Sex Lives of the Great Dictators

13. ATATÜRK — FATHER OF A NEW TURKEY

Kemal Atatürk is seen by many as a liberator. Certainly he was more liberal that the Sultan’s regime that he overthrew in 1920. But Atatürk believed in modernization at all costs and this required a one-party state. When he did flirt with the idea of creating an opposition party in 1930, it proved so successful that he immediately crushed it. Opposition by ethnic minorities, such as the Kurds, was suppressed even more ruthlessly.

Besides, Atatürk openly acknowledged that he was a dictator. He was proud of it. When a French journalist wrote that Turkey was governed by one drunk (Atatürk was famous for liking a drink), one deaf man (Atatürk’s prime minister) and three-hundred deaf-mutes (the chamber of deputies), Atatürk said: “The man is mistaken. Turkey is governed by one drunk.”

At the age of twelve, Mustafa Kemal was sent to the military academy in the then Ottoman city of Salonika. He already loved uniforms and became one of a group of flashy dressers. Although he had entered a practically all-male world, he managed a small romance with a girl named Emine. She was the eight-year-old daughter of an official at the school. Years later she recalled how fastidiously he dressed and how, in her schoolgirl’s eyes, she believed he was destined to become sultan. However, they were kept apart by Muslim custom and barely did anything beyond look at each other longingly through the window of her house as he passed by.

Kemal was incredibly jealous when his widowed mother remarried. He searched for a pistol to scare her new husband but, fortunately, did not find one until they were safely out of reach. He did not see her again until he finished his military training.

At fourteen, he moved on to an academy at Monastir. Before he went, a friend gave him a knife to defend himself against the sexual interest of other men. Women were still behind the veil and pretty young boys like Kemal were much in demand. Occasionally, he would travel back to Salonika to see Emine. Her sister recalled that they planned to marry, but nothing came of it.

On his vacations in Salonika, he enjoyed visiting the European quarter where women were unveiled and sang and danced and sat at tables with men. He enjoyed drinking and the women there found this handsome young soldier irresistible.

Later he was posted to Istanbul, where he became a regular visitor at the home of Madame Corinne, an Italian widow who lived in Pera, a Westernized district of the city. When he went to Sofia as military attache, he wrote to her constantly, assuring her that there were no pretty women there. However, his letters are strewn with mentions of women he had met — each and every one, he stressed, was not beautiful. One woman he did not mention was a German nurse called Hildegarde. When he moved on, he began corresponding with Hildegarde too.

In Sofia, he became the favourite of society hostess Sultane Rasha Petroff. One night, at a masked ball, he met Dimitriana “Miti” Kovachev, daughter of the Bulgarian Minister of War. They danced and talked all night. Soon Kemal was a regular visitor to the Kovachev household where Turkish was often spoken. He was also allowed to take Miti out on the town without a chaperone. In Turkey at that time, no young lady from a good family would be allowed out with a young man.

Miti was Kemal’s ideal European bride, but there was the problem of religion. Kemal consulted his friend Fethi, who was wooing the daughter of General Ratcho Petroff. When the question of marriage came up, General Petroff said: “I would rather cut my head off than have my daughter marry a Turk.”

General Kovachev also put his foot down. Marriage was out of the question. Miti was a Christian; Kemal a Muslim. To make his feelings abundantly plain, General Kovachev even refused to attend a diplomatic ball at the Ottoman embassy.

The beginning of World War I saw Kemal recalled to Istanbul. After showing great bravery at Gallipoli, Kemal returned to Sofia. He and Miti were plainly still in love, but convention demanded they be no more than polite to each other. Four years later, she tried to visit him in Istanbul, but the collapse of the Bulgarian front made the journey impossible. She married a Bulgarian deputy, but continued to follow the astonishing career of her young Turk.

Kemal had a reconciliation with his mother after she split from her second husband. After his death, her husband’s young sister, Fikriye, came to live with her, and Kemal took her as his mistress. Kemal’s mother disapproved heartily. Fikriye was not nearly good enough for her son.

Although she was technically married to an Egyptian, she lived with Kemal in the Sisli district of Istanbul. This did not prevent him from continuing his relationship with Corinne. After the British occupied Istanbul, Corinne’s house was searched for weapons. Kemal had fled to Anatolia, where began the struggle for independence.

Fikriye followed him there, where she lived openly as his mistress. She wanted to be his wife, but although he loved her dearly he would not hear of it. He wanted a Western-style marriage to a woman who could stand beside him. Although she kept her face unveiled, Fikriye was an oriental woman who would always walk behind. Besides, as a Pasha, his first wife should be a virgin. The dark, slender Fikriye was already, technically, married.

Nevertheless, she would do for the present. Having her with him on the campaign would keep him away from the promiscuous women who hung around the garrison with whom he had entertained himself before.

The campaign to liberate Turkey ended with the burning of Smyrna. While Atatürk was there, a young woman came to his headquarters and asked to see him. He refused, then thought he might take a look. When he saw her, he dismissed his orderly and asked her to sit down.

Her name was Latife and she was the daughter of Ushakizade Muammer, a rich Smyrniot with interests in shipping and international commerce. Although Latife was a Turk with olive skin and large dark eyes, she had studied law in Europe and spoke French like a Frenchwoman. Her parents were spending the summer in Biarritz, but she had returned to Turkey to help his cause. Like many Turkish women, she wore his picture in a locket around her neck. In Atatürk’s mind, this fuelled the fantasy that she was in love with him.

She lived in a large house outside the city and invited Kemal and his staff to stay there. She even threw a formal reception for him. But she would not go to bed with him. This puzzled Kemal who, as a liberator of his country, was used to willing, eager women. But Latife was determined to become his wife, not just his mistress. When he left Smyrna for Ankara at the end of the month, she still had not succumbed.

Kemal wrote to Latife. Now he was head of state, he needed a wife, he said, and she seemed to fit the bill. She visited Ankara. Kemal’s ailing mother died while she was there, but, nevertheless, Kemal asked Latife to marry him at once. The following day, they married in European style in her father’s house. In an Islamic marriage, the bride and groom do not see each other until after the ceremony. Kemal and Latife broke with tradition and took their vows seated together at a table.

Kemal took his new wife on a honeymoon tour, using her as an example in his campaign to emancipate Turkish women. This was how women should be treated, he said, indicating Latife standing beside him in breeches. When women offered to put her up, he insisted that his wife stay with him. There was to be an end to the harem and the separation of the sexes.

Flaunting his new wife in such an unseemly manner provided ammunition for the traditionalists among his opponents — especially when Latife appeared in low-cut gowns at gala events.

At the time of the wedding, Fikriye was away in Germany in a sanatorium. The hardships of his military campaign had left her with tuberculosis. The first she heard of the marriage was in the newspaper. She returned to Turkey and stayed with Kemal and his new bride at Chankaya for four days in the summer of 1923. Then she returned to Ankara and checked into a hotel. A few days later, she went to see Kemal at the presidential palace, but was refused admission. She drove back to her hotel and shot herself with a pistol she had bought in Germany. The shot did not kill her immediately, but she died soon after in hospital.

The guilt that Kemal felt over Fikriye’s death made married life impossible. Kemal and Latife clung together for the next two years, but on 5 August, 1925, the marriage was dissolved. Latife went to live in Istanbul, though would be discreetly out of town if Kemal visited the city. In 1933, he was given the name Atatürk Father of the Turks — by the National Assembly. He continued his heavy drinking and died of cirrhosis of the liver in 1938. Latife outlived him by thirty-eight years.