Abstract
Since his death, the personality cult surrounding Mustafa Kemal Atatürk (1881–1938),1 the general who founded the modern Turkish Republic in 1923, has developed many of the trappings of a fully fledged religion, often with striking parallels to Islam.
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Notes
Elliott Grinnel Mears, Modern Turkey (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1924), 557.
Lord Kinross, Atatürk: The Rebirth of a Nation (Nicosia: Rustem, 1990), 6.
Atatürk later credited his history teacher at the military preparatory school, a passionate Turkish nationalist called Major Mehmet Tevfik, with opening “a new horizon before my eyes.” Ali Fuat Cebesoy, Sinif Arkadasim Atatürk (Istanbul: Inkilâp, 1981), 9
For example, Sami Karaören, “Under the light of Atatürk,” in Atatürk: From the Past to the Future, ed. Türkan Saylan (Istanbul: Association for Contemporary Living, 1996), 58.
Though undoubtedly spiced with a fair degree of artistic license, a vivid description of Atatürk’s mood and machinations during this period is given in H. C. Armstrong, Grey Wolf: An Intimate Study of a Dictator (London: Arthur Baker, 1939), 114–21.
In an interview with G. W. Price, the Constantinople correspondent of the Daily Mail of London, Mustafa Kemal offered his services to the Allies, commenting that: “If the British are going to assume responsibility for Anatolia they will need the cooperation of experienced Turkish governors to work with them.” G. Ward Price, Extra-Special Correspondent (London: George G. Harrap, 1957), 104. Although he was to excoriate him repeatedly in the Nutuk, Mustafa Kemal also appears to have enjoyed a good relationship with Sultan Mehmet Vahdettin (1861–1926), who had succeeded to the throne as Mehmet VI in July 1918. He accompanied the then–crown prince on an official visit to Germany in December 1918. During his six months in Constantinople in 1918–19, Mustafa Kemal had four audiences with the sovereign, although the content of their discussions remains unclear.
In the Nutuk, Atatürk claimed that there was a conspiracy to arrest him or sink his ship on the way to Samsun but that he preferred to risk death rather than become a prisoner. Atatürk, The Great Speech (Ankara: Atatürk Research Center, 2005), 24–25. There is no evidence of any such plot. In fact, when he was in Constantinople, British intelligence knew him only as one of a large number of Ottoman officers with links to the ITC. FO. 371/4173, E. 5811, Public Record Office, London. After he arrived in Samsun, Mustafa Kemal held cordial meetings with locally based British military officials to discuss his tour of inspection “with the object of maintaining tranquility.” Captain L. H. Hurst to Vice-Admiral Sir. A. Calthorpe on 21 May 1919. FO 371/4157 Public Record Office, London.
Ethem Ruhi Figlali, “Atatürk, Religion and Laicism,” in A Handbook of Kemalist Thought (Ankara: Atatürk Research Center, 2001), 109–15.
For example, local religious officials known as muftis were included as founding members in 130 of the 140 societies for the defense of national rights established across Anatolia. Recep Çelik, Milli Mücadelede Din Adamlari Cilt 2 (Istanbul: Emre Yayinlari, 2004), 241
Ergün Aybars, Istiklal Mahkemeleri (Istanbul: AD Kitapcilik, 1998), 34–41.
Contrary to the claims of modern official Turkish historiography, which portrays the resistance as an enthusiastic popular uprising, recruitment was always difficult and desertion a constant problem. In his memoirs, Kiliç Ali (1888–1971), who became one of the most feared of the Independence Tribunal judges, made no secret of the fact that intimidation of the local populace was one of main purposes of the courts. Hulûsi Turgut (ed.), Kiliç Ali’nin Anilari (Istanbul: Türkiye Is Bankasi Kültür Yayinlari, 2006), 367.
Author’s translation. Çerkes Ethem, Anilarim (Istanbul: Berfin Yayinlari, 1998), 80.
Türkiye Büyük Millet Meclis, Gizli Celse Zabitlari II (Ankara: Türkiye Is Bankasi, 1983–5), 270.
A further exemption was added for the approximately 11,500 Greek Orthodox Christians on the islands of Imbros and Tenedos (now known in Turkish as Gökçeada and Bozcaada respectively). The number of Muslims in western Thrace was around 100,000. No reliable figures are available for the Greek Orthodox population of Constantinople. In 1920, the British military in the city estimated the number at around 200,000, or approximately 20 percent of a population of one million. The first census of the new republic’s population, which was conducted in 1927, suggested that just under 92,000 (or 11.6 percent) of the city’s population of 795,000 spoke Greek as their mother tongue. Fuat Dündar, Türkiye Nüfus Sayimlarinda Azinliklar (Istanbul: Doz Yayinlari, 1999), 156–7.
For an account of the human toll of the exchange see Bruce Clark, Twice A Stranger: How Mass Expulsion Forged Modern Greece And Turkey (London: Granta Books, 2006).
A survey conducted by the ITC in 1915, which was admittedly far from comprehensive, identified 264 industrial enterprises in the empire, of which approximately half were in Constantinople and most of the remainder divided between Izmir and Bursa. A total of 172 (80.4 percent) of the privately owned companies belonged to non-Muslims, while 42 (19.6 percent) were owned by Muslims. In terms of advanced technology, the gap was even wider. For example, Muslims owned twenty-four of the twenty-nine individually owned flour mills but only one of the nine pasta factories and two of the eighteen sugar refineries. All of the canned food factories were owned by non-Muslims. Ayse Bugra, State and Business in Modern Turkey: A Comparative Study (Albany: State University of New York, 1994), 38–39.
Çaglar Keyder, “The Consequences of the Exchange of Populations for Turkey,” in Crossing the Aegean: An Appraisal of the 1923 Compulsory Population Exchange between Greece and Turkey, ed. Renée Hirschon (Oxford: Berghahn, 2003), 46.
Mehmet Ali Gökaçti, Türkiye’de Din Egitim Ve Imam Hatipler (Istanbul: Iletisim, 2005), 132–3.
Binnaz Toprak, Islam and Political Development in Turkey (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1981), 49.
However, some took advantage of the outbreak of fighting to try to settle old scores. For example, the Alevi Khormek and Lolan tribes took the opportunity to attack their long-time enemy the Sunni Jibran tribe. Martin van Bruinessen, Agha, Shaikh and State (London: Zed Books, 1992), 303.
“Open rebellion by a conservative Moslem peasantry was freely prophesied.” Edward Mead Earle, “The New Constitution of Turkey,” Political Science Quarterly 40, no. 1 (1925): 86.
Houchang Chehabi, “Dress Codes for Men in Turkey and Iran,” in Men of Order: Authoritarian Modernization Under Atatürk and Reza Shah, ed. Touraj Atabaki and Erik J. Zürcher (London: I. B. Tauris, 2004), 215–16.
Ahmet Ünsür, Kurulusundan Günümüze Imam-Hatip Liseleri (Istanbul: Ensar Nesriyat, 2005), 89–90.
The process is entertainingly described in Geoffrey Lewis, The Turkish Language Reform: A Catastrophic Success (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999). It continues today. Despite its many absurdities, the reform has been so successful that the Nutuk now needs to be translated into modern Turkish in order to make it comprehensible to younger generations of Turkish schoolchildren.
A detailed account of the uprising based on contemporary military reports was published by the War History Department of the Turkish General Staff in 1972. Resat Halli, Türkiye Cumhuriyetinde ayaklanmalar (1924–1938) [Rebellions in the Republic of Turkey, 1924–1938] (Ankara: T. C. Genelkurmay Baskanligi Harp Tarihi Dairesi, 1972), 365–480. However, the numerous candid accounts of summary executions and indiscriminate massacres led to the book being immediately recalled and destroyed. Only a small number of clandestine copies have survived. Martin van Bruinessen, “Genocide in Kurdistan? The suppression of the Dersim rebellion in Turkey (1937–38) and the chemical war against the Iraqi Kurds (1988),” in Conceptual and Historical Dimensions of Genocide, ed. George J. Andreopoulos (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1994), 148.
For example, in 1925 all non-Muslim employees of the Üsküdar-Kadiköy Water Utility Company in Istanbul were dismissed following a request by the Ministry of Reconstruction and Development in Ankara. Soner Çagaptay, Islam, Secularism, and Nationalism in Modern Turkey: Who is a Turk? (London: Routledge, 2006), 28.
Berna Pekesen, “The exodus of Armenians from the Sanjak of Alexandretta in the 1930s,” in Turkey Beyond Nationalism, ed. Hans-Lukas Kieser (London: I. B. Tauris, 2006), 63.
Cem Emrence, “Politics of Discontent in the Midst of the Great Depression: The Free Republican Party of Turkey (1930),” New Perspectives on Turkey 23 (2000): 31–52.
Erik J. Zürcher, Tw o You n g Ottomanists Discover Kemalist Turkey: The Travel Diaries of Robert Anhegger and Andreas Tietze. (Available Online) Leiden University (cited December, 2007); Available from http://www.let.leidenuniv.nl/tcimo/tulp/Research/diaries.htm.
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© 2008 Gareth Jenkins
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Jenkins, G. (2008). The Creation of the Kemalist State. In: Political Islam in Turkey. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230612457_4
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