece. That both governments saw the resulting homogeneity as a stabilizing factor didn’t minimize the suffering. Neither side did much to ease the pain for newcomers. Their descendents are still mad about it.
Kurds are mad too. They have never reconciled themselves to being a minority in a country dominated by Turks. Other ethnic groups got their own nation in the decline and breakup of the Ottoman Empire. They don’t see why they can’t have theirs too. Of course Kurds represent sizeable minorities in Iraq and Iran as well and they aren’t happy there either. Still Kurds do have real grievances. Turks have brutally suppressed their separatist movement, even forbidding Kurdish music and language instruction for Kurdish children, mild perhaps in comparison to Saddam Hussein but still repressive by modern humanitarian standards.
Atatürk is widely revered in Turkey, roundly despised almost everywhere else in Islam. It is doubtful his model will be replicated in other places. More is the pity. Had he come to power in an Ottoman Empire with its provinces in Asia Minor still intact the world might be a more peaceful place today, but of course one never knows. Turkey wants membership in the European Union and they will have to adopt further reforms to get it. They are already the most democratic state in the Middle East save maybe Israel. Arabs would do well to put aside their distaste for Kemalism and take note. Whatever else may be said about him he did transform a people and most of them are better off for it materially and, I would argue, spiritually. Their neighbors to the south lag far behind by every conceivable measure.
posted by Onfoot at 7:14 AM
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