From the Ashes of an Empire
Mustafa Kemal, the man who changed the destiny of the Turkish people.
Gloomy premonitions.
The splendors and the glory of the Ottoman empire had already disappeared since
long time when it went out defeated by World War I. The crazy adventure in which
Enver Pasha and his military party had conducted it, it had revealed for that
that had been since the beginning: a Pindaric flight to the search of the disappeared
greatness. That bloody years of struggle against the allies were only the epilogue
of almost one-decade of intestine wars and with uncomfortable neighbors that had
weakened the resistance of the secular empire. In fact, since the affront of the
annexation of Bosnia Erzegovina from Austria-Hungary in 1908, the territorial
extension governed by Istanbul had always gone decreasing. The war with Italy
in 1912 had deprived it of Libya and of the Dodecaneso and the following year,
the struggle with the young Slavic nations of the Balkan had limited the Turkish
presence in Europe to a very narrow region in defense of Istanbul and the Bosphorus.
When the archduke Francis Ferdinand was murdered in Sarajevo, Turkey had already
been for several years in the sphere of influence of Germany and it would not
have been able to be otherwise. Too far from the western and colonialist mentality
of France and Great Britain, threatened by the czarist army, the only way out
that it had to own disposition was an alliance with the Central Powers. The support
to the Austro-German cause was, however, in unstable balance until the last moment
for the opposition of the cultural political Movement of the Young Turks. They
had fought since the beginning of the century for a modernization of the Ottoman
institutions, getting a liberal constitution that, however, didn't go over some
concessions in political field, leaving unchanged the privileges of the Moslem
clergy (with the judicial application of the Sha'ria) and particularly of the
Sheikh-ul-Islam who still had a veto on the decisions of the government. The amelioration
that would have been able to get with the time was prevented by the burst of the
war. Also abhorring for principle the armed conflicts, the Young Turks were pervaded
by a vast sense of nationalism that was the base of the support furnished to Enver
Pasha. In front of the choice between the division of the empire under the push
of the populations of border and the war, they chose the latter as minor damage.
The first phases of the war seemed helping the interventionists, because Anglo-French
landing in the Dardanelles and the Russian offensive in the Caucasus were run
aground in front of the resistance of the Ottoman army. The pride for these defensive
victories was so great that the government hypothesized an advance in Armenia
and Azerbaigian (tried with disastrous results in 1916), to create a vast confederation
with the Turkish populations of those zones. The insurrection of the Armenian
and Arab population was resolved in different ways. While for the Arabs it decided
to abandon them to theirs destiny, the Armenian had been submitted to a deportation
of mass that in some cases in episodes of extermination that soiled forever the
little illuminated government of Enver Pasha. For his ulterior adversity, the
military backwardness of the Turkish army would have engraved on the defeat in
the same way of the extreme usury of the country class of the Anatolia on which
weighed in maximum part the obligatory conscription. The 1918 Arabic desert great
offensive and the following fall of the oriental front would have removed every
hope at least of an honorable peace.
Also after the humiliating surrender, the Ottoman empire would have been able
to survive, as puppet state between communist Russia and the Mediterranean, if
it had not been for the inconclusive behavior of the greatest political leaders
of the winning countries that didn't show the least knowledge of the culture and
the Turkish history. Not as soon as they finished the armed clashes, every winning
nation, for how much its contribution to the victory had been small, it felt the
right to complain some compensations of territorial and monetary character from
the Sultanate. This sudden return to the colonialism was unexpected not at all,
but, contrarily, it was founded on precise appointments taken even previously
the beginning of the war. During the frantic days that followed the attentat of
Sarajevo, France and Great Britain committed to attract in their own coalition
either Italy either Russia. To this last they offered everything, for which the
same nations had fought the war of Crimea, this is to say the possession of Istanbul
and the Dardanelles. The agreement had to be revealed at gotten victory only and,
absurd element indeed if we thought that it had been officially ratified from
three governments, France and Great Britain thought of being able subsequently
to modify it, bringing back Russia out of the Dardanelles.
However, the government of the czar let already hear its own voice in March
1915,asking an official confirmation of that agreement. This confirmation was
made by the Anglo-French ambassadors in Petersburg after having received instructions
from the respective executives. The division of Turkey had not only to deprive
it of its more important city, but also of all the territories of the oriental
provinces, that would have been fairly divided between France (Syria) and Great
Britain (Iraq), with the constitution of some Arabic satellites-states on the
Caucasian borders of Russia. A 1916 agreement, denominated Sykes-Picot after the
names of the allied plenipotentiaries who were the authors of it, served to delineate
these new borders. Just in this occasion, they started to glimpse some signs of
schizophrenia in the foreign politics of Great Britain. In fact, while on one
side it signed a pact with Russia that foresaw some well precise agreements for
the Arabic population of the empire, on the other one it tightened alliance with
the emir Hussein of the Hedjaz, promising the full independence of his people
in exchange for the revolt against the Sultan. If these incongruities had not
been enough, great difficulty would have risen for the assignment of the zone
of Adalia that had to be entrusted to Italy behind Russian permission. This way
doing, it had arrived to increase the resentment of the Greek people, that after
having fought hard for a long time on the mountains of the Thessalia, it had seen
to disappear in a sol hit every possibility of expansion. However, the sacrifice
of a small allied, it was worth the guardianship of the equilibrium of strength
that was constituted in the region. To upset everything had come the Russian revolution.
Diplomatic plays and political errors.
The fact that the czar had been dethroned and that Russia was prey to a civil
war, it didn't involve only an ulterior effort on the three powers remained to
fight with Austria and Germany but it also modified all the juridical agreements
stipulating before the change of regime. The agreement on the Straits had been
virtually annulled, as that for Adalia, submitted to the condition of a consent
of the Russian state that was contested at the moment either from the allies either
from its inside. Instead of simply gathering these regions to Turkey, it was decided
that it was possible to give the territorial expansion that Greece complained.
If not in the zone of Adalia, at least in that of Smirne, near the Dardanelles,
populated by a Greek origin 's minority. The ideation of this plan has the paternity
of the English Prime Minister Lloyd George who if only had known a little of the
history of Turkey, he would have understood what fuse had turned on. Unaware of
the consequences, Greek troops were let disembark in the zone of Smirne in April
1919 with escort of English, French and American war ships. A little afterwards,
in east of this position, they also disembarked some Italian units to protect
the Aegean islands.
The British foreign politics made another serious error granting too much space
to the claims of the Armenian nationalists. Harshly tried by the persecution of
the years of the war, Armenian people had found in Great Britain the protectress
that had looked for. Although an initial project that foresaw that the whole oriental
Turkey was used for the institution of an Armenian state was rejected, it had
already allowed the constitution of an Armenian nation in territories of the Ottoman
empire that had an high percentage of Turkish population. The British army also
occupied all the Caucasian territories that had belonged to the empire with the
excuse to safeguard the new protectorate of Iraq. In the middle of these continuous
overcoming, to Turkey had made an only concession, but of great consequence. After
the decadence of the agreement with Russia, Istanbul would be due to revert under
international administration leaving a small kingdom with capital in Konya to
the sultan. Instead, after having created some puppet states anywhere, Great Britain
was felt enough sure to return the city in Turkish hands. In every case, to avoid
future problems, the English government set on the throne a pro-British prince
named Vaheddin and occupied Istanbul with its own troops. All these conditions,
even if extremely unfair and oppressive, were firstly discussed in San
Remo and then undersigned by Turkey in the agreement
of Sèvres (1920). This agreement gave the dominion of the Middle East
to France and Great Britain, with a sure support of Greece and Italy. To oppose
this colonialist vision, the United States following the 14 points dictated by
President Wilson condemned the evident negation of the popular wish in that zones
under the control of nations that had nothing to do with the traditions, the culture
and the history of Turkey. Unfortunately, this opposition remained on the paper.
The man of the Providence
The situation in Turkey had however already started to change in 1919. On the
scene, it had bossily appeared a character that would have marked the destiny
of Turkey: Mustafa Kemal. He has born in 1881 in Salonicco (that it is currently
in Greece, but that at that time it belonged to the Ottoman Empire). At the beginning,
he was educated in the traditional religious school. Already from the first years
of his infancy he imposed himself for a definite and inflexible will, perhaps
inherited from the mother Zubeyde who remained prematurely widow and educated
his sister and him with extreme severity, but with as many affection and sense
of the justice. Thanks to his mother, young Mustafa had the possibility to move
to a modern school of western style, where he grew with the liberal teachings
common to that epoch. At only twelve years, he entered in a military school of
superior studies, where the second part of his name (that is Kemal that means
perfection) was earned. To attribute him this nickname was his teacher of mathematics
in honor to the cleverness of his own student. Since that moment, he would have
been always known as Mustafa Kemal.
At the beginnings of the twentieth century, more precisely in 1905, he graduated
in the military academy in Istanbul with the rank of captain. Since the first
years of career, he was also active in political field. Together with other officers
he created a secret group called “Homeland and Liberty” and he had a
little role in the ascent to the power of the Young Turks in 1908. His fame reached
the top only in 1915, when he became a national hero during the defense of the
Dardanelles. Firstly, he had success to stop the allied landing, then with a series
of excellently programmed offensives he succeeded in rejecting them definitely.
This permitted him to have the rank of General already in 1916, when it was 35
years old only. From that date until the end of the war, he distinguished himself
for the continuous victories on the field that however did not modify the final
defeat of Turkey. In 1919, Mustafa Kemal had succeeded in being named to the office
of inspector of the Third National Army near the city of Samsun on the coasts
of the Black Sea. The nomination at the beginning did not have a lot of meaning,
because this Army existed only on the paper, being limited to a small number of
men. However, it had two extremely important advantages. It allowed appropriating
of a residue of weapons and provisions abandoned by the Germans in port of Samsun
and gave to him that legitimacy that derived from the official position. Even
if theoretically he would have had to take orders from the Sultan in person, Mustafa
did not do so, beginning the crossing of the Anatolia with his small army in the
direction of the lands occupied by the Greeks.
In his long journey from the Black Sea to the Aegean Sea, he crossed lands
populated by those same farmers of Turkish blood that so much had suffered giving
their own life during World War I and anywhere he stopped, he found new voluntaries
for what it was becoming an army of national liberation. Arrived in proximity
of the city of Sivas, he had the opportunity to agree with the governor of the
province for the choice of some delegates who would have thrown the bases for
the following conference of Baliksheshir and for the more important congress of
Erzerum in July 1919 where through the stipulation of a “National Pact”
it was consecrated the principle that the Turkish ground was inviolable and not
subduable to any foreign administration. However, despite the big authoritativeness
of Mustafa Kemal until the conference of Sivas in September 1919, the national
movement was still unprovided of a leader. The movement itself was still moderate
and has not any revolutionary tendencies. However, these ideas were already enough
extremists for the sultan, who gave order to the military chief of staff of the
central district of the Anatolia, Kiazim Kara Bekr to arrest Kemal. The military
employee found himself in a rather difficult situation. He was also of moderate
ideas and next to the positions of Kemal. He was nevertheless still faithful to
the sultan, but he did not want to interrupt the revolutionary motion that was
activated to Sivas. Not to contravene to the order, he answered to the sultan
not to have enough forces to be able to arrest the rebellious general, believing
that so doing he would have taken at least enough time to be able to reach an
agreement with Kemal. The Sultan, it seems pushed by pressures of the British
advisers, transferred the order of arrest in the hands of Kurd units of the oriental
Anatolia that undertook a maneuver of approach to Sivas that resembled too much
to the movement of an invading army not to wake up again the national feeling
of the Turkish country class.
In front of the armed threat, Kemal acted with promptness. He used the faithful
soldiers in the struggle against the troops of the sultan, succeeding in defeating
them with facility. In front of the impossibility to have reason of the rebels
with the strength, the Sultan passed to a diplomat tactic that seemed to get the
wanted effects. He invited the parliament of Sivas to reenter in the legality
moving to Istanbul. The members of the Parliament who, as we have already remembered,
had liberal and moderate tendencies, accepted. Once reached Istanbul, the legislative
organ would have liked to continue with the work of modernization that had already
started in Sivas. Unfortunately, the Sultan did not understand the difference
that passes between an absolute sovereign and a constitutional monarch. This way,
to avoid useless risks he decided to intervene.
On March 16 1920, English troops arrest all the members of the parliament who
did not succeed in running away in time, sentencing them to the exile in Malta.
Mustafa Kemal that had refused to move in Istanbul not to undergo to the wish
of the Sultan, was still free. To destroy the threat that he still constituted
for the power of the empire, the Sultan army the Greek troops of Smirne started
to converge on the center of the Anatolia with the assignment to put an end to
the revolt.
Even before dealing with the military situation that was already very worrisome,
Kemal decided to systematize the political one. In Ankara he gathered all the
members of the Parliament that had succeeded in escaping the capture and he gave
life to a permanent National Assembly that named him head of the provisional government
and of the army with the title of Marshal. It also assumed all the extraordinary
powers that were required for facing the imminent danger, becoming a revolutionary
organ at all the effects. Gotten that constitutional legitimization that he still
missed, Kemal decided to face the most important problem that was the enemy that
was advancing toward the new capital with a forced march. The only troops that
in a first moment were available to oppose to this advance were a horde of irregulars
and voluntaries that had often gathered themselves in uncontrollable gangs. The
most substantial one among them was defined “Green Army” and it was
to the orders of such Edhen, an adventurer who was taking advantage from the civil
war to enrich himself through looting and unauthorized requisitions. Although
he didn't respond to the authority of Kemal, he was fundamental because the Green
army contributed to slow down the march of the troops of the Sultan, allowing
the government, with the diplomatic work of two faithful followers of Kemal as
Ismet and Fevzi Pasha, to get the necessary financing to acquire armaments abroad.
Surprisingly the nations that were shown more generous to collaborate with Ankara
were Italy and France that had already understood as the English politics in the
region went against their affairs. They preferred an independent, but pacific
Turkish state, rather than a continuous threat towards their possessions in Syria
and in the Dodecaneso.
With the new supplies it was possible to train a nucleus of professional troops
that under the command of Ismet Pasha stopped the Greeks in the battle of Inönü
guaranteeing to their commander the nickname that would have accompanied him for
the rest of the life. This first success was followed from a winning campaign
in Armenia made by Kiazim Kara Bekr, definitely passed to the part of Kemal. Defeated
the Armenian army, he arrived to the occupation of the city of Kars and to the
full collaboration with the Russian communist troops. The communists, who in that
period were also in struggle against the allied strengths that tried to turn upside-down
the new regime in Moscow, were precious allies, intervening in favor of the Turks
to guarantee safety in the Caucasus. Military successes would have remained well
little thing if they had not been accompanied by an intense diplomatic activity.
Making lever on the increasing malcontent in France and in Italy towards the English
ally that was making the part of the lion in the Middle East, Kemal proposed to
the two nations a separate peace with nationalistic Turkey. Both, in exchange
for ample economic reassurances of exploitation of the Turkish raw materials,
consented to withdraw their own troops and to conclude an agreement of peace independent
from Great Britain. Even more important it was the Pact of peace stipulated with
Russia in March 1921, with which for the first time after two centuries, the two
nations traced a sure border between them, reconciling the whole Caucasian region.
Eliminated the possibility to be attacked on more fronts, Turkey started a
hard opposition to the Greeks who, in the meantime, had succeeded in conquering
Eski Shehir. The Turkish army that has withdrew behind the river Sakaria, opposed
a heroic resistance to the enemy during a battle that lasted two whole weeks.
The Turks did not win the clash, but they showed that they could not be beaten
without destroying them. This way, the Greeks were forced to go back in direction
of Smirne running into an impressive series of defeats. In September 1922 the
Turkish army entered in Smirne victoriously, freeing the whole Asian Turkey. It
remained the Greek threat on Istanbul, through West Tracia. There, there were
also some English troops to defend the Straits and Kemal did not dare to attack
them directly. Instead, he returned to use the diplomatic weapon that had wisely
already shown to know how to exploit. Lloyd George, pressed from the coalition
that supported his government, was forced to surrender and to ask an armistice
with the Turks that was signed on September 29 1922. The following year was summoned
in Lausanne a Conference about the Straits that saw two contrasted blocks.
On one side Russia and Turkey, revolutionary states that had gone out victorious
from the wars against the West and on other side France, Great Britain and Italy,
the traditional colonial powers. These last ones would have liked the opening
of the Bosphorus to the war ships of all nations, proposal that was unacceptable
either for Turkey either for Russia. Particularly, Turkey pretended the possibility
to close the passage to the ships of nations with which it had been in war, exactly
the same request done by the Sultan (who had been deposed with the declaration
of the Turkish Republic on October 29 1923). It arrived to a compromise that required
the demilitarization of the Straits and the creation of an International Committee
of control over them. This solution was welcomed from Turkey for two fundamental
reasons: 1) it doubted of the true friendship of Russia, for which it preferred
to reapproach to the west 2) Kemal was sure that the Great Britain would not have
had enough diplomatic strength to impose the respect of those conditions. In fact,
in the 1936 Montreux Conference, Turkey succeeded in getting the rights of fortification
and block that it needed.
Always in the Conference in Lausanne they were pointed out the western borders
of Turkey that regained Istanbul, Adrianopolis and the whole West Tracia. They
were reached so the confinements of that state-nation that was in the projects
of Kemal. He succeeded even in letting abolish the institute of the capitulations.
They consisted in a particular judicial privilege that allowed the western states
to let judge whatever controversy that implicated their citizens according to
the procedure of their own homeland. This fact had been always seen as a legal
guardianship of such states towards Turkey and his revocation coincided with the
regaining of a complete juridical liberty. The objectives already reached in 1923
from Kemal were only the beginning of his work and he was well conscious of it.
It can be inferred from his own words: “After the military triumphs that
we have gotten with the bayonets, the weapons and the blood, we have to fight
for reaching victories in fields as the culture, the schooling, the science and
the economy [...] the durable benefits of the victories depend only on the existence
of an army of education.”
Turkey enters in the twentieth century.
The fall of the Caliph’s institution did not involve a political revolution
only, but also ecclesiastical and juridical modifications. In fact, the position
of the Caliph as it had developed during the centuries of the Ottoman empire,
had also become the temporal expression of the Islam with the consequence to create
an Arabic influence in Turkey. If Kemal wanted to transform his own country, he
had to separate the ecclesiastical law from civil law and to restructure the whole
clerical apparatus. The Sheik-ul-Islam that because of its power could be compared
to a Middle Age pope had to disappear together with the Caliph if he wanted to
continue the Revolution. In fact, since the Turks' conversion to the Islam, the
Sha'ria or Koranic law had constituted the juridical base of the nation. Certainly,
already beginning from the 16th century, it was tried to amend this ecclesiastical
law with the introduction of some “man's laws”, but still in 1908 the
Young Turks had not been able to avoid that the Sheik sat in the ministry of the
government showing the his own importance. Kemal abolished the position, transforming
Turkey in a secular nation on the example of revolutionary France and Russia.
In addition to the juridical motives, there were also economic reasons for this
transformation. The state, in fact, confiscated the conspicuous good of the Evkaffs,
religious institutions that possessed remarkable patrimonies, restoring at least
partly the worrisome government deficit provoked from the World War I and from
the War of independence. However, the reform of Kemal was not anticlerical, contrarily
it some positive consequences for the religion. It was for example ordered to
translate in Turkish the Koran that till that moment had been written only in
Arab, allowing the less learned classes to draw near to the word of Allah.
It was, however, the big judicial revolution that constituted a giant effort.
They were proclaimed three new codes: the penal one inspired to the Italian experience,
the civilian one stamped on the Swiss code and the commercial one derived by the
German pandects. The Sha'ria had not abandoned completely, because it was allowed
the citizens to respect it in the private life, but in the official relationships
in front of the organs of the state, among which the judicial institutions, only
the laws proclaimed from the Republic had full force, arriving to the real separation
between State and Church. The passage between the tradition of the Ottoman empire
to the republican nationalism was not immediate and was not performed before 1930,
so much that still in 1925 a special office of the Religious Affairs had to deal
with the role of the clergy in relationship to the government. However, at the
end of this long procedure it was gotten a nation that could be defined modern,
where every institution had its sphere of competence without interventions and
without interference.
In social field, the emancipation of the woman was gotten (at least towards
the state) and the abandonment of some very rooted traditions, as that of the
fez, the Turkish traditional headgear and of the use of the only first name close
to the title or personal rank (Some nicknames were adopted that had value of surname.
Mustafa chose for if that of Atatürk, that is the Turks' father, an appellative
that he was been suitable). It was also adopted the western calendar to the place
of the Islamic one. At the end of his reforming work what had become Turkey it
fully corresponded to a passage taken from his discourses: “We have to free
our concepts of justice, our laws and legal institutions from the bonds that have
tightened us in an iron slipknot, although we were conscious that they were incompatible
with the needs of our century […] the greatest challenge that we have to
face is to raise our national life to the highest levels of civilization and prosperity”.
Kemal and the Dictatorship
Every nation that goes out of a period of long stasis through a revolution
is subject to the risk to fall prey of the dictatorship. Turkey did not subtract
itself from this stereotype, but it had fortune to find its own dictator in the
person of Mustafa Kemal.
Already in the years of the war of independence, they were delineated the strengths
that would have commanded after the final victory: the liberal party, moderate
and composed by the most traditional exponents of the Young Turks who didn't want
a traumatic transition from the past and found their supporters in the clergy
and in the class of the dealers; on the other side there was the radical party
that would have transformed in popular party during the government of Atatürk,
tense to a complete Revolution without impediments. The pretext to eliminate the
political opponents arrived with a revolt of the Kurd population. This people
had never accepted the Turkish dominion at the times of the sultans, but during
the revolution, it had been faithful to the government of Istanbul, so at the
moment of their revolt, the repression was severe. The Turkish army fought for
a long time to disperse the armed gangs, but Atatürk's action was not limited
to this. He deported wide part of the population in central Anatolia and he put
Turkish farmers in the Kurd regions. It prohibited the use of the Kurd language
in the official acts and he denied every national identity to this people, unfortunately
creating the presuppositions of the today's conflicts in the region.
As already said, the Kurd revolt served as pretext to eliminate the opposition.
Kemal let approve a Statute of laws that in practice conferred him all the powers.
He was surrounded by a national guard of “Lazi”, Georgian Moslems that
constituted his armed arm. He dissolved all the parties of opposition, but he
allowed to their exponents entering in the Popular Party that became so a national
unique party on the style of the Russian Communist Party, without, however, its
excesses. Some extremists of the opposition tried to murder Kemal on the occasion
of a speech in Smirne and this one was the only occasion in which the Turkish
leader used really totalitarian methods. Through confessions extorted with the
torture, the culprits were individualized and publicly hung in the plaza of Ankara.
It was, unfortunately, a serious stain on the period of government of Kemal.
Foresight of the Atatürk
The fact that Kemal had transformed Turkey in a totalitarian state, it did
not mean that he desired this form of government for his own country. His ideal
was to arrive to a democracy of western style, but he had recognized the impossibility
of the Turkish nation to reach this goal in the first years of independence. Only
a strong guide would have been able to avoid the chaos. However, after these years
of break-up were passed, Kemal acted in such way that the presuppositions were
created for a transition without pain toward the democracy. Firstly, he wanted
to experiment the creation of a democratic opposition to his government. He created
an inside faction in the Parliament under the guide of Fettey Bey that had the
assignment to oppose the projects of the majority. At the beginning, the experiment
seemed to work, but well soon, it degenerated in a real brawl between parliamentarians,
not accustomed to the dialectical clashes. The exponents of the opposite factions
began to come to blows in the corridors of the Parliament, so that Kemal was forced
to set term to his attempt.
He also tried to effect provincial elections with democratic method. He thought
that if on local level the population had accustomed to the principles of the
direct democracy, it would have been subsequently simpler to elect a representative
Parliament. The result was still less edifying of the first effort. The local
delegates were chosen with nepotistic method and after little time the mutual
notification on phenomenon of corruption and exchange of votes became the rule,
rather than the exception. Kemal had to return to a more classical vision of the
dictatorship, abolishing these too premature reforms. One of his good qualities
was to understand the degree of preparation of his own people. When he realized
that an initiative was not suited for the historical period in which he lived,
he did not do anything else other than staying and attending the good times to
continue.
Of great importance for the pacification of the region was the exchange of populations
with Greece. Thanks to a diplomatic activity of high profile, Kemal got that the
Turkish population of the West Tracia was moved to Turkey, taking possession of
the good of the Greeks of the East Tracia and viceversa. This movement allowed
a painless passage of thousand of individuals through a frontier that was a true
border of hate.
A premature end
The death of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk put an end in 1938 to a life that had
a lot still to give to his country. The decade since 1928 until 1938 had transformed
the Turkish nation so much deeply to modify the style of life of Turks until our
days and everything for hand of a man. The successor at the presidency of the
Republic, Ismet Pasha Inönü, knew how to continue the reforming politics
of his predecessor, but he had the advantage to have the walk already traced by
the illuminated example of Kemal. The politics of neutrality between East and
West was also maintained during World War II, preserving Turkey from the horrors
of that conflict. The behavior of the first president of the Turkish Republic
can be synthesized in a very eloquent sentence of his: “There are two Mustafas
Kemal.
One is the Mustafa of meat and blood who is here in front of you and that he
will disappear, the other one are you, all you who are here and that you will
go to the distant corners of our land to spread the ideals that must have defended
with your life if necessary. I exist for the dreams of the nation and the job
of my life is to let become them true!” A greater identification between
a single individual and a nation was never reached again in the world history.
Sources : “History of Turkey” by Philips Price, “The Forty
Days of Musa Dag” by Franz Werfel, “Portrait of a Turkish Family”
by Ifan Orga.
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