Kemal Pasha Ataturk: a history maker

By Mansoor Akbar Kundi

November 10 is the death anniversary of Kemal Mustafa Pasha, better known in history as Ataturk, a leader whose heroic endeavors and nationalist spirit during the formative years of the Turkish Republic have left lasting imprint on the minds of Turks. Ataturk is the surname bestowed on him by the Grand Turkish National Assembly (GTNA) after it passed the “Surname Law” in 1934 as a part of the Kemalist reforms to modernize the Turkish society – thus making it mandatory for all Turks to adopt a surname.

Kemal Ataturk emerged at a critical juncture of Turkish history when the Ottoman Sultanate had lost all the grandeur of its past and was on the verge of disintegration at the hands of colonialism. Turkey had become what Nicholas I of Russia called it in 1853, as the sick man of Europe. Ataturk soon became the moving spirit behind the Republican movement and led his country out of social chaos and foreign dominance to independence and integration through a succession of radical reforms. Toynbee, the great British historian noted that “in the nineteenth-twenties he (Ataturk) was perhaps as revolutionary a program as has ever been carried out in any country deliberately and systematically in such a short span of time.”

Like many great men in history, Kemal was born in wretched poverty. His father Ali Reza was a low-paid civil servant whose salary was insufficient to support wife and two kids – Kemal and his sister, Makbule. Kemal was born in 1881 in Salonika, today an important and busy port city of Greece. At the time of his birth, Salonika was a port of the Ottoman Empire. The city was captured by the Ottoman Sultan Murat in 1430 and remained as an important Ottoman provincial centre until it was ceded to Greece after defeat in the First World War in 1914. The area was known as Macedonia. Once asked by a Hungarian diplomat, “Are you a Macedonian” Kemal answered, “Yes, I am. But I do not make territorial claims.” He took pride in his Macedonian nationality and impoverished past. On the eve of opening of a primary school he said, “Poverty should not handicap Turk children. We have rather to provide them opportunities.” Today Turkey’s 90 percent population can read and write with an established network of government-run schools and a growing number of universities both public and private sectors.

Ali Reza named the child as “Mustafa” after one of his childhood brothers whom he caused to die by overturning the crib. Kemal was the name added to Mustafa by his mathematics teacher in the Military School at Salonika owing to his extra-ordinary intelligence. He carried the twin names until 1934, frequently suffixed by Pasha (meaning general).

His father’s death in 1892 left the bereaved family in abject poverty. They were forced to migrate to a relative’s ranch where the child Mustafa was assigned the task of keeping the vultures and crows from ruining the fruit crops. Ataturk would later relate his short assignment at the farm to learning how to drive the enemies away from ruining one’s land. Kemal’s mother, Zubeyde returned to Salonika to enroll her son in a government school. Thanks to a retired major and Ali Reza’s family friend who explored Kemal’s talents and got him admitted to a military school. Zubeyde, as Ataturk recalled, wept the day she learnt his son would become a solider rather than a scholar, but allowed him with a promise not to ever let a foreign hand stretch towards his motherland. A journey thus began for the young Kemal to be moulded into a uniformed nationalist and patriot. His stay at the military academy served him opportunities to broaden his vision by mixing with cadets from different sections of society. He made friends. One of them was Ali Fuad, the son of Ali Nizam Pasha, the famous Ottoman general who later on also served as an Ottoman ambassador to Austria. Ali Nizam Pasha once told him, “I see that those who speak so high of you are not mistaken. You are not going to be an ordinary officer like the rest of us; you are going to change the country’s destiny.”

“Responsibility is a burden even heavier than death itself,” Kemal Ataturk occasionally said. “A leader can neither be born nor recognized without responsibilities, but the dominant character of a leader is to do them successfully.” In May 1919 he gathered his troops against foreign invasion. The Entente Powers had surrounded around 70 percent of the Turkish land under the Mondoros Treaty. The 25 article treaty signed in September 1918 allowed Entente/Allied Powers to exercise control over the Turkish soil as a Central power. Turkey was called a Central power after it entered the World War I on the German-Austro-Hungary side.

The province of Adana had been occupied by French; Urfa Maras, Antep, Merzifon and Samsun regions by the British; Konya and Antalia by Italians. The Greek army had captured the Izmir sea ports and its surroundings. Had the occupation continued without resistance, Turkish geographical integrity may not have existed as it is today. He and his comrade generals backed the soldiers as true defenders of his nation. He commanded by saying, “A Turk soldier does not know how to flee from battle. If you see him running away, it is because his commander has deserted.” One can hardly realize the situation without visiting the huge war cemeteries where battles took place and seeing thousands of graves around. The two main war cemeteries are in Canakkale and Galiopoli where the major battles took place between the Turks and Allied forces. The graves containing soldiers from on both sides killed in action stretch on miles.

After the battles were over and the Republic established, Ataturk ordered to decorate the graves of the soldiers fighting against Turks too. On the eve of the commemoration of Battle at Dardenelles he addressed a letter to the mothers of the killed Allied soldiers, “There is no difference between the Johns and Mehmets to us, where they live side by side here in this country of ours. You, the mothers who sent their sons from far away countries wipe away tears. Your sons are now lying in our bosom and are in peace after having lost their lives on this land. They have become our sons as well.”

Ataturk was generous in paying respect to others, be it the enemies. Soon after Turk forces recaptured Izmir and Greek troops were driven out in 1920, a ceremony was held by the Turk troops in the Karsiyaka House near Izmir to toast the victory. A Greek flag had been spread out for him to walk on. This angered Ataturk. “Why did you do like this” He asked the general. The general replied that it was in response to an event in history wherein the Greek King Constantine had stayed there after the capture of the Island by Greek troops and had trampled on the Turkish flag, Ataturk answered, “But I cannot repeat his mistake. A flag represents a country’s honour and should not be trodden upon. Remove this flag immediately.”

His military expeditions surprised the world and won him great deal of respect. Since the inception as a young cadet to the last battle of Izmir, he actively participated in around 31 battles. The decisive one was the one at Sakarya which continued for 22 days and nights. It was after this battle he was given the title of “Ghazi” and promoted to Marshal. During the battle his famous words to soldiers were recorded, “I am not ordering you to fight. I am ordering you to die.” They did so, winning the day.

He was a soldier and believed in the establishment of a strong army as a bulwark of independence. He acknowledged the fact that army played a role in the establishment of the Turkish Republic. He always relied on army in sensitive matters. Nine days before he proclaimed the republic on October 29, 1923 he intervened in the cabinet meeting for a pay raise for armed services. In 1924 his campaign to abolish the religious office of the Caliphate gained momentum, he traveled to Izmir and the garrisons around to test the atmosphere of army engaged in winter war games. He stayed for two months in close contact with generals before he announced abolishing of Caliphate in March 1924.
Ataturk both emerged as a political and military leader. He, however, was against the direct interference of army into politics. Soon after the establishment of the Turkish Republic he founded his political party, an elite organ to man bureaucracy and the professionals – all designed to rule independent of military support. During the opposition by Liberal Republican Party formed by some very prominent generals, Ataturk advised them to either stay in army or resign their posts and enter politics. In his famous Great Speech of October 1927, He said that the “Preserving and defending national independence and the Turkish Republic to the Turkish youth and not the army.” His first task was to elect the GTNA, a final body to approve legislation, and frame the Constitution. He called the Assembly as “the sole fount of political legitimacy in the Republic.” All the major reforms he adopted from 1923 to 1938 were put before the Assembly and duly approved by voting. The amendment which proposed Turkey as a Republic by abolishing Sultanate on October 29, 1923 was carried by narrow margin of 158 to 122 in the 286 member House.

He believed in the promotion of opposition as essential to a democratic society. He allowed two political parties during his life time to play an opposition role, Progressive Republican Party in 1924 and Free Party in 1930, however, both were closed down as they became a focal point for opponents to his ambitious reform programme, including monarchists, separatists and Islamic conservatism, particularly in the backlash against the Kurdish rebellion 1925.

Ataturk raised his nation by means of principles and revolutionary thought. He was a statesman who did not control the country from his table. He would travel far and wide to demonstrate direct contact with the people. For instance on 24 August 1925 he set out on a trip to Kastamou, a small city far away from Ankara. A rule had been passed to ban the wearing of the traditional Turkish cap Fez. While addressing and meeting people he was wearing a hat. When he returned to Ankara, his old friend Rifki asked him why he preferred a very small place like Kastamou and not a big city like Izmir and Istanbul. He replied, “People around these cities have seen a lot of me. If I wore a hat there, they would look at the hat and not at me. But the people who were seeing me the first time accepted me as a whole – me and my hat.”

Ataturk was a born nationalist. He took inspiration from Namik Kemal, the famous Turkish ideologue and founder of Turkish modern nationalism, who said that a “person who does not love his county is not a human being”. To him, country was a concept for which “one should be ready to die. Country is not a piece of land.” He would say that “Turks were hardy, brave and hospitable people, but perhaps their strongest characteristic is their patriotism.” His domain was Turkey and Turkey itself, a concept manifested in his revolutionary philosophy, Kemalism. One of his mottoes “the days of Empires are over, now it is the days of nation-states.” He was a nationalist but his brand of nationalism was neither parochial nor racial. A large number of Jews taking refugee from Hitler’s atrocities were honorably allowed to stay in Turkey. Majority of them chose Turkey as their permanent abode. His principal dentist, Sami Gunzberg was himself a Jew expatriate.

His two favourite generals were Napoleon and Alexander the Great, but he differed with both for being too ambitious to ignore the national interests of their individual countries. To him, Alexander the Great forgot about his country and went far away to conquer the world. About Napoleon he said, “Napoleon started with his country and ended with himself. He was a man without a sound political idea, more concerned with his ambition for world conquest than with national interests of France.” It was a mistake a leader should not make.

Ataturk was fascinated with innovative ideas and believed in their projection to his people. One day he found the French translation of H.G. Wells’ Outline of History. His personal secretary, Hassan Riza revealed that he found the leader reading at a stretch except taking hot showers and strong black coffee for forty hours. He went to sleep only after he had finished the book. And the following morning he asked for the translation of the book in Turkish and make it available to public. He also ordered for the formation of a board of historians to prepare An Outline of Turkish Nation (in Turkish).

Ataturk was committed to the establishment of the Turkish Republic on secular and modern lines. His ideas of secularism may have mobilized resistance and criticism, nonetheless, they are at times misinterpreted too. He wanted to turn Turkey into a modern nationalist state. He met resistance from a number of religious and conservative circles for being anti-Islam. In Kemal’s opinion the first step in solving these two problems could be taken only through the foundation of a secular republic free of religious conservatism and bias. On April 5 1928, the eve of the abolishing of Islam as state religion from the 1924 Constitution he said, “religion is entirely a matter of conscience. Every body is free to follow the dictates of his own conscience. We are respectful of religions. We are not opposed to thought or reflection, but they should not be parochial and repressive. We only aspire to separate matters of state and religion.” He was firm and aggressive in dealing with those who resisted his reforms as counter-religion.

Like many great leaders who devoted all their time to nation-building at the cost of their own family life, Ataturk married life was short-lived too. He married on January 29, 1923, Latife Hanim (1898-1975), a London-Paris educated lady from Izmir, but the marriage ended on August 5, 1925.

Time was very important in his life. He is said to have been very conscious of time. He believed in proper utilization of time for all purposes. The last words he uttered before his death due to cirrhosis of liver on November 10, 1938 were, “What is the time?”

The writer is Professor of Political Science at Balochistan University, Quetta; he was a scholar on Iqbal Chair in Istanbul.