[Originally published in Turkish Daily News]
Today is the anniversary of a tragedy in Turkish political history. Eighty-two years ago, on this day, Turkish democracy was crushed and an authoritarian regime was introduced. And the legacy of that moment has continued to doom our political system to date.
If this is totally news for you, don’t worry. It is so for many Turks, too. For they have been raised on the creation myth of Republican Turkey, which can be summarized as something like this:
“From the ashes of the Ottoman Empire, which was rotten to the core, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk arose as a great savior. He won the war of liberation (1919-22), and rebuilt Turkey as a modern country via his radical reforms. His opponents were backward minded fanatics, which he rightfully got rid of.”
That would be the gist of an “Official Turkish History For Beginners” book, but it would only be a half-truth. It is definitely true that Atatürk was a great leader who modernized Turkey in many ways, but some of his political opponents were also men with alternatives, and at least equally promising, visions.
Modernization, But How?
To see that, one should first recall that the late Ottoman Empire had a very sophisticated intellectual elite. Most of the Ottoman intelligentsia spoke English and French, and they were very well versed in European thought, not to mention the Islamic tradition. Among them were different trends, but to generalize, we can speak of two main camps. One of these was what I call the “modernization within the tradition” camp. Its proponents realized the need for reforms, but were hoping to realize these without abandoning traditional values, and especially the religious ones.
The second trend was what I call the “modernization despite the tradition” folks. Their most radical representative was the secular fundamentalist Abdullah Cevdet, who thought Turks could only save themselves if they abandoned their religion. His distaste with traditional values reached a level of deep self-hatred. As a believer in Social Darwinism, he once argued that Turkish women should be bred with men from the “superior races” of Europe to ensure “biological progress.” He is still remembered with deep disgust among Turkey’s conservatives.
During Turkey’s War of Liberation, both of these intellectual trends – and all other segments of the society, which included Islamic clerics, Kurdish leaders, and local notables – were united against the occupying powers and under the roof of the Turkish Parliament. But even during those years, the two different political lines became evident within Parliament. The line that unquestioningly supported Mustafa Kemal was also secularist and revolutionary in nature. This was called “the First Group.” “The Second Group,” on the other hand, consisted of the “modernization within the tradition” people.
Enter Terakkiperver Fırka
When the war was won and the Republic was announced in 1923, the First Group turned into the People’s Party (“Halk Fırkası”), which was dominated by Mustafa Kemal (Atatürk) and his right-hand man, İsmet İnönü. About a year later, The Second Group established the Progressive Party (Terakkiperver Fırka), whose leaders were also war heroes such as Kazım Karabekir, Refet Bele or Rauf Orbay.
There were three main differences between the conservative Progressive Party and the revolutionary People’s Party:
1) The Progressive Party believed in free markets and individual entrepreneurship, an idea that had been advanced by Prince Sabahattin, the nephew of the late Sultan Abdulhamid II. The People’s Party, on the other hand, held a more “statist” approach towards the economy, which would become almost socialist over time.
2) The Progressive Party was friendly to religion. Its founding document included the famous Article six, which read, “We are respectful to religious ideas and sentiments.”
3) On political issues such as the fate of the Kurds, the Progressive Party was tolerant and liberal. Kazım Karabekir, its leader, prepared a detailed report arguing that Kurds needed to be integrated into Turkish society gradually by encouraging agriculture and trade, and by keeping the spirit of common Muslim values. The People’s Party, on the other hand, believed in what its leader İsmet İnönü called the “Turkification” of the Kurds, by using authoritarian methods such as banning their language and destroying their culture.
Today the People’s Party is still around, and its current leader, Mr. Deniz Baykal, is still a statist, die-hard secularist, and ultra-nationalist. He is Turkey’s main opposition leader and one of the prominent flag-wavers in the recent “secularism rallies” held in major cities.
But the Progressive Party is not around, of course… Do you know why?
Well, it was shut down on June 5, 1925 – on the day of infamy I was talking about. The party was actually able to survive for only six months and two weeks. Then, not only was it destroyed, but also its leaders were excluded from politics. Its top figure, Kazım Karabekir, lived under house arrest until the death of Atatürk. All of his works were collected and burned on the orders of the government.
And do you know why the party was closed down?…
The announced reason was Article six in its program: the “We are respectful to religious ideas and sentiments” clause!.. For the Kemalists, this was a statement that encouraged “backward minded thought and action,” and which could not be tolerated.
The Post-1925 Trauma
From 1925 to 1950, Turkey lived under an ultra-secularist “single party regime,” which, unfortunately, established the perception that religion and modernity are incompatible. Turkish citizens felt themselves forced to abandon the former for the sake of the latter. Some of them did so, and they became the “secular elite.” Others, no wonder, resisted.
Yet they resisted peacefully and reasonably. In the first free and fair elections held in 1950, they brought an ideological heir of the Progressive Party to power: the Democrat Party (DP) which used the motto, “Enough, the nation has the word!” The DP brought relative religious freedom, encouraged capitalism, and softened the policy on the Kurds. It also made Turkey an ally of the U.S. by joining the Korean War and NATO. But for the secularist/socialist/nationalist Kemalist elite, this was all heresy. That’s why they decided to crush the conservative line once again: the military staged a coup in 1960, imprisoned all DP deputies, and executed the party’s leader Adnan Menderes and two of his ministers.
That Stalinistic purge would not be able to destroy the “modernization within the tradition” line, but it had a quite different and unexpected result: the rise of Islamism, i.e., the rejection of modernity for the sake of tradition. In the late ‘60s, Necmeddin Erbakan came on the scene with his message of splitting from the West and establishing an Islamic order. Interestingly enough, his inspiration was not the Ottoman tradition – which had been swept aside by the secularist state – but the radical Islamic movements of the Middle East, such as the Muslim Brotherhood.
No More Days of Infamy
In other words, Islamism arose in Turkey not because its Islamic tradition was prone to it. No. It arose because its secular fundamentalists kept on suppressing even the most moderate and progressive expressions of religion.
And the bad news for today is that they are craving do the same thing again.
The current secularist hype in Turkey, which goes hysterical in the face of any sign of religiosity in society, is a very dangerous political force that might, once again, crush Turkish democracy and prevent the cultivation of a truly modern, moderate and yet still devout Muslim identity. The roots of the incumbent AKP, which is at the eye of the storm, is in the Islamist line of Erbakan, for sure. But the party reformed itself to a great extent and became a true heir of the Progressive Party, i.e., the “modernization within the tradition” line. Neither the AKP nor the rising modern Muslimhood in Turkish society that it largely represents should be sacrificed to the ideological rigidity of the secularist establishment, which is, despite all the changes in the world, as anti-religious, anti-capitalist, and nationalist as it was in the ‘30s.
To put it shortly, Turkey needs no more days of infamy. What it really needs is simple: more freedom and a real democracy.
Dear Mustafa Bey,
I view the fact that the Progressive Party was closed down as a sad end to a democratic experiment. However, I find your argument wrong.
For democracy to function, a consensus on fundamentals is required. I therefore view Refet Bele and Rauf Orbay, two gentlemen of the Ottoman school, to be quite naive. To assume that a country with extremely feeble communications, practically non-existent literacy and newly emerged from a war with umpteen nations (plus an insurgent minority) to be ready for democarcy would be quite utopian, and a recipe for disaster.
I also find some points you make rather interesting reading. “Yet they resisted peacefully and reasonably.” I congratulate you first on your selective memory. The insurrection of Şeyh Said? The Menemen Incident? Second, I congratulate you for your implicit assertion that the resistance to secular modernisation could very well have not been “peaceful and reasonable”. How very interesting.
I am also quite interested in knowing what exactly the “modernisation within tradition” would have brought Turkey? After all, did this stop the decline of the Ottoman Empire? Would the Republican period of “modernisation without religion” have brought about, I don’t know, the relative emancipation of women? Does the fact that Turkish women would most definitely have not received the vote in 1930/34 offend your democratic sensibilities? Or would it have been OK, because it would have been in line with “our” religious practice?
And what part of the break with tradition do you exactly oppose anyway? Which of the Great Reforms do you feel were wrong (for the time)? I mean, talking about etatism is fine and dandy, but it’s a dead letter even within the CHP. But it served its purpose. The banks the AKP has been selling were all founded at that time!
Moreover, you criticise a great deal, but give no clue as to what you would like to see, except for headscarves. Is that all? Please share with us, what of the following reforms you would also like to change.
1. The surname law?
2. The abolition of titles?
3. The secular civil code? In particular: The introduction of a civil marriage?
4. The abolition of mecelle?
5. The emancipation of women?
6. The suffrage for women?
7. The change in alphabet?
8. The unification of boys’ and girls’ education?
9. The introduction of street names?
10. The expansion of education?
Now, let us consider the so-called five/six arrows. There is general consensus that etatism has outlived its usefulness. Therefore not even the CHP recommends renationalisation or something similarly absurd. But which of the other principles would you be opposed to?
1. Republicanism? Do you advocate a return to monarchy to be a good thing?
2. Populism? After all, the (rigged) 1946 and the (fair) 1950 elections were enabled under this. Perhaps it ought never to have been instituted?
3. Revolutionism? Perhaps we should maintain our society, ossified and immutable, at the state that prevailed… when? 1900? 1800? 1700? 1600? 1500? 1000? 500?
4. Nationalism? Should we return to the millet system? Would you like to see the Patriarch in Istanbul resume ethnarchical powers? Different courts? Wine for Greeks but not Turks?
5. Laicism? Your answer to this is obvious – no need to answer.
But do you have a quarrel with the first four?
Calling us paranoid, devoid of intellect, etc can be fun. I’m not in the least bit offended, merely amused. But you do go on and on and on about the dreadful mess the Kemalists have made in Turkey without anything but vague platitudes by way of contrast. Except for headscarves, which are apparently a democratic necessity. (On that subject, I’ll believe your sincerity when you spend equal time defending the right to wear miniskirts in a democracy. In Fatih, for example!)
I and your other readers would be very much interested in knowing what exactly you would propose instead of the above-mentioned 15 or so items. Do please enlighten us.
Dear Muhiddin,
You are a fan of the radical policies of the chp. however, Muhiddin is not a very laik name, is it? Maybe you should start with yourself? Maybe you should change your name? How about, Dinsiz?
Dear Mustafa Akyol, the CHP has always been a radical statist party. I agree with you on this part. however, this was probably usefull in the upheaval during the time of hitler and mussolini. I think Ismet Inonu, a kurd himself, took the title of IL DUCE, (turkish milli sef), probably because he was afraid of attack and wanted to show that Turkey was no push-overs. I do not think ypu can ignore European politics when you are talking about turkish politic history
I find this article very weak indeed. Like in most Akyol´s writings, you have plenty of the very same sort of anti-secular hysteria he so often accuses of his political opponents. Public scene is not an appropriate arena for experiments in fusioning religion with politics. And, like previous poster, I do not quite understand, what Mr.Akyol menas by “modernization within tradition”. Just to put the most trivial example, would that mean that women are to wear “modern” headscarves? But what about mini-skirts and make-up? And there may be hundreds of questions like this. While these questions linger, it is absolutely right for the Turkish military and broader secular public to be highly suspicious of the Islamists, however “moderate”.
Kahraman´s comments are very indicative of the intolerance reigning supreme among the radical Islamists. Instead of trying to elaborate answers to the very well articulated and concrete questions of Muhiddin he chooses to undertake a vicious personal attack, making silly suggestions about how he should rename himself. Is this a cohort that vociferously demands democracy in Turkey? What exactly kind of democracy is this? If I have to choose between such “democrats” and the military, my choice could not be clearer.
Proponents of religious democracy must realise that being irreligious, even atheist, is as much a human right as it is being religious and observant. Yet there is absolutely no evidence they are going to respect this. Their democracy and their human rights are for the religious only. The irreligious are constantly being lambasted as “paranoid”, “histerical”, “statist”, “authoritarian”….This is why I think all the lofty talk about democracy in Turkey contains an enormous deal of the most terrible hipocricy. It is merely a ploy to dislodge the secularists from power, and fill it with “moderate Islamists”, who would then dictate people, what to eat, drink and how to dress.
But they are not going to get it. The secularists are strong enough to defend their right to live free from religious oppression. Make no mistake: they are going to fight!
How quickly the freedom to be modest is equated with the freedom to be immodest, which proves a misunderstanding the true definition of freedom. That’s where the mandated absence of religion harms society, in crippling the ability to reason.
To see that, one should first recall that the late Ottoman Empire had a very sophisticated intellectual elite.
Apparently a lot of them were Armenian.
I suppose Kazim Karabekir is a hero in your eyes.
Professor Dadrian writes of him as a military leader intent on completing the destruction of what is now Soviet Armenians in the 1918-20 period.
Dadrian might be over-egging the pudding; but, since you are intent on destroying the creation myths of the Republic perhaps you could address this other little known and little discussed aspect of your ‘progressive’ hero.
For your information, i think Turkey’s recent secularist backlash of public “mitings” as well as the opposite efforts championed by AKP to bring some mild or democratic form of Islam to society are both baloney.
Turkey will tear itself apart on such wranglings and get absolutely nowhere. It may even go back to the infighting and economic chaos of the 1970′s.
The only real and immediate issue for Turkey to move forward as a society or as a democracy has neither to do with Secularism or Islam but to acknoledge and face it’s own past with respect to the Armenian genocide.
As a Turk, i will feel proud again when Turkey has finally done this.
Thanks once again Mustafa Akyol on a fine piece. However I find the responses from Eli and Muhıttin an absolute laugh.
I find the views of these so called ‘secular tragics’ laughable. The period of 1923 till 1950 was a time of darkness, no enlightenment as they would like to make people believe, but rather a time of lost opportunities and backwardness.
The most laughable point made is regarding the emancipation of women. İt is argued that Ataturk and the CHP gave women freedom. How? By allowing women to vote in elections ın 1930/34 and by allowing women to wear take off the headscarves and wear minı-skirts. When I first read this by Muhittin I couldn’t help but laugh. Looks like it is Muhittin bey who has selective memory not Mustafa Akyol. Democracy first appeared in Turkey in 1876, during the CHP period there was no democracy. There was only one party till 1946. İt wasn’t till 1950 was there real democracy a choice between the DP and CHP. Coincidently it was the CHP which fell into its own trap by setting up traps that worked well in 1946 elections but not so well in 1950.
Can Muhittin bey explain if Rauf Orbay and Refet Bele were so naive why weren’t they allowed to compete in the elctions of the time? Surely if these gentlemen were naive they would have been beaten soundly during the elections. However, this never occurred but rather their party was closed down and unfortunately we can never tell how successful they would have been. It seems like Ataturk and the CHP at the time were not very confident with themselves and were more interested in imposing themselves on society then actually helping the people.
The idea that the republican period gave women freedom is nothing more than a laugh for comedians. Allowing women to wear mini-skirts, forcing women to take off headscarves isn’t freedom Muhittin bey. My definition of freedom is being able to do what you like to do when you want. Such as economic freedom. The CHP has never in 84 years of the Turkish Republic been able to put forward an economic blueprint. Their idea of having a functioning economy by the state owning everything and the people getting its share from the state. İ’m sorry Muhittin bey this isn’t how you run an economy.
I can go on about how the CHP lacks ideas to you Muhittin bey, but my suggestion to you is that you go and check the election results of the last 57 years. The CHP has only won twice. This result goes to show how successful the CHP has been in Turkey. This sounds more like rewarding mediocrity rather than rewarding excellence.
The AKP has actually been the most successful party in Turkish Republican history. Again Muhittin bey you can go and check your statistic. Turkey has double its GDP in the last 5 years. From 1923 till 2002 the GDP in Turkey was 2500 USD. İn 2006 this had double to over 5000 USD.
Thank you again Mustafa Akyol on a great piece of writting and hope Muhittin bey ponders some of my suggestions for future reference.
I find the expansion of the six arrows by the first commentor interesting.
Specifically:
“4. Nationalism? Should we return to the millet system? Would you like to see the Patriarch in Istanbul resume ethnarchical powers? Different courts? Wine for Greeks but not Turks?”
Is that really the issue with the Patriarch in Istanbul? The issue is pretty clear once you get outside of Turkey and away from extreme press (on both sides of the political aisle) and it has nothing whatsoever to do with ethnarchy.
The Patriarch is the spiritual head of hundreds of millions of Orthodox Christians and is the direct administrative head of about 4 million (three million in the US alone).
He hasn’t made a single complaint about Turkey except for the basic religious freedoms that are accepted world wide as normal.
That is that issue today, not ethnarchy, but basic relgious freedom, i.e. allowing to open their theological school, hold the traditional ecclesiastical title, and for our government to stop taking their facilities.
It will be a great credit to us to stop trying to destroy something that has been here for almost two thousand years.
Regardless of how we feel about the poltical parties and movements, how WEAK and SMALL it is for US to throwing a relgious insitrtions we have ill treated into political discussions as a scapegoat and bogeyman.
It is 2007. The discussion has nothing to do with sharia and ethnarchs, it has to do with normalizing our society. Is there something wrong with saying that Ataturk was a great man but a good portion of what he did is no longer set in stone for us? Is there something wrong with giving our majorities and minorities basic relgious freedom? Are we so afraid of ourselves?
I am sick of the veiled threats of military intervention. The people making them have no part of Turkeys future. Do we think we are so week and so in need of authoritarianism that we can’t have both headscarves for people who want them and miniskirts for people who want them as well? I don’t.
I can not agree more with the latest commentator: its all about normalizing a country and adapting to current values and norms. Mustafa is right: its about freedom and real democracy.
I find it difficult to discuss ‘sensitive’ things in Turkey. Friends become hysterical as I criticize state ideology. Than, what is left…is to shut up, and stop discussing…
And that’s a sad situation for a country as Turkey. People are not bein taught to discuss subjects but only to accept.
Goksel Doganay illustrates perfectly clearly what the Islamists` real idea of freedom is. He says “allowing wearing miniskirts” is not freedom. Surely, he would have been happy living in a society where women are FORCED to wear headscarves, provided there is a freedom to make money. But he forgets that not everybody shares this bizarre idea of freedom. He chooses to ignore the millions of people in Turkey who are going to fight exactly for what he hates so much: for freedom to wear miniskirts and drink alcohol. And then, we will see who laughs the last.
Eli again illustrates a pitiful understanding of freedom. Can I just say to Eli that I live in Australia and I have no issue with people wearing mini-skirts and drinking alcohol. İf you read my article closely you would understand what I meant. These are trivial issues that makes me laugh. I couldn’t care less if you drank alcohol or wore a mini-skirt. However I’d like to point out these are lifestyle choices. Since when have women been forced to wear a headscarf in Turkey. İf anything wearing the headscarf in Turkey even though it is looked down upon by many in Turkey demonstrates the strength and courage of the average Turkish woman even under heavy duress. In future Eli I recommend that you get your priorities right or else you will be living in poverty for the rest of your life. Also I’d like to point out yes I am Muslim and Turkish I say it proudly but I find it laughable that I am called an İslamist by Eli. Sounds like Eli needs more education rather than concentrating on freedom or lack of it.
Goksel Doganay, I would overlook these pathetic insults you throw at me, and these ridiculous advices you give me, ignoring who I am and what I do. I am not interested in this sort of primitive polemics. But it is very illustrative of the dangerously intolerant mindset reining supreme among the so-called “democrats”.
Please, henceforth refrain from replying to my comments.
İ would like to invite these secular tragics including Eli to Australia and learn what is secularism. We intolerant democrats in Australia would be more than happy to educate secularism free of charge. But İ guess I’m just illustrating a very ‘dangerous intolerant mindset’ and this is just another ‘pathetic insult’ that İ’m throwing.
Muhiddin Önder’s answers typify the intellectual penury of die-hard but buffoon elements purporting to reprsent every good idea that man can cherish. In a typical bravado posturing that reeks of siege mentality and lofty haughtiness that finds solace in trading in human anguish, he positions himself as an intellect praising dictatorship and dismissing others as cheap charlatans who are against progress and freedom in the name of secularism. His misplaced reasoning that shuts doors on true progress and enginreering and re-ingineering is a disease that defies treatement which has stricken him and his accomplices. I find his explanations utterly cheap, sleazy and trashy that it deserves no comment.
In his bravdo intelligentsia, he writes: “To assume that a country with extremely feeble communications, practically non-existent literacy and newly emerged from a war with umpteen nations (plus an insurgent minority) to be ready for democarcy would be quite utopian, and a recipe for disaster.” That very harebrained explanation is the very reason why few elite who have accumulated wealth thru dubious means try to stand on the way of the nation claiming that they protect the republic. Do you protect the republic from the public? Do you have a nationalist without a nation? That said, democracy is not a grandiose exercise that can only be comprehended by rocket scientists. It is the simple things people do like voting, going to school, doing what they deire in their social places, praying in whichever way they deem fit and so on. Were these actions so great that the Turkish pple couldn’t understand when u are rooting for the dictatorship of the kemalists? Democracy builds pple and that’s why it was invented for pple, but the mafia lot preaches complex mentality that defies reason and belittles the pple of Anatolia reasoning that they and they alone can comprehend all issues. We find such arrogance and loftiness utterly foolish and it boomerangs on its ownsers. Those who think that they can hold the nation to ransom, will be awaken by the nation and the nation is made up of the Turkish pple in the four winds. We will compare the notes and time will tell if the nation can continue bleeding while few marauding hordes try to block the will of the nation.
You complained about “modernisation within tradition”. Defintely this is not a complex subject but your stubborness breeds mental blockage and that’s why u can’t comrehend. It simply means that the Turkish pple are free to do what they deem fit. Free to be Muslims and allow others [be they muslims or not] to exercise their religious commitments. Your paranoa which is understandable makes you see others marching on to rob you. It was Chinua Achebe who wrote in his “A Man of the People”, that there ” is nothing more fearful that an elite that builds its wealth and bastion in exclusion. They are weary, harmful and oppressive.”
I myself find Ataturk and his lot deserve respect however villain they were, after all, everyone has a good point. However, every day has its realities and modernism doesn’t mean the rallying call of the junta in 1924 but better roads and free society. If we have accepted the ideas of the 1924 dictatorship, then we shul accept the ideas of the world community like in the 21st centurly like religious freedom, minority protection, free will of the pple, free association, free media, judiciary and so on. To build that, we need a free intellectual discourse and crtitical thinking that’s free from poisoning and belittling the Anatolian pple. About the headscarf, I can’t comrehend why u are so fearful of a small cloth on the head of a someone whom u share nothing with. Are u the guardian of the pple? By what law by what justice do you lord over the pple with your buffoonery and absurd idealogies which are dead in the world of today? That said, you wrote that while the veil may be allowed, Aykol has to accept that mini-skirt. Surely, is this ur kind of intellectual loftiness? I’m not disturbed bcoz I wasn’t expecting much from ur ilk. Well, I don’t represent Aykol but I’m sure he is not interested even if u want to have sex with your own mother infront of Cankaya. You are free to do what u want but you shul know that every human being has his own likings and therefore, she/has to be free to do what he/she wants. I can’t make u a better Muslim by forcing u. Islam is a choice and an inward feeling and unless u are fearful of ur own God, then no one can force u to be a better Muslim. You always say Islam is marching, defintely, it supposed to be and Islam doesn’t stop bocz a mortal disparages it. All those who fought it inclusing the repressive junta have gone down the drain but Islam has not died neither does it die. It belongs to the supreme. I want to be free to do what I want. Islam is a private matter and I shul have the freedom to practice it everywhere of the Turkish soil unless Turkey belongs to the few elite who amassed wealth and now are desperately trying to continue keeping the pple in the trenches but with no avail.That said, if a Turkish feels Islam is bad and useless {like u}, u are free and no one shul in anyway under any circumstance whatsoever feel to make u what u not or want to be.