Mustafa Kemal Ataturk’s

Dimitar Bechev

The question of the impact that Mustafa Kemal Ataturk’s legacy has had on the development of modern Turkey can be treated in a number of ways. Certainly, every book written on recent Turkish history or generally dealing with the contemporary Turkish politics and society, provides the reader with a rather unambiguous answer to the above question. The legacy of Ataturk is the basis of the modern Turkish statehood and the driving force in the process of nation-state building. As we know, the easy answers are not necessarily what any social science is about. The purpose of the present paper is to identify the parameters of the Kemalist ideas’ influence on the development of contemporary Turkey as a political, social, economic, and even cultural entity. Defining these parameters entails answering to the question how, in what way Kemalism is the major ideological factor contributing to the examined processes. To address that question, one has to analyze the significance and the nature of Ataturk’s reforms from the social and political theory’s point of view . If we can construct plausible explanations regarding this, we can deal with the basic question placing it in an established conceptual framework.
In order to accomplish the stated purpose, the present paper will try to address the above series of questions. For that reason, it will first trace the most important events and developments that characterized the Kemalist revolution in Turkey. Secondly, the paper will provide an analysis of the set of principles the revolution and Mustafa Kemal himself settled as essential guidelines in the process of complex transformation of the Turkish state and society. This analysis is considered instrumental in identifying the nature and the implications of the ideas and policies carried on by Ataturk, as well as in defining their long-term impact on the development of modern Turkey.
The first point it is necessary to be made is that what happened during the Kemalist revolution in the 1920s and 1930s was a result of a long historical evolution. A lot can be written in that context on the character of the Ottoman empire and its socio-politicall features as the environment in which different reformist movements-precursors of Kemalism-shaped their profile. Let it suffice to point out several traits that are of substantial importance to the subject of the present paper. For almost 500 years, the Ottoman empire dominated large territories in Europe, Asia, and Africa, subjugating a motley variety of peoples. In 1517 the Sultan in Constantinople assumed the title of khalif, appearing as the spiritual and political leader of the Sunni Muslims worldwide. Not only was his state a gigantic multiethnic state, but it also represented the universal Islamic polity. Starting from the 18th century, however, this colossus entered a period of gradual, but irreversible decline of power. The challenge came first from the rapidly progressing Christian nations of the West which first succeeded in checking the Ottoman military expansion, and then, by the end of the 19th century, turned the empire in a semi-colony, economically and politically dependent on the European Great Powers. The next threat came from the Christian subjects of the Ottoman rulers. The former had little problem in embracing the ideals of the modern West and, motivated by the postulates of nationalism, they followed the path, one people after another, of struggle for political independence which was ultimately destined to success. It was obvious for the Ottoman ruling elite that the whole state needed reforms in order to be preserved. The objective was to rebuild the empire as a modern state and thus ensure its survival. The attempts to reform the Ottoman state started in 1839 with the period of Tanzimat and culminated with the Young Turks’ revolution in 1908 . In the final analysis, all those efforts proved to be at best ambiguous in their results. Up to the years of World War I, the rudimentary process of Turkish nation-building encountered numerous essential obstacles, such as the tremendous difficulty to define national identity in a multinational empire. The striving of the Young Turks to engineer a common Ottoman national consciousness transcending ethnic and religious dividing lines remained a utopian project. Furthermore, within the dominant Turkish ethnos, there was little, if any, sense of nationality. It is worth to emphasize the fact that the Ottoman empire was essentially an Islamic, and not a Turkish state. The separation of the Turkish element and the birth of a distinct national consciousness opposed to the ideal of all-Islamic community, which was embodied in the very notion of umma, was a concern only of a handful of intellectuals, and certainly not a popular phenomenon .1
The wars 1911-1918 changed the Ottoman empire profoundly. The loss of vast territories in the Balkans and the Middle East pushed forward the process of Turkisation of what remained from the state. The War of Independence fought with Greece 1919-1923 and the ensuing Treaty of Lausanne eventually drew the borders of the new Turkish homeland. The years of the war, along with the following two decades in Turkish history are popularly associated with one single eminent personality, Mustafa Kemal, later called Ataturk (Father of the Turks). Under his leadership, the country underwent a period of broad reforms that are known, quite justifiably, as the Kemalist revolution. When Kemal Mustafa Ataturk passed away in 1938, Turkey was hardly the country he had taken over in 1918.2
What were the major highlights of the Kemalist reforms in during the period 1923-1938? The first significant steps undoubtedly was the abolition of the khalifate in March, 1924 and the transformation of Turkey into a republic that was proclaimed in 1923. These were arguably the most important acts distinguishing the transition from Ottoman/imperial to Turkish/national consciousness in the Turkish psyche. The political reforms were furthered by the adoption of a secular constitution, as well as the replacement of the traditional Islamic law (sharia) with modern legal codes borrowed from the countries of Western Europe.3
The reforms pertained not only to the state and its institutions but; they pursued an objective that was far broader . Ataturk and the new secular elite wanted to change radically the attitudes and values of the populace as a whole, thus restructure revolutionarily the Turkish society. Along those lines was the “cultural revolution” of the 1920s promoted by the Kemalists. The state implemented laws pushing towards the acceptance of the Western-style clothing (the hat revolution). In 1928, Turkey replaced the Arabic script with the a modified version of the Latin alphabet. The government encouraged the development of a new secular art, of Europeanized theater and music. The educational system was totally reformed; it was secularized and westernized. Under the auspices of the Kemalist state, the network of schools started expanding substantially in the 1930s in order to reach each and every single Turk, and solve the pending illiteracy problem.4
These are only the main moments in the period of reforms during the rule of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk. As already mentioned, these reforms were intended to exercise , and actually exercised tremendous influence on both the Turkish state and society. One may plausibly argue that they played, in fact, a decisive role in the forming of the modern Turkish state and the Turkish national identity. In order to grasp the real significance of the reforms, it is necessary to pay attention to the theoretical principles that the Kemalist revolution established and was guided by.5
The principle of republicanism (cumhuriyetlik) is the key as far as the building of the modern Turkish state and its institutions are concerned. The founding act that introduced that principle was the proclamation of the Turkish Republic that occurred on October 29, 1923. It introduced, for the first time in the political history of the Turks, the concept of popular sovereignty. It is worth mentioning that all Ottoman constitutions along with the constitutional projects up to that particular moment (the constitution granted by the Sultan in 1876 and the projects of the Young Turks) provided for a limited constitutional monarchy at maximum. All these stipulated that the Sultan was the supreme holder of legislative and executive power. The principle of republicanism marked , in that particular sense, a turning point in the political life of Turkey and the political culture of the Turks. It was grounded on the notion that the Turkish nation is the constitutive element of the Turkish state. Thus, the nation as a whole was to be acknowledged as the legitimate sovereign. That shift from a traditional to a genuinely modern understanding of legitimacy borrowed extensively from the Western political theory was indicative of the emergence of the nation-state concept which in itself has always been a focal point in the ideas of Kemalism. This reconceptualization of the state’s origins played a substantial part in the process of defining the parameters of the modern Turkish state and society. In that sense, the principle of republicanism is in unison with the core objectives of the Kemalist revolution in the 1920s and 1930s.
The above principle is in close relationship with another critically important principle, that of nationalism (milliyetcilik). As already pointed out, the need to identify the characteristics of the Turkish nationality represented a major challenge to some of the intellectuals and statesmen in the Ottoman empire starting from the late 19th and the early 20th century. Whereas it was relatively easy for the different non-Muslim groups to accept the idea of nationality, the Muslim Turks had fundamental difficulty in thinking about themselves as an entity different from the universal community of believers (umma). That impediment was even more serious, given the Ottoman state’s character of an essentially Muslim empire and the khalifate institute’s being the ultimate source of legitimacy . In addition to that Pan-Islamic conservatism, the Pan-Turanist movement emerged in the years of the Young Turks’ revolution. The most prominent herald of Pan-Turanism, Ziya Golkap, referred to the common culture and language of all Turkic people inhabiting vast territories spanning from Europe to China in his advocacy of the idea of all-Turkic unity. 6 The Young Turk leaders, in turn, envisioned the creation of a monolith Ottoman nation out of all the subjects under Sultan Abdul Hamid, regardless of ethnicity or religion. What appeared as a catalyst in the process of nation-building were the continuous wars 1911-1922, especially the war with Greece 1919-1922. By 1923, the territory of the state had shrunk to areas inhabited primarily by Turks. The extermination and expulsion of a major part of the Christian population in these territories contributed additionally to the ethnic homogeneity of the society. The War of Independence 1919-1922 led to an unseen mobilization of the masses under the leadership of the Grand National Assembly, dominated by the nationalists and headed by Mustafa Kemal. The war strengthened the sense of togetherness and eventually played a crucial role in defining the borders of the Turkish homeland, in both the literal and metaphorical sense.
It is worth to point out that the definition of nation accepted and promoted by Ataturk and reflected in the Turkish political and social life until present is based on the understanding that on individual level every citizen of the state of Turkey is its national. This principle has been enshrined in all Turkish constitutions since 1923. The present constitution stipulates that every person who is a citizen of Turkey is a Turk.7 This notion derives from the ideas of certain 18th and 19th century thinkers, such as J.J.Rousseau, A.Comte, and especially the French sociologist E.Durkheim, that seem to have influenced Mustafa Kemal and, hence, the whole Kemalist movement.8 All of the above gave expression to ideas that are centered on the concept of solidarity as an invariable premise of statehood. One of the main elements in the credo of Turkish nationalism is that the nation cannot and should not be divided into religious, sectarian or regional societies. Although the overwhelming Turkish ethnic majority has always been the quintessential factor in practically maintaining the national unity, the concept of nationality in Turkey is not exclusively based on the concept of ethnicity.
The third principle to be analyzed in brief is that of populism (halkcilik) . It is closely related to the both preceding principles. The Turkish state was to be considered after the abolition of the khalifate the state of the people. The nation is the ultimate source of political legitimacy in the republican form of government. The principle of populism is entrenched in the understanding that all nationals are to be considered equal before the law, and no exceptions to any families, classes or communities are acceptable. Therefore, it is intertwined with the solidarist interpretation of nationhood that is common in contemporary Turkey.
The principle of etatism (devletlik) holds a central place in the theoretical framework of Kemalism. It has prevalently economic connotations. One of the chief tasks in the political and social reforms during the personal rule of Ataturk was laying the foundation of a modern industry as a primary factor contributing for the prosperity and the economic sovereignty of the Turkish republic. In 1923, the Turkish economy was in a state of complete disarray. It suffered a great deals from the wars. The enterpreneural class composed mainly by Greeks and Armenians had been liquidated. The Ottoman empire had had for a long time the status of an economic semi-colony of the Western countries, their rough material appendix. The institute of capitulations was just one of the sides in that dependency relationship. These were but a few of the problems the Kemalist elite had to solve by conducting the reforms needed in the realm of economics. It was obvious that that the process of nation-building and institutional reform was inseparable from the development of a modern, industry-based national economy. Both aspects required the exclusive presence of the state in the economic and social life. Therefore, the principle of etatism should be conceived more broadly, not just in terms of the state’s dominant position in economics, but in regard to the relationship between the state and the society. This is a proposition that has a number of far-reaching implications. Let it suffice to point out that the idea of the strong state as an important agent safeguarding the process of transition and modernization of Turkey has been central in the whole set of principles featuring the Kemalist movement and it predetermined the immense importance of the state in the context of the Turkish political and social life nowadays. 9
Another principle of great significance is that of secularism (layiklik). The essence of this principle is the concept of separation of church and state. As already spoken of above, the abolition of the khalifate was a major constitutive act in the creation of the contemporary Republic of Turkey. The legitimacy of power in the new state derived solely from the will of the Turkish nation. In the mind of Ataturk and his adherents, this understanding presupposed a radical secularization of all the institutions of the state. In a certain sense, the Turkish state took over the church during the reforms in the 1920s and 1930s. There is a god example in this respect. The chief Sunni spiritual and religious leader in Turkey, the Sheikh ul-Islam, ranking in the Ottoman hierarchy second after the Sultan, was reduced to a petty government bureaucrat without any substantial authority. Generally, this illustrates how the Islamic clergy, the ulemma, had to give up all its political power. In fact, the church became one of the multiple agencies of the state. For all those years, it has been funded by the state, its activities have been under rigid control, its social and political role has sensibly diminished. Islam, or religion in general, is considered to be a matter of private choice, and not a source of legitimacy the state is established upon. In that sense, the reforms of Ataturk were aimed not merely at separating church and state, but at fundamentally curbing the influence of Islam upon the Turkish society. This is the reason for state’s institutionalized domination in the realm of confession. furthermore, this is the meaning of the principle of secularism as interpreted by the Kemalist elites since the proclamation of the Turkish republic. The new state under Ataturk attempted to break up radically with the inherited Islamic/Middle Eastern/traditional identity of the state and the civil society which was considered a serious obstacle on the way of modernization/westernization. That determines the strong emphasis on that particular principle, put by the contemporary Turkish state. 10
The last principle to be mentioned is that of reformism (inkilabcilik translated also as revolutionism). It is based on the conviction that the Turkish way is, to a great extent, unique, and the process of modernization should not be directed by a rigid doctrine or by the ideologies that flourished elsewhere during the rule of Ataturk. The reforms were considered related exclusively to the immediate needs of the Turkish nation. Ataturk was specifically insistent on that point, and that is the reason one can view the theoretical fundament of Kemalism as a set of principles, but not necessarily an ideology.
The most important conclusion following the analysis of the above principles is that the reforms undertaken under the leadership of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk can be explained as a comprehensive effort to modernize Turkey. In that sense, the principles of Kemalism are to be understood as the essential guidelines in the agenda for modernization.11 We may take into account the fact that the nation-state is a product of modernity and, therefore, conclude that Kemalism is in the core of the notion of modern Turkish nation-state identity. The question that remains to be addressed by the present paper is whether and how the ideas and principles of Kemalism are followed and observed in the political, social, and economic life of contemporary Turkey.
It is evident to the observer throughout the last 60 years that followed the times of Ataturk Turkey has been steadily progressing to evolve into one of the few democratic and relatively well developed economically countries in the Middle East. Although the political situation has been oftentimes shaky, and the record of three military coups (1960, 1970, 1980) comes to one’s mind when one tries to trace the country’s thorny way towards greater democratization, the authoritarian rule of Ataturk, as well as the rule of the military in the aftermath of the coups, ultimately led to the emergence of a multiparty system and political pluralism. In addition, a modern economic infrastructure has been gradually developed. Turkey has turned into a major political, economic, and military regional power. Since the 1980s, the country’s economy has been characterized by a steady growth based on increasing exports and influx of foreign capital. That fact prompted some analysts to qualify Turkey as one of the ten emerging markets of global importance.12 The new role of Turkey as a forepost of the West was acknowledged by its 1952 accession to NATO, an organization which has been as much a forum of nations sharing the basic principles of liberal democracy and free-market as a merely military alliance. Besides that, in 1964, the country was granted the status of an associated member of the European Communities (nowadays European Union). Overall, Turkey is believed to be one of the success stories of modernization/westernization in the non-Western world. 13 Some even make an interesting parallel comparing the Turkish experience with the Japanese. 14 The ensuing question is whether that is true. How successfully is the Kemalist project implemented? The point raised by the present paper is that the success story clichй is probably not the most adequate representation of contemporary Turkey; there is always the other side of the coin.
It is necessary to point out that there have been a number of substantial challenges to the principles left by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk. This is what actualizes the discussion about the significance of those and their role in the context of the contemporary Turkish state and society. One of the substantial challenges to the Kemalist project is Turkey’s failure to built a homogenous nation established on the principle of citizenship rather than the principle of ethnicity. The notion of Turkish nationhood is inevitably intertwined with the idea of Turrkish ethnos, and its distinctive characteristics such as the common language, common culture etc. Consequently, ethnicity has remained a dividing line and the best argument supporting that statement is the undeclared war fought between the Turkish government and the Kurdish separatists taking place in the Turkish South-East since 1984. The struggle of the Kurdish radicals for independence and led by the left-wing PKK and the attempts of the Turkish army to suppress it have cost the lives of tens of thousands. Official Ankara has failed to integrate the Kurds in the Turkish society, although they are believed to be an indivisible part of the nation and are officially referred to as Mountain Turks. The reality is that nowadays Turkey is a home not only of Turks but also of different ethnic and national minorities that amount to 20% of its total population.The most numerous minority are the Kurds, followed by small groups of Arabs, Greeks, Lazes, Armenians etc. Turkey’s reluctance to acknowledge the rights of these minorities to separate identity, which is especially important in regard to the Kurdish problem, has been a major source of tension between her and the West in general. The EU countries have often expressed concerns about the individual human right observance in Turkey, a country that is a part of the Council of Europe and signatory to the European Convention on Human Rights. The logical inference is that, in the final analysis, the Kemalist ideal of national unity that is an axiom in contemporary Turkey is flawed and requires reevaluation.
Another crucial problem that was inherent to the Kemalist agenda is related to the principle of etatism. As it was made clear, the role of the state and its institutions has always been critical to the process of modernization. The first and foremost application of the principle of etatism is related to the special place of the state in the field of economics. Until the early 1980s, Turkey’s economy was of a mixed type. The government was in control of the key sectors. The policies of import substitution were carried on via state-imposed barriers to foreign imports and a managed exchange rate of the Turkish lira. By the late 1970s, this model was in deep crisis. Turkey had accumulated a huge foreign debt; the inflation was rising; the number of unemployed remained high. The politics of etatism and state control had led to a dead-end street. The profound economic reform undertaken by the American educated prime minister Turgut Ozal after 1983 helped the country handle the crisis. The reform was free-trade oriented and entailed lifting of the import barriers, privatization of state-owned businesses, changing the economy’s focus to promoting exports. These policies that marked a major shift in the economic philosophy of the Turkish policy-makers proved efficient and put Turkey in the number of NICs. Turkish economy has been characterized ever since by a steady growth rate. What matters is that the economic reform of the 1980s equaled a reevaluation of one of the Kemalist postulates. In that sense, it was a significant turning point in terms of the country’s political and social life and more specifically in terms of the state’s control of the society’s affairs. The way Turkey coped with the challenge posed by the global economic system is remarkable and this may serve as an evidence of the relative flexibility of Kemalism expressed through the principle of reformism.
The most serious challenge to Kemalist Turkey has come with the rise of Islamism in the 1970s and 1980s. The Islamic revivalist movements which have been a common Middle Eastern phenomenon have put forward their own socio-political agendas which are alternative to the policies of the secular regimes in the region. Political Islam has had a tremendous impact on Turkish society. The democratic system that was established after the military rule 1980-1983 and the referendum 1987 provided an opportunity for conservative politicians, such as Necmetin Erbakan, banned from participation in politics after the 1980 coup to reemerge as popular figures. The Islamists steadily gained support after the Refah (Welfare) party appeared on the stage. Gradually, Refah won the municipal elections in many major urban centers. The Islamists enjoyed popularity not only among the conservative Muslim masses in the rural areas but also among the impoverished migrants and shanty-town dwellers in the big cities such as Istanbul, Bursa, and Izmir. In the parliamentary elections of 1995, Refah received the largest portion of the vote which put the mainstream secular True Path and Motherland parties in an uneasy situation. After a continuous political crisis, a coalition government formed by True Path and Refah headed by N.Erbakan came to power. Although somewhat moderate, the policy of the Islamists emphasized the Islamic values and highlighted the importance of religious tradition in the political and social life. Moreover, the government sought to promote Turkey’s relations with the Muslim world and favored in fostering closer ties with countries like Iran. These steps were looked at with an increasing animosity by the secular political and military elite as a frontal attack against the Kemalist principle of secularism, the sacred cow of modern Turkey. After a series of unambiguous indications on behalf of the military that it would interfere the way it did in 1980 to ensure the inviolability of the state’s secular character, the coalition government was forced to resign and soon Refah was banned by the Turkish Supreme Court as anticonstitutional. Nevertheless, the formation of a new Islamist party is currently underway preparing itself for the upcoming elections. The clash between the Islamists and the adherents of Kemalism is a source of substantial cleavages in the Turkish society. It is evident that the Islamists are going to continue enjoying the support of their traditional constituents and aspire for political power.
The project of Kemalism contained in the complex objective of creating a modern, consolidated, and westernized Turkey may require revaluation following the trends observed during the 1980s and 1990s. This proposition has important consequences in terms of the question of Turkish identity. In the last couple of decades, the policies of total westernization that involved severing the cultural and historical ties with the Middle East suffered a great deal by losing some of their adequacy. The problem has two aspects-an internal and external one. The internal aspect pertains to the relationship between the state and the civil society. One should bear in mind that the reforms under the banner of Kemalism were enforced by the state on civil society, and some segments of the latter may have never fully accepted as legitimate the transformation, as the rise of Islamism suggests. The future of that Islamist/secularist stand-off is uncertain, but at present the secularists are by far more powerful. The parameters of the external aspect are easier to figure. This aspect relates to Turkey’s place in the global and regional geopolitical and economic architecture. The Turkish aspirations westbound aiming at full membership in the EU are at present left unsatisfied. With the changes in Central and Eastern Europe EU expansion priorities changed, and the EU progressively started to be be perceived by Turkey as a closed Christian states’ club. This has been one of the point raised by the Islamists, but it is considered by the secularist politicians too. A statement made by the current prime minister Mesut Yilmaz that the Turkish patience had been over and the application for EU membership may be withdrawn is along the lines of the comprehensive effort of the Turkish policy makers to redefine the country’s foreign policy priorities. Nowadays, Turkey seems to understand itself as a bridge between the Middle East and Europe, and not a country isolating itself from its neighbors in the former region. One should not miss the increased economic activities of the Turkish business in the countries of the Middle East and Central Asia, institutionalized through the Economic Cooperation Organization established in 1985, as well the central role played by Ankara in Black Sea Economic Cooperation Organization. The country’s important place in the Islamic Conference Organization is to be looked at through that lens too. The reconceptualization of Turkey’s place in regional politics is related, whether directly or indirectly, to the question of identity. The conclusion is that a final answer to that question is still to be elaborated. This renders the whole issue central in the political and social life of contemporary Republic of Turkey.
The principles of Kemalism have always served as the guidelines in the quest for an answer to the identity dilemma. The inadequacies that the paper focused on impose the need for reevaluation, possibly redefinition, of these principles, but still it can be argued that in respect of their broader significance they are indispensable to the very existence of the Turkish nation-state. In addition, a special attention should be paid to the principle of reformism which has been crucial to the vitality of Kemalism as a whole. It provides the basis for the needed reconceptualization. The economic reform under T.Ozal’s cabinets is a convincing instance backing the claim that the redefinition of Kemalism is possible, and even desirable given the realities of the particular moment. The question is whether more substantial principles such as nationalism (following the Kurdish challenge) and especially secularism (the Islamic alternative) are subject to reevaluation. In the former case, the it is a matter of political will and one can think of a number of solutions, whereas in the case of the latter the chances for reassessment are not considerable. The need for reeavluation is present and this will be a focal issue in Turkish society and politics. This illustrates, although from a non-conventional perspective, the immense importance of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk’s legacy to contemporary Turkey.