By Henry
Srebrnik, [Charlottetown, PEI] Guardian
The founder
of the modern Turkish state, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, died eight decades ago, on
Nov. 10, 1938.
But is his
legacy now being buried alongside him in his Ankara mausoleum?
Ataturk,
known originally as Mustafa Kemal, built the Turkish Republic on the ruins of
the decayed Ottoman Empire, which was defeated and stripped of its remaining\Middle
Eastern possessions in World War I. It was a time of great danger for the
Turkish nation itself.
The
victorious Allied powers planned to take possession of its capital, Istanbul, the
old Greek city of Constantinople, and even place much of its Anatolian
heartland in the hands of foreign powers.
The Treaty of Sèvres was imposed on the defeated Ottoman
Empire in 1920. Under its provisions, the Turks were obliged to cede much of
Anatolia to Greeks, Armenians, and Kurds, as well as to Britain, France and
Italy, which would possess zones of influence.
What particularly rankled the Turks was the clause giving
Greece control over a large area of western Turkey, including the city of
Smyrna (now Izmir).
Mustafa Kemal demanded that the Turks fight, and the
subsequent war with Greece resulted in a Turkish victory. Armenian forces were
also defeated.
In 1923, the Treaty of Lausanne was signed, overturning the
previous agreements, and resulting in total independence for the new Republic
of Turkey. Mustafa Kemal became the country’s first president and would remain
its leader until his death.
In creating
a modern secular state, he ushered in reforms that modernized Turkey. He
banished religion from the public sphere and looked westwards to Europe for
inspiration.
Mustafa Kemal
abolished the caliphate, thus separating religion from politics. He introduced
the Latin alphabet for the Turkish language, ordering
all newspapers, books, and street signs printed in the new script.
He gave
women the right to vote and take jobs in business and government. In
1934, the Turkish assembly gave Mustafa Kemal the name Atatürk, or “Father of
the Turks.”
But Ataturk’s policy of state secularism was controversial, and he was
accused of decimating important cultural traditions. It was viewed by his
opponents as a form of anti-clericalism, destroying the Islamic cultural basis
of Turkish nationhood.
Are such
people now reversing Ataturk’s work, with President Recep
Tayyip Erdogan now ruling the country in the manner of an Ottoman sultan?
Erdogan has said one of his goals is to forge a “pious
generation” in predominantly Muslim Turkey “that will work for the construction
of a new civilisation.” Religion classes have been made compulsory for children
in public schools.
All of this involves returning Turks to their natural state
of religiosity before Ataturk had changed them from what they were and always
had been.
His recent speeches have emphasised Turkey’s Ottoman history
and domestic achievements over Western ideas and influences.
Under the AKP, the government’s Diyanet (Directorate of
Religious Affairs), which trains imams, administers mosques and religious
schools, and oversees Friday sermons, doubled its staff, with its annual budget
increasing more than fourfold.
Since November 2017, the national police have been
monitoring online commentary on religion and suppressing freedom of expression
when they find such commentary “offensive to Islam.”
All these new measures bode ill for the Kemalist tradition
of secularism. Given the increasingly Islamic Turkey
Erdogan has built – he calls it the “New Turkey” -- the country today looks less and less like a
liberal European democracy.
Said one AKP advisor to the author Shadi Hamid, a senior
fellow at the Brookings Institution, “We need to carry Mr. Ataturk to his grave
again.”
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