Updating Ataturk’s
Legacy
By Ahmad Faruqui, PhD
Danville, California
Every
year, Turkey observes the death anniversary of
Mustafa Kemal Ataturk on November 10th with a
nationwide salute at 9:05 am, the time of his
death in 1938. Veneration of Ataturk, whose image
is captured throughout the country in statues
and photographs, is pandemic.
Thus, as EU parliamentarian Andrew Duff found
out, a call to update Ataturk’s legacy for
the 21st century can cause controversy. Duff,
a proponent of Turkey’s accession to the
EU, had simply called for the removal of Ataturk’s
memorabilia from public buildings. Responding
to the uproar, Duff said, “Rigid Kemalist
orthodoxy is sometimes used in Turkey today as
a conservative brake upon reform, and even as
an excuse to disregard the criteria of EU membership
— including freedom of thought and speech,
reform of the judiciary, and the adoption of a
more modest role for the armed forces in political
life.”
Duff reminded Ataturk’s adherents that modern
Europe placed its commitment to liberal democracy
above that of nationalism and regarded the state
as being subservient to the citizen and not vice
versa. He suggested that portions of Turkey’s
polity were mired in the 1920s.
Indeed, such an archaic orientation has created
multiple fault lines in modern Turkey. The most
serious one involves the continued intrusion of
the military in politics. Other nations, such
as Chile, have instituted new constitutional amendments
to reduce the role of the National Security Council.
The civilian president now has the power to dismiss
the military chiefs after consultation with the
Congress. In a democracy, the military is accountable
to the civilians.
The second fault line deals with the country’s
14 million Kurds. The military labels anyone calling
for a restoration of Kurdish human rights as a
terrorist. It is waging war on the Kurds in the
same heavy-handed fashion as the Russians have
waged against the Chechens, with similarly poor
results. When the EU condemned Turkish military
actions against the Kurds, Gen. Yasar Buyukanit,
who commands Turkey’s land forces, shot
back in Pavlovian fashion that that the military
was “responsible for protecting the Turkish
republic.”
Ataturk’s nationalistic vision had led the
Turkish foreign minister in 1927 to assure the
British ambassador that Kurds would disappear
like the “Red Hindus” in North America.
In due course, the Kurdish language would be discouraged
and then outlawed for broadcasting and publication.
Anyone who violated this policy could be imprisoned
for putting forth “propaganda against the
indivisible unity of country, nation and the state
republic of Turkey.” At one point, the publisher
of Noam Chomsky’s “American Interventionism”
was arrested simply because the book discussed
the Kurdish question.
Back in 1999, when the Kurdish guerrilla leader
Abdullah Ocalan was arrested, Harold Pinter wrote
about “the despair of a people who have
been degraded, humiliated and treated as an inferior
race for decades. State terror is systematic,
savage, merciless. All efforts on the part of
the Kurds to bring about a political rather than
a military resolution to the conflict have failed.”
Ocalan’s life was saved by Turkey’s
decision to abolish the death penalty, taken in
anticipation of accession talks with the EU. However,
he continues to languish in solitary confinement
at a military prison on the island of Imrali.
The third fault line deals with the question of
what happened to a million Armenians between 1915
and 1923. The Armenians says it was genocide while
Turkey’s official line is that the deaths
took place during a war. The Armenians assert
that troubles began when Turkish Ottoman authorities
arrested and deported 250 Armenian leaders in
1915. Subsequently, Turkish nationalists launched
an ethnic-cleansing campaign that went on for
eight years. Hundreds of thousands of Armenians
were forcibly marched through the Mesopotamian
desert where they died of dehydration and starvation.
The first-ever conference on this issue was held
after much difficulty at Istanbul’s Bilgi
University in September. However, they had to
contend with angry protesters who opposed debate
on this issue. Edinburgh University’s Donald
Bloxham argues that the Armenian genocide issue
is not just a historical footnote but also a living
issue, since Turkish nationalism is the common
ideology behind the Armenian genocide and the
Kurdish suppression.
There is indeed much evidence that diehard defenders
of the old order, the “Deep State,”
are becoming paranoid as Turkey seeks to legalize
free speech. The Deep State is attempting to muzzle
an icon of modern Turkey, internationally acclaimed
novelist Orhan Pamuk. He is charged with “explicitly
insulting” the Turkish state by saying that
30,000 Kurds and a million Armenians were killed
in Turkey. For this crime, Pamuk can be sentenced
to a prison term of up to three years.
The final fault line is created by a clash between
the secularists and those seeking religious freedom.
Gen. Hilmi Ozkok, Turkey’s chief of general
staff, has said that nobody should expect the
Turkish Armed Forces (TSK) to be impartial on
secularism and modernity. Speaking in coded language,
he has criticized “certain circles”
for depicting the TSK as the main obstacle to
reform in Turkey.
Ozkok, a moderate, has welcomed constructive criticism
provided it was based on “correct”
information. On November 1, lawyer Eren Keskin,
head of the Istanbul Human Rights Association,
was taken into custody on returning from Germany.
She was surprised to find that she had been tried
in absentia for having insulted the Turkish military
in a speech. Apparently, she had used “incorrect”
information.
Eighty-two years after the Republic’s founding,
Ataturk’s attempts to divorce Turks from
their rich history have to be re-evaluated. The
call to prayer now draws large numbers of fourth
generation Turks to the mosques, like it did during
the six Ottoman centuries. The ruling AKP party
favors easing restrictions on women wearing of
Islamic headscarves in public places. In its drive
to open up Turkish society and bring it closer
to European norms, it is also seeking to scale
back the TSK’s power and influence.
When Ataturk sought to Europeanize Turkey by making
the military the guardian of its national identity,
it is unlikely that he intended for the military
to play this role indefinitely. In its annual
progress report, the European Commission has granted
the status of a market economy to Turkey but noted
that the political role of the military needs
to be curtailed. It also noted that human rights
violations, mistreatment of minorities and torture
have to stop.
Ironically, as Turkey moves closer to Europe,
it will have to distance itself from the regimentational
aspects of Ataturk’s legacy. It will need
to craft a new vision based on the free will of
its people.
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