Ataturk: The Nation Builder
By Asif Javed MD
Williamsport, PA
As a young army officer, Mustafa Kamal once told a friend: “I am going to make you PM of our country one day.” “And what will you be?” asked his surprised friend. “The one who appoints PM,” Mustafa Kamal answered. Enwer Pasha, one of the founders of Young Turks, was his superior in the army. While approving Kamal for promotion, he remarked acidly, “Once he is a General, he will like to be Sultan. Once a Sultan, he will like to be God.” The above two incidents should leave no doubt in the reader’s mind that the founder of modern Turkey was ambitious and did not hesitate to proclaim his greatness.
History tells us that over a period of time, reality gets distorted by legend that tends to get ossified. This is more so for people like ZA Bhutto, Napoleon and MK who create their own cult.
Born in Salonica -- now in Northern Greece -- MK’s family was precariously middle class. His paternal grandfather may have been of Albanian origin. His father, Ali Raza, was a junior civil servant who died when MK was 7 or 8. Years later, when shown a picture of his father, MK remarked, “This is not my father.” His mother, Zubaida remarried while MK continued his education.
Two years before MK’s birth, the Russian Army was encamped just a few miles from Istanbul while only 200 years earlier, the Ottomans had laid siege to Vienna; this is how far the once invincible Ottoman Empire had fallen. By the time MK got his commission in the army, the First World War was raging. The Turks were under attack from multiple hostile neighbors. It was after defeat in the war, followed by the flight of the leaders of Young Turks that MK emerged as a leader who is now remembered as a radical modernizer and nation builder.
In April 1915, three-quarters of a million soldiers were crammed into the Gallipoli Peninsula; the sole objective of allies was the Ottoman capital, Istanbul. There are only a few times in the life of individuals as well as nations which make or break them; for MK, Gallipoli was that moment and he seized it. There is a statement attributed to MK that has become part of the folklore of Turkish war of independence: MK issued an order to his regiment that he wanted them to die for him. In the ensuing furious hand-to-hand fighting, most of his regiment was wiped out but the Turkish line held, until reinforcement arrived to save the day. The Allies had to withdraw much to the chagrin of a young Winston Churchill, then a young Lord of Admiralty. In 2010, while visiting Gallipoli, this writer came upon the graves of three Indian soldiers — Imam Din, Allah Ditta and Hussain Khan -- who were made to fight against their fellow Muslims by the British Indian Army.
It is interesting to note that in the fog of war, MK’s exploits at Gallipoli remained largely unnoticed until an interview that he gave almost three years later; it was only then that he was rightfully acknowledged as the victor of Gallipoli and savior of Istanbul.
BY all accounts, MK was handsome: he was of fair color and had piercing blue eyes. He liked women and has had numerous affairs. Even later in life, he was not always discreet about it. He liked to smoke, drank alcohol and frequented night clubs. Once at a ball, he danced with the beautiful daughter of the French ambassador and under the influence of alcohol, started to kiss her while in full view of guests. MK hated signs of oriental life: he disliked baggy trousers, was fluent in French but could hardly speak Arabic. He was obsessed with order, good clothes and cleanliness.
MK’s nationalist fervor has become a legend: once he over-heard a Turkish officer admonishing a fellow junior Turkish officer who was upset with an Arab soldier. Having heard a statement that Arabs were a race to be respected and were superior to Turks, MK was furious and made one of his most celebrated statements saying, “The Arabs may be a noble race but Turks are even nobler.”
MK’s personal life was a disaster. He married 24-year-old Latife, the beautiful daughter of a wealthy merchant from Izmir. It was a failed marriage and in many ways, is reminiscent of M. A. Jinnah’s marriage. Both wives were young, beautiful, from high profile families while their much older husbands were preoccupied with the national struggle; these marriages were doomed. The marriage was strained also by a long-term affair that MK had with the niece of his stepfather; this attractive young woman named Fakhire who was totally devoted to MK, continued to pursue him even after he was married; depressed after MK’s refusal to see her, she shot and killed herself.
MK was convinced from the beginning that only he could lead Turkey in the right direction. Many of his original companions, among them Gen Ali Furat and Karakebir, fell by the wayside while he continued his relentless pursuit of radical reforms and modernization. He was lucky to have found a superb subordinate in the person of Colonel Ismet, later known as Ismet Inonu. Ismet, who gained fame by his brilliant defeat of the Greek army at Inonu, turned out to be a perfect complement for MK. The two men were very different in their lifestyle: MK was very westernized and secular — he once declared that he had no religion — while Ismet was a practicing Muslim — he was known to carry a miniature Qur’an in his pocket — and a shrewd politician. But they both shared the vision for their homeland and despite their differences, managed to work together. MK had enormous respect for Inonu: aware that Ismet was hard pressed financially, MK left a portion of his will for the education of Ismet’s children.
MK had been born in to a multi-ethnic, multi-lingual predominantly Muslim Ottoman Empire. But while serving in the First World War he convinced himself that Islam alone will not keep the country together. His bitter experience in the Middle East where the Arabs changed sides immediately after the defeat of the Turkish army, coupled with rebellion in Hijaz by Sharif Husain, showed him that religion can only keep people together while their interest goes with it — a sad lesson learned by Pakistan in 1971. Ironically, the Jewish population of Anatolia, by and large, remained loyal to the Ottoman Empire.
In November 1918, MK arrived at the Hyderpasha train station in the Asian part of Istanbul which was then occupied by the victorious allies. He looked at the harbor and having noticed 50 or so allies warships, said to his ADC: “They will leave as they have come.” Prophetic words! While the Turkish war of independence was to come in future, MK was already determined to fight it and lead it. On another occasion, while the peace negotiations were delicately poised in Lausanne, Ismet who was representing nationalist Turkey, asked for advice: MK’s reply was blunt --Turkey will not cede an inch of territory. This was not empty rhetoric like Gen Niazi’s in East Pakistan; later events were to prove Turkish resolve.
MK lived at a time of enormous change in his part of the world: the communist revolution in Russia, Raza Shah’s secularization of Iran as well as Amir Amanullah’s reforms in Afghanistan; of these, only MK’s reforms in Turkey have survived the test of time; the rest either failed or have been reversed.
MK left Turkey fully independent and a respected member of the international community. There was internal order and despite one-party system, he did leave behind the basic framework of democracy that has flourished. He did not allow his party to dominate the state like the Nazis in Germany, Fascists in Italy or Communists in USSR. He was financially clean as was Inonu.
His reforms were drastic and effectively created a secular state but most of them have survived. He could be eccentric and at times, made decisions on impulse: once while dancing in a night club in Istanbul, the band stopped playing because of call to prayer from a neighboring mosque; he seemed irritated and remarked: “The places of worship should not be in close proximity to the entertainment areas.” The next day, the minaret of the mosque was pulled down; on another occasion, he was approached by the owner of a night club who wanted a loan application approved from the bank while unable to provide a collateral; MK wrote a letter of approval there and then, while under the influence of alcohol — our own Yahya Khan was to emulate MK’s example, decades later. The following day, wiser counsel prevailed and as per regulation the loan was denied.
MK became leader of nationalist Turkey at a time when the Ottoman Empire had been defeated in the First World War, Istanbul was occupied by the allies and the Greek army had invaded the heartland of Anatolia, coming almost 200 miles inland from the western Turkish border. At his death, he could rightfully claim to have left behind an independent, stable country, a respected member of the community of civilized nations. Along the way, he had single-handedly ushered in, by the sheer force of his conviction, drastic reforms that radically changed the face of Turkey.
MK had his faults; he did not take insubordination lightly: once, Dr Galip, a rather emotional young member of his party, criticized the education minister somewhat harshly in MK’s presence; MK was visibly annoyed and asked him to apologize to the minister. To everybody’s shock, Galip refused. MK was furious and asked him to leave the table. Galip refused again saying, “The table belongs to the nation and is not your personal property.” MK was impressed and got Galip appointed as education minister. Sometime later, MK invited him to his home (Galip had lost his ministry by then). At MK’s instructions that were given beforehand, Galip’s chair was lifted in the air by two guards and then put back in its place. “This is how we elevate people and then bring them back where they rightfully belong,” MK scornfully remarked. MK’s detractors also point out that he did not always practice at home what he preached in public; his reforms gave Turkish women equal rights but at home, his wife was lonely, unhappy and bitter while he continued late nights with his friends; she was eventually divorced.
MK was not immune to flattery either: a telegram to MK by Celal Bayar, the future President of Turkey, reads: “I will work as your idealistic laborer on the radiant road opened by your great genius which comprehends better than anyone the needs of the people and the country.” The similarity of this letter to the one written in the 50’s by a young and ambitious ZA Bhutto to President Iskander Mirza is obvious. Sometime later, a newspaper editor went way overboard in his description of MK’s family background: his father was described as a senior civil servant and a very successful businessman and his mother was mentioned to be from a rich and famous family -- neither was true; MK’s humble origins were widely known. This only reinforced the view that MK wanted to create his own cult.
“Ataturk was a competent commander,” writes his biographer, Andrew Mango. “He was a shrewd politician — British PM Lloyd George’s fall from power being partly due to MK’s tactics — and a statesman of supreme realism. But above all, he was a man of enlightenment; and the enlightenment was not made by saints.”
MK was not an idealist; he was a practical man who chose his options carefully. He once remarked that he won the Turkish war of independence by the use of telegraph wire. Resources were limited and at a critical moment in the war, peasant Turkish women used ox-carts to move critical war material to the front against Geek army. He was a superb organizer and knew how to delegate -- a critical trait lacking in some leaders. During delicate negotiations in the Turkish war of independence, he proved his political skills by using the Bolsheviks against the West, Bulgarians against the Greeks and France against Britain. He worked late in to the night while consuming endless cups of Turkish coffee, alcohol and cigarettes. Years later, when he developed liver cirrhosis, as a result of heavy drinking, he found it hard to stop alcohol despite warnings from his physician. The strict disciplinarian in public had failed himself in private. He was 58 at the time of death in 1938, from liver failure, in Dolmabahce Palace, once abode of the mighty Ottoman sultans. Ironically, the last words of the man with no religion were, “Wa-Alaikum-Assalaam.”
(The writer is a physician in Williamsport, PA, and can be reached at asifjaved@comcast.net )
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