Titans of History

ATATÜRK

1881–1938

We shall attempt to raise our national culture above the level of contemporary civilization. Therefore, we think and shall continue to think not according to the lethargic mentality of past centuries, but according to the concepts of speed and action of our century.

Atatürk, speaking at the 10th anniversary of the Turkish Republic (October 29, 1933)

Atatürk—the name adopted in 1934 by Mustafa Kemal—means Father of the Turks. He was a leader of immense vision, who created a new Islamic secularism, led Turkey out of the ruins of the moribund Ottoman empire and transformed it into a modern, Westernized republic. He became a military hero in the First World War and subsequently led the Turks to victory over an invading Greek army, sometimes with ruthlessness. He went on to become Turkey’s first president, leading the country until his death in 1938. He was by far the greatest of the strongmen of the inter-war period. In our own time of challenge from Islamist fanaticism, Atatürk’s vision has never been more important or relevant, yet his methods were harsh and the massacre of Smyrna was at least partly his responsibility.

Atatürk was born in what is now the Greek city of Thessaloniki. He was an academically gifted child and attended military schools from the age of twelve. Once he had been commissioned as an army officer, he joined the group known as the Young Turks, who were critical of the Ottoman regime and eager for reform and progress. Atatürk was one of those leaders who was as gifted a politician as he was a military commander. During the First World War, he was the victor of Gallipoli, defeating the Allied attack there. He also served in the Caucasus, Sinai and Palestine. He demonstrated a talent for winning the ultimate loyalty of his troops. “I don’t order you to attack,” he told them, “I order you to die.”

At the end of the war Atatürk found himself on the losing side. As many of the Arab lands once ruled by the Ottomans were distributed among the victorious Allies, he became involved with a national movement to create a modern nation out of the Turkish heartland of the defunct empire. British prime minister David Lloyd George and the Allies believed in a classically inspired Greek empire, assigned much of Anatolia (the Asian part of modern Turkey) to the Greeks, and encouraged its premier, Eleftherios Venizelos, to invade, thus launching a recklessly unnecessary war. Atatürk resisted ruthlessly and brilliantly, culminating in victory at the Battle of Dumlupinar in 1922—and the appalling atrocity of the Great Fire of Smyrna, in which Turkish troops were responsible for conflagration, rapine and murder, destroying one of Europe’s most cosmopolitan cities and killing 100,000 people. Commander-in-Chief Atatürk must bear some responsibility. Turkish independence was assured, however—confirmed in 1923 by the Treaty of Lausanne.

With the military struggle over, another challenge arose: to secure the modernization of a new secular Turkish state. In October 1923 the Republic of Turkey was declared, and Atatürk became president. As a nationalist, one of his first aims was to purge the country of foreign influence. As a progressive, his next priority was to separate the Islamic religion from the state.

The last Ottoman sultan had been deposed in 1922, and in 1924 Atatürk abolished the caliphate—the institution by which successive sultans had claimed rule over all Muslims. In place of an autocratic theocracy, Atatürk embraced, at least in theory, the principles of democracy and a legal code based on European models. Although Turkey remained a single-party state virtually without respite throughout the 1920s and 1930s, Atatürk tried to operate as an “enlightened authoritarian”—ruling without opposition but with a progressive and reforming agenda.

Economically, Turkey lagged behind much of the Western world in the 1920s. Atatürk set up state-owned factories and industries, built an extensive and efficient rail service, and established national banks to fund development. Despite the ravages of the Great Depression after 1929, Turkey resisted the moves toward fascist or communist totalitarianism that took hold elsewhere.

Atatürk declared that Turkey “deserves to become and will become civilized and progressive.” A major part of that drive was in the cultural and social field. The restrictions of Islamic custom and law were lifted. Women were emancipated—Mustafa Kemal’s adopted daughter became the world’s first female combat pilot—and Western dress was strongly encouraged, at times by official rules. Panamas and European hats replaced the traditional fez, which was banned by law. Education was transformed in towns and rural areas alike, and a new Turkish alphabet (a variant on the Roman alphabet) was introduced. Literacy levels rose from 20 percent to 90 percent.

Atatürk encouraged the study of earlier civilizations connected with the heritage of the Turkish nation. Art, sculpture, music, modern architecture, opera and ballet all flourished. In every area of Turkish life, Atatürk pressed forward his modernizing, nationalistic mission, and a new culture began to emerge. In the process he rode roughshod over non-Turkish minority groups, suppressing the Kurds, among others.

Dramatically good-looking, Atatürk was an eccentric leader, a vigorous womanizer and a heavy drinker. His Herculean workload combined with these prodigious appetites to bring about a collapse in his health, and in 1938 he died of cirrhosis of the liver. He was only fifty-seven. He was loved by his people for his charisma, his energy and his personable style, and his funeral brought forth a massive wave of grief across the country. His memory is still revered; today in Turkey there are portraits and sculptures of him everywhere, and it remains a crime to insult the visionary father of the nation, yet during the early 21st century, his fiercely secular order is increasingly challenged by the mildly Islamic rule of Prime Minister Erdogan.