TURKEY DEMONSTRATES FOR A SECULAR STATE- ATATURK WOULD BE PROUD
By Tracy Dove, Ph.D – Editor, Russia Today
U.S. Politics Today, DC
April 30 2007
As many as 1 million Turks crowded the streets of Istanbul this
weekend in support of preserving the secular state that Turkey has
enjoyed since the modern nation’s founding after World War I.
Demonstrators carried posters of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk- the founder
of the republic- and called on the army to secure the country against
the ruling AK Party’s designs at capturing the country’s symbolic
but highest office- the Presidency.
Turkey is literally the bridge between Europe and Asia, and its laws
and institutions also straddle political concepts that stem from
the East-West horizon. Ironically, the establishment of democracy,
secularism and republican government took root in Turkey thanks to the
Ottoman Empire’s resounding defeat during World War I. In 1918, the
unstable government collapsed as British and French forces occupied
Istanbul, and at the Paris Peace conference in 1919 the unfavorable
Treaty of Sevres was drafted and signed in 1920 which dismembered the
empire into numerous protectorates that would fall under British and
French control.
By all accounts, Turkey had the odds of success against it, and the
democratic countries of Great Britain and France had no interest
in supporting independent and uppity popular democracies that would
threaten their control of the Middle East. These were the heady days of
post-World War I imperialism when the European powers were accustomed
to redrawing national frontiers to suit their own financial aims,
and Turkey was no exception. A series of secret treaties already
envisioned carving up the Middle East into large chunks to be given
out to the allies as rewards for staying in the war. But before the
ink on the Treaty of Sevres had even dried in 1920, Turkish forces
were battling Greeks, Armenians and the allied forces indirectly-
and winning. A Turkish parliament was set up in April of 1920 that
supported the nationalist-reformer movements, and finally in 1923 the
allies were forced to recognize the new Republic of Turkey, headed by
a man named Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, in the Treaty of Lausanne in 1923.
Historically speaking, nations that fight their own wars of
independence usually have a greater success rate than those whose
fighting is conducted for them. And if a national hero emerges in
the conflict, even better. Early on in the wars for independence, an
army officer named Mustafa emerged as both a military and national
leader; he went by the nickname "Kemal"- or intelligent one- which
was given to him by his grade school teachers. Upon victory in 1923,
Kemal moved to revolutionary changes to bring Turkey into the 20th
century; Sharia law, which had been the de facto rule in most of
the Ottoman Empire, was abolished, and women were given the right to
vote and seek employment in business. Men were not especially happy
with many of Kemal’s reforms, since they threatened to undermine the
traditional paternal control over the family; girls were forced to
attend school, the new laws forbade men from taking more than one
wife, and the beloved and popular fez was suddenly removed entirely
from the public eye.
Kemal liked hats with a brim, western style, because these prevented
a man from bowing and touching his forehead to the ground during
Islamic prayers, which the brimless tasseled fez had allowed
for quite nicely. This was perhaps one of the most insignificant
looking laws that brought about the greatest secular changes in
modern Turkey. The country was also to belong to Europe and not
Arabia, for Kemal scrapped the complicated Arabic alphabet- which
was seen as a learning hindrance among the country’s illiterate-
and replaced it with a Latin alphabet. To ensure its acceptance,
Kemal often traveled the countryside teaching on a chalk board how
the new letters were to be pronounced.
The most important guarantee, though, that we can attribute to Kemal-
and the one which Turks were demonstrating in favor of this weekend-
is the separation of church and state. In the Turkish constitution,
this divide is guarded closely by the military, which takes an active
role in overseeing politics in the country and has more than once
intervened to remove a prime minister or president from office.
Although the AK Party of Turkey- which is de facto a Muslim party
with a secular face- has a strong majority in the current government,
the attempts to place another of its members into the office of the
president may meet with the disapproval of the military. It was in
favor of keeping the Islamists out that the people demonstrated in
great numbers over the weekend, and certainly the military kept a
close watch on the process.
One last reform of Mustafa Kemal was that everyone had to take a last
name, European style. Mustafa Kemal was given the name "Ataturk",
which means "Father of the Turks." This weekend’s demonstrations should
not be seen as a sign of political weakness but of the strength of
historical and secular traditions, which were established by the
long standing national hero and founding father of the country-
Mustafa Kemal Ataturk.
Tracy Dove, editor of Russia Today, is a Professor of History and the
Department Chair of International Relations at the University of New
York in Prague.
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From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress